Coming Home (38 page)

“Exactly.  Use something like that as a starting point and take it
from there.  Are you game?”

His enthusiasm was irresistible.  “I’m game,” she said, “but how
are we supposed to work together if we’re on opposite coasts?”

“Elementary, my sweet.  The first thing we do is go out and buy
you a fax machine.  Then we engineer our schedules so we can work together. 
Sound okay so far?”

“It sounds wonderful.  I hate to have to admit it, but I’ve missed
your ugly mug.”

He patted her cheek.  “Let’s go check out that fax machine,
kiddo.  I hear there’s a monster sale going on at Woolworth’s.”

She hadn’t returned to work after her life blew up in her face. 
After pouring all her pent-up grief and frustration into the Rothman project,
she had needed to be in a different space for a time.  Now, she took comfort
from the familiar patterns of working with Rob.  They spoke on the phone
constantly, sent faxes back and forth between Boston and Los Angeles.  Whenever
he could wrangle a block of free time from his hectic schedule, he flew to
Boston and they spent exhausting twenty-hour days working together.  He arrived
one weekend carrying two suitcases and a slightly cantankerous Siamese cat in a
plastic carrier.  After that, he just stayed. They spent their days enveloped
in cool, jazzy rhythms, their evenings lingering over dinner at Polcari’s or
the Union Oyster House.  Late nights often found them in some smoke-filled
blues club, drawing in the music with every breath, absorbing blue notes into
the very marrow of their bones.

Rob insisted that the work week should end at five o’clock on
Fridays, so on the weekends, they played.  They took advantage of Indian
summer, went for long drives in the country to admire the foliage, visited flea
markets and antique dealers and auctions.  They fell into a comfortable pattern
of eating Sunday brunch in Southie with his parents, then loading Mary and
Patrick MacKenzie into the back seat of Casey’s BMW and taking them sightseeing. 
The four of them visited Plymouth Rock, admired the mansions of Newport,
shopped the outlet stores in Kittery and North Conway.

The first time Rob went running with her, he made it as far as the
end of the block before he collapsed onto a bench, gasping and wheezing and
clutching his chest.  “Are you crazy, Fiore?” he said.  “Are you trying to kill
me?”

“Throw away the cigarettes,” she told him, “and you might just
surprise yourself.”

“Jesus, woman, I’ve been smoking since I was fifteen.”

“And your point is?”

“You’re cruel, Fiore.  Damn cruel.”

“Hey, it’s your lungs, hot stuff.  But don’t think you’ll keep up
with me if you don’t quit.”  And she sprinted away and left him sitting there.

The next morning, when she emerged from her bedroom, dressed to run,
he was already up and waiting for her.  “I just want to make sure you witness
this,” he said as he solemnly held up his last pack of cigarettes and dropped
it into the trash.

She gave him a quick round of applause.  “Congratulations,
MacKenzie.  Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.”

“Just remember, Fiore, this was your idea.  You’re the one who’ll
have to put up with me once the nicotine withdrawal kicks in.”

“Give it a break, Flash.  You’re all bark and no bite.”

For the three weeks it took to rid his body of its nicotine
addiction, he bore an amazing resemblance to Attila the Hun.  He took umbrage
at Casey’s most innocent remarks, slammed doors and kicked drawers, and got
involved in a shouting match with another driver who cut him off in downtown
traffic.  But Casey had to give him credit for determination.  He fought nearly
unbearable cravings and continued to run with her every morning until he was
sweaty and gasping and unable to continue.  Because he’d smoked for so many
years, he built up endurance more slowly than she had.  Casey slowed her speed
to a crawl to accommodate him until his pace picked up.  And one fine morning,
he actually made it the entire six miles.

He was like a little kid, so proud of his accomplishment that he
called his mother to brag.  After that, there was no stopping him.  He took to
running with the same zeal he exhibited in every other area of his life. 
Within a month, he could run circles around her.  And Casey wondered if there
was anything that Rob MacKenzie couldn’t do.

chapter twenty-three

In January, Danny hired a private investigator to locate his
mother. 

