Promise Me

by Jack O. Daniel

  She removed her coat and sat down, too numb to cry, too shocked to be angry. Several hours had passed before she found the courage to open the envelope. Inside it was a cheque for twenty thousand dollars, their combined savings for the wedding they were planning.

  A week later, she did three things. She sold the ring, ditched her job at the insurance firm and booked a world tour.

  This was how six months later, twenty-one-year-old Isabel Caine, former insurance fraud investigator now a vagabond, ended up in New Zealand.

  RED BEACH ON THE HIBISCUS Coast, Orewa, New Zealand, with just six thousand residents, was hardly a tourist destination, at least not compared to other parts of the North Island. It was scenic and serene, but in the middle of the Southern winter, it was deserted.

  She couldn’t have found the place, had she booked a cruise or a bus tour. Her decision to hire and drive around in a campervan was fortuitous. That was how she found herself on this gorgeous deserted beach on this winter’s day.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the beach, drawing in the sand with a piece of driftwood, enjoying her solitude when a man walked past. His denim jeans were folded to his knees, walking barefoot on the wet sand. It struck her how cold the water must be, but he didn’t seem to mind. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. That was the extent of it.

  Around midday, she decided to drive off to another surprise destination and made a turn towards State Highway One. She was driving and there he was again, walking at the side of the road. She didn’t know why, but she stopped. ‘Want a lift somewhere?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you going?’ She asked as he settled into the passenger seat.

  ‘Pinewoods Motor Park. I have a bach there.’

  ‘A bach?’

  ‘A holiday house. Well, it was originally thought to mean bachelor pad. The other alternative theory is that it’s a Welsh word for small,’ he explained. ‘Good to see another American this far south. Where are you from?’

  ‘San Francisco,’ she said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Washington, D.C.’

  That should have been the extent of their conversation, Pinewoods being so close to Red Beach, but he invited her to join him. ‘Be my guest, I’ve got food.’

  She uncharacteristically agreed to join him, a man whose name she didn’t even know.

  His bach was minimalist and modern. An open-plan pavilion that allowed for effective cross-ventilation. The sea breeze coursed through the living and dining room, providing a refreshing atmosphere. There was a toilet/bathroom at one end, and she supposed a master bedroom at the other.

  A four-seat couch was strategically placed along the front half of the pavilion to take advantage of the views. She walked around admiring the richly textured wood that contrasted well against the solid red granite kitchen bench. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Glad you approve,’ he said as he made sandwiches with sourdough bread and salad without bothering to ask what she wanted. She might have been a vegetarian – although she wasn’t.

  Later, she understood why. He made vegetarian sandwiches and a platter of cold cut meat on the side to complement it. He carried the tray of food, she the glasses and a bottle of white wine. They shared a meal alfresco on a rock he covered with white linen just outside his bach.

  She sat across from him and noted that he had amazingly blue eyes and short dark hair. And, he looked athletic. And tall. When they were walking side by side, she tried to measure him against her 5’5” height. Easily, 6’2”, she thought.

  He studied her for a second, smiled again and said, ‘Do you always pick up strangers?’

  ‘No,’ she said as she popped a tomato into her mouth. Then she shrugged. ‘I don’t know; you seemed harmless.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’

  They were having coffee when he asked, ‘So, who are you running away from? Or, what?’

  She blinked, then her hazel eyes were immediately defiant. With raised eyebrows drawn towards the middle of her forehead, she said with conviction, ‘I’m not running away from anything or anyone.’

  He touched her brow lightly with his ring finger. ‘Briefly, you expressed a micro facial expression here, and it tells me you’re lying.’

  ‘What are you? A face reader?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve been lied to more times than I can remember, but they don’t always get away with it.’

  ‘And you, who are you running away from?’ she challenged.

  ‘Not running away. I couldn’t run away from Uncle Sam if I tried.’

  And that’s when she noticed it, a small tattoo of the American flag on the inside of his wrist.

