by O. L. Casper
How is life in the dacha? I’m sure it’s blowing your mind. As for me, what can I say? Our last night was among the most spectacular of my life. But perhaps it’s better if we never speak of it, as not to diminish the quality. I’m very happy for you and your new life. May you receive all that your wonderful big heart deserves and then some! I’ll visit you in a week. I can’t wait to continue our affair – seaside.
Tears filled my eyes. I don’t know whether they were of joy or sorrow, but I needed sleep badly. I turned off the bedside lamp and rested my eyes.
The sound of shattering dishes greeted my entrance to the dacha. It was before six a.m., and Anna was there to greet me with the baby in a downstairs parlor. The room was unique in my experience because it gave the distinct impression of being in the middle of an Amazonian rainforest. The trees and flora were so thick I could scarcely see the walls and the high, domed ceiling was painted like a cloudless sky. There were streams running to and fro between plants and sand-covered walkways. It was like a scene out of Oliver Stone’s Alexander after the conqueror had defeated Darius and entered his Babylonian palace. In my imagination I saw a harem of beautiful Persian women ready to meet any demand, to fulfill any desire, at the drop of a hat.
In reality I heard shouting and more crashing of china coming from the next room. For a split second I saw Isabella’s face before she slammed the door to the adjoining dining room. And in that moment, I felt sympathetic toward her. Her face was red, all flush with tears, and she seemed short of breath.
“She’s fighting with Mark,” Anna said.
“What about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Take the baby. I have work to do.”
She handed me the baby and abruptly left the room. I cradled little Savannah in my arms. She was very tired, her eyes rolling back up into her head and shutting as she tried to force them to stay open. This was a baby who did not like to go to sleep. After she did go to sleep, I surveyed the room, walking around looking at the various streams and small waterfalls. So, this is what people do who have exorbitant amounts of money. They indulge every single architectural fantasy they ever had—if they’re so inclined. This room in particular looked as though it was something that might have come out of a disturbing dream.
Pretty soon the crashing of dishes came to an end followed by silence in the next room. Still cradling Savannah, I leaned against the door to the dining room. I couldn’t hear anything at first. Then slowly, spread out then coming closer together, I heard a sighing intermingled with a moaning. I thought it was Isabella sobbing on the floor, but then I heard a thumping sound—like a soft tapping on a wooden cabinet with perhaps an open palm—and I knew what was happening: makeup sex. I listened perhaps for a moment longer than I should have till I felt self-conscious and wanted to go somewhere else. Also, there was the fear of discovery. Before I left, I pictured what was going on in the next room. I couldn’t help it. But more than that, I wondered what must be going through that woman’s head as I saw more of what I consider an increasingly bizarre relationship between two very different people.
I took the baby upstairs to a room with a crib. I placed her gently in it. I put a blanket over her and turned on the ceiling fan. Under the chopping whir of the spinning fan blades, I opened a set of French blinds to find a view of the beach. Overhead the sky was clear, but in the distance there were heavy clouds brewing, looming over the ocean.
I heard the sound of a door opening downstairs and cautiously treaded to the corridor. Below, I saw Stafford tucking in his shirt and putting his belt back through the buckle. Fucking pig, the first thought to pass through my mind, was followed by a wave of intense desire which I decided to suppress as quickly as possible. I seriously doubted I would ever have a chance with him and I didn’t really want to get involved with a married man. I like to think I possess some of the old school ethics and morality that so many of my generation were so quickly losing as they plunged headlong into a society that was becoming so destitute it bordered on depravity. As I pondered a world quickly going to the devil, I watched someone I thought must have some kind of pact with the Evil One to have achieved the kind of material success he had so early in life. What are his thoughts about business and life in general? What attitudes led to his great wealth? What connections? How much of it’s inheritance?—and on and on like this, till I was overcome by the absurdity of these thoughts.
