The Glory Game Part 38

After registering at the desk, they were escorted to the bedroom suite. When Luz glanced into the second bedroom, she noticed Rob's polo shirt and breeches hanging in the closet. "I guess Rob's been here and gone." Raul stood at the window overlooking the city and the Rio de la Plata, giving no indication he'd heard her. Luz hesitated, then went into the bathroom to freshen up. When she came out a few minutes later, Raul was still standing at the window, his position unchanged.

Hesitating, she studied him, then walked over to the window and smoothed the frown from her face with a smile. "What are you thinking about?" She tried to inject a lightness into her voice.

For a moment, he stared at her as though she were a stranger to him. Luz was suddenly and unexplicably uneasy. "Come." Moving, he curved an arm around her shoulders and turned her from the window. "There is something I want you to see." He propelled her toward the door.

"Where are we going?" she asked, but he didn't answer her.

The estancia car was still parked in front of the entrance when they emerged from the hotel. Raul guided her to it. As soon as she was settled in the pa.s.senger seat, he slammed the door and walked around to the driver's side. Luz watched him slide behind the wheel and start the motor. The muscles stood out along his jaw, betraying the tension that charged the air. He seemed almost angry, which thoroughly confused her.

While Raul battled through the downtown traffic, Luz sat silently, trying to figure out what was wrong, and half worried it had something to do with Rob. She didn't understand why Raul was keeping their destination a secret. If they were going to the polo grounds, why didn't he say so? It didn't make sense.

Caught up in her thoughts, she paid little attention to the areas they traveled through until Raul slowed the car and turned onto a narrow street. Luz stiffened when it finally registered where they were. On both sides of the car, squalid huts of tin, wood, and cardboard littered the blocks. Las villas miseria. Why would Raul bring her here? She stared out the window at the clutter of shabby dwellings, a television antenna poking incongruously from the tin roof of one of them. He turned onto a side street, narrower than the last. It took them deeper into the shanty district, and her apprehensions increased.

"Raul, where are we going?"

At last her voice made an impression on him, and he glanced at her, his eyes appearing cold with challenge. "I want to show you the place where I once lived." He faced the front again, his gaze sweeping the miserable shacks all crowded together. Her mind went blank at his stunning announcement. She was completely at a loss for words, unsure whether she was shocked, dismayed, or repelled by this revelation of his past. "Would you like to see it?"

Her mouth worked for an instant before anything came out. "Yes. I would."

She stared out the window at the makeshift hovels, oblivious to the turns he made that failed to change the scenery. She remembered what he'd told them when they had driven past this area on the way to the estancia-about the shortage of housing and the constant immigration of people from rural areas into the city, more than could be accommodated.

Raul stopped the car on one of the back streets, switched off the motor, and stepped out. Luz waited an instant, then realized he wasn't going to come around and open her door. He was standing at the collection of shacks across the road. She hesitated, then climbed out of the car by herself. Conscious of the eyes staring from behind rickety fences and crude doorways, Luz walked cautiously forward. In her white linen suit and white open-toed heels, she felt decidedly out of place. There was little sound except for the distant laughter of playing children, as if their presence had hushed everyone in the immediate vicinity. She tucked her purse more securely under her arm and continued to Raul's side.

She saw the cold, remote look on his face. Although he appeared to take no notice of her, he waited until she was beside him, then started across the street. Luz followed a step behind and stopped when he did.

"It was there, where that brush grows." He indicated a spot half enclosed by a rickety fence. Luz stared at it, unable to visualize what he saw in his mind. "I made a shelter out of cardboard boxes, big enough for me to sleep in. Sometimes I would build a little fire outside, but only a little one. I did not want my house to burn. It was not always easy to get more cardboard boxes. And a stableboy does not make much money. I was always hungry." Raul spoke as if she weren't there. "Many times, I stole from the vegetable gardens of the others who lived here. Sometimes I would fill my pockets with the grain from the stables and make a mush that I heated in a can over my little fire."

Silently she studied him, unable to find anything to say. She wanted to touch him, to link her arm with his, but she couldn't do that either. They stood side by side, but separately.

"I wanted to be a horse-like one of the fast, powerful animals I cared for-only I would let no man ride me. I would run free with the wind." For a long minute, he simply stared at the patch of ground by the scraggly bush, green leaves sprouting where its twiglike branches weren't broken. "I had a small sack in which I put my few belongings. I took it with me wherever I went. I was like one of your bag ladies in New York, no?"

"Yes," she murmured.

The sound of her voice seemed to break the spell of the past that had ensnared him. His head lifted as he turned to look at her, again his action giving the impression he had forgotten she was there. "You have seen enough?" he demanded.

"Yes."

