Once More With Feeling (32 page)

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, let's suppose you discovered that
Owen is not unfaithful to Elisabeth anymore. Suppose you realized
that he loves her, has loved her all along even if he strayed just
a bit. What could you do about it? You're the woman in the other
car. The woman who put his wife in a coma."

The cup slid from Gypsy's hand and clattered
against the saucer. "But it's not that way."

"All right." Marguerite folded her hands to
stop them from fidgeting. "Then it's not."

"I don't even want to think about Owen.
There's another man in my life." Gypsy stopped, then she shook her
head. "There was."

"I see."

"No, you don't. I wanted him. He's the
sexiest man I've ever met." She looked up. "One of two."

"And?"

She shook her head again.

"You were never any good at sex without
love," Marguerite said. "No matter how badly you wanted to be."

"Maybe I'd better learn to be good at it. Or
I'm going to live the life of a nun."

Marguerite covered her hand. "I'm afraid you
can take the woman out of the body, but you can't take the heart
out of the woman."

For weeks Gypsy had contemplated going to
see Elisabeth. There was no reason that she should. What could she
say or do that would change anything? Elisabeth was in a coma, and
Gypsy was alive and well. Going to see Elisabeth was too much like
the afternoon years ago when she had driven past the first house
she and Owen had lived in together. It had been disheartening to
see what the new owners had done. She had been powerless to replant
the lilacs and bridal wreath they had removed or restore the
original shingles and shutters. The house was forever changed; it
no longer belonged to her.

Despite that, knowing that, she still felt
compelled to make the trip. And her lunch with Marguerite only
reinforced the impulse. That afternoon she sat at her desk and
considered all the consequences. She longed to talk to Casey about
it, but she had hardly seen him since the trip to Cleveland. They
had scrupulously avoided each other, and when they had been forced
to work together, they had been polite and distant. Rumors were
flying at the studio that their romance had ended.

"You're sure about Billy and his boys,
now?"

Gypsy looked up from the jumble of papers
that she hadn't touched in ten minutes. Desmond was planted in her
doorway. "Absolutely."

"You feel safe?"

"I feel perfectly safe. No one's batted an
evil eyelash at me since Nan left. Hey, it's Tuesday, and I didn't
even get a rose. All bets are off this week and the grips are
fighting mad."

"Maybe the guy's florist went belly up."

"Maybe he's just found someone else to
pester." Gypsy stacked the papers and stood. "I'm tired of being
tailed, Des. If someone wants me out of the way badly enough,
they'll get to me whether Billy's there or not. It just doesn't
make sense to spend more money on this."

"Okay. Then we'll pay him off."

"As of when?"

"Now?"

She nodded. "I'll be careful. If anything
looks odd to me, I'll let you know."

"Do it. And we'll take all the normal
precautions here."

"There haven't been any new leads about
Mark's murder, have there?"

"Don't you watch your own show? We get a
lead, you'll be the one telling Mr. and Mrs. America."

"I've wondered. . . Exactly how long was he
working here, Des?"

"Not even three full months."

"Did he have time to get involved in a story
that someone didn't want him to tell? Could his death have had
something to do with the show?"

"We looked into all that. We read his notes,
checked his mail and messages, went through everything in his
office. Zip. Nada."

"I guess that wasn't exactly a world-class
hunch."

"Not a bad hunch, but you're underestimating
your colleagues. We didn't leave any stones unturned."

Gypsy knew the prevailing theory about why
Mark had been murdered. "If it was an organized crime hit, then
we'll probably never know."

"Probably." He grimaced. "You just stay out
of harm's way now. We can't afford to lose anyone else."

She stared at the empty doorway after
Desmond left. The Billy Boys were off her case, and she was free to
come and go without explanation. She was never going to be certain
that seeing Elisabeth again was the right thing to do, but if she
waited, she might lose her nerve entirely.

She gathered work to take home for the night
and grabbed her purse. If she was going to see Elisabeth, now was
the time.

