All About Charming Alice (19 page)

“They are?” A shiver of guilt flashed through her, dampening the pleasure of compliments. He wanted everyone to meet her, and she’d only been dreaming of going home. Of dragging him away from his friends, his contacts, his life here. Bringing him back into hers. She felt like a spoiled egocentric child.

“I thought everyone was here to look at art. Not me,” she joked.

Jace laughed. “Yes … well … this is conceptual art, so I doubt if there will be much to see.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

He shrugged. “Keeping up a presence with colleagues. Don’t worry. It won’t last forever.”

Although, in very little time, it certainly felt as though it would.

Almost desperately, Alice tried to find interest in a snag of tangled chicken wire in one corner of the room:
Untitled Work
read the ticket on the wall beside it. There was a display of video art in which a man walked forward ten steps, then back, then forward again, then back. Five extremely large photos showed close-ups of a woman grimacing; there was a two-page, rather obscurely written explanation of the work.

Was anyone really enjoying this stuff? Alice looked around. In fact, no one seemed to be spending much time looking at anything. Instead, wine glass in hand, everyone chatted: the usual cocktail conversation.

“I was right,” Alice said to no one in particular. “Been here, done this,” Was it so different from those parties she’d attended in Hollywood? The setting was certainly different, and the noise level was a lot lower. Maybe there were even interesting conversations going on in several of the groups. But she was bored. Terribly bored. Whereas Jace, perfectly relaxed, chatted amiably with people, many of whom he’d known for years.

A woman — was her name Lana? — turned to her. “Jace says you work with snakes?”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m a herpetologist.”

Lana shook a head of glossy, artificially red curls and grimaced. “I’m terrified of snakes. How can you be interested in something horrible like that?”

“Do you know anything about snakes? Have you ever been close to them?” Alice’s voice was calm, cool. She had the feeling she was wasting her breath. When would Lana ever run into a snake?

“I’d die first.”

“It’s an instinctive fear,” said Jace, overhearing and coming to the rescue. “But not something we can’t get over. It just takes time and effort. And curiosity. I’m learning that.” His eyes, warm, filled with love, met Alice’s over Lana’s head.

“You can’t convince me.” Lana insisted almost petulantly.

No. They probably couldn’t.

• • •

“Jace … ”

He stood by the cocktail cabinet, pouring out two cognacs — an intimate gesture, one they shared every evening before bed.

She felt, more than saw, his body tense. As if, instinctively, he knew what she was about to say. He always sensed what she was thinking. No point in hiding anything. If she didn’t use words, he seemed to pick up on her every thought telepathically. Now he raised his eyes, looked over at her, his eyes wary, his expression guarded.

“Jace. I’ll have to go home soon. To Blake’s Folly.” Simply said, that devastating phrase
.

“Oh?” He made an effort at keeping his tone light. “Leaving me already?”

Alice looked at him, shrugged helplessly. She was destroying the intimacy of the dark lovely night with bad news. But, when you came down to it, was there a good time for bad news? “This was only supposed to be a short visit.”

Jace shrugged. “I know. I just hoped a short visit meant more than a couple of weeks.” Crossing the room, he handed her a glass, sat down beside her on the broad leather sofa, enfolded her in the curve of his free arm.

“I know it isn’t easy for you here, Alice. I wish I could get away more, have more free time. It’s just that I’ve been away for so long, and there’s so much catching up to do in the publishing end of things. And with the students who have been waiting for me.”

Twisting slightly, she reached up, cupped his chin in her hand. “Don’t feel guilty. It’s been wonderful being with you. I love it, and I love you.”

He sighed. “But? But you’re out of your element here. That’s what you want to say, isn’t it.”

She forced a smile. “The weather is getting warmer, and snakes will be coming out of their burrows. There are photos to take, articles to write.”

“And you want to be back in the desert, doing just that.”

She nodded. “Yes, I do. But that’s not our only problem, you know that as well as I do. Of course you’ll never come out and say it, so I’ll say it for you.” She took a deep breath, turned so that her eyes met his evenly. “You want to get working on your own book, don’t you? But you can’t. Because you feel you have to entertain me every evening when you come home. Keep me happy.”

