Copyright Robin Knight 2011

ISBN: 9781626752337

Postscript

Hans had been photographing the monstrous waves from the side window of a fourth floor apartment, when he saw two people struggling on the beach. He saw what was happening through the lens of his zoom. The next minute, he immortalized the death of Max on film. No one reported him missing in Mexico. Nobody knew he was in Mexico. No body was ever found. I can only suppose that he was eaten by sharks, excited by the taste of his blood in the water.

Max could never know, but the sale of that photo to a major news syndicate brought a small fortune, thus financing our joyous barefoot beach wedding and six months of honeymoon on our new catamaran.

I have forgiven Hans for not believing me. He humbly begged me to do so. After all, it was a weird and unlikely story. My paranoia disappeared with Max’s death, and I can actually walk down a street now, without turning to look behind my shoulder every few steps. Hans continues to call me Isabel as everybody else. Catarin belongs to my past life. I did let my blond hair grow again and I’m told it looks super with my darkly tanned skin.

Meggy cleaned up well, from all the sand and seaweed, was none the worse for the scare. She slept for three days straight, woke up and licked my feet for hours in gratitude. All my zoo has accepted Hans as the “top dog”, and he has adopted them.

Carmen and Manuel had to confess that they had been seeing each other secretly since he came to bring my luggage back after the break-up with Hans. They were married by a Mayan Shaman at the ruins of Tulum, in front of the ocean. They jokingly argue all day about destiny, magic rituals and premonitions. They knew all the time that things would go as they did, but couldn’t tell us for fear that our knowledge would cause us to take some action that would have changed the course of our destiny. Carmen is now a Mexican citizen and she and Manuel delayed their honeymoon until they could go to Cuba to meet her family. They live in a bungalow on the lagoon. You can hear them howling together on the beach on full moon nights. Carmen and I still create mosaics together and have even hired an apprentice to cut the tiles for us. I couldn’t imagine living without my best friend.

Hans leased out his apartment and we live in my sunny home in front of the ocean. It survived the storm as I did. A few minor repairs and we both look better than before. I am not afraid anymore, so I wrote a long letter to my uncle Michel in Provence, to tell him all that had happened. He wrote back saying that he had something to send me; something I had forgotten on my last trip. Two weeks later, a delivery van pulled up the drive to our beach house and unloaded a large crate. I opened it and found the old Louis Vuitton trunk I had wanted when I found it in the market of Saint Rémy with Michel. A note inside the trunk said,

“Cherie,

I know I don’t have to ask if you like it. This will be your wedding present from your old Uncle who adores you.

Yours,

Uncle Michel”

Hans decided that he wouldn’t work on locations anymore, unless that is, I would go along with him. He says that it isn’t just a concession because he doesn’t want to be away from me ever, but that he’s getting too old to go anymore. Frankly, from the looks of him, nobody would say that he’s getting old. He seems to grow handsomer and more interesting by the day. Most people think that he’s just too much in love to leave me for a minute alone. I will surprise him....I am secretly harboring the idea of going along with him in some remote place of the world. I think that sex in a tent in the desert would be wildly exciting and I’m not afraid of rattlesnakes or anything else anymore. I still have nightmares sometimes, but I wake up next to Hans and know I’m safe in his arms.

The stains from Max’s blood on the pink coral rock wall at La Vida Loca, are strangely indelible. They have baked in the hot sun and become a permanent tourist attraction.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

For my family

“Time heals all wounds”

Anonymous

“Time wounds all heels”

Olivette Knight

Non are so blind as those who do not want to see.

Miami Beach

Summer 2004

I’m lying prone on the smooth, white travertine floor of my home on the bay in Miami Beach, staring at the beams of the ceiling. I will have to get used to not calling it home anymore. I turn to lie face down, so the tears don’t roll across my face into my ears. This is a trick I’ve learned recently, along with that of crying inside while in public, so I can swallow my unnoticed tears. My forehead, heavy on my folded arms, breathing the cold of the marble, while the tears drip , forming a small puddle. Lifting my face to the French doors, I see the bay and its pale opaque blue water. The view that captured me when I saw the house the first time, is now joyless and dead.

