Phoenix Heart Read online

  Phoenix Heart

  Carolyn Nash

  Edited by Amy Redd-Greiner

  Copyedited by Carolyn Nash (any errors are my errors)

  Thank you to Navin Madras for suggesting the final title and to Christine de Brabander for all of her suggestions for the cover design. And to all the Brats, the greatest writers’ group in the world, thank you for, well, everything.

  Copyright © 2013 Carolyn Nash

  All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  Always and Forever to My Boys

  and to

  Amy Redd-Greiner

  One of those rare people who knows how to be a friend and a critic and who is exceptionally good at both. My work and my life are greatly improved by having you in them.

  CHAPTER 1

  I leaned against the wall, hugging my tablet of paper like a shield across my chest. I took one deep breath, then another, but it really didn’t stop the fear. All it did was add a large helping of dizziness.

  Don’t think about the interview. Think about something else.

  I looked down the hall and out the window. It was a lovely day. Early fall, no smog for once, and my appointment was perfectly timed so that I would miss the noon rush back at the bank.

  Oh lord. The bank.

  All teller windows are open and a long customer line snakes through the lobby. Men, women, and children wave brochures, demanding to be allowed to open savings accounts. A multitude of tellers beckon new customers to their windows and just as quickly send them over to New Accounts. They give each other significant looks and snicker behind their hands. Jan leans over to Carl: “She will never win the contest, now! Mu-ha ha ha ha!” A big certificate with Winner emblazoned on it floats in water. The moisture soaks in and “Winner” changes to “Loser” before the paper twists, turns, and spirals down the drain.

  I looked the other way up the hall trying to find something to take my mind off the disappearing prize. The hallway was university standard: beige linoleum tiles, cream-colored walls, yellowed-fluorescent light panels on the ceiling. At the end: the Biology Department office--the last view I wanted. My latest in a long line of anxiety attacks had begun with the sight of the students and professors trooping in and out of that door, greeting each other by first name, all of them so obviously knowing why they were there, so obviously belonging. No, that sight had only added to the panic that had been with me from the moment I’d received my graduate admissions interview notice. Me, alone, facing a committee of five professors.

  I shook my head, trying to drive back the sudden images of black cowls and iron maces.

  Concentrate on your shoes. That’s safe.

  So, I stared down at the tips of my shoes. Brand new, I’d bought them just for this interview because they looked great with my new outfit. The shoes had a design incised into the leather that was really quite attractive, and string ties. I’d had another pair of shoes with that type of laces; had the damnedest time keeping them tied…

  The left one comes loose going through the door; her right foot tramps down on it. She stumbles, tries to recover, falls forward across the table, knocks the department chairman’s cup of coffee into his lap. He leaps up screaming, slams his elbow into the nose of the guy next to him, blood spurts everywhere.

  I pushed off the wall. “Stop it.” I whispered. “Just stop it.”

  “Stop what?” came a voice from my right.

  I bit off a scream, barely managed to snag my pad of paper before it hit the floor, and turned to see a tall, lanky guy in jeans and a faded green T-shirt leaning on one shoulder against the wall, arms crossed. His brown, slightly curling hair looked like he’d combed it with a blow dryer set on high. His light blue eyes glimmered behind gold, wire-framed glasses. My face begin to heat up to somewhere in the spectrum between red and scarlet.

  “I didn’t hear you come up,” I said.

  “Didn’t want to disturb you. You looked pretty deep in thought.”

  “More like deep in terror.”

  He grinned and his glasses shifted down his nose. He pushed them back up. “Waiting for the inquisition, huh?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve been watching the whole line of you going in: pale-faced, twitching, talking to yourselves.” His otherwise innocent face split into a wicked grin. “Don’t worry; three out of five first-year grad students survive the initial interview. The two who don’t?” He shrugged. “Well, this is the Biology Department; we do find a use for the bodies.”

  I smiled brilliantly. “I really can’t tell you how much better you’ve made me feel. Really. I can’t.”

  He held up a hand and shook his head. “Please, there’s no need to thank me.”

  “You know, I really wasn’t going to.”

  He raised an eyebrow, a look of mild shock on his face. “Do you know to whom you are speaking?”

  I bit my lip to keep from smiling and shook my head.

  “One of your betters, I can assure you,” he said. “I am a second-year student.”

  “Oh! I am so sorry!”

  “I’ll let it go this time.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Chuck Benson.”

  I curtsied. “Melanie Brenner, Your Worship.”

  “You’re going to fit right in. Listen.” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Don’t worry. This interview is just for the professors to meet you and get to know a little more about you. Nothing more than a how-are-ya, glad-ta-see-ya kind of thing.”

  I turned to him, letting, for the first time, the tiniest seed of hope germinate. “Really?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, sure. Listen, this is nothing. I mean, compared to the raw terror of your first paper presentation; the horror of stepping in front of a lab full of freshman biology students whom you have to teach, test, and grade, and all who have access to sharp instruments; the gut-wrenching dread of defending your thesis proposal; the...”

