Cassie has a chance meeting …
Today started out as the best kind of day here in Middle Valley, in my humble opinion.
The lawns along River Road, lush from an entire night of rain, shimmered a deep, dark green. The regular pedestrians were out walking to wherever it was they went every morning. Len Stills, the plumber, hustled round the corner, tipping his hat in my direction (as he does every day). And Patricia something-or-other, who owned the consignment shop down the block and ran a boarding house in the middle of town, did her usual power walk to work, today with a golf umbrella she’d “borrowed” from her husband Richard. Her short stature was swallowed up by the breadth of the thing – I didn’t even know it was her until she called out my name.
See, rain here was a beautiful thing. It quieted the mind and created an environment for introspection – the very opposite of what it did to New Yorkers.
Rain meant rage back home. It had a way of stagnating the five boroughs like no other type of weather could – not even snow. Trains ran late, the water seeping onto the tracks through the cracks and flowing down the subway steps. Buses sat in indescribable traffic. Once, I was on a bus to New Jersey at rush hour in the middle of a summer thunderstorm and, two hours into the ride from Port Authority, it broke down in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel. Traffic had to be diverted around us, then a new bus had to fight its way in from the city side to pick us up and get us to Jersey – a two-hour endeavor in and of itself. It didn’t help that I could have walked to my destination from where the bus died, but that’s a story for another day.
If you commuted into the city from New Jersey or Long Island, chances are you remained wet (or at least damp) all day. And the shoes? Forget it. Ladies, leave the Manolos at home and break out the duck boots, because heels just will not do on a Monsoon Monday in our great metropolis.
On my list of reasons I did not miss New York City, the rain fell in at about No. 3.
Reason No. 1 greeted me outside The Riverside this morning, smoking and smirking and, well, being his usual smackish himself.
“It’s 10 o’clock, Cunningham. Aren’t you late for work?”
He threw his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it, just for dramatic effect, of course.
“No, Mick. I’m not. Is there something I can help you with? And what the hell are you doing here anyway?”
He grinned. “I could ask you the same question.”
I never dreamed of running into him like this, but I already had a plan in my head as to how it would go, and so far, this was exactly on point. I mean … I was married to the man for more than five years.
Mick Righteous. Worst stage name ever. I knew him as Mick Mitchell, singer, songwriter, guitar player. A post-pandemic James Taylor. By the time we met, he’d established himself as a weekly regular at four bars in New York but made his primary living during the day as a session musician for jazz acts. We’d been married for four years when he was offered a gig at the Montreax Jazz Festival in Switzerland. It would be the honeymoon we could never afford, he’d told me. I was to join him halfway through it. But before I got there, the renowned producer Armond Jones had overheard him playing poolside late into the evening one night. One thing led to another, Armond invited Mick to record at his studio in London, and by the time I got there, Mick was (both mind and body) in another place – a private jet with Armond and his crew, leaving me in Switzerland to fend for myself.
He’d been discovered, and I’d been ditched.
I got back to New York to find his closets empty, suitcases gone, and a note.
“Cassie, I’ll call you next week. Lots to tell. I’ll make it up to you. Mick.”
And that was it.
I called the landlord, told him to take Mick’s name off the lease and add mine. Then I called a lawyer.
And now I stood in front of him. At this point, I had to laugh.
“See what I bought?” I said, pointing to the building before us.
“What you bought?” He feigned incredulity. “Always said you were Daddy’s girl at heart.”
I had to laugh again. “I’m not going to tell you what he said about you the other day … believe me. I’d steer clear of that place if I were you.”
He smiled. “I know, no going back. I get it.”
I shook my head. “Why are you here?”
Mick looked down, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and kicked the gravel under his boot, a boot I’d bought him for our third anniversary. He had gotten me a set of fine cookware that my sister had mercifully deposited into the trash bin when I moved, an elegant (if slightly overzealous) fit of pure solidarity.
“I think I may be in some trouble.”