Susan Johnson - Hot Streak

The next morning an extravagant basket of exotic lilies was delivered. The scrawled note was brief: “Day one and counting. Six to go. I love you.” Carey's sentiments were like him: direct, without apology, and imbued with a provocative vitality.

She set the flowers on the foyer console. She found herself more vulnerable than she expected to Carey's thoughtfulness. But she remained painfully aware of his engaging charm. He was familiar with the game of love, an expert at the chase. He had, after all, set records for acquisition.

If she married him, would she begin hearing whispers of his affairs once the passionate glow of their love softened? Or more aptly, with his track record, how long would it be before she heard the whispers. And would she ever be able to come to terms with Sylvie's possessiveness? Knowing Carey's affection for Egon, surely Sylvie would enter their lives on occasion. She had to weigh his charm against her vulnerability, his past against her hopes for the future. She had to find some reasonable answers to the confusion that preyed on her heart.

In the meantime, she received a daily floral offering and love note. But as the third day passed, and then the fourth, she found herself no nearer a resolution; the same combination of anxieties relooped through her brain without even a basic sorting process to eliminate her minor concerns.

Her dilemma was like the bad ending in a movie she'd recently seen in which the protagonists walked away from each other because neither had sense enough to go for the brass ring. She hated the movie after she saw the ending; she hated the characters for their small, bleak view of happiness. But this wasn't a movie, it was her one and only life, and she was afraid the pain would come too soon to compensate for her brief moment of happiness.

She was well and truly bewildered.

And then, he didn't call; even though she hadn't wanted him to call, he actually hadn't called, which put an entirely new complexion on her anarchistic thinking. It was easy to send flowers and clever notes; he didn't even have to lift a finger to do that, someone else could take care of it, like Allen, who practically ran his entire life, anyway. And maybe it meant he was too busy with Egon or her to even think of the woman he claimed he loved more than anything. Anything, sure, after the film and Egon and Sylvie with the name that sounded like her parents knew she was going to be a damn two syllable movie star from the cradle. Damn, damn, damn. She missed him. She missed him terribly.

As if life wasn't miserable enough, the phone rang on the morning of the fifth day and Jason Evans's lubricated voice greeted her hello. What now? she thought. Does he want a pound of my flesh before the renewal is up?

He was sending over the papers on her repaid note, he said.

“Repaid?” Molly had to stifle the squeal coming up from her lungs.

“Yeah, last month by Phoenix Ltd. I thought you knew.”

She'd die before giving Jason the satisfaction of knowing she was completely ignorant of the repayment. She dissembled shamelessly. “In the excitement of my vacation in Jamaica-I just returned a few days ago-the note completely slipped my mind. You know how it goes, Jason, it's fun, fun, fun.” She tried one of those trilling laughs, but winced at the brittleness. Jason didn't seem to notice; brittleness, no doubt, was a way of life for him.

“How's your love life?” he said with his usual subtlety.

“Probably better than yours, Jason, although possibly not as quiet. You don't like them to talk, do you? Until they say, ‘Drive me home, Ken.'”

“Cute.”

“When I want to discuss my love life with you, Jason, I'll give you a call.” And she hung up on him with a satisfaction so profound, she felt giddy.

How had Carey accomplished the payment? she wondered. The answers to her naive questions were obvious. Carey Fersten had a reputation for doing pretty much what he pleased, she reflected, an uneasy resentment simmering beneath her gratitude. However benevolent his action, his presumptuous meddling in her financial affairs reinforced all her nagging insecurities. She refused to concede her hard-won independence to a man who ordered the world to his perfection.

She didn't want, didn't need, wouldn't tolerate an authoritarian husband.

She had lived through too many unhappy years with Bart, who viewed a woman's role as somewhere between household furniture and a mannequin. She had survived too many desperate months after the divorce wondering if her business would succeed another day or through another payroll or past another quarterly tax payment. She and Carrie had struggled through those bad times when each new account was cause for celebration, when she and Theresa would rework the numbers, shuffling and cutting until all the monthly bills were covered-just barely. And now, at last, when she was seeing daylight for the first time, she would not give up all her triumphs and achievements for love.

Her sudden emphatic decision after days of bewildering confusion was startling at first and coldly unromantic. For a brief transient moment she felt as though she had forsaken dreams of a lifetime and a thunderbolt would strike her dead for her unorthodoxy. But she was still sitting at her desk, intact and whole a few minutes later, feeling a flush of pleasure at the prospect of emancipation. Emancipation not only from her past, from the divorce and unhappiness of those years, but an emancipation from so many of the stifling rules she'd always considered requisite to a woman's fulfillment.

She was free from the limiting strictures she carried from childhood. She was also assured now she could succeed in her business. And yes, she had to admit, she was cheerfully self-indulgent at times. Without guilt.

And if she smoked, she could have dressed in a three-thousand dollar dress to lounge in one of those ads declaring: You've come a long way, baby.

Still seated at her desk with the sound of Jason's unctuous voice grating on her memory, she decided she was ready. She was ready to negotiate her love and future happiness from a position of strength, an autonomous, self-reliant sense of self and purpose.

She would not give up her business nor her independence, and if Carey Fersten needed capitulation on either count, he wasn't the man she wanted to marry. That was the bottom line on her personal integrity. After that point was established, she'd enter the discussion about other issues like Australia, pursuing women, Sylvie and Egon's likely presence in their lives, submachine guns and counter-culture types, paparazzi, and sundry facets of the glittering film world.

Carey hadn't called because he was trying to play by her rules. It was hard; he'd picked up the phone a hundred times that week, only to slam it down in frustration a moment later. He was short-tempered-rare for him, a man who prided himself on self-control-and everyone on the cast and crew had begun glancing at him out of the corner of their eyes as he passed, in the event they had to jump fast. And he'd apologized for his curtness more in the past few days than he had in a lifetime.

He'd promised everyone a bonus if they finished by Friday, driving them unmercifully, single-minded in his goal. Perhaps as stubborn as Molly and as self-indulgent, he admitted freely his wishes were purely selfish: He wanted her and he intended to get her. By her rules this time, but by any rules or no rules if necessary.

When the week was over, Molly's apartment resembled a hothouse for orchids and rare lilies, and the florists in Minneapolis were richer for her impetuous stand on integrity.