After a moment he looked directly at me. I gave a start, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. He must have felt me watching him. A chill moved along my spine and then was vanquished by a knowing grin. It’s a face I’d thought perfect while expressionless, but the smile made it only more beautiful. Did he know I’d heard him? The thought sent waves of embarrassment through me. I blushed and looked away. Did he know what I was thinking? This was terrible. I wished I’d never walked to that doorway to see him.
I thought he was about to say something, but the moment passed and perhaps he thought better of it. He walked away, out of sight. I returned to the side of the crib, the baby was fast asleep, snoring. I looked out the window and wondered how I would ever live this down, how I would ever be at ease in his company again. Knowing he knew that I knew what he’d done, and that it amused him. It would have been less uncomfortable if it’d just been sex I’d overhead, but having seen clearly the emotional torment that woman had suffered before he’d capped it off with a solid screw made it much harder. That sonofabitch who could so get me into a corner with embarrassment and dominate me with a smile. In our unspoken converse, I felt I was put in a trap and controlled by him. As my employer he did have a type of authority over me, but now it was something else too. Something almost intangible but a thing of deep feeling and assumed importance. Of course it was sexual, but I did not want to cast it in those terms, and, for now, I didn’t even want to admit to its existence. And so it hovered at the back of my mind, gaining even more power over my fleeting soul than it would have if I’d simply confronted, acknowledged, and moved on.
The pictures that came into my head were as uncomfortable as they were stimulating: her hands grasping the edges of that long dining room table, holding on for dear life, one side of her face pressed against the gleaming surface as she panted, pants down, ass in the air over the edge of the table: large, glistening, smooth skin, as it was thrust into. Or her on the floor. Her hands folded where the fingers started, over the edge of the countertop, as she held on dearly once more. Legs spread on the floor. Hips lifted in the air. Her head turned again to one side.
At twilight, as the evening redness in the west faded rapidly and I lay on my new bed, I received an email from my father. Concerned but pretending to be casual, he told me in his nonchalant way that home life out west was as it always had been. He wondered how I was. It was not longer than two lines and was that dry. I wrote a couple of prospective lines, ended up deleting them, and logged out.
There came a knock at my door. I got out from under the covers and nervously slipped on my bathrobe. I imagined it would be Anna with some sort of message about the following morning. Therefore I was embarrassed to find that it was Stafford, with a few too many buttons unbuttoned on his shirt for my comfort, and, probably unknowingly, his fly unzipped. I instinctively pulled my robe tighter around my chest. I looked him in the eye, then away as it became somewhat intense and I didn’t want to help him to understand my thoughts any more than he probably already did.
“Sophia.” He grinned.
“Mr. Stafford, what can I do for you?”
“Please, call me Mark. Or anything else you might like to call me. But not ‘Mr. Stafford.’”
How about fucking bitch?
“Mark, how are you this evening? What’s up?”
He looked at me in a way that at once undressed my soul—or so I thought—a look much more possessive and unnerving than one that merely undresses the body. I made myself remember that owning places, things, and probably people is what he does, perhaps all he does or know
s. And ownership is as foreign a concept to me as it was to the Native Americans. I don’t possess anything, things possess me, and so, as much as possible, I shun them. That’s probably why I never did anything in finance, because I find the attitudes of all those people abhorrent.
And now this horrid man stood in front of me. Why hadn’t he sent Anna? A half-dozen thoughts passed through my head simultaneously—he’d come to lie to me about what happened with some silly explanation, to welcome me and apologize, to tell me about what he thought my job should entail, to tell me his wife was a psychotic whore, to say how attracted he was to me but that it must not lead to anything. Or that he was here to ravage me, rip my robe right off my body and—or that he was here to kill me…I instantly had a vision of my crimson organs decorating the walls, him desperately scrubbing at them, in a vain attempt to destroy the evidence, though, if it came to that, he would probably get someone else to clean up. Startled by the violent strangeness of my thoughts, I directed my attention to him.
