Off the Chart. James Hall

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      Three weeks after their meeting at the Lorelei, Daniel Salbone and Anne were having breakfast on the outside patio of the Cheeca Lodge.

      Overnight a late-season cold front had muscled in and the sky was hanging low – as heavy and ominous as a slab of slate. A few yards away from their table the Atlantic thrashed and foamed against the resort’s white beach. While they sipped their coffee Daniel’s gaze kept drifting out toward the end of the long dock where a white sport-fishing yacht was moored. For the last half hour several men had been rolling dollies down the dock, then heaving the supplies aboard.

      Anne’s mind was whirling, her body inflamed from the three-week frenzy of sex and extravagant food and full-throttle cruises on the Black Swan, both of them naked, racing the moonlight. Except for the boat rides, they’d not left their room at the Cheeca Lodge. DO NOT DISTURB on the doorknob. Room service trays piling up in the corner, their sheets growing funkier by the hour. They’d switched off the air conditioner because they wanted to marinate in their own juices, breathe the other’s true scent. They opened the windows to hear the ocean and the gulls, inhale the marshy breeze. Lying in the black night or at noon, feet tangled in the sheets, skin glistening, she trailed her fingertips across his long stretches of muscled flesh.

      A few nights ago in the dark, Daniel said, ‘Is this love?’

      ‘Hell, no,’ she said. ‘This is sex, plain and simple.’

      He laughed and she laughed with him.

      A moment later he said, ‘You don’t want it to be love.’

      ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘You want something flimsy, something you can control, something you can walk away from when you’re ready.’

      ‘This isn’t real,’ Anne said. ‘It’s heat lightning on a summer evening.’

      ‘You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re scared.’

      ‘Of what?’

      ‘That it’s real. That it’s solid.’

      She was silent. Staring up at the darkness.

      ‘I don’t scare easy,’ she said.

      ‘Then you’re a rare woman.’

      ‘You’re just noticing?’

      The ghostly curtains stirred with a warm breeze.

      ‘So who was that guy at the restaurant?’

      ‘Restaurant? What guy?’

      ‘The Lorelei, that day we met. I saw you kiss some guy. Your boyfriend?’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He’s nobody. A local I went out with for a while. It was finished centuries ago.’

      ‘What’s his name?’

      She hesitated a half-second and said, ‘Thorn.’

      ‘First or last?’

      ‘That’s what he goes by. I don’t know which it is.’

      ‘So it’s over, is it? He won’t be wondering where you’ve gone off to these last three weeks?’

      ‘Stone-cold over.’

      ‘You kissed him. I saw that. You still have feelings.’

      His body stiff, Daniel stared up into the dark.

      ‘Hey, what is this? You store away a meaningless kiss from weeks ago. Are you some kind of green-eyed control freak? Tell me now. I don’t want any big surprises later on.’

      Her words hung in the darkness. When he answered, his voice was solemn, almost apologetic.

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t lie to you. I suppose I can be fiercely protective of what I care about. Is that a crime?’

      ‘Well, there’s nobody to be jealous of, Daniel. Nobody at all.’

      He took her hand and shifted beside her. As he fit his length more snugly against hers, the tension seemed to drain from his body.

      ‘So you’ve been saving yourself for me,’ he said. ‘For this.’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not at all what I had in mind.’

      ‘What about now? Do you have me in mind?’

      He touched her in the dark and she made an uncertain groan.

      ‘You’re not happy? This doesn’t make you happy, Anne Bonny?’

      ‘Two inches lower and it will.’

      Anne called in sick one day too many and the Lorelei let her go. Three weeks together, she and Daniel had talked easily, focused on the moment, but without sharing history on either side. Now it was over.

      This morning while Anne lay in bed, Daniel’s cell phone rang for the first time since they’d met and he stepped out on their balcony and spoke quietly for a moment, then came back inside and told her that he was going to have to leave.

      ‘For the day?’ she said.

      He shook his head.

      ‘And do what? Go where?’

      ‘I can’t talk about it.’

      ‘Oh, you can’t talk about it. I see.’

      Anne rose from the bed and went to the closet and yanked her clothes off СКАЧАТЬ