§ § § - November 19, 1983
Later that afternoon Roarke and Leslie, on their way to make a few routine rounds, stepped off the porch at the main house, only to see a familiar figure coasting toward them on a bike. It was Mrs. Mallory, who braked to a stop in front of them. "Well, Mrs. Mallory, you look very jaunty and dashing!" commented Roarke.
"And really happy, too," Leslie put in.
Mrs. Mallory laughed. "Oh, Mr. Roarke, I'm having such a wonderful time. I hope to get to the boutique before it closes. I have to get some new lipstick, and perfume, and...listen to me, I'm carrying on like a schoolgirl." Roarke was laughing quietly, and Leslie grinned, thrilled that they had at least one happy guest.
"Nothing wrong with that," she said.
Mrs. Mallory grinned back. "I guess not," she agreed.
"I'm glad everything is turning out as you have planned." Then Roarke seemed to remember something. "Oh...there is one thing—but I'm sure it will make no difference..."
"What is that?" Mrs. Mallory inquired, as Leslie tensed up suddenly, realizing what was coming. Of course it had to happen, she thought, wishing she had stayed at the main house when Roarke had taken her and Lawrence off to meet the afternoon plane.
"Your son and his family have just arrived on the island," Roarke told her.
Mrs. Mallory's smile collapsed and she looked dismayed. "Oh no." She turned to the bike, put down the kickstand and went to the nearby iron bench, where she threw herself down in despair. "How did they find me?"
"Well, your son told me that he became worried when he noticed that some of your suitcases and your personal items were missing," Roarke explained, sitting beside her.
Leslie nodded, lingering near the bike. "And then I guess he found the itinerary for your trip," she added apologetically.
"Was there some reason you didn't wish your son to know your whereabouts?" asked Roarke with gentle perplexity.
Mrs. Mallory shifted her eyeballs to peer at him sidewise. "I couldn't very well tell him I was running away from home to...well, you know..." She shrugged, like a chastened child whose parents have just discovered her latest major transgression. Roarke offered a sympathetic smile, but there wasn't much he could say.
Before anyone could come up with a comment of any kind, there was a stern hail from somewhere nearby. "Mother..." Mrs. Mallory looked around in alarm, and she and Roarke arose as Leslie turned to behold a man and woman somewhere in their thirties and a girl five or six years younger than Leslie approaching. "Mother! We were so worried about you!" The man took Mrs. Mallory's hands and kissed her cheek.
"Oh, Mom, you look terrific!" his wife exclaimed enthusiastically, taking her turn to kiss Mrs. Mallory's cheek.
"Thanks," she murmured, accepting her granddaughter's hug. "I'm glad to see you... but I, I, uh...I really must be going..."
Leslie noticed her father's worried scowl and bit her lip as Mallory asked suspiciously of his mother, "What's going on here?"
"Nothing," she replied. "I'm just having a little holiday."
"A holiday," he repeated skeptically. "Uh-huh. That's it, isn't it." He glanced at his wife and daughter. "You think we've been neglecting you at home, so you decided to teach us a lesson—is that it?"
"Richard," his mother scolded, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never thought that, ever. And now I really must be on my way." With that, she went to the bike, booted up the kickstand and jumped on.
"Where're you going? We just got here!" Richard Mallory protested.
"Nice seeing you all!" his mother called back, and pushed off on the bike.
"Mr. Roarke?" Richard began.
Roarke turned to him and raised both hands. "I'm sorry, Mr. Mallory, I'm sorry—I never interfere in family matters." He caught himself when he noticed the stern glare Leslie was drilling him with, and corrected, "Well, almost never. Will you excuse me." He brushed past Leslie and retreated into the house.
That left Leslie there alone facing Richard Mallory and his family; realizing it, she cleared her throat, trying not to let her consternation show. I'll get you for this later, Mr. Roarke, I swear it! She gestured to the nearby rover. "We have some empty bungalows this weekend, if you'd like to get settled into one," she offered.
"Well, thank you," said Richard Mallory, sounding a little less strident than he had a moment before. "As you no doubt just saw, that was my mother who just tore out of here...I'm her son Richard, and this is my wife Lisa and my daughter Michelle."
