“Well, I knew this would happen. So hold on…” He went to his car and fumbled in the front seat. “Here.” He smiled, shoving a Victoria’s Secret pink-and-white shopping bag at me. Inside was a very tasteful and elegant set of lounging pajamas.
“What? No oversize South Park sleepshirt?”
Ignoring me, he continued. “Cell phone?”
“Check.”
“Daytimer?”
“Check.”
“Coffeemaker?”
“Check.” We had decided I should have my own coffeemaker in my room so I wouldn’t have to greet Roland Riggs in the mornings pre-caffeine.
“Coffee beans.”
“Check.”
“Grinder.”
“Check.”
“Double latte with two sugars for the road?”
“No…I figured I’d stop on the way.”
“If you stop, you’ll be late. Can you this once be punctual? Hold on.” Again he bent into the Jag and emerged with a tall double latte from my favorite coffee bar.
“You happen to have a tall, dark, and handsome guy in there who also cooks?” I took the latte and set it on the roof of my Caddy.
“No. But I thought of everything else. That’s why we’re a good team.”
He smiled at me, and we had another one of our awkward moments. I knew he thought of me as a daughter. He and Helen never had children. But she had always been the one with the easy, affectionate gestures. A tall, graceful blonde, with the aura of Grace Kelly, she was the one who bought my Christmas gifts—always something truly personal and perfect. A first-edition copy of The Sun Also Rises. An antique cameo pin for my blazer lapel. A tortoiseshell-and-silver brush-and-comb set engraved with my monogram. Helen gave sentimental gifts chosen to show how much she and Lou loved me. Without Helen, Lou faced the daunting prospect of conveying his emotions without her. Since her death, he hugged me clumsily. Mumbled when it felt right. Nursed me through self-pitying moments with visits to our favorite dive bar. But Helen had humanized Lou; they were a perfect pair, and without her he was totally adrift.
“The best team in publishing.” I hugged him. We were about the same height. He patted my back.
“Call me.”
“I will. You’re going to miss me.” I pulled away.
“Oh sure. You after two pots of coffee barking at me over the schedules and covers. Hell, I might actually get some work done with you gone.” He cleared his throat. “You better get going.”
I threw my pajamas in the trunk, donned my Ray-Bans, and took my latte.
“Admit it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you. Now get going.”
I eased my car out of its tight parking space, waved and was on my way, trying not to think of Michael Pearton. But the mind, even my caffeine-hyped mind, doesn’t work that way. I drove across the Florida Everglades, heading to ward Sanibel Island, and tried—hard—not to think of his voice. But the harder I tried, the more vividly his face and disembodied voice drifted toward me, like a phantom passenger on my soft leather front seat.
I forced myself to think of Lou and Simple Simon, which he made me re-read three times. Lou had been impossible since Roland Riggs’s call. Every day he had new instructions. “Hook up your e-mail if you can. Right away. Call me the second you finish reading the manuscript. Tell me what he looks like. See if you can find out if he’ll do publicity for the book. Is he willing to do interviews?” I hadn’t seen him so hyped up by the possibility of a book since he courted movie legend Joan Fontaine to write her memoirs. (She declined.)
“Lou, shut up,” I had said. “You’re making me nervous. He’s just a guy. He pisses standing up like all the rest of you.”
“Sometimes I piss sitting down.”
“You know, Lou, that’s a little more information than I need to know.”
“Christ, I get to hear about every time you have your period. We brace for your PMS like it’s a hurricane crossing the Caribbean and heading dead-on towards Boca. You can hear about how I sit.”
I smiled to myself as I drove. Think of Lou and Roland Riggs—was I talking to myself already?—not Pearton. I flipped on my stereo, popped in my Elvis Costello CD and steered toward Alligator Alley while listening to “Indoor Fireworks.”
Alligator Alley is a lonesome, flat expanse of highway stretching from one coast of Florida to the other. As far as the eye can see in any direction is Everglades. Reeds and swamp, the occasional scruffy tree. I presume alligators. And dead bodies. Mafia hits take place in the ’glades. At least that’s what Joe “Boom-Boom” Grasso told me. We published his book about life in the Gambino crime family.
Empty mile after mile of swamp ate at my nerves. I gave up and allowed Michael to invade my thoughts. The mark of a good editor is an anal-retentive mind that never forgets a detail. With my typical obsessiveness, I replayed every conversation I’d had with Michael over the last five years.
So much of what passed between us was banter at first. Indoor fireworks. But somehow, over the years, we had progressed to intimate all-nighters about God (he tried to persuade me to give up my agnosticism), writing, dreams, Freud (we both concurred—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar), and even my father and mother. I forced his face from my mind by singing along with Elvis. Every time I tried too hard to make Michael vanish, he returned to my thoughts, his enigmatic smile staring up from his jacket photo. I felt my stomach tighten slightly.
Two hours after my departure from Boca, my banana-mobile and I emerged from the ’glades and proceeded toward the island. If you’re into the beach and the sun and palm trees and sand—which I am not—then Sanibel is indeed a paradise. I hadn’t yet spoken to Roland Riggs, but he had given Lou explicit directions to his house. For a New Yorker, any directions that start, “Make a right onto Periwinkle Way” bodes ill.
Driving along Periwinkle, one lane in either direction, I cursed the blue-haired in front of me, steering her Caprice with all the agility and speed of an Indy racer on thorazine. At this pace, I took in Sanibel Island. Dairy Queen. A pizza place. A real estate agency. A shell shop. Not a coffeehouse in sight. No bar I’d consider calling my home away from home. I’d never survive a month.
I followed the directions, winding my way to the water, finally arriving at an immense wrought-iron gate. I couldn’t even make out a house. Grasses and dune-like mounds of sand blocked my view. Climbing out of my car, I approached an intercom mounted on the gate. I pressed a button and waited. I pressed again.
“Hello?” A female voice answered.
“Hello. This is Cassie Hayes. Is this the home of Roland Riggs?”
“Sí. Hold on.”
The gate buzzed and swung open. I got back in my car and drove through. The driveway—if you could call it that—was gravel and sand and meandered its way to an immense house that stood on top of a dune but was perched on stilts like a heron.
I parked at another iron-filigree gate that led into a garden. Leaving everything in my car, I pushed on the gate, surprised at how nervous I felt. I was coming face-to-face with one of the literary giants of the century. Barbara Walters would have coldcocked Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer for this moment.
5
A bove the surf noise of the Gulf of Mexico rippling toward shore, I heard a bubbling, gurgling sound. Glancing around the garden, I spotted a fish pond