"Today," Dick continued, "I've heard at least three people grumbling that our sales force is rude if they don't buy two weeks of time-share. I don't know who's to blame, but I've heard enough to know it's coming from more than one of you. Look folks, until all the time-share units are sold, we're still trying to run a hotel here. And it's my job to keep the guests happy. I want them treated with respect." Without waiting for a response from anyone on the sales staff, he turned on his heel and left the room. Staring after him, I admired the strength and purpose it took to give that lecture. That's when I first became intrigued with Dick Lee.
"Jennifer," Dick said one day, his voice gentle and approachable, "would you like to have a cup of coffee?"
"Fine," I said. "I have a little time before my next up." We briefly chatted about job related topics, before returning to work.
Neither Dick nor I were in a hurry to get to know each other. However, in the exchange of vital statistics, we soon discovered Dick was six years my junior, a fact that we both dismissed as unimportant. Over the next month or so, during shared coffee breaks at the hotel cafe, our conversations that had begun casually turned to deeper subjects. I learned that he had been married twice, the first time to a woman supposedly the daughter of a Mafia chieftain. Dick stirred his coffee and said with downcast eyes, "MaryJo gave birth to our first daughter, who died at birth. Our second child, a boy, had Multiple Sclerosis. He only lived until shortly after his seventh birthday. When my son died it killed our marriage, killed even my ability to feel..."
I leaned forward.
"After losing both my babies," he haltingly added, "I married Betty, a woman with two boys. I missed the sound of children. I hate to admit it, but I guess I married her for that reason. Not being in love with her must have soon showed because the marriage lasted only nine months. After it ended I loaded up my truck and high-tailed it from Chicago to Florida, hoping that the salt water and the sun would help heal the wounds quickly...both the mental and physical wounds."
"Physical wounds?"
"It's not a pretty story." Dick slowly shook his head. "Are you sure you want to hear it?"
"Only if you want to talk about it."
Dick nodded and signaled the waitress for coffee refills. "Well, after my divorce from my first wife, the mother of my children, MaryJo kept the house. I moved into an apartment and began working in sales for a chemical company. A few months later I met my Betty at work through a mutual friend. As I said, she had two sons from a previous marriage. The boys were nine and thirteen. Great kids. Betty needed a husband, the boys needed a father and I needed all of them. She had what I thought I wanted and needed for the rest of my life. Betty wanted a big church wedding but the boys wanted us to get married even sooner than we had planned. So we changed our minds, took the kids with us to the courthouse and tied the knot. I thought things were fine. Then, six months later all hell broke loose."
"What happened?" I looked directly into his eyes.
"I know what happened, but not why. Bottom line, I arrived in Sarasota recovering from wounds to my chest and left arm. Betty slashed me with a knife."
My mouth flew open. "Good grief!"
"I think she flipped her lid. It all started one evening as I stood in the kitchen having a drink while Betty made dinner. We talked about getting a haircut for her thirteen year old son Saul. Then, out of the blue, she started screaming that all I wanted from our marriage was to be a daddy to her two boys, and for someone to take care of my clothes, and how I never really loved her. That sort of thing. I've replayed the scene over and over again in my mind trying to figure out why it happened. I still don't know. She stood at the sink slicing vegetables and waving a kitchen knife in the air like a baton. I told her to put it down before somebody got hurt. She looked wild-eyed and must have gone a little nuts!"
Dick's voice grew a bit louder. I looked around the hotel cafe, feeling uncomfortable. He caught the movement, nodded his head and lowered his voice. "Then she lunged at me with the knife and screamed, ‘Maybe you're the one who should get hurt for a change! Everyone's always getting hurt except you! How come, Dick?’ I couldn't imagine what she had meant by that. I never hurt her or the boys. I stepped back and raised my left arm as she slashed downward. She got me on the upper part of my arm. I held the drink in my right hand and wanted to get rid of it fast, so I pitched it in the sink from across the room and heard it shatter. Just then she brought the knife up again and slashed me across my chest. Thank goodness she made more of a slicing motion than a stabbing one because the cuts were long but not too deep. Blood splattered everywhere. I grabbed her wrist and she dropped the knife. I picked the bloody thing up and threw it in the sink with the broken glass and sat her down on a chair."