"I'm Leslie Hamilton," Leslie told them and managed a reasonable facsimile of a cheery smile of welcome. "Right this way, just grab your bags."
As soon as she had deposited the family into a bungalow—giving them the full list of the resort's amenities to forestall any questions—she drove back to the main house with a sense of relief and a growing annoyance that spawned frustration when she discovered that Roarke wasn't in the study. "Great," she muttered, "just great. Somehow, some way, you just have to spoil everything, don't you. I bet I know whose fault this is."
"And whose fault would it be then, miss?" asked Lawrence, entering the house unexpectedly just then from the terrace.
Yours, she thought uncharitably, but only shook her head. "Oh, never mind me, I'm just disgusted by the way things are going. Where's Mr. Roarke?"
"I haven't seen him for a while, miss. I'm certain he's gone to attend to someone's fantasy, though. Perhaps you'd care to wait here for him, and try to get through some of that paperwork while you're here." He gestured at the desk.
She threw him a look that made his eyes get comically wide with overdone offense, but it achieved the goal of making him depart. She fell into Roarke's chair and sifted listlessly through the mail, thinking wistfully that all this might have had a much happier outlook if only Tattoo were still here. At least she'd be much less depressed; she and Tattoo could have speculated on what Roarke's next move would be.
The evening meal was stilted; Lawrence talked business as long as he could, till he ran out of updates and had to concede to the stiff and pressing silence that inevitably followed. Leslie ate slowly, not feeling especially hungry, but unwilling to face any haranguing from Mariki. Roarke said little other than making occasional acknowledgment that he was listening to Lawrence, but after Lawrence sputtered to a halt, he fell silent too.
Once the meal ended, he suggested to Lawrence that he supervise the luau and asked Leslie to stay in the office and take any phone calls, before leaving himself to walk some trails and think a bit. He knew Leslie was upset with him, and he knew why; unfortunately, for once, he had begun to second-guess himself a bit. He had had his reasons for doing what he had done with the Tuckers and Helen Sinclair; but had they been good ones, after all? He came upon a bench and settled onto it, gazing into space and considering it.
Then an indignant female voice sent his thoughts fleeing into hiding for the moment. "Mr. Roarke!" He looked around to see Kathleen Tucker standing there glaring at him.
He said carefully, "I thought you might need to talk," and gestured to the space beside him, making as if to stand up.
But Kathleen didn't bother to accept or even acknowledge the invitation; she simply started right in on him. "How could you do that to me? How could you spring his mistress on me like that?"
Roarke decided he was in this for weal or for woe, and might as well follow through. Rising, he informed her, "It's called confrontational therapy. It's very difficult to fight an enemy you've never seen."
"And what did I see?" she retorted. "She's not as gorgeous as I expected. And she's not some eighteen-year-old nymphette." That got a raised-eyebrow look from Roarke, who fleetingly wondered if Kathleen realized that Leslie was that age and most likely would have taken offense—embarrassed offense, no doubt, but offense all the same. "Oh, what's wrong with me anyway, that he wants to have her?"
"It's not necessarily that anything is wrong with you," Roarke said, falling into step beside her as she began to meander down the path. "Some men just like the adventure, the excitement, of someone new."
"So the marriage gets stale and the romance isn't there anymore." She frowned, and Roarke almost said something, but then Kathleen muttered, "Oh, who am I kidding. It's over between Gary and me."
"You wouldn't be here if you really thought that, would you," Roarke said, stopping her there in the path. "No, Mrs. Tucker, you've come to Fantasy Island to find out if you can save your marriage, when other women might have given up."
"Oh, do you think there's still a chance?" Kathleen asked, brightening with hope.
Roarke regarded her critically. "The answer to that question is exactly what your fantasy is all about, isn't it?"
Kathleen stared at him, then nodded, her face hardening with determination. "Okay. I may not win, but that octopus is gonna know she's in for a helluva fight."
"Good girl," Roarke encouraged her.
