Susan Johnson - Hot Streak

“We'll have to see how much you've learned in ten years. How many rounds can you go now before I win?”

“What makes you think you'll win?”

“I always win,” he murmured. Her eyes were emitting little sparks now, so he touched her cheek with a caressing finger and whispered, “Used to win… And,” he said with a grin, “in the interests of future universal harmony, I'd better see that you get home, for your mom and dad and Carrie.” He glanced at the clock. “We'd better fly.”

“What about my car?”

Junk it, I'll get you a new one, he thought. “Someone will drive it back,” he said instead.

“Someone?”

“There's about two hundred people up here on my payroll. I'm sure one of them has a driver's license.”

“What if I say I'll drive myself back?”

Carey smiled. “I'd forgotten how difficult you could be. Don't you like to fly?”

“I'm used to running my own life. You get a taste for it, like rattlesnake meat.” She slid away from him and sat up.

“Okay, okay, no problem… I'll drive back with you and Jess can fly down and pick me up.”

“Carey!”

“Hey,” he responded, wondering what he'd said wrong now. “I'm being understanding as hell. You make your own decision.”

“From a list of your choices?” Molly asked testily.

“Look.” His voice was quiet, his glance placid. “Arrange it anyway you like, only I'm staying with you until you get home because I don't want to miss a minute of our first night together in ten long years. In the morning I've got to shoot come hell or high water. Delays cost eighty thousand a day. You have to work tomorrow, you already primly informed me; your daughter needs you; your mother and father expect you and your banker, who holds your note currently up for renewal, wants his interest money. Only until tomorrow morning, I'm going to stay with you. Now, should we try and eat quickly before we leave? You haven't tasted my fettucini since I learned how to cook and I love you no matter what you say, but keep in mind I outweigh you by at least ninety pounds when you decide how to respond.”

“You love me?” Molly said so softly her words wouldn't have carried another inch.

“Always have,” he said, equally softly.

“I wish I would have known…”

“I know, Honeybear… It's been the longest ten years of my life. But,” he went on briskly, shaking away his melancholy and reaching for her, “the next hundred are going to be great.”

As it turned out, they were chauffeured down to the Cities in Carey's limousine while Molly's car, driven by one of Carey's numerous employees followed behind.

Isolated in the plush darkness of the backseat, Molly and Carey watched the late show and the late, late show, seated hand in hand, kissing occasionally or just squeezing each other's hand in a message of contentment.

The sun was rising when they reached Molly's.

“I'll call you tonight,” Carey said. “Don't go away.”

“You're going to be late getting back.”

He debated his answer for a moment. “Jess is waiting at the airport.”

She grinned. “I can see it's going to take awhile to whip you into shape.”

His brows rose and fell like Groucho Marx. “I'll hurry back.”

And they were both giggling when they kissed good-bye.

M onday started out well in a haze of tumultuous feeling. Carrie was brightly vivacious all the way to school, interested in her mother's weekend, full of details of her own visit with Grandma and Grandpa. Molly's employees welcomed her back warmly with a hand-painted banner over her office door. She had never missed a day of work before. And, to top it all off, one of her largest accounts decided to redo their executive offices. It was the key to solvency; the commission and profit would bring her company solidly into the black by the time the project was completed. So when Molly faced Jason Evans across his polished walnut desk at precisely eleven, she greeted him buoyantly.

His response was less enthusiastic, but she didn't notice, insulated by her own special happiness. “This may be the last time I have to renew the note, Jason. United Diversified just came through with a marvelous contract. By December-February at the latest-I should be in the clear.”

“I can't renew the note, Molly.”

“Do you realize what that means to my company? It's only been two years since I put together financing and-” The apprehension showed in her eyes first. “What did you say, Jason?”

“I said I can't renew the note.” Picking up a pen, he tapped the point lightly on his pristine desk blotter.

“Seriously?” Molly's stomach tightened convulsively. “Why not?” Panic was accelerating her heartbeat; she could feel the added flurry tingle through her body.

“The interest rates are going up on short-term notes.”

“So rewrite it. I don't mind paying higher interest for a few months.” She waited for the answer with the terrible feeling that her life depended on it.

Setting his pen down, Jason moved it precisely in line with the edge of his desk. This martinet was concerned with symmetry when her business was at stake, she thought bitterly. “I can't,” he said, not quite meeting her glance. “We're not going to be writing short-term notes anymore.”

An awful, sinking feeling overwhelmed her. “Does Bart have anything to do with this?” she asked suspiciously, carefully watching Jason's face. He wouldn't give her an honest answer if Bart was involved, but maybe she could read something from his denial. Although not close friends, she'd discovered during one of Bart's infrequent visits that they'd been fraternity brothers in college.

“Of course not,” Jason replied, adjusting his perfectly arranged tie.

“Don't of-course-not me, Jason, not after last time. Bart's little dealings through First National and Chip Ballay cost me a business, and you know it.” It annoyed her how the old-boy network supported each other exclusive of their employers, like a well-ordered, smoothly run mutual aid society.

“That was all perfectly accountable.”

“But not ethical, and you know it,” Molly snapped.

“I'm sorry, Molly,” he said in a tone that was bland and hardly sincere. “Maybe some other bank could give you an interim loan. My superiors are on my case. We've renewed this four times now.”

