Time's Hostage: The dangers of love, loss, and lus (Time Series Book 1)

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  Barth talked about his new painting, which everyone wanted to see later on. Jack told everyone about a few interesting old cases. Sophia took it all in, beaming at Lili and Chanel. At one point, her eyes became preternaturally bright, shining with an ethereal glow as she shed a few tears for all that was and wasn’t to be. To her embarrassment, her thoughts strayed to Dirk as she was titillated by her anticipation of the next day’s escapades.

  Sophia and Jack cleared away the remains of the food. There was a lot left over. Sophia had over ordered as usual.

  Barth and the engaged couple retired to the living room, drinks in hand, laughing and talking as they resumed their seats.

  They were ready for the remake of La Bonne Année with Peter Falk. After the movie, everyone agreed that they preferred the Lelouch film. Barth had seen La Bonne Année several times and he was in the same camp with the others.

  “That was the best UnChristmas I’ve ever had,” Sophia announced.

  They all drank to that. And all too soon it was time to go.

  Barth and Sophia had promised to drive Lili and Chanel to the airport early on Friday. They said their good-byes, vowing to do it again next year and make it an outside-the-box tradition.

  Barth and Sophia sat down with a final glass of wine.

  “I agree with you about Keith. You definitely should not meet him. If I’m right about what crisscross means, he wants to get you to agree to knock off Amanda. Maybe he thinks you already agreed. His warped mind is unreliable,” she said.

  “You’re right, of course. I can’t pander to him. But what will happen when he gets stymied? When his unreality clashes with reality?” Barth wondered.

  “We can’t think about him. He’s operating on a weird plane. We can’t join him there. He has to play it out. I just hope no one gets hurt,” she said.

  “Are we sleeping together again?” Barth asked.

  He looked like a puppy wagging his tail tentatively as he begged for the bone that would make him wag his tail wildly.

  She gave him the bone. “Yes. But no sex.”

  “You need comfort. I need comfort. Lili is leaving us. I’ve had several horrific hallucinations I have to share with you. I haven’t forgiven you, but I think Keith is punishing you more inventively. And more than you deserve to be punished,” she conceded. “You were like a big baby looking for his pacifier. Well, that’s the wrong metaphor. I guess Keith was getting the pacifier, but you were certainly pacified. You’re such a child Barth,” Sophia said.

  “That’s right. Cut my balls off,” Barth said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. That’s what Amanda wanted to do. Literally. Cut your balls off with a butcher knife and have them for breakfast. But enough. Let’s just go to bed and cuddle up, forget everything, and get a good night’s sleep,” Sophia said.

  “Sounds good to me,” Barth replied, venturing a kiss on the cheek, which Sophia accepted. “I just realized everyone forgot to look at my painting,” he said as he pulled back the covers.

  While they were preparing for sleep, a lone figure in the garden, curls waving wildly in the strong breeze that had picked up, watched their bedroom windows intently as the light went off, plunging the house into darkness.

  CHAPTER 24

  At last Thursday has arrived, thought Sophia, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, leaving Barth sleeping soundly. She was prickling with anticipation at the thought of seeing Dirk again and all that their meeting promised.

  She was happy to shake off the disconcerting nightmare she had had. In her dream, Keith was leaning over her, staring fixedly into her eyes. His eyes were like two black stones, hard and cold with purpose. Some of his curls had found their way into her mouth, and she felt as if she were choking on his hair sliding down her throat. She awoke just after she noticed the gleaming butcher knife he was holding in his upraised right hand, ready to plunge into her. The hair acted as a gag, preventing her from screaming.

  Sophia had awakened with her heart flip-flopping with fear. As she transitioned to happy expectations of the day ahead, the sensation turned to excitement. Now her heart flip-flopped with sexual excitement.

  Who knew she would have the best, the wildest, the most inventive sex of her life at fifty-eight? And not with a young man either. Dirk was something else, she thought, feeling warm and tingly as she pictured his hands, his mouth, his arms, and his penis.