I’ve just finished closing the last suitcase of my belongings. The house is empty of furniture, and seems so strange and so much larger than before. The empty rooms eco every small sound. I’ve already sent ahead the few things I will need in the future. I turn my face away from the windows, to look at the huge sandstone fireplace that had never held a fire. this useless fireplace is the symbol of my life in this house. It is a beautiful fireplace that never held burning logs, but fake logs with a fake fire. They were convincing and functional; they didn’t even produce heat, which would have been uncomfortable in Miami’s typical year-round air-conditioning. That fireplace is just like me; it’s a real fireplace, of course, and I am a real person, but we are both empty and useless in this place and time. We both have lived a life that seems to have been just the stage-setting in a play. The fireplace, with a perfect imitation of a fire and I with an imitation of a perfect life. I think we both deserved better.

It isn’t that I’m crying because my heart is broken or something like that. It’s more a sadness for what I lost. I don’t mean the man. I mean my home. The artworks and furniture it contained, had surrounded me with love from my past and the past of my ancestors. I’ve also lost the comfortable feeling of knowing I had rather large bank accounts on two sides of the world and could well afford the lifestyle I enjoyed. I have even been robbed of the work I loved. I will miss the pride of doing my job well and being praised as well as handsomely paid. I am mourning the fact that I had everything I wanted and now it’s gone forever; nothing can bring it back, and nothing will be the same again. I feel helpless, like a scared, lost animal in the middle of a road in the night. I suppose that if someone flashed a light in my eyes right now, they would see through the red glow of my pupils, directly into my bared soul. I am still hurting. If one could die of the pain caused by this empty feeling, then I would have succumbed sometime in the past few weeks. Maybe I am dead. Maybe I just perform automatic robotic motions; filling boxes with small momentos to send ahead to help me remember in my next life, what the good part of this life was like before it ended abruptly.

I suppose that I have to admit that I am also crying for the shame of having been fooled by someone I totally trusted and loved. I am not stupid, although it may seem so. The truth is that I was just too busy living my trendy little life, to pay attention to the signs. I can’t remember any signs now and wonder if there were any. I really would feel more like a fool if it weren’t for the fact that I was not alone. I think that anyone who knew us believed in the fable and that was an amazing lot of people. That, of course, doesn’t make me feel any better. After all, a fool in the company of fools, is still a fool. It’s just that only one of us fools got smashed like a cockroach. Now that I think about it; maybe it isn’t true; maybe some of the people who knew us, knew. Perhaps they all knew but didn’t let me in on it. Now that I have become a social outcast, it doesn’t matter whether they knew or not. I don’t miss most of those people who were around me before all this happened. The truth is, that I don’t miss even one of them. If they had been real friends, they would still be close to me. There are other people close to me now, people I never would have known, or maybe I should say, I never would have gotten to know, or know better, and I never would have considered them as friends if all this hadn’t happened. Let’s put it this way; they were not on my social level for one reason or the other and so I didn’t imagine getting into a friendship situation with them.

I thought I was living my dream and it had turned out to be my nightmare. It was as though the script of my destiny had fallen into the hands of some screen writer who decided that the story was not exciting enough and decided to throw in a lot of conflict and terror to liven it up. Now I’m suffering the consequences of having barely survived that conflict and terror, with the knowledge that I am privileged to be alive. Unfortunately, after the exhilaration of realizing you have survived near death, comes this empty and lost feeling, and that is the thing that scares me now. I handled fear just fine, but lost and empty is difficult to manage. I wonder if I will ever quit feeling this way again. Will I ever be able to having feelings or trust anyone again? I’m trying to forget the past, but I’m on “hold” as far as the future goes. I think I will start thinking about it all as though it had been a natural disaster; a tornado that came down upon my life and destroyed it almost completely. I am now digging through the rubble, searching for any small thing to cherish from all that I had before. After you have built your good life and settled into its quiet comfort, one nanosecond later, without warning, your whole existence can be irrevocably altered. I know that these things are beyond the imagination of most people. I was happy and all of a sudden I found myself sitting upon that heap of trash, repeating over and over to myself,

“This can’t be happening to me.”

I decide this is enough feeling sorry for myself, rise, dry my face on my sleeve, and go to shower for the last time in that thing they call the “master” bathroom. I am aware and ashamed to admit, that most people in the world live in a space smaller than my main bathroom. I slip my clothes off and turn to look at my body in the wall to wall mirrors. I am very thin now that food repulses me, but still not bad for my almost fifty years. I take a closer examination of the reflection of my skinny self and decide that I can still pass for thirty something, even after all the crap that has happened to me recently. I decide not to use the big round Jacuzzi, but then, since I had seen the photos, I hadn’t used it again.

