Change of Heart (3 page)

He was tall, with very thick curly brown hair. He wore a soggy trench coat, and from across the room Sharlie could smell the damp cold air he'd brought inside with him. His face was flushed from the sudden hospital heat, and he looked wonderfully healthy and strong.

“I'm disturbing your dinner,” he said, hesitating in the doorway.

“Oh … no, I'm finished,” Sharlie said, smiling at him timidly and wishing he'd come closer so she could drink in the clean smell of him. “Why don't you hang up your coat and let it dry out a little?” Good Lord, she thought, don't I sound casual, just as if I'm visited every day by beautiful young men like you.

Brian removed his coat and made a tent with it over the back of a chair. He propped his umbrella in the corner, pulled another chair next to the bed, and settled into it as if he fully intended to stay. He wore a three-piece tweed suit, warm and brown and coarse like his hair.

“It's funny,” Sharlie said. “A lot of days go by without my knowing whether they were sunny or rainy.”

Brian glanced at the window, and Sharlie thought, He doesn't think it's funny. It's
not
funny. He thinks I'm whining.

She began again, lamely. “I guess I just forget to look,” and she reddened, thinking about the article she could write for
Cosmo
: how to make an ass of yourself when meeting the attractive man who saved you life.

Brian was looking at her with such intensity and curiosity that her blush deepened. She cursed her pale skin, that made a blush so obviously a blush. No way to pretend the crimson cheeks were all because of “this dreadful cough,
hack, hack”
or “isn't it
warm
in here, I'd better remove my sweater.”

“What exactly is wrong with you?” he asked.

Sharlie started, but he was looking at her with such open interest that she found herself responding.

“Something I was born with—valvular heart disease.”

“I thought they put plastic ones in now.”

She nodded. “Teflon. But I've got three out of four that won't cooperate. It gets a little sticky. Even for Teflon.”

He smiled. “Well, then, what are they doing for you?”

“Pumping me full of digitalis and anticoagulants. And lots of Demerol,” she replied. He looked at her, waiting for more. She smiled. “It's not so bad, really. I get waited on hand and foot, and every now and then they let me out for a walk … which is how I happened to pass out on your shoes the other day.”

“You mean you live here?”

“Not all the time, no. My parents' house is pretty well equipped, actually. We've got shelves full of magic potions for this symptom and science fiction machinery for that symptom. I guess we're all medical technologists by now.”

“When are you getting out?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. Last time it was a couple of months, and I'd only been allowed out of the house a week before I got on that bus. Then again, I might not get out of here at all.” Oh damn, she thought, did I have to say that?

Brian leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. His face was contemplative. Finally he looked up at her earnestly. “You're telling me you're not going to get well.”

She nodded. “I didn't exactly mean to tell you that.”

He was staring at her with eyes so wistful that finally, flustered, she blurted out a question about his job.

“I'm a lawyer,” he said.

“That's very … nice,” Sharlie said, and they both laughed.

“Right now I wish I were a doctor.”

Lord, Sharlie thought. What was she supposed to say to that? “Are you in court a lot?” she asked finally.

“All day today. The judge read
The Wall Street Journal.”

“While you were doing your case?”

Brian smiled. “While the other guy was doing
his
case. I was much too interesting.”

“Isn't that illegal or something?”

“His honor's got a lot of money invested in coffee beans.”

“They're not all like that, are they?”

He shook his head. “Sometimes they listen, and sometimes they make remarkably sensible decisions.”

“Did you win?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Who's Bob Rackey?” Sharlie asked. Brian looked puzzled. “When I called you at your office, the secretary said—”

“Oh.” Brian laughed. “Barbara Kaye. That's who runs me … my firm, rather.”

“Is she your partner?” Sharlie was beginning to feel as if she were pumping him.

“I used to work for Legal Aid. Barbara snatched me out of civil court one day four years ago, and I've been with her ever since.”

There was affection and respect in his voice, and Sharlie wondered whether Barbara Kaye was attractive.

But Brian was still talking. “She's shown me what the law can be, what it can do. I was drowning down there, all that bureaucratic bullshit, excuse me. She's probably the best civil rights litigator in the East.”

But is she pretty?
Sharlie thought. Brian suddenly stopped and grinned at her.

“You're a good listener.”

“I get awfully bored listening to the inside of my own head. It's nice. How old a woman is she?”

He shook his head. “No. Your turn. Do you ever go out when you go out? On dates?”

“Good heavens, no,” she said. “I couldn't inflict myself like that on anybody. Look what I did to you. You could have strained your back hauling me off the sidewalk. I pass out a lot.”

