My Three Husbands (18 page)

As she sang I felt something drop onto my shoulder and skitter softly down my bosom. I looked down and saw it . . . a huge spider, just standing there on all eight legs right between my tits. I let out a gasp and threw up my hands. Red wine flew out of my glass and into Marcello's face.

Jane Bugler's last
“Perché”
was a really high note. But my scream was much higher and much louder.

I didn't hang around for long.

I sort of heaved my tits forward, brushing frantically with my shawl, hoping the spider would fall or jump off.

Marcello, his face dripping, his immaculate shirt soaked with burgundy, watched me in a shocked daze. I must have looked insane. The room inside became totally quiet.

“It's Godiva!” I heard Kristen's excited voice coming from somewhere inside the Great Hall. “She's a famous Icelandic rock star.”

I dropped the shawl and took off. I didn't know where I was going. I just wanted to get out of there before anyone could attach my face to the shriek that drowned out Jane Bugler's last and highest note.

I fled. Man, did I run. I ran the way I used to run when that gang of black girls in middle school chased me, furious if I didn't give them my lunch money. I ran the way Cinderella had to run when the clock struck midnight and her Mercedes was about to turn back into a beat-up Toyota Corolla with duct tape holding up the windows.

I flew down the flagstone terraces and around the back of the lodge. There were service doors down at the bottom level. I could see a big kitchen, hear the clatter of dishes, see food-service workers carrying plates and platters. That's where I really belonged—downstairs with the help.

I dashed on, my sides aching. Turning the corner I came to the ramp leading down into an underground garage. I darted in and searched for a dark corner where I could hide and catch my breath and collect my thoughts.

I huddled down in a recess back in the furthest corner of the garage, luxury cars and SUVs all around me. I looked for the dads' dusty, battered Rodeo but didn't see it.

Hands shaking, winded, I fumbled in my bag for a cigarette. Stray thoughts flashed and collided with memories. Getting back home and locking myself inside before the gang of black girls got me. Lingerie modeling. My wedding the day before. Whitman's disapproval. Tremaynne's hostility. Being refused service in Snakebite. The dead bear. The charging elk. Genital herpes. The terrifying long-legged spider . . .

I looked down to make sure it was gone. Pried open the front of the sequined bodice and looked inside. My breasts were very hot. And they'd suddenly taken on a weird new importance. Marcello had offered me a thousand bucks just to look at them.

But Tremaynne was my first concern. I needed to verify that he had, in fact, gone into McCall and wasn't hanging around the lodge waiting or looking for me. I decided it couldn't have been him I saw across the river. That would be, like, abandonment.

When I'd caught my breath I stood up and began scanning the gleaming rows of cars and SUVs. There was one section I couldn't see from where I was.

As I stepped out to look, something dark ran across the floor and darted beneath a white Lexus SUV. It moved too fast to see what it was.

Then I saw another one, followed by three babies.

Raccoons.

They were smaller than me, so I didn't feel the instant urge to run away. But I wasn't going to hang around, either. Raccoons bit and carried rabies. One year they overran the dads' house in Portland, taking over the terrace—“like goddamn squatters!” Whitman complained. They were bold, stubborn animals, unafraid of humans, and it was like they expected you to feed them. If you didn't, they tried to get inside to feed themselves.

Keeping my eye on the shadow cast by the white Lexus, I quickly slipped off my ragged nylons and tossed them in the backseat of a nearby BMW convertible. I squeezed my swollen feet into my heels. I was afraid to walk barefoot past the animals.

I took a deep drag of my Marlboro for courage and then started slowly down the wide corridor between the cars, staying close to the opposite row. Nothing leaped out from beneath the white Lexus, but I had a sense of bright watching eyes.

Before I could get to the end of the corridor the biggest raccoon I'd ever seen came trundling down the ramp from outside, a rotten banana peel dangling from its mouth. It saw me and stopped. I stopped. It looked at me with those bandit-masked eyes, then sat back as if daring me to pass. I could see its paws with their weird, humanlike fingers.

Something growled behind me. I slowly turned my head. Saw sharp, beady eyes and sharp pointed teeth. The mother, maybe, thinking I was going to harm her young.

I did everything in slow motion, like a tai-chi routine. I stuck my cigarette in my mouth and quietly opened my purse, pulling out the box of red hots. I shook some out and flung them over my shoulder, as far behind me as I could. I heard a skittering, a scratching, as the baby raccoons darted out to get the red hots. The mother joined them.