A wave of nausea passes through my body causing me to shudder as I step into the shower, remembering what I felt when I saw those photos one day not too long ago. The feel of water coming down like rain on my head, calms my spirit. It reminds me of a soft, quiet, tropical rain, and I stand there, still for minutes, trying to feel something. Maybe I will never feel anything again. Maybe I will just spend the rest of my life numb as a zombie.

I have to get ready now; the small private plane I have contracted to take us to another country, is scheduled to leave in less than two hours. In about another hour, I will say goodbye to my past life. I have to stop crying now and get on with that next life, which is all to be written.

Chapter 2

I’m a U.S. citizen, although I was born in a little town in Provence, in the south of France. The fact that I was born there, legally entitles me to have French citizenship as well as American. My Scottish-American father and French mother brought me to live in the States at a very young age. They, unfortunately for me, are no longer in this world. Fortunately for me, they left me a conspicuous heredity, stored away in a Swiss bank. Now they are probably looking down at me from heaven, shaking their heads in despair.

I’m an interior decorator with a B.A. degree from the New York Institute of Design, member of The American Society of Interior Designers. Before all kinds of disasters hit my life, I owned a highly successful little antique shop in the very chic Coconut Grove area of Miami.

My shop was in a lacy, old white Victorian-period cottage, surrounded by a garden full of daisies and a quaint white picket fence. An oval sign on the post at the entrance gate, read “Lapin Blanc”. It was written in longhand script, curving across the top, above a cute leaping white rabbit, in order to suggest the meaning of the name to those who don’t understand French. Other than my frequent trips to Provence to buy furniture, decorations, ceramics, glassware, and other things for the “White Rabbit”, I was very busy with my decorating work and usually close to Miami.

Miami was an endless source of work for a creative decorator. Actually, I was offered even more jobs in Palm Beach, but although they paid more, the work was not as interestingly diverse as Miami and “So Be” as we locals call South Beach. The work in Palm Beach was mostly in private homes, while in Miami Beach, it was in the old Art Deco hotels which were all being bought and restored. That was the work I really enjoyed.

Of course, following those various disasters which have fallen upon my life in the last months, I have become professionally and socially dead and nobody of any importance is going to give me work in Miami and probably the rest of this side of the world as well. People don’t even answer my phone calls and they avoid me in an obvious way in public places. I certainly don’t get the tons of invitations to events which previously overflowed from my mailbox and I have actually seen people I deemed friends before, turn their heads and pretend not to see me.

My, as of recent, ex-husband Max, is tall, dark, and let’s say strangely attractive if not exactly handsome, and he has a Master in Economics from the Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, his home town. Although his friends call him Max, his very serious ivory-colored business card reads Massimiliano Ferro, Financial Consultant. Strangely, his card only shows his office phone and fax numbers, e-mail address and cell phone number, with no street address because he doesn’t take on just anyone who walks into his office. He’s an advisor to several large companies, insurance, pharmaceuticals, a group of affiliated private hospitals, and a few very wealthy individuals. I was a wealthy individual myself back then, and that is how I met him. He had been recommended to me by a client of mine, who was his client as well. She said that he was the ultimate genius at handling money, and I didn’t have a lot of talent in managing it myself, so I called to make an appointment and asked if he could come to my shop.

The day of our appointment, he arrived five minutes late and zoomed at high speed into the parking lot of my shop, coming to a screeching stop. He was driving an overly clean, black Mercedes Benz 350 SLC with the convertible top down. I watched him hop out of the car with impressive athletic style, jog across my flower garden and jump the “Do Not Walk Here” sign. From afar, he looked like a movie star, with a kind of irresistible masculine baby face like Brad Pitt. I recognized the kind of face that would bring out the maternal instinct even in a hired killer. I heard him burst into my shop, send the bells in a wild frenzy, and announce himself to my shop manager. Sarah knocked on the door of my office, “Catarin, did you call an escort service?”

“Don’t be a smart ass or I’ll fire you.”

“Ok, but wait until you see what’s out there.”

