Up Too Close

by Stein, Andrea K.

  René wasn’t tall, not a hulk at all, but he was fast, very fast, and nimble. Once when three defenders ganged up on him, actually bringing him down with a crushing bear hug, he felt like he might have cracked a couple of ribs. Blood streamed from a cut above one of his eyes. Sight in the other eye had narrowed from swelling.

  He was having such a good time trouncing the Horta crowd, he hadn’t checked on CeCe for while. When he chanced a quick glance, she was standing, her back to the game, rounding the bleachers and heading for the parking lot.

  He was dumbstruck, and in that second, Augie took him down hard. Everything went black.

  * * *

  CeCe drove the familiar winding road home, not really seeing, tears half-blinding her. What made her think René had changed? She had worried about him being blown away on the football field when all along he knew exactly what he was doing.

  He had outdone her brothers and made them look silly. René was just another coarse asshole, like the four she’d grown up around. No wonder her mother had run away from the raging torrent of testosterone. Men and their games. Like her family, like Jerome Carrothers, René was just another clueless man in the end. She’d been right not to tell him about the baby.

  She pulled over the truck and laid her head on her arms curled around the steering wheel. A wave of need for her mother swept over her, a need so painful, it cut like a knife through her chest. After a few moments, she raised her head and wiped away her tears with a sleeve. She started the truck and cranked the gears in reverse, blasting her way back onto the roadway. She knew what she had to do.

  She crunched the tires up the gravel roadway to her childhood home. After pulling the hand brake, she charged in through the kitchen door. Just as she thought, her father’s faithful housekeeper Teresa was pounding dough on the table, readying loaves of bread for the festival.

  Teresa had always been there, ironing her dresses for school, taming her long, silky hair into pigtails. Her comfortable arms and bosom were always there when CeCe had needed a good cry all through high school.

  Like the time her father and brothers had driven off her first love, a gentle young man she’d played flute with in the island orchestra. She’d made the mistake of letting him kiss her in his car one night. Everyone on the small island could not beat a path fast enough to Zarco’s door to tell him.

  All the times in her life she’d really needed a mother, Teresa had been there. When CeCe slammed through the screen door, Teresa turned and pulled her into her arms, just like always.

  “Titia Teresa,” CeCe said through her tears, “I need my mother.”

  Teresa gently settled her onto a window seat and then stood back with a thoughtful look on her face. She pulled a cellphone from a pocket in her spotless white apron and punched in a few numbers. She handed the phone to CeCe and said, “Then why don’t you tell her?”

  * * *

  René’s equilibrium was still a little shaky from Augie’s takedown, but he could not have hoped for a better outcome. His soccer prowess had done what no amount of talking could have accomplished. He was one of the Zarco “boys.” Even Augie had warmed up to him, and Mika seemed more sincere about their friendship.

  They’d all piled into a neighboring farmer’s cattle trailer, since CeCe had commandeered Zarco’s truck. Hélder’s sensible Euro tin-can-sized car barely contained his tall frame, let alone all of theirs. The eldest of the Zarco brothers shared the tiny auto with Chienne and her adoring entourage of Zarco’s attack dogs. All of them rode along with their heads hanging out the windows and barking.

  René preferred the trailer, no matter how smelly. Augie was now his best bud, and kept urging him to join in rousing stanzas of lewd songs. Mika had given him a succession of bottles of island beer, and now the pain of his injuries, not to mention the cow stench of the trailer, had faded a little.

  However, at the pit of his consciousness, a nagging worry throbbed. Where had CeCe gone? Why had she abandoned them? He’d thrown himself to the lions for her, like an ancient gladiator. And she’d just turned and left before he finished his triumphant trial by fire for her brothers.

  Women. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, René had assumed he was a master on the subject of women. Apparently, he was wrong. He was French, but, mon Dieu, was he ever wrong about four particular females: CeCe, Chienne, the Tourbillon, and his enigmatic grand-mere. He had no idea what made any of them tick.

