Time of Departure

by Douglas Schofield

“And how many years could we have together? Ten? Fifteen?”

  “Too few.”

  “Right! And what about kids? What if we wanted children? You wouldn’t be around to see them grow up!”

  Marc’s eyes filled. I saw his throat working. He rose slowly from his seat. “I think I’ll get an early night. Leave the dishes. I’ll clear them up in the morning.” Before I could think of a response, he left the table and strode across the apartment to his bedroom. He entered and shut the door behind him.

  Once again, my temper and my caustic tongue had left me silently kicking myself.

  I got up and cleared the table. In the kitchen, I rinsed off the dishes and methodically loaded them in the dishwasher. I’d been told a hundred times that prerinsing before loading a dishwasher is a complete waste of energy, time, and water, but the mindless action was exactly what I needed at that moment.

  It didn’t work. My mind was in turmoil. I returned to the table. There was still an inch of wine left in the bottle. I lifted the bottle and poured the wine straight down my throat.

  “Go to bed, you idiot!” I whispered to myself. “Just go to bed! And tomorrow, you apologize!”

  I set the bottle on the table and walked straight across the apartment to Marc’s bedroom. I opened the door and walked in. In the spill of light from the door, I could see Marc lying on his side, with his back to me. Somehow, I sensed he was awake. I stripped off all my clothes and slid in next to him.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  But then … my nerve failed me. I didn’t touch him. I just lay there, trembling like a schoolgirl. A long second passed. I was about to change my mind and flee when Marc rolled over and folded me into his arms. He kissed my eyes, my nose, my neck … my mouth. The kiss was long and soft, and I felt a rush of heat and desperate need.

  I melted into him.

  And then it came … an unbelievable lust that almost stopped my breath. It was a desire for this man and this man alone that seemed at once alien and familiar, known and unknown.

  Can this be me? my reasoning mind asked in the single millisecond before I forgot everything and let myself go.

  Marc Hastings devoured me.

  And then I devoured him.

  And then he cried.

  It was long after midnight when we finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  When I awoke, the room was soaked in sunlight and I was sprawled on my stomach with the covers down around my thighs.

  I felt Marc touching me.

  Actually, I felt only his fingertip. It was tracing the outline of the butterfly tattoo that I’d had on the small of my back since I was a college student.

  I murmured. “It’s a blue morpho.”

  “First one I ever slept with.”

  “Butterfly?”

  “No. Tattoo. I’ve slept with a few butterflies in my day.”

  I rolled over and stretched, giving my best imitation of feline contentment. “How did you know?”

  “What?”

  “How did you know exactly what I would … like?”

  “Experience.”

  I snorted. “Oh, of course!” I reached over my head, grabbed my pillow, and whacked him with it. “The arrogance of the elderly!”

  A broad grin spread across his face. “Elderly, huh?” He grabbed me and held me down. He really was surprisingly strong, and he kept grinning while I squirmed and bleated and giggled.

  He hovered over me. “Elderly, huh?”

  Ten seconds later, he didn’t have to hold me, and I wasn’t squirming or bleating or giggling.

  I was savoring every second.

  At the end—after the end—we lay in each other’s arms.

  I couldn’t speak.

  I couldn’t speak because I was totally stunned.

  Stunned by his tender lovemaking.

  And … stunned at my own desperate passion for him.

  After long minutes, Marc stirred. He stroked my face and whispered, “I knew this.”

  I felt my brow knit as I looked into his eyes. “Knew what?”

  “That we would be here.” He spoke so quietly, I almost missed the words. “And I still find it impossible to believe.”

  I kissed his hand and asked lightly, “And how long have you known this, my oh-so-very-handsome older man?”

  He tried to smile, but I saw haunted eyes. In place of a reply, gentle lips touched mine. His kiss was long and filled with emotion.

  He broke away and rose from the bed. Pulling on his shorts, he said, “I’ll fix us some breakfast.” He lifted my arm, kissed the inside of my wrist, and left the room.

  I decided right then that I would get to the bottom of the mystery that Marc sometimes seemed to flaunt but more often seemed to wear like a mortifying hair shirt.

  30

  I didn’t start out with the idea that my affair with a man who was twice my age couldn’t last. All rational thinking, all critical awareness—and all my inbred wariness—were swept away by a torrent of emotion. I just drank in the passion, and lived minute to minute.

  It was late on the fourth day before we left the apartment, and even that was just a quick trip to pick up some groceries. We cooked, we drank, we embarked on dozens of unfinished conversations, snuggled in front of the television, and made love in every room.

  Eventually, we ventured out. We took my car, and after running through a few countersurveillance moves, went out for romantic dinners. On one of those evenings, Marc directed me to Laredo, a little Mexican restaurant in Starke, a town about twenty-five miles from Gainesville that I had seldom visited. After an unbelievably delicious meal, Marc suggested we stay the night.

  I glanced around the almost empty restaurant. “Here?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He paid for the meal. We left the restaurant and got into my car. He pointed north. “It’s that way.”