“Thanks, I saw it already from the window. Send him on in so I can get a look up close and don’t let me catch you at the keyhole.”

I disliked him at first sight. His arrogant attitude and over-polished look turned me off. Every hair of his softly wavy dark mane was kept in place with gel and there was not a wrinkle in his custom-made Italian clothes. You could see your reflection on the toes of his English shoes or the large gold cufflinks he sported proudly. Anyone could recognize the brand of very expensive gold watch, worn on top, instead of under his left cuff. His very British perfume, barely perceivable, was something like freshly mowed grass. He looked and even smelled like a highly-paid mafia lawyer. He was too suave for my taste and too sure of himself when he smiled with his blindingly white teeth, crinkled his strange yellow-green eyes and turned his head to show off his statue-like profile. He reminded me of a stud show dog in competition.

He made me feel like a fool when he laughed about the nonchalant way I managed my money, so I decided to take his challenge to let him take it over and make it grow instead of depleting it, as he said I did. He was blabbering on about interest rates, investment capital, amortization and other foreign sounding terms. I didn’t want to be bothered with those things I didn’t understand. The thing he said that I liked the least, was that I would have to see him often in order to get my investments in line. I had no desire to see him often, if at all.

He left with the same sort of style with which he arrived, bowing and brushing my hand with a silent kiss just half an inch above my skin. I recognized a real European hand kiss and supposed that he had received good education in the manners department. The nearness of him and his warm breath on the back of my hand, however, rather bothered me. Maybe it was just strange because you don’t get many hand-kissers in Miami.

My aspect was the quintessential example of a member of the interior design profession. I think that anybody could tell that I was a decorator from a distance of a hundred yards. I had a penchant for silk and linen and dressed exclusively in very simply cut clothes, unbranded designer things, black or white. When I was on a job, painting a faux finish on someone’s ceiling , I dressed in loose white overalls, splashed with pastel acrylic paint and always had a number of paintbrushes jutting from my back pockets. My long blond hair was completely hidden under a white linen scarf. My trendy, beige parchment business card read, Catarin Elizabeth Kavanaugh, Interior Design. My parents had felt obliged by family tradition to name me for my grandmothers. I realize that Catarin isn’t your everyday sort of name, which is the reason my friends call me just Cat and even if that sounds silly, well, I’m attached to it and I guess it fits someone born in the sign of Leo.

I was especially known for designing almost totally white interiors, with sparsely placed authentic French provincial furniture and an occasional splash of pastel colors on ceilings. When I did use color, my favorite was the same as my eyes, which my Mother had described as the blue of the sky on a clear day in Provence. I kept scrapbooks of the dozens of spreads in “A.D.” and “Interiors”, about my work in trendy restaurants, designer hotels and famous people’s homes.

After our first meeting, Max kept calling me to meet him in his office to discuss my account, but when I went, he talked about himself instead of my money. Maybe I was a little slow, but it finally dawned on me that he was more interested in me than my money. He was the absolute of my anti-type. I wasn’t even minimally interested in him as a man. One day when he called, I told him, with irritation in my voice,

“Listen, you’ve been calling a lot lately and you have no idea just how damn awkward and inconvenient it is to answer a cell phone while you’re hanging on a ladder with a dripping paint brush in your hand.”

Laughing, he apologized, “I’m awfully sorry, I didn’t realize I caught you in such a situation. I can just picture this scene. I really don’t want to interrupt your concentration at work or even risk to make you fall off your ladder into your paint buckets.”

“Well, that is exactly what almost just happened when I answered my phone, which is now spotted with yellow paint.”

“May I make a suggestion? If we could meet this evening to discuss a few things, then I wouldn’t be interrupting your work.”

I didn’t want him to pick me up because I certainly didn’t want it to seem like a date, so I met him at the trendy oriental restaurant he suggested. I wondered if it was coincidental that I adored Chinese food.

The restaurant was empty and there was a small sign on the door, saying that it was closed for a private party, but as I turned to leave, Max arrived in a taxi.

“We’ll have to find another place to eat. There’s a sign on the door that it’s reserved for someone’s party.”

He took my arm and ushered me inside.

“Yes, I know, we are the party.”

We sat at a large round table, he on one side and I on the opposite, sufficiently apart that I didn’t feel menaced.

