Not Quite an Angel (10 page)

“He was a child, Adam. Children are the only hope for the future, and this boy doesn't even have a home.”

He took a deep breath and started again. “What I mean is, a situation like that could be dangerous. Kids like Troy are often on drugs. He might not have had any qualms about pulling a knife on you, or walking off with Delilah's stereo.”

She shook her head. “He wasn't like that. He was just a hungry and confused little boy.”

He frowned at her. “You still shouldn't have taken him home. There's no way of telling whether he's just a kid down on his luck or whether he'll come back with a gang and trash the house.”

“Of course there is. I checked him out thoroughly.” Her chin tilted assertively. “I'm not a fool, Adam. Before I came, I was given intensive grounding in detecting and dealing with the violence and turbulence your society is undergoing. I wouldn't put Delilah at risk in any way. Troy's a good boy, and now I don't even know where to find him. He ran off down the alley after Violet hollered at him.”

Thank God for small blessings, Adam thought as he paid the bill.

They went to a movie, a newly released romantic comedy in which the heroine's mother happened to be psychic. Sameh loved it. Was he becoming paranoid, Adam wondered,
or was he really being bombarded by elements straight out of the twilight zone?

When they came out of the theater, night had fallen, but the air was hot and dry. Adam took Sameh's hand and they strolled down the neon-lit boulevard in search of somewhere to have a cool drink. They turned a corner, and Sameh bumped headlong into a woman wearing high-cut shorts, low-cut halter and five-inch heels. The small purse she was carrying slid across the sidewalk, flying open and scattering condoms, makeup and some small change in a wide arc. A prostitute. A thousand emotions skittered through Adam's mind as she cursed at Sameh, crouching down to snatch up her belongings.

Sameh wrenched her hand from Adam's grasp and knelt too, collecting lipsticks and condoms, clumsier than ever with her bandaged hand. “I'm so sorry. I'm accident prone,” she apologized in a contrite tone. “I was talking to Adam and didn't even see you. There, I think we've got all of it,” she said, scooping the collection she held into the woman's handbag. The two of them rose to their feet, the hooker giving Adam the once-over and staring at Sameh with a suspicious frown on her heavily made-up face. “We were just going to have a cold drink. Would you like one, too? It's awfully hot tonight.”

Adam's stomach contracted.

The woman licked her lips and grinned. “I get it,” she drawled. “You wanna party, right?”

“Get lost,” Adam snarled at her, tugging on Sameh's hand.

Sameh ignored him. “No party, thank you,” she said to the woman. She was as polite as she might have been refusing a box of Girl Scout cookies. “I just thought maybe you were thirsty.”

The hooker was staring at Sameh.

“Let's go, Sameh.” Adam had hold of Sameh's arm now, and he tugged on it, trying to hurry her on down the street.

But Sameh slipped from his grasp again, walking back toward the other woman, reaching out and touching her arm, smiling into her eyes. “Maybe we'll meet again sometime. I hope so,” she said in a soft voice. She took the woman's hand and held it against her cheek for a long moment in a strange, intimate gesture.

When they walked away, Adam could feel the prostitute's eyes boring into his back the whole way down the street. When he finally had them seated in a small café, Adam drank half his mugful of beer before he felt able to say anything coherent. “What the hell were you doing, buddying up to a hooker that way?” he finally managed to blurt out.

Sameh shrugged and sipped her lemonade. “She's a person, a human being, another woman. I knocked into her. Why shouldn't I be polite to her?”

Adam's hands were trembling, and he clutched the glass so Sameh wouldn't see. “Look, take my word for it, she's not the type of woman you want as a personal friend, that's why the hell not.”

Sameh frowned at him, tipping her head to the side and studying him with an intensity that unnerved him. It took an immense effort of will to meet her questioning gaze. As he'd learned to do long before, he slammed shut all the gates to his memories, to his past and, as always, took refuge in sexuality.

He reached across and ran a finger lightly down her cheek, allowing his thumb to slowly, sensually, trace the voluptuous curves of her mouth, filling his mind with the way it felt to cover those moist, full lips with his own. Her eyes widened, and for one intoxicating moment, he felt the
sexual tension between them crackle and snap like a live electrical wire.

As if she'd been burned, Sameh jerked her head back. “Friends, Adam, remember?” There was warning in her voice, but there was also a slight tremor.

Reluctant now, he withdrew his hand. He gave her a lopsided, regretful smile and nodded. “Friends, Sameh.”

