Fat Chance (15 page)

“Wait.” Then his mouth is on mine and I'm yielding to the pressure of his lips as his fingers gently knead the base of my neck. If his work is as good below the waist…The car is steaming up like a Turkish bath. I ease back from him, taking a breath.

“Maybe we shouldn't start this now, you're so wasted.”

“Mmmm.” He's kissing me again.

“Taylor.”

He looks as though I've startled him. “What?”

I close my eyes, exasperated and get out of the car. He follows me to the kitchen door and starts to open it, and then stops. The lights are on, but there are no sounds. He looks at me warily, then cautiously steps in. And there, at the kitchen counter, is Jolie, flipping through French
Vogue.

“Oh, hey, well, what are you doing home?” Taylor asks, with sudden sobriety and an easy charm developed in fifteen years of theatrical training.

“Everything went wrong and the shoot was canceled. I tried to call you
mais
nobody was home.”

“Oh man,” he exhales, involuntarily raking his hand through his hair.

“Bummer, yeah,” I say, badly squelching an eruption of laughter. The magazine pages keep flipping. Someone has to break the strained silence.

“Well, I'll let you guys catch up,” I say. “See y'all in the morning.”

Taylor gives me a sheepish grin. “Sleep tight.”

I climb the stairs, obsessed suddenly with biting away a ragged sliver of a cuticle, knowing I will end up drawing blood. I storm into my room, slip off my shoes and fling them toward the closet. One inadvertently misses its mark, and ricochets out of the open window. SHIT! If I had only left the damn windows sealed. Now I'd have to go downstairs again, and outside to search. I wasn't about to leave a snakeskin Manolo out in the damp night to get moldy.

 

I lie back in bed waiting for them to go up to sleep before I tiptoe back downstairs. My eyes are closing, I can't help
it, and then I'm drifting, dreaming of seeing Tex and Justine going into an eyeglass boutique.

She laughs off his selections. Her eyes sweep the hundreds of frames and in a nanosecond, she snatches up three pairs. She extends her hand.

“Try.”

Before he has time to look at himself, she picks out the ones that “they” would take.

He jumps back involuntarily. “They're six hundred dollars! And that's without the lenses.”

“Or the brown tint,” she says.

“Tint?”

Then she leads him by the nose to Barneys, and ooh, Joseph Abboud.

He doesn't know what she's talking about. She shakes her head in despair. “Joseph Abboud,” she repeats. “We're going to dress you in him.”

I see them emerging together, weighted down with garment bags bulging with Scottish cashmere sweaters and jackets, tropical wool gabardine slacks, sea island cotton shirts and a dozen coordinating silk ties, all in muted tones of mahogany, rust, tan, camel and beige. Then they're in the gym, working out side by side. He's got a gorgeous body, and she's reed-slim, dressed in a thong leotard. I wake up, startled, and remember where I am.

Slowly, I ease open the bedroom door and slip down the staircase toward the front door. Whew! They've already gone up. I tiptoe out to the area that I judge to lie directly beneath my window. My eyes scan the grounds, but I don't see it. Not having exactly a handle on the laws of aerodynamics, I'm not quite certain where to look for an airborne Manolo that has been propelled out the window and down two stories.

I walk farther from the house, pushing aside bushes, step
ping over plants. Just my luck I have to plow through the Garden of Eden, hedge by hedge. Why the hell couldn't he have a Japanese rock garden? A serenity garden with sand and smooth stones. I look and look but don't see anything. It couldn't have vanished, not unless the ground is made of quicksand. My toe catches something hard and for a minute I think that it might be the shoe, but then realize that it's either a sleeping rattlesnake or a garden hose. No sound or movement, so I assume it's inanimate or dead. I keep searching and suddenly spot the heel jutting up from the ground close to the house. Aha! I take a step and am about to lean over and pick it up when an ear-splitting alarm pierces my heart like a spike.

OH MY GOD! CHRIST ALMIGHTY. I start to bolt, then duck, then try to run. A moment later, a brilliant bath of light streams down from an overhead flood, blinding me. I creep closer to the house, paralyzed by fear, expecting a pair of burly arms to throw me up against the house and pat me down. What should I do? Hold my hands up till the cops come? How the hell do I turn everything off? This must be what it feels like to be part of a botched prison escape. My heart is beating as though it's breaking out of my chest.

“HEY, WHO'S THERE?” It's Taylor. I look up and see him leaning out the window.

“WHO THE HELL'S OUT THERE?”

I close my eyes. “It's only me, Taylor,” I say in a small mouse voice. “Jesus, your alarm system scared the shit out of me.”

“Maggie? What are you
doing
outside now? Wait, I'll come down.”