“I'll be able to pay the balance by the first of the year. Can't you tell them that?” She bit hard on her bottom lip to stop the tears from filling her eyes.

He only shook his head.

Composing herself with superhuman effort, Molly heard her calm good-bye, heard her reasonable voice telling Jason she'd call him by Friday and then in numbed panic she spent the next hour walking the downtown streets frantically totaling her assets, re-arranging payrolls, operating expenses, accounts payable and receivable in an attempt to come up with the two hundred thousand dollars she needed to pay off the note. Jason could suggest interim financing all he wanted, but if it was so easy, why the hell didn't he give her the interim financing. All she was asking for was another six months. You work for years to make a dream happen, work and sacrifice and work some more, nights, weekends, holidays, and then zap-a banker's reality.

Returning to the office, she spent the afternoon with her assistant Theresa, going over expenditures. But everything was cut to the bone already. They had enough coming in to cover monthly expenses, but not enough to cover an extra two-hundred-thousand-dollar note, not until United Diversified's offices were finished and billed out. At four o'clock she left to pick up Carrie from school and tomorrow she'd simply begin with the other banks. If she talked to them all, perhaps someone would advance her the money. Her building was mortgaged to the hilt but she was beginning to see small profits at the end of the month and once the last empty spaces were leased, she could anticipate a healthy financial statement.

But that eventuality wasn't today and after Carrie was put to bed that night, Molly indulged in a bout of crying self-pity-her responsibilities overwhelming her. As if being a mother, employer, and lease-holder to seven and a half stories of distributors wasn't enough, now, in addition she had to take on Midwest Metro's adjusted policy on note renewals as though it were a matter of accumulating enough dollar bills to fill a cookie jar. It wasn't dollars though, it was two hundred thousand impossible dollars and even thinking of the sum made her stomach constrict. Oh God, she dreaded tomorrow with the necessary calls on the banks. But what she dreaded more was the possibility of losing her business. The anxious fear crept in and filled her mind.

When Carey called late that night after shooting, after the editing, after Christina had been politely sent to her own room, he almost immediately asked, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” Molly said, valiantly trying to disguise her misery. “Too busy a day at work, that's all. How did the shooting go?”

“Great. The weather cooperated. We're almost through with the midsummer scene. Probably Wednesday we'll finish, and I'll give everyone a couple of days off and come down. I'd like to meet Carrie, see your business, take you to dinner, all those domestic details I've missed in your life.”

“I told Carrie I'd met an old friend at the reunion. A dear old friend. She's looking forward to seeing you. When I told her you were a movie director, she asked whether you could get her a date with Chachi from Happy Days.”

“Tell her I'll check it out.”

“And then Theresa my bookkeeper thinks you're the hottest thing to come down the pike, and Georgia called early this morning-”

“What's wrong?” he repeated, interrupting the brittle elan. “Tell me.”

“Nothing serious. Business stuff. It'll smooth over.” Molly hadn't perfected a gift for dissembling, and her answers were far from convincing.

“The note?” Carey asked.

She gulped in astonishment. “How did you know?”

“Movies, even modest movies, cost millions, love. I've dealt with enough money brokers in my life to anticipate trouble. No renewal?”

“Right,” Molly dejectedly replied.

“I'll give you the money.”

“We went through that last night. I can't take money from you. I'm going to the banks first thing tomorrow. Jason suggested an interim loan, only for a few months. There shouldn't be any problem,” she finished with a forced lightness. She didn't want to take Carey's money. After her bitter experience with Bart, she was wary of some man saying “you couldn't have done it without me.” She wanted her independence. Needed it. It was doubly important to her after having broken out at long last from her closed-in no-win marriage with Bart.

“Is that the banker you were talking about last night?” Carey asked. “The one at Midwest Metro. Jason Evans?”

“None other,” she replied, surprised at his memory for detail. “But enough dismal business,” she quickly went on, determined to shift the conversation from something that could cause an argument. Last night, Carey's mouth had clamped tightly shut when she'd refused his money, and she knew that expression from past experience. “Did you miss me today?” she murmured in a wonderfully fey voice that reminded him of splashes of sunlight.

“Did Byrd want to reach the North Pole first?” he replied in an amused drawl.

“That much, hey? Thanks.”

“You're entirely welcome. It was a pleasure thinking of you, remembering you, remembering us, wondering occasionally how a relatively sane man could have been so stupid for so many years-”

“You're glad I stopped by at Ely Lake, then?”

There was a sudden silence, and for a moment Molly thought they'd been cut off. “Yes,” Carey said very softly, “I'm glad.” A hundred times that day, he'd been struck with terror when he thought how close he'd come to missing her-again.

“Good,” she replied with pleasure.

“I'll call you tomorrow. And if all goes well, I'll be down Thursday.”

They hung up on whispered good-byes and silly love words murmured in childish accents that would have shocked anyone familiar with Carey Fersten, film director. But they had their own private world and always had, a world of pet names and lispy silliness and warm, undiluted happiness.

Three minutes later, Allen was summoned to Carey's motel room. Waving him to the phone before he was completely into the room, Carey said, “Get me George. It's important.”

“He's on vacation for two weeks,” Allen reminded him. Carey's principle accountant had carefully explained his schedule before leaving, tied up any loose ends with Carey personally, and been wished a bon voyage.