Alligators in the Trees (45 page)

“Phil,” he said, shuffling to catch up.

“Let me just say this, Martin, so that we understand each other clearly. I’m not sure of the exact names, but there have to be laws on the books that prohibit the kind of acts you’ve committed while under my hire. I’m thinking along the lines of conflict of interest, breach of trust, fraternizing with the adversary…things of that nature.”

“That would kill my wife,” Martin croaked hoarsely.

“What—the part about being unfaithful, or the part about being disbarred?” There was a lump in Martin’s throat that refused to go up or down. Philip could actually feel the painfulness of it. “Here are the terms: she moves out, I get full legal custody of Caitlin, and her settlement is two million dollars, period.” Martin blanched.

“What about alimony and child support?” Philip paused as he pretended to consider this.

“Since I will have full custody of Caitlin—with generous visitation rights for Marianne—there will be no child support. As for alimony, four thousand a month, terminating in five years, unless she remarries first.”

“Four thousand for five years?”
Martin squeaked. “She’ll never go for it.”

Philip shrugged as if to say it wasn’t his problem. “You’ve got twelve minutes left,” he said.

Priscilla raised herself up on her elbow and looked across Tobias’s sleeping body. The clock read 4:08, yet it felt like she had been lying awake for days. She folded back the sheet and eased out of bed without disturbing her fellow occupant and found her way to the living room in the dark. She switched on a table lamp, temporarily blinding herself.

Once her eyes adjusted, she canvassed the room for the notebooks she had sold to Tobias. She found them neatly boxed and bagged under a hall table, apparently in some sort of order. She flipped through book after book until she came across what she was hunting for.

Quietly, she tore out a few blank pages and put the notebooks back the way she had found them, all except one. She went to the piano, searching for Tobias’s pen. She then sat cross-legged on the floor, using the sofa as a backrest.

Though she had ample verses piled up in her head waiting for release—like water in a backed up sink—now, with pen in hand, she didn’t know where to begin. Writing may have been the craving that propelled her out of bed in the middle of the night, but there were bigger issues praying on her mind than pent-up creativity.

If she had any sense, she’d pack up and head out of there before Tobias woke up. She’d never had an affair so quick to heat up and so quick to fizzle. Of course, that was her take. For all she knew, Tobias could still be as enchanted with her as ever. But her feelings toward him had most definitely cooled.

She couldn’t say what exactly had put her off, but she supposed finding out he wasn’t the man she had imagined all these years was the main cause. It was odd, too, because they had a real connection—very easy and natural. But music was really their only common ground. Finding out his words did not reflect the spirit of the man devalued much of what she had admired about him, and left her feeling vaguely swindled.

Priscilla bit her lip as she doodled the word ‘connection’ repeatedly. She thought about their brief history together, remarkably short considering how much ground they had covered. There were moments when she’d felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into the danger zone with him. She could still feel the thrill of them.

How does a spell like the one he cast on her lift so suddenly? She recalled the scene at the club, the jilted lover dousing him with champagne and running off in a fit of heartache. She could read Tobias’s thoughts as clearly as if they’d been printed on his skin: people come into his life and they leave. There was never any reason to mourn their departure, for someone else would always appear to take their place.

Brody Haversham might be the one exception to that philosophy, but it hadn’t assured him any better treatment from Tobias. To say Tobias was selfish was like saying coyotes were cruel and unfeeling. They are, of course, but that’s their nature. Instead of hunger and the need for survival dictating his every move, Tobias had the cumbersome burden of extraordinary talent to pamper and coax.

Trying to pretend it didn’t exist for many years had burned a hole inside him, which had festered and produced a dangerous self-loathing. It was almost impossible to be so disdainful of others without being doubly disdainful of one’s self.

Even though their time together had been mostly lighthearted and exciting, Priscilla could feel the unease below Tobias’s surface. If she was with him in a week’s time, she was sure he’d become surly and indifferent toward her. It would be impossible to avoid letting him down in some way.

You put a warp on me

Now no one else fits

You’ve made your claim

But I know you won’t commit

If time meant nothing

And souls could grow anew

I would surrender both

Without ever feeling blue

I’d make my bargain

Cross my heart and hope to die

Let you do what you will

And never say goodbye

But my heart’s a silly fool

I can’t trust it where you’re concerned

As soon as I’d hand it over to you

You’d make sure that it was burned

I’ll let my head lead me on this one

Hop that train for out of town

If there’s fifteen-hundred miles between us

Perhaps I won’t feel I’ve let you down

They say a man has only one master

In your case that master is you

What you call your consuming passion

Is entirely up to you

In any event, the time has come

And I must say goodbye

I’ll disappear in a puff of smoke

And not give you one last try

When I look back upon this time

I don’t believe I touched your heart

Will you ever look back at me?

Will you forget me once we part?

Though I’ve never been one for betting

I think it’s pretty safe to say

I’ll end up like so many memories

That the tide will wash away

Priscilla drew a deep breath and kept writing. Her words uncorked wouldn’t stop flowing until she had gotten them all out on paper. Twenty years of these musings had become a burdensome load to cart around and protect, but the act of writing was no different in its vitality than the blood coursing through her veins.

As she continued to write,
she realized an emotional growth spurt had occurred without her knowing it.

Casting long shadows, we run across hilltops/ Chasing the day with the onset of night/ A pocket in time, we wrap up this memory/ Making a wish, then holding it tight

Tobias’s shortcomings were far less glaring than the quirks, handicaps and flaws exhibited by the former men in her life—Brawny, Ryan, and all the rest. Yet they were so vividly apparent to her, she knew she wouldn’t stay with him for long.

