by Amy Korman
“I wish I could have seen the vet’s arms,” I said to Waffles, “because he had really tan wrists and hands. He probably has great forearms, too.” Although, if he was married, his forearms were null and void. I don’t look at married guys’ arms—ever—unless they’re the arms of movie stars along the lines of Daniel Craig, which doesn’t count.
I may have bad taste in men, but it’s not bad enough to include dating married guys. I’d choose a single man who was a flight risk to Thailand any day over a man who’d vowed to love and honor another woman. And I’d probably never see John the vet again. How likely was it that I’d go to a symphony party again anytime soon?
Then again, maybe he was single.
I looked at Waffles, who was gently snoring, and thought: Bingo! John was a vet, wasn’t he? Waffles could use a checkup. There was nothing wrong with him, but it couldn’t hurt to take the dog in . . . and see the vet. Plus I could double-check for a wedding ring.
I opened my laptop and looked up the number of John Hall, DVM, and found out he was part of a veterinary group called All Creatures Great and Small, in Haverford, two miles down the road. A chipper-sounding assistant answered my call, and I asked for an appointment with Dr. Hall. “It’s for a basset hound,” I told her. “Just a routine checkup.”
“Dr. Hall has an equine/bovine practice—he treats horses and cows,” she sang in an infuriatingly cheerful way. “And he’s not in the office much. It’s hard to bring a cow into the office, so he goes to them!”
“I see,” I said, stymied. “Um, does he work in the office at all?”
“He does usually spend Thursday afternoons catching up on paperwork,” she said, sounding a little less cheerful. “May I ask why?”
“I’ve heard he’s a great vet!” I told her, then asked for an appointment with one of the vets who treated dogs. “I can only come in on a Thursday, though,” I told her regretfully. “In the afternoon.”
“What’s wrong with your dog?” she asked.
“He eats everything,” I told her.
“All dogs eat everything,” she told me.
“This is beyond normal,” I assured her. “I’m pretty sure he has a tapeworm.” She grouchily ordered me to bring a stool sample. “With pleasure!” I said, and hung up.
This was a fantastic plan!
“Waffles, you’re a good boy!” I told him. I’d reward him with a late lunch of chicken salad, I decided, and before that, we’d go for a quick walk to enjoy the gorgeous sunny day. The front door was open, a light breeze lilting in through the screen door and the windows. There were a few ladies still winding up lunches at the café, moms taking their kids for ice cream down at the little shop by the post office, and a festive, early-summer feeling that school would be out soon.
As I grabbed my keys to lock up, there was a sound you don’t often hear in the center of Bryn Mawr these days: the clomping of horseshoes on cement.
I opened the screen door to peer down the street, and spied Mariellen Merriwether atop her prize horse, Norman, at the end of the block, Norman’s well-groomed black tail swishing proudly as he walked along. He really was a beautiful animal: glossy, clear-eyed, and magnificent. His Ritz-Carlton lifestyle had clearly paid off.
His owner, of course, sat in perfect equestrienne posture, and wore impeccable beige riding pants, polished boots, a crisp white shirt, and a black riding hat. Naturally, she had on her pearls, too. I noticed she had a CVS bag poking out of the pocket of her jodhpurs. So the rumors were true: When Mariellen needed to pick up a prescription or some calcium supplements, Norman was her mode of transport!
Waffles took one look at Norman, and kind of lost it. I’m pretty sure he thought Norman was a very large dog. And since Waffles is incredibly friendly, every time sees another dog he has a dog-gasm. He started whining, woofing, and jumping excitedly.
This didn’t go over too well with Norman. The horse reared, whinnied in terror, and took off down Lancaster Avenue with Mariellen, ever the excellent horsewoman, hanging on to the reins, still in her perfect posture, trying to calm him. She shot me and Waffles a look of icy hatred as they zoomed by the store, heading in the direction of the post office as cars halted to let them by. Despite the balmy day, I felt my entire body go cold.
“No!” I said desperately to Waffles, who was looking longingly at Norman’s disappearing hooves and whining.
