Moments In Time (7 page)

Before Maggie could respond, Rick appeared out of nowhere, and J.D. grinned broadly, knowing that he need not be concerned about having Lindy on his hands for the rest of the evening.

“Can I get one of those?” Rick asked the waitress as she put J.D.’s drink on the table and he pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’ve been sent as a one-man delegation to talk you two into joining us back at the hotel. The rest of the guys think it’s criminal that you’ve kept Maggie to yourself these past few days. You’re welcome to come, too, of course,” he added to Lindy, not for a second oblivious to the beautiful blonde with the million-dollar smile and the big blue eyes seated next to Maggie.

They sat and talked but were constantly interrupted by fans passing the table who could not resist stopping and telling them how great the show had been. After a long fifteen minutes, J.D. turned to Maggie and said, “Let’s go home.”

“Oh, Maggie
…”
Lindy
pleaded with her.

“Doesn’t mean you have to leave, Lindy. You want to come over to the hotel with me?” Rick flashed his best smile.

He didn’t have to ask her twice. With a wink in Maggie’s direction, Lindy rose and draped her jacket over her shoulder. Rick appeared bewitched as all five feet ten inches of the perfectly proportioned leggy blonde emerged from the chair.

“Last chance, J.D.” Still mesmerized by the incredible legs barely covered by Lindy’s short skirt, Rick obviously couldn’t have cared less at that point what J.D. would do with the rest of the evening.

“Thanks anyway.” J.D. shook his head. “Ready, Maggie?”

Traffic was heavier than she’d anticipated. The long line of cars waiting for the br
idge seemed to take forever to
move, the river of headlights flowing slowly to the roadway below. They stopped at a light, and J.D. put his hand on the back of her neck, tracing little circles on her skin with his fingers. She felt the heat from him in even the small touch
and wished the light would turn. That dizziness he always made her feel washed over her, her body
responding down to her toes.

“Are we almost there?” he asked, the twinkle
in his eyes
clearly in
dicating what was on his mind.

She cleared he
r throat. “A few more blocks.”

“Good.”

By the time she’d unlocked the apartment door, the
anticipation was unbearable.

They were half in the hallwa
y, half in the doorway to her
bedroom. The hall light was on, the rest of the apartment in darkness. He pushed her jacket off over her shoulders, and she left it on the floor where it landed. He reached for her, and they
held each other.

“I do not want a beer, just in case you were about to ask,” he teased, then kissed her ne
ck, starting under one ear and
moving around her throat to th
e other, then kissed lower on
her neck, then lower. She thought she’d die from the ache that was growing rapidly i
nside her. She moved backward
into the room, backed up to the bed, and he took every step with her, still kissing her, his hands undressing her and hers undressing him. She prayed she would not black out, as she feared she might, from the unbelievable r
ush that was overtaking her.

Afterward, they lay in the darkness with only the light
from the street lamp outsi
de the window to illumine the
room, listening to each other’s breathing, still holding on to eac
h other. Neither could let go.

“Shazzam,” he said finally, and she laughed. He rubbed the side of her face with his and murmured, “That was so
good,
Maggie, so good.”

She ran
her fingers through his hair, trying to find her
voice.

“Ah, Maggie, this is how I want to spend my life. Sing for a few hours every night, come back here, and make love to you, just like this.” He nuzzled her face.

“Jamey, do all the guys in your band use drugs?” she asked unexpectantly.

Startled, he looked down at her. “What? Well, yes, I suppose they do to one degree or another.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he admitted, wondering what had caused her to ask.

“To what degree?”

“Sometimes to a very high degree.”

“Why?” she ignored his play on words.

He pondered the question for a moment. “I don’t know, I never really gave it much thought. I guess because sometimes there’s nothing else to do. Because sometimes the whole thing gets to me, and the loneliness is more than
I
can deal with and nothing else makes it go away.”

“You could kill yourself.”

“I don’t use things that could kill me.”

“What do you use?”

“Most
l
y hashish.”

