Back under the palms where relative silence reigned, a cigar vendor bent to light a customer’s purchase. The smoke smelled sweeter than my uncle’s cigars back home. Either Cuban or Dominican. The good stuff, if you were into tobacco.
“We’re a little early,” Gavin remarked. “Want to try the casino for a few minutes?”
“I don’t…” I didn’t have much money with me.
“Oh, com’on,” he said. “They have nickel slots.”
“Okay.”
A red-jacketed doorman-cum-guard ushered us into a room about the size of an eight-car garage, much smaller than I expected. It was crisply air conditioned, and much less frenetic than an American casino, perhaps only twenty-five or thirty patrons casually testing their luck.
“What do you want to try?” Gavin inquired.
“Nickel slots sound good.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He handed me a five-dollar bill. “Live it up, kid. I’ll just be…” he circled his finger to indicate that he’d be around.
Half an hour later, I sidled up behind him at a poker table. The dealer was a gorgeous Asian woman who used a no-nonsense attitude to keep the players from flirting. She dealt swiftly and with such concentration that I couldn’t imagine calculating my hand fast enough to keep up. Slap, slap, slap, scoop. Repeat.
While he watched her perform, Gavin’s graceful fingers toyed with a small stack of multi-colored chips. What they were worth I couldn’t begin to guess.
He raised his eyebrow at me when the current hand ended and his bet was gone. “Ready?”
I returned his five dollar bill and an additional fifteen cents.
“Big winner,” he observed with a chuckle. Then he tucked the five into a pocket and dropped the fifteen cents back in my hand.
“How’d you do?” I inquired.
“Not as well as you.”
He cashed in, and we headed back out into the night.
“You always that frugal?” he asked.
“Yup. Have to be.”
“What’s it like, living like a church mouse?”
“Is that a real question?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Why? You expecting a reversal of fortune?”
“That’s pretty personal, wouldn’t you say?”
“So was your question.”
“Humm.”
We hooked arms and strolled a few yards. Then he asked whether I was going to answer him.
“You go first.”
“My father threatened to cut me out of his will.”
“Because…?”
He thought for a moment. “Nope. You got your answer. Now you.”
“Okay. I discovered that if I have enough for necessities and a beer at the end of the week, I’m content.”
“Content. Not happy?”
“Material things don’t make a person happy.”
“You’ve met my mother, right?”
“Hmmm,” I said as if considering. “Make that ‘material things don’t make me happy.”
“Atta girl.” Gavin congratulated me. “Keep those expectations low.”
We stood at the stairs to the disco, or whatever they call a dance club these days. I’d never been to one. Frankly, I had no desire to step foot inside this one.
But step foot we did. It was dark, except for strobe lights on the dance floor and a row of bulbs behind the liquor bottles that silhouetted the bartenders and gave the couples and singles on the stools a halfway decent look at each other.
Gavin drank three drinks to my one, and we danced. His moves were practiced and fun to watch; but when he noticed my lack of enthusiasm, he began to drink faster and ogle other women.
One thing we did not do was talk. Yell at each other to be heard, yes. Talk, no.
After about an hour of that, Gavin leaned across the tabletop and shouted, “Let’s go.”
His pronunciation was overly careful, not a good sign, but he’d said exactly what I wanted to hear. I performed a mental fist pump and grabbed my wrap.
“Wanna walk back on the beach?”
“Absolutely.” So there we were—barefoot, shoes dangling from our fingers, kicking cool sand and meandering through the shadows with nobody to watch us but the occasional guard.
Gavin steered me up against a coconut palm and moved in for a kiss.
“Whoa, fella,” I said pushing his chest away with my own palm.
He tried to move in again.
I ducked under his arm.
“Whasup? You don’t have a boyfriend anymore.” He was huffing, getting angry.
“No,” I admitted, because it happened to be true. “But you have a girlfriend.”
“Shit,” he said. “What’s that to you?”
Strike two. I had been appalled when Gavin dredged up the scattering-of-the-ashes fiasco to Chantal this morning, and now he had disrespected his girlfriend. His serious girlfriend from the sounds of it. Frank wouldn’t have bothered to threaten him over her otherwise.
I like to think that Lauren Beck would have used more restraint, but I was too deeply into the Lori Ruggles persona to hold back.
“You may be president of some damn company or other,” I heard Lori say, “but you’re also an asshole.”
Gavin’s head jerked. Lips twisted with anger, he took one drunken step. Then the sonovabitch lunged for my neck, so I used his forward momentum to flip him on his back. The sand made for an easy landing, but I heard his teeth click when his head bounced off the tree trunk.
When he opened his mouth again, nothing came out but curse words, so I kicked sand at him until he spit and yelled, “Stop.”
Flashlight bobbing along the ground, a guard hustled over to us. Shouting to be heard over the crash of the incoming surf, he asked us what happened in English with a Spanish lilt.
“He tripped,” I told the guy, holding out my hand to help Mr. President up. He was still wiping sand out of his eyes with his sleeve.
“Tell the officer what happened,” I prompted as the cop’s flashlight played across Gavin’s face.
