Summer on the Cape

by J. M. Bronston

  “What have I been up to? I’ve been busy. I’ve been meeting with a lot of people. I don’t see what all of that has to do with us!” Zach cast about him in frustration. The room was too small, its furniture was too small. He was accustomed to dropping his big frame into chairs designed for big people, to leaning up against walls and door frames and windows that would accommodate his long legs and arms. Here, the windows were filled with plants, and there were small chairs and tables against the walls. He stood helplessly in the middle of the room, feeling like an elephant in a flower patch. “After I saw you on Thursday morning, I flew back to the Cape. I picked up my car and I’ve been driving practically all over the East Coast. Well, that’s an exaggeration. I’ve been to Marblehead and Cape Ann and Gloucester. Yesterday, I ferried over to Nantucket. I’ll be in Jersey this afternoon. I’ve got my car here with me.” He paused, feeling tongue-tied. “Damn it, Allie, I don’t see why I’m explaining all this to you. I’ve been busy arranging things.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve been busy. Just as busy as a little beaver, right? Getting all your ducks in a row. Watching out for Number One while you were cleverly deflecting everyone’s attention.”

  “If ‘watching out for Number One’ means protecting what’s important to you, yes, that’s what I’ve been doing.” Zach took a step closer to her, and Allie stiffened, knowing her resolve would crumble if he took her in his arms again. Zach saw her response, and hesitated, his frustration and anger rising. “And that’s what you’ve been doing, too, Allie. Taking care of Number One. That’s what you were doing at that meeting Thursday morning. That’s what you were doing when you hopped out of bed on Wednesday night and raced for the airport, because you needed to be at an important meeting. That’s what your whole involvement in this project is about, taking care of the Number One named Allie Randall.”

  “That’s not fair, Zach.” Allie could hear the pitch of her voice rising. She backed away a step or two toward the window, and she could feel the tickling edge of a rubber plant brushing the back of her legs. “Whatever I’ve done, whatever I’m doing, I haven’t lied to you. Anything I haven’t told you—” She thought of how little time they’d had, how much there was to tell, how hard it was going to be. “Well, anyway, I haven’t lied to you.”

  “Lied!” Zach closed the space between them, seeing a flicker—perhaps of fear?—in Allie’s eyes as he stepped toward her. He was torn between his anger and a heart-wrenching wish to stop her accusations with his kisses, to hold her close and end this irrational fight. “Allie I don’t get it. I haven’t lied to you . . .”

  He paused. They both heard something—someone—at the door. A key in the lock. Startled, they turned toward the sound, their anger, their voices frozen, their eyes fixed on the door as it slowly opened.

  Preceded by Allie’s big, black leather portfolio, Adam let himself into the room, pausing to return the key to his pocket before he looked up and saw Allie and Zach staring at him. Allie’s eyes opened in astonishment. Zach’s mouth clamped shut.

  No one spoke. Adam’s eyes went from one to the other, plainly surprised to see them there. Zach stared at him for a moment. Slowly his head turned to Allie whose eyes were darting from Adam to Zach and back again.

  “So that’s the way it is.”

  Zach almost hissed at her. His eyes were black, his words practically inaudible. He leaned toward Allie, his face close to hers, his voice so low she barely heard him.

  “There was a lot of talk here about ‘lying’ a minute ago. Now I understand your preoccupation with ‘lying.’” His face was livid, his teeth bared in fury He was across the room in a few steps.

  “Zach!” Her voice was weak, barely reaching him.

  “Out of my way, Talmadge!”

  Adam lifted the portfolio to protect himself as Zach went by him, and Zach stiff-armed him, shoving him against the wall. A picture dropped off its hook as Adam was jammed into it. Zach was past him and out of the apartment without another word, slamming the door behind him, leaving it shivering in its frame as he stormed down the stairs.

  The apartment was quiet for a moment as they both stared at the door. At last, Adam turned and walked into the living room, putting the portfolio down against the wall.

