Once More With Feeling (34 page)

"Owen . . ." She stopped herself.

"Please, go ahead and call me Owen."

"Your wife was a grown woman. She made her
own choices."

"I shouldn't be telling you this. You didn't
bargain on instant intimacy when you came here today."

She wondered if that was true. Had she
really come to see him as much as Elisabeth? "I'm glad I'm
here."

They switched to safer topics, the weather,
baseball scores, books they'd read. The meal arrived in stages, and
it might have been as good as Owen promised, but Gypsy hardly paid
attention to it.

They were alone in a restaurant, discussing
their lives and their days as comfortably as old lovers. Once upon
a time they had done this often. They had made time in their busy
schedules for each other, crossed off parties or business
appointments on their calendars just to be together. Nothing had
kept them from enjoying each other's company in every way.

When had it all gone wrong?

"It's funny. . ." Owen sipped his
after-dinner coffee--black with three lumps of sugar, just the way
he always drank it.

"What's funny?"

"I think you and Elisabeth might have been
friends if you'd had the chance. You're much more like her than I
ever would have believed."

She had been stirring cream into her coffee.
Her spoon clattered to the table. "Is that so?"

"Not in looks, of course. But you listen
with the same enthusiasm that she did. You share your opinions the
same way, too. I know exactly where you stand, but you make me feel
like my opinions are every bit as important."

"Maybe that's something all women learn at
their mothers' knees."

"Not all women. My mother could shut down a
conversation so quickly that no traces of it lingered in the
air."

"Actually, mine's that way, too," Gypsy
said, thinking of Rose Dugan.

"My mother was born in a different time and
a different country. She and my father were sturdy Polish peasant
stock, and there wasn't a question in their minds that children
were sent by God to work, say their prayers, and keep their
thoughts to themselves."

Gypsy wondered how much of his life story
he'd admit to a stranger. He had grown far beyond his roots, and he
rarely discussed them. "There's just the faintest trace of an
accent when you speak. Something not quite New York."

"The family name is Witovicz, changed to
Whitfield by my grandfather the moment he stepped off the boat. But
the next generations were never allowed to forget who we really
were. My father knew he'd better marry a Polish girl or face
complete rejection by his family, so he found and married my
mother, whose background was every bit as pure. We spoke Polish and
nothing but at home, even though both my parents did most of their
growing up in this country. I still dream in Polish."

"And Elisabeth?"

He smiled, as if his thoughts were pleasant.
"As much of a WASP as they come. Her blood is so royal blue it
could be matched by color instead of type. She's never done an
improper thing in her life, except marry me."

"Marry you? But look at you. You're known
internationally for your work. You're wealthy, handsome."

He didn't blink or blush. Owen knew who and
what he was, and he was comfortable with all of it. "At first I was
so in awe of her, I could hardly stammer out a sentence. She was
every dream I'd ever had. Beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent.
She was absolutely sure what to do in any situation. And I was a
long-haired, tongue-tied Polack who was so poor from his years in
graduate school that he couldn't even afford to take her to a
decent restaurant. We ate at a place just like this one on our
first date. We went Dutch treat." He wasn't smiling now. "That's
probably why I come here. I make my connections with her any way I
can now."

He had remembered that first restaurant.

Gypsy sat quietly stirring the last inch of
her coffee and trying to put everything Owen had said into
perspective. It was tempting to believe he still loved Elisabeth.
Tempting and poignantly satisfying. But how much was guilt and how
much just sentimental memories that had no real meaning in the
present?

"I'm sorry," he said.

She looked up. Owen did look sorry.
Frustrated and sorry and altogether miserable. "Why?"

"I don't have the right to put you through
this. I don't know why I have."

"Maybe you just needed to tell someone what
you were feeling."

"There are no words for what I'm
feeling."

