Sunburn (21 page)
Slowly, in a monotone, Bertran went over some new regulations concerning money brought into the country. Sean still was having most of his money sent to him from his broker in the States, and Bertran suggested that he might consider keeping a larger portion of it on hand in Spain.
“It might make things more stable,” he said.
“Here?”
“Yes? Why not?”
“And if Franco dies?”
Again he turned his palms up. “Yes? What of that?”
“Things will be stable then?”
The lawyer smiled. “Of course. You don’t think all of this unrest will lead to anything, do you? The transition is secure. Juan Carlos is stronger, personally, than is generally believed. You wait. It will be business as usual.”
Sean replied that he would wait until that was certain.
After an interminable forty-five minutes, they had nearly finished. Sean’s eyes felt as if they had salt in them. Outside, the breeze had picked up, and he saw a few white clouds pass across the window. Bertran was saying something now about his will, which he’d rewritten a year before. At that time, he’d left his entire estate to Berta, since there’d been no one else around. He’d thought it would be a nice surprise for her. The only personal stipulation he’d given was that he be buried on his land. Now he was in that same lackadaisical mood he’d been in when he’d named Berta his beneficiary. All he wanted was to get out of this stifling office and into the air again. Suddenly he perked up and chewed ruminatively on his cigar butt. He stood up.
“Carlos,” he said, “I’ve got to go. Everything sounds fine. I want you, though, to include a clause in that thing, giving ten thousand dollars to Denise Hanford, at my address. And hurry up. Let me sign the addition.”
He paced the room while the lawyer penned in the clause. It was only a gesture, he knew, but he felt good about it. He could always undo it. When he’d signed it, he asked for another cigar, got it lit, said good-bye, and walked outside.
It had clouded over, and walking back to meet Tony revived him. He enjoyed the new heaviness in the air, the slight chill. At a café that had just reopened, he stepped inside and ordered a brandy, which he downed in two swallows. The cigar was delicious, much better than the one he’d had in the office, though he knew it was the same kind.
When he stepped back onto the sidewalk, it was raining in large drops. One of the drops hit the tip of the cigar and knocked off the ash with a sizzling noise. He stopped and looked at his face in a window, grinning.
Sixteen
We all had breakfast together for a change. Time seemed to have crept by, with Sean and Kyra forever growing closer, and Lea and I coming apart like an old paperback when the binding has gone brittle. I knew I would be leaving soon, and Lea hadn’t committed herself, though I suspected she would stay on, if not here, then on her crusade with Mike.
At breakfast, Berta rather mysteriously asked for the day off, which Sean, of course, gave her. Lea was going into town, and Kyra offered to drive her, since she was going out to shop anyway. I announced that I would be going into Blanes with Sean to keep him company. Though it hadn’t yet been two weeks since he’d been there to see the doctor, his ear continued to be bad, and he’d decided to go back and get something done about it. We let the girls have the car, since Kyra had been planning on having it for several days, and we decided to take a cab down to Blanes with Berta. We were still waiting for its arrival when Kyra and Lea left, and just afterward, Sean changed his mind and decided to stay at the house and try to write.
“I don’t want to get hysterical about this ear thing,” he said. “Give it another week maybe, and it’ll be fine. Besides, at least it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
So when the cab came, we packed off Berta, and Sean went back to his office to write. I was not unhappy to stay home. It was a blustery and overcast day, and I thought I’d go up to my room and spend the day in bed, reading.
But when Lea had gone, she’d had the impression that the house would be completely empty all day long.
Seventeen
The white stucco of the house glared dully by contrast against the slate gray sky. The silence was complete. Not a bird chirped. Even the chickens had settled to roost. The air hung heavy with unreleased rain, charged with static electricity. It smelled metallic outside. Here and there the house was streaked with a murky blue where the stucco had run from the previous rains—a bruised, wet blue turning to gray at the edges, painted with the same brush as the sky. Where the stucco held, the white was a glaring, garish, almost neon white.
Inside, there was no noise. Upstairs, a man lay stretched out on his bed, his head propped up by a pillow. He held a book in both hands, though he wasn’t reading. The book was open, pages down, upon his chest. From time to time, he would force his eyes open and wade through a paragraph, but it was an effort. Downstairs, another man sat quietly at his desk. Beside him was a bottle of whiskey, from which he would occasionally sip. He was trying to write with no greater success than the man above trying to read. He’d write a word, then stop, staring with increasingly blurred vision at the clouds outside the open door. He’d take a drink, then look down and cross out the word.
Lea sat with her palms spread out on her legs. The smooth, thick gray wool of her slacks felt good against her hands. Watching the road, Mike gripped the wheel too hard. They were both nervous. In spite of what everyone believed, they were not lovers. They had not even kissed since that first day at the fort. This morning, Lea had met him at a café, as usual, and they’d begun talking of their plans to find Sharon. After a while, Lea asked him if he’d drive her up to the house before the rain came. The road, she said, terrified her when it was wet. They could talk up there. Maybe he could stay for dinner.
Lea never asked herself what she would do if they found Sharon. She never asked Mike. She had cast aside her logic as irrelevant. It simply didn’t matter here. She knew that in her bones. She had never decided to be consciously illogical, but if she were to be with Mike, that had to be one of the conditions. She still believed in her rational mind that she could work things out with Douglas. After all, she had not been unfaithful to him. She even told herself that she wanted to work it out. She had invited Mike up to the house to talk. She had not consciously remembered that no one would be there. She didn’t really have enough strength to hurt someone knowingly, to admit she was acting in her own interests. She preferred it to appear that she was being carried away by events over which she had no control, and perhaps it was true. An earlier Lea might have been able to stop herself, to back off and appraise things, but now she had been sucked too far into the maelstrom.
