Tied to the Tracks (48 page)
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
“This is going to backfire on Patty-Cake, you know that,” he said.
“I’m counting on it,” Angie said. “What I can’t decide is, should I wait for the full force of public humiliation to wash over her before I kill her, or just indulge my fantasies straight off.”
John felt himself flush and stir, and what a mess he was: Angie Mangiamele said the word
fantasies
and he felt himself stirring. “That’s a question worthy of some deliberation,” he said, and turned the television to channel 12.
fantasies
and he felt himself stirring. “That’s a question worthy of some deliberation,” he said, and turned the television to channel 12.
He was disappointed when Angie left the room; he was about to go find her to admit he needed her with him through this when she came back with a tray: coffee, milk, a few apples, and a pile of diet bars, the kind made of sawdust and fake chocolate, kept afloat by marketing and Orwellian names: Choco-Mint Extravaganza and Orgasmic Orange.
“Patty-Cake strikes again,” she said. “You can take this as a commentary on my figure.” And then, as she pulled up a chair to sit next to him, she did a double take at the television screen.
“Who the hell,” she said in a conversational tone, “is behind that camera?”
It certainly wasn’t Patty-Cake, who had stuck her microphone in Button Ogilvie’s face and was asking about her dress, and was that Dior? Patty-Cake herself was in a sheath of electric blue that showed off her cleavage and the exact shape of an obviously enhanced derriere and tilted her slightly forward, so that she looked like an exotic breed of chicken, which John pointed out because it was true, and because he desperately wanted to make Angie smile.
“The feathers on her hat complete the image,” she agreed.
There was some work to be done with Angie, John knew that; maybe being stuck here would be a good thing, in the end. Neither one of them would be able to bolt off when the discussion got rough, as it was bound to.
“John?” Angie said. “Do you know who’s behind that video camera?”
He said, “My guess is, Will Sloan. He’s got the public-access TV station all tied up these days.”
Tony walked past Patty-Cake and her cameraman and shot them an incredulous look. Angie snorted a laugh.
“This will be the best-documented no-show wedding in Ogilvie history,” John said. Then he realized that if Tony was there, Rivera must be, too. He thought about that, wondered if he should raise the subject, and decided there weren’t words enough in the language to sort out how he was feeling about Rivera.
Patty-Cake was running in tiny little steps to catch up with Kai and—John gulped as he saw this—his mother and stepfather. OP-TV wasn’t alone in wanting to talk to Lucy, who had her usual small crowd of admirers trailing along.
“Sam looks a little thunderstruck,” Angie said.
“Lucy Ogilvie in her element is more than most men can handle.”
“Lucy!” Patty-Cake was calling. “Lucy, won’t you spare a few words for
Girl Talk
?”
Girl Talk
?”
Apparently Lucy would not; she never slowed down, though she did throw Patty-Cake and her viewers her own version of the royal wave.
“She’s going to sit with Miss Zula,” Angie said.
John had successfully avoided the idea of Miss Zula for the last day or so, but there she was on the screen with her sister and a half dozen other Bragg relatives. For the first time he was actually glad to be locked in the editing suite.
Angie glanced at him, and he had the sense he was reading his thoughts. She said, “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry for Caroline, too. But mostly I’m sorry for Rivera. You’re not the only one Caroline disappointed last night, you know.”
That caught him off guard. He said, “Caroline dumped Rivera?”
Angie shot him a sour glance. “You can’t dump somebody unless you’re already with them. That make you feel better?”
It should, but it didn’t. He thought of telling Angie so, but there was something small and hard in his gut that clenched when he thought of having to apologize again, of always being wrong.
Without looking at him, Angie said, “Caroline has done a pretty good job of misleading everybody, including herself. She’s still at it, too.”
And just that easily all the aggravation and anger left him, as though she had stuck a tap in his head at exactly the right spot and drained it out of him. He was overcome by surprise and a deep sense of awe, that Angie should understand so easily, and offer him so much.
Her hand was resting on the arm of her chair. It would be a small matter to touch her, take her hand, try to bridge the gap. But they hadn’t come that far yet, and John kept thinking of Fran Mangiamele on the phone:
You pushed her too hard you went too fast you wanted too much.
You pushed her too hard you went too fast you wanted too much.
On the screen Patty-Cake was saying, “Notice how the ribbons on the flower arrangements echo the color scheme of the garden itself, an elegant touch in line with the bride’s superior sense of style.” Rob appeared behind her, looking grim, and went straight to the house.
This much even Patty-Cake couldn’t ignore. She said, “Of course, even the best-organized wedding will run into a bump or two. The trick is to be prepared for every eventuality.”
It was eleven o’clock, and the camera slid away from Patty-Cake’s face, now sporting a fine line of perspiration along the upper lip, and fixed on the house, where French doors had opened and a crowd of people could be seen poised to come out onto the gallery. A murmuring rose among the wedding guests, and the camera panned across them jerkily. John took in the familiar faces of his own cousins, friends he had grown up with, the few colleagues he had invited. All of them wondering where exactly he was, and if it was really possible that John Grant, steady, responsible, proper John Grant, could be missing in action from his own wedding. Most of his people would give him the benefit of the doubt, but Caroline’s were another matter. Especially if Patty-Cake started talking, something that might just happen if she lost the last bit of common sense she stilled called her own. Somewhere a child began to cry, and John wasn’t far from joining in.
