“Seeing the girls was the good omen, it forecast that we’d see the whale,” Tom said. If luck or chance brought the girls to him once, why not again?
Jan took his binoculars. “Look what they’re selling. Printed T-shirts and beach hats to honeymooners and second honeymooners.”
The cheap ugliness of the place, too easy to ridicule, netted surfeits of contempt from the other three that strained Tom’s affection for them. I don’t want to hear this now, he thought, my children are out there somewhere, and a cultural critique gets in my way. This is how people live today. What would you rather see, slaves in the hot sun? I will not despise or condemn. Let me get rid of my protective shell, let me remove whatever remains of my defenses, let me suffer the various buffetings and impressions that come to me, let me be aware of life without judgment today. He was annoyed with his friends and cold about it. Well, he thought, so there is no constant, single achieved feeling of balance and goodness, only a faster ability to correct one’s course and shield one’s heart against mindless damage. I am the ship, and I am also the reef.
They lowered the sails, and Eddie brought the Mimesis to a mooring.
This was going to be their final good-bye.
“Well, well, well,” said Eddie. He put a hundred-dollar bill in Tom’s hand. “You’ve been a wonderful addition to my life, Tom. Whatever your past, whatever your future, remember that on this little boat, in fair weather and foul, you had real friends, people who knew you and liked you and loved you. Go with peace, and may whatever challenges you meet along the way turn into blessings.”
It was Jan’s turn. “I never told you all the many stories that I should have, and now it’s too late.” She held him, crying.
“No, no,” said Tom. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I can’t help it. Regrets, regrets, regrets.”
“Why?”
“Because there might be something that I know, something I could have shared with you, that could save you in the future. It’s like the fairy tales where someone is given three special gifts that make no sense at the time, a gold ball, a feather, a piece of glass, and then each of those gifts becomes that thing that saves the hero’s life at three times in his life and makes his quest a success. And I have so many stories, and one of them might have had the power to rescue my poor Tom, and I call you my poor Tom because of what I can see of your heart. Broken, broken, broken.”
“But I like it this way,” said Tom. “Don’t cry for me. And I’ll always remember you, and who knows, maybe one of the stories you already told me gave me the weapons I’ll need when everything else has failed.”
“Do you think so?” asked Jan.
“I hope so,” said Tom.
And now Alan offered Tom his hand, and when Tom reached for it, Alan clasped Tom around the neck and hugged him. Tom saw a bad end for Alan, a lonely death, drowned, probably, thrown overboard, but not by the Dodges, by someone else. Alan’s gloom would never lift, for all the reasons he had become this wreck so young in life.
So they let Tom off at the end of a fuel dock, to continue on their way around the world.
Tom waved at them as the dinghy returned to the Mimesis. “I will never see you again!” he called out, the words bouncing off the sound of the outboard.
With nothing in his hand but a hundred-dollar bill, he walked into the next part of his life.
...
The best remedy for distress is work, sudden wealth, or a beautiful woman. I have none of this, thought Tom, but I will create relief by a kind of parallel agreement. My work: to find my children. My sudden wealth: that I know where to look. My beautiful woman: but here Tom ran against the fence of his reality. He stroked his chin, felt his beard, found a barber, and changed himself once again.
He bought a Maui guidebook, then fruit, cheese, and bread, and ate under an old tree in a park on the Lahaina waterfront. The most expensive hotels on the island were the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, the Grand Wailea, and The Palace of the King.
What was her name? Was she Rosalie Levy or did she use her maiden name, was she Rosalie Desser? If she was married to the man in the taxi, she would have taken his name, but would the girls have changed their name? Would she have asked them to sever that connection to their father?
He called the hotels and asked for Perri Levy.
She was staying at The Palace of the King.
“May I ask who is calling?” The hotel operator knew the name too quickly for someone who had just checked in the day before.
“I can’t hear you,” said Tom.
“May I ask who is calling?”
