Exit Strategy

Chapter 4

Austin Daley slid into the booth and carefully rearranged her glass and napkin in front of her. She set the phone off to her side, but close enough to read any incoming texts. “I’m Austin,” she said, her eyes not quite meeting his.

Austin Daley slid into the Even though he carried expensively-obtained paperwork for two aliases, he replied, “I’m Roderick Malone.” He extended his hand across the table. Her handshake was firm, with no linger. “Do you have a last name, Austin?”

“Daley.”

“Austin Daley,” Roderick said contemplatively. “Sounds a little like a newspaper.”

“I know.”

“Not the first time you’ve heard that?” he added with a smile.

“Hardly.”

The waiter returned, placed the potato in front of her and the ticket on the edge of the table. He nodded to her drink and Austin shook her head.

Roderick extended his hand. “Let me take care of that.”

Austin stabbed the ticket with her index finger. She wore pink nail polish that matched her lip gloss. She slid the paper closer to her. “Thank you,” she told him. “But no thank you.”

“I didn’t mean to imply anything,” Roderick said. “I’m just happy to have your company, if only for a short while.”

“Thank you,” Austin replied. “It’s just a thing I have. I got caught once…well, in a situation.” She paused, took another run at it. “In a situation where a person thought I owed them. Then I started thinking the same way. Ended up doing some things I didn’t particularly want to do. I promised myself not to get into that situation again.” She took a sip from the rum and Coke then added, “And that was way too much information. Sorry.”

Intrigued, Roderick resisted the urge to ask more questions. Instead he said, “It’s not a problem.”

An awkward silence followed, and Roderick half wondered if she would get up and leave—hoped she wouldn’t. His early glimmer began to take form. If used correctly, Austin Daley had value—if only for the short-term. He took a sip of beer as he reformulated his plan. “The only thing you can count on is change.” Roderick had read the quote somewhere—some French guy—back in the seventeenth century. Roderick was fairly certain ten thousand people had expressed a similar thought before that, but no one had bothered to write it down.

If used correctly, Austin Daley had value”Austin didn’t leave. Instead, she stuck a fork into the potato, working to get it proportioned properly with the broccoli and the mushrooms. Then she added the tiniest amount of sour cream. Just before she placed it in her mouth, she nodded to the cane. “What happened?”

“Sprained my ankle,” Roderick answered in a half-embarrassed tone. He turned his palms to the ceiling, as if to suggest divine providence. “Pickup basketball game. Guess I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Austin finished chewing. “Nobody is.”

“Hard to argue with that.”

“You’re not that old. Maybe you just need to be more careful.”

thatIt was a philosophy that played better for good-looking twenty-something females than for guys who’d recently slipped past fifty. Roderick composed what he hoped was a wry smile and countered, “If you say so.”

“I’m guessing it hurt pretty bad,” Austin said, working up another forkful of potato.

“Oh, yeah,” Malone answered. He took a long pull from the light beer. “It hurt plenty.”

The waiter reappeared. “Another, sir?” he asked, nodding to the mostly-empty mug.

The beer reminded Roderick of carbonated ditch water, but hoped another round would prolong the conversation. He nodded and looked at Austin. She again shook her head and the waiter disappeared.

“Actually, it hurt on a couple of levels,” Roderick continued, spinning his yarn. “We were playing a game of three-on-three—for a bit of money, I’m afraid. The fellows we were playing against didn’t see my injury as grounds for reneging on the wager.”

“So, you paid, even though you’d been injured and couldn’t finish the game?”

Roderick nodded, summoning his most-humble expression. “I suppose it was the honorable thing to do.”

“Was your team winning?”

“Actually, no. But we still had hope.”

Austin nodded. “If the situation was reversed, and the other team was a man down, would you have made them pay?”

“Interesting question,” Roderick said, appearing to mull it over. “Probably not.”

