Could he walk through walls too? There might be nothing he couldn’t do, nothing she couldn’t wish of him.
As Julianna tried the door, a scuffling of feet sounded behind her and someone cleared their throat with an ‘Ahem’. Scott stood on the deck below. She gasped. A dangerous impulse briefly seized her: to leap from her lofty position and land in his arms. Her feet itched to indulge it. Her heart drummed. The sharp ocean air became hot cotton candy catching on her breath and a warm waxy heat spread across every inch of her skin.
Missus Cohen appeared beside Scott. Snuggled in her arms, her marmalade Persian cat regarded Scott with slope-eyed suspicion.
“Julianna, honey,” she called up, “this young man said you had an arrangement to meet here. I gave him brownies. I hope I didn’t ruin any dinner plans you mighta made. Anyway, he scoffed the lot.”
Julianna laughed. “It’s ok, Missus Cohen. No, no definite plans. Thanks for entertaining him.”
“You’re quite welcome. Are you staying through July? Have you decided?”
Julianna looked at Scott as she made the instant irrefutable decision. “Yes. Absolutely. Will you be ok if I take off for a few hours?”
“Sure thing, honey. The family’s coming over to visit shortly. I can’t get enough of my latest grandson,” she explained to Scott.
“Great,” Julianna replied. “Say ‘Hello’ to Jason. Isaac’s a gorgeous baby.”
“I will. You kids go and enjoy yourselves. It was nice to meet you, Scott. Wasn’t he nice, Mordy?” she asked the cosseted cat as she withdrew.
Julianna descended to Scott. She resisted touching his arm. She was sorely tempted to do as much, just to make sure he was real.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he grinned.
“You made it,” she giggled.
“Yup.”
“Wow.” She sighed deeply. “Thank you. You got them all.” She jingled the stones.
“Not only that,” Scott announced. He took a fold of notes from his pocket and peeled one off, handing the rest to her. He brandished the $10 bill. “I’m temporarily flush. Where’s a high-roller go round here if he’s looking to impress a girl?”
Julianna laughed. “Come on. I’ll show you the no-fail way to this gal’s heart.”
She snatched his hand. Tentatively, he closed his around hers. Her grasp was compelling and he quickly relented, allowing their fingers to interlace. Immediately he felt a rightness about her hand’s place in his.
She led him to the street, releasing her grip as they stood on the sidewalk. His fingers felt super-charged.
“Ok. It’s not far. Are you ok if we walk it?” she asked.
“Sure. Lead the way.”
This time she gripped his arm. Conscious of how guys hated excessively all-out hand-holding, she didn’t want to come across as clingy. Honestly, what she really wanted was to wrap her arms around his neck and let him whisk her wherever he chose. Still there was no Godly way she wasn’t going to touch him now, by some pretext.
“You don’t mind keeping me steady down the hill? It’s much trickier than coming up,” she explained, wishing for a walk without end and resolving to drag it out to the next best length.
“Yes Ma’am. All set?”
“Here we go.”
They reached the beach and turned back onto The Strand, heading in the direction of the Pier. Her arms firmly wrapped around his, Julianna moved her feet ever-slower, keeping him to the languid pace her thumping heart desired.
Maybe talking will slow this pony, she decided.
“So, tell me about your adventure in Glendale. How went the quest?” she asked.
“Oh. How long do you have? I can take you step-by-step, like you had me doing.”
“Brian christened it Indiana Jones and the Lost Stones of Oberon. He’s such a brat. Wait… o-ooh! You didn’t get the note? I left it with him. Oh please don’t tell—”
They stopped. With a magician’s flourish, Scott produced the envelope and gave her a fat eye of disapproval. “I think Brian wanted to see me all hot and sweaty, if you catch my drift—him or his boyfriend. I got this only after a day’s hunting.”
Julianna grabbed Scott’s waist and cowered against him in a playful petition for mercy. “Please forgive me. Take pity! I’m so sorry. That wasn’t the plan,” she mooed in exaggerated contrition.
