Flashback (1988) (13 page)

“Zack, out by the camper before you said, ‘No strings attached.’ Does that promise apply if we make love—right here, right now?”

“It applies.” He slid his hand beneath her blouse and over her breast. Her nipple hardened instantly to his touch. “Whatever’s going on, I just want to make it better.”

“You’re making it better,” she said.

Again and again, they kissed. There was an urgency and hunger in her lips and her touch. Zack knew that it was the secret of her sadness that was driving her into his arms. He knew that, this night at least, she needed him rather than loved him.

But this night, at least, it was more than enough.

She helped him slip off his shirt and nestled her face against the hair on his chest.

“Slowly,” she pleaded. “Just make it last. Please, just make it last.”

Zack undid the buttons of her blouse, pausing between each one to kiss her lips and her wonderful breasts, then eased off her jeans. He worked his moistened fingertips over her nipples, then down her belly, along the edge of her soft hair, and finally to the tense nubbin of her clitoris.

“Touch me here,” she murmured. “Two fingers. That’s it. Oh, God, Zachary, that’s it.”

Moment by moment, what questions he had faded in the smoothness of her skin and in her craving for him. With every touch, every kiss, he felt himself drawn closer to her.

He brushed his lips over her ankles and along the softness of her inner thighs, and then he drew his tongue over her again and again.

She dug her nails into the skin of his back, pulling him even more tightly against her. “Don’t stop. Oh, don’t stop yet.”

She was an angel—at once vulnerable and knowing, chaste and worldly wise. And making love with her was unlike anything Zachary had ever experienced in his life.

She drew his face to hers as she eased him onto his back, caressing him, then sucking on him until he begged her to let up.

“Now, Zachary,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. “You’re so wonderful. Please, do it now.”

They made love—slowly at first, and then more fervidly; each immersed in the other; each focused on pleasing, rather than being pleased.

Darkness settled in across the valley. Far below them, the lights of Sterling flickered like so many stars, mirroring the expanse overhead.

“Zachary, what time is it?”

“Midnight. A little after, actually.”

They were half dressed, bundled in the blanket against a slight, early morning chill. The connection between them had already transcended their lovemaking, and each minute, every second, it grew.

“Do you know,” she said, “that in my entire life I have never come like that? What a wonderful rush.”

He kissed her on the neck, then on the lips. “It must have been that chardonnay.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, buttoning her jeans. “How foolish of me to overlook that. Next time we’ll have to try it without the wine. A controlled experiment. Just to be sure.”

“My mountain?”

She laughed. “Your mountain it will be. You know, I keep saying it, but you are really a very kind and very sweet man.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I only hope you’ll still respect me in the morning. Believe it or not, making love like this
is
a bit beyond my usual first-date fare.”

“Not to worry,” he said. “Doing what one wants in situations like this is a payback for all of the headaches and responsibilities of having to be a grown-up.”

Her expression darkened. “Zachary, I’d like you to know what’s going on—why I’ve been acting so weird all night. Well, almost all night.”

“Listen, it’s perfectly all right if—”

“No. I want to. Besides, by tomorrow night you’ll know anyhow.”

She rolled onto her back, took his hand, and guided it to her right breast. “The upper, outer quadrant,” she said. “Fairly deep.”

It took his fingers only a moment to find the lump—a disclike mass, the diameter, perhaps, of a half dollar, and as hard as the sidewall of a tire; which was to say, too hard. His first impulse was to reassure her, to label the mass a cyst. But he
knew better. There was, without a biopsy, absolutely no way to tell.

Suddenly the whole night—her distraction, her mood swings, their passion, everything—made sense.

“How long since you first felt this?” he asked.

He ached for what he now realized she was going through. If, at that moment, the lump were offered as an exam question with only one correct answer, he would have to call it trouble, all the way down the line.

And so, he knew, would she.

“A month. Six weeks now, I guess,” she said. “There’s been no change over that time. Mammograms were equivocal. A needle biopsy came back normal breast tissue,’ and rather than go through that procedure a second time, I elected to go ahead with an excision, and, if necessary, a modified radical.”

“When?”

“I’m going in tomorrow evening. Surgery’s scheduled for Friday morning. And in case you couldn’t tell, I’m scared stiff.”

He held her tightly.

“I’m just grateful you didn’t send me away tonight, that’s all. You’ve made arrangements for Jennifer?”

“My partner in the gallery is going to take her. She has a son two years older than Jen.”

“Good. It’s going to be okay, you know.”

Suzanne nodded grimly. “Just keep reminding me. I tell you, being a physician, I just know too goddamn much. And I’ll tell you something else: no matter how much you read, no matter how many Donahue shows you watch, the prospect of what might happen just doesn’t compute.”

“It’s going to be okay,” he said again, forcing conviction into his voice. “You’ve got a friend who’s going to be with you all night tomorrow. Will they be doing the excision under local?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “The anesthesiologist and surgeon both recommended general. And frankly, I was relieved.”

“Who’s the anesthesiologist?”

“Pearl. Jack Pearl.”

“Good. He did my case this morning. He’s a little on the weird side, I think; sort of like a character out of a Gothic horror novel. But he sure as hell knows what he’s doing in the O.R. And the surgeon?”

