“Friendly guy,” Loretta said sarcastically.
“Oh, he is when you get to meet him,” Dorie said.
“When will that be?”
“I dunno. When the planets are in harmony, and your signs are in alignment.”
Loretta just stared at her, waiting for a sign that she was kidding. “You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?” Loretta finally asked.
“Yes and no,” Dorie said. “Put it this way. I want to believe.”
“I can sort of understand that,” Loretta said, but she was lying. She had no patience for anyone who believed in angels, crystals, pyramids, and all that other New Age crap.
“So what’s the secret ingredient?” Loretta asked, changing the subject. She wanted to know more about Arnie.
Dorie shook her head as she played with her hair. “I really don’t know. Arnie doesn’t talk about it, and neither does Barry. I guess that’s what makes it a secret.”
Thanks a lot, Dorie, Loretta thought.
“So Barry takes care of the money end,” Loretta said, “and Arnie creates the flavors. That sounds like a pretty good division of labor.”
“I dunno about that,” Dorie said, rolling her eyes toward the door marked PRIVATE. “They fight all the time.”
“Really?” Loretta looked up at their smiling logo. “You’d think they were the best of friends from ads.”
“Well, from what I hear they used to be. But that was long before I arrived on the scene.”
“What happened? They have a falling out?”
Dorie shrugged. “Someone told me it all started when Arnie went away to a fat farm in Florida. He lost a lot of weight, but when he came back he was different. No one could exactly put their finger on it, but somehow he’d changed. And that’s when things changed between him and Barry. They stopped palling around. Eventually they were at each other’s throats all the time.”
“So why didn’t they just dissolve the partnership?”
Dorie looked down into the vat. “Because of this, the Fudge Whirl. It started to take off. The company tripled its annual earnings the year it was introduced, and it’s been going strong ever since. The guys were just making too much money to split up.”
“So does Arnie have a wife?” Loretta asked.
Dorie’s eyes shot open. “Why? Are you interested?”
“No. Of course not. I’m just curious.”
“No, Arnie’s not married.”
“Does he have someone special?” Loretta pried.
Dorie looked down and blushed to the roots of her hair.
“You?” Loretta whispered, trying to sound surprised. “But you’re married to Barry.”
“Don’t worry. It’s cool,” Dorie said. “Barry has a girlfriend, too. Sunny. Dragon’s owner?”
Loretta nodded slowly. “I thought there was more going on upstairs at your house than meditation.”
“Really, Loretta. It’s cool. People live that way out here.” The look on Dorie’s face was so ingenuous, ice cream wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. She kept saying it was cool, it was cool, but privately Loretta disagreed. She wasn’t a prude by any means, but some things were just plain out-of-bounds as far as she was concerned, and these people were definitely running on the warning track.
Dorie flashed a naughty grin. “Let’s go get some samples,” she said. “The people on the public tour only get a little tiny cup, but we can get all we want. Come on.” She headed across the floor, past the steel door that led to Arnie’s private laboratory.
Loretta took one last look into the vat of Elmer Fudge Whirl, and it suddenly occurred to her that maybe Arnie’s secret ingredient was some kind of diabolical aphrodisiac that made people cheat on their mates and swap partners and sleep with cocker spaniels and do all kinds of kinky things, then say, “It’s cool.” And Marvelli shovels that stuff in like there’s no tomorrow.
She glanced up at the tourists streaming by, but he was gone and so was Vissa.
Naw, Loretta thought. I’m just being paranoid. Right?
But Loretta kept staring up at all those passing faces, hoping that she’d spot Marvelli—by himself.
“Loretta?” Dorie called to her from an open doorway across the plant floor. “Is anything wrong?”
Loretta shook her head and sighed, her mouth fixed in a frown.
10
Marvelli was sitting behind the wheel of his rented white Pontiac Grand Am, Vissa in the passenger seat. They were still in the parking lot at the Arnie and Barry’s plant. High clouds dotted an otherwise clear blue sky, but it was a little chilly out. The inside of the car was comfortably warm. Marvelli stared out the window, soaking in the heat like a lizard on a hot rock.
“So what do you think goes on behind that door marked ‘private’?” Vissa asked. She was wearing tiny round sunglasses that just covered her eyes.
Marvelli shrugged. “Mr. Arnie seemed pretty anxious to get back inside. Did you get that impression?”
“Yeah. I did.”
Marvelli turned his head to the side and squinted at her profile, focusing on her nose. She had a really cute nose. He happened to know that it was a nose job, but so what. “So what do you think?” he said. “Was that Ira Krupnick?”
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure. We were pretty far away, plus we were looking down at him. I wouldn’t put it past Krupnick to pull another switcheroo with another guy who looked like him.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“With Ira Krupnick? Pretty good, I’d say.”
Marvelli leaned back against the headrest. The heat melded with the quiet and covered him like a thick blanket, making him drowsy. When he glanced over at Vissa again, she was wrinkling her nose as she bit her bottom lip, which produced a sudden twinge in his groin. He wished she wouldn’t do things like that.
