Early afternoon, driving south on the Garden State Parkway with the girl beside him. Passing exits for Point Pleasant, New Jersey, for Toms River. Something haphazard in his driving today, which is unlike him.
Wind from the Atlantic is rocking the Subaru Forester, and he feels a thrill of, what is it, a tug, like a tug-of-war, invisible hands on the wheel, which is his wheel, so his reaction is to resist the intrusion, the way he resists the subterranean pull of sleep when he wakes before dawn, stunned and exhausted by dreams.
Cassidy is feeling reckless. Young.
“Is something wrong?” the girl asks sharply.
How like this girl to register the nuance of a moment, a half moment when he (almost) lost control of the car.
Affably, he tells her no, not a thing is wrong. It’s just wind.
Resenting the question—not that he will indicate resentment. His manner with the girl is more bemused, placating.
Next exit, Barnegat Light. Cassidy feels a pang of nostalgia. No children in this vehicle, no plans to exit, climb the winding steps to the top of the old lighthouse, peer at the ocean through mounted binoculars while gulls and terns circle the balcony as if expecting to be fed.
Does Cassidy miss being a daddy—a daddy to small children? The overseer of so much emotion, a puppet master with weary arms?
Cassidy half expects the girl to suggest that they go to the lighthouse. It’s the sort of tourist attraction that might appeal to her, an occasion for girlish enthusiasm, photos to take on her iPhone.
When they leave the Garden State Parkway for Ocean Drive, she asks if they could please not talk for just a while. The view is so special—she doesn’t want to be distracted.
The coastal view is special. The wintry Atlantic roiling, frothing, glittering like a gigantic skin shaking itself, great galleon-clouds passing overhead, torn and tattered by the wind.
But he still feels rebuffed. Rebuked. _Please don’t spoil things by talking.
He wants to protest: she was the one who set things back in motion. Calling him the night before, a clandestine call at 12:20 A.M., when she knew that he’d be awake and his wife would be asleep—this is something he has shared with the girl, an example of how admirably she differs from the wife.
When she called, he was, in fact, lying in bed. Beside his sleeping, oblivious wife. Lying in bed and thinking of her, the girl, the teen-aged mistress, what he would do with this girl or to this girl if they were alone together in some neutral space, an impersonal and unnamed space, a very private place, a high-ceilinged luxury hotel room without windows or even a door, a floating kind of place, an offshore kind of place, soundproof.
He made his way barefoot through the familiar dark of the bedroom to an adjacent room, where his cellphone was charging, like a heart detached from its body.
Hand shaking? No, his hand was not shaking.
In the bedroom, his wife slept unknowing.
In their rooms, his teen-aged children slept unknowing.
On the phone, that giddy sensation of giving in, sinking, as if boneless, will-less, to which he had become addicted.
And now, the next day, the next afternoon, he is driving south on Ocean Drive, along the Jersey coast, with the girl beside him. Through swaths of bright, blinding sunshine, punctuated by the flitting shadows of clouds. It seems a kind of miracle. One he’d never have predicted, for each time they’ve said goodbye it has seemed to him the final time, the sensible, final time.
Yet here he is, and Brianna is beside him, in this fraught period before Christmas, after which, he has decided, his life will shatter and reorganize itself.
In his elated state, he drives at just above the speed limit. No hurry about the drive—they will arrive at Cape May well before dusk. With the girl beside him, he has all that he requires. So long as they are alone together, and she is in his custody, so to speak.
Brianna has been sitting forward in the passenger’s seat, taking pictures with her phone. Marvelling at the view: the wind-buffeted ocean waves, the light shivering and rippling to the horizon, where it dissolves in mist.
Brianna’s concentration appears to be genuine, unforced. He envies her this childlike enthusiasm, so different from her frequently sulky, peevish moods.
A teen-aged mistress! What else could he expect?
In fact, Brianna is nearly twenty years old. Her birthday is next month, January. A Capricorn, she told Cassidy.
Does a year make a difference? If/when his wife discovers the liaison, if/when he decides to reveal it to her, will an affair with a twenty-year-old seem slightly less reprehensible than an affair with a teen-ager?
A teen-ager who is, in fact, known to his wife, the daughter of friends in Fair Hills, New Jersey.
Waves glittering to the horizon, pewter-colored, hypnotic. Cassidy is reminded of how he once purchased a ticket on a chartered boat out of Provincetown, taking passengers on a five-hour excursion out into the Atlantic.
Open ocean, immense sky, rocking boat, no sight of land. A mild sensation of panic.
After two hours, the guide summoned passengers to the railing. The Provincetown Princess was cutting through a plankton path: a wide swath of ocean where fish were feeding, thousands of fish, even millions of fish, writhing silvery bodies in the dark water, savagely frenzied activity of a kind that Cassidy had never seen before. It left him appalled and shaken.
