Exact Revenge

EPILOGUE

ON THE FRONT STEPS of my Fifth Avenue mansion I stop to inhale the smell of fallen leaves. Orange, yellow, and red light up the treetops in the park. It’s cloudy in the city, but the TV says the weather upstate is beautiful. My limousine takes me to Teterboro airport. When I climb on board my plane, Bert is sitting there in the main cabin, grinning up at me.

“Hey,” I say. “When did you get back?”

“This morning,” he says. “You gotta go next time. Here, look at this.”

He hands me a small cardboard folder with a photo inside. Bert taking up a two-person seat on a giant log ride, plummeting, hands in the air, mouth wide in a happy scream.

“Splash Mountain,” he says.

I give him a smile, hand his photo back, and sit down in the leather seat across the aisle. I recline my seat, close my eyes, and say, “Syracuse plays Louisville today. Allen’s starting at quarterback. You coming with me?”

“He’s doing all right?” Bert says.

“He’s finally sleeping at night,” I say, “so they think he may have started to put it behind him. They say it was harder with Frank just disappearing. No closure, I guess.”

“What about you?” Bert says. “Is it behind you?”

“I guess.”

The jet takes off and the rumble of the engines puts me to sleep until we’re ready to land and I sit up. Below, the trees are on fire with the colors of autumn. When we get off, the blue sky is crisp. I tell the pilots to leave my bags. Bert and I drive to the Dome and watch the game from my box. Lexis is there. She has some guests from the fine arts department, where it’s been arranged for her to teach next semester.

Syracuse wins the game and Allen makes his share of good plays. Afterward, we wait outside the players’ entrance with Lexis, but when Allen appears limping slightly and his head wet from the showers, Bert and I hang back. I watch her nod and smile at him. She kisses his cheek and off he goes with his friends.

In the truck, Lexis says, “I got Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for dinner. I know you like it.”

“My dad sure did.”

“Allen’s coming.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“What did the counselor say about that?”

“He lost his father, Raymond.”

“I’m his father,” I say.

“Be patient,” she says. “It will all work out.”

Lexis insisted on something modest. A four-bedroom Queen Anne row house on a hill adjacent to campus so she can walk to classes. Bert and I have a beer on the front porch while Lexis gets it ready.

Dinner is nice. Barbecue with mashed potatoes, greens, gravy, and corn bread on fancy china plates. A round table with a linen cloth in the modest high-ceilinged dining room. Candles flickering down on us from an antique silver candelabra. Allen brings a friend from the team who’s as big as Bert, and I have to stop them from thumb wrestling so I can make a toast with the port.

I raise my glass and say, “To family.”

Bert clears his throat. Allen and Lexis look at the table, then Allen looks up at me and says, “Family.”

Allen and his friend tell us they’re already late to the bars on Marshall Street. I’m glad to see him kiss his mom and give her a big hug in front of the friend. I’m even happier when he shakes my hand and looks me in the eye. When they’re gone, we move to the living room. The floorboards creak under our feet.

Bert brings in some wood and starts a fire before lowering himself into a big mission oak chair with leather padding. The walls are covered with a light blue paper that goes nicely with the white trim. Prints, mostly Monet and Mary Cassatt, hang in simple frames, and the window sashes are crowded with small green plants growing in jam jars behind the thin white curtains. Against one wall is a big bookcase filled to the top.

Lexis sets a tray of coffee on the table in front of the couch and sits down next to me. The fireplace is brick with a carved golden oak mantel. Above it rests the painting of the Blue Hole with its family in the mist. The wood pops and I stare at the flames. We talk football for a few minutes, then our voices trail off. Bert gets up to take a walk. He invites us to come, but we just sit.

When the front door closes, Lexis leans her head into my shoulder and says, “Will you ever just stay?”

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly through my nose.

“I’ll always be here for you, Lexis, but Raymond’s gone. I told you that,” I say quietly.

“What about Seth?” she says, touching my cheek with the back of her fingernails. Her eyes are moist.

“Didn’t you say if you could control it, then it wasn’t your destiny?” I say, taking her fingers in my hand and squeezing them before I set them back into her lap.

When I stand up, I try to look at her, but can’t.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a whisper.

As I come down the front steps, Bert appears on the sidewalk out of the darkness. His hands are jammed deep into the pockets of his leather coat.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

He shrugs and says, “What are you?”

“Got a trip,” I say. “A long one.”

“Need me?” he says.

“You can take me to the airport.”

We get into the truck. I start the engine and say, “You can do anything you want, you know.”

