“They let me off with a warning,” I said.
Someone stirred on the living-room sofa, and it wasn’t Marcela. At first, I didn’t recognize the tall young man sitting there, his wiry hair mussed from sleep. He was olive skinned, with a thin, dark mustache. Had an agent been sent to my house?
“Hey, Mr. Hardwick,” said a voice that was deeper than I remembered. “Sorry I crashed out. Chela was going crazy.”
His name came to me. Bernard Faison. Chela’s boyfriend.
“I said it was all right, Ten,” Dad said. “He slept on the couch.”
As far as you know, I thought. When I was in high school, I asked Dad if I could spent the night on a girlfriend’s sofa—and he looked at me like I was crazy. Chela grabbed my arm, as if to restrain me. I hid my flinch so she wouldn’t know she’d hurt me.
“He was helping us check hospitals!” Chela said. “He drove me all over after school yesterday, then he got us Taco Bell. I don’t know what we would have done without B., Ten.”
Bernard unfolded, standing at his full height, and he was taller than I remembered, too.
“No big deal, Mr. Hardwick,” Bernard said modestly. “Glad you made it home. Go easy with the . . . you know . . . drinking.” He stage-whispered the word with a disapproving look.
Chela held his hand, and for a moment I was forgotten. Bernard filled her eyes.
“Thanks, man,” I told Bernard, “but I wasn’t expecting company.” I didn’t want Bernard up in Chela’s room with her, and I didn’t want anyone except family in my living room.
Bernard’s face went flat. “Oh. Right. You’re probably . . . tired.”
Chela looked mortified, but my bandages kept her civil. “He needs to sleep it off, baby,” Chela told Bernard as she led him to the door, casting me a look over her shoulder.
Was Chela in love with him? If I didn’t hurry and adopt her, she would be grown.
The stairs would be hell on my leg, so I stopped at the sofa for a while, pushing Bernard’s blanket aside. Chela stayed outside with Bernard for a long time, an emotional good-bye after their first trial together. Bernard’s stature had risen while I was gone. Glad to help, B.
The news on TV didn’t bother me anymore, since the story wasn’t about me.
BIRTH FATHER ARRESTED, the caption on CNN’s screen read. Footage taped the previous day showed a proud police procession following Maitlin and her husband as they brought Nandi home. Nandi was all cleaned up, with bows in her combed hair. I hoped Maitlin would never know exactly how her child had looked and smelled in the basement in Paso Robles.
Watching Sophia and Nandi waving and grinning for the cameras in front of Maitlin’s house, it looked like mommy-and-daughter day at the park. Their joyous smiles were identical. Ebony and Ivory, I thought. Living in perfect harmony on my HD flat screen.
Next came footage of Happy Cellars, where police vehicles still crowded the farmhouse.
“. . . a harrowing scene in tranquil Paso Robles last night, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, when helicopters descended on the vineyard where Nandi Maitlin was being held . . . one kidnapper is dead, and the FBI made at least a dozen other arrests, including Paki Zangwa, the South African national who is Nandi’s birth father . . .”
Paki’s mug shot. He took a good photo even when all hell was breaking loose.
For irony’s sake, the network showed footage of Maitlin’s The Vintner. Maitlin, in Victorian dress, was running between rows of ripe grapes toward an impossibly beautiful sunrise.
When Marcela arrived with a small bag of groceries, I had to submit to prodding and wrapping all over again. She grudgingly admitted that the doctors had done a good job with my injuries, but she clucked because I hadn’t been admitted to a proper hospital.
“A knife again?” she said, without being told. She could tell by the marks.
“Clumsy me,” I said.
Marcela held both of my hands, trying to get past the crazy. “That knife came only inches from an artery in your leg. Cinco minutos, and good-bye. And your face!” She looked mournful, gazing at my slashed cheek, like a ruined Picasso.
“I’ll never drink again,” I said. Except maybe the occasional glass of wine. Maybe.
I noticed intricate African designs on Dad’s cane. It was the one April had bought in Little Ethiopia, I realized. “April came by?” I said.
“Checked in on you yesterday,” Dad said. “Worried, like the rest of us.”
