Mean Woman Blues (28 page)

“Nice,” he said.

“Last I heard,” Rosemarie remarked, “you were doing pretty well yourself.” She rummaged in the bathroom and handed him an electric razor. “Go to it, kid.”

She thought she was finally freaking him. He was starting to sweat.

He made his voice seductive, clearly trying to match her
sangfroid
. “Why don’t you do it for me?”

“A bit intimate for a married woman, don’t you think?”

“You’re not legally married to that twinky, are you? Even you aren’t that crazy.”

She laughed genuinely again, the way she had when she called him Eliza Dolittle. She was still in the bathroom, where she’d gone to look for the razor. “Of course not, darling. It makes it easier for him socially.” She paused. “Not that he hasn’t asked.”

He stepped close to her, deliberately invading her space. She knew he could feel her breasts, and her breathing. He grabbed the hand that held the razor and lifted it above her head, against the wall, pinning her. “We wouldn’t want to endanger that lovely money, would we?”

“Let me go, Earl.” She made her voice low and threatening.

“That lovely money you wouldn’t have if it weren’t for me. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“What the hell do you want?” She couldn’t keep the bite out of her voice.

He shoved her into the wall, stepping back, but retaining a threatening distance. His voice was smooth and uncaring. “How about a shave and a haircut?”

“Sit down,” she said, indicating a little vanity bench.

He sat, staring into the mirror. She stood behind him, also staring at their tableau. They would have made a lovely couple if not for the fury on their faces.

She cooled her face down and saw him see her do it. Not good. She rummaged in a drawer and came up with scissors. “Let’s cut it first.”
How about stabbing?
she wondered. Could she do it? It might be her best bet. She’d hidden the gun on her way to answer the door, but she needed time to retrieve it.

“Whatever the lady wishes.” The proximity of their bodies, the heat from the mirror lights, maybe even the anger did something that might work well for her. He was starting to get turned on. She could feel his breathing change.

“Take off your shirt,” she said.

Daily workouts had been part of his transformation. She knew how proud he was of his torso. For full dramatic effect he pulled the shirt over his head instead of unbuttoning it.

Rosemarie pretended not to notice. She took it and stomped it under her feet. “To catch the hair,” she explained. And she began cutting his hair with an energetic focus that might also, it occurred to her, be described as violent.

She hadn’t gotten where she was by being a shrinking violet, and nobody knew that better than Earl. She saw a light sweat break out on his upper lip.

She wasn’t quite sure when she’d have a better moment. She had the scissors. All she had to do was… what? Bury the blade in his back? Or maybe his ribs.

“Too warm?” she said. “Let me turn up the AC.”

“Ever the perfect hostess.”

How much pressure would it take to kill him?

“Ow! Do you have to pull it so hard?”

She didn’t answer. Maybe she was hurting him on purpose. She didn’t think she could stab him. Shoot, yes. But thinking of that blade and how it would feel, cutting through him… no. Uh-uh. She couldn’t do it.

His head was now covered with a steel-gray cap of quarter-inch hair.
Not a bad look
, she thought.
But way too Mr. Right for today.
She picked up the razor.

He grabbed for it. “Never mind I’ll do this part”

Letting it go, she leaned languidly against a wall. “Oh, really? I thought you were kind of enjoying the attention.”

He threw the razor down and pinned her once again, giving her a whiff of his sweat. Before she could move, he kissed her, and she let herself melt against him, thinking maybe the tiny submission would reassure him. For the moment it seemed to work. He let her go. “Mmm. Yeah.”

She smiled, lifting an eyebrow in a bemused, slightly superior way. “Later, maybe?”

He fired up the razor and buzzed it over his skull. “What about the semi-hubby?”

“He’s probably passed out in front of the TV.”

“What do you see in him, anyway?’

“I never have had good taste in men.”

“Except for that last husband of yours.” The one who’d left her the lovely money. “And of course your first.”

“Not everybody marries Mr. Right the first time around.”

“Including you, baby. We’ve come a long way since then.”

