by Mara Purl
Zack congratulated her on the promotion, and she brushed aside the compliment as quickly as she could. They engaged in a few moments of small talk, followed by promises to stay in touch, and then she excused herself to take her next meeting. Short and sweet, Zack thought. Mission accomplished.
As he pulled out of the parking structure ten minutes later, he couldn’t help but consider his own career path. When I’m in my late forties, will I be running Calvin Oil, as Dad expects? Or will I jump ship and try my hand at a mega corporation? Admiral of a small fleet? Or Captain in a huge fleet? Though I’d hardly say someone with Ms. Knowles’ credentials is a mere Captain.
By the time the density of cars finally thinned out, he was passing through Thousand Oaks, and he pushed the pedal to the metal when he came around the big, gentle curve of Highway 101 in Ventura where the road finally touched the coastline. Okay, I only have one more business appointment, and then my vacation officially begins.
This last meeting would be with Clarke Shipping, one of Calvin Oil’s primary transportation partners. A relatively small company, privately held, its corporate profile matched that of their own company. As CEO, Joseph Calvin felt this to be appropriate, and even wise. Dad and Russell Clarke didn’t know each other well, but had arranged meetings several times through the years. Apparently, Clarke himself was out of town, but Zack would meet with his own counterpart over lunch. And since Clarke Shipping was located in Morro Bay, his scheduled drive north had been the inspiration for Zack’s trip up the coast.
Just then Zack’s cell phone rang. He’d been one of the first to buy the Motorola Star-TAC when they were released in January, and he considered it worth every penny of the thousand-dollar price tag. The high-tech clamshell phone weighed only three ounces and was so thin, he could actually fit it into his breast pocket. But, having taken off his jacket to drive, he now reached for the phone where he’d placed it in the center console. Flipping it open, he answered the call.
“Mr. Zackery?”
‘Yes, Mary.” I’d know that voice anywhere. And in case I missed the voice, I’d still know it was her, because she perpetually clears her throat. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, ahem.” She cleared her throat. “Yes, Sir, Mr. Zackery. However, there’s been a slight change of plans.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, a Stacey Chernak called—she’s the secretary at Clarke Shipping—to say that Mr. Marks regrets, but he cannot meet you today after all.”
“But, Mary, I’m already on my way. And after my meeting with Will, I was planning to stay—”
“Oh, yes, Sir. I realize exactly what you’re about to say. Now, apparently Mr. Marks can meet with you for lunch on Friday, if that would suit? If so, I will call back the secretary to confirm.”
“Let me just think for a moment.” I suppose Friday would work just as well. I can drive beyond Morro Bay now and explore a little. But then I’d need a different place to stay. “Mary, lunch Friday will work fine. And you’d booked me a Morro Bay motel. Can you cancel that? I’ll find something on my own and let you know where I am, so you can leave me details about the lunch with Will.”
“Oh, yes, very good, Sir. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks, Mary.” Zack closed his phone and returned it to the console. I suppose now that my meeting is postponed, my vacation starts right now … which means I can turn off the phone. Hitting the power button, he focused his attention to the road and took in the scenery: sparkling water to his left, and to the right, jagged mountains where land’s end continued to wander ahead of him.
With a deep breath, he settled further into the leather seat. An autumn haze softened the profiles of offshore oil rigs as they marched along in the coastal water, and he found himself naming each of them, ticking off the construction dates and remembering some of the details of their histories.
But now’s the time to leave the oil business behind and see how the rest of the world is getting along. Digging his heel a little more deeply into the car’s plush carpeting, he nudged the speedometer a notch or two higher. Worried for a moment, he removed his sunglasses and scanned the road through his rearview mirror—sometimes a cop car was hard to spot with the sun low in the sky. But Zack’s eyesight was excellent, and he relaxed, realizing he’d seen merely a fellow traveler with wheels as fast as his own.
