Chapter 12

It was well past three o’clock in the morning when Lionel got a call back from his connection in Asia. By this time, of course, it had been many hours since he had finished dinner with Sasha and had sat with her and discussed what to do if the container was still in Malaysia, what to do if it had already been shipped back to Shanghai or if it had indeed been sent on to the US, and above all, what to do should the container not be located at all. In any of these several cases, getting things back on stream and on schedule was going to be very costly in either time or money and, most likely, in both. They both recognised that and he had tried to think of every single thing he could, every person he could perhaps contact, to help resolve each of these possibilities. Several times during their discussion, Sasha had closed her eyes and shaken her head as if trying to get pieces to fall into place inside her head, or to fly away out of her head. Sometimes, she had held her head in both hands as if she were trying to hold it together in one piece.

“It has to be on its way to Florida,” she said several times. “It just has to be. I can’t do this again any time soon; can’t go through this whole long, painful process again right now. Naw, man! No no no! I have to find it. And soon.”

“We’ll find it,” Lionel reassured her each time. “Don’t worry. We’ll find it. I got you! My guys are good at this. If this container is anywhere at all on the face of this earth, they will find it!”

When the call came, he had already driven Sasha back to the boat. They had sat and talked in the car for a long time, both of them with their doors open on each side of the car and their feet set outside on the pavement. After the security guard had passed back and forth about three times, and said “Good night” each time, they had finally got out of the car and walked down to the dock. Even then, they had then stood chatting on the dock for several minutes before Sasha asked Lionel, “Tea, coffee, milk, water or more wine?” and climbed aboard laughing when his response had been, “Yes!” In the end, they had both had water, wine and coffee with milk.

“You might as well here wait with me, come to think of it, if you don’t mind, that is,” she had said to him, “because you’d have to call me immediately, anyway, whatever time the call comes in. I’ll be up worrying and won’t be able to fall asleep until I hear from your guys, either, so…”

“Yeah! You’re right,” he agreed with her. “I won’t be sleeping, either, until they call in.”

They had taken off their shoes, pulled out pen, paper, smart phones and her laptop, and sat down to complete their strategising. Now, the night had grown closer to sunrise than to midnight and they were still seated on the poop deck of the yacht, under a dark blue sky strewn with stars, waiting for a call – THE call – that would determine their next steps and the major activities of the immediately foreseeable future. They both jumped, sat bolt upright, startled and anxious, when the phone rang.

“Tell me, Siro!” he said into the phone. He listened without interrupting and without any change of expression, as far as Sasha could see – and she was looking very closely at his face! She was sitting ramrod straight, now, from her earlier position half reclining on Lionel’s shoulder. She searched his face for clues. She strained her ears to see if she could hear anything at all that was being said by this person sitting in an office somewhere far on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. She heard nothing.

After a few minutes, Lionel tapped his iPhone screen and placed it on the table in front of them. Sasha turned to him, anxiety etched all over her face.

“What did he say?” she asked nervously, impatiently.

“Nothing much, I’m afraid,” he answered with a sigh. “The man he sent out has not yet been able to set eyes on the container but he is still at the docks, so we will hear again when he calls in another update. The office is checking manifestos for all the ships which have entered and left the port in the past few days, a little before and a little after the dates when the shipment should have moved through Tanjung Pelepas.”

All the energy left Sasha’s body. She crumbled back into the seat, swearing loudly in her mind, too weakened and dispirited by this lack of news, to even be able to make the effort to move her lips and say anything out loud. Lionel looked at her for a moment, desperate to find a way to help this woman with whom – it hit him like a bolt of lightning! – he was clearly beginning to fall in love. There! His heart had finally said it to his head. The words forming in his mind brought his body to a full stop. The realization froze him. So, there they were, she crumpled up, eyes closed, trying to disappear into the cushions, he frozen in mid-movement, eyes popping, staring down at her, with an expression that was almost as if he was seeing her for the first time ever. Before he could regain his senses and move again, Sasha opened her eyes and looked straight at him. She blinked, blinded by the force of his gaze. For a long moment, they just held each other’s eyes. She moved first.

She rose up to meet him, her body warm and soft against his chest, her eyes still locked into his. When she reached her hand up and caressed his cheek, he looked blankly at her, for a moment. Then, recognition hit him and he closed his eyes and leaned his head into her hand. She wrapped her other arm around his shoulder so she held his head in both her hands. Lionel moaned and reached for her, his hands clasping her waist, and then wrapping around her body, taut and tense as she strained up to meet him. He moved his head and kissed the palm of her hand. He moved again, bringing his hand up to hold her hand against his mouth. He kissed her palm again and again, and then her fingers one by one, still holding her tightly against his body with his other arm. She curled her fingers and her toes, spread them out and curled them in again. By the time he reached her middle finger and took the tip of it into his mouth, her back arched as she, instinctively, pushed harder against his chest. She was moaning now.

