Whirlwind (22 page)

Liza paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Sure.”

“With all that gunk on top?”

“Gunk? It's wonderful!” Liza cleaned off her fork and dug into the omelet for more. “You don't know what's good, Forrester. Here, try some catsup—”

“Whoa!” He caught her wrist before she could upend the bottle.

His grip was quick and firm, and Liza felt her pulse jump against the pressure of his fingers. Laughing, she lifted her gaze to his dark eyes, but suddenly found herself tongue-tied. Surprise flickered across his face, too, but Cliff was careful to release her hand gently. But the moment had happened—a brief instant when time seemed to stop and a funny electrical current passed between the two of them.

Liza cleared her throat. “How about some ice cream after I finish this?”

“The ice cream melted. Remember? You forgot to put it into the fridge.”

“We'll go to town, then. I bet the Dairy King still makes great banana splits. When was the last time you had a banana split?”

“I don't like bananas.”

“Really?” Liza laughed. “That's odd. What else don't you like?”

“Beets,” Cliff responded, going back to the last few bites of his omelet. “And mincemeat pie.”

“What's wrong with mincemeat pie?”

“I don't know. It's probably something from my childhood. My Grandmother Pierce used to make it and force it down my throat on holidays. I was always sick afterward,
though probably not from the pie. My brother and I used to steal her shortbread cookies before dinner, you see.”

Liza liked the visual image of a young Cliff Forrester stealing cookies from his grandmother's kitchen.

“Were you afraid of your Grandmother Pierce?”

“Terrified. She was a very tall New England lady with a big voice. She was a little deaf, I think, and always shouted.”

“She's gone now?”

“Yes. Half the Daughters of the American Revolution mourned her passing, since she'd been the driving force of the organization for many years. She was quite a woman. I was named after her father.”

“He was a Cliff?”

“Clifton. Clifton Rutherford Pierce.”

“Clifton,” Liza repeated, trying the name on her tongue. “That sounds very blue-blooded. Are you?”

“Blue-blooded? I don't know. What does that mean?”

“Do you come from a very old and venerable Boston family with lots of money and a collection of silver that would sink a yacht?”

“Yes,” said Cliff, and they laughed together. Quickly, he added, “My family had money a long time ago. But my father became a career man in the air force, so he wasn't exactly rich. His choice of careers was a disappointment to my mother's family, who wanted him to quit flying airplanes and join the family business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Publishing. You ever heard of Pierce and Rothchilde's?”

“Good grief, you're from
that
Pierce family?” Genuinely startled, Liza exclaimed, “Heavens, Forrester, you could be rubbing elbows with rich and famous authors instead of counting rainbow trout or whatever you do here.”

“I like working outdoors,” said Cliff shortly. He finished
his meal with a couple of quick bites and carried his dishes to the sink.

Liza ate in silence after that, pleased that she'd made a little headway with him despite the abrupt end to their conversation. Talking about his family hadn't made him too uncomfortable, so she decided to try another idea.

She dropped her plate into the sink and dusted off her hands. “Let's go for ice cream.”

“You go,” said Cliff. “I'll wash up.”

She shut off the water faucet and steered Cliff away from the sink, his hands dripping soap bubbles on the floor. “No, I want you to come along. I don't remember the road exactly. I might get lost.”

“You won't get lost!”

“I might,” she insisted, lying cheerfully. “Come on, I'm dying for something sweet. Don't fight me on this, Forrester. I can be a bear unless I get my chocolate fix.”

He gave in reluctantly, and Liza led the way, dashing through the rain to the pickup truck. Cliff drove, and Liza propped her sneakers on the dashboard and turned up the volume on the radio. As they splashed through puddles on the highway, she sang merrily along with the Beach Boys and Tommy James and the Shondells, tapping her toes and drumming her fingers on the seat between them.

Cliff found the Dairy King quite easily and parked under the flickering neon sign with half a dozen other cars.

“I see a little rain can't keep the citizens of Tyler away from their ice cream,” Liza noted. “Ready?”

