Time's Hostage: The dangers of love, loss, and lus (Time Series Book 1)

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  “I’m getting distracted. I’m still wondering how you know me,” she said.

  “Don’t be so suspicious,” he said. “When I researched Bartholomew, you came up as his wife, Dr. Sophia Werniczewski, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist. Photos and all. When I saw you in the restaurant, I didn’t make the connection. It had been a while. But you did look familiar. Mainly I was drawn to a beautiful, sophisticated woman. When I saw you again tonight, it all clicked. I placed you.”

  “But you acted as if I were a total stranger at first.” She felt odd now that he was telling her about all this knowledge he had of her and Barth.

  “Sophia, my dear, you are a total stranger. And I would like to change that.”

  Despite her disquiet, she was drawn to him. Maybe it was because of her disquiet. The tension in the air reminded her of many conversations with Morton that had felt the same. Something was a bit off. Was it her imagination, or was there an undercurrent of duplicity?

  “Dirk, I feel as if I’ve known you forever. I have your card and will call you soon to make arrangements for you to see Barth’s work. I guess this won’t be good-bye after all,” she said, the words tumbling out. “And now I must run. I have an early appointment tomorrow, and it’s getting way too late.” She stood, taking her leave.

  As she hailed a cab, she was thinking, I am going to see him again. A smug smile slowly spread across her face.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lili and Chanel basked in the afterglow of good sex. Their sweat-soaked bodies entwined, they both lay with eyes half closed, mindlessly grinning. At peace with the world. The ocean breezes wafting in through the louvers kissed their moist flesh, deep-sea perfumes mingling with their sex scent.

  Lili was the first to stir. Extricating herself from the slippery Chanel, she brushed and then kissed her small breast with its nipple still erect. She felt a vague stirring deep within her as she gave Chanel’s nipple a swift nip. She had to get up, get dressed, and get rid of Chanel before her mother arrived.

  Sophia’s neurologist had his practice nearby, and they had arranged for a lunchtime visit after her appointment. They were to go to Monty’s, a casual spot on the bay, within walking distance of Lili’s place.

  Lili noted that it was already eleven, and Sophia was due within the hour. She heard Chanel moving around in the bedroom.

  “You beast. First you have your way with me again this morning. Then you slip away, leaving me shivering in a pool of sweat all by myself. You are so cold!” Chanel, with her French accent, which so many found adorable, chastised her from the bedroom.

  “Well, you know Ma is due here in less than an hour, and she knows nothing about you.” Lili was not in a playful mood. It was hard work keeping her worlds separate. She wanted no collisions. Keep everything nice and simple. But keeping everything compartmentalized was not so simple. When she was away at Parsons in the city, it was easier. Now that she was on Ma’s home turf, it was tough keeping up appearances.

  “She thinks I’m a good little heterosexual panting after the next penis I can find,” she called out. “She doesn’t need to find us glowing in the aftermath of lesbo sex. She might have a heart attack.”

  “Oh, I was thinking almond croissants and café au lait from across the street,” Chanel pouted as she stood framed in the bedroom doorway, wearing nothing but a bright red beaded necklace.

  “Well think again, my love,” Lili said, admiring Chanel, then striding over to kiss her hard, one hand behind her head as with the other hand, she fingered the red beads around Chanel’s neck. She let her go just as abruptly as she had seized her.

  “I must ask you to go. Je suis desolée, but you understand? I will call you tonight, and we can have dinner?” she asked.

  “Bien sûr. I count the hours till we meet again. I’ll shower at home. You are tense enough. You would explode if I showered here, thinking your maman will burst in on us, catch us red-handed—or wet-handed is more like it, and die of shame and embarrassment because her darling Lili is a gouine, a dyke.”

  Chanel slipped on her emerald-green shift and red flats. She had worn no underwear. Her only jewelry was the red beads. She pecked Lili on the cheek, patted her derriere, and made her exit. She lived a short ride away in the Design District in midtown, over the scenic sweeping MacArthur Causeway on Biscayne Bay to the mainland.

