The Talk of the Town (22 page)

Luke stifled his second reaction, which was to suggest that she get her brains unscrambled, and said instead, “How in God’s name could you ever think I’d think less of you—for any reason? I’m the last person in the world to judge others, but least of all, to judge you. Whatever happened, and I believe it was more his fault than yours, whatever happened doesn’t dim you at all in my eyes. I know how good, how gentle, how fair—”

Roxie was still too despondent to comprehend what he was saying. She tried to blink away the tears that burned her eyes. Failing that, she let her lip slip from between her teeth and she began to cry. “I disappointed you. I’m not what you thought I was. I’m so much less—”

Again, Luke put his arms around her. Again, he comforted her with the warmth of his shoulder. Trying to soothe her, he rubbed her heaving back with his palm. And again, desire for her pulsated through him, demanding release. But this time his physical pangs were submerged in a great upswell of tenderness, in a surge of longing to ease her emotional suffering more than his physical torment.

“I could never think badly of you, Roxie,” he told her in all honesty. “Never. No matter what you’ve done.”

“It must have changed something.” Pulling out of his arms, she sniffed back another large sob. “Otherwise, why don’t you want me?”

“Don’t want you?” If she had socked him in the gut, Luke couldn’t have been more surprised. His breath whooshed out and his arms fell to his sides. Except for swallowing hard, he remained perfectly still, staring at her face.

She hung her head as if she was ashamed.

“My God, woman, don’t you realize I’m throbbing with wanting you?” He took her shoulders between his hands, sorely tempted to try and shake some sense into her but simply held her in a light grip. “I’m sore from wanting you. I’ve wanted you so much, for so long, that all it takes is a whiff of your perfume—no, not even that. Just the thought of you. Just picturing your smile or remembering your laughter and I get so worked up, I ache with wanting.”

Raising her head, Roxie gaped at him. The ardor in his voice was echoed on his face, in his eyes. “But what’s wrong then? Why did you push me away?”

He released her and forked impatient fingers through his hair. “Because I can’t let you get mixed up with me.”

“But I want to be mixed up with you!” she cried in frustration.

“You don’t understand what that means, Roxie,” he said, and though he’d intended his tone to be mild, it came out dolefully harsh. “The looks, the talk—you had a taste of it at the carnival tonight.”

“It was nothing!”

“Yes,” he conceded, “it was nothing. But think about enduring it all the time, every day, wherever you go, because you’re with me or associated with me. People talk—”

“I don’t care what people say.”

“No matter how much you tell yourself you don’t care, you do,” he corrected her grimly. “I know. I’ve suffered such talk my entire life.”

“I’m not made of porcelain, Luke. I can handle it.”

“You think that now because you don’t fully realize what it can be like being isolated from everyone else, being socially unacceptable.” He didn’t know what more he could say to get her to understand. “You wouldn’t be just Roxie Mitchell anymore. You’d be Roxie Mitchell, that Luke Bauer’s woman. And that’s if they were being kind.”

Roxie personally thought being considered Luke Bauer’s woman would suit her to a T, but she knew better than to tell him so—at least right now, anyway. “What I’d be is with you,” she pointed out. “That’s the important thing, not what anyone else might say about me.”

To be with her—it sounded like all the dreams that had filled years of cold, lonely nights melded together into one glorious design. But that was the problem, Luke thought. It was only a dream. It could never be more than that.

“I want you, Roxie. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I want you.” He longed to stop there but steeled himself to go on. “But I care enough to want what’s best for you. I can’t let you make a foolish mistake. And Lord knows, getting mixed up with me would be a mistake that went way past foolish.”

“Who are you to say what I can or can’t do? If I want to make such a
mistake
”—she sneered the word— “how do you intend to stop me?”

“I’ll find a way. I’ll have to.” He said it with determination. “I’ll have to keep you from throwing yourself headlong into the mess I’ve made of my life. For your own good.”

“Don’t you start with that business.” She bristled with indignation. “I’m sick and tired of everyone else knowing what’s for my own good. Everyone thinks they can rule my life,
for my own good
. But I’m the only one who can say what’s best for me. I’m the only one who knows what’s in my heart.” Roxie reached for him, longing to hold him and show him just what was in her heart.

