Sylvie's Cowboy (3 page)

In the living room all personal treasures,
family photos, or decorative knick-knacks were gone, the trendy
furnishings were sterile. The mega-screen TV was silent. Leslye
moved past the couches to study the blue-gray vista of the Atlantic
Ocean blurred by rain pelting the endless windows of the penthouse.
Muffled thunder vibrated the glass. Leslye sipped her flat,
leftover wine and grimaced.

The packing cacophony from the bedroom
ceased, and Sylvie Pace emerged, eyes raccooned with mascara from
weeping. Her classic black dress fit her like a proverbial glove,
and she was barefooted. Mismatched lingerie drooped over her
shoulder and a shoe hung from one hand.

Sylvie crossed to the window wall and stood
beside Leslye, watching the rain. Wind whistled outside. Thunder
shook the glass. Sylvie started sobbing.

Leslye patted Sylvie on the back. “I don’t
know what to say, Sylvie. It’s like a nightmare. I can imagine how
you must feel. Until yesterday I guess you’d never even heard of
margin calls or collateralized debentures or leveraged buyouts.
This is a hard way to learn.”

Sylvie nodded and pulled herself together.
Never in her crudest imaginings had she thought it was possible for
her father’s fortune to simply disappear almost overnight. She had
always been assured of plenty, of freedom, of leisure. Her
intellect comprehended the definition of “working class” or even
“poor,” but her emotions rejected any possibility of those terms as
applicable to herself. She controlled her sniffles and wiped her
nose on the lingerie she carried, then she headed back to the
bedroom.

Leslye followed her.

Sylvie disappeared into the room-size bedroom
closet.

Leslye leaned against the bedroom doorway and
gagged on another sip of wine.

Sylvie returned from the closet depths and
tossed another load of clothing onto the heap festooning the
now-invisible bed. Then she gasped and began digging through the
clothing until she uncovered a Shar-Pei puppy, who immediately
licked some of the mascara streaks from Sylvie’s face.

“You love me, don’t you Maude, baby,” Sylvie
cooed to the dog. “Yes, you do, I know you do. You love me even
without Harry’s old money, don’t you, baby.”

From the doorway Leslye said, “Are you sure
you won’t let me or Danny help you? A loan, maybe, or at least use
my credit card to rent a car?”

Sylvie set aside the dog and resumed packing.
“Thank you again, Les,” she said, “but, no. It’s not your fault or
Danny’s. Harry made it, and Harry lost it. I’ll make it, too. I’ll
be back. Somehow I’ll get back.”

Leslye scoffed. “Back? You may never leave.
Even though you can’t take the furniture, there’s still an awful
lot to pack.”

“I’m just sorry Danny had to be away on
business,” Sylvie said. “You’ll tell him
au revoir
for me,
won’t you? So he’ll know I didn’t just run off without saying
goodbye?”

Leslye put down the stale wine without regret
and crossed to give Sylvie a sincere-looking hug. “Of course,
dear,” said Leslye. “Dan understands deadlines. That’s all part of
business. It’s just lucky you have somewhere to go on such short
notice.” Straightening away from Sylvie, Leslye looked around the
room and shook her head. “You will never get all this into that
car,” she predicted.

“That ...
thing
is not a car!”
Sylvie grumbled, slapping something into her suitcase angrily. “It
isn’t worthy to suck the exhaust fumes of a real automobile!”

Thursday Morning

At the bustling commercial anchorage of Port
Everglades, Harry Pace’s familiar dove gray Mercedes Benz limousine
squatted on the quayside. A red Ferrari with a vanity plate that
read “SYLVIE1” rolled up a shallow ramp onto a massive shipping
pallet beside the Mercedes.

A few yards away, a mid-size ship of foreign
registry was taking on cargo bound for another continent. A
dockworker emerged from the Ferrari’s driver’s seat and secured the
car to the shipping pallet. Overhead, one of the ship’s herculean
cranes hovered, prepared to lift the cars aboard the foreign
freighter.

Several yards away, Dan Stern and a swarthy
man in an Armani suit were reviewing and signing papers spread out
on the hood of Dan’s personal Bentley. Armani Man nodded at the
cars and the papers. Dan folded the papers and handed them to the
Armani Man. Armani Man lifted his briefcase onto the Bentley’s hood
and opened the case to reveal orderly bundles of cash. Dan had
happily (and quickly) sold Harry’s and Sylvie’s personal vehicles
for an astronomical sum.

