His first tall blonde.
And not his last.
His own good looks, athleticism and the confidence that came with privilege had meant that he’d never struggled to attract the women he’d desired.
So, to be seated beside a beautiful blonde in a speedboat cleaving through the sunstruck Andaman Sea should’ve been a little passé for Michael.
But it wasn’t.
He felt like he’d been broken out of a prison of his own making, each nautical mile taking him farther away from the dimmed, diminished version of himself that he’d become, and closer to... what exactly?
He didn’t know, but he was ready to find out.
This made him laugh, and Liz Keller turned to him and said, “Having fun?”
He nodded. “I am.” He shrugged. “Even though I know this is work.”
“Why not a bit of both?” she said, and her hair blew in her face, and she swept it away, steering them through water so blue it looked like a video effect.
Earlier, on the phone, she’d said, “Remember that project I told you about last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Any chance of a site inspection today?” she said.
“How long would it take?”
“A few hours.”
“I guess I can swing that,” Michael said. “Where should I meet you?”
“At my boat in thirty minutes.”
“We’re going on a boat trip?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“That’s a surprise. Believe me you won’t be disappointed.”
He’d showered and put on khaki shorts over swimming trunks, a cotton shirt, a white cap and a pair of well-worn boat shoes.
When he reached her speedboat she was already on board, seated at the wheel.
She was dressed the way she’d been the first day he’d seen her, wearing a patterned cloth over a one-piece swimsuit.
She smiled at him and fired up the twin outboards.
“Wanna cast us off?” she said.
He untied the rope and pushed the boat away from the jetty and climbed aboard, sinking into the seat beside her.
She pushed down the throttle and took them out of the bay in a wide swerve, heading toward the open sea.
“Our destination’s still a secret?” he said.
“Uh huh.”
“I’m not being trafficked, am I?”
She laughed and accelerated and the boat javelined forward, its hull smacking the flat ocean.
46
Ban clicked on his flasher, and a truck allowed him into the adjacent lane. Caroline flicked through the Raymond Carver and closed it. They traveled a few yards and stopped again. She looked out the window at a scene of sundrenched horror.
A mangled motorcycle lay on the blacktop. Its rider was sprawled on his side, his head a strawberry smear. A SUV was tipped on its roof and a woman hung trapped behind the wheel. Her side window was starred and red with blood.
Caroline heard Ban inhale and make a hissing sound. Sirens moaned in the distance but there were no first responders at the scene yet. Rubberneckers walked through the blood and glass shooting pictures on their phones.
Caroline looked at the trapped woman. She dangled in the boneless way of the dead.
Caroline closed her eyes and how could she not flash back to that night in the snow? Terror and panic exploded inside her.
She heard herself panting as somebody else’s hands scratched in her bag and found two OxyContin tablets and put them on her tongue. She tasted the familiar bitterness and reached for her water bottle and swallowed the pills.
47
Michael watched as a tall, narrow limestone cliff rose from the ocean like a tower. Its base was lost in a tangle of dense green jungle that fringed an island beach with blindingly white sand. The sea, as it neared the shore, went from azure to turquoise.
Michael sat forward in his seat, shielding his eyes, staring out.
“My God, what is this place?”
“It has no name,” Liz said.
“Deserted?”
“Totally.”
“Who owns it?”
Liz slowed the boat and steered toward the shore.
“The Thai state. But a lease is available. I want to build a super-exclusive resort right there on that fucking beach.”
“How come nobody has done it yet?”
She shrugged. “The Thais are a superstitious lot. There’s some legend about a bad spirit haunting the island. A succubus if you can believe it. They take that stuff pretty seriously, so nobody wants to touch the place. But I’ve found a Thai partner, a guy who was raised in the States. He sees the potential and isn’t about to let some ghost story stop us.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Liz slowed the speedboat a short way from the beach and dropped the anchor.
She pointed at a chrome cooler box in the stern.
“Think you can manage that? I brought a few refreshments.”
She hopped over the side, landing in knee deep water and waded ashore.
Michael climbed down, hefted the cooler out and followed her.
The water was so clear that he could see a swirl of tiny black fish fleeing from him.
Liz waited for Michael under a palm tree and he set the cooler down in the shade on the soft sand.
“So,” she asked, “Are you interested?”
“Very.”
She smiled. “Well, take a good look.”
Liz unwrapped the cloth and revealed a body-hugging swimsuit.
She let the cloth drift to the sand and sat on it, smiling up at him.
He dug his phone from the pocket of his shorts and shot a series of photographs of the beach, the jungle and the cliff.
He heard a pop and turned and saw that she’d lifted a bottle of Krug from the cooler and opened it.
She filled two glasses, and held one out to him saying, “Brunch is poured.”
He snapped her picture and then took the glass and drank it dry.
