Casa Dracula 3 - The Bride Of Casa Dracula (22 page)

I moved close to him, pressing against him, but instead of putting his arms around me, he pushed me away.

“Milagro,” he said softly, “why don’t you go to bed?”

When I tried to kiss him good night, he turned his face, and my lips landed on his cheek. So I went to bed, feeling awful and guilty. He missed what we’d had, and even though he’d said he didn’t mind the bruises and red marks I’d left on his body when we made love, I hated hurting him.

In the morning, Oswald came to my room and said, “You’re going to have to move out until we get married.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not respecting our agreement. You knew I couldn’t resist an offer like that.”

My many objections were all nullified by the fact that I’d thrown him on the floor in the middle of the night. I pleaded with him to let me stay, but he was adamant. Two hours later, my truck was loaded with the green zebra-print suitcase, blankets, pillows, the fruitcake recipe, my writing gear, Cornelia’s case of rosé, and several books. I tossed a few plastic packets of calf blood in a small cooler.

Oswald followed me around the house, telling me how this was for the best, but when he wasn’t looking, I hid all the remote controls and disconnected electronic devices. As I was doing this, I came across the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective catalog that my friend had sent me. I shoved it in my jeans pocket because I thought it could prove useful.

“Will you be at Mercedes’s or at Nancy’s place?” Oswald asked as I got in the truck and slammed the door. He knocked on the window until I rolled it down.

“Maybe, or maybe I’ll go to that stupid loft.”

He reached through the window and turned my face to him. “You know I don’t want you to go, but I don’t know any other way to get through this period.”

“The other way is to tell the Council to go to hell and to let me back in your bed. We can go slower. I can concentrate and not…not react like that. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Don’t you think I want to do that? The only reason I don’t is because I care about you and your future.”

I saw the concern on his face and I began to cry. “I love you, Oswald Grant, but that doesn’t mean you get to make these decisions about my life.”

“I love you, too, which is why I’ve got no other choice.” He leaned in and kissed me. “Drive safely. Call me when you get to the City.”

I nodded. “Water the plants on Daisy’s grave,” I said and I drove away from Casa Dracula.

I watched him in the rearview mirror, standing in the drive, watching me leave. My emotions were wild enough to propel me to the edge of the mountain. Then I saw the tall trees that marked the initial rise uphill. I drove into the shadowed coolness and my heart began pounding. I slowed my breath and watched the speedometer. The brakes and steering worked perfectly as I rounded the curves.

A broken tree trunk marked the place where Cornelia’s car had flown off the road. I wondered again who had called the sheriff for me.

Only when I reached the sunshine where the slope descended into the vineyards below did I relax my grip on the steering wheel. I’d beat the traffic and I arrived in the City before I knew it.

After picking up a latte and muffin at a café, I parked in the loft’s garage and hauled my things upstairs. It looked even more depressing with my sad blankets and pillow set on the floor and a cardboard box serving as my desk.

I checked my phone a few times to make sure it was working, since Oswald would be calling soon, begging me to return. I would forgive him and then we would reunite for a passionate session of lovemaking and tender promises not to fight again except when we wanted to have incredible make-up sex.

But while I was here, I might as well make the most of my time. I called Nancy and invited her over to talk about the wedding, and I called Mercedes and told her I’d be stopping by the club.

My last call was to my friend and gardening client Gigi Barton. I’d met the extravagant socialite and heiress (“It’s not worth sneezing at if it’s not Barton’s Tissues!”) when I’d gone to Nancy’s wedding with Ian. Gigi’s assistant told me that she was out of town, but that I was welcome to come by any time to see the garden.

Nancy arrived a few hours later, carrying an oversized leather tote and a pressboard folder. She looked around the loft and asked, “Are you staying here?”

“Oswald and I had a fight. He thinks we should hold off on sex until we get married.”

When she finished laughing, she said, “That isn’t a bad idea, actually. It might make sex after marriage less pfft.”

“I thought you and Todd were…very compatible,” I ventured.

“We were, until his interest turned to producing little Todds-Todditos, your people would call them-who would get a generous trust fund from Daddy. You have no idea how lucky you are to be poor.”