Dan motioned to the dockworker, who in turn
motioned to the crane operator, and in seconds the Ferrari and
Mercedes were hoisted high into the air.

Dan happily took possession of the
cash-stuffed briefcase. While he was shaking hands with the Armani
Man, however, Dan’s face turned ashen. The red Ferrari had slipped
its moorings and performed a swan dive off the wooden pallet into
the ocean, spuh-lash! It sank out of sight.

On the ground, Armani Man followed Dan’s
horrified gaze to the foaming splash, the half-empty, swinging
pallet, and the frantic dockworkers. As he watched, the Mercedes
also began listing sickeningly to one side, then it followed the
Ferrari into Davy Jones’ locker.

Without missing a beat, Armani Man retrieved
his briefcase from Dan’s arms and slapped the documents down on the
Bentley’s hood. Armani Man walked away with his money. Dan Stern
stormed across the pier waving his arms, cursing at dockworkers and
crane operators, and turning an unhealthy shade of crimson.

Inside the air-conditioned cab of the loading
crane, its operator dialed a number and then spoke into his cell
phone, “It’s a goner.” The crane operator listened to the other
party’s response, then patted his pocket and, smiling, said, “No,
thank
you
, sir!”

Miles away, across the street from the
Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, a man in a yellow windbreaker,
Stetson hat, and sunglasses hung up his cell phone and tossed an
empty diet root beer can into a nearby recycling bin. The
Windbreaker Man leaned against a lamppost, watching the office
building and chuckling in satisfaction.

Back in Port Everglades, after an hour of
raving and threatening to no avail, Dan Stern was pulling away from
the pier in his Bentley. Dan vented his anger and frustration into
his cell phone. “You don’t understand! How can you not understand?
You are the company’s insurance agent. The car was a company car.
It’s a simple question: How soon can we get a settlement check on
the loss?”

Dan listened to the response of the insurance
agent and, if possible, turned a deeper shade of crimson. “You did
what!” Dan shouted.

Dan held the cell phone away and stared at it
as if it had sprouted venomous fangs. Brakes screeched, horns
honked, and Dan narrowly missed a head-on collision. He tossed the
cell phone into the car’s floorboards, swerved off the road, and
skidded to a halt.

With the car stopped, Dan leaned into the
floorboards, picked up the phone, and put it again to his ear. “How
could that happen?” he asked. “Geez!”

The insurance agent said something.

Dan responded with, “How could you cancel the
insurance?”

The agent said more.

Dan gritted his teeth and asked, “Well,
wouldn’t you get something that important in writing? Why would
you—Me! I didn’t tell you to cancel it, you gold-plated
doofus!”

The agent responded.

Dan growled, “Then you better find out who
did!” He slammed the phone against its dashboard holder and pounded
the steering wheel with his fist.

Miles away, across the street from the
Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, the Windbreaker Man strolled happily
away from his lamppost, whistling “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

...

An hour west of the pier and north of the
offices, highway 27 stretched between canebrakes that rose like
green tidal waves alongside the road. A battered Volkswagen Beetle
convertible, top down, piled high with Sylvie’s luggage, rumbled
and rattled toward wavy mirages shimmering over the sun-tortured
asphalt. Three of the ancient bug’s fenders sported bare body
putty, testimony to repairs never completed.

Sylvie Pace sat regally behind the wheel,
looking wildly out of place in Dior scarf and Porsche Carrera
sunglasses. She looked as incongruous as Princess Diana driving a
mule-drawn buckboard to Buckingham Palace.

Maude, the wrinkled puppy, perched in
Sylvie’s lap. There was not an inch of space for the poor dog
elsewhere in the overburdened little vehicle.

It was mid-afternoon, and Sylvie was
convinced she was totally lost, when the pitted dirt road through
palmetto bushes and scrub oak onto which she had turned finally
ended in the yard of an old ranch house. She parked under a tree,
took Maude under one arm, and went to knock on the ranch house
door.

The door opened. Walt McGurk took a good look
at Sylvie, then at Maude, then back at Sylvie. “Surprised you
remembered how to find the place,” he said.

“I didn’t. I asked for directions at the
yellow house down the road.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s got a few rumors
started.”

He stepped past Sylvie into the yard and
whistled. Butch, Walt’s massive mongrel cow-dog, loped from behind
the house, greeted his master with happy wiggles, and stood
slavering before Sylvie and Maude.

