Wait for Me (7 page)

“Are you psychic?”

“Am I what?”

“When I’m angry, I know it’s obvious. But how did you know what I was mad about? How did you know about the cream and sugar in my coffee and the Jack Daniels? And what about the weird way you have of knowing what I’m thinking and the—”

“That must be it, then,” she said, smiling, his question too impossible to take seriously. “You’ve found me out. I’m psychic.”

“I’m serious.”

“I can see that. And I’m confessing. If that makes you feel any better. But we both know I’m not psychic, for crying out loud.”

“Then how do you know all those things about me?”

“I don’t. I act on hunches and do whatever I think is best.”

“Well, it’s damned peculiar.”

She leaned close, as if to tell him a secret.

“So is life, in case you haven’t noticed,” she said, locking their arms together. “Come on. I’ll show you the work I submitted so you can bid enough money on it to renovate the entire building. Oh. Maybe I should tell you...” She put a hand to his shirtfront. He was sure it would leave a permanent impression on his skin. “I have a devout irreverence for money. It’s like the world’s best joke that so few have so much of it, when so many others need it more. If I give it too much importance, I get a little crazy.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Good. I didn’t want you to think it was personal.”

“Of course not,” he said, a smile twitching at his lips.

The rest of the evening was perfect. Holly would vanish and then reappear at his side with a smile that let him know where she was happiest.

Her contribution to the auction was an enlarged photograph of a gnarly, work-worn hand cradling the fat, young, innocent hand of a child. It touched the hearts of many a father and son in the crowd and, strangely enough, was taken out of the bidding before the auction began.

“I don’t understand how that could happen,” she said when she was told by one of her committee chairpersons. “Don’t we have rules about things like that?”

“It’s the first time anyone’s ever offered us that much money to take something out. We didn’t know what to do. We’ve never gotten that much money for anything.”

“Well, who was it?”

The woman shrugged. “Gracie didn’t say. She said the man came, gave her a big check, and then left her with her mouth hanging open.”

“Oliver?” She turned to him. “Can things like this happen? It’s not against the law or anything, is it?”

“I don’t think so. Not if everyone involved is happy with the purchase price.”

“Are we happy, Jannine?”

“We’re thrilled,” she confided in a low voice.

“Okay,” she said pragmatically. “Oliver, have you met Jannine yet? None of this would be possible without her.”

Jannine giggled and denied it self-consciously.

“Yes. We met earlier, but she wouldn’t tell her phrase,” he said, turning Jannine seven shades of scarlet as he examined her head to toe.

Holly empathized. Oliver had a way of looking at a woman that only the most cold-blooded of the sex could ignore. She’d been suffering hot flashes all night because of it and was glad for the respite, sure that Jannine would eventually recover.

If only she were as sure of herself...

How many times had she found herself waiting to feel his hand at her back as she moved about the room? How many times had she recalled the kiss in the empty corridor and felt her lips tingling? How many times had she been nudged into his side or pressed close to his chest in the crowd and wished for his arms to hold her there?

“I’ve got it,” Oliver said. “The headphone. The K-Y jelly. You’re a slick operator.”

Jannine grinned, “It was Holly’s idea. I couldn’t think of anything. I was going to wear my bunny outfit again and call myself a pubic hare, but...” She broke off in tongue-tied embarrassment, as she had every time she’d discussed the costume with Holly.

“Holly thought up mine too,” he said quickly, coming to her rescue. He turned his head, and Holly was once again in his limelight. “She’s very clever, isn’t she?”

Jannine agreed that she was, then felt a sudden urge to be needed elsewhere and left.

“You love this stuff, don’t you,” he asked.

“I like seeing people happy, yes.”

“Your patients must love you.”

“My patients?”

“The residents at the convalescent center. Do they fight to see who’s going to get you for their nurse?”

“I’m not a nurse. I don’t even work there. I just volunteer some of my time.”

“Oh,” he said, taken aback. She’d been so at ease with so many of the people that he’d assumed she was part of the staff. Her efficiency and caring ways had fit the mold of a nurse.