I stand still, holding the stiletto in my hand like a talisman to ward off evil spirits. If only I could be someplace else! I would take a nuclear testing site in the Nevada desert, Easter Island, anyplace. And why isn't the old San Andreas fault
lending me a hand here? But no such luck. Not a tremor, not a shudder. In a minute, Taylor walks up to me, clad only in black silk boxers, a taut, tanned Adonis.

“What's going on?” he says, bewildered. “What in the world were you doing out here?”

“Testing ground-level security. Wanted to make sure that you were safe from invaders.”

He doesn't say anything.

“The shoe, the shoe,” I say, finally, holding it up to his face. “It somehow got out of my grasp and took a nosedive out of the window.”

“You are somethin' else, babe,” he says, shaking his head. He takes my hand and starts leading me toward the front door, but then he turns back to me. “C'mere,” he says, guiding me into the gardening shed. I follow him, and in the darkness he leans up against me, covering my mouth with his.

“This is what we should have been doing,” he says, working his mouth down to my neck. His hands are slowly tracing the outlines of my body and I'm pressing against him and moaning. There's a cushion on the floor and he edges me back down onto it. My skirt is being tugged slowly up my thighs and my breathing is getting short. He's so warm against me, pressing, hungry, his body hard. In just a minute I won't be able to stop things. His hand is beginning to slide up between my legs, and I pull back from him sharply.

“Wait, no, I can't. I feel like we're sixteen-year-olds tiptoeing around back behind the garage while my parents are upstairs. A minute ago you were upstairs in bed with Jolie, and now you're sneaking around here with me.”

“So what? I want you,” he says, not separating himself from me. I push his shoulder back.

“But this is so sordid, really. I can't do this—the furtive fuck in the—ahem—‘tool shed.'”

He presses his forehead against me, and waits until his breathing slows. “Okay, okay, you're right. I don't know what I'm doing.” He looks down at himself and smiles shyly.

“Give me a minute, okay? I'll walk you up.” He stands there, eyes closed. Finally, pulled together, he helps me up and leads me back into the house. I follow him up the stairs, and work hard to pretend that I'm not short of breath. I have a sudden memory of being six years old and excitedly playing red light, green light. When we get to my bedroom door, I barely look at him.

“G'night,” I say, quickly slipping inside. I undress and then get into bed, lying there unable to sleep. Instead of being flattered by his attention, it depresses me. Groping in the dark, that's the only way I can think of it. He was high, and he was horny. It didn't feel like there was any more to it. I'm the other woman in the house. What kind of move could he make that would be honest, open and caring? However you looked at it, he was sneaking around. But even if he wasn't, is he really interested in me? Or am I just another conquest, living—off-limits in a sense—in another part of his house? Maybe the duplicity of it turns him on. Maybe he really is like the sexy sleaze he plays on TV. Maybe… Oh, what does it matter? I drift off into a fitful sleep.

W
hen the call comes in the wee hours of morning, it doesn't surprise me. Tamara has been living the life already. In addition to shots of Camby, that together formed a basketball ballet, she has candids of the staff: Wharton spilling coffee on his lap in the cafeteria; Ty tossing a wad of paper in a garbage pail as if he were shooting a basket; Tex giving the coffeepot a menacing look; Justine studying her profile in the ladies' room mirror.

Ever since she started keeping her camera with her, she'd been capturing intimate slivers of life. Outside accounting she'd talk with the secretary, while keeping her eye on people opening their paychecks. In the cafeteria she'd shoot people taking first bites of the daily special. It didn't win her popularity contests with her colleagues, except for Wharton.

“Give me your best shots,” he told her again and again. “I'd like to see what you've got.” Obviously he didn't mind being included in her rogues' gallery.

“So the telephone rings and Wharton's secretary asks me to come up to see him,” Tamara says, continuing her update, “and I panic.”

“Why?”

“The first thing I'm thinking is that it's something that you've done, Maggie.”

That wakes me up. “I do have a lot of skeletons in my closet.”

“Then I'm thinking that I'm spending too much time away taking pictures,” Tamara says. “Okay, maybe I'm slacking off a bit while you're gone, Maggie, but so what? There really isn't that much to do when you're not around. So I go up to his office, and his secretary waves me in. Big Daddy is sitting behind his desk, smiling at me.”

“Then?” She has a way of taking forever before she cuts to the chase.

“‘Sit down, Tamara,' he says, ‘I have your portfolio right here.' He looks through it and says, ‘You've certainly been busy with your camera, haven't you?'

“Maggie, that's when I'm sure that he's canning me.”

She's secure. It takes one to know one.

“Then he says, ‘Have you thought much about where you'd like to go with your picture taking?' So then I'm positive I'm being canned. I mean, ‘Where you'd like to go'?”

“What did you say?”

“‘For now, I'm just practicing, hoping to get good shots, but I haven't really planned anything beyond that.'”

“Okay.”

