Kids. A boy and a girl because Nick liked symmetry. No redheads. Two neat little brunettes, like Nick. She’d have to keep them away from the pool— unless they took swimming lessons at the country club. Of course they’d take swimming lessons at the country club. They were Nick’s kids. And the suede couches would definitely have to go— unless she raised them to be incredibly tidy, like Nick. And incredibly well behaved, like Nick. And of course, they’d have to go to the right schools and wear the right clothes and probably play the Moby Dick game, and as Tess visualized them in school uniforms, she suddenly didn’t like them much.
Boring little twits, she thought. And then she thought, Stop it. It wouldn’t be like that. Nick would change once he got the partnership.
Maybe.
It was too much to think about and she’d been thinking all night, anyway, so she went back upstairs and fell asleep and dreamed of dark-haired children who kept looking at her with contempt and saying, “Oh, mother,” and Nick coming home and announcing he was running for president so she’d have to get new clothes. She didn’t wake up again until three, when Gina called her, hysterical, because she’d just read in the paper about Park’s engagement.
“How could he be engaged?” Gina said through her tears when Tess reached her apartment. “He’s been with me every night. How could he have gotten engaged to somebody else?”
“Oh, Gina,” Tess said, sinking onto Gina’s moth-eaten couch and pulling her friend down with her. “Listen, honey, Park just...” She tried to think of a good way to put it, but the truth was that Park had been two-timing Gina all along and Tess hadn’t done anything about it. “Park’s a jerk,” she finished. “So am I. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Gina pulled away. “You knew?”
“Nick told me not to get involved,” Tess said miserably. “And I thought it might work out. You were so happy and... Oh, hell, I screwed up. I’m sorry. If you never forgive me, I understand.”
“How long has he been seeing her?” Gina’s eyes blazed at Tess. “How long?”
“I don’t know,” Tess said. “From the way his father talked, they’ve known each other since birth.”
“He knew her before me?” Gina said. “So what was I? A fling? He knew all along that...” She stopped and swallowed. “And he didn’t even tell me. He let me read it in the paper. Did he think I wouldn’t care?”
“I don’t know,” Tess said. “I don’t know what either one of them thinks. Sometimes I think they don’t see us at all. They just see what they want to. Maybe Park thinks you’re only looking for a good time. Maybe Nick thinks I enjoy being the new Nancy Reagan. I don’t know. I just want to kill both of them right now.”
Gina slumped back against the couch and picked up a pillow. It was a Cats T-shirt, plump with stuffing and sewn shut at the neck, sleeves and hem, and it looked oddly like a dismembered corpse as she hugged it. That’s what Park’s going to look like when I get through with him, Tess vowed, and then she concentrated on Gina. “Are you all right? Talk to me. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Gina said into the neck of her stuffed T-shirt. “I don’t know. I love him.”
Tess felt her whole body grow cold. “You are not going to see him again. Tell me you’re not going to see him again. You wouldn’t.”
Gina’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Tess stopped and tried to keep from shrieking. “He’s getting married. What are you going to do? Be his understanding mistress? I know you’re heavily into adapting your life to suit Park, but don’t you think that’s a little much?”
“Stop it, Tess,” Gina said tiredly. “No, of course I’m not going to be his mistress. I just have to think about this. I’ll have to give back all the stuff he gave me, and then...I don’t know. I guess I don’t want to see him.”
“I guess you don’t,” Tess said. “My God, I guess you don’t.”
“Do you suppose Nick would pick the stuff up after I’ve packed it?” Gina asked. “Would he give it to him?”
“Of course he would,” Tess said. “Whether he wants to or not. You don’t ever have to see that rat again.”
“He’s not really a rat,” Gina said. Then she sniffed. “Well, maybe he is.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Tess said, standing up. “I’m going to go get us ice cream and mashed potatoes and gravy and enough chocolate to coat Riverbend, and when we’re done sedating ourselves with food, I’m going to tear that bastard apart with my bare hands.”
