The Greener Field

Hauntings of the Past

 Hey Sarah:

So did you think I was kidding when I told you I would definitely look you up? I'm sure you're back in San Diego right now. Probably already slaving away in the clinic with those kids and their speech problems. Well, look. I was just wondering if you're still thinking about me. You know, the handsome guy you met at the overlook of Fira last week? My introduction, if you recall, was while looking over that incomparable edge of Santorini at sunset.

So Sarah, I just wanted you to know I found you alluring those two days you stayed in the same hotel with your parents. I must confess you're a girl not easy to forget. And by the way, I hope you're not feeling the places I invited you were only to impress you. I would have gone to them myself anyway. But as I remember, you did seem to be having a pretty good time. At the dinner party on Stuyvesant's yacht. The scenery there suited you, as i remember. Mr. S. is an old client of mine. And such a crazy host. He actually complimented me later about you. "Where did you find that jewel of a girl?" he asked. Really. Just yesterday by phone from Zurich.

Well, I'm sending you this email because you don't seem to be picking up your cell phone these past few days. Hope it's not about who's calling. But if it is, just let me know and I'll fade away. Hopefully as a nice memory. Anyways, I've been a bit concerned since you and your folks flew back to Athens and then on to Cali. Not being able to reach you has been a little worrying.

Hope all is good over in "America's Finest" I'll actually be nearby in La Jolla on business next week. And because of that, was hoping to take you out to dinner and maybe some clubbing while in town. Let me know if you are up for some more tall tales and laughs. And maybe just one more of that unforgettable kiss. Looks like there's going to be a full moon during that weekend . . .

Message me. --Jess

* * *

Sarah closed the screen of her laptop and walked back to the bedroom of her small but elegant apartment. The lithe twenty-four-year-old was not particularly happy with the message. She had met Jess quite by accident the previous week of her vacation, and at the time just wanted to find peace and quiet in a faraway place. Her parents invited her on their whirlwind trip to the Mediterranean island of Santorini—just like they had done to other exotic locales while she was growing up. This time she did not complain and went along with them, partly out of nostalgia. She had not seen much of her parents since finishing her Masters at UCLA the year before. But it was also a time for Sarah to reflect upon her life after college and now her recent position as a speech and language therapist. The clinic where she spent long hours was not far from her apartment in Torrey Pines—a scenic, coastal area just north of San Diego. It was known to the more wealthy inhabitants of the town simply as 'The Village."

Sarah went to the back window and stared out into the pine forest that was an aesthetic buffer between the sandstone and wooden complex and the nearby blue Pacific. She had hoped to spend that Saturday morning just padding around in the red and blue Japanese kimono she wore as a robe over her pajamas—reading the paper, and hopefully, attending to some domestic tasks she had only learned to do herself while a freshman in the dorms of Scripps College. Not far away from her place was stately Fairbanks Ranch, the affluent and sprawling community where she was raised by her parents as an only child. The Ranch had all the trappings of an exclusive country club—complete with golf course, equestrian complex and several polo fields.

Sarah was at this point in her life much happier with simplicity and frankly, having less. Her recent and more pedestrian years as a college student in Los Angeles had afforded her this frugality and tranquility, which she found a more Zen outlook than materialism. And it was for this reason, and a couple others involving males, that she had walked away from the computer that morning, somewhat perplexed and angry over Jess' out-of-the-blue email. The inescapable invitation from the man she had forced herself to forget.