He put the razor down and turned to her. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re about to go a lot farther.” She wasn’t sure what she meant by it, just hoped it would give him the idea to get the hell out of her life.

He said, “I meant the look.”

“Very hip. Come on out where I can see you.” She led him into the guest room proper, lounged on the bed, and gave him the onceover. “Too bad there’s no time to grow a goatee or something.”

He shrugged. “I’ll be okay with shades and a cap. I need clothes.”

She nodded, licking her lips. Good. Maybe an excuse to get the gun. Todd’s clothes wouldn’t fit him, but she didn’t have to mention that.

“And money,” he said.

“Oh?”

There it was. Finally on the table. “Look, I’ve got plenty under another name. But I can’t go in the bank. I mean I did, and someone recognized me; so I split and came here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Rosemarie, give me the phone and the number of your bank account. I’ll have it transferred right now. I need cash; Mr. Right’s dead. I’ve got to get the hell out of here or I am too.”

“What about Karen?”

“Karen.” He stood stock-still, as if he hadn’t even thought of her. Finally, he said, “Don’t you get it Rosemarie? I’m Number Two on the FBI’S Most Wanted list. I’ve got to get out of the country. Today.”

“That’s all Karen means to you? What about if it were us?” She stretched back on the pillows. He sat down on the bed and caressed her cheek. She curled her body close to him.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Where?”

“Wherever you like. I have passports to burn— that’s one little precaution I took. What I don’t have is cash.”

“Neither do I.” She snuggled closer.

He swung a leg over, straddling her, and pinned her shoulders. “Goddammit, find some,” he shouted.

Almost instantly, Rosemarie heard running. Todd. He must have heard the shout. Damn. He didn’t know where the gun was and wouldn’t think to bring it if he did. He was bigger than most men in Texas; he didn’t think in terms of guns.

Earl rolled off Rosemarie, grabbed for his briefcase, un-snapped the outer pocket and extracted his own gun. She tried to stand, but he grabbed her arm. When Todd came into the room, at a dead trot, Earl was holding Rosemarie’s elbow with one hand and the gun with the other, pointing at the door. “Whoa, boy. Slow down,” he said.

That was the last thing Todd was about to do. Poor Earl didn’t know him at all. One reason she’d picked him was that he was part bodyguard. He was about six-five, had shoulders like a table, and the long hair of a blue-collar worker. Earl rolled off the bed; Todd crashed onto it.

Earl rocked back, training the gun on the big man. “Take it easy, now. Let’s all just catch our breath here.”

Todd said, “What the hell is going on here?” He pronounced it “hay-ull.” “You okay, darlin’?”

Rosemarie stood up and smoothed down her flowered capris. “He didn’t rape me, if that’s what you mean.”

She realized Todd didn’t recognize him. Maybe the shaved head worked better than she thought.

Earl was swiveling his head, looking at Rosemarie, then Todd, then back again. She could tell he was getting furious, the way he always had when he didn’t get his way. “
Rosemarie, you whore!
” he shouted.

Okay, it was now or never. She looked at Todd, caught his eye, and inclined her chin very, very slightly, giving the go-ahead sign. Todd turned to Earl, but he wasn’t quick enough. As if in a dream, she saw her ex-husband steadying his weapon. Todd leapt on him. Earl fired.

Todd fell backward, blood spurting. Rosemarie screamed.

Earl fired again and then he seized her and pounded her face with the butt of the gun.

She screamed again, knowing it was over, the game she was playing, unable to feel a thing for Todd, even to worry about her face; just terrified, knowing Earl was going to kill her. But he pulled back before be hurt her too badly. Why, she didn’t know. Maybe he needed her for something. With Earl, it was always that. She had to convince him she was his devoted slave in about a millisecond. But she knew he’d seen her signal Todd.

“You killed him,” she said, putting all the shock she could muster into her voice.

“Oh, come on, Dragon Lady. One of us was going to die; you set it up like that, didn’t you? Only the plan was, it was going to be me.”

“Earl, look at me.” He obeyed, as she knew he would. “Earl, I love you, baby. You were my first love. And my only love…” She was pleading for her life.

