Palomino

1

Hurrying up the steps of the brownstone on East Sixty-third Street, Samantha squinted her eyes against the fierce wind and driving rain, which was turning rapidly into sleet. It whipped her face and tingled as it pricked at her eyes. She made a soft purring noise, as though to urge herself on, and then stopped, gasping, as she fought with the lock, her key refusing to turn. Finally, finally, the door gave, and she fell into the warmth of the front hall. For a long moment she just stood there, shaking the dampness off her long silvery blond hair. It was a color one rarely saw, like spun silver meshed with fine gold; a towhead they had called her as a child, and she had hated it, and then in her teens and twenties her hair had won her lavish praise. Now at thirty she was used to it, and when John had told her that she looked like a fairy princess, she laughed at him, her blue eyes dancing, her beautiful, delicately angular face in sharp contrast to the full breasts and softly rounded hips. Her legs were long and thin and endless.

She was a woman of a thousand contrasts, huge dancing eyes with a sharp look that saw all, in sudden contrast to the sensual fullness of her mouth, the narrow shoulders, large breasts, the long graceful hands; the softness of her voice in contrast to the intelligent precision of her words. Somehow one expected Samantha Taylor to have a southern drawl, to languish on a velvet chaise longue, her form framed by a negligee trimmed in marabou. Instead she was given to jeans and bounded across rooms with a long stride. She was filled with energy and life, except tonight, except for the past hundred nights.

She stood now, as she had since late August, silent, still, waiting, the rain running off the tips of her hair, listening… but for what? There was no one here anymore. She was alone in the old brownstone. The couple who owned it had been in London for six months, their duplex apartment had been lent to a cousin who was almost never there. A reporter for Paris-Match, he spent more time in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago than he did in New York. And then there was the top floor. Samantha's domain… Samantha's… only hers now, although once upon a time it was Samantha and John's, an apartment they had put together with such devotion and such care. Every elegant inch of it, dammit. Samantha thought of it again with a small frown as she left her umbrella in the front hall and made her way slowly upstairs. She hated to come home now and managed to see to it that she came home later every night. It was almost nine o'clock this evening. But it had been later than that the night before. She wasn't even hungry. She hadn't been since she had first heard the news.

“You're what?” She had stared at him in horror on a broiling August evening. The air conditioner was broken, and the air was heavy and still. She had come to greet him at the front door, wearing only white lace underpants and a little lilac bra. “Are you crazy?”

“No.” He had stared at her, looking wooden and strained. Only that morning they had made love. And now his Viking-like blond beauty seemed… beyond her reach. He looked like someone she didn't even know. “I can't lie to you anymore, Sam. I had to tell you. I've got to get out.”

For what seemed like hours she had only stared at him. He couldn't mean it. He had to be kidding. But he wasn't. That was the insanity of it. He was deadly serious. She knew it from the look of agony on his face. She walked slowly toward him, but he shook his head and turned away. “Don't… please don't.” His shoulders shook softly, and for the first time since he had spoken she felt pity slice through her like a shaft of pain. But why was she feeling sorry for him? Why? How could she feel sorry for him after what he had just said?

“Do you love her?” The shoulders she had loved so much only shook more, and he said nothing. But the pity began to fade now as Samantha moved toward him. Anger began to boil within her soul. “Answer me, dammit.” She yanked hard on his shoulder, and he turned to look into her eyes.

“Yes. I think so. But, Sam, I don't know. I just know I have to get out of here for a while so I can figure it out.”

She stalked across the room, stopping only when she reached the far side of the delicate French rug that looked like a carpet of flowers beneath her bare feet. There were tiny violets and small dusty-colored roses, and a myriad of still smaller flowers one had to stoop to see. The overall impression was one of pastel pinks and reds and mauves; it was a warm link to the soft-pinks and mauves and deep dusty green on the couches and chairs that filled the large wood-paneled room. The house was an old brownstone, and the top floor was theirs. And Samantha had taken two years to decorate it, lovingly, with beautiful pieces of Louis XV furniture that she and John bought together at antique shops and auctions at Sotheby Parke Bernet. The fabrics were all French, the vases constantly filled with freshly cut flowers, the paintings all Impressionistic, and the overall feeling of the apartment was decidedly European and very elegant. Yet there was a cozy side to it too, as there was to Sam. It wasn't the beauty of the apartment she was seeing now as she stood with her back to her husband, wondering if they would ever be the same again. It was as though one of them had just died, as though everything had been instantly and irretrievably shattered and would never be repaired. And all with a few well-chosen words.

