Grand Avenue (20 page)

“You’re looking well. How’s life treating you these days?”

“Pretty good.” My husband’s concubine recently delivered a seven-pound baby boy named Brandon Tyrone and my daughter is sprouting hips the size of Ohio, but I’m just fine and dandy, thank you very much.

“Tell me what you think I can do for you.” Dr. Steeves motioned toward the purple armchair in front of his large mahogany desk. Barbara sat down, waited to speak until the doctor was seated and she was sure she had his complete attention.

“It’s my stomach,” she told him. It’s my life, she thought. “I mean, I’ve always had this little pot, but lately it’s not so little.”

Dr. Steeves peeked at his charts. “How old are you now?”

“Forty-four,” Barbara said, coughing into her hands to mitigate the harsh sound.

“How many children?”

“One.” Barbara looked into her lap, trying not to think of baby Brandon Tyrone. “I was thinking of a tummy tuck.”

“Well, why don’t you get undressed and let me have a look. Not everyone is a candidate for this kind of surgery.” He handed her a blue cotton robe and walked to the door. “You can keep your panties on. Just tell the nurse when you’re ready.”

Less than five minutes later, she was lying stretched out on the examining table, the blue cotton robe pushed aside to reveal a pair of black lace panties pulled low on her hips, and Dr. Steeves’s well-practiced hands were running along the raised scar of her cesarean section. “Muscle tone’s not bad at all, considering,” he was saying, neglecting to specify. “We could cut into the existing incision.”

Barbara winced, remembering her earlier surgery, the months it had taken her to recover. Did she really want to go through that kind of pain and discomfort again?

“So what do you think about Iraq invading Kuwait?” Dr. Steeves asked suddenly. “Think Hussein will invade Saudi Arabia?”

Barbara thought she must have fallen asleep, that she was having another of the peculiar dreams she’d been having lately. Could she really be lying here naked save for an expensive pair of black lace panties pulled down almost to her pubis, while a man caressed her stomach and talked of Saddam Hussein? Had she disappeared altogether?

Surely she was still capable of commanding a man’s attention, of turning a man’s head. Surely all she had to
do was put herself out there, make herself available, send out the appropriate signals. Surely to God someone would notice.

I need someone to notice me, she thought.

“Why don’t you take a few days and study the literature,” Dr. Steeves said when he’d concluded his examination, and Barbara nodded, wondering why doctors always referred to the pamphlets they gave out as “literature.” “Talk it over with your husband, and let me know what you decide.”

Barbara grimaced, but the doctor was already walking to the door. “How soon could you do it?”

“You’d have to check with my receptionist. She has my schedule.”

“How much …?”

“It’s in the literature.”

I need someone to show me I’m still desirable, she thought.

“What’s all this stuff?” Tracey asked moments later, indicating the pamphlets in Barbara’s hands as they waited for the elevator.

“Literature,” Barbara said with a laugh, noticing Tracey was empty-handed. “You forgot your book …”

“I left it there.” Tracey smiled. “It’s a stupid book.” She shrugged. “I’ll just tell Pam I lost it.”

“You’re a good girl.”

I need a man, Barbara thought.

The man, it turned out, was scarcely more than a boy, which was exactly the point when you thought about it, Barbara decided, admiring the hard, naked body looming above hers. About the same age as putrid
Pammy. Hell, if Rotten Ron could find happiness with a bovine-faced bimbo, so could she.

His name was Kevin. At least she thought it was Kevin. Weren’t they all named Kevin these days? And he was tall and buff and good-looking in that bland Calvin Klein-billboard way, all pouty arrogance and rippling abs. That’s what he called them, Barbara thought with a smile.
Abs
. As if it involved too much time and effort to say
abdominals
. Or maybe that’s what he thought stomach muscles were actually called.
Abs
.

“I’ve got some great exercises for upper and lower abs,” he’d said when she’d first approached the muscular young trainer at the gym the day after her consultation with Dr. Steeves. “You don’t need surgery,” he’d told her with a sly smile. “Spend a month with me. I’ll whip you into shape.” That was all the encouragement Barbara needed to decide that Kevin Young Hardbody was just what the doctor ordered.

