My Three Husbands (19 page)

Liar,
I thought. I wondered if they'd found my cigarette butt, and what had happened to the raccoons.

“So now I'd like to invite everyone to relax,” Geof Killingsworth said, “since that's what you're all here to do. Please enjoy some champagne from our fine wine cellar and one of the very special low-calorie no-fat desserts prepared by our dessert chef, Mary Mulrooney.”

He gestured to someone and all the lights went off. There was a moment of surprised silence, then a subdued
aah
of appreciation. The room was beautifully lit by hundreds of flickering candles. A string trio started to play. Champagne corks popped. People moved toward the dessert table.

I was starving. Except for a tartlet and a roulade, I hadn't had anything to eat since that hot dog outside Boise. A dessert or two sounded pretty good. The sugar rush might help me stay awake. I'd had maybe two hours of sleep in the past forty-eight hours and was at that stage of exhaustion when you either collapse or start hallucinating.

Across the foyer, I saw Whitman join Daddy. They looked around, spotted us, and came over. Daddy held out the bow. “I found this stuck on the garage door,” he said. “Isn't it part of your dress?”

“Yeah, the propeller.” I took the bow and smiled dumbly. Everyone looked at me, as if expecting an explanation. I kept my mouth shut.

Of course the polite dads then had to thank Marcello for saving me from hurtling into a wall earlier in the evening. I was mortified.

“You are her fathers?” Marcello asked. “Both of you?”

“Yes,” Whitman said. “John's her real pa, and I'm her faux pa.”

“John was the architect here,” Marielle said to Marcello.

Marcello nodded. “Yes, I know. We've been in several meetings together. But always by conference call.” He took Daddy's hand and pressed it between his own. “A pleasure to meet you at last, John.”

“So,” Daddy said to him, “what do you think now that you're finally here?”

Marcello scanned the room. “What do I think? Of the building?
Bellissimo.
Tell me, were you at all influenced by Le Corbusier?”

Marcello glanced at me and then, to my horror, walked off arm-in-arm with my father.

Marielle and Whitman exchanged amused glances. “What do you think?” Whitman asked.

“I would have thought older,” Marielle said. “Fokke always made him sound like an old man.”

“Molto hunkissimo,”
Whitman said. “Like Rossano Brazzi in
South Pacific.”

“Alpha investor,” Marielle said. “The entire region. Diversifying assets to United States.”

“He's not mob, is he?” Whitman asked.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked. As if I didn't know.

Whitman turned me around, lifted my shawl, and tsked as he examined my ripped dress. “A mysterious rich man.” He cocked an eyebrow at Marielle. “Gay-issimo?”

“No,” I said. “Definitely not gay.”

“How do you know?” Whitman asked.

“Radar.”

“My gaydar says he's queer. Just molto closeted.”

“Not hardly,” I said. “The Italian guy? He was looking at Marielle.”

“He was looking at
you,”
Marielle laughed. “That's why I told him you were married. He's got quite a reputation in Europe.”

“Well, it's
my
domestic partner he eloped with.” Whitman took the bow and tried to reattach it. “Honestly, sweetheart, how do you manage to ruin every dress you put on? Every dress, since you were eight years old and I took you to Bloomingdale's for the first time.”

Marielle brushed something off Whitman's shoulder. “How is it going for you?” She sounded like a concerned wife.

“Fine,” Whitman said. “I've been doing my homework. Snooping around. General consensus is that Pine Mountain Lodge is a winner. Perfect alternative to Sun Valley. Investors seem quite happy. But of course there's a big fat fly in the ointment.”

Marielle asked what it was.

“Earth Freedom.” Whitman let out an incredulous laugh. “Here they are, out in the middle of the most pristine wilderness in North America, in a fantastic health spa meant to reduce stress, and they're worried that some gang of ecoterrorists is somehow going to break through the gates and set fire to the place. That's why everyone was so jittery when the smoke alarm went off in the garage.”

“They did set a fire in Rancho Mirage,” Marielle reminded him. “On Long Island, too. That place in the Hamptons.”

“Being paranoid is part of being rich,” Whitman said. “Ask anyone in my family.”

