Riptide (8 page)

Pamela blinked.

“And Jason’s,” Christina added, trying to gain traction.

Jason’s name hung, supercharging the air until the room reeked of ozone.

Lightning followed. Pamela exploded with a fury that made even Dan take a step back. Standing no more than five feet in her Jack Rogers, she shot straight up, uncrossing her arms for the first time. Her hands were balled into
fists. “I doubt that.” She glared. “I really do.”

Dan’s voice was devoid of any formality. “You’ll just have to take our say-so for that.”

Pamela’s response was to gasp for air, producing a sound that was truly awful.

Dan smiled.

Nobody had ever talked like that to Pamela Cardiff Lofting in her entire life, probably. It was enough to make Christina feel sorry for her. Almost.

“Oh, my God.” Pamela raised a hand to her face, pressed a balled-up tissue to her nose, squeezed her eyes closed, and began to cry.

Christina blinked. This was awful.

Dan stood his ground.

“Pamela, look.” Christina moved in close to pat Pamela on the shoulder.

Pamela’s head popped up like a Jack-in-the-box, her dark eyes glowing black with rage. “I have no idea what’s wrong with you,” she hissed, placing heavy emphasis on the word “wrong,” “but my poor brother has died…” The sentence ended with a squeak.

This tragic fact trumped everything else. Despite the fact that Pamela was scary on a good day, and that she was royally pissed off right now, Christina reached out to comfort her.

It was like hugging a tower of Legos.

But having Pamela break down in her living room was better than having Pamela scream at her, so Christina hung in there, patting Pamela’s bony shoulder. “Things will be okay,” Christina murmured, even though she knew this simply was not true.

Pamela allowed herself to be steered over to the couch. “I knew something was wrong,” she sobbed. “I
just knew it.”

High drama was Pamela’s MO. But she was giving Christina the creeps, carrying on about premonitions her brother wouldn’t live to celebrate his fortieth birthday.

And he hadn’t.

Christina sought Dan’s gaze while continuing to rub little circles on Pamela’s back.

“I’ll call you,” he mouthed, before ducking out.

Which didn’t help Christina’s creepy feeling, not even a little bit.

I came, or came to, or came as I came to. Whatever. It was great, absolutely fucking fantastic. Or fantastic fucking. I was in the zone, right where I wanted to be. That place you could spend your whole life trying to get to, the perfect mix of feeling and not, pleasure and nothingness.

My whole body twisted beneath Dan’s weight, wave after wave moving through me of pleasure, nothing but pleasure, so I threw back my head and howled at the moon and the wind and the sand and the waves while my whole body rocked with it.

Dan thrust into me, deeper and deeper and maybe a little too rough but my pelvis had developed a life of its own, rocking with him, up and down, harder and harder, until I felt the sting of bits of sand that were working their way inside me but to be honest I didn’t care about anything in that moment other than having the best orgasm I could, right along with Dan.

We went at it in a frenzy, both of us coming and howling in the sand at the top of our lungs and the beach that night was windy with nobody to hear us and
we laughed and howled ourselves silly and I pounded him on the back, begged him to go harder and harder on me as fast as he could and he did till it seemed like even my lungs were vibrating with the force of it.

I don’t know what happened exactly, but when I tried to use the toilet late that night my panties wouldn’t come off at first and hurt like hell. They were caked through with dried black blood.

The wind picked up the way it always did along the coast at night, gathering moisture from the ocean waves. I felt it pelt my bare skin and knew I should feel its chill, like I should be bothered by the gritty sand underneath me.

But I wasn’t.

I was still high on booze and Dan and fucking and right at that moment the moon and stars could have dropped out of the sky right down on top of us and I wouldn’t have budged because right at that moment everything in my life was exactly where I wanted it to be.

I wanted more.

I reached out, sweeping an arm across the sand where I figured the bottle might be. I found it and raised it to my lips. Empty. “Shit!”

