Timothy

by Greg Herren

  I could do it.

  I had just finished putting on a pair of cargo-style shorts and a T-shirt when there was a knock on my door—undoubtedly my breakfast. No time like the present to start being more outgoing, I decided as I crossed the room and pulled the door open.

  It was indeed the room service waiter, with a black garment bag with the Versace logo on it draped over his arm. He smiled, inclining his head as he pushed the cart into the room, placing the garment bag over a chair.

  Curiosity pushed all thoughts of friendliness out of my head.

  “What’s that?” I asked, indicating the garment bag.

  “It was delivered for you last night, sir—the concierge asked me to bring it up with your breakfast,” he replied respectfully as he placed a tray containing a covered plate, a coffee urn, a small pitcher of cream, and silverware wrapped in a linen napkin on the small table next to the chair. With a flourish, he presented me with the check inside a leather portfolio, which I signed. He bowed and shut the door behind him.

  I poured a cup of coffee and sipped it, pondering the garment bag. Surely, it couldn’t be…but what else could it be?

  There was a small envelope affixed to the zipper of the bag.

  I removed it, and used my finger to tear open the flap. There was a folded piece of heavy stock paper inside. I unfolded it.

  Church Mouse,

  I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the liberty to buy these few things for you. I saw how much you liked them, and it seemed silly that you should have to do without them when I can afford to pay for them. It’s the least I can do after you so graciously kept a lonely old man company yesterday. I believe your kindness should be repaid with more kindness.

  I look forward to getting to know you ever better,

  Carlo Romaniello

  I almost burst into happy tears.

  He wasn’t just being nice—he really did like me!

  Unable to stand the suspense any longer, I unzipped the bag. It contained both suits—the charcoal and the black. I took them out of the bag and examined them carefully—the material felt incredible against my skin, and I hung them up in the closet. There were also several shirts in the bag, linen shirts in vibrant colors with matching ties wrapped around the hanger. There was an electric blue shirt with a dark red tie, a dark red one with a blue tie, and a beige shirt with a red-and-blue striped tie. I held each up against me in turn so I could see how they looked in the mirror, and again my eyes filled with tears. I had never before owned anything so beautiful. I hung the shirts up next to the suits and folded the garment bag and placed it on the shelf. I couldn’t stop staring at my beautiful new clothes.

  I took a cup of coffee out onto the balcony and sat down.

  Of course, I didn’t have anywhere to wear these clothes—they were far too nice to wear to the office, and while I sometimes got to trail along behind Valerie at posh events, I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about me wearing clothes that made me look like an invited guest rather than her lackey.

  As I sat there sipping my hot coffee, beads of sweat breaking out on my upper lip and my forehead, I wondered with a start if it was okay to accept the clothes.

  In any number of novels I’d read, women weren’t allowed to accept expensive gifts from men who were interested in them—such gifts were inappropriate. The proper thing to do was to return them with an air of being insulted.

  But that also presumed that Carlo was interested in me romantically—and I wasn’t sure he was. He hadn’t done anything untoward—he’d never touched me except in passing or to get my attention, and when he had, his touch hadn’t lingered. He hadn’t tried to kiss me or to get me up to his suite—and, I remembered with a smile, I still didn’t know which hotel it was at.

  So I couldn’t return the clothes to him even if I wanted to—all I could do was return them to the Versace store.

  I bit my lower lip. Even if I never had the chance to wear them, I didn’t want to part with them. I didn’t care if it meant something bad. I wasn’t going to get rid of them. Period.

  And if yesterday was any indication, he certainly didn’t expect anything in exchange from me.

  Having made up my mind, I ate my breakfast and finished the pot of coffee. I was debating whether I should call to thank him or simply send a text message—I wasn’t sure of the protocol other than I knew I had to acknowledge his generous gifts—when my cell phone started ringing.

  It was Valerie.

  She sounded horrible, her voice raw and throaty, deep with phlegm. She coughed again as she said, “Did you get everything taken care of?”