“Yes, I’m grateful for that every day,” I said. “But for the record, I don’t consider myself poor.”

“I love that about you. Did you mail the invites?”

“Didn’t you get yours?”

“Yes, but I thought that maybe you’d just mailed one to me to trick me into thinking you’d sent them all. I still think you should have more bridesmaids. It seems rather stingy to only have Mercedes as maid of honor.” She sighed dramatically. “I’ll try to pass it off as restrained, and people will understand that I’m not a bridesmaid because of my official duties.”

I was glad that Nancy had managed to rationalize her absence from my wedding party, when I had been excluded from hers. “We can go shopping for a dress while I’m here.”

“You should have done that months ago. But I have solved your problem.” She sat cross-legged on the folded blankets and opened the folder. “Do you remember my cousin Sissy?”

“The costume designer?”

“Yes, but she’s bored with those grungy actors, so she’s branching out into fashion. Here’s her design for your dress.”

She handed me the folder and I saw a pen-and-watercolor sketch of myself wearing a version of the old movie star dress I’d said I liked. The style of the dress had been altered to floor length and looked like a wedding gown, and it was shaded in the palest violet. A sample of gorgeous heavy satin was pinned to the drawing.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said.

“It will be cut on the bias so that it flows,” Nancy said. “You don’t need a veil, just a flower in your hair and pink pearls, I think. I’ll loan them to you and they’ll be your ‘something borrowed.’ You have to see Sissy ASAP for a fitting.”

Nancy bothered me with a lot of details about things I had to do and handed me wedding magazines with marked pages and notes. But I kept going back to the sketch of the dress. It was just right. “Nancy, you done good.”

My friend grinned. “I told you I would. It’s so easy to deal with someone who doesn’t care. You have no idea what it’s like arguing with women who think they know what they’re doing.”

“I care! Really, I do, but I realize that Oswald wants the type of wedding that I couldn’t put together by myself.”

Nancy tilted her head. “It’s your wedding, too. If you really cared, you’d be calling me up twenty times a day with ideas and suggestions. Where’s your ring?”

“I misplaced it.”

“If you don’t like it, you can have it reset. I marched Todd right back to the jeweler to buy a better stone. There’s so much more to judging a diamond than cut, clarity, carats, and color.”

“Nancy, promise me that you will always use your genius for frivolity, not for evil.”

“I make no promises.” She packed up her things and stood. “I have some furniture in storage. Do you want to use it here until you remodel?”

“Oswald will be begging me to come home any second, but it would be nice to have a place to sit when I drop by.”

She said she’d have it delivered and we arranged to meet later in the week at what she called her cousin Sissy’s atelier. I didn’t think I’d get any writing done, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and went to sleep during the day on my native soil, like a vampire.

exile on vein street

I awoke to the sound of ringing. I picked up my phone automatically, and it took me a moment to realize that the ringing was the doorbell. I pushed the intercom button and a man said, “Delivery for Ms. Los Dos Knockers.”

“Come in.”

In a few minutes, two scrawny guys were at my front door with a pink velvet sofa in the hallway. The older guy leered at me and said, “You must be Ms. Los Dos Knockers.”

“It’s De Los Santos.”

He looked down at a clipboard. “I got Los Dos Knockers here clear as, uh…” His gaze became fixated on my own dos knockers, and his companion hid his grin behind his hand.

“Yes, whatever,” I said. “Bring in the sofa.”

It wasn’t just the sofa. There were chairs, rugs, delicate side tables, a desk, and drapes. The guys hauled in a disassembled queen-sized bed and several unmarked boxes. The prevailing theme was pink and froofy. The boxes held dishes, towels, linens, an entire apartment’s worth of things. Oswald had given me a toolbox for my truck, and I fetched it and found a screwdriver. I put together the bed and hung the drapes with tacks.

The overall effect was house: crackhouse, whorehouse, madhouse, all of the above. I felt strangely pleased, especially by the desk set up by the window. I called Oswald’s office, and the office manager told me that he’d gone out to dinner with an associate.