Dan laughed and slapped me on my thigh. Hard so it stung but I was drunk enough to like it and I just laughed.

He slapped me again, taking the empty bottle from my hand. “You love this shit, don’t you?”

I said nothing. I was ashamed. I had never admitted anything to anybody about my drinking.

Dan’s eyelids drooped shut and his lips curled up.

The effect was a cruel little smile.

He took the bottle and flung it far into the dunes.

I opened my mouth to protest.

He put a finger to my lips, smiling broadly in the moonlight, and he dug something from the pocket of his jeans. “Shhhh. I got something better.”

“Christina?”

Rain gusted against the windows facing the ocean.

“Christina, are you okay?” Pamela frowned, still working the tissue across her nose and those tiny eyes now swollen almost shut with tears.

Still, she probably didn’t miss much. “I’m fine,” Christina murmured, edging away.

“You’ll get through this,” Pamela said, blowing her nose. “We’ll get through this.”

“Ummmm,” Christina said, looking down at her feet. Her pedicure had worn away in rehab, the polish oxidizing from fire-engine red to something resembling rusted rebar.

Pamela gave one more swipe at her nose. “Let’s get some things taken care of before my parents arrive.” She pulled a leather-bound day planner from her purse, flipped it open.

Christina managed to get rid of her eventually, after pleading exhaustion (which was the truth), and promising to follow up on Pamela’s list. They were back to pretending to like one another, this time for the memory of Jason, trading air kisses at the door to say good-bye. Pamela left.

In the living room, Pamela’s yellow Post-it notes were arranged in a single tidy overlapping column. The number for Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue lay on top. Next one down listed the private
cell phone number for the pastor of Towne Church on East Eighty-third Street, and the one underneath that contained the cell phone and home numbers for the Sutton Place florist who had done the flowers for all the Cardiff weddings.

That florist had been rude to Christina, horrible to work with.

She peeled the yellow sticky notes from the table and crumpled them before tossing them in the trash.

Detective Frank McManus, phone hitched high against one ear, leaned all the way back in his seat so the caller on the other end could not hear the tapping sound his fingers made on his keyboard. Keeping most of his attention focused on his business call, he finished filling out the message for his daughter’s gift and hesitated. For an extra seven bucks, he could use express shipping and guarantee his daughter’s birthday present would arrive on time.

Decision made, he hit the
PRINT
button.

Outside, a bright yellow Land Rover pulled in, taking up the better part of two spaces reserved for visitors.

Ben Jackson appeared in the doorway and made an eating motion with his hands.

It was going on noon.

A blonde emerged from the Land Rover. A couple of tissues fluttered to the ground, but she paid them no mind. She was busy staring at the entrance. She dug in her pocketbook, probably looking for the tissues, but they were tumbling across the parking lot. Giving up, she swiped her nose with the back of her hand and made for the front door.

Jackson tapped his watch. On Thursdays, they always
hit Subway for lunch.

McManus considered things. The blond woman with the Land Rover most certainly hadn’t come in for a job interview. Which meant right now she was telling her story to the uniform at the desk.

Being a curious sort, McManus decided to skip lunch. Shaking his head, he mouthed the words, “Catch you later” to Jackson.

His gamble paid off less than a minute later, when the old-fashioned intercom on his desk flashed once and buzzed. He placed his call on hold and pressed the button.

“Good, you’re there,” the desk sergeant said. “I got someone out here who wants to talk about Jason Cardiff.”

“No problem,” McManus replied, pulling a box of Kleenex from his bottom drawer and placing it on his desk so it was in easy reach of the guest chair. “It’s my new favorite subject. Send her in.”

J
ason and Christina had chosen the house for its location, two hundred feet of oceanfront property along the one of the world’s most-sought-after stretches of shoreline, the southern coast of Long Island.

