For All Their Lives (11 page)

“I'd like to hear all about France and what it's like to live there.” He wasn't just saying the words. He really did want to know.

“Where do you come from, Mac?” Casey asked quietly.

“McLean, Virginia. It's not far from Washington, D.C.”

“I will tell you all about France if you tell me about Washington, D.C.”

“It's a deal. Hey, here's a taxi.” Mac flagged the Checker cab. “Polk Street, La Folie,” he said to the driver.

“You're familiar with the city then?” Casey asked curiously.

“Not really. I used to come to California on vacations,” Mac said shortly. “San Francisco is not one of my favorite places. I prefer Los Angeles.”

“I see,” Casey said, because she felt she had to make a comment.

Mac laughed. “No, you don't. My mother used to say ‘I see' all the time. What it meant was she didn't understand and she was going to be polite until I explained. My father likes California. He has friends here, and we used to come here every year when the school term was over in the spring. Going on a vacation with one's father isn't exactly the best way to have fun, especially when father and son don't get on all that well.” He forced a light tone to his voice. He wasn't about to allow his father to infringe on this evening.

It was dark when the cab pulled to the curb in front of the pretty storefront café. “I have to warn you,” Mac said, holding the door for her, “service here is supposed to be lackadaisical at best. Well meaning, of course. But I've heard it's a fun place. The sort of restaurant my father would hate.”

There was no warmth in his eyes when he spoke of his father, Casey noticed.

“Sazerac cocktails and fresh oysters,” Mac ordered. “Shall I try out my French on you? It isn't half as good as your English.” He leaned across the table and blurted, “You have the most incredible blue eyes. Is that the
real
color of your hair or does . . . is it artificial? It looks like soft butter. It's important for me to know, but I can't explain why.” A boyish grin stretched across his face. Casey's heart thumped.

“My hair color is real. My friends always teased me in school. I tried to be so French, and they all said I looked American. Right now, I don't know what I am. Thank you for the compliment,” Casey said lightly.
She was actually flirting.

“It's your turn,” Mac teased.

Casey blushed.

“I've embarrassed you, I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention at all.” He liked her elegant Gallic shrug. Sadie would call him a clod for what he'd just said and tell him that, no matter what, you never embarrass a lady.

They talked of the weather while they ate their oysters and sipped their drinks. When they exhausted a discussion on the bay's smell, the fog, the cold, and the rainy winter months, Mac asked where she lived in France.

“In a very small flat. I sublet it to a young intern. From my yard I could sneak into the gardens of Notre Dame. I used to pretend I was a grand lady out for a stroll when I went there. The priests were very indulgent with me. I love flowers, you see. They allowed me many liberties.”

They talked and nibbled, whispered and smiled, laughed and touched hands across the table. Casey told herself it was a pleasant interlude that would end when she walked through the doors to catch a cab.

A guilty expression crossed her features when she looked around the room a long time later to find they were the only patrons in the café. “I think they want to close,” she whispered.

“I think so too. It is late. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you . . . it was one of the nicest evenings in my life. Tell me something, though, how is it you have an American name?”

Casey smiled. “It's really a French name. It's spelled Casée. If you were writing it, you would put the little mark over the first e. To be stubborn, I adopted the American spelling.”

“I see.” Mac chuckled. They were both laughing when they swept through the café doors. She could have eaten for a week with the tip Mac left on the table. She said so.

“We took up that table all night. They could have turned it over three times. I had to make it up to our waiter.” Casey thought it a wonderful gesture.

A taxi pulled to the curb. “Lombard Street, you said.” Casey nodded. Mac relayed the information to the driver. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow?” he asked impulsively.

“Yes,” Casey answered just as impulsively.

“Give me your phone number.”

“Oh! I don't know what it is. It must be in the telephone book under Jack Adams.”

Mac stood back from the curb. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Thank you for a wonderful evening.”

“My pleasure. I'll see you tomorrow.” He snapped off an airy salute in the general direction of the cab, and watched it disappear into the swirling fog.

