Now and Forever (20 page)

"What do you mean, no"? Come on, Jessie, push!"

"The hell I will. You push. I'll walk."

"Stinkpot."

"Look at that hill. Who do you think I am? Tarzan?"

"Well, look at your legs, for Chrissake. They're long enough to run up that hill carrying me, let alone bicycling."

"You, sir, are a creep."

"Hey ... look at the spider on your leg."

"I ... what? ... Aaaahh ... Ian! Where?" But he was laughing at her, and when she looked up she knew. "Ian Clarke, if you do that to me one more time, I'll ..." She was spluttering and he was laughing harder than ever. "I'll ..." She hit him a walloping blow on the shoulder, knocking him off the bicycle and into the tall grass next to the path. But he reached out and grabbed her as she stood laughing at him, and pulled her down beside him. "Ian, not here! There are probably snakes in here! Ian! Dammit! Stop that!"

"No snakes. I swear." He was reaching into her blouse with a leer that made her giggle.

"Ian ... I mean it.--no! Ian ..." She forgot about the snakes almost immediately.

"Well, how did you like my favorite hideaway in Carmel?" With a smile, Astrid poked her head in the door of Jessica's office.

"We adored it. Come on in. How about some coffee?"

Jessie's smile said it all. The two days in Carmel had been a peaceful island in a troubled sea.

"I'll skip the coffee, thanks. I'm on my way downtown to talk to Tom's attorneys. Maybe I'll stop by again on my way home." Jessica showed her the gold lima bean, gave her a brief, expurgated account of the weekend, and blew Astrid a kiss as she left. For the rest of the day, Lady J was a madhouse.

There were deliveries, new clients, old customers who wanted something new but needed it altered "right now," invoices that got misplaced, and two shipments that Jessie needed desperately never showed up at all. And Katsuko couldn't help, because she was swamped with details for the fashion show. So Zina juggled the customers while Jessie tried to untangle the problems. And the bills. The next two weeks were more of the same.

Harvey Green appeared twice at the boutique to discuss minor things with Jessie, things about Ian's habits and her own, but she had little to tell him. Neither did Ian. They led a simple life and had nothing to hide. The two girls in the boutique still didn't know what was happening, and the weeks since Jessie's frantic and erratic disappearances from the shop had been too hectic for questions. They assumed that the problem, whatever it was, had blown over. And Astrid was careful not to pry.

Ian was lost in his new book, and the two subsequent court appearances went smoothly. As Martin had predicted the bail was not revoked: there was never even a suggestion of it. Jessica joined Ian both times in court, but there was nothing to see. He would walk to the front of the courtroom with Martin, they would mumble for a few moments in front of the judge, and then they could all leave. By now it seemed like an ordinary part of their everyday lives; they had other things to think about. Jessie was worried about part of the fall line that hadn't moved, another shipment that had never shown up, and the money that was draining from her bank account. Ian was troubled by chapter nine, and incoherent about anything else. That was what their real life was about, not mechanical appearances before a bored judge.

It was a month later when Harvey Green came up with the first part of his bill. Eighteen hundred dollars. The statement arrived at the boutique, as she had requested, and Jessica gasped when she opened it. She felt almost sick. Eighteen hundred dollars. For nothing. He hadn't unearthed a damn thing, except the name of a man Margaret Burton had gone to dinner with twice and never slept with. Peggy Burton appeared to be clean. Her coworkers thought her a decent woman, not very sociable, but reliable and pleasant to work with. Several mentioned that she was occasionally distant and moody. She had no torrid love affairs in her past, no drug problems, no drinking habits to speak of. She had never returned to any hotel on Market Street in all the time Green had been tailing her, nor had she had any men into her apartment at any time since the surveillance had begun. She went home alone every night after work; had gone to three movies in a month, again alone; and an attempt to pick her up on the bus had totally failed. An assistant of Green's had made eyes at her for several blocks, gotten an encouraging look in response, he said, and had then received a firm "No, thanks, buster" when he'd invited her out for a drink. He had said she'd even looked pissed at him for asking. At worst, she was confused. At best ... she was the second best thing to the Virgin Mary, and Ian's case would look very flimsy in court. They had to find something. But they hadn't. And now Harvey Green wanted eighteen hundred dollars. And they couldn't even let him go. Martin had said the Burton woman would have to be watched right up until the trial, possibly even during the trial, although both he and Green admitted that the police had probably told her to behave herself. The prosecution didn't want their case shot down by a random piece of ass Miss Margaret Burton might indulge herself with a few weeks before the trial.

