Beyond the Storm (9780758276995)

by Pittman, Joseph

  “Uh . . .” he stammered.

  He realized she had produced a small square package in her hand and he also knew what it was and thought about how well prepared she was, like she had planned to get laid and who the chosen one was didn’t much matter. With one quick motion she brought the packet up to her lips and tore it with her gleaming teeth. Not even looking where she was going, like she had a map to the treasure memorized, she grabbed hold of him and slid the condom down the length of his growing shaft.

  “I said, take me, Adam. Now.”

  He stopped for a moment, his eyes locked on hers. She looked familiar, that’s for sure, but there was also something different, something . . . primal here. Something beyond the two of them. A new era was dawning between them, not the past and not tomorrow, one that existed in this frozen moment of time. It was almost like he was a different person and so too was she, both of them victims of some crazy possession that had taken them from Danton Hill and from New York, and into an existence where only they breathed. He detected hollowness behind her eyes and an empty soul living inside her body, almost like death had settled inside her.

  Don’t do it, don’t do it . . . he told himself.

  He felt her lips upon his chest. His body surged with heat . . .

  . . . and then he plunged inside her.

  A hungover Vanessa awoke that next morning and hadn’t a clue about a lot of things. Where she had slept was chief among them, followed by what time it was, what city she was in, and just how many vodka martinis she drank last night. Her last question was really more a realization, because in the deepest and most fuzzy regions of her brain, she knew she’d had sex and for the life of her she couldn’t remember a single detail about the guy she’d done it with. She called out to Reva, who was always there but who wasn’t there, and that’s when Vanessa popped up from the bed, saw the garbage can beside it, and nearly retched into it based on the sheer convenience of it. Nothing happened, just dry heaves, and she lay back down, hoping that today could suddenly become tomorrow and she’d be that much further removed from a night to remember that no doubt she wouldn’t. Reva would have fun reminding her, though.

  She stole a look at the clock, the numbers blurry. Her eyes blinked, focused. 10:37.

  Not bad, she could go back to sleep and . . .

  She bolted out of bed.

  “Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Tossing back the covers, she rushed into the bathroom and looked at the mess that stared back at her from the mirror. She repeated her earlier curse words, tossing in a few harsher ones. She was very nearly late for the real reason she’d come to New York. Twenty minutes until her appointment, that much she remembered. Trouble was, it was uptown and she was downtown (wasn’t she?) and more than miles separated the two destinations, especially if she were to make herself presentable. She had a choice, be late and look great or be on time and look like shit.

  “Shit, shit . . . shit.”

  She tossed on whatever clothes she saw lying around, grabbed her purse, and was down in the lobby of the SoHo Grand Hotel moments later. Outside she hailed a cab and told the driver there was a big tip in it for him if he got her to Sixty-Fifth and Fifth in ten minutes. Fortunately it was Sunday morning and traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been during a weekday and Vanessa reached her destination with two minutes to spare. She tipped the cabbie five bucks.

  The pre-war building was one of those fancy addresses along the exclusive avenue that lined the eastern edge of Central Park. Somewhere inside the massive stone building was the very forbidding Eleanor Stillwell-Abramson, wife of the ambassador to some country Vanessa could not recall at the moment; she was lucky she came up with the wife’s name. As she entered the building, the doorman inquired whom she was seeing. She could already feel contempt burning from his eyes; she wondered what Mrs. Stillwell-Abramson would think of her appearance if she was getting the stink eye from the doorman. Great, I look like a party girl who can’t control herself and who stays out till late and doesn’t take anything in life seriously, so why should I even be considered for a position as this privileged woman’s personal assistant? She could just hear that upper-crusty Fifth Avenue voice and see the pince-nez with her beady eyes wide inside them casting judgment down upon Vanessa. She should just turn around now.

  Except she couldn’t do that to Reva; her friend had pulled a major favor from a friend of a friend of a friend to secure this interview for Vanessa.

