by O. L. Casper
Of course I was being overly dramatic. The island had thinned out and now I could see the ocean on either side of the highway. The Escalade still followed but kept a liberal distance. I saw a sign that said Governor’s Harbour, twenty miles. Thank God. I’d overhead Anna talking about the town with one of the other girls at the villa. I’d stop there at a restaurant and see what happened. Most likely, I reasoned, they’d pass me by or get off my tail before I reached the cozy seaside hamlet.
Fifteen minutes later I reached Governor’s Harbour. It was a placid town with some nice sea views. I pulled into the parking lot of d’Artegnan’s, a restaurant with a decent view of BoneFish Bay. As I got out, I looked around but didn’t see the Escalade. I walked inside d’Artegnan’s. It was a darkened place with teak walls and tables. A young girl of no more than sixteen with several piercings and a body like a rake, told me to sit where I liked. As I did, near a window with a view to the harbor, I saw the Escalade roll up in the parking lot. I braced myself.
Stafford and one of his goons got out. I looked down at my menu and pretended not to notice them. Then Stafford waved and, when I looked at him, smiled broadly. I felt massive waves of relief roll over me. This would go fine, I told myself as he entered the building. He made his goon stay outside. The man lit up a white stick from a pack of Dunhills and quietly stank up the parking lot.
Stafford sat down across from me. He paused before he spoke.
“Sophia, I saw you on the road up by the villa and wondered where you were going. Actually, I didn’t know it was you but recognized the car.”
I faked a blush. “I’m so sorry. I hope you don’t mind. Anna said it was alright. Gave me the keys.”
“More than fine. That’s what the cars are there for.”
He paused again uncomfortably. I wondered if this was because he also felt slightly infatuated, or was it completely different—was he totally inhuman and only concerned whether or not I had seen where he and his cavalcade went, or even whether I had followed him and seen more?
“I went up to Spanish Wells to explore that end of the island and then thought I’d round it off with a little trip to Governor’s Harbour. I’d overheard Anna talking about it and it made me curious.”
I smiled. My performance was Oscar-worthy and it came easily. The truth is I lied more naturally than I told the truth. And I had always come into trouble with this early in life. As a child, my parents invariably believed me when I lied and accused me of lying when I told the truth, which of course made me an inveterate storyteller. But as an adult it definitely helped in my journey through life.
“Find anything interesting at the Spanish Wells end?”
This was to the point, I thought.
“Some very beautiful beaches,” I said with wondrous enthusiasm.
“Yes, they are nice. Actually, I was coming from that direction myself when I saw the 911.”
“From your meeting.” I raised my eyebrows with a smile.
“Yes—that.”
“How was the British associate?”
“Same as ever. The Brits I know always talk about having money. They’re always on the verge of being ready to spend their money, as they get you to do something. Then once it’s done, they’ve had an accident, been involved in one or two deals that didn’t turn out, and bam—the money’s no longer there. Wam, bam, thank you, ma’am. We’ve just got you to render a service for free.”
Judging by the tone and the way in which he was venting, I believed the danger had passed and I began to relax even more. And waves of exhaustion came over me.
“I wasn’t having any of it,” he continued.
I pictured the Old Bristly being kicked to the sand on the beach.
“Well, that was that. Pretty dull, right.”
“Not at all. Sounds like a day at the office—or wherever it was you happened to have the interaction—”
He looked at me strangely for a split second now.
“—Business is always interesting to me. I majored in finance after all.”
I grinned inwardly at the smugness of the comment, having realized today that Stafford probably didn’t have the remotest ideas of finance or business—other than whatever sordid illicit trade he was in; drugs, money-laundering, whatever—it was all basically the same simple logic: get the money at all costs. Break their legs, kill them, whatever it takes.
“I’m glad you enjoyed the beaches at Spanish Wells. I was beginning to think you might have followed me. Crazy, right?”
He looked at me hard, minutely studying my reaction.
I smiled without expressing the slightest trepidation.
He lowered his head without taking his eyes off me and spoke this next in a hushed tone I will never forget: “Because if you did I would’ve had to kill you.”
