The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  “You knew what I assumed when you told me you were divorced.”

  “Yes, but I did not lie.”

  “You turned me into an adulteress!” I hadn’t meant to shriek the words quite so loudly. Down the hall, an office door opened and a woman’s head popped out.

  “Everything okay down there?” She was a formidable-looking tank of a woman with gun-metal gray hair pulled back in a severe style.

  “Everything’s fine.” I waved, trying to act nonchalant. “No problem here.”

  “Then keep it down. Some of us are trying to work.” The door slammed.

  “Ellie, please don’t be mad.” Henri put his hands on my upper arms and tried to draw me closer. “I cannot help it if I was bewitched by your beauty.”

  I was pretty sure the only reason he put his hands on my arms was to keep me from slapping him. Really, though, the person I wanted to slap was me. For being so stupid. For thinking a man like Henri would want anything more from me than sex. For hemming and hawing about those invoices when he had played me like a fiddle. 1 felt more ashamed of how I’d fallen for his spiel hook, line, and sinker than of being duped by Jim. My ex-husband, at least, could boast two decades of dependability and fidelity before middle-age had addled his brain.

  “The only thing that bewitched you was the possibility of getting some.”And then my mouth went round with shock, like a little “o.” I’d never used an expression like that in my life.

  “Is that what you think?” Henri dropped his hands and drew himself up to his full height. “That I am just some alley cat on the prowl?”

  Evidently, I’d offended him. I let out a bark of laughter. “No, Henri. I would never compare you to an alley cat. That would be insulting to felines everywhere!”

  Happily for me, the elevator bell dinged at just that moment. The doors slid open, and I stepped inside.

  “If those invoices aren’t paid within five business days, I’ll turn the matter over to my attorney.”

  His face darkened like a thundercloud. “You ungrateful little—”

  Fortunately, the doors closed, shutting out the rest of Henri’s invective.

  * * *

  I fled to Jane’s house out of instinct. I don’t know why I sought her out rather than Linda or Grace. Mostly, I guess, it was because I hoped she could help me sort out this horrible social-life-and-work-life cocktail I’d mixed up for myself.

  “Ellie? What’s wrong?” She took one look at my face and waved me inside. I’d cried all the way to the parking garage, all the way up Broadway, and all the way down Twenty-First Avenue where I’d almost plowed through a group of Vanderbilt co-eds.

  “He’s married,” I sobbed. “Henri’s married.”

  That was all I needed to say. Jane led me to her sofa and handed me a box of tissues. “What happened?”

  “I went to confront him about the invoices.”

  “What invoices?”

  I burst into fresh sobs. ‘The ones he hasn’t been paying.” I flushed with embarrassment. I hadn’t wanted any of them to know what a miserable businesswoman I’d turned out to be, despite Jane’s tutelage.

  “He still hasn’t paid you a dime?”

  “Not a cent.”

  “And you kept working for him?”

  I let that one pass and took the opportunity to blow my nose into the wad of tissues in my hand.

  “So how do you know he’s married?”

  “She was there.”

  “His wife was there?” She winced.

  I nodded miserably.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Young. Elegant. French.”

  “Damn.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Jane shot me a weak smile. “I could, but I’ll refrain.” She was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking about something. “Well, now that he’s revealed his hand, you can become the captain.”

  “What?” Either I was far more distressed than I thought or Jane had started speaking in tongues.

  “In bridge, when you’re bidding back and forth with your partner, the first one to reveal the point range of her cards by bidding a certain thing limits their hand.”

  “Limits their hand?”

  “It means that they’ve pretty much told everyone at the table what kind of cards they have.”

  “What does that have to do with the captain thing?” I said, sniffing.

  “Once your partner limits his hand, then you take charge of the bidding. Your partner has revealed all her—or his—secrets. Since you haven’t, you take charge of the bidding process.”

  “And this has what to do with Henri?” Honestly, sometimes I wondered about these women and their fanaticism for a recreational card game.

  “Look, now that you know his secret, you have the power.”

  “To do what?”

  “Well, for one thing, you can get him to pay those invoices.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Blackmail him?”

  “Exactly.”

  I was speechless for a moment. “I can’t threaten to rat him out to his wife.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I would never do that.” I stopped and swallowed back the knot that lodged in my throat. “I know how it feels to be cheated on. The last thing I would want is to hear the truth from the other woman.”

  “You don’t have to actually tell her. You just have to threaten to tell her.”

  That brought me up short. Because I hadn’t stopped to consider that the threat alone would probably force Henri’s hand.