The big one with the banana peel didn't budge until I threw some candy off to one side of the ramp. Then he slowly walked over to sniff it.

That was my chance so I took it. But as I started toward the ramp, a piercing, pulsating siren suddenly went off. It was so loud that even the raccoons jumped. Mr. Banana Peel looked at me as if to say: “Now you've ruined our hideaway!”

It must have been my cigarette. It hadn't occurred to me that there'd be smoke detectors in the garage. I ground out the butt as fast as I could, then started toward the ramp. But now the heavy garage door was rolling down.

The big raccoon stood up and hissed as I scrambled up the ramp. I didn't have it in me to dive under the door. I was afraid I wouldn't make it and the force of it would chop off my legs or my head. Wouldn't that be cute?

I moaned and turned back around. And in that moment of super-adrenalated vision I saw the dads' Rodeo, parked back in a corner by a door.

An exit door. A door that must lead up to the lodge.

I started off, but realized to my horror that something in the descending door had caught on the big bow on the back of my dress. I was being dragged down to the concrete. Terrified, I let out a screech and lunged forward to escape. The movement triggered some sort of reversal mechanism in the door. It stopped and then started to rise, taking me with it.

“Oh my God!” I gasped as my feet left the driveway.

I was being, like, squashed to death in reverse. I could feel the tug of the bow and the fabric pulling tighter and tighter on my belly. The door strained and whirred and carried me upward. Then I heard a ripping sound.

I dropped back down and landed on the concrete driveway.

Bowless, I made for the exit door inside the garage.

T
he door opened into a concrete stairwell. There was nothing to do but huff my way up the stairs to see where they led.

Three landings up I came to another metal security door. Excited voices were jabbering on the other side. I jumped back as the door swung open.

With a sharp snap of energy, like cops or firefighters, three men burst into the stairwell. The first was Geof Killingsworth. The second was a uniformed employee carrying a walkie-talkie and looking scared shitless. The third was my dad, John Gilroy. The three of them were so intent on getting downstairs that they didn't see me half-hidden behind the door.

“Why weren't the goddamn valets at their posts?” Geof Killingsworth raged as they clattered down the stairs toward the garage.

“Maybe it's that terrorist group,” the uniformed employee said. “They could of set a trap. Knocked 'em out. And we don't have any guns.”

“Probably just a cigarette,” Daddy's voice echoed up the stairwell.

“If I find out someone's been sneaking smokes down there, his ass is grass,” Geof Killingsworth shouted.

From the stairwell I slipped out into a large open gallery close to the reception desk and then ducked into the nearby ladies' room. Two women entered in a cloud of perfume just as I slipped into a toilet stall. I spied on them through a crack in the door as they primped in front of the mirror.

“Did you actually
see
her?” a young blonde woman wearing a black sheath with pearls asked her friend as she carefully remussed her Meg Ryan hair.

“I think so,” said her friend, who was wearing a tight red Spandex minidress that looked like a gym costume. “I'm almost positive it was Godiva.”

Godiva! They were talking about me! Unless, of course, the real Godiva was a guest at the lodge.

“What did she look like?” asked the woman in the black dress, leaning close to the mirror and examining her face.

“Kind of dumpy. Long dark hair.”

“Why would she scream like that?” the black-dressed woman asked.

“She's a punk,” her friend said. “That's her singing voice. What's left of it, anyway.”

They straightened their dresses, appraised their perfect bodies and faces and hair and teeth one last time. “Did you see Tru Brant?” asked the woman in the red dress. “What a hunk!”

“I heard he wears platform shoes,” said her friend as they joined the crowd buzzing outside in the gallery.

As I crept out of the ladies' room, trying to look inconspicuous, I felt like I was in one of those weird dreams where I'm stark naked in Daddy's busy office or on a crowded subway platform in New York. I was afraid more people would recognize me as Godiva, or, worse yet, that the real Godiva would make an appearance.

My goal was simple: to get through the lobby, into an elevator, and back up to our room without being noticed. If the dads' SUV was still here, so was Tremaynne. By now, I figured, he'd be back in our honeymoon suite, and maybe more in the mood for a honeymoon. We could drink wine and laugh over all I'd been through trying to find him. He could apologize for being so hostile. I could forgive him and try to put those phone calls out of my mind.

