Posts

THE IRATE READER, THE DREADED TYPO, AND THE MYTH OF THE INCOMPETENT SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR — OR TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED AUTHORS AREN’T PERFECT, EITHER

/1 Comment/in , , , , /by

typos

Hi, everyone.  The air has changed in Southern California.  The heat of late summer that drives my breath back into my lungs, has suddenly dissolved into a cool, clear breeze.  It feels as if the world has come back into focus.  I’ve broken out the Pumpkin Spice candles and the Gingerbread tea and wrapped the house in garlands of silk autumn leaves that I bought on sale at Michael’s because the trees in SoCal are not going to provide real ones.  (Sigh!)

Our new puppy has come home.  Summer Moon.  She’s an English Golden Retriever. She isn’t golden, at all, of course.  She’s as white as the full moon.  Hence her name.  “Moon” because of her color.  “Summer” because she came home in late summer.  She looks like an angel but is full of mischief.  Her big brother, Rhythm, doesn’t quite know what to make of her.  She has two speeds: “on” and “off.”  And when she’s “on,” nothing in the house is safe from her tiny teeth, including Rhythm’s tail.

21751558_10213961078526328_391421956202483039_n

I’ve just finished uploading the corrected manuscripts for Mirror, Mirror, so now the paperback version will soon be available on Amazon.  I used three proofreaders this time for the manuscript, and the last one read every one of the 120,710 words aloud plus punctuation marks.  When I was an editor/proofreader, before I went to law school, this is the way we read the final version of manuscripts because we had the best chance of catching errors by reading aloud.  So this time I thought I was safe from complaints about TYPOS.  But alas!

About a week after Mirror, Mirror had been published as an ebook, I got the message from Irate Reader.  “I like your book BUT—” Insert drum roll, thunder and lightning. “BUT it has TYPOS!!”  No hint of what those TYPOS might be.  I felt as if someone had sent one of my children home from school with a message pinned on his/her back, “Your child has CHICKEN POX!  Your HORRIBLE EXCUSE for a Mother!”

My first reaction was to protest.  Three proofreaders, I told her!  Every word and punctuation mark scrutinized, aloud!  But, alas!  Irate Reader was unrelenting.   Her next email cut even deeper. She called me, “UNPROFESSIONAL!” I had a big Breneˊ Brown moment after that.  If you don’t know about Breneˊ Brown, she describes herself as a “shame researcher.”  She is a professor at the University of Houston, who has written on the topic of shame and how it affects our lives.  When Irate Reader’s wrath descended upon me, I had been reading Dr. Brown’s book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It isn’t).  And I knew that the paralyzing, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was shame.

Despite my best intentions, I’d humiliated myself in public, by telling a story that I had hoped many people would enjoy.  I wasn’t a woman with three post-graduate degrees, all cum laude.  I was an UNPROFESSIONAL with TYPOS.   Sort of like a careless excuse for a mom who’d sent her kid to school with CHICKENPOX and now the child had to be sent back to the incompetent parent.

I was deeply hurt by having my imperfections hurled in my face.  I thought about taking the book down.  FOREVER.  I’d worked so hard on it every night for six long months.  I’d worked on it on the nights when my heart had been breaking because my Golden Retriever Melody was dying.  I’d worked on it on the nights when I’d been so tired that I couldn’t see the page because I’d been writing for the courts of appeal all day.  But I had kept on going because I had thought my characters were telling me a story that would entertain and touch hearts.  And I’d launched that story into the world after so much time and care, happy and proud, and hoping to find readers with hearts to be touched.  But, now, within a week of its publication, it had been deemed worthless. TYPOS!  UNPROFESSIONAL! All because I’m not, and never will be, PERFECT.

“The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting.”  Breneˊ Brown

Since self-publishing has become an option for writers, a myth has grown up that self-published writers are the only ones who launch books with typos.  That was the gist of Irate Reader’s “UNPROFESSIONAL” (SNIFF) label.   I got a does (dose, get it?) of this prejudice early on when I published my first novel, Dance for A Dead Princess.  At some point, one of the TOP 100 AMAZON REVIEWERS got her 3-star hands on it.   But she didn’t stop at 3 grudging stars.   She went straight to the top, to THE ZON itself and advised that I was illiterate. Why, there were whole sections of the book that hadn’t even been spellchecked!   REALLY!  THE NERVE!

Turns out, Ms. TOP 100 didn’t understand that the Tudor diary of Thomas, Carey, the First Duke of Burnham, is written in my approximation of Tudor English. That means the way Shakespeare wrote and spelled.   THE ZON backed way down after I explained the development of the English language and added, “Bet you wouldn’t have sent a QUALITY CONTROL NOTICE to Random House!”

So, just in case anyone else out there besides Irate Reader and Ms.Top 100 thinks that TYPO’s are the exclusive manifestation of the ignorance of self-published writers and that all the brains belong to the traditionally published ones, let me offer the following examples of TYPOS from novels you will recognize (and by the way, editions of these WITH TYPOS are worth hundreds of dollars)

Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

Characters are referred to as “harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music—like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea.”

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

A wall against which people set up their huts being described as “It stretched out long and grey and very high, and against the base the small mat sheds clung like flees to a dog’s back.” Editions of the book that include the misspelling can go for as much as $9500.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Some copies of this book are valued at a small fortune for this reason. On page 53, in a list of school supplies that young wizards are expected to bring to Hogwarts: “1 wand” is listed at both the beginning and at the end. That said, the typo did reappear in a few later printings even after it was caught in the second round, so it’s only the true first editions that are worth beaucoup bucks. [This example illustrates just how hard these pesky little TYPOS are to eliminate even after they have been found.]

“The Wicked Bible”

The1631 edition of the King James Bible by Robert Baker and Martin Lucas included an accidental new twist on the 7th Commandment, informing readers that “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This managed to incense both King Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury—its publishers were hauled into court and fined £300 (a little over $57,000 in today’s U.S. dollars) for the oversight and they had their printing license revoked. Most of the copies were subsequently burned, and the book picked up the sobriquet “The Wicked Bible” or “The Sinners’ Bible.” Only about 10 copies remain today—one was put up for sale by British auction house Bonhams just last year.

As for me, I went back over the book one more time.  I found some commas that only I would notice were out of place.  There were a couple of repeated words, a few line breaks, and an “it” for an “in.”  One very kind reader wrote to tell me that my dates were wrong at the beginning of one of the chapters.  (Bless her.)

So the corrected version is up.  I’m sure there are more TYPOS out there because perfection is unattainable for me.  But here’s the deal.  If you find any more and email me with the error, its location, and your address, I’ll send you a Starbuck’s gift card for a cup of coffee.  And I’ll send you my greatest thanks for liking my stories and for being my friend.   Even though I’m not perfect.

The Real Diana Tapes – The Peter Settelen Controversy

/in , , /by

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the experience of using Princess Diana as a minor, but important, character in my first novel, Dance For A Dead Princess. Some readers have understood that I wanted to preserve my own view of Diana in the book. She was a beautiful, naive, young woman, looking for love with an older man after an emotionally barren childhood. But instead of creating a family to nurture, as she wanted to do, she was badly used by her husband, who was chronically and openly unfaithful, and she was abused by the institution of monarchy which her marriage was designed to serve. For the trouble she took to produce two princes and two royal heirs, she was later unfairly labeled unfit and unstable by Charles and his supporters in divorce proceedings.

Some readers are put off by Diana’s presence in Dance For A Dead Princess. In their opinion, even mentioning her is somehow exploiting her memory. But that view is very short sighted because if we don’t mention her, we forget her. And forgetting her is exactly what institutional monarchy wants us to do. Charles, who never made a place for Diana in his life, has filled the place that should have been hers with the woman who destroyed Diana’s marriage. And now the party line is to forget about Diana altogether and to criticize anyone who mentions her favorably as exploitive.

I came across this type of criticism recently when I discovered the work of Peter Settelen, a British actor and voice coach. In 1992 and 1993, Diana hired Settelen to help her improve her public speaking. Tapes of her early speeches demonstrate she had little skill as a speaker at the beginning of her career in public life. But after working with Settelen, she improved dramatically.