  When the farmer rolled into Zarco’s drive and dumped them out of the trailer, they locked arms and sang their way up to the house.

  The housekeeper Teresa met them at the door with her arms folded. After a few sniffs, she pointed toward the outdoor showers and slammed the door in their faces. A woman of few words.

  When they’d all finished showering, a pile of worn, faded pants and T-shirts awaited them on a stone bench. The effects of the beer had begun to wear off, and they dressed in silence. They exchanged sheepish looks while moving toward the house. Teresa waited at the kitchen door, along with the smell of something wonderful cooking on her stove.

  Zarco gave his housekeeper a silent salute and a brief hug before they stormed the kitchen and fell on the grilled fish, rice, and freshly baked bread.

  * * *

  Now that René was sober again, the pain of the game took over. And CeCe was nowhere to be seen. He’d retired to his tiny, glowing orange room with a pot of some evil-smelling salve from Teresa.

  He wondered if he dared venture into Zarco’s halls after dark. Would the dogs tear him apart? He had no idea, but he had to try. It was time he faced the music and talked to CeCe. Once he was outside his door, he looked from side to side, but there was nothing but dark silence. He suddenly realized he had no idea where CeCe’s room was. The house was utterly silent, except from the chink of pottery in the kitchen. Teresa.

  René made his way to the welcoming light at the back of the house. When he entered the housekeeper’s sanctum, she had her back to him, washing dishes. She continued her work, ignoring him. When he tried a polite clearing of his throat, she turned, but the look on her face was full of disdain.

  “I’m looking for CeCe,” he said. “Do you know where she is?”

  Teresa raised her arm and unfurled a single finger. “Down the path. On her mother’s boat.” She whirled around and resumed her dish-washing with a vengeance.

  René hadn’t remembered a path outside.

  His standing there seemed to annoy the housekeeper even more.

  “Outside, there is lamppost,” she said. “Go there. You will see the path. There is a cove. She will be on the Anda, for that is where she would always go as a girl.”

  “Thank you,” René said.

  Teresa laughed sharply, and it wasn’t a happy sound. “You shouldn’t thank me. You go down there to your death. You have not seen anger like the Zarco daughter’s.”

  René didn’t want to argue, so he left.

  Man, had he fucked up this time. But what had he done?

  * * *

  René stumbled down a steep path toward the rocks and pounding waves below the Zarco compound. He blundered through a darkness alleviated a bit by a sky full of stars. The moon, just a sliver, was not much help.

  For one crazy moment he feared the housekeeper Teresa hated him so much, she’d deliberately sent him on a path that fell off into nothingness, just to get rid of him.

  Then he saw the cove and the small, perfect sailboat. It must be the Anda, a classic, thirty-eight-foot Beneteau First.

  When he finally reached the pier, he leaned over and gave a tentative knock on the hull. After the longest few minutes of his life, CeCe’s blonde head poked up through the companionway opening.

  “Permission to come aboard?” he asked. Another harrowing moment passed while she stared a hole through his borrowed T-shirt.

  She shrugged and said, “Come on aboard,” and moved to unlock the gate in the lifelines.

  Once on deck and staring at CeCe in her bedtime uniform of nothi
ng but the “Whirled Peas” shirt, René forgot what he was going to say.

  “You’re here,” she said. “Obviously you talked to Titia Teresa. Now say what you have to say and get the hell off my boat. I’m sick of men and all the macho, bullshit games you think you have to play.”

  “CeCe …,” he started.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought beating your brothers would make you happy.”

  “And to do that you made all of us believe you were a helpless, sport-challenged ignorantus.” She leaned over and adjusted two big rubber fenders hanging off the side of the boat next to the pier, exposing a length of smooth, golden thigh.

  “Ignoramus,” he said, and then his mouth went dry.

  “So just how did the big, macho game end? Did you beat the crap out of my brothers? Do they look as bad as you?”

  “No, and no,” he said, finding his voice again. “The game was a draw. Augie knocked me unconscious. Bad for me, but he seemed to enjoy it, and now we are friends.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet. You’re all good buddies now. Right?” She did not sound like a happy woman.