  I threw up a hand. “Enough! Enough! You’ve convinced me. I’m giving up on the whole idea of grad school. I’m going to take a job in my Uncle’s donut shop. No more of this nonsense about a higher education. Bah.”

  Chuck nodded with a look of great satisfaction on his face. “My work is done here.”

  “What work is that, Mr. Benson?” The two of us turned toward the sound of the voice. The door of the interview room was open. A young, blonde, very pale woman was edging past the tall man standing in the doorway. As she passed him, her haunted eyes briefly met mine before she scuttled down the hall in the general direction of the women’s restroom.

  I, however, barely reacted to her presence; all of my concentration was going toward a feeble attempt to expand my lungs to take in a breath. I stood, notepad dangling from my fingers, staring at the man in the doorway: Andrew Richards, PhD. Author of three (so far) books explaining, in terms even simpletons like me could understand, the glorious intricacies and remarkable beauty of biological systems. His first book had been the catalyst for my change from physics to biology.

  On top of the brains, money. Lots of money. Money in the family back several generations, and with each generation the talent to make more and more money seemed to be the strongest trait passed down.

  With all that intelligence and money, by all rights he should have been four-feet tall, four-feet wide, 96-years old, with a wart on his nose.

  He wasn’t. In fact, he looked just like he had on the magazine cover I’d seen this morning when I stopped for coffee, even without his tuxedo. I’d had no clue that he’d be here for the interview. If I had, most likely at this moment I’d be bouncing along on a bus deep in the interior of Mexico and not standing in this hallway concentrating on not swooning.

  “Well, not really work,” Chuck was saying. “More like a hobby. Terrorizing
incoming students. I have a talent for it, you know.”

  “Ah, were it only molecular genetics for which you had the talent.”

  “Ah, come on, Andrew! Just because I got a ninety-two on that last quiz doesn’t exactly mean I’m on the skids.”

  “Who am I to wake you from this dream?” He turned to me. “Ms. Brenner?”

  I swallowed, blinked, focused. “Yes, sir?”

  Dr. Richards smiled. “We’re ready for you now.”

  The Richards smile, live and in person. Beat heart. Beat.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Hear that, Mr. Benson? A few of you older students might learn a few things about respect from some of our newer students.”

  Chuck saluted. “Yes, sir! Anything you say, sir!”

  “Ah, yes. Much better. Ms. Brenner?” He held the door open to allow me to pass. I had to duck under his arm and I just barely brushed against the wool sports jacket he was wearing. That got my heart going again.

  Chuck reached out and touched my arm just before I got through the door. “Relax,” he stage-whispered. “They aren’t all as bad as this guy.”

  Dr. Richards ignored him and followed me into the room.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I arrived at the bank, only one customer waited behind the red velvet ropes hanging from the brass standards in the lobby. I ran up the stairs to the break-room to drop off my stuff. Cheryl, my best friend, sat at the lunch table with the loan officer, as well as Jan and Carl, who smiled quite pleasantly and were not laughing evilly. Mr. Jackson, the operations manager, sat on the couch, a sandwich in one hand, the other hand tracing a column of numbers down a page.

  “Well, it’s about time!” Cheryl said.

  “Hey! I had permission from our sweet, wonderful, understanding boss,” I said. Mr. Jackson’s head came up and he looked at me over the rim of his half-glasses. He didn’t say a word, merely bent back over the ledger as he casually lifted his feet a few inches off the floor.

  Cheryl and I were both still giggling as we headed down to the vault to get our money drawers.

  “I love that guy,” I said.

  “I hope his wife, his children, and his grandchildren don’t find out.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  She grinned at me as we unlocked our drawers and pulled them out of the steel vault cabinet. “So,” she said, “you look like it went pretty well.”

  “Turns out it was basically just a way for them to meet me, and me to meet them. It was no big deal.” I was trying for nonchalance, but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I counted my cash.

  Cheryl dropped her tens into the drawer. She stopped to look at me, a sheaf of twenties in her hand. “Oh my… He was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  She glared at me. “Cut it out. You know who.”

  “Oh, Andrew Richards? Oh, yes, come to think of it, I do believe he was there.”

  I patted the fives down into their slot, picked up the drawer and headed out of the vault.

  “Melanie!”

  I swung back around, grinned, and, holding the drawer out in front of me at chest level, I cha-cha’d backwards out of the vault, turning just in time to lower the drawer, make my face properly sober, and walk sedately out to the counter. Believe it or not, few people enjoy having their money handled by someone who would dance through a bank lobby with a cash drawer.

  Cheryl followed just behind. “You idiot,” she hissed. “Tell me!”

  I slipped the tray of money down into the drawer at my station, moved the Next Window sign aside, and beckoned to the first of three people waiting in line. I saw with pleasure that it was Mr. Sanders, one of my regulars. I turned to Cheryl who was dropping her till into the station next to mine.

  “Okay, I did meet Andrew Richards. And I’ll tell you every detail, later. Okay?”

  She glared at me. “Hag.”

  “Witch.”

  “Shrew.”

  “Termagant.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  I grinned. “Look it up,” I said, then turned to Mr. Sanders.