When Settelen began to work with Diana, he told her she would have to find her own authentic voice if she wanted to excel at public speaking. To that end, he recorded a series of sessions with her in which she described the events of her life. They are charming and candid, and well worth watching. And they reveal the side of Diana that my fictional character, Nicholas Carey, knew and loved and desperately missed as the novel opens.

Settelen has been criticized, of course, for making the tapes public. He had to go to court and fight to get them back after they were found in Paul Burell’s attic. Earlier, Settelen had been told the tapes had been destroyed.

Settelen candidly admits they were meant to be private teaching tools. But, as he also says, Diana did not know she was going to die; and the opportunity to hear the story of her life in her own words is a powerful way preserve her memory. The tapes Diana made with Settelen are well worth a listen. And listening to them explains why my fictional character Nicholas was driven to preserve Diana’s memory at all costs out of loyalty to his greatest friend.

Here is the YouTube link, the Diana Tapes with Peter Settelen.   What do you think of the tapes?  Did Settelen do the right thing to publish them?

xin_3611013010353612517511 - Copy

Diana, Princess of Wales, in Fiction: Crass Commercialism or Loving Tribute?

/in , , /by

mario_testino_7

Even before the name of the new little princess was announced, I, like many others, wondered if she would be called after her grandmother, Diana. Diana was thrust onto the world stage at age nineteen, a bit gawky, a bit naive, but utterly charming and sincere. By age twenty-three, she was the mother of two children, one a future king. By the time she died in Paris, at age thirty-six, she had grown into a beautiful, compassionate woman, anxious to be a healing and unifying influence in the world.

After Diana died, I found I missed her although we had never met. While she was living through her disastrous marriage and divorce in the glare of world wide publicity, I was living through my own marriage and divorce nightmare on a smaller, but nevertheless, public scale. On the days when I had to wait to check-out at the grocery story, I used to read the tabloid headlines written by Prince Charles’ supporters, accusing Diana of mental illness and instability; and I would comfort myself with the thought that at least no reporters were sitting in the courtroom to hear the man I’d married say exactly the same things about me. Although it was a public courtroom and anyone who walked in could have heard how, by having three children whom I loved more than life itself, I had maliciously morphed from an academic over-achiever who graduated Number Two in her law school class into a dangerous, crazy, lying freeloader. I felt a bond with Diana, although I was unenviably poor and she was enviably rich, because I realized that access to all the money in the world could never make up for the pain of having the father of your children heap lies and disrespect on you in a public forum.

When Diana died, I felt as if I’d lost a friend. And as the years passed and Charles and his publicists pushed Diana and her memory farther and farther into the background to replace her with Camilla Parker-Bowles, I wondered how many people remained who, like me, thought of Diana, not as a clothes horse or as a Royal Highness, but as a beautiful, loving woman, unfairly used and demeaned by a powerful and wealthy family.

My first novel, Dance For A Dead Princess has many themes, but one of the most prominent is the power of an aristocratic family to control its members. Nicholas Carey, the heredity duke, who is the hero of Dance for A Dead Princess, was forced to return from America when he was only sixteen to assume the position of heir to the dukedom, although given his choice he would have gladly remained in New York and studied to become a concert pianist like his mother. Diana was also affected by the power of her aristocratic family at a very young age when her father wrested custody of his children from their mother, leaving Diana and young Charles to be raised by nannies at Althorpe while grieving their mother’s loss.

Another central theme is the toll an unhappy marriage takes on the individuals involved. Having been unhappy in childhood, marriage for both Nicholas and Diana represented the chance to form happy unions of their own. For them, marriage was a chance to love and be loved rather than to be used as pawns on their aristocratic families’ chessboards. But Nicholas and Diana’s hopes were dashed yet again. Nicholas’ wife, Deborah and Diana’s husband, Charles, turned out to be powerfully in love, but not with their spouses. For Nicholas and for Diana, having lost the chance at a happy childhood, the loss of the opportunity to have a happy marriage was a second and even more powerful blow.

Some readers interpret Diana’s presence in Dance for a Dead Princess as an attempt to make believers out of the conspiracy theory of Diana’s death or as a crass attempt to sell books because her name is in them. But neither was ever my intention. I brought Diana into the book to keep her memory alive and to remind the world of the tragedy of her life. She was a beautiful, loving woman who was denied the thing she most longed for: the chance to create a loving family for herself, her husband, and her children. At one point in Dance, Nicholas observes how unfair it was for Diana to be called unstable and mentally ill all because she wanted what every wife wants, to have her husband to herself.

The haunting tragedy of Diana’s life was what I hoped every reader would take away from Dance. In the Prologue, the reader encounters Nicholas in Paris where he is grieving the loss of his beloved friend and the mutual support and companionship they offered each other in their isolated, unhappy lives. Nicholas stares down at the Place d’Alama Tunnel, thirteen years after that fateful August night, deeply longing for one more chance to talk to Diana. “How many nights had he spent talking to Diana about his marriage, about her marriage, about his guilt over Deborah and about the impossibility of being in love?” And he wonders how his friend felt as death approached. “ . . . What had she felt as she slipped away from everyone who loved her? Had she struggled against it, as Deborah had? Or had her torn and broken heart quietly accepted her fate? No, he doubted that. She’d have fought to stay with her boys.”

Whether or not there was a historical conspiracy to assassinate Diana is not the point of Dance. The role of the conspiracy in the plot is to give Nicholas an opportunity to express his unbearable grief over the loss of both Diana and his wife. Aching from all that loss in his life, Nicholas vows to expose Diana’s assassins, not as an act of vengeance, but as means of expressing his soul crushing sadness. And ironically, through this one, last powerful expression of grief, Nicholas meets Taylor Collins, the one woman who has the power to give him what he has always longed for, but has never had.

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Twenty

/in , , , , , /by

7937299926_4057669a59_z

CHAPTER TWENTY

January, 1995

That night, Carrie went to the club with a light heart. She had signed off on the Harper deal. Alan was ecstatic and had forgotten the prospectus disaster of the morning.

Publically she had set February twenty-third as the date for the Harper sale; privately she had set March first for her resignation from the firm.
Stan was playing especially well that night, and Lara was nowhere in sight. They went home after the show and made love in the soft glow of the winking yellow light.

Afterward, Carrie cuddled next to him and said, “I reached a very important decision today.”

He gave her a tired, half-smile in the dark. “Did you? How about telling me in the morning. I’ve been up since five a.m.”

“I know. But something really important happened today. I need to tell you.”

He sighed. “Ok. But don’t blame me if I fall asleep in the middle.”
She knew he was tired, but she had hoped for more interest. She considered waiting until morning, but he would probably sleep in, which meant she would have to go to work and wouldn’t be alone with him again until this time tomorrow night.

She began by telling him about the numbers mixup in the prospectus, but halfway through he interrupted. “Look, I get you made a big mistake because your mind hasn’t been on your work lately. You can skip the details of who said what and why it matters. It probably happened because you aren’t getting enough rest, either. You don’t have to come down to the club every night of the week.”

A knot formed in Carrie’s stomach. First he didn’t really want to hear what she had to say. Now he was suggesting she give up the part of the day that she lived for. She tried to keep her voice calm, but she knew the rising tide of emotion inside her made her tone sharp. “That’s not what I meant! I want to be at the club as much as I can. I don’t have enough time to be with you as it is.”

Stan rolled over to face her in the dark. “So you’re complaining I don’t spend enough time with you?”

“No, oh no.” She hadn’t foreseen the discussion going so terribly wrong. “I wasn’t being critical of you.”

“Well, I hope not!” he muttered and turned his back to her.

Despair griped her like a rip tide. She tried again, “Would you just hear me out?”

He sighed and replied without changing position, “Do we really have to do this tonight? I’m tired. Whatever I’m not doing that you want me to do, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to do anything.”

Irritated, he rolled over and faced her again. “Are you sure about that? Weren’t you going to ask me to spend more time with you?”

