Miracle (33 page)

Their father went through the funeral mass with an aloofness that contrasted with the subtle air of frailty about him. Sebastien felt only weary indifference for him.

A few nights after the burial Marie came into their bedroom. Sebastien was standing at a window, trying to lose his thoughts by looking for the faint stars that pierced the haze in the night sky.

She stopped behind him and kissed him on the back of the neck, running her hands down his bare torso to the waistband of his pajama bottoms. He felt her nipples pressing against him through the sheer lace of her nightgown.

“Let’s do something to help us forget the past week,” she whispered. “It’s been so long since we’ve had sex, my darling. I’m ready to start again. And I should be very fertile right now.”

“Have I become nothing but a means to an end? Could you make the request a little more romantic?”

“Oh, Sebastien, don’t be moody. I know I’ve been distant, but it’s because I’ve been depressed all these weeks, and so have you.”

“Ah, and having recently buried my brother, I’m cheerful?”

She ran her hands over the front of his pajamas, caressing
him through the material. “Come to bed. You of all people should know that grief has its limits. We’ll do something positive—we’ll make another baby.”

“It seems that you’ve avoided me until your obstetrician said it was safe to conceive again. Did you think I was happy in here alone every night? Is our sex life now solely devoted to creating a baby?”

“Stop it!” She moved around in front of him, her eyes fierce but her hands still massaging between his legs. “We have a wonderful sex life. We’ve both enjoyed ourselves. It’s always been a purposeful sort of pleasure, so why should it be any different now?”

He stared at her for a moment, growing angry and yet also feeling his body react to her stimulation. “If you want sex from me tonight, you’ll have to work for it.”

Her eyes glittered with challenge. “All right, my darling.” She untied his pajamas and jerked them down, then knelt down in front of him and took his growing erection in her mouth.

Sebastien trembled at the wet heat and the hard sucking of her lips. She was right. It was easy, and why should he care if it were even more emotionless than in the past? He wanted a child, too.

He grasped Marie’s rich black hair and pulled her away from his rigid penis. “Enough. We wouldn’t want to waste good sperm, would we?”

She smiled, her mouth wet, and quickly helped remove the pajamas from his legs. He lifted her to her feet and dragged her to the bed. The instant she climbed atop it he pressed her down and tore her gown in two.

“Yes. That’s just fine. Whatever you like,” she murmured, putting her hands behind her head and drawing her knees up.

Sebastien thrust into her and wondered if her slick welcome came from a tube of lubricant. Then he closed his eyes and shut her out completely, only feeling the connection between their bodies. He burst inside her with a furious orgasm that left him shuddering. When he opened his eyes to look at her, she nodded approvingly.

“
W
e are doomed,” Mary Beth said dully, “to live in dumps and work for the Parker Poodits of the world forever.”

Amy began to laugh. “But the people we meet are so darn interestin’. Come look out this window. I think the Ripple Man is trying to hit Frank up for another dollar.” Their neighbor Frank, a very dapper jazz musician who resembled Sammy Davis, had innocently stepped onto the old building’s tiny lawn to repot his houseplant. “Frank is shaking his head. Now the Ripple Man is peeing on Frank’s begonia.”

Mary Beth snorted. “I dislike living in a neighborhood full of derelicts, artsy-fartsy types, and men with very smooth cheeks and very short hair. I dislike being bohemian middle class.”

Amy leaned back in her chair and smiled at the irony of life beyond college. The bohemian Mary Beth had worked hard in the past year to change her image. Her wild blond hair was now straight and short. It curved around her face like parentheses, the blunt ends swinging inward just below her chin. She’d thrown out her bargain-military wardrobe and begun dressing in tailored suits. Around their colleagues at WAZF, UHF channel 16, Atlanta’s smallest independent television station, Mary Beth Vandergard was now Elizabeth Vandergard, newswriter, news producer, and
sole anchorwoman for WAZF’s sole newscast, aired every weekday evening at six.

It wasn’t hard to get ahead at WAZF. And there wasn’t much about the place to intimidate someone fresh out of college. Which was why Amy had been content for the past year. She’d progressed herself, starting as a production assistant but zooming through the haphazardly staffed ranks to a producer’s job. She now commanded an impressive staff of two and enjoyed an annual income that was almost one-thousand dollars above minimum wage.

“It’ll get better,” she told Mary Beth. “This is great experience. Everybody our age is supposed to suffer while learning the ropes.”

“Bullshit. Deborah Norville is already working for a network affiliate. It’s not fair. For God’s sake, she was in the same production classes as me! We made the same grades! And I can enunciate better than she does!”

“She’s three years older than we are.”

“No excuse. I don’t intend to be known as the ‘other’ blonde who came out of the university! Norville will eat my dust one day. Wanna know why? Because she’s Miss Ice Cream and I’m a bitch, and the public is more fascinated by mean blondes than by nice ones.”

“Interestin’ theory.”

“No brag, just fact.” Mary Beth put a cashmere scarf around her neck and swept a long white alpaca coat over her slacks and blouse. “I’m off. Off to edit tape for my soon-to-be-acclaimed show on candy making.” She sighed. “I wish I could title it,
Lick This, Sucker.
”

The news was not a high priority at WAZF, and the whole city knew it. The station was best known for its wrestling shows. Mary Beth rolled her eyes. “Have a nice Friday off. I’ll see ya on Monday. Don’t be too wild with Mr. Comedy.”

“I won’t be wild. I might be semi-weird, though.”