Tom hung up. Why was Perri screening calls? Why did the operator take no time to look up his daughter’s room number? If Perri was a guest, why did the operator guard her with the familiar nerve of a longtime servant?
What defeat awaits me? he wondered.
Do I have a right to seek them out?
Yes. God put us here. What else is one of the names of God but the secret opportunity behind coincidence?
It was two o’clock. The afternoon wind lifted the tops of the palms and the flags along the waterfront, and there were so many of them, ornamental and national. Away from the Mimesis, and his need to take an argument’s other side for the sport of conversation, Tom watched the tourists with diminishing compassion, and when he felt his contempt rise, he challenged himself to find a better spirit. However this would end, he would refuse the tragic. His daughters were somewhere in this mob of the mottled, the obese, the oversugared, the desperate for diversion, the alcoholic, the numb. Do not hate anyone, he told himself, at least not yet. Just feel the grief for the lost lessons you could have taught your daughter if only, in Jamaica, ten years ago, your attribute of mercy had suppressed my attribute of rage. The tourists know so little, he thought, and then he beat to another tack, but the thoughts were equally close-hauled, because the tourists were also, if not pure and innocent, certainly less guilty than he of murder, most of them, and he suspected—but then changed suspicion to wonder, did the murderers among them keep the same distance from the cheap parade for the same reasons as he? All of this bad taste, this smothering of something that might be real or better, contaminated the world. But now he could ask if he belonged to a negative aristocracy. He summoned his foul mood from the Montego House, and the recovered memory of his disdain for the style of the place cut him with a long, cold blade. As deep as he thought he had gone in his repentance, there was a further revelation and yet another punishment: had mediocre design, bad decoration, and people with no sense of fashion driven him to murder? What a waste. It was a thought to pursue, but he had his daughters to consider, so he accepted the world as it was given to him.
He walked the six miles from Lahaina to the hotel, not to save money but to let the rhythm and purpose of his stride help find a channel for his calculations. If his daughters were happy, and if his restoration would hurt them, be the death of their futures by the return of a buried past, the embalmed come back to life, he would withdraw.
So he marched on, left and right, left and right, planning with one set of strides how to approach his daughters as though his life would continue with them; and then with the next set of steps, he calmly imagined scenarios of happiness without his daughters, the ways to live out the rest of his time as a life and not a judgment. He would have a specific life if he failed to be his daughters’ father again, he would make specific friends, learn a technical skill.
But I don’t want to be without them, he thought. That was the truth.
He took the beach path for hotels east of The Palace of the King, along a trail that linked the big resorts and separated them from the sea. The ocean, whitecaps flocking across the channel, offered danger to even the best swimmers. Under a broad, windy sky, the sheltered hotel pools were crowded and easy to invade.
The Palace of the King was the prettiest of all, the hanging gardens of Babylon, three towers joined by bridges, set above a terraced jungle. The ce
nter tower’s roof supported a green world all its own. To the left, facing the hotel, the lowest of the pools was built in the style of a lagoon, with a sandy beach and, in the middle, a sunken galleon that held a bar. A long water slide delivered shrieking children from the next terrace. To the right, a wide lawn surrounded a pagoda. And there was a Japanese couple getting married! On the terraces above were more swimming pools, lined by Greek columns. Or maybe Roman. What difference? It was classical, and quiet. Everywhere flowers bloomed, and the air was rich with the scent of gardenia.
He walked through the lobby, all white marble, an atrium open to the sky fifteen floors above. Sheer pastel curtains broke up the space; through one scrim was the reception desk, through another a bar, and there, a gift shop. The effect was instantly calming and exciting, it was playful. It made Tom happy to know his daughters were here.
He returned by another set of meandering steps to the lagoon pool, where Perri and Alma, on submerged stools at the galleon bar, sipped from straws in pineapples, wearing the sunglasses they’d bought on Waikiki. The sunglasses paid for by Rosalie. They looked perfectly content, twisting on their seats, at once pretending to be movie stars and surpassing the intimidating power of movie stars.
