David Handler - The sweet golden parachute

“Now don’t be cross with me, Claude,” Poochie chided her. “You seem cross.”

“I’m concerned. You’re lucky you didn’t drown.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Claude. It doesn’t suit you.” Poochie paused to offer Des a firm handshake. “Thank you for your help, dear.”

“What I’m here for, Poochie.”

Dorset’s first lady let out a huge laugh. “We both know that isn’t true.” Then she strode regally toward her daughter’s ride, Tolly trailing along behind her.

Claudia started after them, then abruptly stopped and returned to Des, car keys jangling in her clenched hand. “Mother will be visiting an old friend up at Essex Meadows in the morning.” Essex Meadows was a highend assisted living facility. “She likes to stay for lunch because they often serve fish sticks, which she insists are very hard to find these days. She particularly likes their tartar sauce for reasons that, well, God only knows. I’ll be at my cottage across the courtyard from Four Chimneys. We can talk then.”

“That’ll be fine. Thank you, Mrs. Widdifield.”

Claudia shook her head. “A thankyou is not appropriate, Trooper. Trust me when I tell you this: You are about to be very, very sorry.”

They were running through central park together. He was flying a kite. She was holding a great big lollipop. Her long, blond hair was flowing. It was a bright, beautiful summer day. It had never been so beautiful…

A Maisie dream. Mitch was having one of his Maisie dreams. Often, there were montage sequences:

Now it was raining and they were hugging under an awning on lower Fifth Avenue. Then it was sunny and they were strolling through the West Village carrying shopping bags from stores he’d never heard of. Now they were eating ice cream cones in Washington Square. Now Maisie was feeding hers to a puppy…

This montage is way sappy, Mitch couldn’t help observing. Which was something he did. He reviewed his own dreams in his own head as he was dreaming them.

Now they were in their big brass bed together. Maisie was over him, her beautiful hair gently grazing his bare chest.

“You won’t ever leave me, will you, Bear?”

“How could you ever think that?”

“I can feel you slipping away, that’s how.” She kissed his eyes, his cheeks, his chin. “You won’t, will you, Bear?”

“Maisie, I’ll never leave you. I’ll never go.”

“Yes, you will,” she insisted.

Which was not at all in character for Maisie. She was never the jealous type, Mitch noted as he lay there, savoring the taste of her, the smell of her. Although she did seem a lot smaller than he remembered. Hardly weighed a thing. And her nose was cold and wet. And she was:

Purring. Maisie was definitely purring.

And with a startled yelp Mitch awoke to discover his outdoor hunter, Quirt, standing on his chest in the halflight of dawn, licking his face.

“Hey… buddy,” Mitch gasped, his chest heaving as if he’d just run two miles with a fortypound pack on his back.

He had a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth, and he was drenched in sweat. None of which was the fault of Quirt. Or of his docile stayathome muffin, Clemmie, who lay curled at his feet, fast asleep. No, this was one of those awful panic attacks like he’d suffered in the weeks after his beloved Maisie died. Always, they came in the night as dreams. He and Maisie would be happy. Then she’d start begging him not to leave her. And then he’d wake up with his heart galloping, convinced he was having a heart attack. His doctor had explained to him that what he was experiencing was anxiety. That the metallic taste was adrenaline. And that it would pass-which it had. Mitch hadn’t had a Maisie dream since he’d come to Dorset and met Des.

So why had he had one now?

It was a few minutes past six, according to the alarm clock next to the bed in his sleeping loft. Snow was falling on the skylight above his bed. Shuddering, he got up and waddled down the steep, narrow stairs, Quirt dashing nimbly along ahead of him.

Mitch’s place was a twohundredyearold exposed chestnut postandbeam carriage house that once belonged to one of the grander homes out on Big Sister Island. The downstairs was basically one big room where Mitch lived and worked and made beautiful notquite music on his sky blue Fender Stratocaster. He had a big bay window that looked out over Long Island Sound in three different directions. He had a kitchen and bath. He had his sleeping loft. He needed nothing more.

He cranked up the heat and let Quirt out. The snowfall was very light. Some of it was coating the windshield of his truck but it was not sticking to the ground. According to the thermometer outside of his bay window, it was thirtyfour degrees. It was supposed to warm all the way into the upper forties by the afternoon. Mitch had become something of a weather nerd since he’d bought his little house on Big Sister. What the weather was doing really mattered out here. Plus, he was hopelessly addicted to the Weather Channel and the daring exploits of ace storm tracker, Jim Cantore.

He built a fire in his big stone fireplace and put a pot of coffee on in the kitchen. While it was brewing he shaved. Gazing at his reflection in the mirror, he found his mind straying back to that Maisie dream. He didn’t know what to make of it. Because he wasn’t leaving her-it was she who’d left him. He’d lost her to ovarian cancer when she was thirty. Maisie was his first love. She would always occupy a cherished place in his heart. He accepted that-as did Des, the woman who he intended to spend the rest of his life with. So why had this anxiety suddenly reared its ugly head? Was it because St. Patrick’s Day was right around the corner? It did so happen that March seventeenth was Maisie’s birthday.

Sure, that was it. Had to be.

He dressed in a fisherman’s knit sweater, baggy corduroys and his Mephisto hiking shoes. By now the snow had stopped, the clouds were breaking up in the southern sky over Long Island and Quirt was scratching to be let back in. Mitch put some kibble down for him. The sound of that brought Clemmie ambling slowly downstairs to join them, yawning hugely.

Mitch poured himself some coffee and topped it with two fingers of chocolate milk. Then he flicked on the fortyeightinch grow lights in his bay window and spent a few good minutes doting over his tender little charges in their leakproof modular seed trays. Tiny, bright green shoots were sprouting up out of the seed plugs. His early season lettuce, leeks and parsley. Mitch could not believe how devoted he’d grown to his vegetable garden. Not only had he sent away for a gazillion seeds but also enough gear to stock a small nursery, including propagation heating mats and a halfdozen clear plastic protective domes. These he’d taken to calling Clemmie Domes after he’d discovered that sweet, gentle Clemmie loved to dig her paws into the fragrant starter mix, gum his little seedlings and fling them around the room.

For breakfast, he put away a bowl of the Cocoa Puffs that he kept stashed in the cupboard under the kitchen sink behind the Drano. Des had no idea they were there. While he ate, he cranked up his computer and printed out the baseball stats that he’d downloaded yesterday. Mitch was in a fantasy baseball league with a gang of other film critics. Their talent draft was coming up and he was getting ready to stock his team, the Rocky Sullivans, with a roster of prime talent.

When he was done he climbed into his C.C. Filson redandblack checked wool packer coat, grabbed his binoculars and notepad and trudged on out.

A dusting of snow still coated the meadows and trees, but the sun was starting to break out. It would melt very fast. Mitch poked around in his flower gardens and found snowdrops and snow crocus. In the slushy mud beneath some dead leaves there were daffodil shoots. The birds were returning. He could hear the cardinals, and see the robins poking at the limp, pale grass beneath the trees. Chipmunks scampered about.