Carrie was taken aback by his anger. And she hadn’t expected him to guess at least part of the purpose of her plan. “Well, I suppose in a way I was going to ask that. But the thing is, I wasn’t going to ask you to change what you’re doing.”

“Then how do I find any more time to be with you?” he demanded as if the whole idea was completely unreasonable.

“Because we’ll have more time, in general, together. I’m going to resign from the firm on March first.”

Stan sat up and turned on the bedside light. He rubbed his eyes as if everything about their conversation was a colossal trial. “I’m sorry, Carrie. I can’t deal with anything like this tonight. I’m exhausted. I’ll go sleep on the couch.”

“No! Don’t do that!” she reached out to keep him from leaving. “I won’t say anything more about it tonight.”

Placated, he switched off the light and lay down again with his back toward her. Carrie turned her own back to him and let the tears fall slowly and silently into her pillow. She had hoped he would feel the same joy in her decision that she had. Instead, he didn’t seem to care or understand what was driving her to change her life. Finally, exhausted by the day and her emotions, she fell asleep.

She woke with a start two hours later. The beside clock said three a.m. Stan’s side of the bed was empty. From the living room, she could hear the hum of the television.

Alarmed, she got up, pulled on her robe, and went to investigate. He was sitting in his usual corner of the sofa, a glass of wine in his hand and a half empty bottle at his feet.

He looked up when she came in and frowned. “Go back to bed.”

“Can’t you sleep? I thought you were tired.”

“I am. But I started thinking about what you said, and I couldn’t drop off.”

“You mean my quitting Warrick, Thompson upsets you?” She had never expected that response from him.

“Absolutely. You’re giving up ten years of success in your career just to follow me around all day. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“How?” She was so surprised she could barely speak.

“Horrible. Trapped. Responsible.”

“Responsible to whom?”

“To you!” he snarled.

Carrie felt the world slowly dissolving around her. “But I thought we loved each other. I thought we wanted to be responsible to each other.”

Stan shook his head impatiently. “I can’t say what I feel right now except trapped.”

“But, Stan, I want to quit. I hate what I do. It’s boring and mindless and soulless.”

“It pays the bills. Rather well,” he snapped.

“True. But money isn’t the most important part of life.”

“See if you think that when you start going short every month!”

Carrie paused and tried to size up the situation. Finally she observed, “That sounds like resentment.”

“Oh, that’s a good one! Now I resent you because you make three times what I do, and you want to throw it away to spend all day in bed with me!”

“Wouldn’t you like that? I mean, wouldn’t you like to spend days together, not just in bed, but walking by the bay, having lunch in the cafes, shopping together?”

“There won’t be time if you quit you’re job. We’ll both be waiting tables day and night to make up for the money we won’t have.”

Carrie stared at him. “But I’m going back to music. I’m going to play again.”

“Oh, great. And you think Harry’s going to give you a gig at the club.”
“He’s offered. More than once.”

“Well, even if he does, you’ll find what Harry pays isn’t nearly enough. Want to live like that?”

“I – I ” Carrie stared at the bottle at this feet. “No, I don’t want to live like that. But I don’t want to live like this either.”

“And that means?”

“Walled up alive in the firm, wondering what you’re doing all day and who you’re doing it with.”

“Is this about me and Lara?”

“Yes – at least in part. I mean, it’s about you and anyone you have time for when I would so much rather be with you.”

Stan’s voice took on a low, nasty, insinuating tone. “You just don’t get it, do you? You think you can keep me from seeing Lara if you quit your job and ride herd on me all day?”

“I – no.” But hadn’t she unconsciously meant to do exactly that? The truth of what he was saying spread over her sickeningly.

“Do what you want!” Stan exploded, getting up from the sofa and heading toward the hall where a coat tree held his jacket. “Just don’t expect me to be your willing prisoner!”

Carrie ran toward him and grabbed his sleeve as he opened the front door. “Wait, Stan! Don’t go out now. It’s dark, and it’s cold, and it’s late. Please just come to bed. I’m sorry. I thought this would be good news. I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you’d want to spend more time with me, too. Please, don’t go!”

But he had already slammed the door behind him.

The entire ebook of Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is available for purchase at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Your-Heart-Til-Breaks-ebook/dp/B00RDJQB8Q.  Deborah is also the author of the award-winning novel, Dance For A Dead Princess, http://www.amazon.com/Dance-For-Dead-Princess-ebook/dp/B00C4HP9I0

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Nineteen

/in , , , , /by

Stennis_July_5_2012_4_t658

CHAPTER NINETEEN

January, 1995

The Harper Biotech deal hit a sudden snag during the end of January. The accountants decided the company’s assets had been overvalued and ordered a new look at all their holdings to see if the proposed stock split would survive Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny. Karen cooled her heels in her office for a week, waiting impatiently for them to agree on their final numbers.

But as she sat by her telephone day after day, she wasn’t holding her breath for the call from the Harper accounting department. Instead, she was thinking non-stop about Stan. Where was he? What was he doing? Who was he with?

She knew his habits well enough during the evening and the first hours of dawn, but she had little idea what he did with himself while she was at work. Pictures of Stan with Lara Beaumont began to torment her. Did they sleep together? Eat in the small cafes around 4th and G? Walk by the bay? The thought of Lara doing everything she wanted to be doing with Stan herself was pure torment.

The Harper executives got their numbers together and demanded almost non-stop meetings in the last days of January. Karen sat through seemingly endless discussions about asset values, the corporate pension plan, and executive compensation. She tried to focus as the suits argued with each other, but her mind was on Stan.

Alan came into her office, white-faced the morning after the most heated Harper exchange yet. They wanted an absolute guarantee from Karen that the numbers they had put together would support the stock deal. She knew she had to give an opinion; but her thoughts had been elsewhere during the debate, so she put them off to everyone’s great displeasure.

“What’s going on?” Alan demanded as he closed her office door, always a bad sign. He threw a proof of the stock prospectus on her desk. It landed with an ominous thud.

I’m not going to talk about Stan and my private life, she told herself as she prepared for the confrontation. She expected Alan to berate her for her evasion the day before. She picked up the prospectus and immediately felt her face go as white as Alan’s. “Oh, no!”

“Exactly! The asset and debt numbers are transposed. According to this, Harper is ready for bankruptcy, not a stock deal. How in the hell did you let this happen, Karen?”

By obsessing over Stan and Lara Beaumont. Keep your composure, she reminded herself. Stan is not the only one trained as a performer. Even if it’s bad, make it look good. “It happened because there have been too many changes coming at me too fast.” Not a bad lie, she reflected. “These haven’t gone out to anyone.”

“No one from Harper has seen them?”

“No.” She said a silent prayer of thanks as she spoke. The Harper people hadn’t been happy when the proofs weren’t handed to them yesterday. She was weak with relief that she had obeyed her instincts against Harper’s displeasure.

Alan became visibly calmer. “Then let’s round these up and destroy them and get the correct ones in the client’s hands as fast as we can.”

“Not a problem.” She just wanted Alan out of her office, so she could drop her professional mask and let herself feel the terror and relief sitting side by side in her heart.

He opened the door but turned before he left. “Are you going to give them an opinion today? Can this deal go forward? If you don’t give them an answer, they’re going to pull out and take this back to their usual securities counsel in New York. Make up your mind, Karen.”

As soon as the door closed, she folded her arms on her desk and put her head down. She wanted to cry, but she might be discovered. She had come within a tenth of an inch of ruining not only her chance for partnership, but her career. If Harper had seen those transposed numbers, she would never have lived it down.

I have to get myself together. I have to make some decisions. I don’t have enough time to spend with Stan. I don’t even know what he does all day, and it’s driving me crazy. And I hate this job. I hate this place and this firm, and Alan Warrick’s smug, self-righteous face. I’m only a money-making machine to him.

Her thoughts raced like a runaway freight train. She stared out of her glass walls at the city and the bay below and waited until her emotions began to clear.