“Is there anything you don’t like on the menu?”

“There’s nothing I don’t like about this food. I must have been Chinese in a past life.”

He smiled, turned to the owner, gave him back the menus and proceeded to order in what must have been perfect Cantonese, because the owner answered and the two started chattering like old buddies. I guessed that he was also Chinese in a past life.

Plates of delicious food kept coming and we drank steaming jasmine tea in tiny porcelain bowls. He showed me a better way to hold my chopsticks and how to hold the bowl of rice cupped in my hand near my mouth.

“That’s how they eat rice in China...anyone there would think it awkward to leave the bowl on the table.”

“I have to admit that it beats scattering rice around the table like I did before.”

“Actually, I thought you were pretty able with those chopsticks. Most Chinese wouldn’t have managed to get that much rice to their mouths that way.”

The tension had lightened between us and he told me about his work in China, his travels and how he had lived in Beijing. Several hours passed as he told me stories of things that had happened to him in Beijing city and traveling throughout China. He described the kindness of the people who didn’t laugh at his silly mistakes in pronouncing Chinese words. He described scenes so vividly that I felt his emotion and his love for the country.

“There were literally thousands of bikers filling the road to the Tien an Men Square, pedaling so close they almost touched elbows.”

“Like a sea of bikers...that must have been frightening to see.”

“It was impossible to cross the road and the scene I saw every day, always left me chuckling at the thought that if one of them fell, there would have been a domino effect with a devastating heap of humans and bikes, with surely some wounded and dead.”

“Oh my God, that’s a horrifying thought.”

“Yes, but that was some time ago, and now China is changing. There are more cars and fewer bikers...although I’m not sure that isn’t worse....especially for the air pollution.”

Laughing his boy-face laugh, he lifted his bowl of rice and held it just below his chin while shoveling the rice into his mouth expertly with his chopsticks.

“I would love to see China some day, as I’ve seen it through your eyes tonight.”

“I would like to take you with me next time I go...that could happen soon if you want.”

He definitely caught my attention that night. I was impressed. I guess now, that I was so impressed that I kept seeing him despite my unpromising first impression. A show of class like this, in Miami, was indeed rare and I have always been a sucker for class.

He thanked the owner and I noticed that, strangely, no bill was presented. Outside, it was after midnight and raining softly.

“I noticed you came in a taxi....would you like a lift home?”

“Yes, I really would like that, if it doesn’t cause you any inconvenience.”

“Where would home be?”

“Biscayne, but I know that’s really out of your way, so I’ll walk for a while and then flag down a taxi.”

“You don’t even have an umbrella and I don’t really mind driving.”

He was quiet and seemed worried on the way to Biscayne.

“Catarin, I really don’t feel right about letting you drive back home alone.”

“Don’t worry, Max, it isn’t the first time I’ve driven in Miami alone at night.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. It’s dangerous for a beautiful woman to be alone at night in this town.”

“I don’t think there’s a solution to that problem now.”

“What if I drive you home with your car, and I come bring it to you tomorrow morning.”

“Max, that’s ridiculous...then I would have to drive you back home.”

“Yes, but we could stop along the way in the park at Biscayne and picnic...no work....it is Sunday tomorrow you know.”

“Can I bring my dogs?”

So that’s the way it all started. The most amazing thing about the affair is that it started innocently, or at least in my eyes. Max didn’t even try to kiss me, much less anything resembling sex. After a while, I was beginning to have serious doubts about myself, and even about him. It’s not that I wanted to attract him, but that it was so unusual that he, unlike all the other men I had dated, didn’t seem to want to lay me. I know this may sound ridiculous, but I have to admit that my self-esteem was suffering.

We went to the theater, cinema, and dinners at well known and lesser known restaurants, picnics and even parades. Each time we parted, he would kiss me gently on both cheeks in the best Italian manner. I found myself thinking about him too often during the day and I have to admit having even let him slip into my most private dreams at night. The day I saw him holding hands with a stunningly beautiful woman at lunch in town, dispelled any doubts I had about his sexual preferences.

Day by day, I was becoming more obsessed by his disinterest, until I decided to do something about it. I dialed his number and when he answered, I surprised him with an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“Max, I want to invite you to dinner tonight, since you’ve been treating me for weeks.”

