T he shell pink invitations had been in Winn's possession for three weeks already. Proper bridal etiquette demanded they be mailed four to six weeks in advance. She had lists of addresses from both her side and Paul's, but it seemed there was always some other detail cropping up, some interruption just as she sat down to the task of doing the addressing.
Am I delaying because I think Joseph is right? But even the suggestion made her quail. Attempting to stop the tidal wave of fevered planning that advanced with deadly intent would be like trying to hold back a natural disaster. The plans gained momentum, force and inevitability as they rolled along. The planning of a wedding, Winn learned-much to her dismay-involved so many petty details they managed to detract from the main event, which was the marriage of a man and a woman.
Fern Gardner, for all her being totally inexperienced in such folderol, proved herself as capable and structured as a drill sergeant. Not an iota went unconsidered. She'd made a calendar listing the specific days by which each particular must be checked upon, each decision made, each person telephoned, each piece of frippery purchased. And Winn did consider much of it frippery. Had it been left entirely up to her, Winn would have elected a quiet wedding with a few close friends and relatives invited to her mother's house or anyplace simple and left all the grandstanding for those women much more suited to it.
Yes, she'd enjoyed dressing up and celebrating the day of Sandy 's wedding, but for herself she preferred things much simpler. She was an artless woman of ordinary tastes and would have been much, much happier if all the silly special effects could have been side-stepped.
But Fern Gardner, self-made success, abandoned by her lover at age nineteen, mother of an illegitimate daughter, needed the reassurance and illusion of security attendant with a large flashy wedding. She had only one daughter and that one lucky enough to have attracted a man whom Fern had virtually handpicked. She wasn't about to stint on this most auspicious day of Winnifred's life.
Within the week following Winn's confrontation with Joseph Duggan, her mother called at least eleven times, always for some mindless non-cruciality that made Winn grit her teeth while answering. The realtor called twice asking her to leave the house so he could show it in the evenings. At the hospital Meredith Emery brought brochures of Disneyland and asked how soon her hair would grow back. The furniture store called to say the new living-room sofa, chairs and tables had arrived, and Paul called to ask if they shouldn't take one evening to go out and choose lamps, pictures and also to buy one particular item he'd spied while out browsing on one of his lunch hours; a table-style chess set with inlaid two-toned wood top-perfect for a living-room accent piece.
"A chess set?" Winn echoed, dismayed.
"Not just a chess set. A very special chess set."
"But why?"
"I told you I'd give you another lesson when we had more time. I know you can get the hang of it."
"But, Paul, you know I'm no good at chess."
"You'll learn, darling. I have every confidence in you." He laughed lightly.
Suddenly she experienced a jagged flash of irritation. Unconsciously her back stiffened, and she coiled the telephone cord six times around her finger until it cut off the circulation.
"I'll make you a deal, Paul," she announced with a hard edge to her voice. "I'll come and look at your chess set if you'll agree that for every hour we spend playing it, we'll spend equal time playing racket ball."
A long silence followed, then his chuckle, more patronizing than humored. "Now, Winnifred, you know I'm all feet on the racket-ball court. I've never been a jock and never pretended to be. I'll leave the physical workouts to you."
She yanked the phone cord off her finger and rammed a kitchen chair with her foot till it slammed under the table with a resounding clatter. "Fine! Great! Then what do you say if one or two nights a week we each find somebody else to play our games with? You can find someone with an analytical mind to pore over your chess table with you, and I'll find somebody who likes to rap a ball around a racket-ball court." Naturally the picture of Joseph popped up, dressed in white shorts with his bare belly showing below a whacked-off T-shirt. "Paul, are you there, Paul? What do you say?" she hissed. "Maybe old Rita will oblige you, huh?"
"Winnifred, you're being unreasonable."
"Oh, am I? And what are you being?"
If there was one thing Paul Hildebrandt prided himself upon it was his ability to reason. The electric silence told Winn her words stung.