Just as he'd hoped it would be, the issue of the prostitute was forgotten.

 

S
ATURDAY HE TOOK HER
to an amusement park and then out for dinner in Chinatown. And at the end of the day—a day in which he'd had more uncomplicated fun than he could ever remember having—he heard himself asking if she'd like to come with him on Sunday when he went to the nursing home for his weekly visit with Myles.

Myles was an old friend, he explained, wondering all of a sudden if he'd taken leave of his senses, asking her to come with him. It wasn't as though he'd never introduced any of his women to Myles, he rationalized. Over the years, it was inevitable that one female or another might be on hand when his old friend stopped by.

Since Myles's illness, though, Adam had always visited the rest home alone. But now he didn't want to spend Sunday away from Sameh.

 

H
E STARTED HAVING
second thoughts Sunday afternoon, however, when they walked through the wide front doors of the comfortable, rather shabby building where Myles lived. Visiting an old man with Alzheimer's wasn't anyone's idea of a fun way to spend a day. Sameh didn't even know Myles. It was crazy, bringing her here, but it was too late now to turn back.

“Hi, Adam.” Vinnie Perkins, one of the nurses usually
on duty when he came, smiled a greeting as they passed the reception area. She had dyed platinum hair, a road map of wrinkles and the kindest eyes in the world. Adam introduced Sameh, who was carrying the bouquet of flowers Adam brought every week.

“I'll get you a vase for those. I just tossed out last week's bouquet. They were finished yesterday.” Myles had always loved flowers, although he paid little attention to them these days.

“Thanks, Vinnie.” He extracted a single rose from the assortment and presented it to the nurse with a courtly bow. She took it and winked at Sameh.

“He could charm the birds out of the trees, this young man of yours,” she confided, her eyes twinkling. “Half my nursing staff's in love with him, but they're all ten years older than I am, so you shouldn't lose any sleep over it, dear.” Vinnie's hearty laugh brought smiles from the residents playing poker at a table in the corner of the cheerful room.

That air of relaxed friendliness and the eternal poker game in the lobby had convinced Adam that this particular facility was the one for Myles. He'd never regretted his decision; what the place lacked in elegance it more than made up for in comfort, and the staff was unfailingly kind.

“How's he doing?” Adam asked the question every Sunday before he went up to Myles's room.

Vinnie sobered and shook her head. “Not too well, I'm afraid. It's been a bad week for him. He's not eating again, poor dear.”

Adam cursed himself for bringing Sameh. On bad days, Myles could either be silent and catatonic, or insultingly vocal and inclined to violence. Either mode was hard for him to take, never mind dragging her into it. Taking Sa
meh's hand, Adam led the way to the elevator, feeling his stomach sink as the first and second floors dinged past on the indicator.

Myles was on the third floor, the one reserved for those with advanced cognitive impairment. A security guard was on duty here, a middle-aged, portly man with a kind face. The patients on this floor tended to wander and needed constant supervision.

“Afternoon, Adam. Hot enough for ya?”

“How's it going, Jim? That leg any better this week?”

Adam chatted with the guard for a while, again introducing Sameh and hiding the mounting anxiety that gnawed at his gut. At last there was nothing left to do but lead the way down the hall and knock on the familiar door. As he'd expected, there was no answer, so after a moment he opened it and led Sameh inside.

“Hello, Myles. I've brought someone to meet you.”

Silence. It was going to be one of the days that Myles didn't recognize him, Adam realized. Such days came with increasing frequency as the disease progressed.

The large room was painted a cheerful lemon yellow, and Adam had hung Myles's favorite pictures on the walls. The wide window overlooked the flower beds and caught the morning sun. Books, magazines and a large collection of videos were stacked on an antique wooden desk, and a complex entertainment unit almost covered one whole wall.

The tall, emaciated figure slouched in the worn leather armchair seemed oblivious to both the pleasant surroundings and the fact that Sameh and Adam had arrived. He was dressed in cotton slacks and a sweatshirt. His pale blue eyes, misty and unfocused, darted from one thing to the next, never settling on any object for more than an instant. He was flipping through a magazine, his long fingers trembling as they restlessly turned the pages.

“What you reading there, Myles?” Adam made his way over to his friend. The magazine Myles held was upside down, and Adam's heart sank. He'd made a grave mistake bringing Sameh here.