  Lili loved going from the mainland over the causeway back to Miami Beach—the wide, empty water, the open views to the north and south, the cruise ships, those hulking water hotels, towering close by at the port. She breathed a sigh of relief when she left the mainland, and the causeway swept her toward the beach, her safety blanket.

  Now she sprang into action in preparation for Sophia’s visit. She showered, threw on red jeans and a purple tunic top she had created, threw the bed cover over the damp, tangled sheets, lit a stick of sandalwood incense, opened the louvers all the way, and started to make coffee before she allowed herself the luxury of thinking back to the beginning with Chanel.

  Lili had started Parsons at twenty, two years after Morton’s demise. She met Chanel when she took a year abroad at the Parsons in Paris, where Chanel was a student. She thought back to those enchanting times. She fell in love with Paris and then with Chanel. She wanted to stay forever. They were near the Louvre and Notre Dame. They took boat rides on the Seine, toured the Champagne vineyards in Rheims, and walked and walked everywhere. The street scenes were soul food. Paris was a dream, and she never wanted to wake up. She had fallen for all of it—the coffee, the cafés, the crepes, the museums, the champagne, the churches, the wine, the parks, the cheese, the language, the double ice-cream cones, and Chanel made it all doubly dreamy. Her first real love. She was a late bloomer indeed!

  Then she awakened from the dream. She was back in New York, which was brash, brittle, sterile, and devoid of romance. A nightmare, un cauchemar. But Chanel followed her and finished Parsons in New York. The love affair continued, and they moved to Miami together.

  They were the Bobbsey Twins, and since they were two femmes together, people rarely perceived them as lovers. The straight world was used to a butch/femme combination. Lili and Chanel, with the same tamed raven hair and wax-white skin, the same height, five foot eight inches, the same scrawny build, resembled two animated china dolls. Perhaps it was narcissism, strong self-love, because when one looked at the other, surely she saw a reflection of herself.

  The doorbell’s chiming stirred her. Sure enough, Sophia was early, and her heart skipped a beat as she thought of the possible scenarios entailing a chance meeting between Sophia and Chanel. Sophia would probably think she was a friend unless she caught them in a compromising situation.

  Lili opened the door to a disheveled, disheartened Sophia. Her eyeliner was smudged on one side, leaving a long smear under her right eye like a snail’s trail. Unusual too was her choice of dress—not a black, curve-concealing ensemble, of which Sophia owned many in various permutations, but instead a two-piece abstract purple, red, and yellow number, the top of which tied rakishly across the midriff, while the voluminous skirt billowed and swirled with each step, giving Sophia a raffish, gypsy-like air. It went well with her wild curly russet tresses.

  Lili ushered her into the small, bright living room, which contained—incongruous for Miami—a tiny ornate fireplace built into one wall, making the room even smaller.

  Sophia plopped onto the white couch opposite the fireplace. The couch, covered with exotic colorful pillows and a red-and-gold blanket procured in Paris, felt like a sanctuary to Sophia. She lay down, her head propped up on several pillows, while she hugged another pillow to her. She looked like a concubine in a harem, relaxing in her quarters, waiting for the call to the sheik.

  “Ma, you look done in,” said Lili from her perch across the room. “

  “I don’t want to ever move again. I’m paralyzed by fatigue. All that prodding, probing and pushing—a physical assault and a mental inquisition by Hamish Clyde, a man with no bedsid
e manner. No personality for that matter.” She’d had her eyes closed throughout the monologue, but she popped them open suddenly, directing her startling green gaze at her daughter.

  “It’s understandable that you feel like shit. You don’t know what’s happening to you, and you go to Clyde the quack for answers. He’s not reassuring. And besides, it’s tough to face change. You were sailing along with no symptoms, taking one medication with few side effects, able to forget that you had epilepsy. And bam! Your head’s in the soup, and your senses are all fucked up. You don’t know where you are. And you don’t have control.” Lili’s words spilled out, some tumbling over others. “It’s like the ‘Second Coming,’ that great Yeats poem. Wait, I can only remember a bit of it. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ That’s all I can remember. It starts off with a falcon, I think. The center cannot hold. That’s happening to you,” Lili said, running out of steam.