"It was just an idea, that's all. Naturally, if you're opposed to the chess table, we don't have to go look at it."
Suddenly the back of Winn's nostrils burned. She felt like dropping to her knees and bawling. He thought the issue here was a chess table! Judas priest! For a brilliant man he could be utterly dense.
"Well, what about going out to choose the lamps and other small items?" he was asking.
She opened her mouth wide, drew an enormous calming breath, ran four agitated fingers through her hair and said to the floor, "I don't care. I'd like to do it… whenever you want." But once the words were out, she realized one of the two statements had to be untrue. Which was true? Either she wanted to do it, or she didn't care.
"Day after tomorrow, then? I'll come and pick you up around seven."
"Fine," she answered despondently. "Seven."
"Good night, love. Get some good rest now. You seem a little high-strung lately, and it's probably all the last-minute details piling up."
It was not the details and Winn knew it. The details were being handled with parliamentary punctiliousness by Fern Gardner, who only checked with her daughter as a matter of principle, not because Winn's approval was either sought or necessary. No, Winn's problem had nothing to do with details. It had to do with a curly-haired Irishman whose sexy eyes she could not forget, who played a wicked game of racket ball, drove rusty pickups and kissed like Prince Charming.
Within a half hour of Winn's hanging up after her conversation with Paul, Sandy called.
"Hi, kiddo, how're the wedding plans coming?" Winn had to force herself not to vent her wrath upon her unsuspecting friend-after all, Sandy had no idea of the turmoil within Winn lately. "Pretty well, considering mother's handling all the last-minute glitches with her usual steel-trap deadlines."
"Oh-oh! Something's up."
Winn sank onto the chair she'd earlier kicked so hard. "No, nothing's up. It's just that I have other things on my mind besides wedding, wedding, wedding. But neither mother nor Paul seems concerned."
"The little girl at the hospital?"
"Yes, among other things. She's dying and I-" Winn drew a deep breath and battled the almost irresistible urge to tell Sandy everything, including her feelings for Jo-Jo Duggan, to be honest and open and ask her friend's opinion about the whole matter. But before she could broach the subjects, Sandy went on.
"Well, I have just the thing to take your mind off your troubles and put you in a happy frame of mind. I guess you know what it is. We've talked about it long enough."
Winn covered her eyes and braced an elbow on the table. Oh, no, not the shower.
"It's the shower. I've just been waiting to hear from you until I put the date on the invitations. And it's getting awfully close. I think we'd better have it maybe week after next, or the week following that. Do you have your calendar handy?"
It was staring at Winn from a nail on the wall beside the telephone, and as she looked up at it, it suddenly became blurred by tears. Sandy was waiting for an answer, and here she sat, recalling how Paul had once walked up to that nail and said, "I hope you don't plan to drive nails into the walls of our new house this way." If she wanted to drive a four-inch railroad spike into her wall, by God she'd drive it! On the ugly stucco walls of Jo-Jo Duggan's kitchen there hung a calendar with a picture of a tin lizzie, and a header advertising Duggan's Body Shop. Next time she was there, Winn promised herself to check and see what he'd hung it up with.
Apparently Winn took longer to mull over the shower than she'd realized, for Sandy 's voice came across the wire once again. "Winn, have you sent out your wedding invitations yet?"
"No, I've been working on them."
"Well, the shower invitations shouldn't really go out until after people get the ones for the wedding. Don't you think you should get going?"
Fern had called four days in a row to issue the same reprimand. Winn felt pressured and antagonized. "Yes, I'll make sure I have them out by the weekend if I have to stay home from work one day to finish addressing them." But at work Merry needed her, and she'd no more have deserted the child for a single precious day of her remaining life than Winn would have jumped at the chance to own a chess table of inlaid wood.
They chose two weeks from Saturday for the shower and agreed that Sandy would delay sending her invitations until midway through the following week, giving Winn enough time to get her own out first.
