by Payne, K C
Wandering dejected around downtown Manhattan on a sunny afternoon, I felt totally alone and miserable. Lost in familiar surroundings. Like a zombie, I passed the hip lunchtime shoppers in Union Square. Meandering up Broadway and past the Flatiron in the hazy heat, I barely registered the spicy scents of lunch vendors in the amiable bustle around Madison Square Park.
Following nothing but my feet, I drifted alone through the crowds, up Madison and across to Park Avenue. Down by Grand Central, I saw a Hamptons Jitney minibus pull up. On a whim, I jumped on the little bus and took off for an afternoon at the beach.
The Jitney was full of immaculately dressed refugees from Manhattan to the Hamptons. Quiet voices with long vowels spoke the weary drawl of Long Island natives.
The long journey soothed me. As the dark, shiny Hudson slipped by below the ridge, the high canyons of the city gave way to scraggy suburbs. Along the endless roadwork delays and stop-start of the Long Island Expressway, I thought, This must be one of the worst-named roads on the planet.
Four passengers alighted at the Southampton stop with me. None of them wore drab jeans and dirty sneakers, or a grayish t-shirt. None of the other passengers departed without a car to meet them or an SUV parked nearby.
The route on foot from the Jitney stop to the beach came back to me like I was there yesterday. The bigger sky and a little salt in the breeze lifted my step as I crossed the dry grasses and my feet sank into the pale sand.
It wasn’t a place people came to be miserable. Or ‘contemplative.’ I wasn’t the only person on the beach carrying their shoes, but I was the only one wearing normal clothes. Everyone else wore this season’s beach colors, the shorts all at exactly this week’s length, t-shirts with this morning’s logo or ironic slogan.
More than that, I probably stood out for not wearing expensive shades. It didn’t matter to me. My life was heading for such a drab wreck, I couldn’t care less how I appeared. After I wandered a while in the salty air, my eyes drifted gradually up from the sand and found the misty horizon.
At that point, I had no clue whether I could make up enough grades to pass the year, or even if it was worth trying at this point. Next year, I’d only have to work even harder than I did this year, just to stay in place.
If I did flunk, then all that I’d worked for and spent on classes would be wasted–I didn’t believe at that point that I’d ever find the energy to go back and pick up my studies later.
On the other hand, would there be any point making the effort? Wouldn’t I just be throwing good money after bad? A shudder went through me, like it did whenever I caught a cliché that I associated with the Asshat.
It was only because of him that I knew this beach though. Him and Balthazar. The bright afternoon wasn’t exactly cheering me up, but at least getting some distance had lightened the load some. It all seemed as awful as it had back in the city, but out on the ocean shore, it didn’t feel as if it mattered quite so much.
Hunger called, and I looked around for somewhere to get food. It was stupid of me not to eat in Union Square or Madison Square Park where food would have been way less expensive than out here. I was determined to find something that I would enjoy, though.
I’d scrimped as long as I could remember. This one afternoon was going to be mine, even if it meant walking a couple of miles for a train back.
A white clapperboard cafe in the distance had a wide deck around the outside. Gray roofs sloped to the surrounding tufts of pale grasses and my pace picked up as I trudged towards the promise of refreshment.
When I stepped up onto the deck, a waiter in smart whites with a sliver tray gave me a look up and down. Most of the tables were vacant and heavy white linen tablecloths rose just a little in the sea breeze.
I picked a table in the shade, the one with the most empty space around it. Solitude wasn’t a great comfort, but I wasn’t ready to give it up yet. The same waiter gave me a sideways glance as he set a menu card on the tablecloth in front of me. He raised an eyebrow as he stood with his pad poised.
“Something to drink, madam?” he had a trace of a European accent, maybe Dutch.
“A glass of white wine.”
He turned the menu card and pointed. There was a whole column of white wines by the glass. I chose a white Spanish Rioja. The sails of a few little boats wove along the horizon. Seagulls squawked above. I wished I had a pair of shades, even cheap ones.
The deck shuddered under the pounding weight of a tall, blond-haired man in a gray suit. Surrounded by a milling entourage, he strode to the table next to mine. Maybe half a dozen boys and girls in their twenties buzzed around him. They all wore similar pale khaki pants and short-sleeved shirts.
The way they hung back, made space for him, cocked their heads to everything he said, I figured they were minions, attached to do his bidding. All of them carried tablet computers, little folders and flappy shoulder bags. They all wore very nice shades, although not as nice as his. I shifted my chair so my back faced the group.