She shivered as the car took a curve. Mike looked over at her, asked if she were cold, and put one of his hands over hers. It was like ice, resting there on her thigh. He went back to driving, taking his hand away. Now she did feel cold. His touch had been like a current through her body. She pulled her feet up under her and crossed her arms hard against her to warm her hands. She turned herself in the seat so she could be looking at him, at his face now set so hard in concentration. She wanted to talk and break this tension, but she couldn’t control her breathing. It came in gasps she could barely keep down. She wanted to remain calm, and so said nothing.
The white Citröen pulled slowly into the courtyard and rolled to a stop just outside the front door. They got out into the oppressive silence. When they closed the car doors, the noise was a shock, though it was quickly swallowed up. Mike squinted against the whiteness of the house and followed Lea to the front door. She stood for a moment on the stoop, trying to get her breathing under control.
Inside, she closed the door quietly. It was barely light in the room. She crossed to the window and, looking out at the clouds, shivered again.
Only now did she remember that the house was empty. It was early afternoon. People in Blanes and Barcelona were just finishing lunch, preparing for their siestas. Mike stood by the door, looking at her. They hadn’t said ten words to each other since leaving Tossa. Lea decided to take a tran quilizer. Maybe it would help. They were in the medicine chest in Sean’s bedroom.
Mike gazed around the room in the semidark ness. “It’s awfully quiet,” he said. “Is no one home?”
“No.” She still looked into the courtyard. She wished the rain would begin. “I’ll be right back.” She turned and walked into the hall leading to Sean’s room. Mike followed her.
In the bedroom, she switched on the light and walked quickly to the bathroom door, then opened the medicine cabinet and took down the bottle.
“What are you doing?”
The voice startled her. She looked at Mike’s figure, framed in the doorway, and put the bottle down.
“Are you sick?”
She smiled feebly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”
“Well, here. Come out of there. Lie down on the bed.”
She obeyed him, brushing him as she passed through the doorway.
“Would you please turn out the light?” she asked. “It’s too glaring.”
She watched him cross the room, then stretched out on the bed, moving over to give him room to sit beside her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t . . .” She stopped. “I can’t seem to get my breath.”
“Do those pills help? I’ll get them.”
“No. They’re just tranquilizers.”
His hand felt her forehead, then caressed her face, her neck.
“You don’t have a fever.”
“No. I’m cold.”
“What do you need the tranquilizers for?”
She hunched her shoulders up, girlish, but her eyes never left him. Her face was set.
“I’m nervous,” she said. “I can’t seem to get a deep breath.”
Again he touched her face, but she took his hand away, and held it.
“I feel like my heart is going to beat through my ribs. It’s shaking my whole body.” She took his hand and put it under her sweater. “Feel it,” she said, guiding his hand. She wore no bra, and as his hand closed over her breast, he stared at her for a second, then leaned down and kissed her, open-mouthed.
She came up to meet him, folding her arms around him. He took her sweater into his hands and lifted it over her head, catching some of her hair with it, and they laughed nervously. She could feel his hands shaking and her eyes, to him, looked filled with a mixture of fear and passion. She began to say something, but he quieted her with a kiss. He began to kiss her body, moving his tongue over her nipples and her stomach. Her staccato breathing became marked with little sighs, and she reached for him.
He stood and let her take down his pants, and watched her take him in her hands and her mouth. Their breathing came hard and they looked at each other with glazed eyes, hungrily.
He lay down and pulled her over on top of him. Impatient now, moaning, she wiggled her woolen slacks down to below her knees and straddled him. When he pushed himself into her, she cried out and then they were rocking back and forth. She saw his face tighten and thought it would be too soon, but suddenly, as she felt him starting, she lost control herself, so that they cried out as they came together.
She fell upon him on the bed, but their cries had already cut a wound into the dead silence outside. In another moment, the day returned to its dull, utter soundlessness.
Upstairs, Doug heard the car drive up through a fog of half-sleep, and roused himself to see who it was. He walked to the front window and, looking out, saw Lea and Mike getting out of the car. He pulled back quickly, not wanting them to see him, and not wanting to see them. How could Lea be so insensitive? The last time Mike had been to dinner had been horrible, and now she had asked him up again.
He looked at his watch, surprised at how late it was. Then he remembered that she must have thought that the house was empty. What was Sean doing downstairs? Maybe he should go down and see them. But he simply didn’t feel up to it. Sean would take care of them. There’d be plenty of time later on in the day.
He sat on the edge of the bed, now wide-awake. How had all this gone so far? He was actually afraid of going down now, afraid of what he might find, afraid of his reception. At that moment, he made up his mind to leave as soon as he could arrange it. He’d checked around at the travel agencies in town, and knew that he could be gone in a matter of days. Still, oddly, he knew that he had no intention of going back to work in the States. Maybe Africa, he thought. Maybe just work my way around a bit until something starts to make sense.
He lay down on the bed and folded his arms underneath his head, planning. He didn’t have much money left, maybe enough for two or three months of traveling, and that would leave him completely broke, something he hadn’t been for many years. He realized, then, that he was thinking in terms of his own money, and not his and Lea’s. Of course, they had some stocks. In fact, they were rather well off, but he didn’t like to think of taking that money. But he was thinking of leaving without her. Why not take advantage of the situation?
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