After Mary Beth departed Amy tossed a jacket over her sweater and jeans. She left the apartment carrying a canvas tote and her purse, then drove to the airport through a murky winter morning. She picked up the ticket Elliot had left for her and took a flight to Chicago.

He was waiting for her, in body at least, at the gate. She
found him slouched in a chair, snoring, his head thrown back and his denimed legs flung open. Large black sunglasses covered his eyes. Under a red ski jacket he wore a wrinkled flannel shirt with a crushed paper coffee cup tucked in the pocket.

Amy bent over him and sniffed. As she suspected, the scent of mint mouthwash puffed from him with each breath. He was as ridiculous as a kid trying to hide his drinking, and not nearly as successful. He smelled like a big mint julep. Frowning, she kissed his upper lip and woke him up.

“Huh? Baby, baby!” He engulfed her in his arms and pulled her onto his lap. “Salvation has come at last.” He kissed her repeatedly as she wound her arms around his neck.

Amy removed his sunglasses and peered at his bloodshot eyes. “Let me guess. You finished your last show then hung around the club until about four, then you and every guy who could still walk went to the owner’s place and partied until dawn. Right?”

“Wrong. Some girls went, too.” He grinned. “But I fought them off when they started rubbing their breasts against me.”

“Do you know that when you sleep sitting up you throw your legs apart and look like a dead frog?”

Looking toward heaven, he groaned. “I fought off the groupies to save myself for
her
?” But he was chuckling as he said it and ran his hands up and down her back. “I’ve got a great hotel room. No cheap digs for the hottest comedian on cable. You’re going to love this place. My God, I can’t believe we haven’t seen each other for three weeks. That’s a record. I knew I was getting too lonely yesterday when I was watching the
Flintstones
. I started fantasizing about Betty Rubble.”

She chucked him under the chin. “Well, Barney, I missed you too.” Amy loved the welcome in his eyes, and she knew that he wasn’t lying about his loneliness. Elliot was faithful. When they met she hadn’t expected him to be faithful, but after a year with him she was convinced that he meant it when he said he didn’t have other women.

Elliot had held onto most of his solid midwestern values, and he was so sensitive to the feelings of other people that he was like a piano string that vibrated from every sound near it. His observation-style comedy was built on the resonating tones of the world and the people around him.

But the dark side of such sensitivity made him restless, fearful, and moody. He needed Amy most when those demons plagued him. She took care of him, she made him stop partying long enough to rest, and she gave him a quiet, secure place to which he could retreat.

Now that he was emceeing a monthly showcase for comedians on one of the cable channels, he was hot, and making big money. He headlined at the best of the big clubs in New York and Los Angeles, and the owners of the smaller comedy clubs that had begun springing up all over the country were begging his manager for bookings.

He was riding the crest of an exploding demand for comedians, and he deserved the rewards. If he played too hard—way too hard—at least he worked hard, too. He was a workaholic nomad. People in the business said that Jay Leno was the only big name who traveled more. Most comedians dreamed of being successful enough to quit the road, yet Jay and Elliot thrived on it.

But Amy had met Jay, and Jay was a quiet, mellow person with none of Elliot’s manic traits. And compared to Elliot, he was a homebody. Elliot didn’t even own a home. He didn’t have a car. He said frequently that he had his work, and he had her, and that was enough. She knew that he had his booze and his dope, too, but she did her best to fight them.

Amy had learned a lot about her own strength and confidence during the past year. She made a great nursemaid behind the scenes. It was a trait that bolstered her value at the television station. Being a producer at WAZF meant doing a lot of mother-hen work. She was proud of her ability to protect Elliot more than anyone else could, even his doting, indulgent parents.

She steered him to an airport café and got him a large carton of milk. He sipped from it obediently as they walked out of the terminal, then handed her the empty container
when a group of people recognized him and asked for autographs. Amy hailed a cab and tossed her bag in the backseat. She glanced at her wristwatch and marked five minutes, knowing that Elliot would get restless if she let his fans adore him too long. When time was up she angled through the crowd and reminded him that he had a meeting to attend.

Elliot gave the crowd a resigned look. “This lady keeps my appointments. Sometimes she even makes me go to them.”

He wrapped his arm around her as they made their way to the cab. Amy enjoyed the attention, though she was no longer awed by her status as Elliot’s girlfriend. It was impossible to keep a man on a pedestal once you’d been privy to most of his bodily functions. Even in the most routine moments of his day Elliot loved an audience. As far as he was concerned, she ought to be impressed by his special talents. For one thing, he produced more gas than the Alaskan pipeline.

At the hotel he flopped on the bed and pulled her down with him. “Showtime, baby,” he said with sloe-eyed lechery, his face tired but flushed with excitement. “I’ve got the microphone set up for you already.”

Warmth and need slid through her, but she tweeked his nose. “I don’t do requests.”

“Do whatever you want. I’m helpless.”

“Hopeless, you mean.” She undressed him hurriedly, touching his lean, lightly haired body with appreciative hands, knowing that her happiness with Elliot came from acccepting each moment without question. When she finished removing his clothes he rolled on top of her. “I think one of us is still dressed, and it’s ruining my good time.”

“So undress me.”

“How? You’ve got a man on top of you.”

“Use those big floppy things at the ends of your arms.” Mashed pleasantly beneath him, Amy wrapped her legs around his hips. His body was hard and inviting between her thighs; his smile held genuine affection as he began unbuttoning her jacket.

She looked forward to spending the next two days in bed
with him. Even more, she looked forward to spending the next two nights at the club with him, where she could absorb the magic that made people laugh.