“Why didn't you tell me?” She turned and her face was filled with accusation.

“I…” He began but couldn't finish. There was nothing he could say now to make it better, to take back the pain he had just inflicted on the woman he had once so greatly loved. But seven years was a long time. It should have been long enough to solder them to each other forever, and yet it hadn't, and somehow, somehow, during the election coverage the year before, he had slipped. He had meant to end it when they all got back from Washington. He had really meant to. But Liz hadn't let him, and it had gone on. And on, and on… until now she had forced his hand. And the bitch of it was that she was pregnant and refused to get rid of the kid. “I didn't know what to tell you, Sam. I didn't… and I thought-”

“I don't give a damn what you thought!” Suddenly her eyes blazed at the man she had known and loved for eleven years. They had become lovers at nineteen. He had been the first man she had ever slept with, when they were both at Yale. He had been so big and blond and beautiful, a football hero, the big man on campus, the golden boy everybody loved, including Sam, who worshiped him from the first moment they met. “You know what I thought, you son of a bitch? I thought you were faithful to me. That's what I thought. I thought you gave a damn. I thought”-her voice quavered for the first time since he'd said the awful words-“I thought you loved me.”

“I do.” There were tears running slowly down his cheeks as he said the words.

“Oh, yeah?” She was crying openly now and she felt as though he had just torn out her heart and thrown it on the floor. “Then how come you're moving out? How come you walked in here like a crazy person, dammit, and when I said, ‘Hi, babe, how was your day?’ you said, ‘I'm having an affair with Liz Jones and I'm moving out.’” Her voice was growing hysterical as she advanced on him. “Can you explain that to me? And just how long have you been involved with her anyway? God damn you, John Taylor… God damn you…” As though she couldn't stop herself, she rushed at him, fists flailing, and then pulling at his hair, trying to maul his face; he resisted her with ease and pulled her arms behind her as he forced her down to the floor, where he cradled her in his arms.

“Oh, babe, I'm so sorry…”

“Sorry?” It was a shriek between laughter and tears as she struggled free. “You come in here and tell me that you're leaving me for someone else and you're ‘sorry’? Jesus Christ…” She took a deep breath then and pushed away from him. “Let me go, dammit.” She looked at him with raw pain, and when he saw that she was calmer, he let go of her arms. She was still breathless from her attack on him, but now she walked slowly to the dark green velvet couch and sat down. She looked smaller suddenly, and very young, the thick sheet of pale blond hair hanging down as she buried her face in her hands, and then slowly she raised her face again, her eyes awash with tears. “Do you really love her?” Somehow it was impossible to believe.

“I think so.” He nodded slowly. “The worst part is that I love you both.”

“Why?” Samantha looked past him into an empty space, seeing nothing and understanding still less. “What was missing between us?”

Slowly he sat down. It had to be told. She had to know. He had been wrong to keep it from her for so long. “It happened during the election coverage last year.”

“And it's been going on since then?” Her eyes widened as she wiped away fresh tears with the back of one hand. “Ten months, and I didn't know it?” He nodded and said nothing. “My God.” And then she looked at him strangely. “Then why now? Why did you walk in here today like this and tell me? Why don't you stop seeing her? Why aren't you trying to save a marriage we've had for more than seven years? What the hell do you mean ‘I'm having an affair and I'm moving out’? Is that all this means to you?”

