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“Uh, should we ask for more bread?” Max held up the empty basket for her to see.

On a sarcasm scale of one to ten, his tone of voice was a seven, but he was smiling, which was confusing to her.

“Oh goodness! I ate way more than my share, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you angry with me for some reason?”

“No, why?”

“You seem cranky.”

“No, I just had a tough day, that’s all.”

“Sorry I woofed all the bread.”

“Forget it. It’s okay. You can afford it. You still have that girlish metabolism.”

“Please. I worked out this afternoon to one of my aunt’s videos and almost keeled.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I have to stay in shape, especially with you around.”

Max’s mood seemed to brighten then. “Yeah, you’d better. Your aunts have a phenomenal business, don’t they?”

“Yeah. They’re always on the go trying to catch up with themselves.”

“I know what that’s like.”

“Right? Me too. So, tell me all about your tough day. What happened?”

“Don’t make me relive it.” He took a long sip of his drink, swirled the ice around to gather the rest of the liquid for one last swallow, and drained the glass. “Would you like another cocktail or do you want to order a bottle of wine?”

“Whatever you think is okay with me. I could just have a glass of something with my steak if you don’t want to get a whole bottle.”

“Let me look at the wine list again. Okay, here’s a South American red that’s supposed to be pretty good.”

He gave the universal signal—one raised forefinger combined with a nod—to the manager, and because he caught her eye, she came right over to the table.

“What can I get for y’all?”

“We’re thinking wine? How’s this Argentinean Malbec?”

“Very popular. It’s the chef’s favorite. Personally, I like this California Merlot here. Lots of plum and blackberry.” She pointed to the list. “It’s only four dollars more but it’s about twice as good, but that’s just my opinion.”

“Well, I think we should go with your opinion. Why not? We’ll have the Merlot.”

“Thanks. I’ll get that for you right away.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jesse.”

“Well, thanks, Jesse.”

“You’re welcome. The sommelier is off tonight.” Before she walked away, she winked at Beth and Max.

“I love that. A manager of a busy place like this and she still has a sense of humor. Amazing,” Max said.

“Because it takes a gigantic sense of humor to run a restaurant, lemme tell you.”

“I’m sure you’re right about that.”

“So, Max? Are you going to tell me what’s going on or what? Something is definitely wrong here. You seem like totally wigged-out.”

“I’m okay.”

“No you’re not. You seem very distracted. You can tell me. C’mon.”

Max sighed hard and cocked his head to one side.

“Well, for one thing, your uncle took a pass on my deal without even really looking at it.”

“Oh no! He did? Gosh, that’s awful! Did he say why?” Beth thought she said that convincingly enough, without giving any signal that she already knew the story.

“Oh, it’s okay. It wasn’t personal. He just doesn’t do commercial real estate deals. You know, in the investment world, everyone has their areas of expertise and this just isn’t his.”

“I don’t know what all Uncle Henry invests in.”

“Well, he probably doesn’t want any risk right now.”

“Yeah, all you read in the papers is that this company is closing and that one is closing…it’s bad.”

“Yeah, but it’s not fatal, you know? This is when people with faith in themselves can really rake it in.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not offended or anything but it’s a very big disappointment because I really thought it would be a no-brainer, especially for a man like him.”

“Oh, gosh, that’s not right. It just seems so stupid. I mean, the country is in like this huge flipping mess, disasters in the stock markets, and here’s a sure thing, right?”

“Well, yeah. Exactly! It’s absolutely a sure thing or I wouldn’t have all my money riding on it. And the way I have this structured, it is a very good deal for investors. First, there’s a rapid payback. Then there’s a percentage of ownership and buyout at the end of five years.”

“Really? How rapid is a rapid payback?”

“Six months at the most.”

“Wow. That doesn’t seem like such a big risk then, does it?”

“It’s not. It’s hardly a risk at all.”

“And what’s the percentage of ownership?”

“That depends on the level of commitment, right?”

“Right.” Beth had no idea what the correlation might be between commitment and percentage of ownership but it made sense to her somehow. “So what would be a healthy commitment?”

“Anything more than a hundred thousand.”

“Wow.” That seemed like a fortune to her, but when she considered all that was going into the building, maybe it wasn’t so much.

Their waiter put their appetizers in front of them and Beth ate hers as though she was starving. It seemed that Max had awakened all sorts of appetites in Beth, and watching her eat made him shake his head and smile.

“I never knew a salad could be so delicious!” she said. “Do you want a bite? This fried goat cheese is unbelievable.”

“No thanks, I’m happy with this. Do you want a quesadilla? It’s pretty good too.”

“Sure!”

Max offered her a steaming forkful of his food and Beth allowed him to feed it to her, her eyes never leaving his. Of course, he had given her too much for one mouthful, so with her hand over her mouth she had to go through some grimacing and interesting exercises in mastication to make it disappear.

