Phoenix Heart (14 page)

My mother stands behind him. I
try not to look in her face because that will hurt worse than the slap.

“If I tell you up is down, you
say yes sir!” father yells.

I don’t say anything, partly
because my face hurts and I am terrified that this will be one of the times
when I’ll miss school for a week because of the “flu,” but mostly because I am
a bad girl who refuses to honor her father. My mother tells me to obey him, to
always do what he says, but I am a very smart young lady (my teachers have been
saying that to me since kindergarten) and I can’t say something that I know is
wrong. I can’t.

“Do you understand?” he
screams.

I nod.

“Then say it.”

I shake my head.

“Melly,” my mother says, “do
what your father says.” The way she says it makes me think of last year in
second grade and the way Mary Kennedy would talk to Mr. Barnes so she’d be
picked Star of the Week and get to be line leader.

I shake my head and this time
I see in my mother’s face that she is glad that I’m saying no because I’ll be
the one punished this time and not her. This is new. The look might have been
there before, but I’ve never seen it for what it is. I’m eight, and I’m a very
smart young lady, but this I don’t want to know. And with this new knowledge, I
look at my father’s face, red with rage and alcohol, and I see that he too is
glad; he has crossed that line and there is no going back and for him it is a relief.

This is too much knowledge for
anyone, even a very smart young lady, and I start to cry.

“Stop that whining,” he
demands.

But I can’t.

“You better damn well stop
that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Something’s broken inside. I
can’t stop the tears. It’s as if Beanie died all over again, struck down by the
laundry truck as he ran across the street to greet me, his little tail wagging
joyfully behind him. It’s as if my china head doll that my Uncle Richard
brought me from Japan got smashed again.

Except worse. So much so that
when the hitting starts again it’s like I’m watching it happen to someone else.
The crying stops and I huddle in the Safe Place, which is safe no longer, and I
hear pounding on the wall and a voice yelling, “I called the police.”

My father stands over me
panting, then he says, “Nothing but bad luck since she was born. Nothing.” He
leans down and hisses words at me: “Look what you made me do,” and those are
the last words I hear from my father. My mother pulls at my father’s arm.
“Leave her. You need to get out of here,” she says, and those are the last
words I hear from my mother.

The word “nothing” echoes in
my mind as they go through the apartment door without another glance in my
direction. They are gone and all I can think is that I am alone and I should
have said that up was down.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the memories back, way
back, way down, closing the hatch that the fear had opened. I turned to look
out the car window. When we moved through the next pool of light, I saw only a
passing pillar and a parked car.

Excellent.

The limousine came up out of the garage onto a narrow road
next to a high, curving cement wall. The road continued to rise as it followed
the curve of the wall, and suddenly we were up at street level, feeding into
the main terminal road. The car moved smoothly into the traffic leading out of
the airport. I saw the large green freeway signs ahead as the road forked--San
Jose to the left and San Francisco to the right. Oh god, a week in San
Francisco, I thought, and almost laughed.

“Melanie, I don’t know how to begin to apologize and to
thank you. I still can’t believe what you did in there. I understand that you’re
upset, but I had to at least try to say thank you.”

I turned. Andrew was silhouetted against the light reflected
from the headlights of passing cars. I couldn’t see him clearly, but it didn’t
matter. I knew what was there: Six-foot, two-inch, well-built, healthy-looking
male of unusually fine-looking countenance. Polite, soft-spoken, intelligent. Appears
somewhat upset, perhaps under some form of unusual stress. Though ability to
induce sudden rise in temperature and heart rate in female observer had been
previously noted, ability seems to have been lost.

“You’re welcome.”

“You know, that was one of the bravest things I’ve ever
seen.”

I shrugged.

“I’m serious. You saved my life in there.”

I shrugged again. “Don’t forget my A’s on those mid-terms.”

“I won’t forget. Anything.”