When Winn hung up the phone, she resolutely dragged out the box of pink envelopes and notes, the lists of addresses, her own phone book and a pen. She had addressed five when the phone rang again.
"Hello, Winn, this is mother."
What would it be this time? Had the apricot-rose crop failed in Florida? Winn bit back the sharp response and answered, "Hello, mother."
"Have you got the invitations in the mail yet?"
"No, but they're almost done," she lied.
"Winn, have you taken a look at the calendar lately? Those invitations should have been in the mail no later than last Saturday."
"I know, mother, I know."
"And now something else has come up. Perry Smith has just received word that he's being transferred to Los Angeles."
For a moment Winn was disoriented. She couldn't figure out what Perry Smith's transfer had to do with anything concerning her. Evidently her mother expected some moan of dismay that was not forthcoming, for her voice crackled with indignation. "Well, for heaven's sake, I should think there'd be some reaction from you. After all, there's not much time to find someone else to do the singing."
Oh, yes-Ramona Smith, Perry's wife, had agreed to do the music at the wedding and had already discussed the choice of songs with Winn.
"It's not the end of the world, mother. I'd be happy with just the organ, anyway. Mrs. Collingswood might be twittery, but she's wonderful when she touches a keyboard."
"Oh, Winnifred, don't be ridiculous. Whoever heard of a church wedding without vocal music? The songs are all chosen, and they've been planned into the entire service. Don't tell me you have no intention of asking someone else."
"I don't know any other singers, mother. I didn't even know this one. You found her."
"Well, it's imperative that we move fast on this."
Winn's temper snapped. "You move fast on it if you want to, mother. I've made all the fast moves I can stand for a while!"
Her mother's voice softened, but with an effort. "Darling, you're not yourself these days. Why, I swear you sound as if you really don't care about these decisions one way or another."
"Frankly, mother, I don't. If you want a different singer, get one. Tell him he can sing 'Betty Lou's Gettin' Out Tonight' for all I care. And hire a sequined chorus line to dance along with it!"
She could see her mother's stunned face and feel her hurt surprise at the rebuff. "Oh, mother, I'm sorry. Please just do whatever you want and let me know, all right?"
Thirty minutes later Paul called again. "Your mother and I just had a long talk, Winnifred, and she tells me you just snapped at her and hurt her feelings, and have washed your hands of making decisions about the singer. Winnie, you really shouldn't treat your mother so… so…" He ended with a sigh.
"So what?"
"You know. You're short with her all the time and find fault with everything she does when she's really bending over backward to facilitate matters and help us plan a very high-class wedding here."
"Maybe I didn't want a high-class wedding, Paul. Maybe I just wanted you to pay mother a few glass beads, open a vein, exchange blood with you and slip away to a tepee in the woods." Where had this caustic person come from? Winn was being unfair to Paul, and she knew it but couldn't seem to curb these cutting remarks. She felt him tightly controlling his anger.
"I understand, you're under a lot of pressure right now, so I'll excuse you for getting short with me, but I think you owe your mother an apology."
Dear God-it struck Winn-he's marrying me as much for the mother-in-law he'll inherit as he is for the bride he'll get. Still, she softened her tone. "Paul, do me a favor, will you? Call mother back, and you two discuss the singer and pick one. Will you do that for me, please?"
There followed a moment's pause while he decided how to handle this suddenly unreasonable fiancee of his. "Yes, I'll be happy to. My mother might have a name for us, too. I'll take care of it, darling."
"Thank you, Paul."
After hanging up, she addressed twenty-five more invitations, then dropped her head onto the tabletop and bawled as she'd been wanting to for days.
Her back ached. Her eyelids burned, and she felt like driving an entire box of nails into the kitchen wall, making a regular design of them all around the frame of the sliding glass door and maybe starting across the wall that abutted it. Instead, she left the invitations strewn all over the table, shucked off her clothes and dropped into bed. She was just dozing off when the phone rang-again!
She flung back the covers and stomped out to the kitchen, angry at being awakened and made to get out of bed.