Rosalie’s new man appeared behind the bar and kissed each of Tom’s daughters lightly on the lips. Since the shipwreck bar was in the middle of the pool, Rosalie’s new man must have entered through a hidden passage. The bartenders joked with him with a deferential familiarity, which he reflected back as appreciation, and by the way he restrained himself from an equivalent joviality, and by the command he took when he entered from the submarine passage, Tom understood that Rosalie’s new man was either the owner of the hotel or the senior manager. And he was there just to talk to Tom’s children, this was not an inspection tour.
Rosalie’s new man refilled both of their drinks himself. They adored him.
My wife has married a king. My daughters have become princesses.
Is the marriage new?
They could be living here now.
If they’re living here, I have time.
If this is a short visit, if he owns many hotels and they’re here for a quick vacation, then they’ll leave and I won’t be able to follow them home so quickly, although I can find out where they live.
If I had died and, after ten years in limbo, awoke bodiless at this hotel, spirit witness to my children’s new life, wouldn’t I look upon their new father and fortune as a gift?
Let me see if this is good or bad.
Tom slept that night at a Little League field, in the dugout along the third-base line. He still had fifty dollars.
He walked back to the hotel and sat at the foot of a banyan tree on the other side of the path from the hotel, where he could see the lagoon pool.
He prayed for guidance. He needed a simple vision, a small plan, a tiny idea, nothing larger than a postage stamp, really, from which to begin his trip back to his daughters. This is a meditation. I will relax my eyes and make no distinction between the metal bands around the palm trees, the light on the eyelashes of the waitress bringing that plate of onion rings to those nanny-attended children, the Hawaiian tenor with the high sweet voice on the bar’s sound system, and the woman using her room key as a bookmark before she takes to the water.
Tom walked past the woman’s shoes and stopped to tie his laces. He grabbed her key and moved back to the banyan tree, where he waited.
The woman returned from the pool, and Tom followed her back to her room. He rode with her in the elevator to the ninth floor of the west tower. When she turned right, he followed and then walked ahead of her, listening to her steps. She came to her room, W914. She opened the book for the key and swore.
She knocked on the door, and there was no answer.
She returned to the lobby.
Tom used the key to open her door and went into the room.
There was a camera on the desk, loaded with film. He put the camera on a shelf and set the timer, then took a picture of himself. He finished the roll by taking pictures of the room, the clothes, the safe, the shoes, and then, when the film rewound, put the film in his pocket and left the room.
He had been in the room for three minutes.
His daughters were at the pool again. He hadn’t yet seen Rosalie.
Three men sat together under the awnings of a cabana. Tom sat nearby, listening for a name. One said to another, “Bill, you don’t know. You just don’t know.”
When Bill left, Tom followed him to his room in the central tower, C1200, a suite overlooking the water. Tom went down to the health club, called the hotel operator on a house phone, and said, “Hi, this is Todd at the spa. I have an appointment here for Bill something-or-other in C1200, but he’s late. Could you spell me the last name?”
Bill Delantash.
Tom then went to one of the cafés near the pool and sat at the counter. The waiter recognized Tom because he had been hovering in the area for two days. Tom ordered a sandwich and signed for it using the name. He filled in the room number, C1200.
He slept again in the dugout at the Little League field.
In the clothing store, he charged two shirts to Bill Delantash, and a bathing suit, and a hotel robe. With the hotel robe, it was now safe for him to sit on a chaise by the pool. The men were still there, still in the cabana.
