Super Host

by Kate Russo

  “Let’s have a cup of tea first, yes? Are you in a hurry?” she asks, hopeful.

  “No. No hurry.”

  “Well, have a seat on the sofa. Let me make you a cuppa. I bet you’re not used to that, are you?”

  “I’m not.” He smiles and does as he’s told.

  He’s very obedient, she thinks. It’s nice.

  She kicks off her espadrilles by the front door, thereby dropping two inches in height on her way to the kitchen. People have said that she has an imposing presence. It’s mostly her personality, but disproportionately large breasts and high-heeled shoes help. Without shoes she’s lucky if she’s five-foot-two.

  “I don’t think I picked the right attire for the day,” she says, smoothing down her electric-blue top with a plunging V-neck, complete with a ruffled collar that frames her deep cleavage. Her kids are always telling her to dress normally, but she has no idea what they mean. “I think I might pour myself into my pajamas once you’ve left.” She pulls on the belt loops of her tight black trousers and takes a deep breath. “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t even need to look at Bennett to know that was an overshare. He’s probably picturing her in a black satin nightgown. If he’s picturing her in flannel bottoms and the oversize T-shirt she intends to put on, then there’s something wrong with his imagination. “Do you take sugar, Bennett?” she asks, putting a tea bag each in two white mugs she pulled from the wooden mug tree.

  “No, thank you. Just milk,” he says, regarding her from the sofa.

  “Aren’t you good! I’ve tried to give it up several times, but I just love a lump of sugar. My ex-husband used to say I reminded him of a horse, I love sugar cubes so much.”

  She can see Bennett grimace, though he tries to hide it.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I thought it was a horrible thing to say, as well.”

  As she pours a little milk over the dry tea bags, the kettle begins to whistle.

  “I used to take a lot of sugar,” Bennett says, leaning over the back of the sofa. “My mum always made a really sweet cuppa while I was growing up. Sometimes I swear she left out the tea bag. It was just hot water, milk, and sugar.”

  “That’s nice. That your mum made you tea,” she says, coming over to the couch with both mugs.

  He accepts his mug but regards her strangely.

  “My mum doesn’t believe in caffeine,” Kirstie explains, sitting down next to him.

  “Tragic,” he says, swallowing a big gulp, then going in for another.

  He likes it, she thinks. Good. Albert, her ex, never thought her tea was strong enough.

  “Do you know your way around the area?” Bennett asks. “Can I help direct you to anything?”

  “I’m getting my bearings, I think,” she says. “It’s such a shift—small coastal town to the big city.”

  Until now, Torquay was the biggest city she’s ever lived in; she’s not even sure if the coastal tourist destination is technically a city. She used to love living by the ocean. Its vastness and fluidity had a calming effect on her, but not anymore. She doesn’t think she’ll miss it. Not after what happened with Albert. The idea of hard concrete, as far as the eye can see, appeals to her now.

  “Well, I’ve been here my whole life, so just let me know.”

  “I will, thank you.” She smiles. He’s so helpful. She wonders if he’d be this nice to her if she wasn’t paying him eight thousand pounds a month. “It doesn’t feel like the city out here.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but everything you’ll need day to day can be found on Chiswick High Road,” he says vaguely, maybe even a little bored. “Lots of nice restaurants, too. Great parks.”

  “You sound like you’ve been doing this a long time.” She laughs. “Does the tourism board know about you?”

  He smiles, blushing.

  “What would I do in a park, Bennett?”

  He shrugs. “Sit on a bench? Look at the rose beds?”

  “Sounds hideous.”

  “I don’t go, either,” he concedes.

  “I can tell.” She slaps him playfully on the arm. “You don’t need to worry about me. I know my way to Harrods. That’s all that matters.”

  He takes his final swig of tea and sets the mug down on the coffee table. Her own mug is still half full.

  “I should let you get settled,” he says, rising.

  Not keen to let him go, she remains seated for a moment, then reluctantly stands as well. She glances at the window that looks out on the garden and his studio, which is where he’s no doubt headed. “The lovely painting of your girlfriend is gone.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t want that painting staring at you from the garden.”

