“She'd love it. She's been begging me to get out of her hair all week.” He stopped, eyeing Samantha.
Slowly she smiled. “I'm not going to talk you out of it, am I?”
“Nope. Nor Harvey. It really doesn't matter where you go, Sam, but you've got to get the hell out of here, for your own sake. Don't you want to? Don't you want to get away from all the questions, from the memories, from the chance of running into… them?” The word had a painful ring to it, and she shrugged.
“What difference does it make? When I turn on the news in California, they'll still be there. The two of them. Looking…” Her eyes filled with tears just thinking of those two faces that she was magnetically drawn to every night. She always watched them, and then hated herself for it, wanting to turn the knob to another channel but unable to move her hand. “I don't know, dammit, they just look like they belong together, don't they?” Suddenly her face pulled into a mask of sadness and the tears began to roll down her face. “We never looked like that, did we? I mean-”
But Charlie said nothing, he only pulled her into his arms. “It's okay, Sam. It's okay.” And then as she cried softly into his shoulder, oblivious of the glances of secretaries hurrying past her, he swept a long strand of the blond hair off her forehead and smiled down at her again. “This is why you need a vacation. I think it's called emotional exhaustion, or hadn't you noticed?”
She grunted disapproval and then chuckled softly through her tears. “Is that what they call it? Yeah…” She pulled away from him, sighed, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Maybe I do need a vacation.” And then, valiantly swinging her hair back over her shoulders, she attempted to glare at her friend. “But not for the reasons you think. You bastards have just worn me out.”
“You're damn right we have. And we have every intention of doing so again when you return. So enjoy yourself while you're out there. Horse freak.” A hand on both their shoulders suddenly made them both turn.
“Haven't you left yet, Samantha?” It was Harvey, pipe clenched in his teeth and a bright light in his eyes. “I thought you had a plane to catch.”
“She does.” Charlie grinned at her.
“Then put her on it, for chrissake. Get her out of here. We have work to do.” He smiled gruffly, waved the pipe, and disappeared down another hallway as Charlie looked at her again and saw the sheepish smile.
“You don't really have to put me on the plane, you know.”
“Don't I?” She shook her head in answer, but she wasn't paying attention to the art director, she was looking at her office as though for the last time. Charlie caught her expression and he grabbed her coat and bags. “Come on, before you get maudlin on me. Let's catch that plane.”
“Yes, sir.”
He crossed the threshold and waited, and with two hesitant steps she followed him. With a deep breath and one last glance behind her she softly closed the door.
3
The plane ride across the country was uneventful. The country drifted below her like bits and pieces of a patchwork quilt. The rough brown nubby textures of winter fields drifted into snowy white velvets, and as they reached the West Coast there were signs of deep satiny greens and rich shiny blues, as lakes and forests and fields ran beneath them. At last, with a fiery sunset to welcome them, the plane touched down in L.A.
Samantha stretched her long legs out in front of her, and then her arms as she looked out the window once again. She had dozed most of the way across the country, and now she looked out and wondered why she had come. What point was there in running all the way to California? What would she possibly find there? She knew as she stood up, tossing her long blond mane behind her, that she had been wrong to come all this way. She wasn't nineteen years old anymore. It didn't make any sense to come and hang out on a ranch and play cowgirl. She was a woman with responsibilities and a life to lead, all of which centered around New York. But what did she have there really? Nothing-nothing at all.
With a sigh she watched the rest of the passengers begin to deplane, and she buttoned her coat, picked up her tote bag, and fell in line. She had worn a dark brown suede coat with a sheepskin lining, jeans, and her chocolate leather boots from Celine. The tote bag she had brought was in the same color and tied around the handle was a red silk scarf, which she took off and knotted loosely around her neck. Even with the worried frown between her eyebrows, and the casual clothes she had worn on the trip, she was still a strikingly beautiful woman, and heads turned as men noticed her making her way slowly out of the giant plane. None of them had seen her during the five-hour trip because she had only left her seat once and that to wash her face and hands before the late lunch that was served. But the rest of the time she had just sat there, numb, tired, dozing, trying to reason out once again why she had let them do this, why she had allowed herself to be talked into coming west.
“Enjoy your stay. Thank you for flying…” The phalanx of stewardesses spoke the familiar words like a chorus of Rockettes, and Samantha smiled at them in return.
A moment later Samantha was standing in the Los Angeles airport, looking around with a sense of disorientation, wondering where to go, who would find her, not sure suddenly if they would even meet her at all. Caroline had said that the foreman, Bill King, would probably meet her, and if he wasn't available, one of the other ranch hands would be there. “Just look for them, you can't miss 'em, not in that airport.” And then the old woman had laughed softly, and so had Sam. In an airport filled with Vuitton and Gucci and gold lame sandals and mink and chinchilla and little bikini tops and shirts left open to the navel, it would be easy to spot a ranch hand, in Stetson and cowboy boots and jeans. More than the costume, it would be easy to spot the way they moved and walked, the deep tan of their skin, their wholesome aura as they moved uneasily in the showily decked-out, decadent crowd. Sam already knew from her other visits to the ranch that there would be nothing decadent about the ranch hands. They were tough, kind, hardworking people who loved what they did and had an almost mystical tie to the land that they worked on, the people they worked with, and the livestock they tended with such care. They were a breed Samantha had always respected, but certainly a very different breed than she was accustomed to in New York. For a moment, as she stood there, watching the typical airport chaos, she suddenly realized that once she got to the ranch she would be glad she had come. Maybe this was what she needed after all.
As she looked around for the sign that said BAGGAGE CLAIM, she felt a hand on her arm. She turned, looking startled, and then she saw him, the tall, broad-shouldered, leathery old cowboy that she remembered instantly from ten years before. He stood towering over her, his blue eyes like bits of summer sky, his face marked like a landscape, his smile as wide as she remembered it; a feeling of great warmth exuded from him as he touched his hat and then enfolded her into a great big bear hug. It was Bill King, the man who had been the foreman on the Lord Ranch since Caroline had bought it some thirty years before. He was a man in his early sixties, a man of slight education, but with vast knowledge, great wisdom, and even greater warmth. She had been drawn to him the first time she'd seen him, and she and Barbara had looked up to him like a wise uncle, and he had championed their every cause. He had come with Caroline to Barbara's funeral and had stood discreetly behind the family with a floodtide of tears coursing down his face. But there were no tears now, there were only smiles for Samantha as the huge hand on her shoulder squeezed her still harder and he gave a small shout of glee.
“Damn, I'm happy to see you, Sam! How long has it been? Five, six years?”
“More like eight or nine.” She grinned up at him, equally happy to see him and suddenly delighted that she had come. Maybe Charlie hadn't been so wrong after all. The tall, weathered man looked down at her with a look that told her she had come home.
“Ready?” He crooked an arm and with a nod and a smile she took it, and they went in search of her baggage, which was already spinning lazily on the turntable when they got downstairs. “This it?” He looked at her questioningly, holding the large black leather suitcase with the red and green Gucci stripe. He held the heavy case easily in one hand, her tote slung over his shoulder.
“That's it, Bill.”
He frowned at her briefly. “Then you can't be meaning to stay long. I remember the last time you came out here with your husband. You must have had seven bags between the two of you.”
She chuckled at the memory. John had brought enough clothes with him for a month at Saint-Moritz. “Most of that was my husband's. We had just been to Palm Springs.”
