Hero at Large

  Paint cans and carpenters’ paraphernalia had been stacked in the corner of the box office. A spattered tan dropcloth covered tables and chairs. A bare forty-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, shedding a depressing circle of grim light on the papers in front of Chris. She stared blank-faced at her surroundings, feeling as if she’d been pushed into a corner, both literally and figuratively. A mound of paperwork and the prospect of coming eyeball to eyeball with Ken had kept her chained to her desk. For a fleeting moment in the restaurant parking lot, Chris had thought she felt something holding them together…a gossamer-thin, fragile thread of caring and affection. And then it was gone. Broken by the honking of a truck horn.

  So here I sit, she brooded. Hiding in here like a stupid fugitive. She rested her chin on her hand. It was damn depressing: She loved a man who didn’t exist; her aunt was planning a wedding that would never take place; and she worked for a skating rink that, as far as she could tell, didn’t have a name.

  Ken stood in the open doorway and watched her. Finally, he forced his mouth into a tight smile. “I’ll bet my problems are worse than yours.”

  Chris looked up and stared at him stonily.

  He slouched against the door and tucked his hands into his pockets. “The compressor is all wrong,” he offered.

  “Who cares?”

  “You should care. We can’t make ice without a compressor.”

  I don’t want to make ice, she thought miserably. I want to make love.

  He turned away from her and poured himself half a cup of coffee. He drank it in silence and threw the paper cup into the trash. “I’d like to oversee this project personally, but I can’t. It’s going to be up to you and Marty to make sure the rink opens in a week.” He took a business card from his wallet and scribbled a number on it. “This is where I can be reached in Chicago. If there are any problems, business or otherwise, give me a call.”

  Chris’ hand clenched, inadvertently crumpling the card, as she made a mental note never again to fall in love. “And what consitutes an ‘otherwise’ problem? Canceling the caterer and the florist? You could afford to sit in that damn restaurant and chuckle about all of this. You’re flying off to Chicago. And who knows where you’ll spend the week after that…Bangkok? Zanzibar? I have to stay here and live with Edna. I have to somehow convince her that there will not be a wedding taking place.”

  Ken looked at her levelly for a full minute. His mouth quirked into a smile that Chris thought looked slightly fiendish. “Do you think she’d actually go ahead and plan a wedding?”

  Chris threw her hands into the air. “Of course, she’d go ahead and plan a wedding. You don’t know what it’s like to stop her once she sets her mind on something.” Chris sank back into her chair. “Maybe I should just let her go ahead and plan the wedding and book myself on a flight to Orlando the night before.”

  “There’s another alternative.” Ken grinned wolfishly. “We could go ahead and get married. I could probably fit it into my schedule if I leave Zanzibar out of my itinerary.”

  Without thinking, Chris grabbed the electric pencil sharpener and hurled it at him. It whistled past his ear and smashed against the door. Ken looked unperturbed. The infuriating smile stayed on his lips. “I suppose that means I can go to Zanzibar, after all.” He picked up the undamaged sharpener and placed it on a paint can well out of Chris’ reach. “I’ve made arrangements for Steve to take you home. He’ll be here until five. Just look him up when you want to leave.”

  “You’re going now?”

  “Do you care?”

  “No!”

  “Hmmmm.” He smiled pleasantly, slipped out of the office, and closed the door behind him.

  Chris stared at the door for a long time before she realized she was smiling, too. “Damn!”

  Chapter 12

  Chris stood at curbside, looking balefully at her new car. It was a glistening black Mustang with a black spoiler, and custom striping. And it was a mistake. A twenty-thousand-dollar mistake with black leather upholstery and a sound system that could shatter glass. “You’re a great car,” she told it, “but you were destined for somebody else.” Chris paced on the sidewalk. She’d wanted to get a little front-wheel drive station wagon—something sensible. Something cheap. She sighed. She didn’t know what had come over her in the car lot. Suddenly, she’d had this craving for power and flash—and the day before she’d slunk into a naughty lingerie store and bought a black lace garter belt. Chris made a questioning gesture at the car. “Why? Why am I doing these things?” Because I’m crazy. Kenneth Callahan Knight has made me crazy. Look at this. He has me talking to cars.