She wanted to jump up and run straight back to the loft and into Stan’s arms. If he was even there at ten a.m. He’d played another early morning gig on a different television station also with Lara, and she imagined them now lingering over brunch. Whenever she objected to those after-gig rendevous, Stan reminded her indignantly of Lara’s connection to Deanna.

An aircraft carrier was moving slowly across the bay, accompanied by its helicopter escort. Karen watched its stately progress as she considered what to do.

Lately Stan had taken to sitting up alone, sometimes after they made love, sometimes as soon as he got back from the club. He would sit with a bottle of wine in front of the pointless blue glow of the muted television.

I need to spend more time with him, she thought. He’s alone too much. And seeing him on stage at night and for a few hours between midnight and dawn isn’t enough to know what’s really going on. We need more time together. Lots more time.

Something had to change in her life, she decided as she saw the big ship round the bend by Point Loma, break free of the chopper escort, and move into the open ocean. I have to break free, too. Something has to go. Stan or Warrick Thompson. The choice was easy.

The decision sent a wave of pure joy through Karen. She turned back to the Harper deal on her desk, her mind now focused on the legal issues in front of her. I’ll see this through, and then I’ll tell Alan I’m leaving.

And what will you do, then? A voice in her head spoke up.

Karen smiled. Music. I’ll go back to music. I’ll take Harry up on his offer to play at the club. I’ll work as hard at something I love as I do at this stuff that I dearly hate. Stan won’t be able to say I’m not a performer. And he’ll look at me on stage the way he looks at Lara Beaumont.

Karen summoned her secretary. “Tell Alan we can meet with the Harper executives this afternoon to give them the green light on this deal. And make sure every one of those faulty prospectuses is in the shredder within thirty minutes.”

The entire ebook of Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is available for purchase at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Your-Heart-Til-Breaks-ebook/dp/B00RDJQB8Q. Deborah is also the author of the award winning novel,Dance For A Dead Princess, http://www.amazon.com/Dance-For-Dead-Princess-ebook/dp/B00C4HP9I0

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Fifteen

/in /by

download (6)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

December 24, 2007

At six p.m. on Christmas Eve, Karen Morgan once more stared at the bare, dark trees in Central Park as she waited in her empty suite at the Plaza for Howard to arrive. He had telephoned that he was on his way from the office, and he had reservations at seven at La Vache, a trendy French bistro ten blocks away. What was Stan doing that night, she wondered.

Knocking interrupted her thoughts. Why couldn’t Howard carry a key? He was such a baby: dependent on her, his secretary, his paralegal, and his junior associate. He was fully functional only in a court room.
To her surprise a messenger was standing at the door. He handed her a package that held two, blue Tiffany’s boxes and smiled. “Mr. Morgan wanted these delivered.”

“Thanks.” Karen took the package and sat down on the sofa in the living room. She pulled out identical boxes and stared at them for a moment. Howard never bought her more than one gift. She was too puzzled to wait for tomorrow. She’d act surprised when she opened them. Carefully she pulled the silver ribbon off of each one and looked inside. Identical diamond bracelets. Clearly one was meant for her, the other for someone else. But whom?

Probably Meg Atkins, the highly attractive blonde, twenty-eight-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears junior associate who was part of Howard’s litigation team. Apparently Meg didn’t mind spending Christmas helping Howard prepare for trial. Howard had mentioned that he had asked her and her husband to come to New York over Christmas because he needed Meg’s help. Karen wracked her brain to remember what the husband looked like. She’d seen him standing next to Meg at the Christmas party. He was about his wife’s age, an earnest, owlish tax attorney who worked in Warrick, Thompson’s pension planning section. Odds were he’d never know what the senior partner had given his wife for Christmas.

Karen had vague knowledge of Howard’s various affairs over the years, but this was the first hard evidence she had come across. She could confront him, but it would be pointless. He would deny it and claim the bracelet was to reward Meg’s hard work on the case. Even if she pointed out that it was professionally inappropriate, Howard would ignore her. He did what he wanted to do; he always had. What she wanted was inevitably irrelevant.

Besides, Karen thought as she wrapped the two boxes up again and put them back in the larger box they had come in, her feelings for Howard, if they had ever existed, had been extinct for years. The most horrible part of this discovery was not that Howard was sleeping with another woman. The horrible part was knowing down to the depths of her soul she didn’t care.

* * *

December 24, 2007

Stan lay in bed at two thirty a.m., wide awake. Terri had dropped off the minute her head hit the pillow. Thank God. He had been in no mood for sex that night.

They had played a Christmas party at the Hotel Del with Epic. Terri had looked daggers at Cat all night, and done everything possible to upstage her. In the process, she’d upstaged Marilyn, too. Bad move, he reflected. It was Marilyn’s band. At forty-five, she was highly sensitive to being shoved out of the spotlight by the twenty-somethings. Cat was smart enough to understand the politics and stay away from Marilyn’s toes. But Terri was determined to make her mark to impress Stan. She might not ever work Epic again.

He really hoped so. Marilyn had been so pissed she’d taken him aside during the first break to heap well-deserved blame on his head. Terri was his live-in. Why was he leading Cat on? Make up his mind, so the band drama would go away. Marilyn hated band drama.

Stan got up without waking Terri, who’d had too many pink martinis during the breaks. He went into the living room and slumped on the sofa. He looked around. The house was his, free and clear. He’d won it in Vegas on a lucky streak a few years back. He’d never expected to have a place of his own. He smiled because at last he actually had a home no one could kick him out of.

He knew he should tell Terri it was over. He looked at the sad, spare little Christmas tree slumped in the corner with a few presents underneath. Tomorrow wouldn’t be a good day for the news. But there was a deeper reason why he didn’t just tell her to pack and go.

When he’d met Terri, he’d become tired of the endless flow of women through the revolving door of his life. One night stands had gotten dull. The women on the chat lines predictably swooned over his profession and made conquest far too easy. He liked Terri’s spunk and determination to make it as a singer, and her complete oblivion to how cheap she actually was. He’d sworn he’d make it work even though he didn’t love her. Maybe even start a family. Well, no, not that. But he’d promised himself to stay with her, so he wouldn’t be alone.

He had never really been alone since he’d discovered how to charm women in his early twenties. And after he was widowed, they lined up to comfort him, each one determined to be “the one” to make him forget Deanna. But now he was sick of the compromise that Terri and all his relationships represented. He’d seen the real thing just a week ago. Tonight’s gig had been torture. Every time he’d looked into the crowd, he’d pictured Carrie’s face as she gazed up at him during the Warrick, Thompson party. And he’d have given twenty years of his life to see her in the crowd that night on Christmas Eve at the Del. What was she doing? He couldn’t imagine she’d been making love with that prick of a husband who likely couldn’t do it anymore anyway. Not wild, passionate Carrie Moon. She would never go to bed with a robot. Where did she live? He tried to imagine her house. She’d had a charming little condo in Del Mar back in their day. What had she created for herself and the prick? And then a thought so chilling swept through Stan, that he got up and went to the kitchen and poured himself a stiff scotch straight up. Children. He hadn’t asked if she and the robot had any. The thought split his heart in two.

How he hated Lara. No, it wasn’t her fault. He hated himself. He’d used Lara the way he was using Cat now. He knew his pattern, but he was powerless to stop himself. He couldn’t give in to love and lose control. If only he could, he’d have spent the last twelve years with Carrie.

* * *

November 1994

The phone woke him at ten a.m. on Sunday. Lara wanted to take him to brunch at Croce’s. She’d sung there the week before and had been paid with, among other things, a gift certificate.

He told himself seeing Lara would put Carrie out of his mind. But it didn’t. She seemed so plastic and artificial and cheap in her tank top and thigh high skirt, as she rubbed her legs against him under the table at every opportunity.

He managed to ditch her after the meal, pleading the need to practice. He walked by the bay for a while, but the ache in his heart didn’t ease. He tried practicing. That usually took his mind off of everything. But it didn’t. He kept seeing Carrie’s face looking up at him in the darkness of the club.

