The sudden move took Charlotte by such surprise that she was frozen in shock. Then it dawned on her.
My God, she was actually being kissed!
For years, she’d only imagined the poetic experience of flesh on flesh. And now it was happening to
her.
She’d begun to believe it never would. She ought to discourage him, push him away, but what harm was there in one kiss?
In the cool, blanketing anonymity of night, the spinster analyzed the sensations with studied detachment. His lips felt dry and chapped and tasted of brandy. Yet it wasn’t so bad, she decided. As she relaxed more she felt a queer sensation, a tingling, that spread through her bloodstream like the brandy had. It left a fiery sensation in her belly, then, yes, lower in that secret place. Charlotte felt wicked and thrilled that she was experiencing a kiss, a real kiss—at last.
“There now,” he murmured with satisfaction, slipping the coat off her shoulders and shifting his body so that he was leaning over her. He smiled at her sweetly. She half smiled in return. “You should wear clothes like this more often,” he said, his voice rich with praise. “Shows you off. Shows these off.”
His gaze traveled from her shoulders down to her chest. He encircled her breasts with his hands, weighing their fullness over the stretch of red wool. He sighed lustily.
“Oh, you’re big. And it’s all you, too. We weren’t sure they were real.”
He lowered his mouth to hers again, and she soon discovered how he got the name Fast Hands. Charlotte was awash in new sensations and asked herself again and again if she should stop. But surely this was all harmless. She’d heard the girls in the office talk about this sort of thing all the time. Why shouldn’t she experience this, too?
Suddenly, Lou lifted himself back with a jolt, unbuckling his belt. As the cold air settled between them, she saw him fumble with his zipper. Charlotte realized in a snap that they’d gone too far. She didn’t want anything that had to do with unzipping trousers.
“I think we should stop now,” she said firmly, pushing up on her elbows.
“No…no, not yet. We haven’t even started having fun yet.” The zipper hummed loudly in the darkness.
“I said that’s enough.” Her voice was as crisp and cold as the night.
“Whoa, baby. Not so fast. You’re a wild one, aren’t you? I’m ready for you, though. Oh, yeah. I’m gonna give you a real nice Christmas present.”
She wrestled her hand away from his grasp with a cry of alarm. Where was the spark of kindness that she thought she’d detected? How could she have been duped into trusting him against her better judgment. Fear replaced pleasure in a sudden rash move. She fought against him, but he wrestled her legs wide, maneuvering one up onto the seat while the other dangled uselessly to the floor. When his hand moved to slide under the waistband of her panty hose, Charlotte screamed but he cut it off with his palm.
“I’ll bet I’m the first one, right?” When he saw her eyes widen in horror, he laughed. “Thought so. Didn’t think a whole lot of guys would be lining up. You got a great body, kid, but I swear, I oughta put a bag on your head.”
Tears instantly flooded Charlotte’s eyes as she felt a despair deeper and more raw than any caused by a physical blow. She bit his palm, digging into soft flesh, then threw her head back and screamed as loud as she could. “No!”
He hit her then, hard, stunning her.
“Shut up,” he said in an angry growl. “You’d better play along or you’ll lose your job. Besides, you’re so ugly, you should pay me for it.”
Lying there, feeling the tug of fabric roll down her hips, buttocks, then thighs, Charlotte flashed back to the time long ago, in kindergarten, when she’d felt the same brutal pulling down of her pants. Now it was happening again, she realized with unspeakable shame. She was lying here, on this smelly car seat in this dirty garage, letting Lou Kopp do it to her all over again.
Something snapped in Charlotte. All the anger and shame that she’d felt lying on the dirt behind the bleachers came back to her in a rush. Fifteen years of remembering that incident, wishing she’d fought harder, screamed louder. Years of anguish from cruel jeers and taunts from boys while she just sat back and took it all, came rushing to her. Suddenly, in a brilliant flash that lit up her dim dismay, Charlotte remembered the promise she had made herself back behind the bleachers.
Consumed with fury, indignation and resolve, she was strong. Charlotte bunched her hand into a fist. “N-o-o-o!” she screamed, and swung up to meet his jaw with a resounding crack.
Lou cried out, falling back, slapping his palm against his jaw. Seizing the moment, Charlotte raised her right leg and with righteous power kicked like a horse, making direct contact with what he’d been so proud of moments before. Lou howled in pain and doubled up.
