Allan Retzky - Vanished in the Dunes

“What are you doing here? I thought you were back at the house staring at the ocean. And how long has it been since you were here? A month? Longer?”

She moves to the living room window, turns her back to him, and appears to stare across the street at the corner of Third Avenue and Ninetieth. He stays in the middle of the room, several feet from the door he’s just entered. One hand leans against the polished wood arm of his favorite wing chair. A small bag rests at his feet. He takes a step toward her and then stops. He almost wants to ask her if she’s missed him, but decides it’s wiser not to go there.

“It’s only been a few weeks plus a couple of days since I was here.”

“It seems longer.”

“I can’t help what it seems like.”

“You can’t help anything anymore.”

She turns back from the glass and faces him. Her eyes widen. He feels the heat of anger.

“For months now you’ve been distant. You’ve changed. You can’t keep sweating out what the Feds might do, or keep cursing the bastards at your old firm for throwing you to the wolves. We’ve covered all of that already, and I’m fed up with your self-pity. All you’ve done for several months now is sit around the beach house and keep away from me. It all started back in May. Did something happen then? Something that made you change even more?”

He ignores the fact that she’s the one who’s been distant and wanted to separate, yet realizes that she isn’t accusing him of having an affair. Not this time. His reaction spills out. Almost too fast, but he has prerehearsed a possible answer for months.

“No. I swear. It’s nothing. And it’s not you. I just can’t take the city anymore on top of my issues with the Feds.”

“Bullshit! You’ve worked here all your life.”

“It’s not the same when you’re not working. Now all I sense is the crush of people, the noises, the trash, and, most of all, the loneliness of someone without a place to go.”

“This marriage hasn’t had a place to go either. It’s close to being finished as far as I’m concerned.”

“Stop it. I love you.”

That’s when he should tell her about what happened. But he can’t. He can swear fidelity all he wants, but fidelity was what got him here.

“Then prove it.”

Her voice has softened and is now throaty and barely audible. She again turns back to the window without waiting for an answer, but he knows that if he says or does nothing it would all be over. Done. Finished.

He doesn’t speak again, but moves up from behind and presses into her. The window reflects a faint yet true image of her eyes closing even as her mouth parts to pull in short breaths. She moves a few inches, as if to reaffirm the source of the pressure. They stand like that. A car horn blares from the street, but they don’t move. Not an inch.

“Get undressed,” he says at last.

There’s no answer, but she doesn’t move away.

“Take off your clothes before I tear them off.”

The smile in the reflection widens.

“Go ahead and tear away, but take care of the blouse. It’s silk.”

That’s when it all changed. She wants him again and that’s all that matters. He still isn’t sure why, but his sex drive is all the way back and it elates him despite all the issues that still exist. He still hasn’t told her about what happened. He can’t. He knows she senses his worry and assumes she just attributes it all to his potential matters with the Justice Department. Now it’s much too late to tell her the truth, although he longs to do it.

He sees a light out there somewhere. He can’t risk losing her after he came so close. The longer he’s waited the less likelihood there is for anyone to believe him. All he can think of now is deflecting attention to Stern if it comes to that. Our marriage or Stern? No choice. No choice at all.

Her attitude has also made a complete shift in the past month. It’s clear that she now seems to want to put the past behind them and make a new start. In the past few weeks she often speaks about moving away. This is new. She says she’s grown tired of the firm, the hours, and the useless feeling she gets from some of her clients. She says more than once that she’s mostly tired of not being with him. Since he’ll only stay in the apartment for limited periods, her solution is to switch her career and move if he wouldn’t mind.

Wouldn’t mind? The thought makes him positively giddy, and he embraces the idea. Yes, sell the apartment. Yes, sell the house. He can bear it he says as he withholds his hope that he might never again see the red quarry tile floor. She even has a future career plan. A law school friend is a dean at Cal-Davis in California. There’s an associate professorship opening in corporate reorganization law available and she’s interested. What does he think? He doesn’t hesitate to affirm her idea. A new start for both of them. And it’s all her idea. Wonderful. Now all that’s left is to take care of the doctor.

He goes back and reenters the bedroom. He pulls the box from the closet and moves it to a shelf in the upstairs hall closet just feet off the living room. What better place to keep a weapon than near where he would entertain an unwelcome visitor. He moves back into the main room with the ocean view. He’s ready in case the doctor decides to pay a visit, although he has doubts the man would actually try.

CHAPTER 15

She leans into the cushioned backseat. Her eyes flutter closed.

“Relax. Grab some sleep if you like.” Ed Whelan’s voice is soothing. He’s even been told he sounds like warm syrup.

“It’s just past noon and we’re between rush hours, so we should be there in less than three hours.”

Ed and Frances sit in the front of the Volvo and listen to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony on a CD. The volume is down. They have an apartment a few blocks away from the Posners’ in Manhattan and a house just around the corner in Amagansett, which makes it easy to give Sara a lift to or from the city when the timing works out.

The music rolls through the car in quiet waves. There’s an image of a forest clearing. Red-and-yellow foliage enclose the open space. A spotted fawn stands nearby and arches its neck toward a low-hanging green morsel. After several minutes, Ed tilts his head toward the backseat and blinks his eyes a few times. Frances nods.

“Yes. She’s asleep. Let’s be quiet.” She mouths all of this.

There’s no need for speech. They’ve already played catch-up gossip an hour earlier while they waited in their car for Sara to come downstairs.

Frances keeps pivoting her head to view the front door of Sara’s apartment house while they speak. It wouldn’t seem right to have Sara interrupt them.

“She was really shaky when we met for a drink several months ago. First his old firm screwed him over for doing what they asked him to do. Then they hung him out to dry when the Feds got involved. He seemed to be handling it pretty well though until last spring. That’s when she said he fell into some kind of deep depression and shut everyone out. Especially her. I gather they might even have separated for a while. I know she hasn’t been out to the beach for months.”

“Is that when she thinks he started an affair?”

“She never said that. I’ve already told you, I just picked up some vibrations. It’s my hunch. But maybe I misread the signs. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Honey, you’re not usually wrong about these things. And what makes her so pure? Remember a few months ago I told you that I thought I saw her walking arm in arm with some guy out of a steak house on Forty-Seventh Street.”

“That means nothing. It was probably business.”

“Even so.”