Guilty Pleasures (26 page)

Lance shifted uneasily, and leaned towards her.
 

“Well, was I surprised! He was there. He had this girl bent forward over his desk. He was fucking her, Will, and calling her pet names I thought only belonged to me. He looked so ugly. His eyes were bugged out and he was panting, grotesque, hideous. I just ran. I ran and ran and ran. I went back to my room and just slept for two days. When I woke up, I felt really ill. I was burning up, sweating, and cramping. My roommate called an ambulance.”

Lance reached out his hand to hers, and held on with gentle fingers.
 

“I lost the baby. That was the worst part, Will. I hated Fredrick, but that baby was already part of me. It broke me. My dad came for me. He took me home, told Mother I’d had an emergency appendectomy.”

“Millie, I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

“Two months later, I came back like nothing had happened. I went to this party. There was a man there, very attractive, who’d once been rather partial to me. I just walked up to him and propositioned him. I took him into one of the rooms, turned on all the lights, and just pulled up my skirt. I fucked him. I didn’t let him kiss me or touch me, caress me. I wanted to watch his face. I wanted to
see
. He looked like Frederick, exactly the same. So did the next six men. So I quit. I walked away from all of that. So now you know . . .”

“There is nothing common or silly or sordid about you
or
your story, Millie. You were very young and very hurt. As for these other
affairs
, those don’t even count. You weren’t trying to disprove your impression; you were working very hard to confirm it.”

“You might be right. You didn’t look bug-eyed and hideous, just very surprised!”

“I’m so glad you approve. Come along, Miss Millie. Let’s get back to Guilty Pleasures, drop off the shopping, then I’ll take you home for your rest. I need to get home, too, for a bit of sleep and to get into some fresh clothes.”
 

They drove to her house in silence, hands clasped. Lance pulled over outside her door.

“Will? Thank you. Thanks for everything.” Millie leaned over and kissed him properly, soft lipped, and hot silken tongue, until he was dizzy and rock hard.
 

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

I like Will enormously. He is so sweet. There is a kindness in him; a childlike tenderness that touches me.
 

I loved being with Will. I loved what he did to me, and what he does for me.

He listens.
 

I must be very careful and go slow.
 

This is a risky venture, in a lot of ways, personally and otherwise. I must protect myself, and Serge, too.
After Will dropped me off this morning, I called my lawyer and made an appointment for twelve thirty today.

I must be careful . . .

Chapter 18

Remember that for a woman everything is pertinent and interconnected.

They don’t mean to be complicated.

In fact, they don’t see themselves as complex at all! The correlation of facts and connecting the dots is something they do instinctively, subconsciously.

I believe
intuition
is nothing more than very fast processing of very little information, with astonishingly accurate results.

The feminine decision-making process is, contrary to legend, a rational process—a carefully reasoned weighing of pros and cons. Based on a system of logic stripped to the bare bones by the female genetic imperative, it leads to conceptually complex decisions women consider simple and self-evident.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance danced in through the door at Guilty Pleasures. He felt light, buoyant, and dazed with happiness. He grinned foolishly. “Serge, good afternoon.”

The dwarf eyed him suspiciously. “Here now, Willie Wanker! That chap from the market with the dreadlocks and the shifty eyes didn’t slip you any of them happy mushrooms he keeps for the friggin’ Wiccans, did he?”

“Who, Dink?” Lance asked as Serge nodded. “No, I’m just feeling good.”

“Yes . . . well, move your bottom down to the trash cans and feel good down there, okay?”

“Yep.” Lance joyfully obliged, an incredible energy filling every fibre of his being. “What’s for dinner?”
 

Serge sighed. “We’ll be doing a very basic dinner tonight: Pea Soup, Turbot in a White Sauce with Potatoes and Rice Pudding. It’s hardly a challenge, is it, but that old biddy’s got guts. She was a nurse during World War II, married an American airman she met during an air raid, lost him five years ago, and still keeps celebratin’. She says what they had she’ll celebrate till the day she dies.”

“They were together sixty years?”

“Oh yes, sixty years, five kids, litters of grandkids . . . but she always comes here alone with her urn. Here, wash the bugs out of these here broccoli. Be very thorough—broccoli hold a lot of shit and bug piss—then scrape the carrots.
Gently
.”
 

Lance shook his head with wry amusement. “Gently?”

Serge nodded. He steamed the turbot and prepared the champagne and fish stock for the béchamel. He cooked the emerald-green peas and set the rice to simmer gently in cream with cinnamon, a vanilla pod and cardamom. It was a leisurely preparation. Serge hummed happily, calmly stirring the pots, filtering the stock through whipped egg whites. Finding the rice still too firm, he added hot milk to the preparation.
 

Lance inhaled the delicate aroma of the creamy rice. “Nice, but wouldn’t cold milk be better?”

“You must
never
add cold liquids to anything on the boil, Will. It stops the process cold. Get it?”

“Got it.”

“Cold! That reminds me of a time I was working in Vegas, Caesar’s Palace, it was. Were the seventies mad? Mad I tell you. Anyway—”

“
You
cooked at Caesar’s Palace?”

