I'll Be There

by Iris Rainer Dart

  In the cool living room of the cottage Nina was lying on the sofa reading a copy of Vogue Cee Cee had bought at the Los Angeles airport. “Oh, hi,” she said, without looking at Cee Cee. “I felt nauseated from the sun so I figured I’d stay in here for a while.”

  “‘T’sokay,” Cee Cee said, wondering if she could make up some kind of excuse for them to have to check out of the hotel. She could

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  call Larry Gold and have him call her back when she knew Nina would answer. He could say they had to be back in L.A. in a hurry. Or she could tell Nina the truth. Oh, Nina, there’s something I think you should know. The little jerk in the baseball hat is your father. nd the “P” stands for prick. No. She’d say, By a very odd coincidence your father happens to be at this hotel. It would give Nina the choice to either watch him from far away or approach him. But how could she do that to Nina? Wasn’t it too hcavv a responsibility for a child suddenly to come across her lather and his new family at a resort

  and have to figure out how to behave? “Want lunch?” Cee Cee asked. “()kay.”

  The rich green odor of the tropical growth all around the hotel dining room drifted gently in through the open doors as Cee Cee and Nina followed the muumuu-clad hostess to a table in the front of the room where they could get the best view of the panorama of the lawn and the beach and the sea. Cee Cee wore a big straw hat pulled down over her ears and large sunglasses covering the rest of her face and she was relieved that her disguise, which usually didn’t fool anyone, seemed to be working. A quick scan of the restaurant told her the Barton family wasn’t around, and she thought with a sad laugh to herself that maybe Michael had punished all of them and banished the entire family to the hotel room without food. The schmuck.

  Nina looked over the menu, then out at the view, and Cee Cee saw a calm on her face she had rarely seen there at home. Certainly not recently.

  “This place is great,” Nina said. “So peaceful.”

  You should only know, Cee Cee thought, as if Michael Barron hadn’t done enough damage to the life of this child, now he was here to ruin her vacation, and Cee Cee couldn’t get rid of that clutching feeling in her chest of impending doom. Nina knew what Michael looked like, or at least what he used to look like, from old photographs of his wedding to Bertie, snapshots and films of trips Bertie and Michael had taken together. She hadn’t looked at them in years and Michael looked different now, older and chubbier, but there might be a chance she could recognize him. Instinct counted for a lot, and Nina was a sensitive girl.

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  “I’m going to sign up for a massage later,” Cee Cee said. “You interested in having one?”

  “No way,” Nina answered and Cee Cee realized by the slight blush accompanying the reply that the intimacy and sensuality of a massage was probably too much for a girl her age to handle. She continued nervously to watch the door to the dining room, thinking how ironic it was that she had brought Nina there so that the two of them could have a rest, and now she would spend their vacation feeling panicky and afraid. That was no good, she thought, knowing she would have to do something. Say something.

  Nina ordered a hamburger and Cee Cee ordered the grilled mahimahi and passed the time waiting for their lunch to arrive with small talk about the naked people on the beach and the beauty of the hotel. Just as the waitress emerged from the kitchen carrying the tray with their lunch, Cee Cee’s heart sank when she spotted the Barrons entering the dining room. Michael was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt, and a Panama hat with a black band. The children came next, more quiet and reserved than children should be, and the elegant wife, cool in white Bermuda shorts and a white blouse, was last.

  “Booster seats,” Cee Cee overheard Michael’s wife say, and her stomach lurched when she saw Nina look over at the four of them being seated. But it was a brief glance with no significance, after which she dug immediately into her lunch, chattering about a bathing suit she’d seen in the hotel shop, and Cee Cee found herself jumping in and yakking inanely about clothes too, hoping to hold Nina’s interest so she wouldn’t look back at the table where the Barrons were seated.