Austin set her fork on her plate, gave Roderick a long look, and then asked unabashedly, “What do you consider a bit of money?”

a bit of moneyIt was the question Roderick was waiting for. Experience taught that women of Austin’s age were interested in men of Roderick’s age for one of two reasons. The first, and the more complicated was “daddy issues.” Over the past decade he’d certainly sampled his share of this variety—always eager to please, but invariably high maintenance. When the end of the relationship came—and it usually came quickly—it never lacked for drama.

Austin’sRoderick’sThe second reason, and by far the least complicated, was money. Young women assumed older men had it and would be willing to share. For a five-year stretch, Roderick had annually leased a new Porsche 911. The lease always commenced on the day before Thanksgiving—a shiny new “panty magnet” just in time for the holidays. The good ol’ days, he thought. But the young woman across the table seemed more sophisticated than that—not the type who would get naked for a ride in a car—which brought him back to “daddy issues.” Part of Roderick hoped there was a third category he’d yet to discover.

The good ol’ days, “We were only playing for a few hundred dollars,” he replied off-handedly, an answer crafted to be simultaneously arrogant and humble.

The waiter came back to the table and swapped out the beer mug.

Austin checked her phone again, then placed it face down on the table. After the waiter left, she said, “You must be quite the basketball player.”

“Used to be,” he said, offering a quick wink. “Like I said, before I got old.”

She tilted her blonde head twenty degrees, pushed her lower lip into the “pouty” position, then said, “Poor you.”

Roderick laughed. Damn, she was adorable.

Damn, she was adorable.For the next hour they talked. Roderick ordered another round of drinks. This time Austin Daley didn’t object when he slid a fifty in the waiter’s direction and told him to keep the change. The type you have to ask twice to the prom, he thought. Good to know.

The type you have to ask twice to the promGood to know.They talked about music, literature, and the arts. Austin more than held her own. She was bright and articulate, fairly fluent in French, but didn’t know if she would ever get to visit Paris. As a younger man, Roderick would have been hopelessly intimidated. But now, his age and the pile of cash more than evened the playing field. They sat in the booth at the back of the restaurant like two old friends. When they offered opinions on the best actors and actresses of the past decade, their choices were shaped by respective generations—Leonardo DiCaprio and Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank and Meryl Streep. Roderick wore the mask of attention as his mind continued to race ahead. To keep Austin Daley around for a while would be quite the trick.

Austin looked at her watch. “I was supposed to meet my friend here. We were going to…” She stopped talking and shook her head. A strand of blonde hair fell across her forehead.

“You were going to what?” Roderick asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound overbearing, or even worse—possessive. If it did, Austin didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m pretty sure I know what happened,” Austin replied, staring at the melting ice cubes in the bottom of her glass. Her voice arrived as a soft mixture of resolve and contempt. “Heather’s back with her boyfriend. That’s the way she is.” Austin’s voice trailed off into the gloom of the bar. “Don’t know why it’s so hard for me to figure out.”

Possibly an opening. “Don’t be so tough on yourself,” Roderick replied in a supportive tone.

Possibly an opening. “We were supposed to go to the Shenandoah Valley and hang out for a few days. Heather’s father has a cabin. There’s a little pond in front and a trail that starts almost at the back door. It takes you to a pretty little waterfall.” Austin took a deep breath, and added in a reflective tone, “That’s probably where Heather’s headed right now.” She flipped the phone over, stared at the screen and looked as if she was trying to make a decision.

“I’m sorry,” Roderick said from across the table.

Austin set the phone back on the table. She looked out the window. They had talked long enough so that her car was now fully shaded. “The cabin is really nice in the fall,” she said wistfully.

Definitely an opening. “There are other places just as nice,” Roderick said.

Definitely an opening. Austin, still looking out the window, nodded dismissively. “I’m sure there are.”

“Maybe places even nicer,” Roderick replied. “I realize we barely know each other, but I was wondering…”