Love Deluxe (29 page)

“Some pin-head with a pocket protector pays my markers and everything else and besides, I don’t carry cash so it’s of no use to me. Didn’t you enjoy winning it?”

“Well, yeah. But that’s bullshit; no one gives away that kind of money.”

Without my realizing it we were being seated at a table in the coffee shop, “Let’s have pancakes, I’m starving.”

“Don’t change the subject, Drew. I need for you to understand, this is an abnormal act.”

“Having pancakes?” he asked. I laid the key on the table and started to leave; he was next to me in a flash and said, “No more jokes, will you please just sit down?”

I sat and he talked, I watched his mouth and blushed, women paid money for lips like his.

“Am I boring you or amusing you?” He asked catching the look in my eyes.

“Sorry, go on.”

“I had a great time playing slots with you tonight. Winning was fun but it’s the chance, not the money. I’m sure you know my family name means something, the Perrin Hotel Group and all, but it goes back farther than that. My grandmother’s father was on the Titanic, all very dramatic, she inherited a fortune and her money came to my dad and me. Cate, take the fucking money, you might want to leave Dolf Lundgren someday, or maybe I was sent to rescue you a little. It must be a sin to turn a gift away.” He ordered pancakes, bacon and hash browns for both of us. “You know, what you said earlier, about men doing things for you? Women usually like that and really, men are dicks, they don’t do nice things very often unless it’s gonna get them laid. When I first saw you, I thought beautiful and untouchable, period. But what’s killer is, you’ve got this whole ‘little girl lost’ thing happening, it’s in your eyes and it pulls at the heart. Who could resist?”

After we ate he walked me outside and asked the bellman for a car.

“You go ahead,” he said, “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

The car pulled up and he opened the door, I got in and put the window down.

He bent down to look at me and I said, “A
Bentley
? You rich boys are so predictable.”

His smile broadened, “You just said boy again and you know what that means. Until next time, Mrs. Robinson.”

***

Back in the room I was out of the tub drying off when I heard the door open and then close. I dropped the towel and reached for a robe as John walked in.

“Good, my sweetie’s still awake.” He pressed me to him, taking my ponytail down, running his hands through my hair. His leather jacket was cold against my skin and he smelled of the night air.

“Where’ve you been? You’re cold.”

He released me, walked to the desk and emptied his pockets of chips and bills.

“
Harrah’s
,” he said, “Man, I love the tables at
Harrah’s
. Then I walked back to get some air, walk off the booze and come see about my wife”

I climbed beneath the covers and watched him undress; he talked as he removed shoes, shirt, pants, underwear.

I thought,
it isn’t fair to look like that, so perfect, so long limbed and ethereal, a great pale angel fallen to Earth. He might well be Adam, his single flaw, passion for a woman.

He slipped into the bed and drew me to him, we spooned, front to back and he yawned and said, “Sleep sweetie.”

***

My eyes opened to the sun pouring full and bright into the room and I knew. I knew the difference, somehow, in that day and all others. I covered my face with my hands and cried and then sobbed and then screamed. My heart broke open and all the pain of all the mourning mothers of the world poured out. I wept for my child, for myself, for what was lost and couldn’t be resurrected. For the tear in the fabric of my soul, a hole where something once was, a life, an entire universe, my child, lost.

I cried until all that touched me was salty with my tears. I cried as mothers have cried back through the ages, before time was recorded, before there was a language for grief. Who can name a single day when mothers did not bury and mourn their sons and daughters? Even as the righteous funeral goers turn away, the mothers suffer on. Suffering as infinite and limitless as only the holiest of books has described in truth, “Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted, for they were no more.” I choked on sobs, unable to stop, the pain a devil inside me, forcing its way out. I couldn’t stop myself; surely I had fallen over the edge of reason.

John crossed to the bed, a towel around his waist, his hair wet from the shower. He stood and watched me, speechless at the outpour, unable to look away, astonishment on his face. “This is your bad day,” he said with quiet reverence. “Man, nothing will kick your ass like planet Earth.”

