The Scorpio Illusion (9 page)

“We come from different worlds, my dearest. Your life is here; mine is in Europe. I have responsibilities you don’t have, Tye, I tried to tell you that.”

“I remember only too well. Save the Children, Relief for Somalia—two or three other initials I could never figure out.”

“I’d been away too long, far longer than I would have been without you. Organizationally, things were a mess, and several interfering government regimes weren’t helping. But now that the Quai d’Orsay is firmly behind us, things are easier.” “How so?”

“For example, one time last year in Ethiopia …” As she spoke of the triumphs of her several charities—over bureaucratic barriers or far worse—her natural ebullience lent a kind of lovely electricity to everything about her. Her wide, soft eyes were so alive, her face so expressive, revealing that well of infinite hope she drew from and which sustained her. Her capacity for compassion was almost unreal, made infinitely credible by a
sincerity that bordered on naivete, in itself denied by a soft-spoken intelligence and worldliness.

“… so you see, we got through with twenty-eight trucks! You can’t imagine what it was like to see the villagers, especially the children whose hunger was in their faces, and the older ones who had nearly given up hope! I don’t think I ever cried with so much happiness.… And now the supplies get through regularly, and we’re branching out everywhere, as long as we keep up the pressure!”

“Keep up …?”

“You know, my darling, harass the harassers with our own threats, presented gently, of course, with our very official documents. The Republic of France is not to be toyed with!” Dominique smiled triumphantly, her eyes bright.

He loved her so. She could not leave him again
!

“Let’s go get a drink,” said Hawthorne.

“Oh, yes, please! I do so want to talk to you, Tye. I missed you so. I have an appointment with my uncle’s lawyer at the bank, but he can wait.”

“It’s called island charm. Nobody gets anywhere on time.”

“I’ll call him from wherever we are.”

4

T
hey sat at a sidewalk café, their hands clasped across the table as a waiter brought Dominique an iced tea and Hawthorne a carafe of chilled white wine. Tyrell spoke.

“Why did you disappear?”

“I told you. I had other commitments.”

“We might have become one, a commitment, I mean.”

“That’s what frightened me. Quite simply, you were becoming too important.”

“For what? I thought you felt the way I did.”

“Your confusion and your guilt about Ingrid were overwhelming, Tye. You didn’t drink because you were an alcoholic, your charters proved that. You simply had to go a little wild when you weren’t responsible for anyone but yourself. You couldn’t forgive yourself for what happened.”

“That was it, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“You wanted to be more than a nursemaid, and I was so wrapped up in myself, I couldn’t see it. I’m so sorry.”

“Tye, you were deeply hurt and bewildered, I understood that. If I’d felt the way you say, we wouldn’t have had the time we did together. Almost two years, my darling.”

“It wasn’t long enough.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Remember how we first met?” asked Hawthorne warmly, his eyes locked with hers.

“How could I forget?” she replied, laughing softly and squeezing his hand. “I’d leased a boat and was sailing it into the marina on St. Thomas when I had some difficulty pulling into the slip I was told to use.”

“
Difficulty
? You came in under full sail as though you were tacking toward a racing marker. You scared the hell out of me.”

“I don’t know how afraid you were, but you were certainly angry.”

“Dominique, my sloop was moored in your direct line of attack.”

“Oh, yes, you stood on your deck, waving your arms and swearing at me—but then I did manage to miss you, didn’t I?”

“I still don’t know how you did it.”

“You couldn’t see, my darling. You were so angry, you’d fallen into the water.” They both laughed, leaning toward each other over the table. “I felt so ashamed,” continued Dominique softly. “But I did apologize to you when you came on shore.”

“Yes, you did, at Fishbait’s Whisky Shack. Your coming over to me made me the envy of all the charters … and it was the beginning of some of the happiest months of my life. What I remember best were the sails we took alone to so many tiny islands, sleeping on the beaches—making love there.”

“And
loving
, my darling.”

“Can we start again? The past recedes, and I’m a lot less screwed up now. I’m even known to laugh a lot and tell dumb jokes, and you’d like my brother.… Can we start again, Dominique?”

“I’m married, Tye.”

It was as though Hawthorne had been struck by the bow of an ocean liner while in a fog-bound sea. For several moments he could not speak, speech was beyond him; he was capable only of lowering his eyes and doing his best to simulate normal breathing. He began to re
lease Dominique’s hand; she abruptly stopped him, covering both with her free one. “Please don’t, my darling.”

“He’s a lucky fellow,” said Tyrell, staring at their hands. “Is he also a nice guy?”

“He’s sweet and devoted and very, very rich.”

“He’s got two out of three more than I do. But devoted I would be.”

“The rich helped, I won’t deny that. I don’t have particularly expensive tastes, but my causes aren’t cheap. And the modeling profession, which certainly afforded me a lovely apartment and glorious clothes, doesn’t care to hire crazy crusaders. I was glad to leave it behind me. I was never comfortable showing off designs barely an iota of the buying public could afford.”

“You’re in another world, lady. You’re also a happily married woman, then?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Dominique quietly, firmly, her eyes now focused on their entwined hands.

“I missed something.”

“We are a marriage of convenience, as La Rochefoucauld phrased it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hawthorne raised his eyes, studying her passive face.