"What a mess." My coffee, mostly untouched, grew cold.
"We'd both had a few drinks," Dick continued, "which made it worse. By then she's crying like a baby and saying how sorry she is and how we have to hurry and get me to a hospital. I wrapped some wet towels around my arm, held some more to my chest wound and calmed her down so she could drive. It looked a lot worse than it was, except for the blood...it was all over me, her, the refrigerator, sink, and the kitchen floor. I remember thinking, before getting in the car, that it was a good thing the boys were spending the weekend with their grandparents, so they didn’t have to see all this."
Dick paused to gulp cold coffee. "I felt rotten about getting cut up, that's for sure. I felt even worse for the boys because I knew then and there that I wasn't going to be their dad, not for long anyway. That's the part that really hurt me, because the boys and I had become good buddies. I knew I'd miss them and figured they'd miss me too."
"What a terrible shame."
Dick let out a sigh and stared out the restaurant window for a few seconds in deep thought. "So, Betty was all tenderness getting me into the car to drive me to the hospital. When we got there, I knew a nurse or doctor would have to report it to the police. Obviously, I had knife wounds. We'd have to answer all kinds of questions. At the hospital, the first thing a nurse asked me was, ‘How did it happen’? I told her I had an accident and that was all I was going to say. Betty could say whatever she wanted to. The emergency room doc sewed me up with about three dozen stitches, then gave me a tetanus shot and a couple of prescriptions for pain and infection. About four hours later we went home."
"What a nightmare. Then what?"
"Well, that happened on a Friday evening and Betty's boys were due back home on Sunday night. I wouldn't lie to them and I couldn't exactly tell them that their mother had sliced me up over the weekend. On Saturday morning I took a handful of pain pills and zonked out for about twenty-four hours. Sunday afternoon I dragged myself up, loaded my truck and left Chicago and my second marriage."
"What did Betty do?"
Dick sighed. "She sat down on the porch steps and watched. Every time I'd come out with another load of clothes, she cried again and begged me not to leave. I guess that's why I ended up not taking all my things, just my clothes, some tools and odds and ends. I called my Grandmother on the way and told her what happened. Good old Granny insisted I stay with her here in Sarasota, until my wounds healed a bit. She said I should lie on the beach and soak in the salt waters of the Gulf, and I'd heal faster. Thank goodness for grandmothers."
Dick's face relaxed a bit. He leaned back and looked relieved.
"And are you all healed now?...physically and mentally?"
He looked at me, weighing my question. "Almost," he said, his voice now level, and in a tone that seemed to obey him at will.
Dick's interest in me and my children won over my reluctance to furthering the friendship. I found it gratifying to find a man who seemed so concerned about young people, particularly because of recent problems emerging with my son, Gregg. I shared with Dick that Suzie, now nineteen, lived on her own and appeared to be doing fine. However, struggling with drug abuse and other teenage problems, Gregg had been begging me fo
r over a year to live with his father. Sam had remarried for the third time and gave the impression his life had straightened out. Gregg's Dad insisted he and his new wife led a wholesome life and he no longer had a drinking problem. Feeling fairly comfortable in sending Gregg to live with the two of them, I agreed to let him move to the East Coast of Florida in Lantana. At least for the present.
Less than a year later, however, my teen aged son wrote and asked to return home to Sarasota. I was torn by his request because, while I missed him, I realized the difficulty I would have raising him if he returned with the same, or worse, paschal of problems he had left with. I wrote Gregg asking why he wanted to move back home, but got no response. I wrote again. Still nothing. Perhaps my son had changed his mind.
Coffee conversations with Dick eventually led to casual dinner dates. At times he broke those dates, citing some emergency or other. Still, he appeared solid, responsible, and caring.
