Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) Page 6

  In an ironic and unfortunate twist of fate, not long after my mother's death, I read a letter she'd written to her father around the time I was born. In it I discovered she didn't name me after Thomas More, honored saint and statesman. She named me after Thomas Moore, the Irish romantic poet.

  ABOUT SEX

  But maybe he would be curious. And maybe a tiny bit interested? Was it possible?

  A CREEPY PERVERT

  GAIA MOORE? ARE YOU WITH US?

  Gaia snapped her head up. She glanced around at the unsympathetic faces of her classmates. Which class was this? What were they talking about? She gave her head a shake to dislodge her heavy, demanding preoccupations.

  Let's see. Ummmm. Ms. Rupert. That would be history. European history. Which century were they in now? Which country? She hadn't looked at her textbook in a while.

  "No, ma'am, I'm not," Gaia replied truthfully.

  Ms. Rupert's eyes bulged with annoyance. "You're not, are you? Then would you be so kind as to share with me and the rest of the class what you find so much more captivating than the court of King Henry VIII?"

  Gaia drummed her fingers on her desk. Did Ms. Rupert really want to know the answer to that question?

  "Yes, Gaia? I'm waiting." Her hands were on her hips in a caricature of impatience.

  Apparently she did. "I was thinking about sex, ma'am. I was thinking about having sex," Gaia stated.

  The class disintegrated into laughter and whispering. Everybody was staring at Gaia. It wasn't nice laughter. Since the incident with Heather getting slashed in the park, Gaia wasn't exactly Miss Popularity. She shrugged.

  Ms. Rupert looked like she'd swallowed her tongue. She spluttered and turned deep crimson before she could get a word out. "G-Gaia Moore, get out of my class! Go to the principal's office now!"

  "Yes, ma'am," Gaia said agreeably, striding to the door.

  This was a lucky break, she thought, walking down the deserted hall with lightness in her step. The vice principal would keep her waiting outside his office for ages as a phony display of his importance and full-tobursting schedule, and it was much easier to obsess about Sam without Ms. Rupert droning on about Henry VIII and all the various people's heads he'd chopped off.

  What was Sam thinking? That was the central question nagging her. Assuming he'd received her psychotic e-mail and could tell it was from her, what must he be thinking?

  That she was a nympho, for one thing. That she gave new meaning to the word desperate, for another. That she was an opportunistic couple wrecker, for a third.

  But maybe he would be curious. And maybe a tiny bit interested? Was it possible?

  She hardly dared hope.

  In some ways she was happy she'd gotten the ball rolling, even if the note did make her seem like someone who deserved to be arrested and put under a restraining order. At least she'd opened up the conversation. At least it would give her the opportunity to say, Hey, Sam, I know this is weird, I know I seem like a complete sex-starved lunatic, but can I just explain?

  She ascended a flight of stairs and was just passing the computer lab when she stopped. Hmmm. The room was dark, empty, and filled, not surprisingly, with computers. She needed only one, and she needed it only for a minute or two. Ms. Rupert would eat her own arm if she knew Gaia was making a detour, but so what?

  Gaia crept to the back corner of the room and revived the sleeping monitor. Quickly she located the Internet server and signed on. She went to the site where she kept a mailbox and typed in her password.

  Oh, God. There was mail! She held her breath and clicked on the envelope symbol. Her heart leaped. It was from Sam Moon! He had replied!

  Was this good? Was this bad? At least it was something.

  Now, calm down, she commanded herself. Okay. She clicked on the letter to open it.

  Dear Gaia13,

  Your letter was an unbelievable turn-on. I've been hard since I read it. You name the time and place and I am there, honey. I am all over you. I will make you scream, baby. I will make you beg for more. Once you feel my --

  Gaia swallowed. She couldn't read any more. Her stomach felt queasy. This wasn't what she ... she couldn't quite believe he ...

  Her eye caught on something in the routing information at the bottom of the letter. A phrase of coded gobbledygook in which she picked out the word Canada. She clicked on another series of boxes to get Sam Moon's personal profile.