He looked slightly embarrassed, and she knew she’d guessed correctly. The time they’d spent together here in the city had also forced him to be idle. Had it been as difficult for him as for her?

He was silent for a long time. “I know how you feel,” he said finally. “You’re an independent woman. You’re used to doing what you want when you want. I’m like that too. We’re really very similar.”

Alice nodded. “So you see? If we go on like this, we’ll ruin everything,” she said sadly. “The magic will vanish. And if it’s tinged with frustration and regret, our love for each other will fade. You know it will.”

“So what do you suggest we do? About us?”

“How about if we visit?” She tried to sound hopeful, make the suggestion sound viable. “You visit me in Blake’s Folly; I’ll visit you here in Chicago. We’ll make things work out for us with no sacrifices on your part or on mine. Goodness knows, the house in Blake’s Folly is big enough for you to have your own office. Perhaps when I’m here, I can meet other herpetologists, get access to research papers.” She stopped. She didn’t think she could keep up the positive-sounding patter for much longer. Any minute now she might even burst into tears, her heart was that heavy.

He didn’t look very enthusiastic. “Maybe.”

“Some people manage long distance relationships for years on end.”
But not for foreve
r,
her little voice told her.

He leaned back, raked his fingers through his hair. “I’d hoped for more than visits. I’d hoped that somehow we could manage to live together.” A rueful smile tugged his mouth. “Never having been in this position before, I suppose I thought everything was possible if I wanted it enough.”

Why was he using the past tense? Didn’t he think there was any hope for them anymore? Did he think everything was over? Or that she was refusing him?

“I want to be with you, too. To live with you,” she said softly. It was true. She hadn’t even realized, until right now, how much she wanted just that. To live with Jace, to wake up with him every morning, feel his warmth beside her. Know he’d be there every day of her life, sharing. But thoughts like that belonged in Never-Never Land. To the world of impossible things. Or to the lives other people lived. Not to her. Not with Jace.

“But you don’t think it’s possible.” His voice was dry.

“Not like this. Not now, anyway. We’ll have to find another way of doing it.”

“Fine. We’ll look for a solution.” He sounded less sure now. As if he were giving up. Carefully he put his cognac down on the low cocktail table beside him. “So. When would you like to leave?”

She bit her lip, agonized, her heart breaking. Did he want her to go as quickly as possible now that the decision had been made? Did he want to get on with his old life now that he knew it wouldn’t work with her? Because it wouldn’t. Not in the long run. “In a few days,” she said as calmly as she could manage.

“You set the date and I’ll make the plane reservation for you.”

There was a long silence. She watched him as he leaned back, closed his eyes wearily. She knew he was hurting. She was hurting, too. But what could she do? Just hope she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

He opened his eyes again, looked down at her, and she saw the warmth had returned. “Alice?”

“Yes?”

“When you get home … just hold off putting that ‘ROOM TO LET’ sign back in the window, okay?”

Someone turned the terrible tinny radio up, and the distorted crackle of music sounded like a bomb in Alice’s ears. She bit into the chocolate chip cookie she’d been holding in her hand for the last half hour and grimaced.

Ma’s cookies, so sweet they made all your teeth ache simultaneously, now tasted like musty old straw in her mouth. No, not even that. Old straw would have tasted good, comparatively speaking. The coffee resembled tepid boiler fluid (even if Alice didn’t have much experience in the tepid boiler fluid department, she reckoned the comparison was pretty close).

All in all, she was having a miserable time at an event she normally enjoyed: Shorty Leap’s annual garage sale. The garage sale was the next most important social event in Blake’s Folly after the Get-Together. True, it wasn’t a social event that would ever hit the Beautiful People pages of fashion magazines, but as far as old-fashioned fun went, it usually wasn’t bad.

Except this year. This year, it was just awful.

How could you have fun if you were wasting away with a broken heart?

“I hear that lodger of yours has moved on,” said Mick Fletcher, her watery blue eyes full of commiseration as she swigged back her beer.

The last thing Alice wanted — or needed — was commiseration. And pity.

