Moore to Lose

by Julie A. Richman

  “Thanks, Meezie. Let’s get together this weekend.” Hanging up, Charles rejoined the conversation with the other men.

  Mia’s subconscious had entered DEFCON 1, quickly surpassing levels 5,4,3 and 2. It was fully aware of what had just happened and was trying to quickly erect barricades to keep it from Mia’s conscious brain. Mia’s subconscious was in full blown protect mode. Protect the psyche at all costs. Yet, as hard as her subconscious was trying to scramble to get its shields up, the leakage had already busted through and was starting to affect her conscious thought — the physical discomfort, general ill at ease feelings.

  That thing she was trying to grasp and couldn’t quite reach, the familiar voice that sounded like it was coming from a TV show in the background of her call with Charles, was no TV show. It was reality. And she wasn’t wrong. She did recognize the voice, on some level. As much as her subconscious would allow.

  The last time she had heard that voice it had teased her that the bagels and pizza in New York had better be as good as she had been bragging they were.

  It had been over twenty years, and unbeknownst to her, Mia Silver had just heard Schooner Moore’s voice again for the first time since their fingertips had last touched.

  Had Schooner known that Charles Sloan, a man he had just met that day, was standing next to him talking to Mia Silver, he would’ve rudely grabbed the phone right out of his hand. If he had known that this man was one of Mia’s closest friends, and had been for many years, he would’ve invited him into his office, closed the door and pumped him for every last bit of information he could get out of him.

  Mia left her office feeling very out of sorts. It was a little more than a spur of the moment decision to stop off at a neighborhood bar on her way home. Mia was on a mission and she didn’t quite know who had given the orders.

  Sitting at the polished oak bar, Mia was on her third gin and tonic when they entered. Three guys, mid-twenties, two dark haired and a tall blonde. Her eyes immediately went to the tall blonde. He had an athletic build, and although just moderately attractive, he was tall and blonde.

  The bar had several circa 1980’s pinball machines. Mia Silver was a pinball wizard. Joni and Rob used to tease her that she spent more time in the Student Center playing pinball than she did in any of her classes. Unfortunately, it was true.

  Some people are pool sharks, Mia was a pinball shark and it was a skill she never lost. When you’re good, you’re good.

  Choosing the most challenging machine, one that was multi- levels and shot multiple balls at once, Mia started in on her game, using her whole body to play (known as Body English), she knew it would be impossible for the boys not to notice her ass in her short, tight black pencil skirt as she swayed and lurched with her plays. It would also be impossible to ignore the lights and the bells, as well as the scoreboard racking up points in the millions.

  It wasn’t long before she had her own viewing gallery. Upon finishing a game, she noticed the guys were standing just a few feet away, watching her.

  “Impressive score,” one of the dark haired ones commented.

  Mia hit them with a full tilt devil smile, “Was my major in college.” Feeding the machine again, she began her next game while the trio looked on. Her whole body moved with the machine as she concentrated on multiple balls careening down toward her flippers. With the precision of a maestro, she caught each ball with the flipper and flipped it back until she decided to let it slowly roll to the flipper’s end and send it back up the fairway again.

  In the background, because she was concentrating on the machine in front of her, she could hear their cheers as they were starting to get into her game. They were hooked and soon she would invite them to join her, to play with her. And they would drink together.

  An hour later they were all old buddies tossing back pitchers and playing team-tournament pinball. She was teamed with one of the dark haired guys and Blondie was teamed with the other. She flirted openly with all of them, giving the dark haired guys more attention and long eye gazes to the blonde when no one was looking.

  The dark haired guys were up and Mia and the blonde were standing by watching. She excused herself to the Ladies Room and caught Blondie’s eye, motioning for him to follow her. Knowing the other boys would not look up from the pinball machines, their escape was an easy one.