She was beginning to shriek again and John Taylor almost cringed. He hated this, hated what he was doing to her, but he knew he had to, he had to go. Liz had something he desperately wanted, she had a quality that he needed, a kind of low profile that pleased him. He and Samantha were too much alike in some ways, too visible, too spectacular, too quick, too beautiful. He liked Liz's sensible plainness, her less-dazzling intelligence, her quiet style, her willingness to take a backseat, to be obscure, while helping him to be more of what he was. She was the perfect foil for him, it was why they worked so well as a team. On camera, doing the news, John was undeniably the star, and Liz helped make him look that way. He liked that. She was so much quieter than Samantha, so much less flamboyant, so much less exciting, and he had finally discovered that that was what he wanted. He didn't feel anxious when he was with her, he didn't have to compete. He was automatically the star.

And there was more to it now. She was pregnant and it was his child, he knew it. It was the one thing he wanted more than all else. A son, to play with and love and teach to play football. It was what he had always wanted, and what Samantha couldn't give him. It had taken the doctors three years to discover what the problem was, and when they did, they were sure. Samantha was sterile. She would never have a child. “Why now, John?” Samantha's voice dragged him back to the present, and he slowly shook his head.

“It doesn't matter. It's not important. It just had to be done. I had to tell you. There is no good day for something like this.”

“Are you willing to end it?” She was pushing and she knew it, but she had to ask, had to push him; she still couldn't understand what had happened, and why. Why on this blistering hot day had her husband come home from the television station where he reported the news every night and told her that he was leaving her for someone else? “Will you stop seeing her, John?”

Slowly he had shaken his head. “No, Sam, I won't.”

“Why?” Her voice had dwindled, childlike, and there had been a fresh wave of tears. “What does she have that I don't have? She's plain, and she's boring… and you-you always said you didn't like her… and you hated working with her, and-” She couldn't go on, and he watched her, almost feeling her pain as his own.

“I have to go, Sam.”

“Why?” She grew frantic as he moved into the bedroom to pack his clothes.

“Because I do, that's all. Look, it's not fair of me to stay here and let you go on like this.”

“Please stay…” Panic crept into her voice like a dangerous beast. “It's okay, we'll work it out… honest… please… John…” The tears were streaming down her face, and he suddenly turned hard and distant as he packed. He became almost frantic, as though he had to leave in a hurry before he fell apart too.

And then suddenly he turned on her. “Stop it, dammit! Stop it… Sam, please…”

“Please what? Please don't cry because my husband is leaving me after seven years, eleven if you count the time at Yale before we were married? Or please don't make you feel guilty while you leave me for some goddamn whore? Is that what you want, John? For me to wish you luck and help you pack? Christ, you walk in here and blow my whole life apart and what do you want from me? Understanding? Well, I can't give it to you. I can't do anything except cry, and if I have to, I'll beg… I'll beg, do you hear me…?” And with that, she collapsed in a chair and began to sob again. With a firm hand he clasped the suitcase into which he had thrown half a dozen shirts, a pair of sneakers, two pairs of dress shoes, and a summer suit. Half of it was hanging out of the suitcase, and he was carrying a fistful of ties in one hand. It was impossible. He couldn't think straight, let alone pack.

“I'll come back Monday when you're at work.”

“I'm not going to work.”

“Why not?” He looked disheveled and distracted, and Samantha looked up at him and laughed softly through her tears.

“Because my husband just left me, you jackass, and I don't think I'm going to feel like going to work on Monday. Do you mind?”

He hadn't smiled, hadn't softened in any way. He just looked at her awkwardly, nodded, and walked quickly out the door. He dropped two ties as he went, and after he was gone, Samantha picked them up and held them for a long time as she lay on the couch and cried.

She had done a lot of crying on the couch since August, but John hadn't come back. In October he had gone to the Dominican Republic for a long weekend, gotten a divorce, and five days later married Liz. Samantha knew now that Liz was pregnant, and when she had first heard, the news had cut through her like a knife. Liz had announced it one night on the broadcast, and Sam had watched her, her mouth open, shocked. So that was why he had left her. For a kid… a baby… a son that she couldn't give him. But in time she came to understand that it wasn't only that.

