All for a Story (27 page)

It was far from the first meal he’d eaten alone, but this evening the empty chair loomed cavernous across from him. He bowed his head in the habit of asking the Lord’s blessing on his food, but the tomato-laced steam carried with it the image of Monica’s face in the light of stained glass. The weight of her head on his shoulder.

“I think I might love her, Lord,” he said aloud, but he dared not ask for wisdom. Or guidance. Or any direction that might take her away. Instead, he asked that God would bless her meal too. Whatever —and begrudgingly, with whomever —that might be.

Don’t fall for the slick, dandified cake eater —the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.

ANTI-FLIRT CLUB RULE #8

SHE SPENT THE NEXT DAY —all day —in bed, cocooned in a flannel gown and quilted robe, snuggled under a thick, voluminous comforter. Only the call of the coffeepot and the subsequent call of the lavatory enticed her out into the chill of her room. Otherwise, she sipped the black beverage and nibbled from a bag of pastries and imagined herself as one of a group of gracious women sharing a house in sunny Italy. At times she let the book fall open against her and stared out the window at the mass of leafless branches grown close against it.

What if she’d stayed true to her mother’s wishes? Maybe if she’d played the good girl, met all the right boys, and behaved in all the right ways, she’d be married —or at least engaged —to a man who could provide some nice, comfortable life for her to grow old in. But she’d left that path long ago, and despite Max
Moore’s attempt to elevate her virtue, the previous day’s visit made it clear she wouldn’t be returning to it anytime soon.

Charlotte Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot may be fictitious characters in a novel, but they clearly showed marriage to be a trap —a long, tedious road leading to nothing but shared emptiness. A life lived alone while chained to another. What possible benefit could there be in that?

Unless, of course, it meant having somebody lying right next to you. Somebody who’d read the same story, who might have a different opinion, but who would have a brain to talk about it.

She’d marked her place in the book with the folded copy of Alice Reighly’s rules for the Anti-Flirt Club. All that talk of “the one.” Like a wink and a smile in one direction would build up a wall against the other.

What a load of crackers. Life wasn’t one long hallway with the right guy waiting at the end of it. More like a maze —something from those great English gardens —with a new guy surprising you around each corner. A few dead ends, maybe, but always another one waiting.

But the next one, she promised herself, wouldn’t be married. Not that Charlie would have been that much of a prize anyway, but she’d still wasted a lot of time on a man only to hand him back to his wife. No guy was ever a guarantee, but a married one? That was just like walking in circles, chained to a tree. Best to let the Mrs. Charlies of the world wait at home with all the inanity and ennui that drives a woman to rent a villa for the spring. Monica would take her chances facing this spring alone.

Well, maybe not completely alone, as the view from her window took on new life with the arrival of a gray tabby cat who immediately began scratching at it with his enormous six-toed paws.

“Paolo!”

His return was an early sign of spring, and she leapt out of bed to open her window to his demands. He was thin, as he always was this time of year, and felt like nothing but bones as she lifted him over the sill. She cradled him in one arm while shutting the window with the other. The Graysons would never allow her to keep Paolo as a permanent pet, and she scarcely saw herself fit for that kind of responsibility. Like every other man in her life, this one showed up, loved her for a time, and went away. The difference being, of course, that Paolo always came back.

Monica nuzzled her face in his furry neck and delighted in the resulting purr. “You’re early this year, buddy.”

She set him on her bed and slipped downstairs to the kitchen, where she found enough milk in the bottom of the bottles waiting by the back door to make a nice little puddle in a saucer. Further rummaging through the icebox produced a hardened wedge of cheese and a fatty piece of ham —nothing that would be missed by the other tenants. She tore the treats into cat-bite-size pieces and mixed them with the milk, carrying the dish upstairs quietly, but quickly, to avoid any confrontation with her housemates. Back in her room, she set the meal on the floor and herself right next to it, urging Paolo to come down from where he’d curled up on the end of her bed.

“If I had an egg, you’d almost have an omelet.” She scratched behind his ears as he tentatively picked through the morsels. When he’d finished, his eyes half-closed with contented drowsiness, he jumped back onto the bed —this time with considerably more effort —and began to knead the comforter.

“Poor thing.” She took a paw in her fingers and studied the deformity of having what looked like two paws fused into one. At first she’d thought it to be an accident of birth exclusive to her
Paolo, but Mr. Davenport assured her that it was a documented, if rare, condition. Polydactyl, these cats were called. Hence the cat’s name, Paulie, changed over to Paolo in the quest for something more exotic. Not that a twenty-four-toed cat wasn’t exotic in his own right.

“That’s how I felt yesterday, you know? In that church? Like there was just something
wrong
with me. Like I didn’t fit. And now tonight? Going to this shindig again . . .”

She didn’t belong in the Anti-Flirt Club, either. Not outside of the story. And Max’s note above her column still rankled: she didn’t represent the views of
Capitol Chatter
. Someplace else she didn’t quite fit.

Monica went nose-to-nose with Paolo, filling her vision with nothing but his green sleepy eyes. “Maybe I should follow you. Go wherever you go when you’re not here. You might have a whole big gang of cats just like you. A clowder, isn’t it?”