"Hullo!" she growled.
"Hello," came the masculine voice she'd been trying her hardest to forget. Tears burned her eyes again. Her heart slammed against her chest. She covered her eyes with one hand and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the sliding door in the dark.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"What do you want, Joseph?"
"You."
The line hummed with a taut silence. Winn's feminine parts surged to life-nipples, stomach, inner reaches all pressing for contact with him.
"Don't," she begged in a voice very close to tears.
"I'm sorry, Winn. I complicate things for you, don't I?"
"Yes, oh, God, yes."
She heard him sigh as if close to defeat, yet unwilling to accept it quite yet. "Are the wedding plans progressing without a hitch?"
"Yes. I'm addressing the invitations."
"Oh." Again there followed a poignant silence. "Will you do me a favor, Winn? Will you send me one?"
"Jo-Jo," she sighed.
"Oh, I won't come. I'd just like one to keep."
"J-Joseph, you are b-being exceedingly unkind."
"Winn, are you crying?" He sounded anxious, as if he'd clutched the phone closer to his mouth.
"Yes, d-damn you, I'm crying."
"Why?"
"B-because! He wants to buy a chess table for the l-living room, and some w-woman I don't even know is m-moving to Los Angeles… and b-because Sandy wants to give me a sh-shower… oh, God, I don't know, Joseph. I only know I'm supposed to be happy, and I'm miserable."
"How's the little girl?"
"Oh, thank you for asking, darl-Joseph. Nobody else really cares how I feel about her around here. Sandy asked, but when I answered, she hurried on as if to avoid the subject, too."
Winn paused for breath, and his soft voice fell upon her ear. "Back up a minute, Winn. Start at the beginning of that."
"I… you don't make sense, Joseph Duggan." But he made perfect sense and she knew it.
"You were about to call me darling."
"No, I wasn't."
"Try it anyway and see how it feels." Joseph Duggan, consummate flirt, she thought. But she knew him to be far more than that now. His voice was odd as he asked, "Is that what you call Paul?" It was one of the only times she recalled Joseph referring to her fiance by his correct name.
"No. He calls me darling. I call him Paul."
"We've got sidetracked. Tell me about the little girl, Winn."
Why did the name Winn sound more like an endearment from Joseph's lips than the term darling from Paul's?
She told him about Merry's lack of progress, about the brochures from Disneyland. She told him about the singer whose husband was being transferred to Los Angeles, about the argument with her mother, about the shower and the gift registration she was supposed to decide upon at a local department store, where she was expected to choose a china pattern she didn't give a damn about and crystal glasses she'd be uncomfortable drinking from. She told him she'd just made the final payment on Paul's wedding ring, and that her mother was harping about buying something called a unity candle that was to be used in the wedding service, though she herself didn't understand why it was necessary. And she ended by telling him Fern had now come up with the idea of providing limousine service on the day of the wedding.
"Limousine service!" she cried, exasperated. "Of all the phony things."
"Your mother sounds as if she loves you very much."
"My mother is putting on a show she wished for and never had herself. She's playing fairy godmother."
"Then if you have to go through with it anyway, let her. Why do you agree with her one day and buck her the next? You're the one in the wrong, not her."
"But she's railroaded me into all this… this circus stuff I never wanted."
"Then why didn't you tell her a year ago when you should have instead of letting her believe it was what you wanted? Or is it really your mother you're upset about at all?"
"Joseph, I'm tired and I want to go to sleep."
"And I'm frustrated and I want to see you again. Will you drive up to Bemidji with me this Saturday?"
She couldn't believe the man! Five weeks until her wedding, and he suggests she flit away with him like a carefree sprite. " Bemidji! You want me to take off with you just like that and drive up to Bemidji?"
"Yes, to an auction sale."
She was flabbergasted. "An auction sale. Jo-Jo Duggan, you're crazy. I'm addressing my wedding invitations, and you invite me to an auction sale."
