Footprints in the Butter (12 page)

Okay. Suppose over the last few years Stewie had undergone reconstructive surgery. Doctors had learned so many new techniques in that field.

Then what? Stewie murders Wylie. The perfect crime, masterminded by perfect Patty, committed by a dead person.

I was letting my imagination run amuck. But the Charles Manson Green Beret painting fit. Death is. Death is what? Psychosomatic? Psychosomatics dealt with the interrelationship between the emotions and the body. That fit. So did the swastika. Facial scarring.

Think. Think loud. Think strong. If my ridiculous theory had even the slightest hint of validity, why hadn’t Wylie left the
Charles Manson
painting to me? Why Doris Day?

Maybe I should examine Doris again, look beyond the pillows and the quote above her head.

Look for what?

I didn’t know, but I suddenly itched to find out.

Bidding a fond farewell to Kim, I promised she could accompany me during my next trip to Hollywood,
if
she stopped accumulating demerits. Kim was a spunky kid and I felt warm inside, very maternal, very un-Ingrid, very…Grid. According to my crossword puzzles, a grid was a network of conductors for the distribution of electric power.

I thought about the movie
Carrie
. Carrie’s conductor was in her head. She could move objects with her mind while my mind couldn’t even conjure up the answer to a simple riddle.

How do you make a statue of an elephant?

As I drove home, my stomach growled. I would have to eat some food soon. Craving chicken fajitas with globs of guacamole, I parked in my driveway, navigated my porch, entered through my front door, and retrieved Doris Day’s portrait from the cabinet.

Lugging her into the family room, I placed her against the marbled fireplace.

Hitchcock whined joyously.

Doris smiled brainlessly.

Eyeballing the painting with a vengeance, I saw the musical instruments.

Chapter Twelve

I had contemplated the pillows, Doris Day’s face, and the quote above her head, ignoring background images. Blending into the background, wallpapering the canvas, were miniature musical instruments—piano, drums, violins, sax, clarinet. Even if I had focused on the instruments, I probably would have dismissed them, because Doris had been one heck of a singer before she’d hit it big as a film star.

After last night, however, my senses were synchronized.

Alice Shaw Cooper played the clarinet, at least she did. She had marched during our high school football games, and she was always out of step. The band members would be playing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree,” their left feet stomping forward on Yellow while Alice’s left foot heel-toed the turf on Ribbon.

I thought maybe Doris Day’s clarinet was larger than the other instruments. Was that a clue?

What about Manson? Another clue? Or had Wylie portrayed Manson as a soldier because Wylie believed that war and Charles Manson were equally evil? Murder was murder, even if it was politically, therefore morally sanctioned. Once upon a time I had believed that, and I guess I still did.

Forget Charles Manson! Forget Stewie! Sing, sing a song
.

I couldn’t forget Stewie. But I could hide him inside my snagged pantyhose drawer, along with Wylie’s rape-seduction.

Hitchcock sat by the answering machine, his maple-leaf ears on a par with its blinking red button. I gave Hitchcock’s shaggy black head a pat and hit MEMO.

“Ing, it’s me. Bet you thought I was dead, huh? Well, I’m not. Surprised? Look, we have to talk. There’s this restaurant across from the shopping mall, called the…um…what the hell is it called? Fig Garden? No, Olive Garden. Meet me there between five…no, five-thirty and six. Come alone. You like crossword puzzles so much. What’s a seven letter word that means a state of distress?”

That was it. The whole message. I turned off my answering machine and stared at the phone. My condition was one of distress. Hitchcock bounded toward the kitchen and his doggie door. When he returned, he carried a dirt-encrusted chew bone in his mouth. Placing the bone at my feet, he wagged his tail. Then he flopped down in front of the coffee table.

“Thank you,” I said, staring at the bone. “What a good, sweet dog.” But my voice seemed to come from far away, another planet maybe.

I’ve never fainted in my life, not even when Dwight’s car crashed and he lay there with his shattered body and shattered dreams, not even when the dreadful, deadful news about Stewie squeezed itself through multiple telephone lines. I’m simply not a better-go-fetch-the-smelling-salts-again kind of gal.

With that last thought, I plunged into darkness.

* * *

I blinked open my eyes to find Hitchcock licking my face. His tongue felt warm, then cold. So did I.

Blame my brief fainting spell on recent events. Blame it on the poisoned pie. Blame it on the gastric lavage. Or place the blame where it really belongs, on my ex-husband who isn’t my ex.

Bingo!

Barry Isaac Nicholas Gregory Oates had been born to an indecisive woman with several rich relatives to honor. For three days and two nights she called him Barry. Then, arriving home from the hospital, he had immediately been christened Bingo.

And Bingo was his name-oh.

His voice sounded the same, yet different. The genetic indecision lingered, but a brand new abrasiveness had been cultivated. And the crossword puzzle bit was a subtle reminder that he knew me well.

For instance, he knew that I would meet him at the restaurant. He knew that I had been searching for word of his whereabouts. And he probably suspected that I had given him up for dead.