The glare he aimed at me would have melted metal. “I tripped,” he said, then spit at my feet.
“We’ll just go home now. Okay, officer?”
The guard stepped back, reluctantly, but he did step back. While he watched, I took Gavin’s arm and playfully pushed him in the right direction.
“Oops,” I remarked to the guard. “Forgot our shoes.”
By the time I picked them up and turned back, Gavin was nowhere in sight.
Chapter 20
After breakfast the next morning, I drifted into the lounge area to watch CNN with Frank. Since no terrorist group had yet claimed credit, a diverse panel of people I didn’t recognize was discussing the Metro crash in hypothetical terms.
We learned that the driver had been on the job for twenty-four years and had no history of drugs or alcohol, nor were any discovered during the autopsy. His finances were in good order. His wife still loved him. In short, no reason had emerged to explain why he had been driving excessively fast.
“It isn’t a very difficult corner…” remarked the only female on the panel.
“No, but the proximity to strategic government buildings…” by the moderator, a man wearing pinstripes.
“Anything useful on the black box?” the recording device usually associated with airplanes.
“Unfortunately, no. The accident happened too fast for anyone to log a reaction.”
Lacking any real news, the moderator began to describe some of the nut-case confessions that cost investigators dozens of precious hours.
Frank clicked off the set. “Déjà vu all over again,” he remarked with a disgusted sigh.
Then he noticed me. “Something I can help you with?”
“No, oh no thanks,” I said, realizing I’d intruded yet again. “Just wanted to thank you for, for everything. You’ve been extremely gracious.”
Frank’s nod
struck me as a little curt, but perhaps he didn’t take compliments well.
“Chantal likes you,” he conveyed with a warmth that made me miss my father. Maybe instead of a deposit on an apartment I could visit Dad in Albuquerque, mention that I needed a place to live, settle in…completely destroy their honeymoon glow…
I told Frank I didn’t think Marsha shared Chantal’s impression of me.
Settling back against the sofa cushion, the CEO’s face took on a forgiving sort of fondness. “Marsha enjoys having something to bitch about. She thinks it keeps us on our toes.”
I began to say, “I guess it would,” but just then Frank’s cell phone buzzed. He scowled at the caller ID. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to take this.”
To offer an illusion of privacy, I carried my empty coffee mug around the corner to the galley. I wasn’t really out of earshot, but Frank didn’t contribute more than a word or two to the conversation anyway.
When silence suggested the call was over, I peeked around the corner. If I gave my host a wide berth, I might be able to return to my stateroom without bothering him again.
No precautions were needed. Frank had forgotten I was born. Still on the sofa, elbows resting on his knees, he looked like a man who’d just been hit with a rock. His eyes were blank, his lips slack. The gray of his skin would have made a heart attack victim look healthy.
I debated whether to ask if he was okay, and my hesitation prompted him to glance up.
“The family will be leaving this afternoon,” he announced. “If you’d like to stay longer, I can make arrangements…”
No sign of pain, other than emotional.
“Not a problem,” I said, although my heart was beating a quick retreat of its own. Why on earth had I brought that Glock? “I don’t mind going home early, but thanks for the offer.”
Probably still digesting his new business emergency, Frank didn’t seem to pick up the tremor in my voice or noticed my reddened face.
“Guess I go…pack,” I said, but Frank had stopped listening.
So far as I knew, Gavin’s first appearance of the day was at three PM when we gathered ourselves and our belongings on the sidewalk to board the van for the airport. He didn’t speak to me, nor I to him. He also climbed in last, insuring that we wouldn’t end up side by side during the ride.
The airport bustled with what I guessed to be a few hundred travelers—noisy kids, sleepy seniors, impatient youths, placid Europeans. We got the word that our private plane was delayed, so Frank, his wife, and his daughter wandered up to a members-only lounge.
Gavin pulled me aside at the bottom of the stairs. “They’ll page us,” he said cryptically, then led me through the duty-free stores and upstairs to another slightly less frenetic, marginally cooler waiting area.
We found two seats together facing the chaos. Gavin extended his long legs and slid his ass down to the edge of his, laced his fingers over his belt buckle, and said, “So. Where did you learn how to deck a man with one hand?”
While I chose what Lori Ruggles would say, I tucked a stray curl behind my ear.
“Self-defense class.”
“And why would you need a self-defense class?” he pressed.
My face asked whether he really needed an answer.
Relaxing with a distant thought, he smiled. “Been different if I was sober.”
“Sure would,” I agreed. “You’d be in a Dominican jail.”
His mouth opened, but he quickly closed it. We both slouched back in our seats as if we expected to be there a long time.
Hoping to finally get to my original agenda, I asked his girlfriend’s name.
“Julianne,” he confessed. “Not exactly my girlfriend anymore.”
“Sister of the unfortunate Luanne Sykes?”
Gavin did a double-take. “How the hell do you know that?”
I admitted that Chantal told me. “What I can’t understand is why your dad gives a flying fig who you’re with now that Roitman Industries won the lawsuit.”