It was explained to the passengers that a concentration of plankton had drawn swarms of small fish to the area; the concentration of small fish had attracted larger fish, which devoured the smaller fish; these predators attracted larger predators, to devour them. The popular term for this was “feeding frenzy.”
Cassidy stared, transfixed by the horror of it, repelled, yet unable to look away. Feeling the first twinges of nausea. Spread out before him was a region of unfathomable appetite: foaming, churning, flashing, quicksilver with the eel-like bodies of fishes, a sheer boundless, thrashing energy. The guide prattled on, reciting prepared words. “Are there sharks?” children kept asking.
An abrupt loathing of the ocean itself swept over Cassidy, the very sight, smell. What beauty there was in it was a matter of distance, fairy lights twinkling on heavy, heaving water, not seeing the feeding frenzy beneath the surface.
The ceaselessly rolling, jolting boat was sickening to him, too. That the movement was unstoppable, and that of his own volition he’d condemned himself to five hours of this misery, further disgusted him.
He was alone on the chartered boat. Not yet with Charlotte, whom he would marry two years later. No woman at his side to lay a hand on his arm, to comfort and distract.
Cassidy has an impulse to tell the girl beside him about the horror of the feeding frenzy. He likes to tell her about incidents from his past, accounts that he has embellished over a period of years, but that are new to her and, if new to her, new to Cassidy as well.
But she’d pleaded with him: Please let’s not talk for a while, O.K.?
Also, the feeding frenzy had happened long ago, before Brianna was even born. It could be embarrassing to bring it up.
When Cassidy looks over at her, she is, to his surprise, no longer absorbed by the view but peering at the phone in her hand. She has turned away, as a child might, hiding the little screen from adult scrutiny.
Scrolling through e-mails. Or Instagram, TikTok.
“Have you been taking some beautiful pictures?” he can’t resist innocently inquiring.
“Yeah! Yes. I have.”
Smiling at Cassidy sidelong, a quick flash of her very dark eyes, almost shy.
“Great. You can show me later.”
His own cellphone he switched off that morning before Varick Street. Wanting to be, for the next forty-eight hours or so, off the grid.
Is it cruel to refer to Brianna Rinzler as his teen-aged mistress when she is nearly twenty years old and mature for her age? And she is Cassidy’s mistress only intermittently and unreliably.
Also, “mistress” is a comical word. Outdated, quaint.
Ten days before Christmas feels, to him, like an ultimatum. He’s not sure why.
Each time they’ve been together—five, six times, seven?—has seemed to be some sort of test. Whatever is to be proved remains unproved.
He isn’t desperate, yet. He doesn’t intend to push the girl. He has leased a condo overlooking the East River, but she has been aware of this for a week at least, no need to dwell upon it. He knows from experience that that is exactly what you don’t do with them—dwell upon a subject, push.
His own daughters. Other men’s daughters.
He’s not sure what they will end up doing today. Brianna doesn’t like to make plans, shrinks from premeditation. Planning to have sex, for instance: gross. Planning an outing together, slipping away on a weekday, spontaneous, brazen: cool.
A child of upper-middle-class suburban privilege, accustomed to others taking charge, protecting her. Looking out for her as you’d look out for a blind person crossing a street. He has made a reservation at the most highly rated inn in Cape May, just in case.
Passing signs for Ocean City, the toll bridge at Corson’s Inlet, Seven Mile Beach. Coastal marshes, shore birds. Warbler migration in spring and fall, monarch-butterfly migration in the fall. . . . It has been years since Cassidy has driven this far south in New Jersey, years since he hiked along the shore at Cape May Point.
Amazing to think that he picked Brianna up in the late morning at a loft on Varick, where, she says, she is staying with friends, having moved out of her parents’ house in Fair Hills. When he pulled up at the curb, she ran out to him, uncombed streaked-blond hair, jacket unzipped, tossed her neon-pink backpack (an eyesore) into the rear and climbed into the Subaru, half-falling beside him, startling in her beauty, in her trust, trust of him. Turning her face to be kissed, confident that she would be kissed, and kissed hard, until she laughed in mild protest.
“Hey. I’ve been missing you.”
“I’ve missed you.”
He wasn’t angry with her then, isn’t angry with her now.
That’s the surprise of it, every time: how you forgive them.
He liked it, liked the intimacy. The girl’s breath smelled of sleep, just slightly stale—no time for mouthwash, toothpaste, in her haste to see him.
Always a jolt when he sees the girl. For the fact is he’s crazy about her.
He just has to accept it, his occasional distrust of her. Her obfuscation. Squid ink released in the water to blind, confound predators.