By three, he wondered if she were at work. He looked up Warrick, Thompson in the phone book and walked to the Emerald Shaprey Center, whose six hexagonal glass towers loomed over him and West Broadway, like an army of transparent Titans. The elevators in the marble lobby were guarded by a man in uniform who told him that Warrick, Thompson was on the twenty-sixth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-fourth floors. But off-limits until Monday morning.

Awed and intimidated by the corporate grandeur that separated his life from hers, he wandered back to his loft feeling tired and defeated. He’d screwed it up. He didn’t realize how much he’d miss her. And he didn’t know how to unscrew it.

When he pulled out the keys to his front door, the scrap of paper with her phone number fell out. It was worth a try.

She answered on the third ring. His heart was in his throat. “Carrie, it’s Stan. I thought you’d be at the office.”

“I was earlier in the day.” Voice flat. She wasn’t going to make it easy.

“Look, I’m sorry for the other night. It was a rotten thing to do. I miss you at the club. Harry misses you, too. Could we get together and talk?”

Silence. He struggled to keep his breathing even and the anxiety out of his voice.

“You mean now?”

“Well, it’s my only night off. If you’re not working, I mean.”

He could picture her eyes in thoughtful mode. Were they gray or green or that haunting mixture of color that defied a label?

“I’m at home. I’m tired. I’ve worked all weekend. If you want to come by, we could go for coffee.”
“You’re in Del Mar, right?”

“Yes.”

“Let me buy you dinner. I used to play a lot at Sambuco’s back in the day. The food’s good. We’ll get a bottle of wine and talk.”

“Ok.”

“Around six?”

“Sure.”

* * *

The condos were typical, coastal narrow stucco two-story buildings, directly on the ocean. Expensive, he thought. Hers was painted white, and he found her end unit without any difficulty. He followed the path from the parking lot to her front door but paused just outside. The haunting lilt of a flute playing Brazilian samba stopped him in his tracks. At first he thought it was a recording. But suddenly the tune shifted from throbbing syncopation to a passage from Mozart and the Magic Flute, and he realized she was the source. She was experimenting, he realized. And she was a damned good musician. Better than he had ever guessed.

He wanted to go on listening, but eavesdropping felt wrong. He rang the bell.

When she opened the door, she took his breath away. He had never seen her in anything but a suit or a cocktail dress. She was barefoot, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and holding the flute in her long fingers. No makeup, and all that magnificent red hair loose around her shoulders. She looked about nineteen. This was Carrie Moon, the musician. The lawyer had disappeared. The change was so dramatic he could not speak for about thirty seconds.

“You sound amazing.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t think you still played.”

“I just started again.” She stepped aside, to let him in, then led the way down the white-tiled entry way to her living room. He noticed the music stand facing the ocean, which would have been visible in daylight through the sliding glass doors that dominated the room. He took in the comfortable, white sofa and matching chairs. Soft, black mohair throws cuddled beside red and black cushions, inviting him to sit and nestle among them. The walls were covered with abstract oils with slashes of orange, yellow, blue and green. Although the room exuded money and taste, it was also charming and inviting. But she, of course, spent little time there he reminded himself.

“What’s that?” he pointed to the page of thick notes on the music stand.

“The first movement of the Prokofiev flute sonata.”

“Play some of it for me?”

She hesitated.

“I’ve played for you,” he reminded her.

She put the flute to her lips and took a long breath. The haunting opening melody filled the room.
He watched her face as she played. She was happy the way she was at the club. And when they’d made love. The sharp sting of Lara and why he was here hit him. He wished for the hundredth time he hadn’t been so insensitive.

“You shouldn’t have given up music as a career,” he said when she finished.

She smiled but did not look at him as her long fingers twisted the silver joints apart, swabbed them out, and put them back one by one in the leather case. “Maybe not. But I did.” The profound sadness in her voice touched him. She went on, “You can want something too much.”

“You told me that on one of the nights when we walked by the bay.”

Her stormy green eyes suddenly met his. “Or someone.” She closed the flute case with a sharp click.
“Let’s go to dinner,” he said.

* * *

He reached across the red-checked table cloth, in the candle light flickering against the red brick walls of Sambuco’s and took her hand.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve already said that.” The wine was taking the edge off her anger and distrust. Her eyes were beginning to sparkle again. Stan hoped he hadn’t blown it forever.

“Will you come back to the club?”

“That depends. Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“Lara.”

“Didn’t Harry explain?”

“In your own words. Who is she? Why is she important to you?”

So she was going to make this hard. Well, he deserved that.

“I met Lara and Deanna in Las Vegas. They were show girls at Caesar’s Palace. I played their gig that night. They were roommates.”

“And when Deanna died?”

“Harry told you. Lara and I have been an item, off and on. We end up in horrible fights.”

“Over what?”

“Deanna. Lara claims I don’t love her, that I just use her to avoid admitting that Deanna is really gone.”

“And do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Love Lara?”

Stan studied their hands twined together. Then he looked back at Carrie and the auburn glow of her hair in the pale yellow light.

“I thought I did. Until –”

She waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, she repeated, “Until?”

“I looked down that night at Harry’s and saw you looking up at me from the second row.”

She smiled, her entire face alight.

“Come back to the club?” he repeated. “Play with us?”

A shadow crossed her smile. “I don’t know about playing. I’m not a professional any more. I don’t have time to practice enough.”

“You sounded fine to me.”

“Endurance. I can’t play for hours the way I used to.”

“You could still sit in on some tunes.”

She smiled. “We’ll see.”

He rubbed his thumb along their entwined fingers. “Carrie, there’s another reason I want you to come back.”

Her green eyes met his. “Why, then?”

He sighed deeply, and studied their joined hands before meeting her steady gaze.

“I play better since you’ve come. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s because you actually know what I’m doing. If it’s good, you know. And if it sucks, well, you know that, too.”

“What about Lara?”

“She’ll be back on a cruise ship in a month. She’s never here long. Look, you said you saved the club so that you could hear me play. What was the good of that if you don’t come back?”

“You have a point.”

* * *

He walked her to the door, wishing she would ask him in.

But she opened it with her key and smiled from the threshold. “Thanks for tonight.”

“Sure. And, again, I’m sorry.”

“Understood. You can stop saying that now.”

“Tomorrow night, then? At Harry’s?”

“If I can get away.” She smiled and began to close the door.

Disappointed, he turned away and walked up the path toward the parking lot and his car. Wanting her close to him throbbed in his veins. He could smell her hair and taste her lips.

He opened his car door but stopped and stared at her building. He heard the rush of the ocean onshore and smelled the fresh, night sea breeze. And he remembered how it felt to hold her.

He closed the car and locked it. His heart pounding, he retraced his steps and knocked.

When she opened the door, he swept her into his arms. Her mouth opened hungrily under his, and she hugged him hard to her. Then, without a word, she smiled, kissed his open mouth, long and lingeringly, and led him down the hall to her bedroom.

* * *

He slept intermittently. He lost count of the times they made love. He felt like a man rescued from death. He had never thought anyone could love with the fire and intensity that burned inside of her. He was afraid it would consume him and yet afraid that it would not. He wanted to be one with her in a way he had never experienced with anyone else. If she consumed him or he consumed her, he could never lose her. He slept and woke to her fire over and over until dawn.

The alarm went off at six a.m. He struggled awake at the unaccustomed hour.

She wrapped him in her long, soft arms and whispered in his ear. “You don’t have to get up. Unfortunately, I do.” She kissed him, long and deeply; and he wanted her with that throbbing desire that blotted out all rational thought.

But she rolled away, and seconds later he heard the shower start in the adjoining bath. He dozed and wished she didn’t have to go to work.

A little later, she bent over the bed, now dressed in one of her usual conservative black suits. Carrie was gone, and now she was Karen the lawyer again. But she gave him another one of those bone-deep kisses and caressed his cheek.

“Sleep, sweetheart. There’s no rush for you to leave.”

He pulled her down to him in one long, last, glorious kiss. “Tonight at Harry’s. Ok?”

“Of course.”

The front door clicked behind her. He sank deeply into the sheets that smelled of her and sex. After a while he drifted off in the soft dark of early morning.