Suzanne sighed.

“It’s your friend from this morning,” she said. “Jason
Mainwaring. Whatever you might think of him, Zack, he’s by far the best technician around.”

“So I’ve heard. Well, I only hope his skill in the O.R. is more highly advanced than his skills in interpersonal relations.”

“Oh, it is.”

“In that case,” Zack said, “we’ve only got one thing to worry about, right?”

8

Frank Iverson’s office was a spacious two-room suite on the ground floor of the west wing—the newest addition to the hospital. From his spot in one of three leather easy chairs, Zachary watched his brothers two secretaries go about their business with prim efficiency. One of the women was dark, with an air of sophistication and polish. The other was blond and wholesome. Both were young, well built, and remarkably good-looking—far beyond the run-of-the-mill in any setting, but near goddesses by Sterlings standards.

Gorgeous secretaries, a plush office, big-money business deals, a Porsche 911, a spectacular hillside A-frame—the man certainly had style, Zack mused. And while that particular style was not one Zack had ever really wished for himself, Frank had clearly come a hell of a long way from fraternity beer blasts.

Fifty percent identical
. With each passing year, it seemed, the two of them were becoming less and less a validation of that genetic truth.

Still, there was a time, Zack knew, when their drives and their goals were not nearly so divergent, a time when the two brothers careened through their world along virtually parallel tracks, guided only by the beacons of early success: trophies, ribbons, medallions, and adulation.

It had become something of a game for him—a recurring daydream—to imagine his life had he
not
fallen that winter day, had the ligaments of his young knee
not
shredded.

Accidents. Illness. The violent, uncaring acts of others. The daydream, as always, led him to acknowledging how fragile life was—how totally beyond control. A patch of ice, the fraction of an inch, and suddenly, in one agonizing instant, the blinders were stripped away from his protected view of life; his unswerving track was transformed into a twisting, rutted path negotiable only one uncertain step at a time.

Zack’s eyes closed as he drifted back to that day. He was in a
perfect spot, racing after Frank. Three seconds was a lot, but nothing he couldn’t have made up—especially with his brother being so uncharacteristically cautious on his second run.

And he wanted it. He wanted it more than he would ever admit to anyone—even, he reflected, to himself.

The colors, the packed snow, the sudden disappearance of the steady crosswind that had been blowing all day—it was a moment frozen forever in his memory. The conditions were perfect for an upset, for a demonstration to all that Zachary Iverson had suddenly come into his own. The Judge, their mother, and most of the town, it seemed, were gathered along the slope, anticipating his run.

Waiting beyond the red and blue pennants marking the slalom course was a wonderful trophy, a savings bond, a trip to the Junior Olympics, and a huge piece of the praise and newsprint that he had watched being heaped on his older brother over the years.

It was time. It was, at last,
his
moment,
his
run.

He checked the course below. No problems. A few final seconds to mentally chart his line, and he lowered his goggles and glided to the electronic starting gate.

Then, suddenly, he stopped.

Something was wrong. Something simply didn’t feel right. His boot? The wax? No, he realized at the last possible second, it was his ski—his right ski. Somehow, the binding on it had come loose.

He backed away and made the necessary adjustment on the screw, cursing himself for not being more meticulous in his preparation in the first place. The oversight could have been ruinous.

But now there was nothing to stop him. It was his run, and there was nothing but two minutes of skiing between him and Colorado.

Nothing, that was, except a small patch of ice.

Zack shuddered and sensed his body recoil and stiffen as he relived some of the pain and helplessness of that fall, the bouncing and tumbling over and over again down the matted slope.

The loose binding, while never a factor, had certainly been an omen.

“Dr. Iverson, can I get you something? Some coffee?” It was one of Franks bookend secretaries—the blonde, scrubbed and sensual. The prototypical farmer’s daughter.

The impotence and anguish lingered for a moment, and then drifted away. Unconsciously, Zack rubbed at the still-hypersensitive scar that ran along his knee.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “No, thanks.”

He checked the time. Just four o’clock. Three forty-five, Frank had said; he had been quite specific about the time.

Zack had a consultation waiting and a small stack of paperwork in his office. Suzanne was due to sign herself into the hospital in less than two hours. The last thing in the world he needed at that moment was a meeting with Frank. However, the invitation had been couched in words that made it difficult for him to beg off, even for a day.

The fifteen-minute wait, while very annoying, was hardly surprising. Frank had never been one to pay too much attention to the schedules of others.

“Excuse me,” Zack said to the secretary, “do you have any idea how much longer he’s going to be?”

The woman smiled blandly. “No, Dr. Iverson, I’m sorry, I don’t. But it shouldn’t be too much longer. Mr. Iverson is on the line with the Ultramed mainframe computer in Boston. He talks to it every day.” She sounded very proud to be working for someone who regularly talked to a mainframe computer. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee? Or a Coke?”

Zack shook his head. “What I’d like,” he said, standing, “is to reschedule this appointment for a time when he’s able to keep it. Just tell my brother to have me paged when he’s through, okay?”

“That won’t be necessary, old shoe,” Franks voice boomed from the intercom on the blonde’s desk. “I was just calling Annette to have her send you in. The doors open.”