The Penny Pinchers Club

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “From underneath the seat of our car, darling. Your Lexus, in fact.” He turned and frowned. “Sorry. I was trying to spare you.”

  “Our car?” That was shocking. “Why would there be condom wrappers in our car?”

  “Our daughter. She drives the Lexus more than you these days.”

  Laura? But she was so . . . perfect. “She told me she wasn’t having sex.” And with Todd Wilner? He with the pet tarantula and Guitar Hero collection? Why in a million years would she have lost her virginity to him? “She promised she’d wait.”

  “Come on, Kat. Don’t be like that.” He pulled me to him, pressing my head to his warm chest. “She’s almost graduated from high school and she’s a big girl now. Let her go.”

  I would not let her go, not Laura. Laura, who, just yesterday, I’d wrapped in a pink blanket and played “little piggy” on her teensy-weensy toes to make her chortle and laugh. Laura, who used to build fairy gardens in the backyard with moss and acorn hats.

  “You should be proud of her for being smart enough to protect herself.” He kissed the top of my head, and, reluctantly, I returned his gesture with a hug. It was so comforting to have him hold me at a time like this that I didn’t care about the money stuff. I needed my husband. I needed the father of our daughter to assure me everything was okay, that we would get through this together.

  He bent down and kissed away my tears, pushing back my hair and tilting my chin so he could have my full attention. “Don’t cry, Kat. We’ve done a good job. Laura’s a great woman who will go on to do great things and you know you will always be her mother no matter how much sex she has.” A smile played at the corner of his mouth.

  That was the annoying thing about Griff: He knew exactly the right thing to say. Even more than his eyes or those sexy lips, it was this quality about him that I found most alluring.

  “As for whatever insanity I inadvertently put you through earlier today by the crime of not answering my office phone, don’t be silly,” he said simply. “From the first moment you wandered into Barb Gladstone’s stuffy library, I have always loved you and I always will. No cute assistant will ever change that. Well—” he grinned—“depending on how cute. . . .”

  He laughed, and I punched him gently on the chest. “How cute my ass.”

  “Yes. I like that, too.” To drive the point home, so to speak, he reached around and playfully squeezed my butt, bringing me to him as hard as he could, his lips trailing down my neck and sparking an unexpected urgent craving.

  There was a party outside, but it was impossible for us to go back to it when we’d headed down this path. We’d been together long enough to recognize the signs, the signals, even the smells of unstoppable passion. “The laundry room,” I gasped. It was our old safe haven, where we used to flee when Laura was small and we were hit with sudden bouts of lust.

  “But,” he tried to protest as I kissed his rough neck,“we’ve got . . .”

  “Now!”

  Wordlessly, Griff lifted me and, with the strength of a man half his age, carried me across the kitchen to the door. Kicking it open, he gently set me on the folding table and closed the white shutters to the outside window as I madly yanked the shirt over his head.

  “Lock,” I whispered, sliding out of my underwear and fumbling at the zipper on my dress.

  “No time.” He meant the dress, not the lock, as he undid his jeans, the hardness of him unmistakable under his boxers.

  Please, I begged, crazed as usual by the overwhelming physical madness he could inspire, the almost animalistic urge to have him inside me. He pulled up my dress and, kissing me softly, slid himself in, pumping with masterful, determined strokes. Our mutual explosion was almost instantaneous and immediately cleared my head—a leaden accumulation of worry and fear rapidly dissipating into nothing.

  Of course he loved me, I decided calmly. How could I have ever thought otherwise?

  “Wow.” He pretended to be embarrassed, clearing his throat as he zipped up his jeans. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Griffiths. I have no idea what came over me.”

  I playfully tapped him on the nose. “Oh, I think I know what came over you.”

  He rearranged my dress and kissed me once more. “Happy anniversary, my love.”

  “Ditto.”

  We composed ourselves as best we could, careful to return to the party from separate entrances. I stalled by going to the bathroom to finger-comb my hair and carefully redo my lips in the emergency Pink Plum lipstick I kept in the downstairs medicine cabinet, trying not to laugh at how spot-on Buster had been about the room rocking.