“Well, let’s see what the plan actually was.” Scott extracted the note.
Julianna took his arm and walked on.
Scott started reading in a mock-girlie tone. “Dearest Scott, well, imagine my surprise when I saw the scale of this place. I am soooooo”—he dragged the ‘o’ theatrically out—“sorry. I expected a modest and manageably sized cemetery like we have back east. Heart. Please forgive me. Heart.”
Scott gave her a sideways squint. She locked her truffle-brown eyes to his, blinking rapidly, a Disneyfied expression of naiveté.
He cleared his throat and read on. “I can empathize with how overwhelmed you felt as you first walked through those gates. Thank you for not walking back out. That means so much to me that I can never adequately express it here. I will console myself that, having already demonstrated a wise and pragmatic mode of thinking in Arizona, you have immediately come to the office to inquire about the layout of the park.”
“Hah!” Scott added, continuing. “I assume you have mentioned Merle Oberon, though I suspect you are too cool to reveal the exact purpose of your visit.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he commented. “As a result, one of the trustees—I hope it’s Brian. He’s been ever so lovely to me and is at present making me coffee as I write this—has handed this note to you and therefore spared you the toil of scouring the entire grounds.”
“I didn’t get coffee,” Scott whined.
“You got me.” Julianna thumped him on the arm. “Keep going.”
“I have left the stones as we agreed, so if you don’t mind a pleasant, albeit less exacting, meander through the delightful grounds and halls, I hope you can find the time to retrieve them for me. They have a replica of Da Vinci’s David here. Can you believe that? There is a beautiful Scottish church called ‘Wee Kirk O The Heather’ so if it gets too warm you can retreat there to compose yourself and pray for the safe return of my sanity!”
Scott paused to stare her down. “There aren’t enough prayers in creation, you do realize?”
“Creation’s not over yet. Keep going. It’s a gripping yarn. I like her. She sounds motivated.”
They resumed walking.
“Well, I guess I’ll sign off for now. Oh, pre-S. I’d better tell you my telephone number is 310-174-9598, since it occurs to me that should someone disturb one of the stones then all this will have been in vain. I also didn’t factor in the area code and there are a gazillion of them in this city. Some things are too important to be left to chance, don’t you agree?”
The walk halted again. “What was all that back in Arizona, Miss Mystic?”
“Kyra was right. Heatstroke. I need to be shut away for my own good.”
“I look forward to you getting this note and hopefully using this number to let me know that it all worked out ok. Until then, all my love. Julianna Putnam. Saturday. June 14, 1997”
Scott raised a paternal eyebrow. “All my love?”
Julianna froze. She was on the cusp of stepping forward and answering his question with a kiss—the kiss. She was nudging dangerously to that inevitable end. She thought he must have sensed it too, how he’d given her the crucial prompt. Why else would he hold the note between them now, as though a barrier to keep her in check, if not because he sensed an emotional hurricane ready to swallow him as well?
Scott read the remainder. “Ps—Duh me! You need to know where the stones are. Turn over for the names and map of the locations. Brian says to just ask him for any help you might need. He drew the map so be sure and thank him. If you ever think to turn the stones over, you might discover how you didn’t think of everything. Hah!”
Without waiting to be asked, Julianna stepped onto his boot toes. Scott closed his eyes. After a fleeting last look at him, so did she. She threw her arms around his neck and one hand hunted through his hair, until her fingers found the warm delicate peak of his ear. She clasped her other hand to the hot nape of his neck, pressed her lips to his, her tongue for his. Their breaths became one, for no more could they take, what wisps they had quickly burning vaporous in the crucible of the kiss.
Scott placed his hand on the crescent hollow of her waist. He brought his other arm around her shoulders, felt her hair brushing a sensuously spectral ballet across the raised skin of his forearm. The note was still in his hand and both were shaking. The paper fluttered with a faint ‘whop-whop’ and Scott clenched it tighter to silence its betrayal of his state. His traitor heart was harder subdued. It rode the rabid current of his blood, selling him out to her at every inch where their excitements pressed and bartered. He was becoming aroused. So was she.
