Miracle Man (14 page)

Lahra smiled at Wally's
comment as the news anchor appeared and began the next story.

A heavy sigh of relief rose
from inside her like a giant air bubble from the sea floor. She looked
absolutely terrible on screen, what with the ravages of the wind and the rain,
but she could not have hoped for a better showing. If Marcus was sitting at
home watching the news, he would have seen no evidence of his effect on her.
Nothing that he could gloat over.

Lahra reached for the pile
of books she'd been stacking and the phone rang. She ran to the kitchen to
answer it.

"Hello?"

"Well, how does it feel
to be a television star?" Marcus said dryly on the other end.

"I don't know. You tell
me." What on earth did he mean to achieve by calling her now, Lahra
wondered. She pictured him sitting at home in his bathrobe and slippers, feet
up on an ottoman, smug smile on his face.

"I suppose you heard
about the delay in construction."

"I think you mean
deconstruction. Yes, I did."

"I didn't realise you'd
got Mother Nature to sign one of your petitions."

Lahra didn't respond. If
there was a point to Marcus calling her at her home at night she wished he'd
just hurry up and get to it. As far as she was concerned, they had said all
there was to be said last night. "Where did you get my number?"

"You've got it written
on your kitchen phone." Lahra looked at the phone and saw the number
scrawled there in her father's handwriting. He'd written it up for her and
Janie's benefit.

"Marcus, I really don't
think we have very much to say to each other at the moment, so if you do have
something to say, please just say it." A nervous knot had formed in her
stomach, that familiar first sign that Marcus was beginning to erode her
control.

"I just wanted to tell
you that I meant what I said last night about you being proud. You should be. I
know that we're generals of opposing armies, but that doesn't mean that I can't
admire my adversary. Particularly one as beautiful as you."

The knot tripled in size in
the space of a heartbeat. These weren't the words that she needed to hear.
These weren't the things that would make her life easier. She grimaced and
closed her eyes. "Marcus, you can't say things like that. You can't-"

She was interrupted by a
loud banging on the front door. Half of her wondered who it could be, but the
other half was thankful for not having to think up an excuse to end the conversation.

"I... I have to go,
Marcus. There's somebody at the door. Please don't call again."

"Lahra, wait-"

She hung up, and turned to
look out of the water-rippled window to the small light that burned on the
opposite hill. The banging on the door sounded again, more insistently. She
tried to think who it could be at this hour in this rain, but drew a blank. It
wasn't like Wally to drop over unannounced.

She went to the door and
opened it just wide enough to see a wet, dark figure standing there.

"Kurt," she said
in half surprise, half despondency. "What are you doing here?"

"Mind if I come in?
It's a little wet out." Lahra's first instinct was to say yes, she did
mind him coming in. But instead she opened the door and ushered him in,
directing him toward the fire.

"Place still looks
good," Kurt announced as he shrugged off his wet jacket and laid it near
the hearth. "Even better than I remember it."

Lahra stood with the couch
between her and her visitor. "Would you like a drink?"

"Yeah, sure.
Beer?"

"No, sorry."

"Oh. Well don't worry.
I'm just passing through, anyway. Phew, this fire's good."

"What are you doing up
here?" Lahra wanted to relax, but there was something in Kurt's manner
that made her uneasy. Even more so than usual.

"Mum was afraid that there
might be some flooding, with all this rain. So I told her I'd drive up and
check the rivers, see if they were lookin' bad. The water's pretty high, but I
doubt if the rain will keep up like this for too much longer. At least you're
nice and safe up here! But when you live down in the valley like us, you can't
be too careful." He laughed a nervous laugh, and shifted restlessly on his
feet. Lahra suddenly found herself searching for excuses to get rid of him.
There was something in the sidewards way he looked at her that set off warning
bells inside her.

"You've actually caught
me at a really bad time," she said, adjusting her glasses. "I was
just about to get ready to go and have dinner with Wally and Malcolm
McGuire." Kurt nodded in understanding. "You should have called. We
could have arranged something."

"Yeah, well, you know.
I was just in the area..." Kurt began moving around the couch towards her.
"Just thought I'd drop in to check up on you. You were a bit shook up last
night." Kurt swaggered closer, and the muscles in Lahra's legs tightened
involuntarily. "You know, ever since I bumped into you at the shops the
other day I've been thinking about you a lot." He was very close to her
now, but she didn't back away. She didn't dare show any signs of vulnerability
that might signal that she was now feeling quite afraid of him. He looked at
her the way she imagined a farmer might look at a prize cow before making an
offer for it. "You're even better looking than you were when we were going
out together."

"Well, I wouldn't
exactly say that we were going out together. A couple of dates."

"You're not like the
other women around here, Lahra." Kurt's hand reached out and stroked
Lahra's cheek. "You're different. More... oh, I dunno. I just wanted you
to know that I haven't forgotten you. And if you need some company while you're
here in town, you know who to call." A thin-lipped smile stretched across
his face. "We're all grown up now, so maybe we can have a little grown up
fun together."

"I'm really going to be
late," she managed to say. She hoped she looked more convincing than she
sounded. "Why don't we arrange to get together after the whole Miracle
Cinema thing is sorted out? Perhaps lunch or something."

Kurt's eyes travelled down
from her eyes to her lips, and lower still. They finally came back up, and he
took a step backwards. He didn't say anything. He just smiled and watched her
as he moved away and bent down to pick up his jacket.