  When I was through, I looked matronly, not at all like I’d been banging my husband on the laundry folding table minutes before. Viv would know, though. She always did.

  Done, ready to face the party, I opened the door to find a very small, very strange woman with jet-black hair and cat-eye glasses tapping a foot impatiently. “Oh,” I said, searching to place her. Perhaps someone’s new girlfriend. “I had no idea you were waiting. Sorry.”

  She reached in her purse and pulled out a business card. “I was waiting for you, not the bathroom. I saw your husband outside and thought this might be my chance to introduce myself.”

  I glanced at the business card.

  TONI FEINZIG, ATTORNEY

  SPECIALIZING IN MATRIMONIAL AND FAMILY LAW

  “I FIGHT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO!”

  So this was the famous Toni Feinzig.

  “Actually,” I began, embarrassed that Viv had been so bold as to invite her to the party,“I don’t think I’ll be needing your services after all. My husband and I are fine.”

  “I thought you might say that. It’s hardly usual for these matters to proceed in a linear direction. However, if circumstances should change, my cell is on the back of my card. Don’t hesitate to call me at any time of day or night.” She glanced at the laundry room. “I find it so pathetic, the extremes some men will go in order to buy themselves more time, their superficial attempts to fool the women they no longer love with presents, jewelry, extra attention.” She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “Sex.”

  I forced myself not to blink.

  “Of course, I expect you’re too smart to fall for those tricks. After twenty years you’d know when your husband is being manipulative, wouldn’t you?”

  It was definitely a trick question. There was no way to answer it. All I could do was shrug.

  “Interesting.” She smiled thinly and tapped the card in the palm of my hand. “Just remember, don’t say anything to him until you talk to me. Better not to shoot yourself in the foot at the start of the race.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Yes, what Toni had said was haunting. She was haunting with her drastic red suit and those rhinestone cat-eye glasses and jet-black hair—Kelly Osbourne meets the Wicked Witch of the West. As she minced away in her stiletto heels, I ripped up her business card and tossed it into the wastepaper basket, vigorously washing my hands afterward to remove the poison.

  It was Adele’s fault for jumping the gun and impulsively contacting that awful, awful ambulance chaser. Or, rather, in the case of divorce, moving van chaser. I hoped Toni wouldn’t continue to bug me with spot visits. I wasn’t exactly sure how these divorce lawyers worked, but I’d heard stories that they could be ruthless in their quest to beat out the competition and drum up business—following women to the ladies’ room and such.

  Shaking off Toni’s bad vibes, I returned to the party, where the tiki torches were flickering and our guests were enjoying themselves in the cool late-summer night. For once I’d thrown a decent gathering, I thought with pride, snatching a flute of bubbling champagne and drinking in the heady elixir of perfume and forbidden cigarette smoke.

  Over the glass rim, I caught Griff smiling at me from across the patio and I went all squishy. Too bad Bree wasn’t around to witness us in top form. Then she’d back off—she and her tiny A-line skirt.

  Turned out, the only drawback to the evening w
as Viv, who, tipsy on chardonnay and erroneously believing I’d confronted my husband about having an affair, stuck out her lower lip and offered her services as amateur psychologist/confidante.

  “How are you holding up?” She darted her eyes at Griff with new loathing. “You wanna go someplace and talk? That’s what sisters are for, you know, to lean on. You don’t have to put on a brave face with me.”

  I gently removed her hand from where it was stroking my hair. “Thanks,Viv. But nothing happened. It’s over.”

  “Don’t say that. You and Griff can get counseling and . . .”

  “My marriage isn’t over. I mean . . . this misunderstanding.” Elaine and her husband, Gerry, were getting ready to go, providing a welcomed escape from Viv’s hovering. “Excuse me. I have to thank Elaine.”