I hadn’t. Not really. I had given him up for gone.

Bingo and I first bumped into each other on November 14, 1969, during the second Vietnam Moratorium Day. We were in Washington D.C. We marched single file, Bingo behind me. His body bumped mine and, for balance, his hands circled my unfettered breasts. Bingo smelled clean and looked like Moondoggie—Gidget’s boyfriend—only blond. We were both from Colorado, a good excuse to spend the night together. After all, we didn’t want to sleep with strangers.

The next day 249,998 protesters joined us, and we lost each other in the crowd. Bingo’s last words to me were: “Hell, no, we won’t go! Ingrid, where the hell did you go?”

We met again on April 30, 1973, at a sleazy bar that served the best baby ribs in Denver. Richard Nixon gazed down at us from an overhead TV as he denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in, or any subsequent cover-up.

Bingo still looked like Sandra Dee’s Moondoggie. “Ingrid,” he said, “where the hell did you go?”

Exactly two months later, while John Dean testified that Nixon had discussed the use of executive privilege as a means of avoiding involvement in Watergate, Bingo and I flew to Vegas.

We didn’t consummate our marriage the first night because Bingo was too busy gambling. I drank free shots of vodka, which made me uninhibited. “Bingo,” I pleaded, “let’s hit the sheets.” But he wouldn’t leave the dice table, so I retired to our hotel room alone. During our flight home, Bingo accused me of picking up the lounge piano player and consummating with him. That was the beginning.

Bingo was born in the Year of the Cock. Cocks are selfish and eccentric. Cocks are shrewd. Cocks are dreamers. My cocky husband had two obsessions. One was jealousy. The other was his plan to accumulate a portion of the family fortune.

While I composed movie scores, Bingo spent hours composing long letters to Barry, Isaac, Gregory and Nicholas, mapping out intricate investment opportunities. The only relative who responded was Isaac. NOT INTERESTED he printed across a postcard. The postcard made Bingo impotent.

That didn’t stop him. He had in his possession a Hallmark card that read: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW BABY BOY. Inside the card, Nicholas Oates had penned: “Thanks for the name, Cousin. I’ll leave the little nipper something in my will, ha-ha.”

Bingo took it personally. And literally. After Nicholas, a successful Chicago real estate developer, passed away, Bingo found an attorney, then proceeded to hound Mrs. Nicholas Oates and her kids, Herbert, Beatrice and Stanley.

I listened and sympathized because it was easier than arguing, but I defied my husband on two occasions. First, I refused to destroy my prom picture. Second, I insisted on using my maiden name. I needed my own identity, I told Bingo, although, truthfully, I didn’t want my movie credits to read Ingrid Oates. To me, it sounded like a breakfast cereal.

Eventually, I begged my jealous, impotent, obsessed husband to seek help. Instead, he stole my prom picture and disappeared, leaving me thousands of dollars in debt. “I hate to say I told you so,” said my mother.

Insolvency was one reason for my sparse wardrobe.

I couldn’t wear my old sweatshirt and air-conditioned jeans to the Olive Garden. Oh, the hostess wouldn’t kick me out. I had eaten at fine dining establishments where the clientele sported I’M WITH STUPID T-shirts. However, I had just conjured up an image of my mother, who tended to shudder when my purse didn’t match my shoes.

“I know what you’d say if you could talk,” I said to Hitchcock, who was busy gnawing his dirt-encrusted chew bone. “You’d say that my mother has no control over me anymore. It’s simply not true. You see, there’s this invisible umbilical cord.”

Hitchcock whined and snuffled. He was one heck of a sympathetic listener.

“Bingo’s seven-letter word probably means divorce, wouldn’t you agree?”

This time Hitchcock didn’t reply, so I re-ran the answering machine tape, listened to Bingo again, then heard a second message.

“Ingrid, it’s 3:45 and I hope you’re napping. Please call an attorney and tell him to get down to the precinct ASAP. Remember that I love—”

The rest of Ben’s message was smothered by atmospheric disturbances. In other words, his you was lost in static.

“Ben wants me to get in touch with an attorney,” I told Hitchcock. “Should I ring up Bingo’s lawyer? No. He’s a sleaze. Besides, I still owe him money.”

Desperate, I found the Visa bill envelope and called Cee-Cee, long distance. She said she knew a good attorney. Perceptive as always, calming me down, she promised to contact the woman immediately.

Immediately took twenty minutes. Cee-Cee called back and said the matter had been taken care of.

Thank God for a little help from your friends.

* * *

Six-fifteen. Six-thirty. I lounged inside the Olive Garden’s frugal lounge. It was no larger than an oversized carport and all the miniature round tables were occupied. Next to me stood a middle-aged man. His T-shirt read: LIFE’S HARD THEN YOU DIE. He wasn’t Bingo.

