Kimberly did have a man in her life. She was engaged to some rich guy up in Cambridge who came to see her every weekend. Or so said Hal the trainer. Hal was a twenty-something jock who’d been recruited out of Dorset High by Boston College to play wide receiver. Hal wasn’t big-no more than five feet eleven-but he told Mitch he’d possessed world-class shifty moves until he blew out his right knee freshman year. He’d dropped out of BC after that. Returned home to Dorset and, near as Mitch could tell, morphed into the village’s preeminent stud muffin. Hal Chapman seemed to have his nightly pick of the college girls, secretaries and divorcees who found their way to the Connecticut shoreline every summer. This despite his truly appalling skullet haircut-a shaved head with a full-tilt mullet in back-and his rather broad snow shovel of a jaw. Hal also wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he had broad shoulders, slim hips, a complete six-pack of abs and an easy, upbeat personality. The ladies loved him.
As the class lay there in Savasana Kimberly urged each of them to gaze inside with their third eye and focus on their intention. Mostly, Mitch’s intention had been to survive until dinner. Although he was learning to use these introspective moments to connect more deeply with his new job. Mitch had been lead film critic for New York’s most prestigious newspaper. When the paper got taken over by a huge media conglomerate, they’d made him over into their resident cutesy cable news quote-machine whore. Or tried. But he’d walked away from all of that-handed in his license to shill and rejoined his old editor, Lacy Nickerson, who’d just launched a prestigious e-zine devoted to thoughtful criticism of the arts. His intention now was to write about whatever was on his mind. Hold nothing back. Just run with it. Working for Lacy meant less money, but who wasn’t working for less money these days? Besides, he had a contract to complete another film reference volume, Ants In Her Plants, which he hoped would do for screwball comedies what his first three bestselling guides had done for sci-fi, crime and the western. And now he was free to enjoy life in his antique post-and-beam caretaker’s cottage out on Big Sister Island. He puttered in his garden. Played the blues on his beloved sky blue Fender Stratocaster. And spent as much time as he could with the lady in his life. All talk of marriage was off the table. They were just letting it happen. Mitch, the Jewish movie critic from New York City. Des, the West Point graduate who was six feet one, black and knew eighteen different ways to kill him with her bare hands.
After Savasana they sat cross-legged on their mats and said “Namaste.” Then Mitch drank down an entire liter of mineral water and staggered to the showers, his arms so tired he could barely raise them over his head to shampoo his hair. But he did feel unbelievably mellow as he toweled off and put on his complimentary red Saw IV T-shirt, baggy shorts and rubber flip flops.
Hal was out on the floor working out a sexy young redhead in spandex. “Later, bro,” he exclaimed, bumping knucks as Mitch oozed on by. Hal had a tendency to lay on the “bro” thing a bit thick, but it didn’t really bother Mitch. Nothing bothered Mitch after yoga class.
The vast food hall, with its fragrant stalls and coffee bar and Parisian style seating area, was totally mobbed. It was a Friday afternoon, and during the summer the population of this quaint, historic New England village at the mouth of the Connecticut River doubled. It also developed a showier, more Hamptons vibe. Dozens of fashionably dressed young women with tanned legs and salon-streaked hair sat drinking iced mocha-whatevers and talking loudly on their cell phones. Mitch found himself looking forward to Labor Day, when Dorset’s population would return to its normal seven thousand cranky Yankees.
Mitch bought some fresh buffalo mozzarella from Christine to go with the tomatoes and basil that were growing in his garden. Then he ambled over to the fish market in search of something to throw on the grill that night. As he stood there trying to choose between the striped bass and the sushi-grade tuna, Mitch found himself shooting glances at the woman next to him. She was an attractive, frosted blonde in her late forties or early fifties, fashionably put together in an aqua-colored silk top, tailored white slacks and a pair of Manolo Blahnik gold sandals that had to run at least six hundred dollars. The Hermes handbag she was clutching would easily go for at least twice that.