48
Euphoria was the only word. Mild, of course. Caroline had only popped two pills. But even that little duo, once they had paddled across the blood brain barrier, had been enough to induce a blissful numbness.
Today Central was a pageant of color and beauty, populated by smiling, gorgeous people. Caroline was deaf to the Thai pop on the speakers—she had her own soundtrack, a memory loop of the trippiest Beatles numbers.
“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”
“She Said, She Said.”
“Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Songs that she loathed when she was straight.
She wafted through the mega mall, taking in the sights, wrapped into a little chemical cocoon of wellbeing. The horror of the car wreck was far away now, the drug a nifty little buffer between her and anything unpleasant.
She found herself in a massive fashion store. Shoes. Bags. Accessories.
A silk scarf caught her eye. A knock-off of a vintage Hermes. A dead-ringer for the blue and yellow floral thing her mother had worn on special occasions. Something she’d inherited from her own mother.
The sight of the scarf brought a smile to Caroline’s face, after the morning’s unsettling dream. This scarf conjured her mother as she really had been, with her graying hair pulled back into a French plait, her upright carriage, her quiet dignity.
Caroline slipped the scarf off the rail and slung it round her neck. And promptly forgot about it.
She cruised another couple of aisles and then realized she was very thirsty and headed for the exit, trying to remember how to navigate herself to the coffee shop Liz had taken her to.
Caroline left the store and was about to board the escalator when she felt a hand on her upper arm.
She turned, smiling, and looked down into the face of a Thai woman dressed in some kind of uniform.
“Madame, please to come with me,” the woman said,
She walked Caro
line back toward the store where a chunky man in a similar uniform stood speaking into a walkie-talkie.
49
Michael sat with his back against a palm tree, staring out at the sun dancing like shards of broken glass on the flat ocean. The champagne had given him a buzz and the heat was almost hallucinogenic.
As he watched Liz Keller extracted weed paraphernalia from her bag and set about rolling as expert a joint as he’d ever seen.
Michael was no dope head, but he’d been to college, and Liz would’ve left those poseur frat boys for dead.
She set fire to the joint and took a hit, held it for impressively long while, and released a pungent cloud, her eyes never leaving his.
When she offered the joint to him he thought about jungle gardens and forbidden fruits. He hesitated, but he took it and put it between his lips and tasted the tart bitterness.
Michael had a little puff, barely enough to fill his mouth with warm smoke, and tried to return the joint to her.
Liz laughed, refusing to take it. “Come on Bill Clinton, inhale the fucking thing.”
Michael looked at her and then down at the joint, the smoke snaking up into his nostrils.
The urge to get wasted was irresistible.
He took a serious hit, held it, swallowed a cough, and then released his own cloud.
“Well look at you,” Liz said.
It had been years since he’d smoked and the effect was immediate, stronger than anything he’d ever known. Like a ball-peen hammer between the eyes.
Staring at Liz down the wrong end of a telescope, he handed the joint back.
“Fuck,” he said. It was all he could manage.
“Yeah,” she said. “Really.”
She smoked again and it looked like her head was on fire.
He wiped his teeth with a tongue that was lazy and swollen.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Local stuff. Kinda trippy, huh?”
“Uh huh.”
She passed the joint again and the little relay continued until it was just ash.
Michael closed his eyes. He heard the sweet call of a bird and the soft slap of the water on the sand.
Then, closer, he heard the whisper of a zipper and opened his eyes to see Liz stepping out of her swimsuit. She looked down at him and smiled and then walked naked to the water, leaving castaway footprints in the sand.
50
The bullet-headed cop stood leaning over Caroline, shouting into her face in Thai. He smelled of garlic and an industrial-strength deodorant. She shook her head, doing her best not to cry.
He said, in an attempt at English, “You take cloth! Take cloth!”
She shook her head again. “No. It was a mistake.”
He stood upright, folding his hands across his chest, staring at her across the steel desk. He wore a tight dung-colored uniform and had silver stars on his shoulders. A pistol was holstered at his hip. His hair was cropped close to his skull. A ruby ring gleamed on the little finger of his left hand.
“Please,” Caroline said, “Can I call my husband?”
She had asked this before.
The policeman shook his head and turned and strode out slamming the door after him. She heard a key turn in the lock.
Caroline stared at the palms of her hands. Her fingers still bore the traces of fingerprint ink. She placed them flat on the desk and they were made blue by the buzzing florescent tubes. The surface of the desk was empty but for a blank white legal pad and two retractable ballpoint pens, one red one black. The single window was covered by a green slatted blind that swayed and ticked softly in the breeze of a standing fan.
The Thai king watched her from the wall.
She felt a wave of dizziness and closed her eyes.
Back at Central the security guard had snapped a picture of Caroline with the scarf still wound around her neck, and then she and her male colleague had walked her back into the store. Other shoppers had paused in their browsing to watch this walk of shame.