Casey swept into the house, her steps light, her eyes sparkling.

A fire would be nice, she decided. While she laid the twigs and crunched up papers, she pushed all thoughts of Captain Mac Carlin as far back into her mind as she could. She waited a moment while the pyramid of sparks raced up the chimney before she added two solid birch logs. Satisfied with the steady blaze, she trotted off to her bedroom to put on her robe and slippers. She carried her pillow and the comforter bordered with yellow tulips and sprigs of green fern out to the living room. She settled herself in front of the fire. She thought about Mac's promise to phone her, and reached out of her cocoon for the telephone book on the shelf under the end table. Her eyebrows shot upward when she discovered all the columns of Adamses. Like a child, she ran her index finger down the page to search out her father's name and phone number. Once she saw it and committed it to memory, Mac would be more real. She could almost picture him dialing the number and then waiting for her to say hello. Ohhh, she could hardly wait for the call. However would she pass the time until that wonderful moment happened? She was on the fifth column on the second page when she realized there was no J. Adams, no Jack or John Adams listed on Lombard Street. Panic seized her. Once a number had been printed on the little paper circle, but it was nothing more than a blur now. Completely illegible. Where was the number?
Mon Dieu
, where was the number? Her throat tightened. She swayed sickeningly. Her finger found the O on the dial. “Operator, I need to know the number of this phone I'm calling you from. Could you give it to me please?”

“One moment. The address and name, miss?”

Casey gave her the address and spelled her father's name slowly. “Possibly the number is listed under Jack or John or maybe just the initial J.”

The silence on the phone while the operator looked up the number thundered in Casey's ears. “I'm sorry but that number is unlisted.”

“What does that mean?” Casey croaked. “I'm new here in California. This is my father's number, and he . . . what does it mean?”

“It means the number can't be given out. To anyone,” the operator said irritably.

“But it's my number now. I'm the one who will be paying the bill. I should have the number. Please, this is very important to me.”

“I'm sorry, miss. Contact the business office tomorrow. The hours are nine to five.” Casey stared at the pinging phone clutched in her hand. This couldn't be happening to her. It wasn't fair.

Casey slumped down on the floor again. Lord, she was stupid. What was she going to do with the phone number when she got it from the telephone company? Stupid! Stupid! She didn't know where Mac was staying, so how was she to give him the phone number? She pummeled the padded comforter, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Two weeks. Mac had two weeks in San Francisco, time enough for them to get to know one another. Time enough to explore the area. Time to laugh and perhaps cry when it was time for him to leave.

If she'd been more experienced, more worldly, she would have made sure the handsome captain had her address. If she'd been more sophisticated, she would have gotten the name of his hotel. Sister Ann Elizabeth would say this was nonsense, and that's why fate intervened to create an impossible situation. Casey didn't believe it for a minute.

She fought the urge to stamp her feet and scream. Nicole and Danele would tell her to leave no stone unturned. “Go, go, go,” they'd say. “Where?” she wailed. “I don't know enough about this city. I don't even remember the name of the coffee shop where I met him.”

The logs shifted, teetered on the iron grate before they settled between the wide prongs. What was Mac Carlin doing right now, this minute? She wished she knew. She longed for a dog or a cat to snuggle with. She'd always wanted a pet. Someday she was going to surround herself with cats and dogs. Once she'd had a goldfish she kept in a cracked cup. It had died in a day's time. She'd cried for a whole day when Sister Ann Elizabeth flushed it down the toilet and then threw the cup in the trash. She'd wanted to bury the fish in the gardens at Notre Dame. She wondered if Mac Carlin had had a pet as a child. Once she'd caught a flicker of sadness in his eyes, but it disappeared almost immediately.