Green hadn't even been able to come up with any dirt on her past. She had been married once, at the age of eighteen, and the marriage had been annulled a few months later. But he didn't know why, or who she had married. Nothing. And there was no record of it, which was probably why she hadn't admitted to it at the preliminary hearing. (What he knew he had learned from a woman Margaret Burton worked with.) What Jessie was paying for was a clean bill of health on the woman.

Jessie sat at her desk, staring at Green's bill, and opened the rest of her mail. A statement from Martin for the five thousand they still owed, and nine statements from New York for her purchases for the spring line. Ian's bill for his physical two months before, still due, for two hundred and forty-two dollars, and her own chest X ray for forty, as well as a seventy-four-dollar bill from a record store where she'd splurged before she'd gone to New York. As she sat there, she wondered what had ever made her think that seventy-four dollars for records wasn't so awful. She could still remember saying that to Ian at the time. Yeah ... not so awful if you haven't found yourself with ten thousand dollars in legal bills in the meantime ... and the florist ... and the cleaner's ... and the drugstore ... she could feel her stomach constrict as she tried not to add up the amounts. She reached for the phone, looked at the card in her address book, and called.

She phoned the bank before going to the appointment, and she was lucky, more or less. Based on the previous performance of her account, the bank was willing to leave her loan uncovered by collateral. She could sell it. She had been secretly hoping that they wouldn't let her. But now she had no choice.

She sold the Morgan at two in the afternoon. For fifty-two hundred dollars. The guy gave her "a deal." She deposited the check in the bank before closing, and sent a check of her own to Martin Schwartz for five thousand dollars. He was paid. It was taken care of. She could breathe now. For weeks she had had nightmares about something happening to her and nobody being able to help Ian with the bills ... horrible fantasies of Ian begging Katsuko for the money, and being refused because she wanted the money to buy kimonos for the shop, while Barry York threatened to drag Ian back to jail. Now they were saved. The legal fees were paid. If something happened to her, Ian had his attorney.

She then borrowed eighteen hundred dollars from Lady J's business account to pay Green his fee. She was back at her desk at three-thirty--with a splitting headache. Astrid showed up at four-thirty.

"You're not looking too happy, Lady J. Anything wrong?" Astrid was the only one who called her that, and it made her smile tiredly.

"Would you believe everything's wrong?"

"No, I wouldn't. But--anything special you want to tell me?" Astrid sipped the coffee Zina had poured for her and Jessie sighed and shook her head.

"Nothing much to tell. Not unless you have about six hundred spare hours to listen, and I don't have that much spare time to tell you anyway. How was your day?"

"Better than yours. But I didn't take any chances. I got up at eleven and spent the afternoon having my hair done." Jesus. How could she tell her? How could Astrid possibly understand?

"Maybe that's where I went wrong. I washed my hair myself last night." She grinned lopsidedly at her friend, but Astrid didn't smile. She was worried. Jessie had been looking tired and troubled for weeks, and there was nothing she could say.

"Why don't you call it a day, and go home to your gorgeous young husband? Hell, Jessica, if I had him around, wild horses couldn't keep me here."

"You know something? I think you're right." It was the first real smile Jessica had produced all day. "Are you heading home? I could use a ride."

"Where's your baby?"

"The Morgan?" She tried to stall. She didn't want to lie, but ... Astrid nodded, and Jessie felt a pain in her heart.

"I ... it's in the shop."

"No problem. I'll give you a ride."

Ian watched Astrid drop her off from the window in his studio, and he looked puzzled. It was time to take a break anyway--he'd been working straight through since seven that morning. He opened the door for Jessie before she got out her key.