"Yes. There's a '41 Ford on the billboard, and there'll be a swap meet, and I might be able to pick up a piece for my '54 Cadillac pickup I haven't been able to find. I thought we might drive it up there."
"And what about Paul? Should I invite him to come along with us?"
"Sure. We'll put him in a coffin, and he can ride in the back."
She gave a nasal snort of laughter before she could stop herself, then covered her nose with a hand. "That's awful, Joseph!" she scolded.
"With a comfortable pillow and blanket, of course," he added, "not a satin lining. And a thermos of iced tea to keep him company for the long ride."
She resisted the gravity of his teasing and became serious once again. "Joseph, I have to go now."
"My leg could use some of that attention you promised."
"Goodbye, Joseph."
"And I've signed up for dancing classes."
"Goodbye, Joseph."
"And I can't find anybody who's half as good as you on the racket-ball court, or who kiss-"
She forced herself to hang up gently. But she dreamed of his curls and crinkly eyes that night.
The prenuptial craziness continued the next day when Fern reminded Winn to send the caterers their time schedule and be sure not to forget to put return postage on the R.S.V.P. notes, and to tell her she'd found the perfect stem glasses for the toasting ceremony of the bride and groom. Winn shook her head as if she'd just been landed a right uppercut. They had to buy special glasses for that?
At eight that evening Winn sat at the kitchen table pouring on the steam to her addressing operation. A knock sounded, and Paul came in without waiting for her to answer.
"Winnie, darling, the most wonderful thing has come up!" He swept into the kitchen and stepped behind her chair, grasping her shoulders while bending low to kiss her neck. "I've been asked to go out to California for a week. The company is sending me on a tour of The Valley! Imagine that-The Valley!" She knew by now there was only one "valley" in Paul's vocabulary. He referred to " Silicon Valley," the world's foremost computer-manufacturing area.
"When?"
"I leave tomorrow for a week. There'll be tours of all the major computer-manufacturing plants and opportunities to learn about all the latest technological advances." The entire country knew that the area just south of San Jose had been in the vanguard of computer technology and was populated with brilliant young men and women whose genius in the field would see many of them millionaires in their thirties. Their expertise was so valued in the industry that the term "The Valley" was now recognized worldwide. Innovations came from The Valley so fast and radically that a computer was often obsolete almost before it rolled off the assembly line, bettered by its successor. Winn understood how the opportunity must excite Paul.
He urged her up from her chair. He kissed her ardently, then asked, "Can you get along without me, darling? I know there's a lot going on, and I know I shouldn't be leaving you at this time, but it's the chance of a lifetime, Winnie." Seldom did his eyes dance like this. She looked into them and tried to conjure up even a quarter of the electric response generated by the mere sound of Joseph Duggan's voice crossing a telephone wire.
"Of course, I can get along without you for a week. All I really need to get done right now is the invitations, and you can't help me with them."
"Oh, thank you, darling." He cupped the back of her head and lifted her toward his kiss-an excited, searching kiss-then wrapped her in both arms and pressed her body close to his. She clung and kissed him back with an almost violent twisting of her body against his, pressing and writhing against him. But it didn't work. She was forcing the issue, and when her body failed to respond as fully as she'd hoped, Winn realized Paul was stimulated as much by excitement over the trip to Silicon Valley as he was by his bride-to-be.
"Winnie," he groaned in her ear. "Let's go to bed. God, it's so good to have you like this again. Something's been wrong for the last few weeks, and I haven't been able to put my finger on it. But tonight you're like you used to be."
She kissed his jaw as she answered, "No, Paul, not tonight."
He drew back, hurt. "But I'll be gone for a whole week."
"I have my period." It was a lie, and she suffered the weight of guilt for it while he encircled her in his arms again, slipped his hands beneath her shirt and caressed her breasts while groaning into her ear.
"Damn!" he murmured at last, forcing himself to release her.
She offered him a consolation that hardly eased her conscience. "When you get back, we'll go out shopping for the lamps and buy you the chess table, too."
