Riptide (6 page)

The police said Jason had thrown a party last night.

Christina wrinkled her nose. “Party” was too nice a word to describe what Jason had been doing.

Through the glass that comprised the southern wall of the house, the tops of the dunes were visible as heavy shadows in the gathering darkness.

Inside, the house was silent as a tomb except for the tick-tick-tick of the sculpted-iron floor clock on the landing, purchased in SoHo years ago when they first got married and Jason still accompanied her on shopping trips.

There were signs everywhere of activity from the night before. Furniture out of place, couch cushions
that still held the impression of someone’s body weight. Dining-room chairs askew, clustered at one end of the long glass table. She could well imagine what Jason and his guests had been doing on its surface.

The floor needed vacuuming, and she could see into the kitchen counters cluttered with open bottles and dirty dishes. Several long-stemmed champagne glasses, liquid still pooled in their bottom, caught her eye.

The back of Christina’s throat tingled with a desire so strong she grabbed the couch to hold herself back. She sank onto the rumpled cushions, clutching her purse to her chest like a shield.

She should fire Señora Rosa’s fat ass, and her simpering niece Marisol, for leaving the place in such a state.

Later, she would find the upstairs bathrooms clean and the beds freshly made, tasks that would have been completed by the housekeepers, perhaps, before they discovered Jason’s body.

The screen door leading to the yard was open, the way she had left it earlier, and she decided to leave it open to air the place out despite the scumbag paparazzo at the front gate. The Cardiffs’, like the studio exec’s house across the way, sported signs that promised
ARMED RESPONSE.

They had installed a new alarm system when they redid the house last spring. They only set it when they were away. She could see the green
READY
button shining steady in its panel mounted on the wall near the side door, and made a mental note to set it before she went up to bed tonight.

Upstairs.

She wasn’t ready to face those empty rooms. Not yet. Not the guest room she had taken over at the end of
last summer, a move that had never been discussed. Not Tyler’s room, which always felt empty and wrong when he was away. And most certainly not the master bedroom.

Jason’s room.

Tonight the whole place felt haunted.

The steel clock chimed eight, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

She cleared her throat just to make some noise. The sound was hollow and lonely in the empty house.

Those half-empty champagne flutes beckoned from the kitchen counter. Christina wondered whether her stock of Grey Goose was intact inside the freezer.

Her rehab counselor’s face floated to mind. “Think before you drink,” Peter had implored them with his priestly blue eyes.

It had been a day straight from hell, the worst of Christina’s life.

Her throat itched at the back. Nobody would blame her if she took a drink. Nobody would even know.

Except her son, Tyler, would know. She pictured his face pinched down the middle when he was angry, the way his thin shoulders would stiffen, and he would pull back when she hugged him hello.

Tyler had learned at a young age to catch the scent of booze.

Christina vowed to ride this one out, fresh on that memory.

This decision behind her for the moment at least, she fell back on the cushions, exhausted. She had learned in rehab that all newly recovering alcoholics grew tired easily, unused to moving through life without alcohol to round out the sharp edges.

Peter had lectured them to monitor their moods in the first ninety days of sobriety. “Progress, not perfection.”

Lessons for life that would fit on a bumper sticker, Christina thought sourly. Was there a catchy slogan for how to cope when your husband was found facedown in your swimming pool?

Christina thought of the interviews she’d watched on TV with 9/11 widows. Their eyes, their faces, their voices ravaged by a depth of pain she simply did not feel right now.

The truth was, if she looked back and reviewed the fabric of her marriage, she would not have seen a smooth bolt of strong cloth. Nor would she have seen a smooth fabric in the center, drawing the eye away from fraying and wrinkles at the edges.

What she would have seen was something shredded right down the center, hanging on by a few strands of thread. Fabric that, however tattered, would hold together way beyond its useful life.

For the threads that bound the Cardiff marriage were bonds forged of mutual need.

Jason Cardiff brought money and prestige to the marriage.

Christina Banaczjek brought beauty, a yearning to escape the crushing poverty of her childhood, and a desperate desire for financial security.

The problem was that, as time passed, both began to envision a life without the other. Their patience for each other frayed and grew thin. Looking back, Christina could mark certain turning points in their relationship.

One such turning point was the annual benefit for the Southampton Foundlings Home. The event had grown over the years from a sleepy potluck dinner to a high-
powered corporate event that was the social highlight of the Hamptons’ season.

Invitation lists were prepared months in advance, labored over by PR staff scurrying across fields and through humid tents on the day of the event, barking orders into cell phones with all the concentration and precision of launching the D-day invasion itself.

