Heartbeat (19 page)

“You do your best, kid.
Give
it your best shot, and hope that does the trick. And if the folks don't like it,” he said, shrugging philosophically, “them's the breaks.” Easily said. But she still couldn't believe what had happened as a result of her sticking to her guns with Steven. But it wasn't as though she'd had a choice. She couldn't have done otherwise. She just couldn't. There was no reason to. It was their baby, and she loved him. It made it impossible to get rid of it, on a whim, just because it frightened Steven. So she had lost him.

“Would you stick by what you believed in, no matter how someone else felt?” she inquired as they sat down to the big juicy steaks he had cooked while she watched him. She had set the table and made the salad dressing, but he had done everything else, and the dinner looked delicious. Steak, salad, garlic bread. And there were strawberries dipped in chocolate for dessert. “Would you hold your ground no matter what?”

“That depends. You mean at someone else's expense?”

“Maybe.”

He puzzled over it for a minute, as she helped herself to the salad. “I think it would depend on how strongly I felt. Probably. If I really thought my integrity was at stake, or the integrity of the situation. Sometimes it doesn't matter how unpopular you get, you just can't deviate from what you believe in. I know, as one gets older one is supposed to get more moderate, and in some ways I have. I'm thirty-nine years old and I'm more tolerant than I used to be, but I still believe in taking stands about things I care about. It hasn't exactly won me a lot of gold stars, but on the other hand, my friends know I'm someone they can count on. That counts for something, I think.”

“I think
so
too,” she said softly.

“How does Steven feel about that?” He was getting curious about him. Adrian spoke of him very little, and he wondered how well they got along. He wondered how much they had in common. Just looking at them, they seemed very different.

“I think he feels strongly about his opinions too. He's not always very good about understanding other people's positions.” It was a classic understatement.

“Is he good about adjusting to you?” Their marriage intrigued him. He wanted to get to know them both, since he couldn't have her to himself, much as he would have liked to.

“Not always. He's good at …” She groped for the words and then found them. “Parallel living is the best way I can describe it. He does what he wants to do, and he lets you do what you want without interfering.” As long as he thought you were doing the right thing to get ahead. Like working in the newsroom.

“Does that work?”

It used to. It did. Until he moved right out of her life because he didn't like what she was doing. She took a breath as she tried to explain it to Bill Thigpen. “I think to make a marriage really work, you need more involvement than that, more intertwining, more interaction. It's not good enough to let each other be, you have to be something together.” It made sense to him, and he had figured that out when he was married to Leslie. “But I only figured that out recently.”

“The kicker is that that's the whole secret. A lot of people will just let you do your own thing. The trouble is, there are damn few people who want to do the same thing you do. I've never found one. Though I have to admit, I haven't looked very hard in the last few years. I haven't really had the time, or the inclination,” Bill added.

“Why not?” She was intrigued by him too. He looked as though he would have enjoyed being married.

“I think I was scared. It hurt so much when Leslie and I broke up, and when she took the boys, I think I never really wanted to do that again. I never wanted to care enough to get that hurt, or have kids someone could take away from me just because the marriage didn't work out. It never seemed fair to me. Why should I lose my kids because the woman I'm with no longer loves me? So I've been careful.” And lazy. He had purposely not looked for a serious relationship for a long time, telling himself he wasn't ready.

“Do you think she'll ever give the boys to you full-time, or more than for just a few visits a year?”

“I doubt it. She thinks she has a right to them, that they're hers, and she does me a big favor by sending them to me at all. But the truth is, I have as much right to be with them as she does. It's just bad luck that I happen to live in California. I could always go back to New York, to see more of them, but I always thought it would be even more difficult there. I don't want to be ten blocks away from them every night and wonder what they're doing. I want to wander in and out of the room when they're talking on the phone, doing their homework, hanging out with their friends. I want to stand there and get tears in my eyes when I watch them sleep at night. I want to be there when they're sick and throw up and have runny noses. I want to be there for the real stuff. Not just a few weeks of Disneyland and Lake Tahoe in the summer.” He shrugged then, he had let her see what really mattered to him, and it really touched her. “But I guess this is all I get. So I make the best of it. And most of the time, I just accept what
is
_y
and I don't worry about it. I used to want to have more kids one day, so I could 'do it right' this time, but I think by now I've decided it's better this way. I don't want to go through all that heartbreak again, in case someone decides they don't really like me.”

“Maybe next time you could keep the kids.” She smiled sadly and he shook his head. He knew better than that.

“Maybe next time it would be smarter not to get married and have children.” Which was what he'd done for years, but deep down he knew that wasn't the answer either. “What about you? You think you and Steven will have kids?” It was a rude question, but he was so comfortable with her that he dared to ask it.

She hesitated for a long time before answering, not sure what to tell him. For a moment, she almost wanted to tell him the truth, but she didn't. “Maybe. Not for a while. Steven is … a little nervous about children.”

“Why?” That intrigued him. Bill thought they were one of the best things about marriage. But he had the benefit of experience, so he knew that.

“He had a difficult childhood. Dirt-poor parents. And Steven decided early on that kids were the root of all evil.”

“Oh, dear. One of those. How does that sit with you?”

She sighed, and her eyes met Bill's. “It's not always easy. I'm hoping he'll come around eventually.” Like by January maybe.

“Don't wait too long, Adrian. You'll be sorry if you do. Kids are the greatest joy in the world. Don't deprive yourself of that, if you can help it.” To him not having children seemed like a real deprivation.

“I'll tell Steven you said so.” She smiled, and Bill smiled back, wishing Steven in perdition. It would have been so nice if she were free. He reached out and touched her hand, not in a rude way, but a warm one.

“I've had a wonderful day, Adrian. I hope you know that.”