“Something’s come up. We’re heading to the Bahamas early in the morning. The plane leaves at six. I’d appreciate if you’d be ready to travel and at the house no later than five. Can you do that?”
“No problem. Is everything alright?”
His eyes flashed with barely discernible fear. I could hardly guess at the reason. But if I hadn’t seen it, I would have smelled it. I should’ve smelled it earlier, but I was too caught up in all that was Mark Stafford to have noticed.
“Nothing—nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine.” This response made me all the more skeptical. For all his apparent financial wizardry, it was downright mysterious that he hadn’t the modesty to hide his outright lying. Or was it a trick? To spark uncertainty in his audience, to cause concern.
“It’s a business meeting. A partner has flown in from London for an impromptu meeting—all uninteresting. Tedious in the extreme. Routine.” For a man for whom obviously nothing was routine…it prompted more curiosity in me, but I didn’t want to prompt any more in him, so I let it go at that.
“I see. I’ll be ready.”
I think he wanted a different response for he looked at me expectantly and wasn’t much pleased by this. Just as earlier in the day, he looked as though he was about to say something but in the last moment changed his mind. Then he looked apologetic. He turned and left. I watched him walk away in near darkness. The pathetic millionaire. Compared with my earlier interaction with him, this was a towering success. Once again I was in control and I would work hard to keep it that way.
Chapter 2
Enter Paradise
Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)
July 12, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
The first image that comes to mind is of the sprawling Atlantic Ocean stretched out before us as we (the Stafford clan and attendants) floated several thousand feet above in a two-tone Gulfstream Jet, the shadow of which I frequently watched through the window gliding along the dark waters below. I remember the archipelago appearing ahead of us, as viewed from the cockpit, in early morning fog. The islands seemed to be floating above the ocean magically as if they were some mysterious airborne kingdom, a place which I imagined held the keys to an ecstatic bubble of good living, cut off from and unattainable in other parts of the world. The first thing that struck me about Eleuthera Island from the sky was the tremendous flatness of it, that and its tremendous length (110 miles) as it extended south past the edge of the horizon. We landed at the tiny North Eleuthera Airport just before eleven. The air outside was unseasonably crisp. The openness of the landscape impressed me as I stepped off the jet, I could see why it was called Eleuthera (from the Greek word eleutheros, meaning free). On the runway we boarded a convoy of Mercedes Benz limousines, with windows that I thought were tinted as dark as they possibly could be, and headed east along Queen’s Highway. I watched the jungle pass by with increasing speed as we traveled en route to a beach Anna said was called Anse Lazio. According to her it was one of the world’s most beautiful beaches. The Staffords had a country estate at Anse Lazio along with a strip of private beach. As I watched the dense jungle, devoid of any sign of human interference, an unsettling feeling of the tremendous isolation of the place came over me. It was a hard feeling to shake and I began to think about how far from any kind of a paradise this island really was. What a let down.
I asked Anna why we hadn’t passed through customs or had to show our passports to anyone. Apparently, it was because Mark Stafford had a “special relationship” with the Bahamian government allowing him and his entourage to skip certain formalities on entering the country. I found this rather odd and decided I would look into it more fully later on.
Soon the convoy passed onto a white sandy road that led deeper into the jungle. We passed through a heavily secured gate surrounded by a high stone wall covered in overgrowth, and, after some moments passing through thicker and thicker jungle, we came to an extraordinary sight.
The first I saw of the Eleuthera Island villa was the massive, pyramid-shaped roofs of various buildings poking out from the tropical foliage. The vehicles ascended a hill and circled the villa from a hundred or so feet above it. From there I got the best view of the place. Spread out across three or four acres, surrounded by flowing waterfalls, intertwining with a network of streams and fountains, it contains a variety of vast overgrown gardens. Up to this point in my life, it marks unsurpassed grandeur. The main house itself is some 24,000-square-feet. In elegant Spanish-style architecture, apart from the roofs, it’s Kubla Khan’s Xanadu, Genghis Khan’s Forbidden City. I imagine it must be Mark Stafford’s Valhalla.
