“And it was actually two dinners.”
“Great. She had two dinners with you, and you’ve talked her into going off to the Riviera tomorrow.”
“Uh, tonight.”
“Tonight. Excellent. These dinners must have been something. You must be a magician with a fork and knife.”
“Did you say fucken knife?”
“Have you taken time to count your marbles lately. I think a couple may be missing.”
“That’s why I called. I need a reality check.”
“Okay. A, I think you should stay away from our cousin. We all know what kind of person Frank is, but I’m afraid you don’t see that as clearly as everyone else. B, I think Benny has your best interests at heart. If he says you should let it go, you probably should let it go. C, I know you well enough to know that you’re not going to listen to him. So D, how are you going to track down this Gilles person?”
Did I mention that Kelly is a psychologist with a very well ordered mind? She often gives lists like that.
“I already spoke with Gilles. Sounds like a nice old man.”
She hesitated before saying, “Dad wouldn’t even be sixty yet.”
I nodded to myself. “I mentioned that to Gerry Egidio yesterday. Benny says Gilles is older than that.”
She waited.
“You think this all too strange.”
“I think you’re strange.” She sighed loudly into the phone. “You’re really going to France to meet him?”
“It’s not a conversation we can have on the phone. He made that clear, and so did Benny. I have to ask him about something they were involved in more than thirty years ago. He’s not going to discuss it on a trans-Atlantic call someone might be listening to. For that matter, he can’t even be sure who I am. Not without meeting me.”
“I guess that’s right,” she admitted.
“You have a better idea? Other than just letting it go, I mean.”
Kelly was quiet again.
“Hello, you still there?”
“I’m thinking. Give me a second, for god’s sake.”
Kelly’s profession is better known for questions than answers, a perverse calling based on the proposition that we will feel less psychic pain if we can identify the source of that suffering. Assuming you buy into that premise, you subject yourself to years of counselling sessions, only to determine the reason you’re a mass of neuroses is because your mother didn’t breast feed you long enough, or your father didn’t show up at your Little League games or your grandmother forced you to kiss your grandfather’s corpse when you attended his wake at the age of four. Tell me, if a teething infant understood the source of its pain, would it cry any less? I don’t think so. When you hit your thumb with a hammer, does the knowledge of how that blow was struck reduce the ache? Nah. Sometimes, I think knowledge intensifies the hurt. Isn’t ignorance supposed to be bliss? Take a look at some of the morons you have to deal with in life. They seem incredibly untroubled, don’t they? Knowledge can be overrated.
“Are you listening?” Kelly demanded into the telephone.
“What’s that?”
“Did you hear what I just said? I love being asked my opinion and then having it ignored.”
“Sorry, sis. Lost in thought.”
“What else is new? What I just said was, I think you need to go. To get closure about this.”
“Closure,” I repeated. A psychologist’s word.
“You should meet him and hear what he has to say. What harm can there be in that?”
“I wonder.”
“You going to call Benny before you leave?”
“Right after we hang up.”
“If you won’t call the police, at least Benny might be able to tell you something about those two thugs.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“You better,” she warned.
“I actually think I might be doing myself a favor, getting out of town for a few days.”
“Oh, great. My big brother, taking it on the lam.”
I ignored that and asked her how her kids were doing. She has two little children, one of each.
“They’re good. You ought to visit them some time, like before they head off for college in fifteen years.”
“I will,” I promised. “I really will. Say, uh, you think you could mail me some recent pictures of them?”
“What?”
“Photos. If you’ve got some extras laying around. Something to hang on my refrigerator door or something.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Forget it.”
“No, no. I will, I’ll send you a couple.”
“Thanks.”
“You be careful, okay?”
I told her I would, made her promise she wouldn’t tell our mother where I was going, and said goodbye.
Then I pulled out Benny’s number. It was still early in Las Vegas, but I wanted to tell him what was going on.
His wife, Selma, answered the phone.
I said hello, then told her who I was.
“You,” was all she said, making the word sound horrible.
I decided to forego any niceties and asked, “Is Benny there?”
“No,” she said, her angry voice faltering, “Benny’s in the hospital. Now don’t call here again. Not ever.” Then the line went dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next several hours were something of a blur. I packed, picked up the airline tickets, straightened things out at the office and found myself on a plane with Donna, heading for the Riviera.
My mind was in overdrive, feeling worried for Benny, suspicious of Donna, anxious about what my cousin Frank was up to, nervous about the two thugs that had visited my apartment and generally concerned about myself.
Even so, it never occurred to me that anyone outside that small universe might be interested in what I was doing.