Adam cleared his throat and tried to make the best of it. “Myles, I'd like you to meet a friend, Sameh Smith. Sameh, Myles Fontaine.”

There was no indication that Myles had even heard him make the introduction, but Sameh reached out and clasped one of the restless hands in hers. With her other hand, she gently cradled Myles's sunken cheek. “I'm very glad to meet you, Myles Fontaine,” she said in her soothing, musical voice. “Adam has told me you're a special friend of his.”

Myles's gaze darted away as she crouched down to his level, and he began to rock back and forth in an agitated manner. Adam moved closer, worried that Myles might lash out at Sameh unknowingly, as he'd done many times over the past few months, hitting with a strength that belied his fragile appearance.

“Sameh, it might be better to…” Adam's voice trailed off as Sameh released Myles's hand and began to make a curious motion with her cupped palms a few inches away from Myles's head, as if she were scooping the air down and away from his skull. She did this several times and then moved her hands slowly up and down, palms out, all around his head.

Myles became absolutely still. His hands relaxed in his lap and the magazine fell to the floor. Slowly, inch by inch, he raised his head and looked, really looked, at Adam. Recognition shone in the eyes that a moment before had been filled with confusion. A sweet smile curved his mouth.

“Hawk, my boy. How are you? It's good to see you. I've missed you. Where've you been?”

T
HERE WAS BOTH COHERENCE
and genuine pleasure in Myles's weak voice, and for a moment, Adam couldn't answer him. He was dumbfounded at the dramatic change in Myles's condition. In all the months he'd been coming here, he'd never seen the older man go from a state of such utter disorientation to absolute awareness in a matter of seconds, even though the nurses had told him it was possible with this particular disease.

“And who's this lovely creature?”

Adam looked at Sameh. Her eyes sparkled and she was smiling her wide smile. He introduced her all over again, and she grasped the trembling hand that Myles extended. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fontaine.”

“The pleasure's all mine.” His head dipped in a courteous little bow, and he held her hand much longer than necessary. “Please call me Myles, and then I'll feel free to call you Sameh.”

Damned if the old fox wasn't being outright flirtatious.

Adam felt like letting loose with a whoop of pure happiness, but he subdued the urge. His dearest friend was back from somewhere far away, and the pure joy of it damn near brought tears to his eyes.

For the next hour they talked, and Adam had to forcibly remind himself that the creeping darkness might steal over Myles's mind again at any time. He had to guard against too much hope. To let himself believe this sudden respite
was anything but temporary would be devastating when the disease reasserted its hold on his friend, and he understood all too well that it would.

But a quarter hour became a half, half a whole, and still the miracle held.

Myles asked Adam to locate an old photo album in the drawer of his desk, and he and Sameh were now sitting close together on the sofa, poring over the snapshots. Adam sat on a chair nearby, watching the elegant silver head bent so close to the gleaming golden one. A bond had formed between the old man and the young woman, and Adam couldn't have been more pleased.

“How did you two meet?” Sameh tapped a finger on a snap of a very young Adam in military uniform, standing at attention in front of a parade ground, with Myles, also in uniform, beside him. “It looks as if you were both in the military.”

Myles nodded. “Indeed we were. I was an instructor at Robert E. Lee Military Academy near Richmond, Virginia. Adam was enrolled as a student. Despite the difference in our ages, we eventually became friends.”

Myles's explanation left so much out. Adam remembered all too well the angry, incorrigible boy he'd been when he arrived at the academy. It had taken Myles almost a year to penetrate the shell Adam had constructed around himself. It was thanks to Myles that he hadn't been expelled during that year; he'd run away several times, and Myles had bent rules and out-and-out lied to keep him enrolled. Adam had been booted out of numerous other expensive boarding schools before he got to the academy. And he knew that without Myles's intervention, he'd have been drummed out of R.E.L. the first month he was there.

“How old were you when you attended this academy,
Adam? You look so young in these pictures.” Sameh was looking over at him, interest alive in her beautiful face.

“Fifteen.”

She shook her head and frowned. “So very young to be away from your home. Where I come from, we're still very much children at fifteen.” She turned the page and giggled at some new snapshot as Adam thought about her comment.

He'd been fifteen, but he wasn't a child anymore when he was enrolled at R.E.L., and certainly not innocent. For one thing, he'd already had more instruction in how to make love to a woman than most men received in their entire lives. His mother's best friend, Morgan, had seen to that the summer he turned fourteen.