It seemed as if the air was sucked out of the room at once and I had to gasp for breath, my fear was so great at these words. Still, outwardly I concealed it and laughed it off. He joined in the laughter. I was suddenly, oddly reminded of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula as Jonathan Harker had been sent in his employment to the noble’s castle and had at first been impressed by the largess of his lifestyle and his expansive way of thinking only to be sucked into a trap, a bizarre situation of increasing fear and helplessness. Though I felt fear, which I tried to keep at bay, I didn’t feel helpless. It seemed the beast had taken an interest in me and the only recourse, I thought, was to seduce the beast. If not literally, then to control him through the careful use of subliminal signals in our encounters. I don’t mean to be diffuse in the use of this expression; I have given long study to the ways in which people hold sway over one another, to how some people use subtle tricks to gain power over others, and to power relationships in general. Obviously Stafford is a master of certain kinds of power relationships. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in. But I would attempt to dominate him in aspects of life I assumed he was as yet unfamiliar with. I would slip in through these alleyways on the outskirts and work my way in. I would make it my singular objective in life to dominate Mark Stafford in every way. To come in through a side door and break him. I’m not talking about BDSM, which has become fashionable in the cheaper kind of fiction and is really only a cat-and-mouse game between two pussies who are trying to experience a sense of power. I’m talking about pure psychological domination. I was Alexander fighting Darius at Gaugamela. I was Elizabeth I warring against the Spanish Armada. I was Julius Caesar about to cross the Rubicon. I was Cleopatra about to conquer Caesar. Vini, vidi, vici. I was the Kundalini energy in meditation, entering the highest chakra at the top of the skull—illumination. I was Arab assassiyun eating magic mushrooms and hashish, committing murder in Holy Jihad—enter Paradise.
I felt sympathetic toward him as a hunter might feel sympathetic toward his pray before he slays it. But there was no empathy. That was something I was incapable of. When I was a small child of about five or six, I used to kill tiny geckos and, imagining I was a mad scientist, hook their bodies up to stripped wires I would attach to batteries. I was seeing if somehow I could restore them to life. It never worked. Invariably the lizards died and didn’t recover. The strangest thing about it was that I had no feelings about the creatures or any creature up to and including people. Instinctively I felt that death was the state of ultimate satisfaction, the greatest peace. It was later in life I had to be told by my parents that death was sad and something to be mourned. I had always just naturally assumed it meant paradise. Strange, huh.
Stafford looked like a seismograph might look if it was to miraculously take on human form. I had never seen a more sensitive looking soul. He seemed to be able to register the slightest electrical disturbance on another continent. Stafford is the antithesis of me, I thought. This was no doubt part of the attraction.
The rake-bodied girl showed up to take our order. Stafford asked whether I was hungry, I pretended that I was and she took our order. Stafford himself did not eat but ordered only a tall lemonade.
We didn’t speak much over my sandwich and his lemonade. It was more a montage of awkward silences and I remember gazing out the window quite often, wondering about his goon chain-smoking Dunhills in the parking lot. Eventually, Stafford typed something into his phone. (I made a mental note that he still had it with him and looked forward to listening to what was recorded on our return.) A few seconds later the goon received a message on his phone, got in the Escalade and exited down the road along BoneFish Bay. Mark Stafford was riding home with me. The fear subsided a bit at the thought of this and my mind turned to thoughts of a more enthusiastic nature regarding him. I could feel things heating up for us like the sensation one gets tanning on the beach in the morning sun.
The white heat of the solar afternoon reflects off the long, narrow stretch of Queen’s Highway. The deep blue of the mighty Atlantic extends to the horizon on either side. Not a word has been spoken between us since we entered the Porsche. I look over at Mark, now wearing the English cap and shades, and an overwhelming sense of freedom passes through me. I conceive of us as two tiny specs on this tiny blue world in a galaxy that is nothing more than a miniscule grain of cosmic dust in the inconceivably vast multiverse. We are a mere instance, lost somewhere in the three tenses of time. It feels good. The insignificance and obscurity. In my deluded human heart, a brain of limited capacity as all brains are thusly limited, this is how I conceive of freedom. I wish for a thousand golden brains, as Kerouac once said. Stafford sets his hand on the leather-enshrined console between us. I tense the muscles in my stomach. If I don’t, the whole universe melts. Fleeting thoughts of Isabella pass in my mind. I allow them to appear and disappear of their own accord. They are unwanted intruders that I can’t force to leave. As if that would somehow change the course of world events. As if somehow I would lose this moment and all the fruit it might bare if I run from thoughts of her. I have the distinct sensation she is watching us as I set my hand next to his. It can’t happen like this. It’s moving too fast. I’ll lose control. Thoughts fly through my head a mile a minute. Uncomfortable thoughts. Thoughts I never thought I’d think again. Wildly unrelated thoughts. Gross and depraved thoughts. Between us there exists a magnetism that feels as though, when I look in his eyes, I can see the whole universe turn. Its axis is there. He is the light and the life, the truth and the way. It’s now I realize just how far gone I am.
The windows are down so we can feel and smell the sea breeze as it pelts us. Also, as an excuse not to have to converse. It’s just as well, the feelings in me are too big for words. Apart from these feelings and very distinct is the feeling that this is the birth of evil in me. I cannot say where this thought comes from. It isn’t religious by any means. I am not religious. All I can say definitely is that it’s there, it’s terrifying and all-consuming like my burning affection for this almost entirely unknown man.
His hand touches the edge of my hand.
I look at him, holding my gaze.
