21-07-2026, 04:38 AM
After a few moments she wiped her face and without looking back at me, said, “I am sorry, Mon Chéri. I was just...just remembering....how André looked when we took him to a small village on the Portuguese coast last Fall. It looked like this, without the tourist shops. He ran along the beach making a mess of his new clothes and harassing the fishermen working on their nets in the sun.”
She turned and buried her face against me. “I’m sorry. So sorry. But I miss him.”
I didn’t say anything. Just held her. And it didn’t matter that she was lying. She missed her son. And her husband. And her life. Which was far from here. But it had been my choice. This was part of it all. And no matter how bad it hurt to know who she should have been with, I had made the deal with the Devil to take the bad with the good of having her here.
We walked hand in hand to the Castillo de San Marcos, or as everyone in North Florida has called it since well before I was a twinkle in my daddy’s eye, The Old Fort. Its rolling green approach was covered with kids and picnickers. We walked up to the entrance and I paid the $14 for two tickets and I led the way.
I wasn’t a professional guide, but I had been in here so many times as a kid I felt like I could have done a professional job. I took her through the powder magazine, a dark prison cell, the chapel and guard rooms. The walls seemed to close in, the coquina walls felt colder than the underground location could account for.
When I’d been a kid I sometimes fantasized that there were real ghosts here. I imagined that the short—even shorter than me—dark haired men in the funny armor and their eyes in paintings both disturbingly cold and at the same time fiery, had left behind their spirits when they had died of disease or enemy attacks.
I knew it was all bullshit, but there had been a lot of pain and dying inside and outside these rugged walls and if there was any place in Northeast Florida that deserved a few ghosts rattling chains, the Old Fort would have been the place.
Or sometimes, I thought when I became a teenager and old enough to have my heart broken by the some luscious young lady who didn’t see the stud I was underneath the nerd costume I wore, I imagined a dark-haired Spanish soldier with a cool goatee coming down with a fever and dying of a broken heart when the woman he loved returned to Spain with a rival.
When I got a little older, I realized that lovesick soldier would probably just purchase a whore, camp follower or possibly one of the Creek, Choctaw or
Seminole women who’d been captured by slavers. I got to be very cynical after the tenth time I saw the love of my life walk away with some idiot who just happened to be tall enough to pat me on the head condescendingly as he took my girl away.
We walked to an upper level where we could look out over the Bridge of Lions and the Matanzas Harbor. The sun was blinding on the choppy waters as an early Fall nor’easter blew the wind ahead of it. In a few hours the sky would be overcast and then the sky would fall in, but right now it was Florida at its best.
I grabbed Aline’s hand and said, “Let’s go down.”
We walked out onto the rolling hillside that led from the Fort’s entrance to the street.
“I’ve got to do this,” I said, and I started trotting. Holding my hand, she stumbled and then as long legged as she was she started to catch up with me. Then we were racing and laughing like crazy, laughing like kids while tourists and mothers and fathers and small children just stared at us. Finally, just before we ran out of grass and tumbled onto the bricks, I fell to my knees and dragged her along with me.
She was laughing so hard she could barely speak, but she managed to say, “What....what...what was that all about?”
“I loved to do that from the time I was nine or ten. My friends and I would go up to the Fort and run down as fast as we could and try not to sail out into traffic. Of course, nobody ever drove more than 15 miles an hour by here, but even so it’s a wonder any of us survived.”
“You are crazy, a crazy man,” she said, kissing my check. “That’s me, a wild and crazy guy.”
For just those few seconds I hadn’t felt every second of my 42 years. It had felt good.
“Oh,” she said finally. “What time did you say we had that reservation at The Top Floor?”
“7:30. We have 45 minutes. Plenty of time.”
“Well, I need to get in and get a long bath and. get some things done.”
I just gave her a look and she gave me a shrug. “Wait and see.”
