Ecstasy

by Gwynne Forster

  “I’m Clayton Miles. How do you do?”

  Jeannetta let her gaze move casually over her business-class seatmate, allowed him a half smile and replied, “I’m Jeannetta Rollins.” That accomplished, she returned to crocheting a doll that she’d give to the Edwin Gould Foundation for distribution to homeless and other needy children. She hoped to have completed about twenty of them by Christmas.

  “Is this your first visit to Kenya?”

  It wouldn’t hurt to talk with him, and it wouldn’t interfere with her crocheting. She might even manage to stop thinking of Mason, at least for a while.

  “Yes. I’ve never been to Africa, and I’m looking forward to being there. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be in a country where I’d be one of the majority and where black people governed.”

  He accepted a drink from the stewardess, and she got a good look at his hands. Neat. The hands of a cultured man.

  “Depends on the country. It can be pleasant, and it can be downright awful. Over here, people care about their family and their tribe, and if you’re not a member of either, don’t look for compassion.”

  Curious about the handsome black man, who had the bearing of a university professor, she asked if he was on a business trip.

  “I’m afraid those days of dashing around the world on business are over. I marketed a wrinkle-reducing product for a chemist who claimed to have tested it, but, after women used it for a while, their skin tended to get leathery. The lawsuits ruined my company. Up to that time, I had a real good business producing and marketing all kinds of chemicals. Fortunately, I managed my affairs so that I’m personally all right, but my reputation as a businessman is shot. The company went bankrupt, and it depressed me for months. Then I said, the hell with it—and decided to see the world while I figure out what to do with my life. I’m fifty-two and I’ve no intention of taking a powder. But that’s enough about me—what about you?”

  To her astonishment, she heard herself telling him about her health, Mason, the scheme she’d concocted to gain his help, and the way her hopes had shattered.

  He downed his drink and ate a few Brazil nuts, all the while seeming to dissect what she’d told him.

  “Sure you didn’t overreact? If I were facing what’s before you, I expect I’d have gotten on my knees and begged him.” She wrapped the crochet thread around the doll and put it in the little bag beside her.

  “Maybe that’s because you’re not in love with him.” Heads turned when he whistled.

  “That’s a mean complication. If he cares about you, he’s dealing with a shrunken ego.”

  That’s nothing compared to what I’m trying to handle, she thought. With dinner over and the lights lowered, she tried to sleep, but whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the sadness that marred Mason’s face when he walked out of her room. She feared she’d carry it with her always.

  * * *

  “She skipped lunch and dinner yesterday, and she hasn’t come down for breakfast this morning, and doesn’t answer her phone,” Mason told Geoffrey. “I think I’ll scout the shopping mall next door.” He said it casually so that Geoffrey wouldn’t know how deeply concerned he was about her. He walked outside and, within minutes, his clothes began to cling to his body. Unmuffled sam lams—three-wheeled motorized taxis—roared through the streets, as did old trucks, poorly maintained cars, and more brand-new Mercedes-Benz cars than he’d ever seen. He clasped his hands over his ears when a big jet thundered low overhead and irate drivers honked their horns at the red light. The din nearly deafened him. He searched the mall without luck, figured she might have gone to one of the temples, looked at his map, and struck out for the nearest one. Babies cried, women cooked on the streets over primitive utensils; the smell of assorted strange foods tormented his nostrils, and he looked around for an escape. More of the same. Every place. He crossed the wide street, thinking that he risked his life, dodging among mad motorists hell-bent on winning some imaginary race, walked into the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, a cool, quiet oasis, empty but for himself, and sat on the marble floor. He couldn’t help reminiscing about his life, one that seemed so much longer than it had been. He wasn’t afraid or nervous, but how would he feel when he went back there? He got up and walked toward the exit, the echo of his clicking heels shouting at him from every pillar and nook.

  “May I help you?” a monk in saffron-colored robes asked in a soft voice. Mason thanked him and walked on.