Finally: Cape May. One of the first hotels they pass on Beach Avenue is the Cape May Heritage House, where Cassidy has reserved a room. He tells Brianna that he’d like to check in now. She can wait in the Subaru while he runs inside, he’ll be just five minutes, but Brianna is impatient to get to the ocean, to the beach, as soon as possible. It’s 3:20 P.M., the sun will start setting in an hour, and she wants to get out of the damn car and walk, run.
Her skin is luminous, pale with indignation. Her dark eyes are all pupil. Pointless to argue with Brianna when she’s in this mood. Cassidy doesn’t dare touch her as he’d like to: grip her shoulders and shake that petulant look off her face.
He says in his most reasonable voice that they’ll have time in the morning to walk on the beach, yes? All day tomorrow?
All day tomorrow? Brianna regards Cassidy as a child might regard an adult suggesting something so ridiculous, so hurtfully stupid, that she cannot find words to oppose him but is struck dumb.
Brianna zips up her bulky quilted jacket, pulls a crimson angora cap down over her forehead. She tells Cassidy to just please let her out. If he doesn’t want to walk right now, he can check into the inn by himself; she’ll meet up with him later.
Jesus, no.
Cassidy is panicked. What the hell is Brianna thinking? All this way, to fucking Cape May in December, and she’s suggesting getting out of the vehicle without him?
She is a teen-ager. Impulsive, not thinking of anyone except herself.
Silent on most of the drive, as if she’d forgotten Cassidy’s very existence, totally immersed in her damned phone—Cassidy suspects her of texting with unknown parties constantly, compulsively—Brianna surprises him now with her sudden animation, as if a switch has been pulled.
Haphazardly, Cassidy has continued to drive though the near-deserted historic district of Cape May. Desperate to interest the teen-aged mistress in stately old Victorian-era architecture. Hotels, inns, charmingly quaint bed-and-breakfasts. A former gambling casino refashioned as an arcade.
Intrigued, Brianna is taking pictures again through the window.
Cassidy remarks, “It’s off-season here, but also off-century.”
“Like a time warp!” Brianna says. She loves these old-fashioned places!
But not all the specialty shops and boutiques are open. Some hotels are obviously closed, not just for the season but permanently. Against the moldering stucco wall of the grand old Atlantic Hotel, folded-up café umbrellas stand like upright corpses.
Folly to have come here, Cassidy thinks.
Over the water the sky is glazed now with an Arctic pallor. Massive snow clouds like battalions have smothered the sunlight. The last thing Cassidy wants to do is hike along the edge of the ocean—he’s dying for a drink in a cozy bar. Still, it’s a relief at least to have stirred some emotion, some feeling, in Brianna.
Easily bored: adolescents. Notoriously.
“Come on,” Brianna says, poking Cassidy. Suddenly playful, forgiving. “Trapped in this car for hours. Jesus!”
The sulky mouth is beautiful again, smiling. Eyes glistening. She’s all elbows, knees, uncoiling legs. Cassidy recalls his daughters, his son, when they were small children, their sudden explosive energy. When they still adored their daddy, never doubted him.
Before Cassidy can properly park the Subaru beside one of the sand-swept walkways, Brianna scrambles out. Winding a long crimson scarf around her neck. Tugging on matching mittens. In her knee-high Italian leather boots, she resembles a springy colt yearning to run wild. Cassidy is left behind to lock up the vehicle.
He will punish her, he thinks calmly. That will be his reward, once they are alone in the room he reserved at the Cape May Heritage House.
But now he is laughing and waving at the long-legged girl, hurrying to catch up with her.
I n love! This is how we behave when we are in love.
Hiking at the water’s edge. The wind is colder than Cassidy anticipated, razor-sharp, making his eyes water. Beside him, the girl is exclaiming in excitement about the beauty of the ocean, the “unspoiled” beach, the funny little birds—sandpipers?—pecking in the hard-packed sand. She seizes Cassidy’s gloved hand in her mittened one and tugs him along, swinging their arms, forcing an antic mood in a way that Charlotte would never have done even in her youth. . . . Heedless in love, crazy for love. Look at us!
Except for an elderly gentleman walking his dog some distance away, both taking mincing steps, the beach and the boardwalk are deserted. No one to observe the lovers, no one to envy the middle-aged man with the much younger girl taking a romantic (if windy) walk along the beach at Cape May in December.
Folly, Cassidy thinks, slightly out of breath, gripping her hand hard. Fate.
He would like to ask Brianna why she didn’t answer his calls for five days. Why she shrinks from acknowledging that, since he has rented a condo in Manhattan, there is no reason for her to continue to stay with friends in a drafty loft.
But Cassidy knows that, at the first sound of reproach, at the first demand, Brianna will flee. Can’t risk it.
