Phoenix Heart (11 page)

“I know,” I said.

“But that’s not what you were thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I lied.

“Right,” Andrew said.

“I wasn’t!”

“You see?” he said. “And you know me, at least a little. You
think anyone’s going to believe me against J.P. Harrison?”

“Look, I don’t know you at all,” I said truthfully and with
a little temper. “Do you expect me to just automatically believe everything
without any doubts or questions?”

“I guess not,” he said after a few moments.

“Okay,” I said. “Besides, you haven’t told me anything
beyond the fact that Dr. Harrison was spending a lot of money and maybe told
some people some things about you. Hell, maybe a relative died and left him a
packet.”

“Granted,” Andrew said. “It could have happened that way,
but it didn’t. Two weeks ago somebody broke in my lab and stole my lab
notebooks. Thankfully, it was my copies of my graduate school notebooks that
disappeared and not my current journals.”

“But why do you think it’s Harrison?”

“Why?” He smiled a smile so painful that I had to look away.
“Because this morning, it was J. P. who denounced me to the police. He told
them that he had carried me through grad school, that I’d barely squeaked
through my post doc, that my research at the University had been a sham, that I
had stolen his work and was about to pass it off as my own. My mentor, the man I
respected more than anyone, attempted murder and then accused me of it.” I
stared at him in horror, at an absolute loss for anything to say that could be
anything more than totally inadequate.

“Could I offer you an hors d’oeuvre?”

I nearly screamed. The voice had come from right behind me,
and it was everything I could do to keep from leaping out of my seat. Somehow I’d
completely forgotten that I was on a plane full of people. The black-haired flight
attendant stood just behind me, holding a tray.

“Sorry if I startled you.”

Andrew quickly slid his glasses on and raised a hand to rub
his forehead as he turned toward the window.

I laughed. “No, no it’s fine. And nothing for me, thank you.”

“Something to drink?”

I smiled. “Nothing thanks.”

“What about you sir?”

Andrew ignored her.

I glanced over at Andrew then back to the flight attendant,
and crooked a finger at her. “To tell you the truth,” I whispered as she bent
down, “he’s nursing a hangover that would kill three ordinary men. I don’t
think he wants anything.”

“Oh, I understand completely,” she whispered, then she moved
on down the aisle.

When I turned back Andrew was looking at me, his glasses in
his hand again, studying my face as if he couldn’t quite figure out what it was
he was actually seeing. “Seems all I do is thank you,” he whispered finally.

“No problem,” I said. It was then that I noticed the
disgraceful state of my skirt. I worked for almost a minute brushing off the
nonexistent lint, and straightening the already straight pleats.

“Look, Andrew,” I continued. “There’s no way he can get away
with this. The people in the lab will vouch for you.”

“Yes, but who would you believe, a bunch of probably-bribed
grad students or J.P. Harrison? No one else at the University really knows much
of anything about my work. I told you, I’ve been keeping it under wraps. “

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“So, how can I help?” The words slipped out quite naturally.
I didn’t really even hear them until Andrew turned to stare at me.

“You know,” he said. “You are really something.”

“Ah, shucks, mister. You’ll turn my head.”

“I’m serious. I’m also very grateful, but you’ve already
done more than enough.”

“I’ve done nothing,” I said. “There must be something else.”

“No nothing.”

“I really don’t mind.”

“Melanie, no!” He stopped, swallowed and looked quickly
around the cabin. The buzz of conversation didn’t pause, the flight attendant
continued with the hors d’oeuvre tray down the aisle. The sound of the engines
and the air rushing outside had covered his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. It’s
just that it’s too dangerous.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think...”

“That’s right! You don’t think!” he whispered. He turned
away, took a deep breath, and then turned back to me, speaking slowly and
deliberately. “You see, you’re right. The story is ludicrous. J.P. knows that
it might take time but eventually the evidence is going to clear me. I may not
be able to convince everyone, but I can clear myself with the police. He never
planned to have to get away with that story. He knows that ever since grad
school, I’ve always been the first one in in the morning. It’s when I work
best. Never get in later than 6:30. I was supposed to be in the lab this
morning, not Lance. Don’t you see? If you hadn’t been there, Lance would be dead
right now, and on an ordinary morning, it would have been me, and not Lance
lying there.”