  “No coffee.” Cee Cee waved off the busboy and signed the check immediately. Then instead of exiting the restaurant the way they came in, which would have taken them by Michael’s table, Cee Cee steered Nina out onto the front terrace and onto the flower-filled hotel grounds for a walk. The early afternoon heat was thick and heavy and Cee Cee wished she had some idea, any idea, about how to handle this. Maybe it would all go away. Maybe Michael and his family would check out after lunch and Nina would never have to know they were there.

  Back at the bungalow, Nina sat on the deck outside reading A Tale

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  of Two Cities, and eventually she drifted off to sleep. When she had been asleep for a long time, Cee Cee went inside to her room and called Hal in New York.

  “Truth is stranger than fiction,” she said after telling him the story. “Pack up immediately and go to another island,” he said. “And what do I tell Nina about why we’re leaving?”

  “Further adventure. | don’t know. But you can’t confront the guy. He obviously doesn’t want them to know about her, and vice versa. This is one of those situations if you saw it in a movie you’d say, ‘Oh yeah, sure. In the whole world these people end up in the same hotel?’ I’d get out of there, Cee. Especially since she’s already told you she doesn’t want to see him. Pack up and hit the road.”

  “You’re right. I’ll call the Mauna Kea Hotel or the Kahala Hilton. We’ll move. I’ll tell her we’re island-hopping.”

  “There you go,” he said. “And, Cee, don’t get too much sun. It’s bad for you. Makes you think you’re seeing people out of your past.”

  “Harold,” she said softly because she thought she might have heard Nina stirring on the lounge outside, “isn’t this too fucking weird? I’m such a nonviolent type. I can’t even swat a fly. But I tell you as sure as I’m sitting here in this overpriced room, I could cheerfully put my hands around that weasel’s neck and choke.”

  “Don’t do it. Remember what happened to Claudine Longet?” “What did happen to Claudine Longet?”

  “I rest my case. On the other hand, everyone remembers Gandhi. Try being like him.”

  “Okay,” Cee Cee said, I’ll skip dinner.”

  When she emerged from her room Nina was still asleep on the deck, so Cee Cee slipped into a muumuu and thongs and wrote her a note on a piece of hotel stationery.

  WENT FOR MY MASSAGE

  BE BACK SOON. C.

  She listened to the sound of her thongs as they flip-flopped across the gravel path toward the main hotel building, thinking how good it was going to feel to have the strong hands of a masseuse kneading her muscles. Sometimes in the past when the educated fingers of a masseuse pushed on just the right painfully knotted places in her shoul

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  ders and back and thighs, the release of tension was so powerful it Could make her cry.

  It was dark by the time she arrived at the lobby, and on bamboo based tables, fat white candles flickered inside of thick glass hurricane lamps, and people in colorful tropical clothes were meeting to go into the dining room.

  A pretty oriental girl in a white coat approached and asked “Bloom?” when she saw Ccc Cee at the front desk, and Cee Cee allowed herself to be led down a long hallway adjacent to the lobby, into a quiet, dimly lit eucalyptus-scented room with only a massage table and a hook on the wall for her clothes. After the masseuse discreetly slipped out of the room to give her the privacy to undress, Cee Cee removed her thongs, her clothes, and her watch, climbed on to the table and put her face into the hole of the face rest and was about to let herself relax when she heard Michael Barron’s voice.

  He was just outside the door of the room, and Cee Cee sat up alert, listening caref
ully, hoping to hear him better. He was talking loudly with one of the masseuses, and it sounded from what he was saying that he was just finished having a massage himself, and was signing the tab. Cee Cee grabbed the towel from under her and wrapped it around herself. The timing was perfect. He was alone, and so was she. She could go out there now to talk to him and not worry about his wife’s hearing her, or Nina’s knowing about it. Tell him she was here with his daughter and see how he handled it. Her heart felt as if someone had reached inside her chest and was squeezing it. This was the fight or flight moment and in an instant she would have to seize it, or let the opportunity of a lifetime pass her by.

  Holding her towel together tightly at the top, she kicked the shuttered door open and stood face to face for the first time in many long years with Michael Barton, certain he was going to gasp with surprise when he saw her, but instead he smiled as if he’d been expecting her.

