I sat on the floor, drinking espresso and reading an article on Flipboard, when Anna found me with a concerned look on her face.
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Gardner is returning today, sometime this evening.”
“Isabella?” I said more to myself than to her.
“Yes. We are behind on so much. The staff has so much to do to catch up. Can you help us?”
“Of course. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Thank you. At least while Savannah’s asleep you can help.”
I handed her the iPad and stood up.
“Mr. Stafford’s also returning this morning and they say he is not happy.”
“Some more bad business…”
This was an afterthought.
“Excuse me?”
Anna gave me a stern look, like I had no right to be prying into Mr. Stafford’s affairs.
“Nothing,” I said and coughed. “I’m going upstairs to shower and get dressed and ready for the day.”
“Go ahead, Sophia, but hurry.”
As I headed upstairs, I wondered what had crawled up her skirt. I’d never seen Anna like this before. There had to be something else to it. I wondered if it could have something to do with the fact that she knew there was something going on between Stafford and me.
In the room I booted up the MacBook and laid it on the bedside table. Then I undressed in front of the mirror. I turned and looked out the window, thinking that if there were any gardeners close by they could probably see me. I cupped my breasts, walked over to the window and looked out, but there was nobody there. Passing the bedside table, I double-clicked the Minerva icon before going into the bathroom and running the shower. In the bathroom mirror I saw that my five o’clock shadow had flourished and become a full on V-shaped fern gully. Once in the shower I took out my razor and rectified the situation, watching the hair scatter in the water and run down the drain.
Drying off in the room, I saw that Minerva indicated a new entry in Stafford’s notes. It was dated yesterday.
Mark Stafford’s Notes
August 6
I’m sitting out by the beach under an umbrella, sipping apple juice as the sun goes down before us. Isabella’s coming home tomorrow. She has been away long enough and was sweet enough on the phone that I actually feel something about her arrival tomorrow. I’ve felt weak for the sins I’d committed while she’s been away. I want to repent to her and make things right again. These are new ideas to me, but I’m curious to see where they will lead. I’m not the type to see sorrow or repentance as weakness, but instead I see them as strengths. They are just strengths I never felt much inclined toward. Until now. Am I softening up at last? Doubtful. Perhaps the new girl has opened some emotional valve in me that has gone heretofore unseen. A comforting sea breeze sweeps over me at these thoughts and I feel the universe telling me something. I feel a renewal of spirits, the kind of feeling one generally only gets in the spring. These feelings might also spring from a new infatuation, but a new infatuation with whom? Isabella, the new girl, or someone else? Confusion is nothing new to me. It seems to me, you’re more and more confused by life until one day you die of it.
Sophia has been amazing, inspiring, refreshing, enlightening—when it came to company and conversation and definitely the other thing. That part of our encounter that had lasted for hours the last time with hardly a word. But all that did was make me want to talk to her more. It made me want to unravel her mysteries, know her inmost thoughts, her core. There’s the feeling that abundant new worlds are opening up to me, that the white hot flame of inspiration burns in her, that meeting her was reminiscent of some strange fear-inspired childhood dream—all this hits me like a ton of bricks. The company that surrounds me is a million miles away with their talk of women and yachts, jewelry and fast cars. As I further withdraw into silence, the old geezers get up one by one and leave me. Most of them are older than me. Fifties and sixties. They’ve had more time to make their money, but they don’t have near as much. And what does it all really mean; not a whole hell of a lot. Fuck all, as Gerry would say.
Now I’m to have what could very well be my final meeting with him tomorrow. I’ve decided not to meet him in the same place for security reasons. I go over all the reasons for our meeting tomorrow. After all the fuckups he’s committed the bastard doesn’t have any reason to breathe in my eyes. He’s screwed so many of us and eaten our money and now it looks as though he’s about to screw me again. All the orders were a mess. Details were deliberately obscured. Gerry can tell me which orders are in play, but when it comes to the details, which I’ve asked him about again and again on various occasions, he invariably mixes up the facts. Makes me wonder if there are any facts at all. Or if it’s all made up. I’m not a killer but he makes me want to become one. No, leave that mess for somebody else, I tell myself. Let that be on someone else’s head.
And then my mind inevitably turns back to Sophia. Thinking back on the drive to the waterfall and the passionate encounter that followed, I wonder if she’s some sort of witch. Remembering certain instances under the waterfall in the fading dusk light, I begin to think that what happened has slipped beyond my control. She’s doing things to my head. It feels like an irresistible force that’s greater than me. This is when the obsession starts. When this insanity of not being able to divert the attention away from her overtakes. Not being able to take a breath without seeing her in the mind’s eye. Even though no one will ever read this and I will delete it after reading it over in the morning, I feel embarrassed at even admitting it to myself. But I also feel that perhaps by admitting to it here I will finally, once and for all, be able to let it go.