  ‘Are you a soldier?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  By the end of the second hour, she was still none the wiser, but she learned he wasn’t a cop or a spy.

  Although they spoke for hours, she never asked for his name and neither did he ask for hers. Chances were high that they would never see each other again.

  Sunset came early, as it always does in the southern hemisphere in the winter. At some point, the temperature dropped significantly enough that they had to retreat inside the pavilion. He pulled the glass doors along the recessed tracks and shut them in from the cold, but not from the stunning views across the water. She rested her hands on the glass panels, her nose barely an inch away from it. She only retreated when it fogged with her breath and she wiped it off with her gloved hand.

  He was busy with the fireplace. Minutes later, it felt toasty and the ambience electric. He removed his gloves and North Face jacket to reveal a well-defined chest and biceps, the outlines were clearly noticeable through his T-shirt.

  She didn’t know why she did it. Perhaps it was because she just wanted it. Perhaps she was being rebellious. Maybe she was more psychologically damaged than she cared to admit. Or, maybe, she was emboldened by the fact that he was a stranger who she would never see again. All she knew was that it was her decision. It was her choice. As she was stone cold sober, she would have no-one to blame but herself.

  She removed her gloves and jacket, too, but she didn’t stop there. With her back turned, she removed her chambray shirt, holding his eyes through the reflection in the glass panel. Next, she removed her hiking boots and her denim pants. With her toes, she removed her socks.

  She stood still for a moment, as though debating with herself whether she could do it. She shuddered from the cold in her bra and undies.

  He didn’t move a muscle. She locked eyes with him through the glass door, almost daring him to blink first. He didn’t. A thin smile spread on his lips, which she mistook for seduction, but it wasn’t. It was one of admiration, although she didn’t know it then. He was thinking, here was a woman, who was by no means beautiful in the eyes of the world; by its foolish standards she was plain and ordinary, but with a spirit that defied fear.

  Her eyes, he decided, were outrageously stunning. The defiance they reflected was alluring. He waited for her to make the move. She held his gaze for a second longer before she turned and took a step forward.

  He held her gamine face and kissed her before lifting her up and placing her behind on the back of the sofa. She helped him with his belt, and one thing led to another until she found herself leaning all the way back, bracing herself with her hands against the seat.

  He was inside her now.

  They held each other’s gaze through the glass panel until ecstasy broke through.

  He was in the shower when she left quietly, taking with her only the memory of his face and the name of the beach where they first met casually with a smile.

  He came out with a robe for her, but she was gone. He was left with the memory of that innocent, sweet face with soulful eyes that defied fear.

  He shrugged and poured himself a drink.

  2: She’s Home

  HAVING FLOWN FOR MORE THAN THIRTY-TWO HOURS, Isabel, Izzy to close family and friends, landed
at the San Francisco International Airport on a Sunday afternoon. It was a hop on, hop off return journey that took her through three countries on three continents in three different time zones and on three airlines. Why, she asked herself, did you do this to yourself?

  She had to admit though that it was fun to have celebrated her birthday three times across the globe.

  It was a personal achievement of sorts, making sure she made the right connections on her way back so that it would be the 20th of June in every country she landed in.

  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  A direct flight from Auckland to San Francisco with Air New Zealand was available, but what would be the fun in that? Now she wasn’t so sure; it felt as though she had done her knees in. At just twenty-two, she felt decrepit.

  Exhausted beyond words, she dropped anchor at a coffee shop and ordered a couple of glazed donuts and a tall cup of café latte. With her humongous backpack underfoot, she fired up her cell phone.

  There were several messages, mostly from her best friend Susie, who hadn’t heard from her for a week. She had deliberately stayed away from social media in the last seven days, opting to use every available minute she had left to enjoy her world tour. Her head pounded, as she listened to Susie’s rants and raves, each one sounding more insistent than the last.

  She sighed while listening to parts of Susie’s messages, deleting them one by one after the first ‘Where are you?’

  No, she decided, she wouldn’t be checking her Twitter and Facebook account; it would un-do all the good her holiday had achieved.

