"I was so startled to hear him talk that I nearly dropped the armload of books I was carrying. But when I assured him I wasn't going to get a detention, he looked disappointed in me. He said he guessed girls never got detention, just boys. Normal boys. That's when I knew!" When he looked baffled, Julie hastened to explain, "You see, he'd been so sheltered by his mother that he'd been dreaming of going to school like ordinary children, but the thing was, neither the other students nor the teachers were treating him as if he was ordinary."
"What did you do?"
She leaned back against the sofa, her leg curled beneath her and said, "I did the only kind and decent thing I could do: I waited and watched him all the next day, and the moment he tossed a pencil at the little girl in front of him, I pounced on him like it was a federal crime. I told him he'd deserved a detention for weeks, and from now on he was getting one just like everyone else. Then I gave him not one, but two days' detention!"
Laying her head against the back of the sofa, she slanted him a soft smile and said, "Then I hung around school to watch him and make sure I was right about what he was up to. He looked happy enough, sitting in the detention room with all the other little rabble rousers, but I couldn't be sure. That night, his mother called me on the phone and tore into me for what I'd done. She said I'd made him ill and that I was heartless and vicious. I tried to explain, but she hung up on me. She was frantic. He wasn't at school the next day."
When she fell silent, Zack prodded gently, "What did you do?"
"After school, I went over to his house to see him and talk to his mother. I did something else on a hunch; I took another student with me—Willie Jenkins. Willie is a totally macho kid, the class cutup, and the hero of the third grade. He's good at everything, from football to baseball to cursing—at everything except," she clarified with a sideways grin, "singing. When Willie talks, he sounds exactly like a bullfrog, and when he sings, he makes this loud, croaking noise that makes everybody start to laugh. Anyway, on a hunch, I took Willie with me, and when I got to Johnny's house, he was in the backyard in a wheelchair. Willie had brought along his football—I think he sleeps with it—and he stayed outside. As I went into the house, Willie was trying to get Johnny to catch the football and he wouldn't even try. He looked at his mother and then he just sat there. I spent a half hour talking to Mrs. Everett. I told her I honestly thought we were ruining Johnny's chances to be happy by treating him as if he were too delicate to do anything but sit in a wheelchair. I'd finished talking and still hadn't convinced her, when all of a sudden, there were shouts and a crash from outside and we both ran out into the backyard. There was Willie," Julie said, her eyes shining at the memory, "flat on his backside in a heap of overturned trash cans, clutching the football with a grin on his face a mile wide. It seems that Johnny couldn't catch the football very well but—according to Willie—Johnny has a right arm as good as John Elway's! Johnny was beaming and Willie told him that he wanted Johnny on his team, but they'd need to practice, so Johnny could learn to catch as well as pass."
When she fell silent, Zack asked softly, "And do they practice?"
She nodded, her expressive features glowing with delight. "They practice football, along with the rest of Willie's team, every day. Then they go to Johnny's house where Johnny coaches Willie with his schoolwork. It turned out that although Johnny didn't participate in school, he was absorbing everything like a sponge. He's extremely bright and now that he has things to strive for, he never quits trying. I've never seen so much courage—so much determination." A little embarrassed by her emotional enthusiasm, Julie lapsed into silence again, and concentrated on her meal.
Chapter 24
When he was finished eating, Zack settled back against the sofa and propped his ankle on the opposite knee, watching the flames leaping and dancing on the hearth, as he gave his dinner companion a chance to finish her meal without further interruptions from him. He tried to concentrate on the next stage of his journey, but in his state of sated relaxation he Was more inclined to dwell on the amazing—and perverse—quirk of fate that had caused Julie Mathison to be sitting across from him. Throughout all the long weeks of working out every detail of his escape—throughout the endless nights he'd lain in his cell, dreaming of his first night in this house—not once had he ever imagined that he'd be other than alone. For a thousand reasons, it would have been far better if he were alone, but now that she was here, he couldn't just lock her in a room, bring her food, and pretend she wasn't. After the last hour in her company, however, he was sorely tempted to do exactly that, because she was forcing him to recognize and reflect on all the things he had missed in his life and the things that were going to be lacking in it for all time. At the end of a week, he'd be on the run again, and where he was going, there'd be no luxurious mountain cabins with cozy fires; there'd be no more poignant conversations about handicapped little boys with prim third-grade teachers who happened to have eyes like an angel and a smile that could melt stone. He couldn't remember ever seeing a woman's entire face light up the way hers had when she talked about those children! He'd seen ambitious women light up at the possibility of getting an acting role or a piece of jewelry from him; he'd seen the world's finest actresses—on stage and off, in bed and out of it—give thoroughly convincing performances of passionate tenderness and caring, but until tonight, he had never, ever witnessed the real thing.
When he was eighteen years old, sitting in the cab of a semitruck, bound for Los Angeles and almost strangling on tears he refused to shed, he'd vowed never, ever to look back, to wonder how his life might have been "if only things had been different." Yet, now, at the age of thirty-five, when he was hardened beyond recall by the things he'd done and been and seen, he looked at Julie Mathison and succumbed to the temptation to wonder. As he lifted the brandy snifter to his lips, he watched a log tumble off the grate in a shower of sparks and wondered what would have happened if he'd met someone like her when he was young. Would she have been able to save him from himself, to teach him to forgive, to soften his heart, to fill up the empty spaces in his life? Would she have been able to give him goals greater and more rewarding than the acquisition of money and power and recognition that had shaped his life? With someone like Julie in his bed, would he have experienced something better, deeper, more profound, more lasting, than the mindless pleasure of an orgasm?