Never Trust A Lady

were typically skimpy. Impossibly skimpy.

“Who is it?” her voice quavered. Stupid, she thought, who would it be?

The answer came muffled. “It’s Tom. Sorry to bother you…”

“Just a minute…” Breathing like a cornered fugitive, she quickly wrapped the extra towel around her waist and rolled the top edge down to secure it, then grabbed the damp one from the floor and covered her top half in the same fashion. Finally, hoping her pounding heart wouldn’t shake the towels loose, she gave her sweat-damp hair a futile pat and opened the door a crack.

“Hi,” she gasped through the gap. “Sorry-I was just…”

Tom was standing there with his hands in his pockets. “Maybe I’d better come back,” he said. “When you’re, uh…” His forehead creased in a scowl of Godzillian proportions. But he looked as if he wanted to say something and was making no move to go.

She shrugged her bare shoulders, keeping a death grip on the top of the towel that covered her breasts as she stuttered, “It’s okay-if there’s-did you want…can I help you?”

She opened the door wider and he slipped into the room, moving stiffly, without his usual grace. “I, uh, just wanted to say I’m sorry.” He was looking around her stock motel room as if he’d never seen one like it before. Looking anywhere but at her.

“Sorry?” As she closed the door, a trickle of sweat emerged from her hair and began a journey across her forehead toward one eyebrow. She mopped it self-consciously with the back of her hand as she turned back to him. “What for?”

He waved a hand in a vaguely self-disgusted sort of way. “For saying what I did-earlier. I shouldn’t have thrown it at you like that. I’d been trying to think how to tell you.”

“It’s okay,” Jane murmured. “Really. I’m just…so terribly sorry.”

He nodded, finally looking at her. Cloaked in terry cloth from her armpits to her knees, she’d never felt so utterly naked. “It’s not something I normally tell people,” he said.

Another sweat trickle traced its way between her eyebrows, and his glance flicked at it, his eyes alert while his body remained still, like a lazy cat following the dartings of a fly.

She lost track of time and space; it might have been an hour or a second before he said, in a voice like a rock slide, “I was wondering…you don’t happen to have any toothpaste, do you? That tote bag of yours…” His smile tilted. Her heart did, too.

“Oh, sure. As a matter of fact, I do.” A laugh jerked her body like a hiccup. “I’ll just…” Amazed that her legs still functioned, she padded to the bathroom on bare feet, her knees all but creaking with self-awareness. “It’s…in here. You’re welcome to it. I’m, uh, finished…” Returning, she thrust the tube of toothpaste at him. “So you might as well keep it. Sorry I don’t have a spare toothbrush.” Her smile and shrug were nervous and apologetic.

“That’s okay-I’ll make do.” He grinned as he held up a finger and made brushing motions across his teeth with it. The smile slipped back into its customary place as he added, “This’ll help a lot-thanks, I ’preciate it.”

Smiling brilliantly, Jane murmured, “Oh, no problem. Glad I could help. Any time.” I hate this, she thought. Hate it. Why did this have to happen?

Again he nodded, saying nothing. And then his eyes dropped unexpectedly to her chest, to the spot where her fingers were knotted in the join of her towel. Her pulse throbbed so loudly in her ears that when he spoke she heard the words as if she were underwater.

“Were you able to get hold of your family?”

“There’s just the girls. They were still out. I left another message.”

“Ah. Well, at least they won’t worry.”

Her smile was as lopsided as his. “I just hope somebody remembers they have to pick me up at the airport.”

“You’ll probably be able to get them in the morning.”

He was moving toward her, moving toward the door. She stepped aside to let him pass, every muscle, nerve and sinew groaning in protest. Close to her he paused…intolerably close, close enough to touch, close enough that she could hear him breathing, breathing as if he’d just been running hard. Her eyes found and clung to his mouth, and though she fought it desperately, of course the memories had to come, too. Tormenting memories of how it had felt on hers, the way it had tasted.

“Well, thanks again for the toothpaste. See you in the morning. Seven o’clock, right?”

“Right”

‘“Night.”

“Good night.” It was almost a gasp, as if she’d been in desperate need of air.

And then he was gone, and she slid the security chain into place and leaned against the door, limp and exhausted, trembling, wishing to God she could cry.

Twenty-one years of a bad marriage, five years divorced…I thought I knew what loneliness was. Dear God, I thought knew.

But lying in bed that still, dark night, with seabirds calling in the marshes and Tom lying near enough to touch but for a few cruel inches of wall, she understood that she’d only begun to know real loneliness. Only begun.

They left the island in a single-engine Cessna, lifting into a lovely pink and lavender haze that reminded Jane of cotton candy. She did not get airsick; in fact, she enjoyed the flight so much she thought she might even decide to take flying lessons. After this, she was definitely going to need something exciting and new in her life. Something big enough to fill a void created by a man she hadn’t even known existed until two days ago. Except she was very much afraid there wasn’t anything in the world big enough to fill that particular void.

Tom had very little to say to her that morning, brooding in silence on the flight to Greenville while Jane chatted with Fritz, the pilot, a serious young man with a blond crewcut and a military manner who somehow seemed too American to be with Interpol. She wondered, but didn’t ask, if he might be FBI. In any event, by the end of the flight he’d warmed up and softened enough that he gave her the names of two people he knew of in North Carolina who might be willing to teach her to fly. He’d have taught her himself, he said, except he was a little too far away for her convenience.

“Wasn’t he nice!” Jane said to Tom as he walked her to the terminal, Fritz having stayed with the plane, which was idling on the tarmac.

His only reply was an ambiguous grunt, which she didn’t try to interpret. She was determined to keep herself cheerful, the tone of their leave-taking casual and light. Which had proved to be easier than she’d expected, because after the trauma of the previous evening she felt quite numb. She felt that she’d learned a valuable lesson, and that never again would she allow herself to be so vulnerable. So needy. Never again.

“Did you manage to get hold of your kids this morning?” Tom’s voice was like a truckload of gravel-about normal, for him.

“Oh, no,” she said politely. “But that’s all right. I didn’t want to disturb them on a Sunday morning until I knew what flight I’d be coming in on. I’ll buy my ticket first, then call. By that time, they might even be up.” She said it with a smile, inviting him to join her, but his face remained somber.

“So,” he said, “you sure you’ll be okay? Anything you need?”

“Quite sure. Thanks for everything.” She stuck out her hand, and though he looked momentarily startled, he took it. Steeling herself against the warmth of his grasp, she said brightly, “Listen, good luck. I hope you find…the whatever-it-is you’re looking for.”

“Yeah,” said Tom, “me, too.”

“Well, so long.” She managed not to add, “It’s been fun.”

“See ya.”

No, thought Jane. We both know that you won’t

She watched him walk away, and the numbness held. She turned and began to make her way toward the USAir ticket counter, and it occurred to her suddenly that Tom still had her toothpaste. Well, of course, it was Connie’s toothpaste, actually.

That was when her legs got wobbly, and she had to go and sit down for a while and wait until the trembling stopped.