Like everyone else I knew, I owed April a call. I had given up on getting my phone back. Once I could stand up again, I would need a new cell phone—but I no longer felt incomplete when I was out of touch with April. The people I needed to talk to were already here.
“Where’s the vampire lady?” Chela said, returning from her long good-bye. “Was she with you when you got jumped?”
“Nah,” I said. “She’s moved on. Rolling stone kinda thing.”
“Good,” Marcela said fiercely. “I didn’t like her.”
“Seemed all right to me,” Dad said, and Marcela breezed away with her medical kit.
“Why aren’t you getting ready for school?” I asked Chela. “Go on. I’ll still be here when you get back.”
Chela sighed, ready to protest. Instead, she wrapped an arm around my neck, careful to steer away from my bandages. “You better be, Dad,” she said.
Dad.
My heart, which had felt dead for days, sparked back to life.
After Chela went upstairs, Dad sat beside me on the sofa, without help except from his cane. His sigh wasn’t from exertion; it was a leftover worry set free.
“Sorry, Dad,” I told him. “It was out of my control. I couldn’t call.”
Dad patted my knee. “Grateful you’re in one piece, more or less. Thank you, Jesus.”
On TV, the newscaster said the FBI would be giving a press conference the next day.
“Feds pulled it off after all . . . ,” Dad said, almost a question.
“Looks that way.”
“Caught a lucky break?”
“Real lucky,” I said.
We left it at that, for the time being. Dad was so proud of me, he couldn’t help smiling. He patted my knee again.
The last faces I saw before I dozed off to sleep were Maitlin’s. And Nandi’s.
Smiling.
I had made it up to my bed by two o’clock, when Len Shemin called. By then, I had slept and not much else all day. Any interruptions felt like dreams; only sleeping felt real. I was sleeping so hard, I didn’t have rooms for real dreams.
“Is this your number now?” Len said. “The home number? All this time, I never had it.”
“For a while,” I said.
“Before I forget, Spike wants to know when you can be on the set,” Len said. “They called this morning—so you’re still in. Let’s both give thanks to the movie gods.”
I tested my body, trying to sit upright. All of me roiled with pain, even in places the knife hadn’t touched. I vowed to start painkillers by bedtime.
“I can’t do it before next week,” I said. Or a hell of a lot longer.
I hadn’t taken a good look at the scar Spider had left on my cheek, but I might need more than makeup to go back in front of a camera. I didn’t have the heart to tell Len yet. Until right then, I hadn’t thought about it.
“Next week? Really?” Len said, deflated. Delaying the scene wouldn’t sit well with the producers. “Okay. Let’s say Monday.”
“Monday’s not gonna happen, Len,” I said. “I need a week. At least.”
“Is there something you need to tell me, Tennyson?”
“Nothing I need to, and nothing I can. Sorry, man.”
The line was silent while Len pouted. Len knew I didn’t divulge most of my secrets, but he hated to be left out of the Sofia Maitlin saga. “Well, I heard back from Rachel Wentz,” Len said finally. “She says it’s fine. Just show up at the gate.”
“When?”
“She said anyt
ime. They’re in all day. Thank God the little girl is safe. I hardly slept a wink this whole time. Tennyson, just tell me this . . .” He struggled to find diplomatic language.
“No, I’m not fucking Sofia Maitlin,” I said. “Now, before, or ever.”
“Thank you,” Len said, relieved. “I hate to ask, but it’s for your own good. Let this whole stink die, and we’ll get you back to work. Six months from now, it’s all behind you.”
It would never be behind me, but Len didn’t need to know that either. “I’ll update you on the shoot,” I said, as if I juggled movie shoots every day.
None of that mattered. All I could think about that day was Sofia Maitlin’s smile.
If Len had known what I wanted to ask her, he wouldn’t have helped broker our meeting.
He would have begged me not to go.
The paparazzi encampment down the street from Maitlin’s house had thinned, but a dozen cameramen and three news vans sat hoping for footage of Maitlin taking her rescued daughter out for an ice cream. Or to the nearest airport. Where do you run?
