make love to her all night. He was a very intoxicating man, and she was beginning to think she was in love with him. He was hinting about marriage. She was too young of course, but in a few years…maybe…he said he wanted to have babies with her. But right now it was more fun just having sex. She was planning to stay at his place that night, and mentioned it vaguely to her sisters as she walked out the door. She was meeting him at his apartment so she could drop off a small bag. She wondered if they would even make it to the party. Sometimes they never made it out the front door, and wound up in bed instead, or on the floor. She didn't mind that at all.
“I may not be home tonight,” she muttered vaguely over her shoulder, halfway out the front door.
“Hey wait a minute…,” Sabrina said. “What was that? Where are you staying?”
“Marcello's,” Candy said blithely. She was twenty-one, had been on her own for two years, and her sisters didn't have the right to tell her what she could and couldn't do, and she knew it. So did they, although they worried about her.
“Be careful,” Sabrina said, and came over to kiss her. “Where does he live, by the way?”
“He has an apartment on East Seventy-ninth. He has fantastic art.” Sabrina wanted to say that that didn't make him a nice guy, but didn't. Candy was wearing a crotch-length black leather miniskirt and thigh-high black suede high-heeled boots. She looked incredible with a skin-tight black cashmere sweater, and a gray mink jacket.
“You look knockout gorgeous,” Sabrina said with a smile. She was such a beautiful girl. “Where on East Seventy-ninth Street? Just in case something happens, it's nice to know where you are. And cell phones don't always work.”
“Nothing's going to happen.” It annoyed her when Sabrina acted like a mother instead of a sister, but she indulged her just this once. “One forty-one East Seventy-ninth.
“I won't,” Sabrina promised, and Candy left.
Chris came back from his ski weekend, and they retired to her room to talk and cuddle and watch a movie on TV. He slept there that night, and Tammy slept in Candy's room, so they'd have the floor to themselves. She stuck her head in to see Annie before she went to bed. She was doing homework in braille.
“How's it going?”
“Okay, I guess.” She looked frustrated, but at least she made the effort. All in all, things were going well for her, and they all agreed it had been a nice Thanksgiving weekend, even without their mom.
Chapter 21
She had just said hello to Baxter, who heard the sound she had made as she fell.
“What happened?” he asked, mystified by what was going on. Her voice was coming from lower to the ground, and she was laughing.
“I'm sitting on my ass. I fell.”
“Again? You klutz.” They were both laughing as someone helped her up. It was a firm, strong hand.
“No sledding in front of school, Miss Adams,” the voice teased her, and she didn't recognize it at first. “You'll have to do that in Central Park.” She realized as he helped her up that the seat of her jeans was wet. And she had nothing to change into. And then she remembered the voice. It was Brad Parker, the director of the school. She hadn't spoken to him since the first day.
Baxter could hear him talking to her, and they were late, so he told Annie he'd meet her in class and told her to hurry up.
“I take it you two are friends,” Brad said pleasantly, as he tucked her hand into his arm and walked her in. There was ice on the ground. It had snowed early that year. And there were always mishaps outside school when it did, even if they were careful to shovel it.
“He's a great guy,” she said about Baxter. “We're both artists, and we both had accidents this year. I guess we have a lot in common.”
“My mother was an artist,” Brad Parker said pleasantly. “She painted as a hobby actually. She was a ballerina, with the Paris ballet. She had a car accident at twenty, and it ended both careers. But she did some wonderful things in spite of that.”
“What did she do?” Annie asked politely. It was amazing how many lives were destroyed or lost with car accidents. She had met several in the school, some of them artists like her. With eight hundred people in the school, there were countless stories and people from all walks of life.
“She taught dance. And she was very good. She met my father when she was thirty, but she taught even after they got married. She was a hard taskmaster,” he laughed. “My father had been blind since birth, and she even taught him how to dance. She always wanted to start a school like this. I did it for her after she died. We have dance classes here too. Both ballroom and ballet. You should try it sometime, you might like it.”
“Not if you can't see,” Annie said bluntly.
“The people who take the class seem to like it,” he said, undaunted, as he noticed that she touched the wet seat of her jeans. She was soaked from her fall, and wondering if she should go home. “You know, we have a closet with spare clothes in it for times like this. Do you know where it is?” She shook her head. “I'll show you. You're going to be miserable in those wet jeans all day,” he said kindly. He had a gentle, easygoing voice, and sounded as though he had a sense of humor. There was always laughter just beneath his words. He sounded happy, she decided, and nice. In a fatherly sort of way. She wondered how old he was. She had the feeling he wasn't young, but she couldn't ask.
He took her upstairs to a storeroom with racks of clothes in it. They donated them to some of their scholarship students, or used them for incidents like this. He looked her over and handed her a pair of jeans. “I think these might fit. There's a fitting room in the corner, with a curtain. I'll wait here. There are others if you want.” She tried them on, feeling slightly self-conscious, and they were big but dry. She came out looking slightly like an orphan, and he laughed. “May I roll them up for you? You're going to fall again if you don't.”
“Sure,” she said, still feeling self-conscious. He did, and they felt fine. “Thank you. You're right. My jeans are really wet. I was thinking about going home to change at lunchtime.”
“You'd have caught cold by then,” he said, and she laughed.
“You sound like my sister. She's always worried that I'm going to hurt myself, fall down, get sick. She acts like a mom.”
“That's not an entirely bad thing. We all need one at times. I still miss mine, and she's been gone for almost twenty years.”
Annie spoke softly when she answered, “I lost mine in July.”
“I'm sorry,” he said, and sounded genuine. “That's very hard.”
“Yes, it was,” she said honestly. And Christmas was going to be rough this year. She was grateful they had gotten through Thanksgiving. But they were all dreading Christmas without their mother. They had talked about it when they divided up her clothes.
“I lost both my parents at once,” he said, as he walked her out of the storeroom and toward her classroom. “In a plane crash. It makes you grow up very quickly when there is no one between you and the great beyond.”
“I never thought about it that way,” she said pensively. “But maybe you're right. And I still have my dad.” They had reached her classroom then. She had braille that morning, and kitchen skills that afternoon. They were supposed to make meat loaf, which she hated, but Baxter was in the same class and they always had fun clowning around. She could make perfect cupcakes now, and chicken. She had cooked both at home, to critical acclaim. “Thank you for the jeans. I'll bring them back tomorrow.”
“Anytime,” he said pleasantly. “Have a good day, Annie.” And then he added, “Play nice in the sandbox,” and she laughed. He had a major advantage over her. He could see what she looked like, and she couldn't see him. But he had a nice voice.