To deal with my embarrassment at Waffles’s outburst, I worked feverishly for the rest of the day. By 4:30 p.m., there was nothing left to polish or straighten. I decided to leave Waffles at the store while I met Joe and Holly. He was peacefully racked out on his dog bed after his eventful afternoon, and there was a small chance that if I tiptoed out the back door, he might never notice I was gone.
I couldn’t stay annoyed with Waffles for long. I took a look at his sleeping, portly, brown-and-white form and goofy ears as I headed out, love welling up inside me. Norman the horse had nothing on Waffles.
“IS KLONOPIN SUPPOSED to make you hungry?” asked Joe. “Is it like pot?” He sucked down half a margarita in a loud slurp through a straw.
Joe already looked bombed when I arrived, and he’d only been at the club for fifteen minutes. His hair was messy, and his polo shirt was wrinkled. He’d popped one (or maybe more) of Holly’s pills, and his eyes bore the glazed look of the celebrities whose mug shots are featured on TMZ. He clutched a salt-rimmed glass with a trembling hand while Holly administered sympathetic pats on his arm.
“Sophie’s like a garden gnome, the one in that commercial that keeps popping up wherever you go. Isn’t there a horror movie about a garden gnome?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “And there’s Gerda, too. Always Gerda.”
“You’ll be finished there in a couple of months!” said Holly encouragingly. “And you have my house to work on, too, which of course will be amazing.”
“I need a cheeseburger,” moaned Joe. “I’m really hungry.”
“He’s not driving, right?” I whispered to Holly, who jingled her car keys reassuringly, and made a no-way gesture toward Joe.
We flagged down the waitress, which wasn’t difficult because she was already staring at us. Not only was Joe semi-slumped over his margarita, Holly was wearing a yellow strapless maxi dress, with her hair in a bouffant in the manner of Julie Christie circa 1973.
She also looked a little tired and stressed. Sometime in the next few days, I was determined to have that one-on-one about her impulsive decision to split from Howard.
I’ve known Holly since grade school, so her bravado doesn’t fool me; she seemed miserable. I thought if I could talk to her alone, away from the chaos that seemed to follow us lately, I could convince her to give Howard another chance.
Back in February, when Bootsie had heard that Holly was getting divorced, it all sounded like a big misunderstanding. Bootsie’s info was based on idle gossip at the club: Bootsie had been sitting in the bar waiting for Will, and was eavesdropping on some tipsy members, the Binghams.
The Binghams are always blitzed on white zinfandel, even when they play racquetball. Honestly, you can’t listen to the Binghams, because they always get things wrong, due to the fact that they drink about five bottles of wine a day. Anyway, the Binghams had witnessed a big fight that day between Holly and Howard about the length of Holly’s tennis skirt—ironically the very thing that had lured Howard to Holly in the first place—and assumed their marriage was on the rocks. They shared their observations with Bootsie, which Bootsie took to the next level: a Definite Divorce.
I thought Bootsie had to be wrong when she’d called me the next morning, but then later in the day Holly had phoned me, enraged about a supposed affair Howard was engaged in with that busty bartender at the Porterhouse. At least Holly thought he was having an affair with this Boobs Girl, because the steakhouse’s number had come up a couple of times that week on Howard’s caller ID.
Howard told Holly that the Porterhouse was calling to confirm a
dinner reservation he’d made for them that weekend, but Holly, who’d become obsessed with the bartender, refused to believe it.
Somehow the whole thing had snowballed into a lot of lawyers arguing in paneled conference rooms, and into Holly spending more and more time at the club in outrageous outfits. I guess I would have been suspicious, too, but I knew Howard adored Holly, and I truly didn’t believe he had cheated.
“Did you at least find out anything from Sophie today about who knocked Barclay on the head?” Holly asked Joe.
“Nope,” he said tipsily. “Just found out that there are more ugly shades of purple in the world then I’d ever imagined.”
With a start, I heard a New Jersey accent and clacking heels loudly heading toward our table. I didn’t even need to look.
Sophie. I guess she’d somehow invited herself to join Joe and Holly.
“Hi, everyone. Sorry we’re late,” Sophie announced. She was dressed all in pink: pink miniskirt, pink silk blouse, pink sandals. “We got held up by the weirdest thing back at the house. We were all dressed and ready to go, and then when we opened the front door to head out to the Navigator, a big smelly package wrapped in newspaper was on the front steps. So Gerda opened it, and we found a half-dozen dead tilapia inside!”
