When Angels Cry (6 page)

As he approached Kaylee, Bastian saw that her head had fallen slightly askew from the pillow as sleep had reclaimed her
;
long strands of hair had slipped across her features.  Realizing he was going to have to wake
her
, he set both saucers down and knelt
in
front of her.  Without realizing what he was doing, his fingers drifted to her face and gingerly brushed the
away.

“Kaylee?” he whispered softly. 

No answer.

“Kaylee?
  I have your tea.
” he said
,
a bit louder.  She opened her eyes and peered at him.

“Thanks.”

She
peer
ed
at the rising tendrils of steam wafting from the cup.
  “Looks hot.” 

Once she’d sat upright, Bastian offered her the tea.   “You didn’t want
it
cold, did you?
  It wouldn’t help.
”  Bastian lifted his cup to his lips and took a burning sip that forced him to set
down
the mug.  He glanced toward the kitchen.  “I accidentally broke a cup.  I’ll pay you for it,” he offered, staring at the carpet.

“No need.  I have others.  What made you come by?  Don’t tell me you
just
happened to be in the neighborhood.”  
She tipped the cup to her lips and closed her eyes, savoring the tea. 
She
resettl
ed
the cup on the saucer before placing both on the table. 

Bastian took a drink.
“Actually, I don’t make a habit of driving through this part of town.”  He tapped his foot nervously and
l
ooked out the window at the snow still wisping
across
the ground.  Ice
had
frosted the tree limbs, bowing them.

“So?
  You didn’t answer my question.
”  Her hand trembled and she gripped the mug more tightly.

“I didn’t know if you’d be going for swim.  You seem to have a knack for that sort of thing.”  He set
his tea
on the table, got up, and walked toward the window as though mesmerized by the snow. 

“You were checking up on me
—admit
it,
” Kaylee said. 

Bastian shook his head. 
“
Maybe
I just like driving in the snow.”

Kaylee snorted. 
“In a truck that has no heater and sometimes doesn’t start?
  Yeah that’s just what I would do all right
.
”

“We can’t all have limos.  I should go.”  Bastian stiffened and gritted his teeth, thinking just
what
a lose
r
he must seem
. 
He
ducked into the hall
and
reached the entryway
in
three long strides
.

Kaylee jumped up and followed.  She touched his arm.
  “I didn’t mean it that way, Bastian.” 

He jerked from her hand, ripping his arm away from her fingers.
  “Like hell you didn’t.”
 

As he reached for the front door, Kaylee stepped in front of him.   Her chest rose and fell quickly as though she’d just run a marathon.  Her cheeks flushed
, she
looked around the room and noticed, for the first time in a long time, all the fine things
—the
paintings, the marble tile, the floral arrangements.

“It’s about all this stuff, isn’t it?  You think I just snubbed you because we’re from different backgrounds, right?”  She slowly shook her head and blinked.  “What is it you see?”

Kaylee
’s
hair
had
slipped down her chest, leveling at her breasts.  “You think this is about money?
  And what if I told you that one day you’d be so rich you wouldn’t know how to spend all your money
?
  Even so, you’d still be unhappy.  What would you say to me, Bastian?”
  She leaned against the front door
, her
fingers splayed against the wood, pressing it closed.  She could feel the cold through the door. 

“Get out of the way,” he growled
, his
hands balled into fists.

“Some people don’t give a damn about money.”
 
She glared at him, refusing to budge.

 
“Yeah, right.” 
Bastian laughed incredulously.  He raised his hand and swept it around the room.  “You have a friggin’ $5000.00 painting on that wall.  God only knows what these marble floors cost, and you don’t care about money
?
”

“It’s just stuff, Bastian. 
S
tuff.”  Kaylee moved from the door to the corner where a fancy decorative vase stood.  As she took it in hand, Kaylee felt the weight of
the
glass chips inside.  “This vase cost $500.00 when I bought it a year ago.  I thought it would go well with these marbled floors
—and
the marbled floors went so well with the décor of the next room
, and
so on and so forth.  The whole house is set up to match, but you know what?  It’s never really been a home.”  Kaylee looked down at the black
-
and
-
white vase.  Tentatively, she trickled her fingers along the pattern.  “Five hundred bucks.  And this is what happens one day when someone isn’t careful or God isn’t paying attention.”  She loosened her fingers one by one until the vase slipped. 

