She pulled back and waited. It took Scott a moment to realize she was done and open his eyes. His mouth was still agape so she smiled for them both.
“I know you will. I don’t have any doubts about you,” she grinned.
Her giddy infection was breaking out on his face now. “Neither do I. But I may be lapsing. How about a proper kiss to bolster me?” He made a knee-buckling gesture and she slapped him on his head as he stumbled about for comic effect. The truth was that he was giddy-headed. His heart purred in an adrenaline haze and his ears burned with a blood-heat hotter than a thousand Arizona days. Humor and cliché were always his defenses when he felt this way.
“Ow! Ow! Pain and pleasure. Is there no end to your talents? Stop. Stop, please,” he pleaded.
Their giggles subsided as Kyra reappeared from the washroom. “Hello?” Kyra said, her statement as much a query to Julianna as a welcome to the newcomer.
“Kyra, this is Scott.” Julianna seized Scott’s arm and eagerly presented him for Kyra’s inspection. “Scott rolled up with some car trouble and I was just making sure everything was ok. He’s from back east too.”
Kyra accepted Scott’s outstretched hand and shook it. “Boston?” she asked.
“No, Ithaca,” Scott replied.
Kyra turned to Julianna. “We really ought to be going.”
“Can’t we swap him for Christy?” Julianna joked. “That tire still looks iffy. Please Mom! Can we? Can we? Can we?”
Kyra scrunched her mouth. “Ok. Heatstroke. Fine. Let’s wake Chick Little and make tracks. Nice meeting you, Scott from Ithaca.”
She gripped Julianna’s elbow and chaperoned her toward the Rav4. Julianna backpedalled and, as Kyra dragged her away, made a ‘telephone’ gesture against her ear for Scott’s benefit.
Call me! her lips worded.
Scott watched them pack up and pull away before staggering to the store to escape the heat; his head reporting that his legs no longer worked but his heart no longer caring.
Chapter 3
2005 - Boston
Emerson Avenue, Peabody
Monday August 22
Scott sat in his BMW and looked out at the storm. The heavy shower had begun as he left work, and here in his neighborhood, it was in full flow. The suburban street lights meshed with the last hue of day, giving the avenue a pallor of fishscale silver, sharpened by the slick film of rain.
A little before Ten, it made no sense to be parked up, mere moments from his own house. Scott wondered why he had even returned to Peabody. He had a 6am meeting back at the office the next morning—‘Ugly o’clock’, Julianna called it. Now he regretted not checking into a hotel downtown, texting Jules to inform her that he couldn’t come home, and simply crashing.
But it wouldn’t have been so simple, right? Working late, which was his accepted routine these many months, that was one thing. But to make the progression—Regression. Let’s call it what it is, man—to an all-nighter? Scott knew—just knew—it would be an escalation in their stand-off, one bound to elicit a reply from Julianna, no matter she accepted his explanation. Even if she didn’t make an outright comment about the significance of his first ‘stay away’, the implication of it would not be lost on Scott. It was not a step he was ready to take—yet. Bad enough to sleep alone under his own roof, at least the walls were still on speaking terms with him.
Not that Scott expected much rest tonight. The meeting to come was a big deal. Sandstorm Engineering, among the most prestigious construction consulting outfits in New England, was about to have a visitor; and not just any visitor but their biggest cash cow—Thomas Sanders, one of the wealthiest men in the state. In Scott’s five years with Sandstorm, he had personally overseen three Sanders projects, netting the firm over 70 million dollars in fees. Yet in all that time, neither Scott nor anyone outside the Directors’ circle could lay claim to having ever met the man. Scott didn’t even know what Sanders looked like, and though he strived to keep up on matters affecting his work, he couldn’t ever recall seeing a photograph of Sanders—not in the Globe’s social, metro, or business sections or in any of the trade publications which constantly circulated the office.