East Hampton is located approximately one hundred miles east of New York City. Its blood is not as blue as its neighbor to the west, Southampton (which was founded eight years earlier, in 1640), but its summer residents could fill the pages of
Vanity Fair,
and very often do. A trip for ice cream in town means waiting in line with Hollywood movie stars, network news anchors, or descendants of families whose names have been associated with everyday household products for generations.

But prime Hamptons real estate in the new millennium is only within grasp of today’s American royalty: CEOs with stratospheric pay packages, hedge-fund operators, and owners of private equity funds.

Jason Cardiff’s wealth fell into several of these categories. His pedigree reached back five generations. The name Cardiff graced a plaque on the headquarters of Wall Street’s whitest white-shoe firm, with offices overlooking the bronze
Charging Bull
at the southern end of
Broadway. His forebears famously got their start earning a commission on every head of livestock bought or sold on Bowling Green.

Jason Cardiff’s personal fortune, rooted in blue blood, had mushroomed in the wild nineties.

He talked nonstop on his cell phone during the Realtor’s walkthrough.

“This house is a prime example of the Shingle Style of architecture.” The Realtor directed his comments at a pregnant Christina.

Her allergies flared as soon as they crossed the wide plank porch to enter the old house.

Between sneezes, she eyed the thick knot of hickory and scrub oak that grew right up against the ivy-clad walls. Later in the car, she picked a tick off one leg of her Chaiken maternity capris.

They tore the place down after closing, replacing it with a postmodern abstraction of reinforced concrete and tinted glass. Living in this house, the architect promised, would be an interactive experience, like installation art. The new structure had soaring geometric angles and walls of glass with computerized blinds that popped up from a slit in the floor with the touch of the controls. There was a chef’s kitchen, underground media room, wine cellar, humidor, and a small butler’s pantry tucked inside the master bedroom suite. There was a minimalist sculpture garden and a koi pond (in constant need of restocking) on the lawn where the trees used to be. The entire south-facing wall was glass, looking out over the ocean from every room, “to integrate the lives of those inside with their natural surroundings.”

Christina, Midwestern in her soul, never latched on to
the Atlantic. Unlike the freshwater lakes she had visited only rarely as a child, the ocean was loud and messy, crisscrossed with powerful currents, brimming with strange animals that stung and bit, or worse. Her son Tyler, native New Yorker that he was, grew up loving the sea. And so Christina had learned to swim in the briny heaving surf, keeping always to the shallows well inside the line of breakers, and even taking a water-safety class for the sake of her son.

She had developed an uneasy alliance with the watery wilderness that began at her doorstep and stretched for thousands of miles.

On this day, Christina wanted to get away. The pounding sea reminded her too much of the thoughts tumbling, dangerous and untamed, through her mind.

It was enough, almost, to make her grateful for the arrival of Señora Rosa and Marisol.

Almost.

Christina heard them before she saw them, speaking quietly in Spanish out by the pool. They were dressed in their gray work uniforms and dark sunglasses. The landscapers joined them on the patio, following suit when Señora Rosa and Marisol dropped to their knees and crossed themselves. The group prayed for a few moments before lowering a small bouquet of flowers into the deep end of the pool.

The group watched as the flowers, tied with yellow ribbon, bobbed along the surface..

That ribbon would clog the filter system. Christina made a mental note to fish the bouquet from the pool before Tyler got home tonight.

Señora Rosa was still sniffling when they entered the
house. At the sight of Christina she cried,
“¡Dios mío!”
and grabbed Marisol for support.

Whether Señora Rosa was expressing sympathy for Christina’s new status as widow, or was simply taken aback by Christina’s appearance, was difficult to tell.

The answer was evident within a few seconds.

Señora Rosa ripped off her sunglasses for a closer look and cried out even louder, this time in English.

“Oh, my God, no! Oh, no, Señora Christina! No, no, no!” Sobbing, Señora Rosa collapsed onto Marisol, who made the sign of the cross three times.

So much for the beautifying benefit of detoxification, Christina thought.

Her cell phone rang. She grabbed it, hoping it was Dan.