His mouth twisted in an ironic grimace. Nowadays there'd be a song and dance about sexual abuse if it became known that a prostitute in her twenties gave a fourteen-year-old boy intricate and extensive lessons in lovemaking. Morgan had been thorough, no question about it. She'd paved the way for the years he'd spent seducing one woman after another. Sameh was the first woman he'd become friendly with before they'd gone to bed together.

He forced his attention back to the present.

“This was Adam's graduation,” Myles was saying.

“What did you do after you graduated, Adam?” Again those intense blue eyes were trained on him.

“Vietnam,” he said shortly. “I was lucky. I only hit the tail end of the whole fiasco.”

“And then you came back here?”

He was about to agree when Myles interrupted. “No, he didn't come home, not for several years. He stayed on in Southeast Asia, searching for prisoners of war.” The naked pride in the old man's voice made Adam's chest ache, although it also embarrassed him to have Myles brag about him to Sameh. “Hawk was something of a legend, rescuing
men who'd given up all hope of freedom,” Myles related, and Adam's face burned.

“Sameh's not interested in all that ancient history, Myles,” he protested, his voice gruff. “Why don't we go out for a walk, or—”

“Yes, I am so interested, Adam,” Sameh interjected, frowning at Adam and focusing her attention on Myles. “When did Adam come back to the United States? How did you two get together again?”

Damn. Adam got up and stalked over to the window. The two of them were talking about him as if he weren't even in the room.

“He didn't come back until after he nearly got himself killed over there,” Myles told her, and there was a tremor in his voice. “It was touch and go for a while. It took him almost a year to recover. I'd retired by that time—I'd never married, you see, and I was living here in L.A. I can tell you I was damned lonely. Hawk was good enough to come out and keep me company for a time.”

Adam shook his head in disbelief and rolled his eyes heavenward at that version of the story. The truth was that Myles had located the veterans' hospital where Adam was a patient and had him transported out to his own house in the Valley. He'd hired the best rehab team he could find. He'd knocked out a wall and turned what had been his living room into a gym, filling it with the equipment Adam needed to regain the strength he was certain he'd lost forever.

Even all these years later, Adam shuddered at the memory.

It was humiliating to recall it now, but he'd sure as hell lost his guts at that stage. Worn down with pain and the dismal surroundings at the V.A. hospital in which he'd felt trapped, he was ready to give up and settle for a six-foot patch of earth until Myles got hold of him. The stubborn,
wonderful old bugger had nagged and bullied and shamed him into taking the painful, tedious route back to living. Adam owed him more than he could ever say.

In a roundabout way, it was also through Myles that Blue Knights came to be. Through a friend of Myles's, Adam had eventually met Bernie, who'd just quit his job as a detective on the LAPD.

Bernie was disillusioned and bitter over a case he'd been working for over a year, one his superiors had dropped because of political pressure. Bernie was newly married and needed to find another job fast. Opposites in many ways, the two men liked and complemented each other. They found they worked well together, and Blue Knights was born.

Myles had been friend and mentor to him, the nearest thing Adam had ever had to a father. The thought of losing him again to the creeping horror that stole his wits away and made him a caricature of himself made tears sting behind Adam's eyes, and he suddenly had to turn away from Sameh and Myles until he got control of himself.

News of Myles's amazing remission had quickly spread, and the nurses had been discreetly checking in all afternoon, as delighted and astonished with their patient's sudden improvement as Adam was.

The afternoon shadows lengthened, and a nurse wheeled in a cart with dinner. There were servings for Adam and Sameh, as well, and Sameh set up the small table under the window, putting one of the roses in a water glass as a centerpiece, laughing at Adam's good-natured teasing when she dropped the cutlery on the floor for the third time.

When the table was ready, Adam helped his friend over to the armchair he'd drawn up, but it was obvious that the older man's strength was fading with shocking rapidity. Exhausted, Myles made a pretense of eating at first, but finally
his head lolled and he lurched forward, falling asleep long before the simple meal was finished. Adam called an orderly to help prepare Myles for bed, and when the cheerful young man arrived, Adam and Sameh said a reluctant good-night.

“You come visit again soon, my dear,” Myles whispered tiredly as Sameh bent to press a kiss on his cheek. “You can even bring this reprobate along if you want,” he added, making an unsuccessful effort to clasp Adam's hand in his own. His faded blue eyes met Adam's, and a slow tear traced its way down his wrinkled cheek. “Goodbye, my boy,” he murmured. There was a finality to the farewell that sent shivers down Adam's spine.

