Valentine (14 page)

The first blow came from the Hispanic guy, sending the white man crashing into the jukebox. He came back with an uppercut that knocked the first guy to the floor. The other patrons shouted and clapped, and the bartender pulled his baseball bat out from under the bar. The Hispanic man came up from the sawdust, his nose streaming blood, and the next thing everyone heard was the click of his switchblade.

The sudden hushed silence in the room was disrupted by the second click. The big white man was holding an enormous semiautomatic, aimed at the Hispanic’s heart. There was a long pause, which seemed longer than it actually was: sheer drama. Then, with a wide grin, the Hispanic sheathed his knife, returned it to his pocket, mumbled some sort of apology to the white man regarding the woman named Rosa, and left the bar.

He’d smiled, coming forward from the shadows. The weapon had already disappeared back inside the white man’s leather jacket by the time he’d arrived
beside him at the bar. The jukebox went back to its repertoire of heavy metal, the conversations began again, the dart game was resumed, and the bat disappeared behind the bar. He sidled right up to the victor, slapped him on the back, and called for two more beers.

In the next hour he’d bought two more Buds for himself and seven Heinekens for his new friend, Hatch, a biker with a gang called the Dead. Hatch and the Hispanic—also one of the Dead—were both sleeping with Rosa, a waitress at a nearby diner. Hatch didn’t mind that, but he objected to Pedro calling her a whore. By the time the two Buds and seven Heinekens had been appropriately supplemented with four shots of tequila each, Hatch had supplied him with the vital information.

Now, on Fourteenth Street, he turned and headed toward Chelsea. He was to ask a bartender named Mick for a regular named Flash.

It was time to get a gun.

The chicken was in the oven, and the wild rice had just been added to the boiling water on the stove. The salad was in a large bowl near the sink, waiting to be dressed. The two women leaned against opposite counters in the cheerful yellow-and-white kitchen, sipping Bloody Marys. Well, Mary had the real thing: Jill was drinking straight tomato juice.

Mary had handed over the advance copy of the
New York
interview as she arrived, and watched as her client dropped it absently on the coffee table without so much as opening the envelope. Now Jill launched into her monologue, watching Mary’s face as she spoke. The agent was a tall woman, with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and a large, attractive, friendly face. Her most arresting features were her eyes: deep, dark green, sparkling with intelligence and an innate humor. They gave anyone looking
at her the impression that she would, at any moment, break into a dazzling smile.

She was not smiling now. On the contrary, her usual merry disposition was nowhere in evidence. The color drained from her face as she listened, frowning slightly and occasionally shaking her head in disbelief.

When Mary was up to speed on the cards and the roses and the analyst and the private detective, Jill paused for a moment. Then she delivered what she thought would be, for Mary, her most devastating news.

“So, all things considered, I’ve decided to stop writing the book.”

Far from being devastated, Mary seemed relieved. “Of course, Jill. I was about to suggest that myself. You can’t go on with it. Not now, anyway. It would be too—I don’t know,
ghoulish.
”

“Yeah,” Jill agreed. She looked at her friend and shook her head, thinking how crazy it seemed even to be discussing things like this. She’d been living with it for several days now, and yet the strangeness—the cold, macabre
reality
of it—struck constantly fresh, as if for the first time.

“Maybe you should take a break,” Mary said. “Just not write anything for a while. You’re certainly doing okay, and it’s not like you’re on a deadline for the next one. I can tell Bill—”

“No!” Jill interjected. “Please. I—I don’t want everybody knowing about this—this situation.” She shuddered at the thought of the projected conversation between her agent and her editor. “Besides, I want to keep working. At least I’ll have that. He’s not going to take
that
away from me, whoever he is! I have other ideas for books: I’ll just pick one of them. Please don’t say anything to Bill.”

She was aware of the shrillness of her voice, and that, to Mary, she must sound desperate. With a tremendous effort, she forced herself to smile at her friend.

