THE QUEST

Chapter 4 Strangeness in Paradise

"Adam and Joan Girardi-Rove? Yes, I have a reservation for you, prepaid. Welcome to Paradise Hotel."

Great, thought Adam. We have an all-expenses-paid trip to the Florida beaches, exactly when we don't want it.

Neither Adam nor his wife had had the nerve to call their families and tell them of this new leg of the trip. As far as Will and Helen were concerned, they were still in Brooklyn. Adam hoped that no confusion would arise from that lie-by-omission.

Joan finished the paperwork at the desk. "We have a friend staying here, Darryl Adams. Could you tell us his room number?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we don't give out that information for reasons of privacy. If you want to leave a message, we'll see if he's here and deliver it to him, and you can make connections."

"Um, no thank you." They hadn't worked a plan for approaching Darryl yet.

A clerk accompanied them to their room, which looked ritzy. Maybe God hoped good accommodations would cheer them up. Adam looked out the window and found himself regarding a beautiful beach. The sand, the barely clothed denizens, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico all appealed to his artist's instincts, but they might also be a useful clue. "If they chose a hotel adjoining a beach like that, they must have hoped to use it. Maybe we'll find them down there."

"Yes, except we don't know what they look like, and we'll look silly wandering the beach while dressed for a Maryland winter. Hmm. Maybe Cathy can eMail us a picture of Darryl and his girlfriend."

"But we promised not to contact her."

"The particular promise was that we wouldn't say that Darryl was in Sarasota, or maybe even Florida," observed Joan. "An Email won't give that away."

"OK. I'll send her an Email, and in the meantime you can try to buy us a pair of bathing suits. There must be that sort of shop near here."

Joan went out, and Adam carefully crafted the Email request. It would be handy, he pointed out, if he and his wife could show pictures of the missing couple to possible witnesses. Cathy was apparently convinced, because a few minutes later she sent a reply with a scanned-in photo attached. Two attractive young people. Adam had no printer, but his artistic skills let him memorize the picture. If he saw the pair on the beach, he was sure he would recognize them.

Joan got back about an hour later. "Found 'em. One for you and one for me. I knew your size and guessed at the style you'd like."

"Thanks." He looked at Joan's new suit, a big one-piece designed to cover everything from the breasts to the thighs. "But what didn't you get something sexier for yourself, Jane?"

"We've been through that before. I've got a scar on my navel, and I don't want people to see it except for family and my closest friends. Besides, it's part of the plan I've thought up. I want to look drab-"

"A plain Jane?"

His wife giggled at the pun. "Yes. You see, you're going to have to stare at a lot of people to see if they match Cathy's Email, right? Won't they get suspicious?"

"Um, yes."

"But if you pretend to be a hubby with a roving eye, and I look sulky, they'll get a lot less suspicious. They'll just think you're ogling the girls."

"That's clever, but it won't be a pleasant part to play."

"I know. Do you think I WANT to look drab? The whole point of this is to find that couple as quickly as possible, so that we can head back home."

When they got down to the beach, Adam felt even weirder. His normal impulse would be to get out a sketch pad and draw the beautiful Turneresque tableau of the sky and the ocean. If he saw a sexy girl on the beach, he would normally avert his eyes out of loyalty to his wife. Instead he had to peruse each girl he saw and pretend to be attracted. Jane was doing amazingly well playing the slow-burning jealous wife, except that in Adam's opinion she was too beautiful ever to get in that situation. She had had acting lessons earlier that fall, when starring in a play at college. What's more, she had had several years during which she had had to keep up a façade, covering up the fact that she was going on missions for God.

Finally: "I've think I've spotted the girlfriend from Cathy's picture, Jane. Lizzie, wasn't that her name?" He was relieved; if they found the girl, he could stop pretending to check out other women.

"Let's wander in her direction, so you can be sure."

They walked vaguely in the girl's direction. "I'm sure, Jane." A slender blonde, with a pretty face (and good figure, Adam guiltily noted) but a worried look that one would not expect on a vacationer to Florida.

"Thank God." She raised her voice. "Do you think I'm going to just stand by while you ogle every hussy you see? Let's go jump the waves for a while. That way, unless there happens to be some mermaids out there, I'll have you to myself!"

"Yes, dear," said Adam meekly.

The wave-jumping was actually fun, not only in itself, but because he didn't have to put on an act anymore. But Jane kept looking back every few minutes at Lizzie.

"She's heading back to the hotel now, Adam. I'll try to follow her and see where her room is. Don't try to follow me – she may think you're a stalker."

"Do I really look that sinister?" He sounded hurt.

Joan ignored the last question as she walked quickly – quick enough to keep the girl in sight, not so quickly as to look suspicious, she thought.

But as they reached the patio of the hotel, suddenly Lizzie whirled around, and asked: "Who are you? What are you up to? It was bad enough seeing your wimpy boyfriend stare at my boobs, what do YOU want?"

"Excuse me – you looked familiar—" Joan floundered.

"You don't look familiar to me."

"There was a party," Joan improvised. "My friend Cathy Adams brought me – pointed you out—" She held her breath. People their age were always partying, so it seemed safe to mention one.

"Oh," said Lizzie. "Roberta's birthday. Lot of people there. Guess that's why I didn't notice you." She seemed mollified.

Joan was relieved that her bluff had worked, and followed it up with another fib. "I was so surprised to see a familiar face, a thousand miles away, that I had just had to make sure it was you."

"Yeah, small world." The girl was about to turn away when a thought seemed to strike her. "Um, could you do me a favor? Don't tell Cathy you saw me here."

"Why not?" Joan asked, playing dumb.

Lizzie hesitated. "I mean, Cathy's all right, but there's this guy we really want to avoid, and I don't want him to hear where we are."

"Well, OK." It sounded as if she disliked Lionel as much as he disliked her. She didn't know Lionel's detective has already located them.

It's too bad Darryl's friends hate each other, and Cathy is caught in the middle. For that matter, so are we. What's so important about this falling out, that Adam and I have to dash around the country instead of joining our own families for Christmas?

TO BE CONTINUED

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I read that Amber Tamblyn has a scar near her navel, which may be why we never saw Joan in revealing clothing. It was written into the second season episode "The Wealth of Nations.")