Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

And he was not alone. There, like satellite planets coming in and out of his orbit, were Greg, Phoebe, Delilah, the Chief, Tess-and a guy Jeffrey didn’t recognize, an interloper who was getting awfully close to Phoebe. Jeffrey was aware of this much, and he was about to ask the guy to step back. Phoebe could not be counted upon to protect her own airspace; she seemed not even to notice this guy.

Then Jeffrey realized the interloper was Addison without his glasses. He had taken his glasses off, he was sweating too profusely, they would slip off, the dancing was so wild, they would fall off. The reason the interloper kept bumping into people was because it was Addison, the sight-impaired. He could not see a damn thing without his glasses, and Jeffrey wondered what it felt like to be dancing in a blur of bodies, to be reliant on sound, smell, touch. Jeffrey wanted to be Addison.

Just then a cry went up and Jeffrey was nudged in the ribs. He turned. It was the Chief, pointing. Across the dance floor there was an elevated stage with two poles. There were two women dancing, three women, four women.

“Look at the girls!” the Chief shouted.

The girls, the women-Delilah, Phoebe, Tess, and Andrea-were all up onstage, spinning around poles, lifting their legs, throwing their heads back. Phoebe was the most beautiful of the four women, and the best dressed, in a short go-go number of red-and-orange fringe. But she was the weakest dancer-spaced out, she was a cross between a Deadhead and bad Twyla Tharp. Tess was adorable and Gidgety in her white pants and navy striped nautical top; she had been born to do the twist. These two used their good judgment and hopped down from the stage into the arms of the strapping black bouncers. This left Delilah and Andrea. Jeffrey-and everyone else on the dance floor-was mesmerized. They danced separately with their poles in a surprisingly erotic way (okay, Delilah had watched a lot of Sopranos episodes this winter, but where had Andrea learned to pole-dance?). Then they came together in a sensual, crowd-pleasing moment, and Jeffrey felt aroused, then disturbed. The only two women he’d ever made love to-well, it was powerful to see them together like that.

They kissed once, briefly but passionately, and Jeffrey’s heart stopped, went into free-fall, then started again, pounding in sync with the bass. The Chief whistled, then pounded Jeffrey on the back.

“Look at our girls!” The Chief’s tone of voice said it all: this was enough fantasy to last him the rest of his life!

As for Jeffrey, well, what was he to think? How to process this? The only two women he had ever loved had kissed each other. Jeffrey’s past and his present, his present and his future… he wasn’t sure what was going on inside him.

Addison said, “What just happened?”

He couldn’t see. He’d missed it!

Jeffrey kept dancing. He spun around, he put his hands in the air. Those were his women, this was his entourage. They either fit in or stuck out, he was either not himself or more himself than he’d ever been before. He was hot and more than hot, he was warm, finally warm. This had been his idea. His idea! He was in heaven. They all were.

A re you going to tell him? Are you going to tell him you love me?

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid you won’t get it.

The $9.2 million deal closed without a hitch, and Wheeler Realty received a check for $368,000, half of which went into Addison’s pocket. Normally this would have been cause for celebration (corporate and personal), but Addison was distracted.

What to do with Tess’s cell phone?

He had flat-out lied to the Chief. Addison was by no means an honest person-he was a real estate agent, after all, prone to stretching the truth, and he had for six months concealed his affair with Tess. But something about looking Ed Kapenash in the eye and flat-out lying about Tess’s phone instilled fear and shame.

Should Addison come clean? Tell Ed that yes, he had the phone? Show Ed the text messages? Tess was afraid-of the water, of Greg, of something more nebulous? There was no way to figure out what had happened on the boat. The Chief had one idea; Addison had another. Should Addison confess to the affair? What would that help? It would help nothing, he decided. It would only hurt.

Addison tucked Tess’s iPhone in the top drawer of his desk, which locked with a key. Addison had one key and Florabel had a spare key swimming in the ashtray where she kept paper clips, rubber bands, and safety pins. The Chief would never find Tess’s phone in Addison’s top drawer, though it was the obvious first place to look. Should Addison move it? Take it home or put it in his car? The skin on the phone was traffic-light yellow, bright as an alarm, impossible to miss. Would Phoebe find it?

He pulled the two pieces of the felt heart from his pocket. He was not only emotionally feeble, but mentally feeble as well. He believed that this heart had power, that it meant something. As he handled it, it ripped again. The heart was disintegrating. Was this a sign? Addison could not accept it as a sign.

Florabel loomed over his desk. She eyed the torn, misshapen pieces of heart on his desk.

“What is that?” She sounded disgusted, as if they were pieces of pig heart.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You need to pull yourself together, Dealer,” Florabel said. As ever, the woman was speaking the brutal truth. She slapped a whopper of a check down on his desk, covering the scraps of felt. “There’s some money. Go get yourself a shrink.”

Thoughts of escape occupied her at all times, the way some people, she supposed, fantasized about sex with Robert Downey Jr., or winning the lottery and buying a power yacht, or being selected for American Idol . Freedom had always been Delilah’s drug of choice, and now, who could blame her? Tess and Greg were dead, everything was painful; even breathing hurt. Delilah dreamed about living alone in the South of France, riding a funny European bicycle down a path cut between fields of lavender toward a charming village where she would buy a baguette and runny Camembert and a bottle of wine that would aid her quest to block out everything that came before-her life on Nantucket, her friends, her husband, her children.

She used to love a crowd, she used to demand the company of others, but now she wanted only to be alone.

And even that wasn’t quite true. She couldn’t stand herself. She wanted to unzip her body and step out of it. She wanted to be attached to a machine that would erase her memory, obliterate her guilt, wipe her clean.

She had run away once before, in high school. There had been no reason for it other than boredom, a standard-issue teenage restlessness, and a desire to see what other possibilities the world contained. Delilah had had a pleasant childhood and a less-pleasant-but-still-okay adolescence, growing up in South Haven, on the shores of Lake Michigan. Delilah’s father, Nico Ashby, was a real estate developer, responsible for the burgeoning suburban sprawl in the acreage just off the lake. He brought South Haven Taco Bell, Blockbuster, I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt, Lucky Nail Salon, Subway, Stride Rite Shoes, and Mailboxes, Etc. He also had his hand in the bigger, uglier, more egregious development along Route 31 toward St. Joe’s-the Wal-Mart with its attendant Big Boy Diner, the Staples, the eighteen-theater Cineplex, the Applebee’s, the Borders. Nico Ashby and his wife and two daughters lived in a stunning Victorian house on the bluff that overlooked the town harbor and the South Haven Yacht Club (where Nico had been president for nine years). Nico was a local hero-a successful businessman, a philanthropist, a member of Rotary and the Lions Club, a model husband and father, a big, good-looking guy with a full head of dark hair, a bronze tan in three seasons, and a booming laugh. Nico Ashby-everyone knew him, everyone liked him.