One time, Scott dared to google Sanders: 1,800 hits—all business, nothing personal, not one image. When Sarah Parales, a PA to one of the directors, saw Scott snooping, she joked how Sanders would probably get a notification of Scott’s inquiry sent directly to his desk. She teased Scott to be on the lookout for men-in-black, with ear-pieces and cuff-mics, their dark SUVs shadowing Scott on his ride home. Scott took it, for the most part, to be the good-natured joke he hoped she meant. Still, he deleted his browser history when Sarah had walked away.
That Sanders was coming was cause enough for Scott to be on guard; but any client bankrolling $400 million in an upcoming project had every right to demand a sit-rep. No, what niggled Scott was knowing, by way of Operations Director Andy Finkerman, that Sanders had specifically requested Scott be the one to deliver it. All joking aside, Scott had counted five suspect SUVs on the way home tonight.
“Mister Sanders is looking forward to finally making your acquaintance,” Finkerman told Scott, with a wry mix of pity and jealousy, as Finkerman briefed Scott’s team earlier in the day.
On the eve of the most important meeting of his life, Scott sat in his car and procrastinated going home. The meeting was happening but he was ready. Scott would finally get to meet the ‘Dark Sith Lord of Sandstorm’. It should have been a cause to rush home and excitedly tell his wife. It would have been, once upon a time. Now Scott experienced only the usual trepidation about how he and Julianna would be when he arrived home: the mostly silences, the occasional argument, the no-mans-land of edgy politeness as a livable compromise. Pathetically, it was so routine now, Scott no longer considered it worth sweating over.
When the dash clock turned 9:59pm, Scott started the BMW and pulled away. He drove slowly. Without fail, his daily disconsolate mood was complete, as he pulled into his own drive at the end of Emerson Avenue exactly 60 seconds later.
In the dark hallway, Scott ran his fingers through his rain-greased hair, wiping his damp hand on his pants leg. The storm’s heavy patter hummed against the stillness of the house. Slipping the wet jacket from his shoulders, he gazed upstairs and called out.
“Jules?”
No answer.
He entered the unlit kitchen and dialed the ceiling spots to full illumination. Sharp light flooded into every corner of the large space. From one of the cabinets flanking the colonial cooker, he pulled a hand-towel, shook it open, and patted himself down.
“Jules?” he repeated.
Only silence shrugged back at him. Outside, the rain ‘hmmed’, none the wiser.
The microwave was empty: no plate waited. That was unusual. Maybe she was upstairs, dozing by her ‘picture’ window. The previous owners of the house had remodeled the entire rear of the upper floor, swapping out the conventional windows of the two back bedrooms and their connecting bathroom for a series of almost-floor-to-ceiling column-style skinny windows. They looked down on the unspoiled views behind Emerson Avenue, especially the panoramic vista of Cedar Grove cemetery and The Meadow golf course beyond. On the two rear corners of the second storey, the end windows were special—two-piece glass wrap-arounds—and standing there gave the feeling of being in a skyscraper, not a typical suburban house.
“What’s it called?” Scott asked on their first visit with the realtor, trying to place the style of the arrangement.
“It’s called glass,” Jules joked. “It’s how the light gets in.”
When they finally bought the place in late 2000, Julianna immediately installed chaise-longues at each corner’s spectacular outlook. The far guest room quickly became her favorite chill-out zone, its east-facing view closest to Spring Pond and the cemetery behind it.
“You better make the most of it,” Scott warned her, “since that view alone cost us an extra forty K.”
So she did—and ho
w. They had barely unpacked when Julianna handed Scott a permanent black marker and made him sign the bottom-right corner of that window, flatpalming all his questions as to her purpose. Duly silenced, Scott bent down and, with difficulty, scrawled his signature as best he could.
“Ok, are you going to tell me why I have just permanently defaced the best window in the house with the worst possible rendition of my signature?” he griped.
“Wait and see,” she teased.