There had been a lot about their marriage that she hadn't seen, hadn't wanted to see, because she loved John so much. His sense of competition with her, his sense of insecurity over Sam's success in her own field. No matter that he was one of the top newscasters in the nation, no matter that people flocked for his autograph everywhere they went, John always seemed to feel that his success was an ephemeral thing, that any day it could be over, that they might replace him, that the ratings could change his life. For Sam, it was different. As assistant creative director of the second largest advertising agency in the country, her position was tenuous, but less so than his. Hers was a fickle profession as well, but she had too many award-winning campaigns behind her to make her feel vulnerable to the winds of change. As she sat alone in her apartment all through the autumn, she remembered bits and pieces, snatches of conversations, things he had said…

“For chrissake, Sam, you've made it to the top at thirty. Shit, with bonuses you make more money than I do.” And now she knew that that had bugged him too. But what should she have done? Quit? Why? In her case why not work? They couldn't have a baby and John had never wanted to adopt one. “It's not the same if it's not your own.” “But it becomes your own. Look, we could adopt a newborn, we're young enough to qualify for the best. A baby would mean so much, sweetheart, think about it…” Her eyes had glowed when they discussed it, his had always glazed, and then he would shake his head. The answer to the question of adoption was always no. And now he didn't have to worry about it anymore. In three more months he would have his first child. His own. The thought of it always hit Samantha like a physical blow.

Samantha tried not to think about it as she reached the top landing and opened her front door. The apartment had a musty smell these days. The windows were always closed, the heat was too high, her plants were all dying and she had neither thrown them out nor taken care of them. The entire apartment had an aura of unlove, of disuse, as though someone were only changing clothes there, but nothing more than that. And it was true. Samantha hadn't cooked anything more than coffee there since September. She skipped breakfast, ate lunch with clients as a rule, or with other executives of Crane, Harper, and Laub, and dinner she usually forgot. Or if she was absolutely starving, she grabbed a sandwich on the way home and ate it in the waxed paper, juggling it on one knee as she glanced at the news on TV. She hadn't seen her plates since the summer and she didn't really care. She hadn't really lived since the summer, and sometimes she wondered if she ever would again. All she could think of was what had happened, how he had told her, why he had left her, and that he was no longer hers. Pain had given way to fury, which led to sorrow, which grew to grief, which reverted once again to anger, until at last by Thanksgiving her emotions were so frayed at the edges that she was numb. She almost blew the biggest campaign of her career, and two weeks before that she had had to go into her office, lock the door, and lie down. For a moment she had felt as though she were going to have hysterics, faint maybe, or perhaps just put her arms around someone-anyone-and burst into tears. It was as though there were no one now, no one to whom she belonged, no one who cared. Her father had died when she was in college, her mother lived in Atlanta with a man she found charming but whom Sam did not. He was a doctor, and pompous and self-satisfied as hell. But at least her mother was happy. Anyway, Sam wasn't close to her mother, and it wasn't to her that she could turn. In fact she hadn't told her of the divorce until November, when her mother had called one night and found Sam in tears. She had been kind, but it did little to strengthen the bond between them. For Sam and her mother it was too late. And it wasn't a mother that she longed for, it was her husband, the man she had lain next to, and loved, and laughed with for the last eleven years, the man she knew better than her own skin, who made her happy in the morning and secure at night. And now he was gone. The realization of it never failed to bring tears to her eyes and a sense of desolation to her soul.

But tonight, cold as well as weary, for once Samantha didn't even care. She took off her coat and hung it in the bathroom to dry, pulled off her boots, and ran a brush through her silvery gold hair. She looked in the mirror without really seeing her face. She saw nothing when she looked at herself now, nothing except a blob of skin, two dull eyes, a mass of long blond hair. One by one she peeled off her clothes as she stood there, dropping the black cashmere skirt, the black and white silk blouse she'd worn to work. The boots she'd pulled off and thrown on the floor beside her were from Celine in Paris, and the scarf she unknotted at her neck was a black and white geometrical pattern from Hermes. She had worn large pearl and onyx earrings and her hair had been severely knotted at her neck. The coat, which hung damply beside her, was bright red. Even in her dazed state of loss and sorrow, Samantha Taylor was a beautiful woman, or as the creative director of the agency called her, “a hell of a striking girl.” She turned the tap and a rush of hot water ran into the deep green tub. Once the bathroom had been filled with plants and bright flowers. In summer she liked to keep pansies and violets and geraniums there. There were tiny violets on the wallpaper, and all of the fixtures were French porcelain, in a brilliant emerald green. But like the rest of the apartment, it lacked luster now. The cleaning woman came to keep everything from getting dusty, but it was impossible to hire someone to come three times a week to make the place look loved. It was that that had left it, as it had left Samantha herself, that polish, that luster that comes only with a warm touch and a kind hand, the rich patina of good loving that shows on women in a myriad tiny ways.

