Part One

I was at home trying to get caught up on eight months' shite that had accumulated during my long absence to film in Mexico, and then to recuperate in San Francisco from the results of my own clumsiness and lack of a graceful turn of foot. I guess I'd never make a professional dancer, although, come to think of it, I did actually dance in several stage productions once upon a time. Maybe the grace had fled with the oncoming years, I dunno.

I'd rushed home just after the middle of December thinking my lady would be following me a week later and we'd all celebrate Christmas and New Years at the farm like I loved doing. The rellies had done most of the planning this time since I'd been otherwise occupied, and it felt a bit strange to arrive home without the usual last minute, frantic arrangements to be made and glitches to be smoothed over. I had only to figure out where to put 800 pounds of assorted boxes, crates and cardboard cartons - most of which held pressies for the family and friends - until Christmas Eve when I could unload the gaily wrapped parcels under the huge tree in the lounge room of my parents' new house.

What I ended up doing, was spending hours on the phone, burning up the wires between Nana Glen and San Francisco, trying to soothe Frenchie's worries about us in general, and the rellies' reaction to our being an "us" in specific. "They'll think I'm nuts," she had told me in one of our marathon conversations. "They'll think you're nuts too."

"I don't give a flying fuck," I'd snapped back, "Let them think what they like - besides, Jen, they all know and love you - what the hell are you so worried about?"

She couldn't - or wouldn't - tell me exactly what it was. I had the feeling something had happened after I'd left cause when I left, she had been so excited about coming over to Oz, so happy to see everyone she hadn't seen in years, so much in love with me (I thought) that she'd almost floated to the airport to see me to my plane. I had almost succeeded in persuading her to just chuck everything and come back with me. I actually had her on the plane with me and my credit card out to add another person's fare when she suddenly got this pinched look to her face, kissed me goodbye with this fast peck on the cheek like she was my maiden Aunt Gloria, and raced off the plane leaving me standing there with my Amex card held out to a bemused First Class flight attendant and an open-mouthed look on my face like a bloke who's just had his lolly stolen right out of his lips.

"Frenchie, what the fuck is going on here? You're driving me fuckin' mental, woman!" I held the tiny cell phone away from my head to glare at it like she could see it, then clapped it back up to my right ear. "What? You told me you had someone to cover your schedule - what's this with the 'I've got to work' bullshit now? Frenchie - I swear to God, if I have to come back there and drag you over here by the hair of your head, I'll fuckin' do it."

More backing and filling - and outright talking around the subject - by the object of my affections, and the source of my frustrations, until I wanted to just grab her by the arms and shake some sense into her. And out of her. I had a sinking feeling this was not going to end well. Turns out I was right. That phone conversation was only a plateau on the way down into the Pits of Hell.

The next thing I knew, I was wakened from a relatively sound sleep - and in my own bed, for once - by the soft purring of my phone. I had the ringer turned way down because the thing used to go off like a firehouse gong and practically cause a heart attack. The purring noise was enough to wake me sufficiently to grope for the phone. I dragged the receiver up to my ear, eyes still shut, then opened one long enough to read the luminous digital alarm clock display - 4 fucking a.m.! "This better be good," I husked into the phone.

It was Frenchie. "Rusty - I hope I didn't wake you," she started off. Then she realized the time difference and started apologizing right away. I finally snarled at her to stop saying she was sorry enough times that she actually did and got to the point. "I'm not coming."

I groaned aloud, maneuvered myself up so I was sitting with my back against my rucked up pile of pillows, and asked her if she'd lost her mind. "Frenchie - what's going on? You had this all arranged - why are you wussing out on me, girl?"

She began a litany of excuses that she had obviously been rehearsing for hours, if not days - she had a lot of surgeries that she just had to do between then and mid-January. She wasn't sure her surrogates - the other orthopedists she'd hand-picked for crying out loud - could handle the patients properly. She wasn't sure she should or could spare the time to take a vacation just then - maybe summer would be better, or - more agreeable yet - maybe NEXT Christmas. She felt guilty just descending on my family without much forewarning considering they were already going to be inconvenienced by the normal influx of house guests we always had during the Christmas/New Years' holidays.

When she finally ran down, we just sat for a few minutes without saying anything. I heard her sigh, a sure sign she was going to start in again, and I cut her off. "Frenchie, I never thought you'd be such a coward."

"Coward!" came the indignant response, "I'm not a coward - I really DO have things to do and I shouldn't be gone from here for 3 weeks without a lot of advance planning. Surely you see that, Rusty."