Luke jerked out of her reach. He knew if he let her touch him it would be all over. He’d grab her, and the rest of the world be damned. But for her sake he fought the fire of his raging desires. And managed to insult her in the process. “Like you knew what was best for you in St. Louis?”

Her lungs emptied on a sharp gust. Her arms fell limply to her sides. “We’re all capable of making mistakes,” she said in a quiet voice. “You, of all people, should know that.”

He came abruptly to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Roxie asked, not certain at the moment whether she really even cared.

“I need to walk a bit. I won’t go far.”

Feeling rejected and dejected, Roxie watched his silhouette fade into the darkness behind the schoolhouse. She sat listening to the wind rustle the leaves amid the myriad hum of night songs. The sky was filled with stars and striated with faint grayish wisps that with any luck would soon swell into rain clouds. She thought how ironic it was that when she finally made up her mind to love Luke Bauer, to brave all opposition, to face down all those who would have her suppress her feelings for her own good, Bauer, the lady-killer, should choose to be noble.
For her own good
.

It was one of those little ironies that sometimes made her feel that life was too complicated for her. At such times she couldn’t even figure out what she felt, much less how to deal with it. She knew she was angry, terribly angry at all those who had ever made Luke feel so unwanted and unworthy. She knew she was disappointed, deeply disappointed, and a shade embarrassed, too, at having her advances rejected by him. She knew she was depressed, pervasively depressed, at his insistence on keeping her at arm’s length. He could be more immutable than the Rock of Gibraltar when he set his mind to something. And it appeared he’d set his mind to setting her free.

“What do I do now?” she sighed into the shadows. She waited breathlessly, but the night returned no answer. When she heard his footfall, she jumped up to meet him face-to-face. But it wasn’t his face she met. She met his mask, the detached, impenetrable mask that shielded his thoughts from the world.

“I want you to know that I do care for you, very much,” he said on a note of finality that snuffed any hope she still harbored. “I’ve valued your friendship more than I can tell you. But I made a mistake in encouraging you as I have. Besides alienating you from your family and friends—”

“That’s not entirely true,” she interrupted. “Granted, my brothers have behaved like asses. But my parents haven’t said word one against you. And my friends like me despite my . . .” She groped for the right phrase.

“Your lack of judgment?”

She was glad it was too dark for him to see her flush. “Despite whether or not they agree with me a hundred percent, about anything.”

Luke didn’t think he could stand much more of this. His soul was shattering, and he feared that all too soon his control would shatter with it. He had to convince her to drop it, and now.

“Our friendship has been . . . frustrating . . . for me,” he said in a purposely toneless voice. “For my good as much as for yours, I think we’d do best to call a halt to it.”

This was worse, far worse, than anything Roxie had feared. She’d never expected him to tell her it was over between them. As her mouth fell open, her fingers flew up to hold back any cries that might try to escape.

“You—you can’t mean that,” she finally stammered.

“It’s for the best.”

His voice was without inflection, his expression completely blank. It was clear to her that he was deaf to any pleading or reasoning she might try to make. Turning on her heel, she started back to her car. She climbed in on the driver’s side and, a minute or so later, he joined her in the passenger seat. They drove off wordlessly.

And a night that had begun with such wonderful promise ended with wrenching pain.

* * * *

Muffling the closing of the back door as much as she could, Roxie removed her white shoes and crossed the kitchen on cat’s feet. Adroitly maneuvering in a zigzag pattern to avoid the creakiest steps, she mounted the staircase, then paused, listening tensely at the top. The house was blanketed in sleep. She snuck into the sanctuary of her room in relief.

She felt like an errant teenager, tiptoeing in after staying out too late with her boyfriend. She winced at the image. Luke had said the old schoolhouse was where he’d taken all the girls to pitch a little woo. He still did, she qualified gloomily. She wondered if he kept a scorecard, and just to rub a little more salt into her wound, figured she had probably rated a zero.