“You don’t need to repay me, you know, and although I’m honored by your kind invitation, Cat, I must ask you a question first.”

“What kind of question would that be?”

“Do you know how to cook?”

“Come at nine o’clock and find out for yourself.”

“My antique table for twelve was not intimate enough for a dinner for two so I draped an ivory-colored linen tablecloth over the huge coffee table in the living room. My best porcelain plates and antique silverware looked good with the green orchids I had placed in the center. I completed the finery with tall baccarat crystal flutes. I planned for us to sit on the floor on several huge black velvet pillows. I prepared the stereo. Ella Fitzgerald would sing for us that night. The stars, under the nearly black moonless sky, were sparkling like diamonds, as were the lights from the bay side of Miami Beach. Satisfied, I went to dress for the kill. He needn’t have worried if I knew how to cook. Dinner was a twelve-hundred dollar tin of Sevruga caviar, the trimmings, and a magnum of icy cold Brut Krug Reserve Champagne.

Max arrived at nine and one minute. I pressed the button to open the front gate and door. The house was lit only by candle light. Several dozen white candles led the way from the entrance gate to the main door and inside, more of the same lit the room. Outside, there were thousands of fireflies trying their best to light the garden. The only scent in the house was Shalimar, the perfume I’ve worn since coming of age.

I heard the gate close and Max’s footsteps coming closer and then the door opened.Without a word spoken, he came close to the table and smiled, reached down for the Champagne and twisted off the cork, which hit the ceiling and fell back onto my lap. I leaned back on the big black pillows where I sat, while Max filled the two flutes I held up for him. He lowered himself onto the pillows close to me and took a flute full of Champagne from my hand.

“May I make a toast to the woman who has stolen my heart.”

“If that’s true, then I must be a clever thief.”

“Clever you are, my woman, but not a thief. The truth is that I gave it to you the first minute I saw you.”

“What took you so long to tell me?”

“I liked being a free man and I was fighting destiny like crazy.”

He took the flute from my hand and placed it next to his on the table, leaned forward and placed his lips on my forehead. I can’t say he was going too fast; actually, everything seemed to be in slow-motion and I felt paralyzed and could do nothing to stop him, even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t. He kissed my eyelids and my cheeks before he came to my mouth, where he remained for the longest time imaginable. I have no idea how long that kiss lasted, because any intelligent thought I had before, fluttered from my brain into the room up to the high beams of the ceiling. Had I opened my eyes, I might have seen those thoughts flittering and glowing like the fireflies in my garden.

After that kiss, I was so bubble-headed that I hardly knew what I was doing, but I also probably drunk a really large quantity of Champagne. I had opened a bottle in the afternoon, to give myself enough courage to go through the evening, so I was already feeling, to say the least, very relaxed. I reached to open the silver caviar dish and spooned up some of the tiny salty balls from the crystal bowl. We started by spreading the caviar on buttered toast, savoring the sensation of the little back eggs exploding flavor in our mouths. I prepared his, and he, mine. We fed each other toasts between kisses and before long, we stopped using toast and started feeding each other spoons full of caviar.

He looked at me, laughed and leaned over to lick the caviar off my lips. Then he reached down and gently pulled the strap of my dress from my shoulder and then from the other shoulder. My breasts were exposed and he admired them for a minute before he bent down to kiss and nibble them softly. He took a spoonful of caviar, put some on each nipple and proceeded to lick it off. No words were spoken, no asking for permission, no begging for more; it was pure animal behavior; he took what he wanted and I made no resistance. I barely remember when he slipped my dress off over my head and tossed it on the couch. I do remember when he entered me and I came immediately as though I had wanting him for months.

At some point of the evening, we finished up in my bed and when I opened my eyes the next morning, he was awake and looking at me.

“Now that you’ve seduced me, you have to marry me.”

“Oh I wouldn’t want to take you off the market.”

“I only want you Catarin, please marry me.”

“Well, if that’s the way you put it, I guess I have to say yes.”

“Cat, I was so afraid you wouldn’t say that word.”

I had gone from hating the guy to being his fiancé without thinking about it. I had just had sex with him this night and agreed to marry him the next morning. Later, I asked myself

“Am I crazy, am I in love with this guy, or am I just tired of being alone?”