“No, you’re not,” Gina said, her voice exhausted. “Just let him be. It’s not your problem. It’s my fault. I should have known better. What did I think he was doing with somebody like me, anyway?” She looked up at Tess. “I really thought he loved me. I really did. Isn’t that dumb? No wonder I never graduated from high school. No brains.”
Tess sat down again and wrapped her arms around Gina, holding her tight. “Stop it,” she said. “Just stop it. This is his fault, not yours.”
Gina buried her head in Tess’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice muffled. Then she pulled her head back and looked at Tess. “It’s okay. I told you. It’s not your problem.”
Tess swallowed the lump in her throat that formed every time she looked at Gina’s tear-ravaged face. It might not be her problem, but it was going to be her pleasure when she found Park, the son of a bitch. “What kind of Haagen-Dazs do you want?” she said, and went to work dragging Gina back to mental health.
Two hours later, Tess stormed into the outer reception area of Patterson and Patterson looking for blood. Park’s blood. Splattered all over the walls if possible. Just the thought of Gina’s devastated expression made her shake all over again. She was going to find Park, and when she did, the next notice the paper ran about him would be his obituary.
“Excuse me, miss, but—”
Tess ignored the receptionist and stomped through the doors into the law offices themselves.
Several startled secretaries looked up, and one, a medium-size guy with glasses, actually tried to head her off, but when Park emerged unknowing from his office, she bore down on him with a murderous single-mindedness that quelled everything in her path.
She grabbed Park’s lapel as he spoke to his secretary and pulled him around, his startled face only inches from hers. “I want to see you now, you rotten bastard,” she hissed. “You want this in public or in private?”
“I, uh, have a client in my office...” Park began, babbling in shock.
“Here.” A calm brunette in her thirties opened an office door across the way. “Use Nick’s office.”
“I don’t think so, Christine—” Park said, but Tess said, “Great,” and when Park said, “Really, I can’t—” she grabbed his tie and yanked him across the floor into the office, slamming the door behind them.
“You rotten, lousy, lying scum of a cheating creep,” Tess spat at him, backing him up against the wall. “You had to hurt her, didn’t you? It was too much trouble to break it off, too tough for you to tell her you couldn’t see her anymore, so you just let it go on and on and on and then you let her find out from a damn newspaper article!”
“What are you talking about?” Park asked.
That stopped her. Park looked terrified, but he also looked clueless. There was no guilt on his face at all. God, he was dumb. He didn’t even realize what he’d done to Gina with that announcement. “Gina,” she spat at him. “I’m talking about what you did to Gina.”
Park grabbed her shoulders. “What happened to Gina? Is she hurt? What—”
“Of course, she’s hurt, you jackass,” Tess said, shrugging out of his grip. “She just read about your engagement in the paper. She thought you loved her, she really thought—”
“What engagement?” Park said. “I’m not engaged. Gina thinks I’m engaged?”
“The paper says you’re engaged,” Tess said, but her voice went down an octave as she
frowned at him. “To Corinne.”
The expression on Park’s face took away the last of her rage. Obviously if there was one thing Park didn’t want, it was to be engaged to Corinne.
“Park,” Tess said calmly, “somebody told the paper you were marrying Corinne. Was that a mistake?”
“Oh, God,” Park said. “And Gina read that? I’ve got to talk to her.” He lunged past Tess for Nick’s phone, and Tess followed him, relieved but perplexed.
“Who would tell the paper you were engaged?” she asked him as he punched numbers on the phone like a madman. “And why would the paper believe him? Or her? Corinne? Would Corinne do it?”
“No,” Park said grimly, and then his expression changed. “Gina? Gina? No, wait, Gina—” He put the phone down and swallowed hard as he looked at Tess. “She hung up as soon as she heard my voice.”
“She’s really devastated, Park.”
“I didn’t do it,” he said plaintively. “I wouldn’t do that to her. I didn’t do it.”
“I know,” Tess said. “I realize that. It’s the only reason you’re still living. Sit down.”