  She passed muster and found herself shooting up to the twenty-fifth floor.

  “Ms. Massey, please come in,” a waiting Eleanor Stillwell-Abramson said as the express elevator opened up directly onto the penthouse-level apartment. The regal-looking woman with perfectly coiffed white hair standing before her was sixty-ish, smartly dressed in a blue tailored suit with a set of pearls wrapped around an aging neck. Her lips were held tight, her makeup nearly undetectable.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Stillwell-Abramson, very kind of you.” Vanessa attempted to get the words out, her tongue’s clarity trapped somewhere after the hyphen.

  “Dear, it’s okay. I know it’s quite a mouthful. Why not call me Eleanor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Some tea, coffee, water . . . uh, aspirin?”

  There was no hint of sarcasm, just kindness.

  “Oh, three of those four would be wonderful,” she said, an attempt at humor.

  “I assume that last choice is between tea and coffee . . . hmm, let me presume that if you’re interviewing for this job you probably have a thing for London and its penchant for afternoon tea, and if that’s the case you’ll be drinking and serving a fair amount of Earl Grey to thirsty highbrows . . . how am I doing so far?”

  “You’re reading me very well,” Vanessa said. “I apologize . . .”

  “Dear, please have a seat. I’ll get the aspirin.”

  Vanessa did as instructed, especially since the tender but firm voice reminded her of a school’s headmistress. She returned a moment later and the two women settled down to talk as tea was served, as were those promised aspirin. Mrs. Stillwell-Abramson outlined the details of the job: the lucky candidate would live with her and her husband in their stylishly appointed flat in Mayfair, overlooking London’s expansive Green Park. She would arrange Eleanor’s schedule, get her to her appointments on time, help when it came to shopping, clothes, travel arrangements, etc. Sundays would be her one day off, otherwise, she would be on call 24-7, but she’d be handsomely compensated for her potential lack of sleep. The woman, eyes steely and serious, asked if Vanessa understood and she said yes, shook her head, and said how much she would enjoy the job.

  “You’re American.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Eleanor,” the woman said, then added, “Americans have no taste.”

  “Indeed, ma’am.”

  “Are you agreeing with me?”

  “Yes?”

  “Then why would I possibly hire you for a delicate job that requires not just taste but manners?” Her tone had turned chilly, like a wind suddenly sweeping down from the north, off the lake, a feeling Vanessa knew quite well and had experienced recently. “If you’re American and Americans have no taste and you are in agreement with me, then it very much implies that you, dear, sweet and pretty and as unkempt as you are even for this interview, have no taste.”

  “I had taste enough to answer your ad and to ask Reva Jenkins to get me the interview,” she said, “and quite frankly, I still have the guts to be sitting here in this pretentious apartment on Fifth Avenue, answering ridiculous questions that really have no merit when it comes to the job qualifications. And can I say, you should really be living in Notting Hill, not Mayfair, it’s much trendier, way less . . . stuffy.”

  “Are you calling me stuffy?”

  “You are planning to reside in Mayfair, aren’t you?” Vanessa asked, a broad, confident smile widening her curious face.

  Mrs. Stillwell-Abramson pursed h
er lips in a way that made them hard to read. “You’re hired.”

  “I am?”

  “Dear . . . I appreciate good conversation, and even more so I appreciate someone who will challenge me. All the other girls I’ve met with, they were all raised properly by their parents or their nannies or their Upper East Side schools, so they want to say the right thing, dress the right way. I could do with a breath of fresh air . . . a dose of reality. Not quite a tornado, mind you . . . But, Vanessa dear, keep this in mind. The partying lifestyle you indulge in goes by the wayside. Time to clean up your act. You’re how old?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Time to grow up.”

  “Yes, Eleanor.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Divorced. Not a good breakup. He was Italian. I was independent.”

  “Say no more.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  Eleanor simply nodded.