She climbed up into the bed and curled herself around him. Not that she didn’t have her own clowders. Dance clubs and juke joints and dark, smoky bars. Those were her people; there she fit right in. Blended perfectly. At least she used to.

Tempting as it may have been to doze the afternoon away, she picked up her book, tucked her feet under the accommodating cat, and escaped to spring.

The meeting was held in the same basement space, and even though it was her second time to attend, she approached with apprehension. A group of girls gathered at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. What they were saying in their huddled whispers wasn’t clear, but the hushed outrage couldn’t be ignored. Sure enough, one of the girls had a folded copy of
Capitol Chatter
,
and Monica walked down the steps to the sound of her own words, surprised at how sinister they sounded.

The atmosphere downstairs, too, was subdued —a far cry from the previous meeting. She went directly to the row of coats along the back wall and stood, her forehead buried in her sleeve.

“So you’ve read it.” She knew it was Emma Sue not so much because she recognized the voice but because it came from so far above her. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

Monica looked up.

“It’s just so mean-spirited. Makes Alice out to be an Elizabeth Cady Stanton trying to stamp out the modern girl.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.”

“It certainly is. Just hateful. And worse —” she looked around and lowered her voice —“it was written by one of
us
.”

“You don’t know that. The whole city knows about this group. I learned about it from the newspaper.”

“This wasn’t someone who knows
about
the group; it’s someone who
knows
the group. And Alice is just sick about it.”

Monica busied herself taking off her coat and smoothing it over the hook before asking Emma Sue if there were any doughnuts like last time.

“Yes,” she said, “and coffee.”

“Good,” Monica said, “but I might have to skip the coffee. I’ve been drinking it all day. Explains why I’m so jumpy.”

In fact, she skipped the doughnuts, too, though she offered no explanation for that. How could she explain that her throat was so swollen with truth and guilt, she’d never be able to choke down a single bite? Instead, she headed for the back row of chairs and took a seat on the aisle, in case she needed a quick getaway.

As Alice Reighly took her place, the women followed suit, and once all had taken their seats, it was obvious this crowd was
considerably smaller than that of the previous meeting. A tiny flicker of pride rose up through the quagmire of guilt. Women had read her column; they had changed their allegiance because of her words. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she worked to keep her face straight. Wouldn’t do to be the only grin in the crowd of so many grumpy Grundies.

“Good evening, ladies,” Alice said to the hushed room. “I do not think it is an exaggeration to say we have been dealt a traitorous blow. I have never been a regular reader of —” she paused to make a show of reading a folded issue of
Capitol Chatter
 —“this piece known as Monkey Business. And I can rest assured that I have hardly been missing an opportunity to better my mind through substantive journalistic effort.”

Soft laughter rippled through the room, Monica’s included, though her derisive snort was meant to defend her from the girls. Most of them wouldn’t know substantive journalism from a lovelorn romance.

“To quote this ‘little Monkey,’” Alice continued, “we are nothing more than a bunch of women ready to ‘crawl back into the last century.’ I look at you lovely young ladies and cannot see anything further from the truth. You are all beautiful and modern, every bit as stylish as this writer claims to be.”

Monica squirmed.
Claims
to be?

Emma Sue nudged her and whispered, “Don’t worry. I think you’re very stylish.”

“Thank you,” Monica said, not thinking to return the compliment.

“Nobody wants to turn back the clock of womanhood less than I do. I relish our freedom, but I also see the responsibilities we have to each other. Our days as chattel are over, if only the rogue on the street would remember that fact.”

Cheers erupted, with Monica’s polite applause in their midst.

“Do not fall prey to the hatred of men —or monkeys —who wish you to remain powerless. Just as alcohol robs you of your judgment, so does flirting rob you of your self-respect. I strongly suspect that is something this authoress lacks.”

Monica sat stock-still as Alice’s words fell around her, striking her like embers flung from fire. She dared not close her eyes, lest she open them to find the basement meeting room transformed into a cathedral with the Virgin Mary in all her fresco glory lining the walls. So she fixed her gaze directly on the diminutive woman behind the podium and burned.

“As most of you know, Monkey is the nom de plume chosen to protect the identity of this writer. She could very well be sitting among us this evening, as she was most certainly in attendance at a previous meeting. But I urge you not to seek her out, as I shall not. Let her stay and learn and grow. Nothing extinguishes the behavior of a flirt like being ignored. And I shall speak of this no more.”

She made a show of folding the paper and dropping it into a rubbish bin clearly set on the stage for that purpose and lifted her voice to declare that they would now discuss more fruitful things.

Next to the fuming Monica, Emma Sue sat with her long, thin arms folded across her chest, openly expressing the anger that seethed beneath Monica’s skin.

“Some nerve,” Emma Sue hissed. “I’ll bet she’s ugly.”

“Sshh.” Monica feigned interest in the speech while the guilt she’d felt as she walked in twisted into something more akin to shame. Alice regaled the audience with the account of the handsome photographer, calling him a grand test of their principles.

“Not to mention that brother of yours,” Emma Sue whispered.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Monica said. “Mention him, that is.”
Or even think about him, for that matter. Otherwise, it was just a matter of time before all the secrets were out.