What had they eaten?
Soupe de poissons, crudités, pâté, potage de légumes,
and
glacé panachée.
She found herself giggling when Mac gave the order in his strangled French. She'd laughed aloud when she saw the garnish on the soup. Mac said it looked like a giant ladybug. It had been one of the most enjoyable evenings of her life. Damn! She wanted to see him again. How delighted she'd been when he asked to see her tomorrow. Now it was like everything else in her life that didn't work out.

“What I need is a fairy godmother,” Casey muttered. She flopped over on her stomach, propping her chin in her hands. “A fairy godmother who knows San Francisco, and knows about men.”

Where was he staying? Had he said anything, given a clue she hadn't picked up on? She yanked at the telephone in her lap. Hotels. She would call them all until she found him. Sleep was the farthest thing from her mind as she flipped through the telephone book to the section that listed hotels. She blinked at the long list. It would take a full night and day to call all of them. Her jaw set tightly. Either she would call them or she would have to forget about Mac Carlin. She dialed and dialed. At one in the morning she was perturbed, at two she was annoyed, at three she started to get angry, at four she threw down her pencil in disgust to head for the kitchen to make coffee. She'd called over a hundred hotels in the San Francisco area and had that many still to call, if not more. She sipped coffee while she continued to dial one number after another. By seven her eyes were red and full of grit from the smoky fire. At eight o'clock she threw her pencil into the dying flames. She was so stupid. Mac said when he visited San Francisco with his father it was to visit friends. He wasn't staying at a hotel at all but with friends. She felt like a fool when she replaced the telephone on the end table.
“Bête, bête, bête,
”she chastised herself on the way to the shower.

Casey rubbed at the steamy mirror with a yellow hand towel. She looked awful, felt awful, her eyes red and puffy. She wanted to scream at her reflection, to keen, to wail her lament. Instead she cried silent tears of frustration. She toweled her hair as she wept, with the same yellow towel she'd used to wipe the mirror. Satisfied with her damp curls, she made her way to the bed, where she crawled between the cold sheets. She'd never considered sleeping in the nude before, she thought as she drifted into sleep. When she awoke from her nap, she was going to do something else she'd never considered: she was going to join the army.

 

T
HE FIRST THING
Mac Carlin did when he finished his breakfast was to write Sadie's address on the box his Uncle Harry had given to him. He had checked into a civilian hotel in order to have more services than would be available at an army BOQ. And now he called the hotel desk for a bellhop to mail the package. He hadn't looked at the books. It wasn't time for him to touch his mother's things, even though they were meant for him. Maybe it would never be time. He scribbled off a note to Sadie and slipped it into one of the hotel's envelopes. When the bellhop appeared, he handed him a ten-dollar bill and asked to have the letter attached to the box. “Keep the change,” he said generously.

The second thing he did was pull out the hotel telephone directory to look up the Jack Adams number. He ran his finger with his blunt-cut nail down the long list of Adamses. There had to be at least five hundred, but not one that lived on Lombard Street. He felt his heart twitch. It was Lombard Street, he'd repeated it to the taxi driver. The information operator told him in her nasally voice that the number was unpublished. His heart gave a second twitch.

Mac knew what he was feeling was wrong, but he didn't care. He also knew what he was about to do was just as wrong. He didn't care about that either. Yesterday he'd met a delightful young woman, a woman who made his blood sing. He'd chased tendrils of fog with her, laughed with her, eaten with her, and held her hand for the briefest second in time. It was fate. Kismet. Preordained. It was
something,
and he wanted to experience it again. Jesus Christ, he was a “star man” of West Point, top honors, a captain in the United States Army. He was trained to do the impossible. A little thing like an unlisted phone number and lack of address would not,
could not
deter him. What he had to do, he told himself, was change the situation around and think of Casey Adams as the enemy. Search her out—that's what he had to do.

Mac Carlin was a man with a purpose when he strode through the wide double doors of his hotel in search of a taxi. He was oblivious to the admiring glances of the female hotel guests and envious stares of the potbellied men toting their briefcases. “I want to go to Lombard Street,” he said briskly. “I don't have an address. Just drive.”