  “Well, well, well,” he said slowly, approaching Allie, looking her over thoughtfully. “Has little Allie been at play behind her uncle Adam’s back?”

  Allie started to cry.

  “Oh, Adam, go away, will you? Just go away. Get out of here.” She turned her face away from his in despair. “Just leave me alone.”

  Adam was astonished. He had never seen her cry.

  “So that’s how it is! Oh, my poor Allie.” He gathered her up in his arms. “Come on, lean on old Adam’s shoulder. There, there, cry away, dear. I had no idea. As bad as all that, is it?” He stroked her hair while she sobbed against him, burying her head miserably in his shoulder.

  “Oh, Adam, why did you have to come in just then?” Through her tears, Allie wailed at him. “What are you doing here anyway? Why didn’t you ring the bell or something? Why did you use your key? You’ve never done that before.”

  “My poor sweetie. If I had any idea! We were in the neighborhood—I was going to check out that new gallery on Barrow Street—so I called you from the car, about ten minutes ago.” Adam smoothed down her bangs and kissed her forehead, reassuringly. “There was no answer, so I figured you weren’t home. I had that thing with me,” he pointed to the portfolio, “and I didn’t want to lug it around all day.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I feel so stupid. I told Marcus to go get some gas while I just ran upstairs to leave it off.”

  “Oh, Adam.” Allie was still sobbing. She took the handkerchief that was folded into his breast pocket and tried, uselessly, to mop the flowing tears. “It’s all such a mess. It’s such a miserable mess.”

  “I know, dear. I know.” Over her head, Adam was smiling indulgently. He stroked her hair some more and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “There now, there, there. But imagine! Zach Eliot, of all people. I never would have guessed!” His quick mind went back over the last few weeks. “That certainly explains a number of things.”

  Allie was too miserable to notice what he was saying. “What am I going to do, Adam? What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, dear. We’ll try to think of something.”

  In the street below, as Zach opened the Jag’s door, he tried to stop himself, but his eyes were drawn helplessly to that window. There, framed by the plants, he could see her in Adam’s arms, her golden head buried against Adam’s shoulder.

  “The hell with her!”

  The words were barely out of his mouth and he was in gear and away in a screech of rubber that raised eyebrows up and down the quiet street.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was Tuesday morning, and Allie was in the chairman’s office, trying to continue her preliminary sketches. The work wasn’t going well, and even Mr. Nakamura could see that she’d been crying. Ah well, he thought to himself, I see that this hour will probably be a waste. He noted the puffy lids and the irises, deep green, against the bloodshot whites of her eyes. Interesting, he thought. Yesterday, her eyes had been a golden hazel color. No question about it. She’d been crying. The child has perhaps been having a lovers’ quarrel. These things happen, he thought, remembering nostalgically the passion of his own youth. I will attend to other matters while she tries to get through this hour.

  “You do not mind, Ms. Randall, if I review these papers while you complete your sketches? I will try not to move about too much.” He pointed to a stack of contracts on one side of his otherwise totally bare desk.

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  He was not surprised that she barely raised her eyes as she responded to his question. Apparently, she would rather not talk. It was just as well. He had things to think about.

  This matter of the Cape Cod project. In addition to all the usual obstacles, a new one had presented itself
. The meeting last week with this fellow—what was his name—Eliot? Nothing, it seems, would convince the man to sell that piece of land he was holding.

  The chairman picked up the first of the contracts concerning a shopping mall acquisition in Dallas, almost four hundred pages including attachments and schedules, with a covering memorandum and a legal opinion from outside counsel. He laid it on the desk in front of him, but he was not yet ready to attend to it. This Cape Cod matter was still on his mind.

  Eliot’s opposition was nothing new. The chairman chuckled to himself as he remembered that lady on East 53rd who thought she could get an exorbitant figure for her brownstone by blocking the construction of the Cityscape Building. For a few hundred thousand, she could have made a happy move to Florida and lived out her days in comfort. But she was greedy and tried to hold out against them. Fortunately, it suited their purposes to build around her instead. Now she had service entrances and loading docks on either side of her residence, and her once-quiet and attractive street was filled with noisy industrial traffic.