  He directed me through a few turns into a residential cul-de-sac. The end of the street was dominated by a magnificent Craftsman house nestled among mature holly and magnolia trees. It looked at least a century old, but it had been meticulously maintained. A discreet sign at the end of the driveway read: ABERDEEN HOUSE B & B.

  “How did you know this was here?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I didn’t. But there’s this amazing thing…”

  “What amazing thing?”

  “It’s called the Internet.”

  Marc had already reserved a room on the top floor. It had a huge bed and an en suite with a Jacuzzi. We soaked together in the tub, drank wine, and made love all night.

  The next morning, we went out and bought a change of clothes and some bathroom stuff and stayed for two more days.

  A week later, we ventured farther afield. We drove west, joined Route 98, and turned north. Five hours on the road put us in Mexico Beach, a community on the Panhandle coast that I had to admit I’d never heard of.

  “What’s here?” I asked. I eyed the long stretch of sugar-white sand beside the road and added, “I mean, apart from the long empty beach with no cover to hide our usual activities from a shocked public?”

  “The Driftwood Motel.”

  “We drove five hours to stay in a motel?”

  “Not just any motel.”

  We parked in front of a two-story white beachfront building with red doors, quirky gingerbread accents, and crossed palm trees above the main entrance. The sign said DRIFTWOOD INN—VACANCY.

  We got out of the car. Marc stood back, taking in the building. “Well, this used to be a motel. Looks a lot different now.”

  “Marc?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is this, by any chance, some kind of sentimental journey?”

  “It is.”

  “Should I be feeling awkward?”

  He kissed me. “Not at all. Just savor the moment. You won’t be disappointed.”

  I accepted his advice, and I wasn’t disappointed. We took a suite on the upper floor that came equipped with a full kitchen. We spe
nt three idyllic days reading, walking the beach, whipping up improvised meals … and making love in a magnificent four-poster bed.

  Only once during our stay did I feel particularly uneasy. We’d been lounging on a patio on the upper beach, surrounded by flowering plant boxes, Alice in Wonderland weathervanes, and a serpentine network of sand fences. I awoke from a doze, still holding the Agatha Christie paperback I’d picked up in the lobby, to discover that Marc was gone. I found him examining a collection of framed photographs hanging on the wall in one corner of the inn’s breakfast room.

  The photos showed the inn at various stages of its development, dating back to the 1950s. When I appeared at his side, Marc tapped an aerial photo showing a much-reduced version of the main building, surrounded by an undeveloped sea of white sand. There were a few 1970s-era cars parked in front. He slipped his arm around me and said, “That’s the Driftwood I remember.”

  “She was very special, wasn’t she?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes, she was. There has never been anyone like her.”

  “I remind you of her, don’t I?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I understand.”

  He bent to kiss my forehead. “I don’t think you do, but thank you.”

  At the time, I was blinded by love, but as I replay those days in my mind, as I have so many times, two things stand out:

  First, this man who had spent twice as long on the planet as me had still revealed very little about his past life. Several stories from his childhood, a few anecdotes from his early years in the police, and occasional comments about his daughter, Rebecca, who had moved to Canada and seldom visited. That was all.

  Apart from that one reference to lost love, not once did Marc speak about Rebecca’s mother.

  The second thing was that, with each passing day, Marc Hastings became quieter.

  Quieter … and more distracted.

  Distracted … but not distant. From time to time, I would catch him looking at me, and his eyes seemed to blaze into my soul. As the days passed, whenever we embraced, he seemed to press closer, to hold tighter. It was as if he was savoring every kiss, every touch, and every moment because they might be our last.

  * * *

  The end came on the day Harlan Tribe was released on bail. It was all over the news. We sat in Marc’s living room, watching the coverage. I didn’t need a goggle-eyed reporter to tell me the case would probably never go to trial. I could see it in Sam’s expression when he left the courthouse, brushing microphones aside, as he and Eddie Carlyle made their way to a waiting car.

  Marc and I decided to leave town for a few days. But then my car refused to start. I thought it just needed a new battery until Marc pointed out that it was less than halfway through its warranty period. “It might be the alternator,” he suggested. “If I can get it going, I’ll take it to a shop and get it checked.” He called a taxi to give it a jump start and then drove off to find a mechanic. I figured we weren’t going anywhere until at least the next morning, so I got to work in the kitchen, hoping to impress Marc with my mother’s recipe for shrimp creole. I was working pretty much from memory, but from the tastes and smells, I figured I’d nailed it.

  I left the sauce to simmer and wandered into the living room, looking for something to read. There was a stack of old newspapers lying on the lower shelf of a side table. I’d noticed them before, and recalled vaguely wondering why Marc was keeping them. I pulled them out, sat on the sofa, and spread them across the coffee table.

  It didn’t take long to solve that little mystery. The papers were actually a collection of pages from several editions of The Gainesville Sun, with dates ranging back several months. Every one contained a story about one of my prosecutions or, in one case, about me personally. The paper had run a profile piece a few months before I was appointed to replace Roy Wells. The individual stories weren’t marked or circled or otherwise highlighted on the page, but I was the only subject that each of the disparate sections had in common.

  Finding them was not exactly a shock. Marc had made no secret of the fact that he had singled me out some time ago to work with him on the “Gainesville’s Disappeared” file.