"He wants adventure? He wants surprise? He wants something new? I'll give him something new. He ain't seen nothin' yet." With a smirk—and clearly a plan—Kathleen Tucker strode away down the trail, and Roarke watched her go, newly bewildered even when she came back long enough to deliver a heartfelt thanks before hastening away again. Just what, he wondered, both intrigued and a little disquieted, was she up to?
He returned to the main house at some leisure, and found Leslie there, sitting with her chin on her fist, with a pile of letters, some opened and some still sealed, scattered all over the desktop while she doodled on a scratch pad with the stub of a pencil. She didn't seem to realize he was there till he deliberately made a little extra noise with his shoes on the wooden floor surrounding the Persian rug. Then her head shot up and she stared at him, startled. "What're you doing here?" she blurted before she could stop herself.
"I live here," Roarke replied dryly. "I trust you don't mind if I come into my own house and change my clothes."
Leslie blushed and hung her head, shrugging. "Sorry," she mumbled and began to stand the pencil on end, sliding her fingers down it, flipping it over, standing it on the eraser end, and repeating the action again and again. Roarke watched her for a moment, but she seemed engrossed. After a long minute and a half, she lifted her head and peered at him from under her bangs. "Thought you had to change."
"Has it been that quiet around here?" he asked mildly.
"Better quiet than fighting with Lawrence," she mumbled, shrugging again.
Roarke chuckled then and approached the desk, taking one of the chairs in front of it. "Leslie, I realize you disapprove greatly of my actions with the Tucker fantasy, but I had my reasons for taking those actions. However...it may interest you to know that, thanks to your indignation over the incident, I had some second thoughts about it and took the time to consider it carefully." He smiled at her astonished look.
"You did?" At his nod, she reddened again. "I don't know why. I mean...it's not like I'm the expert of the world on what you do or why you do it. The whole idea that you'd take my hotheaded opinion into serious consideration..."
Roarke laughed. "You need not denigrate yourself to that extent, Leslie Susan."
"Well, no...but I guess it wasn't really that, so much as the fact that you claimed never to interfere in family affairs when that's exactly what you did with the Tuckers. Imagine what Lawrence would've said if he'd overheard that."
"Are you telling me I got off easy with you?" Roarke asked her whimsically, and laughed again when she rolled her eyes. "Even I am prone to slips of the tongue on occasion, my dear daughter, and it might behoove you to remember that when you begin to elevate me to a pedestal I have no wish to occupy." He smiled and patted her hand at sight of her latest sheepish blush. "Let's forget it, shall we? I have someone to see, and to that end, I'd better hurry upstairs and change before the night grows too much older."
"Who're you seeing?" she wanted to know.
He smiled. "Mr. Tucker. I have a few 'interfering' words to say to him as well." Leslie laughed at that, and he retreated upstairs, chuckling.
Some twenty minutes later, he wandered into the luau clearing—now boasting a bar, a small stage and a dance floor—where the Saturday-night party was in full swing and most of the audience was being captivated by a fire dancer performing unusually intricate tricks. There was but one person at the bar, namely Gary Tucker, who sat hunched over a drink; Roarke strolled in and took the stool beside Tucker, nonchalant and pretending not to notice the man, though he was well aware of Tucker peering over his shoulder as if looking for someone before turning to him and saying a bit belligerently, "You must think I'm a real lowlife, don'tcha?"
Roarke studied him for a second or two, watching him stir his drink with a swizzle stick, before replying, "I don't take it upon myself to judge people, Mr. Tucker. But now that you mention it..."
Tucker's head came up sharply before he subsided. "Well, I...I didn't mean to hurt either one of them." He stared at Roarke as though in challenge.
Roarke stared right back and said, "Sadly, there are some situations which do not have in them the ingredients of success."
Tucker sighed. "They're, uh...they're both terrific. Kathleen is safe; Helen is...exciting. I need them both."
"Yes," Roarke mused. "I tried to explain your attitude to your wife."
"And?" said Tucker with interest.
Roarke smiled genially. "Men have been trying to expound upon your theory for thousands of years. Perhaps you'll have better luck. And if you do, Mr. Tucker," he concluded, rising, "you'll be a legend in your own time. Will you excuse me?" He left without waiting for a response, satisfied that he'd at least given Tucker something to mull over.
