at First Sight (2008) (3 page)

I waited until Melissa was gone. Then I sat and scanned the area, looking for my goddess, holding my breath, so that when I spotted her I wouldn't lose it, gasping and sighing like a busted windbag, making the same hopeless gushing sound I'd made when I spotted her yesterday.

And that was the second disaster.

She wasn't there.

I left my stuff in the chair, then got up and walked all over the grounds. I asked one of the pool boys if the ladies' room was empty:
a t
ough question for a mid-fifties guy to ask, but I cleaned up the moment by adding that I was looking for my wife.

He smiled and said, "Yes, Mr. Best, it's empty."

I looked around. I waited. Then fear overtook me. What if my goddess and Mr. Tidy Bowl had left? What if their vacation was over? What if I'd never see her again?

When I got back to the tent, my stuff had been moved and there was a thirty-five-year-old, wide-shouldered asshole wearing a CSI: Miami baseball cap occupying my cabana. His skinny, big-breasted squeeze was sprawled in the pool chair beside him.

"This is my spot," I told the guy. He was big--huge actually. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of guests at this hotel must be on steroids. Maybe Brian gives shots. This guy had shredded arms and a rippling six-pack. I haven't got the time to work up a set of abs like that. I've got a business to run. His face was crafty but pockmarked. He and Evelyn would look perfect together on a Gold's Gym poster--"The Anabolic Workout." He glared at me with mean, dangerous eyes.

"It isn't your cabana," he said. "It's mine."

"My stuff was in it. I had my book, my sunglasses . . . my radio. It was all on the towel right here."

The guy smiled a lazy, sweet smile. "I think you're mistaken." "My daughter got up at 4 A
. M
. to secure this cabana. I just came down."

"Nobody was here when I sat down. I think that's your stuff over there." He pointed to my things piled on a nearby table, while hi
s w
ife, or secretary, or whoever the lounging cupcake in the string bikini was, just stared, holding her hand up to shade her eyes, squinting at me like I was dirt that blew in under the door.

"Look, this is my cabana," I said, turning up the volume, putting a little more bass into the mix.

"Don't make this into something you can't deal with," the muscle-head in my pool chair said softly.

"Are you threatening me? Is this a threat? Are you suggesting violence?" I was outraged.

"Get the fuck away from me," the man said, softly. Only now, he sat up. Shit, a monster!

So, there you have the gist of it. Me, standing there with a body that already felt like the home stretch at Hollywood Park, him looking like Bluto in a TV-show ball cap. Normally I don't back down, but this morning, with everything else, I just decided to let him have the cabana . . . but not before giving this bastard a good parting shot.

"You haven't heard the last of this," I whimpered. Shit. More and more, I was beginning to act and sound like a total pussy.

Next I had to take on Evelyn. I caught her as she came out of the hotel and tried to convince her that we should go into Lahaina and shop, but she wanted sun. Then I said, "Let's rent a catamaran." Anything to keep her from seeing I'd lost her power position by the pool.

But no, she wanted the cabana. Then, shrewdness born from years of pool-chair infighting crossed her narrow features. "Who's guarding our place?" she wisely asked.

"Uh, well . . . I lost the cabana," I finally admitted.

I won't go into a play-by-play of what happened next, but let me say here that it wasn't pretty, and it did absolutely nothing for my self-esteem.

We ended up playing golf. Evelyn was pissed, but her anger gave her an extra twenty yards off the tee. She beat me easily.

The only great thing that happened on the golf course occurred when we got back to the caddy shack to turn in our shoes, rented cart, and golf clubs. Actually, it was more than just great--it was miraculous. Because, you see, she was standing there--my dream woman and the curly-haired, athletic asshole with the perfect teeth. They were also returning their rented equipment.

"Great course," I said to her as she was passing to leave.

"What?" she said, turning. God, up close she was even more breathtaking.

"Great golf course," I repeated.

"Yes, it is." She turned and left with the handsome man.

