Star (29 page)

Spencer drove to the city in a rented car, and moved into one of the elegant guest rooms. He had two weeks to himself and nothing much to do, but it was a relief to get away from the men he’d been living with, and the world of combat boots and dog tags. He was concerned about what he’d heard of the action in Korea. It sounded like an ugly little war, and he wasn’t looking forward to going back to the Pacific. He was nine years older than he’d been the first time, and at thirty-one, he was a lot less anxious to be daring and brave. He had too much to live for now, and a hero’s death in a strange land held little appeal for him, yet there were times when it was exciting to be free again. He had called the law firm where he worked when he got the news, and all of the senior partners had been very kind, and wished him well, and told him they’d be waiting for him, and so would his job, when it was over. But he would have to rethink all that one day too. Having a breather from it now, he was no longer quite as sure that he wanted to go back to Wall Street. He was still a lot more interested in criminal work, and there was certainly no hope of it there. But he’d have to talk to Elizabeth about it anyway, before he did anything drastic. And he suspected she would want him to go back to the same firm on Wall Street.

Spencer took a long walk around town, on his first afternoon in San Francisco. It was a warm August afternoon,
and Crystal turned nineteen that day. She was sharing a small birthday cake at the restaurant with her friends, and Harry gave her the night off, and she bought a bottle of champagne to share with Mrs. Castagna. She had moved into one of the better rooms recently, when the man who sold insurance got drafted and was sent to Korea. It was a little larger and there was a window that looked over a tiny corner of someone’s garden. But otherwise, nothing much had changed. She was doing well singing at Harry’s restaurant, and she’d gotten several favorable write-ups in the papers. She’d even sung at several very fancy parties.

Boyd and Hiroko had come to see her twice, with little Jane, when Hiroko came to see Dr. Yoshikawa. And their new baby had been born a month before, but this time there had been no one to help her. The baby had been breech, and he had died before Boyd could get anyone to help her. He had had to go all the way to a midwife in Calistoga, and left Hiroko alone with Jane. It was lucky the midwife had agreed to come, he hadn’t told her his wife was Japanese, and she had saved her life. But she was still in bed a month later, and Crystal had promised her she would come to visit, but she dreaded going back to the valley, even to see her friend. It was just too painful for her. She knew that Tom was still carrying on with Boyd’s sister, but Hiroko’s last letter said that he had reenlisted to go to Korea. Boyd had been called back, too, but he had been suffering from asthma for the past few years, and this time they had refused to take him, which was just as well. It would have been too hard on Hiroko if he’d left her alone among still hostile neighbors. Five years after the war, things were still the same. Their hatred of her hadn’t dimmed. Their memories were long and their hearts cold, especially now, with the hostilities
in Korea. To them it was all the same thing, Korean, Japanese, most of them didn’t know the difference.

Crystal was lying on her bed, after she left Mrs. Castagna, and feeling happy after two glasses of champagne as she thought about her life. She wondered where Spencer was, if he had reenlisted too. Not that it mattered. He was gone from her life. He no longer existed. Except in her heart where he had always lived. And she couldn’t help wondering if he was happily married. She tried not to let herself think of him now, but it was never easy, and with the champagne, he crept back into her mind and she let herself think of him, like a kind of birthday present.

It was hot in her room that night, and she decided to go for a walk in North Beach. There were people sitting in restaurants, and standing around the sidewalks talking in Italian. There were children scurrying past, chasing each other, and fleeing their mothers in the warm night air, and for a moment she was reminded of her own childhood, and being teased by Jared. She was wearing jeans and an old shirt, and her cowboy boots, and her long hair hung down her back in a single braid as she walked to the corner store to buy an ice-cream cone.

