I'll Be There (28 page)

But that wasn’t where she was looking at all. Her eyes were wide at the sight of a long-haired bony-looking woman a few yards away from them who had removed her muumuu and was jaybird naked underneath it, and now was unselfconsciously spreading her blanket on the beach. Next to her, holding a baby, was her muscular, goldenbrown husband, who was also stark naked. Cee Cee noticed now that the couple who had been oiling one another down the beach had both removed their suits too. Nina giggled. “Oh my God,” she said again, with an openmouthed, outraged grin.

“They didn’t mention this in the brochure,” Cee Cee said, as the naked man handed the woman the baby, then took off in a run down the beach to the water.

“Or you would have been here sooner,” Nina said with the perfect timing of a girl who had spent the last six years of her life listening to jokes being delivered by the best comics in the business. Then she stood. “Well … I’m going up to the room,” she said.

I’LL BE THERE

“Is this making you uncomfortable, honey?” Cee Cee asked, looking up at her seriously and shielding her own eyes, which even behind her dark glasses felt scorched by the blazing sun.

“Oh no,” Nina said with a wave of dismissal. “Does it bother you?” “I don’t even notice it,” Cee Cee said. Nina slid a T-shirt on over her still-wet suit. “I’m just running up to get myself a Coke. What can I get you?”

“How ‘bout a penis colada?” Cee Cee said, heard herself, and let out a burst of laughter, and Nina looked at her the same way Bertie used to when she said something funny but too outrageous to laugh at, without first giving her a sideways glance of disapproval. Then she broke up, laughing so hard too that she had to sit back down on the towel for a minute to recover, and Cee Cee laughed to see her reaction, and their laughter continued to set one another off until Cee Cee said, “And hold the colada,” and Nina, still giggling, was off up the hill to the room.

Cee Cee sat up, squeezed the suntan lotion bottle, and felt the hot cream squirt into her hand, then spread another coat of cream all over herself and decided that maybe she should at least dip a toe or two in the water. She was, after all, in Hawaii, and the water wouldn’t be like the freeze-your-toes-off water in Malibu. So she stood and moved down toward the shore, passing the naked woman who was now nursing the baby at her breast, and the four fat card-playing women, two of whom reminded her of the De John Sisters, an act she’d worked with in the Catskills. “Thank God they’re not naked,” she mused.

In spite of the layers of protective lotion, her face was stinging from the heat, with the cream feeling as if it was bubbling. I should have worn a hat, she thought, as she passed the blanket of the family with the wife who looked like Bertie. What reminded her of the hat was seeing the father remove the baseball hat with the “P” on it, revealing his partly bald head with gray and brown hair surrounding it like a fuzzy cloud, and this time she heard him say to his son, who was whimpering softly, “You keep whining, pal, and you’ll spend the rest of the day in the room without fi)od.”

God, she hated anyone who could talk to a poor child that way. With a stony, unsympathetic delivery that was so unfeeling it reminded her of someone in her past for whom she’d felt this same kind of heart-tearing anger, but she couldn’t think who. And when

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she realized, she stopped right there on the sand that was burning her feet, and standing on that fiery-hot beach where there was not even a whisper of a breeze, she was covered with goose bumps because she knew now the “P” on the cap stood for Pirates. Pittsburgh Pirates, and the balding man whose second wife looked ironically like Bertie was Michael Barron. Nina’s father, whom the child had never seen.

It had been years since Cee Cee had seen him, but there was no mistaking him. She turned to face the ocean, trying to collect herself, feeling simultaneously sickened and thrilled. She peeked once back over her shoulder at Michael and his second family, hoping none of them would look up and catch her staring. The baldness that had been promised even by the time Michael was in his early twenties had arrived. In fact, Cee Cee watched him pour some Coppertone into his hand and rub it into his bare scalp. When his little girl picked up his baseball hat and put it on her own head, he grabbed it away and put it back on himself. That’s him all right, Cee Cee thought. Still Mister Nice Guy.