Leslie was still at the desk reading letters when he got back, though he caught her smack in the middle of a yawn as he walked in. Laughing, he suggested, "Perhaps you'd better go to bed. You've had a long day."
"Oh, I'll be all right, I just need to move around a little. What'd Mr. Tucker say?" she asked eagerly, clearly more alert now.
Roarke shook his head. "Something tells me he's going to do his utmost to hold onto both his wife and his mistress."
Leslie rolled her eyes. "And he thinks they'll let him get away with that? He's got another think coming, in that case. Some men can be so dumb—they carry on as if a woman doesn't know how to think for herself. Anybody ever does that to me, I'll set him straight so fast he'll still be spinning around by the time I've walked out the door."
Roarke grinned at that. "Well, good for you," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Tucker will have a major decision to make—and if he doesn't, then Mrs. Tucker and Miss Sinclair will do it for him. All right, I think it's time we get some sleep."
§ § § - November 20, 1983
The morning was quiet after all the excitement of the previous day, giving Roarke and Leslie a chance to catch up on some paperwork and Lawrence the opportunity to "tidy up the study", as he put it. They had lunch on the veranda, with Lawrence putting in a surprise request for some sort of "trifle", which turned out to be a layered dessert presented in a large clear footed serving bowl shaped like a cylinder. "I'll have you know, Mr. Cornwell-McKinnie," said Mariki tartly, "that this took me an hour to put together, so you'd better appreciate it." She stalked away without waiting for his reply.
Leslie, mouth open with surprise and burgeoning glee, watched her go; Roarke, too, gazed after her in bemusement. But Lawrence had only one question: "How did she find out what my surname is?" At which Leslie and Roarke snapped around to stare at him, then at each other, and both began to laugh in spite of themselves.
Once the meal was over, they went to the pond restaurant with its new lounge, including a bar, stage and dance floor; Roarke and Leslie checked with the bartender about supplies, while Lawrence perused the room looking for Kathleen Tucker, as Roarke had asked him to do. But it wasn't till he noticed a new couple step out onto the dance floor that he finally spied her. "Oh, there's Mrs. Tucker now."
Roarke and Leslie followed his pointing finger and saw Kathleen dancing with enthusiastic energy; her partner was a slender dark-haired man with a mustache (awful lot of mustaches on the island lately, Leslie found herself thinking) who was dressed surprisingly conservatively for a young single man in this day and age—in an ecru jacket and slacks with a shirt that nearly matched his dark-brown hair. "Wow," Leslie murmured.
"Apparently the lady has taken charge of her own destiny," commented Roarke.
"And I say, bully for her," Lawrence announced, earning a curious look from Roarke and a smirk from Leslie. Though hers went unnoticed, Lawrence did turn to Roarke for his reaction and looked a little abashed, schooling his features; but Leslie noticed the twinkle in Roarke's eyes and his slight smile, and grinned, watching Kathleen dance.
The music changed to a somewhat mellower tune, and Roarke straightened, pulling his jacket around enough to button it. "Perhaps I'd better find out what Mrs. Tucker is up to," he mused, strolling out onto the dance floor.
"Why is he so suspicious, I wonder?" Lawrence mused, mostly to himself.
"Because Mrs. Tucker supposedly wanted to save her marriage," said Leslie, eyeing him in surprise. "Remember? If she really wants to do that, then why is she dancing with some other guy? I hope he can figure out what's going on."
Roarke cut in on Kathleen's partner, who backed off with some reluctance but no protest, and turned to her. "May I?"
"Oh," said Kathleen, looking pleasantly surprised. "I didn't know the fantasy included a dance with the host." Roarke smiled at that, and they fell in time with the music.
After a moment he inquired, "Are you enjoying your fantasy, Mrs. Tucker?"
"Well, it didn't turn out exactly like I expected, but yes, I'm enjoying it," she said.
"With strange men you meet at bars?" Roarke asked.
"Why not?" returned Kathleen, defensive and defiant. "He thinks I'm smart, and he thinks I'm sexy—two things about me my husband seems to have overlooked."