In their most intimate moments, Cassidy has felt the tension in the girl’s slender body, nerves strung tight as wires. Brianna seems to swing between two moods: intense enthusiasm, intense repugnance. It’s Cassidy’s fancy that she thinks with her entire body, strained, finely trembling. Her skin is always slightly feverish, unlike his own, which feels lukewarm to him, only half alive. Or maybe it’s the effect of pills, the little white pills that Brianna carries loose in her pockets—amphetamines, opioids, antidepressants, traded and bartered among her friends as casually as children in another era shared sticks of spearmint gum.
Brianna has dropped his hand, pulled away. Venturing so close to the splattering surf that her tight-fitting jeans are dappled with wet.
Despite his discomfort, Cassidy likes it that Brianna Rinzler has led him to a place, a specific place, to which he’d never have gone except in response to a whim of hers. He likes it that he is doing something out of character, something that would astonish his wife, his children, his friends, his business associates, if they knew.
Also, Cassidy likes it that Brianna is nearly as tall as he, in the Italian boots he purchased for her. Though when they are both sitting or lying down together, and the girl is naked, soft-skinned as a mollusk out of its shell, Cassidy looms over her.
Trotting along the beach at Cape May in December! Forty-six years old. In an L. L. Bean fleece-lined suède jacket, corduroy trousers. His male vanity is such that he is hatless. Freezing yet uncomplaining. Short of breath yet invigorated. His pulse rings with an animal excitement indistinguishable from dread, panic: a flood of adrenaline, as if his life were at risk.
Brianna would be furious to know that Cassidy thinks of her, even half seriously, as his teen-aged mistress. Sexist-asshole thing to say, stupid. She’d slap his face. Tell him to fuck off, go to hell.
As it is, Brianna sometimes jokes uneasily about the age difference between them. Yet she was the one who pursued him. That has to be acknowledged.
Cassidy catches up with her, slides an arm around her shoulders to rein her in. His prancing little horsey! Kisses her mouth, but the gesture is awkward, clumsy; their teeth strike together, and Brianna winces. Her lips are luxuriantly cold, a pleasurable shock against Cassidy’s skin.
“Hey—I love you,” he says, as she turns away, but the surf is too noisy. Brianna seems not to hear.
Last time they were together, Brianna asked him not to talk like that. But he isn’t discouraged. He will wear the impetuous girl down, he is sure.
At this moment, the cloud bank shifts and the waning sun glares, broken on the waves, eerily beautiful, blinding.
When had he fallen in love with his friends’ daughter?
Four years before, at a school Christmas concert in Fair Hills, which Cassidy and his wife attended, with the Rinzlers, in fact. Their daughters were both in the girls’ chorus.
Did she remember the Palestrina she sang? Cassidy has asked Brianna. The Vivaldi Psalm?
Brianna frowned, trying to remember. So long ago, she was, like, sixteen.
Maybe it hadn’t been in love, exactly. Though certainly a sensation of falling.
During the chorus’s slow-paced candlelight procession down the center aisle of the auditorium and onto the stage, Cassidy found himself staring at a girl he didn’t quite recognize as Brianna Rinzler at first, her heartbreaking face, utterly lovely. He couldn’t look away even when he belatedly realized who the girl was. A clutching sensation in his chest, a wave of vertigo, of a kind he hadn’t felt in memory.
The candlelight procession was one of the features of the annual winter concert. For weeks, his daughter Veronica and her friends had excitedly discussed it. Two by two, the choruses filed in from the rear of the auditorium to the stage, girls in high-necked white silk blouses and long wine-colored velvet skirts, boys in dark suits, ties. Slow, solemn Christmas music accompanied them, as if in church. Cassidy and Charlotte sat with the Rinzlers, who were longtime acquaintances, if not close friends; the couples made it a point to see one another several times a year.
Cassidy craned his neck, waiting for Veronica to appear: his daughter was a plump-cheeked, earnest girl with close-set brown eyes, limp brown hair, a manner that was shyly appealing, like Charlotte’s. Cassidy loved his daughter, fourteen at the time, and feared for her, for all that was to come, as almost pretty could be a harsh fate. There was something hypnotic in the way the candlelight procession continued, girl after girl and boy after boy; only a few of the candlelit faces, such as that of Brianna Rinzler, warranted a second glance, attention beyond the obligatory pride of parents for their children. Cassidy had almost forgotten Veronica by the time she appeared: she passed nearly unnoticed, as he stared at the Rinzlers’ daughter, whom he could have sworn he’d never seen before.
Brianna seems scarcely to recall the winter concert. Girls’ chorus wasn’t an activity to which she devoted much serious time. Vaguely she recalls the ceremonial procession, the fluttering candle flames, the white silk blouse, and the senior boy with whom she was paired. Of the blurred sea of rapt adult faces, her parents’ and Cassidy’s and Charlotte’s among them, Brianna remembers nothing at all.