The next evening, she led him back to the window, where Scott found the following added above his name, in her much-more-elegant-than-his hand.
“So large his bounty, her soul so sincere.
two score millennia did not seem too dear!”
An original work by
Scott Jameson
“Think of it as though I bought you a unique piece of art. Cost me 40,000 bucks but I’m sure you agree it was money well spent. Happy Birthday, my Man,” she trumped.
“That’s just the most fragrant example of me-gifting I have ever seen,” he groaned.
“Har-di-har,” she replied. “Well then, how d’ya like dese apples?” she announced, leaping onto him and wrapping her legs round his waist.
They made love that night on the guest bed, as a Hunter’s moon lit the winter scene beyond Scott’s glass masterpiece. After, as they lay in silent separate reflection, Julianna wished for it to snow and to never stop, to preserve them in the now, forever. As he held her, Scott gratefully accepted that he would never have even an ounce of his wife’s gift for the perfect detail, her ability to crown the perfect moment. Julianna’s alchemy could transform the mundane to magic. Measured against hers, his own contrived efforts seemed little more than metronome to her music.
Now Scott called again from the kitchen. “Jules?” Finally, exasperated, he yelled. “Julianna!”
He listened for some telltale response. None came: no pattering of feet across the wood floor of the guest room and onto the landing, no sound of the voice once as vital to Scott as the air in his mouth, as the aromatic scent of her skin in his nostrils. A knot of apprehension tightened between his shoulders. He closed his eyes against the hard kitchen lights. Still the glare breached his vision so he draped the towel over his face and considered what this meant.
See the light, Scott, he mulled. Stop hiding. Face facts.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. One of his late mother’s favorite platitudes.
She’s finally gone. His back stiffened as the possibility asserted itself. She beat you to it. Open your eyes. You didn’t avoid anything. You just kept them closed and finally you’ve walked off the cliff into a big empty nothing. Even if she shows up right now, she’s not here. Neither of you has been for months.
Scott inhaled the damp sweet scent of the towel.
Not yet. Stop it! Count to five. I’ll look then and she’ll be standing at the door, wondering why I’m hyperventilating under one of her best Filene’s towels.
And then what?
And then I’ll tell her I’m tired, I have an early start, and I’m hitting the sack. Maybe I’ll mutter something about how we need to talk, just not tonight. Plenty of road to kick the can along yet.
His time up, Scott ripped the towel from his head and adjusted his eyes to the searing brightness above him. He directed his gaze onto the black top of the centre island, a blessed contrast to the lights. The cream envelope there lay face down on the marble counter. Julianna had propped it against a vase of fresh flowers but a gust had followed Scott into the house and toppled it.
He didn’t notice how the towel fell from his grasp as he walked forward and stood over the envelope. His hands didn’t even shake as he pushed them toward it. He pulled it closer and looked at the sealed rear flap.
He knew his name would be on the front when he flipped it over. He knew it would be written in the same elegant script as on the window upstairs. He knew Julianna was not upstairs anymore and he knew that the contents of this envelope would tell him why.
Though he knew all these things, none of them was on his mind that instant. All Scott could think was how this envelope, laying flat between his hands, looked remarkably like the gravestones in Los Angeles, the countless gravestones he had examined; all because the girl with the dusk-dark brown eyes and the night-sky black hair had set him a task, had laid him the trail.
There ought to be a stone beside this envelope, Scott thought. Julianna should have realized it was the appropriate touch. She always had an eye for the perfect detail. Devil’s in the detail, right?
Chapter 4
1997 – Los Angeles
Manhattan Beach
Friday June 20
Julianna ambled along The Strand, the pedestrian path which ran the length of the Manhattan Beach shore. The sandy strip beside her bustled with athletic activity, where numerous volleyball games jostled side-by-side. Farther out, joggers and dog-runners paced along the water’s edge.
