Still Waters

Three

"Amanda, you have got to tell me-what's he like?" Jody asked avidly when Maddy met her for lunch exactly a week later at their favorite deli.

"He's… nice," Maddy said, gazing at the salad bar as she bit absentmindedly into her meatball sandwich.

"Nice? Is that all you can say, nice? 'Nice' is the man who pumps my gas for me at the self-serve island. 'Nice' is the electricity meter man, who never, ever complains about the asparagus fern I have hanging right over the meter, even when it-"

"Almost," Maddy went on, inserting the words edgewise, "against his will."

"Amanda, my dear." Jody eyed her balefully. "You do realize that this is the man whom at one time, in my carefree youth, my entire dorm voted the man we'd most like to share a bathtub with? And now all you can think of to say about him is, 'He's nice'?" Jody sighed deeply. "How sad. That man had the most gorgeous body. Swimmers have such gorgeous bodies, don't you think? Swimmers and divers." She wriggled ecstatically. "And gymnasts. Lord, who could forget gymnasts? Gee, I love the Olympics, don't you?"

"He still does," Maddy said.

"Does what?"

"He still has that body."

"Wouldn't you know it." Jody stared accusingly at the last few bites of her submarine sandwich, then dropped it back onto her plate. "For some of us, twelve years makes a difference."

"Oh, it's made a difference in him too." Maddy frowned, sipping iced tea through a straw. "In other ways."

"Oh, yeah? How? What, exactly, does he look like? What have the years done to him? Is he bald? Wrinkled? Wouldn't surprise me-the sun does that to a person, you know. I tell that to myself every time I see one of those incredibly gorgeous tanned bodies that makes me feel like I just crawled out from under a rock! In ten years, I say to myself, you'll look like a map of Cleveland, and I-"

"It's not really physical," Maddy interrupted, laughing. "It's hard to explain. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you remember Zachary London? Besides that!"

"Hmm. I don't know." Jody considered. "His smile, I guess. He had that gorgeous-"

"Right. The smile. Every time you saw him being interviewed, even dripping wet and huffing and puffing, he'd be smiling. That smile just lit up his whole face."

"Well, he had a lot to smile about. All those gold medals, fame, a fortune from endorsements alone, a future in whatever branch of show biz he chose to bless-"

"You know," Maddy said softly, "I think it was the smile I always liked best about him."

Jody snorted. "Coming from you, Amanda, my dear, I'd almost believe that. So what about the smile? Oh, my God." She clamped a hand over her mouth. "He's lost his teeth!"

Maddy burst out laughing and choked on her iced tea. "His teeth… are perfect," she gasped out when she could speak again. "It's the smile he seems to have lost." She dabbed at her eyes and nose, sobering as she tried to figure out herself just what she meant by that statement. Because, of course, she had seen him smile-at her, and at Theresa. It was just… "He acts like he gave up smiling for Lent," she said, suddenly inspired. "Except that every now and then, one slips away from him, and he acts guilty. That's what I meant when I said he seems nice in spite of himself. He acts almost like he resents anyone who makes him smile."

"Oh, boy." Jody suddenly clapped both hands over her mouth, as if she were about to be sick. "I just remembered."

"What?"

"Oh, it's so awful." Jody transferred one hand to her eyes. "I know what happened to his smile. I don't know how I could have forgotten it for one minute. I can't believe it. Imagine him working with little kids… teaching swimming, of all things."

"Jody, what are you rambling about? Teaching swimming seems to me the most natural-"

"Don't you know what happened to Zachary London? It's been a few years ago now, but I don't know how you could have missed hearing something about it. It was such an ironic tragedy, you know?"

Maddy waited tensely as Jody leaned across the table and gripped her hand. "Maddy, he lost a child. His only child, I think it must have been-a little boy. He was about five years old."

Maddy felt as if someone had hit her in the stomach. "That's… terrible," she said inadequately. "How?"

Jody stared at her. "I can't believe you didn't hear about it. He drowned. A freak accident of some kind-he'd been swimming since he was a baby, as you'd expect. Isn't that something? There he was, at the top of the heap. One of the world's blessed. Looks, fame, fantastic health, money, married that model… What was her name? They looked like Ken and Barbie…"

For once Maddy was glad to let Jody talk. She was staring at nothing, imagining the unimaginable. The unspeakable.

