All or Nothing (26 page)

“No, she’s not out of the coma––but she opened her eyes. I yelled for the nurses and they came running, and the neuro specialists too. They are testing her now, checking whether she sees anything or whether it was an involuntary reaction.”

“I’m on my way.” Marla was already speeding back down the boardwalk. “I’m in Venice, I’ll be there in half an hour, wait for me, Giraud. By the way, what was it you were you saying to her when she opened her eyes?”

“I was holding her hand. I said Vickie, this is Al Giraud. Trust me. Steve is innocent. And I will prove it.”

“And then her eyes popped open, just like that?”

“Just like that.”

From behind her, Marla heard the bike cop shouting at her again. She spun around the corner, dodged down an alley, snaking her way through the little streets until she came to Main where her car was parked. The to–die–for cop wasn’t going to give her another ticket. No way. This was an emergency.

In minutes, she was in the Merc, tugging off the skates. Without even taking the time to put on her shoes, she was pulling barefoot into the Saturday afternoon traffic, heading for the 101 freeway and the hospital. And quite possibly a speeding ticket.

There were so many things whirling around in Vickie’s head she didn’t know where to begin to sort them out, and that frightened her. She was college–educated, had a logical mind, she always knew exactly what she was doing. So why not now?

Her eyes refused to move to the right or left and therefore all she could see was a rectangle of white ceiling. And those strange faces that from time to time loomed over her. They waved their hands over her eyes but she didn’t even blink. She couldn’t blink.
Why the hell couldn’t she blink?

It had something to do with Steve, she knew that.
Steve . . . 
what was it they said about him? Someone had said something. It was important, she knew, but now she couldn’t sort it out from the rest of the jumble that was her brain. It felt as though the wires had gotten crossed and all the connections were coming out wrong. Tears filmed her vision; she felt them snaking down her cheeks, felt their heat against her chilly flesh, tasted their salt on her dry lips.

“Oh, my God.”
Marla put her hands to her own eyes as she felt her own tears coming. “Al, she’s crying.
She’s actually crying.
”

But he was already bending over Vickie, mopping up her tears, talking to her slowly and so tenderly it made Marla cry even harder.

“It’s okay, Vickie. You had a bad accident. Now you’re going to be just fine. Take it easy. And remember this, Steve loves you. Okay? He asked me to say that specially.
He loves you.
And he is
innocent,
Vickie. So don’t worry about a thing except getting well again.”

Vickie wanted to thank him for clarifying the hurly–burly of thoughts, the scraps of information, the snippets of conversations in her head, and molding them into a whole thought. But she could not.
Steve loved her.
Steve was
innocent.
She would cling to those words, hold on to them like precious jewels until she fought her way out of this stifling fog . . . 
oh, my God, the girls. . . .

“And your daughters are well, they come every day to see you, you know that?” Marla was sitting by the bed now, stroking her hand. “The doctor has called them and they are on their way to see you. . . .”

“Even as we speak,” Al muttered, and Marla laughed.

Vickie liked the sound of that laugh, it made her smile too even through her tears.

“Oh, my God, she’s smiling. She understands us,”
she heard the woman say with a whoop of triumph that brought other people running to peer at her again, to take her pulse, her blood pressure, to wave things in front of her eyes and more.

And this time she blinked. “Oh, my God” was right, Vickie thought, and she had Him to thank for the fact that she was alive, that she could blink and smile and see––at least a little bit.

And for the fact that she was out of that deep dark pit of despair where her brain had roiled around like heat in her head, burning her, stabbing her . . . but she didn’t want to think about that. Not now. She wanted to see her babies, her little girls, whose names were   .   .   .   ? Oh, now she couldn’t even remember their names. The tears started again but this time she welcomed them. This time she knew they meant she was alive.

Marla’s car was in the courtyard, blocking his garage entry. Giraud smiled as he parked the Corvette next to her Merc, giving his own automobile a proud little pat before he unlocked his front door.

Music drifted through the house. Now, Al’s tastes ran toward Big Bands or smoky nightclub jazz, while Marla was strictly au courant with whatever was going down music–wise at the moment. But this was Barry White, rolling out those songs from somewhere deep in his gut and his nerve ends, sensual as sex. Firelight glinted off the table set with flowers and crystal and candles––and champagne waited in a frosted silver bucket.

