Perfect Sax (30 page)

“You got married?”

“I’m not totally sure about that part. It was Vegas, Maddie. We were kids. It was after the prom.”

“The prom? You got married after your high school prom?”

“Hey.” She looked thoroughly miserable. “I can’t remember everything I ever did, can I? I thought it was a joke.”

Okay. I’m a professional problem solver. I get paid to do this—although usually the problem has to do with how to feed thirty hungry nine-year-olds when the parents told us they were only inviting ten. But still, I guess you could say I know a problem when I come across one. Holly, whose wedding to Donald Lake was only fourteen days away, was already married to another guy. A guy named Marvin. I tried to get my dear young friend to focus. “Holly!”

Under the jaunty hot pink cap, beneath the fringe of blonde hair, her bright blue eyes were on me, intense. “This is bad.”

No, no, no. This had to be a joke. I smiled at her. “Are you telling me that all this time we’ve known each other, you have really been Mrs. Marvin Dubinsky?”

Unfortunately, Holly didn’t smile back. “Possibly.”

“Oh, man. So you never got it annulled? Or filed for a divorce? Or talked to an attorney?”

“My bad.” She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to yell at her or something.

“Holl. You know that motto they have now: ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’? You can’t really count on that.”

“I’m an idiot. I know.” Her eyes burned bright with anger, directed inward. “I just didn’t think about it. It didn’t seem for real.”

She was my friend and she was in pain. Holly’s lovely
face crumpled, showing that awkward, it’s-my-own-damned-fault kind of pain—the pain of consequences slowly and finally catching up.

Holly. Always so wonderfully carefree. No worries. But me, I am the yin to Holly’s yang. I see the potential for danger everywhere. I check things out ahead of time. I research. I plan. I prepare. I wouldn’t go to the corner 7-11 without thinking it through, let alone go out on a date with a guy whose last name I couldn’t recall. Or to the prom.
Or to a wedding chapel in the middle of the night with a fresh marriage license in my hot little hand.
Now that, no matter where you stand on the control-freak scale, was totally flipping nuts.

But my way, the tiptoe through life way, was not the right recipe for everyone. And I loved Holly and the way she could charge ahead in life without worrying herself to death over six zillion things that could go wrong.

In the end, I had to laugh. “Honey, who the hell is Marvin Dubinsky?” Holly was twenty-six and yet, in all the time we’d been buds, I had never heard that name.

“He was just some guy from high school. He was in a band,” Holly said, relaxing back in her seat, smiling back at me. “The Roots. He played bass.”

“Sounds like your type.”

“He was the shortest guy in our senior class.”

“It figures.” I got a great mental picture of teenage Holly, Amazonian-tall wild child that she must have been, attending her senior prom with the most vertically-challenged boy in school.

“He was really, really smart. He took all APs and had a freaking enormous brain. He ended up going to some supergeek college, I think. University of the Insanely Gifted, or something.”

Holly has a certain flare for picking men. Always had. “So you married a diminutive, bass-playing genius?”

“He was a sweet guy. I think he was going to go into some agro-techy field, you know, study plants. Like Aquaponics, or I don’t know what.”

“Botany?”

“He grew orchids and bromeliads and stuff like that.”

“Holly, you are like a magnet for weird males.”

“I can’t help it. It’s like a gift.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he was like my tutor for senior Bio. That’s how we met. Without Marvin I’m sure I would have flunked the damned course, but he got me through. At the end of senior year, after all those Tuesdays and Thursdays in the science room after school, he finally told me he was in love with me, which, you know…” Holly became a bit dreamy-eyed at the memory. “Well, he was sorta sweet. So, anyway, one day he admitted to me his darkest secret; that he hadn’t been able to get a date.”

“To the prom?”

“
Ever.
” She shook her head, awed. “Isn’t that, like, sad?”

I thought about high school. What a minefield of pain it could be for the short, smart guy. I sighed.

“So you know me,” Holly continued. “I’m all heart. I just felt it was my duty to help the poor kid out. He was really a pretty funny guy when he wasn’t getting all giggly. I think I made him nervous.”

I nodded, picturing it all, and bit my lip.

“And I think he was gonna have a nice smile someday, you know, when he got his braces off.”

“The poor boy was still wearing braces in 12th grade?”

Holly nodded, grinning. “He had what we might call ‘appearance issues’, Maddie. And he was shy. So I just got it into my head and asked him to our prom.”

“You have always been very sweet.”

“My friends thought I dated him just because he gave me
all the answers to the Bio final, but that wasn’t it at all. I mean, I was really grateful for the help with those answers, but I had always kind of liked him. He used to write me poems, Maddie. I used to go home and actually look up some of the words. They were always flattering, too. Like he called me ‘serene’.”

