Danielle Steel - Passion's Promise

“Are you coming, Alejandro?” She was in a hurry to leave the hotel.

“Christ, woman, I can hardly keep my mind straight, and you stand there like you’re going to a tea party. How do you do it?”

“Practice. It’s a way of life.”

“It can’t be healthy.”

“It’s not. That’s why half the people I grew up with are now alcoholics. The others live on pills, and in a few years a whole bunch of them will drop dead from heart attacks. Some of them have already managed to die.” A vision of Tiffany flashed through her mind. “You cover up all your life, and one day you explode.”

“What about you?” He was following her down the hotel’s ill-lighted stairs.

“I’m okay. I let off steam with my writing. And I can be myself with Luke … and now you.”

“No one else?”

“Not till now.”

“That’s no way to live.”

“You know, Alejandro,” she said, when she had climbed into the cab, “the trouble with pretending all the time is that eventually you forget who you are, and what you feel. You become the image.”

“How come you didn’t then, babe?” But, as he watched her, he wondered. She was frighteningly cool.

“My writing, I guess. It helps me spill the grief in my guts. Gives me a place where I can be me. The other way, keeping it all in, sooner or later rots your soul.” She thought once more of Tiffany. That’s what had happened to her, and others in the course of the years. Two of Kezia’s friends had committed suicide since college.

“Luke’ll feel better when he sees you, anyway.” And that was worth something. But Alejandro knew why she had worn the well-tailored black coat, the black gabardine slacks, the black suede shoes. Not for Lucas. But to make sure that the next picture in the paper showed her with it all in control. Elegant, uptight, and distinguished. There would be no collapse at the jail.

“You think there’ll be press when we get there?”

“I don’t think so, I know it.”

There was. Kezia and Alejandro got out of the cab at the front entrance of 850 Bryant Street. The Hall of Justice. It was an unimpressive gray building with none of the majesty of City Hall. Outside, a pair of sentries from the Examiner scouted her arrival. Another pair were pacing at the building’s rear entrance. Kezia had a nose for them, like Luke did for police. She clung tightly to Alejandro’s arm while looking as though she barely held it, and quietly pulled her dark glasses over her eyes. There was a faint smile on her face.

She brushed quickly past a voice calling her name, while a second reporter spoke into a pocket-sized transmitter. Now they knew what lay ahead. Alejandro studied her face as a guard searched her handbag, but she looked surprisingly calm. A photographer snapped their picture, and with bowed heads they stepped quickly into an elevator in the salmon marble halls. It struck Kezia, as the doors closed, that the walls were the same color as the gladioli at Italian funerals, and she laughed.

On the sixth floor, Alejandro led her quickly through another door and up a flight of strangely drafty stairs.

“A breeze from the River Styx perhaps?” There was irony and mischief in her voice. He couldn’t get over it. Was this the Kezia he knew?”

She kept the glasses in place and he took her hand as they waited in line. The man in front of them smelled and was drunk, the black woman in front of him was obese and crying. Farther up the line, a few children were wailing and a bunch of hippies leaned back against the wall, laughing. They stood in a long thin line on the stairs, one by one reaching a desk at the top. Identification of visitor, name of inmate, and then a little pink ticket with a window number and a Roman numeral indicating a group. They were in Group II. The first group had already been herded inside. The stairs were crowded but there were no reporters in sight.

They moved inside, to a neon-lit room which boasted another desk, two guards, and three rows of benches. Beyond it they could see a long hall lined with windows, along which ran a shelf with a telephone every few feet, and a stool to sit on as you visited. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Group I was in the midst of its visit, destined to last five minutes or twenty, depending on the mood of the guards. Faces were animated, women giggled and then cried, inmates looked urgent and determined and then let their faces relax at the sight of a threer-year-old son. It was enough to tear your heart out.

Alejandro glanced at Kezia uncomfortably. She looked undaunted. Nothing showed. She smiled at him and lit another cigarette. And then suddenly the photographers swarmed them. Three cameramen and two reporters, even the local rep from Women’s Wear was with them.

Alejandro felt a wave of claustrophobia engulf him. How did she stand it? The other visitors looked astonished and some backed away while others pressed forward to see what was happening. Suddenly, there was chaos, with Kezia in the eye of the storm, dark glasses in place, mouth set, looking stern but unshakably calm.

“Are you under sedation? Have you spoken to Luke Johns since the hearing? Are you…. Did you…. Will you…. Why?” She said nothing, only shaking her head.

“I have no comment to make. Nothing to say.” Alejandro felt useless beside her. She remained in her seat, bowed her head, as though by not seeing them, they might disappear. But then unexpectedly, she stood up and spoke to them in a low, subdued voice.

“I think that’s enough now. I told you, I have nothing to say.” A burst of flashes went off in her face, and two guards came to the rescue. The press would have to wait outside, they were disrupting the visiting. Even the inmates having visits had stopped talking and were watching the group around Kezia and the flashes of light that went off every few seconds.

A guard called her aside to the desk, as the photographers and reporters reluctantly exited. Alejandro joined her, realizing he hadn’t said a word since the onslaught began. He felt lost in the stir. He had never even thought of dealing with something like that, but she handled it well. That surprised him. There had been no trace of panic, but then again it wasn’t new to her either.

The head guard leaned close to them and made a suggestion. A guard could accompany them when they left. They could take an elevator straight into the police garage in the basement, where a cab could be waiting. Alejandro leapt at the idea, and Kezia gratefully agreed. She was even paler than she had been, and the tremor in her hands was now a steady fluttering. The paparazzi attack had taken its toll.

“Do you suppose I might see Mr. Johns in a private room somewhere up here?” She was rapidly abandoning her determination to shun special favors. The curious crowd was becoming almost as oppressive as the press. But her request was denied. Nevertheless, a young guard was assigned to hover nearby.

A voice called out the end of the first visit, and guards ushered Group I into a cage where they could wait for the elevator without disturbing the next group. It was strange to watch the difference in faces as they left—pained, shocked, silent. Their moment of laughter had ended. Women clutched little slips of paper with orders, requests: toothpaste, socks, the name of a lawyer a cellmate had suggested.

“Group Two!” The voice boomed into her thoughts, and Alejandro took her elbow. The pink slip of paper in her hand was crumpled and limp, but they checked it for the number of the window where they’d visit Luke.

There would be other visitors at close range on either side, but the promised guard was standing beside them. It seemed like a very long wait. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. It felt endless. And then they came. From behind a steel door, a line of dirty wrinkled orange suits, unshaven faces, unwashed teeth, and broad smiles. Luke was fifth on the line. Alejandro took one look at his face and knew he was all right, and then he watched Kezia.