No one took notice of the cab that pulled up at Maitlin’s gate. The bandage across my cheek looked almost as bad as the bloody scar. Since ugly is a sin in Hollywood, nobody glanced at me twice.
I didn’t remember the name of the man at the security gate. He was on Maitlin’s staff, the one who’d reminded me of a college football player. Like me, he had aged.
He didn’t greet me, since I was a reminder of our shared disasters, and lost friend. I didn’t ask when Roman’s funeral was scheduled, and he didn’t say so. Maybe I had missed it. He gave me a weak, pained nod and opened the gate.
Carter. That was his name. The guilt in his eyes pissed me off. I had slept off my guilt as I lay in my bed thinking of Maitlin’s smile.
“You, me, Roman . . . we did good work, Carter,” I called as the cab drove me by. He glared like he thought I was being sarcastic. “It wasn’t our fault.”
“Whatever gets you through the day,” he said.
Soon, Sofia Maitlin might need a new security team to protect her from her old security team. She really might.
“Wait for you here?” my cabbie said, taking a break from his Bluetooth. My cabbie was African, maybe Ethiopian. His name on the visor was Dawit.
“Yeah, hang out awhile,” I said. “This won’t take long.”
Walking to Maitlin’s door was a return to the scene of a nightmare. The shiny pebbles in the driveway only reminded me of our frenzied search for Nandi, doomed before it started.
Pretty isn’t the same as happy; it only looks that way.
The housekeeper who’d stood with me beside Nandi’s kidnapper in the kitchen opened the door. The memory passed between us, too, unspoken. She pursed her lips.
“Please follow me,” she said.
Somewhere, Nandi was laughing. With the ceilings up to the sky and a foyer as large as a courtyard, Nandi was suddenly all around me. I’ll never be able to describe that sound, but it made me promise myself a date with Dad to church. It almost put me in a better mood.
Riding on Nandi’s laughter, I didn’t mind so much that the housekeeper was leading me across the length of the house, toward the back. I hadn’t planned to see the backyard again.
I saw Maitlin through the sliding glass door before we reached the patio—she and Rachel Wentz were sitting at a shaded table near the pool, the same table where they’d been on the day of the party. The day Paki was sitting with them.
“Mr. Hardwick!” a familiar voice exclaimed behind me. Zukisa, the nanny, was overjoyed to see me. Her dark, lovely face glowed. She rushed as if to embrace me, but stayed clear of my crutches, bouncing on her toes. “We have her back with us!”
“I heard,” I said. “How’s she doing?”
Zukisa’s smile faded fast. “It is still difficult,” she said. “She doesn’t sleep well. Cries and cries. Won’t stand the dark.” Her South African accent made each word a poem.
“Don’t try to put her in a playpen,” I said before I could stop myself.
Zukisa’s eyes widened: How did you know? She nodded. “Yes . . . it will take time.”
“She’s got that,” I said.
I wanted to return Zukisa’s smile, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure what I thought of her. I didn’t know where she fit yet. She hadn’t worked at Children First, but what if she was connected to Paki somehow, too?
“Are you going to be all right, Mr. Hardwick?” Zukisa called after me as I followed the housekeeper through the door.
“I will be,” I said. One day.
Rachel Wentz and Maitlin both stood up when they saw me coming on my crutches, but they didn’t move otherwise. Their conversation stopped dead.
Rachel Wentz was dressed for a day at the office, and Maitlin was in shorts and a T-shirt. I noticed her light dusting of makeup only because of the bright sun. Two brown ducks squabbled over bread in the water in the nearby duck pond.
Rachel Wentz glanced at Maitlin with a face for a funeral. Then she picked up her BlackBerry and stepped toward me, resting her hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what I thought about Rachel Wentz either.
“My mind can’t fathom it,” Wentz said. “Thank you so much for everything you did to help Nandi. We’ll never forget it. Anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate. Call us about your compensation. I’m going to start dropping your name. You’re a genuine hero, and that’s a rare thing in this town.”
The old Tennyson Hardwick’s fortune might have been made.
The new Tennyson Hardwick stood, and watched, and kept his thoughts to himself.
“Anyway . . . ,” Wentz said, looking pained. She turned to give Maitlin a long hug. “It’s in God’s hands . . . ,” I heard her whisper.