“Then, listen to this. He says, ‘I have a proposition for you. For a while now, I've been thinking about doing a weekly photo column called
Whoops.
It would consist of pictures of celebrities caught unawares—like Ralph Fiennes walking down Broadway pulling up his fly, or a Ford model emerg
ing from a secluded nightspot, on the arm of someone else's husband. What do you think?'”

“Unbelievable. What did you tell him?”

“Maggie, I still didn't realize he was offering me something. I looked at him and said, ‘Well, readers would love it.'

“And he says, ‘Think you could handle it?'”

I start clapping my hands.

“A little peep came out of my throat,” Tamara says, laughing. “‘Me?'

“And he looks at me and says, ‘I thought that was obvious.'”

My eyes are filling with tears, but I don't want her to know this. I'm going to cry, but I'm praying it doesn't happen until I hang up. “So what did you say,” I say, pretending to cough, as if that's why my voice is growing deeper.

“I jumped up from my chair and flung myself in front of him. ‘I will not disappoint you. I promise. I'll spend every second of my life getting pictures.'”

“There's nobody who deserves a break more,” I say. “I'm so thrilled for you, I don't know what to say.”

I know that Tamara picks up the emotion in my voice and is touched by it. I hear her voice getting softer and ragged too.

“Can I tell you something, Maggie?” Tamara says, not waiting for my answer.

“This is the first time in my life that hard work has paid off. I'm being judged for what I did, not the color of my skin, my sex, or where I went to school. For once, I got a break, a chance to make it. Quantum leap out of the ghetto. And with no one's help. No handicaps, no deals. A break!”

I've never heard her talk like this, and the tears are welling up in my eyes.

All I can croak out is “I know, I know,” and we leave it at that, promising to speak again the day after Valentine's Day.

 

In the early-morning sun, the bedroom is washed with piercing white light, like an overexposed photograph. No wonder New York is so often gray, the sun here is doing double shifts. Perfect weather or not, I'm on my own today. Taylor's in the studio. Then I remember promising to cook for him on Valentine's Day.

But what? Eggs? Eggs and caviar, or eggs and smoked salmon? Eggs were foods of love, and what more apt symbol of fertility, fecundity? Or maybe just a big ole tin of caviar and shrimps diavolo. Or bouillabaisse, lighter fare. Always keep the dog a little hungry. I don't dwell on where this love feast may lead.

It would be a switch from last Valentine's Day when I spent the night at home alone and was tucked into bed with a book by 9:00 p.m., wearing a flannel nightgown that had been a sweet-sixteen gift. Just as I was setting the alarm, the phone rang.

“Turn on CNN,” Tex said. “They're doing a report on—”

“The Valentine's Day massacre?”

“Awful date, huh?”

So I lied. A woman had her pride. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Guys are assholes, Maggie…so what happened?”

Safer not to embellish the falsehood. “There are no words…” Half an hour later, he arrived at my door, unannounced, with a red fur teddy bear slung over his shoulder. It was almost as tall as I am.

“I'm getting a hernia,” Tex said, brushing my face with the bear's arm.

I'm not surprised he's back from his V-Day dinner with Sharon. She got up early on weekdays to talk with her fi
nancial clients, and Tex couldn't handle the alarm clock beeping at 5:00 a.m.

“You'll have to rent him an apartment of his own.”

“We can share custody.”

Before the night was over, we traded Valentine's Day stories and finished a bottle of Merlot.

“I took out a girl from Goldman Sachs a couple of years ago,” Tex said, nodding his head glumly. “As soon as we sat down to dinner, I knew it was a mistake. She started out by telling me that she had to be home by nine. ‘I work out with my trainer at four-thirty, and get to the office by five-thirty, then I'm putting together these billion-dollar mergers in Silicon Valley until ten at night,'” Tex said, parroting her nasal voice.

“‘Tex, you wouldn't believe…Microsoft's
fate
hanging on issues of credibility…the SEC halting trade in the shares of five Internet-related companies…the astronomical force of deals in the global economy.' I sat there, fixated on the size of her teeth—long, white, convex, predatory,” he said. “And then the clincher was when she said she'd be thirty in three months and that her income for the year was almost a quarter of a mil more than the last.”

“So you ordered champagne?”

“No, I slid her the check.”

I can't remember many Valentine's Days when the night lived up to some magical level of romanticism.

“In college, a girlfriend fixed me up with a cousin who was visiting from out of town,” I tell him. “I looked at him and wondered whether all the men in Wheeling were five foot four and sold insurance or whether I had just gotten lucky.”

Tex smirks.

“You just know how our dinner conversation started.”

“‘Term or life?'” he says.

