One Way or Another(15)

12

In New York, Martha was lingering over her usual morning macchiato and sesame bagel in the deli near her apartment, prior to meeting a client to go over the revamped designs. This was the third set and Martha suspected the total might rise to four. Or even five. Some of these women were too rich even to know their own minds, let alone make up their minds. One day it was this, the next that; in fact the grass was always greener. It paid, in Martha’s opinion, to have less and enjoy what you had, but ever the diplomat, she was always concerned for her clients’ well-being, striving to make sure they were, in the end, happy. That was her job, and despite its frustrations she loved it and found it creative.

Anyhow, for once her mind was not on her job; it was back in Turkey with Marco. Marco and Martha. It sounded like a cartoon, an animated movie that would make people laugh. Marco had called her again about the girl he supposedly had seen fall off a boat and drown, and since then she’d been worried about him. This was a girl, Marco also said, who had been beaten around the head. She was bleeding as she fell; a girl he had searched the sea for—and not found.

Spooning up the froth on her macchiato Martha wondered if there had been such an incident. Since no missing person had been reported she had questioned Marco as to exactly what he thought he had seen.

“Not thought,” he’d said, sounding angry, something she had never heard in his voice before. “I saw a girl fall from a boat. A black yacht. Her head was bloody. She had red hair. I got in the dinghy and went to look for her.”

And never found her, Martha thought. And that was the problem. She sighed as she took a sip of the coffee. It was too hot and she burnt her lips. She slicked on her cherry Blistex to take the sting away, which of course made the coffee taste awful. She sighed again. She had never known Marco like this, so concerned, so adamant as to what had happened. About the large black boat from which the girl had fallen. About her red hair floating in the sea. And the extent of his despair when he was unable to find her. It was as though Marco felt guilty, that somehow it was his fault that an unknown woman had “disappeared.” Yet no one had been reported as “disappeared.” No one was lost. No one found. No one drowned.

Martha’s phone rang. She checked it quickly. It was her youngest sister, Lucy. “Hi,” she said, answering. “What’s up?”

“I met a guy.” Lucy’s voice was high-pitched with excitement.

There was a lull while Martha took in this news. Then, “Who, exactly?” she asked, wearily, because this was not Lucy’s first foray into love, and when Martha had seen her a few weeks ago she was not even attached. Nor, as far as she had known, was she seeing anyone in particular.

“His name is Ahmet.” Lucy told her quickly all about him. He was not an Englishman, he was “foreign.” When Martha asked exactly what kind of “foreign,” Lucy told her he was probably Croatian, and a millionaire. “And good-looking,” she added, sounding more thoughtful. “And sexy.”

Oh God, Martha thought, she’s done it again. Lucy fell in love at the drop of a hat. And besides, no Croatians were called “Ahmet.”

“Maybe I’ll bring him over to New York to meet you,” Lucy told her in that rapid-fire way of speaking she had. “And I want to meet your Marco.”

“He’s not exactly my Marco.” Martha wished he was though.

“Anyhow, this guy owns a yacht. He asked me out on it.”

“What? You didn’t go, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t, I’m not that daft.” Lucy was laughing. “Not yet, anyhow. But you’ll get to meet him. We’ll have dinner or something. Talk to you later.” And Lucy rang off.

Just what I need, Martha thought, switching off her cell phone. Lucy was the youngest, just seventeen, and most irresponsible of the three sisters. The eldest, Sarah, was a pediatrician in England. Lucy was supposed to be at drama school, auditioning for acting jobs, but was perpetually out of work “seeing how the real world lives.” A typical Lucy remark if there ever was one.

In Martha’s opinion their parents had indulged Lucy shamefully. The family lived at Patrons Hall, “the Ancestral Home,” as Marco had called it, amused, when Martha had taken him for a quick visit. They’d been en route to Paris with a stopover in London, when she’d rented a small car and driven them there, whizzing fast down the motorway with Marco flinching next to her while she laughed at his fears and told him she had been doing this route for years, knew it like the back of her hand. She did, but he’d still heaved a sigh of relief when they arrived without incident.

Martha remembered turning to look at Marco sitting silently in the seat next to her. He was staring intently at the rambling, creamy-stone house with what she recognized as his “painter’s eyes,” a special look where he seemed to absorb a place, or a person, somewhere deep within his brain, in his soul perhaps. That was one of the reasons he was such a good artist. A great artist, it had often been said, though Marco would only describe himself, simply, as “a painter.”

“I’m looking at history,” he’d said quietly. “I’m looking at masons and woodworkers, at slate that must have been mined locally, for nothing came from far away, not when this place was first built. Elizabethan chimneys, Queen Anne tiles, Victorian gothic architraves…”