“I want to try those desserts,” I interrupted. “Then I'm going upstairs.”

 

 

I didn't care if Whitman and Marielle followed me or not. What I really wanted to do was get Daddy away from Marcello. I'd been watching them. They looked like intimate friends. Marcello emphatically chopped the air with the side of his hand as he talked. Daddy stroked his chin as he listened.

“Daddy,” I said, swooping in and tugging at his arm, “why don't you give me a tour of your building?”

“Not now, honey, I'm talking.” Out of the side of his mouth he whispered, “May lead to more work.”

“I, too, would love a personal tour from the architect,” Marcello said.

Daddy brightened, immediately agreeable. “Okay, let's go.”

The last thing I wanted was to traipse around with my father
and
Marcello. But, short of telling Marcello to fuck off, I couldn't figure out how to separate them. I shot him a few annoyed glances, but he didn't get the hint. Luckily Marielle and Whitman joined us just then, handing around plates of dessert.

It was deep purplish blue, like my hair color when I was sixteen. There were tiny BB-size berries in it. It was artistically splattered over a crispy crusted pastry with some kind of featherlight lemony cream inside. It was a pretty dessert, but not very well built. When I tried to cut the pastry, cream squished out the sides.

“Squisito,
eh?” murmured Marcello, looking at me through thick black lashes as he ate.

We were standing there in the vast, candlelit Great Hall, eating our desserts, the string quartet playing, when a pulsing, high-pitched alarm went off.

Everyone jumped. There were groans. People looked at one another. Nobody moved. An annoyed voice said, “What is it
this
time?”

I looked at Daddy. He was turning around in an agitated circle. “That's the lobby-level smoke alarm,” he said. Then he smacked his forehead as if something had just occurred to him. “The candles!” he exclaimed. “Blow out all the candles!”

There wasn't time to blow out the candles, because a sudden drenching downpour from the sprinkler system extinguished every last one of them. The giant glass-walled room went dark as a hundred high-pressure sprinklers sprayed water with the force of fire hoses.

People were too shocked to realize what was happening. In an instant everything and everyone was sopping wet. Pastries with purple dessert sauce shot off the plates. Women screamed and threw up their hands to protect their hairdos and faces. China crashed, glasses shattered, silver forks clattered on the flagstone floor.

Marcello shielded his eyes and squinted upward like a sea captain scanning stormy skies. Whitman, his mouth drawn up into a painful-looking grimace, turned in circles as the water shot out in every direction.

Daddy threw down his plate. “Turn on the lights!” he ordered. And when no one did, he hurried off through the gushing torrents to do it himself.

Marielle stood frozen, soaked dress clinging, avant-garde hairdo plastered flat against her skull, shoulders hunched, eyes squeezed tight. She held a plate in one hand and a fork in the other. “I lost my contacts,” she cried. “Whitman, where are you?”

People gasped and wailed and shrieked as they held their hands out against the stinging force of the water. It was like being trapped in a giant car wash. I watched as an elegant woman in a tight dress slipped, threw up her hands, and fell to the floor. The musicians, scrambling to keep their priceless instruments dry, pulled open the heavy glass doors and escaped out to the terrace.

In a great surge the entire room followed them. Everyone flowed toward the open terrace doors, like they were being washed out. Whitman grabbed my arm and Marielle's wrist as we began to move forward with the others. The lights outside went off. I heard screams and the splash of bodies falling into the pool.

I tried to shake myself free from Whitman. “I've got to find Tremaynne!” I shouted.

“No!” Whitman held firmly onto my wrist, the way he used to in New York when we were in really crowded places. “Stay close to me!”

I tried to pull away, but when I turned I banged into Marcello.

“Laurie Ann,” he said. “Let me help you.”

I twirled back to Whitman's side.

It was all dark, drenching pandemonium. The crowd jostled us towards the terrace. A tuxedoed man in front of us slipped and grabbed for the long food table. He got the tablecloth instead, and brought half the candelabras and leftover desserts crashing to the floor. Marielle, her eyes clamped tight, tripped over him and fell in a squealing heap. Whitman and I tried to pull her upright. But the man she'd fallen on desperately grabbed at her dress as if he were going down on the
Titantic.
I heard a ripping noise, then a shriek. Marielle's form-fitting sheath ballooned out as water shot into a long tear down the back.