“No, I was a . . . fluffer. We were shooting this skin flick,
Vincy Vidi Veni,
in one of the penthouse suites. This girl was supposed to bring in the champagne in a bucket, shout, ‘Room Service!’ and then she’d service him right there and then. But she spilled the ice on this poor sucker’s johnson, and let me tell you, I worked up a sweat getting
that
pot on the boil again!”
 

Lance guffawed.

Serge grinned. “Francisco Ruiz y Morales, best damn director I ever saw! Had an amazing sense of timing, just amazing! But you know how it is. There was a lot of prejudice in the movie business against Mexicans at that time, dwarfs, too, for that matter, and there still is, but I had the time of my life!”

“Vegas in the seventies? Must have been wild! Elvis, Jones, Sammy Davis!” Lance exclaimed.

“You have no idea! Hey! I got to see Tom Jones live! And let me tell you
live
is the word! The man is a dynamo. Hot, hot,
hot!
When he swung those hips, there wasn’t a dry pair of panties in the house.”

Millie breezed in, carrying a garment bag; she’d had something done to her hair, and she was radiant. Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Good afternoon, boys. Steaming away, I see?”

“
You’re
chipper.” Serge observed dryly. “Seems there’s something in the air today.”

“Just feeling good.”
 

Serge eyed Lance suspiciously, then turned back to Millie. “Well, that’s good. I think.”

“Hello, Will.” Millie greeted him nonchalantly. “Since you did such a great job with the Paparazzi Pizza Party, I wondered if you’d like to help out again tonight? I’ve got you a black Nehru-cut serving jacket in your size I hope?”

“Hello, no problem! Great, I don’t mind at all. I quite enjoyed it.”

She smiled happily. “Excellent. Here you go.” She handed him the bag and flitted away.

Serge stared Lance down. “Anything you want to share, Willie?”

“Serge, all I can tell you is I care for her. A great deal.”

“In that case,
you
take care. She’s a complicated girl, our Millie, skittish-like. Takes careful handling.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed.”

At eight exactly, the doorbell rang and Millie dashed down to escort a formidable-looking old lady into the small salon. Mrs. Belmont was quite petite, with clear green eyes, a very fine porcelain skin, and an astonishingly full lower lip, carefully tinted. Her age showed in her thin translucent hands, fine boned and crisscrossed by ropy veins—a veritable roadmap to a very long life.
 

Still, she moved those hands energetically, in broad, firm, illustrative gestures. Her voice was clear and very young. “Edgar, God bless him.” She patted a silvery urn tucked under her arm affectionately. “He loved to live—adored it. Eat, drink,
other
things. He loved it all.” She winked at Lance.

Lance smiled back.
 

“I stick to the food and drink.” Mrs. Belmont carefully placed the urn opposite the single place setting at the table. She turned to Millie and hugged her. “Thank you, darling. No one else allows me to take Edgar out to dinner but you.”
 

“Oh my dear, I’m always glad to have you here! Both of you.”

Mrs. Belmont’s smile brightened, and a speculative gleam glossed her remarkable eyes. “We are being rude. Who is this charming young man?”

Millie gestured Lance over. “Mrs. Belmont, this is Wilfred Pecklise, our newest collaborator.”

Mrs. Belmont eyed him appreciatively. “You’re a very attractive young man. You would have given my Edgar a run for his money.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Belmont. You’re very kind.”

“Kind, my ass. I’m old, boy, and I’m neither dead nor blind. You’re as fine a piece of manhood as I’ve ever seen, and the day I can’t spot
that
is the day I die.”

Millie coughed delicately into her hand, and gestured towards the table. “Shall we begin, Mrs. Belmont? Serge has done full justice to your usual menu, and I even found that extra special bourbon you love.”

“Goodness, girl.” Mrs. Belmont smiled. “That’s the worst Tennessee rotgut, but that was what we drank with our wedding dinner, and that’s what Edgar and I always had on this very day for sixty-five years.”

Lance stepped back into the kitchen and brought out a flowered porcelain soup tureen. He uncovered it and presented a delicious-looking crème pea soup with a sprinkling of mint to add zest to the enticing aroma.
 

Millie ladled a portion into Mrs. Belmont’s plate, set a dish of crisply golden croutons next to it, and stepped back politely, creating a circle of privacy around the charmingly set table and its very odd couple.

Mrs. Belmont savoured her soup, happily crunching her croutons, sipping at the golden liquid Millie had poured into her wine glass. She dabbed delicately at her lips with her linen napkin and sighed. “Lovely. Just lovely.”

Lance wheeled in the platter of snow-white turbot gently steaming under its silky béchamel, the fine breadcrumbs golden perfection. The fish was surrounded by the glossy green and orange of the steamed vegetables, the tiny potatoes, their papery skin unblemished, lovingly adorned with glistening nuggets of melting butter.

Millie dished up the turbot, and Mrs. Belmont tucked in. Lance topped up her wine glass yet again. She was consuming the bourbon at an alarming rate.