Robby read the numbers off of the phone card and punched them into the pay phone next to the bathroom in the clubhouse restaurant. He abandoned his cell phone a few years ago to escape the nagging calls and interruptions. These days he regretted that decision. After years of being hounded and surrounded by people his seclusion was creating pains of loneliness. Maybe a cell phone, and greater accessibility, would connect him again to the fibers of life after so long a time away? Or maybe its constant silence would remind him more of his voluntary solitude, his self-inflicted exile?
Sure would make it damn bit easier to make a call when he needed to make a call instead of searching out for the fast-disappearing species of pay phones that were hidden in the dark corners and dank hallways of America. Might make him less of a publicly pathetic person than he appeared while using a pay phone to display his self-abusive nature to the world when he tried to speak with his soon-to-be ex-wife.
“Hey…this is me. What are you doing?”
Her voice was weary. Definitely not excited to hear him. Caught in the middle of something vastly more important. Going through the motions. Disinterested inquiries into his whereabouts.
“No…I’m here. I’ll probably be here awhile longer. Hiding out…yeah.”
She made some crack about Robby returning to his roots. Reliving his past. Regressing.
“Yeah. Home.”
It wasn’t her that he wanted. The gatekeeper. He might’ve preferred the nanny, although her English wasn’t first rate. But he got her and needed to play the game so that he could get through.
“Hey…is she there? Uh…huh. Lessons. Sure…no…I…”
Dance. Kinda like a sport, I guess. Gotta stay in shape. But it might involve high stockings and a dress. Pointy shoes. What about tennis? What about swimming? What about ice hockey? If only I was there…I could…
“I could try back later…if you don’t…okay.”
It will be late and there’s a sleepover planned and summer’s almost over and there’s a camp trip into the city tomorrow and there’s dinner with the parents and the kid’s goddamned scheduled to death. What happened to running wild in the woods and swimming out to that raft in the cold turtle pond and using that tree rope to swing out over the water and missing lunch and not caring and nobody knew where you were and getting water into your lungs and feeling like you are going to die but you don’t, you live to play another day and throw rocks down at the beach? Where are those days? And why can’t we acquire them for our kids? How much would it cost to buy them?
Not a clever idea to talk about buying things. Not with the woman who is racing to get all of your money before the other guys get to it first.
No need. Please don’t let her try to reach me. “I don’t want her thinking that she has to call me back.” Whatever. There’s no number to call anyway. “Okay…Savannah?”
A kid, a girl, tapped Robby on the elbow and held up a pen and a menu. Robby turned away from the pay phone and grimaced, but when he saw the girl he recovered and smiled.
“Yeah, okay.” Into the phone he said, “Hold on a sec. Okay?” And he dropped the phone to his shoulder and began to sign the menu propping it up against the wall.
“What’s your name?”
And the kid said, “Maggie.”
“Okay…Maggie.” And he signed it. “That’s G-G-I-E?”
“Yup.”
Robby handed her the menu and the pen and tapped her on the head. He was only being nice. Kid wouldn’t know who the hell he was. Dad put her up to it. Sent his daughter down the hallway and coaxed her to get it and run back. Like a test.
He lifted the receiver back to his face. “Autograph. Still in demand.”
Nothing.
“Savan? Hello?”
He looked at the phone, hesitated, and softly placed the receiver on the cradle.
Back at the table in the early evening light. An uncomfortable dinner at the club with a family of annoying sports fans. Vacationers. Paying top dollar for mahi-mahi and fried okra. A pro shop owning dad and his two thick-necked sons. They were talking. The dad was talking. Robby wasn’t listening.
“Billy, ask him how he liked it playing in Japan. Go ahead and ask him.”
“You ask him.”
Robby and his third tall glass of scotch and very little soda had tuned out the table. His eyes were drawn to the widescreen TV near the bar and the weathercaster and the projected hurricane tracks. Two systems so close together. Slow moving. Stalled. Getting larger. One right behind the other in the warm water out there. Like two swirling galaxies about to collide and destroy all.
“This is the critical point that we’re watching closely. The storms have now both been reclassified as hurricanes and they’ve got new names…Adam and Bartolo.”
“You like that fish there, Robby?”
Robby didn’t hear. He tuned out and tuned in.
“The question we have with these systems is will they turn left or right? If they turn right before reaching Florida, we could be in for major trouble here, gathering strength…”
“Maybe you prefer sushi?”
“Huh?”