I smiled and turned back to the window. Off the freeway a
dark expanse of black stretched for miles, blackness that I assumed could only
be the San Francisco Bay. On the other side of the black, a string of lights
edged the darkness. In some areas the lights rose up what must have been the
sides of hills.

I turned to comment on the view, but Andrew was laying back
on the seat. His eyes were closed, so I watched the view alone. I saw a sign
for Candlestick Park and caught a glimpse of the stadium sitting on the edge of
the water before the freeway turned and climbed to cross a hill. We moved down
around a sweeping curve with overpasses crisscrossing above them and freeways
jetting off to the left and right, then a minute or two later the limo rose up
another hill.

And the city lay before us. All lit up. Short squat
buildings, tall, soaring buildings, the pyramid-shaped Transamerica building
poking up from behind the rest, one down near the front arched in an art-deco
fashion on top--all cheek by jowl, fighting for space. It was really quite
beautiful. Really. Ordinarily, I would have been going into absolute paroxysms
of joy.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” So, he was awake.

“Um-hmm,” I said.

“And magic.” He was watching me.

I laughed. “I’m a big girl. I don’t believe in magic.”

“Oh, no. Don’t say that. You’ve got to believe in magic.”

“I don’t have to do anything but die, pay taxes, and pass
biochem.”

He wouldn’t stop looking at me. “You’re a funny duck,
Melanie Brenner.”

I batted my eyes. “Please, Dr. Richards. Don’t compliment me
so.”

“Andrew. You risked your life for me. Why?”

“Oh, I didn’t risk my life.”

“Yes, you did. And for Lance this morning.” His eyes didn’t
leave mine.

“It wasn’t anything.”
For God’s
sake, blink!

“Yes it was.”

“Look. It’s the second Friday of the month. I try to save
someone’s life every second Friday. It’s a habit.” I shrugged. The limo was heading
off the freeway down a ramp into the city proper. “So, what are you going to
do? Do you have friends, here, somewhere you’ll be safe?”

Andrew just kept looking at me. “You’re an unusual woman.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you?”

He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward to tap on the
sliding glass partition. “Mr. Kent, could you pull over and let me out?”

“Certainly.”

I looked out the window. “Here? There’s nothing but office
buildings and stores.” I caught sight of a street sign: Market and Tenth.

“I can catch the bus. It’ll get me over near the University.
You forget. I was a grad student here. It’s been awhile but I think I can still
find my way around.”

The car pulled over and he opened the door and stepped out
onto the curb. I shifted over on the seat and rolled down the window.

“Thanks again for everything,” he said. “I don’t know how I’ll
ever…” He was looking at me again with that same intent look.

No, I’m not going to let it
get to me. He’s almost gone from my life. I’m not going to

Andrew reached through the window, cupped my cheek with one
hand and kissed my mouth lightly. He started to straighten, then he stopped,
took my face in both his hands and kissed me again, and this time it was
anything but light. In the plane the fire of the setting sun had seemed to come
from his eyes. Now that heat came from his lips. It burned through me,
vaporizing the ice that I had painstakingly formed around my heart on the ride
from the airport. I put out a hand, holding on to the car door to steady
myself.

Andrew broke the kiss and pulled back. I looked into his
eyes; the light from the passing cars glinted in them. That lock of hair had
fallen down across his forehead and I reached up and brushed it back.

He touched my cheek. “Extraordinary,” he said, then turned
and walked away.

As Mr. Kent pulled the limo away from the curb I turned in
the seat, looking back, watching his tall form until it disappeared around a
corner.

I had turned forward again by the time the tan sedan pulled
into the space we had vacated. I sat, touching the warmth on my lips, staring
down at the carpet, feeling the flood of feeling his kiss had released in me,
confused and happy and afraid and, therefore, I didn’t see the tan car or the
tall man with the large gut step out of it in order to follow Andrew into the
darkness.

And, I didn’t see the smaller man who was driving the tan
sedan pull away from the curb and drop into the traffic behind Mr. Kent’s
limousine.

These things I only found out later.