“Oh, my god,” I breathed. In all that had happened, in all
my ups and downs believing this or that, never in my wildest fantasies had the
idea of murder crept in.

“When you left this morning, when the fire captain came up
to question me, he told me that they’d received a phone call from J. P.” He
rubbed his hands down his jeans and gripped his knees. “And he told me what he’d
said.”

He stopped, cleared his throat, and then continued. “The
thing is, the only way J. P.’s going to get through this intact is to finish
what he tried to do this morning.”

I leaned forward. “All the more reason you should let me
help you.”

“Good god, girl! Why in the world would you want to get
mixed up in this mess? What do you think you know about handling something like
this?”

“What, and you’re an expert?” I whispered, suddenly furious.
“You deal with hired assassins every day? Or maybe you just trained for it.” I
lifted my chin, tossed my head haughtily and threw in a preppie accent. “‘But
of course, Dad and Mums insisted that Buffy and I pick up courses in Dodging
Bullets, Hiding Out, and Evading the Mob.’ Molecular Biology major, minor in
Trained Killers?”

 “And I thought you were so quiet. What a mouth.” He arched
an eyebrow at me and fixed me with the exact same expression of cynical humor
that I’d seen not six weeks before in a layout on the people page of Time.

And yes, ladies and gentlemen,
there she goes again! Isn’t she marvelous! At the drop of a hat she can turn
her face three shades of red! Come one! Come all!

I shrank back in my seat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sometimes I
think my tongue has a mind of its own.”

Andrew reached over and picked up my hand. “You are really
something,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend. The very fact that
you have offered means a great deal, but, I am not going to let you do it.”

Friend.

I pulled my hand from his.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“Yes. Okay. But what are you going to do?”

“You do ask the difficult questions, don’t you?” He rubbed
the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. The only way I can
prove that J.P. had anything to do with this is to find some kind of hard
evidence. I doubt I’ll find the proverbial smoking gun, but what I might be
able to find is some evidence that he’s been the one plagiarizing my work, and
not me, his. If he has been doing the research, he’ll have lab notebooks with
daily records, experiments that worked, experiments that didn’t, conditions
used, all the kind of intimate detail that can’t be faked. If he has tried to
fake it, I’ll know it, and I can prove it to someone else. I’ve got to get into
his lab, find the evidence, and get it to the police before his people can get
to me, or before he has time enough to alter it.”

“Oh, and in your spare time you’ll discover the Unified
Field Theory, the meaning of life, and chocolate that tastes as good as the
real thing but actually has negative calories. Look, I’m sorry but you need
help. If not mine, somebody’s.”

He shook his head. “I’ll manage.”

“But…”

“I said I’ll manage.” His face was deadly serious. “I am not
letting anyone else get in the line of fire. I almost lost one friend already. I’m
not risking anyone else.”

“Okay.”

“You said that before.”

“I know. But, okay. Will you do me one favor?”

He eyed me suspiciously. “Tell me what it is first.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Should I?”

“I guess not. Look, all I ask is that you call me and let me
know what happens. I’ll be at the Pacific Crest Hotel. I’m not sure exactly
where it is, but...”

“I know where it is.”

“Okay, good. Just call me. I’ll want to know how everything
turns out.” I was leaning forward talking earnestly, and suddenly, it was if I
had stepped back into the aisle and looked down on the two of us sitting in
those extra-wide, first class seats. In the window seat, Andrew Voted-one-of-America’s-twenty-five-most-eligible-
bachelors Richards. My major professor. Escort of supermodels. In the aisle
seat, Melanie Brenner, the meek and mild. The insignificant. The plain and
dull.

I sat back. “I mean, call if you have time to call, but if
you don’t, it’s okay, I’ll understand.”

Andrew reached out absently and lifted a thick strand of my
hair from where it had fallen down next to my cheek. He ran his fingers down it
then dropped it back over my shoulder. He touched my cheek lightly. “I’ll call
you.”

