- Steele Words and Red Holt Tears
Date: Monday, July 31, 2000
- Michael Bledsoe <m2p3b@bellsouth.net>
I would like to thank Debra, Adri and Dee. They pushed me
onward when I was ready to give up. I would especially like to
thank Debra who volunteered to beta read and didn't realize it
until later. I would like to thank Kathleen who has beta read
me for 20+ years, but was tied up with work this time. I would
also like to thank Ellen, my long suffering wife. It is our love
that Steele feels in my stories.
This piece of the story takes place seconds after the 1st challenge
story.
"Steele Words and Red Holt Tears"
by Michael Bledsoe
As quickly as it began, the storm was over. In its wake lay the
debris. Some of the outside damage was very visible, easily found
and repaired. Internal damage required a much longer cycle of
repair. Sometimes the assessment took days before the damage
was found and repaired. Sometimes damage control took years to
complete. Other times it took forever.
The evening had been young once, much like Laura and Remington's
relationship. A fast moving storm front had brought rain to the
normally dry Los Angeles area. Lightning and wind accompanied
the rain and changed a pleasant night of celebration to one of
intense personal revelation. Laura had provided the celebration
and the revelation. Steele had provided nothing. Once again he
was trapped in a situation that was way beyond his control.
During Laura's recounting of her troubled past, Steele wanted
to protect her from her past. The gap in her armor provided a
place to start from. They could grow from these memories. Maybe
he could share some of the pain that had filled his boyhood.
Laura turned around with an assumed jaunty air. It was as if
she were attempting to hide the revelation of her soul.
"Mister Steele, why don't you run out to the Rabbit and
get the rest of your present. We can set it up and watch 'Casablanca.'"
The mood was over, the tension was broken and the relationship
was unscathed.
Right. If only it were that simple, Steele mused.
Laura went to her purse and extracted a set of keys. Handing
them to Steele, she said, "It's the big box in the trunk."
She laughed lamely and continued, "You can't miss it."
Dismissed, Steele went to the closet and gathered up his raincoat.
"I'll be right back."
Laura waved her hand indifferently.
Suddenly, Remington felt as if he were a boy again, passed from
foster home to foster home, no parents of his own. Even now as
a man, the humiliation of the situations he had suffered burned
in his cheeks, in his chest. Humiliation made him feel as if
his namesake were rammed up his spine, making him cold and inflexible.
He slipped on the coat and went out the door. The problem was
that it was his own apartment he had to return to.
He stopped in midstride. It wasn't even his apartment, was it?
He was just in a different class of foster home. Again, his cheeks
burned. It was all about Laura. Her needs. Her wants. Her bloody
life and he was just a character in her story. Maybe he had not
been intended to play this role after all. Maybe this was just
a movie about Laura Holt and he was only a bit player intended
to exit, stage left.
* * *
Laura glanced up from the dancing fire and something caught her
eye. Her hand reached out instinctively, as if she had no control
over it at all. She opened the pocket watch and it began to play
"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." She opened it and found
the inscription "To S.J. from K.L." She closed it and
groaned, her words coming back to haunt her. 'A man without a
father is a sad and lonely man. Abandoned. And best of all, vulnerable.'
Vulnerable, she had said-- and more memories flooded in.
She had looked at the man they called Steele and asked, "Who
are you? Where did you come from?"
He had smiled slightly in that way that was only his. "Humphrey
Bogart to Ingrid Bergman, 'Casablanca', Warner Brothers, 1942."
Irritated, she had shot back, "This is no time to be quoting
old movies."
From that tight smile had come the reply, "Then stop asking
old questions."
Stop asking old questions. His light words echoed in her head
years later. Stop asking old questions.
* * *
Steele patted the passports in the breast pocket of his raincoat.
Tonight he had been willing to share the search for his past
with Laura, the one person he trusted more than Daniel Chalmers--
and she had closed him off, closed him out.
Steele's humiliation and rage abated slowly. He fumbled with
the keys in his hands, unable to see the lock properly with the
rain in his eyes. That isn't right, he thought as he kicked the
faithful Rabbit. It isn't raining now.
"Sorry, old thing," he said, caressing the convertible's
top. "Its not your fault; it's the fault of your mistress."
The key slipped easily into the lock then. "Thanks, old
girl," he said.
The box was bigger than he had guessed. Not only bigger, but
it was bloody heavy, as well. With the box in his arms, he found
himself unable to close the boot.
"Bloody hell!" he declared as he set the box on the
wet pavement. In one decisive motion, he slammed the boot closed
and grabbed the box off the ground. The passports in his coat
pocket dug into his chest. Would this insane night ever end?
* * *
Laura was startled out of her reverie by an insistent banging
at the bottom of Steele's door. She hurried to the door.
Steele's voice carried through. "Miss Holt, if you could
see fit to open the bloody door before everyone in the building
comes running."
She smiled as she saw him. The front of his raincoat was wet
and he was puffing for breath. He carefully set the oversized
box on the coffee table and dropped his coat over the back of
the sofa. She picked up the coat, intending to hang it properly
so that it might dry, and several items fell to the floor. She
dropped the coat and stooped to retrieve the items from the floor.
Her blood ran cold as five passports fanned out in her hand:
Douglas Quintain, England, Michael O'Leary, Ireland; Paul Fabrini,
Italy; John Morrell, France; Richard Blaine, Australia. Laura
couldn't believe it. She had bared her soul and he was ready
to run.
"Laura, I can explain..." Steele started, but Laura
cut him off.
"Captain Chameleon getting ready to leave again? The reality
gets rough and you hit the road."
The bitterness of her words shocked Steele. The rage and humiliation
rose like gorge. "Laura, don't," he pleaded quietly.
"That's what I love about you, Mister Steele. You are always
here when I need you. When things get close to you," she
said striking him on the sternum with her index finger, "you
find some better place to be--in some made-up fictional world."
"Laura, don't." His voice was now cold metal.
Laura was taken aback. This was not the jousting that she had
grown familiar with. Had she finally pushed him too far.
"Let me tell you about a fantasy world, Laura."
"When I was five years old, my foster father came at me
with a belt. He was just going to punish the little tyke who
scuffed his shoes. He shoved me into the closet he called my
bedroom and the last thing I remember is my foster mother screaming
at him not to hurt me too badly, as they would lose their money
for me.
"When I awoke, he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, I couldn't
see at all. I had frozen pieces of meat on both my eyes. A neighbor
came and took me to hospital. I had three broken ribs, a broken
arm and a broken nose. My foster father was down at the pub,
proud of the lesson he taught an ungrateful punk kid that was
not his own.
"Hell, Laura, I am not ashamed that I retreated into films.
It was much better than my world of foster homes. Humphrey Bogart
and Cary Grant taught me about the world, not my foster parents.
You keep asking who I am. Well, bloody hell, woman-- find out
who I am."
He turned from Laura, whose face had gone white with red dots
on the cheeks, and stared into the dying embers of the fire.
Funny; he hadn't noticed the fire going out. Maybe there were
other things he hadn't noticed either.
The End?
- BACK