Windstar (8 page)

“Angela, let me in,” he asked.

She did not respond and after awhile, he seemed to give up. She sat up on the bed, swiping at her swollen eyes as the tears finally subsided and felt her heart breaking. For the longest time she sat there going over and over the choices she had and realizing they were few.

She’d given up her apartment to move in with him and what little money she had in the bank wouldn’t be enough to put down on a deposit for a new place. She’d only worked for him for one day and that wouldn’t be enough to get her very far. She had no choice but to stay if he’d allow it and work long enough to save up the funds to get another place. She doubted he’d give her a good reference after the fool she’d made of herself tonight.

“You idiot,” she called herself. “Why did you tell him all that?”

After an hour of self-recrimination, she got up and trudged unhappily into the bathroom, her memory of his kiss still enflaming her body, dredging up needs that had not been filled in years. Cranking the water up, she stripped off her clothing that had his smell on them and threw them across the room. She climbed into a shower too cold and stinging but needing the punishment for having been so stupid.

* * * *

Rory stood at the window and stared out at the lights of New York. The apartment was quiet and still and lonelier than he could ever remember it being. He could feel Angela down the hall, but she might as well have been a thousand miles away.

Not used to feeling as he did at that moment, he turned away from the window and lay down on the sofa. Why had he grabbed her like that, he wondered? That was so out of character for him, so alien, yet it had felt right as he held her, as he kissed her. Emotions he hadn’t experienced in years had welled up inside him and he had wanted her as he hadn’t wanted another woman for as long as he could remember. He’d been going through the motions for months, taking what beautiful women so willingly offered, but never gaining anything more than the moment’s satisfaction from their silken arms and collagen-injected lips, the release of his sperm into bodies perfectly sculpted by the finest plastic surgeons in the world. He had entangled his limbs with their perfumed ones and called it fulfillment but it had been far from that. Every liaison had been nothing more than physical release. They had signified nothing and meant even less.

But with Angela, he had felt more than desire, more than passion. He had felt contentment, a coming to the place he’d been striving to find and now he had wrecked that fragile beginning, crushed it.

He groaned and turned to his side, his face to the back of the sofa, his knees drawn up. He was miserable and hated himself for what he’d done. No wonder the poor woman wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t allow him to explain, wanted nothing more to do with him.

Then he did what he’d been doing since university when his life wasn’t going the way he’d wanted it to. He got up and went in search of the bottle he had hidden, the only one Bobby hadn’t found and poured down the drain when Rory had been in rehab. With the vodka in hand, he sat down on the bear skin rug, unscrewed the cap with a flick of his thumb, and brought the bottle to his lips.

* * * *

Hours of tossing and turning finally ejected Angela from her bed and she went to the door, an ear to the wood, listening. It was very late and she was fairly sure Rory had gone to bed hours before, but she cautiously opened the door and peeked out. The living area was dark, only the striated bands of sky-glow coming in through the long bank of windows.

She ventured out, her mouth dry, needing something ice-cold to wash away the thirst. One look at his bedroom door to find it closed made her heave a relieved sigh yet she was quiet as she padded barefoot into the kitchen and quietly pulled the refrigerator door open. Taking out a cold can of Pepsi, she closed the door and started back to her room.

“I’m a fucking prick.”

Angela squealed and dropped the can. It rolled along the parquet floor as her heart thumped madly in her chest.

“‘Course, I’ve always been a fucking prick.”

It was the slurring of his words that made her hesitate continuing on to her room. She tried to find him in the living room, but the fire had gone out in the fireplace and wherever he was, he was in the darker shadows. She took a step or two into the room.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In hell, wench,” he mumbled. “In the twentieth circle of fucking hell.”

She nearly stumbled over him as her foot struck the bottle and sent it skittering across the floor--no doubt to join the can of soda wherever it had gone.

“There is no twentieth circle,” she said.

“There is in my world,” he told her. “I’m fuckult.”