“Good?” he asked.

She bobbed her head up and down, grinning with enthusiasm for the small bite of a tortilla stuffed with a few shreds of seasoned duck meat. She loved it so much when he fed her she would have believed it was manna.

“Oh yeah,” she said emphatically. “I could eat a whole lot of that before I got sick of it.”

“Let’s not talk about getting sick, if it’s okay with you?”

“Oh, shoot, I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Sorry, but probably not.”

“Nice.”

Although Max said
Sorry, but probably not
in a pleasant enough way and with a large grin, she didn’t think it was such a nice thing to say. Truly, no gentleman and most of all no genteel son of the South should ever remind a lady of something so devastating and humiliating. It was best to let those kinds of demoralizing incidents go to their eternal rest as quickly as they could take flight.

That one uncertain moment left the possibility of romantic disingenuousness in Beth’s heart, but Beth decided to erase it from her mind. He had been on the receiving end of some very bad news that day and he was understandably moody. Beth reassured herself that no man could make love with the tenderness and simultaneous wild abandon of Max Mitchell and not truly care about his partner. The very thought that he didn’t feel great affection for her seemed absolutely absurd.

They worked their way through their steaks and then shared a piece of Station 22’s trademark coconut cake and at long last Beth wanted no more to eat. The conversation had shifted away from Max’s problems, and the more wine he consumed the more their thoughts traveled to the bedroom.

Throughout dinner Max would say things like
Remember last night?
And she would blush and say
I loved it.

As he poured out the last of the wine, he looked around to see if anyone was listening and then whispered something naughty.
Just wait until I get you in bed later.

Beth swallowed hard and whispered back to him,
Remember Mae West said
,
I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, and three times to make sure.

Max ran his hand through his hair and said, “I think it’s time for the check.”

After a dinner of titillating innuendo, the rest of the evening did not play out as Beth had hoped and expected it would. It was only nine when they left the restaurant and returned to the Island Gamble. Max, who was cruising through all the channels on the television and drinking a bottle of water, seemed mildly uninterested in rushing to the bedroom, which surprised and disappointed her. But while she walked Lola, she told herself this might be another difference between guys her age and Max. Perhaps older men saw no reason to rush toward the inevitable. They would get to the bedroom before the night was over; she was certain of that. Or, she thought, since it was really too early to go to sleep for the night, maybe he didn’t want to undress, fool around, get dressed, undress again to sleep with her, fool around some more, and then get up somewhere in the middle of the night, dress yet again, and slip out in the dark before she would know he was leaving. It would be too much dressing and undressing, and just as a practical matter, they should wait until ten-thirty or so. Or maybe he was worn out from the night before. Even she was still somewhat fatigued and he probably was too. She told herself not to pressure him to hop in the sack and then expect crazy energetic sex all night. Somewhere around her sixth or seventh rationalization of why he wasn’t all over her she started feeling insulted. Exactly why
wasn’t
he all over her?

By the time she went back in the house, gave Lola a treat, and put her back in her crate, she had worked herself into a respectably sized hissy fit.

He was half asleep watching an old movie. She stood between him and the television screen with her hands on her hips and said, “Max?”

“What? You’re blocking the screen.”

“Max! Do you want to screw or what?”

Max sat up straight, looked up at her, opened his eyes wide, burst out laughing, and said, “Did I hear you right?”

“Yes! Now just tell me! Yes or no!”

“What red-blooded male in his right mind would say no to that? Come with me!”

Max led her upstairs to her room and thus ensued the shortest time spent in a sexual act in recorded human history, including the infamous Masters and Johnson studies. While Max immediately fell into a deep sleep and snored and snorted like something from deep within the forest primeval, Beth, in a state of very specific dissatisfaction, told herself that Momma was right when she sang that old Supremes song from the sixties.
You can’t hurry love.

12

Bank on It

[email protected]

Maggie, Had a dream about Livvie last night. We were shopping together, can’t remember the details but she was awfully happy about something. I love when I dream about her.

[email protected]

Susan? Think there’s a connection between Beth and Cecily running around together and how we never could have done that with Livvie unless we were babies still in a carriage? Times have changed.

[email protected]

I went shopping with her all the time. Where were you? With Lucius on the porch? xx

B
ETH SPENT THE
better part of the next morning wondering about two things. The lesser issue was this: Exactly how did Max pull off another David Copperfield and disappear from her bed in the middle of the night without her knowing it? She never even felt one hair rise from the mattress whenever it was that he got up to leave. And the other infinitely more important question was, How was she going to save Max from financial peril so that he would love her forever?