  Walking past the bathrooms, Mia pushed open the back door to the bar. It lead to an alleyway between old brick buildings and was empty save for a few green metal dumpsters. Emerging into the alley, with Blondie right behind her, Mia could feel the blood rushing through her veins, she was back on the edge — a place she hadn’t played in a very long time. She imagined this is what it felt like to a recovering addict who just shot up.

  Turning to the boy, her back to the brick wall, he put his hands on either side of her head and bent down to kiss her. This was going to be fast and furious and they both knew it. His tongue was down her throat and she reached around him, pulling him against her. Feeling how rigid he was through his jeans, she pressed him against her harder, before reaching between them to unbutton and unzip him.

  Grabbing her by her ass, he pulled her up against him and Mia wrapped her legs around him, her skirt hiking up over her hips. She could hear the slit at the back of her skirt rip and she didn’t care. She reached down and pushed the silky fabric of her bikini underwear to the side, giving him access to push up into her. They both grunted as he sunk deep into her wet pussy.

  With his hands against the wall for leverage, the boy rammed up into Mia relentlessly. He started to walk with her, impaled on his cock and wrapped around him like a vine, until her back was up against one of the big green dumpsters, where he continued to drive into her. A metallic thud sounded with each thrust until he groaned and leaned into her, pinning her up against the cold metal.

  “Wow. That was hot. You’re amazing.” The boy was panting.

  “Glad you enjoyed it.” Mia was straightening her skirt. “Say goodnight to your friends for me,” she called over her shoulder as she began to walk down the alley.

  Blondie stood there, shell shocked. “You’re not coming back in?” He yelled down the alley.

  “I think I’ve played enough pinball for one night.” She didn’t even turn around.

  “So we haven’t had one of these visits in a very long time.” Mia was sitting in Dr. Gary Cohen’s office after an exam.

  “I know. Gary, I don’t know what set me off. I usually know my triggers. I’ve been able to identify the antecedents and put coping strategies in place before I do something risky or stupid, like I did the other night.”

  “So, nothing happened that you can identify?” Gary’s concern was evident, both as a friend and a healthcare professional.

  “No, I have no clue. I was talking to Charles Sloan on the phone and I could feel that crazy anxiety that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. All we were talking about was a UNICEF event that we’re both working on.”

  “Hmm.” Gary shook his head. “I was really concerned you’d go to pieces after Michael’s death and you didn’t. You actually seemed stronger and more together than ever, so having an episode like this now, so many years later, really doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know. Everyone was worried that I’d go a little bat shit crazy after Michael’s death, but I kind of felt like I had Michael’s strength to keep me moving forward. Like he wanted me to take the grief and the anger and use it for positive things and I did and it helped me heal. Helping others helped me heal. And since that time, the relationships I have had have been healthy. No great shakes, but healthy. And my behavior has not been destructive — I’ve felt really stable and whole for a long time now. I worked hard at facing some really ugly things and I really thought that I had come out the other end. So what this was all about — I just don’t know. It was like my subconscious had some big secret that it just didn’t want to share with my conscious and my conscious said, “Screw you.” I just wish I knew what it wa
s that could have an effect on me like that. What could have that kind of effect on me?” Mia shook her head, wondering …

  Book 2

  Schooner

  Chapter One

  Recently …

  The 2.64 miles between The Dock Restaurant and their home on Linda Isle was going to be one damn long drive, Schooner was sure of that. CJ was in a massive snit and if Holly wasn’t sitting in the back seat of the Range Rover, he would just tell her to shut the heck up. Clearly he didn’t act the way she wanted him to act tonight, at his own birthday party, and he put at risk whatever she was trying to accomplish — obviously the real reason for his bogus forty-third birthday party.

  “And you left me all alone to host. You could have at least pretended to be having a good time. I did this all for you and I have to continually put up with your selfish behavior and make excuses for you.”

  Schooner hit the satellite radio button on his steering wheel and selected XM20 — E Street Radio. Tonight, on his forty-third birthday, more than any other night in recent history, he wanted to blast Bruce’s music and feel close to her again — so he hit the volume button to drown out CJ’s bitching. And CJ hated Springsteen’s music which made it all the more satisfying. Happy Birthday to me, he inwardly chuckled.

