Be My Baby Tonight (39 page)

* * *

Keely McBride rolled over, punched her
pillow, flopped her head down once more, moaning in mingled mental
agony and frustration. She couldn’t sleep. She might never sleep
again. Ever.

How did insomniacs do it? Why hadn’t they all
just said the heck with this baloney, killed themselves, and gotten
it over with? What did people
do
all night long, when they
couldn’t sleep? Count sheep? Ridiculous. Besides, it didn’t work.
Keely knew, because she’d tried it.

The portable television set in her bedroom
hadn’t helped either, even though she’d kept it on until two in the
morning, watching infomercials, then a “Gilligan’s Island” rerun
that had never been one of her favorites. Nothing. Not even one
heavy, drooping eyelid.

In fact, if she got any
more
wide
awake, she could stop wasting time and go re-shingle the roof or
something.

She was just too nervous to sleep, too
scared. She had one shot, just one, and it was coming with one
Sadie Trehan and the next sunrise. How was she supposed to sleep?
Giving up on what had been a bad idea from the moment she’d crawled
into bed some six hours earlier, Keely tossed back the covers and
headed toward the bathroom to take a shower.

It wasn’t as if the running water would wake
anyone else in the house, because there wasn’t anyone else in the
house. She was alone. All alone. Aunt Mary didn’t have any living
houseplants, let alone a tabby cat or nervous lapdog to keep her
niece company while the older woman was off honeymooning in Greece.
You’d think one’s only aunt would have more consideration, damn it,
because Keely could do with a purring cat or a yapping dog. She’d
settle for a hamster and its squeaky wheel—anything to break the
silence, anything she could talk to, complain to. Bitch to.

Keely had a lot of bitching to do.

For starters, she was in
Allentown—
back
in Allentown—because her fledgling interior
design business in Manhattan had gone belly-up only fifteen months
after she’d first opened the doors.

How Keely hated to fail, especially when her
one and only lover had so smugly declared “You’ll never make it
without me” when she’d left his bed, his employ, and set out to
buck the odds that 70 percent of all new businesses fail in the
first two years.

God, how she hated statistics, being a
statistic. Almost as much as she’d hated Gregory Fontaine—which she
didn’t anymore, because to hate somebody you’d actually have had to
have
liked
him at some point—and she’d figured out that
there had been nothing likable about Gregory Fontaine.

He was handsome, sure. And successful. And
he’d hired her straight out of college, the ink on her diploma
still wet (and her only work reference from Aunt Mary, who anybody
with even a pea for a brain would know had to have given a glowing
recommendation, even if Keely had been the worst interior designer
since the first jerk had hung a moose head on his den wall).

Ah, yes, Gregory Fontaine. He’d been suave
and debonair and dined in all the right restaurants and knew the
right people and could quote lines from every Neil Simon play. He
also bit his toenails. Keely liked to remember that Gregory
Fontaine bit his toenails. It was
so
vindicating.

Keely stood under the stinging spray, her
head bowed so that her honey blond hair turned darkly golden. She
poured shampoo into her hand and worked up a thick, creamy lather
in her hair, trying to wash away any bad thoughts.

It didn’t work. It never did. She never felt
more awake, aware, or alive just because she’d washed her hair. She
certainly had never had an orgasm courtesy of some nature-smelling
shampoo.

There was so much of life she’d missed out
on. Spraying room deodorizer had never turned her living room into
a flower garden. Toothpaste had never put a blinking, diamondlike
starburst in her smile. No genie had ever popped out of her
all–purpose cleanser bottle and danced her around her
sparkling-clean kitchen. And as for her sex life? Hell, nobody had
“validated her tires” since she’d waved Gregory Fontaine ta-ta
eighteen months ago.

Her life was one huge downward spiral, that’s
what it was. Business, gone. Manhattan apartment, gone. Future,
gone. Love life? Hell, it hadn’t been that good, but that, too, was
gone. Way gone.

Here she was, back in Allentown, back to her
roots, back to the beginning, to the same bedroom at Aunt Mary’s
she’d slept in while growing up, dreaming of getting “out.” She had
not passed Go, and she sure hadn’t collected any money. If it
weren’t for Aunt Mary, she’d pretty much be on the streets, or
selling furniture in some shopping mall department store for nine
bucks an hour and every third Saturday off.

