“Oh, sure,” Aaron said. He took a pile of folders off his desk chair and sat.
“I’ve had the opportunity to see some of your work.”
“Really?” Aaron leaned back. “Where?”
“Sandburg Village in particular. What a brilliant concept,” Harlan said, “a modern mall set up to look like an old English village with the artisans complimenting the retail shops. I especially got a kick out of the glass blower, and an actual blacksmith creating the metal for those bed frames and chairs. The way you spaced out the little garden areas, ponds, and fountains was beautiful. You’ve turned a shopping plaza into a major tourist attraction. All that free publicity for the merchants, terrific.”
“Yes,” Aaron said. He recalled this, but he had forgotten exactly where it was.
“Isn’t it a big trip to go to Sandburg?”
“Naw, only about three hours from here, but I was on my way back from Albany, New York, andmade a short detour to take it in. I had been hearing about it.”
Harlan paused for a long moment as if after reporting all this, his thought process had stopped. His eyes looked as if they had shut down. They glittered like glass, without thought, without feeling, reminding Aaron of Mrs. Masters’s bartender. It made him nervous. He cleared his throat loudly, and Harlan snapped back and reached for his briefcase.
“Right,” he said, as if Aaron had made a comment. “So, what I’d like you to do is come up with something similarly exciting for us.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a folder, spreading the contents on the desk.
“Here are the prospective retail outlets and a description of the food court and the entertainment area. Why don’t you noodle it a bit, and we’ll get back together say in a week and knock around some of your thoughts. I’d be happy to take you out to the site right now, if you like. It’s only about fifteen minutes from here.
“Great location,” he continued, “far enough from downtown Driftwood so as not to rile up the store owners, but close enough to a half dozen other communities to draw from those populations as well. The research is all in that folder, population studies, competition, projected growths, all of it.”
“Okay,” Aaron said.
“So you want to go look at it?”
Aaron gazed at his office. Not having things organized the way he wanted them to be gnawed away at him. It was definitely a major part of his personality tobe as meticulous and as orderly as possible. Megan had him pegged when it came to that. However, Harlan Noel looked so excited about his project, Aaron sensed that to refuse would deflate him and maybe spook him.
I need the work, Aaron thought.
He nodded. “Sure. Let’s take a quick look at it. That will help me envision things when I go through all this,” he said, indicating the papers.
“Just what I was thinking,” Harlan said. He stood and Aaron went for his jacket. “Love your new vehicle. I had one of those once.”
“Oh? Why did you give it up?”
“Those were my wild-oats days,” Harlan said. “Before I became a respectable businessman and family man.”
They left the office and Harlan nodded at the dark blue Volvo station wagon.
“These days, I’m Mr. Conservative. Hell, I’m even a Republican delegate, and if you would have known me ten years ago, you never would have thought that would be.”
Before Aaron got into Harlan’s vehicle, he glanced across the street at a man who seemed to be standing there just watching them. The man looked familiar. Aaron opened the car door and looked back once more before getting in. The man had turned his back and was walking away.
Harlan started the engine.
“Half the time I look in the mirror and wonder who the hell I am these days,” Harlan continued.
“What? Oh. Where are you from?” Aaron asked him.
“Rochester, New York. My father was in construction. Taught me a lot whether I wanted to learn it or not. Everyone thought I would just take over his business when he was killed. I was an only child. My mother died four years before, a cancer victim. She was a heavy smoker. I remember how she would smoke while she ate, a bite, a puff, a bite. I used to dream about mowing down tobacco company executives.”
“How was your father killed?”
“Freak accident on a site. A crane cable snapped. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. I kinda blocked it out of my memory, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I think I can appreciate that,” Aaron said.
“Um,” Harlan continued. “Those days afterward are like . . . foggy. I was in my early twenties. My father and I were very close, even closer after my mother’s painful death. I took it bad.”
He looked at Aaron. “I actually went into therapy. That was a result of a little incident and the judge’s decision. I guess I became rebellious, angry. That’s when I bought the Corvette, tooled around the country, wasting myself, going nowhere really, until I met Patricia.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Biloxi, Mississippi. Great resort spot. I was coming back from California, taking the southernmost route, and I stopped at this motel for a few days. We met on the beach. I was just sitting there staring out at the ocean, wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life, when I heard this beautiful voice say, ‘They tell me if you look long enough, you can see the end of the world.’
“I turned and fell in love almost as quickly as my eyes brought her to my brain.”
Harlan laughed at his own words.
“She told me I looked like it, too. You know, smitten. We walked on the beach, talked, quickly got to know each other, went to dinner, and that night couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I’ll never forget what she told me when I asked her why she let me take her to bed so quickly.”
“What was that?” Aaron asked, smiling. He was surprised that this big, rough-looking man could be so sentimental and romantic. That might explain why so beautiful a woman was drawn to him, he thought. Megan had made it crystal clear that women like and need romance, but maybe men did, too, maybe more than everyone, especially men, believed.
