Trophies, page 46
There wasn’t a strong-enough pill.
On her way to the car, Claire ducked her head into the family room and said good-bye just to rub in the guilt.
Her only response had been an anxious wail from Brooke: “Oh, my God! She’s still here? Mommy’s coming any second!”
Claire drove down the driveway, but she didn’t go to the movies. Instead she turned around and parked in the shadows of the biggest hedge she’d ever seen. With a perfect view of their gate.
She needed to see the ex who was still in love with her husband, because she had the feeling that her husband was still in love with the ex.
She ended up seeing more than she’d bargained for.
When the Hummer pulled up to the curb, Claire didn’t expect to see Pam get out, much less wait until the very young guy she was with get out of her passenger seat and come around the car to take the wheel. She certainly didn’t expect to see Billy’s ex give a long, deep, wet one to the very young guy either.
(Okay, strike that in-love stuff.)
There was more unexpected stuff to observe.
Pam-the-ex was thin. Very thin.
Her long hair was thin too. It was the coarse, overbleached, straightened-one-too-many-times kind of hair that said, I’d really rather be brown and curly and some protein wouldn’t hurt either.
She wore overhip teenager clothes that she no longer filled out.
And too much fad jewelry, and sunglasses, even though it was dusk.
And then something else broke through Claire’s renewed stronger-strategy-that-was-evidently-useless when she saw Pam unsuccessfully punch the call-box buttons, throw up her hands and curse, dive into her purse, produce a card, finally get it right after two tries, and fume as the gate opened, obviously too slowly.
Something else broke through when she saw Pam turn back to the very young guy and say loudly, “This’ll be short. I’m not going to let those little bitches make this a habit.”
What had broken through was:
Pam was put out that she had to see her kids.
The next thing that had broken through was:
Pam used to be a Trophy wife.
Now Pam was a neurotic ex-wife who didn’t want to deal with her age—or anything else, for that matter.
And Claire had needed to ask herself:
Was this going to be her future too?
Later, when Pepper’d called to make a lunch date for next week, Claire had been purposely vague.
She didn’t know if she was going to be sticking around that long.
82
Dark Moon Arisin’
This Greek fever is gettin’ scary, thought Pepper as she watched Cooter and Maybelle stomp out of the living room in tears. Their tears usually destroyed Ari! They made him nervous to the point where he’d give in to just about anything, no matter how many times he’d been played. Cooter was turning him into Gumby at three and Maybelle disarmed him earlier!
But just now, Ari had coldly broken their little hearts, causing real tears without batting an eye. Well, she wasn’t sure about the eye batting. The whole time he’d been informing the family that he’d canceled their spring vacation at Atlantis and booked them all on what sounded like a cruel and rocky holiday in Crete, he was staring out the window at Baphy-the-statue.
He still was. It was creeping her out, making Pepper almost wish she had found drugs when she’d raided his medicine chest this afternoon in an effort to figure out what was wrong with him. She’d darned near lost a sister to methamphetamine, but at least she had experience with drug addiction. At least drugs would explain this behavior!
The Greek fever was progressing too. Closed-eyed sex, babbling on the phone for hours, and now, endless statue staring! They were up to three statues out in the damn yard (actually, four, but Maybelle had drawn a happy face on Apollo’s “wiener” and he was out getting cleaned). What the hell was going on with this man? Greek people didn’t act like this. Weirdos did! Ari’d been staring out the window and sipping at funky firewater ever since he’d come home!
He looks like a statue himself!
“Nice goin’, Zorba,” Pepper said to her husband-the-statue’s back. “So who made this decision, you or your new best friend, Mr. Ouzo?”
“It is time they learned the true meaning of Easter,” Ari said quietly.
“Forgiveness? I wouldn’t wanna hold m’ breath.”
“They will love it,” Ari insisted. “In Harakas Monofatsiou, Easter Sunday is celebrated by burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot on a giant bonfire. All over the island, you’ll see villagers on their donkeys, gathering firewood. And the children can help gather wood too.”
He’s gone crazy.
