The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller) (8 page)

CHAPTER 19

CHARLESTON

“HEY BABY! DAMN,
you are looking good.” A woman’s voice caught Cole’s attention.

Landed and walking out of the guarded exit, he glowed as he looked for words to respond. “Well, you are too, sexy. Atlanta is treating you well I see.” Cole’s coastal drawl was emphasized in hearing the much stronger version before him.

“Damn straight! And I treat Atlanta just as well.” Elizabeth Ann Fray, Ann as she was called, did indeed look good. Curvy in all the right places and gorgeous. Her long, brown and blonde-highlighted hair brushed Cole’s cheek as they hugged. Ann was safe harbor, providing Cole one of the few opportunities to be himself without judgment or fear that she would try to ‘cure’ him of his aversion to feeling.

“Damn, woman, I’ve missed you.” Cole pulled back, his hands on her shoulders, and admired the view. The pistachio green and brown paisley maxi dress accented her carefree appreciation for life. The thought of her in Boulder or San Diego flashed across his mind.

She flipped her long hair over her shoulder as she responded, “Me too, babe. I’m so excited to be back in Charleston with you.”

He channeled a pompous broadcaster’s voice. “Uh, it is the number one tourist destination
in the entire world
according to Condé Nast Magazine, thank you very much. And the best in the U.S. by Travel Mag. Oh, did I also mention
we
are from here? If that doesn’t mean something, I don’t know what does.” The two laughed. Cole continued, “So, I think it should be a blast. I can’t wait to catch up and just enjoy you. How long have you been waiting?”

“Well, I flew in yesterday to hang with my old sorority sister, Patsy, you remember her, and she just dropped me off about thirty minutes ago. Your flight was late, mister. So I grabbed some nasty-ass Yellowtail while waiting on you.” Ann’s tendency to animate her words with head gestures had not been lost over the years with it swinging left to right several times as she talked.

Cole’s eyes widened playfully. “Look at you, already getting the party started. Yellowtail? I thought you were too much of a wine snob for that bottom-shelf brand? Well, let’s get out of here so you can gargle it out and fix the situation, boozehound.”

Warmth filled Ann’s face as she spoke. “For sure! It really is good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

“Good, that means you’ll carry my bags, right?” Cole pushed his old carry-on towards Ann playfully.

She swiped it away with her leather-sandaled foot. “Ha, not a chance, Jack.” Together they walked out of the airport to find Cole’s rental car.

COLE DROVE AS
ANN filled him in on life in Atlanta. They had met in high school and pretty much been inseparable since, or at least until Cole’s move to Denver. She was the strongest reason to stay, but ultimately he reconciled that she was just a telephone call and plane ride away. There were tears in Ann’s eyes when he broke the news of his move almost a year and a half earlier. He gave her six months lead time before the move to emotionally prepare herself, but it didn’t help. It strained their relationship for a time. Yet, things were definitely back on track and the distance actually seemed to bring them closer together.

“So then he was like, ‘but you told me you didn’t want a relationship.’ What the fuck, do you guys really buy it when us girls say that? I mean, seriously, when has a woman ever just wanted to have sex without there being an expectation of more?” She clapped her hand on the car’s seat to emphasis her feigned frustration.

Smirking, Cole replied, “It worked for Madonna.”

Ann gave him an ‘I can’t believe you just said that’ look. “Madonna? Please. Please don’t compare me to Madonna. It clearly has not worked out well for her lately.”

“So what did you do?” Cole had been through this conversation before. Ann, for all her beauty and intelligence, seemed to be on an endless cycle of dead-end relationships. Each was with a similar guy. Handsome, yet totally lacking in success.
Window dressing for a large pile of shit… with a half-chewed Barbie arm in it.
But they had aspirations of success. Just, bills, kids, ex’s—fill in the blank—kept them from actually dedicating the time and energy into chasing success. The latest was an aspiring doctor with nothing more than his GED. But for his consistent need to get drunk and waste all his money, he would be the next Dr. Travis Stork
ala
The Bachelor
and
The Doctors
talk show. Like a first-time home buyer, Ann saw only the potential for a palace and not the long, expensive road through remodeling, bills, and withdrawal from society, in her men.

“Well, I told him I had changed my mind. That I cared for him and thought he cared for me. Oh, and this is where it gets good.” Ann bounced in her seat like a kid excited to be heading to Disney. “He looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes and said, quote, ‘you’re nice and all, but I have a lot on my plate and really can’t handle a girlfriend right now.’ Can you believe that shit? The man had been in my bed every other night for the past month, me cooking him breakfast—and you know I suck at cooking—and then, when I want it to be legit, he says he’s too busy.
Screw him
.”