They walked back to the car, and Raul escorted her to the pa.s.senger side. Luz was unwilling to break the long silence during the drive back to the hotel. A thousand questions tangled in her mind. There were so many holes in her knowledge of him, missing pieces that kept the picture incomplete. And there was nothing she could say about what she'd seen, no comment she could make that wouldn't sound inanely trite.

When they reached the hotel, Raul left the car for the attendant to park and silently accompanied Luz to their room. Once inside the suite, she walked to a side table and laid her purse on it, then turned to face Raul. He lit a thin black cheroot and blew out the smoke he'd inhaled, looking at her through its trailing cloud.

"I see the questions in your eyes. You want to know it all, no?" he observed tersely.

Briefly she dropped her gaze, then brought it back to him. "I wish I could say-only if you want to tell me. But, yes, I do want to know. I'd be lying if I said I don't."

He took another drag on the narrow cigar as if stalling for a moment while he debated whether to tell her, then he turned and walked away from her to the window, giving her only a side view of him. "Before I came to Buenos Aires, I lived in the Pampa." Again he spoke in the singular, as he had done at the villas miseria. In previous conversations, he had indicated he had come with his mother, which meant it should be plural-we came, we lived. Luz was confused by this apparent contradiction. "You have not seen the western pampas."

"No," she admitted.

"The land is much drier, more desolate than where the estancia is located. Always there was dust." He stared out the window, idly taking a puff on the black cigar. "My father was a farmer. He had a small piece of land. My mother told me our life was good then. There was always plenty of food on our table. Then one day he left when I was three years old. I never knew why. I only remember mia madre crying ... crying all the time. We had to move off the farm. It was not ours anymore. I think my father sold it and took the money with him." His accent became more p.r.o.nounced as his voice dropped to a husky level. "My mother went to work at a big estancia not far from where our farm had been, and we were allowed to live in a worker's hut on the land. It was made of adobe, one big room with a metal roof, much like the one by the ombu tree where we took shelter from the rain."

"I remember." And she also remembered how he had compared it to the home he had known.

"I earned my first money when I was six years old carrying water for the horses on the estancia. The year I was eight, my mother became sick. All the money we had saved to go to Buenos Aires went to the doctor. That is when I quit school and went to work as a stableboy at the estancia. My mother did not get well. The following year, the priest from the village came to see me. He told me my mother was dying. I think I already knew that she was never going to get better." He rolled the cigar between his thumb and fingers and studied the ravel of smoke. "That night I took the few pesos we had, some food and clothes, and left."

"You left your mother?" Luz was stunned "S." Raul gave her an emotionless look. "She was dying. There was nothing I could do for her. Soon she would be gone. If I did not go to Buenos Aires then, when would I go? I suppose this is what I thought She was dying and there was no more reason for me to stay."

"So you left her, the way your father did," she accused, then a second thought occurred to her. "Or did you leave her before she could leave you?"

"I no longer know what was in my head then. It has been too long. I heard later that she died shortly after I ran away. The rest of my story you know. It is well you know. A man cannot change what he is."

"That's what Hector said about you," she recalled. "Yet you have changed, Raul. Look at where you've been and where you are." But had he changed? Was he still the little boy wanting to be a horse? He had learned to ride as one with a horse-like the legendary gaucho, half man and half horse-and his life-style was one of a roamer, running free, always leaving something or someone behind. "The women you loved, Raul, I wonder if you left them because of polo or because you wanted to avoid finding out if they would leave you. Leaving is your specialty, isn't it? You always leave before somebody gets too close to you."

"You have forgotten Hector," Raul said, dismissing her amateur a.n.a.lysis. "He has been my friend for years. I depend on him."

For an instant, Luz believed she was wrong, then she remembered, "But Hector is safe, Raul. He's a cripple. How can he leave you?"

"You have seen too many psychiatrists. Perhaps I am only realistic. My life is polo. Women do not want a husband who is gone all the time, not the ones I have known. So, yes, I leave before I care too much or they do." He crushed the cigar in the ashtray.

"What about me, Raul?" Unconsciously she moved toward him. "When are you going to leave me?"

Straightening, Raul looked at her for a long, motionless moment, then lifted his hands to frame her face in them. There was so much gentleness in his touch that Luz almost wanted to cry. His gaze made a minute search of every detail of her features, from the curl of her lashes to the pores of her skin.

"When I look at your face, I see something. It has haunted me from the beginning," he murmured. "But now I know what it is. I look at you and see the need to be loved. It pulls me because I have this same need, too. I have no wish to leave you, querida."

He lowered his mouth onto hers, and the gentleness gave way to the need they shared. It was a fevered heat that swept them and sent them straining against the physical limits of the flesh. In mating, they glimpsed the glory a man and woman could know together, but never hold.