  “Hello, Cecilia,” he said. “I thought that was you on the beach today. And I’ve got to tell you, I noticed you’ve put on quite a bit of weight.”

  If her rage hadn’t made her speechless, just seeing him this close would have. He was such a colossal asshole, he had to open with an insult. Collecting herself as best she could she said, “Michael, I’m here with —”

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  But before she could finish the sentence, he put his hand on her arm, the hnd wearing Bertie’s ring, and she could smell that same disgusting cologne she remembered him wearing. Royal Lyme or something like that, and her worst memory of him rushed into her mind. That night at the Kahala Hilton in 1967 when her husband was sleeping in his own hotel room and Bertie was in the next room sleeping and he’d put the full court press on Cee Cee, trying to get into her pants.

  “I’ve wanted to fuck you since I saw you,” he had said. “And you’ve wanted it, too, so what are we waiting for?” The sick slime.

  “This was a bad coincidence,” he said to her softly and calmly, as if it was cocktail party chitchat, “because Helen and the kids don’t know a thing. But the good news is that we’ve been here for a week, so we’re on our way home in the morning.”

  “No, Michael,” Cee Cee said, trying to sound menacing, but having a hard time feeling as if she could intimidate anyone as she stood there wrapped in a towel. “It was not a bad coincidence, it was a good coincidence because I’m going to tell Nina you’re here and let her have the chance to sit down with you in my suite, or in the location of your

  choice, and take one half hour to see your face.”

  “Not a chance,” he said.

  “Michael, you’re the lowest, sickest, worst piece of garbage in this world,” Cee Cee said, knowing this wasn’t the smoothest way to handle the situation and feeling the pressure of tears against the inside of her eyes, but willing them to stay in with everything she had. “Unless you make some kind of peace with this girl.”

  “Don’t fight me, Cee Cee,” he said in a confidential voice. “I can have her taken away from you. I can call up shit from your past you can’t even remember. You did a lot of drugs in your day, and fucked an awful lot of men. The court would probably want to know about that. Not to mention that ‘family entertainment’ company that puts out your movies. So you just go back to your room and order room service for you and Nina, and just for old times’ sake you can put it on my tab. By tomorrow I’ll be gone and you can pretend you never saw me. So come on now, do what I say.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” she said, hearing her voice sound shaky and childlike. “I’m not afraid of my past. You tell me you’ll give this child

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  one half hour. Tell me yes and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of all of our lives.” Michael’s jaw was set and he actually seemed to be considering doing what Cee Cee asked, and Cee Cee, who knew this toughness she was putting on was the biggest bluff of her life, held her breath while he did. Please, she thought, make him agree to this and you don’t ever have to answer another one of my prayers.

  “In the morning,” he said. I’ll meet her down in the social hall on the far side of the pool. Early, say seven thirty. Tell her I’ll meet her there for half an hour. We can talk there and then I’m leaving. If she doesn’t want to come, I’ll just stay there for fifteen minutes or so and if she doesn’t show up, I’ll leave.”

  Cee Cee felt a rush of triumph, and heroism on top of it for finally making this evil snake succumb and agree to see his child at long last. It was so heady, for a moment she even felt grateful to the little piece of pond scum.

  “Oh, bless you, Michael,” she said. “Thank you for doing this. You won’t regret it. I promise you this girl is so special, and so good, and maybe someday you can find it in your heart to tell your family and get them to know her because she is such a joy.” And while she rambled she already knew this was a mistake, but if it wasn’t, and it could create some kind of a positive relationship between Nina and her father, it was worth it. After Michael turned and left, his Royal Lyme still in the air where Cee Cee stood, she moved, exhausted, into the massage room and lay on the table planning what she would say to Nina.

  “Nina, the strangest thing has happened. Today when we were on the beach I saw a man who looked very familiar to me and I realized after

  I looked closely that it was your father.”

  “What?”