I began to laugh then. I laughed through my tears and clutched my stomach I was laughing so hard, laughed until my sad tears turned to tears of mirth. I laughed and couldn’t stop because he was right, he’d found the truest truth of every single life on planet Earth.

Chapter Twenty Two

I loved the carriage house, nestled into the bend of the river, dwarfed by the imperious sprawl of the commercial landscape. West facing, it caught the day’s breezes when the tall doors were opened, front and back. It was as I imagined it would be, lovely, tranquil, a tiny treasure where least expected. Our days rambled there, hidden in the heart of the city, close to my old neighborhood, yet far removed. We awakened, made love, ate, slept, tended to our small lives, were bored and made love again.

We traveled to Las Vegas every few weeks, trying new hotels and gratifications, the city welcomed us, made a gift of its luxuries. My lust for gambling kept me more in the casinos than the stores with each trip.

John was free in Vegas, he was the man I fell in love with and something more, yet another personality come to light. His generousness, the sweetness of his truest nature, the disarming purity in the vivid blueness of his eyes, these qualities shone through. Combined with his uncanny knack for winning, his certainty that in the city of excess he was master of the universe with endless stacks of chips and hosts and ass-kissers eager to please, it all made for a powerful aphrodisiac.

We opened our eyes each day to a new adventure, an exotic meal or show, gambling elbow to elbow with celebrities, athletes, moguls. We rented a car and drove through the desert just to see if towns with names as odd as Pahrump and Tonopah really existed. We continued southwest to San Diego and he showed me aircraft carriers like the one he called home long ago, we walked on the beach and I marveled that the Pacific was cold, so unlike the familiar Gulf.

At the mall we bought a personal massager and explored its pleasures in a water-front room at the
Hotel Del Coronado
. We moaned with pleasure over bowls of Blue Crab bisque and bottles of cold white wine by an outdoor fireplace at a restaurant on the beach. We drove north toward Santa Monica to see the famed pier of his childhood and had a terrible fight along the way. I insisted he drop me off at LAX and as I disappeared into the airport he left the car running and found me and I followed him back outside. The car was gone and we didn’t care, we checked in to a room at the airport
Marriott
and discovered the mind blowing ecstasy of make-up sex. John demanded a refund two hours later complaining the room wasn’t suitable for human habitation and we shook with laughter at that erotic bonus buy as soon as we were out the door. We rented another car after reporting the first one stolen only to be told it had been towed away and we owed gargantuan fines.

We headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway, spent a day and a night in Malibu then turned northeast into the Sierra Nevada’s. John wanted to show me the ski village of Mammoth Lakes where he lived after his breakup with one of his somewhat serious California girlfriends. She left him, he said and he was heartsick as she boarded a plane to Hawaii, she was worn down by the cold, by his obsession with skiing, with his inability to say he loved her.

He missed her but she wasn’t
the one
, he moved his arm against mine as we drove and said, “She wasn’t my forever sweetie.”

He loved the drive, circling up through the forest, the awesome stillness, the glimpses of white capped peaks, Mammoth Mountain’s long snowy season, skiable into June and even August some years. He’d never skied before he moved to Mammoth but he was a natural on the slopes, there were none he couldn’t conquer and he would ski alone some days, in the late spring with the sun high and the snow deep, he skied in a Speedo to work on his tan.

“Such is the magic of you!” I said, shaking my head at the thought.

He signed on as a ski instructor and everyone loved him, he was the best, he felt proud and accomplished, happier in the mountains than he’d ever been. But there was the aloneness and isolation, people stayed for a few days, a week and were gone, he needed someone to be with.