Looking back, I guess I was a bit myopic about that, not to mention some other things that should have been obvious. But when you live in the real world, the workaday business world, you’re not really prepared for being followed or having your apartment looted or being rousted by a couple of guidos from Little Italy. Those things don’t happen to Working Stiffs and, if they do, it’s tough know what the hell you should do to protect yourself.
Anyway, when we arrived at the airport in Nice early the next morning and made our way through immigration and customs, there was a guy was staring at me, and I asked Donna about him.
“Where?”
“On the far side, to the left. Don’t turn around yet, I don’t want him to see you looking at him.”
Naturally she spun right around. Why do people always do that when you tell them not to?
“Which one?” she asked as she gazed across the terminal.
“The gray one,” I told her, more quietly now.
“The gray one?”
“Yeah. Gray suit, gray tie, gray hair, gray face.”
She started to laugh. “Oh, I see him, the gray one. And you think he’s staring at you.”
“Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Think he’s staring at me,” I demanded impatiently.
“This is France. He might be staring at me.”
“Ah.” For some reason that hadn’t occurred to me.
“He does look French,” she said. “Maybe he’s just a local guy meeting someone.”
“All right,” I said, not feeling entirely convinced. “Let’s go.”
We grabbed a taxi and, by the time Donna and I arrived in Antibes, the thing I needed most was sleep. I hadn’t closed my eyes once on the plane, fretting my way through a seven hour flight and the five hour time change. Donna had napped soundly, but I mostly sat there, staring at magazines, or movies, o
r off into space. By the time we reached our hotel, I was ready to pass out.
The desk clerk was in no apparent rush, probably still working on his first latte. We went through an infuriatingly slow check-in process, then shown to our chambre on the third floor.
The room was small but full of charm, with heavy brocade curtains, old trompe l’oeil wallpaper and Provencal furniture made of dark wood with antique brass trim. It also featured a four poster bed, which had most of my attention at the moment.
“This is beautiful,” Donna said.
“So are you,” I informed her with appropriate chivalry, then announced I was about to fall face down on the bed and become dead to the world.
“Not so fast,” she said, calling me over to the window. “Look at this.”
The room had a magnificent view of Cap d’Antibes, a little peninsula surrounded by the blue Mediterranean. Majestic looking sailboats, huge yachts, fishing boats and other, smaller craft rocked gently on the early tide. The morning was sunny and warm, and Donna suggested we go for a swim.
“Really?”
“Come on,” she said, “don’t be a stiff.”
“Even I wouldn’t touch that line.”
“Come on,” she said again, then dragged me to the small luggage stand, where they’d placed our two bags, and began digging for her bathing suit.
“I didn’t remember to bring one.”
She said, “You’re lying,” and pulled a pair of trunks from my suitcase.
“Perfect,” I said.
We discreetly took turns changing in the bathroom, slipped on the thick Turkish robes provided by the hotel, then headed down to the beach. On the short elevator ride, I nearly nodded off. Then, as if by magic, we were outside, facing the sun and the sea.
The beaches of the Riviera are not like American beaches. There are no big waves crashing on top of each other, nor is the shore lined with fluffy sand. The Cote d’Azur features a carpet of smooth stones that have been polished by eons of the sea’s gentle ebb and flow. Wooden walkways crisscross all over the place, each path leading to the sea.
It was early by Riviera standards, and we were pretty much on our own. Most people were still sleeping off champagne hangovers and late nights at the casinos. We dropped our robes on two wooden-slatted chairs and walked toward the shore. I was moving a bit slower than Donna, so she took me by the hand and pulled me along.
“We’ll have a nice swim. Once you jump in, it’ll invigorate you.”
“You promise?”
“Promise,” she said.
“I won’t have a heart attack and die?”
“Not today, no.”
We reached the end of one of the boardwalks and, as we stood facing the onshore breeze, the morning didn’t seem as warm as it had when we looked out from the window of our cozy room, the one with the big four poster bed I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“How do you know the water isn’t freezing?” I asked, but Donna was done with my whining. Still holding my hand, she took off, and in an instant we were diving headlong into the azure water.
“You see?” she said triumphantly as we came up for air. “You lived.”
“Now if I only could feel my legs.”
“Come on, let’s swim out to the float.”
It was immediately apparent that she was the better swimmer. Her slender arms came out of the water, reached high over her head and then sliced back through the sea like some sort of a machine. I did my best to muscle my way alongside her but, if we were racing, it was clear she’d be kicking me in the face.
“Nice of you to hold back,” I said as we lifted ourselves onto the large, square wooden float that felt about five miles from shore. We sat there on the edge, dangling our feet in the cool water.
“I was a swimmer in school,” she told me, then flipped her hair back with a quick snap of her neck.
Her smile seemed even brighter in the morning sun, droplets of salt-water running down her tanned face, the color of the shimmering sea no match for the blue of her eyes.