Bastian stooped and tried to catch it, but the vase crashe
d to the floor and shattered, scattering
the glass chips across the floor.

“Geez, Kaylee
—that
was an expensive vase.
”  He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed in bewilderment.

Kaylee shook her head as Bastian collected the fragments.  “It doesn’t matter, Bastian.  In the end, even expensive things break like cheap ones, and all that remains are pieces.  Still, I’d rather have the pieces than the money because maybe the things bought with the money, if they are the right things, mean something, and if you put the pieces back together,  just maybe you have that moment of perfection before everything comes apart again.”  She crossed her arms over her chest.  “I could give you all this, and you know what, Bastian?  It wouldn’t make you happy.  Maybe at first it would seem like it, but then, day after day, you’d realize all the things money isn’t, and all the things money can’t do.  And then, God help you, you’d realize just how empty you are because you don’t even have that illusion anymore.”

Kaylee walked away, leaving Bastian to collect the fragments.  One small shard jabbed his finger and broke the skin.  A pinpoint of blood welled up on his forefinger. 

“Damn
.  I guess this is what I get for jumping in
,” Bastian
mumbled
.  He brushed the skin, feeling for more glass
,
but found none.  He stared at his finger as blood beaded upon it, growing from a fine pinprick to a circle the size of a pencil eraser.  Bastian shov
ed
his finger in his mouth.  Kneeling, he watched the doorway
, but
even as he
expected her
to come back, he knew better.
 
He took his finger out of his mouth and sized up the cut
,
which had finally stopped bleeding.  Once again he picked up the pieces, this time more carefully.

“You’re an enigma, Kaylee.  You have all the money in the world  you seem not to want
, and y
ou must be a black belt the way you keep your door unlocked.  You even fraternize with somebody like me.”  He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.  His eyebrows furrowed as a frown overtook the neutral line of his mouth.  When he opened his eyes, he peered down at the fragments in his hands.

“I know what to do with a vase, Kaylee.  Pieces are a different story.”

He held the collection of fragments and carried them from the foyer into the kitchen
,
where he set them on the counter while he rummaged for a bag.  After three d
rawers
, he found Kaylee’s stash.  He took a brown paper sack, opened it, and set all the pieces inside.  As he walked back through the room, he looked around with a new perspective at all the things filling her house, things that didn’t really match Kaylee
at all
.  It wasn’t that she didn’t go with beautiful things
, exactly,
or that she didn’t have money.  She was more beautiful than anything and she had more money than even his family had, but there was something deeper
to
her that didn’t need money.

And, God knows, she certainly didn’t need him.

Bastian
stepped into the foyer, opened the door, and started
out
into
the snow of
a landscape too cold to melt
it away
.

Chapter
Fo
ur

Bastian trudged through the snow and found the drifts higher than before.  The snow blinded him and
had begun
cover
ing
his truck, not to mention his feet and
on up to
his calves.  He glanced at the
washed
-out
clouds still freighted with winter.

“I hate snow,” Bastian muttered, slogging to the driver’s door.  He brushed the recent flakes from his windshield, and the cold bit hard, reddening the flesh.  Opening the door, he slipped inside and set the bag of pieces beside him.

He turned the key, but the starter simply clicked.  “Damn
,
” he seethed.  After the second try, it was clear he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
 
He slammed his fist on the dash.

“You could have left me stranded on the road somewhere instead,” he snapped.  “But no–you
strand
me here.”

Bastian glanced at the bag, wondering why the talk of money had set her off.  “Damned female,” he muttered, knowing he’d have to trudge back inside because he couldn’t stay in the
cold
.  

What had he gotten himself into, he wondered
,
retracing his steps.  He touched the knob, half expecting to find it locked, but it wasn’t.

Bastian poked his head inside the doorway. 
“Kaylee? 
It’s me, Bastian.  I’m sorry to bother you, but my truck won’t start
,
and it’s cold out here.” 
He waited, but only the
grandfather clock down the hall chimed a response.

“Kaylee?”  The clock fell silent as Bastian tentatively stepped into the foyer and stole into the living room.  In passing, he looked around the empty room and frowned.  Puzzled, he passed through to the kitchen.  Each room was just as empty as the last, which ultimately brought Bastian to the staircase in the foyer. 