  “Do all captains resort to blackmail?”

  Jane chuckled. “Only the really good ones.”

  I smiled back at her through my tears. Henri’s betrayal still hurt, even if I’d begun to pull away from our romantic involvement. But the idea that I was in any way the same kind of woman as the despised Tiffany was even more painful. I’d been so sure she was pure, unadulterated—or adulterated as the case might be—evil. But did I even know for sure that she’d known Jim was married when they became involved? Jim hadn’t said, and I certainly hadn’t asked. She might be as innocent as I was. And even if she wasn’t, Jim was the one who should have known better. He was the one with the wedding ring on his finger.

  “So you think I can get Henri to write me a check?”

  “If you play your cards right.”

  “Captain, huh?”

  “The ball’s in your court.”

  “So what do I do?”

  Jane stood up. “I just took a pound cake out of the oven. Let’s have a slice and draw up a plan.”

  By the time I left Jane’s house and stumbled across the yard to my own front door, I was exhausted, even though it was barely noon. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with who I found sitting on my front steps. Jim. With a dozen red roses in hand and a look of contrition in his eyes.

  “Hello, Ellie.”

  Honestly, I wished a hole like the police had dug in my backyard would open up and swallow me.

  “Go away, Jim.” I was too tired for any measure of diplomacy. “I’m really not up to this.”

  Honestly, I’d expected him to call or show up before now. I figured once Tiffany told him about our bathroom conversation at the Green Hills Grille that he’d come by and chastise me. But as the week wore on and he didn’t show, I began to think she hadn’t told him what had happened. And then I’d spent way too much time wondering why she hadn’t told him instead of writing copy for Your Better Half’s Web site or calling the leads on potential clients Jane had e-mailed me.

  He stood up and held out the flowers. “I brought you these.”

  It had been six years since he’d given me flowers of any kind and more than a decade since I’d been presented with roses.

  “I don’t want them.”

  “Please. Take them.” If he’d had a hat, it would have been in his hands. The sharply sweet scent of the roses stung my nose.

  “Jim, it’s really not the time.” I tried to ke
ep my face slightly averted. I did not want him to know I’d been crying, and I definitely did not want any probing questions about why. The last thing I needed was Jim learning that Henri was married. He’d never let me live that one down.

  I tried to brush past him to get to the front door, but he stepped in front of me. “Ellie, stop. I’m worried about you.”

  And he was. I could see it in his eyes, big and brown and full of concern. Eyes that had looked at me in just that way countless times over the years, and always, always that look had been both my comfort and the undoing of my composure.

  If I thought I’d cried all my tears at Jane’s, I was wrong.

  “Shh. It’s okay.” Somehow, I wound up with my head against his chest, and I was sobbing into his shirt. He smelled like Jim—the slightest hint of Gray Flannel mixed with antibacterial soap. His arms came around me at waist height, holding me securely as they’d always done. We fit together perfectly, like two puzzle pieces, the result of years of practice.

  I knew I shouldn’t indulge myself, but I did it anyway. I let Jim hold me and murmur reassuring, mindless words in my ear. I sobbed against his shoulder, dampening his shirt, until the new well of tears ran dry. And then I just rested my head there for several long moments because I didn’t have the courage to lift it up and look at him. I felt warm and safe, a different feeling from the excitement I’d found with Henri but one more likely to last over time.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?” I mumbled into his shirt.

  “I’m a first class jerk.”

  I sighed, stepped back, wiped away the last traces of my tears, and looked at him. “This is not particularly new information.”

  Now his eyes were filled with sadness. “No, I guess it’s not.”

  I looked down at my feet, unsure what to do next.

  “Ellie, I’ve also been a fool. An idiot. And a bunch of other names that I shouldn’t say in front of a lady.”

  “You’ 11 get no argument from me.”

  The whole moment had a hugely surreal quality. I half expected clocks to start slithering down walls and over pieces of furniture.

  “I’ve broken it off with Tiffany.”

  That caught me by surprise. I looked up. “Why?”

  He grimaced. “Actually, that’s been coming on for a while. Ever since we started planning the wedding.”

  I wanted to feel vindicated. I wanted to crow out in triumph and rub his nose in his admission of failure and wrongdoing. Before that morning, I might have. But now that I was myself the “other” woman, I was feeling slightly less righteous.

  “And so you think if you dump Tiffany you can just show up here with a dozen roses and all is forgiven?”

