The Awakening of Dr. Brown Page 16

  His heart rate mysteriously accelerating, Ethan followed the agent’s directions. A woman was standing there, casually watching them from the shade of some pin oak trees, one shoulder leaning against a lichen-encrusted trunk. She was tall and willowy, and wore a long white skirt of some kind of gauzy material that started low on her hips, with a white stretchy top that left her shoulders and most of her middle bare. A white cowboy hat worn straight on her head shadowed her face and completely hid her hair.

  Ethan looked back at Tom, eyebrows raised in question. Tom lifted a hand and spoke briefly to his wristwatch, then nodded. “Go ahead-Carl’s got you covered.”

  Ethan muttered, “Thanks,” gave Michael’s shoulder a squeeze and added, “Catch up with you in a few minutes.” then angled off the path, jogging across the grass toward the trees. The smell of crushed grass drifted up from his feet, filling his senses and adding itself to the list of things he knew he would ever afterward associate with Phoenix.

  Still twenty feet or so away from her, for reasons he didn’t entirely understand he paused, bent down and plucked a dandelion from the grass. He straightened and stood looking at her, holding the stem of the fragile white puffball in his fingers.

  He didn’t know what to make of her-or of himself, and the way he felt, seeing her. He thought of all he knew about her-and how little. He knew that, however unintentionally, he’d made her want him, that last night’s kiss had been as real for her as for him. But real for whom? Whom had he kissed last night, Joanna, or Phoenix? The way he understood it, Phoenix wasn’t even a real person, she was a persona, an invention, a collection of personalities that could be changed at will to fit the demands of a fickle record-buying public. A man would have to be insane to allow himself to fall for one of them, when she might be gone tomorrow…like a dandelion in a puff of wind.

  And as for Joanna…he had no idea in the world who she was, much less how to find her again.

  She smiled when he started forward again, but crookedly. “I wondered when you were going to notice me.”

  He smiled back, the same way, and nodded, taking in her costume. “Another nice disguise.”

  She hitched one shoulder as she pushed away from the tree. “I prefer to think of it as protective coloring.”

  “Whatever it is, it didn’t fool Tom for a minute-he’s the one who spotted you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s his job.” She held out her hand when she saw the dandelion. “Is that for me?”

  He offered it to her with a curious reluctance, his heartbeat tapping in quick time at the base of his throat. “If you want it,” he said. She took it from him, holding it as he had been, with the delicate stem between two fingers and thumb. He expected that she would immediately lift it to her lips and blow it to pieces.

  She did raise it to her face, but instead of blowing the fluff away, cupped her other hand around it as if to protect it from stray breezes while she studied it. Her features were grave and still. Then her lashes lifted and her eyes came back to Ethan, and he was caught off-guard by the sadness in them. “It’s so perfect, isn’t it? By tomorrow it will be gone, you know.”

  He nodded, a lump coming into his throat. “That’s true.” What was she telling him? A warning? That whatever this was between them would be gone tomorrow, too? That, he already knew.

  “I guess…some things you just have to enjoy while you have them,” she said on a lightening breath.

  They began walking by mutual unspoken consent, it seemed, through the trees, paralleling the jogging path, Phoenix still holding the dandelion with a hand cupped protectively around it.

  “I wasn’t stalking you, you know,” she said after a moment, flashing him a smile. “I was just…curious.”

  “To see if I was really going to the park…or who I was going with?” Ethan said, teasing her.

  She dismissed that with a little spurt of laughter. As if… She aimed a smile at her sandaled feet as though she found it entertaining to watch them play peekaboo with the hem of her skirt. “No, actually, I wanted to see what ‘regular’ people do on a Saturday in the park.”

  “Well,” Ethan said, looking around as they walked, “as you can see, that covers a pretty wide range.”

  Her gaze followed the same path his had taken, touching on groping lovers, picnicking families, joggers, bicyclists, in-line skaters, a toddler chasing squirrels, a young man throwing a Frisbee to a dog wearing a bandanna around his neck, and a group of out-of-shape men with their shirts off courting heart attacks with a game of touch football in the muggy heat.