“So have I.” She smiled happily, and polished off the last of her steak, as Bill finished the salad.

“You know, for a skinny girl, you eat a lot.” He was honest, but teasing, and they both laughed.

“I'm sorry. It must be all the fresh air.” She knew exactly what it was, but she wasn't going to tell him.

“You're lucky, you can afford it.” She had a beautiful figure, and he liked the fact that she obviously enjoyed his cooking.

They talked until about ten o'clock and she helped him clean up the kitchen, and then finally he walked her back to her place, carrying her beach bag. It was another beautiful night, with hardly any smog in evidence, and the stars bright above their heads. She hated to go back to work the next day. It was the Monday holiday of the three-day weekend, but she had said she would work because she had nothing else to do except wait for Steven to call. And they had their regular show to do, despite the long weekend. And so did Bill.

“Do you want to come by tomorrow?” Bill asked. “I should be in the office by eleven.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“We go on the air at one o'clock. Come on by if you've got a free minute. You can watch the show, tomorrow's a good one.” She smiled at the prospect, and this time she was more relaxed as she unlocked the front door. He had already seen her empty apartment. There was nothing to hide from him anymore.

Except the fact that Steven had left her two months before, and she was pregnant.

“Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee?” He was about to say no, and then decided he would, just to prolong the evening. She pulled up the stool and offered it to him as she made the coffee and then they went to sit in the living room with their cups. They sat on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit. It was a far cry from his comfortable apartment.

He noticed as they sat that she didn't even have a TV or a radio, and then he noticed where there had obviously been stereo speakers. And it dawned on him suddenly that she wouldn't have sold them. There was absolutely nothing left in her place except the light fixtures and the doorknobs, a carpet in the living room, and an answering machine on the floor next to the telephone. Even the table the phone had been on was gone. It looked like a place someone had just emptied to move out of, and as he thought the words, he suddenly realized what must have happened. He looked at her as though he had spoken the words out loud, with a startled look, as the idea came to him, but he didn't dare ask her.

“So, tell me about your new things,” he said, pretending to be casual, as he stood up and looked around. “What kind of stuff did you order?”

“Oh …just the usual stuff,” she said vaguely, continuing to tell him about the politics of the newsroom, hoping to distract him.

“You know, your layout is so different than mine, the two places don't even look remotely related.”

“I know. It's funny, isn't it? I noticed that, too, when I was at your place.” She was smiling at him. She had had a beautiful day, and she was totally relaxed, even though she was a little bit tired.

“How much space do you have upstairs?”

“Just one bedroom and a bath,” she answered easily. “We have another bedroom downstairs, but we never use it.”

“Can I look?” He had let her wander all over his place and it would have seemed unfriendly not to let him do the same, so she hesitated but nodded, as he walked easily upstairs and asked her for another cup of coffee. And when she went into the kitchen to get it, he whipped like whirlwind through her bedroom. It was as empty as he had expected it would be, and within seconds he pulled open both closets, and looked through the bathroom cabinets, pawed through the boxes where she kept her clothes, and discovered what he had just figured out but she had never told him …unless his things were downstairs, and suddenly Bill wanted to know, but he didn't dare ask her. A sixth sense told him that there was a reason why Steven Townsend had loaded all their belongings into a van, and it wasn't because they were going to redo the apartment. Even their wedding picture in the silver frame now sat on the bedroom floor with the room's only lamp, because Steven had taken the dresser and all the tables.

“I like the layout,” he said, as he came downstairs looking relaxed, his whirlwind tour having gone unobserved, and then he asked her if he could use the bathroom. There were two doors on the main floor, and he intentionally chose the one he suspected was a closet, pulled open the door and found it empty save for a handful of empty wooden suit hangers. And then he opened the right one, and closed it behind him as he walked into the bathroom. He opened all the cupboards as quietly as he could, and then flushed the toilet and ran the water. And as he sat down to coffee with her again, he watched her eyes for the answers to his questions. But there were none. She had said nothing to him. She had pretended for weeks that Steven was away on business, that he would be back in a few days, that everything was fine, although she had admitted over dinner that it wasn't always easy. She was a beautiful girl, and he knew she was married. She was still wearing her wedding ring. But he also knew one other thing, after going through every closet in the place. For whatever reason she chose not to disclose, Steven Townsend was no longer living with his wife, and when he had left, he had taken everything with him.

Bill thanked her after a little while, and told her he'd drop by the newsroom the next day. And he thought about her all the way back to his place on the other side of the complex, and he just couldn't figure it out. He was intrigued by her all over again. What was she doing? And why? Why was she pretending that everything was okay? Why hadn't she admitted that she was living alone? What was she hiding? And why? But as he thought of the empty closets again, Bill Thigpen was delighted.

T
HE COMPLICATED PLOT TURNS HE WAS ABLE TO DE
-vise were seemingly endless. And at the moment, Helen's husband, John, had recently been arrested for the murders of Helen's sister Vaughn, played by the late, great Sylvia before she moved to New Jersey, and a young drug pusher named Tim McCarthy. Vaughn's drug habit had been unveiled, her misdeeds as a call girl had come out and caused untold embarrassment, and a politician with whom she was involved, and for whom she had had an abortion years before, was about to become publicly disgraced when the entire scandal hit the papers. But even more important, the fact that Helen was pregnant was about to be unveiled on the show that week. And the real scandal was that the baby wasn't her husband's, a blessing in this case, but it would be the cause of untold guessing games in kitchens across the country for the next several months. Who was the baby's father? Eventually, John and Helen's marriage would end in divorce when he wound up in prison serving a life sentence for the two murders, and the identity of Helen's baby's father would become known, but not for a long time. And Bill was going to have a lot of fun with it in the meantime.