“Um, I don’t think they’re ready ta trade shark tanks an’ water slides for a burnin’ man an’ blood-colored eggs. An’ speakin’ a’ Easter, when’s the last time Ari Papadopoulos set foot in a church?”
“Last week when I registered Janos for Sunday school.”
“That’s not fair!” hollered Jerry, coming in to see what was going on.
“I’m only half Greek!”
Ari turned in a flash and shot out a finger out at his son. “You’re my son and you’re Greek and you’re getting confirmed and that’s final!” he roared. “And how dare you raise your voice to me?”
“How dare you act like a stupid-head bully?” said the little boy, sticking out his chin, despite his shock.
That was it. Ari hurled his glass at the machine-cut quartz-paneled wall surrounding the fireplace and it exploded into a fine crystal mist.
At Ari’s first step, Pepper instinctively moved in front her son like a shield and locked eyes with the stranger in front of them. “Jerry, git on upstairs, hon,” she croaked. “Daddy’s not feelin’ like hisself tonight.”
But Jerry was her firstborn. And he sensed danger around his mother. “Not if he’s gonna hurt you instead.”
The words might as well have been a mirror of Ari’s soul. And for a split second Pepper saw that her husband didn’t recognize his own reflection.
“That’s ridiculous,” he muttered, fingering the medal lying underneath his shirt before dismissing them with a wave and stalking off to his study.
Pepper felt her son lean his forehead into the small of her back.
Holy shit, she thought as the sound of Ari slamming his door and throwing the lock echoed back down the glass halls. I’m back in Kentucky!
In her now-Papadopoulos-subsidized apartment, Mariah, in a trance, dribbled three circles of bull’s blood around a phallic-shaped candle containing painstakingly gathered fingernail clippings and strands of Ari’s hair. (She’d followed him to the barbershop and managed to surreptitiously plunder the wastebaskets.) Lighting the candle, she muttered a final incantation before being released from the trance and collapsing.
A half hour later, she opened her eyes and focused on her bedroom’s indigo walls and the work she’d completed. The seven-hour trance had left her hungry.
In the kitchen, Mariah consumed three large glasses of water and a pear while forking garlic-free lamb souvlaki out of a Tupperware container into a saucepan on the stove. It was left over from the lunch she’d served Aristotle Papadopoulos earlier today.
Just before she initiated their first kiss.
In four days, when the moon becomes full, he would come to her home for dinner. And she would finally seduce him and seal the spell, binding him to her forever.
And then, on to the next Papadopoulos brother.
The phone rang just as she tucked into the meat; she checked on the number as she chewed.
Right on time.
After pouring herself a glass of dark retsina wine, and washing down her mouthful, Mariah punched the speaker button on the phone.
“Good evening, Mr. Kousakis,” she said.
83
Dude!
“Aw. Mrs. Erhardt, that’s not a good—”
“Oh, come on, Joseph.”
“A man could get killed.”
“Don’t be silly! You’re thinking too hard.”
“I’m thinking I don’t want to die.”
“Oh, just give it a shot. C’mon. Bam! Now!”
“No way! I am not going to guess your age!”
Patti looked at the other security guard inside the north gatehouse of Beverly Park. He was shaking his head without looking up from his book. Patti drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of her Aston Martin DB9.
“Okay,” she began, “what if I was a stranger and I ran the barrier? And you had to call the police and give a description of me. What would you—”
“What kind of car?”
“Huh?” Patti asked. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Well, it does, because a Smart Car, like Mrs. Pollarde’s, wouldn’t break—”
“A Hummer. What age would you tell the police?”
“We’d notify internal security personnel first. Does the Hummer have plates?” asked Joseph.
“Give it up, Mrs. Erhardt,” yelled the other security guard without looking up. “Joey ain’t playin’.”
“You all look twenty-one,” Joey finally said, but it didn’t satisfy Patti.
“Twenty-one like Cissy Pollarde, or twenty-one like Janet—” she began.
“Mrs. Erhardt!”