  “He’s here. Michael Barron is in this hotel with his family. A wife and two children, and I confronted him. He told me that they don’t know about you, and I asked if he would see and talk to you alone, and that I would ask you if under the circumstances you wanted to talk to him.”

  “And what did he say?” Nina’s eyes were defensive and her posture was stiff as she waited for the answer.

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  “He said he would. He checking out tomorrow but told me that he’d meet you down at the rec room near the pool early in the morning. At seven thirty. He said if you weren’t there in about fifteen minutes he would leave. That how he would know that I asked you and you said no.”

  “‘Io kds, she said with no intonation at all. “How old arc they?” “Maybe six and four.”

  She sighed and looked down, clearly hurting, and instantly Cee Cee was awash with regret. Hal was right, why hadn’t she left it alone? Packed Nina up and run away from this place instead of dragging her through the agony of this meeting. What in the hell would she get out of it anyway? Probably she would say no, now. Tell Cee Cee to forget it, sleep late in the morning, and let the son-ofa-bitch go back to Pittsburgh without seeing her. But then there was something in her eyes. A flicker of hope when she said, “I’ll do it,” looking at Cee Cee. “Did you bring a travel clock? H1 set it for five so I can have some time to work on my hair.”

  They played Scrabble and had a room service dinner and though each of them yawned sleepily before they parted to go to her bedroom, Cee Cee didn’t sleep at all and she could hear Nina moving around all night too, knowing the girl must simultaneously be looking forward to and dreading the dawn. Finally Cee Cee must have drifted off, because before it was daylight she sensed someone in the room and looked up to see Nina, an apparition at the foot of her bed. She looked as if she had spent the entire night working on her hairstyle. It was waved perfectly and she wore light blusher on her cheeks and a new outfit of silk turquoise shorts and a camp shirt, and she looked as elegant to Cee Cee as if she’d just stepped out of the pages of Town & Country magazine.

  “I’m going down there,” she said. “See you when it’s over.”

  “It’s only six forty-five,” Cee Cee said, her voice husky with sleep as she looked at the digital clock on the dresser.

  “I know. I want to just sit there for a while and think about things.” “Okay, honey,” Cee Cee said, and watched her go with her own heart so fearful it pinned her to the bed, where she lay for a long time watching the numbers on the digital clock, watching it minute by minute
until it became seven thirty, trying to imagine how the meeting between them was going. What Michael was saying to Nina, and

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  how Nina was feeling, certain that Michael couldn’t be anything but smitten with her and her extraordinary beauty. At eight o’clock she got out of bed and took a shower, shampooing her hair with the creamy coconut-smelling shampoo the hotel placed there. And at eight thirty-five, she was glad Nina wasn’t back yet, assumed it was a good sign that she wasn’t rushing back iN tears. Decided that maybe it meant they had really gotten into it, talked about the past, maybe even planned to see one another again.

  At eight fifty she slipped into shorts and a T-shirt and some thongs, then put on a big hat and dark glasses and decided to stroll down toward the social hall and tiptoe by to see if she could see any sign of them. A brown-skinned beachboy nodded to her as she passed the pool and made her way across a large grassy area leading to the rec room. Probably Nina and Michael weren’t there anymore. Maybe Michael had decided the timing was perfect and took her to the dining room to have breakfast with his family. Right. The rec room was empty, and a hopeful Cee Cee turned and headed back toward the dining room, but before she got to the top of the hill she spotted Nina, sitting tailor-fashion on a chaise lounge she had moved away from the pool area, under a tree to face the ocean.

  Cee Cee hurried to the spot. “Neen?” she said as she approached. “Hello, Cee Cee,” the girl said, looking up at her with vacant eyes. The look from Nina stopped Cee Cee from saying anything back; something had gone wrong. Very wrong. She stood there silently as a morning breeze blew the buttery odor of macadamia nut pancakes from the dining room past her, making her feel suddenly ravenous with hunger. “He didn’t show,” Nina told her, looking back at the