  “So you’ve been living in London?”

  “Yes. But Brussels before that. And Rome and the Lake District when married.”

  “A jet-setter.”

  “Hardly. Just trying to find where I fit in.”

  “A rebel then.” Before giving Vanessa a chance to reply, she asked, “What brought you back to the States?”

  “I had some personal matters to attend back home. Upstate.”

  “Westchester?”

  “No, real Upstate. Lake Ontario, a small town, forgettable.”

  “From your expression, what brought you back was nothing to your liking.”

  “A funeral.”

  Again, Eleanor Stillwell-Abramson simply nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  The woman waited for more, but Vanessa was done with that line of questioning. She’d offer up no further details.

  “In that case, we leave for London next week. My husband is already there, working.”

  “I’ll be ready tonight,” Vanessa said, and for the first time she smiled since waking up in that disheveled hotel bed with no memory of the night before. She recalled her visit back home and all the awfulness that trip had brought, and then she saw images from last night start to creep back into her memory. Reva, the Standard, running into Adam Blackburn and thinking the sexy man in front of her couldn’t possibly be the same boy who had taken her to the prom. Endless drinks, endless innuendo from Reva, and then seizing her moment, begging Adam for sex and feeling him inside her, knowing at once it was the same Adam. All of them had been stupid mistakes that only managed to bring her even further back home, inextricably linking her to Danton Hill for forever despite her continual running away. Then she said, setting down the cup of tea and wishing for two more aspirin, “I can’t get out of this city—this country—soon enough.”

  Eleanor paused, as though waiting for what more was to come.

  Vanessa Massey said, “I’m ready to be someone else.”

  CHAPTER 14

  NOW

  “What time is it?”

  Adam, pupils darkened by night and by forgotten memories, was unaware not only of the time but that Vanessa had ceased talking before posing her question. Unknowingly, they had allowed silence to hover between them without thought toward filling it. They had each told their respective stories of lost love while sitting out on the front porch of the farmhouse, avoiding the romantic pull of the swing and the sexual entanglement it had earlier led them to. This late hour felt like a moment for revelations and truths, not explosive passion that served only to delay such truths. Sitting opposite each other, leaning against the sturdy wooden posts, they had talked and they had listened, and then it was as though their words had dried up with the rain, secrets held over them by thickening clouds. As though the space separating them now represented eleven years passing of when they hadn’t seen, talked, thought much, or heard about the other.

  Almost like that night in New York had never happened.

  “I’m sorry, what did you ask?” Adam asked.

  “The time.”

  He checked his wrist instinctively, but he wore no watch. It didn’t work anyway, broken in the car accident. “I don’t know. Eight o’clock? Midnight? Does it matter?”

  “I was just wondering what was happening at the reunion.”

  “Probably it’s just getting started . . . or it’s over.”

  “Adam, time doesn’t mean much right now, does it?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Still . . .” she said, her voice drifting off.

  Adam filled the void building between them. “Lark Henry is probably giving a speech, just like she always used to when she was voted class president; two years running, if I remember. Standing up in front of the gang, maybe hint of gray in her hair, saying how great it is to see everyone and thanks for the great turnout . . . you know, the same words she spoke twenty-plus years ago when she was first elected.”

  “What does she do for a living anyway?” Vanessa asked.

  “School principal. At Danton Hill High.”

  “Scary. But perfect.”

  “Leader that she is, she’s probably gathered everyone together for a moment of silence in remembrance of our classmates who have died,” Adam said. “She’s a good soul.”

  Vanessa nodded, withdrawn for a moment, lost in thought, before her eyes lightened up with a sudden roll of her eyes. “Jana and Tiffany are probably thinking of adding me to that list. Because my no-show just means they’ll kill me,” she said. Then quickly added, “What about you, Adam, were you close with anyone in particular in high school? Anyone you still keep in touch with or were anxious to see at the reunion?”