Park sank into Nick’s office chair and buried his face in his hands. “My father did this,” he said through his fingers. “He wants me to get married and he picked out Corinne and now he’s forcing my hand.”
“He really thought if he just announced you were marrying her, you’d do it?” Tess asked incredulously.
Park looked up from his hands. “I probably would have if I hadn’t met Gina. I’ve had a lot of Corinnes in my life. Might as well marry one.”
Tess sat down across from him. “You’re going to marry Corinne? You can’t be serious. What about Gina?”
Park put his head back in his hands again. “She won’t talk to me.”
Tess resisted the urge to slap him. “Park, explain something to me. What the hell have you been doing with Gina and Corinne in the past month?”
Park leaned back and closed his eyes in pain. “I meant to tell Gina I couldn’t see her anymore. I knew my dad wouldn’t like her, and there was Corinne. I meant to leave Gina. But I couldn’t.” He opened his eyes and looked at Tess in abject misery. “I just couldn’t.” He swallowed. “I made up my mind to do it after Nick pointed out yesterday what a mess I was making. I went over there last night, and I was going to do it. I really was.”
He stopped, and Tess watched him, ready to disbelieve everything he said but feeling sorry for him at the same time in spite of herself.
“And she opened the door,” Park said finally, “and she was just... beaming at me, and I thought she’d won the lottery or something, her smile was that big. I asked what happened, and she said...” Park swallowed again. “She said, ‘You’re here.’” He blinked at Tess. ‘“You’re here.’ That’s all it was. That big goofy smile just because I was there. Nobody ever smiled like that at me before.”
Tess leaned back in her own chair, newly sympathetic, but still fed up with how self-centered he was. “And that’s when you knew you couldn’t leave her— when you realized she loved you,” she said derisively. “Well, terrific, Park, but that still leaves Gina out in the cold.”
“No,” Park said. “That’s when I knew I loved her.”
Tess eyed him skeptically. “Because she gets a big goofy smile every time she sees you?”
“No,” Park said. “Because I get the same big goofy smile every time I see her.”
Park’s face creased into a big goofy smile at the thought, and Tess closed her eyes and groaned. “Don’t do this to me. I was doing much better hating you. Now I have two of you to take care of. Oh, hell.”
“What am I going to do?” Park asked. “Gina won’t even talk to me.”
Tess could hear Nick’s voice saying, Stay out of it. Well, the hell with him. It was his fault they had two twits for kids. She straightened her shoulders and looked Park in the eye. “All right, here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to call Corinne and tell her you’re not engaged. Then you’re going to go see Gina and invite her to dinner with us all tonight.”
“Dinner with my father?” Park said appalled. “He’ll be awful to her. I can’t do that to her.”
“Are you serious about loving her?” Tess demanded.
“Yes, but—”
“Well, she’s going to have to meet your parents sooner or later,” Tess said. “And under the circumstances, sooner is your best bet. It’s only a matter of time before your father gets you engaged to Princess Di.”
“He’ll be awful to her,” Park repeated. “And my mother... Oh, God, my mother—”
“You’re just going to have to stand up for her,” Tess said. “Gina’s going through hell, and she’s not going to believe you’re serious about her unless you announce it in front of your parents. You owe her.”
Park swallowed. “All right.” He pulled the phone toward him again and punched a button that connected him to his secretary. “Get me Corinne,” he said into the receiver and then looked at Tess.
“Good start,” Tess said.
When Park finished breaking off his non-engagement, Tess called Gina.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Park is coming over. The engagement was a mistake. He needs to talk to you. Let him in.”
“You made him do that!” Gina cried hysterically. “I told you not to get involved. You can’t make him love me. Stop it.”
“Gina, think for a minute. You know how I feel about Park.” Tess avoided his eyes as she spoke. “Why would I try to get you two back together if he didn’t want that, too? He loves you and he’s miserable you got hurt, and he’s on his way to your place, so let him in.”
“He loves me?” Gina said woefully.