Filling in the momentary pause, Cole added, “You know how to pick them.”

“Don’t you start.” She smiled as she cut her eyes away. They knew they could tell each other anything without judgment. Cole exercised his right to make observations of Ann’s choice in men and relationships often. Only once did it result in him being on ‘probation,’ without hearing from her. And that only lasted a week, until she needed a sidekick for a Christmas party at work.

Exhaling loudly with a huff, she started again. “Yeah, I know. I sent mixed messages,
yada yada yada
. You’ve told me before, and I agree, I have acted stupid in the past. But I really
did
change my mind this time. I entered it just as friends with benefits. Then we started seeing each other every night or so and it just grew. Or, I thought it did.”

“Ann, the men you date are good for one thing and one thing only.
Sex
.”

Ann looked down to her lap, deflated, arms limp to her sides. “Ugh, and it was
good
sex. I mean, earth-shaking, body-trembling good sex. My only complaint was that he was too lean.”

Cole turned his head from the road at Ann’s comment and took the bait. “Huh?”

She grinned knowing she had successfully drawn him into talking about sex, something he did not like to do. “I mean he had like
no
body fat. His body was smoking hot, don’t get me wrong, but his penis was like cold steel.”

“Oh my god. Please sto…”

“Just think of having sex with an iron rod and you get the point. How that damn Bella chick does it I will never know. Cold steel touching my girl with my feet in the stirrups once a year is enough for me, thank you very much.” Her head was weaving again.

“…op”. They both burst out laughing. There were few limits to their conversations and she demanded that sex not be one of them.

Playing along, Cole added, “Well, look at it this way, Ann, you now know what it’s like to have sex with an android or robot. The first woman in the world who can say that.”

“Sure felt like it. But, man, did he know how to use that robotic dick.” The laughter returned harder as they arrived at Charleston Place, or the Omni as Cole knew it from his childhood. They checked into rooms that had been unintentionally booked on separate floors, both overlooking Meeting Street and the Old Slave Market. There was no time to waste, drinks were to be had and they were not apt to disappoint.

CHAPTER 20

LOOKING AT HIS
watch, Cole noted it was half past eight.
West to east travel sucks.
He was no fan of losing time, especially when he was on vacation. Ann and he had rushed to their rooms to change and were to meet in the downstairs lobby of curved staircases in front of check-in. Cole ran to Godiva first, one of many shops attached to the interior of the hotel.

As a kid, he had always loved Godiva and frankly, he needed the caffeine to keep up with Ann’s spastic energy. As he walked across the beige marble-tiled floor of the shops into the small store, he recalled being told once when he was a kid that Elizabeth Taylor ate Godiva and ordered it exclusively from Charleston. He would learn in college that Godiva was a chain, like McDonalds or anything else, and that there was better chocolate to be had in the world. But visits to the store evoked enough memories of his childhood that he would routinely stop by and grab a piece. Memories, good or bad, comforted him, make him feel in control. Now, his analytical side suggested that it was chocolate’s impact on endorphin levels in the brain that caused that reaction, but whatever the reason, he did it purely out of tradition—something Southerners revered.

Halfway through a white chocolate truffle he lifted his head and noticed that he must have been making a spectacle of himself enjoying it because a lady was staring at him from across the interior garden of the Charleston Grill as if she was thinking she wanted a bite, too. His contacts were too dry and blurry from travel to fully make her out, but she was definitely admiring the view. He suspected it was a bite of the truffle, not him, because he certainly wasn’t channeling the Diet Coke guy at the moment. He popped the last bit in his mouth and casually returned to the lobby, chuckling at himself. He was always his own best entertainment.

Ann was running late as he bit into the dark chocolate truffle with milk chocolate center. It melted in his mouth and tasted of cream and sugar. Ann being late was like the moon rising. It was expected and routine. Sometimes it was quiet, sometimes it flooded everything in sight with lunar tides. Cole always added thirty minutes to a planned meet-up time in an attempt to avoid disappointment. Moments after the second truffle was gone, she finally appeared.

Casual dress had no impact on her beauty as she stepped out of the elevator in skin-tight blue jeans and a sparkly silver V-neck tee that hugged her in all the right places. She was stunning no matter the attire. This had led to a lot of suspicion among friends and prior co-workers about their dating status. Cole and Ann had made a run at dating for a very brief moment several years before he left Atlanta. It ended as quickly as it started when they both realized they were much better for each other as friends then they ever were as lovers.