Not wasting a second, Charlotte yanked open the door with her hand. Pushing hard away, she fell back out of the car, losing her shoes and landing in a heap on the hard, cold pavement. Scrambling to her feet, she yanked up her pants, grabbed her purse and ran, shoeless, toward the stairs. She allowed herself only one quick backward glance at Lou Kopp. He was still moaning and cursing, hunched over in the front seat. A wounded wolf howling at the moon.
Vindication surged through her veins as she raced to the door.
She’d fought back!
No more cowering. No more whimpering. Never again would she allow someone to take advantage of her. She was through feeling sorry for herself.
Running out of the garage to the sidewalk, Charlotte gulped the air. The icy cold burned her chest, cleansing her. It awoke her to the stars that flickered in the sky overhead. Standing in her stocking feet, with her coat and purse dangling at her side, she lifted her face to them.
“I
matter,
” she called out to the stars. Then farther into the heavens, she called out to God. “I do not accept this fate you’ve given me. I swear by all that is holy that I will find a way to change it. And if you have any mercy at all for me, your lowliest of creations, you will not stop me.” She took a deep, trembling breath, afraid of the new feelings that rumbled inside her breast, demanding to be heard.
“And if you do try to stop me,” she cried, shaking her fist in the sky, “I will defy you!”
M
ichael Mondragon paused at the hotel lobby door. The look in that woman’s eyes as the elevator door closed stayed with him. As well as that huddled-shoulder stance that he saw so often in women when they were feeling shy or insecure. A gut instinct told him that he should have pressed further, made sure that she was all right. But she had said no. Any more interference would have been seen as aggressive.
Certainly the sour looks from that other man told him to back off. Michael’s lips curled. He knew the type: a real sleazebag out for a good time. Another reason why he didn’t feel comfortable leaving a seemingly naive girl with him. There was something about her. Not beauty. It was a shame about her chin…. She had lovely, silent-movie-queen eyes that spoke for her. And they spoke eloquently of an innocence that men like that creep preyed on. And that men like him defended.
Michael blew a steady, calming stream of air from his lips, trying to shake off the guilty feeling. She’d said no, he reminded himself. These days women knew their own minds and didn’t appreciate unasked-for chivalry.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” he muttered, closing the case in his mind and pushing open the glass doors.
He stepped straight into a frigid blast of wind that gusted from Lake Michigan. It took his breath away and whipped his long hair back from his forehead.
“Damn this Chicago weather,” he cursed. The Windy City was aptly nicknamed, and this close to the lake, the gusts were strong enough to push along even a man as big as he. He’d never get used to it. Michael hunched his shoulders, turned up his collar and rammed his hands into his pockets before joining those few foolhardy enough to walk the sidewalks this arctic night. He thought of the warm breezes of California and fingered the envelope in his pocket.
Michael quickened his pace to Michigan Avenue where, with luck and a piercing whistle, he might catch a cab. He’d just ducked out of a small wedding reception for a fellow architect at city hall. Frank and his bride seemed so happy, so sure of their decision to spend the rest of their lives together. Their happiness left him feeling hollow, reminding him how empty his own life was.
Michael fingered again the envelope in his coat pocket. He had received the letter from his father early today and carried it with him, rereading it several times. His father hadn’t written him more than three letters in his whole life. Most of the letters he’d received were from his mother. Her English was better, and she would kindly include his father’s opinions. “Your father and I are proud of your good work at school.” “Your father sends you his love.” “Your father and I wonder why you don’t come home more often.”
His father, however, rarely lifted a pen to write a letter. Michael never judged him harshly for it. Truth was, he understood that his father was too exhausted from lifting a shovel all day to even consider lifting a pen into his large worn and callused hands.
He had received his first letter when an essay he’d written on the Constitution was published in the local newspaper. The second when he graduated from college. “A college graduate!” his mother had crooned, her breast as puffed as a hen’s. The first ever from his family. Michael’s entire extended family had gathered to celebrate the occasion at a noisy fiesta with plenty of singing and laughing. He remembered with chagrin the suspicious glares from the “gringos” neighbors. And now this one. In this third letter, his father, Luis, had called Michael home.