  “I don’t mind. I liked her. She looked confident,” Kirstie asserts. “I guess you’d have to be to pose nude.” Not something she could ever imagine doing herself. Not anymore.

  “That painting was a headache,” he says, brushing past her obvious lack of confidence. “I’ve moved on.” He gestures to his easel, where a smaller canvas sits. She has to squint to make out a possible figure as its subject matter.

  “Very exciting,” she fibs. “I look forward to spying on your progress.”

  “Pop round for a cup of tea sometime. Have a look.”

  “Thank you, I will.” She hopes his invitation is sincere. He’s the only person in this whole city she knows.

  “Off to meet the pretty girlfriend?” she asks, catching herself too late. “None of your business, Kirstie!” she scolds herself aloud.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Dinner with my daughter and her new boyfriend, actually. If I strangle him, I may need you to bail me out of prison.”

  She thinks back to Albert, his hands around her throat, telling her she’s not worth the oxygen she breathes.

  * * *

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  She’s lucky to be alive. He could so easily have pushed her over the glass balcony and right into Salcombe Harbor. “Ungrateful bitch,” he called her. His house, his balcony, and his wife. To Albert’s mind, he could do what he wanted with all of it.

  Of course, he hadn’t been like that when she first met him. That’s the thing people can’t seem to grasp. If he’d been like that when they were going out, she wouldn’t have married him. She’s not an idiot. His cruelty snuck up on her, starting out as a whisper, a tiny insult here, an undermining gesture there. But after Michael, their first son, was born, the “or elses” started to creep in. “Shut up, or else.” “Smile, or else.” “Fuck me, or else.” She didn’t know what the “or else” meant, but her imagination ran wild with it—everything from cutting off her credit card to running her over with his Land Rover. So, she shut up, she smiled, she fucked him. In return, she got a beautiful, contemporary house on a Salcombe cliffside that looked out over the harbor. She got a large stipend, plus a maid and a nanny. Her time was mostly her own, since Albert, an actor, was always on set. By the time Martha and Matthew were born, Albert was in Dorset most of the time filming Criminal Coast, the long-running drama series in which he played the lead, Detective Inspector Cliff Caswell, a troubled, but brilliant and handsome, homicide investigator. The character of Caswell was inspired by Albert’s own father, a man who came back from war damaged, but more determined than ever to put the world right, a giant bleeding heart on legs. The character may have been a saint, a man devoted to justice and the service of his community, but Albert Cartwright was a prick and a control freak. A health-nut, he treated his body like a temple and, committed as he was to the art of manipulation, he rarely drank. He was also charismatic and charming. He enjoyed telling sentimental stories about his old man, while stroking his luscious white-blond hair that never went thin. The cast and crew of Criminal Coast were all his disciples. A die-hard Labour supporter, he defended the show’s crew, men who frequently went on strike for better pay, though hi
s passion for a fair, living wage never seemed to apply to the women on the show. Every season had a new female lead, each paid a small fraction of what Albert was. He slept with every single one of them, Kirstie suspects, though he never tried to strangle any of them. They would have sold their stories to the papers by now, if he had. No, she’s the only woman he ever strangled, so in that respect, she told herself, sarcastically, she was special.

  It was when Criminal Coast got canceled five years ago, after a twenty-year run, that things started to feel dangerous. Suddenly, he was at home all the time, a presence in the house and the town that, until then, had been her domain. He resented her constant closeness and seemed frustrated that she was no longer the pretty young thing he married. He was insulted that she wasn’t more intelligent and didn’t care to listen to his daily monologues on current affairs. “God, Kirstie! Think!” he’d say, looking over the top of his Guardian, trying to explain the day’s news to her. “What do you do all day?” he’d ask her. Then he’d quickly add, “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.” What did she do all day? Well, what she’d always done. She shopped. She watched a lot of property programs. She took classes, mostly in yoga and Pilates. She liked to walk along the beach and collect shells, but why tell him any of that? He would have considered all of that pointless and shallow. What did he expect? Hadn’t he for the last twenty-five years methodically stripped her of her interests, her life of purpose? She kept her mouth shut, she smiled, she fucked him. That’s what he asked for. Since when do trophies get to think? “I’ve met rocks with more common sense than you,” he liked to tell her. The kids, too, picked up on his contempt. “Mum’s dumb as a rock,” she heard Martha whisper to Matthew when they were just eight and six, and they giggled. It was probably around that time when she began her slow transformation to the stone everyone believed her to be. She could actually feel herself harden.