He slid his hand around to the small of her back and pulled her into him as his lips moved from her hand to her throat, his tongue finding the spot just beneath her earlobe that made her squeal a little, breathlessly. He heard her suck her breath in and round her mouth as she let the air out. She moved her head back and forth and up and down, following the movement of his lips and tongue, feeling his breath against the trail of moisture he left on her skin. It was warm, it was cool, it burned, it froze. She moaned again and again. He found her ear and she heard his breath dive deep into her head, run ragged and hot around her insides, burn itself all the way down into her navel. She sucked her belly in and curled her hips into him.

He arched her body backwards and pushed her gently into the cushions, his body covering hers, his elbows holding him up so that he lay only lightly on top of her. He moved, and his mouth found the tiny cavern at the base of her throat. He kissed her there until she arched against him again and moaned, deep and low. He found the well between her breasts. He stopped. He moaned. He breathed in sharply and deep and kissed her there. When he let his breath out again, it wafted over the wetness his tongue had left on her skin and she opened her mouth and cried out softly. Her hands cradled his head against her. She opened her eyes and looked down her body to the top of his head. She ran her fingers up through his hair and down again. He ran his tongue across her breast and around it. They were moving now, their hands seeking each other, their tongues tasting each other, their bodies reaching, feeling, fusing with the other’s.

It took them a while to realise that the phone was ringing again. Both of them straightened up, looking uncomprehendingly at each other and at the space around them, for a long moment. This time, he moved first. He dove for the phone on the coffee table, only to have it cease ringing just as he got his fingers around it.

“Aah!” he said. He flicked the screen a couple of times to see who had called. “Dammit! Oh! It’s my sister. That’s strange. I wonder what she wants at this hour!”

Sasha sighed, wriggled her body back into the cushions and stroked his arm.

“See what she wants,” she said and got to her feet.

“I’ll get us something to drink. We were supposed to be working, remember,” she added with a deep chuckle. He nodded and smiled, took her hand and kissed it.

“Yes, ma’am! Working. Yes,” he said. “I love working with you! This is an approach to work that I could get very used to.” She chucked him gently under the chin and walked away.

“Hi, ‘Nella!” Sasha heard him say. “What’s up?”

She turned sharply around when she heard him exclaim. He was on his feet now, one hand in his hair, his face twisted in astonishment or pain, she couldn’t quite tell which one.

“No!” she heard him say. “Oh! No. No. Antonella. Oh, god. No!” She walked quickly back to him.

“What’s up? What’s the matter?” she asked. He continued listening to his sister talking. He didn’t answer Sasha but he put his arm around her, pulled her to him and held her there while he listened. She felt the tension rising in his body. She felt his body quiver. She put her arms around his waist and never took her eyes off his face.

“Oh. Nella. No. Not now. Not now. What the hell?! How is Mom?”

Sasha could hear his sister’s voice coming through the phone, but she couldn’t quite distinguish the words, so she just held on to him and waited. He listened intently to everything his sister was telling him, but he didn’t say very much. Finally, he said good-bye to her and swore as he put the phone down.

Sasha waited for him to speak. For a long moment, he said nothing. She kept the silence with him. Waiting. Allowing him to process whatever he needed to before he spoke. He would tell her when he was able; she trusted that.

“My brother Mario had an accident,” he finally told her. She waited for him to say something else. He looked out over the bay. For a while, he didn’t answer. His body was taut and tight. She felt his anguish.

“Is he alright?” she reached out. “Did he get hurt?”

“Motorcycle accident,” he responded, his voice low. “He’s been hurt bad. He’s in the hospital. He’s unconscious. Head injury and possible broken spine. We won’t know anything else until after the surgery. They’re operating tonight.” He spoke slowly. She could hear the pain in his soul.

“Oh my god!!” she said and held him a little tighter. “I am so sorry, Lionel. I hope he will be alright. Where is he?”

“He’s in California. He was riding back from San Diego. He and some of his buddies. Eighteen-wheeler flew past them, he and one of his buddies got caught in the turbulence or something, lost control and hit vehicles, the divider or something. I don’t really know! Antonella wasn’t very clear. She was crying so hard, and I couldn’t understand some of what she said.”