  He nodded his head, still not understanding.

  “Of course,” CeCe snapped. “Why don’t you turn your macho self around and head back up the cliff to re-join all the other swaggering assholes? Where you belong.”

  René stubbornly soldiered on. “When she said you were down here alone, I was worried. I love you, CeCe.”

  CeCe gave a short whistle and a familiar dark, curly head popped through the forward hatch, barking.

  “Chienne,” René said with a sigh. “I guess you two girls will be fine.”

  “You bet your bottom we will be.” CeCe crossed her arms over her chest. “And I’m going to make sure we don’t get any more company. I’m going to anchor at the mouth of the cove. Leave me alone.”

  She stared until René sighed and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day Thirty-Two

  1000 May 14

  Horta Dockside

  René dipped a brush into a little can of red paint and traced a line across the words his grandparents had painted on an out-of-the-way corner of the harbor.

  Thank you for the fire, Phillipe.

  The words that had once inspired him now depressed him. Where had he gone wrong with CeCe?

  Supposedly, it was the stupid football game the day before, but that couldn’t be, could it? He had tricked her brothers, but they had gone after him with a vengeance. He saw his ruse as self-defense.

  CeCe didn’t see any of that. To her, he was a typical man doing typical man things. That might have been the case not too long ago, but now everything was different.

  He cleaned his brush, then mixed blue and green paint together, oil-based so they would resist the elements. Even so, how could the painting still be on the harbor wall sixty years later if someone hadn’t touched it up? Someone had. And since his grand-pere was dead, the only other suspect was Grand-mere. Of course, she’d paid someone, but now René could renew his grandparents’ memento.

  Maybe that was part of why his grandparents had stayed married for decades. They had committed to the upkeep of their marriage like they’d committed to keeping the painting touched up on the concrete of Horta Harbor. He could do the same with CeCe, if only she would let him, but she’d made it clear: He was a fling.

  He knew about flings. Yet, he never imagined he’d be the one flung away.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar pair of football shoes standing in front of him. Deja vu.

  “So you paint too?” Mika asked. “Football pro, a painter, and a sailor. Isn’t my sister lucky?”

  René raised his eyes. Mika stood there, smiling at him.

  René shrugged. “I don’t know about lucky, but she is mad.”

  “Women, always angry about something. I wouldn’t worry about it. Or maybe her mood swings have a cause.” Mika’s gave him a knowing little smile. “Now, what could cause a woman’s mood to change so much?”

  “Elle a ses règles?” René asked.

  Mika obviously didn’t catch what he meant. René switched to English. “Maybe her time of the month?”

  “Or the exact opposite,” Mika said.

  Before René could ask what he meant, Mika raised a hand and called out three names, “Bibiana, Branca, and Britesia.”

  René’s stomach fell. The Horta whores. Uh oh, so Mika was up to his old tricks. Maybe the football game didn’t mean a thing.

  All three women came over in tight skirts and tighter tops. Kind of formal for a sunny Saturday morning. They all lowered huge sunglasses in unison.

  “So, Captain, we have something to say, maybe funny for you,” one of them said. René thought it might be Branca, but all three were so similar. Dark hair, dark eyes, lots of make-up and lots of curves. Smiles as red as raw meat.

  “Funny?” René said, smiling. He stood up and leaned in close. “I like funny. Tell me.” Bon dieu, he was flirting. But it felt so familiar, oddly comforting, to be back playing the game.

  The three women smiled back, and he loved how their eyes felt on him. Sexual energy filled the air, giving him the idea that the Horta whores wouldn’t be opposed to a foursome.

  “Well,” Branca said, “you are going to be here tomorrow for Festa do Divino Espirito Santo, sim?”

  “Sim,” René answered, liking the short Portuguese word for yes.

  Every smile widened. Including Mika’s. Which wasn’t a good thing.

