Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 19 - The Ride

  I took it easy leaving the plaza for three reasons: I'd already dinged the museum by stealing their iconic painting, and thought leaving rubber tracks on their plaza bluestone would add insult to injury; I hoped Tommy enjoyed driving fast but couldn't assume that just because he looks like Steve McQueen, and didn't want to scare him, right out of the blocks; and because I'd only driven this beast of a car for half an hour and didn't have a feel for it yet under high performance conditions. I didn't want to scare myself, either. Gale had found it right here in town, and had negotiated a short term lease with its owner at the rate of $1000 a day. I wondered what Roger would think of this arrangement, but stopped myself quickly by quoting to myself, 'while the cat's away.' Gale had gone with me to the guy's house to pick it up, at which point I paid him for five days, in cash, in advance, and on the way home she had looked at the back seat and said, "Better than my Ferrari."

  I took it easy getting out of the historic district and then up East Bay Street for a mile, but when we hit the elevated ramp that led onto the three mile long Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper and Wando Rivers, I punched the throttle. There's something exciting about accelerating uphill. By the time we merged with the four lanes of the bridge we were doing seventy and by the time we reached the apex of the bridge we hit ninety. I took my right hand off the wood wheel and pointed out to the harbor, saying, "See the flags flying over Fort Sumter?" When he looked away to where I was pointing, I looked at his face, and he seemed relaxed, enjoying the ride. I had figured as much.

  As we crested the bridge, I took my foot off the gas, the sound of the 390 changed from a rocketing thrust to a burbling growl, and changed again halfway down the slope as I downshifted to third to scrub off more of the ninety mph. As we tooled at a sedate forty mph between the Ravenel Bridge and the causeway leading to the Ben Sawyer Bridge and Sullivan's Island, my only comment was, "Urban sprawl." Tommy hadn't said a word, another mark of character, him knowing when silence is golden.

  About this time back at the museum Gale slipped away from the crowd still at the champagne tables which included the Mayor and the Chief, draining every last drop of the Veuve, went back into the gallery, thinking everyone was at the party and no one was watching the security cameras, and tried to pry the plexiglass case off the exhibit pedestal on which sat the silver teapot she wanted to grace her dining room table, but found it screwed down. She said, "Shit," which really wasn't taught at the Savannah finishing school to which she'd been sent for a year, but which you can put down to the combination of five glasses of champagne and a sense of frustration at being thwarted in her second attempt at stealing something of significance.

  The Ben Sawyer Bridge sits halfway out the three mile long causeway over to Sullivan's Island, and by the time we hit it I had goosed the speedo up to eighty. This velocity created enough momentum to briefly overcome gravity at the crest of the bridge and leave us airborne for thirty feet before hitting asphalt on the downslope. I didn't turn my head to look at Tommy, having some small concern regarding the possibility of a vehicle coming toward us from the opposite direction, but I didn't have the sense he even blinked. In my peripheral vision I noticed his legs were crossed and his hands lay palms up in his lap, neither of which I construed as signs of discomfort, much less the terror your average guy would feel, given the circumstances. So far, so good.

  As we pulled up to the stop sign at the end of the causeway I asked, "You ever been to Fort Moultrie?"

  He shook his head and said, "So far I've been to my hotel room and the museum. I lied to the museum director and the mayor, telling them I spent last Sunday at church, but really I still was at the hotel."

  "What were you doing on Sunday?"

  "I was trying to take it easy and get away from investigating thefts for a day. I just spent two months in Paris doing that, hardly a day off, and then when I got back to New York my boss caught me and sent me down here, doing the same thing."

  "You catch the person you were after in Paris?"

  "People. A gang."

  "Well? You catch 'em?"

  "I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it adversely may affect our relationship."

  "We have a relationship?"

  "Anytime you voluntarily go airborne in a car with a person, you're in a relationship."

  The brick fort built in 1810 appeared on our left, and I parked in a spot in front of Cannon Row. Both of us were sorry to hear the sound of silence as I switched off the Mustang's engine, but we figured we'd get used to it. It was 7pm and the fort had been locked up for two hours, so I led the way over to Battery Jasper, a monolithic concrete gun emplacement built in 1899, much later than the fort. It too was locked up, but I said, "I know how to get in, and the view from up on top is great." We walked half way down the front face of the structure until we hit a row of steel plate doors that covered ventilation shafts. I lifted one of them up and then out, and it swung open on squeaking hinges. "My family had a summer cottage over here, and we used to play around here before the Park Service took it over and opened it up to the public." I climbed through the opening, walked down a corridor, and then up a flight of concrete steps that opened to a gun platform on top of the battery. In front of us was Charleston harbor and its mouth out to the Atlantic.

  I pointed out to Fort Sumter and said, "See how any ship coming in from the ocean to attack the city had to pass between the two forts?" He nodded, and we walked to the end of the battery near the fort.

  Below us was the small parking area and the car. He said, "Nice ride. That was fun." He paused, then said, "How often do you pick up guys in a hot car and bring 'em out here?"

  I looked at him, then out at the harbor, and said, "Not often. Not ever, really. You were going to pick me up sooner or later; I just thought I'd cut to the chase, figuratively and literally. I like car chases. We don't have hills like in San Francisco, so that was the best I could do."

  "You don't pick guys up because you're married. Roger's his name, I think."

  "How do you know about him?"

  "I know a lot about your family, from way back up to the present. You happily married?"

  I turned and looked at him and said, "Yes, I am."

  Now he looked out at the harbor, and then said, "So this was a business pickup? Not a fun pickup?"

  I took a deep breath and said, "I've never cheated on my husband. He's in France for two months and, like you said, you and I have business together. I see no reason not to have a little fun along with the business. I can think and feel strongly without slipping into infidelity."

  "What about my thoughts and feelings? And what about when the business ends? What if that's not fun? Most business deals are about both parties getting something of benefit. But sometimes one party gets all the good and the other gets the bad."

  I said, "Maybe you can think and feel strongly too, without slipping into carnality. It's been done. And playing the game isn't always about the end result. All the sports people say 'winning is everything.' That's wrong. That's not sportsmanship. It's about how you play the game that counts." He stood listening to me; really listening to me, I could tell, so I finished with, "And Tommy, before you decide to play the game with me, you need to imagine a future in which it doesn't turn out as you've been thinking it will. Can you experience losing and still love the sportsmanship of the game? Now's the time to ask yourself that."

  He looked at me for a moment and then turned and walked ten feet away, looking out at the Lighthouse in the far distance. Without turning back to me he said, "I've never had anyone say anything like that to me before, but I think the answer is, yes. I know I want to find out if I can." He paused, then said, "Can I drive the yellow beast back to town?"