When the tub was full of steaming water, Samantha slipped slowly into it, let herself just lie there, and closed her eyes. For a brief moment she felt as though she were floating, as though she had no past, no future, no fears, no worries, and then little by little the present forced itself into her mind. The account she was currently working on was a disaster. It was a line of cars the agency had coveted for a decade, and now she had to come up with the whole concept herself. She had come up with a series of suggestions relating to horses, with commercials to be shot in open country or on ranches, with an outdoorsy-looking man or woman who could make a big splash in the ads. But her heart wasn't really in it, and she knew it, and she wondered briefly for how long this would go on. For how long would she feel somehow impaired, damaged, as though the motor ran but the car would never again get out of first gear? It was a feeling of dragging, of pulling down, like having lead hair and hands and feet. When she stepped out of the tub, with her long silky hair piled in a loose knot atop her head, she wrapped herself carefully in a huge lilac towel and then padded barefoot into her room. Here again there was the feeling of a garden, a huge four-poster was covered with white eyelet embroideries and the bedspread was scattered with bright yellow flowers. Everything in the room was yellow and bright and frilly. It was a room she had loved when she did the apartment, and a place she hated now as she lay in it night after night alone.

It wasn't that there had not been offers. There had been, but she was immobilized by the interminable sensation of being numb. There was no one whom she wanted, no one about whom she cared. It was as though someone had turned off the faucet to her very soul. And now as she sat on the edge of the bed and yawned softly, remembering that she had eaten only an egg-salad sandwich for lunch and skipped both breakfast and dinner, she jumped as she heard the buzzer from downstairs. For a moment she thought about not answering, and then, dropping the towel and reaching hastily for a quilted pale blue satin robe, she ran toward the intercom as she heard the bell again.

“Yes?”

“Jack the Ripper here. May I come up?”

For a fraction of an instant the voice was unfamiliar in the garbled static of the intercom, and then suddenly she laughed, and as she did she looked like herself again. Her eyes lit up, and her cheeks still wore their healthy glow from the warm tub. She looked younger than she had in months. “What are you doing here, Charlie?” she shouted into the speaker in the wall.

“Freezing my ass off, thanks. You gonna let me in?” She laughed again and rapidly pressed the buzzer, and a moment later she could hear him bounding up the stairs. When he arrived in her doorway, Charles Peterson looked more like a lumberjack than the art director of Crane, Harper, and Laub, and he looked more like twenty-two than thirty-seven. He had a full, boyish face and laughing brown eyes, dark shaggy hair and a full beard, which was now dusted with sleet. “Got a towel?” he said, catching his breath, more from the cold and the rain than from the stairs.

She rapidly got him a thick lilac towel from her bathroom and handed it to him; he took off his coat and dried his face and beard. He had been wearing a large leather cowboy hat that now funneled a little river of ice water onto the French rug. “Peeing on my carpet again, Charlie?”

“Now that you mention it… got any coffee?”

“Sure.” Sam looked at him strangely, wondering if anything was wrong. He had come to visit her once or twice before at the apartment, but usually only when something major was on his mind. “Something happen with the new account that I should know?” She glanced out at him from the kitchen with a worried look, and he grinned and shook his head as he followed her to where she stood.

“Nope. And nothing's going to go wrong. You've been on the right track with that all week. It's going to be fabulous, Sam.”