But we couldn't have sex. Not without a condom. Not if he had herpes. No way. I'd have to come up with some safe erotic tricks that avoided penetration.

People were scurrying back and forth across the lobby with worried looks on their faces. I could hear the distant hee-haw of the siren in the garage.

“Everything's fine,” a man at the concierge desk assured a knot of wealthy guests. “It's a new alarm system, so it's jittery.”

“Are you saying there isn't a fire?” a bald man with thick glasses asked. “Yes or no?”

“We're checking on it now, sir.”

“Should we evacuate?” another man snapped.

“My beautiful Mercedes!” moaned a thin blonde woman with a lifted face and an English accent. “If anything should happen to her—”

“Did anyone find out what that scream was?” the bald man asked. “It sounded like someone being murdered out on the goddamn terrace!”

“Someone said it was Godiva!” another woman standing by the desk told him.

“Who the hell's Godiva?” the bald man asked.

“That famous Swedish rock star,” someone else said.

“Whoever the creature is, she deliberately ruined Jane Bugler's aria!” huffed the facelifted English lady. “These wretched celebrities are all so hopelessly immature and self-centered. They'll do anything to get publicity.”

I pulled my hair around my face, like a mask, and kept my head averted as I slowly made my way toward the lobby, passing the model of Pine Mountain Lodge. In miniature I could see exactly where I'd been racing around like a crazy person for the last hour.

“Venus!” It was Marielle, wine in hand. “Did you find him?”

I shook my head. “I don't think it was Tremaynne you saw.”

She squinted at me, a little drunk. “I'm certain it was.” She let out a conspiratorial titter. “Anyway, you missed Jane Bugler. My God, was she pissed.”

“Oh?” I said innocently. “Why?”

Marielle took a little step backward, lifted her wineglass, and started to laugh. “I shouldn't,” she protested. “It was terrible. Right at the end of her big aria, someone screamed. Right outside.” Her yellow diamonds glittered in the gallery lights. “Fokke was furious. He thinks some vulgar, childish American was making fun of Jane's singing.”

“I wonder who it was,” I said.

“Ya, I wonder. Someone told me it was Godiva, but I don't believe it.”

“Yeah, I heard that rumor, too. But I've never heard of Godiva. Who is she?”

Marielle waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, I think she's some boring Irish pop star.”

“Irish,” I said. “I thought she was Icelandic. Or Swedish.”

“No,” Marielle said, shaking her head, “Irish. One of those untrained singers who can't read music but knows how to show off her naked body.” She glanced appreciatively around the foyer. “You must be very proud of your father, eh?”

I nodded.

“I have never seen such a beautiful spa in my life,” she said. “And believe me, I've been to all of them. Your father has an exquisite eye for materials and detail. And this setting!”

“The setting's cool,” I agreed, adding silently,
If you have a husband or lover or domestic partner to share it with.

“I
adore
the American wilderness. It is something we simply do not have in Europe.”

“It's very pretty,” I said politely, like a good girl, trying to extricate myself.

But Marielle wanted to talk.

I'd never really confided in her, but at a party she was always my safe haven. In fact, it was only at parties that I saw her. Through the dads, the glamorous Marielle with her exotic accent had been a part of my life for years. She was like a rich socialite aunt who took a kindly interest in my various sordid affairs.

“Dey're so cute, your dads,” she sighed tenderly. “Half the women here are after them. And dere dey are, the poor dears, trying to have a honeymoon.”

“They're always on a honeymoon,” I said jealously.

“The management wants Whitman to write a good story, so they've packed his schedule from morning until night. And every time Geof Killingsworth gets nervous, he whisks your father away to look at something or other. Dey're both working! On dere honeymoon!”

“They're always working,” I told her.

“Ya. So is Fokke.” She cast a sad glance back towards the Great Hall. “Always working.” She looked at me, head cocked. Her short auburn hair, fixed in a weird ultra-high-fashion style, stuck straight out from her head like a high-tech toilet brush. “You know,” she said morosely, “I feel quite useless at times.”

I didn't feel sorry for her. I'm not into the woes of the wealthy. “Marielle, you're rich and beautiful, for God's sake. You've got everything you want.”

“Hah.” She blinked back tears. “Money means nothing, Venus. Absolutely nothing.”

“You wouldn't say that if you didn't have any.”

“Once upon a time I was quite poor,” she confessed.

“You?”