We left the mountains later in the day than planned and as we drove east through Death Valley the sun was going down and it was otherworldly desolate. John had been scrolling through his favorite music as I stared out at the barren hills and harsh, rocky landscape; it seemed as if nothing could exist in such a place. I thought of Brooks and hoped he was somewhere lovely. I hoped that if there was a soul and I prayed there was, that his knew ecstasy. That he was one with God and knowledge and the collective consciousness. I feared that he was lost in a ruined land.

“Hey, buddy,” John reached for my hand, lifted it to his lips. “Why are you sad? I can’t stand to see tears on your face, Catey, Listen; this is my song to you.”

Terry Kath belted out
Make Me Smile
and I did smile and wiped the tears from my face and then began to laugh and couldn’t stop.

“What’s so funny? It’s the way I feel.”

I laughed until my sides hurt and he looked immensely hurt, when I could finally speak I asked him to play the song again, I wanted him to hear something. Between singing the lines the singer shouted “Woohoo and whoa yeah!” with unrestrained excitement.

“That’s exactly the sound you made the first time we had sex, when you were finishing,” I said with an immense grin.

He turned redder than I’d ever seen him and refused to look at me, I fought the urge to laugh some more. I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled between him and the steering wheel.

“I loved it, buddy. You showed me what passion is, you gave me a gift and saved my life and you know it’s true that I’ve lost my heart to you for good.”

He held me against him and as always I was in love with the smell and feel and taste of his neck. The music of
Make Me Smile
died away and the next song started. I climbed back into my seat and listened intently.

“What does this song even mean? I’ve heard it a thousand times but I’ve never known.”

“Everybody wonders that, there are all these different theories, some think it’s about using heroin, the band members liked the mystery, I guess.
Twenty Five or Six to Four
, I don’t think they ever said for sure. I think it’s about escape, needing to go, when the shit gets too deep, you’ve pushed some limit as far as you should and you just walk away to save your own life.”

***

He was moody in Texas, lost and miserable. Screaming on the phone with his father, pacing the floor he threatened to show up and take over the project, unable to make himself act. On those days he turned away from me, ravaged by rage and loathing, his long fingers skittering over the slight scar beneath his eye. His passion for me lost in the fear of his parent’s betrayal, despondent in not knowing. I was certain of it and pleaded with him to let it go, walk away, it was only a bit of money, after all.

“They’re my parents!” he yelled and his eyes were madness as he slammed the front door and drove away. Always he returned, missing for only an hour or so, nerves calmed and talkative, eager to reconcile. “I’m going to Austin,” he said on a morning in June, “it’s my Grandma’s big birthday party, she’s ninety. I have to go.”

“Then, I’m going with you, buddy.” I tried to sound enthusiastic but fear made the ends of my fingers prickle.

The days leading up to the party were tense and we were silently apprehensive. I worked in my shop, my inventory was pitifully low, it had never looked so rag-tag. My partners asked if I was happy, would I like them to buy me out. They said it would be best, that my heart wasn’t in it any longer. They were right, I knew, I wanted only him and our enchanted life, everything and every other person had been pushed far back in my mind. Yes, I wanted out, decide on a price, I said, it makes no difference, whatever you think is fair, I’ll accept it.

***

The birthday party was at a club in Austin. The drive was torturous and the party, even worse. There was an open bar and his family and the guests made the most of it. John’s father was throwing back shots and he tried to catch my eye whenever he could but he never looked at his son. Carrie hovered around John, her words already slurred from alcohol and her eyes imploring him to forgive her transgressions. John couldn’t resist his mother’s subtle solicitation of his affection, he was her child and was so easily won over. The two of them sat off to the side of the room, drinking and smiling and talking quietly. I found an empty chair on the patio and closed my eyes and counted the minutes until we could leave. A chair scraped the ground next to mine, I opened my eyes and Ben Foster sat next to me.

His breath was liquor soaked and washed over me as he leaned close, “Did my boy tell you I held a gun to his head once? Don’t ever think he would cross me even for a snobby little holier than thou goodie two shoes like you.” I knocked my chair over to get away from him, he blocked the door and said, “I’ve always had fantasies about you, I guess I’ll have to kill my son so I can have his wife.”

