“Okay, sure.” Jake looked down at his slacks, shirt, and tie. “Am I dressed well enough?” He looked like any other twenty-four year old in an office.
“You look fine. I have an extra jacket if you need to borrow one. Marilyn will bring it to you.”
“Thanks.”
“My driver will pick us up in front of the building around six-thirty.”
“I’ll be ready.” ***
The maitre d’ stood at attention behind the podium, every white hair on his post-retirement head perfectly combed and slicked back. He checked the seating chart, looked over the waiting patrons, and smiled at the small well-dressed crowd standing near the door. Peter tipped the doorman a twenty, walked past two waiting middle-aged couples, and approached the maitre d’. Jake excused himself to everyone in earshot and followed in his father’s presumptuous wake.
“Mr. Winthrop. Good evening, sir. How are you this evening?” The maitre d’ recognized a hundred customers by sight and knew half of them by name. Mr. Winthrop was an erratic regular. Twice a week sometimes, once a month when he was occupied with business or pleasure. But he was unforgettable.
“Good evening, Albert. How is the wife?”
“She is well, thank you.” It was a lie the maitre d’ told a half dozen times a day. Customers didn’t want to hear about his ill wife before sitting down to fifty-dollar plate of linguini with fresh sea scallops.
“Your table is ready, sir. The senator is waiting.”
“Has he been here long?” Peter asked.
“Five minutes. He was early as usual.”
“Let’s hope he’s as enthusiastic and punctual at work. You and I are paying his salary.”
Albert laughed. “Sir, somehow I doubt that he is.”
Jake watched his father with interest. He was complex. A hard-ass and a charmer at the same time. Jake was getting a crash course in the type of education most kids learn through observation over a lifetime.
“Albert, this is my son, Jake.”
Jake stepped from the shadows of his father and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Good looking young man, Mr. Winthrop,” Albert said shaking Jake’s hand and looking at his father. Peter took the compliment for his son to mean that he, too, looked good.
The senator stood as Peter and Jake approached the table. The senator’s guest, a blonde firecracker no older than Jake, put her lipstick back in her purse and tried to stand, balancing precariously on a pair of four inch heels.
“Senator, pleasure to see you again.”
“Peter, please call me John.”
Round robin introductions followed and the senator offered Jake the seat next to his dinner guest, Dana. The senator explained how Dana was helping out in his office on the Hill until his Columbia University alumni aide, a victim of a waterskiing accident in Saipan, recovered. Dana glowed as if she had just been introduced onstage at a beauty competition. Jake thought of Kate and wondered what she was doing this evening.
Dinner lasted three hours. Jake was bored after the first ten minutes. He read the paper, followed politics, and listened to NPR. He knew what was going on in the world, but he was lost in the incessant name dropping of Senator X, Congressman Y, and Special Committee Z. Senator Day and Peter Winthrop were engaged in an unspoken battle of who could talk the longest without being interrupted. It was neck-and-neck heading into dessert.
Jake’s main entertainment for the evening was the senator’s office assistant. A short conversation with the young blonde told Jake all he needed to know.
“What are those?” Dana had asked pointing to the capers on Jake’s plate.
“Raisins,” Jake had answered.
“Nasty.”
The girl was eye candy, perhaps a senate office toy, nothing less, but certainly nothing more. She was a disaster at conversation and in dire need of table etiquette. Jake was mesmerized, though not by her looks, which had probably caused a few geezers on The Hill to order oysters for lunch. She was a study in human behavior, and in wasted real estate between the human ears. She reapplied lipstick after every course, fidgeted in her chair endlessly, and twice Jake saw her lift one cheek and casually pull at what he hoped was a wedgie.
“Jake, the senator and I have some more business to discuss. We’re going to head over to the Presidential Club on Fourteenth Street for cigars and brandy. My driver will take you and Dana home.” It wasn’t a question or a request, and Jake didn’t care. He was looking forward to falling asleep on the sofa in front of ESPN’s SportsCenter.
“That’s fine. I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”
“That’s what the working world will do to you,” his father answered. His father looked at the senator and the blonde bimbo who was chewing a piece of gum with vigor. “I forgot to mention, Jake started working for me today at Winthrop Enterprises.”
“That’s great. Good for you. If you feel like getting an early start on a political career, I can always pull a few strings for you,” the senator said with a wink. “Good looking young man like yourself could go far in politics.”
“Thank you, Senator. I appreciate the offer. I’ll let you know if things don’t work out where I am,” Jake said, winking back.
Peter paid the check and the four stood and pushed in the high-back wood chairs. The restaurant was still full, families and dates stuffing their faces with the best Italian food in the city. The waiters, cooks, and busboys wouldn’t get off for hours. For at least two of the patrons, the heartburn from overeating would last well past closing.
As Peter and the senator walked out the door, a platonic couple in matching his and her suits watched through the window of the restaurant as the two men got into the politician’s car.
“Now what?” the woman asked, her red hair glowing under the recessed ceiling lights that ran along the front of the restaurant.
“For today, we let him go,” her date said before cursing under his breath.
Chapter 6
Half a world away, the good doctor’s morning routine rarely changed. He was up at dawn, downed two cups of coffee with the morning paper, and was out the door with a banana in hand forty minutes later.
It was a half-mile walk to the beach and another quarter of a mile to the small marina where he rented a boat slip for a hundred dollars a month. The walk took a little over ten minutes, no slower than driving his red Jeep convertible down the winding roads. When the weather didn’t cooperate, the doctor used the time on his boat to clean his fishing equipment and tidy up the cabin, which was immaculate most of the time anyway.
It was a brilliant summer day on Saipan and the doctor walked down the beach at a leisurely pace, eating his banana in slow bites and greeting familiar faces of expats who, like himself, couldn’t force themselves to leave the island. He could see The Sea Nurse from a point on the beach where the currents from the south headed further out to sea. The twenty-five-foot, twin-engine boat was among the largest in the marina. She was a beauty and the good doctor loved her more than he loved any woman in his life. Sure, the boat was more expensive to take care of than any woman, but it also gave him a lot less shit.
He climbed on board and checked the moorings, pulling firmly on every line. He unlocked the door to the cabin and stepped down the three stairs into the small but comfortable one-room suite. He changed into his swimsuit and grabbed his mask, snorkel, and fins off the floor before heading back into the light of the world outside. He untied the boat and started the engine with a single turn of the key.
The Sea Nurse never let him down.
It was a fifteen-minute ride to his favorite spot off the coast where he alternated days between snorkeling and spear fishing, depending on whether he wanted to catch the night’s dinner. The Cortez Reef area was one of the most beautiful on the island. Its status as a protected marine-life zone kept most of the tourist boats away. The restriction on boats in the protected area made it nearly impossible to get a permit, and the few who were lucky enough to have one tried to influence local powers to keep others from getting theirs.