When he woke, the sun was streaming hard bars of light through the blinds. He opened his eyes and saw the time, ten a.m. He got up slowly, showered, and dressed, savoring the creams and lotions and soaps that attested to her feminine presence. She had left a note in the kitchen that coffee was ready to be brewed in the pot. He made a cup and sat on her patio, savoring the deep rich hazelnut and watching the changeling Pacific, first blue then green in the morning sun. He missed her. He never allowed himself to miss anyone. And he missed her, down to his soul. But a warning bell was already going off within him: their lives were so different. She was locked in those massive glass towers downtown while he was alone here by the sea.

The entire ebook of Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is available for purchase at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Your-Heart-Til-Breaks-ebook/dp/B00RDJQB8Q. Deborah is also the author of the award winning novel,Dance For A Dead Princess, http://www.amazon.com/Dance-For-Dead-Princess-ebook/dp/B00C4HP9I0

Chapter Twelve

/in , /by

LOVE SONG

CHAPTER TWELVE

November 1994

Through her tears, she watched him vanish up the path toward the parking lot.  Go after him. Fight for him, her heart said. Show him you won’t desert him. Show him it’s safe to love you.

He had already left when she reached her car. She drove the few blocks to his loft at Fourth and G. By some miracle, there was an empty meter in front. She got out and hurried up the steps to ring the bell.

Answer. Please, answer, she prayed. Her breath came in short, harsh sobs as she stood waiting for a reply from upstairs.

None came.

Karen rang the bell, more insistently this time. She counted ten seconds and rang the bell again.

Then suddenly the iron security door swung open, and Stan was there. Without a word, he pulled her inside and into his arms.

* * *

December 2007

As the American Airlines jet began to taxi toward take off in the late December twilight, two days before Christmas, Judge Karen Morgan sat back in her first class seat and closed her eyes. One week since she had seen Stan at the Christmas party. Seven miserable days of coming home to the blank answering machine. No call. No message. So why did she expect one? She had told him the truth: Carrie Moon was dead. Why then did she think he would come after her and insist she wasn’t? Because she so desperately wanted him to? Because she had once fought for his love in an effort to rescue him from a life of numbness and emptiness, and now she wanted him to do the same for her? But the odds were against it. She ordered a scotch straight up and closed her eyes.

The jet sped east through the darkness, but Karen was back in the lift in Stan’s building as it creaked upward toward his loft. Her nostrils were full of the cool salty breeze, sweeping over her hot arms and face, damp with perspiration and desire. And she could smell the familiar dark, masculine scent of Stan, the mixture of sweat and sex that surrounded him after hours of performing.

Sometimes, Karen reflected, as she listened to the big jet engines labor, life brings you to a split second when you suddenly understand everything is about to change forever. In the twinkling of an eye, as you stand poised on the edge of the inevitable, you pause to burn into your memory what life is like at that moment – the moment before change engulfs you. That sliver of time before the future arrives to transform your life forever is as tiny as an atom, yet as wide and deep as a black hole in space. You stand poised for less than a breath upon the rim of this vast knowledge that all the events of your life have happened for only one purpose: to bring you to this moment of irrevocable change.

* * *

November 1994

Stan said nothing as he held her tightly against him as the elevator lumbered upward. When it stopped, he pushed aside the iron bars to allow them to exit.

He led her down the hall to his loft. As they stepped inside, he pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers in a crushing kiss.

* * *

Karen Morgan shivered at the memory of that night and downed a huge gulp of scotch. Where was Stan at that moment? It was Friday night, so he was probably playing another gig. The old stab of jealousy bit through her heart as she remembered him flirting with the blonde singers last week. Did he ever remember how they had made love over and over again that first night, each time more intensely than the last?

No, Karen answered herself. She was certain Stan didn’t remember. He had more than likely made love to so many women in the last twelve years that the details of his first night with Carrie Moon had long ago disappeared completely from his psyche.

But then, why had he called? If women were nothing more for him than interchangeable Lego pieces, why had he picked up the phone after twelve years? Curiosity, most likely. Certainly not to apologize. Stan would never apologize for what he had done to them both.

* * *

November 1994

On that first night, Carrie finally dozed just as the first tentative light filtered through the long loft windows. She tried to fight the impulse to sleep, knowing she had to be at her desk by seven a.m. to make up for not going back to the office at midnight. But the combination of exhaustion, satiety, and the joy of being surrounded by Stan and his warmth overcame her.

She woke to bright sunshine and Stan’s kiss.

“Wake up, sleepy head.” He pulled her close and made love to her yet again. But afterward, as she lay cradling Stan in her arms, she felt a rising tide of panic. What time was it? Would Alan have missed her?

Unlike last night when she had remained as close to Stan as possible after they had finished making love, she slid away from him and sat up.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

The hands of the clock on the beside table were irrevocably placed at ten a.m. Carrie caught her breath. She had never arrived that late for work in nine years and two law firms.

He watched her eyes travel to the clock. “Late for work? Then I guess you don’t have time for one of my famous breakfasts?”
She shook her head and began to get dressed.

* * *

At ten thirty, Karen walked into her office, uncomfortably aware she was wearing yesterday’s clothes, had not showered, and smelled like Stan and sex. Alan sat behind her desk, going over the documents from the overnight secretarial pool. The knot in the pit of her stomach tightened.

He looked up and surveyed her from head to toe. Karen wanted the floor to open and swallow her.

“I see you didn’t make it home last night.”

“I – ” For the first time in her association with Alan Warrick, she didn’t know what to say.

“We were concerned when you weren’t at work by eight.” Every word was a nail hammered into her professional coffin. “We called your apartment and got no answer. I decided I’d better start going over these documents to keep the deal on time.”

A flash of anger surged through Karen. “My being late this morning isn’t going to delay the IPO. We still have two weeks before the sales date.”

“And Burnett keeps changing its numbers on its assets. I hope you are paying attention to the changes.”

Her anger deepened. She wanted to take Alan by the throat and scream that she was entitled to a life away from Warrick, Thompson and that sleeping with the man she loved didn’t mean her brains had become mush. Instead, she summoned her cool, professional tone.

“I’m quite aware of the changes, Alan. That’s why these documents were in overnight secretarial. I appreciate your pinch-hitting for me, but I’m here now and ready to look these over.”

Even though Alan was one of the name partners, that tone from Karen always made him back down. It reminded him she possessed the true securities expertise. He was merely a litigator who knew enough to get him through whatever trial happened to be the case du jour in his life. Even if she showed up late in last night’s clothes, she knew the securities code inside and out. She would be hard to replace. He didn’t want her to know that, of course, but he did.
Beaten by her commanding tone, Alan yielded her chair and headed for the door. He turned back, however, before he left.

She kept her eyes on the documents, hoping he’d take the hint and go. But his gaze remained on her until she looked up.

“I gather last night wasn’t about scouting properties for Waterfront Development?”

“Last night was not about anything to do with you, Alan. Or the firm.”

He frowned. Obviously he wanted the whole story, and obviously he wasn’t entitled to a word of it. Beaten again, he sent a parting shot across her bow as he turned to leave. “Remember what’s at stake this year, Karen. Don’t screw up.”

The entire ebook of Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is available for purchase at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Your-Heart-Til-Breaks-ebook/dp/B00RDJQB8Q. Deborah is also the author of the award winning novel, Dance For A Dead Princess, http://www.amazon.com/Dance-For-Dead-Princess-ebook/dp/B00C4HP9I0

seaport-village-dusk.1170.430.s

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Eleven

/in , /by

BEGUINE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

November 1994

“Damn!” Alan Warrick stormed into her office at three o’clock on Tuesday.
Karen looked up from the piles of Burnet IPO documents unperturbed.

What’s wrong?”

“Look at this! Just look at this!” He thrust a stack of papers into her hand.

She glanced down and realized they were Harry’s books. “Where did you get these?”

“His accountant had them messengered over in response to the letter I sent last week. Son of bitch, the guy is meeting the damn lease terms. He’s showing a profit. What the hell are we going to do now?”

