The Starter Wife (41 page)

“Listen—” Gracie turned back to Sam. “—I want to apologize again—”

“Lavender got hurt last night,” Sam said.

Gracie’s face traversed a spectrum of emotions until it landed on panic.

“This morning. They said she’s going to be all right,” he said. “She’s in the hospital. I thought you should know.”

Gracie’s mouth squeezed into a grimace. “How?”

“She got hit by a car. Early this morning.” Even as he said the words, he felt the muscles in his throwing arm twitch.

“The ambulance,” Gracie said. Her hand found her mouth and she began to cry. Sam put his arms around her as she buried her face into his chest.

“She’s going to be fine,” he said. Why was he promising her what he didn’t know to be true?

Gracie nodded. “She’s going to miss her graduation,” she said.

“You knew about that?” he asked. It wasn’t like Lavender to trust the residents with personal information.

Gracie nodded, then let her head submerge into his chest once more.

Sam stroked her hair as her breathing eventually settled. Even now, surrounded by the taint of tragedy, he felt a burgeoning feeling—

Oh, fuck, Sam thought to himself. How can I be horny at a time like this?

He let Gracie go. “I’ve gotta run,” he said. She was staring at him with her big, dark eyes. He wanted to stay there and stroke her hair and kiss her eyelids and run his hands all over her body. And that’s why he was leaving.

Gracie nodded and listened to his footsteps as he walked away; she heard the clap of the door closing behind him.

She stared for what felt like a long time out the kitchen window when she noticed, there for all to see, the green blanket.

Sitting on top of the blanket was a lanky, well-dressed blond man, hooked up to an iPod. The Malibu Masturbator. His hands were seated nicely on his knees.

There was something on his face.

Gracie got out Joan’s binoculars, always at the ready on the kitchen counter should someone really interesting (read: gorgeous and male) turn up on the beach.

She looked through the binoculars, finally finding her subject after drifting back from the pier.

He had a bandage across his nose. His eyes were bruised.

“Hey,” Kenny said, as he loped back into the kitchen, swinging the spatula like a baseball bat. “Where’d your friend go?”

“He had to run,”Gracie said. “Business to attend to.”

Kenny nodded solemnly. He looked about as disappointed as a child who’s dropped ice cream out of his cone. “Of course. But I want to set something up with him. Hook me up. Can you put together a dinner or something?”

Gracie shrugged.

“Do this for me,” Kenny said. “Come on.” Apparently Gracie didn’t respond fast enough. “You know, this was the problem with our marriage. You just didn’t support me enough.”

“I didn’t … what?” Gracie turned toward him.

“It’s the wives who decide everything.” Kenny was making a point with his spatula. “It’s the wives who determine the social status of the husband—the wives who can make or break a man. And you just didn’t try hard enough.”

He punctuated his point, brandishing the spatula like a sword.

“I didn’t try hard enough,” Gracie said.

“That’s right, you didn’t,” Kenny said, jumping in. “We should have had dinner parties once a week. We should have had people over to play tennis every Sunday. And not just any people, like your friends—real people, like the Murdochs, the Spielbergs, the Katzenbergs, all the damned ’bergs—”

“Being head of a studio isn’t good enough for you?” Gracie asked.

“Gracie. Don’t be stupid,” Kenny snorted. “All studio heads get fired. It’s just a matter of time. But if I were friends with Rupert or Steven or Jeffrey, well, that goes a long way in this town. Why do you think I fell in love with Britney?”

“To help your career?” Gracie asked. She had passed anger and was now heading into bemusement.

“Damn right,” Kenny said. “I mean, I do love her with all my heart, but, you know, this is going to blow me up big-time.”

Gracie nodded and wondered if she appeared at all interested.

“Did Spielberg date Madonna?” Gracie finally asked.

“He’s been married to two actresses,” Kenny said.

“Geffen?”

“Married to Cher, I think.”

Gracie nodded, again. “Maybe you’re on to something, Kenny,” she finally said.

“It’s got nothing to do with the movies, you know,” Kenny said. She realized he was being defensive. Kenny’s last two pictures had been major flops. A third one? He’d be packed up and sent on his way.

“Sure,” Gracie said. “It never does.”

Gracie thought about the demise of her marriage, she thought about Lavender’s accident. She thought about her age.

She decided that she was going to sleep with Sam tonight, whether he wanted to or not. All of the signs could be read. There was no time to waste.

28
 
LOTS OF STUFF TO DO TONIGHT

G
RACIE RECALLED
the conversation she’d had with Joan as she left the house that evening.

“Where are you going?” Joan asked. She was on the couch, her reading glasses on. Gracie couldn’t tell if she was reading
The Atlantic Monthly
or
The New Yorker,
but she looked vaguely annoyed as she often did when reading about social injustice or governmental abuse. Gracie was dressed casually but carefully—she had chosen clothes she could take on a hike, but made sure they were in colors flattering to her skin tone and body type.

She looked good enough, she knew, to raise the question of suspicion in Joan’s mind.

“I’m going for a walk,” Gracie had said.

“A walk,” Joan repeated back to her, as if informing her friend that the mere thought of going for a walk on a balmy, slightly breezy evening in Malibu was suspect.

“I’m going to sleep with the homeless man,” Gracie admitted. Lying was not her strength.

“Oh, okay, fine,” Joan said, getting back to whatever magazine article was provoking her. “Just make sure you’re back at a decent hour.”

“If you need me, I’ll be lying on the trail behind the Colony,” Gracie called out as she opened the front door, “screwing my brains out.”

Joan raised her hand over her head, her fingers and thumb forming the universal “okay” sign.

S
AM HAD
a few loose ends to tie up at the Kennicot house, so he stopped there before heading home.

