New Way to Fly

“Well, that’s Mary Gibson.” Beverly paused for dramatic effect, giving Amanda a pointed significant glance.

Amanda looked at the other woman in puzzled silence. “The name kind of rings a bell,” she said at last, “but I…”

“Bubba’s wife,” Beverly whispered. “Bubba Gibson.”

Amanda’s eyes widened. “The one who’s in jail? He killed somebody, didn’t he?”

“He killed some of his horses for the insurance. If it had just been people he killed,” Beverly added, “folks around here would probably be able to forgive him. But horses, that’s something else altogether. Far, far more serious.”

Amanda gazed at her friend, startled and appalled. “You’re kidding. Aren’t you, Bev?”

Beverly considered. “Maybe a little,” she conceded, “but not much.”

“And the girl in the leather skirt, where does she come into it?” Amanda asked.

Beverly eyed her beautiful dark-haired friend with scant patience. “Come on, Amanda,” she said, sighing. “You’ve been living in Austin for months, and visiting out here all the time, and it’s all anybody’s been talking about. How can you not know what’s going on?”

Amanda shrugged. “I don’t pay much attention to gossip,” she said. “You know that, Bev. I’m just not that interested in dishing the dirt.”

“Well, it’s dirty, all right. The girl in the miniskirt, she was Bubba’s mid-life folly long before the mess with the horses. That little affair went on for ages, right under Mary’s nose, and everybody knew it. They were just awful, the pair of them.”

Amanda’s blue eyes widened. She gazed surreptitiously at the gorgeous young woman with her pouting red lips and sumptuous figure, and then at the stiff middle-aged woman in the dowdy suit who stood near the archway.

“The poor woman, Bev. How can she stand it?”

“It can’t be easy,” Beverly agreed with a flash of the generous compassion that often surprised people who didn’t know her well. “And the worst part of it is that Mary’s such a darling. She truly is, Mandy. Everybody loves her. And she’s never said one word against Bubba, not once during this whole mess. If she has opinions, she keeps them to herself.”

She keeps her agony to herself, too, Amanda thought. And it’s probably going to kill her, the poor woman.

“Come with Jeff and me,” Beverly was urging in an obvious attempt to change the subject. “There’s lots of people I want you to meet. You can’t hide here in the shadows all evening, girl.”

“Hmm?” Amanda asked, giving her friend a distracted glance.

“I said, I want you to come with me and…”

“Oh, right. Sure, Bev, in a minute, okay? I just have to…to find a powder room, and then I’ll come right out. Where will you be?”

“On the patio. Just through that door over there,” Beverly said, pointing with a graceful scarlet-tipped finger. “Don’t get lost.”

“I won’t,” Amanda promised. “I’ll be out right away.”

She stood watching with an automatic smile as Beverly took Jeff’s hand, paused to give him a quick kiss and headed for the patio, dragging the handsome young man laughing behind her.

After they were gone, Amanda took a fresh drink from one of the serving girls, exchanged a few cheerful remarks with the youngster and then edged toward the woman by the archway, who was gripping her elbows in white-knuckled hands and staring at the swirling crowd with a blank unseeing stare.

“Hello,” Amanda said in her quiet musical voice.

“My name’s Amanda Walker.”

The older woman turned to look at her with a dismal expression. Then she smiled and her face was transformed. Mary Gibson had a luminous, childlike smile that lit her weathered features and shone warmly in her hazel eyes. Amanda swallowed hard and smiled back.

“I’m Mary Gibson,” the woman said, extending a slim brown hand. “And I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“I saw you on TV. I think you’re just beautiful.”

“Oh.” Amanda’s cheeks tinted a delicate pink when she thought how trivial her show about correct accessorizing must seem to Mary Gibson.

But Mary didn’t seem at all troubled by the superficial glamour of Amanda’s presence or position.

“That one outfit,” she said wistfully, “the one Beverly wore, you know, that was all white with a little trimming around the edges?”

Amanda nodded, gripping the stem of her glass and smiling absently as a couple brushed past her, shouting loudly to someone across the room.

“Well, I thought that was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Mary said shyly. “And when you showed how the silver earrings highlighted it and brought out the turquoise tones, I could see exactly what you meant.”

Amanda felt a quick rush of pleasure, and a surprising desire to hug the woman.

“You know, I’m so glad to hear you say that. I wasn’t convinced that the image would translate all that well onto the television screen,” she said.

“Watching those commercials of yours, it always makes me wish I was thirty years younger,” Mary went on in the same wistful tone. “It must feel so wonderful to wear clothes like that, and look pretty in them.”

“Why would you have to be younger?” Amanda asked. “You’d look beautiful in clothes like that right now, Mary.”

The other woman gave her a quick wary glance, as if fearful that she was being made fun of. But Amanda returned Mary Gibson’s gaze quietly, her lovely face calm, her eyes warm and sincere.

At last Mary shrugged awkwardly and looked away into the crowd. “That’s just plain silly,” she said in a flat miserable voice. “I couldn’t wear clothes like that. I wouldn’t know the first thing about buying them, and even if I did, I couldn’t afford them.”

“Buying clothes for people is my job, Mary,” Amanda said. “That’s what I do for a living. It’s what the television commercials are all about. And as for the prices, well, it just so happens…”

She paused and set her wineglass on the tray of a passing server, then folded her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers childishly. Amanda always hated telling lies, even tiny little white ones, and she was about to come up with a real whopper.

But she thought about Mary Gibson’s sad defeated look and the sudden childlike wonder of that glowing smile, and steeled herself to plunge on.

“It just so happens,” Amanda said, “that I’ve had a bit of bad luck this past month, Mary. I bought quite a lot of things on spec for a woman who…who got sick, and has to spend a few months in therapy, and she doesn’t feel like buying anything new just now. So I’m stuck with them. And the odd thing is, this woman is just about your size and coloring. I think some of them would be perfect for you.”

Amanda paused for breath and found Mary Gibson staring at her with that same wary cautious look. But there was something else in the woman’s eyes, too, a glint of hope and longing that nerved Amanda to continue with her story.

Not that all of it was a complete lie. The clothes she was talking about did exist, all right. But they were Amanda’s own clothes, hanging in the bedroom closet of her apartment back in Austin.

Amanda allowed herself a brief flash of private humor, thinking how aghast her New York friends would be if they knew that Amanda was proposing, quite literally, to give this virtual stranger the clothes off her back.

But, Amanda told herself, they hadn’t heard Mary Gibson’s story. And they hadn’t seen that small shining smile of yearning. Besides, Amanda wasn’t being completely selfless. There was a plan forming at the back of her mind, a way that she might turn this generous impulse to her business advantage.

“I couldn’t afford clothes like that,” Mary said finally, with a brief hopeless shrug. “They’d be far too expensive for my budget. Things are real tight around my place these days.”

“You might be surprised,” Amanda said. “You see, I’m just starting out in business, Mary, and things are awfully tight for me, too.”