  She nodded toward a family setting out food on a table nearby. “I actually thought about that-bringing a picnic.”

  Ethan grinned broadly at the thought of Phoenix toting a picnic basket. Little Red Ridinghood? Look out, Wolf! “You did?”

  She nodded. “Yup. Then I remembered I don’t own a picnic basket. Or anything to put in one, for that matter. Kind of put a damper on the whole idea.” Her smile turned wry. She gave a shrug that seemed defensive, somehow, and looked away. “So-I just came. Without even so much as a bottle of water. Which reminds me-I’m thirsty. You don’t suppose…”

  “There’s probably a drinking fountain around here somewhere.” A thought struck him. “By the way, how did you come? Did somebody bring you? How did you know which park?”

  She gave him a look that managed to be both direct and secretive. “I took a cab,” she said evenly. “And, I told the driver to take me to the park that’s closest to South Church Street-that’s where your clinic is, right? Must be, because here I am. And here you are…” She was silent for a moment, once again watching her feet flash rhythmically in and out of view. Then she threw him another look, an altogether different one. Uncertain…almost shy. “You don’t mind, do you? That I came? Because if it’s not okay, just say so. I’ll go.” Her voice was gruff but her gaze was unflinching, and it came to Ethan that in a way she was opening herself to him, offering her vulnerability like a gift.

  Unbelievably touched, he thought of the dandelion she still held cupped in her hands, and for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t what was between them she was symbolically protecting, but only her own fragile self.

  “Of course it’s okay. I’m glad you came,” he said softly. And reached over and took her hand.

  The dandelion, suddenly robbed of its buffer, caught a capricious breeze and exploded in a tiny blizzard of fluff. Phoenix gave a stricken cry and halted, her free hand making an involuntary movement toward the drifting feathers, as if trying to catch them, to bring them all back somehow, if only she could…

  Ethan caught her hand and, holding it tightly together with its mate, turned her toward him. “It’s all right,” he said in a fierce and unfamiliar voice, words that hurt his throat, “I’ll get you another.”

  “Hey-nothing lasts forever.” She said it lightly, but in the shadows beneath the brim of her hat, the skin around her eyes had a damp and fragile look.

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to deny it, argue the point, but didn’t see how he could. The fact was, nothing did last forever. So he just looked at her. And then, because her lips looked so soft…so tender and sweet…he leaned over, tilted his head to avoid the hat brim, and gently kissed her.

  He heard-no, felt-the small intake of breath…as if, he thought, he’d caught her by surprise; the slightest trembling, as if she were a maiden unaccustomed to being kissed. And he suddenly remembered what her piano man, Rupert Dove, had told him.

  “What you got to understand about Phoenix is, her heart’s still a virgin…”

  He thought about that, and about the dandelion, while he held her hands enfolded and tucked between his chest and hers, and lightly brushed her warm, soft lips with his. He drew back to find that her eyes were bright and sharp with panic.

  “I don’t know what to do about you, Doc,” she said fiercely. She pulled her hands from his and moved away, and he let her go, not following until there was a
n arm’s length distance between them.

  “You got to go slow…and expect some resistance.”

  After a moment she laughed, her famous chortle. “I can’t get you out of my mind-why do you suppose that is?”

  It was a rhetorical question, and he didn’t reply-though he could have told her he was having the same sort of problem himself. But he suspected she already knew that.

  After a few more silent steps, she went on in a musing tone. “I told you last night that I’d meant to seduce you-” she gave a little gulp of laughter “-God, what a self-conscious little word that is-but you knew what I meant. You said you did.” She glanced at him. He nodded gravely and she looked away again. “I thought it would be so easy-out of arrogance, at first, maybe, but later because…I felt something…” She left it dangling, while her finger made a jerky waggling motion between his chest and hers.

  “It should have been easy.” She halted and turned to him, her voice tense, hushed…angry. “It would be…so easy…for us to be together, Doc. Rock-and-roll legend and First Son, or Leroy and Joanna-take your pick-we’re both consenting adults, without prior commitments-Lord knows, we’ve got the chemistry. Dammit, why can’t we just…be together? Why does this have to be…why does it feel so hard?”