He smiled at the shock on my face and moved away from the door sweeping his hand in a grand gesture for me to go inside.

“You’re not just cruel, you’re insane. Do you have any idea how many lines you’ve just crossed you crazy motherfucker?”

I went inside and found a restroom and locked myself in a stall with my mind running wild. I had to get John’s attention, we needed to leave… I heard the main bathroom door open and then the lock clicked heavily. A chill ran down my spine. I stood frozen, trying to remember if I had
Mace
in my purse. The door of the stall burst open and before I could scream Ben Foster covered my mouth and slammed me against the wall. He was breathing hard as he worked his hand between my legs and pushed a calloused finger inside me. My head felt like it was going to split open from hitting the wall but I bit his hand viciously and scratched at his face, struggling against his bulk. He laughed and leaned his full weight against me trying to work his finger deeper.

“Ah, I see what the boy likes, you are one hot fucking cunt, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I bet you stay torn up from that horse cock of his.”

I scratched his face hard and drew blood with one hand and managed to grab his balls with the other and squeezed with all my might.

He shouted, “Fucking bitch!” and stumbled away from me, falling over the toilet and sprawling on the floor.

I rushed to the door, unlocked and opened it. I stopped and turned to look at him, the deep scratches on his face bled down the front of his shirt, I’d never before that moment felt pure hatred. He was mewling on the floor clutching the front of his pants.

I stared at his pathetic face and said, “I should scream rape you sadistic bastard. If you ever lay a hand on me or my husband again I will spend every penny I have to make sure you sit in jail long enough for some diseased gang members to put you’re filthy mouth to good use.”

I ran through the room with tears dripping off my face and down my neck, John and his mother looked up as I rushed past them and out the door.

John followed “Catey, Cate! What’s wrong, wait, stop, what happened?”

I kept running, found the car, searched my purse for the keys, spilled its contents on the ground and fell to my knees screaming.

“For God’s sake, Cate, tell me, do we need the police? Fuck, your hand is bleeding, who hurt you?”

He had his arms around me and I stopped crying and said, “It’s not my blood, help me, help me find the keys, I need to leave, come with me or stay, I don’t care, I’m going.”

He held my purse and gathered its scattered contents, helped me into the passenger seat and hurried to the driver’s door and then climbed in and started the car.

“Cate, you have to tell me…”

“Drive!” I screamed.

We drove through the night toward San Antonio, about twenty miles down the road he pulled into a rest area, parked and held my blood smeared hand.

“We better wash this, did you do something awful?”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind, “You’re father put his hands on me, he locked the bathroom door and covered my mouth and…”

Even in the dark I could tell he was seething, he got out of the car and yelled at the top of his lungs then felt around in the car, searching for his cell phone. He tried calling a number several times but his hands shook so badly he dropped the phone on the ground.

“Wait, John. Don’t call him or you’re mother, there’s no telling what story he’s made up to explain the scratches on his face. Just wait, he’s not just scary, he’s dangerous, I think.”

John leaned over the grass and vomited until his stomach was empty. I waited silently and was more horrified for him than for myself. My pride was hurt but I knew John could be right— his father wanted him dead.

I got behind the wheel and he said, “Take me back, he’s gone too far, I’m going to stand up to him, I want to make him suffer.”

“No you’re not, that’s what he expects. He wants you to give him a reason to pull the trigger.”

His voice was incredulous, “He told you?”

“Yes, you’re done with him, John, I won’t live in fear. He doesn’t want me, he wants to ruin you, but he’s gonna play hell doing it.”

As soon as we got home I called Emily, it was after midnight but it couldn’t wait.

“Cate? What’s wrong?”

“No one’s hurt, I’m sorry to call this late, I need to talk to Rob.”

She didn’t argue or ask questions, she just woke her husband and handed him the phone.