Tied to the Tracks (30 page)
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
“Just past midnight. John’s downstairs.”
She couldn’t make out his expression in the dark, and his tone was unremarkable.
“I said, John’s downstairs.”
“I heard you. Give me a second.” Her pulse was racing and her throat felt swollen and rough. The room was cool but a fine sweat broke out all over her body.
Tony said, “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m not sure about anything,” Angie said, throwing back the sheet. “Except that I have to go down there.”
“Well, this is ironic,” Tony said. “After all the trouble I’ve caused on shoots because I couldn’t keep my pants zipped, I’m about to tell you to remember why we’re here.”
“ ‘Ironic’ is one word,” Angie said, pulling on a pair of sweat pants. “ ‘Bullshit’ is another. I know why we’re here, Tony. I’ve never lost sight of that and I never will.”
“Yeah, but. If you break up the wedding of the season, how’s that going to play down at the Piggly Wiggly?”
She could stand here in the dark and argue with Tony, Angie realized, or she could go down and find out from John if there was anything to be fighting about in the first place. In the two days since that kiss in the emergency room she had pretty much convinced herself that it was all her imagination; John was avoiding her because he was embarrassed and didn’t know how to tell her he had been drunk and couldn’t be held accountable for outrageous promises. Now she had to go downstairs and let him tell her that. Or she could refuse, simply send a message down: get lost.
A third possibility occurred to her, fantastic but oddly appealing: she could jump into the van and drive down the road to Orlando and see what minimum-wage jobs were hers for the asking at Disney World.
“You already blew the Piggly Wiggly when you dumped DeeDee,” Angie said, and left him there sitting in the dark on her bed.
John spent the few minutes it took Angie to come downstairs speaking firmly to himself, going over the best way to handle things. Then she came in, smelling of sleep, her shape rounded in the old blue T-shirt he had tried so hard to put out of his mind. The battle for reason, for self-denial and patience, was lost at that moment.
Angie stood breathing deeply, her hands twitching at her sides. She noticed how sweet the air was here; it always took her by surprise, jasmine and honeysuckle, like sugar on the tongue. The branches of the old oak that overhung the porch brushed over its roof with the breeze. She heard the low hum of the kitchen light, crickets and tree frogs and the beat of her own heart.
She heard those things, but she saw John. She went up to him and touched him, lightly, on the shoulder.
He turned toward her gracefully, quickly, and put an arm around her waist to pull her up against him, half lifting her off her feet.
“Hey,” she said, putting the flats of her hands on his back. “Hey. I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
He rubbed his cheek against her hair and drew in a deep breath. “I couldn’t stay away. I meant to, but I couldn’t.”
She stepped back and caught his hand. “Come sit down.” With a small tug she pulled him toward the couch and the oblong of yellowish light put out by the single lamp at its far end. She tried to read his expression and saw nothing good there. Angie’s throat constricted but she forced the words up and out.
“John,” she said. She dropped his hand and curled herself in the corner of the couch, feet tucked up, arms tight around her knees. “Just tell me, okay? Don’t drag it out, that won’t make it any easier.”
Something clicked in his face, some understanding and following quickly, surprise. He sat down, his body twisted toward her.
He said, “I never had a chance to talk to Caroline when we drove to the lake, not once. I meant to tell her. Maybe she knew that, somehow. Maybe she guessed. But I couldn’t leave it, so I wrote a letter, and Rob drove me up there to deliver it last night. She must have it by now, but I haven’t heard from her yet.”
“A letter,” Angie echoed. “You took a letter up to the retreat house?”
He nodded, started to say something, stopped.
They were silent for a long moment. Angie tried to imagine such a letter, the things he might have said; whether or not he had used her name. She hoped he had left her out of it, and knew that it was a cowardly thing to wish.
“Go on,” she said. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“I thought she’d call today, but I haven’t heard from her yet. I can’t even begin to guess why.”
“I can,” Angie said. “But then I’ve had some experience.”
There was a small, hard silence. John said, “I wondered if you’d ever bring up the subject of that letter.”
“It was a good letter,” Angie said. “It was all generosity and kindness, and you have nothing to apologize for.”
He touched her hand where it lay on the couch, lightly. “When I wrote it I thought you might answer it.”
“I wasn’t ready,” Angie said. “I wasn’t ready for the things you were offering me but I didn’t want you to give up, either. I was afraid. I still am.”
She met his gaze steadily, and saw that she hadn’t surprised him or made him mad, which gave her the courage to let the subject go for the moment.
“So you’re waiting to hear from Caroline.”
“That’s about it. It’s going to be rough over the next few days.”
Angie might have said,
It’s rough now,
even knowing how terrible it would sound, how unfair.
It’s rough now,
even knowing how terrible it would sound, how unfair.
He was saying, “So I’m thinking it would be best for us to wait until things have settled down a bit.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “that makes sense.” And: “How long do you think that will be?” Angie rarely blushed, but she felt herself coloring now. She put her forehead on her upraised knees to hide her face.
“Hey.”
She made herself look up.
“Another ten minutes is too long, as far as I’m concerned.”
Angie swallowed. She closed her eyes and nodded and kept them closed, because her self-control was shaky at best, and he was so close.
“The thing is, I have to go along as if nothing’s changed until she tells her family otherwise. That may be tomorrow, or the day after, or maybe even Thursday. I can’t think she’d leave it that long, but she might. Then you and I will have to have a serious conversation.”