  Hearing Barth stir, groaning in his sleep, snapped her out of her reverie. She idly wondered if he was having a Keith nightmare too.

  As she stepped into her closet, Sophia remembered her mother’s brush with the loose backing. During all the whirlwind activity of the past few days, it had slipped her mind.

  Overwhelmed with curiosity, she yanked the onionskin sheets and old picture out of their hiding place, where they had been for who knows how long. She pictured her mother as a beautiful young woman, newly wed, slipping her deep, dark, dirty secrets behind her hairbrush. Did she think about them when she brushed her hair? Did she surreptitiously slip them out, exposing them to the light of day, to look at them and remember? Or did she bury them, just wanting to forget?

  Her mother behaved as if she wanted to forget the past. There was no sharing of the horrors. But could one bury the past? In Sophia’s experience, the boundaries between past, present, and future were more fluid. There was no burying the past. It dug itself up like a zombie, no matter how deeply denied, and then it was right there alongside the present and looming large into the future, influencing it, shaping it, transmogrifying it.

  “Did you fall asleep in there?” Barth’s voice startled her back to the present.

  He poked his tousled head around the closet door, looking at her inquisitively as he rubbed the sandy sleep out of his eyes. He walked over and kissed her on the lips, moving her in firmly for a tight embrace. “It’s so good to be back in your good graces,” he sighed into her hair, his warm breath comforting on her head.

  “Listen, Barth,” she said, holding him out at arm’s length. “I found something poking out of my mother’s old hairbrush and haven’t looked at it yet. It’s been too hectic here.”

  “Well, let’s look. What are we waiting for? Is it buried treasure?” He laughed.

  Sitting on the carpeted floor, their two heads bent, almost touching, they leaned eagerly over the items Sophia had pulled out of the brush backing. There were three sheets of onionskin covered with her mother’s faded perfect penmanship, enhanced by the purple ink she had used. It was dated: 06/06/1954. Sophia was frustrated to find it was written in Polish, the language her parents used when they didn’t want her to understand. All three of them spoke Yiddish together. Her parents spoke Polish between themselves. Later, the three of them used a mixture of Yiddish and English, and then English as the new country’s language became the habitual one, the old country and all its indignities receding into the past. Her mother had fanned the flames of remembrance by recording something.

  Next, they turned to the photo, which was dated on the back: 07/01/1944. January seventh. She knew they put the day first and month second in Europe. Under the date, it simply said, “Chelmno.” The death camp for the Lodz Ghetto.

  When Sophia turned the photo over, she felt as if she had been punched in the gut, all the air whooshing out of her for an instant. She caught her breath, hard. She glanced at Barth, who was breathing heavily, his eyes glued to the images in front of them.

  There stood her smiling mother, young, very young, stunningly beautiful in a simple red dress, her skin glowing, her eyes fixed beatifically on her companion, her thick curly black hair gleaming. She was the picture of health. But in a death camp?

  She had her left arm loosely around an elegantly tall commandant, an SS captain by the looks of it, the epitome of the Aryan race—ash-blond hair and piercing baby-blue eyes. He was dressed, in of all things, a white uniform, announcing his membership in the Totenkopfverbände, a red death’s head on his collar. He had a smart, compact red whip in his
left hand while he had his right arm possessively around her mother’s waist, a proud arrogant grin spread across his well-proportioned features. He didn’t view this Jew as inhuman cargo.

  And the coup de grace, which caused Sophia and Barth to turn to each other with mouths gaping in frozen astonishment, like two fish suddenly finding themselves out of water and gasping for air, was the small but definitive baby bump straining the red fabric across her mother’s belly.

  Sophia dropped the photo as if it had burned her fingertips. They both leaned against the wall, speechless, holding onto each other’s hands.

  An old world, incomprehensible, terrible, and provocative, poured out of that old photograph, drowning their senses like a drenching rainstorm, penetrating through to the skin.