She knew that mean he was drunk and when she fumbled for the switch on the light beside the club chair, he wrapped a hand around her ankle.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t turn it on.”

His hand was cold around her flesh, but his touch didn’t last long. He removed his hand with a mumbled apology.

“How much did you drink?” she asked as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she could see him sitting there on the floor.

“The whole goddamned bottle,” he stated. “And another one I found in the planter in the powder room.”

She scrunched her eyes shut. “Why?” she queried.

“I shouldn’t have slobbered all over you, wench,” he said. “Not every woman wants me to slobber all over them.”

She sat there for thirty minutes and listened to him apologizing. Half the time what he said made little or no sense to her for his thoughts were scattered, his words tumbling out in that thick brogue that she could barely understand. At one point she thought he might be crying but then he laughed hatefully, called himself a few choice names then grew silent.

“You need to get to bed,” she said.

“Can’t fucking walk,” he said. “Tried and can’t get me legs to hold me up and I’m pretty sure I’ve pissed me britches a time or two.”

She thought so, too, for the smell was ripe surrounding him.

“Well, you can’t stay on the floor all night,” she said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he quipped. “Once spent the night on a loading dock.” He chuckled. “Woke up with a fucking miserable head cold.”

He was too heavy for her to lift and she doubted if she could brace him steadily enough to get him into the shower. The only thing to do was to call Bobby, his assistant, but when she asked for Bobby’s number, Rory clammed up, refusing to tell her.

“Rory, you ….”

“You’re thinking of leaving me,” he accused. “Because of what I did.”

She didn’t deny it.

“Everybody leaves me sooner or later,” he muttered.

Angela heard true misery in his soft voice and her heart went out to him. “Just give me Bobby’s number,” she said.

He was quiet for a bit then told her he’d make a deal with her. If she promised not to leave him, if she would forgive him for what he’d done, he’d give her Bobby’s number.

She heaved a long sigh. “All right. I’ll stay. Give me the number.”

“You swear?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t leave me?”

“No, Rory,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”

He gave her the number and after she’d called Bobby, woke the poor man up, she made a second call to the AA sponsor whose number Bobby gave her.

“He’ll get there before I am,” Bobby had told her.

* * * *

Long after Bobby and Lou Timmerlane, the AA sponsor, had gotten Rory into the shower and then into bed, Angela sat in the chair in her bedroom and listened to the low talk coming from the room down the hall. Though she couldn’t hear what was being said, she knew the men were trying to decide whether or not to return Rory to rehab. Apparently the decision was made that it wasn’t necessary and Timmerlane left. Bobby remained behind to spend the remainder of the night on the sofa.

* * * *

“What set him off, do you know?” Bobby asked her the next morning as he sat with her at the breakfast table over coffee.

She looked down into her cup. “He kissed me and I reacted badly.”

Bobby sat back in his chair. “He kissed you?”

She nodded. Her hands were wrapped around her coffee cup as though she were trying to keep them warm.

“I thought you said I didn’t interrupt anything yesterday,” Bobby accused.

She lifted her gaze to his. “You didn’t. He told me he had been dreaming that he was making love to me and got pissed when you called and woke him up. I thought he was playing a very cruel joke by saying such a thing and I called him on it. I don’t like being the butt of someone’s childish spite.”

Bobby stared at her. “Rory doesn’t do things like that,” he stated.

“Ah, come on!” she snapped. “You don’t think he was putting me on?”

“If there’s one thing I know about Rory John Keith,” Bobby said, “it’s that he never lies. That man wouldn’t know how to. He might be a fallen away Catholic, but he’s still an altar boy at heart.”

“And you think a man like him would be dreaming about someone like me?” she demanded.

“If he told he was, you can take it to the bank, sister,” Bobby insisted.

“Then why did he kiss me?”

“How the hell should I know?” Bobby countered. He swept his gaze over her. “You’re not a bad looking woman and maybe he liked the way your lips looked. Maybe you were giving off some kind of pheromone or he sensed a need in you. The man has a Mother Theresa complex sometimes when it comes to helping people. It was the way he was brought up.”