"I love you," he declared gently.
His eyes were filled with admiration and gratitude, but he was as eager to leave as she was to have him go when he left a short while later.
After he was gone, she returned to her wedding invitations and attacked them almost frenziedly. She worked that night until midnight and the following night till ten-thirty when she became drowsy and got up to make a pot of coffee to help keep herself awake. She finished the last pink envelope around 1:30 A.M. and licked two hundred and twenty-five stamps before going to bed. She wondered if it was the taste of the glue that made her feel slightly nauseous.
On Friday morning-precisely four weeks and one day before the big event-she dropped the two hundred and twenty-five shell pink envelopes in the big drop box at the post office and breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Tonight when Paul called from California, she'd tell him. Then she'd feel excited.
At work she wrapped patients' limbs in hot packs, then put them through their various rehab exercises. She determined the resistance levels of those who rode the stationary bikes and decided how much weight to strap to those limbs needing strengthening. She gave massages, had a consultation with a doctor regarding a new patient to whom she was being assigned, went to lunch with two co-workers and told them she'd finally mailed her wedding invitations.
And at one o'clock that afternoon, Mrs. Christianson called Winn to her office and quietly announced that Meredith Emery had died.
Winnifred tried valiantly to control her tears.
"But she's due for her therapy at two o'clock," she said inanely, as if the reminder would bring the child back to life to meet the schedule.
Mrs. Christianson took Winn's hand, led her to the exercise room and forced her to sit on the edge of a table, then sat down behind her and started massaging Winn's shoulders and neck.
"You've got very close to this one, I know, Winnifred. And it's hard when you get close. Take the rest of the day off, then go out this weekend and do something wild and crazy to take your mind off it."
The woman's hands were superbly trained and exceedingly adept. She gently kneaded without pinching. But the pain couldn't be massaged away. It went too deep. Winn bent forward, braced her elbows to her knees and dug the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.
"Go home, Winnifred. Go home and take a run, then soak in a hot tub and call that man of yours and celebrate life with him instead of dwelling on death."
But Mrs. Christianson didn't know that man of hers was two thousand miles away, paying homage to a bloodless nerveless entity called "the computer."
Still, Winn followed her supervisor's advice. She put on her green shorts and sweat shirt and ran. She felt the overwhelming need to be outside where blossoms and fresh-cut grass gave testimony to the green resurrection of the world. She sucked in the fecund late May air and counted the number of people who were out planting their backyard gardens, and watched a pair of kites sailing far above her head, realizing two hearty and hale people held the other ends of the strings. She lifted a hand in greeting to every toddler on every tricycle she passed. She cut through a park where pet owners were out walking their dogs and through the parking lot of a small neighborhood grocery store where husbands were stopping to buy cartons of milk on their way home for suppers with wives and children. She steeped herself in life, clinging to each piece of evidence that it thrived, carrying those pictures with her while her legs pumped and stretched and passed the point of easy endurance. She ran on, feeling the heat build in her muscles, welcoming it as a reminder that she lived, panted, burned and ached.
Back at home she draped herself across the kitchen counter, pressing her hot cheek to its cool Formica surface, hardly able to stand for several minutes while her breath beat against her up-thrown arm. When her heart had calmed and her breathing slowed, she stood beneath the pummeling hot shower before eating the most calorie-filled foods she had in the house-all starches and sugars and the forbidden junk she rarely put into the body she kept at its peak as a defense against all those she encountered daily who were not as lucky as she.
Paul called. She told him about Meredith Emery in as unemotional a voice as she could manage. He listened and offered a token response of sympathy before reminding her that it was best not to bring her worries home at the end of the workday, especially with a job like hers.
Rage grew within Winn that he, who spent night after night locked away from her, clattering the keyboard of a computer named Rita, should tell her not to bring her career-oriented concerns home at the end of the day!
In bed she tossed and flailed, and studied the black square of window and tried to cry but failed.
