“Broke?” she asked incredulously.
“That’s right. Broke. Out of business. Kaput. Our old sources have either dried out or they’ve given up on us.” From the look on her face he realized she had never known how serious things were.
“We need a new well to draw on and if there’s one thing I can take credit for, it’s knowing where to turn in an emergency. I’ve found some investors willing to speculate on us, to take a chance. One of their representatives is right here on the grounds and if it’s possible, he’d like to meet with you now.”
“Now?” Jonathan nodded. “Who? I mean, representative—of what?”
“Let him explain himself. Phil knew about him, was planning on meeting with him.” It was, of course, a lie, but he was shrewd enough to know the effect it would have.
“I don’t know. I—”
“Just listen to him Ellen, please. There’s no harm in listening.” He came the closest he ever had to pleading and she was genuinely touched. Perhaps, in his own way, he was more loyal than she had given him credit for. Besides, she had just lectured him on listening to both sides. Now, perhaps, it was her turn.
“What’s his name?”
“Nick Martin. He’s a businessman from Manhattan and as I said, he has a proposal even your husband was interested in.”
“What about Artie Ross?”
“The nightclub is one of the few areas of the hotel where we’re making money. If we have to pay overtime to the musicians, it will cut back our profit margin. From a budgetary point of view, it just doesn’t make much sense.”
“All right,” she sighed. “I’ll talk to him about it later. Maybe we can have the Latin band back the dance and novelty acts and the house band back the singers. Then no group plays straight through and everybody gets to take a break.”
“Sound fine with me. Now I’ll go find Nick Martin and bring him in.”
Ellen took a deep breath and slumped down in her chair, drained of even the little energy she had had earlier in the day. And it’s only the beginning, she realized. She looked up at the display of pictures on the right wall. Some were of Phil alone, others of him or the two of them with celebrities, still others of celebrities alone. But the picture dearest to her heart was taken on the day they were married fifteen years before. No superstars, no Broadway or Hollywood celebrities, no famous politicans or authors, just the two of them on the threshold of sharing a whole new experience together. Well, now there was just one. And somehow she knew she’d have to find the strength to carry on.
“What are you going to do, Grant, sleep right through breakfast?”
Her son turned over and pulled the cover over his head. Melinda slammed a dresser drawer and slipped into her new one-piece tennis outfit, the one with the abbreviated shorts. Satisfied with the way the material clung to her body, she went into the bathroom to put the finishing touches on her makeup and hair. He lowered the cover enough to peek out.
A small, pin-like pain made its way across the lower part of his forehead just above his eyes. It felt better when he closed the lids but the moment he raised his head, an explosion like a time bomb going off occurred at the top. His mouth was unbearably dry, his tongue and lips the texture of sandpaper. He presumed it was now Saturday morning. He had no idea how much he had drunk the night before in Sandi’s hideaway, though he was sure it must have been a lot. Alison, he remembered, had left shortly after they arrived. It all came back to him in a haze.
“I’ll smoke a cigarette,” she had said, “but I don’t want any wine. It always upsets my stomach.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He grabbed the bottle from her chubby fingers. It looked so revolting, the way he slobbered over it when he drank, that Sandi was almost reluctant to put the same bottle to her mouth. When Grant passed it over, she wiped the neck with the hem of her dress and from where he was sitting, he could see straight up to her crotch. The sight of her cotton panties made quite an impression. In his mind’s eye he saw it as a piece of adhesive, barely covering her adolescent vagina which he fantasized as having little or no pubic hair around it.
She took a short sip and passed the bottle back. He fell back against the stack of mattresses and straddled it between his legs, his right hand firmly grasping the neck. The two girls sucked at the cigarettes with such intensity it made him smile.
“Do you have a girl friend?” Sandi asked.
“Lots of them,” he said with false braggadocio. “I don’t stay with any one girl.”
“My mother told me I couldn’t go steady until I was a senior in high school,” Alison said. She was just holding her cigarette now, letting it burn away between her fingers.
“Goin’ steady is for kids,” Grant said.