“With a note,” added Gerda, who was in her usual black tracksuit. “It said, ‘Beppe: Sleep with the fishes.’ ” We all froze, mid-sip. Geez, this was like something out of Casino. Could Sophie be making this up? “Could be that somebody’s going to kill Mr. Shields—for real this time,” Gerda added with a smile, buoyed by the threat to her ex-employer.
“That fish was disgusting!” Sophie elaborated. “Gerda double-Hefty-bagged the whole package, and it’s going out with tomorrow’s trash. It stunk to high heaven.”
“Aren’t you going to pass along the note to your ex? Or the police?” asked Holly.
“No way!” said Sophie. “If anyone wants to talk to the Forklift, they can track him down themselves.
“And then when we finally arrived here, we got lost!” she whined. “It’s kinda dark in there.”
“Well, the main clubhouse was built in 1910, and there’s quite a bit of oak paneling,” said Joe wearily. “Why don’t you both sit down,” he added politely, pulling out a chair for Sophie. Joe’s manners rarely fail him, even when he’s impaired. Gerda hoisted her own heavy wrought-iron chair from a neighboring table, moving it as easily as if she was picking up a bag of cotton balls.
“Sophie, I have to ask you, why are you getting divorced?” Holly said as Sophie and Gerda sat down, Sophie’s feet barely reaching the ground.
I noticed the Binghams, sipping their Gallo white zinfandel three tables away, agog as they eavesdropped. I could only imagine their future versions of this story. With some alarm, I also noticed a willowy older blonde on the grass tennis courts some two hundred yards away. I couldn’t see her face, but was fairly sure that upright posture belonged to Mariellen.
“Well, mostly because Barclay’s been cheating,” Sophie told us, in a confidential tone. “That is, if you count hookers as cheating. ’Cause, some people don’t.”
We all nodded.
“What happened first was, Gerda was suspicious because she noticed a lot of restaurant charges and Saks purchases on Barclay’s credit card statement, which she hacks into every month. I mean, obviously, the restaurant bills weren’t surprising, but Saks doesn’t stock the sizes Barclay wears, so that was weird. And it turned out that the Saks charges were all for bikinis.”
Gerda inclined her head grimly.
“We asked Barclay about the charges, and he got so mad about us checking up on him that he actually reported Gerda to immigration, ’cause her work permit and visa are, well, expired!” Sophie giggled.
Joe’s head snapped up, his tequila-tranquilizer haze suddenly gone. My eyes doubled in size as I stared at Gerda, while Holly sipped her drink loudly through a straw and looked shocked. Gerda looked absolutely enraged, and I saw a vein pop out in her neck and begin to throb. Her fists balled up, and she gave Sophie the Look of Death.
Finally, a motive for Gerda to have attacked Barclay.
“Luckily, it takes a long time to deport someone! And then Barclay went to Las Vegas for a builders’ convention, so Gerda and I hired a detective that she found on the Internet to watch Barclay,” Sophie rattled on, oblivious to our shock at the immigration info she’d so casually thrown out. “And this guy was good. He broke into Barclay’s suite at the Wynn and planted a video camera, and sure enough, after Barclay went to the Wolfgang Puck place for dinner and hit a couple of the buffets, he came back to the room with two girls, and I’m pretty sure they were, you know, hired help! This detective saw the whole thing! And like ten minutes after they got back to the room, one of the girls put on a Catwoman outfit, and then”—Sophie paused here, perhaps with a glimmer that her tale wasn’t club-appropriate, and gulped some water. She decided to go on. “The Catwoman girl pulled out a loaf of white bread, and, well, and . . .” She hesitated again.
“And what?” asked Holly breathlessly.
“Excuse me. Ladies’ room!” I said hastily, jumping up and sprinting across the porch.
I sped inside the club, and blinked in the dim hallway as I walked toward the front door, as far away as I could get from the crowded dining porch, and from Sophie and Gerda.
I stopped short when I glanced outside and noticed a horse tethered to a dogwood tree next to the parking lot. He was happily munching grass, swishing his long black tail. Norman!