“Nurses come from a special mold, I think.” He cringed at her choice of words, but she didn’t notice. “They have to care and still be objective, and I can’t do that. I’m too impatient. I get angry. I want to see results right away.”

“What do you do, then? For a living.”

“I work at the Joey Paulson Clinic on Deaver Street. We do crisis intervention, which is a fancy name for a little bit of everything, I guess.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s see, we find homes for people who’ve lost theirs. We get food for people who don’t have any. We find medical care and psychiatric help for those who need it. We take in runaways and supply prostitutes with prophylactics, and we baby-sit kids while their mothers look for work, and we... do a little bit of everything. And if we can’t do it, we refer people to places that can.”

“You do all this by phone or do people come to you?”

“Both. We do a lot by phone, but they come in too.”

The band was interrupted to announce the beginning of the auction, and they continued to talk as they followed the flow of people into the next room.

“Frustrating work,” he observed.

“Good work, when it works.”

“Is that how you got connected with St. Augustine’s, then? Through your work at the clinic?”

“No. Whatever I can do for St. Augustine’s is purely personal.”

“Don’t you ever get depressed?” he asked, knowing that he would.

“Sure I do. But it doesn’t do anybody any good to stay that way, now does it?”

No, he supposed it didn’t do any good. But to work with the sick and indigent day after day; to live in a rundown apartment building; to have grown up not knowing her real parents... Holly Loftin was a woman unlike any he’d known before. An endless fountain of unselfish giving and concern.

She was beautiful, smart, educated. There were people who would do anything in the world for her. Yet there didn’t seem to be anything she wanted for herself—except Phil Rosenthal’s painting.

“That does it,” she exclaimed, when she was outbid once again. “I’m scratching Mrs. Vochec off the guest list.”

“The same woman from last year bought Phil’s painting?”

“No. She brought her sister-in-law along this year, and
she
got it.”

With the main event over, waiters were beginning to clean up the debris, and they were preparing to leave.

“Why didn’t you let me raise the bid? I would have been happy to buy—”

“I don’t want you to buy me things, Oliver. It isn’t necessary.”

“I know, but I want to.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather have...” she hesitated.

“What?” He waited with eager anticipation.

“I’d rather have a walk in the park, Sunday afternoon,” she said. She wanted him to give her things that money couldn’t buy. A hug. A kiss. And when she was tired, a shoulder to lean on.

“You got it.” He stopped. “Which park?”

“Uh, the one at Lake Merritt. We’ll feed the ducks. I work, so it’ll have to be about four o’clock. Is that okay?”

“Sure. What if it rains?”

“All the better.”

Oliver drove her back to her apartment. She was full of excitement over the success of St. Augustine’s Annual Costume Party and Amateur Art Auction—but she wasn’t full of herself.

“I’m so pleased for them. They all worked so hard on it,” she said, and while he was still musing on her humility, she added, “I can make it from here, Oliver. You don’t need to walk up all those stairs. I’ll be fine. I’m really glad you came tonight.”

“So am I, and I’m walking you up to your door.” He was acutely conscious of her all-but-naked state of attire under her coat and could imagine that every pervert within a hundred miles had their antennae up and were aware of it as well. Letting her out at the curb would be analogous to throwing her to the wolves. He opened the car door, and the overhead light came on.

“Oliver, we fought and made up tonight. We laughed and shared stories and talked about our lives. We’ve covered a lot of territory. But if you come up, I’m going to want you to come in and spend more time with me. You’ll want to kiss me and I’ll want to let you, and then one thing will lead to another and you’ll end up spending the night, and then we’ll wake up in the morning wondering if we might not have rushed it a bit and then we’ll both feel awkward, and then you might change your mind about the park on Sunday and it’ll rain and no one else will be there, and then the ducks’ll have to go hungry that day.”

“How about just to the front door?” he asked straight-faced, his hand still on the door handle. “I won’t go in the building.”

“You can watch me from here.”

He ripped his head to one side and gauged the distance to the door.

“It won’t be easy to kiss you from here.”

