by Nancy Adams
The footage changed into grainy pictures taken on a mobile telephone of Sam and Clair walking along the windy stretch of Brighton Beach. The shot was from far away on the boardwalk and it wasn’t certain that it was either of them, Claire with her back facing the camera and only a sideways look of Sam.
“These images were taken,” Armstrong went on, “by a member of the public on Brighton Beach, Brooklyn two weeks ago. They show a couple walking along the beach in the background. And in this shot here,” the footage paused as Sam turned around and faced the camera for but a few seconds, “you can see what looks very much like Sam Burgess. All of this is, of course, speculation at this time, but here’s the man who took the footage to explain why he feels that it’s Sam Burgess.”
The video was now of a man in his thirties sitting in a chair in a lounge.
“I was recording my kid,” he began into the camera, “trying to fly a kite on the beach and saw this couple walking past in the background, but didn’t really pay much attention. It was later when we watching it at home that my wife said it looked like Sam Burgess. I thought no more of it, until I saw all those articles about a possible split between Burgess and that shrink lady, Jenny or whatever.”
The footage came back to the studio and Jenny Armstrong was now joined by a second person, a well-groomed man in his mid-thirties.
“I have in the studio with me Casey Grant,” Armstrong continued, “who’s made a career out of writing on Sam Burgess.” She now faced Casey and took on a serious look. “Maybe you can explain what could be going on in the Burgess household?”
“Well, the silence is deafening, isn’t it?” he began. “No statements, no photographs and now this footage of Sam with a mystery woman.”
“So you think it is him?”
“It could be,” Casey answered with a shrug. “It sure does look like him. He’s also been pictured in that coat before, so, not that that’s conclusive, but it does make a point and explain why we’ve heard nothing from them.”
“Earlier on,” Armstrong now put in, “we sent reporters in search of Jenna herself and found ourselves outside her old college friend Donna Farthing.”
The footage was now of Donna answering reporters through her gate.
“I’ve heard nothing,” Donna was crying at them, trying to make herself heard above the continual questioning, “It’s not for me to say, or for you to speculate what problems Sam and Jenna are going through—”
“So you admit that there’s problems in their relationship?” someone asked out loud.
“I specialize in relationship counseling, so I know better than anyone that every relationship has problems; but it’s not for me to speculate on someone else’s.”
“But where is Jenna?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
“But we can’t.”
Donna smiled at them and said firmly, “Then just don’t!”
The footage came back to the studio.
Meanwhile in the lounge, Will was looking more and more incredulously at both Beth and Claire. He couldn’t understand why they seemed in such a hurry to watch some gossip program, and he watched them attentively, just as attentively as they watched the show. He was witnessing something, but he didn’t know what, and it bugged him that he didn’t. He trained his eyes on Claire, and saw that her face had taken on a pale hue, a look bordering on terror shining in her sad eyes.
“Why are you watching this crap as though it were foretelling the end of the world?” he asked them.
“Shut up!” Beth snapped, glancing at him for a mere second.
“Wait a minute!” he said out loud.
He recalled the grainy phone footage that he’d seen a moment ago and everything clicked. The girl had definitely looked like Claire from behind, the same hair length and color, but he’d put it to the side of his mind, thinking that it would never be Claire in a million years. But the more he watched their attentive eyes glaring at the set, the more he felt that his initial estimate of a million years might have been off by a long shot.
“Was that you, Claire?” he asked out loud. “On that footage earlier—on Brighton Beach? Was that you?”
Claire didn’t say anything in reply, merely glaring at the screen, and a wry smile rose on Will’s lips. Goody two shoes Claire Prior was having some kind of affair with one of the world’s richest men, Sam Burgess.
“No way!” he said out loud to himself. “It was you!”
“Will,” Beth said to her husband harshly, turning sharply on him, “I swear if another word on this falls from those lips of yours, I’m gonna punch them off.”
“It’s okay, B,” Claire put in softly, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder. She turned to Will and added, “Yes it’s me. Sam and I had an affair nearly six years ago when I was volunteering at the hospice. We had a child and only Beth and Paul ever knew about it.”
“You don't have to,” Beth remarked to her, but Claire waved her hand as if to say it was okay.
“I kept it secret from Sam as well as my family. Then, nearly a month ago, I bumped into him again at one of those conventions he does. We got talking and one thing led to another. I told Paul that we were over and Sam was about to tell Jenna when she burst in on us at his Manhattan apartment. Then, after that, Paul went and saw Sam and told him about the child. Now Sam won’t talk to me and I had to tell my mother everything.”
At the beginning, Will’s face had been one of surprise. Then, as the details emerged, it had taken on an ironic look. But then, as Claire’s tone of voice had saddened and the tale took on a more bitter theme, the smile dropped and his face softened to one of compassion. When she finished, he got up from the couch stepped forward and took Claire in his arms.
“I’m real sorry for all of that, Claire,” he said. “I had no right to pry.”