"How about dinner Saturday night?" Dick asked. "I'll make reservations at one of our favorite spots on the beach. Eight o'clock?”
"Sounds wonderful."
The phone rang as I dressed. I felt a tinge of disappointment when I heard his voice, thinking he'd called to postpone again, but he sounded cheerful. "Hi. First, I'm not calling to cancel. We're still on, if you want to, that is..."
I laughed in relief. "I'm getting ready as we speak."
"Great. What I wanted to ask you is if you could drop me off back at the hotel after dinner? I'll be wheelless. A friend needs to borrow my truck. He'll drop me at your place at eight if you're willing to use your car tonight."
"Not a problem."
The doorbell rang at eight on the dot. My dinner companion looked marvelous in a double-breasted navy blazer trimmed with gold buttons. His dove-gray trousers matched the soft gray leather loafers he wore. I was sure he could read the pleasure written on my face. "You're looking very handsome tonight, Dick."
"You look fantastic." Dick let out a low whistle as he surveyed me in a cream-colored silk dress set off by a gold belt which circled my twenty-four inch waist. Bone-colored heels increased my height to five-nine, giving my one hundred twenty pound frame a lean, model-like look. Dick's thick auburn and blond hair almost matched mine, which I wore long and free flowing. His suntanned skin intensified the laser-blue color of his eyes. As he closed my apartment door behind us, he murmured, "We make a striking couple."
We stepped out into an evening borrowed from a glossy postcard: Stately royal palms lined the road like sentinels, their branches dancing in the soft spring breeze. The moonlight showered us in beams so bright the headlights of my car looked like alien intrusions in the night.
"Look!" I cried out. "A falling star." I made a silent wish for an answer to Gregg's problems.
At the Ledo Beach restaurant overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, Dick took note of the many long stares we received and the prompt attention from the waiters. Seated at a waterside table, we watched elusive moonbeams dance on the water's surface and bobbing lights of red and blue on anchored sailboats.
Dick smiled. "Scotch and soda?"
I nodded wordlessly. When the waiter brought our drinks our first sips were taken in silence. Wanting to get to know him better, I asked about his background. "Have you been in the service?"
He raised his brows. "Why do you ask?" Without giving me time to reply, he quickly went on. "I spent almost eight years in the Navy, attached to the Seals. We did some fancy underwater demolition work." He paused, his glance moving from my face to the Gulf. "I also did a four year tour in Nam."
I had read somewhere that the Seals were the commando-like arm of the Navy and that only a few psychologically trained men made the grade. I found it fascinating to think that this man sitting across from me possessed yet another dimension. Something in the way his eyes narrowed, something I could not define, made me draw back from asking about Viet Nam. Instead, I smiled and nodded.
His face remained expressionless, his eyes veiled and colder than usual as he looked back at me. Dick finished his drink in one long swallow. "Don't you want to know about Nam?"
"Not if you don't want to talk about it."
The expression in his eyes had not changed, but his body stiffened. "I also worked with the CIA."
My eyes arched in question. I had never known anyone who worked for the CIA, just the FBI. "What did the Central Intelligence Agency have to do with what you were doing in Viet Nam?"
Without answering, he signaled for the waiter, then began talking about problems with the hotel and how changing over to a time-share facility represented a whole different can of worms. He seemed to possess a vast array of knowledge on a variety of subjects. We chatted and laughed throughout the evening.
After dinner, with my shoes in hand, we walked to the edge of the water. The night breeze wrapped my dress around my legs. I could feel him without touching him. Turning, I looked up at him and smiled. He reached down for my hand, and said in a low voice, "Don't you think it's time that we went to bed together?" We were infants that evening, and in love with the emotions that swept over us rather than in love with each other. Ocean foam passed over my feet and in the distance I heard the muted sound of a freighter. I nodded
But on the drive home the Italian worked his way into my thoughts, catching me off guard. Looking quietly out at the darkness, I remembered the fire that had been between us and how it had been both intense and sad. "Let it go," I repeated silently. "There's no way to recapture what we had together. It's gone forever. Become part of this moment. Don't let the past become a hammer that beats the present or future to death."