Caller ID revealed it was a call from area code 651. Shit. Minnesota.

“How’s it going, Christina?” Her counselor always sounded like he was bench-pressing a heavy weight, and today he sounded as though he were lifting more than usual.

There was simply no way to reply.

Peter, to his credit, did not ask whether there was anything wrong. “Have you been drinking today?”

“No.”

“Good for you. You’re a winner.”

She didn’t tell him she planned to check on her cache of Grey Goose in the freezer as soon as she got a minute to herself. “I guess.”

“All you need to do today is not drink.” Peter’s voice was firm. “You know, Christina, everyone here is praying for you and asking about you and thinking about you.”

It was hard to imagine anybody praying for her. Christina’s eyes, already sore and aching from lack of sleep, boiled over with tears. The sides of her throat narrowed, squeezed in tight around something hot that wouldn’t budge when she tried to swallow. A sob bubbled up.

Peter picked up on it from all the way out in the Central Time Zone. “It’s okay, Christina. Go ahead and cry. Crying is an appropriate response to what you’re going through.”

Christina nodded even though he couldn’t see, lowering herself onto a couch. The tears came hot and fast.

Señora Rosa hurried over to press a glass of ice water into Christina’s hand. “Drink,
señora,
” she implored, waving her hands through the air as if to sweep the liquid into Christina’s throat.

Christina managed a tiny sip.

Peter was following her progress from his end of the phone. “Have you had anything to eat or drink today?”

“A little.” It was a lie. She hadn’t had enough to eat or drink even to merit a visit to the bathroom since yesterday.

“H.A.L.T., Christina. You remember H.A.L.T.?” When she didn’t reply, he filled in the blanks. “Don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.”

Again with the slogans, Christina thought. “I’m trying.”

“It’s so important to stay hydrated and eat whatever you can,” Peter continued. “Early on in sobriety, especially during times of stress, we need to make a special effort to eat.”

Rosa must have been on the same wavelength because she was heating something in the microwave.

The odor made Christina’s stomach heave. “I’m trying.”

Peter changed tacks. “Have you been to an AA meeting yet?”

When was she supposed to have gone to an AA meeting? “I’m working on that,” Christina responded tightly.

There was silence on the line.

“Really.” Christina wondered how to change the subject.

“I can help. Let me pull up something on my computer here.”

Ever ready to be of service.

The timer on the microwave went off.

Señora Rosa rushed in with a steamy plate of something piled on rice.

Christina gagged.

“How about Westhampton Beach? There’s a step meeting there at eleven.”

Christina frowned. He must have access to a list of every AA meeting in the country. “That won’t work.”

“Why not? It’s got to be fairly close. Westhampton Beach. And you’re in a Hampton, right? It’s right there on Montauk Highway.” He pronounced it Mon-toke.

She did not bother to correct him. “Long Island is big. I’m in East Hampton, which is not really that close.”

“Okay,” he said in a tone that told her he would stick with this all day.

She heard clacking noises. He was a fast typist. She sighed.

Señora Rosa removed plastic film from the plate, releasing a lardy cloud.

Christina tried to narrow her nostrils to block the smell. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“It’s a ‘We’ program,” Peter was saying on the other end of the phone.

“Please, señora, if you would only try.” Rosa’s voice was pleading.

Christina cracked one eye open.

Señora Rosa stood, hands clasped as though in prayer, beseeching her. “Only to try.”

Peter was still working on her through the phone. “Meeting makers make it.”

Another slogan. He could shove it up his ass.

Marisol was making her way through the living room, a feather duster and furniture spray in hand. She slowed to get a look at Christina.

Their eyes met, and Christina did not like what she saw.

She and Marisol were about the same age.

Christina remembered one time, Labor Day weekend before last, the morning after a big party. She’d come down early in search of aspirin. They had run out of Tylenol in the master bathroom.

Jason was there, dressed to play golf, standing very close to Marisol.

Marisol was smiling.