“Okay. You asked him to your prom. This is all fine. Generous even. But then you married him?”

“I honestly don’t know how that happened. One thing led to another. I was pretty wasted, actually. Everyone gets too drunk on prom night; you know how that is. And we were having fun, Marvin and I. And I didn’t have to get home right away because my parents already thought I was going to stay overnight with my girlfriends.”

“So after your prom, you went to Vegas?”

“Right. He told the limo driver to keep driving. He’d been joking with me all night about how I was wearing this white gown and he was in a tux and we looked like we were getting married. When we got to Vegas he told the chauffeur-guy to drive to the Marriage Bureau over on 3rd Street and see if they were still open. It was something like four in the morning.”

“And they were open, I’m guessing.”

“Did you know that that city office stays open until midnight most every night of the week and 24-hours on holidays, Maddie?”

“Incredible service,” I said, and wondered why my local library couldn’t stay open on Saturdays.

“So I guess we got a marriage license. I wish I could remember that night more clearly, but I do seem to recall I had to find my driver’s license for some reason. I just don’t know! I mean, we were having a great time and I was smashed.”

“Okay, Holly. But think hard. Did it all end in a ceremony at some chapel and then move on to the traditional wedding night…event?”

“I swear. It’s all a hazy blur.” Holly just widened her already wide eyes. “I wish I could remember.”

“My God, Holly.”

“I know,” she said.

“Correction,” I said, in awe of Holly’s entire romantic history, but this chapter taking the prize. “Make that: my God, Mrs. Dubinsky.”

“It’s totally twisted, for sure.” Holly shook her head slowly.

“So how did it end?”

“It was my fault, no doubt,” she said, with a guilty look. “I mean, it had all been a lark. We were just having fun. And then I guess I kind of flaked on poor Marvin.”

“You broke his heart?”

“I never meant to hurt his feelings in a million years, but I think that’s what happened. The next day, I remember I was mega-hung over. We drove back to L.A. in the limo and I called my mom to kind of update my cover story, and to check for messages. I guess I shouldn’t have squealed so loudly right in front of Marvin, but my mom told me I’d gotten a call from Griffin Potecky.”

I looked at her, not understanding this turn of events.

“Griffin Potecky was a teen god, Maddie. I’d had a crush on Griffin since middle school. I’d been trying to get him to notice me forever. And he was finally calling me! But I probably shouldn’t have squealed in front of Marvin, huh?”

“Hm.”

“And then I got dropped off at home. Next thing I heard, my sister told me Marvin had gone right off to college, early, just like that. And I never heard another word from him.”

“Wow.”

“But, Mad, this was all so long ago. I haven’t really thought about Marvin or the prom or any of it in years.”

“Does Donald know about this?”

“No. Heck, I don’t even really know.”

Just then, a muffled sound made its way from the back of the house, from the direction of the kitchen. We both looked up.

“What’s that?” Holly asked. “Wes?”

“Must be,” I said, and quickly went back to Holly’s urgent matter. “But, now, about your present crisis.”

“Can you help me?”

“Of course. It looks like you have three main problems, Holl.”

“You are always so organized,” she said, exhaling. “Thanks, Maddie. Thanks.”

“First, if I had to place a bet, I’d say you probably
are
married to this Dubinsky person, because how else would these anonymous e-mailers get your name unless it was off of some official marriage record somewhere, right? Which means you need to get out of that fluky old marriage immediately in order to marry your Donald.”

“Right.”

“Second, you are going to have to tell Donald about your past.”

Holly nodded, her face serious. “Okay. I can do all that.”

“Good.”

“And third?” Holly asked.

“But then, third, clearly,” I said, looking back at the creased paper, “since you actually knew a Marvin Dubinsky, and you actually
married
a Marvin Dubinsky, then you are actually the Holly these jerks are threatening by anonymous e-mail, after all.”

“That’s the part,” Holly said, “that I sort of already
got
, Mad.”

“And I hate to see anyone I love being bullied. So just don’t worry about this anymore, okay? Some idiots using scare tactics. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“I knew you could help me.”

“Do you have any idea where Marvin Dubinsky is today?”

“I have absolutely no idea in the world,” she said. “Nada, none, zilch.”

“Well, that’s something we need to find out. Because this Marvin dude seems to be dragging you into some kind of trouble and we have to clear that up.”

“Cool.”

“And we’re going to need to get you clear of that marriage, too, if it was legal and you really got hitched.”

“Right.”

“So we’ll just have to do a little digging around and find Marvin Dubinsky. I mean, how hard can that be?”