“My hands,” he had written in his own hand. “They are bad now. They no do what they must do. And the customers, they are not happy. So many young men come with new ideas. Ha! They know nothing of the soil. Of the plants. But they draw pretty pictures for
los gringos
who know even less nothing than they do.
“I need you
now,
” he wrote, underlining
now.
“To help the family. You know how to draw those fancy pictures. You know how to talk the English good. Most of all, you know the soil. I need you.
Tu.
Miguel. My son.”
Michael shivered as a cold blast shot down his spine.
Mi padre.
He loved his father. And he missed him. Yet his father was asking him to give up his career as an architect to return to California and the landscape business that his father had started thirty years earlier. Asking him to return to his roots.
Michael closed his eyes against the memories. Roots. The soil. Black dirt under his nails. He ground his teeth. What did he want with roots? He was an architect. He built skyscrapers.
Madre de Dios,
he swore under his breath. He strove higher and higher into the sky. Miles—years—away from the soil. Away from the time he was scurrilously considered just another spic with a shovel. Wasn’t that why he’d left California? To sever the roots? To break with the culture that grounded him?
Michael lifted his chin and laughed loudly into the bitter wind. Fool, he was! Such roots could not be severed. He would return. He knew it. Like poison ivy, the roots of his family were invasive. They dug too deep. No matter how he fought to deny it, he was Mexican. It was his culture, his blood. It was who he was. And, more, he was a Mexican man.
Machismo.
A Mexican male could not be weak or cry about his pain. Machismo required that he honor his father. Machismo demanded that he remember the family.
To remember it all.
The Michigan Avenue office of Dr. Jacob Harmon was as glittering and impressive as his reputation. The waiting room had the cool, smooth elegance of crystal, and as with fine crystal, Charlotte felt afraid to touch anything. But her eyes took in everything: the forced paperwhites in a pinecone basket, the lovely petit point upholstery, and a pungent, silvery eucalyptus wreath for the holidays. Even the artwork was original, not like the cheap prints and peeling posters on the walls at McNally and Kopp. It made her feel that she’d come to the right place. She held her hands tight against her thighs, not willing to so much as move a single up-to-date magazine in the plastic-protected covering from its precisely ordered line. In the corner, her blue wool coat hung in shabby contrast to the other luxurious ones. It embarrassed her just to look at it.
“Miss Godowski? Come this way, please.”
The stunning brunette nurse led her to a small, shell pink examining room to take a thorough medical history. Then she was transferred across the dove gray carpet and left to roost in Dr. Harmon’s office. She thought all the glass and shiny chrome was rather cold and hoped it didn’t reflect the doctor’s personality. Charlotte was exceedingly nervous about the interview. She knew that the doctor’s psychological exam was as important as the physical one in determining if she was fit for surgery. And she just
had
to have the surgery….
After what felt an interminable wait, the office door swung open and Dr. Harmon came sweeping into the room with a billowing white coat, followed by another model-perfect nurse. Charlotte’s mouth fell open. The doctor appeared more a boy. He was short, small boned, with amazingly smooth skin for a grown man. How old could he be? she wondered. More to the point, how many operations had he done?
Dr. Harmon delivered a quick, piercing look as he passed her, then moved to sit behind the huge desk that only dwarfed him further. The nurse appeared attentive, even fawning, to Dr. Harmon as she presented him with the chart and a coquettish smile. She left without so much as a nod of acknowledgment to Charlotte.
Charlotte’s heart began to pound. She slunk far back into the chair and peered out at Dr. Harmon with a guarded expression. He appeared unaware that she was even in the office. He leaned far back in his leather chair and began reading her chart, flicking pages with sharp, quick precision. She thought of a sparrow picking at seed. Good hands for a plastic surgeon, Charlotte decided.
Gradually he lowered the manila chart and raised his gaze. It was as though a searchlight had been flicked on and was scouring every inch of her eyes, her nose, her lips and the awkward line of her deformed jaw. Charlotte didn’t feel embarrassed by the scrutiny because Dr. Harmon studied her with the cold focus of a clinician.
Then, as suddenly, his expression changed. The intensity dissipated, and a slight, practiced smile politely took its place on his face. Charlotte sat up. The interview was about to begin.
“Good morning, Miss…” He looked again at the chart.