  “I think you are worried,” the man said, quickening his steps in order to keep up with Mason, who stopped and looked at the short priest.

  “Yeah. You might say that,” he replied. They stood at the door of the temple, and Mason dabbed at the perspiration running down his face. How could the man not sweat in this heat? The priest bowed.

  “Do what you have to do. Everything you possess is on loan to you, even your intelligence. Whether your life has any value depends on what you do with it.” He bowed and went away.

  Deeply moved by the man’s concern and his words, Mason failed to pay attention to his surroundings. During his lapse, he felt a hand in his pocket, turned, and saw the thief making off with his wallet. With legs nearly three times as long as the thief’s, catching him proved easy. He retrieved his wallet and headed back to the Oriental.

  “Miss Rollins checked out at eight o’clock this morning.”

  The telephone operator’s words battered his eardrums like the toll of a funeral bell. He phoned Geoffrey.

  “Jeannetta has left the tour. Do you know where she went?”

  “Can’t say as I do. She left around eight this morning, and the reason I didn’t tell you before is ’cause I just couldn’t bring myself to give you that news. I know what she means to you.”

  Mason didn’t want any philosophy and definitely not any sympathy. “I’m going back to New York as soon as Lincoln, my assistant, can fly out here.” Lincoln wouldn’t want to leave his new bride, but Mason didn’t plan to give him a choice. He hadn’t remembered that option until he said the words. He felt almost dizzy as plans and possibilities took shape in his mind. He had to hurry. She hadn’t seen the last of him.

  After lunch, Geoffrey and Lucy joined him in the lounge. Lucy’s sudden motherly behavior with him brightened his mood, and he considered the likelihood that approaching marriage automatically made women think of motherhood. But Lucy Abernathy? The woman had long since kissed sixty goodbye.

  “I’ll leave for New York as soon as I can get a flight. Josh can handle things until my assistant gets here day after tomorrow. So don’t worry.”

  “I won’t,” Geoffrey assured him, then he cocked his head to one side and studied Mason. “How’re you going to find her? She won’t be leaving you any clues.”

  “You think I’ll be looking?”

  A deep frown creased the old man’s face, and then a smile slowly erased it. Geoffrey laughed aloud.

  “Why should you?” Geoffrey asked. “This ain’t the end of the world.”

  Mason didn’t hide his irritation at his friend’s sarcasm. “Don’t tell me it isn’t. Speak for yourself,” Mason muttered.

  Geoffrey laughed louder. “My question was as good as your answer. I’ve been watching people a lot of years, and I know when a man cares for a woman. You go ahead—everybody’ll understand.”

  Mason packed, called Skip and his brother, got a seat on Scandinavian Airlines, and left Bangkok that night.

  * * *

  Jeannetta watched the sunrise from the plane’s window and had to fight a wave of melancholy, until she closed the shade and vowed not to get upset every time something reminded her of Mason. She rode into town with Clayton Miles, and discovered that they’d chosen the same hotel.

  “It isn’t such a coincidence,” he said when she commented on it. “There were only two choices. I’m going to sleep for a few
hours. How about meeting me in the dining room about one?” She nodded agreement. He’d be in Nairobi for a week, and he’d never know how grateful she was for his company.

  * * *

  Mason walked into his apartment building after a twenty-two-hour flight, and found Skip waiting in the lobby. The boy rushed forward and threw his arms around him. He marveled at his feelings of contentment as he held the child. When had he developed this deep, paternal feeling for the boy, this sense that he’d come home to Skip? Inside his apartment, the boy didn’t waste time reporting his news.

  “I’m going to be a doctor, Mason. I made up my mind, because Aunt Mabel is so sick and the stupid doctors can’t cure her. I’m gonna cure all of my patients.”

  Mason sat in the nearest chair. “What did you say?”

  Skip repeated it, bubbling with excitement and oblivious to Mason’s incredulity.