  Name: Sam Moon

  Home: Victoria, BC

  Age: 62

  Gaia's body was flooded with relief. She almost had to laugh. She had blatantly propositioned a sixty-two-year-old Canadian man. She exited the program and turned off the computer.

  On the bright side, her beloved Sam Moon wasn't a creepy pervert, although he shared his name with one. On the less bright side, she was back to square one.

  HOW HE FEELS

  "SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?" DANNY Bell wanted to know. He said it so loudly, Sam had to hold the phone a few inches from his ear.

  "Well, I guess . . . I don't know." Sam scratched the back of his scalp absently. "I'm not really sure how I feel about her."

  Sam watched colorful pipes weaving three-dimensionally through the computer screen that sat on his crowded dorm-room desk. He'd set the screen saver to come on after ten minutes of idleness, but when he was talking on the phone or procrastinating, the damn pipes seemed to take over his screen every thirty seconds.

  "You're not sure how you feel about her?" Danny didn't go far out of his way to hide the incredulity in his voice. "Let me get this straight. You have a stupendously gorgeous girlfriend who you've been with for six months. She wants to have sex, and you're suddenly not sure how you feel?"

  Sam could picture exactly the look on Danny's face, even though he was three thousand miles away. Danny was his oldest and closest friend from the neighborhood in Maryland where he grew up. In fact, Danny was the only friend he had from the old days, before Sam had remade himself from a stammering, buck-toothed chess nerd into a decently dressed, mainstream guy who went out with beautiful girls and cared what other people thought.

  It was funny. Sam had changed, but Danny hadn't. Danny was still an unapologetic lover of chess and Myst and Star Wars. He was an engineering student at Stanford University, which was probably what Sam would have been had he stayed the course.

  "Okay, there's a little more to it than that," Sam confessed. "See, I met this other girl."

  "Aha," Danny said in a know-it-all way. "I had a feeling there was something more here. So what happened? Did you go out with her behind Heather's back?"

  The pipes were hypnotic. "No, not exactly."

  "But you're attracted to her."

  Sam let out a groan. "Yeah, you could say that."

  "What's she like?"

  "Well . . . she's different from any girl I've ever met," Sam began slowly. "She's an uncanny chess player, for one thing. She's probably at my level or close to it."

  Danny was silent for at least thirty seconds. "No way," he said at last.

  "I'm serious."

  "Jesus. What's her name? Have I heard of her or read about her?"

  "No. She's mysterious like that," Sam explained. "She hasn't come up through the normal chess ranks. I don't know anybody who's played her in competition. I don't know how she learned. She's just . . . brilliant."

  "Are you sure you're not just stupid when you're around her?" Danny asked.

  Sam laughed. "I am stupid when I'm around her. But she really is good. The other guys who play chess in the park worship her -- and not for her body, either. I wouldn't even play her again 'cause she'd probably beat me in a matter of seconds."

  Danny was struck to the point of speechlessness. "So, what else do you know about her?" he asked finally.

  "Well, I guess her parents aren't around anymore, and from what I can tell, she has very few if any friends. She just moved to New York, but I don't know from where."

  "That's awful. Did you ask her where she came from?"
Danny asked.

  "No." The pipes were now making Sam nauseous. He moved from his desk chair and paced the three available feet of space in the room. One of the few benefits of a minuscule room was that the ancient phone cord reached every corner of it. "I can't explain why, exactly. It's like . . . I don't know. She doesn't give you the feeling that she really welcomes questions. She seems kind of . . . haunted in a way. I guess she's been through a lot in her life. I had this weird reaction to her the first time I saw her, like I knew everything about her even though I didn't know anything. I was intensely attracted to her and sort of scared off at the same time."

  Sam heard Mike Suarez and one of his other suite mates, Brendon Moss, firing up the TV for a baseball game. He moved to close the door to his room.

  One of the great things about Danny was that he wasn't cool. He wasn't jaded or sarcastic. He wasn't embarrassed about having a real conversation. Sam could tell Danny things he wouldn't consider telling his other friends.

  "Does that make any sense?" Sam finished.