“This is the favorite of vacation homes,” Anna whispered to me. “The one they come to most.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s unbelievable.”
“I do not like this one all that much. It’s too huge and there is so much to do. Much too much.”
“But you like the beach?”
“Anse Lazio is a special beach. Like magic. I like the time off here very much. You will see. You will like it too.” She smiled as she said this, her big black eyes warmed to me, and I wondered whether it was a hint of things to come, or was this impression just down to my fanciful imagination?
The motorcade pulled around a towering fountain, under an overhang, and up to the front of the place. Porters came from tall arched doors, collected stacks of travel bags, and removed them to the house. Isabella took the baby in a stroller, and Anna was tasked with showing me around the impressive estate.
Surprisingly, much of the house was empty—many rooms completely empty but for some crates and boxes, and an occasional cobweb-covered mirror. In these rooms dust seemed as plentiful as air.
“Why are there so many empty rooms?”
“There are just too many rooms. With a small family that travels much and doesn’t come often to this place—that’s just what happened.”
“You’d think they’d have it decorated and filled.”
“I think the big man likes it this way. It is perhaps symbolic to him or traditional.”
“Symbolic of what? Traditional how?”
“In many of the greatest mansions and castles you see in Europe, many of the rooms are left empty by the owners. That is why I say traditional. As to the reasoning behind it, I don’t know.”
“I’ve been to Europe once, for six months. But I didn’t see very much of any castles or mansions, except for the outsides of a few, at a distance.”
“If you are with this family for long—and I have a feeling you will be—you will become familiar with many mansions and castles in Europe, as well as in other places.”
“I’m flattered, but why do you say you have a feeling I will be with them long? I don’t think Isabella likes me and Mr. Stafford acts peculiar around me, to say the least.” I called him Mr. Stafford in our exchange because I didn’t want to intimate to her, or anyone in earshot, even slightly, my conflicted feelings about the man. And I wanted to see how she
reacted to my calling his behavior “peculiar around me” as perhaps a way to find out if he was unfaithful to Isabella without actually saying it. I’m still very new and don’t want the fact that I think about these things to fall on the wrong ears.
“Mrs. Isabella likes no one. Between us, that is one silly cow. I have no idea what Mr. Stafford sees. I don’t ever know. As far as how he acts with you—” She shrugged. “He is a private man, and he doesn’t let himself be known to many. Keeps himself to himself. He appears to have a secret network of friends he relies on in business, but I don’t even know them. I’ve never seen them. They are so secret.”
With this last, I forgot all about Stafford’s peculiar way with me and focused on the strangeness of a man who would not even let his business associates be known to one of his chief assistants. Another thing to check up on in my later snooping.
“I’ve been with them eight years and I know nothing of his business. They say it is hedge funds and—what is it…?”
“—Derivatives.”
“Yes, and I don’t believe it. It was something else all along. I can’t know what. Too much secrecy. It scares me sometimes to think about it.”
“Don’t let yourself get carried away. Just because something is secret doesn’t mean it’s bad.” What I was saying, however, ran contrary to my inmost feelings. Just like the way I only infrequently made eye contact with her and didn’t really look at her body, as though her prettiness and physique were not of interest to me. I didn’t know if she liked women in that way—or even me in particular—and, anyway, I wanted to maintain a professional relationship with her as I would have to work with her for the foreseeable future.
Though I did occasionally get a glimpse of more than just her eyes as she led me through those vast empty rooms with unimaginable vistas of snow white beaches and crystalline sea. I was entranced by her openness and her fluid way of speaking. Though obviously foreign, she has a way of communicating images and impressions more clearly than most people I’ve met whose first language is English.