“I don’t understand why someone like you needs to do that.”

“Maggie, it’s so easy for you to sit there and say that, so easy for you to pass judgment. You have a pretty nice life, you know? A good job, your apartment, friends who are always there for you. Look, you have no concept of what it’s like to be on the road for eight, ten months in a row. It takes me weeks to recover from it every time. It is the loneliest life you could imagine. You never have the time to establish any relationship that can last, because you’re never in one place long enough to really get to know someone well enough to develop any kind of connection that—”

He stopped in midsentence as she tensed slightly.

“Oh, no, Maggie, no, no, I didn’t mean this time. This time is different. You’re different. I’ve never met anyone who’s made me feel the way you do. I don’t understand it, and I don’t know why it’s happened, but I swear it’s never
happened to me before. All these years, it’s never happened like this.”

“Jamey, you don’t have to say things
that
…
”

“Maggie, it’s the truth. And the real truth is that it scares me to death. I don’t know what to do about you.”

He ran his fingers up and down her arm absentmindedly, the silence building with the tension that spread through her. She’d tried to find words to ease the situation, not wanting to hear him utter some stock line, but she could not think of one intelligent thing to say, and so she lay in his arms, fighting a sudden, unexplainable urge to cry.

“Maggie,” he said after a time, “over the past ten years I’ve been with dozens of women, some whose names I didn’t even know, and I never gave a damn if I ever saw any of them again. Being with you is
different
…
I don’t think I ever made love with anyone in my life until last night. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“It won’t end with tonight, you know that, don’t you?”

She nodded slowly and, without a word, drew him to her again. When they both fell asleep, much later that night, they were both at peace.

“
J
esus!” J.D. woke with a jolt. “What the hell was that?”

Maggie had gotten out of bed and accidently knocked over the table holding the lamp and phone, all of which crashed to the floor. J.D. put his pillow over his head.

“Sorry.” She giggled as she retrieved the fallen items. “I’m so sorry.”

“What time is it, dare I ask?” The voice from under the pillow was muffled.

“It’s six-thirty.”

“Why are we up so early?” he grumbled, emerging from beneath the pink-and-blue-flowered pillow to look at her.

“I can’t help it. My body is just used to getting up at an early hour.”

“I think a bit of reprogramming is in order,” he muttered somewhat crankily.

Laughing, she went into the bathroom and, when she
came out, found him watching the doorway for her. She smiled and walked into the room.

“Want some coffee?”

“Too early,” he shook his head. “I don’t want to wake up yet.”

“You have to wake up. You have to come with me when I leave today, you know. I’ll drop you off at the hotel. Do you know what time the bus is leaving?”

“No, but they won’t go without me.”

“Come on.” She poked him. “You have to get up, Jamey.”

“Why don’t you come back to bed for a while? We have plenty of time.” He reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her down to him.

“Maybe for ten minutes…”

“Don’t put that kind of pressure on me, Maggie. Ten
minutes isn’t quite enough…
”

T
he ride to the hotel was a bleak one, neither he nor she could think of anything to say. He kept his hand on her shoulder the whole way, memorizing her face and all its expressions. Before they knew it, they were in the hotel parking lot, and she had pulled up near to the entrance to the building.

He made no move to get out of the car, simply rubbed her shoulder as if his touch could tell her the things that eluded words.

“Jamey, I have to get to work.” She did not meet his eyes. Her voice was low and a little shaky.

“Maggie, I’ll call you…
”

She tried to smile good-naturedly.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not a line, Maggie,” he protested. “Do you really think I could walk away from you and never come back?”

He leaned over and held her face, studied it, kissed it.

“Come on, lover boy. The bus is leaving. We were wondering when you’d show up.” Rick tapped on the window. “Good morning, Maggie.”

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

M
AGGIE’S HEAD WAS BEGINNING TO POUND.
T
HE
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?

* * * * *

T
hree 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 thin
g that ever happened to me…
” She nibbled slowly, tr
ying 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 fo
r 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’l
l 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.