  But my older sister would not be so easily dissuaded. Lingering in the kitchen until the last straggler had left, she handed me a cup of decaffeinated coffee, put her arm around my waist, and said, “Finally, we have some girl time. Let’s talk.”

  It was past midnight and I was so tired of talking. Period. It had been a stressful day, what with finding the condom wrappers and then dealing with Chloe, shopping, being told that my husband had a secret bank account and MasterCard, throwing a party. All I wanted was to fall in bed and slip into the deep, dark abyss of blissful unconsciousness.

  “Tell you in the morning.” I took her cup of coffee and gave her a hug. “I promise I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

  She hesitated. “At least tell me what you two were discussing here in the kitchen.”

  “I can’t.” I willed my lips not to smile.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we weren’t exactly . . . discussing.”

  She snapped her hand off the kitchen counter as if it had been contaminated. “Oh, no, Kat, you didn’t.”

  “We did, and I’m glad. I have absolutely no doubts about Griff now.” That wasn’t completely true. I had plenty.

  “That explains why you two were so lovey-dovey later. And here I assumed you were putting on a noble act.” She hooked her purse over her shoulder and regarded me with grave disappointment. “That’s only going to make it worse, you know, in the long run.”

  “He’s my husband. I love him.”

  “I know. That’s why I despise him, because he knows that and he’s using your unquestioning love for him to take advantage of you by sleeping with that hottie assistant of his.”

  “Shhh.” I did not want Griff overhearing.

  She held up a finger. “Remember, men might lie, but the numbers never do.” Clearly,Viv was proud of that line because it was the second or third time she’d said it that day.

  “Who sang that, Mary Chapin Carpenter?”

  “No.” She acted hurt that I hadn’t recognized her genius. “Me . . . I think.”

  “Good-bye, sister dear,” I said, practically pushing her down the hall to the front door.

  “Mark my words.” Miffed, she tromped to a waiting Jaguar, where a teetotaling Adele was behind the wheel to take her home.

  But the damage had been done.

  After a brief sleep, I tossed and turned, unsatisfied, anxious, and incredibly thirsty. I drank two full glasses of water and returned to bed wide awake, staring at Griff ’s bare, broad back, torturing myself by imagining Bree stroking her hands along his wing muscles, moving lower, the two of them buck naked on his hand-carved Honduran mahogany desk.

  Then, for some bizarre reason, I thought of Liam and wondered if he’d been through this exact same hell when he’d learned his wife was having an affair. Miles and years apart and yet we were connected by a common heartbreak of infidelity.

  Maybe Mom was right; maybe I should give him a call. For old times’ sake, of course, nothing more.

  Griff rolled over and flung an arm around my waist, pulling me into the C of his naked, warm body. “Love you,” he murmured. “Great party.”

  That’s what he thought. But what about when he woke up and opened the Visa bill and found that I hadn’t spent $500 on the party but $2,000? Then what? What if Viv was correct in her assessment that our finances were a serious mess and we had no money left and I’d blown our last line of credit on crab cakes, cheese puffs, and champagne?

  Geesh. Laura was going to college next year. What if we couldn’t afford to send her and no one would give us a loan because our credit was crap and Laura would have to join Todd at the community college, where he majored in Call of Duty 101, forever resenting that her mother had ruined her dreams of becoming a French doctor by buying towels and sheets and pillows and leather couches and . . . party stuff?

  All of a sudden, I felt out of control, as if the condom wrappers and the receipt were simply the first symptoms of a larger disease, the spots before the fever of chicken pox. Griff and I were cooked, and no amount of laundry room sex was going to change that.

  Somehow in this turbulent sea of anxiety, I fell asleep and woke up, groggy, to a bright dawn. Griff, who never slept in, bounced out of bed and suggested we go for a run to start our twenty-first year as husband and wife. I did (only because Bree would have) and, after a mile of whining and complaining and practically falling on my knees begging for coffee, I loosened up and managed to put one foot in front of the other.

