Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (5 page)

The stone was a rare, deep blue color, with
only the barest hint of green. Normally aquamarines were sky blue.
I had never seen one like this in person. I was tempted to go
inside and ask to try it on. But I was sure they’d laugh at me, or
more likely, no one would wait on me, so the desire to feel the
ring around my finger swiftly transformed into a velleity (a mere
wish, unaccompanied by any effort to obtain it). Sometimes it
seemed like ‘Velleity’ would have made an excellent middle name for
me.

I wasn’t usually big into jewelry. What
pieces I owned I had received as gifts from mainly my grandpa, who
definitely was into jewelry—well, the gemstones that eventually
became jewelry, that is. I didn’t wear any of it though, because it
made me sad. But the mesmerizing blue beauty of this stone, like a
big drop of water from some tropical sea, frozen in stone and set
in glistening platinum, was completely dazzling.

I purposely didn’t look at the price tag,
which was discretely propped in the sand near the back of the
window in tiny print. The fact that this single ring was displayed
all alone in valuable marquee space indicated that the price was
‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’

I stood there for the longest time, just
staring and imagining. The bright display lights that shown down on
the scene made the jewel, the diamonds and the sand sparkle in a
way that was entrancing. The lights also warmed the glass, adding
to the sensation of being at some warm tropical destination. The
warmth felt good on my face. It was a very pleasant escape. In any
case, it was nice to not have to make conversation…I’d have plenty
of that to do at the dinner table.

I saw the buzzer flashing in my mom’s hand
when I glanced over my shoulder. Taking one last longing gaze at
the beautiful blue beryl, I turned and sauntered back to her side
and then into the restaurant.

Dinner was good. Hoyt ordered fish, as
always. Mom and I shared a pasta dish and then we each had our own
dessert. I always ordered the same thing, Chocolate Tuxedo
Cheesecake. It was wonderful every time, and the obvious choice
because I couldn’t tolerate surprises or disappointments when it
came to dessert. Mom, however, felt obligated to try something
different each time, which always led to regret and dessert envy,
and she would invariably end up eating my treat with me.

“Isn’t that what you got last time?” she
asked after the waitress was heading off with our dessert
order.

“That’s what I get every time, Mom,” I
replied, as I briefly locked eyes with Hoyt who without saying so
acknowledged that we’d had this conversation the last time with a
nod.

“Don’t you want to try something new?”

No.

“Mom, Tuxedo Cheesecake is fabulous every
time. Besides, you need to have something reliable to fall back on
when yours doesn’t work out like you hoped,” I said with a smile
because I knew I had her there.

She just smirked but Hoyt flashed me a quick
smile and arched eyebrows, validating me again.

“Neophobe,” she accused.

“Homophobe,” I accused right back, but with
lots of cheek because I knew she would feel obligated to explain my
response to Hoyt (whose expression was now decidedly alarmed) and
thereby have to use the word ‘homosexual’ in clarifying that
although fear of such was an alternate meaning, a person with a
fear of monotony or sameness was the primary definition of what I
had accused her of being.

Hoyt hated our game, and couldn’t play even
if he wanted to.

When dessert arrived, even before she took a
bite of her White Chocolate Raspberry Swirl flavored cheesecake,
she was eyeing mine, lustfully. With an internal sigh, I took a
knife and cut my dessert in half. Then after feigning interest in
her dessert I offered, “Mom, would you like to split and
share?”

She gave me a sympathetic look, as though
she felt pity for my plight of being stuck with a whole slice of
boring old Chocolate Tuxedo Cheesecake.

As if she was deliberating about whether she
should decline and teach me a lesson or take the high road and be
charitable, she paused before answering my query.

“Well…okay,” she finally said with a
sigh.

She finished off her half of my dessert
before I did.

As we were walking out of the restaurant she
asked, “What were you looking at for so long at the jewelry
store?”