“So, you’re going home to be with him, then?” It was more a statement than a question.

“He’s my youngest brother, you know,” was what he answered her. “He’s always been a rider. He’s been riding since he was in high-school. Well, before that, actually. He’s been riding his entire life, if you include tricycles, bicycles, scooters and skateboards; and Vespa’s and go-carts…and lawnmowers, even,” he added with a short laugh. Sasha listened without speaking.

“One time, when he was just four or five or so, I think, he took off on his bicycle, training wheels and all, after he had got in trouble for something or other and Mom had threatened to take the bike away. He put his pajamas and his Spiderman outfit into his Spiderman backpack and slipped out when no-body was looking. At some point, somebody asked about him, because nobody had seen him for a little bit. Mom sent me to check his room and just as I got back downstairs to tell her that he wasn’t in the house, my other brother who was searching the backyard came back in and said he wasn’t outside either. A second later, a police car pulled up to the driveway and we saw him climb out of the front seat, chatting up a storm. That’s how he was. That’s how he’s always been.

“We watched the police officer get out, open the back of the cruiser and take the bicycle off the back seat. The two of them walked up the driveway, him holding Mario’s hand and the two of them chatting together as if they were old friends. Apparently, Mario had already got halfway across town when the police officer saw him riding alone and stopped. It seems he told the officer that he was trying to get to our grandmother’s house. He was going to live with her, he said, because our mom was going to take away his bicycle. When the police asked him where Grandma lived, he told him New Jersey, because that is where she lived – still lives. So, the officer told him he needed to drive there; that New Jersey was too far for him to go by bike, unless it was a bike with an engine, like a motorcycle, and that if he got into the car, he’d give him a lift to his grandma’s house.

“Well, after that, Mario kept insisting that he needed to get a bike with an engine, or to get an engine for his bike. And he never stopped asking until he got his first little scooter with the little put-put engine when he was in middle school. Then, it was all uphill from there. In high school, he asked Dad for a job and then saved up his money and bought his first motorcycle. Right now, he has about five different bikes. He was riding one of his Harleys tonight, when he hit, Nella said. I hope it was not the one he rebuilt. He spent so much time on that one, getting it just right, just the way he wanted it. He would just die if that particular bike got smashed!” Lionel’s voice cracked as he ended the sentence. At any other time, that would have been a totally unremarkable figure of speech. Tonight, of course, it was not. His brother might actually be dying. He heaved a huge sigh and put his head back onto the cushions.

“He cannot die!” he said, in anguish, clenching and stiffening his body from head to foot. “He just can’t. No. No.”

“He won’t, Lionel. He won’t!” Sasha tried to reassure and comfort him. “He’ll be alright.”

“They air-ambulanced him to LA. My other sister, Francesca, is at the hospital with him already. She lives in LA. He lives in Laguna Beach but he’s in such bad shape they had to fly him up to LA. Our mother and father are on their way to him. They’re driving down from Santa Barbara right now.”

They sat together in silence for a while. Sasha listened to the waves rolling onto and away from the shore. She watched the lights of the island glittering and flickering as if they were reflecting the sparkling of the stars above. Lionel stretched himself out full length on the cushions. She lay beside him and they held each other. She let her head rest in the shelter of his shoulder. She felt warm and safe there. She wondered what she could do, if there was anything she should do. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to him. She wasn’t quite sure what would be appropriate, since she still wasn’t quite sure what there was between herself and this man.

Lionel shifted his body, adjusting his position to make himself more comfortable. Sasha started to raise herself up onto her elbows to give him space but he pulled her back to him, without saying anything, and held her closer still. She let herself relax into him. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. And his neck. She squeezed his shoulders lightly. He held on to her. She let him. They lay together like this for a long time, thinking, listening, hardly talking at all. Lionel’s phone rang again. For the second time that night, both of them jumped, startled and anxious, and sat bolt upright the second they heard the chimes. It was his sister. They stared at the phone for what seemed like an eternity, until finally, he picked it up and tapped its screen. He looked across at Sasha, breathed deeply and let the air out again, before putting the phone to his ear. Sasha watched him. He listened and nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, several times. And then, “Yeah. Ok. Alright. Ok. Yes. Let me know.”

“That was Nella again,” he told Sasha when he put the phone down again. “They’ve taken Mario into surgery, she says. Let me call Francesca.”

“I’ll get us a drink,” Sasha said, and walked into the galley.

“Yes. Thanks,” he answered. He was already tapping his sister’s number onto his iPhone screen.