“We could go in and try to approach him,” she suggested. “But I don’t know. What if it’s not him, and he makes a scene? It could get into the press, and we’d have to answer to Julius.”
“Worse that that,” Marvelli pointed out. “The guy could press charges. False arrest, harassment, interfering with his business. He could sue us personally in civil court. He could win damages.”
She turned her head and looked at him. “What’s he gonna do? Garnish our wages? We don’t make squat as it is.”
“He could take my house.”
“Oh, yeah. I forget about that. Well, I just rent.” She let out a small sigh. “Of course, you could always move in with me … if you wanted.”
Marvelli furrowed his brows at her.
“Just kidding,” she said right away. “Just kidding.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to go there.
But sitting here next to her in this warm cozy car felt sort of like lying side by side on a sunny beach, and he imagined her in a bikini, a lime green one, and suddenly the little guy in his pants moved.
Cool it, he said to the little guy. It ain’t gonna happen. Besides, he thought, Vissa is just a tease. None of it is serious. He glanced at her profile again. It doesn’t mean anything.
He felt another little tingle as if his beeper had gone off in his shorts.
“But what if it is Krupnick?” Vissa said. “Who knows what he could be into? That’s one thing about Ira—he’s never afraid to try something new. As long as it’s illegal.”
“Mmmmm … ” Marvelli was distracted, only half-listening to her. He was thinking about that one time he’d slept with her.
He glanced at her again, studying her face, thinking that part of him would like to do it with her again, but he knew that he shouldn’t even be thinking about that. It was just a physical urge that would pass. Like gas. The damage it would do, the repercussions, the complications—forget it—it wasn’t worth it. One time with Vissa—even a world-class time with Vissa—wasn’t worth losing Loretta over. No way.
“So,” Vissa asked, “what do you want to do now?”
“Huh? What do
you mean?” His heart started to thump as if he’d just been caught red-handed.
“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’? What do you want to do about Krupnick? Do we approach this guy now, or do we watch him for a while?”
“We should just watch him,” Marvelli said. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. We should go slow. Don’t do anything rash.”
“But I thought you were anxious to get back home to Loretta.”
“We shouldn’t rush this,” he insisted. “If it takes a few days, so what?”
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back. The comfortable heat was starting to feel a little too warm.
Are you crazy? he asked himself. A few days for what? He wasn’t going to do anything with her, he told himself. He wasn’t the kind of person who did things like that. Other people did things like that, not him.
But he had done it … once.
He opened his eyes and looked down to one side. Vissa’s long tapered fingers were stretched out on her thigh. The pale pink polish shimmered in the sun. He looked at her dark hair and the Cleopatra eyeliner.
The woman is no nun, he thought. A person this sexy can’t possibly be. She must have had dozens of guys. Which means she could have a sexually transmitted disease!
His heart started slamming in his chest. No way, he thought. He couldn’t risk that.
“So what’re we gonna do?” Vissa said. “Sit here all day?”
“No,” he said.
“You have a plan?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you let me know when you come up with one, Marvelli.” She dropped her chin and rubbed the back of her neck. He had an urge to rub it for her, but he kept his hands in his lap.
He watched her move, shrugging her shoulders and tilting her head. She was incredible. Everything she did was sexy. A striptease couldn’t have aroused him more than what she was doing right now. She squirmed out of her black jeans jacket and tossed it in the backseat. She was wearing only a tube top underneath, lime green. Her hair brushed her bare shoulders. The geometry of her breasts could inspire a long-term study.
Statistically, men give women sexually transmitted diseases more than women give them to men, he thought. Condoms prevent infection. Some guys wear two.
He sneaked a look at her flat stomach. What if he got her pregnant? he thought in a panic. What if Vissa decided to keep the child? He didn’t want to have kids with her. How would he explain that to Loretta? No, forget it, he thought. Much, much, much too risky.
But then Vissa started slowly rubbing her bare arms as if she were putting on suntan oil. She reached down for the handle on her right side and dropped the seatback all the way so that she was lying flat on her back right next to him. Her boobs were right there, like dessert on the table, and her tight black jeans outlined every curve and crevice. The little guy was getting jumpy.
How many times in a person’s life do opportunities like this really happen? Marvelli thought. Almost never.
But then he wondered if what he was feeling was just a symptom of midlife crisis. He was going to be thirty-five in a month. Admittedly he was a little young for a midlife crisis, but maybe what he had was like early menopause or early Alzheimer’s. Whatever it was, it was driving him nuts. He hadn’t been this horny since he was fifteen.
She took off her sunglasses, but her eyes were closed. “Wake me up when you think of something, Marvelli. I’m still jet-lagged.”
Marvelli clutched his seat belt. She was there for the taking.
Or is she? he thought. Maybe she didn’t want any part of him. Maybe this was all in his head. Maybe he was reading in.
She opened one eye and grinned up at him. “Don’t stare,” she said. “I can feel it.” She didn’t sound displeased.
The little guy was all pumped up now. Marvelli was afraid he was going to split his pants. He had to do something. It wasn’t healthy staying this way. He was totally distracted, obsessed, consumed. He needed something—a vacation, Prozac, an exorcist, something. He was definitely gonna go batty if he didn’t deal with this, and then he’d be no good for anyone, Loretta included. He had to straighten himself out before he got back home. Maybe just do it once and get it over with. Then he could stop thinking about it.
