Susan Johnson - Hot Streak

An hour later the floor plan was beyond redemption, hatched and crosshatched with a multitude of revisions and revamping. Tossing aside her pencil, she snapped off the swivel-necked lamp on her drafting table and slid her chair back. This would have to wait till morning. She couldn't concentrate with the current state of her emotions.

He'd been walking since he left the apartment, anger and resentment in varying degrees forcing his long stride. He could have kicked himself. First for acting like a young schoolboy, jettisoning everything-the editing, the 220 people costing him salaries even though they weren't filming-all because some woman talked amorously on the phone and he wanted her. And then to find her with another man. He stopped at a park bench facing a quiet lake and shrugged out of his sport coat. Elbows on knees and chin in hand, he contemplated the emotions tearing him apart. Having Molly back was like stepping into the past with all the old needs and desires.

And as if that weren't enough, Carrie was there, demanding resolution in the turmoil of his thoughts. He didn't know how old she was. He didn't know her birthday so he couldn't make exact calculations, but there was no question: Carrie was his daughter. Joy washed over him like applause. A healthy daughter. A miracle, a gift he'd never dared hope for. He cried, helpless to stop the tears. For nine years he'd been a father and not known. While he was trying to forget Molly, Carrie was drooling, and gurgling, and learning to sit up. She had learned to walk and talk and sing nursery rhymes without him. Her “father” had taught her to ride a bike while he had been practicing self-destruction in Yugoslavia. Someone else had taken her to her first day of kindergarten and bought her her first sundae and held her close when she woke up at night with bad dreams.

She was beautiful.

And I'm her father, he thought.

And was never told.

He and Molly had some talking to do.

Leaving the park bench, oblivious to the jacket tossed across the slatted seat, he started to retrace his route to Molly's.

Molly was halfway down the hall to her bedroom when the phone rang. Rushing back to her desk, she breathlessly picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”

“May I come up?” Carey asked brusquely.

“Yes, where are you?”

“On the corner in a phone booth.”

“Where've you been?”

“Walking.”

“I'm sorry about Bart.”

“I'll be there in two minutes,” he declared, ignoring her apology. “I want to talk to you.” He sounded grim.

Greeting him at the door, Molly led the way upstairs into the living room. He didn't touch her, hardly looked at her. Only said, “Hello,” in the polite tone of a stranger. Apprehensively she watched him stalk across the room. She'd seen him go into a cold rage once when someone had challenged his control over his life, and she was uncertain how deeply the scene with Bart had affected him.

Sitting down, she invited him to, but he didn't. Instead he paced to the bank of windows facing the city, briefly looked out, then restlessly moved back toward her. “Would you like a drink?” Molly nervously inquired.

He shook his head, skirted the end of the peach silk couch, and strode back toward the windows.

“Something to eat?” she queried into the deathly silence.

Stopping, he spun around and stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. His mouth opened, then shut again in the same hard, determined line. His pale hair was ruffled, as if fingers had repeatedly raked through it. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows; he no longer had on the cream linen sport coat.

“Would you sit down, at least,” she said forcibly, his restless stride making her increasingly nervous. “You're pacing like a new father.” It was not a good choice of words.

His shoulders stiffened. Stopping abruptly, he walked over and dropped into a chair near Molly. “So who was the man you were playing with when I walked in?” he accused her in a hard voice.

“I wasn't playing with anyone. The man was Bart, my ex-husband, whom I despise. We were arguing,” she answered coldly, responding to the injustice of his remark.

His eyes which had been studying his steepled fingertips, flashed upward and pierced hers like lasers. “You could have fooled me.” Although his voice was flat and passionless, the muscles in his neck were rigid.

“Don't get authoritarian with me, Carey Fersten. I'm not eighteen anymore, and I don't care if you're used to pulling rank on half the world.” Spreading her arms along the back of the couch, she straightened her spine and added, “I don't give a damn how important you are. But to clear your suspicious mind, I kicked Bart out right after you left. Supposedly he'd come over to see Carrie, but kept trying to pry into my private life.”

Carey relaxed fractionally. “Really?”

“Cross my heart,” she said. “Is that good enough, or would you like a blood oath?” The flowing white of her robe against the silky peach couch set off her golden-haired beauty like a framed portrait. Her long hair glistened, her rich blue eyes stared directly at him, her cheeks were touched with a rosy blush of anger. She was too beautiful for any other man to touch. An inexplicable feeling from a man who until now had calmly accepted the more liberal modes of human relationships.

“I'm jealous as hell, Molly,” he said quietly, his familiar, brooding eyes gazing at her. “It's a novel sensation, but damnably real.”

“Coming from the darling of the international jet set, I suppose I should be flattered.”

“Don't believe all the hype. I lead a quiet life, and I'm not trying to flatter. It's God's truth.”

“Thank you, then,” she replied stiffly.

“You're welcome,” he answered, equally unyielding.

They sat facing each other in the golden glow of silk-shaded lamps, across a short distance of pale green Imuk carpet crafted a century before they were born. Although his long legs were sprawled in front of him, Carey's posture was tense, adversarial. The lamplight burnished his pale hair like gold brushwork on eleventh-century gospels. His bronzed face was angular, cautious, his dark eyes compelling like some pagan god. After a short, spare silence, Carey said, “Why didn't you tell me about Carrie?”

“I know what it looks like,” Molly replied, understanding his question although it was ambiguously worded. Dropping her arms to unconsciously clasp her hands, she went on, “but Carrie isn't-”

“That child is mine.”

