He whirls around, points a finger at me, and tries to form the words; I can see in his eyes, in the twitch of his cheeks, in his furrowed brow, that he has legions to say. But all that comes out is: “You promised me.”
He heads toward the front door. I follow him, explaining anyway. “I told my boss not to run it, that I would quit if he did. The board pressured him.” How to explain all the politics of a multimedia conglomerate owned by a company that started out selling dish soap? “They already had the story, Ness. They were going to fire my boss, the editor in chief of the goddamn Times, and run it anyway. There was no stopping this.”
“Then why make the promise?” Ness asks. He hesitates at the top of the stairs, and I think for a moment that we’ll be able to talk through this. Then I hear him say, “I thought you were real.”
He opens the front door, leaves, and slams it behind him. I run up the stairs, fumble with the latch, and hurry out onto the porch. Ness is already around the low wall toward the garage; I hear the rapid crunch crunch crunch of shells from him running. By the time I get around the corner, the garage door is opening, and a bright red convertible with a white stripe down the middle is growling out in reverse. He doesn’t look my way as he roars by.
This is where I let him go, where I lose him, where I slink home to New York and never see him again, where our tryst is a memory, and whatever story I could write from this wreck of a week is left unfinished, with no resolution, with no way of piecing together his scattered clues.
But I say, “Fuck that.” I say it out loud. I turn to my car. And then I remember my keys are down in the guest house.
I take the boardwalks at a dangerous pace. I’m still barefoot. No bra on. My thoughts whirl. Surely he’ll understand. Once the adrenaline wears off. Once the sting of betrayal cools. I’ll write a retraction. An even bigger piece. When word gets out about how the Times ran this story, there’ll be mud on their faces.
Get real, Maya, I think to myself. When was the last time a retraction ran anywhere but in a small inset on page twelve? The untruths go on the front page. Corrections are buried.
I’ll write the piece anyway. I’ll make it a book. I can fix this.
Fetching my keys, I run back up to the house, out the front door, and jump in my car. I speed across broken shells. I want to catch Ness, don’t want to sit at the house and wait for him to return. He might stay away until I have to leave, might have Monique or his guards throw me out. Approaching the first guard gate, I lay on my horn, and the gate comes up. A new guard comes out with his hand held up. I blow right by him, kicking up a cloud of dust.
I don’t see a trail from Ness’s car. Too far ahead of me. I get my car up to sixty on that gravel road, reach over my shoulder and grab my seat belt, click it in. Tall trees whiz past, trees that don’t belong here. I feel a kinship with them. These trees understand.
The second guard gate eventually comes into view. Ness has already passed through. A paved highway waits for me on the other side. This time, the gate doesn’t open. A guard steps out, hands raised, asking me to stop. The other guard probably called ahead. This one doesn’t look too happy. I roll down my window as I crunch to a stop.
“Hey, hey,” the guard says. “Take it easy. What the hell is going on?”
“Which way did he go?” I ask.
The guard scrunches up his face. “Who?”
“Ness. Mr. Wilde. Your boss. Which way did he turn? Where would he be going?”
The guard glances up the driveway and deep into the estate. “I haven’t seen him since an hour ago when he came to get the mail. Is everything okay?”
“That doesn’t make sense—” I say. But then it does. I throw the car into reverse and back into the empty parking space beside the guard gate, making a quick three-point turn.
“I’m going to ask you to wait here,” the guard says.
But I’m already gone, peppering the shack with bits of ground shells as I spin out.
I know where Ness went. I have no idea where it leads, but I know how I missed him.
38