The waiter brought my wine in a high-stemmed glass on a sliver tray. He set it out nicely and took my order for a club sandwich. The voice at the next table was one that could not be ignored. He was talking quite loudly into a phone. I thought it was funny how people in the best places often had the worst manners.
“I want a Gulfstream G 150 ready for my pilot to collect.” A lump of ice dropped through me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not the words, those didn’t matter, but the voice was so familiar. “I want it at LAX, certified and fueled up the day after tomorrow. Call me back in ninety minutes with your best price. No second chance, understand?” It couldn’t be true. I was afraid to turn my head.
“When you call back, state only your finished, all-inclusive price. Just one number.” I turned. It was him. “It will be a straight cash purchase for the best bid.” And he hung up. Then he looked up, over his shades. Those golden-brown eyes shone into mine, and way down inside me a depth charge thudded.
The entourage fell silent and their eyes all swiveled to me. I hadn’t seen him in, like, forever. I almost didn’t recognize him with the short beard.
It was the sound of his voice I had responded to. And, I mean, I responded. God, the purring rasp of that voice had reached down inside me and stirred me up like a Long Island Iced Tea.
He raised a hand. The entourage all turned to look. His fingers flicked like they were dusting the air. Silently the group gathered their tablets, notepads, and bags, and they melted away.
When he stood, my heart pounded. His muscles were tense, but not as tense as the expensive fabric on the front of his elegant pants. That was tented tense. A weight pressed against them. It prodded familiar feelings in me. The deck shook under his feet as he strode the short distance to my table.
He stood with his feet apart. He was so near, so tall, that I had to crane my neck to look up to him. He stared at me, although I couldn’t see his eyes through the Oakleys or whatever they were.
The waiter came up behind him with my sandwich on the silver tray, but he couldn’t get around and he was flustered. Balthazar didn’t even turn his head, he just took the tray.
“This your sandwich, Sis?”
When he said, ‘Sis’ my stomach fell down a hole. My thighs slackened apart. My throat tightened and my breath caught. All the feelings, all the wrong sensations that I had experienced around him, time after time when we were younger, all the things I thought I’d never have to go through again.
They all flooded back at once. I felt thoroughly drenched. He was still waiting for me to answer, with that half smile on his face that I remembered from the first time I saw him.
“Well?” that familiar sarcastic edge, that slightly superior tone was in his voice. His scent was unmistakable; he had on some elegant and probably expensive, exotic cologne, but behind it was a darker note. A note that lit a sense memory. It revived thoughts and feelings that I knew I shouldn’t have had at the time. But I loved them and I wanted them then.
And I wanted them still.
His head cocked a little to one side. He’d asked me a question. I’d forgotten. I realized that he was still holding the tray.
“Yes,” I told him, “It’s my sandwich.”
He set the tray down. My eyes didn’t leave his as he bent with the tray. The waiter clearly wanted his tray back but he couldn’t find the nerve to ask Balthazar to return it. He bobbed his head uncertainly. Balthazar showed no sign of noticing. The waiter shuffled away, trayless and dejected.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
“While you stand there and watch me?”
“I’ve watched you eat before. I never noticed it troubling you.”
“I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“Oh. I put you off your food?”
No! I wanted to shout at him but I held back. I said, “I’m very surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Likewise.” My stomach curled at the sound of his voice.
I said, “Are you going to just stand there?”
“Until you invite me to sit, of course.” His manners were much more polished. He had reinvented himself. That same spirit burned from his eyes but he had a kind of an assured confidence, a new certainty.
I told him, “Then, it’s my pleasure.” Try to match him. I didn’t feel like I succeeded. “Won’t you please join me?” My voice trembled as I waved my hand to the chair, and my hand shook.
He hitched the knees of his gorgeous suit and his lithe, athletic frame settled into the seat. He laid his phone on the table with his hand on top of it.
He sat in front of me with his thighs spread, like he had when he was a teenager. The bulge was prominent, high and strong. He made no attempt to hide it.
Finally he said, “It’s been a long time, Sis.” My stomach flipped again when he said ‘Sis.’
I said, “You didn’t exactly keep in close touch.”
“With the family?” His lip curled.
“With me.” I was aware of sounding pouty. I hated that.
“It was partly because of you that I left.” It was like a slap in the face.
“I always knew you hated me.” Now I really did sound whiny and hard done by. Suddenly the whole of the day, my professor, the prospect of flunking college, the yawning sense of failure, everything threatened to well up behind my eyes. I held my breath, but still my chest shuddered.