He stared down at Vissa and started to sweat. But how the hell could I do that? he thought. I want to, but I don’t want to. I’m too chicken. I don’t want to lose Loretta. He started to knead his temples with his thumb and forefinger.
“What’s wrong?” she said. Her eyes were open, a dazzling blue gray in the sun. “You okay?” she asked, laying her hand on his thigh.
Please don’t do that, he thought.
“Marvelli? What is it? You don’t look good.” She raised her seatback.
“It’s just a headache,” he said. “It’ll go away.”
“Why don’t we go back to the motel? You can lie down for a while.”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
“It’s not that far from here. Go lie down and take an aspirin.”
“I don’t have any,” he said.
“I have some in my room. I’ll bring it to you.”
His breathing got shallow. A scenario unfolded in his head. She was just bringing me some aspirin, he could say afterward. He had a headache. One thing led to another …
“Come on, Marvelli. I don’t want you getting sick on me. I need you to catch Krupnick.” She was kneading his thigh to emphasize her point. The little bodybuilder downstairs was flexing everything he had.
“Marvelli, are you gonna be sensible about this? Let’s go back to the motel.”
This is wrong, Marvelli kept telling himself. This is wrong. This is wrong.
“Marvelli, don’t be stupid.”
But what if?
She reached over and felt his forehead, then his cheek. “Open your mouth,” she said.
“What?”
“Just open it,” she said, and suddenly she slipped her pinky between his lips and under his tongue before he could object. “I can’t tell if you have a fever from your forehead. It’s too hot in here. This is the only way I can tell.”
“But—”
“Shush. My grandmother used to do it this way. She didn’t need a thermometer.”
Marvelli could feel her fingernail under his tongue. He could taste her. The little hard guy was going crazy.
After a few seconds, she pulled out her finger. “I can’t tell for sure. Let’s go back to the hotel. You should lie down for a while.”
“But—”
“Marvelli, will you stop being stupid? Will you let me help you?”
He zeroed in on her nose and how it flared when she yelled at him.
“Marvelli, please,” she said, suddenly quiet. Her eyes were pleading with him.
Marvelli held his breath. There was ‘roid rage down below.
“Please?” she said. Her voice was somewhere between a squeak and a purr. She was pouting. “Please?” she whispered.
His hand was already on the ignition key.
11
Loretta was in the private bathroom in Barry Utley’s office at the plant. Her wig was on top of the toilet tank, and she was desperately trying to scratch her itchy scalp through the skullcap she had to wear to hold in her own hair. She looked at herself in the mirror as she scratched and made a sour face. Why did she buy this stupid wig in the first place? A washout dye and a new hairstyle would have been a much better idea. She wished she’d thought of that first.
The bathroom was small but posh with matching polished brass fixtures on the sink and shower, and milk-glass green tiles on the walls. The tub, sink, and toilet were a darker green. It was the kind of bathroom a British barrister would have on Masterpiece Theater—if they ever showed bathrooms on Masterpiece Theater.
The framed print hanging opposite the toilet was an antique etching of a tiger in the jungle, something that might have appeared in a turn-of-the
-century Schoolbook. The colors were muted—the sky a peacock blue, the orange on the tiger more of a pastel Cream-side color. The tiger’s face was placid, as if it had agreed to pose for the drawing. It was a far cry from the tiger woman hanging in the living room at Barry and Dorie’s house. If fact, there was nothing remotely sexual about the decor in here or anywhere in Barry’s office. It was a nice cover, Loretta thought, but Barry was still a perv in her book. She was tempted to look in the cabinet under the sink for girlie magazines. Barry had to have something smutty stashed away here.
Loretta picked up the wig and smoothed out the bangs, getting ready to put it back on. Dorie was outside in the office, waiting for her. Barry was out entertaining a buyer from an East Coast supermarket chain.
“You okay in there?” Dorie called through the door.
“I’m fine,” Loretta called back.
“You should have told me you didn’t like Mexican food.”
“No, I like it. It just doesn’t like me.” Loretta lied, reaching down and flushing the toilet again. She’d needed a reason for being in the bathroom so long. “Shouldn’t have had those beans with my huevos rancheros this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Dorie said. Loretta could hear from the tone of her voice that she was taking personal responsibility for Loretta’s alleged gastric distress.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Loretta said. “It’s not your fault.” She hated it when Dorie got all bent out of shape, trying to make things perfect. It seemed like Dorie was apologizing all the time. “I’ll be out in a minute,” Loretta said. She bent forward, positioned the wig on her head, and stood up fast, flipping it into place. She pulled out a comb and started to arrange it when she heard the door to the office open and bang shut. She frowned in the mirror, thinking Dorie was upset about something and had run out. Then she heard an unfamiliar voice.
“What the hell’s going on? Answer me.” It was a husky female voice. Whoever she was, she was furious, but her voice was ominously controlled.
“What do you mean?” Dorie asked innocently.
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