Gavin’s hands kneaded air as he sighed out a chestful of angst. “My father isn’t the most forgiving person you’ll ever meet.”
“Inflexible?”
“Think re-bar.” Those rods they use to reinforce concrete.
“Your mother seems to get what she wants out of him. Why can’t you?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Because my father gets a perverse pleasure out of watching me fail.”
That surprised me, and I guess it showed. “But you’re president of one of his widget factories.”
Gavin’s expression looked like pity. “A custom car mat company,” he corrected me, “and who gives a shit whether that succeeds or fails? Certainly not my dad.”
“Then why own it?”
“To give me something to screw up so he can justify cutting me loose to my mother.”
“Seriously?”
Gavin didn’t bother to reply.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Huh. So how is business anyway?”
“Up fifteen percent last month.” The president of the widget company spread his hands. “When people hold onto their cars, their floor mats wear out. Also, we ran a new ad.”
“Good for you.”
“Thanks.” Gavin’s modest smile revealed how pleased he was to thwart his father’s plan—if Gavin was correct and that really was his father’s plan. Maybe Frank had simply thrown his son into the deep end of the pool to teach him how to swim.
All of which was interesting, but not at all what I needed.
“Was Toby smart?” I wondered aloud.
“You get right to the point, don’t you?”
Yeah, so?
“Toby,” he mused. “The favored son.” Gavin shook his head. “The replacement son’s more like it.”
“You resented him?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Yet from the stiffening of Gavin’s body, resentment was exactly what he felt. I’d finally unearthed a motive, the classic Eliminate Your Rival. Not that I was happy about it.
Chantal appeared at the entrance to our area and waved both hands above her head. I noticed because I was facing that way, but Gavin was busy twiddling his thumbs.
“So,” I said, appearing to tick off the facts. “You’re president of a widget factory, and you behave like an asshole in your free time. What’s up with that?”
Gavin rested his forearms on his knees and showed me a slow smile. “You’ve seen the Queen Mother’s nose turn up, haven’t you? And Frank? He freezes up so tight it’s a wonder he can take his morning shit.”
He was tweaking his parents’ noses? Was he that immature? Unlikely. Devious? Skillful? Calculating? Controlled? I suddenly realized none of my impressions of Gavin added up. Perhaps he had inherited Marsha’s penchant for acting; he certainly knew how to keep his audience off balance.
“Ga-vinnnnn?” Chantal shouted across the crowd.
We both stood. I grabbed my purse, and Gavin slung his duffel over his shoulder. When I didn’t immediately extend the handle of my suitcase, he gave me a curious look.
I told him, “I don’t believe you.”
“What!”
“I think you behave like a juvenile delinquent to keep expectations low. Then if you do screw up your widget factory, the fall from grace won’t be very far.”
He lifted my chin with his index finger, and his face took on a wistful softness.
Then just that quick his eyes were daggers. “You could get into a lot of trouble being that smart,” he warned.
Chapter 21
For my second and probably final flight in a private jet, I vowed to stay awake and enjoy every moment. However, as the fifth person and a relative stranger to everyone else, I ended up having the last short row of seats to myself, and, consequently, no one to talk to. I slept until the wheels bounced ever so lightly on that obscure runway in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia.
The Roitmans held an all-too-obvious discussion about what to do with me in the ter
minal lobby with the little yellow airplane hanging overhead.
“Since it’ll be too late for our driver to take you home tonight, we’d like you to stay with us another night,” I was told. “Somebody will get you wherever you need to go in the morning.” This from Marsha, who appeared not to have slept on the plane and clearly should have.
“Whatever works best for you is fine with me.”
Outdoors again, night was rapidly falling along with a heavy dew. The swaths of dampened grass alongside the runways gave off a green, fertile fragrance. Low on the horizon a pale polka-dot in the sky was probably the planet I’d wished upon as a girl. Later I found out it wasn’t a star, which probably explains why none of my wishes came true.
I scanned the parking lot but detected no orange glow; Mike’s Mustang was gone. The last I’d heard from him, Mary was home again but confined to bed rest. With luck, the only reason Mike hadn’t contacted me again was because he had nothing to say.
“I guess this is good-bye,” Gavin remarked as he dug car keys out of his pocket. Even in the parking lot lamplight he wore his put-on playboy look as naturally as a slob wears ketchup.
I extended my hand. “A pleasure meeting you,” I said.
A kiss to his mother and sister, a nod to his dad. The trunk of a nearby car popped open. Gavin was the president of a widget factory. He did not live with his parents.
Transportation for the rest of the Roitmans and me came in the form of a seven-passenger van with a driver. My suitcase and I kept each other warm in the back seat, mainly because the cargo compartment was full of Louis Vuitton.
As we bumped out of the lot onto the adjacent back road, I texted Mike with the subject line “Guess what” then told him we were back in Virginia “for business reasons.” Also that I’d lucked out and would be spending another night with Toby’s in-laws. Since nobody in the van could see what I was writing, I added, “Had an interesting talk with Gavin,” before I pressed send.
Guilt Trip Page 9