  "Um. Not really," Danny answered.

  Sam sat down on his bed. (Now covered with a clean, nearly white sheet.) "Yeah, I know," he said. "I guess I'm hesitant to ask her anything because I'm not all that sure I want to hear the answers."

  "Huh," Danny said. "Maybe she's a spy. Or an alien. Did you ever see that movie Species?"

  Sam laughed again.

  "So what does this girl look like?" Danny asked. "She can't be as pretty as Heather."

  Sam thought that one over for a minute. "In a way she's not, and in a way she's much, much more beautiful. She doesn't dress like Heather, or wear jewelry, or keep her hair nice. You don't get the feeling she's trying to be pretty. And she's got this kind of hard, angry expression on her face a lot of the time. But if you can get past that and really see her face and her eyes . . . she's by far the most amazing-looking girl I've ever met. I can't explain it."

  "Wow," Danny said. "So why don't you try it out with this girl?" he suggested after considering it for a few moments. "It sounds like she's gotten under your skin."

  "She has. That's exactly what it is," Sam said, rear-ranging his long legs as the weary dorm-room bed groaned under his weight. "But first of all, there's Heather to think of. And also, this girl is all about trouble. I can't even begin to explain to you the kind of trouble she causes. Heather is safe, and she's great. And she's . . . ready."

  Danny laughed. "Yeah. God, I wish I had your problems."

  Sam walked over to the window and looked out at the courtyard. In New York City they called it a courtyard even if it was ten square feet of poured concrete, overfilled with plastic garbage cans and piles of recycling. "It's not as fun as it sounds," Sam said.

  "Well, there's one obvious thing to do," Danny pointed out.

  "Yeah, what's that?"

  "Take out a piece of paper. At the top put Heather's name on one side and the other girl's name on the other, and make a list."

  Heather Gaia

  My girlfriend Not my girlfriend

  My parents love her Would frighten my parents

  Not good at chess Great at chess

  Belongs in a magazine Doesn't

  Safe Trouble

  Loves me Probably doesn't give a shit

  Ready ?

  Sam studied his list for a moment, crumpled it in a tight ball, and tossed it in the garbage. What was he, some kind of idiot?

  GHOSTS

  His heart, his life, his sense of life's possibilities was shaken.

  REMEMBERING KATIA

  TOM MOORE KNEW HE WAS CRAZY TO BE doing this. He walked down Waverly Place in the West Village with his head throbbing and his heart full. Just two blocks from here, in a tiny bookshop, he'd first laid eyes on Katia. It was probably the most important moment of his entire life, and yet he hadn't been back here in twenty years.

  It was, without question, love at first sight. It was a freezing cold day in February, and the city was bleak and dismal. The previous night's snow was no more than a brown, muddy obstacle between sidewalk and street. He'd been looking for a rare translation of Thucydides for his graduate thesis. He was stewing about something -- that his adviser hadn't credited him in a recent publication. He'd seen her as soon as he'd opened the door. The shop was a tiny square, for one thing. But Katia seemed to draw every atom in the place to her. In that moment Tom's entire life evaporated and a new one started.

  She was sitting cross-legged in the corner, bent forward with a book on her lap. He remembered she wore gray woolen tights, under battered rubber boots and a red knit dress. Her hair was long, dark, and straight, falling in a shiny column on either side of her face. She was devouring a stack of books the way a starving person would devour a plate of food. He would never forget that image of her.

  Up until that point, he'd had many relationships with women. Fellow college and grad students, pretty ones he'd met through friends. He'd traveled with girlfriends, even lived with one for a few months. And yet his heart had never been stirred until the time he saw Katia, a naive nineteen-year-old with cheap, old-fashioned Eastern Bloc clothing and a thick Russian accent. And then it was shaken.

  His heart, his life, his sense of life's possibilities was shaken. In her eyes he became somebody he could believe in.

  He paused after crossing Seventh Avenue. He shouldn't be here at all. He'd learned in the hardest possible way that a man who'd made enemies like his could not afford to have a family. His disguise was minimal. His presence was needed in Beirut. He could walk straight into Gaia if he wasn't careful. He was drowning his usually sane mind in a riptide of memories.