Later, lying tangled in the sheets in blissful exhaustion, Luz glanced at the scattered piles of hastily discarded clothes, then turned on her side to face Raul and walked her fingers over his ribs. He caught them, stopping their ticklish journey, and lifted them to his mouth, kissing them, then brought them back to lie on his chest, enclosed in his hand.

Someone knocked at the outer door to their suite. "It must be the maid coming to turn down the bedsheets." She started to throw back the covers and get up, but Raul wouldn't let go of her hand.

"When we are in them? That will be interesting to see." He smiled lazily and pulled her on top of him while she laughed in protest. Another knock came, more strident than the last.

"Let me up, Raul," she insisted in a low murmur, conscious of the hand on her back pressing her down and flattening her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his chest. "She has a key. She could walk in any moment."

"It would be most compromising, no?" His hand slid under the covers to cup a bottom cheek.

"Yes." Both heard the rattle of a key in the lock. "Raul, will you let me get some clothes on?" There was a trace of franticness in her laughing voice. Raul didn't attempt to hold her as she rolled away from him and scampered from beneath the covers.

None of her bedclothes were lying out. The only garment Luz could find that would sufficiently cover her was Raul's shirt. Hurriedly, she pulled it on, shaking back the long sleeves to free her hands to fasten the b.u.t.tons. The outer door opened, and she heard footsteps in the small sitting room that divided the two bedrooms. The connecting door stood open. She glanced at Raul as he stepped into his pants and pulled them up around his hips.

"That is my shirt," he accused lightly. "What am I to wear?"

"I'd rather the maid ogled your chest than mine," Luz retorted, then heard the footsteps approaching the bedroom. "Uno momento!" she called, quickly rolling back the sleeves to expose her hands. She darted another glance at Raul as he zipped up his fly, then turned to face the door.

Shock froze her expression when she saw Rob standing at the room's entrance. The livid redness in his neck crept into his face as his accusing stare went from her to Raul to the tousled bedcovers, then the full brunt of it came back to Luz.

"I didn't expect you back this afternoon," she murmured.

"That's rather obvious." His lips curled over the words while a violent trembling of rage and hurt quivered through him. "Did you enjoy your roll in the sack, Mother dear?"

His sarcasm hurt as much as the anguish she felt over his look of wounded outrage. Luz suspected it was one thing to know about her affair with Raul, and another entirely to be confronted by the evidence of it.

"Rob, please try-"

"Try what, Luz?" he hurled bitterly. "Try to understand that my mother is a tramp who shacks up in hotel rooms with some polo-playing gigolo?! You're no different from some s.l.u.t off the street!"

"That is enough!" Raul came around the bed, anger flashing in his eyes as he advanced toward Rob. Luz moved quickly to step between them and to check Raul's forward movement with her hands.

"No, Raul." She didn't want him involved in any confrontation with her son. She didn't want to risk the consequences. "Let me handle this." Raul hesitated, his muscles flexed and taut beneath her hands.

She turned to look back at Rob, but he was striding through the door. She ran after him, refusing to let him walk out like this. "Rob, wait." She caught up with him in the sitting room and tried to grab his arm before he reached the hall door, but he jerked it away, then swung around to face her.

"You're disgusting, do you know that?" Luz recoiled from the contempt and loathing she saw in his face, stunned that it was coming from her own son. "Nothing means anything to you, but what you want. You don't give a d.a.m.n how I feel."

"That isn't true. I care very much," she insisted.

"You have a h.e.l.luva way of showing it. Do you have any idea what it's like to have your own mother s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your coach, the man who's going to captain your polo team? My G.o.d, you're older than he is. Don't you see how cheap and sordid that is?"

"No, I don't!" Luz refused to listen to any more of his insults. "You don't own me, Rob. I may be your mother, but I don't have to live my life to suit you."

"Then to h.e.l.l with you!" he raged and stormed out of the hotel room before she could stop him, the door slamming in her face.

Shaken by the exchange, she covered her mouth, wondering what she'd done, her anger fading under an onslaught of fear that she might have driven Rob farther away from her-the very last thing she'd wanted to happen. She doubled her hand into a fist and pressed it tightly to her mouth.

A pair of hands touched her shoulders, and she started in surprise, but it was Raul. Gently, he gathered her into his arms, and she let her head rest on the comforting solidness of his chest.

"Why did I argue with him?" she asked herself. "That isn't the way to reach him. Rob is too sensitive."

"He will get over his anger."

There was little solace in that. "I'm worried about him." Her clenched fingers lay on his muscled chest near her mouth, m.u.f.fling her voice. "He was so angry when he left. What do you think he'll do? He doesn't know this city. He can't even speak the language," Luz said, and pushed out of Raul's arms to start toward the bedroom. "I've got to find him."

Raul caught her wrist. "Where will you look?"

"I don't know. But he must have gone somewhere. I've got to look for him," she insisted. "You saw the state he was in. I can't let him go wandering through the streets of a strange city."