  As far as the Pilgrims’ Landing project was concerned, it was still too early to decide to go to litigation, though that was the usual course. Expensive, but only a trifle in light of the magnitude of the project. However, there may be some alternatives in this case. During their meeting, Zachariah Eliot—these Americans have such difficult names!—had raised an interesting idea. Most interesting. Something might come of it, something might just come of it. We shall see.

  He swiveled his chair briefly to the credenza behind him, flipped the intercom, and turned right back, remembering that he was Allie’s model and he mustn’t interfere too much with her work. “Ms. Richman,” he said. “See if you can reach Adam Talmadge. If nine o’clock this morning is convenient for him, it might be a good idea for him to join us then for my meeting with Mr. Eliot.” The chairman saw Allie’s head rise abruptly in response to his words. He noted her quick intake of breath, the sudden widening of her eyes. He saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth, in an apparent gesture of self-control and embarrassment as she realized that Mr. Nakamura had seen her response, and she lowered her eyes to her pad, forcing her attention back to the wash of skin tones that she was working on. The chairman’s eyes remained on her.

  Ms. Richman’s voice could be heard on the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Nakamura. Oh, and Mr. Nakamura, you had a call from a Mr. Hadley from New Hampshire. I told him you’d be tied up for a couple of hours. He’ll call back sometime this afternoon.”

  Mr. Nakamura’s eyebrows rode up a bit on his forehead. “Ah, that is most interesting.” He paused, considering her message. So Hadley had called. Most interesting. “Thank you, Ms. Richman,” he said at last. “And when you speak with Mr. Talmadge,” he added, “tell him I would most especially recommend that he join us. His office is not far from here. It should not be too inconvenient for him.”

  He switched off the intercom and turned back to the papers on the desk in front of him, but not before he had noticed the flush that was reddening the pretty young artist’s cheeks. Ah, well, he thought, it’s a pity, but the Cape Cod affair must be put aside for a bit while we attend to the matter of this Dallas shopping mall.

  * * *

  Oh, God, Allie thought. Zach is going to be here at nine. I’ve got to get out of here before we run into each other.

  The whole thing with Zach had turned into such a mess. Even as she stared at the watercolor pad in front of her, trying to focus on the rather stiff likeness of the chairman that was taking shape on the easel, her mind could see only Zach’s handsome form, as he was last Wednesday night, after—well, afterward. She could not bear to remember his lovemaking, unlike anything she had ever known. No, instead, she let herself remember him framed by the window with the moonlight behind him, wearing only his jeans, one long leg braced inside the sill, the glass of whiskey in his hand, as he talked so movingly about “loved ones lost at sea.” She hadn’t doubted for a moment that his opposition to the Mayflower project was genuine.

  And all that time, he had been lying to her. It was as simple as that. He had sat there, the breath of her kisses still warm on his lips, and he had lied to her. For his own self-serving business reasons, he had wanted her to believe, along with all his friends and neighbors, that he was fighting the project. And only the next morning, not twelve hours later, he had been here in this very office, arranging, as Nakamura told her, to put money, substantial money, into the very plan he was pretending to fight.

  The tears filled her eyes again and she turned away, hoping the chairman was too busy with his papers to notice as she wiped them away with nervous fingertips. This job was important. Too important to mess up with personal problems. There would be time to cry tonight, at home, in her own bed. As she had all last night.

  She started on the next set of sketches, background studies of some of the room details. What has happened, she wondered mournfully, to the old Allie Randall, the girl who hadn’t cried since she was eleven years old? In her mirror that morning, she had seen that hours of crying did not improve a girl’s appearance. She knew she looked dreadful. Not that Zach would care if he did see her. He was even angrier than she was, if that was possible, and he wouldn’t care at all if she looked like a sack of worms.

