“I said meatballs.”
“No. You didn’t. Then you just sat down and stared at the empty tray for a good ten minutes.”
Georgeanne didn’t quite remember it that way. But even she had to admit that she still wasn’t all that good at handling sudden stress. Although she was better at it than she used to be. “You’re a horrid liar, Mae Heron,” she said, reaching up to give her friend’s ponytail a little tug, then turned to cast one more glance at the room. The china shined, the silver flatware gleamed, and the folded napkins looked as if hundreds of white roses hovered just above the tabletops.
Georgeanne was extremely pleased with herself.
A frown furrowed John Kowalsky’s brow as he leaned slightly forward in his chair and took a closer look at the napkin stuffed in his wineglass. It appeared to be a bird or a pineapple. He wasn’t sure which.
“Oh, this is nice,” his date for the evening, Jenny Lange, sighed. He glanced at her shiny blond hair and had to admit that he’d liked Jenny a lot better the day he’d asked her out. She was a photographer, and he’d met her two weeks ago when she’d come to take pictures of his houseboat for a local magazine. He didn’t know her very well. She seemed like a perfectly nice lady, but even before they’d arrived at the benefit, he’d discovered he wasn’t attracted to her. Not even a little bit. It wasn’t her fault. It was him.
He turned his attention back to the napkin, plucked it from the glass, and laid it across his knee. Lately he’d been thinking about getting married again. He’d been talking to Ernie about it, too. Maybe tonight’s benefit had triggered something dormant in him. Maybe it was because he’d just had his thirty-fifth birthday; but he’d been thinking about finding a wife and having a few kids. He’d been thinking about Toby, thinking about him more than usual.
John leaned back in his chair, brushed aside the front of his charcoal Hugo Boss suit jacket, and shoved his hand in the pocket of his gray trousers. He wanted to be a father again. He wanted the word “Daddy” added to his list of names. He wanted to teach his son to skate, just as he’d been taught by Ernie. Like every other father in the world, he wanted to stay up late on Christmas Eve and put together tricycles, bicycles, and race-car sets. He wanted to dress up his son as a vampire, or a pirate, and take him trick-or-treating. But when he looked at Jenny, he knew she wasn’t going to be the mother of his children. She reminded him of Jodie Foster, and he’d always thought Jodie Foster looked a little like a lizard. He didn’t want his children to look like lizards.
A waiter interrupted his thoughts and asked if he wanted wine. John told him no, then leaned forward and turned his glass upside down on the table.
“Don’t you drink?” Jenny asked him.
“Sure,” he answered, and taking his hand from his pocket, he reached for the glass he’d carried in with him from the cocktail hour. ?
?I drink soda water and lime.”
“You don’t drink alcohol?”
“No. Not anymore.” He set down his glass as another waiter placed a plate of salad before him. He’d been dry for four years this time, and he knew he’d never drink again. Alcohol turned him into a dumb shit, and he’d finally grown tired of it.
The night he’d hit Philadelphia forward Danny Shanahan was the night he’d hit rock bottom. There were those who thought “Dirty Danny” had deserved what he’d been given. But not John. As he’d stared down at the man lying prone on the ice, he’d known he was out of control. He’d been cracked in the shins and elbowed in the ribs more times than not. It was part of the game. But that night something in him had snapped. Before he’d even realized what he was doing, he’d thrown his gloves and had bare-knuckle sucker-punched Shanahan. Danny had received a concussion and a trip to the infirmary. John had been ejected from play and suspended for six games. The next morning he’d awakened in a hotel with an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bed filled with two naked women. As he’d stared up at the textured ceiling, thoroughly disgusted with himself and trying to recall the night before, he’d known he had to stop.
He hadn’t had a drink since. He hadn’t even wanted one. And now when he went to bed with a woman, he woke up the next morning knowing her name. In fact, he had to know a lot about her first. He was careful now. He was lucky to be alive and he knew it.
“Isn’t the room beautifully decorated?” Jenny asked.
John glanced at the table, then at the podium in the front of the room. All the flowers and candles were a little too fruity for his tastes. “Sure. It’s great,” he said, and ate his salad. When he finished, the plate was taken and another set before him. He’d attended a lot of banquets and benefits in his life. He’d eaten a lot of bad food at them, too. But tonight the food was pretty good; skimpy, but good. Better than last year. Last year he’d been served a rubbery game hen with really shitty pine nuts stuffed inside. But then, he wasn’t here for the food. He was here to give money. A lot of money. Very few people knew of John’s philanthropy, and he wanted it to stay that way. He did it for his son and it was private.
“What do you think of the Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup?” Jenny asked as the dessert was set before them.
John figured she was asking just to make conversation. She didn’t want to know what he really thought, so he toned down his opinion and kept it nice and clean. “They’ve got one hell of a goaltender. You can always count on Roy to pull through in the playoffs and save your ass.” He shrugged. “They’ve got some good muckers, but Claude Lemieux is a gutless sissy boy.” He reached for his dessert spoon, then looked at her. “They’ll probably make it into the finals again next season.” And he’d be waiting for them, because John expected to be there, too, battling for the Cup.
He turned to let his gaze sweep the room in search of the president of the Harrison Foundation. Ruth Harrison usually took the podium first and got things rolling. He spotted her two tables away looking up at a woman who stood beside her. The woman’s back was to John, but she stuck out in the crowd of silk dresses around her. She wore a tuxedo with long tails and appeared overdressed, even for a fancy fund-raiser. Her hair was pulled back and secured at the nape of her neck with a big black bow. From the bow, soft curls fell to the middle of her shoulders. She was tall, and when she turned her profile toward him, John choked on his sorbet. “Jesus,” he wheezed.
“Are you okay?” Jenny asked, and placed a concerned hand on the shoulder of his jacket.
He couldn’t answer. He could only stare, feeling as if he’d been high-sticked in the forehead. When he’d delivered her to Sea-Tac Airport seven years ago, he’d never thought they’d meet again. He remembered the last time he’d seen her, a voluptuous baby doll in a little pink dress. He remembered a lot more about her, too, and what he remembered usually brought a smile to his lips. For reasons he couldn’t recall at the moment, he hadn’t been drunk the night he’d spent with her. But he didn’t think it would have mattered if he’d been drinking or not, because drunk or sober, Georgeanne Howard wasn’t the type of woman a man forgot.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Ahh… nothing.” He glanced at Jenny, then turned his gaze back to the woman who’d caused such a stir when she’d run out on her wedding. After that fateful day, Virgil Duffy had left the country for eight months. The Chinooks’ summer training camp that year had been thick with speculation. A few players thought she’d been kidnapped while others theorized on the mode of her escape. Then there was Hugh Miner, who figured that rather than marry Virgil, she’d killed herself in his bathroom and Virgil had covered it up. Only John knew the truth, but he had been the only Chinook not talking.
“John?”
Now here she was, standing in the middle of a banquet room, looking as beautiful as he remembered. Maybe more so. Maybe it was the tuxedo, which seemed to emphasize the shape of her body rather than disguise it. Maybe it was the light shining on her dark hair, or the way her profile defined her full lips. He didn’t know if it was one or all of those things, but he found the more he looked at her, the deeper his curiosity grew. He wondered what she was doing in Seattle. What she’d done with her life, and if she’d found a rich man to marry.
“John?”
He turned his attention to his date.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.