Even as he sought to press her harder, Julianna broke the kiss and slid limply within his clinch. Scott seized a Lazarus breath and opened his eyes, for the good it did.
Julianna nestled her head to his chest and held to the frame of his broad shoulders. Breath—breathing—came hard and slow and deep to settle her. Her legs quivered and her consciousness floundered in an otherplace miasma of nothing. Her eyes felt very heavy and her head felt very woozy. She feared that, if he released her, she might slide to The Strand’s surface and fizzle there like butter, until she was only a dark stain of the sheer boppiness she had been reduced to.
‘Boppiness’? she thought. I have kissed myself into an illiterate state of altered weirdness—beyond weirderness—even for me. Oh God. I’m so fucked in love with him already.
Scott wasn’t capable of speech so Julianna whispered one word—barely audible—for them both.
“Gotcha.”
Chapter 7
2005 – Boston
Scott read the sheet from the envelope, staring at the single line for several minutes.
Note-in-hand, he then walked into the hall. One-by-one, he opened every door, flipped every light switch. All the rooms were empty, lifeless.
He climbed the stairs. The bed in the picture guest room was made—readied but unused—as it had been for over a year. The chaise-longue there was equally vacant.
After a moment’s pause at the door, he ventured into Julianna’s bedroom. A paperback and glass of water sat on her night table. He set the note down on the book and opened the walk-in closet.
One half of the clothes space was empty, from where Scott’s things had long since followed to his own separate room. A few hangers clung to the bare metal rail on that side, like clavicles picked clean of their flesh. Julianna’s side was still a crush of what looked to be all her garments. Arranged by season, the parade of her entire wardrobe presented itself for Scott’s inspection. Near the front, he noticed some empty hangers; she had obviously taken a few current things. It pained Scott to admit he wasn’t able to tell what they might have been. On the shelf above the rail, he detected that her small travel case was gone. It couldn’t have held more than three changes of clothes. Maybe she was coming back. The note was definitive about nothing in that respect.
He surveyed the rank of her outfits. They had all been abandoned; he and they ought to have much to talk about. But he accepted how every item had become a stranger to him, like their owner. They hung indifferent to his examination. They had taken up her cause, beyond caring of him or his injurious neglect of her.
He noticed a jacket near the back—Prussian blue with delicate ceramic buttons on the cuff—but could no longer recall the time when it held favor with her tastes.
He lifted the sleeve of a cream blouse. It hung limply in his grasp, lacking substance and purpose in its empty waiting state.
Only a distinctive mint-green jacket stirred any recollection in Scott. He pried it from the throng and held it up. Gradually, the memory returned to him, her full ensemble that day: the jacket itself, with cheery white trim around the lapels and pockets, the long pleated ivory skirt, bobby socks, and sensible lace-up tan shoes.
Scott smiled. The British Charitable Society fete at Chesterwood Estate. At some point, he and Julianna had been recruited to make up the numbers in a croquet quartet. Their opponents—two pompous Knights of the Realm—royally whipped their asses. Julianna took it all with good grace. Mischievously, she then put a challenge to the younger man of their opponents: who could hit the ball farthest—him or her? He had already beaten her on finesse so surely his power game was also superior to hers—a Yank and a woman to boot. Make it interesting—$500, winner-takes-all. It was paper money to his Pound anyway.
Sir ‘Poncealot’ duly accepted. Scott imagined he saw something like condescending modesty on the guy’s face as he drove his own ball a considerable distance down the sprawling lawn. Scott could then barely watch as his wife addressed hers with brutal technique. She hit it cleanly enough but it started to veer away, consigned to dropping short and wide. It did, whereby it crashed against the head of the bronze Lincoln statue by the trees. Old Abe must have read the danger signs. He had the foresight to have his hands protectively cupping his Illinois State jewels. The ball rebounded off his temple and flew across the grass, landing just beyond the Brit’s. Julianna’s victorious whoop drew glances from the well-heeled assemblage.