  He wasn’t familiar with the track playing, so he hit the LCD. The Brokenhearted. Hmm, he wasn’t sure which album that appeared on.

  “The deck is cut, the cards turned, the hand is played

  And all we ever hope for burns to ashes and drifts away

  Now don’t let our love slip into this darkness

  Don’t leave me to the brokenhearted, the brokenhearted, the brokenhearted

  And tell me that you love me

  Tell me that you need me

  Tell me that you love me

  Tell me that you want me

  Tell me that you need me

  Tell me that you want me

  Tell me that you love me

  Yeah tell me that you love me

  Tell me that you love me

  Tell me that you want me

  And come on now darling

  Say it right now baby

  Say it right now darling

  Tell me that you love me”xi

  The angst in Bruce’s voice as he began to wail “Tell me that you need me, Tell me that you want me, Tell me that you love me, yeah tell me that you love me,” was like a searing hot knife slicing into Schooner’s chest. Tell me that you love me. She was out there and now, finally, she was so close.

  For so many years, there was no way to find someone who disappeared. If you wanted to be gone, you were gone. There was no internet. There were no search engines. People didn’t have cell phones or smart phones. There were no apps to find people. Without hiring a private detective (which was more than a little out of his means as a college student), the tools available had been a phone book or directory assistance. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of Robert Silver’s residing in New York City and if you had an unlisted phone number, the trail ended there. By the time modern tools were available, he’d had fleeting thoughts (or fantasies, if he were honest with himself) of finding her again — but intruding on someone’s life, someone who might have a family and children that could be affected, always held him back.

  But she was on Facebook. She had put herself out there and Beau, of all people, had found her. Beau — who had never liked her, finds Mia. What a kick in the ass, Schooner thought as he pulled into their driveway.

  “Do you want to go out for a sail?” He turned to Holly in the back seat.

  “I do, but I think I need to sleep or I’ll never get up for my flight in the morning.” She looked beat.

  “Sailing? You want to go sailing at this hour?” CJ’s mood was getting fouler by the moment.

  “It’s my birthday and I’ll sail if I want to,” he laughed. Man, they were just toxic together.

  Strolling into his home office, Schooner grabbed a bottle of Courvoisier 21 year old XO cognac and a heavy Orrefors crystal snifter out of his bottom desk drawer, plucked a Cohiba from the custom teak and cedar humidor on the side table, grabbed his double guillotine cutter and a lighter. CJ was perched in the doorway watching him, but Schooner knew the Cohiba would keep her from following him and he was tempted to light it right then and there.

  “I want to talk to you about tonight.” Her arms were crossed over her chest.

  “And I want to enjoy the rest of my birthday. Can’t this wait until Holly leaves?”

  “I’m really angry with you,” her eyes flashed venom.

  “I know and I just spent my birthday doing what you wanted me to do and now I just want to spend the rest of it doing what I want to do.” I want to sail out in the middle of the harbor, sit on deck, look up at the stars and think about Mia. That is how I want to spend my birthday. As he brushed past her, he quickly kissed her cheek, “Thanks for the party,” and he strolled out the sliding glass doors onto the deck and down to the floating wooden walkway leading to the dock.

  Courvoisier in hand, surrounded by water and shrouded in the black night, Schooner was alone to get inside his head, and in there, the scenarios were running rampant. What was he going to find? He had successfully avoided getting sucked into social media until now and tonight he wished he’d paid more attention to it. Monday morning, he’d ask Yoli to help him get set up on Facebook. He could trust Yoli with this, but the thought of “coming clean” to his best friend and business partner, after twenty years, was daunting. She was going to be blown away that he’d never shared Mia with her. But there was nothing to share. Mia was gone. Until tonight. Talk about a birthday present. This was more than he’d wished for in over two decades.