“That’s right,” she said, and tried to look as indifferent as possible. At the same moment she was mentally kicking herself for about the one-thousandth time. If only she’d been smart enough to keep Jace as lodger material and nothing else. True, she would have missed out on a relationship of incredible emotional importance. At the same time, she would also have kept her heart intact, her life narrow but well under control.

But no. She’d had to go and fall hook, line and sinker in love. With the wrong man.

She sipped at the boiler fluid. Awful tasting, it might well be, but it was a load better than the solid core of misery turning her inside out.

“Gone back to Detroit, has he?”

“Chicago. Jace lives in Chicago, not Detroit.”
Hell
. She didn’t even want to talk about him. It just hurt too much. “Great coffee, huh?”

But it was easier diverting a guided missile than a good, old-fashioned Blake’s Folly gossip. “Everyone figured he’d be staying on.” Mick’s eyes narrowed.

“Well they figured wrong, didn’t they,” Alice snapped. “Perhaps
everyone
should have asked me outright instead of just figuring.”

Blatantly ignoring her comment, Mick was determined to continue. “Yep, figured he’d stick around, what with the Winterback becoming a tourist center and all that.” She leaned in closer and peered into Alice’s face for the
coup de grace
. “I hear you’re gonna do a snake show. You can make a bundle doing that. Friend of mine’s uncle’s cousin over at Tonopah did a thing with trained moles. Almost got on cable.”

Alice shuddered at the idea of what a mole show might be. Then, a painful image of herself dressed in a spangled leotard and plastic tiara trudged through her mind.
A snake show?
This time rumor was around thirty million miles short of the truth.

“No I’m not going to do a snake show. The Winterback Mine has been declared a conservation area. I’m setting up a snake education program and a protection zone.”

Mick’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re not gonna let them things wiggle over this way?”

Alice tried not to sigh too loudly and reminded herself, yet again, that education begins at home. Pretty well every single resident in Blake’s Folly would be bound to ask her that very same question over the next hundred years or so.

“Don’t worry, Mick. We’re just as interested in keeping the creatures in the reserve as you are.”

The project for the conservation area had panned out perfectly. The job offer had come just a few weeks after her return from Chicago. Alice should have been thrilled. She’d tried to feel thrilled — but then the dead misery had come floating back in again.

Look on the good side of things
, she’d ordered herself.
Now you’ll have enough money to live on without struggling, and you’ll earn that money by doing exactly what you love.

“Folks here reckoned that there lodger of yours would be staying on, the way he fixed the house up and all.”

Alice plunked her cup of tepid boiler fluid down on the Formica table in front of her. Why was she drinking this awful stuff? She turned to glare at Mick.

“
Folks
should mind their own business. Besides, Jace’s work is in Chicago. He’s a writer, he teaches at the university there, and he runs a publishing program. He had to go back sometime, you know. He couldn’t spend his life out here gnawing spindly groat weed. And I couldn’t stay in Chicago because I’m working out here. I love it here and mean to stay put. Chicago is thousands of miles away from Blake’s Folly. In more ways than one.”

Jace obviously meant to stay put too. There was no more talk of permanence when they’d spoken — far too occasionally for her own comfort — on the phone. He missed her, he said. He loved her. She missed him too. When would they see each other again? During his summer holidays? Summer still seemed like light years away.

Mick’s eyes, watery blue, were watching her steadily. “That ain’t no reason.”

“What ain’t —
isn’t
— any reason?” muttered Alice. She was losing the thread of the conversation.

“Distance ain’t.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Thought so once. But it ain’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alice asked testily. She didn’t want to talk about this, did she? Not with Mick Fletcher of all people. Not with anyone. Still, talking about things seemed to take a little hopelessness out of the situation. Just mentioning Jace’s name, as painful as it was, made him seem to be a little closer, as if he’d just slipped out of the room for a moment or two.

“Thought distance made a difference once upon a time. When I met Harry Breem back in fifty-four. He were from down Three Stones way. Lived in a beat-up old trailer with no more cash to his name than fleas to a glass of milk. Earned just about enough to keep hisself in cheap socks an’ boxer shorts by catching rats.”