She savored the ability to saunter on the pavement, a pleasure rare on Boston’s jostling streets. She moved with a blithe liberation, taking the time to look in all directions and indulge her curiosity, to immerse herself in the cacophony of bright California newness.
LA was so unlike the city of her childhood, although both shared similar traits: the ocean ever-present, the ‘out-there’ sensibility, the crucible of cultures, people from all walks united in the singular quest for free expression.
But there it ended for Julianna, the cities’ sameness. For here was a city without the hindrance of history. The Rocky Mountains were too high an obstruction for the past and its pruderies to surmount. Tomorrow could be anything, for anybody, and today was a mere stepping stone to a better future, something to be consigned to a forgotten past the moment it was spent.
Therefore she cared little for the known certainty that her future waited back on the east coast. Her present was this place. She made it her mission to imbue herself with the experience of it all. Not in any reckless sense; in the three weeks since her arrival, she’d politely turned down countless dates and good-naturedly declined any number of opportunities to chemically alter her existence. She didn’t want anything, or anyone, messing with this high, Thank-you-very-much.
The stroll was her daily after-work ritual. She got off the 438 bus at the Pier and walked the nine blocks to her apartment: a modest box-attic conversion above a neighborhood house. Always her eyes darted this way and that, eagerly noting each new instance of things foreign to her experience. She especially marveled at the magnificent dogs walking their masters and mistresses on taut leashes. Yesterday she even spotted four Dobermans towing a sand-sled. A fully-regaled Father Christmas mushed them with commanding ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’s. The dogs had clip-on antlers and fake snow splats sprayed on their backs. It ended badly when the razor-toothed Rudolphs went waterward, pursuing a miskicked soccer ball. Someone hollered, ‘Santa Clause is going to drown!’ and a gaggle of Emo Gothgirls rushed to record the outcome, cameras poised in case the singer might be right.
Julianna drifted on, a memory sponge for such moments. But if her attention succumbed to the distractions of her scene, her feet held to an unswerving purpose. She never quickened or shortened her pace. She merely ghosted along The Strand, walking a direct and unaltered line each day, as true as a tightrope, to bring her home without delay.
As she neared the 23rd Street intersection, the same hopeful question sprang in her mind. For the past week, it had been the single constant in her homeward routine. During the day, she kept it suppressed. When work and responsibility demanded center-stage, the ability to blot out all distraction came easy. She was no idle daydreamer. She did so only when she could give it proper attention, realizing this meant she never technically daydreamed. When done with as much application as she did it, Julianna recognized it actually as hard thinking. When she got right down to it, it wasn’t as much fun as daydreaming. For her, it was a serious business and it harbored no joy.
For most peop
le, hard thinking was the brief skirmish waged on the mercifully bloodless front where wake and sleep melded. After that, their actual dreams could have their conscience and expunge their guilt. They could always rise with the dawn, having dodged the bullet.
Not so for Julianna. When there was nothing else to occupy them, her moods massed and moved. She watched, like Helen on the high ramparts, the opposing forces of hope and dread vying to possess her. Unlike others—the lucky most—Julianna’s inner battles were waged in the hard light of day. Her open eye could always see the blood and her reasoned mind could count the corpses. That’s how hard thinking was for her: brooding on an arid past, looking for some fresh new shoot to thrust through and auger a more serene future. She hated how she always set such trains of thought off within herself. Investing too much hope and expectation in someone or something had always been enough to trigger a disappointing conclusion. Worse still, she was preempting it, even as she doggedly strove to maintain an upbeat outlook. By entertaining such a miserable duality, she recognized how she had become her own worst enemy. It was always her own hand that tossed the rock which brought an avalanche of maudlin thought down on herself.
Stop It! she ordered herself, as she turned off The Strand and started up the steep incline of 23rd Street. This is his fault. This time, you’re off the hook, girl.
She reached Missus Cohen’s, her landlady’s house near the corner of Alma, and steeled herself to conclude the week’s ritual.
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