  “I saved up three hundred and twenty-nine dollars toward it, and I want you to help me open a bank account. I have to put away a lot of money, and I wouldn’t trust anybody but you.” Mason listened as the boy poured out his dreams at a rapid rate, unaware of the pain he caused. How could he encourage Skip, when the boy would someday learn that he’d realized his own dream—and walked away from it?

  “You’ve thought this over and you’re sure? You’re not going to change your mind?”

  “I’m sure. It’s all I can think about. I’m gonna work hard, Mason. I just want you to open my account for me.” He recognized the gleam in the boy’s eyes as the child’s vision of his future, and remembered his own dreams. He shook off the inner voice warning him that destiny stalked his heels. To go back...

  “Alright, son. Be over here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. What bank do you want to use?”

  Skip’s face glowed, his lips curved upward to expose even white teeth and, Mason realized for the first time, a dazzling personality. He stroked the boy’s shoulder.

  “Can’t I use yours?”

  Mason nodded. “Now, get going—I’ve got a million things to do.”

  “Why’d you come back so early?”

  “I have an emergency, and I’ll be leaving as soon as I get it straightened out. A couple of days, I’d say. Run along, and tell Mabel I’ll get to see her before I leave.”

  * * *

  “Steve, how are you?” He listened for a minute. “In my apartment. I got back this morning, but I’m leaving as soon as I straighten out a few things. How about lunch?”

  “Fine, we can lunch here in my apartment, all right?”

  Mason agreed, hung up, and called the chief of ophthalmology at New York Hospital. Sweat poured off of him and he paced the floor, to the extent the phone cord would allow, as he listened to the familiar voice. He loosened his tie, ran his fingernails over the back of his neck, and tried to control his breathing. The thudding of his heart reminded him of the surge of adrenaline he used to get when he’d donned his greens and walked into an operating room.

  “Alright. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.” He hung up. He’d done it, and there was no going back.

  * * *

  “What brought you back here in the middle of a tour, Mason? It isn’t like you.”

  “I’m going back to medicine. It was inevitable, I guess.”

  Steve’s fork fell to his plate, his lower lip drooped, and he reached for his glass and gulped down some water.

  “You’re going back to... Are you serious?”

  Mason nodded, and continued chewing his hamburger.

  “Something must have happened on this trip?”

  Mason pushed his plate aside and looked at his benefactor, the man who had sacrificed his own future to help him become a doctor, and who hadn’t shown bitterness when he’d walked away from it.

  “Yeah. Plenty.” He told Steve about Jeannetta.

  “A lot of people must have needed you these past couple of years or so. You love her, I take it. Suppose you can’t find her?”

  “I’ll find her, but I don’t have much time. When that tumor gets a grip, it can be horrendous. I’ve got a date tomorrow morning with the chief. Wish me luck.”

  Steve cleared away their plates and returned with two slices of chocolate icebox pie. “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, Mason. But I’m sorry you’re starting again in these circumstances, because loving her will make it doubly stressful.”

  Mason put a forkful of the pie in his mouth and wrinkled his nose.

  “Man, how can you eat this stuff?” He made himself swallow it. “It was always stressful, but I was so cocky, I didn’t let it bother me.”

  He could sense from Steve’s manner that his brother meant to air what had long been a contention between them.

  “Mason.” He cleared his throat a couple of times. “Mason, Bianca Norris is in good health, and she was out of danger when you called it quits. I’ve tried all this time to understand how you got so upset that you’d give up your lifelong dream just because you made one mistake. Did you think you were infallible?”

  Mason shrugged and strummed his fingers on the table. “You have to understand that people, even my peers and my chief, treated me as if I could do no wrong. If a case was difficult or out of the ordinary, they’d send for Fenwick. And Fenwick always did it, never questioning his ability or the danger involved. But that morning, right in front of everybody... Well, you know the rest. I realized, right along with them, that I was just a man, one who could make mistakes like the rest of them. I couldn’t sleep that night and, when I woke up the next morning, the thought of going in there made me sweat. I didn’t trust myself. In operations that delicate, self-confidence is just as important as knowledge and skill. And those weeks of waiting—the lessons I learned. I had to turn myself around.”