“Happy birthday,” she muttered to herself, and then walked slowly back toward Mrs. Castagna’s. The ice cream was dripping messily as she fought not to lose what was left, and looked like a child herself, leaning into the street as it dripped on her cowboy boots and she grinned at a little girl watching her. But what she didn’t see was the tall, dark-haired soldier watching her from the distance. He had been lonely in the empty house and he had walked for miles that night, thinking of her and his wife, and tempted for the first time in a long time to go back and see Crystal. But he had satisfied himself with walking past the house where he knew she had once lived, when he had seen her just after Thanksgiving. He
had assumed she’d be at work, and she should have been, and his heart raced the moment he saw her. It was like seeing a dream again, the girl in the blue jeans and the cowboy boots, standing over the gutter, and eating an ice cream, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he should approach her. She looked like a little girl as he stared at her, and then, as though she sensed him watching her, she turned, and froze as the ice cream fell from her hand. She straightened up and stared at him and then hurried back to Mrs. Castagna’s, but he reached the front steps before she did.

“Crystal, wait …” He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, but it was too late now. He knew he had to see her.

“Spencer, don’t …” She turned to look at him with all the longing she had felt and he knew with absolute certainty how wrong he had been to leave her. Without saying a word, he reached out and touched her hand, and Crystal wanted to resist him but she couldn’t. “Crystal … please …” He was begging her. He only knew that he had to talk to her, even for a minute, just to see her, and hold her, and be near her. She looked at him, and they both knew that it was all still there, just exactly where they had left it, only more so. He said not a word to her but pulled her into his arms and held her, and this time, she didn’t fight him.

He knew what a fool he had been, to listen to Elizabeth, and to George, and himself. He had been wrong to marry her when all he wanted was Crystal. He had tried to do the right thing, and in spite of everything, he hadn’t. All he wanted now was this girl, with the platinum hair and the lavender eyes. The girl he had loved for four years now.

“What are we going to do, Spencer?” she whispered as he held her.

“I don’t know. Take what we can, I guess, for as long as we can have it.” It was like an addiction that picked up just where they had left it. Elizabeth was all but forgotten as he looked at Crystal.

“Why did you come back here?” She meant to the place where she lived, not just San Francisco.

“Because I had to. I wanted to see you again, or at least the place where I last saw you.”

“And then what?” She looked up at him sadly, all her strength and resistance seeping away from her, leaving only the love she had felt since she’d first met him. “You’re married now.” She had read about the wedding in the papers. “Where is … your wife?” She hated the word, and she had to force herself to say it. It was easy to think now of how different things might have been if he hadn’t gone ahead with his engagement. They both thought of it as he looked at her, and he held her hand in his own as he ached to kiss her.

“She’s in New York.” He didn’t even want to say her name, not now, not in the presence of Crystal. “I’m shipping out to Korea in a few days, and I had some time to spare … I … Christ, Crystal, I don’t know what to tell you … I feel like such a bastard. I’ve made a mistake. I know that now. That’s a hell of a thing to say right after getting married. I thought I was doing the right thing. I told myself that. I wanted to believe it was, but when I see you, my head spins … my whole life turns upside down. I should have run off with you last November and to hell with doing the ‘right thing’ and being noble. We had just gotten engaged … I thought … oh Christ … what do I know?” He looked anguished.

But for a moment, her eyes sparked fire at him, and the deep lavender eyes were angry. Her voice came at him like a growl, and he didn’t blame her. “And where does
that leave me, Spencer? Playing games with you when you’re on leave? … when you have a weekend off? … when you can get away? What about me? What about
my
life, after you leave me?” She had promised herself she wouldn’t see him again, even if she had the chance, which she had doubted. There was no point to it. He had made a choice, and she was going to live by it, even if he wasn’t. That was why she had returned his letter unopened. “What exactly did you have in mind?” She was clearly angry now, and it only made her more appealing to Spencer. “A little fun before you leave? Well, forget it. Go to hell … or back to her … that’s what you’ll do anyway, just like you did last time.”

He looked at her unhappily, he couldn’t deny what she said, even though he wanted to. He wanted to promise her he wouldn’t go back to Elizabeth, but they were married now, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He couldn’t tell her the marriage was over before it even started. But that was what he thought and what he wanted. He wanted to stay with Crystal forever. “I can’t make you any promises. I can’t give you anything right now, except what I am, right now minute by minute. And maybe that’s not much … but it’s all I have to give, that and the fact that I love you.”