I leaned back on the couch and let go of her. The Top Floor is a restaurant located on the 15th floor of the Barnett Bank Building. It takes up the entire floor and through its windows you can see all of Jacksonville spread out below and around you.
Jacksonville, and all of Florida, for that matter, is about six inches above sea level so there’s nothing to block your view for miles around.
It’s one of the most impressive sights in the city and I wanted to share that with Aline on my birthday. And the food isn’t bad, if you like steak and potatoes. I’m not a huge steak guy, but it felt appropriate for such landmark birthday.
As Aline stepped into the bathroom my cell rang. I almost didn’t check it, but there was always the chance that it was important.
I saw the number and realized it had to be Kelly or Cathy Bascomb. I knew Kelly was still living with Debbie’s parents. I had a hard time figuring why Kelly would be calling me on a prime date night.
“Dad, hi.”
“Hey Kelly. What are you up to?”
“BJ and I wanted to check one more time. Neither one of us is out tonight and we wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind and go out tonight for your birthday.”
I waited a decent interval to reply and then lied my ass off.
“I’m sorry baby. I know this sounds like an old recording, but I have been hot and heavy on some important cases the last week. I’m in my underwear at the condo watching a movie on television and I’ll probably be snoring before 9. I’d fall asleep on you.
“The date’s just a number. Give me a couple of weeks and we’ll go out and do something special, something you guys will enjoy. Can you give me a rain check?”
“Okay. I’ll find something to do tonight. You get some rest. You’ve an old man, now you know.”
“Don’t rub it in. I promise, I’ll contact you when the smoke settles and arrange a nice night out.”
Something entered my head then and it popped out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop myself. I found myself lowering my voice, even though there was no way Aline could have heard me in the bathroom, over the running water.
“We can all get together. You, your brother, your grandmother and grandfather. Even...tell your mother she’s welcome if she wants to come out for dinner with us. Tell her...I promise...truce. We’re going to have to learn...to be around each other...someday.”
The other words in my head wouldn’t come out. It would be the first time in nearly 20 years I had a birthday party where she wasn’t. I knew that was the reality of it now, but it suddenly hit me all over again. I was in my apartment with a beautiful naked woman and I was missing my ex-wife.
“I’ll tell her, dad. I...think she might like that. Okay, I’ll let you go. Get some rest.”
I clicked the phone off. And sat on the couch wondering if I was doing the right thing. But we’d have the rest of our lives together. I had less than two weeks with Aline, and it would probably have to last me for the rest of my life.
And how could I leave Aline alone, a secret from my family while I went out for a birthday celebration. On the other hand, how could I introduce Aline to my kids and say, “By the way, kids, this is the married lady that is cheating on her husband with me. She’s a really nice lady.”
Maybe they could do that in Europe. But not in Jacksonville, Florida. I shook my head just thinking about it.
I yelled at Aline, but she had a small cassette player she’d brought with her going in the bathroom with some French pop tune and I was sure she couldn’t hear me. I went to the closet, pulled out a nice pair of slacks and a V-necked blue pullover. The Top Floor was expensive, but not formal.
I was slipping some black loafers on when the doorbell rang.
Who the hell would be at my door on a Saturday evening? I wondered if something had happened at the jail with Sutton, or...it could be anything. But the phone hadn’t beeped while I was on the phone with Kelly to indicate another call was holding.
The universe did a 180 and I felt like Alice falling through the Looking Glass. I had reached the door and looked through the peep hole.
Even though this wasn’t a bad neighborhood, it was still downtown Jacksonville and I wasn’t opening the door without knowing what was waiting on the other side. I recognized what I was looking at, but my eyes weren’t transmitting the signals to my brain.
Before I could move, a key turned in the lock and I moved backward without thinking as the door opened outward.
I stared at my son and daughter at the front of the parade, followed closely by my mother and my stepfather, my ex-mother and father-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, her six-year-old daughter Amy and 8-year-old son Ricky, and MY EX WIFE? What Circle of Hell had I been dumped into?