He let himself in through the back door, as he had done for almost fifteen years. The silence in the home told him that Mrs. Kennicot was upstairs, presumably taking a nap. He looked for the little Filipino nurse, who never left her side, except to come downstairs to watch her Spanish-language soap operas if Mrs. Kennicot was sleeping during the day.

The Filipino nurse had left some food out for him on the kitchen table. Mostly, she made hot dogs. He was kind of hoping when they hired her that she’d be making some more, well, cultural fare.

Sam sat down and ate two of the hot dogs with no bun, nothing. She had made six for him—she was a bad cook, but she was a generous bad cook.

He was stuck. He wanted to go upstairs to say good-bye to Mrs. Kennicot. He had come to the conclusion that he had to take care of business tonight—if he waited any longer, the kid would probably be on a plane to another state, even another country. The sheriff, at the very least, had to keep him in town for two, three days to determine, to the best of his ability, what went down. After that, the kid would be free as a bird. The parents would buy their way into a college, maybe even buy a
whole fucking building, and their little darling would get off scot-free.

While Lavender would miss her graduation.

Sam had checked in with J.D. earlier that day. J.D. had been on the phone to the nurses at the hospital every hour. Lavender’s vital signs were steady, but she hadn’t awakened yet. Not unusual when there’s bleeding on the brain. They said she would, they said they thought she would. For sure.

Sam decided to leave a note for Mrs. Kennicot. She was going blind now, but the nurse could read it to her. He was pretty sure the nurse could read it to her. Her English was okay. Maybe she was smart enough to give J.D. the note if she couldn’t read it.

Piss to hell,
Sam thought,
this shit is so complicated. All I want to do is beat up the little fucker! Why should that be so hard?

He wrote the note quickly, possibly illegibly. It said he had to leave suddenly, that he was sorry, that he would be grateful to her for the rest of his life. And he gave instructions to the nurse—where to find that thick lotion Mrs. Kennicot liked that they didn’t stock at Sav-on, who to call to fix the old pipes under the kitchen sink (because he wouldn’t be able to anymore). He left the name of the medication that worked best on her stomach problems. He thought the nurse might know, but just in case. He left the name of a lady in the Colony who could walk the dog.

Oh, fuck,
Sam thought.
The fucking dog. I love that fucking dog. The dog’s going to cry, I know it. Fucking Baxter.

Sam wiped his nose on the back of his hand as the screen door closed behind him.

The breeze hit him, raising the fine hairs on his forearms. He could hear the dog, his whine reaching him over the waves. The dog wanted to take a walk.

Do I have to say good-bye to Gracie?
he asked himself. After all, he barely knew her. Wouldn’t she think it was odd that he thought himself so important as to tell her he’d be leaving for a, well, extended period of time? But wouldn’t she think it odd if she never saw him again?

Sam thought about it as he hopped the fence behind the tennis court and made his way down the trail behind the Colony.

He decided he wouldn’t say good-bye. He’d let J.D. explain what had happened. It’d be better for her if he just disappeared.

G
RACIE MADE
herself comfortable, pulling out the sleeping bag, draping a blanket she’d brought over it before settling down. Her first moments there could be broken down, incrementally—excitement brought on by lack of judgment, followed by self-doubt, followed by an increasing sense of dread, followed by fear, then terror, and finally, in a gesture of abandonment of what was left of her common sense, she decided that all was fine, she was perfectly safe, and it was normal for her to be sitting on top of this man’s sleeping bag, waiting for him to return from wherever he’d gone.

After a while, she lay back, watching the evening turn to night.

S
AM WALKED
up the trail. Besides packing, he wanted to dismantle his “den,” take down the cardboard, the tent, roll up his sleeping bag nice and tight.

What he didn’t expect to see were two white legs poking out from under his pup tent. He stopped. Then sighed and shook his head, but he could feel the smile creep onto his lips; he could feel it radiate into his chest.

Why was he smiling? He’d have to get rid of her. He had a job to do. Now he’d have to say good—bye.And now he was annoyedhe should be annoyed—she shouldn’t just turn up any old time she pleased. It showed a lack of judgment, a lack of respect. A lack of common—

Geez, her legs look good, Sam thought as he came closer. He appreciated her small ankles. And those toes. He could see she was lying still, her face toward the sky. For a morbid moment, steel pierced his heart, and he thought she might be dead.

Then he heard the snoring.

He came upon her and watched her sleep. The small curve of her lips. The furrow between her brows softened. Her hands cupped over her belly, modest even in sleep.

He would have fallen in love with her right then, had he not already done so.

Sam sat down on the sleeping bag next to her. She moaned softly. He stretched out his legs and leaned back. She turned to her side, her back toward him. She snorted.

Ever so gently, in the smallest of motions, he maneuvered his body into a position he hadn’t realized he’d missed so badly until he found himself in it.

He spooned her. He buried his nose in her hair; his lips were a breath away from her neck. He placed his arm around her waist and slid his hand beneath her breasts, curving under her belly.

Spooning, he thought, was dangerous business.

The comfort level was almost unbearable. Sam had to fight the surge of adrenaline that told him this situation was fight or flight, code red, highest alert.

He was in the middle of the wrestling match between emotion and physiology when she spoke.

“For crying out loud, just enjoy it,” she said.

His laugh came out like a bark. “You are one scary woman,” he said.

Gracie turned her whole body toward his. “Oh, you have no idea,” she said. “There are women out there who make me look like a lost kitten.”

“Don’t introduce me to them,” he said. They were face-to-face. Sam could feel her breasts pushing against his chest. He was lucky to be able to talk at this point.

He didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud that he was sporting a hard-on that would’ve been able to chop wood.

He chose proud. He maneuvered himself into her hip.