“My husband is a closet homosexual.”

“Thank God for favors, large and small.”

“He’d find that amusing.… We lead a strange life, Tye. He’s quite influential and extremely generous, not only in helping me raise funds but in the area of government assistance, which we frequently need.”

“As in those official documents you mentioned?” said Tyrell.

“Right to the top of the Quai d’Orsay.” Dominique smiled her engaging smile. “He says it’s little enough he can do, for he insists I’m an enormous asset to him.”

“Obviously. No one could possibly ignore him with you at his side.”

“Oh, he goes further than that. He insists I attract a better class of clients, for only the wealthiest could afford
me, if I were available. It’s a joke, of course.” With what appeared to be warm regret, Dominique disengaged her hands from his.

“Of course.” Hawthorne poured the rest of the wine into his glass and leaned back in his chair. “You’re out here visiting your uncle on Saba?” he asked.

“Good Lord, I completely forgot! I really must call the bank and reach his lawyer.… Now you know what happens to me when I see you again.”

“I’d like to believe that—”

“You can, Tyrell,” interrupted Dominique softly, leaning forward, her wide brown eyes riveted on his. “You really can, my darling.… Where’s the phone, I’m sure I saw one.”

“It’s in the lobby.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Dear old Uncle is thinking of moving again; his neighbors have become too considerate.”

“Saba’s recluse of recluses, as I recall,” said Tyrell, smiling. “No phones, no mail, and, where possible, no visitors.”

“I insisted on a satellite dish.” Dominique moved back her chair and stood up. “He loves to watch international soccer; he thinks it’s black magic, but he watches it constantly.… I’ll hurry.”

“I’ll be here.” Hawthorne gazed at the receding figure of the woman he had thought was gone from his life. The rush of contradictory information was not much different from being buffeted by strong winds. The marriage had nearly drowned him; the marriage that was not a marriage at all had restored his breath, the new buoyancy exhilarating.… He could not lose her again; he
would
not lose her again.

He wondered if she would think to call her uncle on Saba and tell him she’d be late returning. There were interisland planes usually every hour until the early evening, an aerial network throughout the chain. Theirs could not be a brief hello and good-bye, it was unthink
able, and he knew her well enough to realize she understood that. He smiled to himself at the thought of the eccentric uncle he had never met, the Parisian attorney who had spent more than thirty years in the swirling, back-stabbing world of arbitrage, racing from boardrooms to courtrooms, millions in the balance with every decision he made, and even then wary of panicking clients who too frequently put money before principle, voiding his hours of concentration.

All of this for a quiet, gentle man who wanted only to get away from the energy-sapping insanity and paint flowers and sunsets, a self-proclaimed latter-day Gauguin. Upon his retirement, Dominique said, he had packed his elderly maid, left a cold, impervious wife with more than enough to continue her extravagant ways, not bothered to contact two insufferable daughters, both infected with their mother’s disease of greed, and flown off to the Caribbean “in search of my Tahiti.”

Saba had been an accident brought about by a conversation with a stranger at the airport bar in Martinique. The man was a runaway who had decided to run back and spend his final years in the lights of Paris, and he had a modest but well-built house to sell on an island called Saba. Intrigued, Dominique’s uncle had inquired further and was shown several billfold snapshots of the house in question. Sight unseen, except for the snapshots, the retired attorney bought it instantly, drawing up the papers himself on a nearby table while his maid looked on in astonishment and not a little trepidation. He then proceeded to place a call to his Paris firm, instructing his former vice president, now president, to pay the owner in full upon the man’s arrival in Paris. His former subordinate was to deduct the purchase price from his former superior’s generous pension. There was only one proviso—delivered to the owner in the airport’s bar. The man was to reach the local telephone company on Saba and have every phone in the house removed
immediately. The perplexed returning expatriate, his good fortune beyond his dreams, got in touch with the island phone office on an airport pay phone, fairly screaming his instructions.

The Caribbean was filled with such stories, for the islands were a haven for the disaffected, the burnt out, and the progressively dissolute. It took someone with compassion to understand them, someone of substance to care. And Dominique, one of the world’s original do-gooders, cared enough for her runaway uncle to pay attention.

“Would you believe it?” Dominique interrupted Tyrell’s reverie as she approached her chair. “The lawyer left a message for me that he was tied up and could we make it tomorrow! He made it abundantly clear that he would have phoned me on the island
if
there were a telephone.”

“Logic’s on his side.”

“Then I made another call, Commander—it was Commander, wasn’t it?” Dominique sat down.

“Long ago,” replied Tyrell, shaking his head, “and I’ve since upgraded myself. I’m a captain now, because it’s my own ship—boat.”

“That’s upgrading?”

“Take my word for it, a full promotion. Whom did you call?”

“My uncle’s neighbors, the couple are so considerate, he wants to move again. They keep coming over with fresh vegetables from their garden, bypass the maid, and interrupt his painting—or his soccer.”

“They sound like nice people.”

“They are; he isn’t, bless his cantankerous heart. Nevertheless, I gave them a chance to legitimately break in on him. I asked them to go over and tell him that there were problems with off-island ownership of property, that his lawyer, the bank, and I were trying to resolve them. I’d be quite late getting back.”