“It’s okay, Will,” she replied from within his arms, placing her own around him. “I feel better for having told you.”
“See,” Beth let out to her; “he’s not always an asshole!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The moment she was alone in the hotel room, Jenna took a shower. She felt dirty after the ride through the dusty, filth-smeared streets and wanted to wash those same streets from her skin. But her bathing was cut short when she was approached by two rather large and inquisitive cockroaches who speedily disappeared through a crack at the base of the wall the moment she stamped her foot at them. This meant that she was unable to continue her shower, feeling uneasy at the knowledge that the two were probably watching her from somewhere secret, waiting for another opportunity to creep out again and get close to her.
As she got changed in the room, she heard loud shouting reverberating around the inside of the building, often sounding like it was just outside her door. It was almost continuous. Male and female. And she never understood the words. But it appeared—to her, anyway—that whoever was uttering these sounds were deeply angry about something and rebuking someone dreadfully. Since the theft of her phone, Jenna’s nerves had been on tenterhooks and the sounds worried her. She was hungry and wished to get ready and go out to find some restaurant, but the sounds scared her out of leaving.
Once she had changed, Jenna approached the door and put her ear to it. Almost the moment she did, she heard the loud sound of people running past, not more than a few meters from her door, and it made her jump back as she followed the sound while the runners, shouting all the time, jumped down the steps onto the floor below and the sound of them gently disappeared. She wondered what type of place this was and why they were running. Whether it was a robbery.
Her stomach yawned and she felt slightly nauseous and faint with hunger. She had to eat. So she decided to open the door slightly and peek out, having heard shouting coming from one of the other floors above, floating down through the gaps in the floors that opened the whole place up and funneled all the sound between each level. She heard an animated conversation coming from above, and wondered if it were a simple
discussion, or an all out argument.
Having carefully ventured her head out of the door further, she watched as a man dressed in western clothing suddenly passed and stopped in front of her, looking at her oddly. When their eyes met, Jenna blushed, feeling embarrassed that she had been caught, and she suddenly ducked back inside the room, shutting the door sharply, going crimson behind it for a moment. Realizing how odd she must appear to him, she felt nothing else for it but to open the door and greet him.
So she did. And there she found a handsome man in his mid-to-late thirties, with tanned skin and brown hair that would have been darker had it not been for the bleaching rays of the sun that it had clearly soaked up of late. He wore a rather friendly and disarming smile upon his thin lips. In his hand he held a book and he was still looking straight at the door when Jenna reopened it.
“Hello,” he said, still wearing his charming smile.
“Hi,” Jenna stammered. “That was pretty embarrassing just then.”
“Not at all,” he said in a Spanish accent. “You wouldn’t be the first girl to slam a door in my face.”
Again he smiled, and this time she smiled back at him.
“Your first time in Delhi?” he asked after a moment’s silence.
“My first time in India…Asia even.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I just arrived.”
“Wow!” he exclaimed, widening his eyes. “Then perhaps you need a guide.”
“You know one?” she said playfully.
“Huh! I’ll be your guide if you like. Unless you want one of the local street boys who will charge you money to take you nowhere except the shops they’re paid to take you to.”
“No, I was joking. I’d love for you to show me around. I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Alex. And yours?”
“Jenna,” she said with a crooked smile, her heart racing a little as she wondered whether her name would somehow jog his memory and he’d recognize her.
However, nothing but another smile rattled from Alex’s lips and he simply replied, “Pleased, to meet you, Jenna. I was going to get something to eat; are you hungry?”
“Very.”
“Do you know much about Indian food?”
“Not a huge amount.”
“But you like it?”
“I’ve tried it once or twice, but it was in America and probably not that authentic.”
“Then I’ll take you to a very good curry house nearby where we can sit on the rooftop and watch Delhi go by underneath us. Are you ready to go now?”
She smiled and said she was. She locked her door behind her, which was done with an external padlock, and the two made their way out and into the thronging, scary streets of Delhi.
“It’s best if you try not to make eye contact with anyone,” Alex advised her as they made their way through all the people, auto rickshaws and motorbikes. “They’ll take it as a sign that they have your attention and they’ll attempt to sell you something. They’ll talk to you for ages with no other aim than to get you to come back to their shops, and then look at you like it’s your fault when they finally realize that you’re not going to come and they have to walk sulkily all the way back.”
“I’ll try not to,” Jenna announced as she attempted to keep up with him through the very tight and heavily populated alleyway.
But no sooner had she said this than she caught the attention of a woman selling clothes at the side of the road. The woman began walking beside Jenna, holding them out for her to see, one after the other, sending her little son, who was with her, running back for more samples each time Jenna had politely turned down every one that she’d been shown so far. In the end, Alex had to tell the woman to leave her alone. The woman swore in Hindi, spat on the floor, scraped her heel in the dust and crud, and then walked back to her stall, shouting at her young son as she did.