“So, okay,” Keely told herself—and maybe the
towel rack, or the toilet, or anything that might be
listening—“maybe I have had one piece of good luck. Aunt Mary’s in
Greece, billing and cooing until late August, and I’m running the
shop. I’m even getting fifty percent of any commissions. This is
not bad. This is not nirvana, granted, but this is not bad. So
lighten up, McBride. Brush your not-quite-diamond-white teeth,
figure out what you’re going to wear, and get ready to dazzle your
new big customer in...” she walked back into the bedroom, wrapped
in a towel, “... precisely seven hours. Oh God, what do I do for
the next seven hours?”

* * *

At six-thirty, Jack was already up, shaved
and showered, dressed, and heading to the kitchen for his first cup
of coffee. It was June, the sun was shining, the weather was
already warm, and he should have been in even sunnier California,
getting ready for tonight’s game between the Athletics and the
Yankees.

Instead, he was here, in Whitehall, a stone’s
throw from the larger city of Allentown, and he had nothing to do,
nowhere to go... and precious little to sit down on, considering
that his furniture consisted of the mattress and box spring, a
couple of lamps, a flat-screen television set, and one lumpy
chair.

Jack had mastered the coffeemaker his Aunt
Sadie had lent him—hey, anything Joe DiMaggio could do, Jack Trehan
could do, damn it—and his morning coffee was hot and waiting for
him. He stood, leaning against the kitchen counter, and looked
around the room. Big. Modern. Empty.

The whole house was empty, and smelled new,
which it sort of was. There was an echo, thanks to the hardwood
floors and the cathedral ceilings. There was sunlight pouring
through huge, floor-to-ceiling windows.

There was no privacy, little comfort, and
Jack was still kicking himself for allowing his agent, Mortimer
“More and More” Moore talk him into buying the ridiculous mansion.
A great tax write-off, Mort had told him at the time.

Yeah, well, maybe. And he could use the tax
write-off, he supposed.

In truth, the house was already a year old,
even if it was still empty. Jack had thought the place would remain
empty until he retired from baseball. Instead, it had remained
empty for only that one year, until he’d been forced out of the
game.

Big damn difference, and now Jack looked at
the house as if it were some sort of punishment he had to endure.
Being home again, back in Pennsylvania, back in the Lehigh Valley.
What a comedown.

He should have stayed in Manhattan, where he
owned this own condo on the forty-seventh floor of one of the
classiest addresses in the city. And he could have, too. Except
that being in Manhattan reminded him that he wanted to be in the
Bronx, at the ball field, working on his curve ball.

So he’d locked up the condo and run home, run
to the house Mort had talked him into buying, even run to his Aunt
Sadie, who lived above the four-car garage... five snug rooms she
jokingly called “the dower house.”

Aunt Sadie had furniture. She had pots and
pans. She had more than two towels.

She also had a guest room, but Jack would
rather sleep on a park bench than in Sadie Trehan’s guest room,
which was furnished in early kitsch. Hell, the Hawaiian hula-skirt
girl lamp had been about the most
normal
thing in the entire
room.

“Yeah, well,” Jack said, pushing himself away
from the counter, “today, Jack old boy, is the first day of the
rest of your life—whatever that means—so you’d better get on with
it.”

Getting on with it meant meeting with the
interior decorator Sadie had hired, and hoping the guy wasn’t a fan
of Sadie’s decor. Getting on with it meant trying to figure out how
he was going to fill his days, his nights, his weeks and years, now
that he’d lost his first and only love, baseball.

Getting on with it, since he was feeling
pretty down and small steps were probably all he could take at the
moment, meant going to the front door and praying Sadie had kept
her word and ordered the morning paper for him.

The Yankees were on a West Coast road trip,
and Jack knew last night’s game stats probably hadn’t made the
newspaper, so he grabbed the remote off the bar separating the
kitchen and den, aimed it at the television. Nothing like a little
morning ESPN to make him feel like going out in the backyard and
wailing like a lost soul.

Auto racing. No scores, no stats. ESPN was
running a frigging rerun of a frigging auto race. Jack hit the
remote once more, shutting off the set. “Life just keeps getting
better and better,” he grumbled, once more heading for the front
door.