“I never hated you.” A breeze blew my hair into my face. He reached over to brush it away. I knew that it couldn’t stand it if he did. I would collapse. More than anything, I didn’t want to go to pieces in front of him.
As his hand approached my face, I seized his wrist to stop him. I misjudged and I used a little too much force so I smacked against the inside of his wrist. But when my skin came in touch with his, it was like all the lights went on in a huge room inside me with a great whump.
He looked at me as I held his wrist.
“Nobody else would dare to do that. You know that, Sis?”
It didn’t matter how hard I peered at his sunglasses, I couldn’t see his eyes behind them. My mouth tightened. “You said you left because of me.”
“I did. Not because I hated you, though.” His lip twitched. His fingers drummed on his phone.
His voice was flat as he rose. “Enjoy your sandwich.”
“Yeah,” I said stiffly. “Keep in touch.”
There was a sharpness when he said, “Like you did?”
“You mean like you did.”
“I left my phone numbers, Facebook, email. You had plenty of ways to be in contact.”
“Likewise, Ba…” I stopped myself. Even now, I wouldn’t break that trust.
The deck rumbled as he left me with the sandwich I could hardly afford, and now, almost certainly couldn’t bring myself to eat. As I glanced at the plate, I saw his phone. My head whipped around, but he was out of sight. I picked up the phone to run after him.
As I got up from the chair, a huge noise shook the air from behind the restaurant. I was just a couple of steps across the deck when a helicopter roared overhead, close enough to blow all the linen. Somebody’s glass blew over and waiters came running towards the protesting howls.
As the helicopter rose and arced out across the beach, it threw up a small sandstorm in its wake. It headed straight for the ocean. It was a small dark fish halfway to the horizon before it baked to the left and veered out of sight.
Even though I had a strong hunch that Balthazar had left in the helicopter, I carried on to the edge of the deck to look around. He was nowhere to be seen. So, I made my way back to my table trying to decide whether I should leave his phone at the restaurant so he could come back for it, or if should I take it.
He would be bound to have a way to track the phone, so if I took it he could find it easily enough. And me with it, if he cared. But that was what I knew I would do. I’d take his phone.
The wine was fresh and crisp, and I did my best to enjoy it. Any taste that I had for the sandwich was gone, but the waiter was pleasant when I asked him to bag it for me. I knew that I needed to eat, and I hoped that a walk along the shore would revive my appetite.
As I walked back onto the sand, the sun was still high in the sky, but the breeze was more stiff and persistent. With the laces of my sneakers knotted together, I put them over my shoulder.
Strolling near enough to the water’s edge to dip my toes in the ocean, I tried to make some sense out of my feelings about the day, with no success. It was a day of disasters. And in the middle of it, Balthazar showed up. My pulse raced at the thought of him. It looked like he had become pretty wealthy.
Thinking of the finely cut cotton of his suit, I tried to keep my mind off the bulge in his pants. The recollection of his scent took me back to the sensation of him standing over me, so near, and his hard heat.
His phone rang. I knew I would be able to answer the call, though I probably couldn’t do much else. I pressed the screen and held the phone to my ear. A cultured male voice said, “Thirteen point eight million dollars. Cash.”
I said, “Who is this?”
And the voice hesitated. “I was told to give the number only. Will you see that the message gets to Mr. Colt?”
“Thirteen point eight million is the message?” I said, baffled.
“Thank you.” They hung up. I looked at the screen. There was no number.
I had just dropped the phone back into my pocket when it rang again, so I fished it back out. Still no number. I pressed the ‘Answer’ key.
“You picked up my phone.” When I heard his voice I nearly dropped it again. “I knew that you would.” The bastard did it on purpose. “Did you answer it a few moments ago? Did a call come in?” It was getting hard to hear him as a huge motorboat sliced the waves close to the shore.
I shouted into the phone, “Yes. Thirteen point eight million dollars, cash, is what the man said.”
Through the noise of the boat’s engine I was just about able to hear him, “Thanks, Sis. Did you eat your sandwich yet?”
“Not yet. I wasn’t hungry.” I shouted with one finger in my ear, pressing the phone hard against the other ear. The boat grew louder and closer.
He said something and I couldn’t hear him at all, the damned boat was so close. I shouted to him to repeat it.
“Have lunch with me,” I moved away from the shore but the boat slammed onto the beach in front of me.
He stood tall in the back of the speedboat. Two of his uniformed minion-kids sat behind the windshield to drive.