“Yeah, it was Valentine's Day and he was trying to sell me
life insurance. So do you sell more of the term or the whole life policies? Oh, oh, I see. And then you can convert them? Really! We weren't even finished with the appetizers. Then he bragged about how he saved money by buying chuck instead of filet mignon, because with enough pounding you could tenderize it so that no one would know the difference.”

He also had a system for saving money on toilet paper by counting the sheets he used each time he went to the bathroom, but I didn't share that with Tex.

That was the last time I ever dated by default, especially on Valentine's Day.

It's not that I'm after a night of endless sex or treacle romance, it's just that I want to be with the right person. I hate the requisite roses or satin hearts filled with gummy chocolates, or the tacky gift of lingerie. (Men rarely splurge on the luscious French or Italian stuff, anyway—it never crosses their minds that there's a difference.) And for lack of knowing what else to do, most guys seem to fall victim to cliché and mass marketing, making the occasion even more painful than if they just showed up with some great take-out food, a good movie, and a smile that would tell you that there was no other place on earth that they'd rather be.

But now here I am three thousand miles from home, and I'm faced with cooking up a menu to make L.A.'s sexiest bachelor sizzle.

I'm walking through the aisles of the grocery store to buy the Valentine's Day menu, and I get an idea for my next column based on what's being done to our food supply.

As I'm stirring a pot, he sidles up to me, resting his hands on my hips.

“What's cooking?” Taylor says, sniffing the air.

“Swan's pizzle.”

“Run that past me again.”

“Don't ask…” I take a spoon of bouillabaisse, blow on it, then hold it up to his lips.

“Mmmm…I'm yours!”

I blush. Leave that alone. I lean over and kiss his cheek. “Happy Valentine's Day, Taylor.”

“Same to you, O'Leary.” He hoists himself up on the kitchen counter. “So this is my aphrodisiac special, right? Gonna drive me out of my gourd?”

“Possibly. Of course there's always the chance that it could have a reverse pharmacological effect.”

“I'll take my chances.”

I take a caviar pie out of the refrigerator and gently slide
a knife through the layers—a topping of shimmering black Beluga pearls resting on a bed of cream cheese and egg salad. I cut a thick wedge for him and a wobbly sliver for myself.

“Should I cut a third for—?”
Why do I hate to say her name?

He shakes his head. “She's staying with someone in Beverly Hills tonight. She wants to show me…”

“I hope I didn't screw things up for you—especially since I'm clearing out in a few days.”

“You don't have to. Camp out here for a while.” He eases me in between his open knees. “Give L.A. a shot. What do you think?”

“Taste the pie.”

I watch him taste it and see the corners of his mouth curl. I sweep a tiny pearl from the side of his lip with my finger. He reaches for my finger, and licks it off.

I cut two more pieces and we move to the table, eating without speaking. The blood rises to my face. I hate that! My stupid, pale Irish complexion always gives me away. I glance over at him, then lower my eyes the moment he catches my gaze. I follow his tanned fingers guiding the fork up to his lips, then look back at his eyes.

“Good?”

His head moves up and down slowly.

It's a game now. But who is the fish, who is the fisherman? Whichever, carpe diem!

I rise from the table and stir the vermilion-red broth, inhaling the pungent bouquet of simmering clams, mussels, scallops, lobster and red snapper. I set the steaming pot before us and ladle it into two bowls, then serve salad and French bread.

“Maybe we should just sniff this,” Taylor says. “Get high on the scent.”

“I'd like to invent a dish that you could inhale instead of eat. Wouldn't that make me the health guru of all gurus?
Please the senses, satisfy the stomach, without touching a drop. We could go into business. I'd cook it and you'd serve it. We'd be rich. I could even write the screenplay.”

Taylor shakes his finger admonishingly. “Careful. If you're thinking about screenplays, you're becoming one of us. Soon you'll get silicon breasts and cheek implants.” He pushes his chair back, as if in horror.

“Yeah, then I'll never get out of this roach motel.”

He tears off some French bread. “You'd miss New York. You wouldn't feel comfortable here, would you?”

“Not unless I sent for my Testarosa and my furs,” I intone theatrically. “I live a lavish lifestyle in the city.” I look around, feigning disgust. “How could someone like me rough it in a place like this?” I say, lapsing into Bette Davis. “What a dump.”

Taylor stares back at me. “You scared of me, or just hostile?”

I'm silent for a moment, looking down at the table. “Both.”

“Don't be.” He lifts the champagne flute and takes a sip, watching me over the rim. “The meal's working,” he says, holding my gaze.

I smile, then unconsciously swallow. “Dessert?”

He just smiles, takes my hand and leads me up the stairs. This feels so surreal. I'd imagined it over and over again, heading to the bedroom I was about to see for the first time. It's as if I'm watching a trailer, but the picture has never gotten made. I picture the king-size bed swathed in gray, see myself lying down, him above me…propping himself up with those arms.