“And your best love, kid. Because I got rid of that surplus husband of yours that time, enabling us both to be rich for the rest of our lives.” In spite of herself, she felt something like hatred cross her face. “Yeah, baby.” he said. “We’ve been over this territory. What’s yours is mine.”

She looked at Todd’s body lying on her bed, blood seeping into the mattress, the carpet, the pretty, red-figured cover. Jail looked kind of attractive at the moment; she could easily end up like he had.

She said, “Of course, sweetheart. Let’s get out of the country.”

Perhaps he’d try to use her as a hostage. That might be good; if she got out alive, she’d be a victim. The whole thing was to buy time.

After her husband had left for work (quite a long while after) Karen got up and dressed for the first time in two days— in black pants and white T-shirt— and moved out to the garden to think.

She sat in an Adirondack chair, staring at the annuals she’d so laboriously and lovingly planted that spring. The jasmine was just starting to bloom. The smell of it was slightly nauseating.

She’d thought maybe she was pregnant the night she had the talk with Carol Ann; sitting there talking about how she wanted a baby, she’d been thinking,
and maybe I’m carrying one
. And so, the day of the show, she went and got a home pregnancy kit. She tested positive, only about ten hours before she lost the baby. She thought she was over her crying, but when she thought of that now, silent tears ran down her face. It hurt to remember how excited she was, how she had first fallen into a reverie and decorated the baby’s room in her head, then thought how much fun it would be to go to the show and surprise her husband with the news. That was the whole point of the visit. That was what she had come for, and he’d hit her and killed their baby. Ever since then, those two facts had been her whole world. Now she was working on moving out the other side.

The question was this: Could she forgive him? The promised “details at eleven” had never been provided.

But anyone deserved a second chance, right?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The old saying echoed in her brain. The complicated thing about it was that David hadn’t fooled her twice. Charlie Bennett had fooled her the first time.

Then there’s my father
, she thought. He’d fooled her more than once. What she wondered was, was there any man she could trust? Other women trusted men. Why not Karen? David really had been under a lot of pressure, and he really had acted in anger. And she loved him, and she wanted to be with him.

Or at any rate, there was so much about being with him that she wanted. She was Mrs. Right. Wife of an up-and-coming local celeb. There was pride in that. Even if future First Lady was only a pipe dream.

And she had this nice house, and security, and love, and the possibility of a baby…. She teared up.
But not the baby I was carrying two days ago.

Everywhere she turned, it was like that. Good, then bad; bad, then good.

I need to work it through
, she thought.

She looked at her watch. Two hours had passed. Without even making the decision to do so, she went back into the house, found a yoga tape, slipped it into the VCR, and changed into workout clothes.

The tape began with breathing. And after the breathing, what the teacher called “The Potted Palm” series, sitting stretches: bending, grabbing for her toes…

And after that standing stretches. She had her butt high in the air, deep in Downward Facing Dog, Mr. Right and her problem forgotten, nothing in the world on her mind but pushing up with her thigh muscles, shifting the weight to the outsides of her feet, trying, as always, to get her heels a little closer to the ground, when the phone rang. She ignored it.

In a moment, someone knocked on the door. She ignored that too. And then the knock became louder, more insistent, like the police knock you hear on television.

She righted herself, frowning, trying to figure out who on earth it could be. The phone rang again. Automatically, she answered it. “Just a minute, there’s someone at the door…”

The voice on the phone said, “FBI. Come out with your hands up.”

She heard a noise like an explosion and then running footsteps. And there in her bedroom were a phalanx of men in riot gear, pointing guns at her.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” the yoga master said. The tape was still running.

She dropped the phone, screaming.
This wasn’t her life.

“Don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off.” She couldn’t really be hearing that.

Someone grabbed her, stuck a gun in her back, pulled her hands behind her. She felt cold metal on her wrists.

Some of the men were pointing their guns inanely at the television. Others swarmed the house, opening doors, stomping…

Her captor marched her into the street, where her neighbors had started to gather. They shoved her into a car. “All right, where is he?”

She was light-headed. Her heart thumped. She was crying. “Where is who?” she screamed.