  “Yes.” Valerie never wanted anything more than yes or no for an answer. I had learned that lesson the hard way on my first day with her.

  “You have cleared my schedule for the rest of the week, of course.” She coughed again, her voice raspy and wheezy. “I’ve just sent you an e-mail with the things I need you to take care of today.”

  “Do you need to see the doctor again?”

  “No, there’s nothing else he can do for me. I have to take all these damned pills and eventually it’ll run its course.” Her voice took on a venomous air. “I’ll just bet that brat on the plane gave this to me. Why the airlines let brats in first class now is beyond me. They might as well…” She went on like this for a few minutes, but I stopped listening. When Valerie was on one of her rants, she didn’t really require my full attention—all I needed to do was agree periodically when she paused to breathe.

  So while she ranted, I got up and walked over to the closet and stared at the clothes again, a delighted smile on my face as I fingered the sleeves of the jackets and the shirts yet again. Versace—I couldn’t believe I owned clothes from Versace.

  I’d certainly come a long way from that small college town in Kansas!

  As I stood there, vaguely aware of Valerie’s whining voice in my ear, I closed my eyes and pictured myself entering a Broadway theater on opening night of some major play, dressed in the black suit with the electric blue shirt on underneath, my hand tucked into the crook of Carlo’s arm. Flashbulbs popped as we walked into the theater lobby, which was crowded with the most fabulous people in Manhattan, dressed to the teeth and dripping with jewels. I received a hug and an air-kiss from a Broadway diva, and said hello to the mayor and his wife as Carlo led me through the glittering throng. He pressed a flute of champagne into my hand and smiled at me. “You’ve made me so happy—I can’t believe how empty my life would be had I not run into you that day on South Beach.”

  Valerie’s rant was winding down, and I was brought back into the present from my wonderful daydream. “Get those things taken care of, and you can have the rest of the day to yourself,” she groused. “At least you’re getting a little vacation time out of this.” She laughed, which triggered another coughing spasm. When she was finished, she said, “And I won’t count any of this against your vacation time. It’s not your fault that rotten little bastard got me so sick.” She hung up.

  “How kind of you to not count this as vacation for me,” I said into the phone, my tone dripping with sarcasm. I tossed the phone onto the bed and sat down at the desk, logging into my computer. I read her e-mail and smiled to myself. Sometimes the fact she really thought I was an incompetent idiot who couldn’t handle the smallest task without having her hold my hand came in handy—the things she needed me to do took me just a little under ten minutes. I went ahead and spent another half hour answering e-mails and made certain that I had, indeed, cleared her calendar for the rest of our stay.

  It was almost nine when I put the tray back out in the hall.

  The entire day stretched out in front of me.

  I picked up my phone, tempted to call Carlo.

  I went back and forth, arguing with myself until I decided there was no harm—I needed to thank him for the clothes anyway.

  He answered on the second ring. “Church Mouse! I was hoping you’d call.” His voice sounded sincere, and I could myself blushing with p
leasure.

  “I wanted to thank you for the clothes,” I said, amazed that my voice wasn’t as shaky as I felt. “That was very kind of you.”

  “It was my pleasure,” he replied. “What you need, Mouse, is someone to take care of you and spoil you.” He lowered his voice—in the background I could hear silverware clinking and the low murmur of people talking. “All night long after I said good-bye to you, all I could think about was how much more fun I’d be having were I with you rather than the bores I was with, and regretting not canceling out on them.” He laughed. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid it might burst through my ribs.

  “In fact, I woke up this morning thanking God that Valerie is so sick—I know that’s terrible, but her bad luck is my good luck, after all, and I won’t dim my joy by feeling bad about her illness. Please tell me you haven’t any plans for the day?”