  “And now?”

  “If I don’t try, I can’t live with myself.”

  “I remember thinking, back when you were a small boy, that nothing would stop you—you showed guts and brilliance before you went to the first grade. You’ll do fine in there, like you’d never left.”

  Mason spent the next two days at the hospital witnessing surgeries, operating on dummies, and reacquainting himself with his true profession. His fourth day back in New York, he stopped at his travel agency to check on the tour.

  “A letter from Bangkok arrived for you this morning,” his secretary told him.

  He looked at the return address. Oriental Hotel. His pulse raced, his heart galloped, and his fingers trembled as he tore open the envelope on his way to his private office. He stood with his back to the door and read:

  My dearest Mason, I’m leaving the tour, and don’t worry; I’ll be alright. I know that I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I knew who you were, and I tried many times to tell you my problem and to ask your help, but I always got cold feet because, if you said no, it would be so final. When our attraction for each other grew strong, I feared that if I asked you, you’d think I had manipulated you. In the end, that’s precisely what you thought. I have unshakeable faith in you, but I know that if you took my case and weren’t successful, you’d persecute yourself forever. I care too deeply for you to wreck your life. Love, Jeannetta.

  He walked to his desk, sat down, and reread the letter. He had to... Where was his mind? He punched the intercom.

  “Viv, get me Jeannetta Rollins’s file.” He noted her address, phone number, and next of kin. When her phone went unanswered, he got Laura’s number from information.

  “Rollins Hideaway. Laura speaking.”

  Mason breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Miss Rollins, this is Mason Fenwick, head of...”

  “I know who you are. And if my sister can’t ask you to look after her case, I sure can.”

  “Slow down, will you? She left the tour. Do you know where she is? She shouldn’t be alone in a s
trange place, for one thing, and for another, she needs treatment. I have to find her.”

  “She called from Nairobi day before yesterday, but she didn’t say where she was staying. You can’t find her in a place that big.”

  “I can if you don’t tell her I’m looking for her.” He had been in enough developing countries to be able to trace an upper-middle-class American; in most, only a handful of hotels would appeal to them.

  “Viv, get me a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, and call Sidu Adede and tell him I need a visa right now.” He made a mental list of what he needed to take with him, called Mabel and Steve, and locked his desk. Twenty-six hours later, he stepped off the plane in Nairobi, went to a telephone, and began checking off hotels.

  * * *

  “Suppose this thing runs out of gas?” a young boy sitting behind Jeannetta in the six-seat Land Rover asked his father, as their guide drove them through the game preserve not far from Nairobi. “How would we get past all these lions to get out of here?”

  Clayton Miles turned to Jeannetta. “If I were as pessimistic as that boy, I’d probably end up selling used cars. I lost millions because I trusted a man, but I aim to make a few more millions before I check out of here. Never take adversity lying down, Jeannetta. Get hold of that doctor, and give yourself a chance at a normal life. My guess is he’ll be waiting for you.”

  “I don’t see how I can do that, Clayton. I can’t ask him to mortgage his life for mine. I intend to put him out of my mind and enjoy this vacation.” Her gaze swept the vast plain, and she looked with awe at the endless varieties of birds perched on the tall grasses that waved in the breeze. Her senses were heightened by the sight of the birds enjoying a free ride, while nature protected them from the small animals hidden among the grasses, waiting to prey upon them.

  “When you do leave Kenya, where will you go?”

  She heard his unasked question: How long would she run?

  “Further south. Home. I don’t know.”

  He didn’t speak for a long time, and when she looked at him, she wondered why he’d closed his eyes when they were supposed to be sightseeing. When he spoke at last, she thought she detected a tremor in his voice.