Only A-listers were invited, and there was no more coveted seat at the gala than to be at one of the Cardiff family tables.

Christina made a point of buying all the papers in the days that followed, scouring social pages for photos of herself in the outfit she always purchased especially for the occasion.

She had not been rewarded with a beauty shot this year in
Dan’s Paper.

She and Jason had made a grand entrance in his new BMW coupe. They had drunk way more than they’d eaten, with Jason spending most of his time at the bar chatting up the waitresses.

Leaving Christina to fend for herself in a sea of Cardiffs.

She made up for it by drinking more than she could handle, and table-hopping as soon as the main course was finished. She spotted a man at a nearby table whom she knew her husband disliked. So she made a beeline for him.

His wife, who had always been bitchy to Christina, had gone off to powder her nose.

Christina made herself at home in his wife’s chair, ignoring the dirty looks being sent her way from her in-laws, and waved off the man’s offer of a fresh drink. She drained his wife’s glass instead.

Just two days earlier, she had read a series of sent e-mail messages in Jason’s BlackBerry trumpeting the fact that he was getting the best head of his life from a girl named Lisa.

Christina threw back her head now and roared at something Jason’s former business associate was saying.

His wife reappeared, freshly powdered, and stood glaring.

The man rose and reintroduced them.

Christina, none too steady, pumped the wife’s hand. She managed to spill a glass of wine onto the woman’s silk dress while she was at it. “I’m so sorry,” Christina slurred, grabbing a linen napkin and taking aim at the wife’s dress.

The woman backed away, directly into the path of a banquet waiter bearing a tray loaded with dirty dishes.

The tray landed with a loud crash.

Christina’s chair tumbled over after it, adding to the mayhem.

The man’s wife hissed and grabbed her husband for support.

Christina shrieked in surprise.

A hush fell over the tent, followed by a ripple of whispers and murmurs.

And more glares from Camp Cardiff.

“My God,” Christina exclaimed, giggling. In her addled state, the incident was hilarious. She hiccuped loudly. “My God,” she said again, breathless with laughter.

The man she had been flirting with was on his knees now, sweeping bits of broken china from the floor at his wife’s feet.

Several waiters rushed over to help.

“Christina.” Jason appeared, solicitous now. He grabbed Christina by her elbow. “Come back to our table. Coffee is being served.”

Christina resisted. “Jason,” she said in a voice loud enough to be heard all around the tent, “you’ve decided to join me. Won’t your friends at the bar miss you?” She was just drunk enough to push the envelope, despite the warning light in Jason’s eyes. “Um, your new girlfriends?” She caught a glimpse over Jason’s shoulder of her in-laws picking over their dessert plates, desperate to pretend this wasn’t happening.

“Come back and sit down,” Jason ordered in a tight voice. “Let’s let the staff do their job and clean up.” He tried to steer her by the elbow back to their table.

Christina wrenched free of his grasp. “No.”

“Christina.” Jason’s voice dropped low into the danger zone.

He could shove it. She was about to tell him so when she felt pressure on her other elbow.

It was Pamela’s husband, Richard Lofting. “Let me give you a hand, Jason.” Richard was all smiles and smooth talk, but the grip he had on Christina’s elbow was a perfect match for the one Jason had on her other arm.

Tight, with not so much as an inch of wiggle room.

“I don’t need a hand,” Christina protested.

But it was no use.

They propelled her across the tent, directly to the exit.

“Sorry you’re not feeling well,” Richard said, loud enough to be heard by the hushed diners.

Christina was indignant. “I’m fine,” she slurred.

They were outside by then, at the valet line.

Two men sprang into action at Jason’s signal.
“Thanks, Rich,” he muttered at his brother-in-law through clenched teeth. “I can take it from here.”

Richard Lofting kept his death grip on Christina’s arm. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Jason squeezed her arm so tight it hurt. She would wake up with bruises the next day, four purple blobs marching up her arm that would take more than a week to fade.

Richard Lofting nodded, careful to avoid eye contact with Christina, before heading back inside. “Good night.”

Leaving Christina alone with her husband. “That was embarrassing.” She spat the words out, furious, and tried to wrench her arm free from Jason’s grasp.

He tightened his grip and lowered his face close to hers. “That,” he said in a voice ragged with anger, “was pure bullshit.”

The valet pretended not to hear, fiddling with the keys hanging from pegs on a wooden board.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Christina shouted, belligerent now. She tried to wrench free once more, but all she managed to do was yank herself around so she nearly lost her balance. A few strands of hair tore loose from the up-do she’d gotten that afternoon at the salon. “Especially now.”

