No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale (3 page)

And we launched into it all over again. Then again, and again, until two hours were spent and I was limp with exhaustion and euphoric at the same time.

Finally Randall closed the piano lid and said, “Well, I think you’ve earned an Italian dinner.”

I opened my mouth, but he didn’t even give me time to let the protest cross my lips.

“And a bottle of chianti, I think,” he added, daring me to argue.

“Sounds decadent.”

“Absolutely.”

That was the end of the argument. He whisked me off to a lovely restaurant only a few miles from house, an intimate little place called Cucina, where we had entirely too much pesto and chianti and amazing fresh-baked bread, and all sorts of conversation. We were both that rarity, natives of Southern California, but his tales of his extended family and growing up in Larchmont Village with his well-to-do but domineering grandfather, lawyer father, writer mother, and apparently teeming hordes of brothers, sisters, and cousins were as foreign to me as if he’d grown up on the other side of the continent. Nothing could have been further from my quiet childhood in Pasadena, where I had been the only child of an only child, and my mother estranged from her own family back in Wisconsin. Certainly there had been no visits from her relatives, and I had grown up knowing only one set of grandparents.

Randall and I talked about so many other things, of course, of music and art and all the seemingly endless distractions of student life, comparing professors and fellow students and pointless papers and the whole crazy mess of it, until we were the last couple in the restaurant—it was a weeknight, after all—and we finally emerged into the cool night air. We both shared a guilty glance at our watches, and he bundled me into the passenger seat of his older-model but meticulously maintained BMW while apologizing for the hour.

“I do tend to run off at the mouth,” he said. “Youngest child syndrome—always looking for attention.”

“It’s okay,” I said, somewhat dreamily, enjoying the luxurious warmth of the wine in my stomach and the happy afterglow of a good meal. “My first class isn’t until ten tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s something.”

We finished the rest of the drive back to the parking lot in silence, broken only by my giving brief directions as to where my car was parked. At that hour only a few cars remained, and Randall pulled up in the space next to my shabby Honda.
 

I climbed out a little awkwardly, pausing to collect my satchel from the back seat, then rummaged through my purse to find my car keys.
 

Randall followed me to the driver’s-side door, where we both paused. The yellowish light from the sodium vapor street lamp overhead cast odd shadows on his face, bleaching the color from his eyes, making him suddenly a stranger.

The words—“thank you for a lovely evening”—didn’t even make it to my lips before his mouth was on mine, his arms encircling me in an embrace that was both shocking and expected. How else, after all, could this evening have ended?
 

I hesitated for the slightest fraction of a second—so slight it was hardly a hesitation at all—then let myself surrender to the pressure of his lips, the warmth of his body against mine. The adolescent fumblings I had suffered in the past were nothing compared to this, nothing to the heat I could feel rising in my own body as I kissed him back, let his tongue explore my mouth as I tasted him, tasted the chianti on his lips.

We pulled apart finally, and for a moment we were silent, watching one another.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he said finally.

I touched my swollen bottom lip. “I have some,” I said, and managed a shaky laugh.

“Oh, God, Christine, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right,” I interjected hastily. It wasn’t as if I had tried to stop him, after all.

“Well—”

“Well,” I repeated. “It’s almost midnight. I really do need to get home.”

He stood by silently as I turned the key in the door lock, but spoke when I tossed my satchel on the passenger seat.

“I hate to see you go.”

Deliberately, I sat in the driver’s seat. “I know, Randall, but I’m not ready for that yet—”

“Of course not,” he said immediately, and I was gratified to see that he actually meant it. “I’ll see you in senior seminar tomorrow, though—I’m accompanying.”

I smiled, and held his gaze. “I’m glad.”

He smiled, too, and then let me shut the car door. Thank God the car started. Lately I’d been given to uttering an invocation to whatever powers may be that the damn thing wouldn’t strand me twenty miles from home. But after a little introductory cough the Civic kicked right in, and I was able to navigate my way through the empty parking lot with whatever calm my rattled nerves would allow me.