  Ethan cleared his throat; he’d never had a conversation like this before, which was perhaps why his voice felt rusty. “Maybe,” he ventured finally, “because we both know it’s not that simple.”

  “I know that,” she snapped, brittle and dissatisfied. “What I don’t understand is why.”

  He took a deep breath and caught himself just before he drove his hand through his hair-his father’s favorite gesture when emotionally frustrated. Dear God, was he becoming so much like his dad-starched, Phoenix had called him!-uptight and unable to express his feelings? Valiantly, he tried.

  “I can’t speak for both of us, but for me, I guess it’s because…just being together-for the sex-isn’t enough.” And even while the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew how priggish they sounded.

  So he wasn’t at all surprised when she smiled at him and murmured teasingly, “Oh, come on…you’ve never been with someone ‘just for the sex’? Not ever?”

  He felt his skin warming, but he smiled back. “Well…okay. I guess maybe there were times…” He shook his head and the smile faded. “But not…this time.”

  “Why is that?” she whispered, looking into his eyes.

  He shook his head. The easy answer, I don’t know…hovered on his tongue, but he knew she wanted more, and in a strange sort of way he felt he owed it to her. He drew another hard breath and began slowly, navigating through treacherous shoals of feelings he hadn’t even sorted out for himself yet.

  “I think…it’s because I want more from you than that.”

  “That’s what scares me, Doc,” she said in a breaking voice, which she instantly halted, and calmed with a breath. And another. Whispering again, she went on. “What I’m afraid of is, maybe you want something from me that I can’t give you.”

  He shook his head hard, denying it. “I don’t see why. I’m not that demanding.”

  “Then what is it you want from me? Tell me!”

  “What do I want from you? Nothing so hard, Joanna, believe me. All I want is-” Your heart? Your soul? But he couldn’t say it. It was too much to ask, and way too soon to ask it. He had no right whatsoever to ask it.

  She laughed, then, but without amusement, and gave him a long, appraising look that for some reason left him feeling vaguely ashamed. Then she turned and started walking again, with her arms folded now across her bare middle. “You know, Doc,” she said in her rusty Phoenix voice, “I think you disapprove of me.”

  “Disapprove of you?” He repeated it in shocked denial. “I do not.”

  “Yeah, you do.” And he could see the edges of her sad, ironic smile. “I think you’d like it if you could peel off my Phoenix clothes-my disguises, you keep calling them-and see if there’s somebody else under here-somebody you might like better.” She glanced at him. “You called me Joanna just now.”

  Still shocked, and beginning to feel a little abused, Ethan said testily, “It’s your name.”

  She made a disgusted sound and a throwaway gesture. “I haven’t been that person for so long, I don’t even remember what it feels like. Don’t you understand? She’s gone, Doc- Joanna’s gone. And you know what? Good riddance. She was a loser-not a good person.” She gave a high, sharp laugh. “Trust me-if you’re hoping to find somebody inside here you think you might like better than me, you’re out of luck. What you see is pretty much as good as I get.”

  She ran lightly from him then, before he could even begin to think what to say in reply. He knew a moment’s heart-stopping dismay, something like what he imagined she might have felt when the wind had taken her dandelion. Then he saw the drinking fountain, and he understood that she was running to, not away.

  He followed but stood back a ways, watching her step delicately between puddles in the bare patch of sandy ground around the block of stone-crusted concrete that formed the base of the fountain. Entranced, he watched her search out the mechanism that would turn the water on…experiment cautiously with the trajectory of the stream, looking as fearful and fascinated as a child with a mysterious new toy. His heart jolted into his throat when she bent toward the fountain, then halted suddenly, straightened up and carefully took off her cowboy hat. With the hat cradled against one hip she leaned down and touched her lips to the arching stream, and Ethan felt a powerful urge of his own to swallow…

  Was this what it would be like, having her always in his life? he wondered. With even the smallest, most ordinary acts seeming touched with magic, as if he was seeing them for the very first time?