Mitch smiled to himself, thinking: Yet another one. Whenever he saw a shapely, good-looking blonde of a certain age, he always thought of Beth Lapidus, the sexy divorcee who’d lived in the apartment across the hall from him in Stuyvesant Town when he was thirteen. She and her son Kenny-a blinky, twerpy little ten-year-old whose nickname on the playground was Spiny. Beth Lapidus held an exalted place in the pantheon of Mitch’s romantic life. She was his first true love. The unwitting object of his sexual awakening. God, how he’d adored her. Whenever he’d heard Beth’s hallway door slam shut, he’d race to his bedroom window to watch her stride across the Oval, her hips swaying, blond hair shimmering in the sunlight. Mitch was heartbroken-truly devastated-when she got married to a rich Park Avenue eye doctor and moved to Scarsdale. He never saw her again.
Maybe it was the yogic glow on his face. Or maybe it was his stint as a big-time TV celebrity. But this particular frosted blonde was smiling at Mitch.
“Why, Mitchell Berger, it is you, isn’t it?” Her voice was soft and slightly trembly. “I used to live across the hall from you in Stuyvesant Town. Beth Breslauer? I was Beth Lapidus then. My boy, Kenny, was always so fond of you.”
Mitch swallowed, dumbstruck. Because this wasn’t really happening. He was still on his mat in Savasana. Had to be… Omm…
“I’d heard that you had a place in Dorset,” she went on. “I’ve been hoping we’d run into each other. I figured it was just a matter of time.”
“You mean… are you saying you’ve moved here?”
Beth tilted her head at him fetchingly, much like Natalie Wood used to do. “Why, yes. I’ve lived here since the end of May.”
“This is incredible. Why didn’t you call me?”
“You’re a big star now. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“As if. I was just going to get a fruit smoothie. Could I buy you one?”
He could. He did. They sat, Mitch trying his darnedest not to stare at her across the table. Beth wore her hair shorter now, cropped at her chin. But otherwise she’d changed remarkably little in the twenty years since Mitch had last seen her. Same curvy figure. Same plump, inviting lips. Same melting gaze from those big, dark eyes. Beth’s face was remarkably smooth and unlined. No bags, no sags. He wondered if she’d had some high-end cosmetic surgery done. She looked as if she could afford it. She was wearing a lot of gold. Not ostentatiously, but it was there. Several rings on her soft, delicate fingers. A necklace, a bracelet, the Rolex on her wrist.
“My husband, Irwin, died last year,” she informed him, sipping her smoothie. “We had eighteen good years together. And I liked Scarsdale well enough. But there’s nothing worse than rattling around in a big house in suburbia all by yourself. So I sold the place. Just decided to do it and did it.” Beth’s manner, he realized, hadn’t changed either. She somehow managed to convey helpless fragility and steely self-reliance at the same exact time. “I’ve bought myself a small apartment in the city, on East 62nd, and I have the condo here so I can be closer to Kenny. He’s up in the Boston area. This way we get to see each other on weekends. He’ll be coming in tonight after work. Mitch, I can’t wait to tell him I’ve bumped into you.”
“What does Kenny do for a living?”
Beth stuck out her lower lip fretfully. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that.”
“Why, is it a deep, dark secret?”
“No, I just don’t understand a word of it. He’s a computer wiz. And apparently knows more about something called ‘molecular modeling’ than anyone in the country. He was on the faculty at MIT. Now he designs research computer systems for pharmaceutical companies.”
“Sounds pretty impressive.”
“He’s still the same Kenny,” she responded, swelling with motherly pride.
“Beth, I’d love to get together with both of you. Where are you living?”
“In the Captain Chadwick House.”
Mitch’s eyes widened. The Captain Chadwick House was the choicest condo colony in town. The only one situated in the Dorset Street Historic District. Des’s housemate, Bella Tillis, had been trying to grab up one of its precious units for ages. But they changed hands very discreetly and rarely, if ever, came on the open market. “It’s impossible to get in there. How did you manage it?”
“It was no trouble at all,” Beth answered with a shrug. “Your folks must be so proud of you, Mitch. How are they?”
“Oh, fine. They live down in Vero Beach now.” Retired New York City public school teachers, both of them.