“Dad...what...I thought...”
“Yeah, Dad,” Kelly said, “You said you were going to bed. We came by to surprise you and take you out for a cool birthday dinner.”
“Yes, son,” my mother said, advancing on me like a stalking lioness. “We thought we were going to have to get you dressed and take you out. But it looks like you beat us to it. Where were you going, and why didn’t you want us to know about it?”
I didn’t realize that she was backing me into my lair until I realized I’d passed beyond the couch and the whole expedition was inside my condo.
“Boy, this place is really small,” Ricky said, looking around. “Sh....baby, no. ” Clarice said.
I heard a sound behind me and I realized that my entire life had been building to this moment. The door to the bathroom was turning and as it opened outward I heard a Cranberry’s tune we had heard at O’Brien’s. When Aline realized how much I loved it, she’d downloaded it.
“Do you like? I thought we might...test it out. before we-“
Only a few times in my life have I seen a person’s jaw literally drop. She stared at me and what stood behind me and her voice died away.
“Mommy, that lady doesn’t have any clothes on.”
It was one of those moments when you can hear the blood pumping through your carotid artery, you can hear the elements inside your apartment’s AC system humming, you can hear the individual breaths of a half dozen human beings against a canvas of silence.
And then Aline was scrambling backwards, shifting her hands from her groin to her breasts and back again, gaze flashing from one set of astonished eyes to another as she disappeared into the bathroom whose door slammed shut.
“...do you have to let it linger ”
She turned and buried her face against me. “I’m sorry. So sorry. But I miss him.”
I didn’t say anything. Just held her. And it didn’t matter that she was lying. She missed her son. And her husband. And her life. Which was far from here. But it had been my choice. This was part of it all. And no matter how bad it hurt to know who she should have been with, I had made the deal with the Devil to take the bad with the good of having her here.
We walked hand in hand to the Castillo de San Marcos, or as everyone in North Florida has called it since well before I was a twinkle in my daddy’s eye, The Old Fort. Its rolling green approach was covered with kids and picnickers. We walked up to the entrance and I paid the $14 for two tickets and I led the way.
I wasn’t a professional guide, but I had been in here so many times as a kid I felt like I could have done a professional job. I took her through the powder magazine, a dark prison cell, the chapel and guard rooms. The walls seemed to close in, the coquina walls felt colder than the underground location could account for.
When I’d been a kid I sometimes fantasized that there were real ghosts here. I imagined that the short—even shorter than me—dark haired men in the funny armor and their eyes in paintings both disturbingly cold and at the same time fiery, had left behind their spirits when they had died of disease or enemy attacks.
I knew it was all bullshit, but there had been a lot of pain and dying inside and outside these rugged walls and if there was any place in Northeast Florida that deserved a few ghosts rattling chains, the Old Fort would have been the place.
Or sometimes, I thought when I became a teenager and old enough to have my heart broken by the some luscious young lady who didn’t see the stud I was underneath the nerd costume I wore, I imagined a dark-haired Spanish soldier with a cool goatee coming down with a fever and dying of a broken heart when the woman he loved returned to Spain with a rival.
When I got a little older, I realized that lovesick soldier would probably just purchase a whore, camp follower or possibly one of the Creek, Choctaw or
Seminole women who’d been captured by slavers. I got to be very cynical after the tenth time I saw the love of my life walk away with some idiot who just happened to be tall enough to pat me on the head condescendingly as he took my girl away.
We walked to an upper level where we could look out over the Bridge of Lions and the Matanzas Harbor. The sun was blinding on the choppy waters as an early Fall nor’easter blew the wind ahead of it. In a few hours the sky would be overcast and then the sky would fall in, but right now it was Florida at its best.
I grabbed Aline’s hand and said, “Let’s go down.”
We walked out onto the rolling hillside that led from the Fort’s entrance to the street.