Sylvie lifted Maude from waist to shoulder
high.

Walt grinned.

Butch drooled.

Sylvie lifted Maude as high overhead as she
could.

Looking from Butch to Walt, eyes wide with
fear, Sylvie stammered, “I couldn’t ... I had to ... Maude and I
didn’t have anywhere else to go....”

“Yeah, I sorta been expectin’ ya,” Walt said,
lifting Maude into his arms. He looked at the little dog. “Maude,
is it? Lord, that’s perfect. Looks just like her.”

“Just like whom?” asked Sylvie.

“Maude Stokes. Old busybody, lives in that
yeller house where you stopped and gave her gossip fodder to last
into next month. She always gave Harry—and me—a hard time.”

He placed Maude on the ground and restrained
Sylvie with an outstretched arm while the two dogs disappeared
playfully around the corner of the house. Sylvie stared after
Maude, obviously concerned. Meanwhile, Walt studied Sylvie’s motley
car.

“Nuther one of Harry’s ‘classics,’ huh?” he
said.

“What? Oh, yeah. ‘Harry’s Folly’ I call it,”
answered Sylvie.

Walt nodded. “Yeah. Can’t park it here,
though. I mean, it’s okay ‘til we get ya unloaded, but I’ll show ya
a place in the truck shed to park it.”

Sylvie tried to put her puppy out of her
thoughts for the moment. Butch had probably swallowed Maude whole
by now, anyway. Sylvie straightened her shoulders and prepared to
enter her new domain.

“Would you have someone bring in my things,
please? I’d like to freshen up.” She sauntered past Walt, went into
his house, and closed the door. Walt looked at the closed door for
three long seconds, then shrugged and began unloading the
Volkswagen.

Sylvie was using the bathroom mirror and
touching up her makeup when Walt staggered past the bathroom door,
navigating the hallway from the living room to a bedroom on his
left. He entered the room, dropped the luggage on the floor, and
pushed past Sylvie, who had followed him in. She gave the bedroom
the same horrified look she had given his dog.

“I can’t sleep in this room!”

The only answer was the front door slamming
as Walt went out for another load of luggage. Sylvie took a long,
slow look around the bedroom.

She saw a plain, heavy, wooden bed, dresser,
wardrobe, Navajo blanket for a bedspread, and old Venetian blinds
on the windows. The antlers of a ten-point buck, a bearskin with
head and claws intact, a moose head, mountain lion bust, big horn
sheep trophy, and rifle rack crowded the walls. The front door
slammed again; Walt returning.

Thinking out loud, Sylvie murmured to
herself, “My own father was a cold-blooded killer! The man who
cried in ‘Bambi’ when I was seven went out and blasted warm, fuzzy
creatures to kingdom come the minute my back was turned!”

Walt schlepped into the room and dumped a
final load of luggage on top of the first. He leaned against the
doorjamb to catch his breath.

“There are ... are parts ... and things ...
of dead animals hanging on the walls!” Sylvie told him, as if
warning him to run for his life. He didn’t respond. She clarified
for him: “I can’t sleep in this room!”

“You want to sleep in mine?” he said.

Sylvie looked at him as if he had asked her
to swallow live cockroaches.

“That’s settled,” he said. “Somethin’ to
drink?”

“Sparkling water, please. Swiss, not French.
With a slice of lemon. Make sure the lemon is freshly sliced, not
sitting in the refrigerator since breakfast. And crushed ice, no
cubes.” Sylvie bent to inspect the Navajo blanket for vermin. She
didn’t see the look Walt gave her before he shook his head and left
the room.

Walt entered his homespun, cozy kitchen
whistling “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” He plundered through a cabinet of
mismatched glasses, found one tinted green, and put it on the
Formica counter.

He opened his refrigerator and studied a case
of diet root beer, many jars of homemade preserves and pickles,
fresh vegetables and fruit, bread, and sandwich condiments. No
sparkling water, Swiss or French. No lemons, sliced or
otherwise.

Closing the refrigerator door, Walt filled
the green glass with tap water. He opened a cupboard, found the
Alka-Seltzer, broke a tablet in half, and dropped it into the
glass. Predictably, it fizzed.

He scooped a yellow squash from a basket on
the floor and impaled it on a countertop cutting board with the
hunting knife from his belt. Then he sliced a thin wagon-wheel
shape off it and, using his knife, poked the piece of squash to the
bottom of the green glass of Alka-Seltzer.