They both turned, startled, as Christina approached, and moved away from each other.

Not before Christina saw something in Marisol’s hand. A thick wad of green bills. She had asked Jason about it later.

He turned quiet. “She’s got a kid back home, retarded or something.”

Jason was not the softhearted type. “We pay them
plenty of money,” Christina had protested. “They get paid better than half the people who work in town.”

Jason shrugged. “You ever take a look at this place sometimes?” He had looked around the giant space that encompassed the living area, entryway, dining area, and eat-in kitchen. It was spotless now, but Christina knew what he was getting at. “Do you have any idea the shit they clean up after one of our parties?”

Now it was Christina’s turn to shrug.

“Yeah, well neither do I.”

“They’re probably not even supposed to be in this country,” she had sniffed. Truth be told, she had no idea whether they were here legally. Jason handled the household accounts.

He shook his head. “Yeah, well at least they both know how to keep their mouths shut. I like to keep our private lives private. Once in a while, a little extra for them doesn’t hurt.”

But it was Marisol he had given the cash to, and not her aunt Rosa, who had worked here longer.

And now it was Christina who looked away first. Christ, she felt like a stranger in her own home.

Marisol headed upstairs to dust.

Señora Rosa backed off at last, leaving the plate of food behind.

Within retching range.

Peter did not back down. “You know, Christina, you can’t do this on your own. Not without help. Especially not with all you’re going through right now.”

All she was “going through” was a mild way of putting it. Just hearing the words made her crumble inside. All the breath blew out of her lungs in a whoosh. Too late, she realized he heard it.

Peter changed tacks. “How’s Tyler?”

Christina’s shoulders hunched with guilt. The fact was she had no idea. “Fine.” Her voice was small with the effort of holding the floodgates closed. She hated to cry.

Peter’s voice no longer flowed like syrup. It had hardened into something else. “You know, Christina, you will not be able to help your son get through this if you don’t stay sober.”

Meaning, Christina supposed, she was useless as a mother. The tears welled up now, hot and bitter. These were not tears for Tyler, who had just lost his father, any more than they were for Jason, who was dead. No, the tears were for Christina.

For the failure she had been in the past and the failure she would be in the future.

She doubled over and moaned.

Peter heard it. “Our problem is self-centeredness. Self-centeredness and self-pity.”

How dare he accuse her of self-pity at a time like this? “Excuse me,” she said, icing him. “But I don’t think you have any idea what it’s like to lose your
husband.
” She spat out the final word for emphasis.

There was a moment of silence on Peter’s end. “Not to mention your best friend, alcohol.”

It was a cheap shot. And true. “Shit,” Christina moaned. “What am I going to do?”

Peter’s tone was brisk. “You’ll get through this. You don’t need alcohol, Christina. It wasn’t working for you anyway.”

She blinked. That much was true.

“The thing is, we can change our lives anytime we want. It’s never too late to start over. You can turn this around, Christina. You can get through this sober.”

She wanted to believe him. She really did.

It was like he could read her mind. “Fear is the enemy, Christina. Don’t let it rule your life. Fight it. You can do it.”

“How?” Her voice was small and weak, the insides of her mouth coated with glue.

Peter was back to business now. “We need to find you a good AA meeting. What about Amagansett?”

Amagansett was practically next door.

“There’s a meeting in less than half an hour. Think you can make it?”

“Yeah.” She couldn’t believe she was agreeing to this. But it would give her a place to go, safe from Marisol’s sly glances and Señora Rosa’s fried pork bellies or whatever they were. Christina checked her watch and grabbed her car keys.

Paparazzi at the gate be damned.

At the moment, AA was the least of all evils.

Jason Cardiff’s life ran smoothly, a well-oiled machine with him as the central cog. His self-regard was of the very highest caliber and was innate, a core part of his being from birth. Like most people who are born into tremendous privilege, Jason Cardiff lacked any insight into the source of his superior confidence (unearned), which of course was due only to his vast wealth.