  She looked over at the Mercedes, also parked at curbside. Tasteful, she thought. Understated elegance. Not the sort of car a woman who owns a black lace garter belt would drive. It has to go back to Darby Hills; there’s no reason to keep it. Chris sighed and ran her hand along a sleek silver fender. The truth was, she admitted reluctantly, she hated to see it go: I miss Ken more than I ever thought possible, and I like driving his car. The car had become a tenuous thread that bound her to him; when she returned the car, one more tie would be severed.

  It had been two weeks since Ken had left for Chicago. Somehow he’d managed to send her postcards from around the world. Bangkok. Singapore. Zurich. Lima.

  “Dear Chris,” he’d written on the Bangkok card. “Business is taking longer than expected and Bangkok is lonely without you.” The last card she’d received had been mailed from Calcutta. “Business is finally done here in Calcutta. Next stop on my itinerary is Zanzibar. I hear they’re expecting an epidemic of bubonic plague and typhoid. Do you think I should cancel?”

  Why was it so hard to say yes? Chris groaned. Why couldn’t she just tell him to cancel Zanzibar and come home and marry her. Why couldn’t she admit, “You’re right, Ken Callahan Knight…I fabricated a bad guy because I was afraid to make a commitment.” Chris wasn’t sure. She still felt doubt and uneasiness. There was something about him that disturbed her—something skulking around in the dark corners of her mind. Chris thought of the beautiful diamond ring, another symbol of her inability to make a decision; it wasn’t on her finger, and it wasn’t in his pocket. It was in never-never land. Ignominiously relegated to life in a cup by the toaster. Yuk, she thought, turning from the Mercedes and heading for her front door, what an indecisive wimp. She was a disgrace to her new black Mustang and her wicked lace garter belt.

  Lucy flung the door open and threw herself into her mother’s arms. “I got a A on my spelling test, and we got flowers! A man came and delivered them. And Aunt Edna wouldn’t let me open the card. She said we had to wait for you.”

  Chris looked at Edna. “Flowers?”

  Edna took the small yellow envelope from the kitchen counter and handed it to Chris.

  Chris struggled with the sealed envelope. She held the note card in front of her and read out loud. “Arrived Darby Hills. Need instructions regarding Zanzibar.” Chris smiled. “Ken’s home.”

  “Seems like a funny note. I don’t understand any of it. What’s this business about Zanzibar?”

  “Inside joke.” Chris snitched a cucumber slice from the salad bowl. “Let’s eat. I’m famished.”

  It was a no-pressure message, Chris decided later that night. Ken could have called when he got home, but that would have required an immediate response from her. The note gave her time. It gave her a chance to come to terms with her feelings and plot a course of action. She thought of the quiet smile that had been on his face when he’d left. She’d thought about that smile a lot. It was not the smile of a man who was angry, or mad, or heartbroken, and it certainly wasn’t the smile of a man who had lost interest. It was the smile of a man who thought he might eventually win. It was patient and gentle with love. Chris wrinkled her nose. Very different from the cold shoulder he’d given her in Boston when he’d returned her key.

  Chris took the key ring from the hook on the bulletin board. She held it in her hand and remembered
how she’d felt that morning when he’d moved into her life. Obviously, the key hadn’t been as significant to him as it had been to her. She could never have parted with it as easily as he had. She looked at the key in the dim light of the silent kitchen, glad that Edna and Lucy had gone to bed early. If she was going to get maudlin over a stupid key, she’d rather do it in private.

  It was the first time she’d really looked at the key since he’d returned it to her. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide and a smile creased her face. “That sneak!” Chris ran to her purse and got her key chain, then put the two house keys on the table and compared them. They were different. He hadn’t returned the key to her house, he’d given her the key to his house! She held it up to the light and examined it more closely. DARBY HILLS had been inscribed on it in tiny letters.