"Lunch. Okay," he
said at last. "We can catch up properly. Celebrate your victory over that
Marcus Dean guy." The flash of suspicion in Kurt's eyes was not lost on
Lahra. "I'll be just as glad as you to see the back of him." Not just
suspicion, either. Embers of hatred glowed there too. "Hope you have a
nice dinner. Say hello to Wally for me."

"I will," she
said, feigning a smile and moving to the door. "Say hello to your
mother."

Lahra opened the door and
the sound of the pouring rain invaded the room. Kurt hesitated in the doorway,
straightening his jacket. "Talk to you soon then."

"Okay. Talk to you
soon."

He left, and Lahra closed
and bolted the door so quickly that she feared she might have clipped his
heels.

What was wrong with her? Why
was she feeling so highly strung over a simple visit from someone she'd known
for years? She had no real reason to feel so threatened by Kurt. He was just a
guy from the country who had taken a shine to her in high school and thought he
was still in with a chance. He wasn't a rapist, or a murderer. As far as she
knew.

It dawned on her that for
the whole time Kurt had been here, in the back of her mind she was hoping,
probably even praying, that Marcus would arrive on her doorstep. As much as she
tried to deny it, there was no escaping the truth.

Perhaps her subconscious had
got the better of her, making her feel unreasonably threatened by Kurt so that
she would yearn for the company of the man she really wanted.  The man she
had been trying to push out of her head all day. The man on whom she had hung
up just ten minutes ago.

The more she thought about
it, the more she felt like just running out into the rain and screaming at the
top of her lungs. Or anything that would purge the whirlpool of emotions that
kept sucking her in just when she thought she was climbing free.

But she only got as far as
the couch, slumping in front of the television, and letting the drone of an
evening soap opera wash over her. All she wanted to do was go back in time. She
wanted to cross Valley Bridge on the first day of her vacation, without a BMW in
sight. No Marcus Dean, no demolition of the Miracle Cinema, just peace, rest
and relaxation.

Slowly, these pleasant
thoughts took hold of Lahra's mind. The droning of the TV and the rhythmic
sound of the rain helped the process along. She closed her eyes, and before
long she began to fall asleep. Dreams beckoned her further away from the real
world. Away to a world where she had no responsibilities. A world where there
was no heartbreak. A world where life really was just like the movies.

*

It was light when Lahra
opened her eyes. At least, it was no longer night time. Outside the rain
continued to fall from clouds that blotted any hope of brightness from beyond.

The television was still on.
The regional morning news had just begun. Lahra didn't move. She remained
curled up hugging the cushion that had been her sleeping partner for the night,
and let the world come slowly into focus.

The fire had died, but she
wasn't cold. Lazily, her eyes scanned for embers, but there were only cold ash
and charred remnants where once there had been something beautiful and warm.
Her mind began to draw comparisons with her life at the moment, but she turned
those thoughts away before they set a trend for the day.

She shifted her attention to
the television, where stories of flooding seemed to be dominating the news.
Images of houses knee deep in muddy water and cars stranded on what used to be
roads flicked across the screen. In areas all over the state, rivers had broken
their banks and water had invaded the lives of thousands while Lahra had slept.
She was thankful that Riverbank itself had only ever experienced very mild
flooding, and only once every ten or twenty years at that.

She stretched and sat up,
shaking off the last effects of sleep. Yes, she was definitely back in the real
world.

As she showered, she began
thinking of the day ahead. She would dearly love to get out of the house, to
actively pursue the people whose decisions would decide the fate of the
Miracle. But there was no point in doing that. She had done everything that
could be done. Now it was a waiting game, in the hands of the lawyers, the
politicians, the bureaucrats. No wonder she felt so helpless.

The rain was such a
deterrent to going outside, too. Heavy and interminable, it served only to make
her want to stay by the fire and get lost in a couple of old movies. Which the
more she thought about it wasn't such a bad idea. She dressed accordingly, in
comfy jeans, her favourite old hoodie, and a thick pair of socks.

It was some hours later, as
Jimmy Stewart reached his lowest ebb in
It's A Wonderful Life
, that the
phone disturbed her relative calm.

"Hello, is this Lahra
Brook?" the unfamiliar voice said.

"That's right."

"This is Sally Stefano.
We met briefly the other night at the Riverbank Town Hall. I'm one of the
solicitors helping out with the Miracle Cinema."

"Yes of course.
Thankyou for everything you're doing."

"Well, don't thank me
yet. I've been trying to get an audience with Bob Moses, the State MP, for the
past forty-eight hours, but I keep getting stonewalled. This morning I decided
to drive out to Bircham, and pay him a surprise visit at his office with the
hope of an impromptu meeting. But as soon as I parked the car I saw Moses
coming out of the building with none other than our friend Marcus Dean. From
the way they were laughing and cracking jokes you'd have sworn they were old
school buddies or something. They got into a car and drove off together."

Lahra pictured the scene in
her head. Yes, she could just see it. While she'd been passing the time in
front of a video, he'd been out there. Marcus the charmer, Marcus the schemer,
Marcus the bender of wills. All he had to do was delay her efforts long enough
for the rain to stop, and by then it would be too late. His army of machines
would mow down the Miracle and that would be that. Anger spiked her in the
stomach.

"I hung around for an
hour or so but they didn't come back. Moses' secretary said he'd probably be
out for most of the day."

"What do you think's
going on?"

"Can't say for sure,
but I wouldn't trust Moses as far as I could throw him. They might have some
sort of deal going, I don't know. I've put the word out to find out as much as
I can, but nobody seems to know anything. Even Mayor Boyle doesn't want to
speak much. I thought I'd call you, seeing as you appear to know Marcus a bit.
Perhaps you can find something out."