Angie felt a pulse throbbing in her temple, and made the tactical decision to overhear this last statement. She said, “We’ve got a lot of work over the next couple days, so it won’t be too hard to stay out of your way.” She managed a small smile, one that must look as insincere as it felt. “Probably wasn’t the best idea for you to come here just now. For all we know Professor Hillard next door is watching us. She has insomnia.”
She meant to strike a playful tone, but instead her voice wavered.
John turned his face away from her as if she had said something painful, his gaze fixed on a point in the dark yard. Then he made a small sound, a half sigh of surrender, and without warning he leaned past her to turn off the lamp with a sound like the snap of a wishbone.
“There,” he said, his voice low and steady. “That takes care of Peggy Hillard. Now let’s take care of you.”
He put his hands on her to draw her toward him. John felt her first startle and then soften in acquiescence, in welcome, in pleasure. She curled against him and he put his hands in her hair, tilted her head up.
“I shouldn’t have come. Maybe if you weren’t wearing this particular T-shirt I could leave. But you are, and I can’t.”
She met his kiss with a hint of nervousness that gave way immediately, her mouth soft and warm and familiar, the kiss spiraling down and down, drawing them together at breast and belly and hip. There was an instantaneous heavy stirring in his groin. He ran his hands up her back under the T-shirt, his thumb skidding along the indentation of her spine and drawing a shudder from her.
John smiled against her mouth and she took his face between her hands and drew him down over her, smiling, too, both of them on the verge of laughter that they should find themselves like this after so long. Finally. She nipped his ear and he yelped and she ran her tongue down the bristling line of his jaw. And then she did laugh, a low laugh full of anticipation.
“This is right,” she said, a little breathlessly. A statement of fact.
“Oh, yeah.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “I should never have let you go. I never did let you go, not really.”
He kissed her breathless while he rocked into her on the broad old sofa, pressing himself against her, relearning her touch and feel, the curves and hollows and the taste of her. She flexed, and then gave in and up and let go, went fluid beneath him. Her T-shirt came off first, leaving her in nothing but the shorts that she wouldn’t let him draw down her legs, not yet, not yet. Not until she had pulled his shirt over his head and set to work on his pants, peeling them down over his hips and stopping to kiss his belly, her mouth open and wet. She looked up at him, her face an oval in the dark, her eyes gleaming, and reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, fished with two fingers and then held up the condom like a magic coin.
“You are such a boy scout. Always prepared.”
“Ever hopeful,” he said, and pulled her up along the length of him until her breasts were pressed against his chest. Then he flipped her neatly onto her back and paused, touching his forehead to hers.
He said, “There are so many things we haven’t talked about yet.”
She groaned, reaching for him, but he held her down with no trouble at all, both of her wrists in his one hand.
“I’ve got things to say to you,” he whispered. “I don’t think you’ll mind hearing them.”
John wanted to talk, and really, Angie tried to tell herself, wasn’t that what they needed to do? This was serious business, after all, he was walking away from another woman, another kind of life, and why? To what end? What did he want from her, really, and what could she expect from him?
Important questions, crucial questions, for tomorrow or the day after, for anytime but now. As much as she loved John’s voice, right now she loved his mouth more. She arched up to kiss him, rich and deep and full, a kiss that flowered in the belly and sent little shocks back up her spine, flowing out and out. He made a humming sound. How had she forgotten that sound of his, that click in the back of his throat? Angie rubbed herself against him, spread herself open beneath him, beckoned.
Now now now
.
Now now now
.
But John would have none of it; he held himself over her with his knees between her thighs, his shoulders wide as a raft, his arms and legs like oars, his chest pressed against her breasts. He held her effortlessly away from him, only his cock reaching toward her, Angie thought, biting back a burp of laughter, as if it meant to handle this on its own, with or without the rest of him.
He was whispering in her ear.
Wait,
and
Christ, Angie, please
.
Wait,
and
Christ, Angie, please
.
She cupped his face in her hands and pressed small nipping kisses on his mouth. “What?” As if she didn’t know. As if she couldn’t see it, the things he was wanting to say and hear. They had been here before, the two of them, on the verge of words.
“Tell me.”
She said, “Of course I love you. I always have, you idiot. You dope. From day one. Didn’t you know?”
His closed his eyes, nodded. Sweat glistened on his face and throat and shoulders, his beautiful shoulders. “Good,” he said, and claimed her, finally, absolutely. “Good.”
FOURTEEN
You must understand how much things have changed in Ogilvie if you truly want to tell Miss Zula’s story. For example, when she was coming up in the forties and fifties, political, social, and racial distinctions were sacrosanct. At the First Baptist Church (and the First Baptist congregation was far more powerful and bigger than the Episcopalians) Pastor Tate was a great adherent of Leviticus (“Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids shall be of the heathen that are round about you. . . . And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever.”). For Pastor Tate and his parishioners, the idea of equal rights for blacks was truly nonsensical and offensive, and one more thing: he would be outraged if he knew about the way the Catholic congregation has grown and prospered in Ogilvie. I know this, because he was my grandfather and he turned his back on my father because he came back from WWII with an Italian Catholic wife.
Your name:
Dab Tate. I’m a partner in the same physicians’ group as Marilee Bragg.
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