At 11:00 P.M. she gave in and called Joseph Duggan.
One of his brothers answered, then Joseph came on the line and grunted sleepily, "Yeah?"
"Joseph, it's Winn."
In the tiny house in Osseo, Joseph Duggan stood in his jockey shorts beside his grandmother's kitchen sink, which was piled high with dirty cups and plates, and pictured the woman whose voice now spoke in his ear. He pictured her as she'd looked the day he turned and found her watching him scrubbing up after work.
"Winn," he repeated, as if the name released a flock of white doves.
"Joseph, I need somebody tonight. I can't… oh, please, Joseph, can you meet me?"
"Anywhere. Anytime."
"Will I sound ridiculous if I ask you to play a game of racket ball at this hour of the night?"
"I'm already tying my Adidas."
"My club is open till midnight. It's closer than yours. I'll meet you there. Ask at the desk which court, and I'll tell them you're my guest."
"Let me go, so I can hurry."
He ran through the house searching frantically for anything to throw on, grabbing the first thing he found-a pair of sawed-off blue jeans and giving up when he couldn't find a shirt fast enough, so heading out without one, only his shoes in his hand, and his racket.
At the club he careered to a halt before the sleepy night-desk attendant and impatiently whacked a palm down beside the registration book. "What court is Winn Gardner in?"
"Number six."
He jogged down the long corridor and panted to a halt before the only court in which the lights were burning.
She was waiting in the middle of the floor, huddled, arms to knees and forehead to arms, facing the front wall. He stepped down onto the wooden floor and paused.
"Winn?"
Her head snapped up, and she spun around on her buttocks.
"Oh, Joseph, thank you for coming."
He crossed the distance between them with a strong muscular stride. "Don't you dare thank me for coming, Winn. Not me."
She swallowed hard and had an awful, belligerent set to her jaw as she rolled to her knees and looked up at him, standing above her. "Work me hard tonight, Joseph," she demanded sternly. "Don't give me no quarter. Promise?"
Their eyes dashed, and he wondered what this was all about but let her carry it to whatever end she desired without enlightening him in the meantime.
"I promise."
She leaped up and stripped her sweat shirt off almost angrily, flung it out into the hall and slammed the door. He watched, frowning as she strode to the center of the backcourt, dressed in a white T-shirt and green shorts.
"Serve!" she ordered, disdaining warm-ups, staring at the front wall almost as if she'd forgotten Joseph was there except as an instrument to do her bidding.
He strode to the serving lane and gave her what she wanted. He worked her like a slave driver, giving her everything he had. She smashed the ball with a vehemence that was awesome. She drove it and backhanded it, and all the time her teeth were clenched and her jaw bulging. She rushed forward to meet each oncoming ball as if her life depended upon meeting it in time. She was vicious and at times almost ugly in her grim fanaticism. But in that ugliness lurked a true beauty, that of the athlete who pushes her body to its physical limits. She arched her back to a torturous angle as she reached for high shots behind her head. She lunged with a pure surge of might and sometimes climbed two steps up the concrete walls in her frantic effort to wreak whatever vengeance she must upon a dumb blue sphere of rubber.
The sweat flowed freely. She swung at a shot and missed, then when the next serve came, cracked it dead center while gritting for emphasis, "Goddamn you!"
They played at the torturous pace for thirty minutes, then Joseph had to know. He stood at the serving line with his back to her and stubbornly refused to turn around while asking, "Did you send out the wedding invitations?"
"Yes!" she barked. "Serve, dammit!"
Joseph felt as if she'd stabbed him in the back with a broken blade.
They played fifteen minutes more, but now he was attacking each shot as recklessly, as angrily as she. Tonight it mattered not in the least who won or lost. It only mattered that they slammed the ball against the concrete walls and got even with the world's injustices and demands.
"Why?" he growled as his racket punished the innocent ball.
"Because I couldn't stop it!" She, too, performed an injustice to the game of racket ball with her next return.
