A Fashionable Affair (20 page)

“He is, you know.” Patsy spoke very softly. “He’s
not trying to be heroic or anything, he just can’t
bear the thought of people like Garfield going
around destroying people like your father.”

“I know.” The bitterness had left Sally’s voice. “It
doesn’t just go back to Daddy, either. Michael was
always like that. Even when he was a little kid, he
always stuck up for the underdog.”

“I remember.” Patsy’s voice was softer than
before.

Steve stretched. “Well, this cheese is fine as far as
it goes, but what’s for dinner? I’m starving,
woman.”

“Then just take yourself over to the telephone
and call out for pizza,” his wife answered sweetly.

Steve grunted. “Pizza, huh?”

“Pizza.”

“Oh, all right.” He got to his feet. “How do you
like yours, Patsy?”

“With sausage,” she answered promptly. She,
too, was suddenly ravenous.

“You’ll stay the night, of course,” Sally said.

“I was certainly planning to.”

Sally grinned. “It’s a good thing I’ve got a spare
room. Michael will be its next occupant, I suppose.
I hope he doesn’t have to stay in the hospital too
long.”

“I hope so,” Patsy echoed, and hoped also that
her face was not indicative of her hurt feelings. Of
course Sally would expect to take care of her
brother. She herself certainly had no claim. She felt
tears sting her eyes and hastily looked down to hide
them. God, she never cried. She must be more tired
than she thought.

Sally and Patsy dropped the children at Jane
Nagle’s the following morning and proceeded
across the island to the hospital. Steve had left the
house earlier and called before they set off to say
that Michael was doing as well as could be expected.

His leg was in some sort of cradle and there was
an IV in his arm. He was unshaven and haggard,
yet when he saw the two of them walk into the
room, he grinned. “Come to view the fallen war
rior?”

“Oh, Michael!” Sally went to the bed and kissed
him.

“I know,” he said comfortingly. “It was stupid of
me to get shot.”

Sally laughed shakily. “It certainly was. But I
must confess, it’s impressed Steven enormously.”

He laughed at that, as he was meant to, and then
his eyes moved from his sister’s face to Patsy’s. She
was dressed in the same clothes she had worn yes
terday and the bruise on her cheek had turned the same interesting shade of purple as her outfit. Her
eyes were huge and brilliant in her pale face. The
expression on his face did not alter and he said,
“You even manage to look beautiful with a bruise
on your cheek.”

“I know,” Sally said. “It’s disgusting, really.” She
pulled a chair up to Michael’s bedside. “How are
you feeling, Michael?”

“Lousy,” he replied frankly, his attention moving
from Patsy back to his sister. “Steve assures me that
he repaired all the damages, however, so I can’t
complain too loudly. The bullet missed the bone,
thank God. A smashed-up thighbone would not
have been fun.” He moved his head a little on the
pillow. “It was very clever of you, Sal,” he added,
“to marry a surgeon.”

“I was thinking ahead,” she replied readily.

He laughed and shifted slightly once again. Patsy
looked at his hands, clenched tightly on the edge of
the blanket, out of sight of Sally’s eyes but not of
hers.

“I’ll be right back,” she murmured, and slipped
out of the room and down to the nurses’ station.
“Mr. Melville is in a considerable amount of pain,”
she told the nurse behind the desk crisply. “Didn’t Doctor Maxwell prescribe something for him?”

“I’ll look,” the nurse said pleasantly, and con
sulted a chart. Then she looked at her watch. “He
was supposed to get something two hours ago.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No. I’ll come now and give him a shot.”

“Thank you,” Patsy said, and walked back down
the hall, inwardly raging. Two hours! Wait until
Steve heard.

Michael was still talking to Sally when Patsy reentered the room. His eyes went immediately to her face and she smiled at him, a smile like warm
sunlight in the small and sterile hospital room.
“Where did you go?” Sally asked.

A nurse with a hypodermic in her hand then
entered behind Patsy. “Time for a shot, Mr.
Melville,” she said cheerfully. “You should have
rung if the pain was getting bad.” Michael didn’t say anything but looked once again at Patsy. “If
you’ll excuse us for one moment,” the nurse said to Sally and pulled the curtains around Michael’s bed.

“How late was that shot?” Sally demanded after
the nurse had left.

“Two hours,” Patsy replied.

“Why didn’t you ring for the nurse?” Sally asked
Michael.

He shrugged. He looked exhausted, Patsy
thought. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to get.”

Sally went to look at the chart at the bottom of the
bed. “Every four hours,” she said. “If they don’t
give you another shot in four hours, for God’s sake,
ring.”

“All right.” His eyes were already beginning to
close.

“Come on, Sally. He’s going to sleep,” Patsy said
softly.

“All right.” Sally bent to kiss her brother once
again. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Michael.”

Patsy came up after Sally, and she too leaned
down and gently kissed the hair that slanted across
his forehead. He looked at her for a brief moment.
His pupils were already dilated from the drug; his eyes looked black. She wanted nothing more than
to sit at his bedside all day and watch over him. But
she had no claim. “Take care of yourself,” she whis
pered, and then, with extreme reluctance, she
stepped back and followed Sally out of the room.