As he placed his hand on the railing, he yelled, “Kaylee?”

Striding up the steps, Bastian found himself in a second
-
floor hallway with numerous doors.   He sauntered down the hall.

“Kaylee?” he called loudly.

“I thought you left.”

“You would be so lucky,” he responded.  “But my truck won’t start, and it’s snowing like crazy.”  He stepped into a bathroom and found Kaylee half-sitting on the counter, dabbing a cotton ball to her bleeding temple.  “What happened?”

“I had a nasty run
-
in with my dresser, and it won.”
 
Kaylee peered at him.

  “Let me take a look.
  “Swimming in winter and hitting your head on furniture.  You’re an accident waiting to happen, aren’t you?”
  Brushing the bangs from her forehead, Bastian lifted the cotton and saw a gash seeping with blood.

  “Thanks.  How bad does it look?”

“Still bleeding, which is normal. 
Head wounds
bleed a lot.” 
He leaned closer
, and h
er breath caressed his cheek
as he
lost himself in her eyes.  He
turned and
put a fresh cotton ball over the gash.

“Is that the voice of experience?” she asked smugly, tilting her head so
sh
e could look Bastian in the eye.

“Not my experience, exactly,” he replied.  “Did you use peroxide?”

“Yes, Mother,” s
he nodded.

“Good girl,” he said slowly.  “Maybe I’ll give you a cookie after supper.”  He lifted Kaylee’s hand and pushed her forefinger against the cotton.  “Hold this.”  Reaching past her, he opened the medicine cabinet.  “Got any bandages?”

“Second shelf.” 
Kaylee pointed.  Bastian pulled the box down, took
out
a bandage, and applied it. 
She swung her legs slightly. 
“Did you knock your head on something when you were a kid?”

“If I said yes, I’m sure that would explain quite a lot, but no, it wasn’t my head.  It was my sister’s.” 
Bastian
smoothed
the bandage into place
,
then
set the box back on the shelf
,
and closed the door.

“Younger or older?”

“
Younger
.”  He gritted his teeth.

“So what happened?” 
Kaylee touched the bandage
gingerly
, her fingers probing where Bastian’s had just been. 

Bastian focused on the circular pattern her finger rubbed against the bandage.  “
I’m assuming you weren’t watching where you were going, but then you’d know that better than I would.”

“No, not me–your sister?”

Bastian shrugged.  “One day we were racing on a mountain path around a curve.  She didn’t see
the
fallen branch
until i
t was too late.  She hit it and was thrown
off her bike
.  She hit her
head
on a rock.”  Bastian lifted Kaylee’s bangs. 

“What happened then?” Kaylee
fidgeted
, tapping her fingers on the counter.

“There was blood everywhere, and Angie was crying, of course.  She was wearing a white shirt and panicked when she saw the red. She didn’t like the sight of blood.  So I took her to the emergency room and sat with her while she got twenty stitches.” 
Bastian touched the skin around the bandage, checking to make sure no blood seeped around the edges. 
Bastian closed the toilet lid and sat.  “I think she got the easy part.”  Bastian tossed the wrapper from the bandage in
t
o the trash.
 

Kaylee pushed her hair over her shoulder.
  “How so?”
 

“When we got home, my father lectured me about responsibility, and, just so the point made an impact on my teenage mind, I also got a few swats.”  Bastian stared into the space ahead of him.  His eyebrows furrowed, and a frown deepened the creases on his forehead.  His shoulders stiffened.

“That hardly seems fair.”

“What do you mean?  What hardly seems fair?” 
Bastian blinked a few times and turned his gaze toward her.  He stretched his back.

“The fact your dad punished you when you didn’t do anything wrong.”  The counter rubbed the back of Kaylee’s legs
and
she stood.

Bastian followed suit. 
“It comes with being the sibling of the favored child who can do no wrong.” 

At this point
,
Kaylee
realized her head
only
came to his chin.  It was a small bathroom, far too compact for the two of them
,
and only inches separated his body from hers.  Clearing his throat, he focused on the aquamarine carpet beneath his feet.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. 
“I don’t mean to impose upon you, Kaylee
, and I didn’t mean to anger you earlier.  I misjudged you.” 
 