  Chris felt as if her heart would burst. Kenneth Knight had given her that key. She knew it was Knight because he’d been clean-shaven and immaculately groomed. And it had been Knight who’d recognized her tears of frustration and confusion in the restaurant parking lot, and who’d held her close, wanting to erase the pain. She cocked an eyebrow. Of course, it also had been Knight who’d gone off on business trips and never even called to say hello. Big deal, she told herself, that’s hardly a criminal offense.

  She felt obligated to enumerate another fault: It had been Knight who’d bought the rink on the sly. Chris sank lower in her chair. He’d bought the rink and turned it into a first-rate training center, making her wildest dreams come true—not exactly something you could give him a black mark for. She sought out the real reason for her discomfort. What was it about him that scared her so? And then, finally, she realized that it was the whole man.

  Combined, the personalities of Ken Callahan and Kenneth Knight created an overwhelming, complicated mixture of masculinity that she knew she could never totally understand and certainly could never control. And if she couldn’t do either of those things, how could she keep him? She would lose him just as she’d lost her first husband. Chris wrinkled her nose. Was that really what she’d been worried about? It sounded dumb. It was like never eating peas because you hated brussels sprouts. Just because they were both green and round didn’t make them identical. At the ripe old age of twenty-nine she might be incredibly inexperienced in the mating game, but she should have known the real thing when it came along, she scolded herself.

  She had consistently underestimated Ken. And she’d underestimated the depth and scope of their love. He would never leave her…and it was impossible for her to leave him. The revelation didn’t hit like a thunderbolt. It was more like molten molasses that crept along brainy crevices, soothing, healing, filling corridors of despair and doubt with hope and courage and joyous security. She held the key in the palm of her hand. It was the key that had opened the door to enlightenment. The key. The smile. And Zanzibar. He had hung in there. There had been times when he’d been angry, but he’d never deserted her…not even when she’d kicked him out of her house.

  Chris looked at the clock on the wall. Nine o’clock. She could be at Darby Hills by ten. She gave herself a mental hug and slipped Ken’s key onto her key chain. She snatched her ski jacket from the hall closet and closed the front door quietly behind her. Chris was halfway down the sidewalk when she remembered the ring. She thunked her head and went back inside. How could she possibly go anywhere without her ring? She was practically naked without it! She looked down at the diamond sparkling reproachfully in the cup and apologized. “Sorry,” she whispered, “I’ve been a real cluck.” She slipped the ring onto her finger and thought for a moment just how right it felt. Locking the door behind her once again, she took a moment to enjoy the cold air that prickled on her flushed cheeks and to wonder at the beauty of the sliver of golden moon that hung low in the navy night sky.

  Chris considered the two cars at her disposal for a moment, then chose the Mercedes, making a mental note to enroll Edna in driving school first thing in the morning. The Mustang would fit her perfectly. Chris doubled over with laughter at the idea of little Aunt Edna terrorizing the neighborhood in the flashy black car. And she’d be a celebrity at her next senior citizens meeting!

  When her laughter had subsided, Chris was plagued with more somber thoughts. What on Earth can I say to Ken? she worried. I’ve been such a boob. She turned onto Little River Turnpike and headed west toward Middleburg, winding her way through Fairfax City. Traffic thinned dramatically once she reached the county line, and she relaxed and enjoyed the solitude. A few stars blinked on. She approached Middleburg and was reminded that it was the Christmas season as she drove past candles burning in small-paned windows framed by ruffled white colonial curtains. Green wreaths and red bows adorned doors. Holly garlands wrapped around front-yard gaslights. Chris hummed a few bars of “Deck the Halls” and wondered about Darby Hills. Surely, it was not as awful as she remembered it…and she’d never gone inside. The inside was probably very nice.

  Chris drove on out of town and searched for the road leading to Ken’s estate, wishing she’d been more attentive on her previous visit. Crossing her fingers for luck, she turned at the next intersection, following instinct more than memory. After a mile she suspected she was on the right route. The private drive appeared to her right. She turned and gave a sigh of relief when her headlights bounced off the gold plaque. She reached into the glove compartment and found the controls to open the gate, and for the first time since she’d discovered the secret of the key, Chris felt the familiar butterflies of fear fluttering in her stomach. The narrow drive stretching in front of her looked ominously black. The steers that by daylight looked so placid and picturesque had turned into brooding bovine hulks.

