“Of course. Now are you going to tell me where in the world you are?”
“Right now I’m sitting in a lounge chair in the lobby of a bed and breakfast fifteen minutes away from the Great Sand Dunes, one of the great wonders in this country. Unfortunately, this is the only phone they have for the guests to use, so it’s not the most private place in the world.
I’ll probably spend the day tomorrow at the dunes and I may stop at the Zapata Falls, which are nearby. Then I’ll move on before nightfall. I’ll call you again tomorrow night from the road.”
“Good. Oh, and Fred says good night and to tell you he misses you, too.”
“Give him a kiss on the nose for me. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, bud.
See ya.”
“Bye, Kate. Be careful out there.”
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Lynn Ames
She held the dead receiver in her hand a moment longer. God, she so wanted to talk to her lover. But she meant what she had said to Peter: it would only make things harder for both of them, and she knew Jay would want to know exactly where she was and when she was coming home.
She could picture the conversation now.
“Kate, where are you?”
“It’s better if you don’t know, love.”
“How can that be better? Don’t you trust me with the information?”
“It isn’t a matter of trust, Jay, it’s just a matter of practicality.”
“Oh, so now I’m on a need-to-know basis and I don’t need to know,
is that it?”
“No, sweetheart, of course not.”
“Well, can you at least tell me when you’re coming home?”
No, talking to Jay would only make things worse. With a heavy heart, she turned and went to her room, where she lay down and cried herself to sleep.
248
The Price of Fame
ay spent Wednesday night in the apartment, surrounded by Kate’s J scent and the lingering fragrance of her perfume on the pillows and sheets. While Jay had found that somewhat comforting, it had also made the longing for her more acute.
She turned in the first sidebar before leaving for Jacksonville Thursday afternoon, calling Peter when she checked into her hotel. He told her only that Kate had been in touch late the night before, that she had been followed in two places by the media, and that she had managed to lose them after deceiving them, then gone on her way. When Jay asked him if he thought her lover would be home soon, he simply indicated that he had told Kate of her impending trip to Florida and her plans to be at the house in Albany over the weekend. He never answered the question one way or the other.
Friday night, true to his word, Peter met Jay at the house with Fred and dinner in tow. She had already been there for a couple of hours and had ferreted out six dozen roses in various locations throughout the house: three dozen red and three dozen yellow, each with a card containing some expression of love and devotion that made her ache for her partner’s presence. She had also found the stash of comic books, with a note indicating that they “ought to keep you busy and out of trouble for a while,” and that Kate expected that, if Jay gave it a chance, she’d understand the draw of Aquaman, Captain America, and the Flash, too.
Jay smiled wistfully, thinking to herself that she’d much rather be personally persuaded by a certain someone than discover an affinity for them on her own.
The dinner with Peter was a nice diversion, although he seemed somewhat uncomfortable. She imagined that was because he could not tell her what she really wanted to know, which was when she might see her fiancée again or where she might be at that particular moment.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t really know; she hasn’t told me.”
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Lynn Ames
“When do you think she’ll be back?”
“I can’t say, Jay, because I really don’t know.”
For yet another night, she cried herself to sleep, this time in her lover’s bed with Fred lying nearby. He seemed to sense her distress and followed her everywhere, staying close by her side, putting his head on her lap as she sobbed, and giving her his favorite stuffed toys to comfort her.
On Saturday she sat down to write the story of the memorial service, but was too distracted. She called Peter to find that Kate had, indeed, called in late the night before after he had gotten home from dinner to say that she was fine and to tell Jay that she loved her and missed her. The younger woman felt the walls closing in on her after that and set out for Kaaterskill Falls with Fred and a little lunch. The two hiked the same route they had taken with Fred’s mistress and stopped to have lunch by the waterfall, where Jay cried, thinking back to the sweetness of that first real date they had shared. She closed her eyes and could feel the moment all over again as if Kate were there with her.
“Come over here and give me your hand, Jay.”
“Why?”
“Has anybody ever told you you ask too many questions?” the taller
woman mock-growled.
Jay chuckled and moved closer, making a grand show of presenting
her hand. At that, Kate grasped the hand, pulling the smaller woman to
her and scooping her up in one smooth motion, supporting her under her
knees and her shoulders.
“Wha,” the writer sputtered, “what are you doing?” She latched on
to Kate’s neck reflexively.
Kate smiled down at her mischievously. “Well, I assumed that you
didn’t want to get wet, and since our picnic spot is over there,” with her
head, she gestured to a huge, flat rock in the center of the creek, “I
thought this might be the best mode of transportation for you. Now if
you’d prefer...” She made as if to set Jay down in the water.
“No!” the petite blonde screamed.
“I didn’t think so.” With little effort, Kate picked her way across the
rocks that populated the creek and over to the designated dining area,
carrying Jay in her arms. Since the water wasn’t particularly deep at
that point and her hiking boots were waterproofed, unlike her
companion’s sneakers, she wasn’t concerned about her feet getting wet.
When she reached the giant boulder, she set her date down gently on top
of it. “How’s that?”
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The Price of Fame
“Mmm, great.” Jay knew Kate was asking about the lunch spot, but
she was actually thinking more about being swept up into those strong
arms.
Jay sighed heavily and shook herself to clear the memory, since it only increased the agony of being apart from her lover.
Saturday night Barbara stopped by to see how Jay was doing. She related that she had bumped into Kate on her way back to Albany Tuesday, the day all hell had broken loose, and that Kate had asked her to check in on her. The two women spent a little time just talking and getting to know one another a bit better, each finding that she liked the other immensely and that they shared some common interests and philosophies.