“Lights!” people called. “What happened to the lights?”

As Whitman and Marcello helped poor Marielle, I made my way back toward the lobby. The water was stingingly cold. My shoes were filled. I kicked them off and carefully made my way up Daddy's staircase. Each wet riser was as slick as cat shit.

By the time I got up to the second-floor landing, the sprinklers had stopped. The lights came on.

I looked down on the wet, dripping wreckage.

Too bad Tremaynne wasn't there to see it, too. I had a feeling he would have enjoyed the sight.

I
knocked first. Called his name. Put my ear to the door and knocked again. Finally dug out my plastic door card, swiped it, and went in.

The room was empty. I knew it the moment I entered.

Dripping and shivering, I made my way to the bathroom and peeled off my soaked dress and underwear. My skin was bright red and covered with prickles. I toweled off my hair, slipped into the thick white robe provided for guests, and made a futile circuit around the room and deck. The water in the stone hot tub steamed invitingly in the chilly night air. A steady rasp of agitated voices rose from the distant terraces. I hardly heard them. They could have been crickets for all I cared.

Where was my husband?

The only piece of luggage Tremaynne owned was his orange backpack. It was gone.

In my mind I played and replayed that glimpse I'd had of someone across the river. I tried to stop-frame the fragment of image, enlarge it, and zoom in. No good. Except for the dot of orange, which could have been Tremaynne's backpack, I hadn't seen enough to verify anything.

But what if he was in danger? Maybe he'd gone out for an innocent hike and that terrorist group had . . .

When the phone rang I jumped for it, certain it was Tremaynne.

“Hello, sweetheart,” my mother cooed on the other end. Her voice was soft and caressing, as if she were talking to a baby. “Am I interrupting anything? Just tell me if I am, sweetheart, and I'll say good-bye immediately.”

“No, Mom, you're not interrupting anything.”

“Are you resting between sets?” she asked in a confidential tone.

“No, Mom, we're having sex while I talk to you.”

She started to cough.

“Just kidding.”

“Well, sweetheart, I just wanted to find out if everything's all right,” Carolee said. “The trip out there was uneventful, I take it?”

“Yeah, except for the elk that charged me, the restaurant that wouldn't serve us, and the dead bear on top of a truck, it was completely uneventful.”

“That sounds lovely, sweetheart.”

She wanted to know if the room was pretty. Then she wanted me to describe the furnishings and the setting and the lodge in general. She sighed like she was having a little masturbatory orgasm when I told her that a chilled bottle of wine and a huge basket of fruit were waiting for us when we arrived.

“Any chocolates?” she asked. “I read that the most expensive places leave little boxes of chocolates on your pillow or bedside table.”

“It's a health spa, Mom. No candy except what you smuggle in yourself. Everything's low-fat and low-cal.”

“What are the other guests like?” she wanted to know.

“Skinny and rich,” I said, then gave her a thrill by dropping the name of the movie star I'd seen.

“Tru Brant,” mom gasped as I described my nonencounter. She hadn't been so excited since I called her once from New York, when I was twelve, to tell her I'd spotted Tony Randall eating a pastrami sandwich in a deli on 57th Street. “Oh my Lord. Tru Brant. And you didn't get in the elevator with him? You didn't ask him to bite his name into your arm?”

“The people here are way cool, Mom. They don't act that way.”

She was hungry for more crumbs from the tables of the rich and famous. And it was up to me to throw them to her.

“Susan Sarandon!” she gasped when I told her who Daddy had seen. “Get her autograph,” she pleaded. “Please, Venus. She's my favorite movie star after Bette Davis.”

“Then Jane Bugler sang,” I went on.

“Who's Jane Bugler?”

“Oh, you wouldn't know her,” I said grandly. “She's a world-famous opera singer friend of Marielle and Fokke. The greatest Norma of her generation.”

“Norma who?” Mom asked.