“What does that mean?” Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him and her voice was deep and husky. “I love you too. But so what? What does that get us six months from now?”

“For the moment …” He smiled sadly at her, he didn’t want to hurt her, and he wondered if he’d been wrong to come, but he just couldn’t help it. “For right now, it’ll get you a bunch of letters from Korea … if you’ll read them this time.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her cry. He was so handsome and she had loved him for so long, and when she looked up at him
again, she realized that deep in her heart she didn’t care that he was married. He was hers, right then, for as long as they had, and maybe, just maybe that was worth grabbing and holding, until he left for Korea.

Crystal bowed her head, thinking of what he had said, and then slowly she turned again and looked up at him. “I wish I had the courage to tell you to go …” But she didn’t finish the sentence.

“I will if you want me to. I’ll do whatever you want.” … and dream about you for the rest of my life … “Is that what you want, Crystal?” He looked down at her and touched her cheek with long, gentle fingers as he spoke softly. He loved her. He would have done anything for her. It was exactly the kind of love he had talked to Elizabeth about before. The kind they had never had, and never would, he knew now.

But she only shook her head, her eyes boring into him with silent adoration. “No, it isn’t what I want.” She was honest with him, she always had been, and he could barely hear her speak, but his heart trembled as she said it. “Maybe all we have a right to is this … a few days … a few borrowed moments …” It didn’t seem like much, but it was all they had, and to both of them, it was worth it.

“Maybe there’ll be more than that one day … but I can’t promise you that yet. I can’t promise you anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” He looked upset but he wanted to be honest. She smiled strangely at him then and took his hand in hers, and began to walk slowly up the steps at Mrs. Castagna’s.

“I do.”

He felt like a very young boy again, as he followed her into the house, still holding her hand and watching the mane of shining hair, and her long, lean body mounting the stairs just ahead of him. She turned only once to put a
finger to her lips and signal to him to stay silent. She took her key out of a pocket of her jeans and let him into the room. She didn’t want Mrs. Castagna to hear them. She would have been sure to cause a scene. She didn’t like girls taking men to their rooms, or her male boarders to bring in women. It happened from time to time, but when she found out, as she often did, lying in wait for them just inside her front door, she registered strong disapproval.

“Take your shoes off,” Crystal whispered, slipping off her cowboy boots, and revealing a pair of red socks that had once been her brother’s. She smiled at Spencer then and sat down on the edge of her bed, looking like a little girl again. There were moments when he remembered easily the child she had been, and then just as suddenly she returned to being a very desirable young woman.

He was whispering as he sat down next to her, and she smiled shyly as he touched her hair, and then kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, a kiss filled with longing, and gratitude for her willingness to accept the little he could give her. “I love you so much …” he whispered slowly into her hair, “you’re so beautiful … so good …” He ached with desire for her, and it took all his strength to resist the urge to tear her clothes off. But when he reached nimble fingers into her shirt, he saw her flinch for just an instant. He pulled away, wondering what he’d done, but she kissed him fervently then, and forced herself to let him explore her. He watched her cautiously, afraid to frighten her, sure that she was a virgin. “Are you afraid?” She shook her head and her eyes were closed as he laid her gently on the bed and slowly undressed her. He stopped only long enough to pull the shades, and when she lay naked and splendid on her narrow bed, he took off his own clothes, and helped her to slip under the covers. He remembered how shy she had been as a young girl and he didn’t want to embarrass her, or scare her, or
hurt her. He wanted everything to be perfect for her, and he wanted it to be a moment they would both treasure forever. She was even lovelier than he’d dreamed, and as he entered her at last, they both moaned softly. She writhed in his arms, and he kissed her endlessly, holding her and whispering his love for her softly. They lay together for a long time, and when it was over, he clutched her close to him, as though they could become one body and one soul if he held her for long enough, and nothing could ever part them.