  She called Susie who, as usual, made her wait for what felt like a minute. Her BFF had the longest ringtone she had ever known. ‘Happy birthday, Izzy!’ she said when she finally answered in her beautiful South African-accented voice, having shuffled and lived in two countries all her life.

  ‘Thanks,’ Izzy replied. ‘What’s up? Why all these messages?’

  Susie didn’t answer; she was too busy whispering to someone. Isabel heard indistinct voices in the background and sensed she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question one little bit. When Susie returned to the phone, she hastened to chastise, ‘I told you, no surprise party! I adore you, Sus, but this time, no!’

  ‘What?’ her BFF protested. ‘Everyone’s coming. Everyone. Please. You have to turn up!’

  Izzy sighed audibly. ‘How much time do I have?’, she asked.

  ‘Party’s at nine, my place, so you have plenty of time.’

  It was going to be far more excruciating to argue than just agree to attend the birthday party being thrown in her honour. ‘Okay, I’ll be there,’ she said with surrender, which Susie typically relished. End of discussion.

  She left a message to her parents to let them know she was back. They would be pleasantly surprised, assuming they didn’t already know. She wouldn’t put it past them if they’d been tracking her movements around the world somehow.

  Hunger got the better of her so she gobbled up her donuts and drank her now disgustingly tepid coffee. She then picked up her backpack and walked to the car rental kiosk. She was undecided which of her two addresses she’d head home to until she reached the counter.

  She filled in a form with her full name, Isabel Fairbanks-Caine, and put in an address in Pacific Heights, one of the most salubrious, old-money suburbs in San Francisco.

  She handed the form to the desk clerk, who couldn’t have cared less about her until he read what was written on it. He glanced up to look at Isabel as though she just morphed into a human worthy of being attended to.

  ISABEL, WITH HER HYPHENATED last name, could have been fodder for magazines’ society pages. She could have been gracing social events as a young debutante, but she wasn’t the sort. Her lifestyle had not been clichéd, even from an early age, in that she didn’t live it the way she had been expected to.

  She was more Caine than Fairbanks. Her older brother, however, was more Fairbanks than Caine. Little surprise, then, that as she worked at Caine Insurance on a monthly salary that didn’t pay for Louis Vuitton luggage, she’d gone with a backpack. Meanwhile, William Andrew Fairbanks-Caine jetted around the globe, living it up in hotels and chateaus. Now, that was cliché.

  If not for a two-bedroom art deco apartment at Nob Hill, which she inherited when she turned twenty-one, she would have had to shell out nearly three thousand dollars a month in rent, almost half of her after-tax salary.

  Her mother, socialite Elsie Fairbanks-Caine, frequently complained that her life had been one rebellious choice after another. She could have hobnobbed with progenies of mega-wealthy families with hyphenated last names longer than an Amtrak’s rolling stock. Instead, she was friends with postmen and clerks.

  After high school, she applied for an entry-level position at Caine Insurance in the Claims and Fraud Investigation Department, much to her father’s chagrin. ‘What in the world—?’ Charles David Fitzgerald Caine asked when he first heard of it. He stopped in time and thought the better of it. She was his child after all. A chip off the old block.

  A week later, she boasted with an inflated ego that she’d been hired on merit, having applied using a fake name. She told her Dad, the Chairman of the Board, that it proved just how easy it was to commit fraud.

  So, at eighteen, she started as Data Entry Clerk while studying online to become a certified fraud investigator. It was all to her mother’s eternal shame and her brother’s horror.

  ‘You could enrol at any Ivy League university!’ her mother said in dramatic fashion. ‘Why, for heaven’s sake? You can be a lawyer, anything but that!’

  Isabel shrugged. Fraud investigation was what she wanted to do. She liked the challenge and wanted a career path out of left-field.

  She could have had a rich boyfriend, too, had she gone out with any of her brother’s friends or one of their neighbours. Instead, she’d chosen an ambitious middle-class guy with a law degree who turned out to be more heel than hero.