Our initial contact--our first conversation. Okay, okay . . . I know . . . not much, I agree. But at least we had exchanged words. I would give you some kind of glowing description of her tonal quality if I could, but to be perfectly frank, I was so shaken, and she had said so little, I didn't even remember what her voice sounded like. I was that gone . . . that out of it . . . that completely in love.

Chapter
4

I CAME UP WITH MY PLAN DEVIOUS, BUT CLEVER.

It was pretty obvious to me that I would never get anywhere just sidling up to her with some dumb opening line about the weather, or how great the hotel was. My approach demanded subtlety.

I may not be a dot-com wizard anymore, but I still remember how to secure an important account.

Rule number one in the sales manual: If you can't get to the client, get to the client's spouse.

I made my move.

The next morning he was standing at the bar getting drinks, his brown, muscled shoulders massive . . . his coppery hair in sun-lightened ringlets. He smelled of aftershave. Minty. I choked down my envy and moved up next to him.

"That's a great course, that Blue Course," I said. Before you ask, let me explain. There are three world-class golf courses at the Four
Seasons Resort: the Blue, Gold, and Emerald. We'd all been on the Blue Course yesterday afternoon.

"Yeah, sure is," he said, then turned to the bartender. "Give me an extra cherry in the Mai Tai. My wife loves maraschinos."

My heart clutched. His wife . . . This unworthy asshole was actually married to her. I was immediately in free fall. My vision blurred and dizziness descended, covering me like emotional Saran Wrap.

I can just hear you saying, "Give it a rest, Chick. Back up. What on earth do you think you're doing?" And you're right, of course. It was insane. But I had already lost control. I was already on the road to self-destruction.

"The Blue Course is a little easy, though," I continued through my psychic pain. "I'm thinking of trying the Gold tomorrow." The Gold Course was acknowledged as the toughest of the three.

He turned and smiled at me. The guy had a killer smile--perfect ivory--a fucking box of Chicklets. "I played the Gold two days ago," he said. "The Gold's the best course, but the fairways are narrow. My wife shanks every other shot, so she prefers the Blue. Otherwise I'd spend all my time in the brush looking for her ball."

"That was her you were playing with yesterday?" I asked, desperately hoping that they weren't married . . . that my goddess was just a friend. His wife's sister . . . anything.

"Yeah, that was her," he said, crushing that slim hope like a bug on a windshield. "She's just learning. I'm trying to give her lessons but I think tomorrow we'll sign her up with a pro."

So it was true. They were hitched. I remember my body feeling numb with this confirmation, my mind pinwheeling wit
h d
isappointment and distress. But I held on, dangling from a psychic rope stretched over an emotional cavern of deep despair.

"My wife is a great golfer," I finally managed. "She played on her college golf team. I can't come close to beating her."

"Sounds like we're at opposite ends of the wife-golf-conundrum," he smiled. "Well, gotta get these back before they melt."

"I'm Chick," I blurted.

"Chandler," he said, holding out a pinky finger for me to shake. The rest of his fingers were engaged in holding the two drinks: the Mai Tai for my goddess, and some sort of white foamy calorie-busting gunk for him--a Pina Colada or something.

So we shook pinkies and off he went. I followed him until I could see that they were sunning down by the beach. Then I went back to the power cabana. We had retaken Pork Chop Hill. We were back on top. I'd been contemplating setting up better fortifications. A machine-gun nest and some razor wire. But now I didn't care and just flopped down next to Evelyn.

"I wish we could go topless here," Evelyn said unexpectedly. She has protruding nipples that look like pencil erasers. She knows they drive men wild, and she loves to show them. She's always pestering me to go to nude beaches, an activity that doesn't suit my new executive spread. Of course, if she took off her top at this hotel, the staff would swoop down on her and run her off the grounds in a towel trolley. But still, the idea of stripping down to her thong appealed to her, and she was still thinking about it as I brooded in my chair. How she got this way is still a mystery to me. When we first got married
,
she didn't act like this. Of course, that was before Mickey D and the Buns of Steel cassette. But still .. .