  Still he continued on. And then stopped dead in his tracks. Of course. Of course. Virtually every single thing in New York City had changed in the last twenty years, and that bookstore remained. Katia was gone. The person he'd been with Katia was gone. Their beautiful daughter, the greatest pleasure in their lives, was alone. And the damn bookstore winked at him smugly. The riptide threatened. It dragged on his feet. Tom walked faster.

  If he had any sense, he'd get back on that plane, his home away from work, and resume his mission. It was all he could show for the terrible sacrifices he'd made.

  But he couldn't. He needed to see Gaia just once. From afar, of course. He'd drink her in with his thirsty eyes, make sure she was safe, and get back to his work.

  Although Thomas, sainted statesman, had boarded the plane back in Tel Aviv, it appeared that the romantic poet had disembarked here in New York.

  DARTS

  "WAIT, SO YOU RE NOT GOING TO Robbie's tomorrow night?" Melanie asked Heather, scrambling to keep up with her friend's long, efficient strides. "According to Shauna, it's a two kegger with zero parents."

  Heather shook her head. "Nope. Other plans." She smiled in a way that was mysterious and maybe a tiny bit smug. She glanced up the crowded block of Eighth Street. There were two good shoe stores before they even got to Patricia Field, and Melanie and Cory Parkes were already loaded down with shopping bags and struggling to keep up. Heather was famous among her friends for being a very fast walker and an intensely picky shopper, but the truth was, she no longer had a duplicate of her parents' credit card, the way many of her friends did.

  "Other plans?" Cory demanded, gulping up the bait as always.

  "Sam and I are . . . getting together," Heather offered.

  "So bring him to the party," Melanie said, falling back for a moment as she rearranged her bags between her tired hands.

  "I promised him we'd be alone for once," Heather explained.

  "Oooh. Does this mean you're taking things to the next level?" Cory asked.

  Heather smiled ambiguously. "It's a thought."

  Melanie was getting that look. Her face crumpled a little when conversation turned to Sam, partly because she was envious that Heather had a mythically desirable boyfriend but also because it got in the way of Melanie's supercontrolling go-girl solidarity. Heather had a pessimistic feeling that Melanie's allegiances would
change once she found a guy she thought was worthy.

  "Besides," Heather said. "You know I can't drag him to high school parties anymore." She pulled up short at Broadway Shoes, one of their regular destinations. "Do you want to go here?" she asked.

  "Let's go straight to Patricia Field," Melanie said. "They have these really cute mod dresses."

  Cory strode alongside Heather eagerly. "Are you going to get the orange skirt with the thingies along the bottom you tried on last time? It looked so, so cool on you."

  Heather shrugged. "Maybe. The lining was kind of itchy." The lining was only mildly itchy; the skirt cost ninety-five dollars.

  They were a few yards down the block from Ozzie's Cafe when Heather's stomach dropped. It was funny. She saw Ed Fargo most days of her life. It had been over two years since they'd broken up. Yet still her physical reaction on seeing him was always the same -- sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but always present.

  He was sitting in his wheelchair at a front table by the window, seeming to scan every person who passed. His dark hair was crying out to be combed, and his awful midnineties cargo pants belonged in a Dumpster. But Ed managed to be powerfully attractive nonetheless. His jaw was a little sharp and his straight nose was a little long, but he had possibly the most beautiful mouth that had ever graced the face of a man. The parts of his face, though not flawless the way Sam's were, came together in a striking and disarming way.

  As often happened, Heather had that strange, sad feeling of disconnect, knowing the ghost of the person she'd loved desperately, the one with legs that worked, was lurking within the person in the ghastly wheelchair, who needed special ramp entrances and kneeling buses.

  She was shallow. She knew that. Ed was still the same person inside. He was still the same person inside. No matter how many times she said it and thought it, she couldn't make herself believe it.

  She stopped abruptly and rapped on the glass. Ed looked up and smiled. It was a guarded smile. She was in a position to know the difference.