Crazy or not, ill-timed and ill-advised as it might be, I knew, even after one evening together, that I was dangerously close to falling in love with Randall Cagney.

“Impossible,” he said, pushing the envelope with the 8x10 photographs inside away from him.

“I’m afraid so, sir.” Jerome shifted his weight almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other, the only betrayal of his discomfort. “I thought it suspicious that she would leave her car there for so long, so I waited—”

Waited with the patience of a spider, and captured the evidence he had so long feared. Nothing in Christine’s life had borne any evidence of a lover or even a casual boyfriend, and now this, this—

“Randall Cagney,” Jerome supplied. “A graduate student and teacher’s assistant. More importantly, a talented pianist who works as an accompanist for the vocal program.”

He could feel the anger growing, the sinuous beast that was already tightening his innards into knots. Rage, and the impulse to kill, to remove any obstacle in his wake. Under the desk, his hands clenched, bitter fists eager to reach out and destroy.
 

“Get out,” he said, and was only slightly gratified to see Jerome immediately turn and practically flee for the door, moving more quickly than he had ever seen him do so before. Apparently his rage was visible even behind the mask.

Alone again, he returned his focus to the object of his fury, the photographs shoved carelessly back inside the manila envelope. He pulled out the first one; it showed an almost-empty parking lot with two nondescript cars parked next to one another. A man and a woman stood next to the driver’s door of the smaller vehicle, and it was obvious what they were doing. His arms were around her, as hers encircled his torso; their mouths were locked, her face almost obscured by the back of the man’s head. But he would have known that fall of curly dark hair anywhere, that graceful curve of cheekbone. Christine.

How could she? How could she, when he was so close to having her?

A sudden violent gesture, and the photographs flew off the desk to scatter on the Persian rug. He didn’t need to see more—they were all variations on a theme.

Why now? Why, after a youth of apparent solitude, a college career where she had carefully avoided any sort of romantic entanglements, had she finally succumbed?

Randall Cagney. His mouth lifted—the side that could lift, anyhow—in a grimace. He didn’t know much about him, other than what Jerome had just related, but he would soon know much, much more. Everything, really, from the amount in his bank account to the brand of underwear he wore.

Soon, very soon, Randall Cagney would be in for a series of most unpleasant shocks. Perhaps he would be forced to reconsider his connection with a certain Christine Daly.

He pressed the speaker button on the intercom. “Jerome, get back in here. I have another assignment for you.”

Chapter Three

He awoke, screaming, from a nightmare of blinding pain, the flash of sharp blades, restraining hands. His breath came in loud tearing gasps, and he slammed a hand down on the empty space in the bed next to him. Of course there was no one to comfort him as he lay alone in the darkness. There never had been.

A moment passed before he felt steady enough to stand. Despite the absolute blackness of the room, he had no problem navigating his way from the bed to the table by the window where he kept a decanter of cognac and a few Waterford snifters. With a hand that shook only a little, he poured himself several fingers of a rare vintage from an ancient French label, then drank deeply, with utter disrespect for the quality of the liquor.

“God damn it,” he said aloud finally. His voice—his one beauty—was ragged. He pulled out a chair and sat down, closing his eyes, even though he was surrounded by merciful darkness.
 

The nightmares had begun in early childhood, just after he had stolen the first fleeting glimpse of his face. That one look was allowed by a careless nanny who had left him unattended just long enough for him to wander into his mother’s bedroom—his parents had taken separate quarters not long after his birth—and peek into the elaborate Venetian-style mirror that hung over her dresser. One shocked look started him screaming, and he had been quickly scooped up and carried out by the butler—but the damage was done.

The surgeries started soon after. His clearest memory of the years between three and six was of masked surgeons bending over him, the lowering of the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, the weeks and months of pain that followed. He always recuperated at home, never at the hospital—too many prying eyes—and never was he allowed to want for anything. Anything except peace, of course.

At some point during that evil time his mother left, never to return. Since he had hardly seen her anyway, he did not miss her that much, but he heard voices raised, doors slammed in distant hallways, then brooding quiet. Her infrequent visits ceased. His father would make an obligatory stop every evening, when they engaged in stilted conversation regarding his lessons, but he never stayed longer than ten minutes; you could time his visits by the clock.