Already he was enjoying the drive up the coast with an abandon he’d been missing for a long time. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, or how long he’d drive. He decided to allow himself the ultimate luxury of unwinding even as his car wound up, and of seeing where he… wound up. The little joke made him laugh. A silly laugh, and a delighted one, at being able to think of anything so trivial.
Half-way to the Central Coast, Zack felt nothing but relief not to be stopping in Santa Barbara. He continued north on 101 and sped past the San Marcos Pass, taking the long way where it followed the peninsula out into the Pacific, the languorous pace matching his mood. He wasn’t hungry or tired of the drive by the time he was passing the turn-off for Solvang. It was a cute little tourist town—almost too charming. All the buildings matched, and every brunch spot offered aebleskivers, the rounds of fried dough the Danes served with powdered sugar and jam. Delicious … but you have to be in the right mood to enjoy Solvang, and today isn’t the day to play tourist.
Turning off at San Luis Obispo, charming college town that it was, he rode past telephone poles festooned with brightly colored posters, and glanced into coffee shops crammed with students exuberant with the fall-energy of a new semester. Even then he didn’t stop, beckoned by an irresistible urge to travel California Highway 1.
The older, narrower road returned him to the coast, and he glided down the big hill toward Morro Bay. The highway contoured beautifully along the deep bay where, as a boy, he’d seen tankers standing off shore, as his father had explained the ways of the great ships. I could stop. But the place makes me think of business.
He almost stopped again when he saw the sign “Harmony. Population 18.” But by the time he was considering it, he’d sped past the only access road, and Harmony slipped away in the late morning sun.
“Cambria” announced itself quietly, picture-postcards of streets and houses winking between trees. But the open road bypassed its center, and the one traffic light that might have stopped him remained a bright, beckoning green. A few miles later the sign for William Randolph Hearst’s sumptuous estate tempted him, but before he reached the Castle, he entered the perimeter of Milford-Haven and somehow knew this was where he wanted to stop.
Turning off the highway, he nosed into a main street that passed through a valley between hills. On the hills were perched tall pines, houses nestled among them. Parking in a diagonal spot outside a row of shops, he turned off the car engine and allowed himself a moment of silence before opening his door. Leaving the car’s top down, he closed the door, stretched, and breathed deeply of ion-rich air, laden with the scent of pine.
A whiff of sizzling meat wafted past Zack’s nostrils, and he glanced up Main Street to discover its source. Instead of tracking it, he continued wandering from shop to shop, gradually noticing that each one housed original arts or crafts of some sort, and that the village he’d discovered was not so much a tourist town as it was an artists’ colony. Every store’s windows were decorated for the season—some with an autumn elegance, some with a whimsy of goblins and ghosts. Outside the local Chamber of Commerce, he perused the visitors’ rack and pulled out a colorful map.
Tracing a finger over the page, he saw a drawing of a gallery called Finders, then looked down the street and saw its sign. He walked the few yards and stepped through the front door, setting off the pleasant sound of door chimes. A voice with an accent—French or French Canadian—greeted him with, “Good afternoon, Sir. My name is Nicole. May I ’elp you?”
“Oh. Thanks. I was just reading about your gallery here and I wanted to see it for myself.”
“C’est bien! We represe
nt a cross section of styles here. We have everything from nature to ’igh technology and from modern to realism.…
Her spiel seemed well rehearsed and as she continued to talk, Zack found himself processing the accented words: “ehv-rrreh-thing,” and “tech-no-lo-jee”, finding her a little hard to follow.
“Well, if I can explain anything to you about our artists, or their work, please do not ’esitate to ask.” As she walked away, her heels clicked on the stone floor, and her hips swayed, confined chicly in a tightly fitted skirt.
“Okay thanks,” he called after her.
She glanced back just in time to catch him looking at her posterier, and gave him a smile.
Zack lifted his gaze, returned the smile and said, “I’ll just have a look around.”