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re not succeeding. Let’s change the subject. How about some of that great Earl Gray tea you make from scratch with a little milk and honey? That’s very restorative. And then make me something simple? I don’t feel like Monty’s,” Sophia said.

  “Glad to oblige, Ma. I’m starving,” Lili said, rising from the chair and dashing into the tiny pale-yellow kitchen. She had painted it herself. Winter sun. She took down the teapot and the loose tea from the red cabinet.

  “I was so preoccupied, I didn’t mention that you look great, dear,” Sophia called out from the living room. “You are positively glowing. Have you taken up some exercise?”

  “No, nothing like that,” a sheepish Lili said. “Just shush and relax. I’ll be right there with the tea.”

  Silence reigned in the apartment. Lili switched on Madeleine Peyroux torching “La Vie En Rose” like a reincarnation of a world-weary Edith Piaf.

  Lili stood waiting for the water to boil and thinking of Chanel. Sex with Chanel made her smile. She danced around the room, thinking of holding her. Was it rare to have such good sex? she wondered. Especially two girls.

  Sophia was thinking of her visit this morning. Hamish Clyde, who resembled nothing more than a bug-eyed, squat-legged, warty toad, thought he still lived in Edinburgh, dressing in avocado-green oatmeal tweeds and dull-brown worsted-woolen ties. Colors that confirmed he was indeed a toad. Fabrics that confirmed he was impervious to feelings.

  When Clyde had leaned forward over his messy oak desk, scarred from age, to intone on the nature of partial epilepsy and what changing symptoms might mean, she had expected a long toad tongue to unfurl itself and curl quickly around a nearby airborne mosquito and snap it up.

  Lili interrupted her fantastical take on her visit.

  “I was just thinking of how much Clyde resembles a toad. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had plucked the mosquito buzzing around his head out of the air with his tongue.”

  “That’s hysterical. You could write a children’s book, and Barth could illustrate. The neurologist would be the toad. But wait. Would you want a neurologist in a kiddy book? What a downer. Unless you are writing a book about a kid with epilepsy. Ma, you should do it.”

  “Don’t get carried away, imposing your creative genius on me,” Sophia said. “I’m not about to write a kiddy book about epilepsy or anything else.”

  “You’re right. I was getting carried away. Sometimes I’m like a runaway train, easily derailed,” said Lili.

  “And easily deranged,” Sophia added. “I feel better now, and I’m getting hungry. What’s for lunch?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Sophia awoke thrashing and gasping for air as she sat up in bed with her heart pounding in her ears. She took a few long, deep breaths as she pulled her hair away from her face. Barth was not beside her. She had had a nightmare of epic proportions.

  It had begun as a beguiling wet dream. Torrential. Dirk, dressed in his blue suit, also sported around his shoulders a flowing midnight-blue cape lined in red satin. Dirk had enveloped her in his embrace and began kissing her insistently. The kisses were magnetic—deep, velvety smooth and more and more urgent. Sophia was matching him tongue for tongue, drawing deep, probing further and further into the fleshy well of saliva. She pressed herself against him, trying to feel as much of his engorged penis between her legs as she could. They were floating in midair as if they were in a Chagall painting.

  She was moving her determined hands toward his member when he disengaged from her mouth. She thought he was helping her unzip him. She slowly realized that he had developed fangs, which were moving inexorably toward her neck. His bloodshot eyes were menacing. Just as he sank his teeth into her neck, veins ripping, her blood cascading from her wound, she awoke panicked and confused. She still felt the remnants of that powerful pulsating desire alongside the heart-pounding terror.

  Sophia touched her neck. Intact. She looked around at the reassuringly familiar bedroom as her heart rate slowed, and she began returning to wakeful reality.

  It was threatening to be thinking about this man. She was not a cheating woman. Sure she looked sometimes. But he had awoken something buried.

  “Snap out of it,” she said out loud. “You have your usual six patients in a row today, and you need your head screwed on tight.”

  Sophia jumped out of bed with renewed purpose. She had a long day of listening, interpreting, supporting, and challenging ahead of her.

