by O. L. Casper
I wonder if I wouldn’t feel the same with any woman. The Durant woman makes me curious in this regard. All women are sweet and unassuming when you first meet them, when the infatuation begins, but just as soon it’s all over they are bitchy and complain about everything and think they own you. But perhaps Durant is so intelligent that at least, even when she did become all these things that every woman becomes, she would be bossy in a way that made sense—in order to get practical matters resolved, she would complain about things that are worth complaining about, and she wouldn’t have any ideas about ownership any more than I do. But of course I’m just romanticizing the unknown. Durant is an unknown entity, no matter how much I might want that to change.
Now I’m thinking about the last time I had sex with Isabella. She won’t ever get all the way undressed. Doesn’t like for me to see her belly button. She shouldn’t wonder why I find the whole affair of making love to her such an extraneous thing. I do it probably with as much contempt and disgust as she does. I feel on these grounds alone that I’d be forgiven for whatever other monkey business I might get up to. I’ll have to be sure and delete all these notes later. Once I’m through venting.
I’m going to meet the Durant girl again. With her, the conversation’s never lacking. It’d be interesting to see what she’s like in other departments besides talking. If anything comes of it. I’ll contact her tonight and perhaps we can meet if she’s not busy.
Sophia Durant’s Diary
August 5, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
Stafford’s notes to self proved more worthwhile than I’d expected. Not only did they go into his intimate thoughts in some detail, but they were also fairly well written. He was expressive and there was an inner life as I had suspected. I didn’t agree with everything he thought and felt, but at least it was honest and somewhat consistent. Of course there were a few things I didn’t understand. Things at the heart of my curiosity that I would have to clarify through a little more serious detective work. All this talk of Zippos, bubblegum sticks, and the other strange phrases I would have to delve into more deeply to figure out. I believed these were what you might call semagrams—words used to cloak the true meaning involved from any readers or listeners other than the person or persons intended to receive the message. For example, James Bond, when talking to M, used semagrams to convey whether or not he had racked up any kills or done anything else during his mission that might jeopardize himself or the mission if outside listeners were to interpret the true meanings behind the words.
Apart from the mystery of the initial paragraphs, I was surprised to see how he thought of me, what things interested him about me and so on. I found his attitude toward Isabella funny in the extreme and I laughed out loud on more than one occasion while reading his private thoughts. On the other hand, I didn’t appreciate the way he thought I put up so-called social barriers, and how he seemed to think of me as some kind of socially stunted introvert. But he did think I’m intelligent. He even mentioned the word infatuation. Things are on the right track.
I closed the MacBook, satisfied for now with what I had seen. I watched a scene toward the end of The Big Sleep as I drifted off while there was still a hint of purple twilight outside. On the whole, my life seemed as confusing and distorted as the plot of the Bogart movie I was watching. Nothing seemed to make sense. It seemed that the glaringly obvious was not at all obvious to me, as though I was the only one lost and confused by what everyone else in the world saw clearly and simply. There was a sense of frenzied excitement to every aspect of life now I had never before experienced. With this thought I drifted into a contented sleep.
Sophia Durant’s Diary
August 7, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
I held Savannah in my arms in the golden dawn light. I had a bottle formula she had sucked down two ounces of before smiling and drifting into an easy sleep. She smiled often, a happy baby. I believe this is a great part of my attraction to her—her easygoing, happy nature. That and her exquisite beauty. I felt that she was my own in the times I was with her, even if I was only her nanny. It is difficult to describe the feelings involved other than to say when she is in the room it is brilliant daylight and whenever she is gone it’s forever darkest night. I carried Savannah off to her cradle and set her down to sleep in peace.
I had borrowed Anna’s iPad and was reading some news about private detective work in London. I’d found the article highlighted on an app called Flipboard. It was mostly about suspecting wives tracking adulterous husbands with GPS devices that attached to their cars, but there was one point of interest. In the article I found the name of a company in London that sells spy gear to the general public. Lorraine Electronics of 716 Lea Bridge Road, London. I went to the webpage and read through the Listening and Tracking page and the Sound Recording Systems page. There I found a small Olympus recording device that was ideal for my purposes. I found corresponding miniature microphones that were battery operated, miniscule, and could be scattered about a location, apparently capturing and transmitting crisp sound in a radius of up to thirty feet. I copied the URL and emailed it to myself. Later I ordered the Olympus and a set of tiny microphones in a way that I was sure no one would ever know. It’s true I can rig pretty much any spy device it’s possible to rig through a laptop or mobile phone, but I felt my objective required extra measures, capabilities not available with a smartphone or MacBook. If I was going to subvert Stafford to a place under my thumb then information was king. And the information gathering was becoming like an unquenchable thirst. An addiction.
I sat on the floor, drinking espresso and reading an article on Flipboard, when Anna found me with a concerned look on her face.
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Gardner is returning today, sometime this evening.”
“Isabella?” I said more to myself than to her.
“Yes. We are behind on so much. The staff has so much to do to catch up. Can you help us?”
“Of course. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Thank you. At least while Savannah’s asleep you can help.”
I handed her the iPad and stood up.
