Moments In Time Page 7

  She smiled and waved a half-hearted greeting. Rick motioned to J.D. to roll the window down.

  “Ah, such sweet sorrow,” he said as he leaned in the window.

  J.D. wordlessly raised the window, effectively shutting out the intruder, who laughed as he walked toward the waiting bus.

  “Look, maybe it won’t be too bad.” J.D. played with the fingers of her right hand. “Let me look over the schedule and see where we’re going to be.”

  “Don’t you know where you’re going?”

  “Someplace south, I think, I’m not sure. I don’t pay that much attention to it, you know. It usually doesn’t matter.” He kissed her. “And besides, I’m the one who should be worried, leaving you here with Jake and Mitch, and God knows who else is hot on your trail. Not that I blame them. If I had the chance, I’d be parked on your doorstep twenty-four hours a day. And I’d never take no for an answer.”

  “You never had to,” she said, trying to smile, “and you never will.”

  “Reason enough to come back at the earliest opportunity. And I will, Maggie. I swear I will. We’ll be together again before you know it.”

  She watched from the car as he boarded the bus, a nagging uncertainty filling some huge space inside her. In spite of his protests, she had no way of knowing if she’d ever see him again. She swallowed the enormous lump in her throat and stepped on the gas pedal, heading toward the road that would take her to work. She could not bear to watch the bus pull away.

  6

  MAGGIE’S HEAD WAS BEGINNING TO POUND. THE last thing she needed right now was a stroll down memory lane. He's doing this on purpose, she fumed silently. Making me remember. As if it could make a difference. The son of a bitch has no excuse for what he’s done, and he thinks if he muddies the water with the good old days, I’ll overlook his little fling for the sake of auld lang syne. Well, it won’t work. That was then and this is now.

  When I think of the angst I suffered over him, wondering if I’d been just another roadstop, jumping every time the phone rang… If I’d known then what I know now, would I have been so anxious, more so with each day that passed, not hearing from him? Would I have been able to have passed him off as a bad experience, poor judgment on my part, and just gone about my life? It hadn’t seemed so then, she reminded herself. I walked around with a knot in my stomach for five days, praying he’d call. What was that old expression, Be careful what you pray for, your prayers might be answered?

  * * * * *

  Three nights after J.D. had left Philadelphia, Maggie sat on the floor in her living room, her back propped against the sofa, her legs stretched out straight and crossed at the ankles, a half-empty pizza box in front of her on the coffee table.

  “Look, Maggie, it’s only been a couple of days, for heaven’s sake. You’ll hear from him,” Lindy said in an attempt to reassure her.

  “I don’t know.” Maggie was pensive, toying with the pepperoni absentmindedly. “On the one hand, I really believed he was sincere, that there really was something between us. Like we tuned in to each other right from the start, and it felt like the best thing that ever happened to me…” She nibbled slowly, trying to explain it as much to herself as to her friend.

  “Then, on the other hand, I think, this guy’s really slick, you know? Has his lines down pat, like maybe it’s his angle. Goes into a new city every couple of days, finds a girl, goes into this sincere routine, and bingo, he has a home for the next forty-eight hours or so. It’s hard not to fall for it, Lind. He’s good-looking in his own way, funny, talented, sweet, intelligent, sexy—any woman would fall for him.” She grimaced. “I did… a testimony to his acting abilities.”

  “I’m still not so sure it was all an act, Mags. No, seriously, it wouldn’t add up.” She waved away Maggie’s look of skepticism.

  “What wouldn’t?”

  “Well, for one thing, the haircut,” she noted with a grin. “Think about it. He only did it to get your attention. He didn’t have to—there’s any number of women who wouldn’t have cared if he had three noses. There are girls who think rock singers are very sexy, you know? They don’t care that some of these guys are dog meat.”

  “So what’s that got to do with it?” Maggie stood up, hands on her hips, waiting for Lindy to make her point.

  “Everything. J.D. knows it. Knows he can waltz in just about anywhere and score.”

  “Want any more of this?” Maggie nodded toward the remaining slice of pizza.

  Lindy shook her head, and Maggie took the carton into the kitchen, folded it up, and put it into the trash. She came back into the living room with the wine bottle, refilled both their glasses, and sat down Indian style on the carpeted floor.

  “Well, if nothing else, your association with J.D. has certainly made a lot of other guys sit up and take notice.”

  “Attention like that I can do without.” Maggie grimaced. “It’s been a steady stream into the office, guys from the ticket office, the promoter’s office, even the guy who handles the concert commercials for one of the radio stations. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Honey, everyone always had you pegged as such a straight little arrow, sweet and serious-minded. Now they’re all taking a second look.”

  “The only reason for the line at the door is the general assumption that I was sleeping with a rock singer.”

  “Which you were.” Lindy could not resist the obvious.

  “Which I was,” Maggie conceded wryly.

  “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Lindy leaned forward, her glass tilted in Maggie’s direction. “That’s what’s bothering you. It’s not the gossip or the guys hanging around.”

  “Then what?”

  “Guilt.”

  “Lindy, give me a break,” Maggie grumbled.