Roarke stopped moving then and studied her, then inquired with a touch of remonstration, "Are you ready to end your fantasy, Mrs. Tucker?"
She stopped too, eyes widening. "Uh-oh...something bad's gonna happen, right?" She rolled her eyeballs in disgust. "I knew it—I knew it!"
"I can control only the present," Roarke told her. "The future is up to you."
"Well..." Kathleen considered it. "I don't seem to have that much to lose, so I'm gonna stick with it." Roarke nodded; she excused herself and he let her go, but he had to wonder what her plan was, especially when she rejoined her dance partner at the bar.
"So what's the story?" asked Leslie when he came back.
"Last night," Roarke said slowly, "Mrs. Tucker was determined to win her husband back. Now she seems to have given up on him. Yet she has decided not to end her fantasy. This grows more and more intriguing." He took in Lawrence's and Leslie's expressions and chuckled suddenly. "I am not omnipotent, you two; don't look at me like that. We have some other errands to run, so we'd better move along."
The day remained quiet for the most part, a great contrast to Saturday. Leslie got a call from Maureen, to her immense surprise, and Roarke allowed her to take it, knowing that Maureen was as busy working in her mother's catering business as Leslie was working with him, and that her other friends had all gone off-island for college, thus making her life a good deal lonelier. The girls were still talking when Lawrence came in from some errand or another, looking flustered enough that he didn't seem to notice Leslie on the phone where he would normally have emitted some cutting remark. "Are you all right, Lawrence?" Roarke inquired, looking up from the ledger.
"Ah, well..." Lawrence drew himself up to his full height, as if afraid he might have suffered some loss of dignity, and cleared his throat. "My apologies, sir, but I inadvertently witnessed part of a confrontation between Mr. Tucker and Miss Sinclair." At Roarke's quizzical look, he elaborated, with some reluctance: "It seems he is preparing to move in with her, and she is raising some very strong objections."
"Ah, I see," Roarke said, settling back in the chair and smiling faintly. "Precisely as I suspected would happen. Thank you, Lawrence."
Lawrence stared at him in amazement. "Sir?"
"Go on about your other duties," Roarke said reassuringly. "You need not worry any further about our guests this afternoon. Thank you."
It seemed to take a minute for this to sink in; then Lawrence blinked and again pulled himself up straight. "Of course, sir." He looked a bit bewildered, but nonetheless walked out, pulling the new inner-foyer doors closed behind him.
A minute or two later Leslie wound up the call and replaced the receiver. "I'm surprised Lawrence didn't say something snarky about personal calls," she commented.
Roarke smiled, vastly amused. "Lawrence was preoccupied," he understated, and at her eager, questioning look, told her what the butler had related to him.
"Ha," Leslie said in delight, grinning and clapping her hands together once. "I think Gary Tucker is in the process of learning a nasty little lesson. Yay for Miss Sinclair."
Roarke chuckled. "He hasn't finished learning it as yet, my dear Leslie, so your celebration may be somewhat premature. Would you go to the kitchen for me, please, and check with Mariki in regard to a shopping list?"
They saw no one from either of that weekend's fantasies until well into the evening, when supper was long over, Lawrence had gone home to his little cottage for the night, and dark had fallen. Roarke and Leslie were on the terrace behind the study; Roarke was doing research on some esoteric subject and taking notes, while Leslie was rereading one of her favorite books. Crickets and other night creatures provided a pleasant white-noise backdrop, and in a tree nearby, a night crier sang its plaintive lament from time to time.
Then the tranquility was smashed to bits when a very outraged Richard Mallory stalked onto the terrace from the study. "Aha, there you are. I've got some serious bones to pick with you, Roarke. What you've done with my mother—it's shameful, it's shocking. In fact...I am more than shocked, I'm simply appalled that you obviously have no idea about the shamelessly flagrant behavior that's running rampant on this island of yours!"