"And I am not going to let you wander the streets looking for him," Raul stated. "It is possible he has gone to the polo grounds."

"Yes." It was a logical place.

"You stay here in case he comes back and I will see if he is there."

Unable to argue with his sensible suggestion, Luz gave in reluctantly. "You will call me if you find him?"

"Yes," Raul promised.

But the waiting was h.e.l.l as the minutes dragged into hours. Raul called once to report that Rob hadn't been seen on the grounds and that he was going to check another polo club. Luz was half out of her mind with worry, wondering if he'd had an accident or gotten into a fight, visualizing him walking the streets alone or drinking away his hurt in some bar. A thousand times she wished she hadn't answered him so sharply, that she'd waited until he'd gotten rid of all that hurt and resentment built up inside him, then reasoned with him. Every time she heard the elevator stop on their floor and footsteps in the hall, she thought it might be Rob, but each time it was another hotel door that was opened.

Outside, twilight tinted the city's haze with its purpling pink shade. A sprinkle of lights dotted the concrete buildings, while below the glitter of streetlamps lined the broad avenues, all antic.i.p.ating the imminent darkness. Luz stood at the window, watching their brightness grow along with the increasing number of headlight beams in the string of traffic.

Her ears strained for some sound, but the crushing silence of the room was all she heard until a key rattled in the lock. Luz swung around to face the door, hope leaping yet half afraid it was Raul. When the door opened, Rob walked in, moving with a jaunty stride. An intense relief flooded through her as she broke from the window.

"Rob. Where have you been? I've been so worried about you. Are you all right?" Anxiously she inspected him for bruises or injuries of some kind.

"I'm fine, really," he a.s.sured her with a laughing smile. His whole demeanor had changed. The anger and bitterness were gone. Instead of returning in a sullen mood as Luz had expected, Rob seemed cheerful.

"You've been drinking, haven't you?"

"I've had one beer." But he must have noticed her skepticism. "What would you like me to do-recite Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers or stand on one leg and touch my finger to my nose?" His speech was unslurred and his coordination was obviously unimpaired.

"Where have you been all this time? What have you been doing?" Luz demanded in confusion.

"I caught a cab and went to see Tony. I had to autograph the cast on his arm. He's coming to the polo matches tomorrow, so you can see my signature on it for yourself," he offered as further proof, then moved past her to stroll into the middle of the room. "I did a lot of thinking after I left." He paused and shot her a bright glance. "It's amazing how clear it all is to me now. I can't understand why I didn't see it before. The same as you have no right to tell me what I should or shouldn't do or who I can see, I shouldn't tell you either. It's none of your business what I do in private, so I guess that what you do is none of mine."

His complete turnabout threw her. "Rob, do you mean that?"

"Hey, I was way out of line. I admit it. I had no right to blow up the way I did." He sounded so sincere it was impossible to doubt him, yet Luz was nagged by a vague feeling that something else had prompted this about-face. Mentally, she shrugged it away, telling herself it didn't matter what had caused his change in his att.i.tude.

"I'm glad you feel that way. I-" She was interrupted by the rattle of another key turning in the lock. A second later, Raul walked in, his expression grim. He checked his stride when he noticed Rob standing with her. "He came back a few minutes ago," Luz explained.

"Your mother has been worried about you," Raul stated, his tone faintly accusing.

"She told me."

Although she watched Rob closely, she noticed little difference in his expression with Raul present. His att.i.tude remained brightly confident. There wasn't a hint of resentment or dislike. If anything Rob acted as if he were an equal to the man who was his mentor as well as her lover.

"Rob went to see Tony," she explained to Raul, then hesitated. Coming to a decision, she moved to Raul's side and slipped a hand under his arm. "I think you should know, Rob, that when Raul comes to Florida next week, he'll be staying at our house." She had intended to inform him of the arrangements during their flight home, but it seemed best to have it in the open now.

Something flickered across Rob's face, then he looked at Raul. "I guess that means you'll be staying in Dad's old room."

"Actually, he's going to share my room," Luz stated.

"As I said, Luz"-Rob shrugged indifferently-"you have no right to tell me how to run my life and I have no right to tell you how to run yours." He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his windbreaker. "I think I'll go get cleaned up for dinner."

She watched him enter his room and shut the door. She turned to Raul, her hand tightening on his arm. He stared after Rob. "It's amazing, isn't it?" she declared, marveling at her son's rapid change in att.i.tude.

"Si, very amazing."

"I always knew he would ultimately accept it, but it's such a relief that he finally has." Luz wasn't sure what she would have done if she'd encountered opposition from both her children. As it was, she had yet to hear from Trisha since she'd written that letter. That was something she still had to face after she flew back to Florida. At least Rob was on her side now.

Part IV.