“No, I hung up.”
“Why you do that?”
“Because I haven’t even had my coffee yet and—” She paused. “Well, golly . . . why shouldn’t I hang up on you?”
“Because it is a beautiful day. I pick you up. We go to lunch in a cozy little place—”
“Listen, Franco . . .” She began to sputter. “What you did last night was . . . well, it was terrible, and I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“But last night I didn’t know you were a child. Today I treat you like a child. Okay?”
“No.”
“But you get mad if I treat you like a beautiful woman. Look, I have been shining up my Honda for two hours. It is so beautiful . . . Tell you what. No cozy little place for lunch. We go to Doney’s. Like tourist. We sit right out in the open. I buy you your coffee, then we take ride. Ciao.” He hung up before she could answer.
Her coffee from room service never arrived, and when Franco called from the lobby she decided she might as well go with him to Doney’s. After all, she had to have coffee. She scooped up the money Mike had left. Then on an impulse she put it back . . . along with the note. She called the hotel maid and told her to make up her room immediately. Let him come back and wonder whether she had slept home last night!
It was impossible to remain angry at Franco. He ordered her coffee and croissants. He was warm and volatile. And it seemed half of Rome stopped at the table to talk to him. His boundless enthusiasm gradually melted her reserve, and she found herself laughing and enjoying her breakfast. This sunny, easygoing boy almost made her forget the Franco of last night. She realized he was trying to apologize, trying to please her, and it would be fun to see Rome with him. She was wearing dungarees, and she realized that subconsciously she had intended to go on the motorcycle with him.
The Honda was bright red. He gave her a pair of oversized goggles and told her to sit behind him. “This time you must hug me.” He laughed.
He drove through the traffic carefully and pointed out churches and important buildings. “Next week we see the Vatican,” he told her. “And I also take you into some churches. Michelangelo’s work in marble you must see.”
After a short time they left the city and headed for the Appian Way. He did not speed. He let her get the feel of the seat, of the wind blowing through her hair and cooling her face. He pointed out important villas . . . bits of ruins . . . the house of a movie star. Then he cut off and went down a winding country road. They stopped at a small family-run restaurant. Everyone including a barking dog greeted Franco eagerly. They called him by his first name . . . beamed radiantly at January and brought out bread, cheese, and red wine.
“The Appian Way is the road to Naples,” he said. “We must go there someday. And Capri.” He kissed his fingers to the sky. “Tomorrow I have filming, but I take you to Capri on Sunday. See Grotto Azura and . . . oh, we have so many places to see.”
Later as they walked back to the Honda he put his arm around her shoulders in a brotherly fashion. As they were about to get on the bike she turned to him suddenly. “Franco, I want you to know that this has been a fabulous day. Really neat. Thank you so much.”
“Tonight I take you to a great place for dinner. Ever eat clams Posillipo?”
“No . . . but I can’t have dinner with you.”
“Why? I took promise I won’t touch you.”
“It isn’t that. I . . . want to be with my father.”
“You what?”
“My father . . . I haven’t seen him since last night.”
“Okay, you see him when you go home now. Then at nine o’clock you have dinner with me.”
“I want to have dinner with my father.”
“Perhaps your papa has other plans.” He climbed on the motorcycle.
“No. I’m sure he expects to have dinner with me.”
“Before you come . . . every night he take Melba to dinner.”
“But I’m here now.”
“And you expect to eat dinner every night with your papa?” He was no longer smiling.
“Perhaps.”
He started to rev the motor. “Get on. I see everything now.”
“What do you see?”
“No girl wants to eat with her papa. You must have other date.”
“Franco, for heaven’s sake. I don’t have another date.”
He grabbed her wrist. “Then you have dinner with me tonight like I say.”
“No.”
He released her hand. “Get on,” he snapped. “I take you home. Hah! And I believed the virgin story. Now I know. You just don’t dig Franco.”