  * * *

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  A retired couple happened to be sailing past their harbor-view house on the night Albert tried to strangle her on the balcony. She wasn’t sure what frightened her more—being breathless because of his tight grip or the fear of gasping for air under water if he succeeded in pushing her over the ledge. As it turns out, it’s the latter that’s stayed with her—that fear of sinking to the bottom of the ocean. She’s certain that Albert would have succeeded in sending her tumbling into the sea, had the man on his boat not shouted, “Let go of her!” In that moment, Albert removed his hands from her throat and peered down into the harbor at the older man, who’d begun snapping photos of him. “Mind your own sodding business,” Albert shouted, throwing one deck chair, and then another, out into the water, hoping they might land on the man or his boat. “That’s Inspector Cliff Caswell!” the man’s wife shouted, pointing up at Albert. “From telly! He’s throwing furniture at you!” Kirstie heard all of this from the adjoining master bedroom, where she’d escaped to. While he was chucking chairs into the sea, she was frantically searching for shoes with no heels that she could run in.

  Eventually, she found a pair of penny loafers and ran downstairs, while Albert was still shouting at the couple on the boat. Grabbing her coat and purse, she made a dash for her Mercedes parked out front in the center of their crescent driveway. She’d imagined that one day it would be her getaway car, and for that very reason she’d bought it under her own name with the money her father had put in an account for her twenty-five years ago—money he wanted to invest in a hotel she’d planned to open. He’d died before she and Albert started seeing each other seriously, but how he would have hated Albert! She wishes now that they’d met, wishes her father could’ve warned her against Albert, because she would have listened. She knows most feminists would disagree, but sometimes you just need a good man’s opinion.

  She drove around for a while that night but eventually ended up at the police station. Had the man on the boat not taken the photos, she’s not sure she would have reported Albert. But she was pretty certain the guy would sell the pictures to the tabloids, and sure enough, he did. It made sense to get ahead of the story.

  “I’d like to report a crime,” she told the constable sitting behind the desk at the Salcombe police station.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, bored.

  “Kirstie Cartwright,” she replied, thinking this could have been in an episode of Criminal Coast. She’d watched this scene a million times. “My husband, Albert Cartwright, just tried to strangle me and throw me over our balcony.”

  The constable, an older man, looked at her in disbelief. “Albert Cartwright? As in Detective Inspector Cliff Caswell?”

  “Albert. Yes. He’s not really a detective,” she added, feeling the need to clarify that, lest the constable think of her husband as a brother-in-arms.

  “That would be a huge news story, Mrs. Cartwright. Are you sure you want to report that?”

  She pulled back her hair and showed him the finger burns on her neck. “I’m sure. And there’ll be photographic evidence, too,” she added. “Some guy and his wife in a boat saw the whole thing.”

  The constable, looking unconvinced, pushed back his chair. “Alright, I’ll have you talk to the sergeant.”

  The sergeant took her statement with as much doubt as the constable had earlier, even after she told him that the coast guard would no doubt find their deck chairs floating in the harbor, even after she provided him with the make and model.

  “Floating deck chairs isn’t really proof of domestic abuse, I’m afraid,” the sergeant, a younger man with razor burn all around his Adam’s apple, told her. “It only proves that someone in your house didn’t like those chairs.”

  Actually, she loved those chairs. She sat in one every morning, from April until November, sipping her coffee and reading House Beautiful magazine.

