San Francisco weather. There was never any way of figuring it. The smudge-gray storm clouds disappeared as quickly as they came, leaving one white cumulus puff to drift lazily around the blue sky like a slow-moving pool cleaner.
Cat savored the warmth of the morning sun penetrating her windbreaker. The earth had been hung out to dry and the melancholy of winter was passing into the season of promise.
There was nothing like a near death experience and falling in love to make a person acutely aware of everything occupying her world. Cat was sure all five of her senses had gone into overdrive.
Trish and the night supervisor passed her and nodded, their stares bordering on downright gaping. Immediately they commenced whispering before she was even out of earshot.
Cat sighed. The debacle had made the Chronicle’s second-section lead story. She thought the celebrity photos of Cross and the photo of the Blazzie’s Secret ad featuring the “Divinely Devastating and Deadly Michael Lake,” were tastelessly overdone.
It was unforgiveable that Gilly had given out her employee photo, and how they got hold of her college graduation picture was beyond her, although she suspected it was Nora who told them her shoe size.
David had warned she would have to get used to the attention. She would be considered public property until people forgot—assuming they ever did.
By Sunday night, there were fifty-six messages on her answering machine: twenty-six well-wishers, two heavy breathers, one editor from a national men’s magazine wanting to do a photo shoot of her wearing nothing but a nurse’s cap and combat boots, three specialty shoe company reps, two relatives, six from Jo Atwood, four newspaper reporters, three radio station producers, three talk show producers, two women wanting to start a Cat Richardson fan club, and four telemarketers.
Accidentally on purpose, she erased them all.
She regarded her sudden notoriety with amusement, until she and David were mobbed by a group of camera-wielding reporters during the soup phase of their dinner at a nearby restaurant. Most of their questions were simply too bizarre to answer, but when they began asking for her measurements and sexual history, and demanding to photograph her bare feet, David flashed his badge.
It was David who managed to allay her mounting fears of never being able to go out in public again. He pointed out that she could take comfort in the knowledge that there were probably a few small towns in Oklahoma or Nebraska where she might not be recognized—provided she dyed her hair, bound her feet, and wore sunglasses at all times.
On rare occasions, she’d forget about the whole incident for a few seconds, as if it never happened, though she knew it did—the sixty-two sutures she’d received in ER proved it.
The ambulance ride stuck out clearly in her memory, probably because she’d never ridden in one lying down before.
Nora and the paramedic tended to her wounds and monitored her IVs and vital signs while David held her hand.
To keep her conscious and focused, David narrated the events from the time Gage sounded the alarm to finding Michael kneeling next to her, ready to plunge the knife into her.
“Even if we hadn’t arrived when we did,” he said, “I don’t think Lake had the strength to do any more serious harm. When I wrested the knife from him, it was like pulling it from the hand of an obstinate child.”
Nora replaced the blood-soaked pressure bandage on her neck with a fresh one. “Then Gage grabbed your head and started chanting and doing something that looked like he was picking fleas from your hair and hurling them across the room. You came to right after that.
“Our marathon mud runner here…” Nora smiled at David in a way that Cat thought unnecessarily sensuous, “…raced back to the main road to guide the paramedics to the house.”
Remembering that she’d peed herself, Cat winced. What a sight she must have been: smeared with blood, vomit still caked in her hair, naked feet with freakishly long toes, and sagging breasts—exposed for all the world to see. The fact that David had seen her at her worst and still wanted her, was cause enough for confidence. Even on her rottenest days, she could never look that bad again.
Dr. Gladstein limped past her, did a double take and hurried on. She could almost hear the word that crossed his mind: Murderess.
Nora and David had been careful not to talk too much about Michael, and it hadn’t dawned on her to ask until after she was in her hospital room.
Nora tried to change the subject, but David told her flat out that Michael was dead, although he cushioned the shock by using phrases such as, ‘self-defense’ and ‘justifiable homicide’.
He took a week of vacation time and, after she was discharged, brought her to his house in order to care for her in a way no man ever had. He fed her, read to her from Dorothy Parker and Malraux, changed her dressings, held her hand while she spoke to attorneys and police, rubbed her back while she cried and told her jokes and secret things about himself. He even fetched Saph and gave him a flea bath in his kitchen sink.
Saturday night he put down the Gary Larson book they were in hysterics over and said, “I want to make you happy. I’ve got a storehouse of love to share with you.”
By Sunday morning, they felt comfortable, like best friends camping out in the backyard—as if they’d been together for a hundred years.
Sunday afternoon he made chicken soup from scratch and served it with hot French bread dripping with garlic butter. She ate ravenously, convinced that the food he fed her had no calories.
Sunday night she remembered that going to bed had another meaning besides sleep.
They were at the kitchen table playing blackjack, when she startled them both by placing her bare feet in his lap. He tentatively rested his hands on the cold flesh of her toes. She shivered and let her head fall back.
Intently studying the contour of her neck and breasts, he began light, teasing caresses down her long and narrow instep.
“I think we should…” His voice was tremulous. He cleared his throat and the teasing caresses turned into a deeper massage. “I think we should go to bed.” He paused, and then added, “Together.”
Her stomach flipped into her throat and perched there. Shaking off the momentary panic, she pulled her feet from his hands and leaned toward him. Far away she heard a voice similar to hers say, “Sounds good to me.”
Neither of them had any recollection of how they got to the bed and out of their clothes, but once there, they’d offered their mouths to each other in a kiss that would not, could not stop.
When he felt her body pressing against him in rhythm, he pulled her legs around him and the passion she had neglected awakened with a vengeance.
The lovemaking that began with the urgent motions characteristic of younger lovers, soon gave way to a sort of sexual composure that allowed them to savor, and then linger over each sensation.
