Close to You (6 page)

Though you could never tell. It had looked like Linda Anderson was going to be around for a while, too. Five years ago, the VCR had been set to record the Garden State News Network every night at ten o'clock.

What had happened to Linda was still a source of the
deepest pain. Loving Linda had been wonderful beyond belief. But Linda had spurned a perfect love.

It had taken five years to be ready to love again.

Eliza Blake was worth the wait.

“Carbon-monoxide poisoning? Oh, how terrible!” Eliza winced.

Eliza and Louise sat together in the kitchen while, in the living room, Mack helped Janie assemble the skeleton of the plastic playhouse she had received as a birthday gift. The two women made certain to keep their voices low.

“I'm so sorry, Eliza,” whispered the distressed Realtor. “I should have known about this and told you before you bought the house. But I was away at the beach with William for a few days in July when the Richardses died, and I missed the gossip about it in the office and didn't read about it in the local papers. By the time I got back I guess it was old news and no one was even talking about it anymore. When the listing came out, I jumped on it, knowing it would be the perfect house for you. I still think it is. But I just found out what happened from the listing agent yesterday and, of course, I wanted to tell you myself.”

Eliza's mind raced. She had done a story on carbon-monoxide poisoning. Hundreds of people died in their homes each year from the poisonous gas that had no smell, no taste and no color. But she also knew that carbon-monoxide poisoning was easily preventable by making sure
appliances were properly installed, checking vents and chimneys regularly for improper connections, and making sure that heating systems were inspected and serviced on a regular basis. If everything checked out and had been corrected, as the building inspector guaranteed, Eliza wasn't unduly concerned about the safety of the house she was about to buy. She would be vigilant in having inspections done and make sure to have carbon-monoxide detectors installed.

It bothered her far more that two people had died so tragically in the house she and Janie were going to move into. She didn't think of herself as a superstitious person, but knowing that a husband and wife had died so senselessly within the walls of the home where she planned to live with her child gave Eliza pause. She felt the fine hairs on her bare arms rise.

In the warm-weather months, Sunday night at dusk was Meat's favorite hour of the week. He didn't have to work at the bar, didn't have to get aggravated watching Eliza Blake flaunt herself on the news, and he could clear his mind by concentrating on his other passion.

Bats.

Since childhood, Meat had been fascinated with the world's only flying mammals. He remembered his mother's hysterics when she discovered that bats were nesting in the attic of their modest home. She had made Meat's father go up there during the day and hammer the tiny creatures while they slept. Meat had been only seven years old, but he could still recall the brutality of it.

Young Cornelius identified with the maligned, misunderstood night creatures. Yes, they were scary at first, menacing-looking with their webbed wings, flying with their mouths wide open. But as he learned from the library books he checked out after the hammering episode, their open mouths were the way they “saw” the insects they ate. Echolocation, it was called. A flying bat sent out a stream of clicks through its open mouth. By listening to the echoes
that came back, the bat could tell where another object was, how big it was, how fast it was moving.

Meat had tried to explain to his mother that the bats were good for them. They lived near the marshy, New Jersey meadowlands where mosquitoes and other insects thrived. The bats were a natural pesticide.

His mother had stared at him, as if he were strange. But she was always doing that. The nuns yelled at him when he chose bats for the subject of his book reports. The other kids said his bat fixation was weird.

So Cornelius stopped talking about bats, but he kept learning about them. And as soon as he moved out of his parents' home, he bought a bat house, erecting it on a fifteen-foot pole in a clearing in the woods behind his apartment building, making sure the wooden house would be able to get at least the six hours of direct sunlight it needed during the day. First he bought a common single-chambered house that could hold fifty bats. After that was filled, he ordered a larger, multichambered design that could contain a nursery colony of two hundred.

The bats gave birth just once a year, one pup at a time. The babies fed on their mother's milk for about six weeks before they were weaned. In the springtime, Meat could wait in the clearing until the adult bats flew out at night in search of food, and then approach the house, seeing the tiny, bald pups clustered together helplessly inside.

Meat felt sad as he lounged at the edge of the clearing on this late-summer evening, anticipating the emergence of the bats as they flew out to feed in the night sky. Soon the cold weather would set in and the bats would leave for the winter. They would fly to caves and mines up to a hundred miles away and go into hibernation, hanging in their characteristic upside-down position, their body temperatures dropping and their breathing and heart rates slowing down. In their sleeping state they would use very little energy and could live through the winter months when food was scarce.

He would miss his winged mysteries, but he consoled
himself with the knowledge that they would be back next year. An average bat could live fifteen years, some as long as thirty-four.

If someone didn't hammer them.

Monday morning Eliza was in her office even before Paige showed up for work. When her young assistant arrived, Eliza handed her a list of the personal things she needed Paige to take care of for her.

“I'm sorry, Paige. I really don't like asking you to do all this stuff for me,” Eliza apologized. “I know it's not really KEY News–related. But I guess we could stretch the validity of it by rationalizing that the anchorwoman will go out of her mind if she doesn't get her personal life in order.”

Paige glanced at the handwritten list. “It's not a problem at all, Ms. Blake. Really. I'm happy to do it.”

“Thank you, Paige. You're a doll and I promise that I'll keep this sort of thing to a minimum. You've just come aboard at a particularly chaotic time. But could you start calling around and find the best employment agencies that handle housekeepers in northern New Jersey and have them send over some prospective candidates? Schedule the interviews around, the other things in my book.”

Paige nodded her curl-covered head and started back toward her desk.

“And, Paige?”

“Yes?” she answered eagerly, turning to face her boss again.

“Please. Call me Eliza. You make me feel so old when you call me Ms. Blake.”