Patty-Cake was talking to the cameraman in a harsh whisper and the picture lurched back in her direction, providing an excellent view of one heavily mascaraed eye, one flaring nostril, and half an angry scowl. Then it swung away again, as if pushed. Will, who seemed to have no real feel for camera work, somehow found Rivera. She was standing against the wall of the house, her camera cradled in her arms, her face drawn.
Angie said, “After I kill Patty-Cake, I may just go looking for Caroline.”
Caroline, who had just come out onto the gallery, bracketed by her family on all sides. Mother and uncle, sisters and brothers-in-law, nephews. She was wearing a suit in a delicate shade of pink and a silky white blouse with a scooped neck. There was a single rose on her lapel that matched the color in her cheeks almost exactly, and her eyes were so bright that John wondered if she had been drinking.
“That must be her going-away outfit,” Angie said. It wasn’t really a question, which was just as well, because John couldn’t have said one way or the other. All he knew for sure was that Caroline wasn’t wearing a wedding dress. That was such a relief that for a moment he couldn’t talk at all.
The camera was on Patty-Cake again, who looked suddenly ten years older, and angry. She batted at it openly and it tilted.
“John’s not here,” somebody said, very distinctly from behind the camera. “John Grant is not here.”
Then Caroline raised her voice and spoke, her tone sure and easy. This strange new Caroline, confident, unshakable. “Y’all must be wondering what exactly is going on,” she said. “So come on over here and let me explain.”
There was a scuffle and then the screen shifted: to the sky, a clear deep blue, to the grass, and then nothing.
“She turned it off,” Angie said. “That bitch. She turned the camera off.”
Sometime later, when the television had sparked to life again with a rerun of a local beauty contest, Angie roused herself. John was sitting slumped in his chair, his chin on his chest.
“I’ve got this idea that Patty-Cake may not come unlock the door tomorrow after all.”
“You think?” John said. “What about Tony, or Rivera?”
“Possible,” Angie said. “But unlikely.”
He didn’t seem upset by the idea that they might be here all weekend; he didn’t seem happy or angry or anything at all. He had a right to a little shock, Angie thought. She had no idea how she would react if she knew all of Hoboken was out looking for her with malice on their minds for something she hadn’t even done.
She said, “Last year I totaled my father’s car. Some idiot ran me off the Parkway and I ran into a construction site at about sixty miles an hour. The airbag went off. Have you ever had an airbag go off?”
He shook his head.
“You get slammed with what feels like a full-body punching bag moving about three hundred miles an hour.”
John looked thoughtful. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s just about what this feels like.” He finally turned his head toward her. “You didn’t get hurt?”
“Nah. Just some scrapes.”
He leaned forward in his chair, put his elbows on his knees. Angie, who had been sure last night that she would be angry at him for the rest of her life, looked at the back of his neck and knew she was bound to give in. For better or worse, she was stuck with the guy. She put her hand on him, felt the curve of his spine and the heat of him. He shuddered.
He said, “I don’t suppose there’s any alcohol around here.”
“That’s an excellent question,” Angie said. “Let’s go see if we can find Tony’s stash.”
They piled the provisions on the coffee table in the reception area. In addition to Patty-Cake’s contribution of apples and diet bars, they had a bag of potato chips, a half-empty box of stale doughnuts, and in the refrigerator they found milk, cranberry juice, and an assortment of Mexican and Chinese leftovers.
“Not even any fermenting juice,” John said.
“Oh,” Angie said, and dashed off. John followed her to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator again, empty now of everything but film, and then peered into the freezer compartment.
“Voilà.” She pulled out a bottle of vodka that was almost full, and turned to hold it up. John found himself close enough to feel her breath on his face. Her smile faded away and they stood there a moment in the open door of the refrigerator, unwilling, unable to move.
“Déjà vu,” Angie said finally, her voice rough.
“All over again.” John ducked his head and kissed her. An easy kiss, a question she could answer without much discussion. Angie kissed him back, tasting of apple and coffee, and then put her forehead against his shoulder and shook her head. He pushed a coil of hair behind her ear and stepped back.
Angie said, “You don’t have to get me drunk, you know. It won’t make a difference one way or the other.”
They had spread out their odd picnic on the floor of the reception room with the vodka bottle right in the middle, where both of them could keep an eye on it.
“You’re the one who’s pouring,” John reminded her. “Maybe you should stop.”
She frowned elaborately, her whole face contorting. Mouth and brows and cheeks disapproving, but she looked at the plastic glass that still held a swallow of vodka, and put it down on the table.
“Spoilsport.”
“So tell me,” John said, “what do you think Caroline said, after Patty-Cake turned the camera off?”
Angie looked at him hard, and he saw that she really wasn’t drunk at all, nor was she as angry as she had been. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take much to push her right back to that place. His own anger had disappeared sometime during the broadcast from Old Roses, and in its place was a void, waiting to be filled.
“Because,” John said, moving ahead carefully, “I’ve been thinking about this whole thing, and I’ve come to some conclusions.”
“Let me guess. A vast left-wing lesbian conspiracy has kidnapped and brainwashed your girlfriend. The one you didn’t want to marry anyway.”
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