his Monday/Tuesday 'weekend,' and when he returned to work that Wednesday he’d somehow managed to arrange the first big interview of his career, a long and candid telephone conversation with retiring U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. He still didn’t know why Warren had consented to talk to him, a noncredentialed novice reporter from a small-time radio station in Florida; but somehow he’d managed to pull it off, and the great man’s pithy ruminations on his controversial tenure had been picked up by NBC for a healthy sum. Within a month, Jeff had been doing news full time at WIOD in Miami. He was off and running; his entire adult life, such as it had been, could be traced back to that summer week.
There’d been no reason for him to choose Boca Raton; no reason not to. Some Mondays he’d drive north, to Juno Beach; on others he might head down to Delray Beach or Lighthouse Point, any of a hundred interconnected strips of sand and civilization that lined the Atlantic coast from Melbourne to South Miami Beach. But on June twenty-fourth, 1968, he’d taken a blanket and a towel and a cooler full of beer to the beach off Boca Raton, and now here he was again in that same place on that same sunny day.
And there she was, lying on her back in a yellow crocheted bikini, her head propped on an inflatable beach pillow, reading a hardcover copy of Airport. Jeff stopped ten feet away and stood looking at her youthful body, the lemony streaks in her thick brown hair. The sand was hot against his feet; the surf echoed the pounding in his brain. For a moment he almost turned and walked away, but he didn’t.
'Hi,' he said. 'Good book?'
The girl peered up at him through her clear-rimmed, owlish sunglasses and shrugged. 'Kind of trashy, but it’s fun. It’d make a better movie, probably.'
Or several, Jeff thought. 'You seen 2001 yet?'
'Yeah, but I didn’t know what it was all about, and it was kind of draggy up to the end. I liked Petulia better; you know, with Julie Christie?'
He nodded, tried to make his smile more natural, relaxed. 'My name’s Jeff. Mind if I sit with you?'
'Go right ahead. I’m Linda,' said the woman who had been his wife for eighteen years.
He spread his blanket, opened the cooler, and offered her a beer. 'Summer vacation?' he asked.
She shifted on one elbow, took the dewy bottle. 'I go to Florida Atlantic, but my family lives right here in town. How about you?'
'I grew up in Orlando, went to Emory for a while. Living in New York now, though.'
Jeff was striving for an air of nonchalance but having trouble; he couldn’t keep his eyes off her face, wished she’d take off those damned sunglasses so he could see the eyes he’d known so well. His final memory of her voice reverberated in his skull, tinny and distant, a telephone voice: 'We need—We need—We need—'
'I said, what do you do up there?'
'Oh, sorry, I—' he took a swig of the icy beer, tried to clear his head. 'I’m in business.'
'What kind?'
'Investments.'
'You mean, like a stockbroker?'
'Not exactly. I have my own company. We deal with a lot of brokers. Stocks, real estate, mutual funds … like that.'
She lowered the big round sunglasses, gave him a look of surprise. He stared into the familiar brown eyes, wanting to say so much: 'It’ll be different this time,' or 'Please, let’s try it again,' or even simply 'I’ve missed you; I’d forgotten how lovely you were.' He said nothing, just looked at her eyes in silent hope.
'You own the whole company?' she asked, incredulous.
'Now I do, yes. It was a partnership until a few years ago, but … it’s all mine now.'
She set her beer in the sand, scrunching the bottle back and forth until she’d dug out a space to hold it upright.
'Did you have some kind of big inheritance or something? I mean, most guys I know couldn’t even get a job in a company like that in New York … or else they wouldn’t want to.'
'No, I built it up myself, from scratch.' He laughed, starting to feel more relaxed with her, confident and proud of his achievements for the first time in years. 'I won a lot of money on some bets, horse races and such, and I put it all into this company.'
She regarded him skeptically. 'How old are you, anyway?'
'Twenty-three.' He paused a beat, realized he was talking too much about himself, hadn’t expressed enough curiosity about her. She had no way of knowing he already knew everything about her, more—at this point in her life—than she knew about herself. 'What about you; what are you studying?'
'Sociology. Were you a business major at Emory, or what?'
'History, but I dropped out. What year are you?'
'Senior this fall. So how big of a deal is this company of yours? I mean, have you got a lot of people working for you? Have you got an office right in Manhattan?'
'A whole building, at Park and Fifty-third. Do you know New York?'
'You have your own building, on Park Avenue. That’s nice.' She wasn’t looking at him anymore, was drawing daisy-petal curlicues in the sand around the beer bottle. Jeff remembered a day, months before they were married, when she’d shown up unexpectedly at his door with a bunch of daisies; the sun had been behind her hair, and all of summer in her smile.
'Well, it’s … taken a lot of effort,' he said. 'So, what do you plan to do when you get out of school?'
'Oh, I thought maybe I’d buy a few department stores. Start small, you know.' She folded her towel, began gathering her belongings from the blanket and stuffing them into a large blue beach bag. 'Maybe you could help me get a good deal on Saks Fifth Avenue, hmm?'
'Hey—hold on, please don’t go. You think I’m putting you on, is that it?'
'Just forget about it,' she said, cramming her book into the bag and shaking sand from the blanket.
'No, look, I’m serious. I wasn’t kidding around. My company’s called Future, Inc. Maybe you’ve even heard of—'
'Thanks for the beer. Better luck next time.'
'Hey, please, let’s just talk a little longer, O.K.? I feel as if I know you, as if we have a lot to share. Do you know that feeling, like you’ve been with someone in some previous life, or—'
'I don’t believe in that kind of nonsense.' She threw the folded blanket over one arm and started walking toward the highway and the rows of parked cars.
'Look, just give me a chance,' Jeff said, following alongside her. 'I know for a fact that if we just get to know each other we’ll have a lot in common; we’ll—'
She wheeled on her bare feet and glared at him over the sunglasses. 'If you don’t stop following me I’m going to yell for the lifeguard. Now, back off, buddy. Go pick up somebody else, all right?'
'Hello?'
'Linda?'
'It’s Jeff, Jeff Winston. We met on the beach this afternoon. I—'
'How the hell did you get this number? I never even told you my last name!'
'That’s not important. Listen, I’m sending you a recent issue of Business Week. There’s an article about me in there, with a photograph. Page forty-eight. You’ll see I wasn’t lying.'
'You have my address, too? What kind of stunt is this, anyway? What do you want from me?'
'I just want to get to know you, and have you get to know me. There’s so much left undone between us, so many wonderful possibilities for—'
'You’re crazy! I mean it; you’re some kind of psycho!'
'Linda, I know this has started badly, but just give me the opportunity to explain. Give us the leeway to approach each other in an open, honest manner, to find—'
'I don’t want to get to know you, whoever the hell you are. And I don’t care if you’re rich, I don’t care if you’re goddamn J. Paul Getty, O.K.? Just leave … me … alone!'
'I understand that you’re upset. I know all this must seem very strange to you—'