Three years after the winter concert, Cassidy had more or less forgotten the Rinzlers’ oldest daughter. Hadn’t seen her in the interim, never thought of her; she wasn’t a friend of Veronica’s. His wife had mentioned that their friends were having difficulties with their daughter: she’d dropped out of the expensive liberal-arts school they’d sent her to; possibly drugs were involved; she was living in New York City and estranged from her family. Then, in Penn Station, where Cassidy was about to board a train to New Jersey one evening, Brianna Rinzler had approached him, boldly, flirtatiously. In retrospect, Cassidy would understand that Brianna was high, radiantly high, her skin luminous with heat and her glassy eyes glistening. She was with a tall pasty-skinned boy with features as striking as hers—might’ve been a male model, photographed for Calvin Klein. In the congested area where passengers were waiting they stood basking in the glamour of youth.
“Hiiiiya! Do you remember me? It’s Brianna, Brianna Rinzler. I was, like, two years ahead of your daughter in school—I’ve forgotten her name—at Fair Hills High. You and your wife know my parents, I guess—do you remember?”
After the first shock had passed, yes. He did remember.
Brianna had been in a giddy mood, pushing up against Cassidy, laughing, stumbling, holding out her iPhone to take a selfie of the two of them, dishevelled and flush-faced.
Just for us, she’d assured him. Just private.
Sometimes Brianna confides in Cassidy a frequent complaint of hers: people won’t leave her alone, are constantly trying to manipulate her.
When Brianna speaks of manipulative people, she is referring to her parents, or to her professors at Bard, or to mysterious figures who remain unnamed, unknown to Cassidy. These are people who are trying to blackmail her emotionally, put pressure on her. Fuck with her head. Sometimes she slips, says you people. As if Cassidy were one of them.
There is a therapist, or there was a therapist, who’d seriously fucked with her head. Friends she’d thought were trustworthy, who’d betrayed her.
It’s titillating to Cassidy when Brianna speaks of her parents. As if, in complaining of them, Brianna is acknowledging that he, her lover, is not in the stifling category—parent, middle-aged—to which the Rinzlers belong.
“It scares me, how people disappear,” she says.
Turns out, there are friends of Brianna’s who have disappeared.
A boy named Colin from her high school in Fair Hills. Six weeks after he started classes at Stanford, he went hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains and never returned. His parents flew out to Palo Alto, stayed for months, police looked for him, there were posters everywhere, search teams, but he’d just disappeared. And a girl in Brianna’s residence hall at Bard, she’d taken the train into the city for some purpose unknown to her suitemates and never returned. One of Brianna’s own relatives, when she was a little girl, a male cousin of her mother’s was said to have disappeared in Tangier.
How serious Brianna is, pressing into Cassidy’s arms! So fascinated by her, Cassidy scarcely hears what she is saying.
One night, in a small, hushed voice, she told him how there was this boy she knew—in fact, she’d been staying with him earlier in the semester, after she’d dropped out of Bard and come to New York, where (it turned out) he was dealing drugs, mainly pot but coke, too, when he could get hold of it. He’d been at Bard but transferred to N.Y.U., then dropped out of N.Y.U., too, and was living over on Avenue A. He’d evidently made some enemies, and that was a serious mistake. Whoever they were, they broke into his place when no one was there and trashed it, and next time (this was after Brianna had moved out, to Varick Street) they killed him.
Stabbed him to death, like, fifteen or twenty stab wounds. Torso, neck, groin.
The body was in the apartment for three days. Only because someone in the building noticed the smell were police called. It was, like, an actual murder. Like something on TV.
In a tentative, wondering voice, Brianna spoke as if she doubted the authenticity or even the plausibility of what she herself was presenting to Cassidy as an adult with the power to interpret.
What she couldn’t forgive was what she’d done, she said—left her friend without telling him, didn’t leave a note, didn’t text, no explanation. She’d just fled.
Shivering in Cassidy’s arms, tears wetting her cheeks, naked, so vulnerable. He kissed her and assured her that she’d had no choice, had had to save her own life. She’d done the right thing by leaving: otherwise, she herself might have been killed. Comforting her, rocking her to sleep like a young child.
Happiest hour of Cassidy’s adult life.
What Cassidy recalls of his Fair Hills life is its routine. The comfort of routine.
How many years, decades. His wife, children. His friends, acquaintances, neighbors, who’d formed a circle of sorts, a net, to secure him—define and confine him. Endless rounds of dinner parties, cocktail parties, receptions. Holiday season beginning after Thanksgiving and not ending until the last open house on New Year’s Day. How boring it all now seemed.
His wife’s family, his family. Relatives—none of them chosen.
The entire texture of that life, its willed imposture. Not that it died quickly—it did not. Like the carefully tended grass of a suburban lawn that gradually thins with time, is invaded by crabgrass, it experienced a slow, diminishing death.
“Are you in love with someone else?” Charlotte had calmly asked Cassidy, her eyes grave and wounded, her voice steady. “We can talk about it, if you are. If you think you are.”