She was taken through a pair of swinging doors, and the ostentation was left behind. Strip lights and scuffed walls. Lockers. A woman in the uniform of a bathroom attendant, wearing a hairnet, sat on a blue stool slurping a plate of soup, looking at her with blank eyes.
“This is a mistake,” Caroline said, again. “I’ll pay. I just forgot I was wearing it.”
The security guard shook her head. “No, madame. We call police already.”
“Please,” Caroline said, “please.”
They took her into a room with a plastic garden table and two chairs and told her to sit. She sat.
“Please to give me your cell phone,” the woman said.
Caroline thought of protesting, but she dipped a hand into her pocket and gave the phone to the woman who put it on the table beside her bag.
“I’m very thirsty,” she said. “Could I please have some water?”
The woman said something to the man and he went out. He came back a minute later with a mug of water. He left the room again. Despite her thirst Caroline didn’t trust the water, and left the mug standing on the table.
The woman put Caroline’s bag on the table and went through it. When she found nothing of interest she stood behind Caroline with her hands folded in front of her.
After a while Caroline heard men’s voices in the corridor and the door opened and two uniformed policemen came in. Bullethead and a younger man, slender, with an almost girlishly pretty face.
Bullethead barked something at the security guard and she said, “Passaport, madame.”
Caroline opened her bag and took out her wallet and handed over her passport.
Bullethead flicked through it and stared at the photograph and then at her. He cleared his throat with the sound of a truck downshifting, then he shoved the passport back into the bag. He gave the bag to the other cop and wagged a hand at Caroline.
“Come.”
She stood. “Where are you taking me?”
“They take you police station, madame,” the security guard said.
“No, please,” Caroline said. “It was a mistake. I’ll pay.”
Bullethead had her by the arm and they were moving. They went back through the store and down to the exit, where a silver police car was parked on a lattice of yellow lines. The pretty cop opened the rear door for Caroline and she sat.
Bullethead drove up into the relentless sunlight. He used his siren like a cowcatcher, sending cars and bikes scattering.
Within minutes they were at a low concrete building, the word POLICE emblazoned in white letters on a red background over its doorway. Flags hung limp as dishtowels in the torpid air.
They took her from the car and photographed and fingerprinted her. Then they brought her into the room, where she now waited.
The door opened and Bullethead returned. He had an official looking form in his hand and thumped it down in front of her.
“Sign,” he said.
Caroline stared down at lines of indecipherable Thai.
She shook her head. “No. I need to speak to my husband. Please.”
The policeman tapped the desk with his ring, then he bellowed something. After a few seconds the pretty cop hurried in, carrying her bag.
He delved inside and came out with her cell phone.
Caroline took it, and with shaking hands dialed Michael.
She got his voice mail.
She dialed again.
Voicemail.
51
Liz floated on her back. She looked past her toes at the beach. Waiting.
She had that familiar feeling low in her gut. Excitement. Arousal. It was much more than sex. The sensation that things were now underway and that the conclusion was preordained and inevitable.
All she had to do was float and wait.
A movement. Michael stood and unbuttoned his shirt. Stepped out of his shorts. He still wore a pair of dark swimming trunks, but that was okay. Better even.
She liked layers.
Michael walked into the water and stood a moment.
He was so gorgeous it was almost a shame.
He glided beneath the surface, then emerged, water glistening in his hair. He wasn’t near Liz and didn’t look at her. He swam away.
She flipped onto her belly and returned to the beach in a slow, lazy crawl.
She lay naked on the sand, supine, legs apart, the sun hot on her flesh.
Liz drew Michael back as she knew she would. He surfaced a short distance away. He looked at her. Then he turned and stared out over the ocean.
The move was hers to make.
Liz rose and walked over to where he stood with his back to her. She made no noise, and stopped an arm’s length from him. When she saw the muscles in his shoulder blades clench, she knew he sensed her behind him.
As she watched a trickle of water broke free from his hair and rolled down his spine, vertebra by vertebra.
Liz stepped in closer, but still she didn't touch him. She could hear his breath over the wash of the ocean.
She curled her arm around him and placed the palm of her hand on his muscled belly. She could feel the trail of coarse hair that led from inside his trunks to his navel.
His belly sucked in and he turned and kissed her and she pressed herself against him, and she could smell salt and sweat and the ink on freshly printed banknotes.
52
Charlie, hidden in the jungle, sweating, feasted on by mosquitoes, focused his phone’s camera on the rutting couple on the beach.
It wasn’t the first time he and the woman who now called herself Liz Keller had done this.
It had been one of their most successful plays, back in the day.
Hardly original, but it had paid off in spades.
Their marks had been wealthy married men on holiday with their longtime wives, and sometimes their spotty, pallid offspring.
Good Friends Page 10