When the wife looked right at her, Cee Cee turned quickly and waded into the water, which for the first few minutes felt icy cold on her feet as she walked farther in, trying to decide what to do. Well, how about that? It looked as if Michael was married and had two kids. Jesus. No one ever told her that, or told Nina. I must finally have grown up, Cee Cee thought. Because the old me would have reeled around the minute I realized it was him, run over, grabbed the sonof-a-bitch by the face and shrieked into it, “How can a man abandon a beautiful child and never have the guts to look her in the face and tell her why ?” But now I’m acting like a big girl, weighing my choices. The grownup Cee Cee Bloom is actually giving it thought. Oh God, stop me from going over and kicking the stinking little slimy bastard right in the balls.

Thank God he didn’t recognize me, she thought, but that can’t last. Everywhere she went, once people realized she was there they ran up and asked for autographs, surrounded her, spread the word. And this was a small hotel; soon the news would be around that she was there, and the people who were her fans would be looking for her in the lobby, in the gift shop, or out here on the beach. Now the water was up to her knees and she tried to tell herself to be calm. To get clearheaded about what to do. Soon the water was up to her waist and her

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shoulders were sizzling from the sun reflecting off the water as she watched Michael-that-asshole-Barron sitting in the sand stiil griping at his poor children, while their mother spread oil on their little bodies.

Cee Cee stood feeling the waves push against her back, watching the members of the Barron family, their oiling tasks complete, lying down across their blanket like a line of gingerbread cookies ready to bake. When they seemed to be at rest, she waded slowly out of the water up onto the beach and then close to their blanket, where she stopped quietly and looked at their closed-eyed faces as they sunbathed.

The wife was sweet-looking and pretty with that same Audrey Hepburn elegance for which Michael clearly had a taste, but at closer range she was not as pretty as Bertie had been. The tiny girl looked alarmingly the way Nina had when she was that age. The boy was on his stomach so Cee Cee couldn’t see what he looked like, and Michael, you dirty dog, Cee Cee thought, when she looked down at his wedding band. Filigreed gold, it was the one Bertie had given him. The cheap schmuck.

When she noticed that the little girl’s eyes were open and looking at her curiously, Cee Cee turned and walked back to her towel. From a distance she glanced over at them a few times, unsure how she was going to handle their horribly coincidental presence here with Nina, feeling relieved that the girl was taking so long back at the cottage. But when nearly an hour had passed and she wasn’t back and the Barron family was hitting a beach ball back and forth, Cee Cee gathered up her towel and Nina’s, and the sunscreen and Nina’s book, and navigated up the narrow hillside path as though there was no frightening drop-off next to it at all. A mission, she thought as she got to the top, realizing she’d been so afraid of the same walk earlier. That’s me. Not much on the everyday stuff, but when there’s a mission, I put my boots on and jump into the trenches.

In the cool living room of the cottage Nina was lying on the sofa reading a copy of Vogue Cee Cee had bought at the Los Angeles airport. “Oh, hi,” she said, without looking at Cee Cee. “I felt nauseated from the sun so I figured I’d stay in here for a while.”

“‘T’sokay,” Cee Cee said, wondering if she could make up some kind of excuse for them to have to check out of the hotel. She could

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call Larry Gold and have him call her back when she knew Nina would answer. He could say they had to be back in L.A. in a hurry. Or she could tell Nina the truth. Oh, Nina, there’s something I think you should know. The little jerk in the baseball hat is your father. nd the “P” stands for prick. No. She’d say, By a very odd coincidence your father happens to be at this hotel. It would give Nina the choice to either watch him from far away or approach him. But how could she do that to Nina? Wasn’t it too hcavv a responsibility for a child suddenly to come across her lather and his new family at a resort

and have to figure out how to behave? “Want lunch?” Cee Cee asked. “()kay.”

The rich green odor of the tropical growth all around the hotel dining room drifted gently in through the open doors as Cee Cee and Nina followed the muumuu-clad hostess to a table in the front of the room where they could get the best view of the panorama of the lawn and the beach and the sea. Cee Cee wore a big straw hat pulled down over her ears and large sunglasses covering the rest of her face and she was relieved that her disguise, which usually didn’t fool anyone, seemed to be working. A quick scan of the restaurant told her the Barton family wasn’t around, and she thought with a sad laugh to herself that maybe Michael had punished all of them and banished the entire family to the hotel room without food. The schmuck.