  We went through the neighborhood and I waved to Mrs. Demorts, who was putting her garden to bed for the year. Seeing me, she slowly stood and waddled over to gossip, brushing dirt off her knees along the way. Mrs. Demorts could talk you to death about such minutiae as where the trash collectors leave her garbage cans, which was why Griff begged off, saying he was going to sprint ahead “to get the sweat going.”

  Chicken.

  Fifteen minutes later, I turned the corner and found Griff dry as a bone, checking his iPhone, the one I bought him over his protests that it was nothing more than a fad and another one of my expensive impulsive purchases. His addiction to it was my own sweet vindication.

  “What’s up?” I bent over to catch my breath, though I’d gone barely a half mile.

  “Not much.” He clicked it off and shoved it into the pocket of his running shorts. “Let’s go. I’m starved.”

  At home, I took a shower while Griff cut up fruit and flipped a few omelets that we took to the patio table where he read the Week in Review of the Sunday New York Times and I read the Style section. Every five minutes behind his paper he checked something in his lap.

  “Breaking news?” I gestured with my fork to the iPhone.

  “Just waiting for word on whether we snagged an interview with Hunter Christiansen.”

  Ah, yes, the elusive Hunter Christiansen, the Fed’s most charismatic and secretive former chairman, the man who most economists—aside from Griff—claimed was single-handedly responsible for failing to recognize the need for the regulation of Wall Street, thereby leading to the biggest crash since the Great Depression. Which might have been why Christiansen had retired in disgrace and fled to some remote outpost eschewing all interviews and demurring from the time-honored tradition of selling the rights to his memoirs for a million plus.

  An exclusive meeting with Christiansen would transform Griff ’s book from an obscure academic treatise by a small university press into a nonfiction best seller. It would be read by every economist, politician, stock broker, venture capitalist, businessman, and small-town banker searching for secrets to the Fed’s inner workings. Not to mention it would definitely get him tenure.

  The odds were Griff didn’t have a shot in hell of talking to Christiansen. The old codger had already sent final word through his people that he wasn’t interested in participating in any book having to do with the Federal Reserve. So how come Griff was on tenterhooks, checking his iPhone every three seconds to see if Christiansen had changed his mind?

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  He said, “You never know.”

  So true.

  As it turned out, the big call did come. Not for Griff, but for
me.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you at home. It wasn’t until after I dialed that I remembered it was a Sunday and that you might have other plans besides work,” an earnest voice prattled.

  Madeleine Granville. She must have read the email I sent on Friday and reconsidered. “No. I’m the one who must apologize,” I jumped in. “I’m not in the habit of putting clients on hold, and someday when we’re old friends, I’ll be able to tell you the truth of what happened.”

  She laughed. “I have an idea, from Elaine. Would it have anything to do with your boss?”

  “Of course not. My boss is a lovely woman.” Who was I to burn bridges?

  “Good for you, keeping it on the up and up. But even with the best boss it’s not easy breaking out on your own, is it?”

  This question seemed more profound than it probably was in light of yesterday’s revelations. Madeleine was right. It wasn’t easy breaking out on one’s own. It required drive, planning, and, most of all, money.

  The thing was, I could list a thousand reasons why I needed to break free from Chloe. What was the one reason Griff needed to break free from me?

  Anyway, as it was not the time to drift off into an existential analysis, I snapped to and focused on reassuring her that I could do wonders for her house, and inexpensively, too. She’d appreciated the ideas in my email, which made my pitch easier. All we had to do was meet.

  “The directions are rather complicated,” she said as I rustled through the bowl by the phone for a pen and paper. “Being a city girl, I don’t have a driver’s license, so the best I can do is tell you how to get to my house from the Princeton Junction train station.” At last, I found one of Laura’s eye liners and a thin envelope from Franklin Savings with an ominous OPEN IMMEDIATLY/TIMED MATERIAL stamped on top.

  Uh-oh. I must have missed it in yesterday’s mail. Tentatively sliding my finger under the flap, I didn’t need to read the opening paragraph to realize it was a notice that on Friday our checking account had gone into overdraft by $64.