Katie’s death had been the catalyst, but it had been building for
some time, the need to know who he was, the need for answers to his questions,
answers that only Annamaria Fiore could give him.  When his V.A. counselor
urged him to seek those answers, for purposes of closure if nothing else, he
found Brad Logan in the telephone book and hired him on the spot.  It was
easier than he’d expected.  Two days after he hired Logan, he got the
information he was looking for:  his mother was living in East L.A., only a few
miles from his Malibu home. 

Only a few miles, but worlds away.  As he drove the mean streets
of the
barrio
, suspicious eyes followed his progress.  He slowed in
front of a pink stucco house surrounded by weeds and crammed tight against a
chain link fence.  Swallowing hard, he pulled the Ferrari to a stop and looked
around.  Two scrawny kids were hanging off the fence, gaping at the Ferrari
with huge, dark eyes.  “Keep an eye on my car for me,” he said, “and I’ll give
you both a brand-new twenty-dollar bill.”

The tallest one puffed out his chest and drew himself up to his
full height.  “You want us to watch your car, man, you show us the money
first.”

He’d forgotten that trust wasn’t in a street kid’s vocabulary.  
Danny opened his wallet and pulled out two twenties.  “Take care of her for me,
guys, and there’ll be two more just like this when I come out.  But if I find
so much as a scratch, you can forget it.”

There was no doorbell, so he opened the torn screen door and
knocked on the glass.  From inside came the canned hysteria of a television
game show.  He knocked harder, and after a moment, shuffling feet approached
the door.  The dirty blind lifted, and dark eyes peered out at him.  He
swallowed again, his throat clogging up with some unexpected and unrecognizable
emotion.  The door swung open, and with it came the moment he’d spent thirty
years both dreading and anticipating.

His legs were trembling, and he tried to find his voice.  But Anna
Fiore Montoya was quicker.  “I figured you’d show up one of these days,” she
said.

***

She should never have brought Rob with her to buy a bikini.

Anything he liked, she wouldn’t have worn out of the dressing
room.  Anything she liked, he declared suitable for his grandmother.  Finally,
he picked out a minuscule number made of shiny green Spandex.  “This one,” he
said.

“You can’t be serious.  There’s not enough material there to cover
a poodle.”

“Trust me, Fiore.  This is the one.”

Casey made sure the fitting room door was locked securely behind
her before stripping down and squeezing into the few square inches of fabric. 
She was scandalized by how little of her it covered.  The bottom dipped low at
the pelvis and narrowed to tiny knots at the hips.  The halter top cupped her
breasts and dissolved into spaghetti straps that tied behind her neck.  The
shiny knit fabric left nothing to the imagination.  She turned left and right. 
If she was going to be scandalous, she should at least look good while she was
doing it.  With a certain smug satisfaction, she noted that her
thirty-something body was as taut as any nineteen-year-old’s.  The bikini fit
her like a glove.  She narrowed her eyes, wondering just how Rob had known that
it would look spectacular on her.  For the first time in her life, she felt
like a temptress.  What a shame that all this would be wasted because she’d
come to Nassau with Rob instead of somebody who could appreciate her.

Hell’s bells
. 
She tore off the bikini and yanked her tee shirt back down over her head. 
Casey Fiore would never be a temptress.  She was too proper.  Too much of a
lady.  Too damn square to wear a bikini she could have fit into the change
compartment of her wallet.

Only one man had ever seen her that close to naked, and Danny
would be apoplectic if he saw her dressed that way in public.  The image
pleased her, and she mentally thumbed her nose at the specter of Daniel Fiore. 
She was an independent woman, and if she wanted to wear the most outrageous
bikini this side of Cannes, she would wear it.  And if she wanted to carry a
rose between her teeth and thread ostrich feathers in her hair and dance the
can-can while she wore it, she would do that, too.  It was time she let loose a
little.  Maybe even time she went out and had an affair.  There were other men
in the world.  She’d wasted the better part of a year waiting for Danny Fiore
to come running after her.  It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t coming.