Light streamed from the kitchen as Marla appeared, silhouetted in the doorway. She was wearing a very short black dress with ruffled white petticoats peeking from beneath, a white organdy apron, fishnets and stilettos. Oh, and a little white halo of a cap perched on her golden–blond hair. She was Marla’s version of a French maid.

“Ah, monsieur is home!” She strode toward him, hips swinging. “Welcome, m’sieur. Your bath is ready, sir.”

Taking him by the arm, she hurried him to the bedroom, pushed him onto the bed then knelt and began to unlace his sneakers. “Ah such poor, tired feet,” she murmured, throwing the sneakers over her shoulder and bending to kiss his toes.

He watched, amazed. “Any woman who can kiss a guy’s feet straight out of sneakers, it must be true love,” he said.

But she was already unbuttoning his shirt, unbuckling his belt. She threw that over her shoulder too, with a contemptuous Gallic
“Pouf.”
Marla had always been jealous of that rearing–silver–mustang belt, she suspected it of being a gift from some previous paramour.

She was leading him into the bathroom now. The black tub was filled to the brim with pink bubbles and smelled, he said, like a New Orleans cathouse.

“And what do you know about New Orleans cathouses?” Marla demanded suspiciously, slipping out of her role as the French maid.

“’Scuse me, mamzelle, it was purely a figure of speech.”

“Monsieur will get in the bath and soak and his little French maid will bring him a nice cold glass of champagne,” she said, pouting prettily. He protested he was a shower man at heart and that he hated bubbles, but she gave him a helpful little shove until he was partly submerged.

“Monsieur will do as he is told,” she said firmly.

“Wrong role,” he called after her. “Isn’t that the governess/dominatrix?”

“Oh . . . 
pouf,
” she said again, on her way to get the champagne.

She was back minutes later bearing a round silver tray with a single crystal flute. Kneeling by the side of the tub, she offered it to him.

“Mmm.” He took a sip. “Not bad for box wine.”

“Philistine,” she muttered, snatching it back from him and tasting it. “Delicious,” she added, closing her eyes dreamily. “Nothing but the best for my poor m’sieur. And now I must go prepare
le diner.
”

He groaned. “Marla, don’t tell me you’re cooking? I’m not sure I’m up for this.”

“You’d better be,” she said saucily, peeking her head back around the bathroom door. “I’m not going to all this work for nothing.” His laughter followed her to the kitchen.

He lay in the bubbles, sipping champagne, thinking about Marla in that short skirt and the fishnet tights. There was a smile on his face. Life wasn’t too bad, after all, he decided.

“Ready, m’sieur?” Five minutes later and Marla was back again, holding out a fluffy white bath sheet, helping him from the tub. She patted him dry, taking care over his more personal parts, then led him by the hand into the bedroom.

“What? Before dinner?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She gave a very French little snort. “
Mais non,
m’sieur. For the French, food always comes first.” And she held out a dark blue velvet robe with satin lapels for him to slip on.

He groaned, putting his arms into the sleeves then peering bewildered at himself. “I feel like an ad for Victoria’s Secret.”

“You look like a Frenchman,” she corrected, kissing him, but she was laughing.

Al closed his eyes, making the most of it. He would have liked more of the kisses, but she was too busy.

“Come, m’sieur.” She had him by the hand again, leading him to the table.

“Beautiful, delightful,” he said, eyeing the white orchids, the damask napery, the Christofle and the Baccarat. “But where the hell did you get all this?”

“Borrowed it, from my mother,” she retorted.

“
Borrowed? Your mother?
You mean she
lent
you this?”

“I told her I was giving a little dinner party for a thirty–six–year–old unmarried orthodontist.”

He was laughing as she held the chair for him. “There’s something wrong here. The table is set for only one person.”

“But of course. A French maid never eats with her m’sieur. She is only here to serve him.”

He nodded. “Is that so? Then tell me something, mamzelle, when exactly do the French maid and the m’sieur get together? Y’know what I mean?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and she giggled and slapped his hand.

“Oh, m’sieur is
soooo
naughty.” And she whisked away with a deliberate little flip of her minute skirt that gave him a distinctly pleasing rear view.