They started down the country road. He drove quickly, bouncing over potholes and rocks. Several times she was almost hurled off. She clung to him as they turned onto the Appian Way. A sightseeing bus filled with Japanese tourists passed. He careened past, almost skinning its wheels. The driver screamed some profanities . . . Franco shook his fist at the driver and went faster. She shouted for him to be careful. But her voice was lost in the noise of the motor and the wind. She was frightened now. There was violence in his driving. She pleaded with him to slow down until she was hoarse. Finally she could do nothing but cling to him and pray. As they rounded a curve she saw a car trying to pass another. He saw it too and tried to swerve the motorcycle off the road. It seemed to rear on its hind legs like a horse . . . she felt herself going through the air . . . and in that split second before she lost consciousness, she felt only a sense of amazement that there was no pain when her body was flung against the stone wall.
When she opened her eyes she saw her father. Two of him . . . three of him . . . She closed her eyes because everything blurred. She tried to reach out for him, but her arm felt like lead. She opened her eyes again. Through the haze she saw the dim outline of her leg raised in traction. Then she remembered the crash. The wild drive . . . the white stone wall . . . and now she was in a hospital with a broken leg. It would ruin the summer, but she felt lucky to be alive. But these days they fixed it so you could walk with your leg in a cast, didn’t they? She tried to move, but her entire body felt like cement. She forced her eyes open again, but the lights made them tear. Why was her body so taut? Why couldn’t she feel anything in her right arm? Oh God, maybe it was more than just a broken leg.
Mike was standing across the room talking to several doctors. A nurse was bustling about. They were whispering. She wanted him to know she was awake.
She called out, “Daddy . . .”
She tried again. It seemed as if she were shouting. But he didn’t move. No one moved. She was screaming but no words were coming out. She was screaming but her mouth wasn’t moving. She was screaming inside! She tried to move her left arm . . . she wriggled the fingers, and then everything blurred into a soft gray sleep.
When she opened her eyes again, there was just a small light in the far corner of the room. A nurse was reading a magazine. It was night now. The door opened. Her father and the nurse began to whisper.
He dismissed the nurse and pulled a chair to the side of her bed. He stroked her hand. “Don’t worry, baby. Everything will be all right.”
She tried to move her mouth. She strained every muscle, but no words would come. He went on talking. “They tell me that even when you open your eyes you don’t see me. But they don’t know everything. You’re gonna make it . . . for me!”
“Make it!” What was he talking about? She had to tell him she’d be fine. A broken leg would heal. She felt awful. Here she was causing him all this trouble. She had probably made him lose a whole day’s shooting just because Franco had lost his temper this afternoon. But it was ridiculous for him to be so worried. But why couldn’t she talk? She wriggled the fingers of her left hand . . . that worked. She tried raising it. That worked too. He was staring off into space. She reached out and touched his shoulder. He almost leaped off the chair.
“January! NURSE! Oh, babe . . . you moved! You moved your arm! NURSE!”
She tried to tell him she was fine
, but suddenly she felt herself falling through space . . . and the thick gray sleep was trying to take over. She didn’t want to sleep! She fought against it. The room was suddenly crowded. She saw two white-coated men closing in on her. One white coat raised her right arm and let it drop. Another stuck a needle into it. She saw it rather than felt it. That was odd . . . she felt nothing. Another doctor stuck a needle into her left ankle. Wow! She felt that! And then the gray sleep took over.
When she opened her eyes she saw a big jar of fluid hanging over her ankle. The doctors were all gone but her father was bending over her.
“Nod if you understand me, baby.”
She tried. Oh, God. Did they have her head strapped down? It was like a rock.
“Blink your eyes, January. Blink if you understand.”
She blinked her eyes.
“Oh, baby—” He buried his head in her shoulder. “I promise you everything is going to be fine.” Then she felt the dampness on her neck. Tears. His tears. She had never seen Mike Wayne shed a tear in his life. No one had. And he was crying over her. And suddenly for that one second she was happier than she had ever been. She wasn’t worried about her leg or her arm. He loved her . . . he cared for her this much . . . she would get well . . . she would heal so fast . . . they’d have their summer together . . . on crutches . . . with a cast . . . it didn’t matter.