"What's with the car? Did you leave it at the boutique?"

"Yes ... I ..." She looked up and she could almost feel the color draining from her face. She had to tell him. "Ian, I ... I sold it." She winced at the look on his face. Everything stopped.

"You did what!" It was worse than she had feared.

"I sold it. Darling, I had to. Everything else is tied up. And we needed almost seven thousand bucks in the next two weeks for Martin's fee, and the first half of Green's bill, and Green is going to hit us with another one in two weeks. There was nothing else I could do." She reached out to touch him and he brushed her hand away.

"You could have asked me, at least! Asked me, said something--for God's sake, Jessica, don't you consult me on anything anymore? I gave you that car as a gift. It meant something to me!" He strode across the room and grabbed for the Scotch. He poured some into a glass while she watched.

"Don't you think it meant something to me?" Her voice was trembling, but he didn't hear, and she watched while he swallowed the half glass of Scotch neat. "Darling, I'm so ... I just couldn't see any other ..." She fell silent, with tears in her eyes. She remembered so well the day he had driven it home for her. Now ...

He swallowed the last of his drink and pulled on his jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"Out." His face looked like gray marble.

"Ian, please, don't do anything crazy." She was frightened at the look in his eyes, but he only stood there and shook his head.

"I don't have to do anything crazy. I already did." The door slammed behind him a moment later.

He came back at midnight, silent and subdued, and Jessica didn't ask him where he'd been. She was afraid to: maybe Inspector Houghton would be paying them another visit. But she hated herself for the thought when she watched Ian take off his shoes. Two small hills of sand poured out of them, and she looked at his face. He looked better. They had always done that together--gone to the beach at night to talk things out, or think, or just walk quietly together. He had taken her there when Jake had died. To their beach. Always together. Now she was afraid even to reach out and touch him, but she wanted to, needed to. He looked at her silently and walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Jessie turned out the lights and wiped two tears from her face. She felt the funny gold lima bean at her throat and tried to make herself smile, but she couldn't. They were past laughing at lima beans now, past laughing at anything, and who knew--one day she might sell the lima bean too. She hated herself as she lay in the dark.

She heard the bathroom door open, then Ian's soft footsteps, and then she felt the bed dip on the far side. He sat there for what seemed like a long time, smoking a cigarette. He leaned against the headboard and stretched his legs. She knew all his movements without looking, and she lay very still, wanting him to think she was sleeping. She didn't know what to say to him.

"I have something for you, Jess." His voice was gruff and low in the stillness of the room.

"Like a punch in the mouth?"

He laughed and put a hand on her hip as she lay on her side with her back to him.

"No, dummy. Turn around." She shook her head like a child, and then peeked over her shoulder.

"You're not mad at me, Ian?"

"No, I'm mad at me. There was nothing else you could do. I know that. I just hate myself for getting us in this spot, and I'd rather have sold a lot of things than the Morgan."

She nodded, still at a loss for words. "I'm so sorry."

"Me too." He leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth and then put something light and sandy in her hand. "Here. I found it in the dark." It was a perfect sand dollar, a milky white shell with a tiny fossil imprint at its heart.

"Oh, darling, it's beautiful." She smiled up at him, holding it in the flattened palm of her hand.

"I love you." And then with a slow, gentle smile he pulled her into his arms and let his lips follow an exquisite path to her thighs.

The next two weeks spun past them crazily. Hours at the shop, long lunches at home, violent arguments about who wasn't watering the plants, and then passionate making up and making love and making out, and insomnia, and oversleeping, and forgetting to eat and then eating too much, and constant indigestion, and terror about the bills followed by spending huge amounts of money on a Gucci wallet for Ian or a suede skirt from another store for Jessie, when she could have gotten it at cost from her own, and baubles and junk and garbage, and all of it charged, of course, as though the day of reckoning would never come. Utter madness. None of it made any sense. Jessie felt for weeks as though she were ricocheting off walls, never to be stationary again. Ian had the impression he was drowning.