The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  James felt her body pressing against his. All his emotions came pouring forth in a flood of grief and anger and frustration and even love. And through it all, he was acutely aware of every detail of Christina— the softness of her skin, her light breaths in his ear when he kissed the slope of her slender neck, and the faint, lingering trace of her perfume.

  Christina slid down on the seat so that she was suddenly beneath him, and James was so surprised to find himself hovering over her that he drew back. As he perched above her, he could hear the sound of his own breath and he could feel his heart thundering so loudly in his chest that he was certain Christina must hear it as well.

  Even in the diminishing light, Christina could see the confused expression on James’s face, and she smiled and pulled him toward her. “It’s okay,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, with a sleepy, sensual quality that James found both reassuring and arousing. As he kissed her, he could feel her tongue slipping into his mouth, searching for his. He became suddenly aware of his erection, and of Christina’s hand in the small of his back pulling him firmly against her.

  He would later have no recollection of Christina slipping out of her shorts, and only a vague memory of him clumsily removing his jeans. His mind slipped briefly back to his first experience aboard the boat with Madeleine Weeks which, until now, had been preserved in his mind as his single most perfect experience with any woman. Now as his skin pressed against Christina’s skin, flawless and smooth, he knew that was no longer true.

  They gently rocked as if they were adrift upon a slow rolling sea. In the darkness, James could just see Christina’s peaceful expression, her sleepy eyes and her contented smile. She tipped her head back and sighed, and then giggled when he gently kissed her neck. Her fingers glided lightly over his shoulders, and then down to the small of his back. When he finally came, he felt her arms and legs constricting around him, and he held his breath, savoring that perfect moment for as long as he could.

  When they were finished, James lay on top of her, his face buried in her long, dark hair as he tried to catch his breath. When he finally began to raise himself off her, she wrapped her long legs around him and squeezed, not yet ready to release him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked playfully.

  James offered a satisfied expression. “Just trying to let you breathe.”

  “I can breathe,” she assured him. She laughed and squeezed him again. “You look a little winded though.”

  “I’ll get my second wind in a minute,” James assured her.

  He would have been happy to remain there all night, joined together on the boat in the shadow of the pines as darkness closed in around them. He didn’t know it, but Christina was thinking the same thing.

  She hadn’t come there looking for this. After receiving Ruth’s call, she’d set out for his small apartment with the purest of intentions. She struggled to understand her attraction to him; only that her feelings for him had been growing since the afternoon they'd spent together in Ellsworth searching for her mother’s Christmas gift. She'd sensed the connection even then, but whenever she'd tested him, James steadfastly resisted her flirtations, which only made her more curious. She resisted her urges mainly out of respect for her mother, but Jean had already confided in her that her relationship with James couldn’t possibly move forward, not as long as he wanted a child. Even so, she never would have pursued James, but when the moment presented itself, she wasn’t inclined to resist him either.

  They remained there for some time, unaware of anything beyond their arms and legs and the smell and the taste of each other.

  When Christina finally did release him, James kissed her one last time as he sat up and dressed in almost total darkness. He climbed down from the boat, and as he helped her down, she threw her arms around his neck. As he stepped forward into her embrace, she felt the wooden hull of the boat against her back, and she again wrapped her long legs around his waist. She sighed joyfully as they traded passionate kisses in the darkness.

  They walked up the path to the house in silence and climbed the stairs, Max leading the way. When they reached the landing, Christina playfully turned to James as if to block his way, but he effortlessly threw her over his shoulder and carried her the rest of the way up the stairs and into his apartment. He lowered her only when they reached his bed.

  Later, when the phone rang, Christina was lying beside him on his bed. She was pressed against him, her head resting on his chest, their legs intertwined. Only a light sheet covered her naked body, exposing her bare shoulders. She was completely relaxed and on the verge of sleep when the phone jarred her awake.

  James lightly caressed her shoulder. “We can let it ring,” he said quietly. “Go ahead and sleep.”

  “It could be my mother,” Christina said.

  There was just enough alarm in her sleepy voice that James responded instantly. He hurried into the living room, nearly falling over Max who was lying in the doorway, and he lunged for the phone.

  Jean was about to hang up when James finally answered. “I’m here,” he said.

  Jean noticed immediately that he sounded breathless and distracted. “James? Are you okay?”

  “I was outside with Max,” he lied. “I had to run to catch the phone.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jean said. She looked at her watch. “Have you seen Christina? She left me a note that she was going by your place to take Max for a walk, but she hasn’t come home.”

  James looked up and saw Christina standing in the bedroom doorway. The sheet that had covered her was now wrapped snugly around her so he could see the sensual curves of her body. She held the sheet in place with one hand and pushed her hair back from her face with the other.