“‘It’s in love and sleep that we learn to trust one another,’ she said.”
He turned to Aaron and nodded.
“When you think about it, sleeping with someone is the most intimate of things we can do with someone else, and when you’re asleep, you’re so vulnerable. You’d better be sleeping with someone you trust, huh?”
“Yes, it does make sense,” Aaron said. He thought a moment and nodded. “I know I’ve heard that before.”
“Sure. Well, there it is!” Harlan cried as they made a turn.
Before them was an expanse of relatively flat, cleared land that looked gracefully cut out of acres and acres of forest. Blue mountains ran along the northwestern horizon.
“Magical,” Aaron muttered.
“Exactly my thoughts. A real find. We’ve already brought in the water and sewer pipes. We’re burying the electric. This road leads to a major highway, and from there people can reach us in relatively short driving times from larger population centers.”
They parked, got out, and walked some of the frontage.
“Be nice if the restaurants had windows facing those mountains,” Aaron said.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Aaron felt his creative juices stirring. Nothing wrong with me on that score, he happily concluded. Maybe this was exactly what he needed to restore himself completely, an exciting new project.
“This is terrific,” he muttered. “We could do something that would fit in scenically, lots of trees, gardens. Make it blend in with the setting so that people wouldn’t feel like they’re coming to just another commercial plaza.”
Harlan laughed and slapped his hands together as if they were going to begin right then and there.
“Something told me you’d get excited about the possibilities here. I’m glad you moved to Driftwood, Aaron,” Harlan said. He turned and patted him on the shoulder as they bot
h looked out at the property. “You’re going to do your best work here,” he added.
“What?” Aaron said, smiling.
“What?” Harlan responded.
“What did you just say about my work?”
“It’s wonderful work. I’ve seen some of your work. I visited Sandburg Village.”
“I know. You told me that. I thought you said something about my work here,” Aaron questioned.
“I did. You’re going to do great work here. I can feel it, and Pamela tells me that I should trust my feelings, even in business. Above all, trust your initial instincts about people, she tells me.”
He looked out again and smiled.
“And trust your feelings about the land and the sea.”
“Sea? What sea?”
“Any sea. She just meant a body of water, a lake, a pond. The way I felt that first day we met when I was staring at the ocean. She was right. Water gives you a different feeling, doesn’t it, a good feeling? We come from the sea, they say, so I guess that makes sense.”
Aaron nodded, amazed at the way Harlan could babble when something excited him.
“What brought you to Driftwood?” he asked as they walked back to the car.
“Pamela brought me to Driftwood,” Harlan said.
“Oh?”
They got into the vehicle.
“Why did she bring you here?”
They started away, Harlan making a U-turn to head back to the village.
“She had family here and I had let my father’s business go to hell. Her sister and her husband are my silent partners in another venture, a small mall in Stanford.”
“Really? Who is her sister?”
“Terri Richards. I get free dental,” he bragged and pulled his lips back as far as he could to exhibit his teeth.
Aaron laughed.
“There are all sorts of benefits to living in Driftwood,” Harlan muttered, nodding as he drove. “Driftwood is a wonderful place to live and work.”
Why is it, Aaron thought as they headed back toward the village, that everything he says sounds . . . recited?
The phone was ringing when he reentered his office. It was Megan and she sounded angry.“How come you didn’t call me at work to tell me what you were doing, Aaron?”
“What?”
“I was worried about you after yesterday. It’s not like you to be inconsiderate.”
“I left you a note,” he said.
“Aaron, did you forget I go to work, too, after I drop Sophie off at school?”
He was silent. He had forgotten. This was the first thing he had forgotten in his renewed life, as he liked to think of it now. Was that a sign of something more serious?
“I did forget,” he confessed. “I’m sorry.” His voice was tainted with deep worry. Megan heard it.
“It’s all right, Aaron. I haven’t talked about my work all that much. It could just slip through the cracks. It’s no big deal.”
“Why haven’t you talked about it much, Megan? I don’t even know what you’re working on.”
“I think we’ve been a bit preoccupied with other things, Aaron.”
“I see.” He thought a moment. “Still, I hope it’s not the sign of another CVA or something.”
“It’s not, Aaron. Stop it! Normal, healthy people forget things all the time. It’s part of being human.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “I didn’t know Patricia Noel was Terri’s sister. Harlan was just here. He and I went to look at the site of his project and he told me.”
“Is she? I didn’t know that,” Megan said.
“I thought you told me everyone knows everything about everyone else in this town.”
“We haven’t been in this town long enough, Aaron. Why the cross-examination?”
Her irritable tone had returned.
“Oh, I don’t mean it to sound that way. I was just curious,” he said.
“Forget it. It’s not important,” she added quickly. He realized she had other things on her mind. “Do you want to meet me for lunch?”