“How far do you think kids our age should go?” Sandi asked. Alison wished they could talk about something else but Sandi held her gaze steady. Grant’s eyes darted quickly from side to side, as if he felt trapped. His fingers moved up and down the neck of the wine bottle nervously. He took another sip.
“It depends on the situation. I know some girls who go all the way on a first date.”
“Really?” Sandi turned to Alison, who in turn looked horrified.
“Oh yeah. Of course none of us go out with them more than once,” he added and laughed. He drank again. Over half of the quart was gone.
“Let me have some,” Sandi said. Her face was beginning to flush, as were all the nerve endings in her body. She threw her head back and took another swallow. Alison played nervously with her cigarette.
“Aren’t the girls afraid of getting pregnant?”
Grant shrugged and took a long drag of his smoke. “The way I see it,” he said, not looking directly at either of them, “that’s not my problem. If they want to go all the way, they gotta worry about the consequences.”
“That’s not fair,” Alison said. “They can’t get pregnant by themselves.”
“Nobody’s forcing them.”
“You ever wondered if you were an accident?” Sandi asked, looking from Grant to her girl friend.
“I know I was,” Grant blurted out. Both girls grew wide-eyed. He rambled on. “My mother didn’t want any kids. She always tells me how I nearly ruined her figure. My father says she kept her weight down so low when she was pregnant I nearly had brain damage when I was born.”
“When did they get divorced?”
“About three years ago.” He took another slug of wine. His eyes were glassy now. Sandi thought he looked as though he might cry at any moment. “He caught her with another man.”
“Oh, my God,” Alison said.
“That’s really tough,” Sandi said sympathetically, touching his shoulder ever so lightly. “Really tough.” For a long time no one spoke.
“I think I’d better get upstairs,” Alison finally said, realizing from the looks Sandi and Grant were giving each other that they probably wanted to be alone. “I told my mother I’d meet her at Champagne Hour.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I really gotta go.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the floor.
“Don’t let anyone see you going out of here.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said. “I promise.”
Sandi closed the door behind her and noticed that the bottle of wine Grant held in his hand was now almost empty.
“Want another cigarette?”
“Not right now.”
“Alison’s a little immature.”
“Not up here,” he said patting his chest. He smiled widely. Sandi laughed, uncrossed her legs and sat back on her hands. He thought about her vagina again, once again imagining it denuded of pubic hair. He knew that a girl her age would have to have at least some, but he could only think of the female sex organ in terms of his mother’s. Someday he would have to ask her why she shaved herself down there if he could just figure out a way so that she wouldn’t know he watched her undress and studied her body so carefully.
Sandi, at the same time, was thinking about Margret Thomas and the scene she had witnessed the night before. “You ever read
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?” she asked.
“Naw. I don’t read much.”
“It’s got some great parts in it. I’ll show you tomorrow.” He didn’t reply. He was too dizzy. “You sure drank a lot of that wine.”
“Huh?” He held the bottle up to his face. “Yeah, so what?” He took a final sip to empty it and fell back on the mattress.
“You’re all right, aren’t you?”
“Sure, Sandi-handi,” he giggled.
She wished he hadn’t had so much to drink. She wished it hadn’t got so late. Obviously this wasn’t going to be the best time to experiment with sex. “You’re not too drunk to walk, are you?”
“Shit, no. I just don’t feel like moving.”
“I’d better put that bottle back,” she said, taking it abruptly from his hand. He looked up at her with a wide grin, reached over and grabbed the back of her lower leg.
“Gotcha,” he said, laughing loudly.
“Shh. Someone might hear us and I’ll be up the creek.” She took his hand away from her leg but held it in hers for a moment. “Let’s take a walk outside. You’d better sober up before you meet up with your mother.”
“Hell, I won’t meet up with her until morning.”
Sandi stood up, tugging gently on his arm. He pushed himself forward and let her lift him to his feet.
“Whooooeeeeee. Why is the room spinning?”
“ ’Cause you’re having a good time,” she laughed, slipping his arm around her shoulder.
He remembered thinking she was pretty. The gardenia scent of her hair, and the softness in her face. She was delicious in a delightful, but confectionery, sort of way. When he looked at her he wanted to twirl her hair around one of his fingers, to brush her forehead repeatedly with his lips. He wanted to press the tips of his fingers into the lines of her neck until he sensed the pulsation of her blood.
