Whirlwind 01 - Finish Line - Pt. 04

Her mother had been nearly apoplectic. A married woman should settle down and be with her husband, and give her mother grandchildren, not fly off to a thirty-stop tour of the Far East. She had pleaded that she couldn't get out of her contract, but that it would be up shortly - knowing full well the Madri-Gals management would exercise the options and keep her at least three more years. So Sean had gone back to two letters and a phone call a week, and, except for a ring on her finger, her life hadn't changed, and she had liked it that way. Except for staying in Sean's apartment on the short and infrequent stops home, life had gone on, and she had become very adept at dodging questions of children, contracts and settling down. She had managed to dodge nearly all Sean's advances; and reduced their relationship, such as it was, to brief, efficient kisses. Since Sean was being groomed to take over the family business from an aging father, she could hardly be blamed for not wanting to distract him, now could she?

Then Sean had flown out to Australia to surprise her on tour for their first anniversary, and she hadn't even remembered. He had gotten the honeymoon suite and made reservations, and had had everything ready to sweep her off her feet... but she had refused to be swept. She had been committed to a veritable storm of performances, appearances, interviews, and photo opportunities, and he had gotten an endless stream of excuses and explanations called breathless over her shoulder as she and the other singers had run from engagement to engagement. At one point she had even fallen asleep in the back of the tour bus while Sean had been in their room with slowly warming champagne. When she had finally taken a breath and gotten to the room just two hours before the Madri-Gals were to board a plane for Japan, she had found him gone.

The letters and phone calls had stopped, and she knew that he had been hurt, but the giddy whirlwind of the tour went on without heed, providing the applause she craved, and she told herself that she would make it up to him on break, which was only in another few weeks.

No one had met her at the airport.

Sean had been busy at work, and worked late that day. When he had finally opened the apartment door, he had been distant and brooding and said all of the right things in the mechanical, unfocused way of all bad actors. She had tried to tell him that the next tour didn't leave for two months, and that it was a whole month before rehearsals would begin, and they could spend some time together. She had resorted to lovemaking, painful as it was, to try to reach him, but she could tell that his body was just going through the motions. He had slept on his side of the bed, was gone to work before she got up and was always back late, and seemed almost reluctant to open the apartment door. Her family never seemed to be in when she went to call. Finally she had ambushed her younger sister outside the school where she taught and nearly forced the story from between her lips. Connie hadn't even looked at her as she talked.

The two families, formerly close as blood kin, were now estranged. Her oldest brother, Tom, who was being groomed to take over the business from their father, and Sean, were hardly on speaking terms. Every decision was a battle, every plan a debate to the death, every expense a bone of contention. She had gone to see her mother, practically forcing the door open. Her mother had not understood and couldn't get past the thought that any wife would leave her husband waiting alone in a hotel room on their anniversary after he had flown halfway around the world. She had said a lot of hurtful things, true but hurtful, about the marriage being her mother's idea and her life being her own to live. She had moved out of the apartment that day. There was no divorce, she just needed breathing room and hope that the tensions could calm down to the point where everything could make sense. Besides, there was the next tour to get ready for, and she could stay at Marie's flat, no questions asked, and avoid the life others wanted her to lead.

Six months later, in a routine physical between tours, she had been informed that she was HIV positive.

Bewildered and enraged she had taken a leave of absence and flown home to confront Sean. He had been horrified. He was, at his core, too honest, and even through her anger she had seen the truth in his eyes. He hadn't known he was infected. When she had threatened him with letter opener from his own desk, he had admitted that when he was flying back from Australia, frustrated, and lonely, and angry, he had gotten drunk, and woken to find himself in bed next to a pretty, sympathetic woman he had run into during a layover. He didn't even remember her name. He had been horrified and remorseful and had fled the room, taken a different flight and gone straight to church when he landed, babbled through a barely coherent confession, and even then loathed himself. She had cursed him out; cursing him with words she had only ever heard when her father got roaring drunk and for which her mother wouldn't let him in the house the next day. And he had cursed back, and he had shouted that from what little he could remember, getting laid by a stranger was an awful lot better than sleeping with her. She shoved his chair at him and run from the room, blinded by tears. If she closed her eyes now, she could still remember his words and the cold rip in her heart

Two days later, her sister had managed to find her in a hotel room at the airport, and, with an odd, detached expression, not meeting her eyes, had informed her that Sean was dead, having killed himself with his father's pistol. Both her father and his had had heart attacks, but were in separate hospitals to keep the families safely apart. The coroner's office wanted to interview her, and the ancient priest at the parish had refused Sean a church funeral and Christian burial, having told Sean's mother that his soul was in hell and there was nothing to be done about it.

The press had a field day with the news for a week, and then an attempted terrorist attack, a major political scandal, and a rock super-star high on drugs ramming a school bus had saved her further mortification. Constance, her agent, and Deborah, her lawyer, had been there for her, and the rest of the Madri-Gals had believed in her enough not to drop her like a poisonous insect. Constance had advised her to avoid the services for Sean, for his family was likely to do her violence if they ever found her. To his mother's extreme grief, he had to be interred in a non-denominational cemetery far outside the city.

