Vanished in the Dunes (3 page)

He collects a pound of cooked shrimp, a few ripe tomatoes, a wedge of Gruyère, and a sourdough baguette. All these are Sara's favorites and should please her, although at this point he feels unsure whether it's likely to warm the atmosphere. It's just as possible she'll say a late lunch has diminished her appetite. He's about to head to the checkout when he decides to pick up lunch. At the take-out section, he selects the first sandwich he sees in the bin. He is not a picky eater. He chooses chicken and avocado. He could have done worse, he thinks, as he plucks a Diet Sprite and moves to the cashier.

He sits at one of the outside stone tables despite the chill. He is suddenly very hungry. His last meal was a chef's salad the previous night at a local Manhattan bistro.

“Oh, so it's you.”

The words draw his eyes upward. The woman in pink and white stands above him, a burst of white teeth against tanned skin. He has never gotten used to people who smile so openly.

“May I join you?” she asks, resting a hand on the back of the other seat even before he can answer. Such tables are meant for sharing, yet she wants to be invited, and so he waves his hand while his wiry five-foot eleven body swivels to the side to let her pass.

This is the first opportunity to see her face without turning his neck. Her skin is remarkably smooth, as if she is newborn, her natural pink lips full to bursting. There is eye makeup and her brows are neat and dark, but he sees no other artificiality. He hesitates for words. He has rarely engaged a woman like this, but it is all frivolous and Sara is, frankly, not here to think otherwise. He suddenly enjoys the opportunity to relax.

“I thought you got off at a later stop,” she says.

“I did, but I needed to shop,” he answers and pulls the shopping bag upward.

She ignores his bag, saying, “Can you show me the beach?” She is almost so direct that he nearly winces.

All he can think to say is, “If you want to see the beach, you can take a taxi, or I guess I can drop you there.”

“That's good,” she says without hesitation, yet even before the last words leave his mouth he realizes that a line has been crossed. He has left an opening, and a part of him, that piece of brain housing genetic material that determines conscience, hopes she declines. He has never been unfaithful to his wife, nor even considered it, despite Sara's recent illusions. Yet this woman whom he now admits to himself looks exotically attractive does nothing to dispel this thought as she accepts the invitation.

“That sounds great.” She reiterates her approval. “Thank you.”

She replaces the top on her soup container and carefully lowers it together with the plastic spoon, wedge of bread, and napkin into a bag that matches his. He stands and directs her to the rear lot and into his car.

“It's chilly here,” she says from the bench at the very back of the beach, only steps from where he parked. He has taken her to Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett. There are no other cars, the unseasonable cool keeps everyone away save a couple dressed in yellow rain slickers standing near the water, tossing shells into the breakers.

She holds her cup of soup, which she says is too spicy, but nevertheless she eats greedily. In the short drive from where they met, introductions are exchanged. Her name is Heidi Kashani.

“I know Heidi is not a common American name,” she says, “but it is very normal in Austria.”

He agrees and tells her that he likes the name and that it makes
him think of green meadows and snow-covered mountains and
The Sound of Music.
Her English is very formal, almost precise. He asks her how long she's been in New York.

“It will be two years next October. I have one more year of residency left. Then I will probably move to California, perhaps to Los Angeles. I am tired of cold winters.”

He concurs with her weather analysis, but avoids noting his own disdain for Los Angeles. Some people love it there, yet her speech is so formal and L.A. so laid back that he finds it hard to picture her in such a place.

She begins to shiver and they agree to head back to the car. She's right, he thinks. If a fifty-degree day drives her indoors, it's time to live somewhere else.

“Would you take my picture before we go?” she asks as they stand, but it is more a statement of fact, a command as if she is the one who lives here, and he the visitor. She pulls a camera phone from her bag and shows him where to press for the digital photo. She stands several feet away, the water some hundred feet behind her, a turbulent boil with white froth in the far background. He snaps a photo and she checks it. He has caught a broad, white smile, enhanced by an overhead midday sun.

“Now you,” she says. “If you give me your e-mail address, I'll send it to you.”

He reluctantly moves from the bench and hands her the camera phone. He has never liked posing, but agrees. He stands with his feet spread and his arms akimbo. He tries to smile and feels relief when the shot is taken. She shows him the image, an olive-complexioned, dark-haired middle-aged man in a white button-down long-sleeved shirt and dark pants. The likeness is actually flattering. His age barely shows.

“Are you Jewish?” she asks after they have settled in the car's front seat.

He doesn't hear such a question often. Certainly not in New York. It is, however, not a new sensation. He is a Jew and Jews are integrated into the fabric of American life, yet there is an uneasiness that sits there. His family has been here for more than a hundred years, but nothing is settled. The Nazis had no qualms about killing Jews who had lived in Germany for centuries.

The woman's words are innocent enough. He answers, “Yes,” and she goes on, oblivious to what flicks through his mind.

“My family is Muslim,” she says, “But I practice nothing. If religion is about morality and ethics, you can certainly have that without any ritual. Do you agree?”

He nods. His slight unease withdraws into a corner and all but disappears. Yet he is reluctant to let the matter rest.

“Why did you ask if I was Jewish?”

“Oh, there are so many Jewish doctors at the hospital, and you are somehow like them—friendly, certainly intelligent, but also a bit reserved and cautious. They often talk about Jewish guilt. Is that something all Jewish men feel?” She smiles at her own words, almost daring him to explain.

Perhaps she is now the psychiatrist playing games, he thinks. He shrugs, yet feels the onset of guilt as she speaks. The woman is flirting with him, but he knows that no matter how appealing, he could never sleep with her, even kiss her, without torment. She is right—he has become cautious.

