sixty-three

I sat in the dark on Revere Beach and watched Graves Light blinking in the darkness. The night air was chilly. The sand was damp, and the surf pounded onto the shore, still agitated by the recent storms. I was alone on the beach, which curved away in a big arc that eventually formed Nahant.

“Aren’t you cold, baby?” asked Carol. She sat next to me, her plum funeral dress shimmering slightly in the night. The ocean breeze waved strands of her black hair. Her dress outlined her thighs as she got comfortable.

“Yeah, I’m a little cold.” I looked back at the ocean. It had been a long day. It would be a tough night. “I figured it out, you know.”

“I know,” said Carol. “Congratulations.”

“I just have to wonder why.”

“Why I was killed?”

“No. Why you betrayed me.”

Carol was silent. She looked out toward the sea. Her eyes filled. She had been appearing to me for months, taunting, helping, guiding, but also hiding something I hadn’t wanted to see.

She asked, “How did you know?”

“It was the timing.”

She nodded, her lip trembling.

I continued. “I saw Margaret’s demo in her booth. Her software was a year-old version of our project.”

Tears were rolling down Carol’s cheeks.

I said, “Alice couldn’t have given Rosetta to her, because you hired Alice nine months ago. You gave Margaret our source code.”

Carol blew air out between her lips. She wiped at her nose with her hand.

“Was it the money?” I asked.

The dam burst and Carol sobbed. She didn’t cover her face. Her arms lay at her sides, palms up as the tears spilled. She tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. Her sobs twisted my gut, and I wished I could trade places with her. Take her pain away. But I couldn’t even hold her, so I stared straight ahead and focused on the blinking lighthouse.

Carol’s tears slowed. “The money? You know I never cared about the money.”

“Then why?”

“To get you back from that horrible project. I hated Rosetta, and Nate, and Huey, and the whole company, because they took you away from me. I loved you, baby, and I lost you to them.”

“I was right there,” I said. “I was there the whole time.”

“You know what I mean. You were mentally gone. Emotionally gone. You weren’t there for me anymore. You lived for that horrible project. It was all you talked about.”

Carol’s tears had stopped and her breathing slowed as she spoke. “One day I caught Jack trying to make a copy of the code. He told me he was debugging it, but that was ridiculous. I could see what he was doing. He asked me what it would take for me to keep quiet about it. I told him that I’d make the copy for him if he’d fire you. I missed you so much. It just slipped out. It was stupid.”

I nodded. Kevin had been right. If I had known the real reason Nate fired me, the whole thing would have fallen into place.

“Then I was trapped and it all went bad,” Carol continued.

“The movies,” I said.

“That bastard Dmitri saw me. He actually walked up to me in Jack’s office and grabbed my boob, then he turned to Jack and Roland said, ‘Real ones. Wery nice’ in that fucking accent. He said that if I didn’t make movies, Jack would tell the police that I was selling your software. I’d get arrested and I’d lose you.”

“Whose idea was it to do lesbian scenes?”

“Mine. I told them I wouldn’t do it with guys. I didn’t want to cheat on you. So they made me do things with Alice while that bastard Roland watched.”

“I know. I found your movie on that website.”

Carol looked at the sand. “What did you think?”

“It was the first time porn made me cry.”

Carol stared into the sand. I peeked under her chin, and she was smiling her little “that’s not supposed to be funny” smile. She looked up at me, her blue eyes glistening.

She asked, “Why did Dmitri kill me? I did everything he wanted.”

I sighed and said, “You set yourself up.”

“What?”

“Jack finally got Nate to fire me. With me gone, they lost their hold over you. You became a loose end.”

“And Dmitri cleaned up the loose end.”

“Yeah.”

Carol stood and I followed her lead. We looked out over the water. We were silent, breathing the salty air and listening to the rushing surf.

Carol said, “We were good together, weren’t we?”

“We were great.”

“Remember that time we did this on the Cape, in Wellfleet? Looked out at the ocean? That was the night we built a bonfire, and stayed by it and drank tequila until the beach was empty.”

I said, “I remember. It was the first time I’d made love on a beach.”

“The first time for me too, you know.”

“Yeah, and the last.”

Carol laughed. “Oh my God! Wasn’t it horrible? We got all gross and sandy and then we passed out and almost got caught sleeping there. What a hangover. I still hate tequila.”

I could feel a change coming. Carol’s dress was shimmering more brightly. The string of lights from Nahant began to appear through her, like stars in the evening. She looked down at herself, then back at me. She smiled.

Carol said, “I have to go.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be all right now.” She looked at the lighthouse and back at me. “Can you forgive me?”

“Of course, you silly girl. I love you.”

“Goodbye, baby.”

I closed my eyes. A breeze came in off the water, and I felt Carol’s lips brush mine as her hand traced across my neck. I caught a whiff of her perfume. Then she was gone.

I opened my eyes. Graves Light winked in the distance. I turned and walked up the beach.