Unforgettable (20 page)

“I’ve got practice with the Wiffenpoofs Wednesday lunch.”

“My lecture is that night. I wish I’d never agreed. I’ve almost gotten work completely out of my mind and I really needed the break.”

“How come you said yes?”

“Cinny asked so nicely.”

The mention of Cinny’s name didn’t chill the air the way Rett had thought it might. “So, Wednesday night?”

“The lecture won’t end until at least nine and I agreed to watch a documentary with my scientifically minded niece afterward. I want to encourage her all I can.”

Rett chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “Thursday?”

“Rochester again.” Angel peered into her face. “I’m sorry — it’s a busy week, actually. Then we’ve got the family dinner on Thursday, but Friday is open. At least during the day. We’re doing a slumber party at Bunny’s that night, remember?”

“Don’t remind me. What were we thinking?”

“That it would be fun.”

“Oh yeah.” Tomorrow night and then not alone again until Friday? It was an eternity.

“I really should be going. I need a shower before dinner.”

“You’re back is covered with pine needles.” Rett could still smell Angel on her lips. There was certainly something to be said for making love outdoors.

“Your back is worse,” Angel said. “And if I were interested in such things, I might point out who was on her back first again. But I won’t.”

Rett tickled Angel furiously. “Tomorrow night we’ll do things a little differently then.”

“Tomorrow night seems like a long way away.” Angel pulled Rett down for a kiss. “I’m so glad you saw things my way, though. Slowing down and all.”

Rett helped Angel to her feet, then had to sit down on the log for a moment. She felt as if her legs were going to fold up. “You’re sure you can’t slip away tonight? After everyone is in bed?”

“My father is a night owl. He loves to watch old movies after Mama goes to bed. I want to spend as much time with him as possible. He’s not as well as he looks.”

Rett squeezed Angel’s fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“I am, too.” Angel’s tone was unsuccessfully nonchalant. “Knowing as much as I do about certain diseases, I have no illusions about what the next year will bring.”

“Then don’t let me take time away. Not too much, anyway.” Her libido told her she was a fool, but for once in the last week her common sense won. Angel’s time was precious to her father and taking too much would put being together at too high a price.

“It’ll be okay.” Angel untangled their fingers. “It’s just that even in the middle of… this, there’s life to deal with.”

The middle of… this, Rett thought, the middle of falling in love. Was that what this was? She should be babbling with fear. She had thought their bodies were way ahead of their hearts, but now she wasn’t sure that their hearts hadn’t been leading them all along.

She missed Angel the moment she drove off, missed her with an ache that was too physical. She went back to her motel to shower and change. Her mood then took her to just south of Minneapolis to the Mall of America for a hedonistic shopping excursion. She found topaz earrings that would look beautiful with Angel’s eyes, and a chili-pepper-shaped bowl for Naomi, who collected unique dinnerware. She dug through piles of clothing at Filene’s Basement to find a single pair of slacks and treated herself to popcorn in the amusement park. She usually avoided popcorn because an inhaled kernel and the resulting coughing fit could add a rasp to her voice for as long as twenty-four hours. But she wasn’t singing until Wednesday, and that was just a practice. She licked her buttery, salty fingers, which reminded her of Angel. She glimpsed her goofy expression in a window and hummed “Chances Are” off and on for the rest of the evening.

After walking only a fraction of the gigantic mall she ached all over and the blister on her ankle protested with every step. Soreness in some parts of her body had far more to do with how she’d spent the afternoon with Angel than any excessive exercise. Back at the motel she plopped herself into a bathtub full of steaming water and soaked for an hour.

She awoke Tuesday morning to the chirping of her cell phone. Work had seemed so far away that she hadn’t even checked her voice mail in the last few days. Tamla reported that Rett was booked at the Top Hat for the weekend after next. That was very welcome news. In just a few days she’d gone from regretting agreeing to stay another week to euphoria at the idea. Getting paid to stay an extra week that she could spend with Angel was just plain wonderful. After that she had to return to some semblance of working for a living and she was certain Angel would as well. Naomi had a background vocal for a commercial scheduled right after Labor Day.