Thanks to the drunken observations of Jeff and Roger, Patti had spent the entire afternoon augmenting her face with Botox and fillers. The amount of cattle required to manufacture her lip collagen alone met the qualifications for membership in the Texas Ranchers Association. Patti herself would qualify as a weapon of mass destruction if she soaked her temples in the right aqueduct.
In order to prevent telltale bruising or swelling, she’d made her dermatologist spend fifteen minutes massaging every single poke point with ice and the results were smoother than she’d ever experienced. But since bruises had a nasty habit of sneaking to the surface, sometimes hours after a dermo visit, Patti spot-checked her face in the rearview every few minutes during the ride home—in case she needed to apply the emergency liquid nitrogen propellant she kept in her glove compartment.
Preoccupied thusly, she didn’t notice a silver truck with multiple surfboards in its bed parked across the street from her house.
And she didn’t go into her house by her front door because she’d parked at the east entrance in order to have a glass of punch at the big farewell barbecue party for Alexandra and her mother, two of the backyard Hondurans who were finally moving out on their own.
The mother, it seemed, had a flair for stand-up and had shaped her experience as a mudslide refugee into a lucrative act entitled “Locas Rich Bitches.” A UTA agent caught it at an open-mike night in Silver Lake and secured the mother her own show on the Zane Enterprises–owned Spanish-language radio network. It was already predicted to be a hit by both critics and the kingmakers of the Housekeeper Network.
Patti made so many toasts that she was mildly in her cups when she finally entered her house to the sight of Lou carrying two glasses of scotch toward the living room, almost causing her to aggravate her injection sites by breaking into tears of joy.
He was walking without a cane.
Marveling at Lou’s ability to balance scotch and maneuver his tank stand at the same time without spilling, Patti tiptoed up behind him into the living room as he handed a glass of scotch to Ricky-the-surfer, who was at the moment, sitting on the couch.
That was when she fainted dead away on the floor.
“Dude!” Rick pointed out to Lou. “Your wife’s down.”
Patti revived on the couch, waking up to see Ricky’s face hovering over her.
Wow. It wasn’t just a dream!
And then she fainted again.
The second time she revived, Patti beheld Lou. With a gun in his hand.
(!)
WWII or I?
And then she fainted again, dead away.
The third time Patti Fink opened her eyes, they focused on Ricky-the-surfer again.
“Patti, don’t pass out!” he cried. “This scotch is amazing!”
“Okay, if this is heaven, I get to change that shirt,” she said, wincing at the purple-and-brown tiki print Ricky was wearing.
“No way! You’re not dead. And neither am I.”
Patti dropped Ricky’s hand and put a cube from his glass on her forehead. Lou was nowhere to be seen.
“I been stalk-parking across the street for three days,” Ricky continued,
“keeping deathwatch just in case you needed company or a sympathy bone.” Ricky broke into a naughty smile. “Drove in on the wrong side while the guards were checking out this lady’s Smart Car. Then this morning, I was taking a leak on your wall and looked over and I saw the old dude come out and get the paper. And he didn’t look dead. And he didn’t look about-to-be-dead. So I got, like, major confusion, so I jumped the wall and knocked on the door to ask the old dude to hurry up and croak because I was in love with his wife. And Lou was happy to see somebody that spoke English, so he invited me in…Patti? Patti? Whoa.”
The fourth time Patti revived, she was still looking at Ricky.
“Patti, stay awake. I couldn’t do it,” he said. “Because now…I’m in love with Lou.”
“This is definitely not heaven,” Patti said, seizing his scotch and downing it.
“Not man-on-man love, but major-dude-admiration love. Lou is one seriously awesome dude! Did you know he both shredded and toked with the Duke?”
“Of Windsor?”
“Kahanamoku.”
“Whoa.”
“I can’t rip off the Lou dude’s woman,” Ricky went on. “That would be seriously not righteous. And I’m sorry, but we can’t get married either.” With that, he uncrumpled his cocktail napkin and offered it to her. “Sorry for the trauma. Here.”
Patti used it to cover her sudden screams of joy and relief.