“You get what you like,” Cliff said, suddenly tense once he turned off the engine. “I'll wait for you here.”

“No way!” she cried, reaching past him and popping open the door on the driver's side. She pushed him out and scrambled after him, saying, “I'm not going to pig out on dessert all by myself. What will you have? A chocolate sundae? A diptop? Maybe a scoop of strawberry with sprinkles and whipped cream?”

“Liza—”

She refused to listen to his protests and propelled the reluctant Cliff through the steamed-up glass doors of the ice cream shop by pushing the backside of his jeans.

The place was nothing fancy—a fake marble counter and a few cheap tables with plastic chairs grouped on a checkered linoleum floor. Behind the counter stood a pair of overworked teenagers who struggled to keep up with the orders fired at them by the phalanx of customers crowded into the Diary King for a rainy night snack. A jukebox played noisy rock and roll in one corner, and the smell of French fries hung in the air. In a booth under a root beer sign, a group of teenagers lounged over greasy paper plates and nearly empty paper cups of soda pop. They shouted laughing insults at one another.

Liza hooked her arm through Cliff's and dragged him to the menu board. “Let's see. I'm definitely in the mood for a banana split. But should I get the regular or the jumbo? Decisions, decisions. A jumbo, I think. What about you?”

“I'm not very hungry.”

Cliff looked pale in the glaring fluorescent light, so Liza shoved one of her hands into the hip pocket of his jeans just to jar him out of the anxiety that looked ready to overwhelm him. “Baloney! You could have eaten a dinner twice the size of the one I made. I saw the way you were looking at my plate until I spread catsup all over everything.”

Her hand in his pants did the trick. It felt good to Liza, and it must have electrified Cliff, too.

“Well...” he said. “I guess I have a little room for something sweet.”

“Great!” Liza led him to the counter and prepared to abandon him there. “Order for both of us, will you? I'm going to the ladies' room. Got enough money?”

Cliff wanted to yell at her. But Liza disappeared in a
flounce of blond hair that drew the appreciative gazes of every teenage boy in the room. She left him alone.

At once Cliff started to sweat. He didn't venture far from the lodge very often, and he stuck to the same routes every time. It was safer that way. He didn't like new places, new people. They scared him, though until lately he hadn't recognized the feeling that gripped him as fear. He never knew if something ordinary might trigger a memory and send him spinning into the past. He might snap into a flashback, an idea that terrified him now that he'd seen how close he'd come to violence with Liza. What if he lost his marbles in a public place with a lot of innocent people around?

Damn Liza for dragging me here!

The walls of the Dairy King suddenly seemed very close. And the floor wasn't steady under his feet. Cliff crossed his arms and hooked his shaking hands under them, afraid to take a step. He closed his eyes and tried breathing deeply, emptying his mind of all conscious thought. Sometimes that technique worked—it often helped him fall asleep when he thought relaxing wasn't possible.

But a large family burst in through the doors at that moment, and Cliff realized he was blocking the entrance. He pulled his wits together and stepped aside.

“Oh, were you in line?” the harried father asked.

“No, no.” Cliff gasped.

“Waiting for someone?”

“Yeah.”

The father nodded and herded his brood to the counter. Automatically, Cliff got into line behind the family. There were several wailing children who wanted their ice cream immediately. One of the little boys wrestled out of his mother's grip and threw himself on Cliff's leg, bawling his lungs out.

“I want choclit!” he howled. “Want it now!”

“Sammy, you'd better behave,” snapped his exasperated mother. “Before that man gets angry at you.”

The boy's sticky-fingered grasp on Cliff's jeans loosened at once, and he cast a scared look upward. His tears evaporated, only to be replaced by fear. But he couldn't drag his hands off Cliff's leg. He was frozen with panic.

Before Cliff could speak, the mother yanked the boy's arm, pulling him against her side. “Don't touch strangers!” she admonished. “What if that bad man decided to steal you?”

Little Sammy started to cry in earnest then. His chest heaved in terrified sobs, and he buried his face against his mother's skirt.