  Like a long-abandoned piece of machinery creaking to life, he stepped forward to hold the faucet on for her while she stroked cool water onto her cheeks, throat and chest like lotion. He gazed entranced at the glossy black coil of her hair as she smoothed back the sweat-damp tendrils clinging to her forehead, and thought about her nape, and how sweet and vulnerable it looked. Then she straightened and raised both arms, turning slightly toward him as she settled the cowboy hat into place over the mass of her hair, and his gaze dropped to her lithe and supple torso-how could it not?

  “Good God,” he said before he could stop himself, “is that a navel ring?”

  She laughed, the coughing sound a surly tiger might make, then said dryly, “Yeah, Doc, that’s what it is.” She waited while he brought his guilty gaze back to her face before she shrugged. “See what I mean? You’re shocked.”

  “I’m not shocked…” He shouldn’t have been. As a doctor he’d personally encountered pierced body parts he’d have been embarrassed to tell her about. “Just…I hadn’t noticed it before, that’s all.”

  “But you disapprove.” And how was it she could sound both amused and sad?

  “No, I don’t,” he said, feeling twitchy and annoyed, suddenly, and very misunderstood. Because the truth was, what he found shocking about the navel ring was the fact that he didn’t disapprove. He felt that he should, that ordinarily he would. But for some reason the fact that it was her navel ring made it not only acceptable, but somehow just one more delightful facet of the incredible and fascinating person she was. It frustrated him that he couldn’t tell her that, and it only added to his frustration when a moment later she voiced his deepest feelings almost exactly in her own words.

  “It just goes with who I am,” she said in her soft-scratchy voice as they walked on again, not touching. “It’s Phoenix. It’s me. That’s all.” He could feel her turn her head toward him, but felt too exposed just then to face the sadness and irony in her eyes.

  He was glad he hadn’t when a moment later she added, “You know, Doc, funny thing is, I don’t feel that way about you. I happen to like you a lot-just the way you are.”

  He’d never felt less likeable in his life. He felt, in fact, like nothing so much
as a contrary child, a mass of confusion and contradictions, inadvertently hurting that which he only meant to hold.

  He closed his eyes, needing to be away from her just then, needing to go to his quiet place and try to rediscover himself there-or failing that, at least to find his path again. Somewhere, he knew, there were important things he was supposed to do that he’d lost sight of, priorities he’d set for himself that he’d somehow forgotten. Somewhere along the line he’d wandered off the path on a quest of his own, this search for the ellusive and alluring being named Joanna, who for all he knew might exist only in his own mind. He sensed that he was very close to becoming hopelessly lost, and that he desperately needed some sort of compass to bring him back to where he belonged.

  It was at just that moment, like an answer to an unspoken prayer, that he heard a childish voice calling, “Hey, Doc! Doc-where you been? Hey, come on, man.”

  He opened his eyes and found Phoenix watching him, blue eyes bright and quizzical in the shadows beneath the brim of the cowboy hat. Beyond her, behind the lattice of a chain-link fence, he could see the basketball court’s cracked pavement reflecting heat in sluggish waves. And Michael, standing at the fence, the fingers of one small hand woven through the chain link, impatiently shaking it while holding the basketball precariously balanced on one scrawny hip. A short distance away, Tom Applegate waited under the basket, patiently mopping sweat.

  “Better go,” Phoenix said with a small jerk of her head. She glanced upward and added wryly, “You might want to hurry…”

  He noticed only then how dark the day had gotten. The air lay on his skin like a hot, wet blanket, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. He felt as surly as the weather, his thoughts humid and unsettled, confusion and frustration tumbling rampant through his insides. He stood and looked at her, part of him craving the peace and quiet only distancing himself from her could bring, part longing to plunge headlong into the emotional tumult, to hold on to her and never let go.

  “Go,” she repeated in a grating voice, forcing herself to smile. She waited until he had nodded and turned away before she sagged against the chain-link fence, shaken…shaking inside.