That got ‘em.
“Maybe you prefer your fish still breathin’?”
Robby decided then and there that this would be last free meal he’d ever not eat again.
The face, the still face appeared on the screen. Why the still face?
“Shssh.” Robby told the dad and his numbskull sons and got up from the table.
“…our other top story…the apparent disappearance of U.S. Senate candidate Russ Venable from Charleston who is missing and feared lost in the Alaska mountains.”
Robby stood at the bar and tapped his glass.
“A search is underway in Denali National Park where Venable was last reported over a week ago…”
Denali is Native Alaskan for Mount McKinley. President Denali. Venable wasn’t missing. And Robby was piss drunk.
He had to get out of there. Had to get away.
And outrun the storm.
The sun had long since deposited on the other side of the country by the time Robby was walking along the road back to the big house. Walking home tight and alone. No passing cars along this desolate stretch of the island. Carrington preserved the immediate property near his grand house by the sea. Would Cynthia do the same? Or would she carve up and sell off the land? Would it matter now? Robby considered whether he oughta take a break from drinking for a few days to sort out the complexity of the mess around him. Seek clarity away from the bottle. Get a notebook and a new pen to write it all down. Take notes. Tear ‘em up. Arrange ‘em on the table. Name the pieces. Carrington. Cynthia. Heinrich. Venable. Mateen. Christi. Rodney Monroe. Coach Cal. The Georgia state guys. Boxley.
Bullet.
Cynthia.
As he approached the house, cutting through the trees in the front, he saw Cynthia rush out to her car, her black Infiniti, and start it up. She quickly U-turned the car and raced down the long, winding drive. He trotted down to the road and tried waving to her in the dark. He appeared in her headlights. But she raced on without stopping, gunning the engine in the night.
To where?
Only a moment of hesitation before Robby ran the 100 yard dash to his old Porsche to follow her.
She was fast. He was faster.
He caught up with her taillights and saw that she had slowed down considerably once she neared the resort entrance and tourist area of the island. He decided to hang back as she cruised ahead through the security gate. Island security guards checked passes at the checkpoint on the way in, but ignored everybody on the way out. Robby’s Porsche picked up speed as the security booth cleared the rearview mirror.
As the road curled through the marshland Cynthia’s taillights seemed to accelerate and become smaller and fainter in the distance. Robby opened his side window to let the night air wake him, snap him into reality. He gripped the outside of his door with his left hand to steady himself and he took the curves with the wheel in his right to close the gap and keep the distance.
The cathedral of live oaks in the late afternoon speckled light now cast tangled shadows in his high beams. A deer, a bobcat, any small animal would cause him to swerve and plaster Robby against one of the eternal oak trees. Who would leave the plastic flowers and the white cross in memorial to him there?
He’d lose her momentarily when she reached and descended the crest of a small hill. How long would this chase last? All the way to Charleston? Could he keep that pace?
A red turn signal. A left. Instinct. Brake lights and she slowed. Robby did the same as he passed the sign for Angel Oak. Turn ahead on the left.
Robby slowed as her Infiniti made the turn onto the dirt road and disappeared momentarily from view. He cut his lights and the total darkness enveloped him. At a crawling pace he made the turn onto the dirt road and saw her lights in the near distance, the only lights to guide his trajectory in the pitch black night.
Her brake lights blared. Robby stopped. Her lights went out. Robby cut the engine and applied the brake. He winced at the distinct, but mild squeal of his worn brake pads.
He sat quietly in the car, in the darkness. The night bugs drowned the still, warm air. An apparent calm before the major storms to come.
A car door opened and shut. Robby leaned forward to try to see, to make out her figure. He could barely make out the outline of her black car. Cynthia had stepped out, Robby could see her then, dressed in white or beige. His eyes were gradually becoming acclimated to the scene. He watched as Cynthia walked into the shadows to the right of the road, in the direction of Angel Oak.
Gently, Robby pulled the outside lever of his car and got out. He didn’t close the door. He stood there in a moment of stillness. His eyes strained to see ahead. No stars or moon were visible in the shroud of black created by the dense trees. Would they still stand in a few years? Torn by a tractor plowing the way for a future sand trap? Or felled by a force of nature greater than a machine?
Just then the darkness that surrounded Robby was ripped apart by an unmistakable woman's terrified scream.
(Read Chapter Twenty-Nine and catch up on previous episodes of Blacksmith's Girl, including Chapter Twenty-Seven and the rest.)