"We should go to the beach," I said.

"I'm not going to the fucking beach. The beach is Skid Row. All those morons who get stuck in the hotel's back rooms use the beach. We're in the best cabana. We're fine where we are."

"I'd like to do some body surfing." I think I was whining. I hope I wasn't, but lately I've been turning into such a wuss, it's hard for me to tell. I hate myself for some of this stuff, but let's not go into that now . . . let's get past it.

"I don't see why we can't try the beach just once."

"I don't want to be seen down there. Besides, it's all sandy. I don't want to ruin my tan. The sand sticks to my suntan oil. I hate the fucking beach."

So for the moment, I was trapped in our power cabana, frustrated as the towel boy in a room full of virgins.

"I think I'll go give it a shot anyway," I finally said ten minutes later.

"Do what you want." She seemed disinterested in whatever I was going to do because she was checking out another woman with a pretty good body. Competition. This woman had abs almost as good as hers. "That bitch is on steroids. She's way too muscular. Looks like shit," Evelyn said, as I stood and looked down at my own wife's super-enhanced pecs and abs, all oiled and rippling.

Sometimes, I just don't get it. Sometimes, I'm completely at a loss about what's going on in her head. More and more, I find myself thinking about divorce.

The beach was beautiful. A light breeze rippled the water. Up by the pool the air was as still as Texas hair. I had one of the beach boys get me a chair and I dragged it to a spot where I could watch my goddess and Chandler, who I knew had to be using some kind of lightener to get that color on his copper curls.

Then one of those fortuitous things occurred that you pray for but in real life almost never seem to happen. It started when Chandler went up to get the two of them another drink, and my goddess decided to go swimming. She was out past the rocks, snorkeling, so I decided to go in and get as close as I could. I was treading water, my abs and shoulders still stiff from my workout with Brian, and then, when I was about ten to fifteen yards away from her, somebody on the beach yelled, "Shark!"

Okay, I've been coming to this hotel for years and have never seen a shark fin in the water, not once. Some dolphins two years ago, gray whales occasionally, but not one damn shark. But, somebody on the shore yelled it, and everybody in the water went totally nuts, including my goddess.

"Oh, no! Where?" I heard her shriek.

Normally if I heard somebody yell "Shark" I'd be climbing over little kids to get out of the water. But this was an opportunity sent by God. This was destiny. So I made my way closer to her. "It's okay," I panted.

"Shark," she said in desperation, her eyeballs white with fear. "Somebody yelled 'Shark:" She started to swim to shore, but was panicking, beating the water with her arms and legs . . . thrashing, gettin
g n
owhere fast.

Time for Chick Cousteau, the old shark expert, to take over. By the way, just so there is no misunderstanding here, I know next to nothing about sharks. "Don't thrash. You'll look like a wounded seal. Slow, even strokes." I'd heard that on the Discovery Channel and those three sentences maxed out my knowledge of water predators.

"I'm . . . I'm scared to death of . . . "

"It's okay. You go first. I'll stay back. I'll watch out for him." What bullshit.

Of course, if I'd seen the damn thing, I probably would have coronaried and there would be no need for him to kill me, because I'd already be dead, floating in the surf--bloated shark chow. But I was deep into it now, doing my "Wild Kingdom" thing. I took up rear guard, swimming behind her.

"He's not here. I'm right behind you. It's okay," I shouted, trying to reassure her with hollow encouragements.

She was still panicked but was finally drawing closer to shore. "It's okay, you're safe. Nothing's behind us," I said bravely, thinking that at any moment, a Tiger or a Great White was going to tear off my leg, or worse still, my whole reproductive package.

And then we were onshore, dragging ourselves out of the surf and back to safety. All along the strand, terrified swimmers were now standing on the beach, shading their eyes, looking for a shark fin. Nobody could see one--but let's not get stuck on whether or not there was a shark. It's not important. As far as she was concerned, I had saved her.