Reunion (22 page)

“I’ll go,” Julian said, laying a twenty on the counter. Mitch swung around, sure he’d heard wrong in the din of the ending song and the applause that followed.

But Blue was saying, “No, stay. It’s fine, I’ll get a cab.”

“You’d end up waiting longer than it takes to walk,” Julian said. “I was leaving anyway.”

She hesitated, then said, “Okay. That’s—well, that’s a generous offer, thanks. Marcy, just catch up with me mid-morning, or whenever you get up, okay?”

“Will do. You feeling all right?”

“Fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” Marcy said. “Julian, make sure she doesn’t get kidnapped by pirates.”

Julian nodded. “She’s safe with me.”

ow here was something Julian never imagined himself doing: walking up a dark Key West street at eleven o’clock at night with a woman whose yearly income exceeded some countries’ gross national products. Such a thing was a conceptual impossibility—and yet, here he was. Here
they
were. A slightly tipsy, past-his-limits man and a too-attractive, slightly older woman. It was beginning to drizzle, which didn’t seem to trouble her—a surprise. He should not be here, not tonight, not alone. His offer had been knee-jerk, good manners besting good sense. It wasn’t at all about wanting to be alone with Blue. That would be absurd.

If he
had
imagined doing this, he wouldn’t have thought it would feel as awkward as it did. They’d walked three blocks so far, and, even away from the noise of the bar, she hadn’t said a word. So he hadn’t spoken either. Here in the dimness of Whitehead Street, there was only the sound of their shoes on the sidewalk, distant laughter and music, the odd dog’s bark, the tiny peeps of chicks in hedges, and the continuous hum of night insects—a sound like soothing music, a symphony compared with the night noise he’d grown accustomed to.

He thought she’d be talkative. Weren’t talk-show hosts supposed to be super-friendly, inquisitive types? She hadn’t done anything he’d expected tonight—sit near his father, horn in on Brenda’s turf, talk incessantly about herself, that sort of thing. In fact she’d hardly spoken to anyone. If he hadn’t known, he might have thought Marcy was the
celebrity in the room, or Stephen, with his Nordic features and the stories he was telling of designing restaurants with Jamie Oliver.

Glancing at Blue’s profile, he wondered if she had written him off as uninteresting, beneath her notice or attention.

Well, what if she had? It was no sweat—except that he
was
sweating. She walked fast, and he was unused to the humidity here after so long in the deserts of the Middle East.

Her phone rang and she stopped suddenly, looking at the display. Her eyes were wide and worried when she faced him. The phone continued to chime. “I have to take this,” she said.

She moved away from him, closer to a towering banyan tree whose branches spanned a hundred feet or better. “Ketchikan,” he heard her say into the phone, then, “Really. What was the cause of death, did it say? … I hope you do. Keep me posted.”

She didn’t turn back to him right away; in the darkness he couldn’t see whether her stillness was contemplation or grief so he waited, unsure of what he should do. Then she turned around and said, “Sorry for the interruption.”

“No trouble.” That was it?

They were at the end of the block, two more to go before reaching the hotel, when she stopped again. “Would you mind if we take a detour?”

He checked his watch. Things were barely getting started on Duval. For him, however, it was … too many hours past his bedtime for his brain to be able to do the math. “Why? Where did you need to go?”

“Nowhere, really. Never mind—I forgot that you’re on Afghanistan time. You must be desperate to get some sleep.”

“I’m pretty beat,” he admitted. “But I did catch a few winks between”—which flight had it been?—“Zurich and Miami. I’m doing all right.” Sort of. The image and feelings the word
sleep
conjured were beginning to take on a hallucinatory quality. Still, seeing as they were already walking, and it was such a nice night, and she looked so appealing in that white openwork sweater … “So what’s the detour?”

“It’s stupid,” she said, pulling her hair up with both hands; she held it there with one while she fished in her skirt pocket and found an elastic band. As she fixed her hair into a ponytail, she continued, “See, I was out walking the other day, and I fell in love with a house—so I bought it. Maybe you heard?”

He hadn’t. “Nope. I guess they didn’t think to tell me. You went for a walk and bought a
house?”
Not a hat, not sunglasses, not some cheap shell jewelry or a fake parrot on a metal hoop.

She nodded. “I’m not an impetuous person, either.”

“No, no, clearly not.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“It
is
a sort of improbable statement, coming from a woman who went for a stroll and spent a couple mill while she was out.”

“I know. Do I sound even crazier when I say I couldn’t help myself?”

No; this love he understood. “Not so crazy,” he said. With his foot, he nudged a toad and watched it hop a few inches, then stop. “I used to want to own a place here until I realized that, with the way prices have increased over the years, I’d have to sell my soul in order to afford it.” Which implied that she’d sold hers. And hadn’t she—she and pretty much everyone else in show business? He believed so, but it was hard to reconcile that belief with the evidence of
her
, damp, fragrant, present.

He said, “I didn’t mean to say
you
sold—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. He scratched his chin, thought about whether he should let his beard grow back, what the differences were between toads and frogs, whether or not the mist would turn to rain and drench them, or affect the shoot—anything to avoid analyzing his desire to extend his time with her. Alec would probably tell him he just needed to get laid.

Blue said, “Anyway, I wanted to go … visit the place, just for a few minutes. I sign the papers tomorrow afternoon, but I haven’t seen it at night, and I just thought—”

“That it might be smart to check for obnoxious neighbors who blast their stereos at full volume?”

“Right, or—”

“Zombies?”

She laughed, and the sound penetrated, giving him that empty-belly feeling. He nudged the toad again, harder, popping it into the grass.

“I hadn’t thought of zombies.”

“Huh,” he said, “well you should. In fact, I’m pretty sure my high school math teacher was one.”