“Grandma’s Kitchen?”
“In an hour,” she said. “I have a surprise for you. I’m not sure that’s the best place for it, but I don’t want to keep it hidden any longer.”
“So tell me now. What is it?”
“Face to face, Aaron. We do our best work face to face,” she said, laughed licentiously, and hung up.
He smiled to himself and put the receiver back on its cradle as he sat back and gazed out the window. Megan could sure make him feel good about himself, he thought. He was musing on that and theirlovemaking when he noticed that man he had seen earlier. He was back where he had been, staring at Aaron’s offices.
What’s he doing? Aaron wondered. He rose and went quickly to the door. He opened it, but by the time he stepped out, the man was gone again, not a sign of him on the street in either direction.
He would have thought him to be a phantom if he hadn’t just remembered where he had seen him before today.
That was the nervous, distraught man in Dr. Longstreet’s lobby.
Megan was already seated at a booth when Aaron entered the restaurant. She smiled at him. The small eatery was already jammed. Another waitress, younger but far plainer-looking with dull brown hair that looked hacked around her neck by a psychotic beautician, was helping Arlene. She waved to him and he smiled back. Then he kissed Megan and slipped in across from her.“Waiting long?”
“Years,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you for years.”
He laughed. “You almost sound like you mean it.”
“Meat loaf special looks particularly good to me today,” Megan said.
“Yeah? Sounds good.”
Arlene took their order quickly and the other waitress, looking sullen and overwhelmed, brought them lemonades while Arlene was doing so.
“Did I order that?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry. Did you want something else to drink?” Arlene asked, overhearing.
“No. The truth is I was going to order it anyway.” He turned to Megan when they left the table. “Does everyone here know what everyone else thinks and wants?”
“People just get used to each other in small communities, Aaron, but they don’t do what people do in big cities. They don’t take each other for granted.”
“Were you always a country girl, Megan? I know it sounds silly for me to be asking a question like that of a woman I’ve been married to for nearly ten years, but—”
“No, it’s all right, Aaron. I expect those memories will be returning a little more every day now. No, I’m not exactly from the rural world. I was brought up on an island, however, so I had what you might call a confined or somewhat isolated life.”
“What island?”
“Granville Island. You reach it by bridge from Vancouver.”
“Canada?”
“Yes, Aaron,” she said, shaking her head. “My parents went there on a vacation when they were younger and fell in love with it.”
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten.”
“My father was a sailor and a fisherman, and my parents ran fishing trips that ran two to five days at a time. Mom prepared the breakfasts and lunches onboard. We had a thirty-eight-footer and fished for salmon, lingcod, red Snapper, rock Cod, and evencrab. I grew up on the water. My friends were all from fisherman families.”
“How did you get into graphic art and advertising?”
“I had a natural talent for it, did all the print promotions for Daddy, and one thing led to another. Naturally, I got the wanderlust and left the cozy little island worlds up there.”
“I feel so stupid sitting here and having my wife of ten years tell me who she is, where she’s from.”
“I understand,” she said, “and it’s not stupid under the circumstances.”
“I know you told me your parents are no longer alive.”
“No, they’re not,” she said quickly. She look
ed down at her glass of lemonade.
“I’m sorry to make you relive sad memories,” he said. “I’ll stop.”
“It’s all right.”
She looked up, smiling.
“What is it? You do have something wonderful to tell me, don’t you?” he asked.
“I do,” she said and reached across the table to take his hand. “It’s happened.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant, Aaron.”
“Already? But we just—” He paused and lifted his eyebrows.
She was nodding with a look of disgust that made him cold. “I can take your forgetting my name, even what I look like, your place of work, our moving, my family, but Aaron,” she said, leaning over the table, “Ican’t stand the idea of your forgetting when we had sex. We did make love a few times before we got here, you know. You weren’t as passionate as I would have liked you to be sometimes, but you were kind enough to make a little effort. After a little encouragement, of course. In fact,” she said, sitting back, “the doctor thinks I might have contributed to your problem by being too demanding.”
“Really?”
“You’ve heard that expression, fucked his brains out, haven’t you?”
His mouth dropped open.
She continued to look angry for another moment and then broke into a wide smile.
“You don’t believe that, do you, you idiot?”
It was his biggest laugh yet, so loud and dramatic, the entire restaurant clientele paused in their own conversations to look at him and Megan. She got up to kiss him and then sat next to him instead of across from him.
“So tell me about Harlan Nolan and his project,” she said when their food was served.
He described it all, infusing his own enthusiasm and excitement.
“It sounds like a big job.”
“It is. A real opportunity,” he said and wondered if he should add a note of darkness by mentioning the man who had been standing outside his offices.
“So, you’re happy about all this, right?” she pursued. She reached for his hand when he hesitated. “Aaron?”
“I want to say more than ever, but I don’t know what to measure it against, and I keep feeling like I’m letting you down, Megan.”
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