“I’ve got to do this,” I said, and I started trotting. Holding my hand, she stumbled and then as long legged as she was she started to catch up with me. Then we were racing and laughing like crazy, laughing like kids while tourists and mothers and fathers and small children just stared at us. Finally, just before we ran out of grass and tumbled onto the bricks, I fell to my knees and dragged her along with me.
She was laughing so hard she could barely speak, but she managed to say, “What....what...what was that all about?”
“I loved to do that from the time I was nine or ten. My friends and I would go up to the Fort and run down as fast as we could and try not to sail out into traffic. Of course, nobody ever drove more than 15 miles an hour by here, but even so it’s a wonder any of us survived.”
“You are crazy, a crazy man,” she said, kissing my check. “That’s me, a wild and crazy guy.”
For just those few seconds I hadn’t felt every second of my 42 years. It had felt good.
THREE HOURS LATER
I tried to untangle my tongue so I could catch my breath. I thought that Philippe’s ghost had gone back into whatever limbo he’d come out of because I couldn’t feel him between us. She lay back on the couch naked to the waist, her breasts dripping with my spit from the sucking I’d been giving them for the last 10 minutes. We could have had the real thing, but we both were putting it off.“Oh,” she said finally. “What time did you say we had that reservation at The Top Floor?”
“7:30. We have 45 minutes. Plenty of time.”
“Well, I need to get in and get a long bath and. get some things done.”
I just gave her a look and she gave me a shrug. “Wait and see.”
I leaned back on the couch and let go of her. The Top Floor is a restaurant located on the 15th floor of the Barnett Bank Building. It takes up the entire floor and through its windows you can see all of Jacksonville spread out below and around you.
Jacksonville, and all of Florida, for that matter, is about six inches above sea level so there’s nothing to block your view for miles around.
It’s one of the most impressive sights in the city and I wanted to share that with Aline on my birthday. And the food isn’t bad, if you like steak and potatoes. I’m not a huge steak guy, but it felt appropriate for such landmark birthday.
As Aline stepped into the bathroom my cell rang. I almost didn’t check it, but there was always the chance that it was important.
I saw the number and realized it had to be Kelly or Cathy Bascomb. I knew Kelly was still living with Debbie’s parents. I had a hard time figuring why Kelly would be calling me on a prime date night.
“Dad, hi.”
“Hey Kelly. What are you up to?”
“BJ and I wanted to check one more time. Neither one of us is out tonight and we wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind and go out tonight for your birthday.”
I waited a decent interval to reply and then lied my ass off.
“I’m sorry baby. I know this sounds like an old recording, but I have been hot and heavy on some important cases the last week. I’m in my underwear at the condo watching a movie on television and I’ll probably be snoring before 9. I’d fall asleep on you.
“The date’s just a number. Give me a couple of weeks and we’ll go out and do something special, something you guys will enjoy. Can you give me a rain check?”
“Okay. I’ll find something to do tonight. You get some rest. You’ve an old man, now you know.”
“Don’t rub it in. I promise, I’ll contact you when the smoke settles and arrange a nice night out.”
Something entered my head then and it popped out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop myself. I found myself lowering my voice, even though there was no way Aline could have heard me in the bathroom, over the running water.
“We can all get together. You, your brother, your grandmother and grandfather. Even...tell your mother she’s welcome if she wants to come out for dinner with us. Tell her...I promise...truce. We’re going to have to learn...to be around each other...someday.”
The other words in my head wouldn’t come out. It would be the first time in nearly 20 years I had a birthday party where she wasn’t. I knew that was the reality of it now, but it suddenly hit me all over again. I was in my apartment with a beautiful naked woman and I was missing my ex-wife.
“I’ll tell her, dad. I...think she might like that. Okay, I’ll let you go. Get some rest.”
I clicked the phone off. And sat on the couch wondering if I was doing the right thing. But we’d have the rest of our lives together. I had less than two weeks with Aline, and it would probably have to last me for the rest of my life.