  “Your Catholic conscience is acting up, honey.”

  “I’m not really a Catholic anymore.” She waved a hand, attempting to lightly dismiss Lindy’s theory.

  “Come on, Maggie, you can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl.”

  “What’s your point?” an exasperated Maggie demanded.

  “Callahan, you are Catholic to the bone. And you’re feeling guilty because you spent a lot of time last week in bed with a man you hardly know. And there’s no guilt like Catholic guilt when it comes to sex.”

  “That’s silly. I’m twenty-eight years old…”

  “Chronologically. Mentally, you’re sixteen.” Maggie started to protest, and Lindy cut her off. “All of you are, all you unmarried Catholic girls think the same way. You’ve been told all your lives not to do it, then when you finally do, you have trouble looking yourself in the face. Unless, of course, you’re going to marry the guy. That’s okay, because you can confess it before the wedding, then start your married life with a clean slate. So that doesn’t count.”

  Maggie laughed heartily in spite of herself, acknowledging a small element of truth in Lindy’s flippant observation.

  “How many guys have you slept with since you and Mace got divorced?” Lindy persisted.

  “Not a whole lot.” Maggie shrugged.

  “Ever have a one-night stand?”

  “Of course not, Lindy, but—”

  “Ever sleep with someone you weren’t having a relationship with?” Lindy continued her probe.

  “Lindy…” Maggie sighed with resignation.

  “And how long has it been since you slept with anyone? Before J.D. Who was the last guy?”

  “None of your business.”

  “My guess would be Stephen, last winter,” Lindy ventured with a sly grin.

  Maggie responded by rolling her napkin into a ball and pitching it toward Lindy’s face.

  “That’s what I thought.” A smug Lindy ducked and poured herself another glass of wine.

  “Okay, so what’s that prove? That I’m selective, that I’m discriminate, that I like to know the person I wake up next to…” Maggie presented her rebuttal calmly.

/>   “How long did you know J.D.?”

  “Oh, all of maybe seventy-two hours,” Maggie admitted with a wry smile. “It seemed longer than that, seemed like I’d known him for a long time.”

  “And now you’re wondering if you knew him at all?”

  Maggie did not respond.

  “It’s okay to have a relationship that’s based strictly on physical attraction, Maggie. It happens all the time,” Lindy said softly.

  “Not to me it doesn’t. And it was more than that,” insisted Maggie.

  “Are you sure? Or are you just trying to justify the whole thing to yourself?”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

  “Hey, look, I don’t really care who you sleep with or how often. I just know how you are about things, particularly men. I’ve never seen you lose your head over anyone. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t feel guilty because this one time, you did.”

  “What makes you so smart?” Maggie asked grudgingly.

  “All those years I spent in clinics, I was under observation almost all the time,” Lindy shrugged. “People talk a lot around mentally ill children. They think you can’t hear or understand what they say. I learned a lot about how people think. I may not have talked for a long time, but I didn’t miss too much of what went on around me. Right now, you are second-guessing yourself, berating yourself, doubting yourself. And all I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t have to.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie silently pondered the irony that she, solid, sensible Maggie Callahan, was being analyzed by a bona fide manic-depressive. What, she asked herself ruefully, is wrong with this picture?

  “I might add that a lot of people I’ve been in group therapy with over the years have been guilty Catholics. That’s how I recognize it in you.” Lindy grinned. “And as far as the office gossip is concerned, keep in mind that there’s probably a bit of jealousy involved there. I’ll bet there’s not a woman in that building who didn’t wish she was you last week.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s tiresome. I walk into the room, and conversations stop. I know everyone is talking about how I lost my head and then got dumped on my ass.”

  “Maggie…”

  “It’s true. I did. It just serves as a reminder to me of why I’ve always kept my mouth shut where my personal life is concerned. Why I’ve never broadcasted who I see or what I do,” she said grimly, once again chiding herself for her less than discrete behavior the previous week.

  “I don’t know how you could have kept it from everyone. God, Maggie, he popped into your office whenever he felt like it, sent you flowers every day, and had them delivered to your desk. You were in the bar together…”

  “I might just as well have had it posted on the marquee outside the building,” Maggie lamented, then added, “and the flowers stopped when he left.”

  “Look, by next week, everyone will have found something else to talk about. Just ignore it. And the guys will back off, you’ll see, as soon as the novelty wears off and they realize that you’re not interested in the game. I know it bothers you, but trust me, it’ll pass.”

  Maggie picked up the wine and tilted the bottle toward the rim of Lindy’s glass.

  “No, no more, I have to get going. Staff meeting in the morning. Thanks for dinner.”

  Lindy rose, slipped her jacket on, and put an arm over Maggie’s shoulder as they walked toward the door.

  “Cheer up, honey,” Lindy told her with that faint hint of a New Orleans drawl, “I still think he’ll be back before the week’s out. And I’ll be more than happy to say I told you so.”

  Maggie closed the door after her departing friend and locked it. She cleaned up the living room, went into the kitchen, and methodically washed glasses and plates. Returning to the living room, she turned on the television and stared mindlessly at the screen. When the news broadcast ended, she turned off the TV and picked up a magazine, which she thumbed through, scanning one article after another, none of which captured her interest. When she became too tired to avoid it any longer, she turned off the lights and went to bed.