They stared at each other a heartbeat too
long. His brown eyes were still uncommonly beautiful, clear,
long-lashed and soulful. She had fallen in love with those eyes the
first time they had met hers. They were eyes in which she'd thought
she could see a shared future. But in the last year of their
marriage those remarkable eyes had been turned away from her far
too often.

Owen looked away. Then, almost as an
afterthought he looked at his watch. "I have to get back to the
nursing home."

"If you need somebody to talk to or just
somebody to be quiet with . . ." She wondered where the words had
come from and why.

"Surely you've had your fill of me and my
problems?"

"We're connected in a very odd way, Owen."
It was certainly the truth. She reached across the table and laid
her fingertips against his sweater. She had bought the sweater for
him. She remembered where and when. She desperately wished she
could feel his pulse through the cable knit wool. "I haven't minded
one second of tonight. I'm glad you talked to me."

For a moment he seemed incapable of words.
Then he nodded. His voice was strangely husky. "Can I drop you
somewhere?"

Reluctantly she withdrew her hand. He was
leaving, and she might never see him again. "Don't worry about me.
It's a nice night. I can walk to the station from here. I'd like
the exercise."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. You go on."

"Thank you. For everything."

She nodded. She didn't trust herself to say
anything else. He slid out of the booth and stood. He didn't move
away immediately. He looked down at her and she, unable to control
her own actions, looked up at him.

Another heartbeat passed, then two. He
turned sharply on his heel and walked away.

She lingered over the last drops of coffee
until she was sure he was gone. Her hands were trembling, and the
room seemed infused with a fine gray mist. More than anything she
wanted to cry, but not here. Not in this place which was nearly a
shrine to their past.

Owen had paid the bill, which was no
surprise. She nodded good-bye to the owner and walked outside into
the chilly evening air. On the sidewalk just beyond the restaurant
parking lot she stopped to put on her coat and look for an evening
paper for the train ride back to the city. A moment later she was
bending over a vending machine when someone began to shout.

She straightened, but not quickly. She was
still thinking about the dinner with Owen, and she was used to
noise in the streets. So used to it that for a moment, she failed
to detect the aggression in the man's voice. By the time she
realized something crucial was happening, the man's shout had been
eclipsed by a woman's piercing scream.

A siren sounded nearby, a police car or a
fire engine. The noise confused Gypsy, and for a moment she didn't
know which direction the screams were coming from. She whirled to
search for the sound and found that she was standing in plain view
of a hooded figure who was pointing a small revolver at an old
woman. The woman, pink hair curlers bobbing with every shriek, was
lost in the throes of hysteria.

Gypsy stared at the man whose face was
partially obscured by a knotted red bandanna tucked into the hood
of a dark green parka. She was fascinated and not one bit
frightened. She hadn't been frightened when her throat closed after
one succulent bite of Perry's shrimp Creole, and she wasn't
frightened now. Dying was familiar, an old friend with comfortable,
welcoming arms.

The man swung the gun toward her and lifted
it higher. There was a split-second opportunity to be glad that she
had spent her last hour on earth with Owen before a bullet split
the air in front of her and she fell to the sidewalk.

Billy was stationed in Gypsy's hallway to
screen all the co-op's comings and goings. Even Des reported
thorough scrutiny when he'd stopped by for a few minutes to see for
himself that Gypsy was all right. Now Casey stood guard just inside
her apartment door with his arms folded across his chest like a
mafioso enforcer.

"I wish you'd sit down. You're making me
nervous." Gypsy paced the small living room. The handloomed rag
rugs which had replaced the plethora of animal skins were getting
their first real workout.

"You'd still be nervous if I sat down.
Somebody tried to kill you a couple of hours ago."

Gypsy was becoming an expert on "almost
dead." After the first shot outside the café two additional bullets
had plowed into the tree lawn bordering the sidewalk where she'd
flung herself. The third bullet had missed her brain by inches,
grinding a well-seasoned pile of dog excrement into valuable
compost.