They left the room, giggled together and walked out of a side basement door that opened on the lawn between the pool and the main building. He stumbled stupidly beside her for a while until the dizziness passed and he was left with only a dull pounding in his head. They parted with a promise to have another rendezvous in the hideaway the next night, this time without Alison whom he had drunkenly nicknamed “Alison Tits.”
Now, the morning after, as he lay snugly under the blanket, he resurrected images of Sandi, the way her nose curved up slightly at the tip, the candy-coated lipstick, the suppleness of her budding breasts. His fingers moved to his penis but it didn’t stir into the erection he anticipated. He held the limpness between two fingers of his right hand and moved them up and down, back and forth. The only reaction was a slow, very slow, tingling sensation but still no hardness at all.
Then Melinda came out of the bathroom, bubbling and talking a mile a minute. She was going down to breakfast and then she’d play a game or two of “Simon Says.” After that, she was scheduled for a tennis lesson. When the lesson was over, she was coming back to the room to change into her bathing suit and go to the pool for the buffet.
“How do I look?” She turned to check herself in the mirror. The skirt of her tennis shorts barely covered the bottoms of her cheeks.
“Great. Just great.”
“You could sound more enthusiastic. Now get up and have some breakfast,” she said as she waved and walked out the door. He listened to the silence. The scent of her perfume lingered. He sat up and dangled his legs over the bed. For a few moments, he just stared into her bedroom. Then he went to her dresser and reached into the top drawer to scoop out a pair of her bikini panties. It was a struggle to get the silk material over his thighs but he had a slim build and finally succeeded.
The tightness growing in his crotch felt good. He closed his eyes and fell forward onto her bed. Then he took her pillow and shoved it down between his legs. He moved slowly at first. Then an exquisite heat started to build in his loins.
He stopped, as if to tease himself. This is wrong, he thought. It’s not only wrong, it’s sick.
But I can’t help it, he replied to the Puritan voice, and what’s more, I don’t want to.
He moved faster and faster until he came in short, magnificent jerks.
As usual, his first reaction was guilt. How many times had he promised himself, made deals with himself that this wouldn’t happen again?
A shower brought a bit of relief. The feeling of cleanliness quieted his conscience, but it didn’t erase the memory. He put the pillow back in place and tried to smooth it out.
Tonight, he thought, tonight she’d put her face against it. It was crazy, but the very realization brought a new excitement to him.
“Just a minute,” Charlotte said. Bruce and Fern stopped, then moved to the side of the aisle as she approached the maitre d’. Bruce thought both girls had been markedly different during breakfast—Charlotte had been uncharacteristically quiet and restless, shifting her attention to the entrance every time a guest walked in and Fern suddenly complained of little appetite and seemed to be forcing herself to pay attention to his conversation. The little life that came to the table was sparked when Fern mentioned her intention to go to the beauty parlor and visit the cosmetician.
“She’s going to pull a
My Fair Lady
,” Charlotte said. “I think she thinks you’re Professor Henry Higgins.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Bruce said, his mouth widening in a grin. Fern’s face lit up for the first time that morning. “And remember, we have a tennis date after lunch.”
She nodded but he didn’t sense the enthusiasm he had hoped would be there.
“Excuse me,” Charlotte said. Mr. Pat looked up and smiled, remembering her kindly from the night before. “Did a Mr. David Oberman, by chance, make different arrangements for his seating?”
“David Oberman?” He picked up his list. “No, he’s still down for your table, table 21. No change.”
“That’s curious. He hasn’t been down yet.” She looked over her shoulder to see if he had come in while she was talking.
“There’s nothing unusual about that,” Pat said. “Guests often sleep late when they enjoyed themselves the night before. That’s one of the pleasures on vacation and one of the reasons why we serve until eleven.”
She looked down at her watch. “But it’s almost a quarter of.”
“What can I do?” He shrugged, looking at Bruce and Fern. “It must have been some night.” He called over a captain from a table nearby. “It’s been kind of spotty all morning.”