Her Name Will Be Faith (14 page)

"No way. Get out of here and
leave me alone. You stink." The waterbed
sloshed alarmingly as she struggled away from
his reach until finally
she was on the
floor, and he was lying diagonally across the bed looking down at her,
laughing.

There was no way she could get back into bed without
virtually being
raped — so she took
the only alternative, rushed naked through the door
and down the corridor
to the spare bedroom, locking it behind her before
climbing into one of the single beds. Michael didn't try to follow her
—
he was probably already asleep.

Next morning Jo woke late and
hurried back to their bedroom to dress.
Michael was out cold, snoring, mouth wide-open,
disheveled hair over
his face. She looked
down at him and shuddered.

Mark Hammond leaned against the
wall of the telephone booth. "Well,"
he said. "That was Barbara. She's fizzling so fast someone could
have pulled a plug. I don't figure it, old buddy. What kind of sea temperature
do you have up there?"

"25C,' Richard told him. "It's
climbing."

"Well, there isn't a water temperature under
261/2°C anywhere south
of Bermuda. So both
Anthony and Barbara spawned, became hurricanes
pretty quickly, and now
have fizzled again."

"There's some jet stream activity," Richard
told him.

"Yeah. But not enough. I just don't get it.
Anyway, I'll be with you tomorrow, we can talk about it then."

"Tomorrow?"

"Sure. I told you I was coming up for a day or
two this month."

"Oh, Jesus," Richard said.

"Come again?"

"Looking forward to seeing
you," Richard said. "It's just that I have
a rather important lunch date then."

"So, I won't get there until afternoon. See you
then. Maybe you'll have
worked out what's
happening. By my book, both those storms should
have been biggies."

"So maybe there'll be a real biggie this
summer," Richard said. "Give you something to spot. See you." He
was on too much of a high to care about hurricanes right that minute, even if
he knew he should. He had encountered JC in the elevator only yesterday
afternoon, and the great
man had remarked,
"Where's all this hurricane activity you promised us,
Richard?
Seems the goddamned things can't get off the ground. Or do I mean the sea? Haw,
haw, haw. But it'd make people more interested in these chats of yours if we
were to have something to hang them on to. Right?"

The old fool appeared to think he could conjure them
out of thin air,
Richard thought. But JC's
excesses didn't really matter; tomorrow he
was lunching with Jo
Donnelly. So she was a married woman. But then, once upon a time he had been a
married man.

Richard Connors replaced the telephone and switched on
his television screen: he had the morning off, and Julian was doing the ten
o'clock forecast. Julian was coming along well – even if there was
nothing to
report. There was another tropical
storm, just off Martinique, and this
one
was being named Christopher, but Richard didn't expect it to do
much
– it was already small and tight, and yet without hurricane force winds.
It was being the damnedest spring, the hottest in New York for some time, and
with summer only a few days away – and yet muted
hurricane activity. A summer, he realized, which could leave him with
egg all over his face, as he had confidently
predicted, on the air as well
as to his superiors, that there would be
several major storms this year.

A summer which could end with him on his way back to
Florida!

His ebullience of half an hour ago had faded, as it
had a habit of doing
when he found himself
trapped in the minute apartment which was
all he had been able to find. The fact was, he wasn't a homemaker, at
least on his own. He had moved in here a fortnight
ago, and boxes of
books remained
stacked in a corner waiting for him to put up shelves.
The place would
look less bare when he had hung his pictures, but he
didn't want to do that until he had redecorated the room – he
couldn't
live with that hideous shade of orange, and he hadn't even
decided what color would be an improvement. He leaned over and took a can of
Budweiser from the box beside him, pulled the
ring, and gulped a couple
of mouthfuls. The bedroom had been easy to
fix; he'd spent most of his time on it, working at odd hours, and felt quite
pleased with himself. It had been his first attempt at Do-It-Yourself. He had
also got his music center working; it had been difficult to get the speakers in
just the right positions in such a small area and he had had to be satisfied
with a compromise – but he'd hardly listened to them: good music needed
to be shared.

Bedrooms also needed to be shared. When Pam had
finally walked off with that over-muscled piece of charred flesh, and they'd
agreed to split,
he'd been quite keen to
sample independence again, have only himself to
please, and get away
from the constant emotional strain and bickering of a dead marriage. He had
visualized himself as the happy bachelor, dating pretty girls when the mood took
him, or staying late at the studio if he
chose
without feeling he was giving Pam an excuse for spending the night
out with some pick-up. He had conjured up pictures
of cozy evenings
alone with his sort
of music, his kind of TV program, hamburger in
one hand and beer in the
other – comfortable and contented. Well, just about every evening since
moving in he had had his music, his TV, his
beer
and his hamburger available – but what the hell had happened to
the
contentment? He'd pondered over the question long enough to know the answer: he
was lonely for a woman. What about the pretty girls? The NABS building was
stuffed with them, everyone eyeing him over their typewriters or round their
coffee machines, offering him a lay any time.
Closer
at hand, there was Jayme, just dying to get him between the sheets.

The trouble was that he was too damned choosy, and he
was not really into one-night stands. He wanted the same woman there, every
night, to
talk with, discuss the day.
Someone with common sense and intelligence. Companionship was what he was
after, even more than sex. A companion
to
eat with, walk with, go to the theatre or art exhibition with, and still be a
pleasure to sleep with. He had met only one woman since coming
to New York who could fill that bill. A married
woman with children. To
get her, he
would have to play his image to the hilt. And he wasn't sure
he wanted
to do that, with Josephine Donnelly. But at least they were lunching together.
He could feel his way.