Still deadly calm, Karen said, “There’s nothing we can do. We’re not responsible for making these facts. Our job is just to report them to Waterfront Development.”

“Like hell it is!” Alan stormed at her. “We’re Warrick, Thompson, not some guy with his solo shingle out front. We’re the ones who get the client what he wants.”

“Within the bounds of the law,” Karen observed.

“Yes, damn it, yes. Ok.” Alan took the documents back and stared at them for a few moments. Then he thrust them at Karen again. “Look, can’t you find anything wrong with these? You’re the accountant. I’m just a trial lawyer.”

If you only knew what I did to them in the first place, she thought. But she maintained her poker face. She pretended to study Harry’s books for a few minutes. Then she said, “Sorry, Alan. Nothing wrong here. He just has a little investment income that takes him through the low months. And that’s held in the name of the club. You won’t get to first base trying to evict him using these.”

Read more →

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter 10

/in /by

BEGUINE

CHAPTER TEN

November, 1994
“Why were you looking at Harry’s books tonight?”

Even when Stan’s voice was angry, it stirred her heart. Karen closed her eyes for a moment as she stood by her car in the parking lot. After finishing in Harry’s office, she had listened to the last set from the back of the club where she thought Stan wouldn’t notice. She had hurried out while he was packing up his instrument, never dreaming he would follow her.

She took a deep breath and turned to face him in the dim light. “He had a problem he wanted me to look at.”

“Some sort of problem that has to do with your firm, right?”

Karen’s blood ran cold. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw a letter on his desk, and the letterhead said ‘Warrick, Thompson.'”

Her mind raced through ideas of what to tell him. But truth was the easiest way out. She gave him the same explanation she had given Harry about her involvement with Waterfront Development.

He moved nearer as she spoke and set his instrument bag on the ground. He was so close she fantasized about being in his arms and kissing him, even as she told the cold, impersonal story of her mandate to close Jazz By the Bay.

When she finished, Stan stared at her without saying anything for a long time. Then he demanded, “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Risk your career to save Harry’s place.” He moved a step closer as he spoke, and she could smell his familiar warmth. It made her think of sleeping in his bed last Saturday night and of wanting him so much it still hurt. His voice became cold. “If you did it for me, you shouldn’t have. I didn’t call you last week for a reason.”

His hostility penetrated her heart even more deeply than the silence of her phone had done day after day, but she was determined to maintain her dignity. “I know that. I did it for Harry and Kristin. And for me. If the club isn’t open, I can’t come to hear you.”

“You can’t get involved with me, Carrie Moon.”

“Why?” The word surged up from the depths of her aching heart.

“You’ll just get hurt.”

“And what if I’m already hurt?”

“It would be a much worse hurt if you got involved with me.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

His tone was as final as a death knell, and it kindled her anger. “You don’t know anything! You’re trying to hurt me enough to make me go away.”

“No, I’ve already told you the truth for your own good. I’m not going to let myself love anyone because I can’t take losing anyone else I care about. Love doesn’t work out for me.”

“Then you might as well be dead.”

“Maybe. But I know what I can and cannot risk. And I can’t risk getting close to you. I know that’s what you want, Carrie Moon. And you’re wasting your time.”

“Am I?” Karen suddenly stepped toward him, shaking her hair out of its workday confinement and letting it hang loose in a red-gold cloud around her shoulders. She turned her face up to his, inviting him to kiss her.
He wanted her. Of that much she was sure. His eyes locked onto hers, and his chest rose and fell with the effort he was making to control himself. She moved another step closer and could feel his warm breath on her face. She tilted her chin up just a little more, encouraging him to lean down to her.

To Karen that moment seemed to last for an eternity. The larger world had collapsed and only she and Stan were left as they stood bathed in the soft gold of the street lamps, surrounded by the nothing of the black night. She felt the cool breeze from the bay on her hot skin as she waited for his kiss. She wanted to freeze her life forever at this moment of potential, where no disappointment yet existed.

But Stan drew back. “No. I won’t kiss you.” He picked up his trumpet bag and turned away, heading for his car without looking back. Karen watched him get in, start the engine, and gun it out of the parking lot. So much for her hopes of spending the night with him. Maybe it was some comfort that he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else that night. But not much.

She got into her own car and drove slowly home. She undressed and crawled into her cold bed, replaying over and over the moment when the two of them had been facing each other, and there had still been time for him to decide to kiss her. She lay awake until dawn, listening to the ocean, longing for the kiss that had not come and remembering what it had felt like to sleep in Stan’s bed.

 

san-diego-bay

Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Eight

/in /by

 BEGUINE

CHAPTER EIGHT

December, 2007

Next day, Karen tried to settle in her study to read the case file that would come before her the following week. Normally she would have been glad to see to see a civil trial on the docket for a change. The presiding judge kept sending her a steady diet of gruesome murder cases. But now the very thought of sitting on that bench every day for the coming week depressed her, no matter what she had to listen to. Seeing Stan had turned her world upside down again. She realized she was living a lie. But that was dangerous knowledge. At least living a lie as Karen Morgan wasn’t as painful as being Carrie Moon and loving Stan Benedict.

Around two o’clock that afternoon, Karen could not read another word. She put down the meaningless trial brief she had been staring at for a half hour and went into the den. The house was as quiet as death. And as empty. It was nearly Christmas, and she hadn’t bothered with a tree or decorations. Howard cared nothing for them unless they were giving holiday parties. But this year he had been too busy with the trial in Philadelphia to demand she play hostess.

She stood by the french doors and stared at her expensively landscaped backyard pool, shimmering in the December sunshine. All she could think about was Stan on stage last night. And the way he had put his arms around the singers and leaned down to joke with them. Which one was he sleeping with? But then, knowing Stan, he might not be sleeping with either of them. That was part of the hell of caring for him; he couldn’t be predicted.

* * *

October, 1994
After the Saturday night she stayed over at Stan’s, she had thought he would call. He had taken her home and work phone numbers Sunday morning just before he walked her to her car in the parking lot at Jazz By the Bay. She had hoped he would ask her to breakfast, but he had seemed very distant except for taking her number.

“I’ll call to make sure you get home all right.” He opened the driver’s door that she had just unlocked, and gave her his impish grin.

“Ok.” And she smiled. But the silent phone drove her slowly crazy all afternoon.

On Monday, she ploughed through the Burnett stock offering. She struggled to think about anything except Stan and how badly she had wanted him to make love to her on Saturday night. And she dreaded the moment when Alan would drop by to demand her final word on Jazz By the Bay. But fortunately he had been called out of town and would not be back until the next day.

That night, around eight, she struggled with her desire to go down to the club, just to hear him play. But she managed, instead, to get herself into her car and home, where she lay awake most of the night.

On Tuesday she jumped every time her secretary forwarded a call. But they were all from the Burnett accounting department. She worked at keeping the irritation out of her voice at each successive disappointment.

That afternoon, Alan turned up in her office.

“So, can we tell Harry Rich he’s in breach of his lease?”

Karen worked hard to keep Alan from seeing her rising panic. She couldn’t just hand Harry and the club over like trophies to be hung on Waterfront Development’s mantel. Truth was the best answer. “I honestly can’t tell what’s up with him. Some nights it’s standing room only. Others, no one is there.”

Alan shrugged. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got him.”

“I think you should ask to see his books before you make any assumptions.” As Karen spoke, she prayed his books would save Jazz By the Bay.

“Waterfront is getting impatient,” he objected.

“Probably, but they won’t be happy if we don’t do our homework. Write him and ask to see his books. It’s a term of the lease. I checked.”

“Ok, I’ll have my secretary get a letter out today.”

That night, she wanted to run to the club and warn Harry. But she couldn’t. She worked for the firm that represented Waterfront. She would break every ethical rule if she told him what was coming. She made herself go home to her empty condo and cried when she saw there was no call from Stan on her machine.

By Friday, she was worn out with waiting for the call that had never come and with overseeing the details of the Burnett deal. And her fantasies of making love to Stan would not go away, despite her best efforts to think about other things.

At eight o’clock, she handed off the documents to the overnight secretarial pool and decided to go to the club. Her hands actually shook as she locked her car and headed for the entrance.