  “Mia Silver, little do you know, but you were my birthday present tonight,” he toasted the night sky.

  It was after 4 A.M., Yoli would be at work by 7 A.M. on Monday. I’m twenty-seven hours away from Mia, he thought. Twenty-seven hours away from possibly knowing. Finally. After all these years. No matter what the answer — he’d finally know what happened, what he had done to make her leave him, to make her run and never look back. Had her heart been broken like his? Had she ever missed him?

  “Did you even love me, Mia? Did you ever think about me after you walked away?” Schooner couldn’t believe he was verbalizing the specters that had haunted him long ago and in moments when he’d let them surface, for they never truly went away — ever. “Did you?”

  He poured himself another cognac.

  He just needed to make it through the next twenty-seven hours. He’d made it through twenty-four years, but these upcoming hours seemed a more impossible hurdle now that he knew he was so close to finding her. Finding her … a dream he had carried for a very long time, but was certainly the surprise of the evening.

  “Oh Baby Girl, what are you going to tell me? Are you going to break my heart again or help me finally bury this ghost?” He knew, even as he verbalized it, that the ghost of Mia Silver was something he never, ever wanted to exorcise, for if he let it haunt him for the rest of his days, she would always be with him.

  Chapter Two

  “Anything yet?” Yoli poked her head into Schooner’s office. It had been two hours since she’d set up his Facebook profile and he’d sent Mia a friend request.

  He shook his head no. “But I’ve been checking out her Facebook page and pictures.” The smile in his eyes was evident.

  Yoli came around and stood behind him, looking at his computer screen. “There are a lot of pictures of her with this guy. Might be her husband.” Schooner flipped through a few of the pictures to show Yoli.

  Shaking her head, “Have I taught you nothing? That is not her husband.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he’s gayer than I am. The man is a screaming queen. I like Mia already.”

  They continued to look through Mia’s online photo album. There was one picture of Mia with a tall, slim man with light brown hair. Her hair was d
ifferent and she looked a few years younger. They were standing outside an old mansion, maybe some type of an inn, he had his arm over her shoulder and hers was around his waist. “That one might be a husband or boyfriend.”

  Schooner nodded. From their body language, he had to agree. Mia looked happy, relaxed. He continued to flip through the pictures, but the guy wasn’t in any other shots. His gut reaction was that he was glad, but immediately felt bad about it — he wanted Mia to be happy.

  “No kids,” Yoli noted. “I don’t think she’s married.”

  Heart racing, Schooner wondered if she might be right. There were no family photos, no kids celebrating milestones. No baby pictures, graduations, Halloween costumes. Could she be single? Breathing deeply to try and slow his heart beat, Schooner wondered if Mia was unattached and available and then immediately drew himself back from the thought. Don’t go there, he admonished.

  “Stop tapping your foot. It’s annoying me.” Yoli quickly brought him back and he had to consciously stop bouncing his right leg. “You are a mess, Schooner.”

  “I know,” he laughed, “I really am. I am freaking out. I want to talk to her now. I want to hear her voice. I want to know what the fuck happened.”

  “Well, it’s just about lunchtime now on the east coast, so she may not have even seen this.”

  “Maybe not,” he continued to go through her pictures. “Why can’t I get into these albums.”

  “They are not set to the public viewing setting. You can’t see those unless you’re friends. The other ones are set to the public setting.”

  “Maybe that’s where the husband and kids are.” See, he told himself, that’s why you can’t let yourself go there.

  “Might be. You don’t know, so don’t speculate. Best case scenario she accepts your friend request. Have you thought about what you are going to do if she doesn’t accept or you don’t hear back?”

  Schooner looked up and gave her his full blast smile. “I have thought about that. If she doesn’t get back to me by midday tomorrow, I’m going to give Scott Morgan a call. Have lunch with him this week. You know he’d sell his mother for a piece of our business and I’ll pick his brain about our old college classmate, Mia Silver.