  And within that world, the established order of predator and prey, superior and inferior, killer and victim had been subsumed by two people making their own rules, overturning the imposed social order. A time capsule within a time capsule.

  “Was there a child?” Sophia finally broke the silence in hushed tones.

  “And if there were a child, what happened to that person?” Barth continued her train of thought.

  “Do I have a sibling out there somewhere in the world? Whose father, by the looks of it, was a stone-cold killer,” Sophia said. “How did he fall for a Jew?”

  “Forbidden fruit,” Barth said. “They sure look like they have the hots for each other.”

  “Let’s go downstairs and make some coffee. The atmosphere in here is eerie. I feel claustrophobic,” Sophia said as she roused herself from her seated position and then helped pull Barth to his feet.

  Once Barth had brewed the potent coffee, they took a few revitalizing sips and decided to sit outside in the garden. Not venturing anywhere near the gazebo, the scene of the crime, they sat just outside the kitchen’s sliding glass door on the two Paris park chairs at a small round table with a red-and-gold mosaic on its surface.

  The porterweed, lantana, and penta planted around the flagstones attracted butterflies, bees, and the occasional hummingbird. Tiny aviators were busy sucking, sipping, landing, and taking off. The plants were alive with activity.

  Sophia sought the shade while Barth ventured to sit in the winter sun, hot but not brutal at high noon.

  “How are we going to get that letter translated?” Barth asked. He was basking in the sun, his outstretched long legs almost touching her bare feet. Then he snorted quietly. “How stupid of me. I have a Polish colleague at the university. I’m sure she would be glad to help.”

  “Not so fast. You saw the picture. Who knows what’s in that letter. I’m not in a hurry to hear it. I’m still reeling from the photo. And how well do you know this person?” Sophia’s anxiety was escalating as she spoke.

  “Calm down, darling. I was just trying to help. We can just wait. That letter has been buried for six decades. It can wait a little longer. It can stay buried. We never have to have it translated, if that’s what you want.”

  “Let me think. Maybe I know someone Polish. I just can’t think right now. Those images are burned onto my retinas. Six decades. Seven for the photo. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

  Barth took a long, slow, measured draught of his coffee before responding. “Yes. Over seventy years. A lifetime. Look, Sophia, don’t get angry,” he said slowly.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I want to do a painting of that photo. The images are remarkable.”

  “Barth. No. I’m still in shock. You want to go from seventy years of burial to full exposure of the images. No, not just exposure. Magnification. I can’t even digest that. You’re being callous.”

  “What’s wrong with painting them? It’ll be fabulous,” he said, barely suppressed excitement in his voice.

  “Let’s just drop the whole thing for now. I need to digest this, and you know my metabolism is slow. Seventy years. That’s how old the kid would be today. Wow,” she said.

  “Okay. Hands off until you give me the word,” he said.

  She didn’t even bother to object.

  “Now how about cancelling your dinner and staying home with me? I need you,” Barth said. “Besides, I want to talk about Lili and Chanel. And, I admit it, I want to keep my mind off Keith.”

  “No, Barth. No, no, no! I vowed to go on with my life. Not to let you derail me with your antics. Besides, it’s too short notice to cancel,” she said. “I want to sit on the beach for a bit before I meet Sonya. Contemplate eternity.” With that, Sophia got up and went inside.

  CHAPTER 25

  Wearing only a long-sleeved maraschino-cherry-red dress and black sandals with no underwear whatsoever, Sophia walked distractedly to Ocean Drive, where she plopped down on an unoccupied weathered bench to contemplate the waves.

  Sophia remembered a patient who was a serial adulteress. She always used to say, “You know how you buy new sexy matching bra and panties for a new lover?” She generalized, including Sophia and the universe in her adulterous habits. Doesn’t every married woman buy new underwear for every new lover? Sophia was going in the opposite direction for her first adulterous affair, forgoing underwear altogether.

  She didn’t have to check Dirk’s directions because she knew where his impressive high-rise building, Majestic Pointe, was located—right on the ocean’s edge in South Pointe, parallel to the port. Not far from Lili’s humble beach quarters geographically, but miles away financially.