Truly? In her brief years, Beth had learned that
nothing
was forever. The blissful periods of her life had been so very fleeting and the dark ones slogged on through a tar pit, only seeming like they might last an eternity, but neither bliss or despair ever did. This new joy would surely pass, or maybe it wouldn’t, if she could cement things. Her immediate mission was to seize the happiness that was her love for Max and ride that wave the whole way to the beach. In any case, these were excellent questions that women have pondered since the whole cosmic misunderstanding about the apple in the Garden and that stupid snake. To where do men disappear and how do we hang on to the good ones?

After she showered and dressed, she walked Lola, apologizing for tossing her bahunkus in her crate the previous night and just abandoning her to satisfy, or to attempt to satisfy, her own carnal needs. Lola was either in a forgiving mood, had no memory of the event, or was just happy to be outside taking in all the smells of the world, because Beth could detect nothing untoward in Lola’s attitude. It was difficult to tell with dogs, even those believed to be partly human.

Later, while munching on a breakfast of low-fat blueberry yogurt, one half of a toasted dry English muffin, and coffee, she came to the conclusion that there was one man and only one man who could have a reasonable solution. Woody. And if not him, Aunt Sophie might be able to help her sort out the whole problem. It made her nervous because even in her state of almost utter delusion she knew there were serious dangers in enlisting their help. One involved getting the actual money, and the other public exposure. She didn’t want her whole family to know anything about Max yet and Aunt Sophie might let it slip. And she wasn’t positive she could secure the funds to help Max either. But she was feeling very desperate to seal her relationship with Max. That was what mattered most. But since she knew she could not do this on her own, there was no other path but to make a cautious move to seek advice and help.

After she cleaned up the kitchen and fed Lola, she ran upstairs and dialed Woody’s direct office number.

“This is Woody Morrison.” His voice sounded hassled and hurried.

“Hey! It’s Beth! Is this a good time to talk? You sound busy.”

“Uh, no. This is fine. Let me just close my door. Hold on, okay?”

She could hear the squeak of his chair as it rolled away from his desk, then the heels of his shoes echoing as he took a few steps, and last the door closing with a profound click, creating a hushed sound.

“Okay, I’m back. So what’s going on?”

“Hon, you need to get yourself a rug and a can of WD-40.”

“You’re telling me? We’re renovating the whole floor because of a huge leak from one of the upper floors. Everything around here is almost gutted to the bricks. No curtains, no carpet, they even took my plants out. Jackhammers and buzz saws screaming all day long—you can hardly hear yourself think.”

“Good grief!”

“It’s
so
bad that your uncle and all of the other partners went fishing for two weeks in Jackson Hole.”

“Wow. Major bummer. Did you know we have a restaurant here named Jackson Hole? I went there the other night. It’s pretty good.” Except for the crab cake, she thought.

“No kidding. Well, we’ll have to go there. Anyway, what’s going on?”

“Well, I’m not so sure where to start but I’ve been thinking and I need your help.”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Well, I keep thinking about Max’s development project. And you were right, it’s a phenomenal deal. I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know why Henry passed. I mean, I know what he said about it being out of his normal scope, but I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t a big enough investment to get him excited. Even so, I still think he made a huge mistake to let it go.”

“Exactly. I read the papers and I see what’s happening out there. There are so few opportunities to make any real money in a short period of time.”

“Boy, is that the truth! Can somebody bring back the MasterCard IPO? Ah, the good old days.”

Beth was completely uninformed about the MasterCard IPO. Most likely she had been buried in a library studying for a test or writing a paper.

“Then there’s another thing that has been rattling around in my mind.”

“What’s that?”

“My own trust. It’s not exactly earning what it has in the past.”

“Is that so? Hold on, I’ll pull it up on my screen. What’s your Social Security number?”

Beth rattled if off to him and Woody typed it into his database.

“Okay, let’s see what we have here.”

“Humph. What you’ve got there is a bunch of stuff that is totally uninteresting to me, and the rest of it? I don’t even know what it is, much less understand how it all works anyway.”

“That’s why you have me, Miss Hayes. Okay, okay. Here’s the scoop. Last year you earned about ten percent. The same thing goes for the prior, uh, one, two—four years. This year you’re going to be down by about thirty-five percent, but so is the rest of the world. Not too bad.”

“Wait a second here. My earnings are off thirty-five percent and that’s a good thing? Could you explain that to me?”

“Sure. First of all, there’s this darn recession. There are some real pessimists out there who say that by year’s end we’re going to be in a hole like we haven’t seen in decades. First, it was housing and then it was Detroit, right?”

“And? What’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, it’s like dominoes. A guy in the auto industry loses his job. Then he can’t afford his mortgage, so he loses his house. On and on it goes. People aren’t shopping, going to movies, restaurants, traveling—nobody’s spending money.”