"His wife?" she managed finally. The pain in her throat was awful. "It must have been terrible for her."

Jody frowned down at her plate. "I seem to remember something about her too. I guess it pretty much destroyed the marriage, though. It happens like that sometimes. I know Zachary just dropped out of sight. Gee, Maddy, I'm sorry. I sure rained all over our lunch, didn't I?"

"Oh, it's all right," Maddy said tightly. "I'm glad you told me. It explains a lot of things."

"Well, I could have picked a better time. We were having such fun. Anyway, you actually met Zack London. Hey, you know, I didn't even realize he lived in this town! Incredible." Jody sniffed, sounding vaguely put out. "Obviously," she said as they stood up to leave, "he can't have been living here very long."

Maddy laughed in spite of the ache that had stayed in her throat. It was probably true. Jody knew virtually everyone in San Ramon.

"So… do you think you'll ever see him again?" Jody asked.

Smiling wryly, Maddy shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Why not?" Jody sounded as wistful as a child denied a chance to meet Santa Claus.

But Maddy only smiled and gave Jody an enigmatic shrug. She didn't feel like trying to explain to her blithe and effusive friend that the only way she was likely to see Zack London again was if something happened that she hoped would never, never happen.

Fifteen minutes later she let herself into her house and made straight for the blinking message machine, scooping up Bosley on the way. She was feeling, not so much depressed, as… wistful.

"It's too bad," Jody had told her one day, "that you don't have a personality to match your looks."

"Well, your looks don't match your personality either," Maddy had pointed out.

"I know." Jody had sighed, gazing down sadly at her comfortably plump and rumpled self. "There is no justice. With your looks I could have either been a movie star or married a prince!"

"But Jody," Maddy had said, smiling, "you did marry a prince."

"Yes," Jody had agreed smugly, in that purring tone she acquired whenever she spoke of Mike. "I did, didn't I? Which just goes to show you-looks ain't everything!"

"No," Maddy said softly now to Bosley. "Looks sure don't ensure happiness, do they? Look at Zack…"

Look at me.

For once, the dragon had nothing to say. Maddy sighed and flipped the message button.

Moments later she was on her way back out the front door, and Bosley was draped haphazardly on his stand, swaying slightly in the breeze of her departure.

When Maddy drove into the parking lot of the San Ramon Municipal Park she wasn't sure what to expect. All Zack's message had said was, "Can you come to the pool before one-thirty? I think there's something you ought to see."

She couldn't understand what had made her heart jump like a startled rabbit at the sound of his voice on her answering machine, but it had been racing as if a pack of hounds was in hot pursuit ever since. And now, as she sat in her car, staring at the glass front of the pool building, she felt almost afraid. She'd been scared the last time she'd sat here, too, but that had been different. That had been butterflies, the cold sick dread she'd grown accustomed to over the years. Right now she felt hot and shaky and confused.

In the last few days, she realized, her emotions had been under almost constant bombardment. She was beginning to feel besieged. She knew that the kind of work she did required a certain degree of insulation in order to survive it. People who let themselves get emotionally involved tended to burn out pretty quickly. Maddy had always managed to keep herself at arm's length-literally. Her puppets were her buffer. Which was really ironic, she thought, when you stopped to consider it. The very tools she used to reach those terrified and withdrawn kids kept her from being reached by them.

But that was before Theresa. How had that kid managed to get under her defenses like that? All because she'd made the mistake of trying to tackle an old hang-up. It had turned out to be like nudging the first in a lineup of dominoes. Her fear had made her sensitive to the embarrassment of being in the wrong class, and fear and embarrassment had made her vulnerable. And in that state she'd allowed one small brown hand to reach out and touch her. Touch her- not Bosley, or one of the other puppets. And she hadn't been prepared for what happened to her heart when she first looked down into those big, lost eyes…

And then, on top of that, to be confronted with Zack London, literally in the flesh! And to suffer the unspeakable indignity of passing out cold in his arms! She'd already arrived at the realization that it had to have been Zack who had carried her into the office that day, Zack who had wrapped her in a blanket and placed her on the cot. And after all that, knowing who he was now and what had happened to him… Well, it was no wonder she was feeling nervous and awkward. Anyone would. As for getting the shakes at the sound of his voice, of course it was because she'd immediately realized he could only be calling about Theresa.