He’d avoided answering her. Unprepared, hadn’t the words just yet. Easier to suggest that she was imagining things.
Soon afterward, Charlotte had a minor accident with her car. Pavement slick with freezing rain, she’d skidded into the rear of another vehicle. Terribly shaken, bursting into tears, but not injured. Thank God, Cassidy thought. If Charlotte had been injured, if she’d died. He could not have borne it, the burden of guilt.
But the incident awakened in Cassidy the understanding that his marriage was vulnerable, expendable. A marriage can melt like wedding cake in the rain, of course.
He has made the decision to move out of the house in Fair Hills, in which he’s lived (happily enough, in fact—that’s the baffling truth) for nearly twenty years. He hasn’t yet told Charlotte; that will come in time. The ideal situation would be for Charlotte to put the onus on him. Ask him to move out.
Still, he is grateful for his wife’s restraint and dignity. Those very qualities in Charlotte that make her so reasonable, reliable, dully predictable, he values now, as he makes plans to leave. She is so fair-minded; she can be relied upon not to rouse the children against him. For he could not bear being considered selfish, cruel, a bad daddy. He has simply lost his ability to impersonate himself, the way over time you can lose a skill like piano playing or speaking a language.
The condo has been leased, though he is still officially living in Fair Hills. Just last night, sleeping beside the wife. Explaining or not-explaining to her, carefully chosen words, spoken in Cassidy’s normal voice, which is affable, consoling, circuitous, nonconfrontational. He couldn’t trust himself to speak otherwise. He didn’t have the script. No way to confess to his wife of so many years that his secret sorrow has been gathering like phlegm in his throat—he wants only to spit it out.
All this while, Brianna has been collecting things on the hard-packed sand of the beach at Cape May.
What sorts of things? Anything that seems to catch her eye, anything droll or strange: for instance, a piece of driftwood resembling a human arm; a child’s sneaker washed clean and pale by the surf; a mollusk shell marked with hundreds of tiny stipples like spines. Brianna takes a picture of the shell on the beach, then holds it in her hand, staring as if at a talisman.
Cassidy, who would like nothing better than to hike back to the Subaru, drive to the hotel, and have a drink, asks Brianna if she’d like him to carry these things for her. They should be heading back to town.
It is nearing 4:30 P.M., and the sun is slanting toward the horizon in the west. The Atlantic wind has become increasingly cold, but Brianna seems scarcely to notice. She hands her worthless little treasures to Cassidy, then turns away to find more. There is something antic, willful in her behavior, but Cassidy supposes it’s genuine.
They have hiked a mile or more from the historic district of Cape May. The beach has become rougher, shabbier. The sand is eroded into curious little ditches, and there’s litter underfoot, the mummified remains of dead fish. They are beyond the boardwalk, but a flight of wooden steps leads to the crest of a weedy hill, about twelve feet in height.
A wet, pungent odor of rot reminds Cassidy of the plankton field off Provincetown. That frenzied feeding in the churning water, the savagery and pointlessness of appetite.
“Brianna? Shall we head back?”
But Brianna is trotting off in search of new treasure, taking pictures with her phone, continuously and compulsively recording whatever strikes her eye, whatever distraction, waves, surf, her own wet boots, twisted clots of seaweed, broken glass, Cassidy. (He knows she has been taking pictures of him, mischievously, since he doesn’t want her to; it has become a kind of joke between them, but not one that Cassidy finds funny.) He is thinking ahead to their evening, to the night in a room in the Cape May Heritage House furnished with “period antiques”—utter privacy, secrecy. Brianna has a way of semi-collapsing on a bed, giddy-drunk, giddy-high, laughing at whatever her middle-aged lover does to her, of which she’s (sort of) aware, unprotesting—thinks it’s funny, no big deal.
Brianna’s slender twisty eel-like body, the thrust of pelvic bones, shiny eyes rolling back in her head in passion or a simulacrum of it. . . . Once, he grabbed her hard around her narrow hips and she snorted in surprised laughter, kicking him, as a child might kick, tugging at his hair, clawing his cheeks, playing rough, puppy-rough, unexpectedly strong for a girl so underweight, saliva glistening on her chin like a tusk. She’d been incandescently high, her skin dry and burning to the touch, an artery pulsing in her throat which he had to kiss, hard.
Cassidy tells Brianna not to climb those steps: the wood looks rotted.
Brianna ignores him because she has glimpsed something in the weeds at the top of the hill. Monkey-quick, she climbs the wobbly steps, snatches up what looks like a broken doll as Cassidy stares after her. Jesus! If she should fall, if she should injure herself . . . Is he responsible? Would such an accident be reported, find its way into a newspaper?
Brianna waves the raggedy doll in the air.