Roarke looked up at that point, stacking a few papers together; he seemed remarkably calm, while the burner under Leslie's temper had been instantly turned on high and was doing its job with great efficiency and speed. She was glaring at Mallory, who didn't seem to notice. Roarke did, though, and glanced at her with a smile. "Calm yourself, Leslie," he said before gathering his notes and books together and arising; the smile disappeared as he got to his feet. "You no doubt are referring to your wayward mother," he observed, making the word wayward sound as if he had put it in quotation marks, "and Mr. Reynolds, who are fast becoming the scandal of Fantasy Island." His tone took on an indulgent edge.
"They certainly are," Mallory ranted. "Cavorting around the way they are?"
"Cavorting?" repeated Roarke, watching Leslie slam her book shut and rocket to her own feet as he stacked his materials together, before eyeing Mallory and striding into the study. She followed, giving Mallory a wide berth and a look of exaggerated revulsion. "By whose sense of morality?"
"Morality! Ha-ha," scoffed Mallory. "I can tell you, there'd be no mistake in my mother's mind what morality meant when my father was alive, you can bet!" He leaned over the desk, yelling, while Roarke put away his books and Leslie stood at the foot of the stairs, watching and wishing she could vent, even if only a little.
"Well, perhaps it would have been better all around if she had just jumped into his funeral pyre," Roarke offered with subtle sarcasm.
"That's a low blow, Mr. Roarke," Mallory said, offended.
"But close to the mark, nevertheless," Roarke retorted.
"Now wait a minute—"
Roarke broke in, "You've become the judge of when grandmothers can no longer think about romance."
For the first time Mallory seemed taken aback. "I didn't say that."
"What about your own wife?" Roarke asked then, and Leslie began to simmer down, enjoying her adoptive father's counterattack immensely.
Mallory looked annoyed. "Would you leave my wife out of this?"
"How can I? At what age will you decide to move her into a separate bedroom? Sixty? Sixty-two?" Roarke waited, but when Mallory gaped at him, dumbfounded, he arose and continued with deceptive friendliness. "Perhaps when you put in for Social Security, at sixty-five...yes, that seems to be the universally accepted age when it can be assumed that life is over." He settled on the front edge of the desk, nodding, then watched the stunned and chastened Mallory lower himself into a chair. Leslie smiled a little, happy to see that Roarke had gotten through, but at the same time realizing that she herself was learning a little something as well. She suddenly missed her grandmother, with an intensity she hadn't felt in several years, and slowly sat down on the steps.
Roarke noticed, but set it aside for the moment, focusing on Mallory, who mumbled, "When you make me look at myself like that, I really don't like what I see." He peered up at Roarke, who simply nodded a little; Mallory nodded back, as if he had just received and registered a very important message. After a minute he drew in a deep breath, released it in a loud gust, and stood up, offering a hand. "Thank you, Mr. Roarke. Thank you." They shook hands, and Roarke watched Mallory leave, waiting till the doors had closed after him before turning to Leslie.
"Are you all right, child?" he queried, joining her on the step where she sat.
She shrugged one shoulder and smiled at him. "Oh, I guess I will be. It's just that...I started thinking about my grandmother. She was widowed when Mom was still a little girl. I wonder if...if she'd have ever gone through with a romance like that, if she'd found one. I mean, I don't think Mom would've minded, and Michael wouldn't have cared. And the twins and I wouldn't have known any better. I just wonder..."
"Everyone is different, Leslie," Roarke said, laying a hand on her shoulder and rubbing his thumb back and forth in a soothing motion. "Perhaps your grandmother was content enough to raise your mother and then to enjoy her granddaughters. The simple point here is that it's no one else's place to dictate how anyone can spend his or her life, no matter at what stage that life may be. For some people, that lesson never comes."
She nodded thoughtfully. "Well, I'm glad Richard Mallory figured it out." She focused on him then and grinned a wistful little grin. "You know, if I hang around you long enough, maybe some of that calm and biting wit'll rub off on me someday, and I can cut loudmouths down to size the same way you just did."
Roarke stared at her in amazement for half a second before he burst out laughing and patted her shoulder. "I notice you managed to restrain yourself this time," he teased her. "Perhaps you're already learning." She snickered, and he arose, giving her a hand to her own feet. "It'll be an early morning, as you know, so let's get a little sleep."