He looks at me, then away. He moves his hand away. The impression is ambiguous. He could have touched my hand on purpose, or perhaps it was an accident. Though he gives the impression that nothing in his life is accidental. It’s the aura he projects. But of course everything is. He didn’t choose to be born as who he is any more than I chose to be me. It’s all incidental, but never mind. I begin to fantasize about pulling off the road, driving out to a perfect beach on the East Coast. Parking in front of the pink sand in the magic hour right after sunset. I cut the engine, take off my pants and climb over Stafford in the passenger seat, mounting him. But I stop myself there. When a thing is imagined it is as good as real, and I want to save the potentiality and let it explode when it does, if it does, in actuality. I don’t want to spoil it by some weak pre-imagining. I think to myself, I can’t let myself do that with him. But the thought is light and arid, and once thought I know there was no point—the opposite is my true feeling, my desire.
If you do read this one day, Julie, I want you to know I am a little embarrassed at some of these admissions, but I am just writing stream of consciousness, getting the burden off my chest like a sort of purging of the heart. I also want to tell you that, in all honesty, I felt a little too weak to commit the atrocious acts I was about to, but I forced myself out of some not-too-well-understood, compulsive need to go through with it.
I strengthen my heart in imagined strands of steel to fortify it against the onslaught of horrific feelings. Stafford does not glance at me again till we return to the villa. The gate is open when we arrive and we pull around a water fountain before the steps to the arched doors.
Stafford says coolly, “Thanks for the ride,” and we separate.
Back in my room I set down my wallet and phone and enthusiastically popped the MacBook. Waiting for it to boot, I glanced out the window to see a sky on the verge of rain. I felt drained, thrilled and like I needed to rest my Serotonin-saturated brain and think it all over. For now, I would just check my email, the news and make sure something was recorded in Minerva. But I would not listen to it till later in the night since all I wanted now was to return to some semblance of a normal life, whatever that was. What were my thoughts prior to the unfolding adventure that began that afternoon? I was a nanny for a millionaire or billionaire who is mysterious and aloof. I was enjoying this private paradise with the unbelievably attractive Anna. I had smoked a few joints and a torpedo with her. Then the millionaire/billionaire put a wrench in it with some highly questionable business on a small cove a few miles to the north. But it was an intriguing wrench and not altogether undesirable. I didn’t like the idea of the crisp, clean Stafford up to his eyeballs in international intrigue. But I wasn’t going to marry the man, I only wanted to fuck him. An act which I was already trying very hard not to imagine. I wondered if he thought about it. Of course he did. He was a man. Clearly he had taken an interest in me. It was written all over him whenever we were together. I hoped no one else noticed it. I didn’t want it to get back to Isabella. But the more I thought about her and her drone-like behavior, the less I cared.
There was a note from Julie in Gmail.
I hope you’re having fun. You must be since you haven’t written me back. Don’t forget about your old friend in her humdrum, middle-class existence. Part the clouds and peak down at me once in a while. I’ll greet you from the marshes with a smile. (She was waxing eloquent.) If you do get in on your new employers’ multi-million-dollar operations, don’t forget that mansion on the beach in the Cayman Islands you promised me. Imagine the movie nights there.
With that she signed off.
I felt a longing for her. She was like a ghost that haunted my dreams. She represented a safe haven in a real world that I once hated but now looked back on with fondness. I wished she was here and could see all of this. She was fairly well-to-do, but her family’s wealth was nothing like this. The rarified air of wealth of astronomic proportions feels strangely out of place in a world mired so deeply in a great economic depression, it gives the world a distinct dreamlike quality.
I clicked on the Minerva icon somewhat hesitantly. Before it could load there was a knock at my door. Thinking it was Anna I set the MacBook on a bedside table and walked over to the door. As I opened it, Mark Stafford leaned in. I felt my heartbeat in my throat and swallowed hard. I immediately regretted leaving the MacBook open. To my horror, the audio file began to play automatically.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I went over to the bedside table and paused the recording. There were no indicators on the screen of what it was. All that had played so far was just a muffled, ruffling noise.
“Weather,” I said without really knowing what I was going to say next. The following came automatically: “It’s a recording a friend sent of a storm outside her house. Only sound, no picture.”
“Interesting.”
“What brings you, Mark?”
“Isabella’s leaving for England in the morning.”
I wondered if it was anything to do with t
he “Brit” Stafford had sorted out in the morning.
“She’s in a bit of a state now. She didn’t want to come see you. It’s not you. She doesn’t want to see anyone. She doesn’t even want to see me.”
What he was telling me seemed like something private he should have kept to himself.
“I hope she’s alright.”
“She is. She just gets like this before she travels. She’s going to see her family.”
“Why didn’t Anna come tell me?”
This was my way of saying I thought what he was saying was a bit too private for my liking. I needed to put some distance between us, take control.
“I thought we were friends.” That magnetic smile appeared again.
I couldn’t help smiling, and I was mad at myself for doing so.
“Anyway, she’s leaving in the morning, but the baby’s staying. So the chore of looking after Savannah will be divided between you and Anna. You two will have to work out how you do this among yourselves. Understood?”
“Claro,” I said with a smirk.
“You speak Spanish?”