“How long will she?” Mitch wondered.
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
He went down the wooden steps to the beach and plowed through the hot dry sand toward them. They were on their hands and knees before their rising castle, both of them filled with laughter and high spirits. From fifty feet away, they looked like a pair of impudent, playful fourteen-year-old schoolgirls full of lollipop dreams. From closer up they were the very picture of innocence lost-two battle-hardened veterans who between them had logged enough years on the dark side for ten lifetimes. Becca was nothing but skin and bone, with dark circles under her sunken eyes. Esme had that fat, scabby lip to go with the expression of dazed confusion that wracked her delicate, lovely face. Her eyes were those of a woman who was now completely lost and fearful.
“This is quite some castle,” Mitch observed, because it was. A good five feet high, with turrets, towers, and a fine, deep moat.
“Are you going to help us?” demanded Becca, wetting her hands in a water pail. “Or are you just going to stand there like a big boss man?”
Mitch promptly flopped down on his knees and started scooping out more sand for the moat. “How long are you planning to stick around, Esme?”
“Until they release Tito’s body,” she answered quietly as she continued molding the castle walls with her hands. “I want to take him back to Bakersfield and bury him with his parents.”
“That’s a really nice idea,” Mitch said. “Listen, there’s something important I need to talk to you about. The night Tito died, do you remember when he came home and was rummaging around in his closet before he went back out?”
Esme didn’t respond for a moment. Just kept fashioning the castle wall with her shapely hands. “I remember,” she finally said in a voice that came from somewhere on the other side of the ocean.
“It was his script he was getting. He must have mailed it to me on his way up to Chapman Falls that night. I just got it today. It really does exist, Esme.”
“How is it?” Becca asked eagerly. She seemed vastly more excited about Mitch’s discovery than Esme, who’d scarcely reacted at all.
“I have to tell you, I was pretty knocked out by it. Honestly, it’s terrific. He called it The Bright Silver Star.”
Esme sat back on her haunches now, swiping at the hair in her face. “I never once saw him working on it. He must have done it when I was asleep.” She let out a heavy sigh, her breasts straining inside the tiny bikini top. “Tito did get up a lot in the middle of the night. The poor thing had such awful nightmares.”
“I have it back at my house,” Mitch said, climbing to his feet. “I’ll go get it for you right now.”
“No, don’t,” Esme said abruptly. “I mean, please don’t. Tito wanted you to have it.”
“It’s your property, Esme.”
“He gave it to you.”
“But this is something of great value. You can get a lot of money for it.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t even want to read it. It will just make me sad. I’m tired of being sad, Mitch. Can’t you understand that?”
“Sure I can. Only, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Something good,” she said simply. “Something decent. You’re a smart man. You’ll know what to do.”
“Getting a little dry here,” Becca announced, taking their empty water pails down to the water’s edge to fill them.
“Can we talk about something personal?” Mitch asked Esme.
“If you’d like.”
“Did you know that Tito was gay?”
The actress peered at him curiously. “You must think I’m a total bimbo, asking me that.”
“No, not at all. It’s just… Will told me that you didn’t know.”
“Will was wrong.”
“He said that’s what Tito told him.”
“Then Tito lied to him,” she said, her voice growing heated now. “I always knew he was gay. It was obvious. Gay is gay.”
“And yet you stayed together,” Mitch said. “Why?”
“I loved him. Is that so hard to understand?”
“Not to me,” said Becca, returning now with the water pails. “I think you guys were really great together. And I always will.”
“Besides,” Esme added, her face darkening, “after what I went through with Daddy dearest, Tito and me just seemed kind of…”
“Kind of what, Esme?”
“Normal.”
“How much did Tito know about that?”
“Not a thing.”
“Why, were you afraid of what he might do to Dodge?”
“No, not really.”
“Then what was it?”
“That was the past,” Esme explained. “I don’t like to go there- there’s never anything back there that’s any good. So I never, ever look back. Only forward.”
“Is that why you never went after your dad?”
“You mean like call the law on him or something?”
“No need to do that,” Becca spoke up, her own sunken eyes getting a steely look. “His current punishment is much worse.”
Esme nodded her head in grim assent.
“What punishment is that?”
“Daddy has to live with himself,” said Esme.
“Each and every day,” Becca added.
Mitch let this one go. He didn’t tell them that Dodge seemed to have no regrets, no remorse, no functioning conscience at all. Esme and Becca both needed to believe that he did, and Mitch wasn’t about to take it from them. They had so little else to cling to. “Esme, why did you come back here this summer?”
“I thought Dorset would be good for us,” she replied, shrugging her soft shoulders. “I was wrong.”
A pair of kids on jet skis went hurtling past them now, shrieking with high-decibel delight. Mitch sat back on his ample haunches, watching them. “Look, maybe we ought to talk about Tito’s script again in a few days,” he suggested.
“No, Mitch,” Esme said. “I don’t ever want to talk about that again. Just promise me one thing, okay?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“His fans deserve to know who Tito really was. Tell them. It can’t hurt him now.”
“What about you? It can hurt you.”
“No, it can’t,” Esme said softly as she continued working on their castle, her wet hands fashioning its walls higher, higher, and still higher. “Nothing can hurt me anymore. Not a thing.”
CHAPTER 16
“Hey, Tina-long time no see.”
“Mitch, it has been too long!” Tina’s round, pink face lit up with motherly delight as she planted wet kisses on both of Mitch’s cheeks. She was a chubby, bustling little strawberry blond in her fifties. “Now tell me,” she commanded him, gazing up, up at Des. “Who is this lovely creature?”
“Say hello to Desiree Mitry.”
“Welcome to my restaurant, Desiree.”
Des smiled at her. “Thank you, I’ve heard a lot about it.”
The Port Alba Cafe was on Thompson Street a block below Washington Square Park, next door to a shop where men sat playing chess with each other. It was a tiny cafe-no more than a dozen tables, all but one of them filled. Young families with small children were eating there. Several couples. One very dignified old man in a white suit who sat alone, sipping an espresso. There was a mural of a fishing village on one wall, a tiny bar with glasses in an overhead rack. The ceiling was of stamped tin. Wonderful smells were coming out of the kitchen.
Des had on a dress for the first time in ages, a sleeveless little yellow knit thing that clung to her hips and bootay for dear life. She wore sandals with it, gold loops in her ears, her grandmother’s pearls, a bit of lipstick. She had even painted her toenails, which she almost never did. But this was a special night. She was out on a genuine New York City date with the man she loved.
Mitch wore a white oxford button-down, khakis, and Mephisto walking shoes, which was the same damned thing he always wore. But for this occasion his shirt and trousers were actually pressed and his mop of curly hair combed. He looked positively grown-up.