* * * *

Michael was in the hospital for almost two weeks. Patsy moved back to New York, and in between
answering a lot of questions for the Justice Depart
ment, she drove out to Long Island five times to see him. But there was always someone there—Sally or
a friend or, on one occasion, the same man from
the Justice Department who had questioned her.

There was a barrier between them, and it wasn’t just the presence of other people. Patsy didn’t know
what it was, but she was sensitive to the fact that
Michael had retreated from her. He was perfectly
pleasant, perfectly friendly, but that he had put up a barrier, she had no doubt at all.

At first Patsy tried to tell herself it was because he
was ill and in pain. It would get better, she thought,
once he got out of the hospital.

He left the hospital on a Monday and on Tuesday
Patsy drove to Sally’s to see him. He was lying on
the sofa in the living room reading the newspaper
when she came in. He was fully clothed and
stretched out like a schoolboy. A set of crutches was
propped up against the wall next to the sofa. Patsy sat on a chair and they talked under the in-and-out-
again eye of Sally and in the almost continual pres
ence of Steven. Patsy, who genuinely loved Sally
and her family, wished fervently that they would all go away and give her just a half an hour alone with
Michael. Then perhaps she would be able to dis
cover what had happened between them.

She did a cover for a national magazine and shot
another camera commercial. The newspapers had gotten wind of her kidnapping, and she found her
self besieged by reporters. The Justice Department issued a statement on the subject and warned her to
say nothing further. Michael began to walk with
the help of a cane and planned to move back
into his own home shortly.

During this stressful time Patsy remained her
usual serene, unruffled self. She was polite with the
obstreperous reporters, patient with her mother, professional with the cameramen. She was also
deeply and profoundly unhappy. She had not
known it was possible to be so unhappy.

He didn’t love her, no longer wanted her, and
that it seemed was that. There was nothing she
could do. She had found the one man in the world
for her, and then she had lost him. And nothing
would ever be the same again. It was as simple, and
as devastating, as that.

Michael called her one day to say he had ironed
out her situation with the IRS and did she want to
come out and discuss it with him? She agreed, and
on a dismal gray and rainy day, she drove once
again out to Michael Melville’s house.

He answered the door dressed in chino pants and
a dark-green knit golf shirt. He was not using a
cane and there was only a slight hesitation in his
walk as he led her into the living room.

“The house looks considerably better than it did the last time I was here,” she remarked.

“I got a cleaning service in and I had the walls all
repainted.”

“You also bought some new chairs.”

“Sally got them for me at some sale.”

“They’re very nice.” She sat in one of them and
looked at him gravely.

He sat on the sofa and picked up a paper. “Well, let’s get this straightened out, shall we?” His voice was professional, impersonal, as he began to talk
fluently about her assets and bank accounts and so
on.

Patsy sat quietly and felt within her a mounting
tide of outrage and fury. How could he sit there
like that, pretending that there had been nothing
more between them than her finances? How dared
he? Anger gripped her stomach, an anger she had
never felt before. She said, loudly, into the middle
of his speech, “You are a selfish, arrogant, and
heartless man.”

He looked up from his list of figures.

“I hate you,” she said.

He put the paper down on the table. “What’s the
matter, Red?” he asked quietly.

He hadn’t called her Red since he had entered
the hospital. She stood up abruptly and went to
stand before the empty fireplace, her back to him.
“You’re worse than Fred,” she said in a voice she
desperately tried to keep level. “At least he only
stole my money.”

Her emotions were in such a turmoil that she
didn’t hear him rise and cross the room toward her.
Then his hand was on her shoulder and he was turning her to face him, and she could no longer hide the tears that were pouring down her face.

“Sweetheart,” he said on a long note of wonder
and surprise, and took her into his arms.

Patsy turned her face into his shoulder. “You at
least could have had the decency to give me a
proper good-bye,” she sobbed into his green knit
shirt.

He held her gently for a long moment, cradling
her trembling body close to him. “I thought it was
the best thing to do,” he said after a while. His hand
came up to lightly caress her hair. “I had put you in such terrible danger. And the case was over. It just seemed best.”

She had stopped crying. “Is that all I ever meant
to you? A way to finally get Jack Garfield?”

The hand on her hair stilled. “Of course not.”

There was a note in his voice that had not been
there before and it emboldened her to raise her
head and look at him. There was a white line
around his mouth and his eyes were shadowed. He
had sounded angry.

“I love you,” she said simply. “I think you should
know that. I don’t want to burden you or make you
feel guilty, but I want you to know that. I love you
and that’s something that’s never going to change.”

There was the sound of rain drumming on the
porch roof, but other than that, the room was pro
foundly silent. He gazed intently at her tearstained face, and deep within his own eyes a little flame
began to burn. “Do you know I have dreamed all
my life of one day hearing you say those words?”
His voice was strained and a muscle flickered in his
cheek. “All my life,” he repeated.

She stared into the flame that was glowing in his
eyes, then, as the meaning of his words struck her,
her lips parted. “Do you mean that?” she asked, her
voice deep and hushed and shaken.