Stan was on stage when she arrived, but instead of his usual friendly gaze he immediately averted his eyes to what was the Table of Five that night. Karen felt the knot in her stomach tighten. Even though he hadn’t called, she had thought he would show he was glad to see her.

As she made her way to her usual table, she noticed the club was only about a third full. Harry came over to take her order instead of the waitress.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, smiling. “Haven’t seen you in almost a week. Didn’t you like your steak last time?”

“No, it was great.” How did she tell him Stan was supposed to call and never did?

“Well, I’m glad you’re back. Your usual?”

“Red zin.”

“You got it.”

She sipped the wine slowly because she knew she had to go back to work in two hours to proof the Burnett documents. But she wanted to gulp it down to deaden the pain in her soul. Stan had meant it when he said he wouldn’t get involved with her. That’s what the silent phone had told her for the last week.

She lost herself in his music, crying inside and wondering what had changed since she’d driven out of the parking lot on Sunday. During the entire set she hoped for “I Can’t Get Started” but he didn’t play it; and she knew it was his way of letting her know she shouldn’t have come back.

During his break, an hour later, Stan took his scotch pointedly to the Table of Five, just giving her a friendly off-hand nod as he passed. He sat with his back to her, joking and laughing with the women as if she weren’t there.
Karen stared at her empty wine glass, knowing she should leave, but too upset to do anything except sit where she was and try to hold back the tears. Suddenly a full glass appeared beside her empty one, and Harry sat down.

“You need a refill.”

She smiled up at him, knowing her eyes had betrayed her. “I can’t, Harry. But thanks. I have to leave. I have to go back to work.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?” he stared at her. “Girl, what do you do for a living? You can’t be a hooker dressed like that!” He gestured toward her simple black suit.

She laughed in spite of herself. “I’m the next best thing: a lawyer.”

“Well aren’t the courts closed this time of night?”

“I’m not that kind of lawyer. Corporate law. Deals. That stuff.”

Harry shook his head. “And all this time I thought musicians and doctors were the only ones who had to work all night.”

Karen laughed again, but her eyes darted toward Stan and the Table of Five despite her efforts not to look that way.

Harry leaned closer and put his hand over hers. “If you want to tell me what happened between you two, I’d be glad to listen.”

“Last Saturday night, after you gave us dinner, I wound up sleeping over at Stan’s. I’d had too much to drink and not enough food that day. Nothing happened. I slept in his bed; he slept on the couch. But he said he’d call me during the week.”

“And he never did.”

She nodded. “That very first night when we walked by the bay after the show, he told me not to get involved with him because I’d only get hurt. I think he meant it.” Her eyes were fixed on Stan’s back at the Table of Five, now in an uproar over one of his jokes.

But Harry shook his head. “He’s just trying to scare you off. Don’t let him, honey. He doesn’t care a thing about those women. That’s why he’s sitting over there. Because he’s scared to death of what he feels for you.”

Karen stared at Harry, wanting to believe him but not sure if she should.
He patted her hand softly. “He’s terrified of being hurt again. But I know he’s been looking for you. I’ve seen his eyes every night when he comes on stage and you aren’t here.”

“But isn’t he sleeping with them?” she nodded toward the other women.
Harry let out a soft chuckle. “Sweetheart, do you think they’d be sitting together night after night if he was?”

Karen laughed. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Stan’s a world class flirt, that’s all. And he wants to see if he can drive you away.”

“But why?”

“Because everyone he loves deserts him, one way or the other; and he thinks you will, too. So if he drives you away now, he won’t get hurt later on.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known Stan for seventeen years. Since he was eighteen, a skinny kid, blowing everyone in town away with his high notes. Cocky as hell about his music. But never sure anyone loved him or would stay with him until Deanna. But, then she died, and he changed. Not so sure about himself as a musician anymore and deathly afraid to get involved with anyone.”

“He really loved her,” Karen said.

“It was something to see them together. She was Stan’s world. Made up for the family he never had as a kid.”

“She was the only person who loved him and didn’t leave him.” She felt that familiar twinge of jealousy.

“But she did leave him,” Harry contradicted. “She died. And that just convinced Stan that for him loving anyone only ends in heartbreak.”

Karen looked over at Stan’s back, as he resolutely blocked her out of his world. “So what should I do?”

“Stay around. Show him he can’t drive you away.”

Karen smiled wistfully. “I wonder if I’m capable. Rejection hurts.”

“Oh, you’re capable, all right,” Harry said as he stood up. Stan was heading to the stage, throwing back the rest of his scotch as he passed her table, so he didn’t have to make eye contact with her.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because unlike those women over there, you really care about him. You’re the one who’ll always be there for him when things get rough.”

Instinctively Karen knew he was right. But she put on her lawyer-skeptic tone. “How do you know so much about me?”

“I watch you when you come in. I see the way you look at him when he plays. You know his secret.”

“And that is?”

“He gives away his soul with every performance. He wants the audience to love the music as much as he does.”

“And they do,” Karen added softly.

“The music, yes,” Harry agreed. “But they don’t love Stan. And that’s his dilemma. No matter how afraid he is of love, he wants to be loved. And you understand that, Carrie Moon.”

“Who told you who I used to be?”

“He did. I told you he misses you. He talks about you.” Harry studied her face as he stood by the table. Behind him, she could see Stan on stage setting up for the next set. “You and Stan have a lot in common besides music.”

“He told you about that, too?”

“Uh, huh. Why don’t you bring your instrument in one night. Play a little.”

“I couldn’t. It’s been too many years.”

“Hogwash! Bring it in. You need something in your life besides those suits and those documents. And you’re a long way from home.”

“How do you know?”

“Accent. I’m from Atlanta,” Harry said.

“Asheville, North Carolina.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

“None.”

“See your parents often?”

“No. They passed away when I was in college.”

“Then that’s another reason the two of you need each other. You both need a family. ” At that moment, Stan began to play “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.”

“Are you going to stay?” Harry asked.

Karen nodded. “Yeah. But bring me some coffee, if you don’t mind. I really do have to go back to the office and read those documents.”

However, Harry came back with more than coffee. He held out Alan’s letter in all its twenty-pound, engraved letterhead glory.

“I got this in the mail yesterday, and I don’t really understand it. Since you are a lawyer, would you mind explaining it to me?”

Karen reached for the letter, gingerly, as if handling a snake. Tell him, a voice in her head insisted. Tell him right now you can’t advise him. You represent his enemy. You are the enemy. “Oh, God, please no,” she thought. “Please, no.”

She stared down at the page, the words a blur. She didn’t need to read it; she knew what it said. “You have a new landlord, Waterfront Development. They want to see your books to see if you are in compliance with your lease.”

Harry’s face fell. “The six out of twelve months thing. I don’t think we’re ok on that one.”

“Are you sure?” Karen tried to keep the urgency out of her voice.

“Not completely. Hey, how come the old landlord didn’t bug us about that part of the lease?”

“They could ignore the condition if they wanted to. But I would guess Waterfront has plans for the property, and you’re in its way.” God forgive me for acting as if I don’t know the truth.

“They want to kick us out.”

“I would say yes, based on the tone of this letter.”

Harry looked away toward the bay, his face a mask of anxiety and anguish. “I can’t lose the club. It’s all Kristin and I have. We’ve put everything into it for the past ten years.”

And it’s all Stan has, too, Karen thought, but didn’t say it.

Harry’s face brightened. “Hey, maybe you’re the answer to a prayer. You do this suff for a living, right?”

“I do.” Tell him you can’t help him, she thought. Tell him now before you get in too deep. But then he’d know you were the spy, and there’d be no chance with Stan. Ever.

“Think you could come down early tomorrow night? Go over the books for me? Tell me what you think. Come around six thirty? I’ll make sure you get a free dinner.”

“It’s a deal. Now I better get out of here. I have documents waiting for me in my office.”

“At midnight on Friday night?”

“At midnight on Friday night. See you tomorrow.”

Karen got up and headed for the door without looking back.

images (4)