“Trickle-down disaster. I know. I know. Bor-ing!”

“Exactly. But true. Retail chain stores, entertainment, hotels, et cetera…all those industries are impacted and the values of their stocks go down. Look, Beth, I don’t think you have to worry. Your portfolio is half equities and half debt, which is the classic way to invest a trust like yours. And it’s a good mix of different kinds of things. Foreign markets, domestic municipalities, and so on. So this year you earn a little less? It’s not catastrophic. We’ll make it up.”

“But I have no say-so about any of this. Zero! Zilch! Nada! And it’s
my
money. I could be going down the tubes and I can’t do a thing to stop it.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust your broker?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Well, FYI, your uncle is the one who chose what to invest you in. I’m just watching the markets and keeping an eye on the account. If you want I can have him call you.”

Beth could feel a frost descending into the conversation, and that was the last thing she wanted.

“Oh, Woody. I’m not blaming you for anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure I should be thanking you for something if I knew what you were talking about. I’m just frustrated. I see this perfectly wonderful opportunity to make a ton of money and I can’t do it because I have no power over my own life.”

“You mean Max’s deal?”

“Yeah. And you agree with me, right?”

“Look, I didn’t really dig into it to see any downside, but on the surface? Yeah, I already told you. I think it’s a great chance to make some serious money. I wonder how much you have to spend to get in the game?”

“I’m not sure of all the details and it doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t do anything about it.”

“Well, actually, you can.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could actually borrow some money against your capital.”

“You mean, like get a loan and use my trust like for collateral or something like that?”

“Exactly. In your case, you’d have to get your mother to sign off on it. But, yeah, you’d go to the bank and get a loan.”

“Really. Any old bank?”

“Well, I’d recommend using a well-known bank. Bigger banks make more loans. It would be less complicated and probably faster.”

“Gosh.” Beth was quiet for a few seconds and then she said, “So, Woody?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you help me figure this out?”

“Of course.”

“What are you doing this weekend?”

“Why? Is this an invitation?”

“Yeah! Pack your calculator and a bathing suit, come spend the weekend, and help me figure this out. I have to work at night but we can hang out during the day?”

“That sounds like a great idea. I’ll pay Max Mitchell a visit or two and get more details. We can discuss our entrepreneurial possibilities on that porch. God, I love that porch. When you get home Friday night we’ll grab a glass of wine and make a plan.”

“Oh, Woody, that would be wonderful. You are the best!”

“Thanks! Wait. If I wait till Friday to come I won’t get to see the job site at work.”

“So, can you come Thursday?”

“Much better idea. Not much doing here anyway with everyone gone. I’ll take off early to beat the traffic and probably get there around six?”

“Great! If I’m not here I’ll leave a key…”

He would find a key under the terra-cotta planter with the chipped ruffled lip containing an asparagus fern on the second-from-the-bottom step on the ocean side of the house. In case there were robbers lurking about, the obscure location would fool them all and save the family’s generations of priceless treasures from being sold to pawnshops and traded in back alleys for drugs. (To date, this had never happened, but that didn’t mean it could not. And there are no such alleys on Sullivans Island.)

“Easy enough. When I get there, I’ll come down to the restaurant and eat at the bar.”

“And be that Lonely Guy?” Beth found herself pulling on the phone cord and looking at the ceiling smiling and she wondered if she sounded like she was flirting. She let go of the cord and stood up straight. After all, they were just friends and nothing more.

“Yeah, I’ll try to look heartbroken and see what happens.”

“You’ll have the local talent drooling all over you, you know. I mean, Sullivans Island isn’t Atlanta, but we have our own healthy quota of nympho-ho cougars on the prowl.”

“One can always hope.”

She knew he was smiling. “Ew. Dog.” Beth giggled and they said goodbye.

Beth was upstairs in the second bedroom she was slowly converting to an office of sorts, which would never be photographed for an issue of
Architectural Digest,
that much was certain. The clutter alone would have made her Aunt Maggie twitch her way across the entire universe into eternity. But a few stacks of catalogs and opened bags of pretzels here and a pile of books, magazines, doggie accoutrements, and dirty laundry there didn’t bother Beth, who was working away making a list of topics for possible pitches for the
Island Eye News.

She thought she might write about the scarcity of public parking and why that scarcity was a good thing. After all, she didn’t want Sullivans Island or the Isle of Palms to become some horrible eyesore, with wildly overpopulated commercial areas. They would need more policemen to keep the peace, which would cause taxes to go up that would be a burden to older residents, and most important, it would destroy the serenity that made those islands so desirable in the first place. There was a growing lobby of merchants who wanted to grow their businesses but they couldn’t serve their customers when there was no place for them to park. Beth saw them all as the enemy.