Other than that, his only personal contact had been Ennis, the butler, and a steady stream of nannies, nurses, and doctors, all of them paid extremely well to never speak of their young charge or his lamentable condition. Some of them never saw his disfigurements at all—up until the age of fourteen, his face had been perennially swathed in bandages and gauze from the unending surgeries. He supposed the procedures would have gone even longer than that, had it not been for the outspoken young plastic surgeon from UCLA.

He closed his eyes. The man’s voice and face were as clear to him as if they had last spoken yesterday, but more than twenty-five years had passed since then. That doctor had been the only one with the strength or integrity to stand up to his father, the only one in a long parade of distinguished surgeons from Beverly Hills to Pasadena.
 

Doctor Santos. Not so long out of his fellowship, new on the staff at UCLA, but already famed for his skill at reconstructive surgery for those with birth defects or disfigurements caused by accidents. He was a slight, dark man with piercing eyes under straight, expressive brows and the fine hands of a concert pianist. Apparently he spent his summer vacations doing
pro bono
work in South America, repairing burn scars, harelips, and cleft palates, even performing amazing reconstructive work on those suffering from neurofibromatosis, commonly known as “Elephant Man’s disease.”

Even now the irony struck him. Perhaps Dr. Santos could have helped John Merrick, but he himself was beyond the doctor’s skill.

He’d gotten very good at hiding in corners, skulking in shadows. So it was no problem to lurk in the hallway outside his father’s office, listening to the conference between his father and Dr. Santos. He had noted that even the earnest doctor had made the long drive from Westwood to Pasadena for this meeting, instead of having them come to his own offices for a consultation.

“Enough,” Dr. Santos said. “I won’t be a party to any more butchery on that poor boy’s face.”

He couldn’t see their faces, but he knew that his father would allow no betraying expression. He’d inherited a massive fortune, but he also had the killer instincts to build on it in his lifetime. “If not you, then someone else.”

“Quite possibly,” Dr. Santos replied. “I have no doubt that you could find someone else to take on the task—although it appears you’ve already run through most of the reputable plastic surgeons in the Los Angeles area. But all that would do is drain more from your bank account.”

His father was silent.

After an awkward pause, Dr. Santos continued, “And it’s apparent that’s of no real concern to you. How much have you spent over the years? A million? Two? A drop in the bucket, maybe, but if no one else will be honest with you, then I will. There’s just no more that can be done.”

“Your opinion.”

“Yes, my opinion, and a damn good one. I’ve read the boy’s history. Forty-five surgeries—forty-five, and the kid’s not even fifteen yet! For God’s sake, there’s nothing left to operate on!”

He could hear the shift of his father’s body against the leather desk chair. “What do mean, nothing?”

Dr. Santos paused. Then he said, “There is so much scar tissue, so much damage to the underlying bone structure, that you risk creating wounds that will never heal. Do you want him to run the risk of infection for the rest of his life? At least now he has half a face. Better that than nothing.”

“I see. And that is your final opinion?”

“Yes. The boy needs to learn to live with what he has. It’s a tragedy, but causing further disfigurement or risking death would be much worse.”

A long, heavy silence. Then his father said, “Thank you, doctor. You may leave your bill with Ennis on the way out.”

A short laugh from Dr. Santos. “This one’s on me, Mr. Deitrich. Consider it to be part of my charitable work.”

“We don’t take charity, Dr. Santos,” his father replied, his tone frosty.

“Guess you don’t need it, do you, Mr. Deitrich?” A pause as he gathered up his briefcase. “Then consider it an early birthday gift for Erik.”

The doctor’s imminent departure necessitated a hasty retreat down the hallway before his eavesdropping could be detected, but Erik had heard enough. Although it was disconcerting to hear that nothing more could be done, as he’d been fed false hopes for years, at the same time he felt liberated. No more surgeries. No more nights of pain where he stubbornly resisted the opiates they’d left for him, afraid even then of what they could do to his mind.