It was early evening and quickly growing
cooler by the time she stood outside the home in Great Neck where
Elisabeth had been moved. The unimaginative tan brick had been
softened by Virginia creeper and wide beds of snapdragons and
asters, but she'd bet her bottom dollar that Owen winced every time
he had to walk through the front door.

Inside, the halls smelled of antiseptic and
floral air freshener without even a subtle bottom note of stale
urine. The walls were painted a soft cream color and cheerful blue
plaid curtains hung at every window. Plants flourished in corners
and beside conversational groupings of chairs and sofas. Not far
away an old man in a maroon robe was carrying on a sparkling--and
one-sided--conversation with the closest schefflera.

An attendant approached and offered his
help. She explained her purpose for being there, and he pointed her
in the right direction. She started down the hallway to the mellow
piped-in refrains of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and arrived to Barry
Manilow's "Mandy." Along the way she was greeted by three different
employees and a resident but stopped by no one.

At Elisabeth's door she removed her trench
coat and stood silently, gathering courage. She remembered the day
in the hospital when she had stolen into Elisabeth's room to prove
to herself that the Whitfields were really strangers. There was
nothing to prove today. She was here because she wanted a peek at
her past and because she felt she owed something to the woman lying
in the bed beyond this door. She didn't know what she owed
Elisabeth exactly. Regrets. Apologies. Explanations. There was no
protocol for this situation. Elisabeth's mother had prepared her
for every conceivable social occasion, but no one had prepared
Gypsy to face the woman she had been.

The room was silent, and the only light
oozed in from a window to the right of the bed. The spring green
curtains and framed New England landscapes couldn't make up for the
fact that this was an institution, and the woman lying as still as
death in the narrow bed with the iron rails didn't care what color
the walls were painted or whether there were roses on the laminated
nightstand.

There was no one else in the room. Obviously
there was no need for round-the-clock nursing care. Gypsy imagined
that Elisabeth was checked and fussed over frequently, with little
expectation that anything important would change. She looked much
as she had in the hospital. Her hair fanned over the crisp white
pillowcase. An I.V. dripped patiently into a vein. Her hands lay
one on top of the other. Her eyes were closed, and a casual
observer would probably say she looked at peace.

Gypsy was anything but a casual observer. To
her eyes Elisabeth looked like she wasn't all there, a chipped and
faded conch shell deserted by the ungrateful conch who had gone
looking for jazzier quarters. Elisabeth looked like no one was at
home. And, of course, no one was.

Gypsy put her coat on a chair and crossed to
Elisabeth's side. "Elisabeth?"

Gypsy would have been shocked if Elisabeth
had answered. The puzzle was complex enough as it was. But the fact
that she didn't answer, didn't moan or even flick her eyelashes was
disconcerting, too. It was impossible to know what to expect, or
even what to hope for.

"Elisabeth, it's Gypsy Dugan," she said. "Or
a facsimile thereof."

She wanted to hold Elisabeth's hand, but she
couldn't make herself touch the other woman. It seemed taboo, a
twisted corollary to childhood rules against touching intimate
parts of the body.

"I'm what you dreamed of being," she said
softly. She leaned over the bed. "I'm your dreams come true,
Elisabeth, but I don't know if that's any consolation. I don't even
know if consolations are in the realm of possibility, here. I mean,
is anything going on inside that body to be consoled?"

She was babbling. She knew it. But there was
nothing she could say that would make any sense, and she knew that,
too.

She looked around for a chair and found one
not far away. She pulled it closer and perched on the edge, leaning
forward so that she didn't have to shout. "I'm back at work. I like
the job. No, that's not true. I love it. It's a little sleazy, even
by Gypsy's standards, but the fact that no one's uptight about
dotting every 'i' or crossing every 't' makes it possible to be
creative. And they're letting me expand my job description a
little. I'm doing some serious stuff, stuff you'd approve of. Of
course you had your raunchy side, didn't you? No one knew it, but
you did."