“You aren't very heavy,” Brian said.

Just at this moment the harried nurse's aide reappeared, lifted the aluminum cover from Sharlie's tray, and frowned.

“We don't have much appetite today, do we? We sure we're finished?”

Sharlie started to say yes, but saw Brian eyeing the rolls.

“Leave it for a while, okay? Maybe
we
can manage a bit more.”

The aide shot Sharlie a suspicious glance but finally left the room. Sharlie nodded to Brian. “Go ahead.”

He laughed and took a roll off the plate, swallowing it in two bites. Then he ate the other roll, the mashed potatoes, the string beans, and the Jell-O salad. He stirred the sherbet curiously.

“What's this?”

“It
was
orange sherbet,” she said. His obvious disappointment that there was nothing more to eat made her smile.

“Not bad for what I've heard of hospital food,” he said, washing everything down with a long swallow that drained the carton of skimmed milk. “Saves me the heartburn from corned beef on rye at the deli.”

Sharlie thought, No wife? No little toddler and another on the way? Suddenly she was afraid he might get up and leave now that he'd finished her dinner. She said quickly, “Could you tell me what happened the other night?”

“You don't remember?”

Sharlie shook her head. “Just the bus. Then falling.”

“I'd been watching you,” he said, mischief in the crinkles beside his eyes, “trying to figure out how I could get closer to you with all those fat ladies in the way.”

Her face was thoughtful, but the voice inside her head shouted, Really?
Really?

“You started to look sort of gray,” he went on, “and when I saw you asking for air, I shoved you out the door. When I let go of you for a second to pick up your bags, crash, down you went.”

He leaned back in the chair, folded his arms, and stretched his legs out in front of him. Sharlie thought she'd never seen anyone quite so graceful.

“As soon as I saw the bracelet, I flagged down a cab with some poor farm equipment salesman from Oklahoma in the back seat. He'd never been to New York before, and I explained that sometimes during the holidays there's a shortage of ambulances, and we have to depend on the good sportsmanship of people like him. Once he realized he could still make the curtain for
A Chorus Line,
he was very generous and paid for the whole trip. You had your head on his shoulder and looked so beautiful I think he kind of enjoyed himself. The driver said he was going to put it in his next book.”

Sharlie shook her head, trying to absorb it all. It was difficult. Her brain resisted getting past Brian's words, the phrase playing over and over like a record stuck in a groove. You looked
so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful …

“There are lots of slices out of my life,” she said, “that other people remember and I don't.” She supposed that sounded like self-pity, and when he got up right away, she was certain that she'd put him off.

But he only reached into his raincoat pocket for the opera glasses. He put them to his eyes and peered out the window. “Nothing much going on in the park,” he said.

“Fifth Avenue's more interesting once it gets dark.”

He grinned at her. “Spoken like one who knows,” he said, pushing up against the window so he could get a better view of the street below. “Hmm,” he muttered.

He was silent for so long that Sharlie finally asked, “What is it? What's going on?”

Brian walked over and handed her the glasses. “Somebody in a fur coat and sunglasses got out of a limousine and practically broke her ankle sprinting to the front door.”

“Aging starlet admitted for secret face-lift,” Sharlie explained. Brian looked impressed. “Spoken like an incurable voyeur,” she said sheepishly.

Brian waved toward the window. “You do a lot of that?”

Sharlie nodded. “Sometimes I've wondered … it's not illegal or anything, is it?”

He smiled. “As long as you don't open up a blackmail business.”

“
I could,”
she said fervently.

“Oh? Tell me.” He looked at her expectantly, but she shook her head, and he could see she was regretting her openness. “Sometime,” he murmured, and looked at his watch.

Sharlie turned the opera glasses over in her hands. The voice inside was pleading,
Don't leave.

“I guess I'd better get out before they throw me out,” he said. He picked up his raincoat and umbrella and stood by the side of her bed. Sharlie's throat felt clogged with unspoken entreaties.

“Can I come see you again?” Brian asked.

What? thought Sharlie. But she couldn't get any words to come out at all.

“Tomorrow?” he urged.

She coughed, trying to clear her throat.

“I'm grateful to you,” she said, and decided to allow herself the luxury of speaking his name aloud this once, “Brian …”

He smiled, ‘Then pay me back with some time.”

“I can't.” She felt wet heat building behind her eyes. Oh, for God's sake, Sharlie, she thought. You're not going to
cry
, are you?

