“Excuse me?”
“Your friends.” She shrugged. “I just wondered why you didn't call a cab from their place.”
“I intended to walk.”
“To the airport?”
“My ankle was fine then.”
“It's still a long walk.”
“Oh, but I'm a fitness nut.”
“Very long walk — especially with a suitcase.”
“It's not that heavy. When I'm exercising, I usually walk with handweights to get an upper-body workout.”
“I'm a walker myself,” she said, braking for a red light. “I used to run every morning, but my knees started hurting.”
“Mine too, so I switched to walking. Gives your heart the same workout if you keep up your pace.”
For a couple of miles, while she drove as slowly as she dared in order to extend the time she had with him, they chatted about physical fitness and fat-free foods. Eventually he said something that allowed her to ask, with complete naturalness, the names of his friends there in Portland.
“No,” he said.
“No what?”
“No, I'm not giving you their names. They're private people, nice people, I don't want them being pestered.”
“I've never been called a pest before,” she said.
“No offense, Miss Thorne, but I just wouldn't want them to have to be in the paper and everything, have their lives disrupted.”
“Lots of people like seeing their names in the newspaper.”
“Lots don't.”
“They might enjoy talking about their friend, the big hero.”
“Sorry,” he said affably, and smiled.
She was beginning to understand why she found him so appealing: his unshakable poise was irresistible. Having worked for two years in Los Angeles, Holly had known a lot of men who styled themselves as laid-back Californians; each portrayed himself as the epitome of self-possession, Mr. Mellow—rely on me, baby, and the world can never touch either of us; we are beyond the reach of fate—but none actually possessed the cool nerves and unflappable temperament to which he pretended. A Bruce Willis wardrobe, perfect tan, and studied insouciance did not a Bruce Willis make. Self-confidence could be gained through experience, but real aplomb was something you were either born with or learned to imitate — and the imitation was never convincing to the observant eye. However, Jim Ironheart had been born with enough aplomb, if rationed equally to all the men in Rhode Island, to produce an entire state of cool, unflappable types. He faced hurtling trucks and a reporter's questions with the same degree of equanimity. Just being in his company was oddly relaxing and reassuring.
She said, “That's an interesting name you have.”
“Jim?”
He was having fun with her.
“Ironheart,” she said. “Sounds like an American Indian name.”
“Wouldn't mind having a little Chippewa or Apache blood, make me less dull, a little bit exotic, mysterious. But it's just the Anglicized version of the family's original German name — Eisenherz.”
By the time they were on the East Portland Freeway, rapidly approaching the Killingsworth Street exit, Holly was dismayed at the prospect of dropping him at the airline terminal. As a reporter, she still had a lot of unanswered questions. More important, as a woman, she was more intrigued by him than she had been by any man in ages. She briefly considered taking a far more circuitous route to the airport; his lack of familiarity with the city might disguise her deception. Then she realized that the freeway signs were already announcing the upcoming exit to Portland International; even if he had not been reading them, he could not have failed to notice the steady air traffic in the deep-blue eastern sky ahead of them.
She said, “What do you do down there in California?”
“Enjoy life.”
“I meant — what do you do for a living?”
“What's your guess?” he asked.
“Well … one thing for sure: you're not a librarian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You have a sense of mystery about you.”
“Can't a librarian be mysterious?”
“I've never known one who was.” Reluctantly she turned onto the airport exit ramp. “Maybe you're a cop of some kind.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Really good cops are unflappable, cool.”
“Gee, I think of myself as a warm sort of guy, open and easy. You think I'm cool?”
Traffic was moderately heavy on the airport approach road. She let it slow her even further.
“I mean,” she said, “that you're very self-possessed.”
“How long have you been a reporter?”
“Twelve years.”
“All of it in Portland?”
“No. I've been here a year.”
“Where'd you work before?”
“Chicago … Los Angeles … Seattle.”
“You like journalism?”
Realizing that she had lost control of the conversation, Holly said, “This isn't a game of twenty questions, you know.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly amused, “that's exactly what I thought it was.”
She was frustrated by the impenetrable wall he had erected around himself, irritated by his stubbornness. She was not used to having her will thwarted. But he had no meanness in him, as far as she could see, and no great talent for deception; he was just determined to preserve his privacy. As a reporter who had ever-increasing doubts about a journalist's right to intrude in the lives of others, Holly sympathized with his reticence. When she glanced at him, she could only laugh softly. “You're good.”
“So are you.”
As she stopped at the curb in front of the terminal, Holly said, “No, if I were good, by now I'd at least have found out what the hell you do for a living.”
He had a charming smile. And those eyes. “I didn't say you were as good as I am — just that you were good.” He got out and retrieved his suitcase from the back seat, then returned to the open front door. “Look, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. By sheer chance, I was able to save that boy. It wouldn't be fair to have my whole life turned upside down by the media just because I did a good deed.”
“No, it wouldn't,” she agreed.
With a look of relief, he said, “Thank you.”
“But I gotta say — your modesty's refreshing.”
He looked at her for a long beat, fixed her with his exceptional blue eyes. “So are you, Miss Thorne.”
Then he closed the door, turned away, and entered the terminal.
Their last exchange played again in her mind:
Your modesty's refreshing.
So are you, Miss Thorne.
She stared at the terminal door through which he had disappeared, and he seemed too good to have been real, as if she had given a ride to a hitchhiking spirit. A thin haze filtered flecks of color from the late-afternoon sunlight, so the air had a vague golden cast of the kind that sometimes hung for an instant in the wake of a vanishing revenant in an old movie about ghosts.
A hard, hollow rapping noise startled her.
She snapped her head around and saw an airport security guard tapping with his knuckles on the hood of her car. When he had her attention, he pointed to a sign:
LOADING ZONE.
Wondering how long she had sat there, mesmerized by thoughts of Jim Ironheart, Holly released the emergency brake and slipped the car in gear. She drove away from the terminal.
Your modesty's refreshing.
So are you, Miss Thorne.
All the way back into Portland, a sense of the uncanny lay upon her, a perception that someone preternaturally special had passed through her life. She was unsettled by the discovery that a man could so affect her, and she felt uncomfortably girlish, even foolish. At the same time, she enjoyed that pleasantly eerie mood and did not want it to fade.