“How often do the buses go back to New York?” she asks. The segue releases him for a moment from thoughts about guilt. The question doesn't surprise him. They have only been together a bit more than thirty minutes. He is likely boring her. It's time for him to get home. A part of him feels relief. He checks his watch.

“There'll be one in about forty minutes. They have them all the time.”

“I like that,” she says. “Do you have the time to give me a short tour of the area?”

He feels trapped. “I guess I could do that,” he answers with a tug of regret, as if he should have feigned some imaginary appointment, a technique years of business deception had ingrained.

“Oh, that would be very nice,” she says in her clipped, very correct English.

“So I guess you speak Farsi and German as well as English?” he asks.

“What do you know about Farsi?” She raises one brown eyebrow.

“I've done business in Iran. I've been to Tehran, I think at least three times. And once to Khoramshahr to check on a cargo of steel pipes we sold. Business with NIOC, the National Iranian Oil Company.”

“While the shah was still there?” she asks.

He nods.

“All the senior people there were tied to the shah's family. Everyone had a chance to make money.”

“Except the traders who sold to them,” he answers, but it is a throwaway line. Everyone made money then. Still, he has an urge to verbalize one of his memories of those days. “Every time we had a contract they would keep coming back and ask us to adjust our terms so there would be more graft to share. I remember one time when they said our sales price was actually too low. Can you imagine a state company telling a supplier to raise its price?”

She doesn't answer. He wants to ask her what her father did in Iran, but he says nothing. Obviously her family has some money. Vienna is an expensive city and she's gone to medical school. Perhaps her family was even one of the many he assisted in illegally transferring assets out of the country. There were strict rules against cash transfers, but Posner and his associates devised a scheme that enabled
rich Iranians to buy commodities for export—copper, aluminum or steel scrap, it didn't matter. As soon as the export left an Iranian port, the title documents were negotiable and the traders in Rotterdam were more than happy to pay slightly below market price, which Posner passed on to the Iranian family's European bank account, less a reasonable commission. Maybe she's even somehow related to the shah's family. So many of the prosperous Iranians he worked with claimed such a connection.

“Look to your right,” he says as they pass a large house that straddles more than a hundred feet of beachfront. He pulls to a stop and they absorb the tall twin cedar turrets that flank the extensive floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

“It's magnificent,” she says. “Do you live near here?”

The question should not have been a surprise, but it is.

“Around the corner,” he answers. His pulse quickens. She is pushing too far, but her flattery disarms him.

“Can I see it?” she asks.

She is over the line now. He has only to answer, “No,” and everything will be formal and polite, but he quickly says, “Oh, sure.”

He moves the car less than a hundred feet and turns the corner. He wonders, almost absurdly, whether she hears the sudden rush of blood that moves through his body, sees the nervous minispasms in his fingers as they clutch the wheel, or the fine line of moisture that settles above his upper lip, but all she says is, “Oh, what a pretty street.”

He directs the car up his driveway and stops. He lets the engine idle, and they sit for a moment. The ocean beats a cadence against the sand and there is the odd, shrill cackle of birds, but the air is otherwise quiet. He sighs, ready to move the Lexus into reverse, but she interrupts his idea of escape and asks, “Can I see the inside?”

Even before he thinks of an answer, she is pulling the door handle open.

“Take care on the steps,” he says. “They've just been refinished.”

He slips his loafers off in the entrance and watches as she slides off her white sandals as well. He notices for the first time that her toes are coated with deep burgundy polish.

“I like to do what the host does.”

Her words drip with unvarnished innuendo. At the top of the stairs she turns and surveys the area.

“The view is great.”

Then she surprises him by ignoring the view as she walks around the room, touching small sculptures, and analyzing a succession of wood-block prints and lithographs on the wall farthest from the windows.

“Do you live here alone?” she asks

“Most of the time,” he answers truthfully. “I'm married, but my wife spends most of her time in Manhattan.”

She shrugs. He believes she doesn't care. The more she speaks, the more he comes to believe she is a latent free spirit, a throwback to the sixties, someone who would have rolled naked in the mud at Woodstock, screwed her brains out for a week, and only then went off to medical school. She continues to survey the room. There is a tightening in his chest as he thinks of her naked in Woodstock or here on the forest-green couch. An intense urge begins to grip his body. He has to think of something else. Now. He turns away and imagines the ocean two hundred feet beyond the window. He thinks of the last big storm that blew shingles off his roof. He considers these things until the urge passes. He realizes more fully that this is a mistake. She shouldn't be here.

“Where is this from? It looks like this house.”

He needs to turn his head to see her standing in front of the pen-and-ink sketch of this very house. A rough design he made over twenty years ago and showed to an architect who liked the idea. He bought the land only after the architect agreed to design plans to fit the sketch. The drawing hangs on the wall leading to the master bedroom.

“It's my design,” he says. “It's this house.”

“Ach, fantastish,”
she says. He is happy to show off something that is his alone. He ignores the fact that she speaks German.

She walks toward him and asks if she could have something to drink. “Perhaps some red wine,” she suggests.

“I guess I can do that,” he says, but there is edginess in his answer. He feels as if he is sliding into a deep pit without a handhold.

“Very nice, thank you,” she answers, “but can I first use your bathroom?”

He points to the end of a short corridor. “The door on your left.” She picks up her bag and moves in the direction he points. He hears the water running and the toilet flush. She is there for several minutes, but he gives it little thought. He spends the interval choosing a wine.

When she returns, he tells her about the sketch he made years ago as he pulls the cork from a bottle of Merlot. He pours a modest serving into a single glass. He has no intention of joining her. He holds the glass in his left hand and walks to where she has stopped, in front of the deep-green couch.

“Please sit,” he says as she takes the glass. She takes a large sip, almost emptying the glass. He sits on the opposite couch and looks straight ahead through the large window at the ocean.

“Please sit over here,” she says. “You seem so far away.”