Well, she wasn’t waiting any longer.

They spent the rest of the morning dropping their money in the
tourist traps, buying baubles and trinkets to bring home to nieces and nephews
and other family members.  Rob bought his mother a flowing cotton skirt of such
vivid colors it hurt the eyes to look at.  Casey bought a carved wooden
alligator for her father, and for her stepmother a cassette tape of calypso
music.  They ate lunch at the hotel, then returned to their rooms to drop off
their loot and change into their swimsuits.

She put on the bikini and stared at her reflection in horrified
fascination as her hard-won nerve dissipated, her vow to start life anew as an
Outrageous Woman swirling away with it.  Why not just prance on the beach
naked?  At least naked would have been straightforward.  This was worse.  This
was secretive.  This was exotic.  This was sexy.

She’d never in her life been sexy.  She slept in flannel all
winter, cotton all summer, wore her skirts at a respectable length and her
shirts buttoned all the way.  She never showed any cleavage.  She wasn’t even
sure she
had
cleavage.  Maybe, she thought, eyeing her reflection, she’d
been wrong about that.  Studying herself from a different angle, she decided
she’d definitely been wrong about that.  It was amazing to discover, at the age
of thirty, that she had a chest.

Her confidence rapidly disintegrating, Casey folded a terrycloth
beach jacket around her and knotted the belt, tied a wide-brimmed straw hat on
her head and stepped into her beach sandals.  Gathering her nerve around her
like a suit of armor, she stepped out into the corridor.

Rob was waiting outside, by the pool.  They set up beach chairs on
the pristine white sand.  She wedged her tote bag into the sand between their
chairs, left her hat on her chair, and together they walked down to the water’s
edge.

The ocean’s warmth delighted her.  It tickled her toes and lapped
at her ankles.  Beneath a cloudless sky, the water was a deep emerald, and the
midday sun reflected off the stucco buildings that lined the beach.  “This
place is spectacular,” she said.  “I’m so glad we came.”

“Told you that you’d like it.”  Rob moved his feet around in the
swirling surf.  “When I came down with Kiki last year, I swore I’d come back
the first chance I got.”

“Kiki,” she said with interest.  “I don’t believe I remember
Kiki.”

“You never met her.”

“What a shame.  She sounds so intellectual.”

“Shut up, Fiore.”  He reached down, cupped a palmful of water, and
tossed it at her.  She squealed, took a step backward, and splashed him back. 
Like two kids, they splashed and laughed until they were both thoroughly wet. 
Casey held up both palms in surrender and they staggered back up the beach to
their chairs.  While Rob liberally spread sunscreen across the bridge of his
nose, Casey took a deep breath and removed the beach jacket.

And the sky didn’t fall.  The sun’s heat explored her flesh like
warm fingers.  She settled herself in the chair, smoothed sunscreen on her
exposed areas, and opened one of the paperback novels she’d bought in the hotel
gift shop.

After a while, the heat made her drowsy.  She set aside the book
and adjusted her chair and lay back, eyes closed, enjoying the sun’s sensual
warmth.  Beside her, Rob was reading.  Every so often, over the ebb and flow of
the surf, over the buzzing of insects flitting from tropical flower to tropical
flower and the distant voices of people cavorting in the water, she heard him
turn a page.

She turned her head to study him.  His lanky legs were sprawled,
bony knees extended, feet buried in the sand.  Above baggy cotton shorts of an
exotic, vivid jungle print, his stomach was flat, his chest generously covered
with hair.  His shoulders were bony but wide, his biceps surprisingly well
developed.  All in all, not a bad package.  “I’ve decided to have an affair,”
she announced.

“Oh?” he said without looking up from his book.  “Anyone I know?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”  She closed her eyes again and made a
lazy mental run-through of all the men she knew.  The list wasn’t very long. 
Or very promising.  Disappointed, she opened her eyes again.  “I never knew you
had freckles,” she said.