He strolled through the room gazing at the paintings. The atmosphere here is so casual… not like visiting a museum. Just then, his stomach growled. I’m alone in here at the moment, so no one else heard that. I must be getting hungry. But he enjoyed keeping the hunger at bay a little longer with the pleasant thought of discovering some delightful little lunch spot. His eye fell on a nice painting that had captured some of the local charm … pines, ocean, mist. Very restful. Then he saw an arresting image: in the center of a canvas bisected by the horizon—sky above, ocean below—a sperm whale breached. Though its tail was submerged, the entire body hung suspended above the waves as though the creature were trying to escape the water. Nothing peaceful about this painting. It’s all energy. And there’s something baleful in that eye.
He continued walking until he discovered another room, realizing the gallery was larger than it had seemed at first. Coming around a corner, he was stopped by what he saw.
The painting hung alone on the far wall—a window to another world… a lost world of primeval forest and untrodden seashore, a dreamscape where footsteps left no prints in a sun-dappled, sandy cove.
Zack stood transfixed, his breathing heavy and deep, heat rising up his neck. As though mist from the painting might cool his face, he drifted closer to the canvas, and waited to receive its message. When none came, his rational mind tried to sort and categorize the fading familiarity. This cove, I’ve seen it before… I just can’t recall… maybe as a child? No, it doesn’t look like Santa Barbara.
What logic and memory couldn’t explain, acquisition could solve. Even as Zack made his decision, he tried to explain it to himself. It’ll go right on my office wall… the ocean, those rocks, that magic cove. Almost in a trance, he walked toward Nicole’s sales desk. “Excuse me.”
Her head was bowed over a file, the front lock of her short, smooth hair concealing her face. She looked up, sweeping her hair out of the way. “Yes, sir?”
“I’ve decided I’d like to buy one of your paintings.” He could hardly believe he was saying it. “That one over there, with the cove and the beach.”
“I see Monsieur is a man who decides quickly.” Zack heard skepticism in her voice and saw a question in her expression, as though she doubted an impulse buy could happen this quickly.
“Well, yes I… I suppose I do. Is it available?”
“Let me just look it up in our catalogue,” said Nicole. Lifting a large leather-bound volume from the edge of her desk, she carefully turned plastic-covered sheets of color reproductions. After a few moment, she said, “Ah.” Looking up, she explained, “This one is on loan from the artist. I’m afraid it’s under contract—”
“Uh, look, I’m just up here for a few days,” Zack interrupted her, “and I’d like to be sure to settle this before I leave. Do you think you could put me in touch with the artist? I’d like to just call him myself.” A strange anxiety gripped him at the thought of losing the painting.
“Actually, the artist is a woman, and she does not answer the studio phone between noon and 4 p.m., but since you’re in a ’urry why not drop by her studio? Probably you could catch her either today or tomorrow… I do not think she would mind, in this case.”
Slightly taken aback at the prospect of having to explain his sudden passion to the artist herself, he nonetheless overcame his hesitation. “All right… I’ll do that.”
Pulling some materials from the file drawer, Nicole gave him a professional smile. “’ere is a brochure about her work, and it ’as the address on the back.”
Zack took the brochure, flipping to the back. For the second time that day, something stopped him. “She’s a beauty!” The words burst out of him involuntarily, under his breath, at the sight of her picture.
Nicole, busying herself with preparing a small package of marketing materials, she looked up again. “Pardon, Monsieur?”
“Oh, it’s a beauty, that painting.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” Nicole seemed to suspect his attempt to cover his blurted comment. “Well, you go out the gallery front door, and turn left, and go up the ’ill….”
She was giving him directions to the private studio of the artist, Miranda Jones.
Chapter 4
Cynthia Radcliffe stood in front of her full-length mirror to admire the view. Her hair was always a slightly different shade of blond. She left that to her hairdresser, just so long as the tone he chose made the best of her caramel-colored eyes. André did a good job this month… with the cut too—long enough to play with and short enough to make a fashion statement.