The phone on the bar rang, stopping him,
reminding him that he’d heard the phone ring in the middle of the
night, stupidly answered it, and found Cecily on the other end.

This time he’d be smarter. This time he’d
check the Caller ID before he picked up.

“Mort,” Jack muttered out loud, then raised
his eyes toward the ceiling, debating whether or not to answer.
Last time Mort had called, it had been to try to talk him into
doing a mouthwash ad for Japanese television. According to Mort,
Jack had to strike now, while he was still relatively “hot,” before
he became “yesterday’s news.”

Mort was a real brick. Supportive. A friend
in need and a friend in deed.

Yeah. Right.

Jack pushed the button, lifted the cordless
phone to his ear. “Morning, Mort,” he said, once more heading for
the door. “What is it today? Hemorrhoid cream for the Netherlands?
Erectile dysfunction medications for—oh, hell, I wouldn’t do one of
those for
anybody.”

Mort’s booming voice had Jack easing the
phone away from his ear. “Good one, Jack. Good one! Hey, ever
wonder why Bob Dole couldn’t have helped his fellow sufferers with
a public service message instead of taking big bucks from a drug
company? I have. Smart man, Dole. A man after my own heart. You can
make bucks from anything if you just angle it right. Free for
nothing is good for nothing, I say. Anyway, glad to hear you’ve got
some of that old fight back.”

“A compliment, Mort?” Jack said warily. Mort
Moore had all the sensitivity of a killer shark. “What do you
want?”

“Want? Me? Want something? Jack, Jack, Jack.
You know all I ever want is what’s best for you. I just wanted you
to know I nixed that mouthwash ad. You were right on with that one.
Not your thing, definitely.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack said, his right hand on the
front door knob. “What
is
my thing, definitely?”

“Corvettes,” Mort said, and Jack could almost
see the wicked grin on his agent’s face. “A two-day shoot in
Arizona—lots of open space there, or something like that. You, the
car, a beautiful girl in the seat beside you. Some drivel about the
pitching ace and his new driving ace—lame, but they’re working on
the copy. And you get to keep the car, Jack. So? What do you
think?”

Jack removed his hand from the doorknob,
rubbed at his chin. “A Corvette? Beats the hell out of mouthwash,
Mort. Okay, but let me think about it. I’m still not so sure about
going the endorsement route. My name on a glove is fine, but I
wonder if it’s really
honest
to start putting my face and
name out there, outside of sports.”

“Strike while the iron is hot, Jack,” Mort
reminded him. “Not every ex-Yankee has a Mr. Coffee in his future.
Now listen up—I’m heading South this morning. Gotta check out this
kid from Florida State who’s thinking of coming out early for the
NFL draft. Big, big boy. Hits the line like a ton of bricks, scares
the crap out of the offense, but won’t take a step in any direction
without his mama being there to watch out for him. So I’m going
down to charm the mama, size up the kid. I wouldn’t want to see
anybody take advantage of him, you know?”

“You’re a real prince, Mort,” Jack told him,
shaking his head. “Your percentage of the kid’s contract means
nothing to you, right?”

“And don’t forget the signing bonus,” the
agent told him, chuckling. “Okay, that’s it from here, Jack. I’ll
be in touch in a few days, sooner if I hear from the ad agency.
Don’t get in any trouble while I’m gone.”

“Trouble? When did I ever get in—oh, forget
it,” Jack muttered, hearing the dial tone in his ear. “Trouble,” he
repeated, reaching for the doorknob yet again. “Mort’s thinking
about the wrong Trehan. I’m not Tim. I’m Jack, the good twin.” He
turned the knob, pulled open the front door, bent down to pick up
the newspaper. “I never get in trouble. I just get injured and
retired at twenty-eight, along with an empty house and an agent
who’s letting me know I’m soon going to be yesterday’s—
holy
shit!”

Jack looked down at the huge wicker wash
basket sitting at the base of the three steps leading to his front
door. Looked at the pink plastic bits and pieces of luggage stuffed
into it. Looked at the plastic seat or whatever it was wedged in
the center of the basket. Looked at the
thing
inside the
plastic seat.