Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

“Oh, Alexi…” She pulled him to her. “My poor, poor Alexi. What’s happened to you?”

“Help me. Help-” His agonized whisper horrified her. She wanted to tell him to stop talking like that this very minute. She felt a damp spot on her thigh and saw that saliva had leaked from the side of his mouth through her robe. It was too much. She wanted to run away. Instead she thought of Fleur.

His mouth worked to form the words. “G-get help. I-I need help.”

“Hush…Save your strength. Don’t try to talk.”

“Please…”

“Rest, my darling.” His suit coat gaped and one of the lapels was turned under. They’d been married for twenty-seven years, and she’d never seen his suit coat untidy. She straightened the lapel.

“H-help me.”

She gazed down at him. “Don’t try to talk, my darling. Just rest. I won’t leave you. I’ll hold you until you don’t need me any longer.”

She could see the fear in his eyes then, at first the merest spark. Gradually it grew more intense until she knew he finally understood. She stroked his thin hair with the tips of her trembling fingers. “My poor darling,” she said. “My poor, poor darling. I loved you, you know. You’re the only one who ever really understood me. If only you hadn’t taken my baby away.”

“Do not-do this. I beg you-” The muscles in his right side tensed, but he was too weak to lift his arm. His lips had a blue tinge, and his breathing grew more labored. She didn’t want him to suffer, and she tried to think how to comfort him. Finally she opened her robe and cradled him to her bare breast.

Eventually he grew still. As she gazed down at the face of the man who had shaped her life, a pair of tears perfectly balanced themselves on the bottom lashes of her incomparable hyacinth-blue eyes. “Good-bye, my darling.”

Jake felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him. A basketball whizzed past his arm and bounced into the empty bleachers, but he couldn’t move. Even the noises of the game going on behind him faded away. Cold seeped through the sweat-drenched jersey into his bones, and he struggled for breath.

“Jake, I’m sorry.” His secretary stood with him at the side of the court, her face pale, her forehead knitted with concern. “I-I knew you’d want to see it right away. The phones are ringing off the wall. We’ll have to issue a statement-”

He crushed the newspaper in his fist and pushed past her. He headed for the scarred wooden door. The sound of his breathing echoed off the chipped plaster walls of the L.A. gym as he fled down the steps to the empty locker room. He shoved his legs into his jeans over his shorts, grabbed a shirt, and raced from the old brick building where he’d played basketball on and off for ten years. As the door slammed behind him, he knew he’d never be back.

The Jag’s tires squealed as he peeled out of the parking lot into the street. He’d buy up all the newspapers. Every copy. He’d send planes all over the country to every store, every newsstand in the universe. He’d buy them and burn them and-

A fire engine shrieked in the distance. He remembered the day he’d come home and found Liz. Then he’d been able to fight. He’d smashed his fist into that bastard’s face until his knuckles bled. He remembered the way Liz’s arms had felt as she fell to her knees and clutched his legs, wrapping her arms around them like a movie poster from A Hatful of Rain. She’d cried and begged him to forgive her while that poor bastard lay on the linoleum floor with his pants around his ankles and his nose pushed to the side of his face. When Liz had betrayed him, he’d had a target for his rage.

Sweat dripped into his eyes. He blinked it away. He’d written the book for Fleur, spilled out his guts…

He clutched the steering wheel and tasted gunmetal in the back of his mouth. The taste of fear. Cold metal fear.

Belinda gazed at the suitcase that lay open on Fleur’s bed as if she’d never before seen one. “You can’t leave me now, baby. I need you.”

Fleur struggled to hold herself together. Only a few more hours, and she’d be away from this house forever. Only a few more hours, and she could lick her wounds in private. “The funeral was a week ago,” she said, “and you’re doing just fine.”

Belinda lit another cigarette.

The burden of dealing with Alexi’s death had fallen entirely on Fleur’s shoulders. A massive stroke, the doctor had said. One of Alexi’s assistants had found him lying on the library floor next to the front window. He’d apparently collapsed not long after she’d left him, and Fleur couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been standing there watching her when it happened. His death left her feeling neither triumph nor grief, only the knowledge that a powerful force had disappeared from her life.

Michel wouldn’t fly over for the funeral. “I can’t do it,” he’d told her during one of their daily phone calls. “I know it’s not fair to you, but I can’t pretend to mourn him, and I can’t handle Belinda looking at me with those calf eyes now that people know my name.”

Fleur decided it was for the best. She needed all her energy to deal with the arrangements, and the added tension of Michel and Belinda’s strained relationship would only make things more difficult.

Belinda blew a thin ribbon of smoke. “You know all this legal nonsense makes my head spin. I can’t cope.”

“You won’t have to. I told you that. David Bennis is going to work with Alexi’s staff. He’ll be able to handle everything from New York.”

Making Alexi’s assistants understand they were now taking orders from her had been one more challenge she’d faced and won. But she still had to deal with Belinda’s neediness and the way her own stomach lurched every time she received a phone call.

“I want you to handle my business affairs, not some stranger.” Fleur didn’t respond, and Belinda’s mouth formed the same pout she’d launched in her daughter’s direction a dozen times over the past week when she didn’t get her way. “I hate this house. I can’t spend the night here.”

“Then move to a hotel.”

“You’re cold, Fleur. You’ve gotten very cold with me. And I don’t like the way you’ve shut me out. All these stories about Jake in Vietnam…I had to read about it in the newspaper. I’m sure you’ve talked to him, but you won’t tell me a thing.”

