Palomino

22

For ten days Sam flew from the Midwest to the Southwest, and then up north again, and only Caroline's insistence that Bill was so much better kept her away from California as well. In each place she stopped she rented cars, stayed at small motels, drove hundreds of miles, and spoke to every conceivable rancher she could lay her hands on, and for her own purposes she spoke to the ranch hands as well. For the purposes of Crane, Harper, and Laub, at the end of ten days she had just what she needed, four splendid ranches, each one totally different, surrounded by varied but always majestic countryside. They were all settings that would make extravagantly beautiful commercials. But for her own purposes, again and again Sam struck out. And as she flew back to New York her sense of victory at having found what she had wanted was vastly outweighed by her depression over not finding Tate. She had called Caroline from her hotel room every evening, inquired about Bill, and then told her who she had talked to, what they had said, and pondered for another hundred times what might have happened to Tate, where he might have gone, which direction he might have taken. By now she had spoken to so many ranchers since he had vanished three months before that she felt certain that if someone found him, saw him, met him, or hired him they would surely drop her a note. She had left her card at all the ranches she had visited, and surely some of that effort would pay off. Maybe he was just taking time to visit relatives along the way and was headed for a specific destination. But again Caroline reminded her that he could be anywhere, on any ranch, and there was always the possibility that he would never surface in Sam's life again. She felt that, for Sam's sake, it had to be faced.

“I'll never give up completely,” Sam had said stubbornly only the night before.

“No, but you can't spend the rest of your life waiting either.” She didn't say it, but Sam had thought quickly “Why not?” Instead they had turned the conversation back to Bill and his health. Caroline thought he was much improved, but still weak.

And now, as the plane landed in New York, Sam thought of him again, and inevitably of Tate. She knew also that for the next month she would think of him every day, every moment, as she interviewed actor after actor after actor to play the role in the commercials. They had already agreed with the client that what they wanted was not four cowboys, but one man. One man who would embody all that was powerful and masculine and good and true and sexy in this country. And all Sam could think of was someone who looked like Tate.

In the ensuing weeks, as she spent hours meeting the actors sent over by the city's biggest modeling agencies, she compared them all to him. She wanted someone tall, broad shouldered, in his early forties, with a deep mellifluous voice, kind, with interesting eyes and strong hands, a good seat in the saddle… what she really wanted was Tate. It was as though each time her secretary announced another group of actors to audition, Sam went to meet them expecting to see him. What she saw instead were dazzling blondes with broad shoulders; tall, dark, handsome men; ex-football-players, and even an ex-hockey-goalie; men with rugged faces, deep-set eyes, and strong chins; but most of them seemed too plastic, some had bad voices, faces that were too pretty, one looked more like a ballet dancer than a cowboy. In the end, after four weeks of looking, she found her man, and it was a good thing. The shoot was only two weeks away, scheduled for July fifteenth.

The man they chose was actually English, but his Western accent was so perfect that no one would have known. For years he had been a Shakespearean actor at Stratford-on-Avon, and two years before he had decided to come to New York and start doing commercials, because he was tired of demanding roles with too little pay. Now he was advertising soft drinks, men's underwear, and a line of tools in national commercials that were paying him a handsome wage. He had shoulders from one side of the room to the other, a handsome angular face that was good-looking but not too pretty, deep blue eyes, and dark reddish-brown hair. He looked totally the part, and every man in America would want to identify with him and their wives would dream of the car being advertised, in the hopes that the cowboy in the commercial might somehow appear at the wheel. He was exactly what they needed for the commercial, and the only thing that amused Samantha, as she told Charlie, was that their new Western hero was decidedly gay.

“Does he look it?” Charlie looked worried.

“Hell no, he's an actor. And he is gorgeous!”

“Well, do yourself a favor, don't fall in love with him.”

“I'll try not to.” But the best part was that she liked him. His name was Henry Johns-Adams, and if nothing else he would be good company on the trip. He was extremely well-read, terribly polite, very cultured, and he seemed to have a good sense of humor as well. It would be a real relief from some of the self-centered, undisciplined egomaniacs she had had along on other shoots. “You coming west with us, Charlie?”

“I don't know, Sam. I hate to leave Mellie. If she has the baby by then, it'll be okay. If not, I may have to send two of my assistants. Can you manage?”

“If I have to.” And then with a gentle smile, “How's she feeling?”

“Fat, exhausted, fed up, bitchy. But I love her anyway. And it's almost over. The baby's due at the end of next week.”

“What are you going to name him?” She hadn't gotten off his back about it being a boy again.

“Her. And you'll see. We're not telling what we're going to name her. It's a surprise this time.”

“Come on, tell me, Charlie. Charlotte, if it's a girl?” She loved to tease him and he pinched her behind as he shook his head and disappeared.

As it turned out, Mellie had the baby that weekend, a week early for a change and a girl this time, finally. The surprise was that they named her Samantha. When Charlie told her in the office on Tuesday after the Fourth of July weekend, there were tears in Sam's eyes.

“Do you mean it?”

“Sure I do. Want to come see her?”

“Are you kidding? I'd love to. Mellie's not too tired?”

“Hell no. The fourth one's easy. It sounds disgusting but she walked out of the delivery room. Freaked me out, but the doctor said it was okay.”

“It makes me nervous just hearing about it.” Like all women who have never had children, Samantha was amazed by the entire process and the whole mystique.

They went to the hospital together at lunchtime, and Mellie looked happy and healthy and glowing in a lace-trimmed pink bathrobe, with pink satin slippers, a huge grin on her face, and the tiny pink and white baby nestled in her arms. For a long moment Sam said absolutely nothing. She just stood and stared at the delicate bundle, her eyes riveted to the baby's face.

“She's so beautiful, Mellie.” Sam said it in a whisper, in tones of awe, and Charlie chuckled from where he stood just behind her.

“Yeah. But we would have named her Samantha even if she'd been ugly.” Sam turned around and made a face at him. It dispelled the enormity of the moment, and Sam's sudden longing for what she could never have, the miracle of childbirth and her own child. Lately she had seldom let her thoughts wander in that direction, but for the first time in a long time, as she stood there gazing down at the new baby, she felt her heart ache for the lost dream.

“Want to hold her?” Melinda looked lovelier than Sam had ever seen her. There was a kind of quiet glow that seemed to emanate from the very depths of her soul and at the same time envelop the baby as it lay precious and protected in its mother's arms.

“I don't think so.” Sam shook her head and sat down on a corner of the bed, her eyes still riveted to the small child. “I'd be afraid to break her.”

“They're tougher than they look.” It was the claim of every mother. “Here… try it.” Without warning, Melinda dropped the baby into Sam's arms and settled her there as they all watched the baby stretch, curl herself up again, and then smile. She was sound asleep as she lay there, and Sam could feel the baby's warmth in her arms.

“She's so tiny!”

“No, she's not!” Mellie laughed. “She weighs eight and a half pounds!”

But a moment later the brand-new Samantha discovered that she was hungry and awoke, looking for her mother, with a yowl. The elder Samantha returned her to the safety of Melinda, and a few minutes later she and Charlie went back to the office, as Samantha felt again how much was missing in her life. It was one of those times when the fact that she was sterile weighed on her like a boulder on her guts.

And then, as she stopped in the doorway of her office, she remembered and called out to Charlie. “Does this mean you're coming west with me?”

He nodded, smiling, “I would have had to anyway.”

“How come?” She looked surprised.

“Just to be sure you don't rape our cowboy!”

“Not likely.” She grinned at him and disappeared into her office. The agony of seeing the baby subsided slightly, though it didn't leave her completely for the rest of the day.