She smiled softly as she started the coffee. “I think so too.” The two exchanged a long, warm smile. They had been friends for almost five years, through countless campaigns, winning awards and teasing and joking and working till four A.M. to coordinate a presentation before showing it to the client and the account men the next day. They were both the wunderkinder of Harvey Maxwell, titular creative director of the firm. But Harvey had sat back for years now. He had found Charlie at one agency and hired Samantha from another. He knew good people when he found them. He had given them their heads and sat back with glee as he watched what they created. In another year he would retire, and it was everyone's bet, including Samantha's, that she would inherit his job. Creative director at thirty-one was not bad at all. “So what's new, kiddo? I haven't seen you since this morning. How's the Wurtzheimer stuff going?”

“Well…” Charlie threw up his hands with an expression of acceptance. “How much can you do for one of the largest department stores in St. Louis that has big bucks and no taste?”

“What about the swan theme we talked about last week?”

“They hated it. They want flash. Swans ain't flash.”

Sam rolled her eyes and sat down at the large butcher-block table as Charlie sprawled his lanky form into one of the chairs across from her. It was strange, she had never been drawn to Charlie Peterson, not in all the years they had worked together, traveled together, slept on planes together, talked into the wee hours together. He was her brother, her soul mate, her friend. And he had a wife she loved almost as much as he did. Melinda was perfect for him. She had decorated their big friendly apartment on East Eighty-first with brightly colored tapestries and beautifully woven baskets. The furniture was all covered in a deep mahogany-colored leather and everywhere one looked were wonderful little art objects, tiny treasures Melinda had discovered and brought home, everything from exotic seashells they had collected together in Tahiti, to one perfect marble she had borrowed from their sons. They had three boys, all of whom looked like Charlie, a large unmannerly dog named Rags, and an enormous yellow Jeep Charlie had driven for the past ten years. Melinda was also an artist, but she had never been “corrupted” by the workaday world. She worked in a studio and had had two successful shows of her work in the past few years. In many ways she was very different from Samantha, yet the two women had a gentleness in common, a softness beneath the bravado that Charlie treasured in both. And in his own way he loved Samantha, and he had been rocked to the core by what John had done. He had never liked him anyway and had always pegged him for an egocentric ass. John's rapid desertion of Samantha and subsequent marriage to Liz Jones had proved to Charlie that he was right, as far as he was concerned at least. Melinda had tried to understand both sides, but Charlie hadn't wanted to hear it. He was too worried about Sam. She'd been in lousy shape for the past four months, and it showed. Her work had suffered. Her eyes were dead. Her face was gaunt.

“So what's doing, madame? I hope you don't mind my coming over so late.”

“No.” Samantha smiled as she poured him a cup of coffee. “I just wonder how come you're here. Checking up on me?”

“Maybe.” His eyes were gentle above the dark beard. “Do you mind that, Sam?”

She looked up at him sadly and he wanted to take her in his arms. “How could I mind that? It's nice to know someone gives a damn.”

“You know I do. And so does Mellie.”

“How is she? Okay?” He nodded. They never had time to talk about things like that in the office.

“She's fine.” He was beginning to wonder how he was going to lead into what he wanted to tell her. It wasn't going to be easy, and he knew that she might not take it well.

“So? What's up?” Samantha was suddenly looking at him with amusement. He feigned an innocent expression and Samantha tweaked his beard. “You've got something up your sleeve, Charlie. What is it?”

“What makes you say that?”

“It's pouring rain outside, it's freezing cold, it's Friday night, and you could be at home with your warm, cozy wife and your three charming children. It's difficult to imagine that you came all the way over here just for a cup of coffee with me.”

“Why not? You're a lot more charming than my children. But”-he hesitated briefly-“you're right. I didn't just happen to drop by. I came up here to talk to you.” God, it was awful. How could he tell her? He suddenly knew that she'd never understand.

“And? Come on, out with it.” There was a spark of mischief in her eye that he hadn't seen for a long time.

“Well, Sam…” He took a deep breath and watched her closely. “Harvey and I were talking-”

“About me?” She looked instantly uptight, but he nodded and went on. She hated people talking about her now. Because they always talked about how she was and what John had done.

“Yeah, about you.”

“Why? The Detroit account? I'm not sure he understands my concept, but-”

“No, not about the Detroit account, Sam. About you.”