  Stretched out alone in the dark, she pulled over the pillow he’d used and placed it under her head as she had every night since he’d left. She felt her eyes bum as she gave in to melancholy. She sniffed quietly, as if to keep her sadness from being detected by anyone else, though she was alone. It embarrassed her to feel so adolescent. Guilty? Maybe. Perhaps Lindy was right, maybe her conscience was bothering her. She wondered if she’d ever see him again. And she wondered who, in whatever city he was in, had received a breathtakingly beautiful bouquet of white roses that morning.

  7

  “IT’S NOT EASY TO ESTABLISH A RELATIONSHIP WHEN you’re traveling around so much, you know,” J.D.’s voice cut through her reverie, “but I was determined not to lose her. We’d gone from Philadelphia to Charlotte, then to Louisville, all in three or four days. It was exhausting. When we finally got to Baltimore for two nights, I called her and asked her to drive down for the weekend—we were only two hours away. It had been almost a week since I’d seen her, and I’d been thinking about her every day and every night. And after the weekend in Baltimore I knew that she was the only woman in this world for me.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes at the statement, and he continued as if he hadn’t seen.

  “We spent almost every weekend together after that,” he continued. “Maggie’d fly to whatever city we were playing in or I’d fly back to Philadelphia whenever we got a break. The more time I spent with her, the more I needed to be with her.”

  “That must have been very exciting, Maggie, all the travel, being part of the entourage,” Hilary commented.

  “I hate to fly,” Maggie snapped peevishly, “and I was never part of his ‘entourage.’ ”

  Hilary leaned back with a smile, watching Maggie’s tension build, hoping she might crack soon and do something crazy. The show needed something to spice it up.

  “Maggie means we spent very little time with the band,” he interjected smoothly. “Most weekends we spent investigating whatever city we were in, checking out the tourist sites. We were still getting to know each other. We’d come from very different backgrounds, you see, and there was so much to learn…”

  The weekend in Baltimore had been wonderful, and so he invited her to join him in New York on the following Friday. His shows had been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and he was there at the train station waiting for her when she arrived.

  They’d spent the next two days and nights exploring the city and sampling its offerings. It had been years since Maggie had been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she begged him to take her on Saturday afternoon. He did so reluctantly, not being in the mood to play the tourist but later had grudgingly admitted he’d enjoyed the exhibits they’d waited in line to see. They spent one night in the Village, seeking out the small jazz clubs, another night uptown, enjoying the glitz and glitter.

  He found that she was slipping quietly into his heart and was unable to let her board the train that would take her back to Philadelphia without knowing when he would see her again. So he had asked her to fly to St. Louis the following weekend. After St. Louis, there was a three-day trip to Kansas City.

  The band had played next in Richmond, and Rick had surprised everyone by unexpectantly inviting Lindy to accompany Maggie on the trip. They’d split up after the concert, Rick and Lindy in search of a party, J.D. and Maggie quietly retiring to their hotel room.

  “How long were you married?” he’d asked her later that night as they lay close together.

  “About eight months,” she replied.

  “That’s all?”

  “It wasn’t a very good match,” she explained.

  “What happened?” He leaned up onto one elbow, curious. He’d been curious for weeks and had resisted asking her about it, half afraid he’d find out she still had feelings for her ex-husband.

  “Nothing ‘happened.’ It was just something I
never should have done in the first place.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  “It’s a very long, involved, and not very interesting story,” she sighed.

  “Do you ever see him?”

  “Mace? No, not really. He calls once in a while to see how I’m doing when he’s in the city and feeling nostalgic, I guess. He’s a sports writer for a magazine and travels around a lot. But I don’t really see him if I can avoid it.”

  “Bad feelings?”

  “No, not at all,” she told him, then added, “at least, not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Then why do you avoid him?”

  “You’re a persistent bugger,” she laughed. “I feel guilty when I see him, okay? He didn’t want the divorce, but I did, so he agreed to it. He wasn’t happy about it, but he went through with it because I wanted it.”

  “Why’d you want a divorce? Did you fall in love with someone else?” he couldn’t help but inquire.

  “No, I didn’t fall in love with someone else.” She was becoming tired of the subject. “I just didn’t love him.”

  “Then why did you marry him?”

  “Aarrgghh…” She pretended to strangle him, and they both laughed.

  “Come on, Maggie, I want to know.”

  “Look, I met Mace when I first got to college. He was a year ahead of me. He was very handsome and bright and sweet, and he was the first guy who ever fell head over heels in love with me—”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he interrupted with a smile.

  “Mace was from a town about thirty minutes north of where I grew up. I caught a ride home with him for Thanksgiving my freshman year. My parents adored him. He was polite and well mannered and didn’t have long hair”—J.D. grimaced self-consciously and she laughed— “and he was very, very Catholic. My father immediately opened our home to him. Invited him back over the weekend to go to a football game with him—my dad teaches history at the college in the town where I grew up.”