I put off seeing Sophia, and I put it off. True, I have much work to do, seemingly around the clock, and that does occupy much of my thoughts. Sophia takes up a lot of the rest of my thinking. Before I go to bed at night, my mind rolls around to her like clockwork. When I wake up, she is the first image that comes to mind. Even during the gaps in my sleep, when I wake up thinking over a problem in the middle of the night, I always eventually think I see her standing over my problem, smiling at me like she has the answer and I never will. Are these thoughts of one slowly losing his grip? The beginnings of an ensuing madness? An ultimate corruption of a mind that tried so hard for so long to remain level enough to accomplish the nerve-racking tasks that have led old Mark to this empty plateau of materialism. Of course I don’t really mean that, I am only trying to impress her with these thoughts, which are normally so foreign to my nature. I love to dominate and control, but I sense these instincts even more strongly in her than in myself and I feel the instinctive urge to bow to them. It is like an uncontrollable magnetic force that makes me feel this way, but I will not submit. Sophia, I will reverse this trend and overcome you. Of course I know it is a sign of my delusions when I begin to think anything about sweet Sophia is willfully attempting to dominate me. There’s nothing in her at all remotely capable of these thoughts and feelings. It’s me projecting myself onto her. I’ve got to stop. And with that, dear diary, I’m signing off.
Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)
On finishing the entry I immediately went back to look for the prior entry I had read a few days before. It wasn’t there. I had it backed up on the MacBook of course, but it had been deleted from his phone. I looked for any previous entries. There were none. So Stafford was a cautious man who had reason to believe others might be spying on him. This made me all the more curious about his activities. He was having a meeting today shortly after he got back. I wished the Olympus digital recorder and mics had already arrived. I sat on my bed, looking around the room at nothing in particular, and wondered how the spying might commence. I dried my hair with a towel and brushed it.
A rapid tap-tap-tap came at the door. I looked at the door with a start, then, gathering my senses, I stood up. It was probably Anna coming to get me to hurry up. Still fully nude, I cracked the door and peered out. A tired, w
orn out face, with the stubble of a few days growth and red, bleary eyes peered back at me.
“Mark. I’m not wearing anything. Let me close the blinds.”
I went to close the blinds. Butterflies exploded on upward trajectory in my stomach. I turned on a solitary desk lamp and let him in.
He tried to concentrate on my eyes at first, but this gave way to an inspection of my body, head to toe, with a bit more concentration on my heaving chest and the place where my thighs met. I felt a few drops creep down my thighs. I didn’t know if I was somewhat aroused or if it was water from the shower. Right now, sex was the furthest thing from my mind. For some reason I was shocked to see him, but I didn’t care if he got an eyeful of my full frontal. He’d seen it all before. And I knew this would stimulate him further. Every moment, seeing me like this and us not in throes of passion would make him crazy for it.
“Forget something?” I asked, nonchalant.
“No…I, uh…just got back. I wanted to see if…uh…maybe you wanted to go for lunch this afternoon…after I finish up with a meeting.”
I knew him so much more now, I felt a good deal of the mystery was lifted so I could afford to be more sure of myself with him, but I still didn’t want to let him know I knew any more than I was supposed to. So I played it cautiously.
“Miss me a lot when you were gone? On your mind, was I?” I smiled.
“That’s a little…”
I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t.
“…Forward of me,” I finished for him.
He caught himself blushing and tried to stop, which only made it worse.
“So is you coming in when I’m naked and just gawking at me. I’d say…wouldn’t you?”
I smiled.
Stafford wasn’t smiling. This was the first time I’d seen him at a loss.
Finally he said, “I’ve been travelling. I’m extremely tired…I better go lie down before…”
He started to walk out without finishing his sentence.
“Send me a message when you want to meet.”
“I will.”
“Any ideas?”
“On what?”
He looked and sounded extremely cranky.
“On where to eat.”
“Oh, we could go up to Spanish Wells. Or Dunmore Town or Harbour Island.”
“Sounds good.”
He closed the door. He had acted like a schoolboy. I dressed and sat down on the edge of the bed near the MacBook. I fetched my HTC from the drawer and composed a text to Anna.
SOPHIA: I’m sorry, Anna, but Mr. Stafford’s just summoned me for some work. I’ll be back to help as soon as I can.
Her reply came almost immediately.
ANNA: I understand. Let me know.
I felt bad. In our developing friendship I found that Anna had a rare integrity and honesty not present in many people I know. When I had to turn down a request for help, especially one so urgent, I felt somehow I was breaking the spell of infatuation.
On the MacBook I watched the pulsating blue dot that represented Stafford’s position. He was still in the house for another five minutes or so. I pushed the Minerva tracker to my phone, but there was no signal and as soon as I was out of range of my computer the HTC would no longer display Stafford’s position. I felt the urge to arrive at Stafford’s meeting place ahead of him, but I couldn’t figure out how. I felt something extraordinary was about to happen and I didn’t want to miss it. Perhaps it was because of the part in his notes about wanting to kill Gerry. I assumed that was the man I saw on his knees on the beach the last time—Old Bristly, but there was no way to know for sure.