I didn't know either, so I ignored the question. “Fokke flew her over from Italy or someplace, just to sing,” I said.

“Then you
know
she went first-class,” Carolee said with certainty. “Not Business. First. She probably demanded it.” She paused and regrouped. “So Marielle and Fucker are there with you?”

“It's Fah-kuh, Mom. That's how they pronounce it in Dutch.”

“Whatever. You've mentioned them before. Friends of the dads.”

“Millionaires. At least.” I paused for effect. “Marielle's in love with Whitman.”

“Oh?” It took her a moment to digest this juicy tidbit. “Does your father know?”

“I doubt it.”

“Does Fucker know?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is Whitman in love with Marielle?”

“I doubt it.”

Carolee was silent for a moment. “Well, Whitman's a very handsome and personable man,” she said generously of the person who'd stolen her husband. “I can see why a woman would fall in love with him.”

I did the dutiful daughter routine and asked her how she was.

She prefaced her reply with a few deep coughs. “Well, I'm afraid I overdid it today and had a relapse. I cleaned up after your wedding party, and all the cigarette butts aggravated my sinuses. Then I started coughing.” She honked a few more times to let me know how serious it was. “I felt terrible, but I forced myself to go out to my ecstatic dancing class. I told you about that, didn't I?”

“Yes,” I lied, afraid to hear.

“It's a method of unleashing your inner ecstasy. Repetitive movements. Twirling, clapping. Sometimes we swoon.”

“You don't wear your clown suit, do you?”

“You wear whatever makes you feel loose and free. I wear jeans and long white veils. Anyway, it's a huge class, about a hundred—”

“Mom, Tremaynne's waiting. I gotta go. “

“Oh!” She instantly reined in her impending story. “Well, sweetheart, it sounds like you're having a fabulous time on your honeymoon, in your beautiful suite with movie stars everywhere you turn.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You must be so glad you let the dads talk you into it.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Is Tremaynne having a good time?”

“I hope so.”

“Well, give him my love, and kisses to the dads, and bring me a little bar of guest soap if you think of it.”

 

 

I decided I was to blame for Tremaynne's disappearance. As I soaked in a hot lavender and sage bubble bath, and washed my hair with essence of green tea, I went through a list of all the things I must have done wrong.

The more I thought about it, the more furious I became. What a disappointment I'd been. Small wonder he'd taken off without me. I'd doubted and denied him, even listened to jokes at his expense. Was that what a wife was supposed to do on her honeymoon?

I'd probably looked repulsed and horrified when he told me he had venereal herpes. That wasn't very understanding of me. If he did have herpes, I was probably infected already, so what difference would it make if he wore a condom or not?

I should have fucked him on the spot.

I vowed that when he came back, I would make it all up to him. I'd go where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. I'd have sex at any time and in any position he wanted.

I could
not
let this marriage fail. As in baseball, so in marriage: Three strikes and you're out.

It was important, as usual, to hide my fears, confusion, and disappointment from the dads. I was in no mood for “We told you so.”

Squatting down on top of a mirror, I examined myself for telltale signs of herpes, then pulled on the scratchy Patty Cakes' Baby Doll nightie with feather trim. The gauzy part was made out of some stiff synthetic material that wouldn't soften to the contours of my body. It stuck out like a pleated lampshade.

The peek-a-boo negligee brought back memories of being a lingerie model. Being half-naked and teasing a roomful of men. It occurred to me that those were the only times in my life when I felt powerful. Like I was in control. Seeing the deep hunger in men's eyes, complying with their secret sexual fantasies, that was life at its rawest and most real. No social etiquette was involved. No involvement of any kind was involved. They paid to fantasize about my nearly naked body; it was that simple.

As I sat there in bed, propped up on feather pillows, waiting for Tremaynne, I considered Marcello's offer. A thousand bucks to look at my breasts. Why not do it, right now, before Tremaynne got back? A thousand quick, tax-free dollars. One flash of my melon patch would cover two months' rent and pay for a new carburetor.

No.

I couldn't.

I mustn't.

Not on my honeymoon.

It was too low.