She didn't know why the gunman had missed an
easy shot three times, any more than she knew why he had chosen her
as a target. She only knew she was alive. Again or still, depending
on perspective.

"Look, I'll sit down if you will," Casey
said.

"You first."

He smiled, just a brief crack in a face as
stiff as a dram of Scotland's finest. He left the door and crossed
the room to her new soft-as-a-pillow sofa. He lounged in the
corner, but even in that position he looked like a man who could
launch himself across the room at a moment's notice.

She perched on the edge of the sofa, two
pillows away. "You didn't have to come. I'm all right."

"No, you're not."

"After it was all over I had the strangest
desire to climb to the top of the Empire State Building and dive
out a window, just to see what would happen."

"Three near-death experiences are a charm. I
wouldn't try for four."

"The police are insisting that I just got in
the way of a mugging."

"What do you think?"

"I think the mugging was a cover. I think
that guy wanted me." For the last three hours Gypsy had gone over
and over the scene in her mind. The man with the gun had ignored
the commotion around him. The woman screaming. The panicked
squealing of tires in the streets. The piercing siren of the squad
car that had been cruising the area looking for a good place to
grab some dinner. The man in the parka had pointed his gun directly
at her and pulled the trigger. Not once, but three times. Then he
had disappeared into the closest alley.

Casey slung his arm over the sofa cushions
in a forced attempt to appear casual. "Next question. Do you think
it's related to Mark's death?"

Gypsy contemplated the gauze adorning her
shin. She had scrapes and bruises from her clash with the sidewalk,
but they were nothing compared to what could have happened. "Casey,
I don't remember the day Mark died. Nothing about it. I don't even
remember Mark, and there's no chance I ever will. I'm not going to
regain any of my memory."

"You sound sure of that."

"It's one of the few things in the universe
that I am sure of."

He abandoned casual and pulled out a
notebook from his inside jacket pocket. "Let's go on the assumption
that the two shootings are related, even if you didn't recognize
the guy with the gun."

"I didn't see enough of him to recognize.
For all I know he could have been my brother." Actually, she
wouldn't recognize her own brother, either, but she wasn't going to
get into that. "He had a bandanna covering his forehead well past
his eyebrows, and the hood of his parka covered the sides of his
face. He was young, I think. Medium complected. About your height
or a little taller. And that narrows it down to about a million men
in a hundred mile radius." She craned her neck to see what he was
writing. "What are you doing?"

"Making a list."

"Of what?"

"People who might want you dead. Who would
you put at the top?"

"Cripes, you make it sound like it's going
to be a foot long."

"I think you'd better be creative and
thorough, Gyps. I had my doubts all along that you were in danger.
But I don't have any now. I think we've got our own personal news
story here, and we'd better go after it like good little
reporters."

"Or?"

"Don't make me say it."

"I don't know why anyone would want me dead.
I can't remember anything."

"Let's start with your life since the car
accident. If that's all you can remember, that's all we have to
work with."

She closed her eyes and leaned back against
the cushions.

She was close to tears, and she wasn't even
sure exactly why--there were too many good reasons to cry just to
center on one. "The Reverend Bordmann still calls now and then to
breathe heavily in my ear. Maybe he's some kind of psycho as well
as a pervert. There's the guy who used to send me a rose--"

"You know it's a guy?"

"I'm guessing."

"Not a good idea under the
circumstances."

She shrugged. "Nan. Julie. I had them both
fired."

"Anyone else at the studio?"

"I don't know. There's a lot of competition.
I've locked horns with Kevin and Loretta a time or two, but never
with any apparent animosity."

"How about higher ups?"

"I'm the golden girl. Why would anyone want
me out of the way? If the ratings were dropping, I might be
persuaded to look closer. But they're not."

"How about your family?"

"My mother dislikes me, but she's a Ten
Commandments kind of gal. And besides, she's softening up a little.
She sent me the biography of Mother Teresa after my visit. I think
she's hoping I'll move to India and do good works to atone for the
rest of my life."