Kevin had been working at the health club in Vicki’s office building for the last six weeks. Personal trainers were the coming rage, Vicki had proclaimed. Worth every penny. Barbara had promptly signed on with Kevin for eight private sessions, two times a week, despite the fact her credit cards were already maxed to the limit, and Ron was making grumbling noises about all the money she was spending. Yes, he’d agreed to pay her credit cards bills for five years as part of the divorce settlement, but within reason.

Screw you, Rotten Ron, Barbara thought. Then, with a laugh, no, screw me! Which Kevin was doing nicely, thank you very much. Barbara adjusted her rear
end to accommodate the continued thrusting of Kevin’s narrow hips. Talk about the stamina of the young, she thought, stealing a glance at the clock beside Kevin’s too hard double bed. Did everything about him have to be so damn hard? she wondered, and almost giggled, except her laughter might be misinterpreted.

Who was she kidding? He wouldn’t hear her. He probably didn’t even know she was still there, he’d been pounding away for so long. Almost forty minutes if that clock could be believed. It was two o’clock in the morning. Didn’t he ever get tired? She’d lost interest in the proceedings at least twenty minutes ago, when it became obvious she wasn’t going to experience orgasm. Promising tingles had become painful irritations. Instead of excitement, she was feeling sore. If she didn’t get some sleep soon, the bags under her eyes would be down to her chin. It was time to speed things up a bit. Time to take matters into her own hands. As it were.

She grabbed his buttocks, groaned, the beginning of her well-practiced routine. A series of short moans followed, accompanied by a slight thrashing of her head. Nothing too violent, just enough to let the boy know she was ready, that he didn’t have to work so hard. Kevin continued pounding away, oblivious. Groans turned to squeals, squeals became gasps. Still, the boy kept pounding.

Like a runaway train, Barbara thought, collapsing back against the pillows, trying to get comfortable. Obviously she wasn’t going anywhere. She thought of pushing herself off the bed, pictured the young man
attached to her torso, like a dog humping a reluctant leg. I could be anyone, she realized, flattery turning to dismay. She didn’t exist for Kevin any more than she existed for Ron, or for Dr. Steeves, or for Saddam Hussein, for that matter. She’d vanished into that nether world of the discarded, a foggy arena filled with women over forty who functioned much like extras in a movie, there to fill out a scene, to occupy space without diverting attention from the key players. A blur in the background. An attractive blur perhaps, but a blur nonetheless.

Above her, Kevin kept pounding away, his eyes tightly closed.

He doesn’t see me, Barbara thought, closing her eyes as well, reviewing the various things she had to do the next day. Tracey would be coming home from spending the weekend with Ron at about three o’clock. Probably she should get groceries, straighten up the house a bit, maybe make Tracey her favorite macaroni-and-cheese dinner before they had to drive out to Indian Hill to catch Kirsten Latimer’s performance in the high school production of
Oliver!
No, Barbara decided, wrapping her legs around Kevin’s tight little buttocks, she’d take Tracey out for dinner. Charge it to dear old Dad. Take that, Rotten Ron, she thought, thrusting up violently with her hips. And that, you bastard. And that. And that.

In the next instant Kevin, perhaps caught off guard by the unexpected ferocity of her thrusts, let out a loud cry, stiffened, as if he were poised to take flight, and then suddenly collapsed on top of her, like a puppet whose strings had been severed without warning.
“Wow,” he said, his body glowing with satisfied sweat. “That was amazing. You’re something else, you know that?”

Barbara smiled. An apt description, she thought, as an increasingly familiar sense of dislocation surrounded her head, like a fine mist. She’d become something foreign, even to herself.

Something other.

Something else.

Barbara left Kevin’s small apartment at three in the morning and drove home, having made some excuse about having to be up first thing in the morning for Tracey. “I could wake you up,” he told her with a wet kiss on her neck, and Barbara refrained from saying that was exactly what she was afraid of. The last thing her poor body needed was another marathon session with the boy wonder. Talk about feeling your age.

Besides, all her makeup and creams were at home, and there was no way she was going to let Kevin see her bare-faced, any more than she’d allowed him to see her naked. “It’s sexier this way,” she’d insisted when he’d tried to remove her pink satin teddy. “Leave it on.”