They ordered pizzas, salad and Frascati again, as if
they were both consciously trying to recreate the rapport of their first meal
here. It was too hot for the English two-piece she had been wearing on the
previous occasion, but Richard loved her in the crisp pale turquoise cotton
dress, with its full skirt. Loved her? That was ridiculous; he hardly knew her.

"...interviews. When school finishes for the
summer..." He let her
chat on, hardly
listening, just watching her. She seemed more brittle than
the last time
they'd met – tired, perhaps.

A word sank in. "Vacationing in Eleuthera?
That'll be fun."

"It is," she agreed.
"All the family will be there... well, nearly all."
A shadow had passed over her face.

"But your kids will be there with you," he
prompted. "You never did tell me their names."

"Owen Michael and Tamsin."

"Cute. How old are they?"

"Ten and eight. Have you any? Oh, no, I
remember..."

"Wish I had, in a way, but it's probably just as
well I don't, with the divorce and all that."

"That's true. Was it..."
She hesitated before asking the question
which
had immediately leapt to her tongue. "Very traumatic?"

He shrugged. "I was told it could've been a lot
worse. We both wanted out at the same time, and having no kids was a great
help."

"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. She had not
come here today to think
about her own
problems – rather to escape them. But of course they were
inescapable now. And hideous. Just for starters,
there was no chance,
even if Michael would admit they no longer even
liked each other, much less loved, that he would want out from his children any
more than she could contemplate abandoning them. Richard was clearly waiting
for her to say something, so she asked, "What's it like being single
again, after years of marriage?"

He was about to tell her it was great to have freedom
again, all those trite quips one usually trotted out when asked that question.
Instead he said, "Awful. I hate it. I never dreamed how lonely it could
be."

Jo shook her head in amazement. "That's
incredible. I'd have thought you'd have any number of girl friends."

"Don't you believe it. Oh, there are lots of
girls, yes. But ..."

"What have casual girl friends and bright lights
to do with sharing TV
suppers with your
favorite person?" Jo suggested wistfully.

Richard's eyes narrowed. "You know?"

All at once she was nervous. The
conversation had crossed that invisible dividing line between professional
colleagues casually discussing personal
matters, and two people striving for at least mental
intimacy. He had
begun to bare his soul
to her, and he was inviting her to do the same in
return. Well, she thought, with some men it wouldn't matter, and she
was
in the mood to do just that – but this one was far too attractive, and
right at this moment she was far too vulnerable. She laughed. "What
married woman doesn't, occasionally? My husband spends most of his time yacht
racing. Now tell me what you're going to say in your first hurricane
chat."

He felt a stab of disappointment as she backed off,
and tried to get his
mind back to business.
"Well, I guess I'll have to begin with outlining
just what a
hurricane is, and hope to God I have something real to talk about before JC
cancels the show."

"JC? Oh, you mean Calthrop White."

Richard grinned. "That's the network ogre, all
right."

"Surely he won't cancel the show after one
program?"

"He might. He reckoned that
there'd be hurricane activity down
south
this summer which would give the chats a boost, and it just isn't
happening. Oh, there have been three named storms,
but they've all
fizzled."

"Don't tell me: the jet stream has been knocking
them off before they could properly form."

"You have a good memory.
Trouble is, the jet stream hasn't been all
that
strong over the central Atlantic this summer."

"So what's the reason?"

He shrugged. "I told you, meteorology is still an
inexact science. I
simply don't know. It's
as if something out there was straining to bust
loose, and hasn't been
able to, yet."

"Isn't that an angle for you to use?"

He shook his head. "I'd be
torn to ribbons by my fellow forecasters,
and
if it didn't happen JC would have my guts for garters."

She was terribly aware of those
black, mobile eyebrows, and that sleek black hair and the way he could smile
with just half his mouth. She could
see
he was quite different from her first impressions of him – so much
more real and sincere, and, she realized,
he
was
vulnerable, too. She
drained her
glass and averted her eyes, watched other people come in
to the restaurant and the feet of passers-by above
them on the side
walk.

There was a brief silence, then he asked, "Do you
go racing with your husband?"

"No. Michael made it quite
clear, a long time ago, that his sort of
sailing
is for men only."

He raised his eyebrows.
"How does he relate that theory to women like
Clare Francis or Naomi James?"

"I'm afraid Michael does
not relate his theories to anyone, or anything,"
she said. "He just behaves and thinks as he sees
fit." And now he would even more, she thought.

"Then what are your hobbies?"

Her turn to shrug. "Being
Mum, I suppose. There just isn't enough
time
to do anything else, if I'm going to hold down my job as well."

"But..." He checked what he had been going
to say.

"Oh, sure, we don't need my
income. That's not the point, though, is
it? I have a life to live just as much as Michael, and I
love journalism.
But spare time does go
on being a wife and mother. You won't believe it, looking at me now, but I used
to play a lot of squash in the winter, and
tennis
in the summer, but one needs to play three or four times a week
to maintain any sort of standard, and I hate
playing games badly, so I
guess
picking up the threads will have to wait until the children are
older."
She realized that she was, after all, baring her soul to him, and discovered
that she didn't mind. In fact, she wanted to, because he was listening to her
in perfect seriousness. She smiled. "I get what kicks I can
out of music. Sometimes, after the kids are in bed
– and when I can find
a baby
sitter – I go to a concert or a play... or just stay at home and
listen
to records. I have a super disc collection."