This was a stark contrast to her former modus operendi. How many months and years she wasted with those other men! Had she not reached this pinnacle of insight when she had, she would’ve surely tagged along with Tobias until his humiliating rejections finally broke down her remarkable resilience.

She drew a deep breath and let it seep out of her. She was grateful she’d never gone down the path of unrequited love like the girl she’d seen at the club. She wouldn’t have wanted to be in her designer shoes for anything. She rubbed her blistered toes as she reflected on her good fortune.

She didn’t know when her amusing interlude with Tobias would end, but mentally she had already crossed the finish line. She was in the safety zone now, immune to his unique charms. It was a shame he wasn’t made of different cloth, for there were aspects to him that made her weak in the knees. She would never find another man who’d put her lyrics to music, for one thing.

And yet, if Tobias had been the sort of man whose heart and mind were accessible, he wouldn’t have been available to her anyway. The good ones were seldom on the market for long. She yawned and rested her head against the sofa, as she let the memories of Tobias slip out of her mind.

Priscilla opened her eyes to daylight. The sound of Tobias padding around the room had woken her. She watched him for a moment as he stood by the window looking at the day. In incremental movements, she sat up. She had been sleeping on the sofa, but she couldn’t remember climbing up there. The rustling of paper as she endeavored to right herself caught Tobias’s attention.

“Hi there,” he said, coming toward her. “When did you come out here?”

“I don’t know,” Priscilla said, sitting up, a piece of paper stuck to her cheek. She looked down to find the others floating onto the floor. She peeled off the damp page while trying to corral the rest with her feet. Tobias laughed as he realized what had driven her from his bed.

“…this place, this piece…what does that say?” he said, trying to decipher the ink marks on her face. Reflexively, she rubbed her cheek, smearing the words into a blue streak. “I guess I’ll just have to read the original later,” he said, giving her head an affectionate ruffle.

“Want me to order some breakfast? I’m absolutely famished. I guess I really didn’t eat much yesterday,” he said, patting his flattened stomach. “Or would you rather go out and get something?” Priscilla sat there and blinked at the sun-filled room. Tobias’s chipper mood confused her.

“Uh…I need to take a shower,” she said, looking down at the minute stubble on her bare legs.

“Okay, I’ll order room service, then. What would you like?”

“Coffee,” she said, her voice hesitant and low.

“Anything else?” he said, looking at her over the menu.

“Um…a biscuit?”

“A biscuit? Well, that sounds homey enough. I don’t know if they serve biscuits…”

“An English muffin, then.”

“Okay, I’ll get it ordered while you take your shower. We’ve got to get on the stick—we’ve got to take you shopping today. See, I didn’t forget,” Tobias said, smiling like he was about to burst with happiness. “Go on, this won’t take long.”

Priscilla obeyed, staggering down the hallway on legs made shaky from lack of sleep. As she stood under the showerhead, she thought back to her revelations of a few short hours ago and wondered if she had judged Tobias unfairly. To look at him, one would think he was love’s greatest success story: the man transformed by his feelings for another human being. In her compromised mental state, she couldn’t tell which assessment of him was correct.

“How come you’ve never written any love songs?” Priscilla asked as they rode the elevator down to the lobby.

“You don’t know that I haven’t,” Tobias replied.

“Okay, why haven’t you ever recorded any love songs?” she rephrased. She knew the words to every song he had recorded by heart, and not one of them resembled a love song in any fashion.

“Just never felt like it,” Tobias answered. She regarded him skeptically out of the corner of her eye.

“I don’t believe you’ve never written any,” she challenged him. Tobias tilted his head, neither confirming nor denying her assertion.

“I can’t claim to have read everything in those notebooks of yours, but I don’t recall finding any mention of love’s slings and arrows,” he countered. “I did read a few very lovely passages that sounded like the author was on an endorphin high. But to your credit there was nothing soppy or overly sweet about them.”

Priscilla scrutinized him silently while she determined whether or not he was tipping his hand. Like a machine, her brain scanned line after line of his lyrics, with no red flags. Maybe it just wasn’t in him to put his most vulnerable feelings into words. Or maybe he never had any.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked as the elevator door opened.

“Oh no,” Tobias said, shepherding her out of the car. “It’s too early in the day for true confessions.” Priscilla felt a hot wave of shame wash over her.
Why did I ask him that?
she berated herself.
It’s not like I care.
Aggravated with herself, she sulked while Tobias attended to business at the front desk. He rejoined her and handed her a key to his room.

“Just in case you bolt out of the store without me,” he said with a wink.

One second later, he caught sight of Marvin Stacks, yet another person he had been studiously avoiding. His first impulse was to duck into the nearest doorway, but he didn’t want to have to explain his strange behavior to Priscilla, who would invariably think he was ditching another ex-lover. His only hope was to try to out-walk Marvin.

To this end, he turned his body in such a way to shield both Priscilla and himself, talking in hushed tones as he navigated her across the lobby. Unfortunately for him, his tactic failed to work. Marvin was on him like a heat-seeking missile.

“Tobias!” he called out, taking long strides on his stilt-like legs in an effort to catch up with his client.

“So, where should we hit first?” Tobias asked, pretending he didn’t hear Marvin’s appeals.

“That guy’s calling you,” Priscilla pointed out, slowing their progress as she craned her neck around.