All for a Story (25 page)

“That’s if she exposes me.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Monica grew silent and tried to hide her scowling ruminations.

“So you think it’s best I don’t write about the photograph at all?”

“As your editor, yes.”

“Well, I guess that’s all that matters.”

“May I offer one bit of noneditor advice? More like brotherly?”

Something in his voice made her dread what might come next, but she said, “Sure,” fully prepared to defend herself.

“They seem like nice girls.”

“Oh, they are. The nicest, as a matter of fact.” Her tone, however, swapped his sincerity for sarcasm.

“What I mean is maybe there’s no story here. What if all you have is a nice bunch of girls who want to live a nice, normal life?”

“Unlike me?”

Now it was his turn to engage in a few silent steps. “I know you’re dying to expose hypocrisy, but they seem sincere. Harmless, even.”

She didn’t dare stop beside him, lest the digging of her heels would root her in this place, clearly in view of Alice Reighly’s home. “I happen to disagree with her and her ‘rules.’”

“Which you made abundantly clear in your column. I don’t see what more there is to say. Maybe it would be better for you not to go back at all.”

“So now are you my editor? Or my brother?”

“A friend. Nothing more. And for the record, I think you’re a nice girl too.”

“Careful,” she said. “Only one of us should be fooled at a time. Back to the office, then?”

“Nope,” he said, making no attempt to hide his grin. “Remember? You said you’d owe me. That I could even take you to church.”

“And you said it was Thursday. Which it still is, by the way.”

“I want to go to the cathedral. The National Cathedral,” he added when she seemed at first to be confused. “Uncle Edward wrote to me about its construction, rather fascinated with the process. He even went to the peace service they held there after the war.”

“I can’t imagine Ed Moore attending a church service.”

“Some men are quiet about their faith, I guess. Anyway, I’d like to go. What do you say?”

“Are you paying the bus fare for both of us?”

He fetched a handful of coins from his pocket. “Will this get us there and back?”

Monica shrugged. “If not, what better place for a nice girl to stay?”

At last he made a third appearance on the summit of the tower of the great bell: from thence he seemed to show exultingly to the whole city the fair creature he had saved.

VICTOR HUGO,
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

IT WAS A TWENTY-MINUTE RIDE on an overly warm, crowded bus. Everybody on board seemed content to be silent, so Max and Monica joined them. It would never be like this in Los Angeles, where strangers openly —and loudly —bragged about their dreams and ambitions, mostly hoping that someone would overhear and make them come true. Here was a mixed bag of age and gender living stoic agendas.

Five minutes into the ride, Monica leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and let her mouth gape open slightly to allow the smallest of snores. He thought briefly about nudging her awake; after all, she might not appreciate being left in so vulnerable a state, but it was the first chance he’d had to look at her. A long, luxurious, open study of this woman who had drilled her way into
his life. Here, he could see her youth as her face relaxed into something softer than she would ever allow. He tried to imagine her eyes without the dark shadow and black mascara that now dusted the top of her cheek. Her lips, so carefully painted, lost their drama in the soft parting of sleep.

In the midst of this reverie, a new concern overtook him. Why would she succumb to such sleep in the middle of the afternoon? On a bus, no less? His mind went to unpleasant places, picturing her in one predicament after another. A dark, smoky club. Drinking, dancing —and he’d danced with her before, so he knew how dangerous that could be.

She shifted and fell against his shoulder. Of all the times they’d touched —and he could clearly recall every single touch —this was the most satisfying. No guile, no defenses. He wanted to absorb the feel of her weight against him, and he prayed for a smooth ride.

His heart longed to pray for other things, too. Mostly that this would be a repeated scenario, her sleeping next to him. Neither of his parents would have approved, of course, and his years working with Sister Aimee did nothing to make him see this as a spiritually beneficial match.

“Your helpmeet is your partner in your journey with Christ,”
she’d said on more than one occasion.
“When our Savior makes his triumphant return to gather his church, do you want to be snatched away? To leave that man or woman with whom you’ve woven your years alone to suffer through the Tribulation to follow?”

The smell of Monica’s perfume wafted to his nose, and he smiled at the thought of it lingering on the shoulder of his coat. Her scent, woven in.

Lord forgive him, but he wanted her.

At the first screech of brakes, Monica startled awake, immediately bringing the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a
yawn. She took her time pulling away, revealing the imprint of his jacket on her cheek.

“Rested?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, now holding her fingers to cover the scar of sleep. “I was up half the night —”

“I don’t need to know —”

“
Reading
, silly. The book you lent me.
The Enchanted April
.”

“That good?”

She put on an aristocratic pose and said, “Enchanting, dahling,” in a British accent so terrible he had to laugh at it.

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Is this our stop?”

She strained to look out the window. “Yes. It’ll be a block or so walk from here. But I could use the air. How about you?”

“Indeed.”

When the bus came to its final, shuddering halt, they joined the others in the press to exit, and he filled his lungs with the cool, refreshing air once his feet hit the ground.

As usual, Monica took the lead, making him long for a time when they could be somewhere
she
could follow
him
. Maybe California, though she’d already made her feelings clear about that. Best to go someplace they’d never been, where they’d be on equal ground. New York City, perhaps. Or Chicago. Or now that the war was over, even Europe, like all the other great writers.

“. . . Italy,” she was saying. “And these women just pick up, pack up, and go. I could do that, you know. There’s nothing holding me here. No family, no job —well, not one that I can’t take with me, right? I could save my allowance, sell everything, and be in Paris by springtime. How long do you think I could last on four hundred bucks?”