“Oh, they have a very rare deep tone
aquamarine on display. It’s amazing. I was surprised to see it at a
store like this. I can’t imagine anybody around here buying a ring
like that. It’s not the kind of piece you’d normally find at a mall
jewelry store.”

She was intrigued.

“Let’s go see it,” she suggested
enthusiastically.

She was always especially interested in
things I liked. But I entertained no false hope that she might buy
it for me. I knew the price had to be well into the five-figure
range. But she enjoyed gawking at beautiful things as much as I
did, so we strolled arm in arm back across the hallway to the
display window. Hoyt was opening up his cell phone and promised to
catch up momentarily.

I was surprised to see a completely
different arrangement in the window…some kind of black pearl
necklace and earring set. I looked around to see if I was at the
wrong window…they did have more than one…but I was sure it had been
the closest one, right beside the bench. I walked over to the next
one, which contained a ruby necklace display, same as before. The
windows on the other side of entrance were full of the same
merchandise as before.

Strange.

Mom could see the confusion in my face.

“It’s not out here anymore,” I muttered,
still mystified.

“Why don’t we go in and ask about it?” she
suggested.

I nodded in agreement and we entered the
store. She did the talking when a sales lady approached.

“Excuse me, we were wondering about the
aquamarine piece that was in the window before we ate dinner,” she
began.

The sales lady had a puzzled look on her
face, but then shook her head, as if banishing a thought, and
smiled at us.

“Yes, the three carat aquamarine in
platinum? We just sold it, not thirty minutes ago.”

She was beaming, I realized. It was, no
doubt, the afterglow of a large commission enhancing her mood.

Mom countered, “Well, that’s too bad. Do you
mind telling me what was the price? We didn’t see before.”

The sales lady took on a bit of an arrogant
aura as she informed us, “That piece was priced at just under fifty
thousand and worth every penny—absolutely stunning. We just
received it this week,” she said, turning a little wistful.

Mom raised her eyebrows as she looked at me.
That price sounded right to me, and my eyebrows stayed relaxed in
place.

Mom wasn’t done digging.

“Do you mind telling me what kind of person
bought it?”

She leaned in, happy to dish.

“It was a man buying it as an engagement
ring for his girlfriend. I bet she’ll say yes,” she said and
laughed at her joke.

It didn’t seem funny to me, though. I felt a
prick of jealousy.

“No doubt,” Mom agreed.

“Can I show you ladies something else?” she
asked hopefully.

“No that’s all right. Mystery solved. Thanks
for your help,” Mom concluded smoothly as we exited the store.

Hoyt was standing across the hall at the
display window of a golf shop, daydreaming, along with several
other men, about a new set of clubs. He snapped back to reality
when we approached.

“Do we still have time for the cruise?” Mom
asked, suddenly remembering we were supposed to be on a
schedule.

“Sure. It will be close, but I called while
you were in the jewelry store and they’re not sold out. We’ll be
fine on time, if we leave right now,” Hoyt assured her.

“Is that what you’d like to do, then?” she
asked me, though I had already agreed.

“Sure,” I confirmed as she took one of my
hands and one of Hoyt’s, so that she could walk between us on our
way back to the car.

In my free hand I carried a doggy bag, which
held two completely untouched halves of a slice of White Chocolate
Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake—but not my purse.

The riverboat cruise was nice. We rode on
the famous ‘Belle of Louisville’, the height of luxury and comfort
in river travel in the early 1900’s. No other river steamboat in
American history has lasted as long, been to as many places, or
traveled as many miles as the Belle. I hoped I looked as good when
I was in my nineties. She was even still racing her old nemesis,
the Delta Queen, in The Great Steamboat Race, held every year since
the sixties on the Wednesday before Derby Day. We got to see the
‘Golden Antlers” on display in the Captain’s office. It was the
trophy that resided with the winner each year. Belle had beaten
Queen twenty-two versus nineteen times up to this year. Hoyt seemed
to believe the rumors that the winner has always been
predetermined, but I clung to the notion that the race’s winner was
determined by steam and good old fashion girl-power gumption, not
sterile coin flipping. They had the calliope going while we sailed,
and I particularly enjoyed that. As it turns out, Belle has a
beautiful voice, too.