And the families had somehow found out about the HIV infection, only the story seemed to be that SHE had infected SEAN, and he hadn't been able to live with it. Only Constance had believed her, or at least pretended to believe her. And how convincing could she sound? She was the glamorous, world-travelling celebrity who barely had time for her husband as she appeared on television, the web, and the press at any number of parties, receptions, concerts and events far removed from family eleven months of the year, while her husband was a quiet, dutiful, hard-working man who had only ever been out of the country once and, except for that trip, had lived his life under the family microscope. She had managed to leave and rejoin the rest of the troupe on tour, but had felt like the hapless fool fleeing the burning village with the castle crumbling into ruins in her wake.

The family business had come apart, her family had disowned her, Sean's family would be happy to kill her if they found her alone, and the only one who kept in touch, albeit infrequently and surreptitiously, was her younger sister.

It had taken six months of highly secretive services from a travelling therapist for her to come to terms with the tragedy. She had wanted to blame her mother; blame her for obsessively wanting grandchildren; for practically dragging her into the church and brow-beating the poor priest into marrying them without all the preparations they should have gone through; for insisting that the only gynecologist she see was the creepy, decrepit old man her mother had been seeing for 40 years, for cutting off her every attempt to talk about, ask about or discuss sex;

But she had only started to heal when she admitted her own fault. Honoring her mother, as the commandment said, did not mean acquiescing to having her life run for her. She had been the one who had not discouraged Sean. She had been the one who said, "I do." She had been able, at any time, to get her own doctor, her own gynecologist. She had let the obsessive sexual taboo passed down to her keep her from finding out that painful intercourse was easily treated. When she accepted all that and permitted herself the release of tears, she had begun to heal. Marie had advised her to set up a fan site, like she had, to distract her and make her feel better. When they had gone on-line to register www.arianacollins.com, they had been surprised to find it not only taken, but a thriving, sophisticated fan site. That was when she had made Nathan's acquaintance.

And now he had proposed to her, and her heart despised her refusal, and all she found that she really wanted was to be back on the Race and have it never end. She fell asleep clutching the crumpled fragments of the photo in her hand.

Sleep was deep but too brief, such that morning was painful; especially with Marie hammering at her door at an ungodly early hour and going on about a Good Morning America broadcast crew...

She had bolted out of bed and made herself marginally presentable and only willing to enter the elevator because she was certain a professional makeup technician from the Madri-Gals or GMA was waiting for her, no doubt impatiently.

The GMA team had taken over a second floor meeting room with floor to ceiling windows looking out over a small park. People were bustling about, and the moment she walked through the door, she was hustled to a makeup chair. Suddenly she had nothing to distract her from the thought that she was going to have to face Nathan again, and how she was going to handle that; and, how he was going to handle it? Would the host ask about the kiss? What should she say? What would Nathan say? He had been obviously disappointed last night, but not angry. Had her rejection weighed on his mind last night? What if Garrett leaked the story of the slap? They hadn't seen it; they had still been limping across the grass when it happened, but they no doubt got an earful about it from the other teams. If her body had been whirling as fast as her thoughts, the chair would have spun so fast it would have hummed.

Her ears were also straining to hear when Nathan showed up. She was bracing herself; certain their first words would set the tone of the entire interview. She rehearsed greeting lines in the solitude of her mind until she couldn't take it anymore. When the host walk by, she finally blurted out, "Where is Nathan?"

The woman gave her a dazzlingly polished professional smile, and said, "Don't worry, we'll be patching into the New York studio. I just got word he's done with makeup there."

There was a ringing in her ears and her vision tunneled down in disorientation. "New York City?"

"We thought you would both be here this morning, but the word late last night was that plans had changed. Don't worry, we're used to chasing celebrities." The light-hearted chuckle didn't touch her eyes, some part of Ariana noted; she was a put-on professional but not an actress. "Oh, and I saw the performance last night, it was quite spectacular. Daniel delivered us some clips last night."

Ariana's "Thank you," was as gracious as it was mechanical. She tried to piece together thoughts from the churn. She had told him she didn't want to see him again. He was Nathan. He had flown all the way to New York City last night, just so the interview could still be done and she wouldn't be embarrassed on television.

The activity became even more frenzied as an assistant began counting down the minutes, and she found herself in a chair facing the host, who underwent an interesting transformation at the cry, "We are live!"

"Good morning to all our viewers. I am here this morning in Knoxville with Ariana Collins, the celebrity half of what has seized the popular imagination as Team Number One. Last night's broadcast of the Fantastic Race finish had nearly 425 million viewers. Everyone wanted to know if the team could indeed manage twelve out of twelve first place finishes. And they did." There was applause as the crew tried to sound like a much larger audience. "And in our New York studios we have patched in the other half of Team Number One, Nathan Moore. Good morning, Nathan."