“You? Forever. Some penniless baron would fall madly in love with you and whisk you off to his castle.” He was only half joking.
The fact that he’d seen her in two different fur coats proved that girls like Monica didn’t need a lot of their own money to live.

“Forget that,” she said with a dismissive air. “
Penniless
isn’t my cup of tea.”

“Are you calling yourself a gold digger?”

“Not so much gold, but definitely green. Nothing makes a girl happy like a little extra lettuce, you know?”

She took his arm in the now-ubiquitous way she had, and he slowed his steps to match her shorter stride. If he’d hoped for a little firsthand history about the cathedral’s construction or its impact on the city, he was in for a disappointment. Besides the occasional comment about a passing woman’s hat, Monica remained oddly subdued. By the time they stood in front of the massive structure, she’d fallen completely silent and her shoes had turned to anvils.

“Are you sure we can go in?” Her grip on his arm was as tight as her voice. “I mean, is it open?”

“It’s a church,” he said, hoping he sounded more reassuring than condescending. “Churches are always open.”

“I dunno.” She let go of him, stepped back, and craned her neck to take in the sky-touching Gothic structure. “That’s a lot of ceiling to come crashing down.”

He reached for the door. “I’ll take my chances.”

She immediately contorted her body, dropping one shoulder and looking up at him with a twisted mouth and one droopy eye.

“Sanctuary . . .” She drew the word out in a low, husky voice, pawing at the door with a limp, clawlike hand. When he didn’t respond, she stood upright and made a show of patting her face back into its original form. “Lon Chaney?
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
?”

“Ah. I’ve read the book; haven’t seen the movie.”

“Nobody has, yet. I just saw the pictures in
Movie Weekly
. Gave me the shivers.”

She demonstrated with an actual shiver, and he pictured her beside him in a darkened theater, the screen filled with the image of a terrifying monster and his arm holding her close.

“Well, then,” he said, chasing the image away, “maybe you should skip that one. See a Buster Keaton instead.”

“Not a chance.” She breezed past him, this time lifting her hands to tap an imaginary tambourine to accompany her gypsy twirl. “It’s my favorite love story.”

“That’s impossible. It’s tragic.”

“Fine,” she said with an air of concession. “It’s my favorite tragedy. But think of it. La Esmeralda is so beautiful, but she’s awful. I mean, really not a kind person at all. And yet, all these men —they love her.”

“They
want
her,” Max corrected, drawing from memory. “There’s a difference.”

“Not Quasi.” She smiled, as if she held a personal fondness for the misshapen hero. “And he knows he could never have her, he knows he would never be able to enjoy her
beauty
, but in the end he shouts his love to the city.” She resumed her caricature and pawed pitifully at his sleeve, saying, “‘There is everything I have ever loved.’”

“But she was already dead.”

She resumed her small, authoritative stature. “Then he shouldn’t have waited.”

Inside the vestibule, a conservatively dressed woman took their coats and Max’s hat and, speaking in a half whisper, directed them toward the entrance to Bethlehem Chapel. They thanked her, with Monica adding a self-conscious move rather like a curtsy. Not sure whether or not she intended the gesture to be a joke, he stifled a good-natured laugh.

She’s nervous,
he thought, justifying his own spark of
queasiness. He tried to brace himself, but the first step on the marble tile took his breath, and he didn’t catch it again until he felt Monica’s small, cold hand in his.

“Golly,” she said, and he found it to be the perfect word for the moment, full of a childlike awe at the pure majesty surrounding them.

The walls were made of massive stone —limestone, if he recalled correctly from Uncle Edward’s letters —fitted together in smooth, almost seamless perfection. Stained-glass windows set within their own arched alcoves lined the walls, and the ceiling stretched high above a series of Gothic arches stretching to the grandeur of the altar at the front.

Monica stepped away and went to the first of the massive columns lining the center aisle.

“It feels ancient,” she said, pressing her hand against the stone. “Like something medieval.”

He closed the space between them. “You’ve really never been here before?”

She shook her head. “I’ve only ever been to church a couple of times since my confirmation. Christmas, mostly. Midnight Mass.” She looked around. “Where do you suppose they keep the confessionals in this place?”

“They don’t have those here. It’s not a Catholic church.”

“Good thing,” she said with the little laugh he recognized as something she did when attempting bravado. “We’d be here awhile. Maybe ’til after dark, and you might not catch the right bus home.”

She was leaning back against the column, her pale skin awash in the lavender light of the stained-glass windows.

He leaned forward, close enough to feel the cool emanating from the stone. “You shouldn’t talk that way about yourself.”

“What way?”

“I don’t believe for a minute that you’re half as scandalous as you say. I don’t know why you’re trying so hard to convince us all of your own mythology.”

“Is that what you’d like to believe?”

There was a shift in the light coming from outside —a cloud drifting, most likely —and a new prism of color graced the top of her cheek.

“It’s what I know. You see, every now and then, this charming little girl makes her way straight to the surface. She’s who you are deep inside.”

“You don’t know anything at all.” She brushed past him and stood in the aisle. “What’s that up there?”

“That’s the altar.”

She batted his sleeve. “I’m not a total dummy. I mean —” she leaned forward, squinting —“I can’t tell . . .”

“Come on.” He touched his hand to her waist and they made a strolling ascent amid the sea of plain wooden chairs. An elderly woman pushing a dust mop appeared from a door at the front of the chapel and, upon seeing them, leaned on its handle to watch.

“We’d better be careful,” Monica said, speaking out of the side of her mouth. “People might get the wrong idea.”