“Shut up.” Jason scanned the drive for his BMW.

“Don’t you tell me to shut up.” Christina’s voice rose, loud enough to be heard back inside the dining tent.

It attracted the attention of the photographers drinking at a makeshift bar that had been set up near the catering generators.

“I know all about your fling with Lisa!” Christina shrieked.

Jason spun her around, bringing her face close to his, and for the first time in her marriage, Christina saw the depth of his anger and was afraid of what he might do.

In that moment, she knew he no longer had any love for her.

He clamped down on her arm so hard she gasped for breath. One silk strap of her dress slid off her shoulder, but she was helpless to do anything about it.

Jason held her in a vise grip. “Don’t you talk to me.” His voice shook with anger. “I’m finished with you.” To prove his point, he twisted her arm back until she felt a sizzling bolt of pain.

Christina cried out. They had never gotten physical. Not like this.

When she came across a photo on some stupid Hamptons’ party blog the next day, she realized this must have been the moment they had snapped her photo.

As it was, she never noticed the flash. She was too hurt, too angry. “Let me go.” She stared into her husband’s eyes with a determination that transcended all the wine she’d drunk. “Or I promise you’ll regret it.”

She had caught him off guard, she could tell by the way his eyes widened in surprise.

“You bitch,” he snapped. But he let go of her arm like it was a hot potato.

Looking back, Jason had been less drunk that night than Christina but probably too drunk to drive. Normally, Jason took advantage of the dessert hour at parties to sober up by downing a few espressos so he could drive.

As it was, she just wanted to get the hell out of there, and so did he.

The sports coupe peeled off into the night, spinning loose gravel in its wake.

Christina and Jason Cardiff rarely spoke, even when they passed each other in the hall, from that point on.

These thoughts were with Christina on the first night of her widowhood as she fell into a troubled sleep on the living-room couch inside her house on an isolated stretch of East Hampton beach.

She woke up sometime later to discover she was not alone.

S
omething was wrong.

Christina sensed it even before she opened her eyes.

Someone was there with her in the dark.

Close. Too close. Invading her personal space.

Looming above her. Blocking any chance of escape.

Shifting from sleep mode to full-scale panic, Christina’s first instinct was to scream. But the sound withered in her lungs.

The intruder’s hand clamped down hard on her mouth.

A strangling sound gurgled up from her throat.

Christina was alone with him, and no one to help.

She was awake enough now to remember she was in her living room, dark as a tomb under a moonless sky. She had left the back door open. She remembered the photographer at the end of the drive.

In the space of the seconds that passed while she recalled these facts, he lowered himself on top of her.

Tyler had already lost one parent. He couldn’t afford to lose another.

Christina fought back, scrabbling with her fingernails until they caught the soft flesh of his face and neck.

He grunted with pain, and Christina seized the moment to raise her knees and curl into a protective ball.

It was no use.

He brushed her legs aside with little effort.

Leaving her open, vulnerable to attack.

“Christina! It’s me. Stop it! Goddamn it, Christina!”

She knew that voice, knew that familiar scent of Old Spice and cigarettes.

The hands pinning her down in the darkness were not there to hurt her.

“Dan, oh my God, Dan.” She went limp with relief.

Daniel Cunningham released his grip and rocked back onto the cushion next to her. “Jesus,” he breathed, rubbing a hand across his face. He pulled it away and tested it with his tongue.

She was close enough to see him scowl in the dark.

“I’m bleeding.”

Christina was too busy trying to figure out if she was having a heart attack to speak, so she reached to pat his shoulder with a hand that shook.

He shrugged her off, half-raising an arm. His hands were balled into fists.

“I’m sorry.” She drew her hand away, pushing up to a sitting position. Every muscle in her body twitched. “You scared me.”

He whipped his head around so fast she cringed. “
I
scared
you?
” He shook his head slowly from side to side, scowling at the tips of his fingers, which, she supposed, were wet with his blood.

Dan had a temper. He had lost his contracting business because of it. He hadn’t told her that in so many words, but Christina remembered the story now. It
was why he freelanced now, painting and plastering for other contractors around the East End during the summer months. He had told her he spent winters in West Palm.

She forced herself to reach out and pat his leg. “You scared me,” she said again, keeping her tone soothing and low. Not whiny. Dan hated that. “And this day…oh, my God, Dan. I’m glad you’re here.”

His shoulders unhunched as he considered this, and she felt her own adrenaline begin to drain off.

Dan leaned against the back of the couch, angling his body so it faced her.

Christina allowed herself to relax now that the crisis had passed.