It was a warm night, but not too hot, and
the breeze coming off the water felt wonderful on my face. The sun
was low on the horizon, but it didn’t get dark until close to nine
o’clock, so I could see fairly well. I’d been planning to wear my
sunglasses, thinking that this would help disguise my staring at
people, but the dusky lighting made it too dark to get away with
it. So I just had to be surreptitious about my snooping. I tried to
look carefully at each face, particularly the eyes. This was
trickier than I’d thought it would be because once we were moving,
most people were standing with their backs to me, facing out toward
the river to see the water and the scenery floating by.

I counted thirty-eight passengers on the top
deck. A handful of people were inside, below, but it didn’t seem
likely that someone watching me would spend the whole time out of
sight hitting the bar. I did what I could to observe the people
around me but there were no suspicious or familiar looking
characters, so eventually I switched to enjoying the scenery
myself. There was a gorgeous glowing sunset, the orange and pink
and purple kind, and it made the occasion all the more
pleasant.

The cruise lasted for an hour, returning to
the dock around nine. We were making our way to the stairs to
disembark, when, in a moment of stupid forgetfulness, I had an
involuntary turn around reaction to the sensation of not having my
purse with me. But then I went with it, realizing that it was
exactly the right thing to do, if I had actually lost it. Mom
noticed my hesitation and body language and asked, “What’s
wrong?”

I answered with appropriate concern, “My
purse. I think I left it.”

We backtracked to where we had initially
been seated, before rising to stand at the rails like everyone
else. There was no purse, of course. I acted concerned and a little
upset, though its loss, including the actual purse itself, would
constitute no more than seven dollars of financial setback, I
estimated.

Mom tried to soothe me by asking, “Honey, do
you think you may have left it in the car?”

No. I smiled inwardly.

“Maybe…I hope so,” I replied with real
nervousness, wondering if anyone was watching and listening to
this. I couldn’t tell for sure, and it was frustrating.

We eventually made our way to the car. Hoyt
hit the button on the remote to unlock the doors and I climbed into
the back. It was nearly dark now. I stepped on something as my feet
came to rest behind my mom’s seat. To my amazement, and wonder, and
dread, I pulled up my recovered purse, placed for me where I would
think I’d left it, in my step-father’s locked vehicle, while I’d
been sailing on the river.

Now I knew for sure that I would need to be
extremely careful, from this moment onward, because people with
tricks I couldn’t begin to imagine were watching me very closely,
and responding to my experiments.

Chapter 6
–
Trust

Mom and Hoyt were already long gone for work
one morning. It was mid-July and I was still sleeping in late in
the mornings—part of the novelty of nowhere to be while school was
out for the summer. There was bright, annoying light flooding all
around the edges of my “room darkening” shades (a misnomer if ever
there was one) making me feel awake, when all I really wanted was
to keep dreaming.

So now I was just lying there with a pillow
over my head. Adding to my annoyance with the present alignment of
the solar system, my own body was rebelling. My back was starting
to ache the way it does when I’ve been in bed for too long; a
similar phenomenon was occurring with my bladder.

As I continued to lay there, laziness still
winning out over annoyance and discomfort, I heard the familiar
sound of the mail truck working its way up the street. My mind was
drifting and it reminded me of a conversation I’d once had with my
mom about Postal Service vehicles.

“For one thing,” I began “you’d think they
would buy American.”

Her expression remained politely attentive,
though she stared slightly through me.

“You know, right side steering wheels?
British, obviously,” I continued.

Her eyebrow raised a fraction.

“And then they aren’t equipped with standard
mufflers, the kind that muffle sound,” I added with a smile,
amusing myself.

“What?”

Her reply was a little uncertain, as though
she was just now tuning in.

“Think about it…the sound, I mean. You can
always hear the mail truck coming. Nothing else sounds like that,
right?” I ventured.