  Courage, she admonished herself, don’t let your imagination run wild. She passed the caretaker’s house and was relieved to see it decorated for Christmas in traditional Middleburg style. Light shone from every window, giving the impression that this was a home filled with activity, but the cheery scene didn’t ease her nervousness. She was pleased to replace the image of Vincent Price with Paddy O’Grady as caretaker, but the feeling of trespass remained. She approached the thicket of trees separating the main house from the servants’ area and scolded herself for not calling first. Taking a deep breath, she encouraged the Mercedes to roll along the winding road. The trees thinned, and Chris found herself gaping in chilled horror at the sight in front of her.

  The mansion sat on the dwarfed hillock like a huge black lump. It was more menacing, more forbidding, and twice as ugly as she’d remembered it. Not a single light shone out in welcome. Chris gripped the wheel and eased the car forward. A rude four-letter word escaped from her tight throat. Thinking of Aunt Edna she quickly amended the phrase to “Oh, sugar,” but it seemed a little mild in view of the monstrosity looming in front of her. She decided there were three possibilities: No one was home, everyone was asleep, or this was all a bad dream. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and nudged the car onward. It was no big deal. She’d simply go on home and call him in the morning. She’d whip right around the big circular drive and get her fanny the heck out of here. No one would ever know. Not Vincent Price or Paddy O’Grady. Only the big stupid cows would know, and they looked like they could keep a secret.

  She was well past the front entrance when she realized she’d passed Ken’s truck. Chris stopped and looked in her rearview mirror. Yes, it was definitely his truck. And it was parked at a rakish angle to the front entrance, leaving no doubt in her mind that he’d zoomed up to the house, screeched to a stop, and run inside. She chewed her lip, threw her hands into the air, and shifted into reverse. What the heck!

  At the front door, Chris stiffened her back and searched for a doorbell, but she couldn’t find one in the darkness. She rapped on the massive block of carved wood and waited. Nothing. She put her ear to the door and listened. Silence. “Well,” she said out loud to bolster her spirits, “good thing I have a key.” She cracked her knuckles and looked around. Now or never, she told herse
lf. Anyway, what was the big deal? He’d given her a key to his house, and this was his house. So, why shouldn’t she use the key? Holding her breath, she closed her eyes and plunged the key into the big gold lock. The ornate door swung open easily, revealing a foyer large enough to accommodate a soccer match. Chris took a cursory glance at polished wood banisters and massive oil paintings and focused her attention on a ray of light sliding under a doorjamb toward the back of the house. A shiver ran down her spine as she walked across the marble floor. It was like being in a deserted hotel. It was hard to believe anyone actually lived here. Especially Ken. Ken who colored Pilgrims orange and purple, and who loved cookies and baked macaroni.

  Chris followed the light and stopped just outside the half-open door. The sounds of a crackling fire and television drifted out to her. She peeked inside and saw that this was a library. The walls were lined with leather-bound volumes, the floors were covered with oriental rugs, and the furniture consisted of massive manly leather chairs and an enormous leather-topped, chairman-of-the-board-type desk. The room was dominated by a stone fireplace that stretched across half a wall. Chris recognized a familiar form hunched in front of the fire and raised a hand to her mouth in relief and astonishment. Ken and Bob the dog were roasting hot dogs and watching TV.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Chris grinned.

  Ken turned and stood. One hand dangled at his side. The other held a long fork with a black hot dog speared on the end. He wore jeans and a faded T-shirt. His ebony hair was backlighted by the fire. It was in need of a cut again, falling in waves over his ears, and Chris felt her heart flip as a broad smile flashed white in his permanently tanned face. “I’m cooking supper.”

  Chris looked at the small television set on the floor. “And watching TV?”

  “Just for the noise. I hate this house. It’s like living in a mausoleum.”