Cole realized that the great advantage of friends is that you don’t have to sleep with them every night. You can listen and live through all the crazy shit they do, say, and think, without personalizing it or attaching a ‘how does this impact me’ to it. Love is defined by those ‘impact on me’ moments. Avoiding that question just isn’t possible when you date, much less marry someone. If they piss off their employer, the first thought is how will ‘we’ deal with this. When a friend pisses off a boss, you think and say, ‘well, that sucks, let’s go grab a drink’ without another thought. When a lover buys an overly expensive car, you wonder how ‘we’ are going to afford that. When a friend does, you encourage them to drive it like it’s stolen and go partying to celebrate.

The risks and consequences of Ann’s decisions accumulated fast for Cole. On one side she was intelligent, successful, and driven. Yet, on another, she made poor, contradictory decisions, told one too many people off on a daily basis, and lacked the stability that he had long since discovered was a personal requisite. The feeling was mutual for Ann. By the end of the three-month trial, she described Cole as ‘bossy,’ ‘cold’ and his personal favorite, ‘boring.’ She resented his control and restraint as a lover. She needed excitement, risk, and the careless nature of a dandelion parachute, adrift in the wind.

The process had strained but not broken their friendship. It would take two years before it was healed. In that time both Cole and Ann came to respect and revere each other for the very differences that made them incompatible as lovers. Several events in each other’s lives thrust them toward each other, forever strengthening their bond as friends. Had Cole known that it would make him fair game for conversations about her sex life, he might have rethought, but secretly he loved that they each felt so very comfortable that sharing even those conversations felt natural.

ANN WAS READY
for a drink. “Okay, babe, where to? I haven’t been out here in ages. What’s hot?”

Cole reached in to pull a stray hair off Ann’s shoulder and responded, “Jackie says that Tommy Condon’s is still a great spot for a pre-dinner drink.” Jackie was Cole’s older sister and a local police officer in the Town of Mount Pleasant, right across the Cooper River, or the ‘Cooper’ as locals called it. “And, you know if there’s a person who knows what bars are hot, it’s a police officer.”

“Sounds perfect. You know how I love Irish pubs. Ha.” Ann was referring to last year’s summer trip to Ireland where she and Cole drank at every pub they could find, sampling the local beer and ‘supporting the local economy,’ as they told themselves. The beer made the reality that the euro was almost two for one a little less painful.

Cole laughed to himself as he recalled that Ann also loved the Irish men. “Yeah, I think it’s time for a revival of our support for the Irish and their beer.”

Stepping out of the hotel, Ann walked in tight, four-inch heeled steps. Heading eastward down South Market Street and alongside the Slave Market, they continued to catch up. Cole interjected into the conversation as they crossed Church Street. “Ahh, horse shit. Welcome to Charleston.” Ann laughed and pinched her nose. The downtown sector of Charleston was clogged with all sorts of transportation. Cars and bikes? Boring. Rickshaws and London-style black cabs, novel. And then there were the horse-drawn carriages. Stereotypical, yes. But very much a symbol of Charleston, nonetheless. Pats of horse manure could be found along any street in the historic area, i.e. the whole peninsula. They were unavoidable. Like the smell of the salt marsh, the random smell of horse symbolized home and evoked memories.

Cole and Ann walked into Tommy C’s and immediately pulled up at the bar. The scruffy bartender rested his eyes on Ann and asked what they would have, clearly wanting to place his own order.
One glass of Ann, please!

“I’ll take a Palmetto Pale Ale.”

“Make that two,” Ann piped in. The bartender’s eyes had yet to leave Ann, and a grin crossed his face. The idea of a woman who drank beer clearly agreed with him. Ann turned to Cole to continue their reunion conversation, wherein the guy took the message and walked away to retrieve their beers. Moments later he was back, popping off the caps of both beers with an opener attached to the underside of the bar.

“Here you go.” His concaved-faced grin was back.

“Thank you, darlin’.” The
g
in Ann’s darling was dropped in typical Charlestonian smooth-talk fashion. Charlestonians’ lyrical speech caused words to merge together at their ends, with few hard consonants or vowels, only inflections. Vowels were held longer here. Their jaw-jutting made them pronounce house as ‘hoose,’ and their proclivity to add syllables caused words like state to come out ‘stey-it’ and boat as ‘bow-et.’ The bartender’s up-state Carolina roots were evident in his slight twang, something Charlestonians lacked. He took his cue and left with anticipation.

Having paid attention to the two accents play out, Cole sat back. “Awh, I miss you and the South. And I really miss the accent.”

“What do you mean?” Ann leaned in to hear more.