“I’ll make it up to our Special Relations for being a crass Yank,” she told Scott, as she slipped her winnings into his shirt pocket. “There’s an item in the auction I want you to bid on later.”
Scott dug into the pockets of the now-empty jacket and felt along the lining. The stamp-sized auction tag came out in his hand, a loose white thread hanging from its eye. A Union Jack adorned one full side of it. The flip side simply said ‘Lot 48’. Now Scott recalled it was sometime in the Spring of ’03. Over canapés and chardonnay, the talk had all been about the superlative success of the war, how Blair and Bush were the only pair with a pair at the UN.
After lunch, the British Legion held a charity auction. The thread Scott held now had been secured by a wax drop to the back of the cameo he had bid on for Julianna. The cameo was matte blue and the woman’s profile on it was dovetail white. She fixed her gaze westward, aloof, oblivious. Her expression betrayed nothing, just knowing. The delicate oval piece was edged in the same white finish as its immutable subject.
“Explain to me exactly what a cameo is,” Scott asked, as they drove home from Chesterwood that evening.
“It’s just jewelry,” answered Julianna. “Women wore them as broaches or pendants or on chokers around their necks. Sometimes they were symbolic. Roman women wore them to signify that they were taken, attached. Even men wore them sometimes.” She leaned over, pressed it against Scott’s Adam’s apple. “Perhaps I should have one made in my likeness. You could wear it to ward off any smitten interns at the office.”
“I think the very act of me wearing it would have the effect you’re looking for.”
“I guess so. Symbolism isn’t what it used to be.”
“Why did you want that one so badly?”
“I need to figure out what she’s thinking.”
“Join the club.”
“You’re saying that like you don’t relish the challenge.”
“You’re not a challenge, Jules.”
“How confident of you.”
“No, I mean… not that way. I don’t feel the need to deconstruct you, is all.”
“Got everything you require, have you?”
“Is it such a bad way to feel?”
“You know, there was a writer from New York there, some existentially angst-ridden soul or other. I overheard some of the women gossiping about his companion. He kept introducing her as his niece but they all agreed how he’s screwi
ng her. Apparently he has a missus back in Manhattan.”
“What happens in Stockbridge stays in Stockbridge.”
“Why does he feel the need to write one woman off because he has a superficial need for another’s unique trait? We are the ultimate Russian Dolls. Keep twisting us open and—voilà! Another. Then another. Some men just don’t have the patience, or the skill, to discover what they’re missing.”
“You mean screwing open?” Scott suggested.
“Great choice of words. They just grab a ready-made replacement for instant gratification, rather than try and locate it in what they have, or once had. Hmm. Do all men think that complete possession resides in the act of screwing us? Shame. It’s how you miss our hidden virtues.”
“Which are?”
Julianna flaunted the cameo to him. “We’re not telling. We have to be unlocked by someone else. It’s technically ‘unscrewing’, by the way. Not so much fun, eh?”
Scott looked apprehensively her way. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You’re asking the wrong woman.”
Scott closed his hand over the tag. The rack of outfits could not—would not—tell him anything more tonight. As he exited the wardrobe, he glimpsed the red dress. He shuddered, stamping on the memory it threatened to stir.
Not tonight.
He sat on Julianna’s bed and opened the note again. It simply said: ‘Forgive me for who I couldn’t be.’
Chapter 8
1997 – Los Angeles
They walked The Strand, hand-in-hand now, swapping their LA stories: Julianna was temping at the French-American Chamber in Century City. Scott told her how it went in the Parks Department.
In the cool white-tiling of the Manhattan Beach Creamery, he repaid the debt with waffle cone doubles. He opted for Oreo-Cookies with Cream-and-Pistachio and he made a nose when she ordered Blueberry and Bubble-Gum.
“Is that for real?” he asked. “Bubble gum?”
They strolled out to the roundhouse aquarium at the end of the pier and gazed along the rolling surf as they sat and slurped their cones.
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