Eventually, they made it to the restaurant and, after walking up a very thin, spiraling staircase that appeared to go on forever, they made it onto a rooftop terrace, which contained several low tables with cushions strewn around them as chairs. At one end of the terrace, under a bamboo shelter, sat a table of people eating and drinking from large green bottles of beer.
The two took a place at the opposite end that looked out over the edge of the terrace and there, in the streets below them, was a hubbub of mass activity; people moving in all directions, massing together in groups and market stalls, vehicles trying to make their way through it all, a giant cow laid in the middle of the road and two motorists arguing with each other as to whose, if anyone’s, responsibility it was. Other cows ate trash that was piled up here and there, and, amidst all this, dogs dodged their way about and crows swooped down for what was left.
As they sat there, a young boy dressed casually in t-shirt, jeans and flip-flops came bounding over and sat himself opposite them as though he had been their intimate friend forever. His sudden emergence alarmed Jenna and she turned from the street below to find his beaming face gazing fixedly at her from across the low table.
Alex and the boy greeted each other warmly and the Indian asked if he’d need menus.
Alex turned to Jenna and asked, “Do you want to have a look at the menu or will you let me decide something mild and easy for you on your first day?”
“You decide,” Jenna replied warmly.
Alex turned back to the young waiter and said, “I’ll have palak paneer and my friend will have paneer butter masala. We’ll share a jeera rice and also a buttered naan.”
The boy wrote all this down on a pad of paper that he rapidly produced from his back pocket.
“And drinks?” he asked, looking up from the pad.
“I’ll have a Kingfisher, and my friend…”
He turned to Jenna and she replied, “Is that a beer?”
“Yeah. They have some spirits, but you’re safer with the beer.”
“Then I’ll have a Kingfisher too,” she said, turning to the waiter.
Once he’d written it all down, the boy bid them farewell and, as quickly as he had thrown himself down opposite, he got up and rushed off downstairs.
“Everything is done in such a casual manner,” she remarked.
“Yes,” Alex replied as he settled himself comfortably on the long cushion, Jenna nervously pressed with her back against the wall, unsure how to be this casual herself. “You’ll have to get used to it all. They have a Hindi word based on Sanskrit here: Shanti. It means peace and forbearance, or as some say: chill out. They have a much more relaxed way of doing everything. It can often be very frustrating, but it works in the end.”
Jenna smiled at his reassuring words, and then the beers arrived, the waiter smiling gleefully as he popped open the bottle caps with the end of a cigarette lighter, even winking at Jenna as he did hers, before disappearing once again.
Under the warm embrace of the cool beer, Jenna once more gazed over the edge at the chaos raging below.
“How often have you been in India, Alex?” she asked her companion as she watched the street.
“In total, nearly twenty years, since I went the first time after high school. I’ve always been drawn to Asia and have spent many years inside of it, especially India.”
“So you’re quite the expert then?”
“Not really. It’s a huge place and even after all this time, I haven’t seen all of it.”
“Why do you spend so much time here?”
Alex mused on this for a moment.
“I guess because I’m a writer, and a writer can write anywhere in the world. And he also needs inspiration, and I find India inspiring. Don’t you? Just looking down there you see a hundred things at once, crazy things that you’d never think you’d see—people doing crazy things that you’ll think about for a thousand years, and still be a thousand away from ever understanding them.”
This made Jenna grin widely and Alex stopped.
“I make you laugh?” he said, slightly abashe
d.
“No, not at all. I admire you. It’s just you’re out here doing exactly what I’m trying to do: become inspired and write something worthwhile.”
Alex smiled back at her and then offered his hand, which she took.
Looking her dead in the face with his hazel eyes, he said with solemnity, “Then it is good that we found each other. We are two lights floating in the darkness in need of inspiration. Maybe I can be of use and share with you what little knowledge I myself have learned over the years. Maybe I’ll point you in the right direction for your inspiration.”
“Maybe,” she replied with an ever-widening smile, letting go of his hand and taking a big gulp of her beer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sam’s heart beat fast while he sat in the back of the four-by-four as it raced through the streets of Durango town, dust piling out of the back of it. He was traveling as part of a three-car convoy, all blacked-out windows, armed men among them. The risk of kidnap was very high in the place, and John Ryan had insisted that Sam not go in there without the best possible protection.
As for John, he sat in the back with Sam. The call he’d received while they’d stood in the vineyard had been from one of his guys monitoring the phone calls of Jose. He’d picked up a direct conversation between Jose and his cousin, Ricardo, in which the cousin had revealed that the house was ready and awaiting the family. From it, they gathered the cousin’s first name and it wasn’t long before they found their man: Ricardo Hernandez of Durango city in Durango state. They then had a man they knew locally flown into Durango to spy on Ricardo. That morning, their man on the ground had witnessed Ricardo meet the family at a large tenement block deep in the city, and he’d contacted John Ryan immediately. John and Sam had flown instantly to Mexico and were now minutes away from arrival at the address.