Tess covered the mouthpiece and said, “Go,” to Park, who shot out of the office. “He loves you,” she said back into the mouthpiece. “Go wash your face and put on some makeup. We’re all going to dinner.”
TESS STILL HAD HALF AN HOUR to kill before Nick was due back, and she spent it exploring his office. It was all brown leather and wood instead of black and white, but it had the same varnished look that everything Nick owned had. The nobody-lives-here look. When she moved around to sit in his desk chair, she saw that even the photograph on his desk was framed in tooled leather.
Her attention caught, Tess took a closer look at the photograph. Whatever she’d expected to find on Nick’s desk, it wasn’t this.
The picture was the snapshot of them —muddy and disheveled— that she’d had back at her apartment, and she marveled at his keeping it on his desk since he looked like hell in it. Really attractive hell, but the absolute antithesis of the perfect image he flaunted for his clients. She picked up the picture and stared at it again, remembering how much fun they’d had that day. How much fun they always had. She traced Nick’s face with her fingertip, loving him so much she smiled just because his picture was in front of her. If only he was always like that, smiling and relaxed, instead of insatiably chasing that damn partnership. Maybe Nick could change and maybe their kids wouldn’t be twits. Park loved Gina. Anything was possible.
She sighed and looked again at herself in the picture. She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek and she looked about ten. That’s probably what her kids would look like without Nick’s genes to balance hers. She scowled at the picture, cataloging her deficiencies. Her hair was standing straight up and her face was dirty. She was wearing no make up and she was laughing with all her teeth showing.
Tess frowned at the picture, suddenly struck. She did look ten. Ten with crow’s feet, but ten just the same.
Or maybe eight.
“Christine?” she called, and Christine appeared in the doorway. “Hi, I’m Tess.”
“That was my guess,” Christine said. “I’m very pleased to meet you. What did you do to Park?”
“Fixed his life,” Tess said. “Tell me, was this picture of me on Nick’s desk when Norbert Welch was here?”
“Yes,” Christine said.
“Do you think Welch saw it?”
Christine paused for a nanosecond. “He moved around a lot when he was in here. He saw it.”
Tess looked at the picture and slowly shook her head. “I’ll be damned. I will be damned. I never thought of this.” She put the photograph down and asked, “Can I make a long-distance call on this phone?”
“Certainly,” Christine said. “Press nine to get an outside line.”
Five minutes later, Tess had Elise on the line.
“Concentrate darling,” she told her mother. “This is important. Remember when I asked you about Lanny?”
“Of course I remember,” Elise said. “I’m not senile.”
“Right. I’m sorry.” Tess tried again. “Somebody else was looking for that manuscript and he found it. What I couldn’t figure out was how he found it. But then I thought, what if this guy knew Lanny, too? What if he was in the commune with us when Lanny wrote the story? So I want you to remember if there was another guy around that summer. Shorter than Lanny. Fatter. Maybe a little older.”
“Well, there were a lot of men in the commune, dear.”
“This one’s name was Welch,” Tess said. “Norbert Welch.”
“No,” Elise said slowly. “I don’t remember anyone by that name.”
“Damn,” Tess said. “I was sure this guy had recognized my picture and that’s why he invited me to his party— to see if I’d remember the story. It was too big of a coincidence otherwise. The commune and me and Lanny and the story... How could Welch have—”
“The only Welch I remember was Lanny,” Elise said.
Tess dropped the photo. “What?”
“Lanny Welch,” Elise said. “He was the only one. No Norbert.”
“Lanny’s name was Welch? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask. And I didn’t remember it until you said the name. We didn’t use last names much. Is it important?”
“Yes. Thanks, Elise.” Tess hung up in a daze. Lanny Welch? A brother of Norbert’s maybe? But then why had Norbert recognized her picture if he wasn’t at the commune? She punched a button on the intercom. “Christine? Is Norbert Welch’s real name Norbert Welch?”
Strange Bedpersons Page 17
