The Surprise of His Life (28 page)

Dean,
lying precisely where he'd been dragged on board, and Walker, edging himself to
lean against a wall, studied each other. Dean's hair was plastered to his head,
as were his clothes to his body. His lips had begun to turn a pale blue, while
his skin looked as pallid as new-fallen snow. One of his shoes had disappeared,
leaving nothing but a soggy sock to protect his foot. A vine of seaweed, dark
green and slimy looking, draped about his other shoe. All in all, he would have
passed for a bedraggled puppy.

But
then, Walker suspected that he looked little better. He, too, was drenched from
head to foot. His heart pounded so loud in his chest that he would have sworn
that it was audible. Curiously, it was pounding harder now than when his friend
had been missing. It was as though, now that it was over, now that he saw the
visible proof of what he'd almost lost, a vial of adrenaline had been shot
directly into his veins. He suddenly felt weak-kneed and as listless as the
puppy Dean looked like. He also hurt in every joint and muscle of his body. On
the flip side, he'd never felt more exhilarated.

"W-what
in hell took you so long?" Dean asked finally.

"Why
in hell didn't you go down where you were supposed to have?"

"D-didn't
want to make it easy."

"Yeah,
well, you didn't," Walker said. On some plane he noted that the pilot was
heading for home. He also heard the pilot on the radio, reporting that they'd
found Dean and to call his family. A vision of Lindsey came to mind. Life.
Death. The passage between the two was short, the journey sometimes so
unexpected. Hadn't he learned that from Phyllis's untimely death? Did it take
nearly losing Dean to once more remind him of this? And when it was all said
and done, wasn't loving the only thing that mattered?

Say
you don't make it to a hundred and ten. Say I don't make it to eighty-six.
Couldn't we just be happy we had twenty, thirty, thirty-five years together?

I
want to be fair to you. I have to leave you free.

Being
in love is like being pregnant. You can't be just a little bit. You either are
or you aren't. And when you're in love, Walker, you commit all the way. You
take all the chances. You don't compromise. And you damned sure don't leave
your partner free to walk away!

"The
engine... it just gave out...."

Walker
brought his attention back to his friend.

"...p-pitched
the copter into the s-sea. Totaled. The c-copter's totaled."

"That's
what we pay insurance for."

"D-do
you have... water?"

Walker
glanced around, spying the thermos from which he and the pilot had fortified
their flagging spirits a couple of times. "How about some coffee?"

"Anything...
wet."

Uncapping
the thermos, Walker poured out a half cup of black coffee. He handed it to
Dean. It was then that he noticed how badly Dean was shaking. "Here,"
Walker said, helping Dean to raise his head and holding the cup to his mouth.
He drank slowly, but greedily.

"'Water,
water everywhere, but not a d-drop to d-drink,'" Dean quoted the famous
poem, a lopsided smile on his face.

Cold.

Dean
was as cold as death.

Walker
could feel the numbing chill in his hands and face as he held the cup to his
friend's lips.

Laying
the thermos aside, Walker grabbed a blanket. "Put this around you,"
he ordered, pulling Dean to him as though he were a baby and draping the
blanket about him. Gently he leaned him back—this time against the wall—and
gathered the woolen blanket about his neck.

He
had just started to remove his hands when Dean abruptly reached for him. He
caught Walker's wrist. The power behind his clasp belied his exhaustion. The
two men stared. Brawny Dean. Agile Walker. Friends for a thousand years.

"You
son of a bitch," Walker whispered at last, "you scared the hell out
of me!"

Dean
said nothing, though his eyes glazed with tears. And then Walker pulled him
back to him. He held him. Tightly. Unashamedly. As his own eyes filled with
tears.

"I've
screwed everything up," Dean said as he peered into the thermos cup full
of coffee, as though there might be answers there that he could find nowhere
else.

The
helicopter was only miles away from the mainland. Though still wet, Dean had
stopped shivering, possibly due to the added coffee Walker had insisted he
drink. After their emotional exchange, nothing more had been said. Nothing more
needed to be. They might be friends who were at odds with one another, but
nonetheless they remained friends. Death's tapping at the door had put their
friendship into perspective. Apparently, it had other things, as well.

When
Walker, who leaned negligently against the far wall, said nothing, Dean glanced
up and over at him. "How can you work all your life building
relationships, then flush them down the toilet?" Before Walker could
comment, Dean added, "I spent twenty-something years loving Bunny and
being loved by her, then whoosh—" he swiped his hand through the air
"—I throw all that away."

"Did
you?" Walker asked frankly. At Dean's look of incomprehension, he
clarified, "Did you throw it all away?"

Dean
laughed rich notes of sarcasm. "I'd say I came as close as any man ever
did."

"Close
isn't the same thing as actually doing it."

"I've
cheated on my wife, I've asked for a divorce, which she's probably more than
happy to grant me and I've alienated my daughter. All in all, I'd say I've come
closer than close."

"Both
are worried sick about you."

The
look in Dean's eyes said that he longed to believe that were true, but then he
dropped his eyes as though to say that, even if it were, he didn't deserve
their concern.

"Don't
be so hard on yourself," Walker said. "Growing older isn't easy for
any of us. You panicked. There's no shame in fear."

Fear.
It dawned on Walker that maybe that was the basis of his refusal to marry
Lindsey. Maybe the reason wasn't nearly as noble as he'd like to believe. Maybe
he wasn't nearly as concerned about leaving her free to walk away as he was
afraid of what would happen to him should she choose to leave him in the
future. Maybe he wasn't nearly as concerned about being fair to her as he was
about protecting himself. And maybe that fear rested in the fact that he saw
himself growing older—older and unable to hang on to someone as young and
beautiful as she. Maybe he and Dean shared the same fear after all, each merely
seeking different routes of expression.