She reached out to touch his head . . . to stroke him . . . but her gauge of distance was suddenly crazy and she touched her own head. It felt like stone. Mike stood up. His face was composed. He saw her left arm flailing toward her head.
Her head! What was wrong with her head? Maybe her face was hurt, too. The panic shot through her; a sudden wrench of nausea twisted her stomach. But she forced herself to touch her face.
He understood her frantic gesture immediately. “Your face is fine, baby. They had to shave your head, but your hair will grow back.”
THEY HAD SHAVED HER HEAD!
He read the panic in her eyes, and took her hand and held it tight. “Look, I’m gonna give it to you straight because you’re gonna have to do a lot of fighting. We both will. So I’ll give you the bottom line. You have a fractured skull along with a brain concussion. They had to operate to release some blood. They were afraid of clotting or something. It’s all right now. The operation was a complete success. Your back is broken. Two vertebrae, but they’ll mend. You also have what they call multiple breaks in your leg. You’ve got casts all over you . . . that’s why you can’t move. You can’t move your right arm because of the brain concussion. But they say that will all come back.” He tried to smile. “Outside of that, baby, you’re in great shape.” Then he leaned over and kissed her. “You don’t know how great it is to see you look at me. It’s the first time you’ve really looked at me in ten days . . .”
TEN DAYS! Ten days since she had fallen off the motorcycle!
Was Franco hurt? How long would she have to be here? Once again she tried to talk, but no words came out. He held her hand and said, “That’s part of the concussion, baby. The side of your head that was hit affects the speech area. Don’t panic. It will all come back. I swear to you. . . .”
She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t panic. As long as he was there, everything was okay. She wanted to tell him to go back to the studio . . . he had a picture to do . . . she wanted to let him know these things . . . that as long as they were a team . . . as long as she knew she’d see him the end of each day and that he loved her and was thinking about her—nothing would stand in her way. She scratched furiously with her left hand. She wanted a pencil. She had to tell him these things. Tears of frustration streamed down her face. She wanted a pencil. But he didn’t understand.
“Nurse!” he called out. “Come here quick . . . maybe she’s in pain!”
(Daddy, I’m not in pain . . . I just want a pencil.)
The nurse was all starched efficiency. January felt the needle go into her arm . . the numbness began to seep through her and in the distance she heard her father’s voice . . . “Just relax, babe . . . everything’s gonna be all right. . . .”
One
September, 1970
WHEN MIKE WAYNE WALKED into the V.I.P. Lounge at Kennedy Airport, the hostess was positive he was a movie star. He had that look of someone you’ve seen many times but know you’ve never met.
“Is Flight Seven, Swissair, still scheduled for a five o’clock arrival?” he asked as he signed the guest book.
“I’ll check,” she said, flooding him with one of her warmest smiles. He smiled back, but experience told her it was the smile of a man who already had a girl. A girl arriving on Flight Seven. Probably one of those Swiss-German beauties that were crowding the market lately. It was getting so a domestic stewardess didn’t have a chance.
“Half an hour late. Due at five-thirty.” Her smile was apologetic.
He nodded and walked to one of the leather chairs by the window. She studied his scrawl on the book. Michael Wayne. She had heard the name, and she knew his face, but she couldn’t place him. Maybe he was on one of those television series . . . like that dreamy fellow on Mannix whom she watched whenever she was dateless on Saturday nights. He was older than the men she usually dated, maybe in his forties. But for Mr. Michael Wayne with the Paul Newman blue eyes she could easily forget the generation gap. In a final bid for attention, she came over with some magazines, but he shook his head and continued to stare at the planes being serviced on the ground. She sighed as she returned to her desk. No way! This one really had something on his mind.
Mike Wayne had plenty on his mind. She was coming back! After three years and three months of hospitals and therapy . . . she was coming back.