There was no way she was going to sleep, she realized as she pushed open her front door. She was too restless, too frustrated, too damn sore. I’ll probably get a bladder infection, she thought, heading for the kitchen at the back of the darkened house. Or a yeast infection. Or worse, she thought with a start. What was the matter with her? Why hadn’t they used a condom? Weren’t the papers full of warnings about the
need for safe sex? Did she think she was invulnerable, that middle age was the antidote to AIDS?

“This calls for a cup of coffee,” she said out loud, her words echoing through the empty house as she plugged in the kettle, spooning a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee into a mug. Barbara hated when Tracey wasn’t here, as if Tracey’s absence diminished her even further. She found herself talking out loud whenever Tracey was away, the sound of her voice lending assurance that she was really there. Lately Tracey had taken to sleeping in her mother’s bed. Probably she should put a stop to that, Barbara thought, pouring the water into the mug before it fully boiled. But what was the harm? It felt good to wake up with her daughter’s arms around her. Her daughter’s arms carried her through the day.

The coffee tasted bitter even with two teaspoons of sugar, so Barbara added a third, which made it too sweet, but so what? she decided, looking through the fridge for the remainder of the strawberry tart left over from the other day. But it was gone, which meant Tracey had eaten it, which was no good. She’d better get moving, make that appointment with the nutritionist, get Tracey on a diet before things got out of hand. “You can pay for that too,” Barbara said, thinking of Ron, glancing at the white phone on the wall.

In the next instant, she was at the phone, punching in a series of numbers, listening as the phone rang once, then again, before being picked up. “Hello?” said a sleepy female voice, halfway between a woman’s and a child’s. Poor Pammy had probably just fallen back to
sleep after baby Brandon’s 2 A.M. feeding. What a shame someone had to call and wake her up.

“Hello?” Pam said again, the word a question.

“Who is this?” Ron’s voice assaulted Barbara’s ears, reaching through the phone and filling the small kitchen.

Immediately, Barbara dropped the phone back in its carriage, her heart pounding. She began pacing back and forth between the phone and the kitchen table. “That was pretty stupid,” she said out loud, then laughed. “Hello?” she repeated in Pammy’s little-girl voice. “Hello?”

She sat down, finished her coffee, feeling strangely exhilarated. Calling Ron’s house might have been stupid, but it sure was fun. More fun than she’d had in a long time, and that included tonight’s workout. For one brief and shining moment, she’d been the one calling the shots, the one in control, determining who slept and who didn’t. Not that Ron would suffer unduly. He’d simply take a few seconds to reassure his frightened child bride, then turn over and fall back to sleep. But poor little Pammy was a different story. She’d drift back slowly into a restless sleep, perhaps dreaming of faceless men with knives outside her door, only to be awakened by baby Brandon Tyrone’s untimely cries.

A few more weeks of this kind of thing and who knew? Pam might soon be paying a visit to Dr. Norman Steeves herself.

A jolt of fear brought Barbara to her feet. What if Ron and Pam suspected she was the one who’d placed the call? But, no, she decided, resuming her earlier
pacing, there was no way to trace the call, and there was no reason for them to be suspicious of her. She’d done nothing to alert them. People got nuisance calls all the time. She was in the clear. Nobody had any idea. She could try it again a week from now, and still nobody would suspect her. Or tomorrow night. Or even right now …

Barbara returned to the phone, waited a full five minutes, long enough for hearts to stop pounding, for tired imaginations to be easing toward oblivion. Then she punched in Ron’s number, listened eagerly while it rang.

“Hello,” Ron’s angry voice bellowed into the phone. “Hello? Hello?”

Barbara dropped the phone back into its carriage with a satisfied grin. No reason she should be the only one up all night. Then she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, stepped out of her clothes, and crawled into bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

V
icki woke from a dream in which she was trying desperately to claw her way out of a deep, dark pit. Her fingers flailed at the wall of her prison, small clumps of earth breaking off in her hands and clinging to the undersides of her nails.

“Ow!”

She opened her eyes to see her husband sitting up in bed beside her, nursing a nasty scratch on his arm.

“ ‘Fraid you’re gonna have to cut those nails, darlin’,” Jeremy Latimer said with a smile.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I did that to you. Poor baby.” Vicki lifted her husband’s arm to her mouth, ran her tongue along the narrow line of blood just below the skin’s surface.