“Not fill tomorrow.” So she already remembered. He had been afraid that he would have to start from scratch after the shot they’d given her the night before. It was now six in the morning.

“You mean today or tomorrow?”

“I mean tomorrow.”

“Why can’t I see him till then?”

“County only has two visiting days. Wednesday and Sunday. Tomorrow is Wednesday. Them’s the rules.”

“Bastards.” She slammed the bathroom door and he lit another cigarette. He was into his fourth pack since the night had begun. It had been one hell of a night. And she still hadn’t seen the crap in the papers. Edward had called four times that night. He’d seen the news in New York. He was half out of his mind.

When she came back, she sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette from his pack. She looked tired, haggard, and pale. The tan seemed to have instantly faded, and dark rims framed her eyes all the way around, like purple eye shadow gone wild.

“Lady, you don’t look so hot. I think you ought to stay in bed.” She didn’t answer, but only sat there, smoking and swinging her foot, her head turned away from him.

“Kezia?”

“Yeah?” She was crying again when she turned to face him, and she felt like a very small child melting into his arms. “Oh God, Alejandro. Why? How can they do this to us? To him?”

“Because sometimes it happens that way. Call it fate, if you want.”

“I’d call it fucked.” He smiled tiredly and then sighed. “Babe …” She had to know, but he hated to tell her. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know if you remember, but the newspaper boys took a bunch of pictures as they led Luke away.” He held his breath and watched the look on her face. He could see that she didn’t remember.

“Those shits, why couldn’t they leave him his last shred of dignity? Miserable, rotten …”

Alejandro shook his head. “Kezia … they took pictures of you.” The words dropped like a bomb.

“Of me?”

He nodded.

“Jesus.”

“They just thought you were his old lady, and I had Luke’s attorney call them and ask them not to run the pictures or your name. But by then, they knew who you were. Somebody spotted the pictures when they were developing them. That’s a lot of bad luck.”

“They ran the pictures?” She sat very still.

“Out here, you’re page one. Page four in New York. Edward called a few times last night.” Kezia threw back her head and started to laugh. It was a nervous, hysterical laugh, and not the reaction he had expected.

“Man, we really bought it this time, didn’t we? Edward must be dying, poor thing.” But she didn’t sound very sympathetic. She sounded distracted.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Alejandro almost felt sorry for the man. He had sounded so stricken. So betrayed.

“Well, you plays, you pays, as they say. How bad are the pictures?”

About as bad as you could get. She had been hysterical when the photographers had spotted them. Alejandro pulled the evening edition of the Examiner from under the bed and held it out to her. On the front page was a photograph of Kezia collapsing in Alejandro’s arms. She cringed as she saw it, and glanced at the text. “Socialite heiress Kezia Saint Martin, secret girlfriend of ex-con Lucas Johns, collapses outside courtroom after …” It was worse than they had feared.

“I think Edward is mainly concerned with what kind of shape you’re in now.”

“My ass, he is. He’s having a heart attack over the story. You don’t know Edward.” She sounded almost like a child afraid of her father. It seemed odd to Alejandro.

“Did he know about Luke?”

“Not like this he didn’t. Actually, he knew I had interviewed him, and he also knew there’s been someone important in my life for the last few months. Well, sooner or later, I guess it had to come out. We were lucky till now. It’s a bitch that it has to be like this though. Have the papers called since?”

“A few times. I told them there was no story, and you were flying back to New York today. I thought that might get them off your back, and they’d keep busy watching the airport.”

“And the lobby.”

He hadn’t thought about that. What an insane way to live.

“We’ll have to call the manager and arrange to get out of here. I want to move to the Ritz. They won’t find us there.”

“No, but you can count on some coverage tomorrow if you want to see Luke at the jail.”

She stood up and faced him, an icy look in her eyes. “Not ‘if,’ Alejandro, ‘when.’ And if they want to be pigs about it, fuck them.”

* * *

The day slipped by in a haze of silence and cigarette smoke. Their move to the Ritz passed uneventfully. A fifty dollar “gift” to the manager encouraged him to show them out through a back door, and keep his mouth shut about it later. Apparently, he had. There were no calls for them at the Ritz.

Kezia sat lost in her own thoughts, rarely speaking. She was thinking of Luke, and how he had looked when they led him away … and before that, how he had looked in the law library. He had been a free man then, for those last precious moments.