“You know what I mean. People here just have a certain manner in the way they talk and communicate. It’s like everything is a big flirt. Even an insult comes across as a compliment unless you know better. Just add a ‘bless your sweet little heart’ to ‘you’re an ass’ and it’s like turning vinegar into wine. And then there’s the style. Bow ties and bright colors are the norm for men and woman. It’s like a spring festival every day. People here love to look good and outsiders clearly agree that they do look good. Didn’t Charleston get named fourth for most attractive people in America, behind Miami and Puerto Rico, last year by some magazine? I think it got first one year.”

Cole thought to himself that indeed the city was colorful, the result of trade with the Caribbean in the city’s early history. Its colorful nature extended to its people, too. Pink gingham, yellow polka-dots, and lime green sundresses filled the streets. Palmetto-lined cobblestone streets stood out amongst all the color and only added to the city’s charm and beauty.

Ann smiled as she spoke. “Lord, you know this city collects accolades like a dog collects fleas. Most beautiful people, most mannered, top destination, best restaurants… the list goes on and on. We have this love-hate affair with our Southern roots and characteristics. We cherish them, holding them tight like the damn Yankees are coming to rip them from our arms, while also parading them around with pride as though to say, don’t you wish you had some of this crazy?”

They laughed at that thought. By no means was crazy unique to the South, but it sure did love to parade it around on the front porch, give it a drink and welcome the world to stare. YouTube had made them video stars for all to see. And, God knows if there was a hurricane anywhere between here and Japan, some Weather Channel or CNN caster would be coming to town to elicit a fool to talk about trailers, beer, and Granny like a good’ol country song.

Cole responded, “Well, I love your crazy. You need to get out to Denver soon so we can show it a thing or two.”

“You know it! Before I head back to Atlanta we’ll have to compare calendars and see when will work.”

“Excuse me, I think you’re in my seat.” Cole’s back was turned when he felt a tap on his right shoulder. Looking up from his beer, Ann was smiling at the person standing behind him. Cole swung around and looked up, way up, to see Daniel Page grinning. At six-five, the young Denzel Washington look-alike towered over Cole, who was still seated at the stained-oak bar. “Daniel! Wow man, how are you? It’s been like forever.” Cole stood up and gave him a male hug. One of those ‘we’re cool enough dudes to hug, but world, we are not jumping in the sack together at the end of the night, okay?’

“Life is great, Cole. What brings you back to town? Didn’t you move even further away from Charleston to…is it Denver or Portland or something?” Cole felt his phone vibrating in his pocket as he went to respond. Years as a trial attorney, in and out of courts, had taught him to keep it on silent.

Disregarding the vibrations and looking back to Daniel, he replied, “Yeah, Denver, but don’t you worry. I’m always just a plane ride away from harassing you, little man. I think we still have to have that basketball match. It’s one and one right now, right?”

“Ha. In your wet dreams, man. It is two and oh; and you cried.” Daniel and Cole had been close friends since elementary school and giving each other grief was part of the job. Ann laughed at the competitive exchange.

Cole reached up and placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Man, I have missed your ugly mug.”

“Same here, Cole. So, what brings you to town?”

“Just visiting the family and taking in some Spoleto, nothing big.” As Cole talked, a woman in a tight-fitting dress crowded her way between Cole and Daniel to place an order at the bar. Daniel moved his eyes up and down the woman’s slender back and then back at Cole with a grin. He liked what he saw. Cole bent his neck to look around the blue-and-red striped summer dress obstructing his view to continue his conversation until she ultimately left, but not without her returning a flirting look at Daniel. Following the woman with his eyes, Cole said, “I can see you haven’t lost your mojo there, mister. Always popular with the ladies.”

“When you got it, you got it. And, when you don’t, you don’t. And, boy you got it. That’s what Momma always says.” Daniel flashed a pursed smile and lifted one brow while pinching his chin with his right hand, reminding Cole of the bad poses forced upon teens and adults at the old Glamour Shots photography center at Northwoods Mall.

Cole laughed. “Awh man, I better pull up my pant legs, it’s getting deep in here. Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

Daniel looked over at the woman from earlier as he responded. “No real plans, why you ask?”

“Dinner…at SNOB…six-thirty?”

“Sounds like a plan! Ann, are you joining?”

Ann leaned into and over the bar to see around Cole. “Oh, and miss seeing you two testosterone-filled men keep pissing on each other like blind tick hounds? Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” The two men laughed, shaking their head at Ann.

Getting up from his stool, Cole said, “Okay, Ann, are you about ready to jet? This boy is worn out. I slept like shit last night and we have a long day tomorrow.”

Ann stepped off the stool and shook out her dress. “Sounds great to me. See you Daniel.”

Cole looked back as he was about to walk out the door. Daniel had turned to the lady from earlier and was giving her the charm.
Yep, he’s still got it.
“Damn.”