After Barbara left, Jay dialed Peter to discover that she had just missed Kate, who again sent her love. “Did she say she was coming home?” she asked hopefully. She missed her so much it was making her sick to her stomach.
“No, honey, she didn’t. She just said she’d call again tomorrow sometime. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, Peter, I appreciate everything you’re doing.”
“You’re welcome, Jay. You know I’ll do everything I can for both of you, right?”
After he hung up the phone, Peter spent a moment longer thinking about his newest friend. He had been worried by her appearance the night before and had told Kate so on the phone. Jay had looked tired and drawn, with no sparkle in her eyes, she’d hardly touched her dinner, and she was clearly getting more depressed with each passing day. He would have felt better, he thought, if she at least had gotten angry. Somehow he had expected her to react differently. After all, she had plenty of spunk and seemed an equal match for Kate in terms of determination and will.
Then again, he was smart enough to realize that there was probably a lot about her that he didn’t know.
For Jay, Sunday was set aside for writing the memorial service sidebar, which she did, sitting down at her new word processor in her lover’s office for the first time. There was a note on it.
“Jay, I know that
the next great American novel will be penned on this machine some day
in the not-too-distant future. I can’t wait to read it. I’m so proud of you.
All my love, K.”
Reading the loving words, Jay cried for what seemed like the tenth time that day.
251
Lynn Ames
She talked to Peter again that night just to check in and let him know she was going to the city via train in the morning to turn in the story. She had planned to leave her car at the train station, but Peter offered to come by and get her instead. By that time, Jay was so depressed she had stopped even asking him for any details of her fiancée’s whereabouts or actions. She only passed along the usual message: that she loved her and missed her and wished she were coming home. At her core, Jay was afraid that she had been right: nothing as wonderful as Kate could really be meant to happen to her.
Kate, meanwhile, was in no better shape than Jay. On Thursday morning she got up early and took a run, then climbed to the top of one of the tallest sand dunes in North America, watching the sun rise over the spectacular snow-covered peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was breathtaking. She had selected that spot, as she had the others she would visit, because it was among the most spiritual, most peaceful places in the country; she hoped the vistas would be a balm to her tattered soul. She was all alone up there, not another soul in sight at that early hour, and she sobbed until she had no tears left.
She cried for the happiness that she had been forced to sacrifice, and the love that was so far away; she cried for the pain the separation was causing Jay; she cried for a future she had just begun to consider but given the recent events knew she would never have. She sat like that for hours, knees pulled up tight to her chin, rocking back and forth in a vain effort to comfort herself. There was only one thing, one person, who could bring her solace, and she wasn’t selfish enough to put her own needs above those of her lover. No, she would have to work through the pain on her own.
Eventually, Kate descended the dunes and detoured to the Zapata Falls on her way out of the area, but the water was running so high she wasn’t able to get too far and turned back to the car to continue on her journey. It took her nearly five hours on US 160 West, climbing over the treacherous Wolf Creek Pass, to make it to Mesa Verde. On the way through the pass, she had gotten out at a scenic overlook to peek over at a breathtaking valley below and to stretch her abused body. By the time she stopped for the night at the Far View Lodge in the Mesa Verde National Park, she was so tired she could barely see straight and wanted simply to be able to close her eyes and shut out the emotional pain that had been buffeting her continuously for two days. God, had it only been that long since she had last held Jay and made love to her?
She called Peter to let him know she had reached her next destination.
“Hey, Kate.”
252
The Price of Fame
“Hi, Technowiz. What’s up?”
“Not much. Jay has landed safely in Jacksonville; I’ll be having dinner with her at the house tomorrow night after she gets back home.”
Around the lump in her throat she choked out, “Give her a hug for me, will you? Good night, Peter.”
Unable to get her mind to stop spinning, she was once again up and dressed in running clothes before dawn on Friday, her long legs eating up the winding curves of the pavement as she wended her way up and down the inclines, occasionally catching glimpses of Shiprock, New Mexico; Four Corners, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico intersect; and the various types of wildlife that populated the area.
She spent the rest of the day hiking the trails in the park and touring the ruins of cliff dwellings created from A.D. 600 to 1200. She marveled at the Cliff Palace, so well preserved that it was easy to envision hundreds of Anasazi people populating the structure, built literally right into the side of a cliff. She made the steep ascent up the Spruce Canyon Trail and climbed the ladder to access the Spruce Tree House, amazed at the ingenuity it must have taken to create such a beautiful and practical dwelling. Then she ventured over to the Balcony House dwelling before proceeding to several others in a different part of the park.
The history and architecture fascinated her, and the engineering skill of the long-ago peoples astounded her. Beyond all that, there was something inherently spiritual about the place that beckoned to her, and Kate felt the pull of that at her core. She decided to spend a second night at the lodge before heading out in the morning.
Once she had made the arrangements, she settled in for the evening and tried to read for a while. Her mind kept drifting to Jay, though, and she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over again.
Finally, she gave up, setting the book aside and turning on CNN instead.
That, however, made her even more melancholy than she already was, so she turned it off and closed her eyes, allowing her mind to wander.
She felt so off balance, so rudderless. What was she going to do with her life when things settled down and she didn’t need to be out of sight anymore? By then, surely Jay would have gotten over her. In truth, at that moment she didn’t care about her professional future, but she knew that sooner or later she would have to do something. She was pretty sure her days as a broadcast journalist were finished; the business had very little use for out lesbians.
So then what? A degree in American History made her well rounded, but not specifically qualified for anything. She could go to law school, something she had considered when she graduated from college. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t handle the coursework. But she didn’t think she really wanted to go back to school at that point in her life, not to mention 253