“Mr. Stafford’s also returning this morning and they say he is not happy.”
“Some more bad business…”
This was an afterthought.
“Excuse me?”
Anna gave me a stern look, like I had no right to be prying into Mr. Stafford’s affairs.
“Nothing,” I said and coughed. “I’m going upstairs to shower and get dressed and ready for the day.”
“Go ahead, Sophia, but hurry.”
As I headed upstairs, I wondered what had crawled up her skirt. I’d never seen Anna like this before. There had to be something else to it. I wondered if it could have something to do with the fact that she knew there was something going on between Stafford and me.
In the room I booted up the MacBook and laid it on the bedside table. Then I undressed in front of the mirror. I turned and looked out the window, thinking that if there were any gardeners close by they could probably see me. I cupped my breasts, walked over to the window and looked out, but there was nobody there. Passing the bedside table, I double-clicked the Minerva icon before going into the bathroom and running the shower. In the bathroom mirror I saw that my five o’clock shadow had flourished and become a full on V-shaped fern gully. Once in the shower I took out my razor and rectified the situation, watching the hair scatter in the water and run down the drain.
Drying off in the room, I saw that Minerva indicated a new entry in Stafford’s notes. It was dated yesterday.
Mark Stafford’s Notes
August 6
I’m sitting out by the beach under an umbrella, sipping apple juice as the sun goes down before us. Isabella’s coming home tomorrow. She has been away long enough and was sweet enough on the phone that I actually feel something about her arrival tomorrow. I’ve felt weak for the sins I’d committed while she’s been away. I want to repent to her
and make things right again. These are new ideas to me, but I’m curious to see where they will lead. I’m not the type to see sorrow or repentance as weakness, but instead I see them as strengths. They are just strengths I never felt much inclined toward. Until now. Am I softening up at last? Doubtful. Perhaps the new girl has opened some emotional valve in me that has gone heretofore unseen. A comforting sea breeze sweeps over me at these thoughts and I feel the universe telling me something. I feel a renewal of spirits, the kind of feeling one generally only gets in the spring. These feelings might also spring from a new infatuation, but a new infatuation with whom? Isabella, the new girl, or someone else? Confusion is nothing new to me. It seems to me, you’re more and more confused by life until one day you die of it.
Sophia has been amazing, inspiring, refreshing, enlightening—when it came to company and conversation and definitely the other thing. That part of our encounter that had lasted for hours the last time with hardly a word. But all that did was make me want to talk to her more. It made me want to unravel her mysteries, know her inmost thoughts, her core. There’s the feeling that abundant new worlds are opening up to me, that the white hot flame of inspiration burns in her, that meeting her was reminiscent of some strange fear-inspired childhood dream—all this hits me like a ton of bricks. The company that surrounds me is a million miles away with their talk of women and yachts, jewelry and fast cars. As I further withdraw into silence, the old geezers get up one by one and leave me. Most of them are older than me. Fifties and sixties. They’ve had more time to make their money, but they don’t have near as much. And what does it all really mean; not a whole hell of a lot. Fuck all, as Gerry would say.
Now I’m to have what could very well be my final meeting with him tomorrow. I’ve decided not to meet him in the same place for security reasons. I go over all the reasons for our meeting tomorrow. After all the fuckups he’s committed the bastard doesn’t have any reason to breathe in my eyes. He’s screwed so many of us and eaten our money and now it looks as though he’s about to screw me again. All the orders were a mess. Details were deliberately obscured. Gerry can tell me which orders are in play, but when it comes to the details, which I’ve asked him about again and again on various occasions, he invariably mixes up the facts. Makes me wonder if there are any facts at all. Or if it’s all made up. I’m not a killer but he makes me want to become one. No, leave that mess for somebody else, I tell myself. Let that be on someone else’s head.
And then my mind inevitably turns back to Sophia. Thinking back on the drive to the waterfall and the passionate encounter that followed, I wonder if she’s some sort of witch. Remembering certain instances under the waterfall in the fading dusk light, I begin to think that what happened has slipped beyond my control. She’s doing things to my head. It feels like an irresistible force that’s greater than me. This is when the obsession starts. When this insanity of not being able to divert the attention away from her overtakes. Not being able to take a breath without seeing her in the mind’s eye. Even though no one will ever read this and I will delete it after reading it over in the morning, I feel embarrassed at even admitting it to myself. But I also feel that perhaps by admitting to it here I will finally, once and for all, be able to let it go.
I put off seeing Sophia, and I put it off. True, I have much work to do, seemingly around the clock, and that does occupy much of my thoughts. Sophia takes up a lot of the rest of my thinking. Before I go to bed at night, my mind rolls around to her like clockwork. When I wake up, she is the first image that comes to mind. Even during the gaps in my sleep, when I wake up thinking over a problem in the middle of the night, I always eventually think I see her standing over my problem, smiling at me like she has the answer and I never will. Are these thoughts of one slowly losing his grip? The beginnings of an ensuing madness? An ultimate corruption of a mind that tried so hard for so long to remain level enough to accomplish the nerve-racking tasks that have led old Mark to this empty plateau of materialism. Of course I don’t really mean that, I am only trying to impress her with these thoughts, which are normally so foreign to my nature. I love to dominate and control, but I sense these instincts even more strongly in her than in myself and I feel the instinctive urge to bow to them. It is like an uncontrollable magnetic force that makes me feel this way, but I will not submit. Sophia, I will reverse this trend and overcome you. Of course I know it is a sign of my delusions when I begin to think anything about sweet Sophia is willfully attempting to dominate me. There’s nothing in her at all remotely capable of these thoughts and feelings. It’s me projecting myself onto her. I’ve got to stop. And with that, dear diary, I’m signing off.
Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)
On finishing the entry I immediately went back to look for the prior entry I had read a few days before. It wasn’t there. I had it backed up on the MacBook of course, but it had been deleted from his phone. I looked for any previous entries. There were none. So Stafford was a cautious man who had reason to believe others might be spying on him. This made me all the more curious about his activities. He was having a meeting today shortly after he got back. I wished the Olympus digital recorder and mics had already arrived. I sat on my bed, looking around the room at nothing in particular, and wondered how the spying might commence. I dried my hair with a towel and brushed it.
A rapid tap-tap-tap came at the door. I looked at the door with a start, then, gathering my senses, I stood up. It was probably Anna coming to get me to hurry up. Still fully nude, I cracked the door and peered out. A tired, worn out face, with the stubble of a few days growth and red, bleary eyes peered back at me.
“Mark. I’m not wearing anything. Let me close the blinds.”
I went to close the blinds. Butterflies exploded on upward trajectory in my stomach. I turned on a solitary desk lamp and let him in.
He tried to concentrate on my eyes at first, but this gave way to an inspection of my body, head to toe, with a bit more concentration on my heaving chest and the place where my thighs met. I felt a few drops creep down my thighs. I didn’t know if I was somewhat aroused or if it was water from the shower. Right now, sex was the furthest thing from my mind. For some reason I was shocked to see him, but I didn’t care if he got an eyeful of my full frontal. He’d seen it all before. And I knew this would stimulate him further. Every moment, seeing me like this and us not in throes of passion would make him crazy for it.
“Forget something?” I asked, nonchalant.
“No…I, uh…just got back. I wanted to see if…uh…maybe you wanted to go for lunch this afternoon…after I finish up with a meeting.”
I knew him so much more now, I felt a good deal of the mystery was lifted so I could afford to be more sure of myself with him, but I still didn’t want to let him know I knew any more than I was supposed to. So I played it cautiously.
“Miss me a lot when you were gone? On your mind, was I?” I smiled.
“That’s a little…”
I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t.
“…Forward of me,” I finished for him.
He caught himself blushing and tried to stop, which only made it worse.
“So is you coming in when I’m naked and just gawking at me. I’d say…wouldn’t you?”
I smiled.
Stafford wasn’t smiling. This was the first time I’d seen him at a loss.
Finally he said, “I’ve been travelling. I’m extremely tired…I better go lie down before…”
He started to walk out without finishing his sentence.
“Send me a message when you want to meet.”
“I will.”
“Any ideas?”
“On what?”
He looked and sounded extremely cranky.
“On where to eat.”
“Oh, we could go up to Spanish Wells. Or Dunmore Town or Harbour Island.”
“Sounds good.”
He closed the door. He had acted like a schoolboy. I dressed and sat down o
n the edge of the bed near the MacBook. I fetched my HTC from the drawer and composed a text to Anna.
SOPHIA: I’m sorry, Anna, but Mr. Stafford’s just summoned me for some work. I’ll be back to help as soon as I can.
Her reply came almost immediately.
ANNA: I understand. Let me know.
I felt bad. In our developing friendship I found that Anna had a rare integrity and honesty not present in many people I know. When I had to turn down a request for help, especially one so urgent, I felt somehow I was breaking the spell of infatuation.
On the MacBook I watched the pulsating blue dot that represented Stafford’s position. He was still in the house for another five minutes or so. I pushed the Minerva tracker to my phone, but there was no signal and as soon as I was out of range of my computer the HTC would no longer display Stafford’s position. I felt the urge to arrive at Stafford’s meeting place ahead of him, but I couldn’t figure out how. I felt something extraordinary was about to happen and I didn’t want to miss it. Perhaps it was because of the part in his notes about wanting to kill Gerry. I assumed that was the man I saw on his knees on the beach the last time—Old Bristly, but there was no way to know for sure.
Just then an idea struck me. Spanish Wells had to have a place you could eat or drink coffee that also had Wi-Fi. I grabbed my purse, the Leica binoculars, the MacBook, and the HTC.
The Porsche 911 Turbo growled to life at the turn of the key. As I pulled out of the sandy driveway, kicking up a trail of dust behind me, I saw the entourage of four Escalades approach. My pulse quickened. I put on my sunglasses and a pair of headphones that connected to the HTC. I put on a song I was listening to earlier, “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails, but found the thumping bass too nerve-racking and opted for something a bit more mellow. Eventually, I settled on “Jane Says – Live LP Version,” by Jane’s Addiction. I zipped up Queen’s Highway and onto Public Highway in under three minutes, doing well over a hundred.