She just didn’t feel like working. Not today. Today she felt like singing for the pure joy of it and not caring about how it sounded to anyone else. “Top of the World” suited her mood exactly. This kind of feeling, where everything was perfect and her body felt as if it had been reborn and rediscovered, was something to be reveled in for as long as it lasted. If she’d learned one thing in the last forty years it was that this feeling didn’t come along often enough to be taken for granted.

She wasn’t going to ruin it by seeing her mother today.

“It’s a chore, you have to do it,” she told her reflection. She tweezed a hair out of her left eyebrow and she sneezed suddenly. “You’re ducking it. It’s childish. It’s really the only thing you have to do now. Everything else is just frosting.”

She had that dopey grin on her face again because she was thinking of Angel as an angel food cake.

She made a stern face at herself. Adult voice talking: “You have the whole day ahead of you. Take care of business. Get it over with. You know you should. Grow up. Just do it.” She stuck her fingers in her ears and sang, “La la la, I can’t hear you” like a child.

She visited the Institute of Arts in Minneapolis instead, finding all the favorites she’d liked when she was a college student. The still coolness of the rooms slowed her rapid pulse. She felt as if her heart had still not slowed down from Angel’s final kiss. She gazed at a Thomas Cole original and tried to think herself into the painting the way she had when she was younger. She could be just behind that tree, looking down into the river. Angel could be just behind the tree, too, and they could be —

She had to change to modern art with no trees or fallen logs to distract her.

The more she thought about the night ahead with Angel the slower time moved.

“I just won’t think about her,” she told herself. “Time will fly by.”

It was the longest day of her life.

“You’re so much nicer than an alarm clock.” Rett drew Angel’s arms around her, enjoying the warmth of her body at her back. She’d been awakened by persistent kisses on her shoulders and back and a pleasing series of events had then ensued.

“I’m starving,” Angel said. “And I’m going to be late to the science club breakfast.” It was just past eight.

“Stupid science club,” Rett said. 

“I could say stupid Wiffenpoofs, which is where you’ll be at lunchtime.”

“True.” Rett rolled over with a grin. “Let’s both play hookey.” She didn’t expect Angel to agree and wasn’t disappointed when Angel’s look said that was out of the question. “Did I tell you I’m doing another Friday and Saturday at the Top Hat weekend after next? So I have to stay another week?”

Angel kissed her jaw and tickled her earlobe with her tongue. “That is positively wonderful. We’ll have lots of time — no reunion stuff going on. I’m not heading home until just before Labor Day. We can just, well, get to know each other.”

“Ah yes, the Getting To Know Each Other. We’ll have to draw up an outline.”

“Ugh,” Angel said. “Don’t mention outlines, theses or papers. I’m on vacation.”

“You’ve got that lecture tonight. I hope I can still get a ticket.”

“I’ve got extras — had to pass them around the family. I don’t know why they’re all so insistent on coming. It’s not like you’re going to sing. I’m not entertaining the way you are.” Angel scratched her stomach, then pushed Rett’s hand away when she began scratching, too. “That tickles.”

“Maybe they love you and are interested in what you do with your life.” So Angel was ticklish. Rett walked her fingers back across Angel’s stomach.

“Maybe. What’s your reason for wanting to be there?”

Rett knew instantly the question was far more serious than Angel’s light tone indicated. She had to clear her throat. “I think I may have the same reasons. I find Dr. Martinetta a fascinating woman and I’d like to really meet her.” The icy feeling in her stomach came back, but she couldn’t feel intimidated by Angel when she was naked.

Angel’s eyes were shining but she said nothing more. After a moment she asked softly, “What are you staring at?”

“You. I’m committing you to memory.”

“Good. I have to get up now.”

“I’ll let you get up if I can shower with you.”

“No hanky-panky. I’m going to be late as it is.”

“No hanky-panky.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yeah,” Rett admitted. She learned in the shower, though, that Angel on a mission could not be swayed from her purpose. She got a kiss and a shampoo for her trouble, though, and had to be content with that. Angel hurried out the door with her hair still wet.

Rett sat down on the bed and felt a little deflated, but an appointment was an appointment. She had her practice, after all. Fair was fair. Still, she felt lonely.