"You
wouldn't have panicked," Dean said.

"Don't
be too sure."

Dean
half smiled. "You know what the real kicker is? When I was bobbing around
out there on the ocean, it struck me like a ton of bricks that I wasn't afraid
to die. I didn't want to, but I wasn't afraid to. What kind of sense does it
make not to fear death, but to fear growing older? Which is what growing older
is really all about, isn't it?"

"In
the main, yes, but you were afraid that life was passing you by."

"Yeah,
and so I reached for something that didn't matter and in so doing turned loose
of everything that did."

"Lindsey
still loves you. Nothing's ever going to change that. She's sick about what
happened between the two of you."

At
the mention of the fight between him and his daughter, pain streaked across
Dean's face. "She and I had never even had words, not any real
words," he said, repeating almost exactly what Lindsey had said. "You
know, the ironic thing was that I decided the night before not to see Michele
again. I really had," he said as though he thought Walker might doubt this
eleventh-hour decision.

"I
believe you," Walker said, and he did.

"I
think I only saw her Friday night because I knew Bunny was with this Don
person. Even before, I knew what I was doing was wrong. Not only to Bunny, but
to Michele, too. Michele kept saying everything was in the name of a good time,
no strings attached, but I sensed that she was getting involved. I didn't want
to hurt the kid. I was afraid that she was going to want something from me that
I just couldn't give. The truth is that I like her, but I don't love her. I
love..." He stopped, as though he no longer had the right to say what he'd
been about to. Instead, he said, "I don't love Michele."

Dean
downed the last of the hot coffee, stoppered the thermos, and leaned back. The
approaching storm buffeted the copter back and forth. Both men were aware that
another subject, as stormy as the weather, had yet to be broached.

"Dean..."
Walker stopped, searching for the right words, then decided that there were
none. "How I feel about Lindsey isn't going to change. I love her. It's
that simple, but I want you to understand that I didn't start out knowing this
would happen. No one could have been more startled than I was. No one could
have fought it any harder than I did."

Dean
started to speak, but Walker halted him.

"No,
I want to say this. Of course I understand how you feel. Don't you think I'm
well aware of what a strain this puts on our friendship? Don't you think I know
that I have some responsibility to you and Bunny? Don't you think I've asked
myself how I'd feel if the situation were reversed, if you were in love with my
daughter? I have. God, I have! A dozen times!"

This
time Dean said nothing, and Walker wished that he would—anything to fill the
silence that now loomed before them. In the stillness, Walker heard the rain
splattering against the helicopter, the chop, chop, chopping of the blades, the
pounding of his heart. Say something, dammit! But Dean didn't, and Walker heard
himself speaking again. He wanted so desperately for Dean to understand.

"After
Phyllis died, I just went through the motions of living. I got up, I did what
was expected of me, I went to bed. Only the time I spent with Adam mattered.
Only then did I feel... I don't know, alive. But he grew up, left home, and
found his own way in the world. Life seemed lonelier after that. The motions
got harder to go through. And then came Lindsey. She had—has—a vitality that
I'd long ago lost. She's sweet and honest and so filled with life. She makes me
feel... young. Ah, hell," Walker said, scrambling his fingers through his
hair. "Maybe I'm just having the same mid-life crisis you are. Maybe I'm
just trying to hang on to my youth."

"No,"
Dean said quietly.

So
quietly that Walker glanced over at him.

"I
could tell Saturday morning that what you had with Lindsey was different than
what I had with Michele. Mind you, I didn't much like what I was seeing, but I
could tell that it was different. When Lindsey brought up Michele, I just
felt... dirty. Even through my shock and anger at finding you two together, I
could tell that you didn't feel that way about what had happened between you
and Lindsey."

"No,"
Walker said, "that may be the only thing I haven't felt. Confused, elated,
disbelieving, concerned, but not dirty. Never that."

The
two men heard the pilot asking for clearance to land, which meant that the
airport was near. Soon the world, life, would once more intrude.

"I—"
Dean began.

"You—"
Walker said.

Both
stopped, hesitated, waited for the other.

Finally,
Dean said, "I haven't grown use to the idea of you and Lindsey, but I
promise you that I'll try."

"You
may not have to," Walker said, a shadow now fallen over his heart.

"What
do you mean?"

"I
don't know what our future holds," he said without going into any detail.
He noted, though, that he was no longer completely rejecting the idea of
marriage. Too much had happened within the last few hours to hold too tightly
to old beliefs. Maybe the basic truth was that life was just too short to spend
it away from people you loved.

"If
you love her," Dean said quietly, "don't let her go." Suddenly,
Dean grinned, a slow, simple curving of his mouth. "Did I just say what I
thought I did?"

The
same smile at Walker's lips, he said, "It must be the acoustics in
here."

Ten
minutes later the helicopter landed. As Walker was helping Dean from the craft,
he saw Lindsey step from the terminal. Totally oblivious to the rain, she began
to walk toward the two men. Slowly. Then not so slowly. Finally, she began to
run. Walker stepped back, allowing her to sail into her father's outstretched
arms.

"Daddy!"
she cried as she buried her head in his shoulder.

"I'm
okay," Dean whispered as her tears fell. "There's no need to cry. I'm
okay."

"I
thought—"

"Shh,"
he said, pulling her tighter, "everything's okay."

For
long moments, despite the rain, despite the howling wind, they just held each
other. Walker watched, feeling a bright glow warm his heart.

"I'm
sorry I slapped—" Lindsey began, but again her father quieted her.