“Godowski.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you. Miss Godowski. Your general health seems to be in fine shape. I’ll give you a complete exam, but I don’t anticipate any worries there.” He looked up again at her with a benign expression. “Suppose you tell me, in your own words, how you would like me to help you.” Dr. Harmon folded his hands neatly upon the desk and looked at her with a bemused expression.
Looking at his face, a face so baby smooth she wondered if hair ever grew on it, Charlotte was at a loss for words. “I…” She stammered and looked away. “I would think it’s obvious.”
The doctor only offered that same faint grin in reply.
She clenched her hands tightly in her lap. What could she say that he didn’t already see? He cocked his head as a prompt. Taking a deep breath, Charlotte blurted out the truth that hovered at her lips.
“I want to be beautiful.”
He furrowed his brows and pursed his lips in concern.
“I see,” he replied.
Charlotte flushed. Of course he saw, all too clearly, and no doubt he thought she was crazy. She shifted her weight, mortified to have released her innermost secret. “Well maybe,” she amended, plucking at her dress with trembling fingers, “maybe just sort of pretty?” She could hear her mother saying, “We’ll make her pretty, no?”
Dr. Harmon’s expression altered to reveal compassion. “Maybe,” he conceded. “In fact, quite possible.” Studying her face like an artist would a blank canvas, he continued. “There are changes I could suggest, but I’d like to hear your thoughts first. What specifically would you like to see done?”
Charlotte took a deep breath, blinking. He hadn’t laughed at her. He hadn’t said her dream was impossible, rather, he’d said “possible.” Did he have any idea how much hope he had just given her?
“Well…I guess…let’s see…” she stammered out. Then, raising her gaze to meet his, she said firmly, “My chin.”
“What about your chin?”
“I want one,” she said more boldly. “A real one that curves out from the jaw and rounds out under my lips. And now that I mention it, I’d like a jaw, too. One that rolls at a right angle from my neck. A separate entity, not the mountain slope that I have now.”
“And the rest? Your nose, your eyes, your cheekbones?”
Charlotte thought a moment. “No,” she replied. “God gave me those. They reflect my mother and my father, and I accept those as part of who I am.”
“Very good.”
He smiled, and Charlotte felt enormously relieved. That was obviously a right answer. She began to relax a bit, unclenching her fingers. She was aware that Dr. Harmon noted in that steel trap of a gaze every movement she made.
“How long have you been unhappy with your chin?”
“Forever. I used to think God shortchanged me on my face.”
“Shortchanged? That’s an interesting way to put it.”
“When I was a little girl, I believed that God made each of us separately, like a sculptor. The rest of me is just fine.” She blushed and laughed shortly. “I figured God ran out of time and had to push me through, leaving my chin unfinished.” She looked up, relieved to see an amused smile on Dr. Harmon’s face. “A child’s reasoning, I know,” she continued. “But I haven’t found another excuse yet. It just feels so…unfair.”
She paused, choosing her words. “I’m not looking to change all of me, Doctor,” she said in earnest. “I’m just asking you to finish what God started.”
Dr. Harmon didn’t speak for a moment. He seemed moved by what she had said.
“I’m pleased to hear that you don’t want me to change everything. That would be unrealistic. What you have is a congenital flaw in your jaw. It’s a rare condition, and correction will involve a long, sensitive procedure. The jaw will be cut and repositioned, bone grafts will be considered, and in extreme conditions such as yours, artificial implants are inserted to augment size and thrust of the jaw and chin. Simply moving bone is not enough. And follow-up with an orthodontist. It is, however, doable, and frankly, you have come to the right doctor. I specialize in craniofacial surgery.”
“I heard that. I also heard that you were the best.”
A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face, but he had the grace not to confirm the compliment.
“How does your family feel about the operation?”
“Family?”
He glanced at his chart. “It says here you live with your mother.”
“That’s right.”
“Is there anyone else important to you? A significant other?”
Charlotte sighed. “There’s only my mother.”
He raised his brows, determined that she would speak.
“I haven’t told her yet.”
His brows rose higher. “Why not?”
“I don’t believe she’ll approve.”
“Sometimes relatives don’t understand how important it can be for someone to have a particular operation. Nonetheless, it is important that you discuss it with her if only to determine the degree of support you can expect.”