Maddy pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Oh, how she'd prayed she was wrong about Theresa. But it couldn't be anything else. Zack wouldn't call her for any other reason. Unless-her heart gave a hopeful lurch-he'd found an adult swim class for her after all! Maybe that was it. Maybe-

She reached for the car-door handle, then stopped. Theresa had come out of the pool building. She looked incredibly tiny, standing there in her yellow bathing suit and sandals, holding a towel around her shoulders like a cape. So small and unprotected. Maddy's heart ached as she watched the little girl search the parking lot, then begin to descend the steps one at a time, her sandals making slapping sounds on the cement.

Maddy sat very still, hardly breathing, as the child came slowly toward her. For a few moments she thought Theresa had seen and recognized her and was coming over to say hello. When she heard a man's voice, rough and impatient, coming from the car right next to hers, she was so startled, she jumped and banged her crazy bone on the door handle.

"Hey, come on. Get a move on!"

Theresa looked up, and Maddy's body went cold. She felt like a great big exposed nerve. One side of the little girl's face was discolored from temple to jaw. Her lip was swollen and the outer part of the white of her eye was blood red.

Fighting the urge to jump out of the car and grab the child, Maddy shifted her gaze to the fragile little hands. She saw them grip the chrome door handle and struggle to open the heavy door, then appear again on the windowsill as they tugged the door shut. Maddy caught one brief glimpse of a swarthy face, dark, curly hair, and a moustache. Then the car roared away.

And still Maddy sat, unable to move.

"You saw?" a voice asked. Zack was leaning over, looking at her through her open window.

She nodded, still staring straight ahead. "It's… different," she said in a low voice, "when you… when you…"

"When you're personally involved. Yeah, I can imagine." He put his hands on the windowsill, then reached for the handle and pulled the door open.

Maddy jerked her head sideways but still didn't look at him. "How do you know?"

His voice was grim. "I have a very vivid imagination. And I haven't done much else since you told me what you do, dammit, except imagine it. Come on. Let's go inside and talk about this. I'll get you a drink of water."

Maddy finally looked at him and felt a wave of shame. At least she'd had experience with this kind of thing. She'd had some warning, some preparation. Zack hadn't. His face looked like bleached bone.

Without a word she nodded and got stiffly out of the car.

As Zack followed Maddy into the pool office he was experiencing a particularly frustrating and futile kind of rage. It was a feeling he'd only had once before in his life.

"How do you take that, day in and day out?" He threw the question at her angrily, almost as an accusation. He found himself resenting her ability to "take it." Dammit, it seemed almost a kind of complicity. And it only enraged him further that she just looked at him with compassion in response to his rudeness, as if she understood how badly he needed to hit out at someone-anyone.

"I'll make this report, if you like," she said in a low voice. "Your name doesn't even have to be on it."

He stared at her. "What the hell do you mean? I want my name on it! I'd like to personally strangle with my bare hands whoever did that!"

"You'd be surprised how many people either don't want to get involved at all or want the protection of anonymity." She'd reached the telephone ahead of him. She grabbed the receiver and held it in what looked like protective custody while she met his furious stare. "I know who to talk to," she told him gently, and began to dial. Zack expelled a frustrated breath and combed his hair back with his fingers.

" Family Crisis Center -Dr. Larry Whitlaw, please," Maddy said into the phone, still watching him with a worried frown.

Zack took two agitated paces to the left, four back to the right, and then, muttering under his breath, pivoted and stalked into the men's dressing rooms. He took his time showering and dressing, and even wasted some more time trying to instill discipline in his hair. That effort failed, but in the process some of the discipline must have managed to penetrate to his brain. He was calm when he went back out into the office.

She was sitting on the corner of his desk, waiting for him. She was wearing a white sundress with a full skirt, and her long legs were crossed at the knee. She looked like the original snow queen. Incredible, he thought. The other day she'd been Marilyn at her sexiest and most vulnerable; today she was Grace Kelly. Who the hell was she really? And why did he want to know?

"What happens now?" he asked harshly, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Maddy took a deep breath. "The home environment will be thoroughly checked out. Counseling and other assistance services will be made available to the family-"

"Family!" she sounded as if she were reading an information booklet aloud! "What about that poor little kid? Won't they get her out of there? Lock up whoever did that to her?"