As she climbs back down, one of the steps collapses under her, and she falls heavily, grunting, to the ground. Cassidy, vexed with himself and with her, isn’t strong enough to catch her in his arms. God damn! She can’t have hurt herself, Cassidy thinks, stooping to help her up. She’s whimpering, tears glistening on her cheeks, dead weight at first, uncoöperative. Has she twisted her ankle? Sprained something? Why the hell didn’t she listen to him? Cassidy demands. Worried that, if he stoops to lift her, he might throw out his goddam back and suffer for days, weeks.
Brianna is petulantly groping about for her cellphone, which is somewhere beneath the rotted steps, and she pushes Cassidy’s hand away. Suddenly furious with her, he snatches up the phone and tosses it into the ocean, cursing in a way that he has never done in front of her before.
In that instant she is stunned into silence: eyes wide, mouth dropping open. She cannot believe what Cassidy has done.
Her iPhone, lost in the slovenly slapping waves. Freezing-stinging waves, spray wetting their faces.
Cassidy yanks the stricken girl to her feet. Gives her a hard shake to stop her whimpering. Tells her he will buy her another goddam phone in the morning, but they are going back to town now, to the hotel. For the night.
Brianna paws at Cassidy, desperate to retrieve her phone. “The fucking phone is gone,” he says. The water is too cold for her to wade into, too cold for him—fuck it, by now the phone is ruined, soaked, just fuck it.
Brianna is sobbing, limping as Cassidy walks her roughly back to the Subaru. His blood is up, he feels no remorse for what he has done as he promises he will buy a new iPhone for her in the morning, an updated model, the newest model, not to worry, the information on her phone is saved somewhere, in the cloud, whatever the cloud is. He’s sure. Brianna continues to sob in shock, defeated.
He has triumphed, as he’d hoped.
Driving to the hotel on Beach Avenue, he demands to know why she didn’t answer his calls—twenty or more calls, over five days. What the hell was she thinking? Was she thinking? And then calling him late last night, when his wife might have overheard, what was that about?
In the passenger’s seat of the Subaru, Brianna is stiff with something like fear, guilt. Cassidy is fully in control now. The headstrong girl has become docile, unresisting. She has seen what Cassidy did with her phone; she has felt the strong impress of his hands on her; her resistance has melted away like a tissue dropped in water.
Just murmuring in response to his questions, Don’t know, and, later, in the hotel room, shrinking from his angry face, pleading, Sorry, so sorry.
In the morning, Cassidy heaves himself from the king-size bed. He is naked, prickly-skinned, smelling of his body. Bodies.
Shaky on his feet. A mild thrill of disgust. He regards the still sleeping girl in the rumpled bedclothes on the far side of the absurdly vast bed, her sickly pale face not very attractive now, her hair matted. Her eyelids quiver as if she is trying to wake up but cannot. Her soft mouth is agape. On one of her bare shoulders, a thumb-size bruise, which Cassidy sees with something like satisfaction, though also tenderness.
Recalling how the girl stared at him the night before, in fear of him, once they were alone together. Fear that was a kind of awe, reverence.
Knowing, accepting that she deserved whatever Cassidy would do to her. This submissiveness in the teen-aged mistress Cassidy has found addictive, like a narcotic. Brianna’s eyes glassy in surrender, pupils dilated. His quick, hard hands. The authority in such hands. For all this, he will forgive her. He will reward her. He will purchase for her the very newest iPhone model; the cost is nothing to him.
In the beautifully white gleaming bathroom, a luxury bathroom, he’s eager to shower off the body odor. For it is disgusting to him, in a way.
She didn’t resist, stumbling into the room the night before. This, the Monarch Suite. He helped her to the bed, where, feebly, she pushed his hands away, even as she continued to apologize. Sorry, I am so sorry, don’t hurt me.
Maybe she’d sprained the ankle. Or torn a tendon. She’d been desperate searching through the neon-pink backpack for pills wrapped in a Kleenex—“painkillers,” she called them—which she needed badly, swallowed dry. Neither of them was in a mood for the historic dining room, where you were expected to dress formally, fuck it. He’d ended up practically feeding her the pricey room-service dinner—she’d kept falling asleep. She hadn’t resisted Cassidy, she never resisted Cassidy, like a Raggedy Ann doll, obliging and, to a degree, even coöperating, if only she could keep her eyes open, which she could not. He’d tugged off the tight-fitting Italian leather boots. Tugged off the tight-fitting jeans. As she tried to wriggle away like a large baby, he’d adored her, declaring that he would love her, would take care of her. When they returned to the city, he’d help her move her things out of the loft on Varick, move in with him. You know you love me. You know that.
Later this morning, he will purchase a new iPhone for her. He’s sure there’s a mall somewhere near Cape May. Maybe then lunch, a visit to the lighthouse, the museum. Back to the Cape May Heritage House—he reserved for two nights.