“What about me?” She thought that was over, that they weren't talking about her anymore. There was nothing left to talk about. The separation was over, the divorce had come and gone, and John was married to someone else. She had survived it. So? “I'm fine.”

“Are you? I think that's amazing.” He looked at her with feeling and a trace of the anger he had felt all along for John. “I'm not sure I'd be so fine in your shoes, Sam.”

“I don't have any choice. Besides, I'm tougher than you are.”

“You probably are.” He smiled gently. “But maybe not as tough as you think. Why not give yourself a break, Sam?”

“What's that supposed to mean? Go to Miami and lie on the beach?”

“Why not?” He forced a smile and she looked at him, shocked.

“What are you telling me?” Panic crept rapidly into her face. “Is Harvey firing me? Is that it? Did he send you here to play hatchet man, Charlie? They don't want me anymore because I'm not as cheerful as I used to be?” Just asking the questions, she felt her eyes fill with tears. “Christ, what do you expect? I had a rough time… it was…” The tears began to choke her and she hurriedly stood up. “I'm okay, dammit. I'm fine. Why the hell-” But Charlie grabbed her arm and pulled her back down to her seat with a gentle look in his eyes.

“Take it easy, babe. Everything's okay.”

“Is he firing me, Charlie?” A lone, sad tear crept down her cheek. But Charlie Peterson shook his head.

“No, Sam, of course not.”

“But?” She knew. She already knew.

“He wants you to go away for a while, to take it easy. You've given us enough to run with for a while on the Detroit account. And it won't kill the old man to think about business for a change. We can get along without you, as long as we have to.”

“But you don't have to. This is silly, Charlie.”

“Is it?” He looked at her long and hard. “Is it silly, Sam? Can you really take that kind of pressure and not buckle? Watching your husband leave you for someone else, seeing him on national television every night chatting with his new wife as you watch her pregnant belly growing? Can you really take that in stride without missing a step? Without missing a goddamn day at work, for chrissake, insisting on taking on every new account in the house. I expect you to crack yourself wide open sooner or later. Can you really put yourself on the line like that, Sam? I can't. I can't do that to you, just as your friend. What that son of a bitch did to you almost brought you to your knees, for God's sake. Give in to it, go cry somewhere, let go of it all and then come back. We need you. We need you desperately. Harvey knows that, I know it, the account guys know it, and you damn well better know it, but we don't need you sick or crazy or broken, and that's how you're going to wind up if you don't take the pressure off now.”

“So you think I'm having a nervous breakdown, is that it?” She looked hurt as well as shocked, but Charlie shook his head.

“Of course not. But hell, a year from now, you could. The time to take care of the pain is now, Sam, not later, when it's buried so deep that you can't find it anymore.”

“I've already lived with it for this long. It's been four months.”

“And it's killing you.” It was a flat statement on his part and she didn't deny it.

“So what did Harvey say?” She looked sad as her eyes met those of her friend. She felt somehow as though she had failed, as though she should have been able to handle it better.

“He wants you to go away.”

“Where?” She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Anywhere you want.”

“For how long?”

He hesitated for only an instant before answering. “Three or four months.” What they had decided was that she would be better off away until John and Liz had had their much publicized child. Charlie knew what a blow it was to Samantha, and he and Harvey had talked it out over many a lunch, but neither could have been prepared for the look Charlie saw now on her face. It was a look of total disbelief, of shock, almost of horror.

“Four months? Are you crazy? What the hell is going to happen to our clients? What the hell will happen to my job? Jesus, you really took care of it, didn't you? What is it? You want my job all of a sudden, is that it?” She jumped up from the table again and stalked away, but he followed her and stood facing her, looking down at her with sorrow in his eyes.

“Your job is a sure thing, Sam. But you've got to do this. You can't push yourself like this anymore. You have to get out of here. Out of this apartment, out of your office, maybe even out of New York. You know what I think? I think you should call that woman you like so much in California and go stay with her. Then come back when it's out of your system, when you're back among the living. It'll do you a hell of a lot of good.”