  Branca nodded. “Show up early to Santa Barbara, maybe an hour, sim? Then we will do things to you. Funny.”

  René caught himself. Okay, time to stop this runaway train. “Not too funny. CeCe and I are—”

  Another of the women answered, “We know you are fighting, but CeCe always leaves, always. So maybe you two are not serious.”

  “Maybe we are,” René said.

  The third stepped forward, took his hand, and pulled him down, whispering in his ear, “We’ll see.”

  Before she pulled away, the third woman, Bibiana, licked his ear.

  The three laughed loudly and clopped away on spiky-heeled shoes.

  Mika punched his arm. “They like you. All three. And you know what that means?”

  René turned on CeCe’s middle brother. Before he could stop himself, René fisted his hands and found himself nearly shouting. “It means nothing to me. I’ve gone after easy sex my whole life, and oui, it was fun, but now I don’t want just sex. I don’t care if there are three of them, and I don’t care about their games. I love your sister, Mika, and if I have to beat that into you, I will.”

  Mika’s smirk didn’t dim. He shrugged. “Maybe I know something that will change how you feel. Maybe you and my sister can’t be together.”

  “What do you know?” René asked, though he didn’t expect an answer.

  Mika shrugged. He turned to walk away, but René grabbed him. “Tell me!”

  “Tomorrow will be very interesting,” Mike said. Then, “Or today will, if you don’t let go of me. It would be a shame to get blood on your painting.”

  René stepped back.

  Mika swaggered away.

  It took several minutes for René to regain control.

  What was Mika playing at?

  René finished bringing the painting back to life and started one of his own: CeCe, Chienne, himself, on the Tourbillon. He sketched the boat quickly in rough chalk outlines and included the water shooting out of the sides from the pumps.

  Then he drew CeCe. He smiled at how much he loved the contours of her body, the long honey-hair. He even liked how he felt when he drew Chienne. But when it was time to draw himself, he hesitated. And he couldn’t do it.

  By this time, clouds had moved in; he was running out of time. He painted quickly, thinking he could go back and add himself.

  Other painters ran off from the impending rain. Some called out a warning to him.

  An older man gave him a pi
ece of clear plastic that René hung over himself. Luckily, he did because not a moment later, a light rain misted down. It would’ve been enough to ruin his paintings, but now, the water ran off into the gutter, saving them.

  Still, he couldn’t add himself. But he painted quickly in French, “Captain René Baudoin is below, fixing things, and taking care of his family.”

  * * *

  “CeCe!”

  Who could that be? CeCe wondered. She’d motored out into the middle of the cove, away from the pier, to avoid visitors. Yet someone had climbed onto her mother’s boat and was calling for her.

  On a Sunday morning, CeCe wasn’t in the mood. Yes, it was the Festival of the Holy Spirit, which had been one of her favorite holidays growing up. It was like everyone took a break from being adult and the whole city ran wild. Kids stayed up, running, eating sweets, throwing up, eating more, and sneaking around doing things they shouldn’t. All the while the adults drank and danced in the light of a million candles. The whole island glowed from the candles and strings of lights decorating the churches.

  CeCe had even loved the “Holy Ghost” soup and Pao Doce.

  But now the enormity of her situation had taken away her childhood wonderment. She was going to have a baby. And she was going to raise it by herself. And she was going to walk away from a man who loved her.

  René had left a half-dozen messages on the cellphone Teresa had given CeCe. The last had been a simple text message letting her know he was around if she wanted to talk. And he apologized for tricking her brothers.

  “CeCe!”

  It wasn’t his voice calling for her in the snug cabin in the bow of her mother’s slender sailboat. No, René might have been easier than dealing with her much-changed father.

  “Pai, what?” CeCe nearly shouted. Chienne barked.

  “Come up and talk to the Zarco like a civilized person.”

  “I hate it when you call yourself that!”

  “I know you do, but I am the Zarco, and it is what I do. It drove your mother crazy as well. But come. You have hidden yourself away for too long. It is time to be with your family.”

  “I hate my family!”