Arthur Clarke - Cradle

Nick was standing beside her with his bag in his right hand. Amanda turned to him and put her hand softly on his left forearm. “But it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that most of the years we came up empty-handed altogether. For we always found the real treasure, our love for each other. We always returned home renewed and laughing and thankful that life had allowed us to share another week or ten days in which we had imagined and fantasized and hunted for treasure together.”

Her eyes were soft and loving. Her voice was low but full of passion. “I do not know when or if you will come again, Nikki, but there are some things that I have been wanting to say to you for some time. If you like, you can dismiss them as the ravings of a sententious old woman, but I may never have a chance to tell you these things again. You have all the attributes I loved in Walter, intelligence, imagination, sensitivity. But something is wrong. You are alone. By choice. Your dreams of treasure, your zest for life—you do not share these things. It is very sad for me to see this.” She stopped for a second and looked back at the painting. Then she completed her thought, almost as if she were talking to herself. “For when you are seventy years old and look back at what your life has meant, you will not focus on your solo activities. What you will remember are the incidents of touching, those times when your life was enriched by a moment of sharing with a friend or loved one. It is our mutual awareness of this miracle called life that allows us to accept our mortality.”

Nick had not been prepared for an emotional encounter with Amanda. He had thought that he would stop by to see her for a few moments, ask her about the trident, and then depart. In retrospect he realized that he had treated Amanda very callously over the years. She had offered genuine friendship and he had spurned it, taking her out of his life altogether when their interaction no longer suited him. He winced as he recognized how selfish he had been.

As he walked slowly down the street, idly looking at the gracious old houses built over a hundred years ago, Nick took a deep breath. He had experienced too many emotions for one morning. First Monique, then Amanda. And it looks as if the trident is not going to solve all my problems. Funny how things always come in groups.

He found himself musing that maybe there had been a lot of truth in what Amanda had said. He acknowledged that he had been feeling lonely lately. And he wondered if the vague loneliness was indeed coupled to a creeping awareness of his own mortality, to the passage of that phase of life enshrined by Thomas Wolfe with the phrase, “For we were young, and we knew that we could never die.” Nick was feeling very tired when he came to the end of the sidewalk and turned onto the pavement of the convenience store parking lot.

He saw her before she saw him. She was standing next to the driver’s side of her brand-new red Mercedes sports coupe. She had a small brown paper hag in her arm and was looking in the window of the car next to hers, Nick’s 1990 Pontiac Nick felt a quick rush of adrenaline followed by anger and distrust. She finally saw him just as he started to speak. “Why, Greta, what a surprise! I guess we just happened to be in this part of Key West today at exactly the same time.”

“Ya, Nick, I thought it was your car. How are you?” Greta put the paper bag on the hood of her car and approached him in a friendly manner. She had either missed or was ignoring the sarcasm in his greeting. She was wearing a sleeveless yellow tank top and a pair of tight blue shorts. Her blonde hair was pulled back in two short pigtails.

“Don’t play innocent with me, Fraulein,” Nick overreacted. “I know you didn’t come here to shop.” He was nearly shouting. He used his free arm to accentuate his comments and block Greta’s approach. “This is not one of the stops on your circuit. You came here to find me. Now what do you want?” Nick dropped his arm. A couple of passersby had stopped to watch the exchange.

Greta stared at him for a moment with those crystal-clear eyes. She was wearing no makeup. She looked like a little girl except for the wrinkles on her face. “Are you still so angry, Nick? After all these years?” She came up next to him and smiled knowingly into his eyes. “I remember one night, almost five years ago,” she said playfully, “when you were not so angry. You were glad to see me. You asked me if I would have you for one night, no questions asked, and I agreed. You were great.”

In a momentary flash Nick remembered the rainy night when he had stopped Greta just as she was leaving the pier. He recalled also how desperately he had needed to touch someone, anyone, on that particular night. “That was the day after my father’s funeral,” he said roughly, “and didn’t mean shit anyway.” He looked away. He did not want to return her piercing gaze.

“That wasn’t the impression I had,” Greta continued in the same playful but otherwise emotionless tone. “I felt you inside me, I tasted your kisses. You can’t tell me—”

“Look,” interrupted Nick, clearly irritated. “What do you want? I don’t want to stand here all morning arguing with you about some stupid night five years ago. Now I know that you’re here for a reason. What is it?”

Greta backed off a step and her face hardened. “You are a very difficult man, Nick. It could be such fun doing business together if you weren’t such a, how do you say, pain in the ass.” She stopped for a moment. “I have come from Homer. He has a proposition for you. He wants to see what you found yesterday in the ocean and maybe discuss a partnership.”

Nick laughed triumphantly. “So I was right all along. You were sent to find me. And now that bastard wants to discuss a partnership. Hah. Not a fucking chance. You won’t steal from me again. Tell your employer or lover or whatever he is to cram his proposition up his ass. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

He started to walk around Greta and open his car door. Her strong hand grabbed his forearm. “You’re making a mistake, Nick.” Her eyes bored into his again. “A big mistake. You can’t afford to do it on your own. What you found is probably worthless. If it is, let him spend the money.” Her chameleon eyes shifted one more time. “And it would be such fun to work together again.”

Nick climbed into his car and turned on the engine. “No dice, Greta. You’re wasting your time. Now I’ve got to go.” He backed out of the parking place and then drove into the narrow street. The treasure was front and center in his mind again. He had been momentarily depressed by what Amanda had told him about the trident, but the fact that Homer wanted to see it gave Nick a feeling of power. But, he asked himself, how does he know already? Who talked? Or could someone have seen us?

WHEN Commander Winters returned to his office after a scheduled meeting with the public relations department, his secretary, Dora, was conspicuously reading the Key West newspaper. “Ahem,” she said, deliberately attracting his attention. “Is the Vernon Winters starring in The Night of the Iguana at the Key West Playhouse tonight anyone I know? Or are there two of them in this town?”

He laughed. He liked Dora. She was almost sixty, black, a grandmother more than a dozen times, and one of the few secretaries on the base who actually had some pride in her work. She treated everybody, including Commander Winters, like one of her children. “So why didn’t you tell me?” she said with feigned outrage. “After all, what if I had missed it altogether? I told you last year to make certain that you always told us when you were performing.”

He took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I had intended to tell you, Dora, but somehow it just slipped my mind. And you know that my thespian activities are not exactly embraced by the Navy, so I don’t ballyhoo them about so much. But I’ll have some tickets for you and your husband in a couple of weeks.” He looked at the stack of message notes on her desk. “That many, huh? And I was only gone a little over two hours. It never rains but it pours.”