Just then an idea struck me. Spanish Wells had to have a place you could eat or drink coffee that also had Wi-Fi. I grabbed my purse, the Leica binoculars, the MacBook, and the HTC.
The Porsche 911 Turbo growled to life at the turn of the key. As I pulled out of the sandy driveway, kicking up a trail of dust behind me, I saw the entourage of four Escalades approach. My pulse quickened. I put on my sunglasses and a pair of headphones that connected to the HTC. I put on a song I was listening to earlier, “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails, but found the thumping bass too nerve-racking and opted for something a bit more mellow. Eventually, I settled on “Jane Says – Live LP Version,” by Jane’s Addiction. I zipped up Queen’s Highway and onto Public Highway in under three minutes, doing well over a hundred.
The jungle slipped by in a dreamlike blur and I was close to Spanish Wells in about seven minutes. Unfortunately, I found out you have to take a boat to the town of Spanish Wells because it’s on a separate island. I cursed myself for not looking more closely at the Google Earth images before I left. For a moment I wondered whether Stafford knew I had been bluffing about having been to Spanish Wells. I doubted he had because he didn’t question me at any great length on the matter. He didn’t even look slightly suspicious when I told him I’d been there. Still, I felt stupid over the mistake.
Stepping out of the parked Porsche and scanning the surrounding blue of the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, which stretched for about 300 degrees of the panorama before me, I took out the HTC. Much to my surprise there were two bars in the upper left hand corner, I had reception. I immediately opened Minerva and checked for the blue dot.
When it appeared I panicked. It was pulsating larger than normal, meaning it was in close vicinity. It appeared to be about fifteen miles from my position.
Without further hesitation I ducked into the Porsche and drove off the road to a place where I could hide the car in some foliage. The foliage was so thick I couldn’t see through it. I took the binoculars and got out. Creeping through the dense brush I got into a position where I could see to the road. I saw the Escalades immediately. Lifting the binoculars to my face, I adjusted the focus for a better view. They appeared very close to me. My pulse quickened and I lowered the glasses to distance myself mentally. It sounds silly in retrospect, but this was my thinking at the time. I watched them round a bend about a hundred yards from me, and, from that point, they moved away from me, headed east. I lifted the binoculars again, watching them move away in the distance. They appeared as though they were in a two-dimensional image, all seemingly pressed flat. I mused on the strange effect of a highly magnified image.
I checked the Minerva app on my phone and watched the pulsating blue dot move to the right. I tapped out of the map and into the part of the program that was transmitting sound from Stafford’s phone. Removing earbuds from my pocket, I set them in my ears and listened in on the immediate surroundings of his phone. There was the familiar muffled scratching sound from a phone that was being sat on. I went back to the map and watched the blue dot. It turned off the road, taking a left toward a beach a few miles from my position. I reasoned whether I should walk along the coastline till I reached the location where they were or if I should risk driving closer and parking. I opened the mile marker in the Minerva app, which indicated I was about 3.5 miles from where they stopped. The meeting might be over by the time I walked there. I would have to take my chances with driving closer. I’d park where I could as long as it was over a mile and a half out from the meeting point. Then I’d sprint along the beach, if I could, to the meeting. I used to be able to run the distance in six minutes, so I reckoned I wouldn’t miss much. I also decided I’d take the Porsche up to speeds of 150-160 m.p.h. so that if one of the Escalades or all of them had decided to turn back this way all they’d see of me was a white blur as I passed them.
When I pulled out onto the main road I punched it. In about eight to ten seconds I hit 160 m.p.h. I knew the road was a fairly straight to the point where I needed to turn off so I wasn’t worried about having to make any high speed turns. As soon as I reached 160 m.p.h., I applied the brakes hard because I was as far as I needed to be. I found the first available hiding spot and took it. I grabbed the binoculars off the passenger seat and got out of the car. I checked my position in relation to Stafford’s on my phone. I was 1.65 miles out. I work
ed my way through the dense brush and trees out to the beach.
The sky was clear for as far as I could see. The beach was more beautiful than Anse Lazio. It was like a tropical paradise out of the film The Blue Lagoon. Once again I felt like I was slipping into a dream and I fought the feeling with active thoughts about the mission I was on. I turned right and faced the visible miles of beach to the east. I was afraid if I approached from too close to the water they might see me. I went back into the brush somewhat and began my journey east, pushing through the jungle. Walking at a brisk pace when I could, I sometimes had to slow down and move around or wriggle through various large plants when the way became too densely forested. I realized the closer I got, the more my fear increased. Occasionally I stopped to catch my breath and try to think about the situation in a light that wasn’t terrifying. Whenever I did, thoughts of the harrowing possibilities—mostly thoughts of being discovered and shot to pieces by an AK-47 or several of them—subsided and thoughts of the exhilaration of sheer adventure replaced them. I imagined I was a spy, collecting evidence for the DEA, FBI, or CIA. I wasn’t quite sure which. Though far from reality, somehow this dramatic imagining calmed me.
Paradise - Part Two (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant) Page 4