"They may remove her from the home temporarily, if the situation warrants," Maddy said carefully. "But permanent separation is usually a last resort."

"Last resort? Whose?" He wanted to grab her and shake her out of that maddening professional calm. "What, does somebody have to get killed first?"

"Zack." Her voice was very low and unusually hoarse. She had to clear her throat before she could go on. "These children love their parents, in spite of… everything. Breaking up a home is… well, it's very traumatic for the child. We try to help, not make things worse."

Zack took a deep breath, held it while he glared helplessly at the ceiling, then released it in a long sigh. "I'm sorry. I just feel so… so damn…"

She stood up and laid a hand on his arm. "You did the right thing. The right people are moving on it now. Something will be done, I promise you."

But would it be the right thing? he wondered. And would it be enough? He took another deep breath, then realized his chest was aching in a way it hadn't in a very long time. He stared down at the hand on his arm, and she snatched it away. He reached out and caught it. "Hey, listen, are you doing anything right this minute?"

She'd made a startled little gasp when he'd grabbed her hand, and was staring at him as if she thought he might explode. "N-now?"

"Yeah. How about a cup of coffee or something? I don't know about you, but I need to get out of here. I'd like to talk about this a little more." He hesitated, then added, "Preferably someplace quiet."

She was biting her lip, looking more like Marilyn now than Grace. After a moment she said, "Okay. How about my place?"

It was unexpected, to say the least, but he didn't show how startled he was. He stood up and said crisply, "Your place it is. I'll follow you."

As he drove behind her nondescript white sedan down a long, creepy lane completely overhung with avocado trees, it occurred to him to wonder, and not for the first time, just what kind of woman he was dealing with. The trouble was, she gave off contradictory signals. She looked like a showgirl. That was the only way to put it. She was leggy and statuesque and blond, the kind of blond whom gentlemen are said to prefer. And what was she? A social worker, for Pete's sake! A social worker who dealt with mistreated kids. Zack still had trouble believing it. It had him feeling strangely out-of-step. It would be interesting to see her place. Maybe there he'd find the clues that would help him fit her pieces together.

And then he wondered again why it mattered. He felt guilty for thinking about her, when he should have been thinking about that little girl. But dammit, Theresa was there all the time anyway, in the back of his mind, and had been for days. And now it was out of his hands. He'd done what he could, and the rest was up to the people who knew how to deal with that kind of sickness. He had to get the kid out of his mind. Forget her. He had a feeling Maddy Gordon could help him forget.

It was quiet in the grove. He could hear the rustle of dry leaves under his tires, the call of a crow somewhere in the treetops. Ahead, fingers of sunlight slanted through openings in the trees, spotlighting an oddly-shaped weathered gray building with no windows. It looked like an enchanted cottage, isolated in a sunlit glade in the middle of a dark and mysterious forest. He kept expecting an ugly little old lady to come around the corner croaking, "Nibble, nibble like a mouse, who's been nibbling at my house?" Or seven fat little men to come marching down the lane singing, "Hi ho, hi ho, it's home from work we go!"

But when Maddy unlocked the front door and stood aside to invite him inside the cottage, he realized he'd had the wrong story. "My Lord," he breathed after a moment's stunned silence. "It's Geppetto's workshop!"

From every shelf and chair and tabletop, faces peered at him; purple faces, blue faces, green faces, bright orange and yellow faces; faces with big sad eyes, faces with bright shoe-button eyes, faces with sleeping eyes, long curling lashes lying against fuzzy cheeks; animal faces, people faces, and faces born of pure imagination; faces with ears, faces with horns, faces with tufts and billows of iridescent hair. Each face was attached to a body, and most of the bodies had arms. But except for the ones suspended by wires from the ceiling, very few of the bodies had legs.

"Puppets," he said in wonder. "They're all… puppets." And then, with horrified disbelief, "My Lord-one's alive!''

For in one particularly furry, gray-blue face a pair of round green eyes had, unmistakably and oh, so slowly, blinked.

Maddy gave a delighted gurgle of laughter. "Incorrigible, you rascal, can the act and come down from there."

The green eyes closed and a pink mouth opened in a wide, insolent feline yawn.