She was back in a flash carrying a tray, a little lopsidedly––he heard dishes clanging together as she tottered on her stilettos and a muttered “Shit” as she corrected her balance and the sliding tray. “I’m not great at this waitress bit,” she announced, plonking the tray thankfully onto the table.

Al looked interestedly at what it contained. Caviar in an iced crystal bowl; fresh asparagus with a lemon hollandaise; poached salmon exquisitely decorated with wafers of cucumber and sprigs of dill; a salad of snow peas and other green growing things. There were even tiny blinis for the caviar.

He looked her in the eye. “Marla, where d’you get all this?”

“I slaved in the kitchen all day for my m’sieur.” She fluttered her eyelashes prettily. Then, “Actually it’s from Gelson’s in the Palisades,” she confessed.

“You gonna join me, hon? Or are we keeping up the French maid and m’sieur thing all night?”

“Oh, but I wanted to surprise you, to play a little game with my m’sieur. . . .”

He dunked an asparagus tip in the caviar and held it to her mouth. “Taste,” he commanded.

She groaned, regarding the caviared asparagus and shaking her head disgustedly. “Philistine,” she murmured again, taking it in her mouth.

“I love it when you curse,” he said, kissing her when her mouth was full. He licked the caviar off her lips. “Do you think anyone ever ate caviar like this before? Who needs blinis when they have a French maid?”

“Oh,
pouf.
” She giggled, flipping her little French skirt at him. And then she was sitting on his knee, feeding him spoonfuls of caviar in between kisses. And in no time at all they were on the rug in front of the fire, glasses of Cristal to hand; Isaac Hayes outdoing himself in smooch on the stereo; Gelson’s poached salmon and jade salad forgotten as they kissed lingeringly.

His hands slid under her little French maid skirt and she was naked under those tights, just as he had known she would be. “Why do you have to have the butt of a teenager?” he mocked, gripping her rounded rump lovingly.

“Because I am––almost––still a teenager,” she murmured back, licking the curve of his ear and sending delightful little chills through his entire body. “Oh yes, baby, oh yes.” She sighed as his hands slid inside the tights. And then she was wriggling out of them and he guessed you could almost see the little electric zigzags of passion flashing like lightning between them.

Marla’s vocal repertoire when he made love to her was a wonder to hear: demands, ecstatic cries, soft little yelps. . . .

“I always did like a yelper,” he said a long time later, when it was over and they were sipping flat champagne contentedly in the fire’s afterglow.

“
Oui,
m’sieur, a French maid always aims to please,” she said in that sexy whisper.

“And you can betcha this French maid succeeded,” he added, laughing.

In fact, he hadn’t given Bonnie/Laurie a thought in almost two hours.

Having the new Clyde triggered thoughts for Laurie of the old Clyde. Especially around two in the morning after half a bottle of tequila, when all outside was silent and she had only her thoughts and memories to crowd her mind.

She had found the first Clyde when she was just a kid, a scrounging rascal she had picked up at the roadside, abandoned and with bleeding paws from whatever long trek he had endured before he ended up in her arms and sleeping on her bed, despite her parents’ very vocal protests about fleas and rabies and stray dogs in general.

“If Clyde goes, I go,” she had raged at them, and something about the look in her eyes had stunned them into acceptance. Clyde had stayed until he died ten years later, of old age, she guessed. One morning he just didn’t wake up and she had sobbed her heart out as she buried him tenderly in a little plot she dug in the meager backyard. She guessed Clyde the First’s bones were there to this day because nobody in that area ever bothered to do much gardening.

Clyde the Second had been her trusty companion, though, found at the pound in Jacksonville, Florida, after a long search, just the way she had with Clyde the Third in Oakland. And the second Clyde had turned out to be the perfect Clyde to her Bonnie. Smart, game for anything, up to tricks she didn’t even know dogs could do––like growling at people she saw in the street and didn’t like; or knowing when she was depressed, and he would come and lick her hand and face and climb up next to her, leaning his weight and warmth against her so she no longer felt lonely; or just staying quiet when she needed him to. Clyde never had to be told––he was just on the same wavelength as her. They were truly Bonnie and Clyde in a way that this new dog, who was sitting at her feet while she lay on the red vinyl sofa, watching
The Silence of the Lambs
on cable and moodily knocking back the neat tequila, could never be.