“Yeah,” Bert says, nodding. “Twenty million dollars is a lot. I don’t know if I ever said thanks. I could buy some of this land back.”

I smile at him and hold out my fist with my thumb raised. I pin him quick and we play while I drive one-handed until he gets the edge on me at best out of twenty. When we pull out onto the tarmac, I shut off the engine and we sit listening to it click.

A big 727 rolls down toward the end of the runway, its lights flashing in the dark. It sits for a moment, then its engines begin to whine then scream and it starts off. We can hear the thumping of its tires, the pace quickening until the wheels leave the earth. It seems to hang for a moment and I hold my breath. Then it noses up and soars off with a roar.

“I still don’t get that,” Bert says.

A ground handler appears in a gray jumpsuit and knocks on the window to ask if he should get the pilots. I tell him yes and he walks inside.

“So,” Bert says. “Am I going?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’ve got to do this alone.”

The pilots come out of the hangar, look my way, then board the plane.

“You’ll miss me,” Bert says.

“I know.”

“You’ll call me, though?” he says. “If you got anyone else you want to kill or destroy or something?”

I laugh and Bert grins. I get out of the truck and he steps around and walks me to the plane.

“What would your grandmother say?” I ask.

“My grandmother would do this,” he says, and he wraps his arms around me and lifts me up off the ground, squeezing the breath out of me before setting me down. “And then she’d say fly with the eagles my friend and look sharp.”

I clap a hand on his shoulder and press my lips tight, widening my eyes so they won’t spill their tears.

When I wake, I sit up and look out the window. The sun is breaching the green mountains and the Mediterranean shines up at me like stained glass. In Naples, a car and driver are waiting on the tarmac. He takes me south along the Amalfi coast, a winding road that snakes in and out of tunnels and along the lips of sheer cliffs.

The car passes through Positano, whose houses and shops are as colorful as a palette. A mile outside of town, on a hairpin bend, we drive through a set of gates and straight into the brick-paved entrance of the San Pietro Hotel. Inside is an elevator that takes me down through the rock. I walk out into a dank cave that is suddenly filled with a breath of salty air, cooled by the sea. Ahead is a sliver of beach. Shells. Pebbles. Cool black sand.

Up some stone steps and I’m standing at one end of a broad terrace whose lip drops ten feet to the surf. Concrete poured over the rocks. Thick padded lounge chairs covered with orange terrycloth. At the bar are three men in white polo shirts. One is behind the bar, cleaning glasses; the other two lean against it, talking.

Half a dozen patrons are already stretched out in the sunshine that has just cleared the cliffs above. At the far end of the terrace, off by itself, one of the orange lounge chairs faces the open sea to the north. All that is visible is the back of a woman’s head and one long bronze arm as it replaces a glass of ice and lime onto a small cocktail table. I step into the sunlight, weave through the chairs, and step out into the open space. The two men from the bar are suddenly by my side.

One touches my sleeve. In heavily accented English, he says, “I’m sorry. You cannot go there. This is private.”

“I know her,” I say, removing his hand.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says. “No one can disturb her.”

“How long has she been here like this?” I ask. “With no one talking to her?”

The man scowls at me and says, “Three weeks. Maybe four. Please.”

“No,” I say, starting her way and shrugging them aside. “She’ll want to see me.”

“Sir,” he says, raising his voice.

I keep going. Helena is stretched out in a white two-piece bathing suit. She must have her eyes closed behind the sunglasses because she doesn’t get up when I block out the light.

“Please go away,” she says. “Nothing personal, but as soon as I sign one thing, I’ll get hounded for the rest of the day.”

Her voice is tired and irritated.

“What if I don’t ask you to sign anything?” I ask, and her body stiffens.

She takes off her sunglasses and blinks up at me.

“Why are you here?” she asks, scowling.

“Because you are,” I say, “and I’m finished with everything that had to be done.”

“With her?”

I nod, but say, “Yes and no. She’s the mother of my son. Part of me cares about her.”

“And the other part?” she asks, her lip trembling.

I kneel down beside her chair.

“Everything else,” I say, “is for you. If you’ll take it.”

She presses her lips tight and says, “You’ll never leave?”

“You saved my life,” I say. “The new one.”

“Meaning?”

“I owe you a life,” I say. “I want to pay it back to you. Ten times. A hundred if I can.”

“Show me,” she says.

“I will.”

She reaches up and touches my face, guiding me to her until our lips touch… From the corner of my eye I see the waiters gawking, wishing they were me, and then I shut my eyes.