She hurt. Heaven above, how she hurt! She had thought that Arthur had left her immune to such gnawing pain. But this was much worse than anything she’d felt then. With Arthur, her misery had been mitigated somewhat by an underscoring relief. Deep down she’d been glad to get out of it. She felt no such relief now. All she felt was pure unadulterated heartache.

Her dress slid to the floor in a crinkling hush. Uncharacteristically, she let it lay, stepping over its folds to drop her underclothes alongside it. So despondent she could hardly lift her arms over her head, she donned her crinkly cotton nightgown. Then she slid beneath snowy white sheets and huddled in a tight ball, determined never to think of Luke Bauer again.

Naturally she thought of him. She pressed her cheek into her palm and thought of her last sight of him, on that dry, rutted road that led to the local bootlegger. He had insisted she drop him there rather than drive him back to the boardinghouse.

Against all her resolutions not to, she had pleaded, “Please, Luke, don’t go down that road.”

For her pains she had received a defiant look that curdled her blood. She turned her head and stared out at the trees standing in dense relief against the night sky, determined not to make a fool of herself over another man. But this wasn’t just another man. This was Luke Bauer, the man she loved.

As light as a dandelion puff dancing on the wind, his fingertip had brushed her cheek. She glanced back at him and saw that his defiance had receded, replaced by a sorrowful expression that had reflected her own.

“Don’t worry about me, Roxie” he had said through barely moving lips. “It’s not worth your time. I can take care of myself.”

“Like you have in the past?” she’d shot back.

The corner of his mouth had crooked in a bittersweet smile meant to mask his pain. “Tit for tat, hey? Well, let me assure you I intend to take much better care of myself in the future. As soon as I’ve got enough money together I’m going to leave here and start over somewhere else.”

She hadn’t responded, only looked at him with a stricken expression.

“Just as soon as I can afford it, I’m gone,” he had reiterated as he reached for the car’s door.

She’d watched him get out. He’d looked back, and their eyes had locked. He didn’t want to look at her. She could tell that from his face. Perhaps because he was afraid his eyes would reveal how much he longed to reach over and take her in his arms. 

“You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?” he had asked.

“Yes,” she had said on a filament of breath.

“Be sure you do.”

With that, he had closed the car door, turned his back on her and started down the road to perdition. She’d driven off with her gaze straight ahead but hadn’t been able to keep from looking back just once. Though her vision blurred, she’d clearly seen him square his shoulders and stick his hands in his pockets as he disappeared into the darkness.

Now she coiled on her bed and wondered and worried. Had he bought a bottle from the bootlegger? Would he get drunk and do something stupid? Something that would cause him to be sent back to prison? She worried until she shook with released sobs, then furiously asked herself why she cared anyway. She didn’t give a hoot about Luke Bauer and never had.

When she couldn’t convince herself of that, when the memory of his every word, his every touch, his every kiss would not leave her be, she let the tears fall, soaking her plump pillow and saturating her grieving soul.

* * * *

The first thing Luke became aware of was the spinning. The bed was spinning viciously. He opened his eyes. Not the bed. The room. It was going round and round like a tumbleweed caught in a twister. He closed his eyes and groaned. It didn’t help. He lay very still and prayed for a quick and merciful death.

Later, he woke a second time and discovered that though the bed and the room had stopped spinning, his stomach had taken up the slack. It heaved violently. He scrambled up off the bed and down the hall to the bathroom he shared with four other boarders. Fortunately it was unoccupied, and he didn’t have to wait to empty his stomach of its severe distress.

Still later, as he sat on the side of the bed and dressed with shaking hands, he struggled to remember where he had gotten drunk and with whom. Not with Roxie, that much he knew. Because his last clear memory was of her profile, frozen into remote dispassion as she pulled away from the corner of the road.

What corner of what road?
he wondered now, and began groping around under the bed for his shoes. His hand hit something made of glass and sent it rolling into the middle of the room. It was a jar with a metal screw-top lid. A murky liquid sloshed wildly in the bottom. It reminded him too vividly of his stomach, and he shut his eyes again.