She called Edward from the Ritz and struggled through a brief, anguished conversation with him. They both cried. Edward kept repeating, “How could you do this?” He left the words “to me” unspoken, but they were there, nevertheless. He wanted her to fly home or let him fly out. He exploded when she refused.

“Edward, please, for God’s sake, don’t do this to me. Don’t pressure me now!” She shouted through her tears and wondered briefly why they kept throwing guilt at each other. Who cared “who was doing what to whom.” It had been done unto Kezia, and Luke, but not by Edward. And Kezia had done nothing to Edward, not intentionally. They were all caught in the teeth of a maniacal machine, and no one could help it, or stop it.

“You have to come home, Kezia! Think of what they’ll do to you out there.”

“They’ve already done it, and if it’s in the papers in New York it won’t make any difference where I am. I could fly to Tangiers for chrissake, and they’d still want a piece of the action.”

“It’s really unbelievable. I still don’t understand … and Kezia … good God, girl, you must have known this would happen to him. That story you told me about his being sick … this was what you meant, wasn’t it?” She nodded silently at the receiver and his voice came back sharper. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded so small, so broken and hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?” There was a long moment of silence when they both knew the truth.

“I still don’t understand how you could involve yourself.

You said in your own article about him that there was a possibility of this. How …”

“Oh shut up, damn you, Edward, I did. That’s all, I did. And stop clucking like a bloody mother hen about it. I did, and I got hurt, we both got hurt, and believe me, he’s hurting one hell of a lot more sitting in jail right now.” There was deadly silence and Edward’s voice came back with a measured venom that was totally foreign to him … except for once before.

“Mr. Johns is used to jail, Kezia.” She wanted to hang up on Edward then, but she didn’t quite dare. Severing the connection would sever something more, something deeper, and she still needed that tie, maybe only a little bit, but she needed it. Edward was all she had in a way, except Luke.

“Do you have anything else to say?” Her voice was almost as vicious as his had been a moment before. She was willing to kick at him, but not dismiss him entirely.

“Yes. Come home. Immediately.”

“I won’t. Anything else?”

“I don’t know what it will take to bring you to your senses, Kezia, but I suggest you make an effort to become rational as quickly as possible. You may regret this for a lifetime.”

“I will, but not for the reasons you think, Edward.”

“You have no idea how something like this can jeopardize …” His voice trailed off unhappily. For a moment he hadn’t been speaking to Kezia, but to the ghost of her mother, and they both knew it. Now Kezia was certain. Now she knew why he had told her about her mother and the tutor. Now she knew it all.

“Jeopardize what? My ‘position’? My ‘consequence,’ as Aunt Hil would say? Jeopardize my chances of finding a husband? You think I give a damn about all that now? I care about Luke, Edward. I care about Lucas Johns. I love him!” She was shouting again.

Three thousand miles away, silent tears were sliding down Edward’s face. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

It was the voice of her attorney, her trustee, her guardian. Not her friend. Something had finally snapped. The gap between them was broadening to a frightening degree, for both of them.

“I will.” They exchanged no goodbye and Edward severed the connection. Kezia sat for a long moment holding the dead phone in her hands, while Alejandro watched her.

Tears of farewell slid down her cheeks. That had been two in two days. In one way or another, she had lost the only two men she had ever loved, since her father. Three lost men in a lifetime. She knew that somehow she had just lost Edward. She had betrayed him. What he had sought most to prevent had finally come.

Edward, sitting in his office, knew it too. He walked solemnly to the door, locked it carefully, walked back to his desk, and flicked the switch on his intercom, informing his secretary in the driest of tones that he did not want to be disturbed until further notice. Then, having carefully put aside the mail on his desk, he lay his head down on his arms and broke into heart-rending sobs. He had lost her … lost them both … and to such unworthy men. As he lay there he wondered why the only two women he had ever loved had such a brutal flaw in their characters … the tutor … and now this … this … jailbird … this nobody! He found himself shouting the word, and then, surprised at himself, he stopped crying, lifted his head, sat back in his chair, and stared at his view. There were times when he simply did not understand. No one played by the rules anymore. Not even Kezia, and he had taught her himself. He shook his head slowly, blew his nose twice, and went back to his desk to look over the mail.