“Listen, I don't want to hassle you.” He took her hand, and she felt the rough, calloused warmth of him. He plays tennis, or squash, maybe, she thought, trying to memorize the texture of his palm.

“Thank you for everything,” she said, with what she hoped was unmistakable finality. His face was sorrowful. Still holding her hand, he leaned down and kissed her gently. He didn't say good-bye, just let go of her and walked out. Sharlie lay exactly as he left her, a long time after the pain had begun to twist and writhe in her chest.

Brian stepped out into a fierce January storm. The rain had turned to sleet, and the gray stone walls of the hospital formed a howling wind tunnel. He pushed against the gale, head down, deliberately choosing the struggle on foot to the crosstown bus. The wind would sweep through his brain, stinging, purging it of Charlotte Converse's mesmerizing face.

Her hands were pale, delicate as moths. She lay there fragile, exquisite, so close to death. And yet he sensed an energy beneath the frail surface. Once or twice she had forgotten how sick she was and how shy, and then the mellow light in her eyes had flickered with sudden heat.

He turned the corner and started walking up Third Avenue. The wind settled into irritated little gusts, and he relaxed, letting his legs carry him loosely. This is insane, he thought. He didn't know the woman. She hadn't said more than a hundred words to him, not that she'd had much of a chance with him running off at the mouth. Must be purely physical attraction. But she was dying. Could
that
be the turn-on? No, when he had seen her on the bus, he didn't know she was sick, not when he'd first fastened his eyes on her and decided he'd just as soon go on looking at the lovely face forever.

He imagined her lying there in her white bed back at the hospital, smiling at him, her eyes huge, dark, and frightened. And unmistakably hungry. He yearned to put his arms around her and protect her from any more hurt.

He belted his coat more tightly against the sharp, damp gusts. Maybe he'd stop off at Susan's apartment on the seventh floor. She was always game for an hour of tennis or an energetic roll in the sack. Her healthy vitality would do him good. But when he rounded the corner and caught sight of the white brick walls of his building he felt reluctant to seek her out. He stood on the cold pavement, blaming his hesitation on a sudden craving for a beer. Instead of entering his lobby, he stepped into Crispin's, the bar next door.

Holiday trappings still hung from the ceiling, where they would droop until next March, when somebody would finally get around to taking them down. Three businessmen sat at the bar, but the tables were empty, their candles unlit.

Brian perched on a stool, loosened his coat, and stared at the blinking Christmas lights. The bartender appeared, and Brian regarded him gloomily.

“You know, Jim, there ought to be a law about Christmas decorations: all down by midnight, December twenty-sixth.”

Jim grinned and poured Brian a beer. “Just trying to prolong the festive holiday spirit.” Brian reached for his glass. Jim watched him for a moment, then leaned on the bar. “You go to that hometown in the sticks for the holidays? Slimy Creek, PA?”

“Silver Creek.”

“Whatever.” He contemplated Brian. “What'd you do, lose that free-speech case today?”

Brian stared back into Jim's watchful face and took another long draw on his beer.

“You know, I bet you got more on your customers than the computers in Washington.”

Jim shrugged. “All part of the job. Better'n pumping gas in Queens.”

“You got a talent for this,” Brian said, feeling the rhythm of his speech slip into synchronization with Jim's. He'd been unaware of the habit until Barbara Kaye pointed out that he did it with everybody. He'd felt like a chameleon and was embarrassed, until Barbara assured him it was a gift many attorneys worked years to acquire—an effective technique for gaining the confidence of clients and witnesses. Speak the same language—no condescension, no mockery, just a slight shift in style.

Jim went off to serve the businessmen, who were discussing the attributes of their secretaries in ever more intimate, ever more boisterous terms. Commuters, all of them, checking their watches to make sure they'd make the next train to Stamford.

Couldn't do it, Brian thought. New York streets, magnets on my feets. Terminal urbanitis, that's what I've got. And his mind leaped back to Sharlie. He'd never given any thought to the word
terminal,
not really, and here was somebody younger than he was, getting ready to terminate her life. His mother had died, but that was different. Quick. She was here, she was dead. There'd been no time to think it over.

Brian felt the impulse to call Jim over and say, “Hey, I've met this girl …”

Maybe it was just that after spending all day with legal briefs and people who think and talk in syllogisms,
whereas'
s, and
heretofore's,
a dying woman was a nice change. He would just spend tonight thinking about her, trying to get her into some kind of sensible perspective so that he could put her to rest in his head and go on about his business.

Okay, he thought, I won't see her again anyway, and I'll just sit upstairs with a bottle of Scotch and figure the whole thing out. And that will be that.