Trouble in Paradise

Sixteen

Jesse leaned on one elbow against the end of the bar at the yacht club and looked out over the water at the tip of Stiles Island. He had a scotch and soda in his hand. Around him the princes of Paradise danced with their princesses at the annual Race Regatta Cotillion to a band playing music from the Meyer Davis songbook. Jesse hated these events, and he hated them particularly when he had to go alone. It would go easier with a few drinks. But he couldn’t let himself have a few drinks, and he hated fighting it off. But he was the chief of police, and he knew it would help him in his work to be part of the social fabric of the town. So he was there.

Morris Comden, the chairman of the board of selectmen, stopped at the bar to pick up a vodka and tonic and chat with Jesse.

“Always a nice party, isn’t it, Jess?”

Comden was a short, square man with a strong chin and deep-set eyes. Jesse had never heard him say an intelligent word.

“Sure is, Morris.”

Jesse hated being called Jess.

“Look at those ladies in their party dresses,” Comden said. “I was a single man like yourself, Jess, I’d be sashaying a few of them around the floor, lemme tell ya.”

“You and Mrs. Comden cut a pretty mean sashay,” Jesse said.

Mrs. Comden was a thin-lipped woman, taller than her husband, who wore no makeup. There was always about her a look of perpetual outrage. The Comdens dancing was in fact, Jesse thought, a mean sight.

“What happened between you and that little lawyer lady?” Comden said. He sipped his vodka and tonic as he spoke.

“Abby? Wasn’t in the cards, I guess,” Jesse said.

Jesse turned his tall glass in his hands slowly. The longer he took between sips, the longer it would last. Comden had no such inhibition, and he gulped some more of his drink. If Morris was quick, Jesse thought, he could get it in and get another before he went back to his table. Jesse smiled to himself. Takes one to know one.

“Heard your ex-wife came east to be on the television,” Comden said.

“She’s doing weather,” Jesse said, “on Channel Three.”

“You ever see her?”

“Some.”

They were quiet for a moment. Comden drank most of the rest of his drink in short quick swallows. Jesse knew that Comden wanted to ask if Jesse were sleeping with Jenn, but he couldn’t think how to ask.

“Well,” Comden said, “that must be odd, seeing her again after you been divorced and all, and you having another girlfriend. She been, ah, seeing anybody?”

“It’s kind of odd,” Jesse said.

Comden’s eyes shifted, looking for the bartender. When he caught his eye he gestured for a refill.

“Yeah, I’ll bet it’s odd,” Comden said.

The bartender set a fresh vodka and tonic up on the bar, and Comden grabbed it as if it were about to flop into the water.

“Odd,” Jesse said.

“Damned odd.”

Jesse nodded.

“Well, can’t leave my bride alone too long,” Comden said. “Good seeing you, Jess.”

“Nice talking with you, Morry.”

He knew Comden preferred to be called Morris. It was late summer, and the sun was still above the horizon. Its reflection made a long shimmer straight across the dark water of the harbor. In another half hour it would be gone, and the blue evening would begin to thicken. Jesse took a small sip of scotch. When he got home, if he felt like it, he could have a couple of real ones before he went to bed. A tall, good-looking woman with a nice tan came to the bar and ordered an Absolut martini up with extra olives. Jesse smiled at her. She looked maybe five years older than he was, with platinum blond hair and a lot of makeup very well applied. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“Isn’t this awful,” the woman said.

“That martini will probably help,” Jesse said.

“If I could have enough of them.”

“And you can’t?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“I’m here because it’s sort of good for business to be seen here,” she said. “Neither one of us can get drunk in public.”

“You know my business?”

“Sure. You’re the chief of police.”

“And you?” Jesse said.

“I sell real estate on Stiles Island. I brought a couple of prospective clients, let them circulate, get a feel for their neighbors.”

She was wearing a very simple black dress with thin straps, which seemed to whisper engagingly over her body when she moved. Jesse could tell she worked out.

“People from Stiles don’t usually come to these things,” Jesse said.