  No, not a shock.

  Flattering, actually.

  I replaced the papers and got up to browse Marc’s bookshelves. There were, I would guess, a few hundred books—novels, travel guides, biographies, a matched set of regional cookbooks—but to my eye, something didn’t look right. They were arranged too perfectly on the shelves, with each spine exactly aligned with its neighbors and each shelf arranged so that all the spines of all the books on that shelf were the same height. I was reminded of the false-front Western towns people sometimes see on Hollywood studio tours. I had a crazy, fleeting suspicion that they weren’t books at all.

  On an impulse, I pulled one out at random—I remember it was a biography of Alice Roosevelt, Theodore’s famously outspoken daughter—opened the cover, and flipped through some pages.

  Of course it was a real book. I snapped it shut and replaced it on the shelf, sighing at my own silliness. I browsed on and selected another book from the same shelf—this time one about Princess Diana, one of the dozens that were released after her death. When I opened the cover, I noticed a stamped inscription:

  Clapton’s Used Books

  682B Rackham Avenue NE

  Atlanta, GA

  Something bothered me. I went back to the Roosevelt biography I’d just replaced.

  The inside cover bore the same stamp.

  I checked the book next to it … and the one next to it … and the next one.

  I checked every book on that shelf.

  They all bore the same stamp.

  I checked half a dozen books on the next shelf down.

  Same result.

  I’d heard that some people—maybe to impress visitors, or maybe in a blitz of low-cost decorating—will find a used bookstore and buy up a few shelves of books. “Books by the yard,” it’s been called. It seemed Marc had acquired his library that way.

  But why?

  I felt a knot growing in the pit of my stomach.

  Why?

  Was this collection of books designed to impress someone? Certainly, the titles weren’t likely to. Or was it just instant decorating—an attempt to make the place appear lived in?

  Why do instant decorating?

  I stepped back so my gaze could sweep in the entire wall. Directly in front of me were the bookshelves I’d just been examining. To my left was a flat-screen TV with remote speakers, each piece set into customized spaces provided in the wall unit entertainment center. Above the TV was another short row of books. I’d noticed them before—a row of five identical leather-bound volumes.

  I moved closer and craned to read random titles.

  Plutarch’s Lives

  Orations of Cicero

  The Essays of Montaigne

  The Decameron

  Paradise Lost

  I reached up and extracted the Plutarch volume. I opened the cover. The inside cover and its facing page were blank. I flipped pages.

  They were all blank.

  Puzzled, I pulled down Orations of Cicero.

  Again, all the pages were blank.

  I pulled down next two books. All blank pages.

  Faux books.

  Why?

  Distracted and confused, I pulled down Paradise Lost.

  I opened the cover.

  The inside cover was blank, as was its facing page.

  But behind the facing page, I found a photograph.

  For a few seconds, I didn’t recognize the girl.

  Then I did.

  It was the coat that did it. I’d worn a coat just like it my final year at law school.

  The girl in the coat was me.

  Someone had photographed me as I was crossing Harvard Yard, carrying an armload of books. I felt my jaw tighten. Experimentally, I flipped pages.

  Paradise Lost was a photo album.

&nbs
p; I went back to the beginning, and turned to the second page. Another picture of me … this time, alone at my favorite table in Café Pamplona on Bow Street, one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee, my eyes glued to an open textbook.

  I flipped through the following pages. Each sheet bore a single photograph. They were all taken in and around Boston, and were apparently spread across all three years of my JD program. Two shots showed me in the arms of Robert Vance.

  They were taken outdoors, and we were fully clothed, but still …

  My face burned with anger. I turned the page … and suddenly I was younger.

  I immediately recognized myself in the first photograph. I was standing in a row of girls. Each of us was wearing shorts and white T-shirts with a number pinned to the front. The photo was taken on the day of my one and only attempt to gain entry into my high school’s in-crowd. I had tried out for the cheerleader squad. Judging from the angle of the shot, the photo must have been taken from high up in the bleachers.

  My tryout had been an utter failure. “Come back when you’re better coordinated,” the cheerleader trainer had told me. She looked pointedly at my chest and added, “And better developed.” Before I could think of a comeback, the bitch had walked away.

  As quickly as that humiliating memory coursed through my mind it was forgotten, because now I was turning pages quickly, finding photo after photo as, younger and younger, the album pulled me deeper and deeper into my past. Here I was, walking to middle school … here, leaving elementary school … here, riding my bike, chasing my pet rabbit across our yard, cavorting in the surf at Melbourne Beach the summer after my eighth birthday … here … and here … and here!

  Every photo had been taken from a distance with a long lens. And, although many pictures included other people, it was obvious that I was the primary subject.

  In the last photos—on the back pages of the album—I was in the playground across the street from the house in Archer where I grew up.

  I was no more than four or five years old.

  My endlessly recurring dream about the watching man slashed across my consciousness.

  A low moan started in my throat.

  I dropped the book and staggered to the couch.

  * * *

  I was grabbing a few things from Marc’s bathroom when he returned. I heard the door open and the jingling of keys.