  “You don’t seem very upset?” the sergeant pointed out.

  “My husband is a bastard. It may be news to you, but it’s not news to me.”

  “We’ll go round and talk to him, but I suggest you find someplace else to stay tonight.”

  “No kidding,” she said.

  The sergeant looked at her, as if to say, I’d toss you over a balcony, too, if I could. She was used to men looking at her that way. They either want to fuck her or kill her. Not one that she can think of has ever expressed indifference.

  “Will you arrest him?”

  “That depends, Mrs. Cartwright.”

  “On what?”

  “On what we find, Mrs. Cartwright.”

  “You’re going to find a good liar and a deck with no chairs.”

  “We’ll let you know, Mrs. Cartwright.”

  “For the love of God, please call me Kirstie.”

  “That’s not how we do things, Mrs. Cartwright. I’ll get you a case number so you can call for updates.”

  “You won’t call me, I have to call you?”

  “We’re very busy, Mrs. Cartwright.”

  “With what?!”

  “Well, someone just accused Albert Cartwright of domestic violence,” he tells her. “The press will be all over this.”

  * * *

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  After Bennett leaves, she makes herself a second cup of tea. The great British stalling technique, she thinks—making tea. When she’s busy, when she’s happy, she could go days without drinking tea. She’s only brewing tea right now to trick herself into believing she’s busy. She hasn’t lived alone, ever. Not until today. For the last several months she lived with her mother in Totnes, a hippie enclave about an hour from Salcombe. Vivienne, despite being in her mid-eighties, owns and operates the town’s most popular shop for medicinal crystals, believing wholeheartedly in their healing powers. Viv never liked Albert, said she always “had a feeling” about him. Viv’s feelings come from what the crystals tell her. This makes them evidence-based, as far as she is concerned. “I
can feel a lot of negative energy coming from him,” she mentioned on her daughter’s wedding night. Pulling a bag of rocks from her purse, she handed them to her daughter, saying, “Try resting these on his stomach while he’s sleeping. They should help neutralize him.”

  On the night of the balcony incident, when Kirstie arrived, late, at her mother’s house, Viv wasn’t at all surprised to see her. “You never tried the crystals, did you?” she asked.

  “No, Mum, I didn’t.”

  The old woman, wearing a colorful, psychedelic-looking robe, her short, dark grey hair going in all directions, just tossed her hands in the air. “How ’bout a whiskey?”

  * * *

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  Kirstie takes her tea upstairs to the master bedroom, where Bennett has laid the four large suitcases on the bed, including the zebra one, which she unzips first. Inside is the collection of crystals her mother gave her before she left Totnes, all carefully bundled in Bubble Wrap. Kirstie thought about stopping alongside the A303, maybe around Stonehenge, and dumping the lot—let some hippie freak happen upon them and build a shrine to their magical powers. However, though she hates to admit it, part of her wants the crystals to work their magical powers on her. Wouldn’t it be nice if the secret to serenity and fulfillment only required the presence of a few rocks? She pulls out the large hunk of amethyst and unwraps it. “This will bring calm to your life,” Viv had said. “Whenever you’re feeling stressed, just bring the amethyst into your orbit.”

  “My ‘orbit’?” she asked. “I’m not a fucking planet, Mum.”

  She puts it on the windowsill, thinking it might be pretty to look at while she’s doing yoga. Next, she pulls out the rose quartz. “This is for your emotional well-being,” her mother had explained. “It will promote self-love.” Unwrapping it from the bubble, she holds it up to the bedroom skylight, so the light can shine through the pale pink rock. It’s true, she hasn’t got a lot of “self-love.” She doesn’t even own a vibrator. What the hell is the crystal going to do? Give her a pep talk? “You’re resilient,” she tells herself in a goofy cartoon voice, wobbling the quartz as though it’s speaking. “You’re quick-witted, and your arse is the real deal.” Kirstie decides to place it on the bedside table, thinking that she’s hardest on herself first thing in the morning.