An extraordinary woman.

I touched my lips, ran a finger across them.

An extraordinary woman.

I sat on the edge of the bed, eyes half-closed.

Andrew stands in the doorway
of the suite, leaning one shoulder against the frame. “Everything’s all right,
now, Melanie. It’s all been settled.”

Has it?

“Yes, my darling. Now we can
concentrate on more important things.” He pushes away from the door and walks
toward her. She feels her tell-tale heart begin to thump faster. She’s glad she’s
sitting down, because her knees would be too weak to allow her to stand. He
stops in front of her. He nudges her knees apart, spreads her feet wide and
steps between them. He reaches down, takes her face in both of his hands and
kisses her. Suddenly, he grabs her upper arms, pulls her to her feet. He kisses
her again, roughly, voraciously, as he circles his arms around her, crushing
her to him.

I opened my eyes. The doorway was empty, the suite silent.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

My Lord, Melanie! Get a hold. It
was only one kiss.

My fingers retraced where his lips had touched mine. I
laughed and pushed off the bed. “Get a grip.”

My suitcases had been delivered within ten minutes of my
arrival. I’d been in a fog when they arrived; in fact, I’d been in a fog the
entire way to the hotel, saying good-bye to Mr. Kent, while checking in, while
riding the elevator to the top of the hotel. I probably appeared quite blasé to
the assistant manager who escorted me to the suite. It was two rooms and a
bath, the living room large and inviting, furnished with what looked to be
genuine early American antiques, and carpeted in a thick, blue, Chinese rug
with a pattern of green and black vines. The living room opened onto a balcony
which overlooked most of the northern half of the city, and you could even
catch a glimpse of the lights of the Marin headlands through the wisps of fog
coming through the Golden Gate. The bedroom was wonderful: an enormous
four-poster bed, a big double-wide arm chair with a reading lamp nearby, and a
closet in which you could have housed a family of four.

Even so, I’d barely reacted to the size, the beautiful
furnishings, the fresh flowers. The assistant manager had proudly showed me the
suite, the view, told me of the history of the hotel, at least I think she did,
but I was hearing Andrew’s voice, feeling his hand on my face, his lips on
mine. Poor woman. She finally left and I had sat and dreamed away most of my
first evening in San Francisco.

I looked down. I was standing in front of my suitcase, my
big, oversized blue sweater folded over my arm, smoothing it down, stroking it
again and again. I laughed and turned to drop the sweater into the bureau
drawer. I finished unpacking then called room service from the bedroom and
ordered a salad for dinner. As I placed the phone back in its cradle, my cell phone
rang in my pocket. My hand shook as I pulled it out, but when I saw the caller
ID, I sat back heavily on the bed.

“Cheryl. Hi.”

“Wow. Try to contain your enthusiasm.”

“Sorry. I thought you were going to be someone else.”

“Okay. So tell me! What’s it like? How’s the hotel? How was
the flight, and the limo ride, and did you meet anyone interesting on the
plane?”

“Well, great, great, fine, different, no, not on the plane.”

“Very funny. You making fun of the way I talk?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Shut up Brenner what do you mean not on the plane? You met
someone somewhere else?”

“Well, sort of.”

“Melanie! Stop being cute. Tell me!”

I laughed. “Well, I didn’t really meet him. I already knew
him. It was in the limo on the way to the airport.”

“In the limo, you mean that hunky driver?”

“Not the driver. Someone else.”

“Who? How?”

“I can’t tell you who.”

“What do you MEAN, you can’t tell me?”

“I just can’t. Suffice it to say that he made the limo ride
and the flight very interesting.”

“Melanie Louise Brenner you tell me this minute or I swear I’ll
never speak to you again.”

I lay back on the bed, grinning at the ceiling. “God, Cheryl,
I am dying to tell you.”

“Melanie, you know you can trust me.”

“I know,” I said. “Well, he didn’t say I couldn’t tell
anyone, just not the... well, just not certain people.”