Once we arrived at my place, I felt nervous, so I turned on soft music and chatted to break the awkwardness. Only one other time in my life had sex been discussed before it had happened. I had been nervous then as well. I went into the bedroom and turned on the bathroom light, leaving the door slightly ajar so that the room would be dimly lit. I kept my bra and panties on as I slipped into bed, then pulled the sheet tightly up under my arms. Dick had no such issues with modesty and quickly stripped down to his skin. The expression on his face looked tender, an expression I found both appealing and somewhat comforting. He climbed in bed beside me. For a while we talked, then tentatively touched, then passionately kissed for a long time.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
An hour later, Dick abruptly bounded out of bed, pulled on his shorts, and paced the bedroom like a caged lion.
"Maybe it's just too soon," I offered, still breathing hard from aroused passion unfulfilled.
"Thanks." In a flash of sudden desolation he moaned, "I don't know what to think."
"We're both nervous." I laughed self-consciously, pulling the sheet over my naked body. "It really is alright," I said, wondering why after having been so at ease together in the office he now seemed like a man sentenced to the gallows.
Looking down at the shadows dancing across my naked shoulders, he signed heavily. "I've never had this problem before. Believe me!"
I got up and slipped on a robe. Conversation ceased. Dick aimlessly wandered around the room for a few more minutes, then began dressing. He glanced at me with a kind of stressed curiosity as I took down slacks and a blouse from the closet. "Don't bother getting dressed, Jen,” he mumbled. "I'll thumb a ride back, or walk."
I shook my head. "It's six or seven miles back to the hotel. I won't hear of it."
Driving him back to the La Casa Hotel, a silent awkwardness filled the car. "I know you'll never want to see me again after this," Dick said in a wee, small voice. "This is terrible, it's never happened like this before, I swear." He paused to look out the window. "You'll have to see me at the hotel, but I'll understand why you won't want to see me again outside of work."
"Dick, I know you're feeling badly, but please don't blow this all out of proportion. You represent a good deal more than a single feat. If it didn't work out the first time, so what? It's not the end of the world.
I can understand how upsetting this can be for you, or for any man. Still, we're friends first, right?"
Dick heaved a sigh of relief and turned toward me as I drove. "Does that mean you're willing to see me again...that you don't hate me?"
"Hate you? Of course I don't hate you. And, sure, I'll see you again."
Exiting my car at the hotel's entrance, Dick came around to the driver's seat, leaned in the open window and kissed me. A strand of hair hung down over his forehead. He looked at me with gratitude. "This won't happen again, Jen. I promise."
I touched his cheek and nodded.
Dick kept his promise.
CHAPTER THREE
Viet Nam and Bill
"Truth -- what we think it is at any given moment of time."
-- Luigi Pirandello
That first night mainly forgotten, Dick and I continued to see each other. The concept of time-share had recently permeated the world of real estate. Business at the La Casa vacillated between swamped and slack, depending on the weather. Often, hours passed between customers. Occasionally, on rainy days, when seven or eight sales people were ahead of me waiting for their "up" turn with a potential buyer, Dick and I would stroll down the beach to a thatched hut bar for a tall, cool, non-alcoholic fruity mixture. One afternoon, we sat perched on stools under the canopy, watching the rainfall around us. I turned to Dick. "I'm getting in trouble for skipping off like this." He glanced at me curiously.
"My boss, Curtis called me to task and said that if I continued spending time with you, I run the risk of losing my job.”
Dick laughed as he swiveled on his bar stool to look at me. "Don't be silly, Jen. They're not going to fire you. You're one of their best sales people. They can't afford to let you go. Besides, they're not even paying your commissions until more construction funds are released."
I nodded in reluctant agreement. "That won't happen until thirty or forty more weekly units are sold."
Dick's shoulders drew back in confidence. "Then stop worrying. It's not going to happen. Relax, Baby."
Tyranny of a Lover...Diary of the Wife of an Undercover informant Page 2