  STUCK AT A SET OF TRAFFIC lights, Isabel had a rethink. No, she wasn’t going back to the Caine’s mega-mansion at Pacific Heights. That hadn’t been her home for the last year; her half-renovated art-deco apartment was her home.

  AS SHE PULLED INTO her on-street parking spot, she noticed a tall man whose hair colouring seemed identical to the mysterious American she’d met on Red Beach. Freaked out, she nearly slammed into the car in front. The guy turned to look as her car screeched to a halt a paper’s depth away from the Saab.

  He jogged over, looking furious.

  Oh, oh.

  He checked the back of the car, which obviously meant it was his. As he flashed her a dagger look, she knew instantly it wasn’t her Mystery Man. He hadn’t had a mono-brow.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, faking a grimace.

  ‘Yeah, you ought to be. If you had hit my car, you’d be eating sardines for ten years,’ he said as he huffed away.

  You wish.

  She made a face at his back, as the cranky-pot walked away, then fell deeper into her seat. Her nerves were frayed. She stayed awhile to simmer down and took a moment to reflect. San Francisco, with all its quirky hilly streets and its vibrancy, seemed staid compared to the culture and antiquity of the South and Central Americas, the drama and the colours of Morocco, the noise and bustle of Delhi, the congestion of Hong Kong, the madness of Shanghai’s street scene, the enormous and expansive vista of Australia’s Red Centre and the freshness and flair of New Zealand.

  Regardless of all that was exciting out there, this was home.

  The dashboard clock caught her eyes. It told her it was two in the afternoon. Time to batten down.

  She hauled her backpack up the steps to her second-floor apartment and fumbled for the keys. Fetid air, trapped for six months, escaped as soon as she opened the door. She dumped her pack on the hardwood floor to open all the doors and windows. Then, she proceeded maniacally to wipe the dust off her furniture. She briefly thought that she should have asked a friend to house-sit, b
ut on second thought, she could have been coming home to worse.

  She vacuumed, scrubbed and deodorised. Then changed her bed sheets.

  A couple of hours later, she paused in front of the sink. Her hands braced against the counter top, her head bowed. She admitted to herself for the first time that she had been damaged far more than she was willing to accept. This can’t be normal.

  All this obsessive chasing around the world, and now around her house. It was like she was demon-possessed. She felt adrift as though she had lost her anchor. Empty, like a hollowed shell. Frustrated with herself, she mumbled, ‘What the heck, I’ve got a party to attend.’

  She ran a hot bath, lit some aromatherapy candles and soaked her travel-wearied body.

  Her mind drifted to that day she met him. He, who she christened Mystery because he was nameless to her. Not asking his name was her big regret. She closed her eyes and let her mind take her where it would. She tried to imagine if he was a Harry or a Jonas or a Jason. As none of the names she thought of suited him, he remained Mr. Mystery.

  Half an hour later, she rose out of the cold bath. Water dripped onto the tiled floor and pooled at her feet. Instead of drying, she rubbed organic coconut oil all over her face and down her legs. That was her moisturising ritual done.

  She walked out of the bathroom in her glistening nakedness, opened her wardrobe and donned a cute baby doll lingerie. She shut the bedroom windows, drew the curtains, crawled into bed and allowed fatigue to take her to slumber land.

  SHE WOKE UP TO HER phone’s persistent ringing, sat up in bed and turned on the bedside lamp. The ringing stopped, then started again a few seconds later. Confused, she paused to listen. It was coming from the floor. She got up and picked up her discarded jeans, fished out the phone from inside her pocket. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘It’s nine?’

  ‘It’s ten! Hurry.’

  ‘Okay, give me fifteen minutes,’ she said.

  She hurriedly donned an Indian sari, piled her hair on the top of her head and clipped it with faux crystal-encrusted crown, bought for five hundred rupees. She headed out the door in a pair of beaded flat shoes and a small clutch to hold her house key. In fifteen minutes, she was at Susie’s, whose apartment building was just four doors away.