“The back door was open. I let myself in.” He shrugged.

Christina nodded.

“There was a guy out there in front,” he said by way of explanation.

“I know.”

“Some prick with a camera. I didn’t want to make things worse for you, so I parked a couple houses down. A friend of mine did a job there last week. They’re gone for the summer. I left my car in their driveway and took the cut-through to the beach.”

Officially, there was no public access to the ocean in this neighborhood. Unofficially, there was a path behind the movie producer’s house for use exclusively by residents of Jonah’s Path.

“I didn’t want that guy to see me coming here.” Dan’s voice softened. “I didn’t want to make things worse for us—you.” He quickly corrected himself.

So he knew. And he was thinking of them as a couple.
Dan had never told her he loved her, but everything had changed now with Jason’s death. Everything. “Thanks.” Christina’s voice broke.

Dan reached for a strand of her hair and started twirling it.

The act of tenderness melted Christina’s insides, made her feel that everything was okay.

Dan was here now. Her Dan.

“So I just headed for the dunes,” he said, his voice turning low, sexy.

Something inside Christina unlaced as Dan sidled over and pulled her close, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I snuck across on the beach and up into your yard.”

Christina yielded, giddy when he dropped his fingers so they grazed her breasts. She was heating up.

“Then I let myself in,” he whispered. “I am your backdoor man, after all.”

It was their old joke. Christina arched her back in response to the small circles Dan was tracing on her nipples.

It was a short tumble into his arms.

She wanted more than anything to lose herself in his scent, the sound of his heart beating close to hers, the feel of his arms around her. She fell against him, practically passing out with the rush she got.

Lately, Christina’s drug of choice was Daniel Cunningham.

“C’mon, baby.” He used his mouth to urge her on.

She looked into his eyes, straining for some clue as to where he’d just been and with whom, but he gave nothing away. Despite this, something inside her unlocked like it always did, and Christina swung open, inviting Danny in…

His breath was hot, moving across her hair, her face, her skin.

Every square inch of Dan Cunningham’s body was as Christina had remembered it all those hours she’d tossed in that narrow bed in rehab. She rubbed her face against his chest, breathing in the scent of barroom, Old Spice cologne, and pure man, through and through.

She lost herself in his heat. She felt like she had been cold for a million years. There were no words to describe the rush she felt. She was in the zone, right where she wanted to be.

Drunk on her drug of choice, Daniel Cunningham.

A sound escaped Christina’s throat, a bubble of something between elation and desperation. She’d had nothing to eat or drink since a bottle of water on the plane this morning.

“You okay?” Dan whispered, his lips moving her hair so that Christina felt a trickle of heat, molten and liquid, race down through her stomach and spread along the insides of her legs.

“Great,” she whispered in reply, shifting onto her side so her body pressed against his.

The move must have caught Dan off guard because he hesitated a beat or two.

Possibly out of respect, Christina wondered, for her new status of widow. Daniel Cunningham was not, as a rule, a respectful type of guy.

And that wasn’t what they were about, anyway.

She whispered his name, tilting her face toward his in the dark until she caught his lips with hers.

If Dan had any reservations, they disappeared quickly. He kissed her softly at first, then, when she moaned,
faster and deeper, until his mouth was bruising hard on hers.

He tasted of smoke and the Diet Coke he liked mixed with bourbon.

Christina sucked hard, savoring every drop.

If he was self-conscious about tasting of booze, he made no apologies for it now. He knew where she had gone. She’d left a message on his cell on her drive to JFK, saying she’d be in touch when she returned, probably in a month or so. If he questioned how she felt about coming back so soon, he kept that to himself as well. This relationship was not about talking.

Dan grunted and rolled on top of her.

This is what they were about.

Christina moaned, and that was all Dan needed to hear.

They went at it in a tangle of arms and legs and lips, sucking and seeking until their skin was hot and swollen.

“I’m gonna give you what you like,” he said in that low voice he used in bed. “But you have to ask for it.”

She did, spreading her legs where she was wet while he whispered things about her that she knew were true.

What she craved was the act of surrender, giving herself up to something or someone.

And that someone was Daniel Cunningham, and had been since the day he turned up to paint and replaster their pool house three months ago.

“That’s right, baby, ask for it now,” Dan ordered.

Christina surrendered to it, to him, in a swoon, and it felt so
good
after all those days in rehab, dreary and gray…

Dan pressed himself onto her, into her, and she closed her legs around him as their bodies pulsed together,
faster and faster, harder and harder, and she felt she needed this more than anything in her life.