“So, we’re going to have my home-cooked dinner, and we are not going to let this nonsense ruin it for us.”

Mary watched her for a moment. Then she, too, smiled. “All right. But—and this is the last I’ll say on the subject—you might want to consider going away somewhere. You know, a little vacation. At least for a while.”

Jill shrugged. “Where would I go in the middle of February?”

“Well, I have an idea. . .”

Jill listened as Mary told her the idea, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it herself. By the time Nate joined them, they were deep in conversation. When the buzzer sounded, Jill raised a finger to her lips, indicating to her friend that none of this would
be mentioned, even to Nate. As she went to let him in, she stored the idea away for future reference, in case escape became necessary.

Nate was holding one hand behind his back, grinning that lopsided grin she loved so much, as she opened the door. He leaned forward to kiss her tenderly on the lips. Then, he whipped his hand around and thrust it toward her.

She stared, stifling the involuntary cry that welled up inside her. Then, with a deep breath and a smile she managed to pull from thin air, she reached shakily out to accept his gift.

One dozen red, long-stemmed American Beauties.

He watched as Tara walked into the crowded little restaurant on Bleecker Street. She glanced around for a moment before she spotted him. He rose from the table in the corner and waved, then stared as the tall, beautiful blonde in the wooly white coat broke into a dazzling grin and sailed across the room toward him. He quickly adjusted his brown turtleneck and straightened his brand-new Harris tweed jacket as she came up to him.

“Good evening,” he said, moving around the table to hold out her chair.

Still grinning, she shrugged. The white coat fell to the chair behind her, and it was all he could do to suppress a gasp. She was wearing a long-sleeved,
knee-length midnight-blue sequined sheath with a neckline that could only be described as dramatic. She sank slowly into her chair, and he sank quickly into his.

“You look lovely,” he said.

The grin became a laugh.

“Oh, this old thing?” she said, raising a hand to her bare throat. The little white price tag attached to the cuff of the dress fluttered before his eyes. “Oops!” With another laugh and a wink, she brought up her other hand and removed it.

He laughed. It hadn’t been a mistake, he knew. It was a deliberate, brilliant icebreaker. Leaning forward, he said, “I have a confession to make.”

The soft glow of the candle in the center of the table danced in her deep blue eyes as she, too, leaned forward. “Oh?”

“I’ve owned this jacket for”—he glanced at his watch—“about two hours. Nate helped me pick it out. He also insisted I buy the aftershave. I’ve never bought aftershave in my life before that costs more than about two bucks a gallon.”

She leaned even closer to him and sniffed. “Ah, yes. Well, that particular one probably cost more than the jacket. I approve.”

He smiled over at her as he relaxed back in the chair, wondering why he’d been so nervous in the
first place. As the waiter materialized beside them, he asked, “Do you like champagne?”

“My dear, I could bathe in it.”

He nodded and ordered a bottle, noting her raised eyebrows as he pronounced
Moët
correctly, with the hard
t
most Americans got wrong.

“So,” he said when the waiter had gone, “do all you New York women like expensive aftershaves?”

Tara laughed again. “I wouldn’t know: I’m not a New York woman. I’m from a little town you’ve never heard of in Iowa, and I have what is apparently the world’s only
functional
family. My father owns a furniture showroom, and Mom is a retired registered nurse. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I have one brother, Gilbert, twenty-four. He’s in law school. I majored in drama at Northwestern; I moved to New York five years ago; and I am now appearing in a popular daytime soap opera you’ve never seen and don’t want to see. I like chocolate ice cream, fuzzy slippers, and long walks on the beach. I hate mushrooms, popular daytime soap operas, and insincere people. The last book I read was—”

“Whoa!” he cried, laughing. “You sound like those centerfolds in
Playboy
!”

She laughed. “Have you ever taken pictures for them?”

“No,” he said, smiling at her ingenuousness. “Photographers
don’t start out doing centerfolds for
Playboy
. They end up there—if they’re lucky.”