“Or maybe I goaded him into it,” she said in a strained voice.

Bobby held her stare until Angela looked away, not quite as sure she understood the situation as she had been.

“You know, he hasn’t had a date in six months,” Bobby finally said. “Maybe he was just horny.” He took a sip of coffee. “I dream I’m doing it with Reese Witherspoon on a nightly basis.”

They both looked up as Rory came shambling past them into the kitchen. His curly hair was tousled, his t-shirt damp, and he looked terrible. He wouldn’t look at either of them but went to the coffee maker and poured himself a mug. Angela noticed the way his hand shook as he brought the scalding hot brew to his lips.

“You need to go to as many meetings as you can find today, Rory,” Bobby said.

Rory nodded. He was standing with his back to them, slowly sipping the coffee.

“You do that shit again and we’re going to take another trip to Arizona. You hear me?”

Again Rory nodded. His shoulders were slumped and he was standing there with one bare foot resting on the other like a child being scolded. It brought out the mothering instinct in Angela and she got up and went to him, putting a hesitant hand to his back.

“Do you want me to fix you something to eat?” she asked.

“No,” he said softly.

“You need some aspirin or something like that?”

He turned his head and when she saw the moisture in his eyes, she felt her heart twist in her chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I ….”

“Let’s just forget it,” she said and forced a smile she didn’t feel to her lips.

“I’m gonna call Lou and find out where the meetings are,” Bobby announced, getting up from the table. “He’ll come by and pick you up.”

Rory was looking into Angela’s eyes. “Will you go with me?” he asked.

She didn’t hesitate for she had heard the pleading in his voice, could see it in his wounded eyes. “If you want me to.”

“I do.”

* * * *

There were nine other people in the room when Rory stood up. He was pale, his handsome face drawn and tight.

“I’m Rory,” he said. He looked at Angela, took courage from her gentle smile, and lifted his chin. “And I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Rory,” the others responded.

Chapter Four

“We’ve known each other since second grade,” Angela told him. “I haven’t seen her in a few years, not since my divorce.”

They were discussing the old friend who was flying into New York later that day to see Angela.

“You never talk about your marriage or your divorce,” Rory said. They were sitting on the balcony with the warm spring sun chasing away the blahs of the winter.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said.

She had been working for him since September and May was a week away. In that length of time she’d traveled to London, Madrid, Rome, Athens, and Los Angeles with him. She’d spent the last two weeks in LA while rehearsals for his next movie got underway. They’d come back to New York for Easter and would be there for another week or so before the production of Wayward Wind began in New Mexico. She’d met his parents, his five brothers, and two of his three sisters, and had been welcomed into their friendly clan as though she were one of the family. She and Bobby had become very close.

As for the relationship between her and Rory ….

They still joked with one another but the humor was more subdued and lacked the intense sexual innuendoes for which Rory had such an affinity. He was a perfect gentleman around her at all times while still maintaining an easy going camaraderie that made her feel at ease. She had finagled him into eating healthier than he had intended and kept a close watch to make sure no liquor lurked in any of his dwellings.

“What was he like?”

Angela looked up from the crossword puzzle she was doing. “Who?”

“Your ex,” he said. He was sitting with the soles of his bare feet planted on the balcony rail, shirt off, jeans unbuttoned at the waist, hair shorn almost to the scalp for the opening scenes of the new western.

He didn’t think she was going to answer. It seemed to him she guarded her personal life religiously, but he was curious about the man who had hurt her so badly she had given up on dating.

“I met him when I was in high school,” she said. “He had graduated from college and was working for my father’s construction company as one of the bookkeepers.” She filled in an answer on the puzzle as she spoke. “Daddy adored him. That should have been a red flag waving in my face, but I was too caught up in Dickie’s good looks and sophistication.”

“Dickie?” he repeated. “His name was Dickie?”

“Richard,” she supplied. “Richard Headly.”