Cliff wanted to say something. To explain that he wasn't bad, at least. But he was afraid his voice would roar out like hideous fire from a dragon's mouth. Cliff couldn't even smile to reassure the little boy. The fear he had seen in that small face paralyzed him.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The girl behind the counter raised her voice and repeated, “Can I help you? Mister?”

Cliff tried to shake himself out of the trancelike state and grabbed the edge of the counter to hold himself upright. Hoarsely, he said, “A banana split.”

The girl was chewing gum and cracked it loudly, making Cliff jump. “What size?” she asked.

The question baffled him for a moment before he remembered what Liza wanted. “A—a large one.”

The girl's elaborately made-up eyes narrowed on Cliff after his long hesitation. “Okay,” she said with exaggerated patience, as if she was speaking to an addled old man. “You want chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream?”

Cliff nodded numbly. His mind was suddenly filled with a harsh buzzing sound.

“Whipped cream?”

Cliff's head swam. He hadn't realized ordering a banana split for Liza was going to be such an ordeal.

“Whipped cream, sir?”

Liza materialized at his side just then, and she leaned over the counter with her earrings dancing in the bright lights. “Extra whipped cream,” she said with authority. “And some peanuts, but no cherry, okay? I hate those canned cherries. They hardly qualify as real food.”

The counter girl dragged her puzzled gaze from Cliff and shrugged. “Okay. Anything else?”

“What are you going to have, Forrester?”

Cliff couldn't think of anything he wanted except to get out of the Dairy King as quickly as possible. The awful buzzing in his head had started to build to a roar. It was a sound like pulsing thunder.

When he didn't answer, Liza laughed. “I guess he's just going to share mine. Give us two spoons.”

“Coming right up.”

Liza jiggled his arm. “You okay?”

Cliff almost couldn't hear her. The thunder in his head was so loud he was sure everyone in the building could hear it. He put one hand to his temple, hoping to hold in the turmoil of emotion that threatened to break through at any moment. But it was no use.

He tore out of Liza's hold and gasped, “I'll wait for you in the truck.”

He escaped then, blundering out of the ice cream shop and elbowing aside the throng of teenagers in his path. He heard a few outraged cries, but he didn't stop until he was safe behind the wheel of the pickup again. Breathing hard, he gripped the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver. The neon lights of the Dairy King flashed in his eyes, so he put his forehead down on the wheel.

The thunder in his head matched the sound of the rain as it pounded on the roof of the truck. Cliff felt as if the sound might knife through his skull at any moment.

“Move over,” said Liza beside him. She had opened the driver's door and was pushing him with one hand, forcing
him to slide across the seat. “Take this,” she ordered, shoving the plastic dish into his hands.

Cliff took it woodenly and nearly spilled a river of chocolate into his lap.

“I changed my mind,” Liza said lightly, “and ordered a hot fudge sundae since you don't like bananas. Start eating it before it melts. Here's a spoon.”

“I—I don't want it. Let's just go.”

“You're not in any shape to drive,” Liza said matter-of-factly. She slammed the door. “So eat. What happened in there, anyway? You looked like you were ready to climb the walls.”

He didn't know what had happened. The only thing Cliff was sure of was that if he'd stayed in the Dairy King for another moment, he'd have exploded.

Beside him, Liza said, “You know, it looked like you were having a panic attack.”

“A what?”

“It's an anxiety thing. All this tension builds up inside and just about bursts you open. My friend Gracie used to get them all the time. They scared the hell out of her. It got so bad she was afraid to leave her house.”

Cliff looked up at Liza and found her studying him intently.

“I wonder...” she murmured, then smiled suddenly. “You better start eating that thing, okay? It's
melting!
”

She started the truck with a roar, then reached across and dug into the ice cream with a little plastic spoon. She scooped up a huge mouthful and ate it with delight, humming happily.

“Now you,” she said, feeding him a bite of ice cream. “Taste good?”

Cliff couldn't taste a thing, and the cold lump that oozed down his throat almost came back up again. He choked.