  “She’s here,” James said. “She’s outside with the dog.”

  “Could you ask her if she’s planning on coming home soon?”

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I’ll get her for you.”

  James’s tone was very relaxed, but Christina appeared panicked when he held out the receiver for her. He pressed his palm over the mouthpiece and he kissed her. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Just tell her you were keeping me company.”

  James handed her the phone and moved past her into the bedroom. Max followed him, and as he reclined on the mattress quietly patting the dog, he could hear fragments of Christina’s conversation with her mother.

  “... His father died... yesterday, I think... I don’t know... You don’t need to... He doesn’t really want to talk. I just didn’t want him to be alone... Okay… I’ll be here.”

  She hung up the phone and when she appeared in the doorway, she looked sadly at James.

  “She wants to see you, and she wants me to come home,” she told him. “She’s coming over to pick me up.”

  “Do you think she suspected anything?” James asked her.

  “No,” she said. She moved toward him, allowing the sheet to fall at her feet and smiling seductively. “We have ten minutes,” she said, pressing her body against his.

  James smiled. He held her one last time, hoping to memorize the feeling of her skin against his, and then he kissed her and reluctantly stepped away. “We’d better get dressed.”

  When Jean arrived, Christina was helping James secure the cover on the Chris Craft. James’s Jeep was parked next to the house, and its headlights were shining on the boat to provide them some light by which to work. Jean could see Christina standing on the near side of the boat watching as James secured a line to the trailer. She was patting Max, who was looking up the path as Jean’s car pulled in next to the Jeep. When Jean climbed out of her car, Max barked and ran toward her. Jean squatted down, letting him kiss her on the chin.

  Christina came up the path first, and she approached her mother.

  “You should have told me you were planning to be out this late,” Jean said. “I was worried about you.”

  “Sorry,” Christina said. “I left you th
e note. I figured you’d know where I was.”

  Jean regarded James as he walked slowly toward them. “How’s he doing?” she asked.

  “He’s okay, I guess,” Christina said, peering over her shoulder at James as he approached. He was still out of earshot. “He was really bad when I got here, but he seems a little better now.” Jean was unaware of the mischief in her daughter’s remark.

  As James came into their circle, Jean stepped forward and hugged him. “I’m so sorry about your father,” she said. She rubbed his back and rocked him from side-to-side just as Ruth Kennedy had done earlier; a mother’s habit, James thought.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  When they separated, Jean held firm to his hand. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  James shook his head. “I’m okay,” he offered. “Christina’s been great, but I doubt I’ve been very good company.”

  Christina recognized the same joyless tone in his voice that she’d heard when she’d first arrived. She wished she could go to him. She knew she could help to distract him from the grief he was feeling.

  “Do you want us to stay with you for a while?” Jean asked him.

  James walked over to the Jeep and turned off the headlights, the boat instantly consumed by the darkness. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ve already kept Christina here longer than she ever meant to be here. I’ll probably just go get some sleep. I owe Peter a good day’s work tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Jean reminded him.

  James looked confused for a moment. “I guess I lost track,” he said.

  Jean ached when she saw the sadness drift over his face again. It seemed to wash over him in waves.

  They stood for a moment in silence until finally James stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Jean. “Thanks for coming by,” he told her. “Maybe Max and I will stop by the gallery tomorrow.”

  When he embraced Christina, he was conscious of Jean’s eyes upon them. He felt Christina tense a bit, and he was certain that she felt her mother’s watchful gaze upon them as well. “Thanks for helping me get through this day,” he told her. He wanted to say so much more to her, but he knew he needed to be careful with his words.

  James walked them to Jean’s car and watched them get in. He closed Jean’s door for her, and before he could release it, Jean took his hand through the open window. “You call me if you need anything,” she told him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Right now I just need some rest.”

  In the passenger seat, Christina bowed her head and smiled, certain the remark was intended for her.

  Once Jean and Christina were gone, the apartment felt lonely again. The hours he’d spent with Christina had provided a blissful distraction from the loss he’d suffered and the void it had left, but it was only a temporary reprieve. Now that he was alone, his heartache returned in full force.

  Amid the grief he became aware of something else, a feeling that he’d eluded— or perhaps ignored— until that moment.

  He’d always rationalized his choices of the previous year as being necessary to move forward, that there was simply no other way that he’d be able to put his old life completely behind him and start anew. But the truth was that the line between his old life and his current one was becoming thinner and more blurred all the time. One seemed to be always intruding upon the other.

  Now, as he mourned the loss of his father, he couldn’t help but think back to that rainy Sunday more than a year ago when he’d left Gloria to face the same sense of loss, the same helplessness and hopelessness, the same anger, frustration and heartache that he was feeling now. He’d always been able to justify it in the past, but now that he was feeling it for himself, he suddenly could no longer dismiss it as just another unavoidable consequence of his decision.