Rosalie and the girls passed him on their way into the ocean. He took his time and went to the beach, where Rosalie and the girls stood in the water up to their waists. The girls faced the ocean, and Rosalie completed the triangle, facing the hotel. Her eyes skimmed over Tom. He felt her disregard for him, another single man at the beach watching her sexy daughters, his gaze an attack on their beauty. He wanted to say hello, to unmask himself right there, tell her the truth about himself, about his travels. He wanted to forgive Rosalie her rage at him, absolve her of the time she wasted hating him, he wanted to let her know that absolution would mean permission to know that her pain needed no excuse, only that the pain had long passed its profit. She would have the right to bring him forward into the world and make him confess his sins again, without the guarantee of her reprieve. She could say No. What then? If he begged her once in public to forgive him, and she said No, and then he gathered another audience, distinguished citizens all, their friends and family, and begged her again for mercy, and she said No, and then he found another court of opinion and recited all of his sins, all of his offenses, all of the ways that he knew his actions had defamed his family, ruined his daughters, shattered the vessels of the world in which they lived, and Rosalie, upon hearing his humble agonized plea for release from his punishment, yet one more time coldly said No, well then, would the sin be upon her shoulders? And so he forgave her that sin now and wished the reciprocal turn from her.
Which did no good, of course, since the dialogue was all in his head, while Rosalie looked through him to the hotel, in expectation, Tom guessed, for her husband (yes, her husband, there was the gold band on her fourth finger), due any minute now for their late-afternoon swim in the ocean.
Tom withdrew from the beach. The curse of his journey, his powerful face, forced him to hide. If he stayed for too long, his singular beauty would stay with Rosalie, and were she to see him again, suspicion of the truth, that he was following her, would cause her alarm.
From the promontory in front of the next hotel, obscured by bushes, Tom watched Rosalie’s husband run into the ocean and grab her. They kissed. His daughters splashed water on the two of them, and then Rosalie’s husband returned the splashes. The new husband and the daughters then swam together away from the beach. The reef, a long way off the shore, kept the waves from breaking closely, and the three swam safely, lazily, joking.
There was nothing to interpret.
Tom returned to the dugout to sleep. He sat up for the night, marveling at life’s parade of dilemmas, this infinite battalion of choice and consequence.
If I … then she … then they …
&n
bsp; If I … then he … then she … then they …
The next morning, Tom was in the lobby early. Already a fixture in the hotel, he was careful not to stay for long in any one zone, and to make few demands on services, eating lightly. Rosalie’s new husband crossed the lobby and chatted with the people working at the front desk. When he passed, Tom asked a bellman, “Is that the manager?”
“He’s Mr. Cohen, the owner.”
“John Cohen?”
“David.”
“Ah,” said Tom.
Tom called to make an appointment to see him in two days. He explained to Mr. David Cohen’s secretary that he was calling from Los Angeles, that he was with a film production company and wanted to talk about using the hotel as a location for a movie. The secretary asked if he would speak instead to one of Mr. Cohen’s managers, but Tom allowed that he would need only a few minutes of Mr. Cohen’s time, after which he would approach the manager, but since Mr. Cohen would have to approve this anyway, could he at least explore with Mr. Cohen the possibility of using the hotel as a location. “I only need five minutes.”
She put him on the schedule.
For the next two days, Tom avoided the hotel and Lahaina, anyplace where Mr. David Cohen might see him. He left the film of the room he had invaded to be developed by the hotel’s photo store.
On the day of the meeting, he showered at a public beach, dressed in the bathroom, and walked to the hotel. Along the way he bought a portfolio case at a stationery store for twelve dollars. He put the photographs inside, along with the receipts for everything he’d charged at the hotel.
The hotel’s administration offices were on the second floor of the west tower. Tom introduced himself as Lyle Monaster. He was kept waiting for half an hour, which he expected, and then admitted to David Cohen’s office.
Cohen greeted him with the affable expectation of a busy man. The office was quiet. The room had the restrained pastels of the lobby. There were photographs on the wall, an exhibition of Cohen’s life, with a suite of pictures taken with Rosalie and the girls, starting, Tom estimated, two years after he went to prison.
Under Radar Page 15