Fleur hadn’t talked to him. Jake refused to take her calls. A fresh stab of pain pierced her heart as she remembered the efficient voice of his secretary on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, Miss Savagar, but I don’t know where he is…No, he hasn’t left any messages for you.”

Fleur had tried both his house in California and his place in New York to no avail. She’d contacted his secretary again, and this time she’d met open hostility. “Haven’t you done enough harm? He’s being hounded by reporters. Why don’t you get the message? He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

That had been five days ago, and Fleur hadn’t tried to call him since.

She latched her suitcase. “If you don’t want to live here, Belinda, you should move. You’re a rich woman, and you can live wherever you want. I offered to go apartment shopping with you, but you put me off.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go tomorrow.”

“Too late. My plane takes off at three o’clock.” But not for New York, as Belinda thought.

“Baby!” Belinda said with a wail, “I’m not used to being alone.”

Knowing her mother, Fleur doubted she’d be on her own for very long. “You’re stronger than you think.” Both of us are, she thought.

Tears filled Belinda’s eyes. “I can’t believe you’re deserting me. After everything I’ve done for you.”

Fleur planted a swift kiss on her mother’s cheek. “You’ll be fine.”

On the way to the airport, the limousine stalled in traffic. Fleur studied the shop windows until a Cityrama bus blocked her view. The limousine crawled forward another thirty feet, swung in front of the bus, and she found herself gazing into Jake’s face on a billboard advertising Disturbance at Blood River. The flat brim of his hat shaded his eyes, his cheeks were grizzled, and he had a cheroot clamped in the corner of his mouth. Bird Dog Caliber-a man without weakness, a man who didn’t need anybody. What had made her think that she could finally civilize him?

She closed her eyes. She had a business to run, and she couldn’t afford to be away any longer, but she needed a few days-just a few days alone-before she went back. She needed to be in a place where no one could find her, a place where she could stop spending her days waiting for a phone call that would never come. She’d healed from heartbreak before. She could do it again.

She’d do it on Mykonos.

The white stucco cottage sat in an olive grove not far from a deserted beach. She toasted herself in the sun, took long, barefoot walks along the ocean, and told herself time would heal her wounds. But she felt numb and color-blind. On Mykonos-where the whites were so white they hurt the eyes, and the turquoise of the Aegean so bright it redefined the hue-everything had faded to gray. She didn’t feel hunger when she forgot to eat, or pain when she stepped on a sharp rock. She walked along the ocean-saw that her hair was blowing-but she couldn’t feel the breeze touch her skin, and she wondered if the terrible numbness would ever go away.

At night, tortured memories of making love with Jake awakened her. His lips on her breasts…the feel of him stretching her, pulsing…If he’d loved her as she loved him, he’d have known she could never betray him. This was what she’d been afraid of all along. This was the reason she’d put him off when he’d suggested marriage. She hadn’t trusted him to love her enough, and she’d been right. He hadn’t loved her enough to stand strong.

By the third day, she knew Mykonos held no magical healing powers. She’d neglected her business too long, and she had to return to New York. Still, she lingered another two days before she made herself call David and tell him when she was returning.

She was numb and grief-stricken, but she wasn’t broken.

By the time she got off the plane at Kennedy, it had begun to snow. Her wool slacks itched her thighs where they were peeling from the sun, and her stomach was queasy from two hours of turbulence over the Atlantic. The snow made getting a cab more arduous than usual, and the one she finally found had a broken heater. It was well after midnight before she slipped the bolt on her door and let herself into her living room.

The house was damp and nearly as cold as the cab. Dropping her suitcase, she pushed up the thermostat and then kicked off her shoes. With her coat still on, she walked down to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and tossed in two Alka-Seltzers. As the tablets fizzed, the cold from the brick floor seeped through her stockings. She was getting into bed, turning up her electric blanket, and not moving until morning. First, though, she’d take the hottest shower she could stand.

She waited until she was in the bathroom before she pulled off her coat and her clothes. After she pinned her hair on top of her head, she slid open the shower doors and let the hot water wash over her. In six hours she would force herself to get up and run in the park, no matter how bad she felt. This time she wouldn’t crumble. She’d go through the motions one day at a time until, finally, the pain would be bearable.

When she’d dried off, she pulled a beige satin nightgown from a hook next to the shower. She’d forgotten to turn on her electric blanket, so she slipped into the matching robe. The temperature change from Mykonos was too drastic. Even though she’d just gotten out of the shower, she was already cold. The sheets were going to feel like ice.

She pushed open the bathroom door and fumbled to tie the sash of her robe. Odd. She thought she’d flipped the light on before she’d come into the bedroom. God, it was freezing. The windows were rattling from the blizzard kicking up outside. Why hadn’t the furnace turned-

She screamed.

“Stay right where you are, lady, and don’t move.”

A whimper caught in her throat.

He sat on the far side of the room with only his face visible in the patch of light from the open bathroom door. His mouth barely moved. “You do what I say and nobody gets hurt.”

She stumbled backward toward the bathroom. He lifted his arm, and she found herself looking down the long, silver barrel of a gun. “That’s far enough,” he said.

Her heart jumped into her throat. “Please…”

“Let go.”

At first she didn’t understand what he meant. Then she realized he was talking about her robe sash. Quickly she dropped it.

“Now the robe.”

She didn’t move.