Crying out, she raked her fingernails across Dan’s shirt, which they hadn’t bothered to remove, and pounded her fists on his back.

Dan called her names that turned her on, pausing now and again to push his tongue to the back of her throat so that Christina was filled completely with Dan the way she wanted to be filled.

She begged for more the way he had coached her, and finally, when she was at the edge of where she needed to be, Christina let go…

She waited for the tidal wave that was Dan to crash over her.

What she got, in the end, was a tiny ripple.

Like a long-distance orgasm.

Dan didn’t notice. He was heaving between her legs with sweat pouring off him so it soaked his T-shirt. Christina felt the wetness of his face, tasted salt on his lips.

The sex act was not so exciting now.

Keeping her legs in place, she rubbed his back and made sounds to encourage him. Her vagina was chafed and starting to sting.

He came at last, in a single great thrust, clenching his jaw and making that animal sound.

Normally, Christina found this sexy.

Tonight, she was aware only that her skin itched, and her neck was pressed against the couch at an odd angle.

Christina had been unable to come lots of times. She’d been drunk so much, she often fell asleep along the way, sometimes waking up when Jason or Dan was finishing
the job, sometimes not. Other times, she woke up with no idea which one of them was on top of her.

But this was different. She wasn’t drunk. Her body had gone through the motions, then seemed to just go on strike, like watching actors having sex in an X-rated movie, which she had done plenty of times.

But this was different. This was life on Planet Weird.

Dan planted one last kiss on her lips and slapped her bare thigh, hard enough to sting, before rolling off.

Christina rearranged her clothes, trying to cover her bare spots, hoping Dan couldn’t see her frown in the dark.

He was too busy fumbling for his cigarettes and lighter to notice. “You mind?”

“No, go ahead.” They had made love in the house and out by the pool any number of times when Jason wasn’t around, but this was the first time Dan had lit up after. Christina didn’t smoke, and Jason did so rarely, only very late at a party. Nobody smoked in their house.

There was a brief flare of orange when Dan lit up.

The room was so quiet she could make out individual sizzling sounds as each tiny shred of tobacco curled up and burned when he inhaled.

He blew smoke into the darkness. “Tough times.”

Christina was silent. What was there to say?

“You okay?” He pulled on his cigarette again. The tip pulsed bright in the dark.

“I guess,” she replied, then realized it would leave Dan no choice but to probe deeper. “I’m fine,” she added quickly.

Taking her at her word, he continued to smoke.

There were no ashtrays around. Just when Christina
wondered what Dan would do with the ash, he tapped it onto the leg of his jeans and rubbed it into the denim.

The move, self-contained and resourceful, was pure Daniel Cunningham.

“Good.” He sat up and switched on a light. “You hungry?”

Christina shook her head and blinked.

He squinted at her, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, his eyes narrowed through the smoke. “Did you eat today?”

She thought back to the bran muffin she’d shared with Sylphan in the break room this morning, a million years ago. The thought of food made her want to throw up. She shrugged.

“Just like I thought.” He nodded. “Cause you look—” He caught himself.

Theirs was a relationship based on mutual pleasure and convenience, mostly Christina’s. At least until now.

Christina sensed things shifting slightly, away from her and toward him, and chose to ignore it. “I’m okay.” Feeling self-conscious despite the fact he’d seen her naked on more than a dozen occasions, she busied herself with the zipper on her jeans, mumbling something about lunch on the plane.

He stood up, zipped his fly. “You need a drink or what?”

“No.” Her voice was too loud. It came out sounding like the lie it was, and she knew it.

He watched her. “So this place you stayed at, they fixed you up that way?” His lips moved into a smirk.

But Dan always smirked. It had never bothered her before. “Yeah,” she lied, looking down at the cotton
rug and its pattern of dark green leaves and bright crimson berries.

“Shining sumac,” the decorator had told her. “Very aggressive. If you’re not careful, it will take over the whole garden.”

Dan scratched his chest with one hand. “I’ll check out what’s in the fridge while you…” Jutting his chin in the direction of the powder room, he frowned. “You’ll be okay. Tough day, that’s all.”

Mortified, Christina ran a hand through her hair and nodded.

He headed off to the kitchen, flipping on lights as he went, and she was struck by the incongruity of this, the final act of weirdness in a day that had been the strangest of her life.

Daniel Cunningham, whose activities in her house until now had been limited to applying plaster and paint to the walls, or humping her on the daybed in their pool house, was now methodically rummaging through the Cardiffs’ kitchen cabinets.

And he was taking his time about it.

Rising to her feet was a struggle, as the combination of exhaustion, jet lag, and nerves finally got to Christina.