It hadn’t been long since I thought the same thing, and for a second I wondered how much of the real Kristen I had ever really seen. Not much, I suspected.
I confess I had rather hoped to have some time alone with Marcus, if only to solidify our newfound friendship, though I also still wanted to ask him about the cave of Zeus. There had definitely been an odd vibe when Kristen had mentioned our trip there, and I felt sure that there was something I was missing, probably something I had missed five years ago as well. Whether Marcus would know more than me or not, I couldn’t say, and it seemed odd that he had never mentioned it if he did, but then maybe the strangeness of whatever the cave meant involved him somehow. It had, after all, been the beginning of our unraveling, though maybe that had been an accident of timing. I couldn’t imagine what might have occurred at some random tourist outing that made him like me less than he had the day before, but with Kristen and Simon on hand, I wasn’t about to ask him about it now.
I had expected the fortress to be more compact, like the castles in The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, with rings of walls and towers with the occasional Disney spire and Hogwarts decor, but it was more like Fort Sumter: big and open, with lots of ramps and platforms for guns. There were no towers at all to speak of, though the perimeter wall was dotted with little turrets that bulged out over nothing but the long drop to the shore, where turquoise water deepened fast. There was a single domed mosque and, close by, some rusted cannons overgrown with weeds, where a solitary tortoise nestled. On the lower level was a long, dark tunnel with a barrel roof, iron gates, and heavy wooden doors leading into storage rooms, barracks, or cells. It gave us a nice break from the sun—the top side of the fort was almost entirely without shade—but I was glad when we left. It was starting to give me the willies.
The place was largely deserted. When Marcus and Simon wandered off to inspect the gift shop, I found Kristen on the main platform, gazing out over the coast.
“You OK?” I asked Kristen.
“Yeah,” she said. She smiled wanly, then shook her head. “Not really.”
“Brad will be fine,” I said. “Just one of those things.”
She nodded but looked unconvinced and a moment later said, “These things happen a lot lately.” She backtracked immediately, as if keen to make sure I didn’t get the wrong impression. “I mean, he’s fine,” she said. “Just stressed. Really stressed.”
“Work?” I said.
Again the silent nod, and this time the silence was longer and deeper. Out over the sea a pair of gulls rolled and dived, screaming at each other. Eventually she gave me a sideways look, took her shades off, and slipped them into her purse.
“Don’t say anything to the others, OK, not even Marcus,” she said. “But he lost his job.”
“What? When?”
“Two months ago.”
“God. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“He’ll find another, though, right?” I said. “All those deals he did. Companies must be lining up to get him.”
“Not an option,” said Kristen. She gave me a steady look, then gazed out to sea. “He lost his real estate license.”
I gaped at her, feeling suddenly out of my depth, not because I don’t know anything about business—though that is also true—but because I didn’t really know her. This was personal stuff, and we were little more than strangers. I didn’t know what to say, but she spoke anyway, something of her usual poise returning to her, as if a weight had already been lifted from her shoulders.
“I mean it about not telling the others,” she said.
“I promise,” I said, wondering how much my word would carry with her. What had Marcus told her? Or Simon? What had she deduced for herself about my occasional fibbing?
Occasional . . . ?
“The way Brad’s business works,” she said, “is that companies who are looking to expand send his agency locations where they want to go, and I don’t mean towns or regions. I mean coordinates. Latitude and longitude. Often they’ve already identified the site themselves.”
“Why don’t they just buy the property themselves?” I asked.
“Something about retailers not wanting to also be in real estate,” she said with a shrug. “It never made much sense to me either, but apparently it’s about showing their investors that they are staying within a particular area of business expertise and subcontracting for related services. Anyway. So a company like yours—Great Deal, right?”
“Right.”
“Great Deal says they want three stores in metro Atlanta in these locations and they’ll pay between one and three million per lot. Brad goes in, negotiates the deal with the property owner through a broker, ensures the land is suitable, then purchases it for Great Deal. But say he finds out that the seller will part with the land for only a few hundred thousand? He knows Great Deal will pay way more than that so . . .”
“He convinces the seller to ask for a higher price and gets a cut of the extra?” I suggest.
“Worse,” she said, and now her previous despondency settled back into her body so that she sagged and, for a second, squeezed her eyes shut. “He buys the land himself. Sets up a shell company under someone else’s name, then tries to sell it on to Great Deal at the markup he knows they’ll pay. A million plus profit per site.”
“Oh,” I said. I knew how lame and stupid that sounded, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I knew nothing of such stuff, but even I could see that this was bad.
“Great Deal finds out, reports him, his agency fires him, and suspends his license for five years.”
“So . . . he’s out of work?” I wasn’t sure where the conversation had moved from the hypothetical to the factual.
“To say the least, yeah. It’s not Great Deal, of course, but otherwise the story is . . . yeah, he’s out of work and lucky not to be banned for life.”
“Oh, Kristen, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. I mean, it’s his own stupid fault but . . . yeah.”
“Will there be criminal charges?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s a matter of professional ethics, but I don’t think he broke any laws. Not that that matters. He had to pay back what he had earned and now has no source of income.”
“Is that why he is so keen to get Simon to invest in his wine-shipping idea?”
Kristen sighed.
“A pipe dream,” she said. “He knows it won’t work, but he won’t give it up. And he won’t stop spending money, living like he’s pulling in millions a year. Right now we’re living off my income, which is crazy. No TV show lasts forever. I figure we have another two seasons, maybe three. Tops. I might never work again.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll get snapped up by—”
“It’s not that simple. Especially for someone in a role like mine. Not many shows are looking for someone who reminds the audience of the alien they played on another show every time they appear on camera. But that’s not the point. He’s living off me, which I’m not thrilled about, and there’s a very good chance that I’ll be out of work before he can go back to work in commercial real estate. I’m sorry to tell you all this,” she said, smiling sadly, as if remembering whom she was talking to. “I’m just so sick of carrying it round in my head.”
“Brad doesn’t want anyone to know?”
“God, no. He’s living this trip like it will set the clock back. Take us all to where we were five years ago. I don’t understand it.”
“Things were good five years ago,” I said.
“They were OK,” she said. “We had fun. But for me, in all honesty, life is way better now.”
I said nothing, again lost for words. That was certainly not something I could say for myself. Five years ago I had been poised to do so many things. My collapsed college career notwithstanding, I had thought there were all kinds of possibilities on the horizon. I had still been thinking seriously about going to med school. I still had Marcus.
“You remember when we went to that cave?” she said suddenly. “Last time. The one where Zeus was born?”
It was as if she had seen into my head. I blinked.