"Is that why you're doing this?"
The whistling return he'd expected to fly past his ear never materialized. Instead, behind him all was silent. He whirled, white lipped now with fury. Dammit, he loved this woman! They stared each other down-she was poised as if to turn her racket on him while he gripped his own racket with a fist so tight it made veins bulge like blue rivers up his arms.
"Is that why?" he demanded angrily.
"No!" she bleated. Then, without warning, Winn Gardner collapsed to her knees, hugged her head and broke into a torrent of sobbing.
Jo-Jo's racket clattered to the floor. He was bending to her in less than a second, knee to knee, grasping her arms in a painful grip. "Winn, please tell me what this is all about."
Her hair was strewn and wild, for it had not been pampered after its last washing. It prodded the air around her face while her mouth yawned in anguish and tears streamed from her tormented eyes. Her fingers plucked at Joseph's chest as if searching for a shirt to grasp.
"Oh, God, Joseph, she died." And then he understood.
"Winn… Winn…" Gently he embraced her, kissing her temple, wanting to slip her inside his very body to protect her from further pain. "I'm sorry, darling. I'm sorry."
Her body jerked. Her arms clung. The salt of sweat and tears intermingled upon his neck as she buried her face there and wept. Incoherently she babbled out her sorrow while he quietly held her, understanding the meaning if not the words. Joseph and Win were bound together wherever their bare skins touched by the sweat they'd forced from each other's bodies during the grueling combat of the past half hour. He ran his hands as far around her as he could and drew her in as if his arms were attached to a winch, and only she could release its catch. Their knees were widespread now, their stomachs and breasts molded flat together. Her hurt became his. And because she cried, his eyes misted, too.
When her sobbing grew terrifying, he plowed his hands through her hair and forced her head back, covering her mouth with his in a blessed surcease of solitariness. Their tongues, like the ball they had just battered, drove and smashed and volleyed, continuing to fight the fight of the living against the invincibility of death. Their heads moved as if they were fighting each other with their open mouths, when there was truly no fight at all, only enormous relief from tensions both emotional and sexual.
He pushed her back and fell with her onto the middle of the vast empty floor, covering her hard-muscled body with his own. His elbows struck the floor, then her head was cradled in his arms in a half awkward, half meshing embrace while their well-matched bodies fused. His hips shifted to one side, and a knee nudged hers open. She complied with profound defiance of everyone and everything save Joseph Duggan, placing her soles on the floor, widening her straddle until he was couched securely within her thighs, and she could freely and angrily thrust up against him.
At first their breaths were ragged, hers still shredded by the last vestiges of weeping. But soon they became conscious of the faint hum of the overhead lights in the otherwise still room. Neither their lips nor hips had separated when the writhing and lashing out stopped.
Their kiss grew tender, the movements of their heads mellowed into those of lovers exploring something wondrous. Her knees were still flexed, but they relaxed now, and one of them slipped down to lie flat against the floor while the other caressed his hip.
Combat became caress.
Grip became greeting.
Anger became accolade.
They moved as a wave moves upon the shore, one upon the other, slipping up to explore, cover, then receding to await the next nudge of nature.
His body was hard. He used it to encourage, to invite, but not to assault or punish. She lifted rhythmically in acceptance, and he backed away the shortest distance possible, only enough to see her wide blue eyes, filled with acceptance of the inevitable, and with something else, trembling, breathless loving.
"Joseph, what have I done?" She spoke of the invitations, of course.
But he wouldn't have her asking of them now. "You've made me fall in love with you. I love you, Winn. Take me home with you."
"For the night, Joseph?" she asked uncertainly.
"Yes, for the night, for only tonight if it's all I can have."
"Yes, Joseph, oh, yes, darling. I think it's time I find out if you're right about a lot of things."
He pushed himself from her, sat back on his haunches with one of his knees on either side of one of hers. Their eyes were polarized now, unable to break apart. He caught her hand and rolled to the balls of his feet, pulling her up with him.