“I can’t believe we’re sitting in the Mediterranean,” I admitted. “It’s surreal, don’t you think?”
She didn’t tell me what she thought. Instead, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth, taking her time to make it count, then jumped back into the water.
I swam a little faster on the way back. Maybe I had the tide with me, or maybe I just wanted to keep pace with her. Or maybe it was the kiss. Whatever the motivation, when we got to shore I was completely winded. We ambled up the wooden boardwalk to our chairs, and I helped her into the plush, white bathrobe. I gave her more than a little help, actually, taking the opportunity to gently rub her with the terrycloth. She was wet, and I didn’t want her to catch cold or anything.
I pulled on my robe, then took her in my arms and we kissed again. There were a few people around now, arranging their chaises and organizing towels and so forth, but this was France, so I didn’t care.
When I slowly drew back from her, I looked up and saw him walking along the quay, just above the beach.
“That’s him,” I said.
Donna turned, trying to find what I was staring at. The guy was walking slowly, not looking in our direction.
“Who?” she asked.
“The man who was watching us in the airport. You know, the gray guy.”
“Of course. The gray guy.”
“Come on, that’s him, you see him walking?”
“Walking? Wow, that is suspicious. Is he still in gray, or has he changed his disguise?”
I was going to laugh, then decided to skip it. “He is, in fact. Still in gray, I mean. Gray pants, white shirt, gray head. Take a look.”
She was still sort of smirking at me, but then he looked right at us.
“Shit,” I said.
He never broke stride. He just stared at us for a couple of seconds, then turned straight ahead and continued on.
“I do recognize him,” Donna admitted.
“So?”
“So what? He’s having a look at the beach, is that so odd?”
“Maybe not.”
With a delicate touch of her hand, she turned my face toward her. “I can only guess how much this all means to you. Your father and all that. But the rest of the world isn’t interested. This is your own personal treasure hunt, no one else’s.”
I was about to say something, then uttered a long sigh instead. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe I’m getting a little nuts. I mean, I don’t usually jump on a plane to Europe on a whim.”
“Neither do I.”
I was going to remind her about the flight from Vegas, when she told me she was already planning to go to Europe, and how this trip was not quite the whim for her as it was for me. But I shook my head, deciding to let it go for now. “All right,” I said, “but I’m telling you, if he shows up at our table for dinner tonight, you’re going to have to rethink this.”
Donna laughed her musical laugh. “Agreed. Now you need to relax, and I think I’ve got just the thing.” She took my hand again and told me to come along.
Who was I to argue?
***
By the time Donna and I made our way up to the hotel room I was feeling a more pleasant kind of exhaustion, the kind where your muscles feel loose and calm and your brain is on holiday. I pulled the curtains closed, and the room enveloped us in a muted darkness. We slipped off our robes and grabbed a couple of towels from the bathroom. As I rubbed my hair dry, Donna pulled off her swimsuit, patted herself down and, tossing her towel on a chair, climbed into bed.
“This is heaven,” she said.
I stood there looking at her. “I promised not to take advantage of you.”
“You’re not. Now take off that bathing suit and get in here with me.”
I did.
We were on our sides, facing each other, and I took her in my arms, our legs entwined. I felt the smoothness of her skin and the soft pressure of her breasts against my chest.
“This certainly is heaven,” I agreed.
She held my face in her hands and we kissed, a long, moist kiss. I held her closer and our bodies seemed to melt together.
She drew her head back slightly and smiled at me.
I said, “Looks like our plan about not rushing things didn’t take.”
She kissed me gently on the lips, then whispered in my ear, “Someone once said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
We kissed again, then I said, “I think it was Lennon.”
“The communist?” she asked with mock surprise.
“The Beatle,” I said.
We laughed, then for a moment neither of us spoke. We just stared into each other’s eyes in that intimate way where you feel everything about you is laid bare. I’m sure I had a goofy smile on my face, but she looked positively beautiful. I was aware of her sweet fragrance and the warmth of her breath as it mingled with mine.
“I’m happy we’re here,” she told me.
So was I.
We made love, tenderly and passionately, feeling so right that I all but forgot my doubts and questions, losing myself in the intimacy of the surprising connection between us.
Just before we drifted off to sleep, Donna whispered, “I have to know something.”
“Uh huh.”
“Do you take a lot of women to Europe to get them to make love with you?”
“Not a lot.” I kissed her lips. “Actually, never,” I said, “but it works out nicely, don’t you think?”
She smiled. “I have a confession then.”
“Uh huh.”
“I wanted to make love with you before you invited me to France.”
“Damn,” I said softly, “all that money wasted.”
We kissed again before we nodded off, my arms still around her.
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