“Oh, you went to high school here?”

“I did.” Tough years, long past. “So where’s the house? Let’s go have a look.”

“Okay, great—let me just take off these shoes.” She took them off and was immediately two inches shorter. “That’s so much better. Who invented heels, anyway? Bluebeard?”

“Napoleon, I think.”

As they walked, she asked him about how he’d come to live with Daniel and Lynn. Last she’d known, she said, he was living with his mother in one of the Chicago suburbs and seeing his dad whenever his parents could work things out.

“Which was like never,” he said, surprised that he’d wanted to answer. “Then Dad got the job at Carolina and moved to Chapel Hill.” After which his mom declared his dad to be a self-centered, uncaring son of a bitch who would abandon his own son.

Julian recalled knowing even then, at age ten, the term “bipolar,” given that his mom regularly declared she was
not
that, no matter what anyone said. He remembered, too, that he’d fought with her the night of her outburst, defending his father while at the same time secretly fearing she was right about him. “You made him want to go!” he’d yelled. “He had to get away from
you!”
He couldn’t tell, though, how much of his father’s alienation was her doing. Was she reacting to rejection? Wasn’t the divorce all because he wouldn’t be faithful, that he couldn’t keep his eyes, and hands, off the college girls? Or was all that
in her imagination, as his father claimed? Had he taken the new post because he, Julian, had so much trouble connecting with him whenever they
did
spend time together? And how was he supposed to be able to judge?

But none of that mattered now. Nor did Blue’s role in those events, if she’d had any. But he couldn’t help asking, “Did we ever meet?”

“No,” she said. “There weren’t too many opportunities.”

Why was her answer such a relief? It shouldn’t matter whether they’d been acquainted back then, her a teenager, him a kid who tried to forget reality by reading C. S. Lewis and Mark Twain. She was never going to think twice about him—or if she did, it would be as his stepmother, the way Daniel had suggested. He needed to wrap his brain around that and forget this odd pleasure he felt in having her so close. A physical reaction. Suppressable.

Maybe.

She continued, “I never saw you. It was just your dad, and your grandparents. They were … I was …” She sighed. “I didn’t have the greatest childhood either. But anyway, I lost touch with all of them until just last weekend.”

She was so unlike his image of her that his mind was filling with questions, yet he couldn’t just start barraging her. Maybe if he shared first, she’d share, too—it’s what they always told the kids in the camps to do when they were trying to make friends.

As if.

He said, “Well, there’s not much more to my story. I lived with my mom until the summer before I started high school. She—you never knew her?” Blue shook her head. “She has some issues,” he said. “She’s doing pretty well now, but back then she was really at the end of her rope.

“Her parents had died a few years earlier—not at the same time, but within a year or so of each other. So when she hit bottom, I came here to stay for a while.” He kept it simple; Blue’s sympathy was not what he was after. He shouldn’t be after anything, except maybe some charitable
contributions—why did he need to keep reminding himself? Why wasn’t he in bed, sleeping off his journey and the beers and whatever was making him so much less sensible than usual?

Blue paused, turning to look at him when she asked, “Why here and not your dad’s—or would you rather I didn’t ask?”

“This was just a better choice for me.” He took a step, and she moved along with him.

“Key West must have seemed like a teenage boy’s paradise.”

“Sure,” he said. No need to tell her that his choice had been a test: if his father wanted him to live in Chapel Hill, he’d fight his decision to stay here. When that didn’t happen, Julian could only conclude that the offer to live in Chapel Hill had been made solely out of duty. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe he’d been so convincing in his argument that he’d be happier here that his dad had
believed
him.

“So you stayed here until you went off to college?”

“Not college. I did more of a trade internship.” Extensive lessons with a photographer in Miami—and then he’d signed on with the Red Cross and taken a space-available military flight out of Homestead Air Reserve Base, bound for Chechnya.

They’d reached the corner where her soon-to-be-vacation-home was located.

“I assume it’s this one,” he pointed at the house closest to them, the only one with no lights burning, inside or out.

She rested her hand atop the gate. “Yep, this is it.”

He studied the shadowed structure, the dense, black jungle of a yard. She was lucky to get the wide lot. “Looks great. If you need some inspiration, you should tour some of the gardens in town while you’re here.”

“Yes, Lynn suggested that too. Now
she’s
quite a gardener. I’m thinking of trying to grow some pineapple, like she’s done.”

“Her friends say she has not only a green thumb but green hands.”

“I can see why,” she said, nodding. “Beautiful place. I love the pool, and they have a charming guesthouse.”

Where he should be sleeping right this very moment.

“It’s so quiet here, so normal…” She turned and examined the
houses around them, taking longer than he expected, as though her mind was elsewhere. He watched, curious. She said, “Can you believe I saw a macaw here the other day? Scarlet red—it was gorgeous. Just flying right through the trees!”

He nodded. “I’ve heard of people turning them loose here. Beautiful birds, aren’t they?”

“Yes—and the painted bunting. I just bought a sculpture of one. Do you think I’ll get any here, in the garden?”

“In late winter you might. You like birds?”

“I—well, I guess I do. I just never gave them much thought before coming here. Do you? I saw that picture you took of the … the …”

“The frigate bird?”

“Right. Frigate bird. Odd name, but amazing photo—you really have a talent.” She looked away as she said this, the way a shy woman might.

“Thanks,” he said, rubbing the knuckle where his finger used to be.

She opened the gate. “Anyway, I’m going to just step into the garden here … Do you want—”

“Nah, I’ll wait here,” he said, because he
did
want, and that was a problem.

“Okay,” she said, so easily that he was sure her invitation had been nothing but politeness. And why would it be more than that? He could take a good bird photo, so what?