“It happens
.
”

“You get acquaintances who impose on you a lot?” Bastian asked.

Kaylee shook her head.  “No, I get people who misjudge me
a lot
.  Like you.”  Kaylee peered at the whirlpool tub that comfortably seated two.  She remembered thinking when she bought it that it would be nice to be able to have a whirlpool tub to enjoy with a man she loved
,
never mind that she’d never fallen in love.

Kaylee tried to imagine herself sitting in that tub, her body entangled with a lover’s.  A male body popped into her mind, but he was faceless, forcing Kaylee to reach deeper, wanting a face
—any
face to
help her see
what she’d missed.  Bastian’s midnight eyes and dark hair surfaced
, along with hi
s blunt chin and thick eyebrows.  Those nameless arms became his
—the legs
, the chest, the fingers.   She saw herself naked next to him, her head on his chest, her long hair spilling down her breasts
, h
is fingers touching her neck
and
shoulders.

“Kaylee?”

“
Hmm
?” 
She jumped, and a flush heated her cheeks.   She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms, trying to brush away the coolness kissing her skin.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.  I was just thinking. 
W
hen you live the lifestyle of the rich and shameless
,
that’s what you get
—people
who assume you’re all about money.
 
I guess that says more about me than anything else, and to think this used to be a lifestyle I enjoyed.
  You coming?
” 
She glanced at Bastian and
stepped into the hallway. 

Bastian followed her. 
“Yeah.  No point in simply hanging out in the bathroom, is there?
 
What changed your mind?”

Kaylee smiled at him. 
“It doesn’t matter, Bastian.”

“What are you about, Kaylee?  We’ve established
i
t’s not money.”

She crept along, forcing him to take small steps to keep pace with her.   Together they walked down the floral-patterned hall.  The thick burgundy carpet appeared so clean Bastian wondered if anyone had ever walked on it.  The whole house
was
immaculate.   Chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, illuminating the
clea
nliness.

“I don’t know
,
exactly.  That’s kind of like asking what I want to be when I grow up.  Never mind the fact I’m already grown up.” 
Kaylee frowned and chewed her lip.  When they
’d
reached the stairs and started down, Kaylee fell into a long silence.  She took each step slowly and held tightly to the railing.

Bastian broke the silence. 
“I know you’re probably really tired of me being here
.  Just as soon as the snow blows over, and I get a jump, I’ll get out of your hair
.
” 

“It’s nice to have company.  Can I get you anything?” 
Kaylee stopped at the bottom and turned toward
the living room
where s
he headed to the couch, waiting as Bastian pulled off his coat and sat.

“No thanks.”

Bastian peered around the room again
.  N
o matter how many times he scanned the walls and furniture, he seemed to miss a score of minute details such as the painting of an angel above the piano.  The
gossamer
wings draped
its figure in a cascade of
soft feathers so multi-dimensional it almost seemed he could touch them.  He squinted, trying to place the artist.

“Nice painting,” he commented.  “Who’s the artist?”

Kaylee sat next to him.
  “Me.”

“
Nice work
,” Bastian nodded.  “
Why’d you choose an angel?”

Kaylee leaned back and propped one arm behind her head.  “Why not?  Maybe I want to believe there’s something beyond this world.”

“There is that, I suppose
. 
Perhaps I will take something to drink after all
—a beer
, if you have it.”
  Shifting uncomfortably, Bastian stared at his hands, watching his fingers brush against themselves.  

Kaylee stood and patted her pink button-down shirt free of creases. 
“You’re as uncomfortable talking about faith as I am about money.”
  

“No, not really--I just don’t have any.”

             
Kaylee started to go to the kitchen but stopped short.
  “Spiritual or otherwise?”

“Either.”  

Kaylee slipped through the doorway and returned with two capless brown bottles.  “
I hope you like Budweiser.  These are the last two bottles left over from a party I hosted last summer.
”  As she offered one to Bastian, the charms on her silver bracelet jangled together. 

“Never met a beer I didn’t like.  Thanks.”  He took a drink as Kaylee joined him.  He pointed to her forehead.  “How does it feel?”

“Been better.” 
Touching the Band
-
Aid, Kaylee winced.   She sipped from her bottle.

“Yeah.”