Elisabeth didn't even twitch.

Gypsy switched topics. "I saw Grant. He
looks well. He looks different from this perspective, too. You
never realized what a hunk he was, did you? Well, he's not your
brown-eyed baby boy anymore. He's gorgeous. You ought to see what
he can do with those brown eyes when the spirit moves him."

Elisabeth looked as cool and impervious as a
white marble sculpture.

Tears rose in Gypsy's eyes. She realized she
was twisting the covers that were hanging over the edge of the bed.
She cleared her throat. "Look, let me give you some advice. If
you're lying there thinking, if there's something left to think
with, just remember. Wishing is a dangerous thing, Bess old friend.
Don't make any foolish wishes while you're lying there, because God
knows where you might just end up."

Elisabeth looked as if wishing were a thing
of the past.

There was nothing left to say, but Gypsy
wasn't ready to leave. She leaned back in her chair. The room was
peaceful, and she had come a long way for this. She probably
wouldn't return; this would probably be her last time at
Elisabeth's side. Since there was nothing else to say, she said
nothing. She closed her eyes, and thought about the woman lying in
the bed. Much later, when she opened her eyes, Owen was standing
beside her.

Obviously Owen hadn't come to the nursing
home from work. He never stepped foot into midtown Manhattan in
slacks and a sweater. And only on the rarest occasions did he
return from the city this early in the evening. Gypsy had assumed
that if he visited Elisabeth at all today it would be sometime
after dinner. She had been certain she wouldn't run into him.

Or perhaps she had only told herself as
much.

He towered over her, stiffly erect and
seething. "What are you doing here?"

She took a moment to examine all the subtle
changes. He was still thinner than he'd been when the woman lying
in the nursing home bed had been taking his suits to the tailor for
alterations. There were lines in his forehead that were new but not
unattractive. He was wearing the wire-rimmed glasses he had once
saved only for reading, but if anything, they gave an arresting
face even more character. She had always known he would age with
style while Elisabeth sagged and faded.

"I'll leave." She got to her feet.

"Why did you come in the first place? Are
you looking for another installment of your tragic tabloid
story?"

Anger flamed inside her, anger that had
little relation to his questions. "Look, I'm not going to bother
trying to explain myself to you. You're obviously one of those men
who's so sure the world revolves around him, you can't recognize
anyone else's place in it, anyway."

"You don't know anything about me, Miss
Dugan!"

"No?" She faced him, hands on hips. "I know
what I see. You're arrogant and insensitive. I almost died in the
same accident that put Elisabeth into the twilight world, but you
conveniently forget that every time you meet me. You're incapable
of giving anyone else's pain a moment's pause. I'm curious. When
you come here and sit by this bed, who is it you're sorriest for?
Her or yourself?"

"What in the hell are you here for?"

"I came to be with her. To talk to her.
That's all." There were two routes to the door. She chose the one
that put the chair between them, but he grabbed her arm to stop
her.

"What do you have to say to my wife?"

"Nothing I plan to repeat."

"How does she look to you, Miss Dugan? Are
you going to describe her on the air? Have you taken in enough
details?"

"Let go of my arm."

He didn't even seem aware that he was
holding it. He looked down. One by one his fingers unclenched.

She moved toward the door, grabbing her coat
and tucking it under her arm. He reached the door before she did.
"She's not any better," he said. "She's probably never going to get
any better."

"No. She probably isn't." Staring just past
his head Gypsy waited for him to move. But he didn't.

"Are you going to tell the world?"

"You really don't listen, do you? Did you
listen to your wife when she was awake and able to communicate with
you?"

"My relationship with Elisabeth is none of
your business!"

"No? You know what? I've got your number,
pal. I bet you've probably spent more time at her bed since she's
been in the coma than you did when she was alive and well!"

He looked stunned. And in that moment, when
all his defenses slipped, she saw what she'd refused to see before.
He was standing at a precipice where he'd never had to stand. And
it wouldn't take much more to push him over the edge.