“Good.” The word came out clearly, not choked as I would
have thought considering my heart had risen and was now beating wildly in my
throat.

He sat for a minute staring into the distance, then, he
began to grin. He slanted an eye at me. “Greek, huh? I always thought I looked
English.”

I groaned and looked away up the aisle, trying to see if
they had some sort of emergency ejection handle so that I could propel myself
out of the plane toward the much more desirable end of crashing to the earth
rather than my imminent death by embarrassment.

He blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry. Did I say something?”

“Shut up, please.”

“Shut up? My goodness. We’re a little sensitive about
something.”

The loudspeaker over our heads crackled and a garbled voice
began to say something. I sat up straight and put a hand to my ear. “Oh, gee,
listen. Hush a minute. They’re making an announcement and I do so want to hear
this.”

“I know they’re fascinating, but...”

I gave him a stern look. “Please. I’m trying to hear.”

He laughed. “Of course. Pardon me.”

The announcement was for the most part gibberish, but I did
hear the words “final descent” and abruptly the brief good humor dissolved. The
short-lived sanctuary accorded us by United Airlines had come all too quickly
to an end. We buckled our seatbelts in silence. As we bounced through a little
turbulence, and my ears began to pop, I glanced sideways at Andrew. He stared
out the window, seemingly lost in thought. He didn’t seem to notice my looking
at him, so I studied his face and as I did, Cheryl’s and my talk in the break
room on the day the contest results were announced came back to me. I’d lied
then: I’d known she was right. The car ride and this plane ride confirmed it.
I’d won the “perfect” trip. I’d been thrust by extraordinary circumstances into
the company of the “perfect” man. This was precisely the sort of romantic
fantasy my Walter Mitty’esque brain liked to write. But, I was the same Melanie
and he was a nice guy. Oh, looking at him still made my heart beat sideways,
and my whole body blush, but that was just physiology. He was so damned healthy
looking that any woman would get her ovaries in an uproar. But undying love?
Please. It had taken years, but the notion had finally sunk in. No
circumstances, no magic trip, no magic man would change my life.

The plane began its final descent into San Francisco
International. I looked past Andrew through the window. I could see a city that
I figured was San Jose under us, and then suddenly, we were over San Francisco
Bay. I looked farther west. Over the coast range I could see the blue-gray of
the Pacific stretching toward infinity. Out near infinity, the sun had begun
its descent behind a line of puffy clouds, outlining them with gold, filling
them with orange and red. A trail of liquid fire led across the water from the
sun to the mountains, skipped over the low hills and glinted off the Bay. Such
moments of extreme beauty come so rarely, and I wanted to reach out and take
hold of it, anchor it in some way so that I could savor it for just a few
moments longer.

I felt Andrew looking at me, and my eyes shifted to his and
it was if the fire from the sun had crossed the ocean, the hills, the bay, and
now flowed from his eyes.

oh new shaky electric what is
this eyes smile soul scary

Blink, Melanie!

I blinked. The surge of energy in the air between us cut
off. Or rather, I took control and stopped my silly romantic thinking before it
could once again lead me astray. Physiology. I doubt the energy was anything
but my imagination, which was pretty much proven out by his next words:

“I may not have a chance later, and I just wanted to say
thank you again for all you’ve done. You’ve really been a trooper.”

Trooper. Yes. Good. Just buds.
Just pals. Just friends.

“Aw shucks, mister.”

He chuckled and I grinned.

The plane touched down with the slightest of bumps and the
engines roared as the pilot reversed them and applied the brakes.

“Okay, listen,” he said. “When we get to the boarding gate,
I’d like you to go on ahead. Walk out of here and forget this whole mess and
enjoy your week. Just please don’t tell the police or anyone else anything that
I’ve told you. Not yet, anyway. I’ll wait and leave after everyone else, just
sit here until they kick me off. That way, anyone who might have been waiting
should have given up. It’s not that I really think anyone will be looking, but,
actually, I’m beginning to enjoy this cloak and dagger stuff.” He grinned.