“What woman?” Samantha looked blank.

“The one you told me about years ago, the one with the horse ranch, Carol or Karen something, the old woman who was the aunt of your college roommate. You used to talk about her as though she were your dearest friend.” She had been. Barbie had been her closest confidante besides John, and they had been college roommates. She had died two weeks after graduation in a plane crash over Detroit.

There was suddenly a gentle smile in Samantha's eyes. “Barbie's aunt… Caroline Lord. She's a wonderful woman. But why on earth would I go there?”

“You like to ride, don't you?” She nodded. “Well, it's a beautiful place and it's about as different and as far from Madison Avenue as you can get. Maybe what you need is to park your fancy business wardrobe and pour that sexy body of yours into some jeans and chase cowboys for a while.”

“Very funny, that's all I need.” But the idea had struck some kind of chord. She hadn't seen Caroline in years. She and John had stopped to visit her once, it had been a three-hour drive north and east from L.A. and John had hated it. He didn't like the horses, thought the ranch was uncomfortable, and Caroline and her foreman had looked askance at him for his prissy city ways. A horseman he wasn't, but Samantha was an elegant horsewoman. She had been since she was a child. There had been a wild pinto pony on the ranch when they visited and she had ridden it, to Caroline's dismay. But she hadn't gotten hurt in spite of the horse throwing her half a dozen times as she tried to help break him to the saddle, and John had been instantly impressed by her skill. It had been a happy time in Sam's life and seemed a long time in the past as she looked up at Charlie now. “I'm not even sure she'd have me. I don't know, Charlie. It's a crazy idea. Why don't you guys just leave me alone to finish my work?”

“Because we love you, and you're going to destroy yourself like this.”

“No, I'm not.” She smiled valiantly at him, and slowly he shook his head.

“It doesn't matter what you say to me now, Sam. It was Harvey's decision.”

“What was?”

“Your leave of absence.”

“It's definite, then?” Once again she looked shocked and again he nodded his head.

“As of today. Three and a half months leave, and you can extend it to six if you want.” They had called the station to ascertain Liz's due date, and tacked two more weeks on from there.

“And I won't lose my job?”

“No.” He slowly pulled a letter out of his pocket and gave it to Samantha to read. It was from Harvey and guaranteed her job even if she stayed away for six months. It was unheard of in their business, but as Harvey had put it, Samantha Taylor was “a fairly extraordinary girl.”

Sam looked up sadly at Charlie. “Does this mean I'm off as of today?” Her lower lip trembled.

“That's what it means, lady. You're on vacation as of right now. Hell, I wish I were.”

“Oh, my God.” She sank into a chair and covered her face with one hand. “Now what am I going to do, Charlie?”

He gently touched her shoulder. “Do what I told you, baby. Call your old friend on that ranch.”

It was a mad suggestion, but after he left, she began to think about what she was going to do. She went to bed still in a state of shock. For the next three and a half months, she was out of a job. She had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing she wanted to see, and no one to see it with. For the first time in her adult life she was totally without plans. All she had to do was have one meeting with Harvey the next morning to explain everything on her desk and after that she was free. As she lay there in the dark, feeling frightened, suddenly she began to giggle. It was crazy really, what the hell was she going to do with herself until April 1? April fool… the joke's on you… Europe? Australia? A visit to her mother in Atlanta? For an instant she felt freer than she ever had before. When she had left Yale, she had had John to think of, and now she had no one at all. And then, on an impulse, she reached for her address book in the darkness and decided to follow Charlie's advice. She flicked on the light and found the number easily under L. It would be nine thirty in California, and she hoped that it wasn't too late to call.

The phone was answered on the second ring by the familiar smoky voice of Caroline Lord. There followed a lengthy explanation on Sam's part, friendly silences from Caroline as she spoke, and then a strange, anguished sob as Samlet herself go at last. Then it was like coming home to an old friend. The older woman listened, really listened. She gave Sam a kind of comfort she had forgotten over the years. And when Sam hung up the phone half an hour later, she lay staring at the canopy above her, wondering if maybe she really was going crazy after all. She had just promised to fly to California the following afternoon.