  “No, I don’t,” I replied. “I was thinking about maybe lying on the beach for a bit this morning and getting some sun, but—”

  “Please come for a ride with me,” he said. “I have something things I need to do, and of course, I’ll treat you to lunch and dinner, if you wouldn’t mind spending so much time with me.”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “Good, you can be my adviser.” He laughed. “If I don’t bore you to death, I’m afraid I just might monopolize you during your stay here. I have some houses I want to look at—I’m thinking about buying a house on one of the islands across the causeway from the city—not here on South Beach, this is a bit too touristy and full of people for me, I want something a little more secluded and—would you listen at me? I’m rambling, aren’t I? You see what you do to me, Mouse? You make me feel as giddy as a schoolboy with his first crush, and I haven’t felt that way in years.”

  At least not since you met Timothy, I thought, and felt my spirits sink.

  I closed my eyes. He was still talking, but I wasn’t hearing anything he was saying. I was acting like a damned fool. Someone like Carlo Romaniello, a wealthy, handsome worldly man like that, would never be interested in me—a rube from Kansas who’d never owned anything nice before, who didn’t know what fork to use at dinner and bought his clothes secondhand or from a discount store. I didn’t know a cheap wine from a good one.

  And I certainly wasn’t attractive enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Timothy Burke.

  “I’ll be in front of your hotel in about ten minutes,” he was saying. “Can you be there by then?”

  I swallowed. Even if he just felt sorry for me, I enjoyed being in his company—and that was enough. “Yes,” I replied, opening one of the dresser doors and pulling out a pair of khaki shorts and a navy blue T-shirt. “I’ll be there.” I disconnected the call.

  When I came out the front doors of the hotel five minutes later, he was there, standing next to a red convertible Mustang with the top down. He waved, smiling. He was wearing a pair of khaki shorts himself, and a ribbed red tank top. Curly black hairs stuck out of the neck, and it showed off the strong muscles of his arms and shoulders. I opened the passenger door and sat down, buckling the seat belt as he started the car.

  And we did end up spending most of the week together. He took me to the dog track, where he lost a lot of money but I had a run of luck that saw me close out with over three hundred dollars in winnings. He took me to watch jai alai, which I never did quite understand, despite his patient explanations. We shopped in boutiques and stores—but I refused to allow him to buy me any more clothes. “You spent enough on the ones you already bought me,” I protested; even as he pouted in disappointment, I remained adamant. He looked at yachts, and we went out for rides with salesmen out onto the sparkling green waters of the bay and the Intracoastal Waterway.

  As the week progressed, I began to wonder why he never tried anything with me. He never tried to kiss me or hold my hand, or made any sort of move on me—or perhaps he had but I was too clueless and inexperienced to know what he was doing.

  One afternoon he took me on a picnic to a secluded private island, where we spent the afternoon relaxing on the sand and in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. I, of course, wore my body-disguising cheap blue board shorts, but Carlo wore a white bikini that left very little to the imagination. I couldn’t help myself—I kept sneaking glances at his strong chest with the dark black hairs, his muscular legs, his flat stomach.

  He caught me looking at him and smiled at me. “Do you like what you see, Mouse?”

  Mortified that he’d caught me, I tried to think of something to say, but as usual, my mouth just opened and closed as my face reddened.

  He threw back his head and laughed, grabbing me by the hands and pulling me to him. “You are the most adorable thing,” he said, and he kissed me.

  And there, on towels spread out over white sand on a private island in the middle of a hot afternoon, I finally lost my virginity.

  The next day was my last full day in Miami. Valerie was already starting to feel better and was really looking forward to returning to New York. By now she’d stopped blaming the sniffling child from the flight down and had decided that actually all of Miami was at fault. Once she’d hung up, Carlo called—he was downstairs.

  When I opened the convertible’s passenger door, he handed me a single long-stemmed red rose, and I could feel myself coloring again.

  “I hope you never stop blushing,” he smiled at me as I buckled my seat belt. “It’s adorable.”