I couldn’t face any more of Sophie’s story, and I’d had my recommended daily allowance of Gerda, who now had a concrete motive to have attacked Barclay. And obviously, with Norman parked outside the front door, Mariellen would likely be off the tennis courts soon and heading this way.
Still, I hadn’t gotten a chance to drink the margarita I’d wanted. And it was so pleasant inside the clubhouse—totally quiet, with oil portraits of former club presidents looking sternly out from the walls and air conditioning blasting. To my right was a corridor that led to the locker rooms, the dining room, and the (clearly marked) restrooms that Sophie had struggled to locate, but I took a left into the club’s paneled, cozy bar. I decided to have a quick drink in the bar, then sneak out the front door.
Perfect. As usual in summertime, there was no one in the bar, since it has a wintry vibe with leather chairs and cozy couches, heavy chintz drapes, an enormous Oriental rug, and a giant fireplace. I had sat in here hundreds of times with my grandfather, and always loved it. It’s the one place in the club that still allows smoking, and a faint whiff of cigar hung in the air.
“Margarita?” asked Ronnie from behind the old mahogany bar. I sat down gratefully and accepted my replacement drink. Ronnie’s a guy from South Philly who’s been at the club forever, even though he’s only in his late forties. Ronnie can always tell if you want to talk or not, and he has an amazing ability to disappear into thin air. He goes behind the bar sometimes, and if you blink, he’s gone through a door hidden at the left of the bar, then magically reappears when you need another drink. I’m pretty sure there’s a secret network of corridors in the club for the staff, actually. They just pop out of nowhere sometimes.
This was great, I thought, closing my eyes for a moment and relaxing in the bone-chilling A.C. I couldn’t stand another moment of Sophie’s stories.
“I’ll have a glass of water, please, Ronnie,” said a man’s voice behind me. I glanced to my right and saw John Hall next to me, smiling down at me, wearing tennis whites that were damp with healthy perspiration. He’d clearly just worked up a big sweat on the courts, and he looked kind of awesome. If you’re into tall, handsome men.
He reached for his glass and I checked out his forearms. I gulped. They were thinner than Mike Woodford’s, but tan and muscle-y.
And no wedding ring!
“Saw you sitting with your friends outside. Recovered yet from the party last night?”
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I nodded, wondering if I had any mascara left from my quick swipe applied this morning. I was also thinking I should probably cancel my fake vet appointment for Thursday, now that I’d run into John again.
“Interesting picture of the chef in the paper today,” he said, with a smile.
“It was nice of you to help him last night!” I told him.
“He’s lucky he wasn’t badly hurt,” said John.
Ronnie was heading out to the porch with a tray of drinks in his hand.
“Ronnie,” I said, “by the way, could you not mention to anyone that I’m in here?”
“Haven’t seen anyone in here all night,” he responded in his usual deadpan way, and disappeared.
“I’m not sure that member fraternization is permitted under club rules,” said John with a smile, “but we never got a chance to really talk last night. Would you like to have dinner with me this week?”
I clutched the bar to steady myself. A guy who had a normal job, no wedding ring on, and had productive hobbies like playing tennis wanted to take me to dinner. “Yes, sure,” I said, smiling. We planned to meet on the porch the next night at six-thirty. I would have rather gone somewhere else, like maybe Delaware or New York City to avoid Bootsie, and truthfully, Holly and Joe, but couldn’t think of a way to tell him this, so the club porch it was.
After we exchanged phone numbers, John the vet headed for the locker room. I crept out the front, trotted past Norman, who didn’t seem to remember me from his traumatic experience earlier in the afternoon, picked up Waffles, went home, brushed my teeth, and put on some lip gloss. I called and left a message canceling my fake appointment at All Creatures Great and Small, then I checked in with Hugh, who morosely informed me that Jimmy was still AWOL.
I got a voice mail from Bootsie, informing me that not only was Barclay still in the hospital, but Chef Gianni was stuck there, too, since doctors wanted to make sure he hadn’t sustained anything worse than a broken ankle. They were concerned the chef might have brain swelling because of his constant screaming and irrational behavior, even though Jessica had insisted that this was his normal demeanor.