To please herself, she dabbed some Fracas onto her wrists, enjoying the piquant gardenia scent. Then she scrutinized again the soft suede dress that clung to her curves. Actually it’s ultrasuede, but it is a Halston. And it’s that delicious color of butterscotch. She’d chosen it especially for an upcoming date with Zackery Calvin. What statement does the dress make? The thought of his face when he saw her in it made her throw back her head and laugh. Whether it did more to emphasize the sculpted waist or the shapely breasts was hard to say. In any case, the strategically placed silver buttons and the feel of the sensuous fabric would have the desired effect.
How long have I been dating him? Seventeen months—and counting. I’m making a big investment in you, Zackery. It hadn’t taken long for her to decide on the junior Mr. Calvin. And finding him had confirmed Santa Barbara as a logical choice, too. This coastal town was far enough north of Los Angeles to be distinct from the complex and sordid layers that made up a large city. In a population of only 100,000, a person with drive could actually be somebody, get noticed. Here, one could have the best of both worlds: access to the big city in two hours—depending on traffic; yet a comfortable sense remove, in a town with a culture all its own.
She imagined there would be less competition in Santa Barbara as well. Not that this town didn’t have plenty of single women. But L.A. was full of sexy young blondes who could distract a man’s attention. These wanna-be actresses were drawn like moths to the flame of Hollywood, and spent their youths dreaming of stardom. She considered all that to be a colossal waste of time. I grew up with all that. My own parents fell prey to it. Cynthia knew exactly where to focus: money and men.
So often the best of both can be found in the same place. And this was the most important thing about the beautiful and tasteful city of Santa Barbara. There was plenty of money here. So she knew she’d find powerful and successful men.
Zackery was certainly both. And he’s young and handsome—but that isn’t necessarily the best situation for me. She’d generally found older men more stable professionally and more needy emotionally, which meant she didn’t have to chase them, because they were eagerly chasing her.
She’d had some success with such relationships, which often came with a bonus: generous men gave nice gifts, which she sometimes parlayed into longer-lasting resources.
Cynthia recalled the time—about three years ago now—when the South African businessman who’d been sweet on her had offered a shopping spree. The dear man had so much money from his diamond business that he really didn’t know what to do with it all. Though his offices were in “Jo-burg” and New York, whenever he got bored, he flew to
Las Vegas to gamble away some of his surplus cash. They’d met there one night in the Palm Court Lounge, where Cynthia was singing. Cynthia’d temporarily closed her L.A. apartment to accept the four-month gig. She enjoyed his attentions, and after they dated a few times, he suggested she buy herself a new wardrobe and handed her five crisp thousand-dollar bills.
Thing is, that money came with strings: buy new clothes so I’d dress as he wanted me to; quit singing so much so I’d be available when he wanted me. But what did that mean? He wasn’t offering to pay my rent. Besides, I wanted to keep my independence. It just wasn’t her cup of tea to be at someone’s beck and call—not with a man who only wanted a fling. Instead, she’d handed him back all but one of the bills. But to assuage his hurt feelings, she invited him to attend a showy charity ball sometime soon in Los Angeles, promising to wear something he’d enjoy.
Her life in L.A. had included membership in several high-profile charities, not so much because she loved helping others, but because she found their annual galas practical for networking. Sure enough, an invitation was waiting when she got home.
So, the day after she’d decamped Nevada and resettled herself in her Van Nuys apartment, she’d headed straight to the couturier department at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, where she discovered the most scrumptious Fabrice gown, covered in silver bugle beads. Much as I loved that dress, it really was too expensive. Besides, it was designed for a forty-year-old. She tried on several others, and found a perfect black number: revealing and kicky, flirtatious and sleek. Then she thanked the frustrated sales woman, tossing her a smile as she left with a “I’ll think about it.”
By two hours later, she’d snagged a look-alike gown at her favorite bargain shop, then deposited the rest of her gift money into her account. Wonder how much interest that amount has earned by now? She smiled. If Derek—or any of my other boyfriends—ever knew how frugal I am, they’d stop trying to buy me things. I wouldn’t want that!