Geez, Zack thought, is she a witch? It was becoming a matter of pride with him to appear unflappable around her, not to let her see how much she could surprise him. And so, to cover his shock and give himself a few seconds to regain his poise, he reached out and gathered up the big gray cat from his perch on a shelf full of puppets. The cat seemed momentarily nonplussed. It reared back its head to stare at him, then flattened its ears and squinted and sniffed at Zack's chin. And finally the cat went completely boneless in his arms, paws in the air, and began to purr.

"That was a test, you know," Maddy said. She was standing beside a small table that held a phone and message machine. It seemed to be the only surface in the place that wasn't covered with puppets or puppet parts.

Zack lifted one eyebrow. "Do I pass?"

"Oh, with flying colors. You're the first, I think." She smiled wryly. "Most people tend to… freak out, as a friend of mine would say, when Corry goes into his act."

"His act?"

"Corry likes to impersonate a puppet, and then frighten people out of their wits by coming to life. He's a born showman, and has faultless timing. He only does it for first-time visitors, and always when they're still in shock just from seeing the place. After that, I guess he figures they've got his number."

"Amazing," Zack murmured, and set the cat on the floor, much to its disgust. After a perfunctory wash designed to save face, Corry made his proud, unhurried exit.

"Yes, I guess he is," Maddy said, smiling fondly after the waving plume of tail.

"I wasn't talking about him." Zack gestured at the puppets and the magical stairways of sunlight that angled down from five skylights, then walked toward her. "I mean all of it. This house, the puppets… you."

"Me?" She shook her head emphatically. "I'm not amazing." Her voice shook, and her eyes seemed to darken. He realized with another shock that she was afraid of him. He felt the desire he'd first felt the day she'd fainted in his arms in the pool, the desire to erase that fear from her eyes. To see her eyes grow luminous and soft, and finally close in complete trust and surrender…

Very slowly, he reached out and touched the nose of the large pink dragon she had gathered into her arms. To his astonishment, the dragon sneezed, then rubbed its nose with its tail.

"Gesundheit," Maddy said, watching Zack over the dragon's blue crest. She was smiling, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes held shimmers of laughter. "This is Bosley. Bosley, say hello to Zack."

The dragon muttered, "Hello." It sounded like a sulky frog.

"Bosley's nose is very ticklish," Maddy explained. "However, he does enjoy having his neck rubbed."

"Oh, yeah?" Zack murmured, and wondered if Maddy did. Feeling only a little silly, he stroked the velvet underside of the dragon's chin. The dragon made a purring sound. Zack was captivated and amused to see that its eyes had closed.

"My goodness," Maddy said, her voice sounding something like a purr as well. "I see you have a way with dragons as well as with cats and children. You must have a magic touch."

Zack didn't answer. He just looked into her eyes and slowly and with deliberate sensuousness began to stroke the dragon's neck. The dragon made delighted Mae West noises and wound itself around Zack's forearm. It rubbed its cheek ecstatically against his biceps, then rested its head on his shoulder and gazed up at him with adoring eyes.

"Hello, big fella," the dragon said in Mae West's sexiest voice.

Maddy looked startled. "Boz! You never told me you were a girl!" Her cheeks were as pink as the dragon.

"Honey," Bosley purred, "you never asked."

"You're good," Zack said softly to Maddy. "You're very, very good."

"Maybe," the dragon said, lowering her eyelashes demurely. But when I'm bad… I'm better."

"Boz!" Maddy seemed genuinely scandalized.

Zack laughed appreciatively, but even as he was doing so, he was battling intense frustration. She was good with that thing-too damn good. He knew exactly what she'd done, and knew that she'd done it deliberately. She'd used that puppet to hold him off, just as effectively as if it had been a third person-a roommate, say-instead of a toy made of velvet and papier-mache.

But Zack hadn't forgotten for one moment that under the pink fabric and paint he had caressed a soft, shapely arm. And that the dragon's head, however uncannily lifelike Maddy's skill could make it seem, was a hand-Maddy's hand. And for a few moments it had stroked his arm and shoulder and rested warmly in the hollow of his neck. His skin still tingled with his awareness of her. It was a kind of awareness he hadn't felt in a long time-hadn't even wanted to feel. And right now he knew that he wanted her hands touching his skin without the interference of cloth and cardboard. In fact, he wanted her skin touching his skin, without interference from anything at all…

But for the life of him, he didn't know how to get past her chaperones.