So simple. You make a decision, you act. Why hadn’t he realized earlier in his life?
Love is a decision you make.
If only Brianna would remain the way she is now, has been since the accident on the beach. Docile, meek, grateful for him. If only this, permanently. The two of them. Like this.
Taking his time, in no hurry in the white-tiled bathroom, Cassidy shampoos his thinning hair below the chrome showerhead, spreads soapy lather over his body, going to fat at the waist, his belly hairy, legs spread for balance. Taking care, he shaves his jaws with his safety razor—now is not the time to rush, risk cutting himself. He rubs body lotion onto his hands, chest. Prides himself on the grizzled chest hair, genitals drooping between his legs, just visible over the swell of his belly. His beard is so heavy, he should shave twice a day. Testosterone.
He regards himself sidelong in the large steamy mirror, squinting, head cocked. Half-consciously, Cassidy has learned how best to observe himself. You do not want to look too directly.
Leaving the bathroom, white terry-cloth bath towel wrapped around his thick waist, he calls to the girl in the bed, “Good morning!” He is in an elevated mood, taking note that it’s 8:41 A.M. by the digital clock on the bedside table nearest him, but there’s no answer. He stands flat-footed, astonished to see that the vast bed appears to be empty, holding only the soiled sheets, like entangled white snakes.
“Brianna? Where—”
On the floor there’s a pillow, one of the large ornamental pillows he kicked off the bed the night before.
Brianna is gone. Unless she’s in the closet . . .
Not in the closet—he checks, foolishly. And nothing on the wooden hangers, nothing on the shelves in the closet or on the floor.
His clothes, his things—not in the closet, and not on the chair where he tossed them. Nor are the girl’s clothes here—no quilted jacket, no Italian leather boots. The neon-pink backpack is gone. Even the mirror against the far wall appears vacant as Cassidy stares, trying to comprehend.
“Brianna? Hey, Jesus!—c’mon . . .”
His breath is quick. He is feeling light-headed, weak. Telling himself, This is not happening! Of course Brianna is in the room somewhere, playing a prank. She must have slipped into the bathroom without his noticing. So Cassidy reënters the bathroom, which smells of fragrant steam, inspects the shower stall with its soap-spattered glass doors—no one here, nothing. On the bathroom floor, sodden towels he kicked to the side for the housekeeper.
Returning to the room, glancing quickly about: the things he left on the bedside table, on his side of the bed, where are they? Wallet, cellphone, keys.
Not on the floor, nothing on the floor except the pillow.
Not even his socks, underwear. The girl’s jeans he’d tugged off her limp lower body, her underwear he’d let fall to the floor—no sign.
Her cashmere sweater with the soiled neck, his L. L. Bean suède jacket, corduroy trousers, water-stained shoes—where?
On the table, the filth-stiffened raggedy doll Brianna found on the beach. This she’d left for Cassidy.
He has only the white towel that is wrapped around his waist. He’s shivering now, his teeth chattering, and a sudden hard throbbing in his head.
Numbly, he checks the closet again. Pulls out bureau drawers: nothing even to rattle in the drawers, no cellphone, no key to the Subaru. The girl has dared to take the Subaru key, she has taken his wallet, his phone, his clothes, his shoes. She has stolen his Subaru Forester and left him alone in the Cape May Heritage House, naked.
Thoughts rush at Cassidy like missiles. It is not possible that Brianna Rinzler has abandoned him in Cape May, New Jersey. It is not possible that Brianna can drive the Subaru back to the city. Has the girl that capacity, that sense of purpose? Will she ditch his vehicle on a deserted street on the West Side and hike back to the Varick Street loft? What will he do, stranded in New Jersey? What can he do?
How did the girl deceive him? She was so deeply asleep, as if comatose, drugged. Oblivious of him, he’d thought, as he stood over her gloating and protective, tenderhearted.
She’d waited until he was in the shower, then slipped from the bed and thrown on her clothes, pushed his clothes, even his shoes, his wallet, keys, phone into the neon-pink backpack and zipped it up, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of the quilted jacket, breathless and charged with adrenaline, as if fleeing for her life, leaving the room and shutting the door behind her—within how many minutes, seconds?
In the bathroom, he’d heard nothing.
Cassidy checks the bathroom again: nothing. Drops to his knees to peer beneath the bed, but the bed is mounted on a solid wooden platform, no space below it.
Exhausted now, his blood pressure mounting, Cassidy sits heavily, leaden, on the edge of the bed. Trying to think. Stares at the digital clock for several seconds without registering the time: 8:48 A.M.
At last, there comes a sharp-knuckled rapping at the door. In this instant, Cassidy is flooded with relief. Brianna has returned, of course Brianna has returned, she has taken mercy on him. He is halfway on his feet to open the door, except the voice is unfamiliar, a woman’s voice, expedient and charmless. “Housekeeping.” ♦