When she crashed on that motorcycle, his own crash dive had begun. It started with the flop of Melba’s picture. He took the blame for that himself. When your kid is busted into pieces, you can’t worry about a spaghetti western. And January’s prognosis had been dismal. In the beginning none of the surgeons held any hope that she would ever walk again.
The paralysis was due to the concussion and called for immediate physical therapy. For weeks he studied X rays he didn’t understand . . . electroencephalograms . . . spinal pictures.
He flew in two surgeons from London and a top neurologist from Germany. They agreed with the specialists in Rome—the delay in physical therapy lessened the chances of recovery from paralysis, yet nothing could be done until the broken bones healed.
He spent most of his time at the hospital, going to the studio to make sure that most of Franco’s scenes were cut from the picture. He didn’t buy Franco’s story—that January had insisted he drive faster—and when he put it to January she had refused to deny or confirm it. But he threw Franco off the set and let the director cut and edit the picture. He wanted to get out of Rome . . . and take January with him.
But three months later she was still in a partial cast and unable to talk. The picture opened in Rome to murderous reviews and tepid business.
In New York it was yanked out of a first-run house after one week and went straight to Forty-second Street on the bottom half of a double bill. In Europe the press labeled Mike Wayne the only man who ever made Melba Delitto look sexless.
He tried to be philosophical. Everyone had to have one flop. And this was long overdue. He had been on a winning streak since 1947. He told it to himself. He told it to the press. Yet as he sat beside his daughter’s bed, the thought nagged like an exposed nerve. Was it just one flop—or had his luck run out?
He had two more pictures to release through Century, and he could amortize the loss of this picture against the profits of the others. And he didn’t see how the next picture could miss. It was a spy story from a best-selling novel. He started principal photography in London, in October. Each weekend he flew back to Rome; forcing himself to walk into that hospital room with a smile to match the one she always had for him. He tried not to be disheartened at her lack of progress. She would make it. She had to! On her eightee
nth birthday she surprised him by taking a few laborious steps with the aid of the therapist and crutches. Her right arm had improved, but she still dragged her right leg. Her speech was coming back. There were times she halted or stuttered on a word. But he knew that was just a matter of time. But damn it! If she could talk and use her right arm, what was holding up the progress of the leg? Certainly not the concussion anymore. But her smile was so bright and victorious. Her hair had grown back short and shaggy—she looked like a frail little boy. His throat felt dry. He felt it tighten as he forced a smile. Eighteen years old, and so many months lost.
After her birthday he had to go to the States to film the chase scenes in New York and San Francisco. Then there was the editing and final scoring in Los Angeles. He had high hopes for the picture; it had the smell of a winner. And somehow he tied up his hopes for the success of the picture with January’s recovery. Like a mind bet. If the picture made it big—her recovery would be rapid.
It opened with a big charity premiere in New York. The klieg-light bit; the celebrities; Barry Gray interviewing the V.I.P.’s. The audience applauded and laughed in the right places. When the lights came up, the heads of Century walked up the aisle with him . . . back-slapping . . . smiling. Then on to the party at the Americana, where they heard that the first reviews on TV had been bad. But everyone said it didn’t matter. The New York Times was all that counted. At midnight they learned the Times had murdered it (that was when the heads of the studio left the party). The head of Century publicity, an optimistic man named Sid Goff, shrugged it off. “Ah, who reads the Times? For movies, it’s the Daily News that counts.” Twenty minutes later they learned the News had only given it two stars, but Sid Goff was still optimistic. “I hear the guy at the Post loved it. Besides, word of mouth will make the picture.”
But neither the Post nor word of mouth was good. Business was weak, but Sid Goff was still cheerful. “Wait till it plays across the country. The people will love it. That’s where it counts.”
It received a lukewarm reception at the Chinese in Los Angeles. It limped along in Detroit. In Chicago it bombed completely. And Philadelphia and other key cities refused it at first-run houses.