"I see a woman afraid to be seen with me is what I see, Jen," I answered her matter-of-factly.

"I'm not afraid to be seen with you," she answered me right back, but that tell-tale quaver I recognized meant I'd come very close to the truth of things was in her voice.

"Oh, yes you are - I missed what happened on the plane when you went all maidenly on me and fled like a scared rabbit - wanna tell me about that?" It was true - she'd gone from being flushed with excitement at doing something totally spontaneous and out of character for Dr. Efficiency into the rabbit act. I'd been too confused and caught up in things at the time myself to see what had actually spooked her. I had a pretty good idea, though. "Who gave you the look, Jen?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said in this voice that told me I'd hit it dead-on. When I just sat without answering her, she tried again, "I'm sure it was common sense asserting itself - as well it should have."

"Bollocks," I said flatly. "Who was on the plane and gave you the once-over, made you feel funny being with me?" She was so hypersensitive about the age difference - why hadn't I seen it when I had her right there with me and the plane was almost ready to taxi? Somebody who knew us both - knew who we both were, somebody with the guts to give her a glance that brought her up as short as a bucket of icewater in the face would have. . .

"Brandon," she said into my whirling thoughts. "Brandon Frankel was on the plane - didn't you see him?"

"Christ - that wimp?" Frankel was a former sports agent - he'd been her agent, in fact, back when we'd played those tennis games in her grannie's back yard in New Zealand. And he knew all about her opinion of me because she had no doubt expressed herself about her experiences taming the bratty kid at tennis and showing him (me) who was boss, and done it so well that he still remembered. And he knew I was that self-same brat, only now an actor with a reputation - however well or ill deserved - as a ladies' man par excellence. In short, he probably gave her an incredulous look - maybe even the beginnings of a sneer - because he saw her standing with me, me kissing her hands and being persuasive, and he realized the comedy of the situation. Brandon Frankel - former sports agent and now host of one of those tabloid gossip shows on the telly in New Zealand. "You thought he'd do some kind of embarrassing story on his show and that made you run?"

"You know how he is, Rusty," she said quietly. "It would have been horrible - exaggerated, sleazy and endlessly amusing - and he would have all that lovely information about me from years back to draw on besides the storehouse of crap about you that's probably out there now. He would have done a hatchet job on us that made us look totally ridiculous."

"I don't care," I told her, and I didn't. But I knew she did. She hated being thought of as anything other than the competent, world-class orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Jennifer Butlin Whitlow, former top-seeded tennis pro, Wimbledon singles champion - I'm sure there were a lot more titles and honors he could trot out to point up her description. Then he could add some of my less-than-glorious escapades - real or imagined - to really point up how the beauteous doctor who seemed so cool, competent and dignified was really just a hot-knickered older woman who'd scored herself a younger man in her bed.

"We could have told him to go fuck himself, Jen," I said after all this rumination. "Or ignored him, not given any dignity to his claims - did you think of that?"

Deep sigh, and she said, "Rusty - I know you usually do ignore this kind of shit, but that hasn't worked all that well for you, now has it? When things have gotten really bad and you've turned your publicists and legal people loose to do their jobs, it's almost been too late, hasn't it? In fact, it's been downright impossible to undo the damage ignoring something like this has done, tell the truth."

I had to admit she was right about that, much as it pissed me off to do it. "But, Jen - I'd have had my people handle this right - make it so totally romantic and wonderful that nobody would dare poke fun at our relationship. I'd already talked to Dorothy about it - didn't you know?"

I had - and she'd been so taken aback that I was going to allow her to handle something personal from the get-go that she told me she was positive at first I was teasing her until I'd patiently explained things two more times. I'm sure she was still marveling over being allowed to do her job without interference from Mister Control Freak, as she termed me when I thwarted her and prevented her from doing her full job because I wanted to handle things myself.

"I didn't know," she answered, sounding really sad - and irritated. "You could have told me - trusted me enough to let me in on what you were doing."

I sighed. "Jen - I know I should have, but - old habits are hard to break. I've been hoping you'd help me break a lot of them."

"I'm not sure I've got time enough in my lifespan to break a lot of your bad habits," she shot back, annoyance clear in her voice.

Ouch. "You make me sound like a monster," I said.

"Brat, you ARE a monster," she retorted. And she had gotten me off the subject. I didn't realize it until we argued ten more minutes and she'd hung up on me, pissed enough that I doubted she'd think kindly of me much that day.

A monster, was I? Well, fuck that - who needed that? Who needed her? I would do just fine without her, I told myself.

Thing was, I didn't believe me.


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