Ricky shook his head sadly. “I knew you’d be bummed.”
“It’ll take time,” she said, after composing herself. “Whooo! I had the strangest visions when I was out.”
Ricky giggled. “You thought we were in heaven.”
“And I saw Lou with this very big gun.”
“Yeah, he got it from some dude named Nippon at some club or something called Iwo Jima. He was underage and lied to get in.” (!)
WWII after all!
Patti almost levitated them both off the couch.
“Whoa,” say Ricky. “You shouldn’t get up yet.”
“Let-me-go-you-don’t-understand! Lou is clever!”
“The gun wasn’t for us,” Ricky explained. “It was for crowd control.”
“Huh?”
“The rave out back is getting pretty festive. Hear it?”
Patti had thought the loud music was coming from Klaus’s room. And outside the living-room floor-to-ceiling windows, she noticed two men moving around, exchanging punches. “Whoa.”
“And Katsume has a history midterm tomorrow,” Ricky informed her.
“But the Lou dude wasn’t gonna wuss and narc on his own party. Besides, the cops have this button they can push that tells them the phone number of who made the call.”
At that moment two shots rang out, coming from the backyard. But they didn’t seem to dampen the mood of the party; in fact, people started cheering and the fight continued.
Then Lou appeared at one of the massive glass patio doors and let himself in. He had the gun in his hand and his portable oxygen tank in his Dunhill shoulder holster.
“Hey, sweet stuff, welcome back!” he said, sidekicking the man who was winning the fight so he could shut the door all the way.
“Um, I hate to tell you this, Lou dude,” said Ricky-the-surfer, “but your rave is still raging. You’re gonna have to shoot more than two people. Or maybe the sound system.”
“Nah, shot in the air.” Lou shuffled over to a massive amber-inlaid console table, opened a drawer, and put away the gun. “Right now every home owner in the park is calling the cops and hiding under their beds.”
Sure enough, the sound of sirens coming from all directions grew progressively louder and the men outside stopped fighting and ran.
“Heh heh,” said Lou, glancing out the closest window. “Look at ’em go! So,” he said, shuffling over and smacking Patti’s thigh as he sat down, “I see you met the kid. Did you know he can surf?”
Patti nodded and hoped someone on her staff was sober enough to hear her ring for more scotch.
“Lou dude, you never finished the Baja story!” said Ricky, plopping down at Lou’s feet like a disciple.
“Oh, yeah, the trip with Bob Mitchum? Had to fight my way out of a brawl. Ever heard of a donkey bar?”
Patti watched her former paramour hang on her husband’s every word. And she found it hysterically ironic that when the staff member brought in the cocktail tray, it turned out he was one of the two jokers who’d just been fighting in her backyard.
Whoa.
84
Boo!
Richard Zane watched the twenty-by-ten-foot wall-to-wall home-theater screen descend from the ceiling and felt his lower back descend and relax in concert with it as he settled deeper into his command chair. The rest of the room was filled with wide, down-filled couches and chaises, but he preferred his custom reclining seat, back row, center, slightly raised, overseeing the room. In control with the controls at his fingertips. He continued to watch the screen click into place as he swiveled his elbow to the right, picked up the remote under his fingertips, and then aimed it at the screen and depressed his thumb in order to dive into eleven days’ worth of TiVo treats.
Nothing happened.
Richard clicked again. Still nothing. Looking down, he realized that the object in his hand wasn’t his old familiar friend the remote but something foreign and smaller and heavier.
Goddammit! Friggin’ Kenny!
Richard now remembered passing Kenny-the-Zane-compound-in-house-technician puttering around downstairs as he was departing for his vacation. But he’d been too preoccupied (or depressed) to stop and ask the guy what the hell he was doing. Every time Richard saw Kenny, it gave him the willies because the guy had a nasty habit of updating electronic gadgets. Dammit! He liked the old remote! He was used to it! Now he had to start all over again with this new alien ray-gun-shaped thing. Richard leaned back in his chair and tipped his head back toward the door.