Vinnie met them in the lobby, her broad face wreathed in smiles. “Now wasn't that something?” she crowed. “He's been going downhill all week long. I'd never have imagined in a million years that he'd come out of it like this. Goes to show you miracles can happen. This old town isn't called the City of Angels for nothing.”

Adam took Sameh's hand in his as they left the building, but he didn't speak even after they were in the car and back on the freeway. In his mind, he was going over and over the afternoon's events, and he still could hardly believe what had occurred.

“I like your friend very much,” Sameh commented. “He's an old soul, a most unusual person.”

Adam was remembering something. “Sameh, what was that thing you did with your hands when we first got there today? Around Myles's head?”

“Oh, that. I was smoothing him, trying to fix the breaks in his energy field.” She turned to look at Adam, and her voice was filled with sadness. “I couldn't really mend it, you know. I could only patch it together for a short time. The electromagnetic currents that surround him are short-circuiting and growing increasingly weaker. What I did was
only temporary. It worked for today, but the disease he has is escalating. I'm afraid by tomorrow morning he won't even remember us being there. The field is so weak that what I did today won't work again.” There was pain in her voice now. “I wish with all my heart that I was better at healing, Adam.”

The uncomfortable and all-too-familiar gut reaction to her flights of fancy rolled over him, but this time it lacked conviction. He'd seen Myles both before and after she'd made those strange motions with her hands. There'd been a dramatic—an unbelievable—change after Sameh did whatever it was she'd done.

Adam had heard rumors of people who were able to use their hands to cure illness; he'd even seen a tongue-in-cheek report about them on “20/20.” The investigative reporters were skeptical, although they hadn't been able to totally discount some of the episodes. Some people really believed that such healers existed.

Frances did. She insisted they were effective, although she'd never been able to locate one with the ability to cure Corey.

Adam was almost ready to believe that Sameh had some kind of talent along those lines, although he didn't begin to understand what it was or how it worked. He thought about how Corey had relaxed when she'd held him, and hadn't Bernie said yesterday that Sameh was teaching Frances some meditation stuff that might be good for the baby? By her own admission, Sameh couldn't completely cure either Corey or Myles, but she sure as hell had helped them both.

Today she'd given him back his friend, if only for an afternoon. A wave of gratitude and overwhelming tenderness washed over him. Never mind how she did it. The fact was that she managed to make people around her feel better. She was so damned…sweet. Caring. Generous.

Loving. She was the most loving woman he'd ever met, which was richly ironic, considering that he'd never even gotten close to undressing her, much less taking her to bed. He'd never been around a beautiful woman this long without taking her to bed. That in itself was a miracle of sorts.

He grimaced. What was he thinking—miracle? It was a colossal bloody disaster. He spent his days and nights in a perpetual state of arousal, like a teenager. He'd probably start getting zits and having wet dreams if his frustration lasted much longer.

He glanced over at her as he pulled to a stop at a red light. Since they'd left the nursing home, he'd been preoccupied, thinking about Myles. He realized now that Sameh was playing with the controls on the radio, flicking from one station to another. The station changed yet again as he looked at her, but she wasn't touching the controls. The small buttons on the console were moving in and out as if by remote control.

A chill wriggled up his spine, and his hands clenched the wheel.

Sameh was relaxing against the seat, head back, eyes closed, humming a little tune under her breath, her hands folded primly in her lap. Her dark eyelashes, indecently long and lush, curled against her cheekbones. He loved the way her nose tilted up just the smallest bit.

A news broadcast began and she frowned. Suddenly he heard the voice of Leonard Cohen, singing about Suzanne and the river, and Sameh, eyes still closed, smiled a lazy, contented smile and hummed along. “This is the singer you like, isn't it, Adam?” The set button depressed and released, locking Cohen in.

The light had changed, and cars behind him were honking. Adam stepped on the gas and the car lurched ahead. “Sameh.” He did his best to keep his voice level, to sound
only casually interested. “Mind telling me how you do that?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Do what?”

He nodded toward the radio. “Change stations without touching the controls.”

She looked surprised, and then she smiled, pleased with herself. “I didn't realize I was doing it. Goodness, it's just like the tutors said. It's simple when I don't try, isn't it? It's called telekinesis—all you do is visualize the object and see the changes occurring. But I've always gotten tense and nervous, and then it doesn't work.”