The feeling was that all this had sneaked up on me and all of a sudden I realized that I might really be in love with him. I wasn’t sure whether it was love or not. I wasn’t sure what love was anyway. Maybe it was sex. Maybe it was because he was so interesting to be with. Maybe I was afraid I would never find another person who was esthetically pleasing and didn’t bore me to sleep. Strange as it may seem, the combination isn’t so easy to find. Neither of us had uttered the word “love”, much less any declarations. Maybe it was the same for him. Maybe he was selecting a partner to make a sort of life contract; someone who would look good next to him, who wouldn’t embarrass him, who was busy with her own life and would stay out of his business. Certainly, he talked well, said the right things to please my ears but, after all, wasn’t that his job. Besides that, I had been so tried up with my work that I hadn’t consciously realized that I was rapidly approaching “old maid” status and so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to stop the “musical chair game” and sit myself down in an available chair.

A few days after the caviar, Max unceremoniously slipped a two-carat marquise-cut diamond on the ring finger of my left hand. He said nothing for the occasion; just looked me in the eyes and smiled his cute crinkly smile. I smiled back; who wouldn’t. I got started planning the wedding. Maybe somebody else would have suffered a nervous breakdown, but I was used to planning and had even designed the decorations for a number of celebrity weddings. We decided to have a civil ceremony in the garden of a friend’s house on Star Island, which could well have been a renaissance palace. The date was set for the 28^th of December. There’s no problem, in Miami, having a garden wedding in the winter. Many of our old friends would be more than happy for an excuse to come down from the northern states for a few days of Florida sunshine. Many of our “Snow bird” friends would already be here. Before I knew it, the number of invited guests had grown to more than three-hundred. Invitations were mailed and I picked out my dress, flowers, photographer, caterer, and cake.

During all the planning frenzy, Max stayed mostly out of the way, but we couldn’t stay away from each other, so he slept at my place every night and started bringing his belongings a bit at a time. It all seemed so natural. It seemed like fun to blend our lives.

“Which side of the closet can I use, Darling?”

“The empty side, Honey; don’t you see that I made room for you.”

“Which side of the bed, my Love?”

“What side would you like?”

“You know, I think I will take the middle, with you beneath me...that is, unless you prefer to be on top.”

Soon there was Christmas and the countdown and then finally the day of our wedding came. An attorney friend of Max performed the ceremony on the wooden deck jutting out into the bay, as our guests gathered, standing near to hear the words. I, in my long, low necked forest green velvet gown and my bouquet of white gardenias and baby ivy, and Max in his Armani tuxedo, promised to love each other until the day we died.

“Do you, Catarin Kavanaugh take Massimiliano Ferro as your lawful husband, to love and to cherish, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do you part.”

“I do.”

“With this ring, I thee wed.........”

In a few minutes that seemed an instant, those serious words I had heard at so many weddings before, were being pronounced at my own wedding. I listened, tried to focus, to understand the meaning of what I was accepting, but the whole thing was just too exciting and I couldn’t concentrate.....I was dazzled. My new husband kissed me for the photographers and I turned and tossed my bouquet into the air. My assistant, Miriam Craig stuck her long arm out of the group of young women in the just right moment to catch her future good luck flowers. After the ceremony, we all sat for hours at the twenty-seven round tables for twelve set in the magnificent garden on the bay. The garden was sprinkled with silver dust. Dozens of stunning white Christmas trees with twinkling firefly lights were placed here and there in the huge garden. The trunks of all the Royal palms were wound with lights and there were gardenias, giving off their heady perfume from beautiful arrangements on the center of all the large round tables. We had chosen the songs from the repertoire of the musicians who played live music almost without rest. We danced and drank Champagne until the last guests left, around two in the morning, before retiring to our friend’s yacht, where we slept, forgetting any idea of first night sex.

We left on the yacht at daybreak the next morning, for a honeymoon in the Bahamas and then the Turks and Caicos. Our friend had not only given us his garden for the wedding, but also his yacht for the honeymoon. We were both good sailors so we didn’t need a crew. We were alone together, sunbathing, swimming, eating when we were hungry and making love when we were hungry for each other.

We anchored in port at Nassau, wandered around the quaint streets with all the pink colonial buildings and pink flowers and pink just about everything, until we were hungry. After our fried conch meal, we stopped at the fancy casino, but I don’t like to gamble, so Max stopped as soon as he had lost a few Bahamian dollars.