“I told them that, but they said they’d like to get a sense of the whole town.”

“This may blow the sale,” Jesse said.

“Well, they’re circulating,” the woman said. “We’ll just play it as it lays.”

She put out her hand.

“Marcy Campbell.”

Jesse took her hand and shook it.

“Jesse Stone,” he said.

She leaned her elbow next to him on the bar and looked at the dance floor. She was only a couple of inches shorter than he was. Her hair smelled the way he was sure violets would have smelled if he had ever actually smelled a violet, which he hadn’t.

“You know what violets smell like?” he said.

“No. But I’d recognize champagne in a heartbeat,” she said.

Jesse smiled. “I like your priorities,” he said.

“Despite life’s busy pace,” she said, “it’s always nice to stop and smell the booze.”

Jesse smiled again and they were quiet watching the dancers moving about the floor. The band was playing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Old Oak Tree.” Most of the men wore white dinner jackets. Most of the women were in floor-length gowns, some of which were in small floral patterns. Many with puffy shoulders and bows in unexpected places. It looked like an overaged frat party.

“My God, look at those dresses,” Marcy said.

“Colorful.”

“Look at this with the bow on her ass,” Marcy said. “If you had an ass like that, would you call attention to it by putting a bow on it?”

“I’d rather not think about her ass,” Jesse said.

Marcy laughed and took one of the olives from her martini and popped it in her mouth. Jesse took another controlled sip of his scotch.

“Wouldn’t you think,” Marcy said, “with all that money and all that time on their hands, nobody works, that these women could manage to look better than they do?”

“Well it’s not like they all married Tom Selleck,” Jesse said.

“I suppose,” Marcy said. “But you know I sometimes seriously think about it. I mean really look at these people. Dancing to dreadful music, wearing dreadful clothes, saying dreadful boring things. Can they possibly be having any fun?”

“Maybe they think it’s fun,” Jesse said.

“But...” Marcy shook her head. “Just imagine the impoverishment of their daily lives,” she said. “If this is their recreation.”

“Better than no recreation,” Jesse said.

“But that’s the sad part. They do this and think it’s fun, and so they never have any actual fun. Can you imagine these people in bed?”

“Another thing I’d prefer not to think about,” Jesse said.

“Most men, and women, lead lives of quiet desperation,” Marcy said.

“That’s a quote from someplace,” Jesse said.

Marcy laughed.

“Henry David Thoreau,” she said. “I modified it a little.”

“How about yourself?”

“Me? My desperations are never quiet,” Marcy said.

“What do you do for fun?”

“Eat,” she said, “drink, work out, shop, travel, read, talk to interesting people, have sex.”

“Bingo,” Jesse said.

“We’ve found a common interest?” Marcy said.

“Anyone special?” Jesse said.

“That I have sex with?”

“Yes.”

Marcy laughed. The laugh was genuine and quite big. He had already noticed that her face flushed slightly when she laughed.

“They’re all special,” she said.

“No husband?” Jesse said.

“Not anymore.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Not currently. How about you?”

“I’m divorced,” Jesse said.

“I knew that. Girlfriends?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think we’ve stayed here long enough?” Marcy said.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go somewhere and get a real drink.”

“What about the clients?”

“They have their own car. I’ll just say good-bye.”

Jesse watched the way her hips moved under the smooth tight dress as she walked away from him across the dance floor carrying her martini. She spoke to a good-looking couple near the buffet table. They looked more Palm Beach than Stiles Island, Jesse thought. But maybe they were just summer people. The man kissed Marcy on the cheek, and she turned and came back across the dance floor. In a while, Jesse was pretty sure, he’d see that body without the intervening dress. The pressure of possibility, which had begun almost as soon as she had spoken to him, was now very strong. He didn’t mind. He enjoyed the pressure. No hurry. He enjoyed looking forward to it. Marcy put her empty glass down on the bar.

“Shall we?” she said.

Jesse drained the rest of his drink and put his glass on the bar beside hers.

“You bet,” Jesse said.