Ruth Wind - The Diamond Secret

As I shed my blouse, jet lag started kicking in again, thick along the back of my neck, weighting my eyelids, making my shoulders ache. I glanced at the clock: 6:17. To get on schedule, I would have to stay up until at least 9:30.

At the moment, it seemed impossible.

Steam curled out of the bathroom. I stripped as I went, leaving a trail from bed to bathroom. Sheer white blouse, bra, red leather skirt—I have a penchant for leather—panties. My skin felt sweaty and sticky, and the water was heaven. The toiletries were high-end, smelling of lavender. For one second, as the spray massaged my back, I thought with some pleasure of the possibility of my Continental, with his long, clean hands. Hands on my tired neck would be very nice indeed. He’d seemed charming enough, and it wouldn’t be so bad to have a holiday affair, especially given the anniversary of my divorce.

But I didn’t want to mix family into it. I’d chosen the Drover pub because no one I knew was likely to be there. It’s not always possible, but I keep family and love life, as well as business and love life, strictly separated.

Business is obvious. It’s too hard to work with someone you’ve slept with and dumped or been dumped by.

And the trouble with families is that they always hope you’re going to settle down. That’s not on my agenda. Tried marriage for three years, and really, not married is better. Men are too unreliable. I should have learned that from my father’s example, but it took a bad marriage—with a man so much like my father they might have been clones; that is, handsome, charming, and completely incapable of fidelity—to drive the truth all the way home.

So I stood alone under the hot shower, washing the breath of hundreds of other people from my long hair, scrubbing the layers of grime from my face.

Feeling better, I wrapped one towel around my head and another around my body. Stepping over the clothes on the floor, I unzipped my black carry-on to get out some lotion and deodorant, mentally trying to choose between jeans and a skirt to wear downstairs.

It took ten full seconds to sink in: this was not my bag.

It was an exact replica, which isn’t so weird—how many black, wheeled carry-on models are there, after all?—but in the netted pocket where I keep my underwear, there were boxer shorts. Instead of my prized red leather pants, there was a stack of neatly folded T-shirts.

“Damn!”

I put my hand on the straps, lifted the edge of a blue shirt as if it were a false front, a little practical joke, and just below it, I’d find my own things. How could this have happened? I’d had it with me all the way from California!

But obviously, that wasn’t true, or I wouldn’t be looking at some man’s things instead of my own.

Think. Where could it have been mixed up? It could have happened when I pulled the bag out of the overhead bin. Not likely. I wedged it next to the right-hand wall, and took it down from the same spot.

Where else then? At security. I suppose I could have grabbed the wrong bag off the belt.

Except my shoes were in the bin right next to it.

Which left the van I used to get to the airport. I thought back to the other passengers, wondering which one might be opening my bag with the same sinking feeling I had right now.

There were three men. One was too fat to wear these clothes, one was a college boy and one was a pin-striped, red-tie business man who’d smelled of my father’s Armani cologne. He might wear silk boxers, but I didn’t see him in a turquoise linen shirt. I fingered it with admiration. Silk and linen, gorgeously cut. I’d like to see the man who’d wear this.

Probably not the van, then. Maybe it was the security check point. But I hadn’t paid any attention to who was around me there. I’d been running late.

“Damn!” I said again.

I didn’t want to wear my dirty plane-ride clothes. I wanted something that smelled clean. I wanted my nightgown to sleep in. My other shoes.

But there wasn’t anything I could do, except track down the owner of the case and try to work out an exchange. In the meantime, I’d have to go shopping in the morning.

I found a tag in a small pocket on the outside of the bag. Same place mine was, of course. The handwriting was hard to read, spidery and European. I couldn’t make out the name, which was smeared, but there was a telephone number, in Paris.

Paris. Dialing the numbers gave me a jolt of body memory, one of those electric moments that are stored God knows where, in cells all over your arms or back or collarbone or ankles. This particular memory, dialing Paris numbers, had been imprinted during my seventeenth year, when I’d dialed the number of a man, a Parisian who’d stolen my heart with a single kiss.

So I thought I was just projecting when the recorded voice on the other end sounded exactly like the voice of that very man, Paul Maigny. In French he said, “Hello, thank you for calling, please leave a message.”

Startled, I hung up. Stared at the phone, the card in a hand that had suddenly begun to tremble violently.

It couldn’t be Paul, of course. Only someone who sounded like him. Paul still lived in Paris—my father, his best friend, had recently spent a week with him—but I would have known if he’d been on that plane. With a slight shake of my head, I picked up the receiver and dialed again. Again the voice shocked me.

And again, before I could decide what to do, I hung up.

There are some voices you do not forget. Your mother. Your best friend. Your spouse. I was not mistaken about this one, either. Those elegant vowels, the slight rasp.

I scowled.

It had been almost five years since I’d heard Paul’s voice—since the day of my wedding, as a matter of fact, when I’d told him never to speak to me again. And he was likely in my mind because the island of Arran, lying backward on the sea like a man, made me think of him. Still.

It couldn’t be his case on my bed. I knew it wasn’t his handwriting, which was an elegant, sprawling hand I’d seen thousands of times.

I was just imagining things.

Firmly, I dialed the number a third time. When the voice mail picked up, I left my name and the telephone number of the hotel on the voice mail of the stranger in Paris, who no doubt had my bag and felt as bewildered as I did. In case he’d left a message for me, I next dialed my home voice mail box. No messages.

So there I was, damp in my towels, with a hot date in an hour. The stranger’s bag was open on the bed. I did what any red-blooded woman would do: I looked through it. Maybe there would be something I could wear.

A scent of laundry and man rose from it, entirely alien from the smell of my own packing. I wondered, briefly, if the stranger would go through my things. I thought of thongs and red leather pants—when you have a job as stuffy as mine, you’ve got to take your pleasure where you can find it—and a little sense of discomfort rippled through me.

Beyond the gorgeous turquoise silk and linen shirt, there was a black, zipped shaving kit, three silk T-shirts, a pair of black trousers, black socks, a pair of well-worn jeans, swimming trunks, the aforementioned boxers. A pair of walking sandals were sealed in a plastic bag. A little sand gathered in the corner. He’d been on the beach.

My stomach growled and it hit me again that I was starving. Which brought home the fact that I still I didn’t have anything to wear.

Grr. All I’d wanted was a little supper and a good night’s sleep. The mix-up was a pain in the neck.

But let’s get a grip here—it was not tragedy or disaster. It was only inconvenient. I keep some makeup in my purse, and the hair dryer in the bathroom would work fine for my wet head.

What I didn’t have was deodorant. With only a slight flush of shame, I opened the man’s shaving kit to see if he had any. There it was, a red roll-on that smelled pretty good.