  Sophia sighed as she thought of how much she would miss Lili. But she wanted her daughter to be happy. That was most important. Besides, though far apart, now they would be closer as their relationship grew in honesty. Lili was gay. Lili was getting married to a woman whom she loved. Now Sophia knew a three-dimensional Lili. Before it was all feinting and dodging.

  When she thought she spied that same witchy beldam who had prophesied doom and gloom last time she was on this beach, she rose from the bench and hurried to Dirk’s place.

  Sophia entered a lobby remarkable for its preponderance of Carrara marble, dripping crystal chandeliers, and high-end modern Italian furniture. Impressive in an overwhelming sort of way. With nowhere for the eye to rest, it screamed rather than stated its intention.

  After a short call announcing her presence, the concierge directed her to a bank of elevators, one of which soundlessly whisked her up to the twentieth floor and, to her surprise, straight into Dirk’s private hallway. She had expected the usual corridor with various doors, which would have allowed her a moment to compose herself. But here she was, right in Dirk’s lair, and he was advancing rapidly, his eyes dancing with excitement.

  “Do you have the whole floor?” she asked.

  “Only half. The other fellow has the same setup,” he said.

  Dirk always managed to channel all the energy in a room. He was humming with an electrical current as he enveloped her in his arms. Then he reached for those two rear globes, kneading, sending his current through her. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the sensations arising in her. She basked in the sexual attention. He reveled in his rapid arousal.

  When they tore themselves away from each other, they seemed to notice each other for the first time.

  Sophia admired Dirk’s exquisite white-on-white linen shirt and jeans.

  “You look angelic in that outfit, you devil,” she said, her eyes roving restlessly all over him.

  “I love wearing white in winter in Miami Beach. It turns everything upside down,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “And you, Zophie, in that red dress covering your naked yoga ass, are driving me to distraction,” he muttered in those gravelly accented tones, guaranteed to send zingers up her spine.

  “Here, come into the kitchen, and let’s get into bathrobes. There’s a bathroom right over there in the corner with a robe for you. I’ll be right back.”

  She stepped into a cavernous, cold kitchen done in sterile white and stainless steel. It looked like an operating room. Too white and br
ight.

  She noticed he was melting gobs of butter on the enormous stovetop as she made her way to the bathroom. When she emerged in her fluffy white robe, she saw Dirk decked out in a similar robe and tending to the butter.

  “Isn’t that a lot of butter?” Sophia asked.

  “We’re not only going to be eating lobster with butter, but also I’m going to use it for our anal sex. It’ll go into your love tunnel and all over my love tool. It’s the best for anal fucking. Much better than that horrid Vaseline.”

  “Ah, an anal-sex connoisseur deflowering this poor naïve virgin,” Sophia said, pretending to swoon with fright.

  “You’ll love it, my dear Zophie,” he said, embracing her and thrusting his long, strong tongue into her ear. “Come look at this humongous cruise ship gliding by just below as effortlessly as a tiny sailboat. I love these panoramic windows looking out on the port, my next-door neighbor.”

  “Lovely. Tremendous view. Not many people can watch these whale-like ships cruise by,” she said, amazed and enthralled by the sight.

  “Here. I’ve been remiss. Let me open some Bollinger for us.” He handed her a flute of champagne, turning away from the windows as he announced the menu.

  “We’ll start with Beluga caviar. Then I have oysters, best in the winter when they’re hard and firm. In spawning season, they’re soft, flabby, and tasteless. Finally, Maine lobsters. The whole lobster because the sweetest meat is in the claws. Oh, and that sourdough you loved so much,” he added.

  Sophia had never eaten lobster. She thought it barbaric to boil the animal alive, that fiery orange attesting to the cruelty in vivid color. And then there was the look of the poor thing with its buggy eyes and antennae, like a giant primordial bug. She had also shied away from caviar and oysters. Would she get away with eating only bread and butter? Highly unlikely.