“No!” Her exclamation was filled with disbelief and poignant pain. “Oh, Carey,” she cried, her glance anguished, “don't you think I wish she were? But it isn't true.”

“Why not? The last time I was with you was only a few days before your wedding.”

“Two weeks before.”

“Twelve days,” Carey said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “to be exact.” Molly's wedding date was etched on his heart, and the years had never erased that pain.

“But I had a period after that,” she explained. The bizarre turn of conversation clouded the sequence of events that had until a few moments ago, seemed logical and clear.

“What kind of a period?”

How did he know, she wondered, looking at him with trepidation. Even though it had all happened years ago, she knew the answer as though it were yesterday because it had been so unusual. “Only slight bleeding,” she whispered at last.

“It looks as though you were pregnant with Carrie when you married,” he said. “You never had a period, after all.” His gaze captured her blue eyes and held them in a glance that demanded an answer. “Did you?”

“I don't know. It was years ago,” Molly dissembled, trying to avoid the collision course facing her, too confused now with complex emotional conflicts to want to come to terms with the unbelievable idea Carey was so relentlessly pursuing.

“All you have to do is look at her and you'd know.”

He was right. The physical resemblance was the most telling argument, the most damning evidence. Carey and her daughter were so remarkably similar, she marveled at her obtuseness all these years. “It can't be,” she declared with a stubbornness that still clung to the tenuous substance of her own misplaced convictions. “Carrie was born too late. She was born almost ten months after the wedding.”

“My mother's pregnancy was close to ten months. It was a family joke, how I didn't want to leave the security of the womb.”

“No, don't say that,” she pleaded, her eyes huge and liquid. “It's too unreal.” Covering her face with her hands, she sat there trembling. “It's not the way it happened,” she whispered, looking up. She was holding back tears, the struggle visible on her face.

He only said, “Thank you for giving me a daughter.” And then, uncurling himself from the depths of the chair, he walked over and lifted Molly. He held her protectively in his arms, kissing her tear-streaked cheeks, murmuring, “I love you, Honeybear. I always have. Always… always…”

Nestling close, she clung to him like a small child clinging to the only security it's known.

He whispered his love and brushed his warm lips over hers. “I'm going to take care of you both,” he murmured.

Molly lifted her head from his shoulder and gave him the beginning of a smile. “I can take care of myself…”

He smiled back. “Well, I can kiss away the tears while you're taking care of yourself, smartass.”

“Deal,” she whispered.

“Now if you'll tell me,” he murmured, glancing over her head to assess the direction of the bedroom, “where the spare bedroom is, I think I'll turn in for the night.”

“It's early,” she teased, licking his chin.

“Fatherhood is exhausting.” He winked at her. “Arguing with the mother of my child is what's exhausting,” he amended, starting down the polished parquet hallway.

“I'm not accomplished,” she whispered, thinking of all the women in his past, “like all… all those-”

“I don't want that, Honeybear,” he murmured, crossing the threshold of the bedroom. “I just want to feel your warm body next to mine, feel the woman I love in my arms, touch your sweet face. I don't want accomplishments, sweetheart, only you, my Honeybear, the mother-” his voice grew ragged “of my child.” It frightened him how helpless he was to the deep emotion he'd thought long vanished.

“Promise me something,” Molly said, her arms tightening on his shoulders.

“Anything.”

“Keep your girlfriends in the closet.”

He set her on her feet and placed his hands very gently on her shoulders. “No girlfriends,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “I'll promise that instead.”

Her eyes shone with happiness, and he smiled because she meant to be practical and civilized but was as jealous as he.

“I don't want any other woman. I'd be a fool to waste my time. I'm holding you every night… and every day,” he added emphatically, “until we're ninety-two.”

“And then what happens?” she teased, sliding her arms around his waist.

“We start on the second ninety-two years.”

Molly's eyes filled with tears. “Sometimes I'm not as strong as I say I am.”

“That's what I'm here for,” he whispered, reaching up to brush away a tear. “I'll take up the slack when you're too wacked out to be strong.”

“Like now. Oh, Carey, everything's happening too fast,” Molly cried. “All I know for certain is I love you. The rest-” Panic was closing in. “Tell me the rest will be fine,” she softly entreated, overwhelmed by the sudden changes in the fabric of her life.

His life had been full of attractive people and congenial events, visited by success, insulated by wealth. Not in a grandiose way, but with a security he'd never had to question. What makes one person so special to you that life dims without them? He didn't know the answer. But only Molly could evoke this happiness, and until now he'd never comprehended the extent of his own sadness. He needed her.

“I love you, Honeybear,” he whispered, “more than anything. And everything's going to work out. From now on,” he vowed, “life is going to be perfect. Guaranteed.”

T he following morning in Rome, Shakin Rifat was seated at his desk an hour earlier than usual. Even for a man trained to give away nothing in his expression, the fire of triumph couldn't be disguised. He was leafing through a dozen black-and-white photos taken with a telephoto lens, developed in a private jet that flew across the Atlantic the previous night and landed at the secluded airstrip thirty miles north of Rome an hour after daybreak.

The photos were of a blond man talking to a young girl with shoulder-length hair. The sequence of shots showed her placing her bicycle in an elaborate stand, then handing the man a package, only to take it back in the next two frames. Both subjects had the same color hair; both subjects had winged black brows; the similarities had been definitively cataloged by Shakin Rafit, his gratification heightened with each enumerated resemblance. Nose, eyes, chin, the same subtle curve of upper lip. The child was a girl, of course, so the strength of form was modified, but in a way, a girl was much better for his purpose. A father would do anything to save his helpless young daughter from harm.