“Ya. My father ran off when I was ten. My mother supported us by working as a cleaning lady. To pay for music school, I had to win scholarships and work all the time. I never had a minute free, and if I did, I didn't have any money to do anything.”

It was hard to believe. Marielle was so polished and sophisticated that I'd always assumed she was born rich.

“I was a student at the conservatoire when I first met your father,” she said. “I mean, your other father. Whitman. He'd just broken with his family and was wandering around Europe after the Peace Corps.”

“How did you meet?” I couldn't help being curious.

She smiled, remembering. “At the opera. In Paris. I knew him a little from the conservatoire. I mean, I'd seen him. Actually, I'd heard him.”

“Heard him?”

“Didn't you know he studied to be an opera singer?”

I shook my head.

“My God, such a voice,” said Marielle. “Anyway, there we both were. At the opera. Up in the highest part of the balcony. We were both as poor as church mice back then.” She eyed me, maybe wondering how much she should reveal. “Being poor doesn't matter so much when you're in love,” she said. “And being rich doesn't matter so much when you're not.”

Scales fell from my eyes. It was like finally figuring out how sex worked. At that moment I realized that Marielle was in love with Whitman.

I had this sudden image of Whitman standing up on a stage singing an aria. I remembered how excited he used to get when we'd go to the opera in New York. “Why didn't Whitman become an opera singer?” I asked.

Marielle sadly shook her head. “To this day I don't know why.”

We watched silently as a parade of employees carried covered trays and enormous wrought iron candelabras into the Great Hall. They were setting up for the candlelight dessert to be served at ten o'clock with chamber music accompaniment. The huge sliding glass walls on either side of the room were pulled shut.

“Luxury is very seductive,” Marielle said quietly. A waiter passed and she exchanged her empty wineglass for a full one. “But it means nothing, Venus, unless you truly earn it.”

I didn't say anything. What was she getting at? Was she implying that she hadn't really earned the right to be here? Or that I hadn't?

“Damn that Jane Bugler!” Marielle exclaimed suddenly. “She always reminds me of what I gave up.”

I suppose she meant her career. The one she'd given up when she married a millionaire.

“I was a better singer than she was,” Marielle said. “My top was brighter. I could trill.”

She opened her mouth and let out a high fluttering noise, then stood there for a moment, silently staring out into space. I thought maybe she was going to cry. “You okay?” I asked.

She turned to me. “Come and have a mud wrap with me tomorrow morning.”

“I think I'll—we'll—be sleeping in,” I said evasively.

“Ah.” She winked. “Is he a good lover, your new husband?”

I nodded, filled with a hot, sudden desire for Tremaynne's body.

“Very important,” Marielle said. She stood there looking at me and smiling, like a kindly fairy godmother. “Let's go find Whitman, shall we?”

“Signorina?”

We turned. Marcello was standing behind us, holding out my shawl. He'd changed into a light black wool sweater and black trousers, his feet in elegant black leather sandals.

“You dropped this, signorina.”

I took the dirty, wine-splattered shawl and quickly wrapped it around my waist, covering up my ripped dress. “Thanks,” I muttered.

“La donna,”
Marielle said to Marcello
, “non é una signorina. É una signora.”

“Ah,
scusatami
—
signora.”
Marcello gave me a slight bow then said something in rapid-fire Italian to Marielle. She responded in Italian and they both laughed.

So did I. I didn't understand a word but forced out a fake, lighthearted party laugh, as if I were in the best of moods and having the time of my life.

But it was such a weird situation. There was this embarrassing tension between Marcello and me. We had to pretend that we didn't know one another, when, in fact, we were bound together by the secret sexual world we'd once shared.

“May I invite you in for dessert?” Marcello asked me.

“No thanks. I'm going up to my room. I mean our room. I mean, our honeymoon suite.”

“The signora claims to be on her honeymoon,” Marcello said with a shrug to Marielle, “but I have seen no honey.”

“He's up there waiting for me,” I insisted.

Before I could turn tail and run, I saw Daddy walking toward the front doors of the lodge. He was drawing shapes or diagrams in the air with one hand as he explained something to Geof Killingsworth. In his other hand Daddy held something that looked like a shiny, pale-pink sea creature. It took me a minute to figure out that it was the big satin bow from the back of my dress.

The minute they entered, Geof Killingsworth turned on his professional charm. He smiled and announced in a loud voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to report that there is no fire. It appears that a bit of stray smoke from a kitchen exhaust fan set off the smoke alarms.”