  “Ms. Brenner,” he said.

  “Mr. Sanders.”

  “Very nice to see you.”

  “Very nice to see you, sir.”

  “A deposit, I think, today.”

  I finished his transaction. As I pushed the receipt across to Mr. Sanders, with the other hand I slid a savings account brochure across the counter.

  He looked up at me. “And, what may I ask, is this?”

  “Oh this?” I asked. “Well, we might be having a small savings account promotion going on.” His eyes lifted to where the five-foot by ten-foot, day-glow green representation of a savings passbook dangled from the ceiling above my head.

  “Indeed.”

  “Actually, the bank is offering some quite attractive incentives.”

  Mr. Sanders smiled, but was already shaking his head. “My dear, I really don’t need another account.”

  “Oh, certainly, really, I completely understand.”

  Mr. Sanders fingered the brochure, flicking the edge of the thick paper with his thumbnail. He looked up at me. “Melanie,” he said, “you don’t get some sort of incentive for pushing these accounts, do you?”

  “Well, no, not really, except for the first class trip for two to San Francisco, all expenses paid, five thousand dollars spending money. Naturally, that’s not why I’m telling you about the promotion. Opening a savings account here will improve your life and probably bring world peace.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Okay, what do I have to do?”

  “Really? Just go over to New Accounts and tell them I sent you. Mr. Sanders, thank you!”

  “No need to thank me. It’s always a pleasure to help a beautiful young woman.” He tipped an imaginary hat and headed toward New Accounts across the lobby.

  Cheryl looked over at me as Mr. Sanders left. “Hey, who died?” she asked.

  “Nobody.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it’s just... I really like Mr. Sanders, but I hate when he does that.”

  “Does what?”

  “That ‘beautiful young woman’ bit.”

  “Why? I love that stuff.”

  I looked at her naturally blonde, curling hair softly framing her heart-shaped face and her clear, exceptionally blue eyes. With no effort Cheryl managed to look like the heroine of a 19th century gothic--the sweet young governess, innocent on the surface but with a sexual inferno smoldering beneath. “Yeah, well, but look at you,” I said.

  She glared at me. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Not that again. You are every bit as…”

  “Hush,” I said. “We’ve got customers.” And, thankfully, we had, and by the time we got up to the break room after work, she had forgotten all about giving me the speech that she’d given me so many times before.

  I had yet to believe it.

  * * * *

  “It’s a time warp. It’s the only explanation.” I sighed and looked across the table at Cheryl. It was a week since my graduate admissions interview and the day the contest winner would be announced. We were sitting in the upstairs break room with the remains of our lunches spread on the table between us. “This week has been at least three and a half months long and this day...”

  Cheryl flipped the pages of a magazine as she chomped on a carrot stick. “This week and this day have been exactly the same length as any other week or day. We’ll get the results of the contest tonight. If you win, you win. If you don’t, you don’t. You gave it your best shot. You practically safety-pinned a brochure to every man, woman, and child who stepped through the doors.” She brandished her carrot at me. “So relax, will you?”

  “Easier said than done. I don’t remember ever wanting anything as much as I want this trip.”

  Cheryl looked up from the magazine. “Why? I mean, I know it’s nice to have the trip for free, but we’re only in LA, for Pete’s sake. You could drive to the Bay Area i
n six or seven hours. What’s the big deal? The money?”

  “Yeah, well, the money’s very nice. But, no. It’s just… I don’t know,” I said. “No break in four years, maybe. Or maybe, just that, you know, well, something could happen.”

  “What?” Cheryl asked, and then, “Oh. Prince Charming. Moonlight.”

  I smiled. “Champagne and candlelight. Sweeping into the room in a ball gown like that one Audrey Hepburn wore in ‘Sabrina.’”

  “Old movies again.”

  “Being raised by your grandmother does have its hazards.”

  “You don’t have to be on a trip to San Francisco to find Mr. Right,” Cheryl said.

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What?” I asked.

  She sighed and shrugged. “Nothing. So is it Andrew Richards reaching out his hand to you as the orchestra plays ‘Isn’t It Romantic’?”

  I laughed. “Right.”

  Andrew takes her hand. “Come, Melanie,” he says. “I’ve waited all my life for this moment, the time when I would dance with the most wonderful woman in the world. It’s you, my love. Only you.”

  “Classes start Monday,” she said. “He’s teaching Biochem.”

  “Oh, sure.” I reached over to the stack of magazines next to the couch and pulled out People, flipped it open, and slapped it down. “This I’d have a chance with.”

  I’d opened it to a two-page spread of a couple walking into a large party. My mind barely registered the shapely, blonde woman. Instead, my eyes fixed on the tall, lean, late-twenties man at her side. The photographer had caught him at the best possible moment. His eyes looked directly into the camera lens so that the green and gold of the irises were clearly visible. His mouth was open to laugh, his teeth showed even and white. The planes of his face were clean-shaven and tanned. Though his slightly long, thick, red-blond hair was combed back from his broad forehead, one strand hung down above one eye. He was just reaching up a hand to rake it back.