And how could I leave Aline alone, a secret from my family while I went out for a birthday celebration. On the other hand, how could I introduce Aline to my kids and say, “By the way, kids, this is the married lady that is cheating on her husband with me. She’s a really nice lady.”
Maybe they could do that in Europe. But not in Jacksonville, Florida. I shook my head just thinking about it.
I yelled at Aline, but she had a small cassette player she’d brought with her going in the bathroom with some French pop tune and I was sure she couldn’t hear me. I went to the closet, pulled out a nice pair of slacks and a V-necked blue pullover. The Top Floor was expensive, but not formal.
I was slipping some black loafers on when the doorbell rang.
Who the hell would be at my door on a Saturday evening? I wondered if something had happened at the jail with Sutton, or...it could be anything. But the phone hadn’t beeped while I was on the phone with Kelly to indicate another call was holding.
The universe did a 180 and I felt like Alice falling through the Looking Glass. I had reached the door and looked through the peep hole.
Even though this wasn’t a bad neighborhood, it was still downtown Jacksonville and I wasn’t opening the door without knowing what was waiting on the other side. I recognized what I was looking at, but my eyes weren’t transmitting the signals to my brain.
Before I could move, a key turned in the lock and I moved backward without thinking as the door opened outward.
“Surprise...”
“Hi, Dad...we... ”
“Dad....I thought. ”
“Bill, Happy Birthday son. ”
They all stared at me in my slacks and pullover and shoes and I stared back. “Hi....Kelly..BJ....Mom...Charles.... Roy?
...Cathy?.....Clarice....Ricky..... Amy”
I couldn’t believe it but I said, “Debbie??”
I stared at my son and daughter at the front of the parade, followed closely by my mother and my stepfather, my ex-mother and father-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, her six-year-old daughter Amy and 8-year-old son Ricky, and MY EX WIFE? What Circle of Hell had I been dumped into?
“Dad...what...I thought...”
“Yeah, Dad,” Kelly said, “You said you were going to bed. We came by to surprise you and take you out for a cool birthday dinner.”
“Yes, son,” my mother said, advancing on me like a stalking lioness. “We thought we were going to have to get you dressed and take you out. But it looks like you beat us to it. Where were you going, and why didn’t you want us to know about it?”
I didn’t realize that she was backing me into my lair until I realized I’d passed beyond the couch and the whole expedition was inside my condo.
“Boy, this place is really small,” Ricky said, looking around. “Sh....baby, no. ” Clarice said.
I heard a sound behind me and I realized that my entire life had been building to this moment. The door to the bathroom was turning and as it opened outward I heard a Cranberry’s tune we had heard at O’Brien’s. When Aline realized how much I loved it, she’d downloaded it.
As the door opened and I spun around in dreamlike slow motion, I heard: “You know I’m such a fool for you
You got me wrapped around your finger Do you have to let it linger..................................... ”
She stepped out like Botticelli’s painting of Aphrodite rising from the sea, all pink and white and jet black wet hair hanging around her shoulders. With the Cranberries spilling out behind her, she advanced toward me on catlike feet, her attention focused on the pink slit of her shaved pussy which she was holding open with her thumb and index finger.“Do you like? I thought we might...test it out. before we-“
Only a few times in my life have I seen a person’s jaw literally drop. She stared at me and what stood behind me and her voice died away.
“Mommy, that lady doesn’t have any clothes on.”
It was one of those moments when you can hear the blood pumping through your carotid artery, you can hear the elements inside your apartment’s AC system humming, you can hear the individual breaths of a half dozen human beings against a canvas of silence.
And then Aline was scrambling backwards, shifting her hands from her groin to her breasts and back again, gaze flashing from one set of astonished eyes to another as she disappeared into the bathroom whose door slammed shut.
“...do you have to let it linger ”
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