Acts of Love by Michael Judith

Author:Michael, Judith [Michael, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Theater
Publisher: New York : Crown Publishers
Published: 1997-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

"You mean you weren't taken in by them."

"Of course not. Did you think I was.i^ I liked writing them; it was fun to pretend a life, like Walter Mitty dreaming himself into a dozen heroic poses to deny the person he really was. But I never thought it was anything but a game."

"There was something in the way you wrote about that life ... a kind of coolness. As if you were distancing yourself from it."

"Is that true?" She frowned. "I thought I was being so careful. Maybe that's why she never fully believed it. Maybe she always wondered if it were just a game."

"If so, she would have known it was a game you liked to play. It really was a fantasy for yourself as much as for her."

Her eyes hardened. "Do you always have to beat people into admitting their weaknesses? Can't you let them keep just a few illusions if that seems important to them?"

Luke's gaze turned inward, and there was a long silence. When he looked at her again, his face was bleak. "I think that's exactly what I do. I suppose I always have. No one has ever pointed it out so precisely. I'm very sorry, Jessica. I didn't mean to do that to you. I won't do it again."

"Why do you do it at all?"

198 ~ Judith Michael

"I don't know. I detest pretense, the masks people wear . . . No one can be a great actor without first understanding himself or herself—you and Constance knew that better than anyone—and I suppose I've been pushing my actors for so many years, I do it with everyone. Maybe. Or maybe I just like to control people and I do it by pounding them into submission."

"A little breast-beating there," Jessica said drily.

He laughed, and the tension was broken. "Actually I was paraphrasing my grandmother. She thought I overdid the need to be in control. I assume she told you that, too."

"Yes. But not maliciously. She worried about you."

"It seems she worried about both of us."

"Not all the time, but enough to talk about. She always wanted . . ."

"What.?"

"I'll tell you another time." She saw the quick line that appeared between his eyes. "No, I'm not doing that to get back at you for keeping things from me. We each have our reasons."

Luke sat back and looked at her thoughtfully for a long time, and she did not turn away, though her hands were clenched tightly in her lap and she had to hold herself still to endure his scrutiny. She looked beyond him, at filaments of clouds trailing across the clear sky, and a sailboat tacking just beyond the bay, but all the time she was aware of his eyes on her.

"I'd like to take you to dinner tonight," he said at last. "Can you recommend a good place on the island?"

She met his quiet look. She knew the two of them were still springing back and forth, from tension to harmony, like bumper cars in a carnival, but she knew, too, that she did not want him to leave, at least not yet.

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