"Good morning," Nathan's baritone rang in her earphone.

"Hello, Nathan," she heard her own voice say.

"Hello, Ariana," came the reply, not cold and distant, but warm and endearing.

"So the two of you set a never to be exceeded record of twelve of twelve first place finishes; earning you the title of Team Number One. Ariana, you, of course, are a singer in the internationally known Madri-gals, and you, Nathan, are the administrator of Ariana's on-line fan forum and the president of her biggest fan site."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Nathan, how did you feel when Ariana asked you to be her teammate?"

"I said, 'If you are serious, I am in.'"

"But how did you FEEL?"

"Stunned, elated, humbled, disbelieving." He chuckled, "All of the above."

"Ariana, why did you pick Nathan to be your partner?"

"Well, Nathan is a jack o' all trades, and smart and strong and I know he would do his best, no matter what."

"Nathan, what is Ariana really like?"

Ariana stiffened, and tried to laugh good-naturedly.

"For some reason everyone seems to ask me that question. I'll just say that if the UN every sponsors a nicest person on the planet contest, and Ariana wasn't at least first runner up, I'll know the voting was rigged."

"Ariana, what is Nathan really like?"

"Well I have the same experience. It seems that since the Race started broadcastin, every new person I meet, the first question is, 'So what is Nathan REALLY like?'"

"And what is he like?"

Her conscious seized control of her vocal cords and said, "He is a true and gentle knight. I couldna hae asked fer a better teammate."

"So now I would like to show a clip from last night's broadcast of the spectacular photo finish."

Her heart hammered. She had been on stage. She hadn't seen the broadcast. She had gone straight to her room and not seen the DVR with the troupe. What did they show?

She watched the monitor as she and Nathan raced into the park, jumped down behind the thorn hedge, pushed through the hedge, streaked across the grass, splashed through the fountain, sprinted to the stairs, and bounded up the steps, side-by-side. She became more and more detached as Tom proclaimed their victory, and Nathan hoisted her up in the air, and then kissed her. She could feel her lips trying to twist into a pucker, and fought it, trying to portray an air of embarrassed modesty. The clip cut off - no slap. She did not sigh in relief, just nodding to the renewed applause, cheers and whistles of the crew.

"The kiss," the host continued, archly. "Last night, web commentators were calling it the most passionate real kiss ever seen on television."

Ariana didn't have to play any role to blush.

"Well, we had been through a lot together," Nathan's voice ventured, as if offering himself up as a decoy for the host.

A tiny desperate voice in the far back corner of her heart was shouting to tell Nathan to fly back right now- all she would have to do was just say one word; to just say 'Yes.' Nathan would know. And he would come. She was called back to the here and now by the host. "I beg your pardon?"

"You were together last night at the theater down the street during the broadcast."

"I invited Nathan to come. He was gracious enough to accept."

"And you sang a song for him."

A surge of adrenalin helped Ariana to laugh lightly and speak quickly to prevent Nathan from saying anything. "At the start, Nathan made me promise that I would sing him a song without music or back-up singers, just me voice. So I picked one of his favorites. And I did," she finished lamely.

"That was an experience the audience will never forget. We have a clip here..." the host said, shifting her attention to the monitor.

As the scene unfolded, she concentrated on maintaining a facade of indulgent modesty even as she writhed in agony inside, re-experiencing every nuance of every emotion which had cascaded through her on stage. She hadn't known Daniel was recording this performance. She knew he did that sometimes, but she hadn't even thought to ask. As the clip ended, she was given a reprieve from making any remarks by the host, who said, "Madri-Gals released that clip on iTunes last night, and I got handed a note this morning that in four hours, there had been nearly two million downloads."

Floundering for a suitable remark, she was verbally outflanked by the host, who added, "The finish wasn't the last scene broadcast last night."

Cold terror seized her. What if..

But the video was of Nathan's shouted sendoff at the airport. Before the host could even ask, Ariana pushed in with how she had been nearly late to return to the tour and that she had had to rush off without saying goodbye, so Nathan had raced to the airport behind her and said it himself. After a few more questions, which she couldn't for the life of her remember answering, the host thanked them and bid them good day.

"Goodbye, Nathan," she had said, mechanically.

"Goodbye, Ariana," he had responded with deep affection.

She got up and carefully bid the host farewell, getting her name wrong, but not knowing or caring, and headed as quickly as she could to the nearest elevator. She walked quickly by Marie and Cassie without even a nod; her entire attention focused on escape, or at least privacy, before her iron will slipped on the icy road of heartbreak.

Marie looked after her with deep sympathy. "An ta think she'll never get an Oscar fer tha performance."

"Wha performance would tha be?" Cassie asked, genuinely puzzled.

Marie stared at her, then walked away shaking her head.

"Wha performance?" Cassie called after her.