Tara nodded. “Yeah. I’ve done musicals in summer stock, but my dream is to star in a new musical on Broadway, one that Stephen Sondheim writes just for me. What’s your dream?”

“To have dinner with a beautiful actress.”

She laughed and glanced over at the entrance to the restaurant.

“Well, what do you know?!” she cried. “There’s Stephen Sondheim—and he’s coming this way! Just look at all that sheet music under his arm!”

They were still laughing when the waiter arrived with the bottle and the ice bucket. As he poured, Tara once again leaned forward.

“So, Douglas Baron, photographer, tell me all about yourself.”

Jill’s surprising culinary skills had been remarked on at length, and now the three of them were in the living room with the remains of dessert and a pot of coffee. Nate and Mary had brandy.

“Aren’t you going to join us?” Mary asked her, indicating the bottle.

Before she could reply, Nate jumped in. “Jill’s on the wagon. Has been for several weeks—not that she ever drank much to begin with. . . .”

She knew Nate didn’t suspect, but she was keenly
aware, without even looking, of Mary’s raised eyebrow. Every woman on earth knew there were three reasons why a woman suddenly stops drinking. Mary knew Jill wasn’t an alcoholic, and that she wasn’t trying to lose weight, which left only one thing.

No, she decided. I won’t tell them. Not yet.

She changed the subject. “How’s Phil?”

Mary registered disbelief. Then, with another raised eyebrow, she said, “He’s fine. He called today from San Francisco.” She turned to Nate to explain what Jill already knew. “My husband is out there for several weeks, supervising the construction of an office building he designed for his firm. It’s the biggest assignment he’s ever had—and the longest we’ve been separated from each other in the three years we’ve been married. He won’t be back till the end of next month.” She turned back to Jill. “‘How’s Phil?’ What the hell are you going on about? You got those flowers with that awful thing in them not six hours ago, and you’re asking how Phil is? What are your nerves made of, anyway?”

Jill looked quickly over at Nate, then lowered her eyes to the coffee table. “I thought we weren’t going to mention that.”

“Flowers?” Nate was saying. “What flowers? What ‘awful thing’?”

With a withering glance at her agent and a long sigh, Jill told him. The flowers, the dead rat, her trip with
Barney Fleck to the florist on Fourteenth Street She was aware, even as she spoke, of the growing tension in the room, knowing what was going to happen next. It was why she hadn’t told him in the first place.

“Damn it!”
Nate cried, jumping up from the couch before she’d even finished her last sentence. “
Goddamn it!
Who the hell
is
this guy? What the hell does he
want?!
”

She shook her head, watching as he paced up and down the length of the room.

“Me,” she said at last. “He wants me.”

That stopped him in his tracks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he wants to scare me. I thought it was Brian Marshall, but now I think it might be this crazy guy from college. The one I told you about last night, Victor Dimorta.” She paused for a moment, once more staring down at the coffee table. “Victory over death.”

“Come again?” Mary said.

She explained. Her friend and her lover stared at her. Then she said, “I know this is stupid, but I don’t know what to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to me. So I’ve asked my analyst to hypnotize me on Friday. I have this blank spot in my memory where Victor’s face should be. Just like my stepfather: I knew he’d assaulted me, but I didn’t remember the whole thing—hitting him with the skillet—until the
analyst put me under. Then I recalled the entire incident, and I remembered it when I woke up. I still remember it. Maybe the same will happen with Victor. Maybe I’ll be able to describe him to Barney and the police, and maybe I’ll remember why it is he might be doing this to me.
If
it’s Victor.”

There was silence in the room, but she noticed with relief that Nate had stopped pacing and resumed his seat beside her. He reached over and took her hand in his.

“Well, whoever it is,” he said, “he’d better stay far away from me!” She heard it in his tone: the desperation, the outraged helplessness that can only ring so clearly in the voice of offended masculinity. Then his face drained of color. “My God, I can’t believe I just brought you those roses. Oh, Jill, I’m sorry!”