  So it was inevitable, perhaps even expected, that along with his grief finally came the guilt that he’d denied for more than a year. When it finally found him there in his small apartment, it was all-consuming and unshakeable. He suddenly found himself lying on the braided rug in the middle of his living room. Max was sprawled out beside him, his eyes closed, luxuriating in the attention as James rubbed his ribs, occasionally rolling onto his back, all four legs splayed out in midair. Max couldn’t know that his friend’s attention was elsewhere, lingering on a choice he’d made more than a year earlier, and the woman who’d been devastated in the aftermath.

  In the days following Bud Moody’s passing, Kate was noticeably solemn and introspective but not devastated, as some had predicted she would be. When she lost her brother barely more than a year earlier, everyone had watched her closely, expecting her to crumble beneath the weight of her suffering. But somehow she endured. No one knew exactly how she was able to maintain her composure when the person to whom she’d been closest all her life was suddenly taken from her. That she even found the courage and the grace to console others at the memorial service, as well as in the weeks and months that followed, was impossible for any of them to fathom given the circumstances.

  When her father passed, there were those who believed that this loss would finally provide the catalyst that opened the floodgates of the grief that many felt she’d denied herself when Edward died. When she finally came apart, as they simply assumed she would, it would be both her father and Edward she was mourning.

  What no one accounted for, not even Kate, was the unexpected feeling of relief that accompanied her sadness. She loved her father, and losing him left a void in her world, but that loss hadn’t occurred suddenly in the hospital as she watched him draw his final breath, or even during those final hours or days. In truth, she lost him gradually over the course of months and years, and enduring that slow transformation, from his being an active part of her life to the complete absence of him, had taken its toll upon her.

  She’d been a devoted daughter to him, both before his illness and in the years since. She’d tended to his every need right up until the end, and she was there to give him comfort when he drew his final breath and closed his eyes upon the world. While her brother’s grief was accompanied by guilt, Kate’s came with an undeniable feeling of satisfaction in herself that she’d done everything she could possibly have done for her father while he was alive, and relief that his struggle was finally over.

  Like her father, Kate was finally at peace.

  On the day that Bud Moody passed away, the one person Kate wanted most to be with was her brother, but that proved impossible. There was always someone nearby, usually Kenny, who was looking after her. Their intentions were honorable; they wanted to make certain that Kate always had someone with her should she decide she needed someone to talk to, or just a friendly shoulder upon which to finally have a good cry. What she wanted most was to be alone long enough to call her brother. She didn’t know until later that he’d lingered on the third floor of the hospital long after they had gone, hoping she would somehow find her way up to him.

  It was Saturday, two days after their father died, when she was finally able to slip away long enough to call him. She left Kenny at the house under the pretense of needing to go for a ride to clear her head, and she drove to her office where she’d have the privacy to speak candidly to her brother without the concern that someone would overhear.

  James had been sitting alone in his apartment most of the morning, quietly enjoying Max’s company and hoping the phone would ring. The moment it did, he knew it would be Kate on the other end, and he hurried to answer it.

  They talked for nearly an hour about that day at the hospital and the subsequent days in Rhode Island. Kenny was very attentive and Gloria had been wonderful, she told him; and Aunt Gin was on her way from New York to attend the memorial service.

  “Please tell me you’re not having a church service,” James groaned. “Dad would have hated that.”

  “Gloria suggested it,” Kate told him. “But we’re not doing that. Just a nice simple reception.”

 
What James really wanted to know were the details of his father’s final moments. Even when he discussed the events of that day with Kate, they both carefully navigated around that subject. He’d been with his father less than thirty minutes before he passed, but it haunted him that he couldn’t be at his side when his father drew his last breath. He desperately wished he’d been there holding his father’s hand and quietly reassuring him right to the end, but that was just one more thing that his decision of a year earlier had taken from him. It was one more thing with which he would eventually have to come to terms, but for now, it ate away at him.

  “It was very peaceful,” Kate assured him, though she knew that wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him.

  “Did he say anything?” James asked. “Last words? Anything?”

  Kate had struggled with the decision of whether to tell her brother that their father had called out for him just before he died. She wondered whether that information would bring heartache or comfort, and she was still trying to deal with her own feelings about it. She hadn’t really come to a decision until that moment when he asked her point blank.

  “He asked for you,” Kate admitted.

  James fell silent on the other end of the phone.

  “He didn’t speak at all after his stroke,” Kate continued. “A few times, it looked like he was trying, but nothing came out.” She paused, replaying the events in her mind. “Then all of a sudden he said your name and then he opened his eyes like he was looking for you. Then he closed them again and that was it.”