A sudden pounding on the door made her jump.

“It’s me,” Angel called.

“What did you forget?” Rett opened the door while hiding her naked self behind it.

“This.” Angel pushed Rett against the wall and kissed her so thoroughly that Rett was left gasping as a delicious tingling shot up her legs and down her arms. “See you tonight.”

Oh my, was all Rett could think. She peeked out the window and watched Angel’s rental car leave the parking lot. Oh my. 

She did her warmups in the car as she followed the directions to Wayne Igorson’s house. His single-story farmhouse was typically Minnesotan, but a large studio sat behind the house with enough room and soundproofing for a band to practice without waking any neighbors.

Wayne had indeed continued his guitar work, and he played exceptionally well in the classical style. Everyone quickly agreed on an old favorite, “Scarborough Fair” as done by Simon and Garfunkel, to showcase Wayne’s finesse and the harmonies they’d devised so many years ago. They sounded as good to Rett now as they had then.

Tom Stoddard’s sharp falsetto was still sharp, so they worked out a song to have fun with that, and then two more numbers featuring all the girls with boys on backup, and then vice versa.

Lisa Goodings plinked her ukulele and tried to get it back in tune. “You’d think that at some point I would have bought a decent one — I got this one with Blue Chip Stamps.”

Jeanette Carlson put down her accordion with a sigh. “It gets heavier every year.”

“I want to hear Rett do a solo.” Lisa twisted a tuning knob and grimaced at the result. “She and Wayne are the only ones who actually get paid for this.”

“Then let me sing something with Wayne accompanying,” Rett suggested. She had a song in mind and she hoped Angel would like it.

Everyone agreed and they settled in to practice. Rett couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so much. It brought back what had been really good times. High school had not been one bleak day after another, she reminded herself. Unfortunately, these good times had always ended with going home to brutal reminders that practice was a waste of time because she would never get out of Woton. At her mother’s relentless insistence she’d gotten a part-time job at sixteen doing dishes at a diner she could bike to over in Green Mill. It was a useful skill, her mother said, far more useful than sitting around dreaming about being a star.

You don’t have to go back to that today, she reminded herself. You are your own woman now. But that sensible adult voice would not let her forget that she wouldn’t be her own woman if she couldn’t at least walk into her old home. Until she did that, she’d still be frightened of turning into what her mother predicted she would become: a nobody.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow and no excuses.

She ended up being very glad she had bought the new slacks. She’d brought apparel for performing, a dance, a picnic and Minnesota’s muggy summer weather, but nothing quite suitable for a serious medical lecture. She was hypersensitive to what Angel’s family would think of her now, and she didn’t want to appear in any way disrespectful of AngeL Slacks and the only button-up blouse she’d brought with her with a simple necklace would have to suffice.

“You look like a nun,” she told her reflection.

She found her way to the campus courtesy of the directions in the reunion materials, but it took longer than she expected. She slid into a seat in the back of the auditorium just as the speakers were beginning. She recognized a number of people from the picnic, but students with notebooks occupied the majority of the seats.

The Vice President of the University of Minnesota introduced Dr. Martinetta. After a long recital of her published papers and research team projects, he concluded with a brief summary of the project that had resulted in her being given the National Science Award. It was odd to hear her referred to as “Doctor.” Rett took a deep breath. She was about to see an Angel she absolutely did not know.

Angel stepped up behind the lectern to welcoming applause, and then hushed expectation fell over the room. She’s nervous, Rett suddenly thought. It was in the tiny flutter of her hands as she smoothed the papers in front of her. That she could be nervous caught Rett off guard. Angel wasn’t a master-scientist-sex-goddess-supreme-being. She was human, she was a woman, and she was perfectly imperfect. Rett’s heart flooded with a nameless emotion that left her palms sweating.

“I recognize that a number of you are science and medical students, but you won’t need notes tonight. I won’t get that technical,” she began. Her voice was a little husky, which Rett liked. “In fact, I’m going to go out of my way not to be technical. I think part of the battle in our fight against disease is overcoming the chronic misinterpretation of technical data.”