We went on from there to Long Island, then the long stretch to the Turks and Caicos. We spent hours snorkeling in the pale turquoise water. Swimsuits were optional since there was never anyone around to observe us. We anchored deep into safe bays and often took the dinghy to shore at dinnertime. We liked to walk the dark paths through the thick vegetation of the islands, lit only with our flashlights, to eat real Bahamian food at the little restaurants for locals. We drank Daiquiris, Cuba Libres, and ice cold white wine; ate seafood gumbo and key lime pie. We rented dune buggies and raced on the deserted beaches before the high tide rushed in. We were happy.

Finally, we had to start the return trip. It was sad, but we knew that we had to return home to take up where we had left off. The weather was worsening, the barometer falling and a storm on its way. We had to move fast, so we headed back through the stormy Caribbean. We had to resume our lives and build one together.

Chapter 3

Our marriage was like a fairy tale to the eyes of our observers. Prince Charming arrives on prancing white stallion to enchant lonely princess and they live happily ever after. Before we realized it, we were celebrating our tenth anniversary. A party was called for, just one of the thousands we attended in all of those years, but this was ours. Our friends toasted us, showing a mix of envy and admiration on their faces. More than two-thirds of our friends had broken up or divorced in those years, and there we were, stuck together like Siamese twins and seeming not to have any desire to part.

Were we in love? Now that I look back from outside the magic soap bubble, I know that we were not and never had been, but I didn’t know it then. I thought that was how love was supposed to feel. I think that we were actually both in love with ourselves instead of with each other. There were no sparks flying or lightning bolts striking, and certainly no bells ringing when we were close. We were too busy trying to be sure the photographers got their photos from our best sides, our smiles not too wide or too miserly and God forbid, no spinach in our teeth. Our eyes open and sparkling, our clothes just right and fashionable; we looked ready to do a TV commercial for toothpaste or something. We looked so good together and the things we did together were so right. Ten years of companionship, complicity, or whatever it is that makes two people stick together, had given us a certain reputation as a reliable example for all. It was as comfortable as an old house slipper.

We were part of the “beautiful people” of Miami, who were constantly present in the society columns of the newspapers and magazines. We received dozens of invitations every day, to more events than we could possibly attend. This kept one of Max’s secretaries busy, declining politely those we wouldn’t attend and accepting graciously what we would. She answered letters, wrote thank-you notes, and kept our social calendar. We were admired by our dozens of friends and acquaintances. I can also imagine that we were pointed out by many in the crowd as the sublime couple to imitate, while the photographers flashed their cameras in our faces. We were good-looking and had amazing style. We were gracious guests and hosts, took part in charity events, theatre, concerts and parties of all kinds. I was on dozens of committees. Max loved our notoriety and it brought him important clients. We both loved our social life. We seemed to be made for each other. We never even had an argument or difference of opinion. It wasn’t a marriage, but a sort of partnership. We needed each other in order to be who we were.

We were both very busy with our work, which kept us separate during most of the days, but I was also busy trying to raise money for my favorite charity. Max was a big help when I held fund-raising dinners and especially when I planned a masked ball at the Viscaya Palace. I went dressed as Lucretia Borgia, in an all black fifteenth century style gown, created for me by Lorenzo Riva and sent to me with his compliments from Italy. Max dressed as Casanova, all in white, tight knee-length pants over hose, pointed slippers, a lace ascot at his neck and a brocade silk jacket. The white wig accentuated his dark features and full mouth. He was already dressed and looked so comical wearing an eighteen century costume while talking on his cell phone. I had to have him help me to close the back of my costume. When he finished buttoning the last of the tiny round buttons, he kissed the back of my neck and laughed,

“Cat, it’s so out of your character to be dressed like Lucretia Borgia. She was an assassin you know, poisoned three husbands and a number of lovers, with poison she kept in a ring she wore. I hope you don’t have any plans like that for your husband.”

“Oh you never know what goes on in a woman’s head.”

“Honey, I know all sides of you. You have a tender heart and you have great class as well as good looks and you wouldn’t harm a fly. You are so beautiful tonight that I would marry you again.”

“Not in black I hope.”

“Well, I’m in white; we could change the rules and surprise everybody, set a new style.”

Casanova