I had a husband to think of.

Any moment now, I thought, he'll walk through that door. He'll see me waiting for him. I teased my body into a purring state of arousal. I imagined Tremaynne's busy hands all over me. His lips kissing me everywhere. Being compliant to his every wish. The hot steaminess of shared breaths, of naked flesh against naked flesh.

The minutes dragged on. I felt like I was going crazy. I was totally exhausted yet slithery with sexual energy. And my addictions were kicking in big time with no hope of release. I couldn't smoke in the room and I was afraid to smoke out on the deck for fear of triggering some new alarm. I was too restless to just lie there so I got out of bed and paced around the room. I opened the wine and drank it pretty fast. There was nothing with sugar or salt to eat, so I tore open and devoured all the low-cal fat-free snacks. Stuff I'd never heard of: organic rice cakes, dried seaweed chips, saltless wheatless eggless crackers. It was like eating air. None of it filled me up. I craved chocolate candy bars with gooey caramel fillings, hamburgers dripping with cheese, greasy french fries, giant glazed doughnuts.

And nicotine. That craving no nonsmoker can ever understand. That horrible sensation that you're going to jump out of your skin if you don't light up real soon.

Miserable, I crawled back into our giant queen-size bed, between the soft Egyptian cotton sheets, careful not to rip or injure my nightie. After ten minutes of twitching, scratching, and staring at the clock, I got out again.

I ended up spending the first night of my honeymoon with Tru Brant, the movie star, instead of Tremaynne Woods, my husband.
My Place or Yours,
one of Tru Brant's latest romantic-comedy hits, was available on the entertainment system.

It was really bad.

 

 

The sound woke me up. Sharp ticks on the big glass windows. Bits of tossed gravel.

My romantic instincts flared up immediately. Who else if not Tremaynne? He must have gotten locked out or lost his door card. My nightmare was over. Relief turned my heart giddy with desire.

I dashed excitedly out to the deck. It was like plunging into a dark unheated pool. The mountain air was sharp and stunningly cold. My nipples stiffened; the soles of my feet danced on the dew-slick flagstones. I could see my breath.

At first I just ran along the balcony railing, back and forth, like an excited animal in a cage, smiling dumbly and peering down into the darkness. Below me was an open meadow and a giant stand of trees. Beyond the trees I could hear the impatient rush of the river.

It took my urbanized senses a minute to remember that this wasn't a Portland park ringed with houses. Wilderness spread out for hundreds of miles around me. The vast black sky was smeared with stars, so many and so clear that it made me dizzy to look at them.

I leaned over the balcony, my tits hanging down like the water balloons I used to drop on cars from freeway bridges, and quoted the only Shakespeare I could remember: “Romeo, Romeo, whenceforth art thou, Romeo?”

From deep within the trees I heard what sounded like a suppressed giggly laugh. I couldn't be sure. As I now knew, animals made all kinds of weird noises.

“Tremaynne?” I stage-whispered.

Silence. I heard a rustle. From far back in the darkness of the trees a low urgent voice whispered: “Come down.”

It had to be Tremaynne.

“I'll be right there,” I called softly.

 

 

There were fire doors off the corridor, but if I used them to get outside I'd set off alarms and create another panic. So I decided to leave by the front door of the lodge and from there make my way around back, to where our suites were located at the end of a wing.

For this secret tryst it was important to look romantic and unforgettable. I wanted Tremaynne to see me and think he'd never seen anyone so soft, beautiful, and alluring in his entire life. I wanted to stir his poetic and protective instincts.

So I wore my long, crushed-velvet dress the color of midnight. Face hidden in the shadowy confines of its soft, cowl-like hood, I hurried along the dark stone corridors. A mysterious woman, in love.

 

 

A cleaning crew was busy downstairs. It looked like every employee in the lodge had been pressed into service under Commander Geof Killingsworth. All the furniture had been cleared out of the Great Hall. Guys perched on enormous ladders were busy squeegeeing all the interior glass and wiping dry all the wood finishes. The glass doors were open and a broom brigade methodically swept water out onto the terraces. Enormous fans were blowing to dry the place out.