The younger woman smiled and Eliza noticed her cheeks blush a bit. It was not the first time they had had this exchange. Paige was so respectful and Eliza liked her for it. But Eliza wanted Paige to know that, young as her assistant was, Eliza considered her to be a colleague. They would be working very closely together over the months to come and Eliza felt it was important to both of them that they be on a first-name basis. Besides, there was only a twelve-year age difference between them. She could be Paige's older sister.

Eliza watched Paige as she walked out of the office and tried to remember what being twenty-two had been like. Fresh out of the journalism and political-science departments at the University of Rhode Island, Eliza had graduated with high hopes and some trepidations. She wasn't naive enough to think that following her dream to work in broadcast journalism was going to be a walk in the park. Though glamorous and romantic to outsiders, it was an extremely competitive field. But, since she was twelve years old, that was all she had ever really wanted to do. The dozen years since college graduation had consistently rewarded her professionally, first working in local television, then going on to the network. It was the private part of her life that had had its share of ups and downs.

Sarah Morton's last letter crossed Eliza's mind. Another twelve-year-old bitten with the television-news bug, fighting a courageous fight against a brutal disease. Eliza reached for the phone and called Paige on the intercom.

“When is Sarah Morton scheduled to come in, Paige?”

“Tomorrow morning at eleven-thirty, Eliza.” The last word did not come out easily, and Eliza could sense it. But she was glad that Paige was trying.

“Do I have a lunch engagement?”

“No. You are actually free for lunch tomorrow.”

“Great. Would you make a reservation for three at Jekyll and Hyde's? I'd like to take Sarah and her father out for lunch after the tour.”

Of all the theme restaurants around Fifty-seventh Street, the Jekyll and Hyde Club was probably the most amusing. Kids loved the suspenseful atmosphere. And at least the hamburgers were pretty good. Eliza hoped Sarah would be up to eating one.

Down the long hallway from Eliza's office, Keith Chapel sat behind his desk and doodled on a yellow legal pad. At the top he had written
A FRESHER LOOK
, and beneath it he was listing the story ideas he had lined up for production over the next two months.

The new series was scheduled to begin right after Labor Day. Weekly packages would air each Wednesday during the
Evening Headlines,
with Eliza Blake reporting on a story that was of particular interest to her. It was being sponsored by a Wall Street investment firm which was paying to get a special mention at the beginning and end of each report. So there was big money to be made for KEY News and the pressure was on to make sure the series was a success and thereby renewed.

Keith pulled a stick of Doublemint gum from one of the packs he kept in constant supply in his desk drawer. As he unwrapped the silver paper, he noticed his fingernails with disgust. They were bitten down to the quick.
Pathetic.

But there was no way he was going to quit biting his nails anytime soon, he reasoned with himself. Not with this
FRESHER LOOK
project and Cindy seven months pregnant and growing more miserable every day.

He popped the chewing gum into his mouth and groaned inwardly as he remembered the scene at home last night. Cindy had been complaining again about how fat she was, crying that she couldn't see her feet anymore when she tried to look past her protruding stomach as she stood in the shower. And then, when she sat down on the toilet seat to dry her legs and feet off, she thought her toes looked like little sausages ready to pop if pricked by a fork, they were so full of retained water. August was no time to be in the late stages of pregnancy. Cindy vowed that she would never, ever do this again. This would be their only child.

Keith had tried to console her. She still looked beautiful to him and there were just two months to go, he reassured her.

“Easy for you to say,” Cindy ranted. “Your life hasn't changed one bit. You still slide into your clothes every day, you still eat everything you want, you can sleep at night, you aren't having nosebleeds and you have no idea what sciatica feels like. No one is kicking at you from the inside and you don't have to run to the bathroom every twenty minutes. I don't see any stretch marks growing across
your
stomach!”

At first she pulled away as he tried to put his arms around her, but then she had dissolved into tears as she buried her blond head in his shoulder. She sobbed and apologized for being such a shrew. She wasn't herself, she promised. Of course she was happy about the baby, but she just hated being pregnant.

“I wish I could make it easier for you, sweetheart,” Keith whispered, as he kissed her wet cheeks. “I love you so much and I know we are going to get through this together.”

It was true. He did love her. Had loved her from the first time he saw her. He had never been so attracted to a woman as he was to Cindy, and he still was, pregnant or not. He lifted her chin and kissed her on the mouth. At first she had responded, so he was encouraged to continue, hoping that it would be different from the last few times he
had tried to make love to her. There was absolutely no reason why they shouldn't, the doctor had told them. But Cindy, always so willing pre-pregnancy, had lost all desire. Keith was going out of his mind.

He tried to the force the issue, hating himself for it. If she didn't want to, she didn't want to. Wasn't she going through enough already? What kind of animal was he that he couldn't control himself?

He could see by the fearful look in her wide brown eyes that it was not going to go well. He should have stopped. But he didn't. And then, instead of falling peacefully asleep in each other's arms, they had spent the night on extreme opposite sides of their queen-sized bed, their backs turned coldly to each another.

This morning they hadn't spoken. He knew Cindy was awake when he had left for the office, but, wanting to avoid him, she had stayed in bed until he was out of the apartment.

Keith was reaching for the telephone to call his wife when Range Bullock appeared at the office doorway.

“How's it going?” asked the executive producer. “You're looking awfully glum. Anything going on I should know about?”

Keith was tempted to spill his guts about the stress at home, but his instincts told him Range wouldn't want to hear it, might even think less of Keith for it. Range wasn't interested in his producers' personal lives unless he felt they were getting in the way of job performance. Keith sat up straighter in his chair and tried to look more upbeat.

“No. Nothing's wrong. That's just my look of extreme concentration.” He forced a joke. “I'm actually working on the
FRESHER LOOKS.
I want them to be great.”