  And it was going to be even worse if Adam was here, too. They’d all be lucky if Zach didn’t kill him. What must he have thought seeing Adam come into her apartment like that? Well, she already knew what Zach thought. And why should she care what Zach thought? Oh, God, this is awful. Her mind was in turmoil. He would never speak to her again. He would never hold her in his arms again. And she didn’t want him to, not after what she knew about him now. So why these tears? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? Why did she want to explain to him about Adam and that key? He wouldn’t believe her anyway.

  She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes to nine. They didn’t really need fifteen minutes to pack up the gear, but the chairman probably would be just as glad if she left a little early. As it was, he’d cleared his calendar just barely enough to accommodate her and only to please his art selection committee.

  “I think I have everything we need for today,” she said, standing up and putting her palette into the aluminum paintbox. “We’ll get our things together now and get right out of here.” She was about to turn to Davey, who had been ensconced in the corner of a couch, studying his photography assignment for his ten-thirty class, when Ms. Richman put her head in at the door.

  “Mr. Eliot is here. He’s a little early for his nine o’clock appointment.” She saw that Allie was standing, apparently finished with her work. “Shall I send him in, or would you like him to wait?”

  Allie’s knees folded under her, and she sat down abruptly, unable to stand. A child could have read the distress on her face, and Mr. Nakamura was no child. How interesting, he thought. “Do you mind, Ms. Randall?” Mr. Nakamura always tried to learn as much as he could about the men he did business with. He had seen that obviously there was some connection between the young portrait painter and the fellow from Cape Cod, and he thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of this opportunity to learn some more about Mr. Eliot. He decided to allow them to come together in his office at the same time. “Perhaps, as you are finished, this gentleman and I can begin our meeting while you collect your things. It may save us a bit of time.”

  What could she say?

  “Of course. We’ll pack up as quickly as we can.”

  She stood up as abruptly as she’d sat down, her knees banging against the easel. She grabbed at it as it began to tip, and she was able to avert at least one disaster that was about to happen.

  But she was not able to avert the other.

  “Tell Mr. Eliot to come in,” Mr. Nakamura said.

  Ms. Richman stepped back into the anteroom.

  “Mr. Nakamura can see you now, Mr. Eliot.”

  And he was there. In a deep gray suit, and white shirt, and dark tie, and highly polis
hed black shoes, he was there, crossing the room. His hand was out to shake the chairman’s proffered hand, and he saw Allie. He stopped dead in his tracks.

  He saw her distracted face and her fingers, nervously clutching at her brushes, and he knew she hadn’t wanted to see him there. He saw the easel and the lighting gear, and he saw Davey, already dismantling the diffusion umbrellas, and coiling up the mass of wires, and he knew why she was there. And he saw her eyes and he knew she’d been crying. He wrenched his eyes away from her and continued toward Mr. Nakamura. They shook hands.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Good of you to see me so early.”

  “Well, I think we have much to talk about. It is good to begin early. But first,”—he turned to Allie, who appeared to be having difficulty closing her tubes of paint and packing her things—“I would like you to meet Ms. Randall, who is here to paint my portrait. Ms. Randall, may I introduce Mr. Eliot?”

  They looked into each other’s eyes, but neither made a move to shake hands. Allie said, “We’ve already met.”

  “Ah, of course,” said the chairman. “While you were painting on Cape Cod, perhaps. Mr. Eliot is also from Cape Cod.” He sat down again, behind his desk, and motioned Zach into a chair opposite him. No one made any explanations to him, and he didn’t expect any. He merely observed that the tall man sat tensely in the chair, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling, and unaware, apparently, that his eyes were following every movement the girl made as she gathered her materials. “I have asked Mr. Talmadge to join us this morning,” he said, noting the way Mr. Eliot’s head came up, his attention immediately and completely focused on the business before them.

  “Excellent. He’ll be especially interested in this discussion.” Zach sat back in his chair and crossed one long leg over the other. “It might also be a good idea to get some of your legal people in here. You might find their input useful.”