Then she gave me another pinched smile, and left me alone with Maitlin.
Neither of us said anything until I heard the glass patio door slide open and close again. Only the ducks were close enough to hear us.
“I’m sorry I can’t bring Nandi out,” Maitlin said. “I just don’t want to remind her . . .”
“She’s seen enough blood,” I said.
Maitlin’s cheeks went pale. She sat again, as if her legs had given out beneath her.
“Seat?” she said weakly.
“No thanks. It hurts when I sit down.”
Maitlin glanced at me, appraising my injuries. Then she looked away, toward the still water of the swimming pool. “I thought she’d drowned, at first,” Maitlin said. “When Zukisa and Roman came to the table and said Nandi was missing, I was afraid to look in the pool. Just last night, I dreamed she was at the bottom of the pool. This damn pool has always scared me. I wanted Nandi to have somewhere familiar to come home to, but . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t stay in this house. It’s torture to sit out here.”
The green lawn was empty, but I could see the phantom pirate ships, one red, one blue. A part of me would always be fused to this spot, searching.
“Nandi told us,” Maitlin said after a pause, still not looking at me. “Last night, she said, ‘Is Mr. Ten here?’ She said Mr. Ten took her away from the bad men. She said you got cut with a knife. I didn’t know what to make of her story, but now I see for myself. I don’t know how you did it, but . . . thank you.”
“The FBI found Nandi,” I said, because I had to.
The mention of the FBI made Maitlin wipe away tears with a waiting tissue box. “Paki . . . ,” she sighed. “He’s not a bad man. I think he met some bad people.”
“We all meet a few of those.” Maitlin had mentioned him first. “Was it in Cape Town? At the winery?” I said. “Was that where you first met Paki?”
Maitlin glanced up at me, a silent plea. But my eyes didn’t give her anywhere to hide.
“Yes,” she said finally. “He was the on-site mechanic there. Handyman, plumber . . . he did everything. We were shooting Vintner. Almost three years ago.”
“And?”
She stared at the tabletop.
“And . . . I was foolish.”
Until she said the words, I might have been talked out of believing it.
“You slept with him?”
“It was more than that,” Maitlin snapped, as if she were offended. “For six weeks . . . we were lovers. The whole world knew my husband was cheating on me, and in walked beautiful Paki. I cared about him—encouraged him to go to school. He was bright. He speaks four languages! He came to my room at night. No one on the set knew.”
“But you were engaged to a billionaire,” I said.
“Yes.” Instinct made her look around to make sure we weren’t being watched.
“And you got pregnant?”
Instead of answering, Maitlin nodded, her head tilting slightly forward. “I was almost suicidal. I couldn’t tell Alec. We were just getting past all the scandals, working toward a marriage contract. He felt guilty for what he’d put me through, so he was feeling . . . generous.”
Seventy-five million dollars. And that was if the marriage only lasted less than ten years. If they made it a decade? Maitlin would be able to buy her own studio.
Maitlin went on: “I felt trapped. I couldn’t tell Alec, and I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the baby. I hid my pregnancy almost the entire first trimester, even from Alec.”
“Did you tell Paki?”
“No,” Maitlin said. “We thought . . .” She stopped herself. She hadn’t meant to say we. Since she hadn’t been working in league with her husband, that left Rachel Wentz.
“Don’t blame her,” Maitlin said, reading my mind. “The first thing she told me was, ‘You have to tell your fiancé.’ But she didn’t know Alec like I do. He never could have married me. He’s much too proud. It would have shamed his family in Greece.”
It’s not like they could have pretended the baby was his, I thought. Alec’s family would still have its date with shame, no doubt.
“And there was all of Alec’s money,” I said.
Maitlin’s ears turned red. “It had been less than a year since my parents were killed, and Alec’s scandals on top of that. I was a wreck, Mr. Hardwick. I lay awake nights for months out of sheer terror that someone would find out I was having a baby. And I couldn’t take sleeping pills, antidepressants, tranquilizers—nothing. That was my diet, and I stopped when I got pregnant. I changed the way I lived.”
From Cape Town with Love Page 36