The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [77]
Clark said, “You look pretty good for your age.”
“What a compliment. I’m not through talking about Annie’s search for love.”
He scooped off the icing from the cake and ate it. “It seems to be not so much Annie’s search for love as it is your search for love for Annie. What are you, her personal love shopper?”
She muted the Weather Channel. “Brad is hanging in there. Maybe she should give him another chance.”
“Sam, it’s only in old movies that women never stop loving their first husbands. Believe me, Ileanna moved onto a new life before my U-Haul left the driveway. Before the tax year was out, she’d married her accountant.”
“You ought to do that. You wouldn’t get audited so much.”
Clark finished his cake. They sat watching the weather. It wasn’t good. Finally he announced that he’d met a radiologist at Emerald Hospital and thought he’d invite her home. Maybe they could cook Jill’s sautéed chicken with ginger recipe. “That recipe’s the only good thing Jill left you.”
“Not true.” Sam turned off the television. “She left me those damn tropical fish. I thought those fish were going to live forever. I thought they were going to outlive me.”
“They might have, if your mother hadn’t poured bleach in their tank. There’s always a silver lining.”
Sam laughed. “Are you planning to leave me for another radiologist?”
“Nope. It’s just you and me, kid. Family honeymoon.” He clinked his empty tea mug against her empty wine glass. “Well, you and me and that woman you met on the cruise to Alaska.”
“Her name was Rachel as you very well know. And she went back to her partner.”
“She did? I’m sorry.”
Sam smiled at the lanky man in his loose, frayed khakis; she patted his arm. “This town has had their hearts set on us ever since I had a meltdown at St. Mark’s about your dying. And then you didn’t even die.”
He smiled back at the tanned woman, trim in her golf slacks and polo shirt. “Remember when Georgette and Annie had the wedding for us under the big beech tree, with ‘borrowed’ rings from Nickerson Jewelers? What were they, nine, ten?”
Sam headed for the kitchen. “You just couldn’t get over Ileanna in time.”
“In time for what?” Clark followed her. “Like you were waiting? Like you could get over anything. You radicals are so damn conventional.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Jill.” He put his dishes in the deep Victorian sink. “Jill.”
Sam butted him from behind. “There were plenty before Jill and there’ve been plenty after her too.”
Clark laughed as he rinsed plates. “Plenty? Sam, you’re starting to believe your own FBI report.”
Sam was proud of the FBI file on her. Back when she’d been an active protester, showing up at rallies and marches and vigils, the government had kept a secret dossier on her. She sent away for it under the Freedom of Information Act. To her surprise, she found herself accused of sleeping with radical Lesbians she’d never even met. She told everyone she felt like a disappointment; her real life had been so much less exciting than the Right had pretended. In her real life, she’d been hard-pressed to find any partners at all, much less well-known rabble-rousers like the names in the secret report.
“Your problem,” Clark said, wrapping the leftover cake in aluminum foil, “is you pick the wrong people.”
“I pick the wrong people?” She folded the dishtowel. “Ileanna got your Chicago house and everything in it! What is it with you and radiology?”
Clark opened the front door to call Malpy in before he remembered that Malpy was on his way to St. Louis with Annie. “I admit, that particular radiologist was a mistake.”
The phone in the hall rang. They both reached for it.
But it was only Brad Hopper. He wanted Sam to know that he was landing right now at Lambert–St. Louis in one of the Hopper corporate jets. He had an unexpected passenger with him, someone that D. K. Destin had forced him to take along. A guy named Don somebody, some kind of businessman buddy of D. K.’s. The guy was asleep in the cabin. D. K. had practically blackmailed Brad into giving