  Adam shook his head. “Not that I’ve kept in touch with. When I went away to college, everything changed for me. Like I woke up from some awful dream and for the first time I saw the sun shining. I acquired some much-needed confidence about myself—who I was and what I wanted from life. No longer was I content being that sniveling, weak boy looking for acceptance from anyone who would look toward him. Danton Hill kind of suffocated me. Leaving allowed me to breathe. What about you, what do you remember most about Danton Hill?”

  “The town itself? So much, the football field and sneaking out during lunch period to eat our sandwiches on the bleachers, the fact that we had to travel like twenty miles to get to a mall, that playground . . . up on Danton’s Hill. Running with friends along rocky Mercer Pier inside Danton State Park. I remember all those times. But God, I suppose the place I remember best is that stupid, old-fashioned soda shop. The Sno-Cone . . . the woman who ran the place was so old we called her . . .”

  “Sno-Crone, I remember.”

  A bit of reminiscent laughter escaped their mouths. “We used to hang out there all the time, when school let out or after football games on autumn Friday nights. We’d get one of those old-fashioned egg creams or a sundae or sometimes just a soda and fries. I mean, there are other memories too. Not all fun and games. Like my demanding parents and the house we lived in on Sanders Street, the dog we had when I was younger, whom I named Yellow because he was. My room with those horrible posters of movies and bands that everyone liked so I liked, even though I really didn’t. My grandmother’s death and how quiet the house was after that. No one talked about death, they just . . . accepted it as they did a summer storm. Just one day she was gone and I didn’t understand and my questions went unanswered. I was so naïve back then, so innocent . . . not like when I got to high school. When I hit the ninth grade, like you said about college, everything started to change.”

  “You changed.”

  Vanessa tossed him a strange look. “In a good or bad way?”

  “Neither. You were you, or at least trying the newer version on for size.”

  “I wasn’t very nice to you.”

  “Vanessa, even when we were in third grade and I believed you still had cooties, we were never friends.”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “You know, not everyone c
an be part of someone’s circle, sometimes those circles close for no reason other than you didn’t like the color pants I wore that day. It made no sense, but that was school. Fitting in socially was harder than homework.”

  “My parents preached independence, but not in any proactive way. I was just an excuse for them to ignore me. As I hit my teen years, I could come and go pretty much as I pleased, and trust me, I did. I started dating Danny Stoker the very first day of high school. He asked me out right there at what became our regular booth at Sno-Cone. We were sitting with friends and someone, I think it was Davey, said high school was all about social status, not grades, and so you better choose your gang wisely or you’re in for a miserable four years.”

  “I think I chose unwisely,” Adam said.

  “Adam, you want to know the awful truth? You don’t choose, none of us did, even the so-called popular kids. You get chosen, mostly based on looks and appearance and where you live and how much money your parents make.” She paused to look up at the sky, searching for the twinkle of stars that should be transporting them back to those days, maybe another time of their choosing. All that hung over them were clouds, the moonlight forgotten, just as they appeared to be. “Eighth grade, we were all still finding our way, naïvely playing and plotting without understanding its repercussions. We all knew that after summer passed, the crazy jockeying for popularity would begin again, and this time on a tougher, much bigger playground. Fortunately, my body filled out that summer. So that first morning at my locker when I heard my name and it was Danny and he said, ‘Whoa, where’d those knockers come from?’ I knew I’d be fine. Crude and shallow, but you take my point. Danny was the best-looking guy in school and he’d chosen me. Well, initially he had chosen my boobs. For the first few months we dated I don’t think he knew the color of my eyes.”

  “Green, with tiny specks,” Adam said, staring at her. “Like unearthed emeralds.”

  Vanessa deflected the obvious compliment, again pushing her hair away from her face like she had that night at the hotel lounge in Manhattan. “When Danny realized he actually liked me for me, he used to joke that he was getting three for the price of me. Direct quote.”