Nina looked over the menu, then out at the view, and Cee Cee saw a calm on her face she had rarely seen there at home. Certainly not recently.

“This place is great,” Nina said. “So peaceful.”

You should only know, Cee Cee thought, as if Michael Barron hadn’t done enough damage to the life of this child, now he was here to ruin her vacation, and Cee Cee couldn’t get rid of that clutching feeling in her chest of impending doom. Nina knew what Michael looked like, or at least what he used to look like, from old photographs of his wedding to Bertie, snapshots and films of trips Bertie and Michael had taken together. She hadn’t looked at them in years and Michael looked different now, older and chubbier, but there might be a chance she could recognize him. Instinct counted for a lot, and Nina was a sensitive girl.

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“I’m going to sign up for a massage later,” Cee Cee said. “You interested in having one?”

“No way,” Nina answered and Cee Cee realized by the slight blush accompanying the reply that the intimacy and sensuality of a massage was probably too much for a girl her age to handle. She continued nervously to watch the door to the dining room, thinking how ironic it was that she had brought Nina there so that the two of them could have a rest, and now she would spend their vacation feeling panicky and afraid. That was no good, she thought, knowing she would have to do something. Say something.

Nina ordered a hamburger and Cee Cee ordered the grilled mahimahi and passed the time waiting for their lunch to arrive with small talk about the naked people on the beach and the beauty of the hotel. Just as the waitress emerged from the kitchen carrying the tray with their lunch, Cee Cee’s heart sank when she spotted the Barrons entering the dining room. Michael was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt, and a Panama hat with a black band. The children came next, more quiet and reserved than children should be, and the elegant wife, cool in white Bermuda shorts and a white blouse, was last.

“Booster seats,” Cee Cee overheard Michael’s wife say, and her stomach lurched when she saw Nina look over at the four of them being seated. But it was a brief glance with no significance, after which she dug immediately into her lunch, chattering about a bathing suit she’d seen in the hotel shop, and Cee Cee found herself jumping in and yakking inanely about clothes too, hoping to hold Nina’s interest so she wouldn’t look back at the table where the Barrons were seated.

“No coffee.” Cee Cee waved off the busboy and signed the check immediately. Then instead of exiting the restaurant the way they came in, which would have taken them by Michael’s table, Cee Cee steered Nina out onto the front terrace and onto the flower-filled hotel grounds for a walk. The early afternoon heat was thick and heavy and Cee Cee wished she had some idea, any idea, about how to handle this. Maybe it would all go away. Maybe Michael and his family would check out after lunch and Nina would never have to know they were there.

Back at the bungalow, Nina sat on the deck outside reading A Tale

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of Two Cities, and eventually she drifted off to sleep. When she had been asleep for a long time, Cee Cee went inside to her room and called Hal in New York.

“Truth is stranger than fiction,” she said after telling him the story. “Pack up immediately and go to another island,” he said. “And what do I tell Nina about why we’re leaving?”

“Further adventure. | don’t know. But you can’t confront the guy. He obviously doesn’t want them to know about her, and vice versa. This is one of those situations if you saw it in a movie you’d say, ‘Oh yeah, sure. In the whole world these people end up in the same hotel?’ I’d get out of there, Cee. Especially since she’s already told you she doesn’t want to see him. Pack up and hit the road.”

“You’re right. I’ll call the Mauna Kea Hotel or the Kahala Hilton. We’ll move. I’ll tell her we’re island-hopping.”

“There you go,” he said. “And, Cee, don’t get too much sun. It’s bad for you. Makes you think you’re seeing people out of your past.”

“Harold,” she said softly because she thought she might have heard Nina stirring on the lounge outside, “isn’t this too fucking weird? I’m such a nonviolent type. I can’t even swat a fly. But I tell you as sure as I’m sitting here in this overpriced room, I could cheerfully put my hands around that weasel’s neck and choke.”

“Don’t do it. Remember what happened to Claudine Longet?” “What did happen to Claudine Longet?”