“He mentioned that he was thinking about expanding,” I said. “I didn’t know he was already interviewing partners.”

“This doc wandered right in here today,” she said. “Said she’s heard about him and was looking to invest.”

“Really? What’s she like?”

She laughed. “Nowhere as pretty as you, hon. Nice, but a little, I dunno, twitchy, I guess. Sharp little features. Little bitty hands. That’s good for surgery, you know.”

“Is it normal for someone to just walk in and ask about a job as a plastic surgeon?”

“It’s not normal-it’s lucky if she’s half as good as she seems. She said she was here on vacation and fell in love with the place. Dr. Oswald is checking her references and credentials.”

I said good-bye and then left a message on Oswald’s cell phone telling him I was thrilled I was staying in the City and adding, “No need to call back tonight. I’ve got a million things to do and I’ll be going to the club.”

And I did. I showered, noting that I needed to buy a shower curtain the next time I was out, and then I had a refreshing blood spritzer. I went through the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective catalog until I found the fuzzy pink handcuffs that Oswald had noticed. I ordered them and a few other interesting products to be delivered to the ranch. The next time I decided to let Oswald taste my blood, I’d make sure I couldn’t hurt him.

Feeling more hopeful, I decided to go out. I found a corner café and ate a rare roast beef sandwich while skimming through the magazines Nancy had left.

I turned a page and saw a radiant bride in an exquisite mermaid dress with rows of silk scallops edged in silver. The model was Ilena, whose blond hair floated around her glowing face. I was fascinated and disturbed by the sight of her as a bride. Not that she was really a bride, just a skinny, apathetic model. A skinny, apathetic model who looked astonishing and was also a financial brainiac.

Since it was just after 5 P.M., I drove to Mercedes’s club, arriving before all the parking spots were filled by the evening crowd. A tall transvestite sashayed down the street in leather pants and boots, and a few drunken homeless guys rallied up the energy to whistle.

I was parking my truck up the street when I thought I saw Ian Ducharme’s dark curly head in my rearview mirror. When I turned around, he had already disappeared around the end of the block. I hurried down the street, and when I got around the corner I saw only a cluster of dark-haired Mexican men in front of a small bar. Which reminded me of my appointment with the eye doctor.

The club wouldn’t be open for hours, and the doorman, Lenny, was hanging out in the box office.

“Hey, sugar, good to see you. How’s life in the sticks?”

“Not fast enough for you, Lenny. Is the boss around?”

“She’s in her office. I’ll let you in.”

My friend was sorting through receipts, her dreads bobbing a little each time she turned her head.

“Hola, mujer.”

“Milagro!” If I hadn’t known her better, I might have thought she looked as if she wasn’t absolutely overjoyed to see me. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought this was my home away from home,” I said and dropped into a chair. “I’m having Issues with this whole vampire thing and the wedding.”

“I thought you wanted to join them and be a part of everything.”

“I did, but I didn’t think their Council would come into my house, drink all my booze, flood the toilet, and try to screw me.”

“Don’t get me caught up in your arroz con mango. Is this going to take long?”

“Yes, it’s going to take long, and what does that mean anyway, rice and mango? It sounds delicious, but is it a dessert, or a side dish, like plantains?”

She leaned back against her desk. “It means a sticky mess. You’re always getting in these situations.”

“I am just trying to live my simple little life, writing and gardening. The Council is causing all the problems. I have to sew wedding clothes and make a fruitcake and suffer sexual deprivation! And Oswald is going along with them.”

She just looked at me with her big brown eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re going to tell me some crazy story, aren’t you?”

Just for that, I made sure to relay my recent travails in excruciating detail. When I stopped talking she said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about the car accident?”

“I don’t know. I’d feel stupid calling you and saying that rats ate my car wiring.”

“You still should have called!”

“I always feel like I’m bothering you with all my drama.”

“I grew up with a Cuban mother-I can deal with drama,” she said. “If you don’t want to join them, don’t. Oswald’s trying to do the best he can for you, and if you ever had to deal with a mortgage, you’d appreciate what the Council is offering you.”

“Did I tell you that Oswald gave me a loft to remodel and sell?”