I had forgotten my cocky husband’s third obsessive quality. He was always late. Like Marilyn Monroe, he wouldn’t arrive until he was prepared to give a good performance. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, Bingo’s performances usually lacked sensitivity, not to mention self-assurance. Indecisiveness isn’t really genetic, but it is environmental.

My current environment was congested—wall to wall people. Lounging next to Life’s Hard Then You Die were three giggly middle-aged women sipping margaritas. The heaviest kept saying, “It’s my birthday, gonna get a free dessert, they give free desserts here.”

Several kids with colorful balloons played hide and seek. One little girl tried to crouch behind my beige leather boots. Her sticky hand clutched at my green, belted shirtwaist, circa 1965, just before she fell on her rump, bursting her balloon and bursting into tears. Thank goodness my old dress survived. Fortunately, a posh pair of boots can make any outfit stylish.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Bingo.

He wore brand new lizard-skin boots, ancient Levi’s, and a red plaid shirt that had passed its used-by date. The frayed collar and cuffs looked sad and weary. So did Bingo’s frayed silver-blond hair and faded blue eyes.

“I asked for smoking,” was his opening line.

“Okay, Bingo, but I gave it up.”

“Sure you did,” he said, just before he bicked a Pall Mall and lapsed into silence.

I couldn’t help comparing him to Ben. They were the same height, tall. They had once possessed the same muscular bodies, only Bingo had let his body go slack. He wasn’t fat, but I could see a paunch beginning to form. Lines grooved his face like an old Smokey Robinson record, and his once obstinate chin sagged then tightened slightly with each deep draw on his cigarette. Tobacco flecked Bingo’s chapped lips while Ben’s lips invited tongue teasing.

“You look okay, Ing,” Bingo said. “Different.”

“After you disappeared, I lost weight. Speaking of disappeared, Bingo—”

“Do you want something to drink?” His thumb tidily-winked the snaps on his shirt.

“No. I want you to tell me where the hell you’ve been!”

Truthfully, I wanted to scream, pound his chest with my fists, stomp on his reptilian boots, bash his head with a bar stool. But I couldn’t. Because we had to act civilized. Which was probably why he had chosen this crowded restaurant for our secret rendezvous.

“Bingo, where have you been? Answer me!”

Before he could reply, a young voice boomed “Johnson, party of three” over the lobby’s microphone. Whereupon the three giggly women grabbed Life’s Hard Then You Die by the arms and guided him toward the lobby. Obviously, he had been invited to their party, the lucky stiff.

Glowering at Bingo again, I had a premonition that my own party wouldn’t be so giggly.

The mike voice boomed, “Barry, party of two. Barry party,” she repeated impatiently.

“That’s us, Ing,” said Bingo.

“Why Barry? Why not Oates?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Barry party, last call.”

“Let’s go.” Carefully snuffing out his cigarette, Bingo pocketed the unfiltered butt.

As luck would have it, our table was situated between the three giggly women and their guest, and
five
bouncy balloon kids. It was also non-smoking.

I started to rise but Bingo said, “Sit down, Ing. Let’s just order our drinks and talk, okay?”

“Talk first, drink later. Look around, Bingo. Wall to wall people, just like the lounge. Our server is probably a tad busy.”

As if on cue, a cranberry-colored apron blocked my vision and somebody said, “Ingrid Beaumont! What the hell are
you
doing here?”

I gazed up at jutting breasts, a white blouse stained with tomato sauce, a gaudy Daffy Duck tie, a platinum ponytail, and braces. “Hi, Tad. What luck! I was hoping—”

“We’d like to order drinks,” Bingo interrupted. “And I’d like an ashtray, please.”

His please sounded like bitch.

“You’re seated in non-smoking, sir,” said Tad. “That means you can’t smoke. Sorry.”

Her sorry sounded like screw you.

I heaved a deep sigh. From experience, I knew that if you pissed off a waitress, your service was apt to be slow or sloppy or both. Glancing at the drink menu, I selected one at random. “Would you bring me a Roman Colada, please Tad? And my friend here will have…do you still drink Stoli neat?”

“Double,” he said. “Forget the olives.”

“Would you care for a lemon twist, sir?” Tad said.

“No!”

“Thank you, sir, I’ll be right back.” Tad approached the balloon table. “Refills?” she asked sweetly, eyeing several Coke glasses. Then she ambled over to the three ladies and their guest. “Ain’t it the truth!” she exclaimed, ogling Life’s shirt. “I understand we’re celebrating a birthday tonight. Twenty-one?” The heavy lady shrieked and giggled. “May I suggest a bottle of wine? There’s the wine list, right there, printed on the menu. And let’s select an appetizer, shall we?”

“Shit!” Bingo stood and stomped through the room. When he returned, he carried one glass.

I said, “Where’s my drink?”

He said, “I couldn’t remember what you ordered.”

I said, “Piña Colada.”

He said, “No, it was some stupid Italian drink.”

Bingo’s voice sounded funny, not funny ha-ha, funny strange. His silver-blond hair was drenched with perspiration, and his face was so pale, his eyes took on a brighter shade of blue.