“Then do it now,” she said with an eager smile, her eyes bright and beckoning.

He closed the car door and all but rolled up his sleeves getting ready to kiss her. While she waited patiently, the strangest thing happened. He developed temporary amnesia or something. He couldn’t remember which way to tilt his head or where to put his hands.

He adjusted his weight to free the tail of his jacket, put one arm over the back of the seat, and looped the other loosely around her waist.

Yes. Yes. It was coming back to him, he thought in a wash of relief as he moved in for the kill. He felt her breath on his lips, they parted. His eyes began to close. He brushed her lips, she turned her head. He planted a big one on her cheek.

Playful and quick, she came around to return his peck and sat back grinning.

“Good night, Oliver.”

“Good night, Holly,” he said, working hard not to smile back. This wasn’t the sort of behavior he wanted to encourage.

She wouldn’t have gotten out of the car if she hadn’t heard the amusement in his voice. As it was, she walked to her door reaffirming her belief that he wanted more from her than what he could get from at least two hundred other women in the Bay Area.

Her phone rang ten minutes later.

“It’s three
A.M....
that makes it the next morning, and I don’t feel the least bit awkward about spending the night with you,” he said, the line crackling a bit.

“Good,” she said, laughing, checking the window to see if he was still parked in front of her building. “Where are you?”

“Halfway across the bridge. But I can turn around and come back if you want me to.”

“Don’t tempt me, Oliver. It’s not nice to tempt a lady.”

“Who says I’m nice?”

“I do. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon.”

There was a brief silence. “Good night, Holly. I had a good time.”

“Me too. Good night, Oliver.”

He was nice. And gentle and sweet and tolerant—tolerant as hell, if the tension he felt was anywhere near what she was feeling.

T
ENSION WASN’T EXACTLY WHAT
Oliver was feeling. Tension was what you felt during a business merger. Tension came when the shares were down before a stockholders’ meeting. Tension didn’t keep him awake all night or make his food taste like a mouthful of dust. Tension didn’t keep him reaching for the phone or blur the words in his magazines. It didn’t make him restless and it didn’t cause him to stare off into space like a zombie.

Holly wasn’t making him tense, she was making him crazy.

“Have you ever heard of a place called St. Augustine’s?” he asked his aunt the next day over a light lunch. “It’s a convalescent home. In Oakland?”

They shared the Carey House estate as a matter of convenience. To try to dislodge his aunt would have been very inconvenient for Oliver—strenuous, aggravating, and more trouble than he cared to undertake. Besides, he knew little or nothing about the running of a large household, though he often suspected that it could pretty much run itself. The place was too big to live in alone anyway. And to hide away or avoid a bash for the cause of the week, he could always use the apartment downtown.

It was a greater convenience to Elizabeth Carey George, however, to live in her childhood home and not have to explain to anyone why her husband’s lack of good investments and surplus of expensive mistresses had left her with little more than another fine old San Francisco name to attach to her own, and a heart full of bitterness.

All in all, it was a fairly amicable arrangement.

“It doesn’t ring a bell, dear,” she said, looking up from the promotional material she was reviewing for her newest crusade—to save the South American limpkin that would soon see extinction with the destruction of the rain forest. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. What about the Joey Paulson Clinic?”

“Paulson. Paulson. There’s something familiar about the name, but I might be thinking of the Palm Beach Paulsons. I heard last night that Barry’s been cheating on her with some showgirl he met in Vegas. Can you imagine it? And Tiffany is a Brooks, and you know how they stick together. He’ll be lucky to get out of that marriage with a spare shirt.”

“He should be grateful for that,” he said, a woman-lover himself but not without a certain amount of restraint and decorum. He liked to think of himself as a man of principle and self-control. Women were a matter of self-discipline, and he had little respect for a man who had none.

“What is this sudden interest in Oakland, dear? I understand the land values aren’t worth investing in, and they say...”

“No, it’s not about business. I... I was talking to Phil Rosenthal last night, and he thought there might be a couple of places over there that could use some help from the foundation.”