  She had to get her act together and put that incredible dream behind her. She stepped into the shower and took her time. As she was soaping up her body, gliding her bath sponge over all of her, she was dwelling on the dream.

  Sophia dressed in her customary black, adding some red jewelry for dramatic color. She flashed on the blood in the dream.

  As she descended the crimson-carpeted steps, she smelled the heady fragrance of strong, rich coffee. Barth must be in the kitchen. She saw his endearing spare frame as she approached. He was bustling about making breakfast, and she watched him unobserved for a few moments. He looked so sweet and handsome with his tousled halo of blond hair and the intent expression on his face as he busied himself with the toast and coffee.

  Like an innocent angel, she thought.

  “Barth, darling!” She beamed at him as she swept over to kiss him tenderly on the lips.

  “I haven’t seen you in days, Sophia darling,” he said, returning her kiss. “Seems even longer.”

  “We’re like two ships passing in the night. Well, this gala on top of everything else has consumed me,” he said. “

  “The gala was perfect. Where did you come up with such great ideas? And the tree was perfect. The music, too,” Sophia said.

  “Are you feeling guilty about something? I never get such unreserved flattery from you. Overcompensating, as they say in your line of work?” Barth asked.

  “You’re such a nut,” Sophia said, blushing.

  Barth brought her coffee and also, anticipating her wishes, Greek yogurt and fresh berries with honey and cinnamon.

  “You are so sweet and thoughtful,” Sophia cooed.

  They sat at the circular pale-gray marble table with its black metal legs, perching on uncomfortable fashionably austere gunmetal gray steel chairs. They sipped their coffee in unison, enveloped in comfortable silence.

  Sophia broke the silence. “I didn’t see Lili there and I forgot to ask her what happened to her. I saw Amanda and Keith and Jack also. Keith complained about you as a teacher. He said you’re too tough,” Sophia laughed.

  “Serves him right for departing from the world of a Starbucks barista. If he wants to expand his horizons and get out of that narrow world he inhabits, he’s going to have to work at it,” Barth said. “I’m working at home today, and he’s coming over for some tutoring. He better bring a shiny red apple if he wants to be teacher’s pet.”

  “The world he needs to stop inhabiting is his mother’s,” Sophia said. “That woman is way too controlling.”

  “Am
anda and Lili don’t seem to have any interest in men. Before you, I was lonely. Searingly lonely sometimes. I did some desperate things to escape the loneliness. But, I was in a vacuum. Encased in thick, soundproof glass, keeping me emotionally isolated. I’m so grateful for you. A breath of fresh air. The sound is back on, too. And so much better the second time around,” Sophia said, taking Barth’s hand in hers.

  “You know my first marriage was loveless and lonely. I sought companionship and camaraderie elsewhere. Marrying young and while still in college wasn’t too smart. We didn’t know each other. We didn’t know ourselves,” Barth said. “No sense in dwelling on the past. You’re the light of my life.” Barth squeezed Sophia’s hand.

  “Jack and I are going to meet at the Deuce later in the week and catch up.”

  “You love that dive. Those creative mega sandwiches across the street make it all worthwhile. A marriage of taste and tacky, Beauty and the Beast.”

  “Before I go, and I do have to get going. I met an art dealer at your do. Long story. Here’s the short version. He’s something of a jet setter, Monte Carlo and Basel as well as SoBe residences. He’s researched you and likes your art, and I’ve told him we’ll have him over before he leaves town,” she said, working hard at blocking out the more memorable vestiges of the dream.

  “Sounds great. I love having people look at my art,” Barth said, letting go of Sophia’s hand.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I saw Clyde, and he changed meds. I have two now. We have to stop meeting like this. We have to talk,” Sophia said.

  “You’re right,” Barth said. “What’s your schedule like today?”

  “You don’t want to know. Six patients. I won’t be done until seven. And I’ll be drained,” Sophia said.

  “Well, we’ll see each other anyway. Maybe we can relax and watch a movie together,” he said.

  “Sounds great, Barth. See you later,” she said, pecking him on the cheek and heading for her home office.