By morning, they had proved the old adage ‘It’s never as good as the first time’ wrong—three times over.
* * *
The two women stared at each other. Virtual strangers, Cat thought, forced to share the intimate pieces of their souls like the survivors of a plane crash waiting in close quarters for rescue.
Lying on Cross’s bed was the Chronicle article. Cat’s eyes immediately went to the lead sentence: ‘In a bizarre series of events which began on Friday afternoon…’
“Pure melodrama,” Cat said with a feeble laugh, folding the paper and placing it out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” Cross said. “I should never have asked you to go out there. It’s just that I didn’t think—I mean, the police said—”
“I jumped at the chance to go, Cross. It wasn’t your fault. Neither one of us thought he’d be there.”
Cross covered her face.
Cat pulled her hands away. “We both wish we could change things so that none of this had ever happened, but it did, and I’m—” What could she say? That she was sorry she’d killed Michael trying to save herself? She handed Cross a Kleenex. “I’m thinking that we both need to just get on with our lives.”
Cat looked around the room littered with new sketches of various nurses and hospital hallway scenes. She recognized Mathilde in one, and Nora with Gage and Tom Mix in another.
Cat rose to leave. “I forgot to get the watercolor,” she laughed. “Sorry.”
Cross blew her nose in a way that was anything but dainty and wiped her eyes. “Nathan is bringing it in this afternoon. Corky will pick it up after school.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Great. I’m proud of him. He’s got a lot more guts than I did at his age. He’s in therapy with someone Barza recommended and it seems to be helping. I’ll make sure he sticks with it.”
Cat was glad that the boy and the woman would remain friends. It was a healthy alliance that would help them through the hard times ahead.
“Detective Padcula said Corky’s assailant has been arrested and charged. All agencies involved have agreed to keeping the story quiet.”
“I'm being discharged tomorrow,” Cross said suddenly. “Why don’t you come up to the cabin for dinner?”
Cat rolled her eyes and snorted. “Our chances of meeting on the Siberian tundra are better. I appreciate the invite, but I'm not sure I want to see the inside of your place again for a long time.
“How about if you slum it for a while? Come to my house in town, meet the cat, see how the rest of the world lives. A change of scenery will do you good. Heck, you might get some ideas for reality poverty paintings.”
“I’d like to do a painting for you,” Cross said. “Something special. Something big and vivid and…” She looked at Cat’s hair and laughed, “…red.”
“Make it orange,” Cat said. “The same shade as those huge winter oranges you can sometimes find at roadside stands if you’re lucky? You know the kind—they’re the ones that always taste so sweet.”
* * *
Gage felt her presence but continued to unpack the newly arrived boxes of Juicy Fruit gum. Her spirit was changed: kinder yet stronger and much more potent in an easy, floating-down-the-river sort of way.
She was not yet aware of the subtleties behind what she sensed merely as new freedom and a spiritual journey. What she would do with her new strength, he could only guess. He prayed she’d work through the stubbornness that kept her limited to meager portions of all that could be hers.
Cat knelt to give Tom Mix a hug.
“How are you doin’, girl?”
“I’m alive, thanks to you.”
He scowled and shook his head. “None of it didn’t have to go that far.”
“I know,” Cat said quietly and continued rubbing Tom Mix behind the ears. “I allowed my stubbornness to overrule common sense and intuition. I ignored every sign.”
Gage made a face. “That mule nature of yours is the best thing the evil powers got to throw you off and mess you up. You can’t be—”
She took both his hands in hers. “I got it, Gage. I know what I have to do, but I’m going to need some help.”
He turned her hands over in his, running his fingers lightly over the backs and palms. “I can tell you ’bout what you gotta do to make the power feel invited, and maybe how to keep it from turnin’ on you, but you gotta learn how to be patient with it, and that ain’t easy.”
He thought for a moment then sighed. “I don’t suppose it’ll hurt anythin’ if I walk with you a ways.”
Bending down behind the counter, he came up holding a cardboard box that he brought around and set at her feet. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “What you gonna do now, girl?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I’ve got four weeks medical leave; that will be enough time to decide if I want to come back or do something else. Twenty years is a long time to be giving yourself to the nurturing of other people.”
She knelt down to stroke Tom Mix again and waited until she could speak around the lump that had formed in her throat. “The truth is, Gage, all those years of being a nurse has changed me, made me able to see things through the filter of wisdom that flows through the heart. I’ve left my mark on a lot of lives. It’s almost enough.”
“What gonna make it all the way enough?”
“When I was being carried to the ambulance, I had an idea. I must have been delirious or something because I saw myself in a medical tent in the middle of a jungle.
“There was a line of women and their children waiting to be tended to. I was listening to a child’s lungs and—”
She shook her head. “It sounds pretty crazy.”
“No it don’t,” Gage said, “It sound just about right.”
Cat smiled, wondering if they might ever get to the point of not having to talk at all. “Was that a vision talking to me?”
“Not exactly. More like the power just helpin’ you hear what your heart been sayin’ to your head all along. Visions comin’ from your heart don’t never lead you down wrong paths.”
Gage opened the box that contained a few dozen packages of Good & Plenty. He sniffed one of the packages then ripped off the cellophane and shook out the pink and white candies into her hand. He took another handful and put them in his mouth all at once.
To guide the woman wasn’t going to be easy, he thought, but like her, the easy way had never been his to choose. It would take time, but she would learn. They would learn together.
* * *
Cat listened to the building’s heartbeat. The cycle of suffering and healing, life and death would go on as always. The insignificant gap her absence created would be momentary, filled in and covered over as if it never existed.
Opening the door, she stepped into the light feeling no regret or longing.
It was time to begin.