  We spent the morning driving from island to island, being led by a real estate agent named Ethel Goldstein through incredibly beautiful houses with landscaped lawns, sparkling blue swimming pools, and towering palm trees, valued at such amazing out-of-my-league prices that I was almost afraid to breathe the air inside of them.

  Ethel was a short, round woman with jet-black hair that had to be dyed and a thick Jersey accent. She was impeccably dressed in a dusky rose business suit with a white blouse underneath. I liked her—she seemed to have a good sense of humor but wasn’t pushy in any way, and she was quite knowledgeable about the amazing palazzos she was showing us through.

  Carlo was completely at ease with her, just as he had been in the shops and galleries the day before, asking questions about things that were complete mysteries to me. I wandered about the houses in awe, stunned by the size of the rooms and the views of the ocean or the Intracoastal Waterway. Carlo didn’t seem to like any of them, though, and every time we got back into the car to drive to the next one, he would dissect all the things he’d found wrong with them—and would ask me for my opinion—and of course, I would try to say something intelligent but usually wound up just saying something like “it seemed more like a museum than a house.”

  At the last house, a huge place made of stone surrounded by lush vegetation, palm trees, and elephant ferns, I wandered out onto a wide gallery that opened off the master bedroom suite, with a stunning view of the green-blue ocean. I leaned on the railing, watching sailboats and yachts cut through the low waves. The sky was a stunning shade of blue, and it was getting hotter the later it got.

  “Imagining what it would be like to live here?” Carlo asked, leaning on the railing next to me. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “I can’t imagine what that would be like,” I answered honestly.

  “If you had to pick any of these houses, which would you choose?”

  “None of them,” I replied quickly.

  “You didn’t like any of them?”

  “They were all beautiful,” I said without looking at him. “But none of them felt like a home. Maybe it’s because they’re empty, but they all felt kind of sterile to me.”

  “Interesting,” he said, turning and leaning back against the railing. “I wonder if you would think Spindrift feels sterile?”

  “I—”

  “You should come to Spindrift sometime,” he said, a shadow crossing his face. “You would be the perfect antidote for wh
atever ails the place.” He shook his head. “I can barely stand to be there anymore.” He lit a cigarette—even though the agent had earlier warned us not to smoke on the property. “In the last year, I’ve spent so much time traveling—going anywhere to get away from the house and all the memories.” He shook his head. Hr looked at me, an eyebrow going up. “Yes, you just might be what the house needs, Mouse. What do you say? Will you come be my guest there?”

  I wanted to say yes, but stopped myself.

  “Well?” he prompted.

  My fears seemed too foolish to say out loud.

  “I don’t have much free time,” I finally blurted out, my face reddening. “Valerie keeps me pretty busy.”

  “Oh, surely even she has to allow you to take a holiday now and then? A long weekend?” He smiled. “Or are you afraid I might take advantage of you?”

  “No, no—I wouldn’t mind that at all, I mean—” I said, stopping myself when I realized what I’d said. Stricken, I stood there, horrified, wishing I could bite off my own tongue or somehow could just disappear in a puff of smoke.

  He smiled and took my hand. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said softly. “I would hate to think I caused you any difficulty.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Mouse, now that I’ve found you, I’m not so sure I want to part with you.”

  “This has been wonderful,” I said, turning back to stare at the ocean. “I’ve had the best time, Carlo—this has been the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I wish—I wish it didn’t have to end.”

  “It doesn’t have to end, does it, Mouse?” He sank down to one knee and smiled up at me. “In fact, I know I don’t want to part with you. Call Valerie and quit your job, and marry me.”

  I gaped at him, wanting more than anything to say yes, but not certain he wasn’t just teasing me or playing some kind of cruel joke. Every night when he dropped me off at my hotel, I’d dreamed of this.

  But I was so used to my dreams not coming true, I couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

  “I know I’m being impetuous, but you make me feel young again. You make me feel alive, and now that I know I can feel this good again, I don’t want it to stop, either. Marry me, Mouse.”