  At least he had the grace to blush. “I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”

  “Then why are you here?” My chest was tight, but whether it was hope or grief constricting me, I couldn’t say.

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, to apologize, I guess.”

  “And?”

  “I know you don’t want me back, but, Ellie, for old times sake, I was wondering…”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Would you at least let me buy you dinner sometime?”

  If he’d shown up like this a month ago, I might have responded very differently. But in the last six weeks, I’d learned a lot—some of it good and some of it not. One important thing, though, I’d come to realize was that I wouldn’t have been so utterly destroyed when Jim left if I’d had more things in my life that were just for me.

  Another thing I’d come to realize was that Jim was not the only guilty party in the situation. Yes, his had been the greater offense. But I’d known for years that our marriage wasn’t what it had once been. We’d been complacent enough to let comfort take the place of intimacy. Stress and children and the busyness of our lives had driven us apart long before Tiffany’s impressive cleavage had burst onto the scene.

  “There’s no going back, Jim.” Nothing said that more clearly than the fact that we were standing on the front porch of my home. Mine alone. Not the one we had once shared.

  “I know. I guess I’m just realizing exactly how bad I’ve fouled up.”

  My smile was so sad it felt more like a frown. “It’s not exactly news to me.”

  And yet, I could see that he was really suffering. Men’s mid-life crises might be the butt of a lot of jokes, but when it was your man suffering through one, it really wasn’t very funny.

  “So can I call you sometime? Maybe take you out to dinner?”

  I paused. In the last six weeks, I’d gone on dates with a married philanderer and a young man half my age. Dinner with my ex-husband would make the hat trick complete.

  “Okay. I guess.”

  And then something occurred to me. Standing in front of me was the answer to several of my current problems, as well as a great way to tweak Roz’s nose. The Cannon Ball was a week away, and I was pretty sure Henri was no longer my escort. Plus there was one thing I still needed to take care of.

  “I tell you what, Jim.”

  “What?”

  “Buy me a dress for the Cannon Ball, and you can be my date.”

  “A dress?” He blanched. “Ellie, you know I’m broke.”

  “Jim, I know exactly what you’re worth and what you own. And it’s a whole lot more than I have.”

  He stared at me like I’d grown another head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He looked down at the roses, thought for a moment, and then lifted his eyes to me.

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Fine. I’ll charge it at Elliott’s.” I couldn’t resist that dig.

  To my surprise, Jim smiled instead of scowled. “You’re really something, you know that?”

  After a day of tears, it felt good to return his smile. “Oh, yes, honey. I’m well aware of that.”

  I also knew that as risky as it might be, I could develop a liking for becoming the captain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Asking for Aces

  The last thing I needed to be doing on the Saturday night one week before the Cannon Ball was playing bridge. I had too many other things on my mind. Will McFarland and his investigation. The approaching date of the Cannon Ball. My humiliation-slash-revelation at Henri’s hands.

  I had spent the rest of the day after Jim left canvassing limo services, taxi companies, and even the local school system for buses to serve as shuttles for the ball. My attempts to find someone to handle the valet parking had fared slightly better. I’d bribed, cajoled, and otherwise unduly influenced a handful of Connor’s friends to help me out, although they were little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. And though I’d blackmailed Jim into buying me a dress, I hadn’t found a spare moment to actually shop for one.

  The only bright spot had been the total silence from Roz. I thought maybe our confrontation at Harris-Teeter had subdued her until Linda told me she was simply out of town. Roz had gone to New York City for a final fitting for her gown for the ball. This news made me feel more than a little like a sooty Cinderella.

  One other bright spot, too, had been the FedEx envelope that arrived at my doorstep early that afternoon. It contained a nice big check from The Triumph Group. Apparently when Henri was properly motivated, he could get the Italians in accounting to move quite swiftly.

  Despite all these complications and a preference for climbing into bed and pulling the covers up over my head, by seven o’clock Saturday evening I found myself ringing Linda’s doorbell, a plate of still-warm-from-the-oven blondies in hand.

  “Hi, Ellie.” Linda let me in and relieved me of the blondies. “We’ve got big plans for tonight.”

  “Big plans?” It sounded like about the last thing I needed.

  “Don’t frown. We’re just excited because we’re going to talk about slam bidding.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Wh
en you bid at the highest levels. Very exciting stuff.”

  And it actually did turn out to be pretty exciting.

  “There are two kinds of slams,” Linda explained as the four of us sat down at the table to play. “Little and grand. With a little slam, you must take all the tricks but one.”

  “And a grand slam is all thirteen?”

  “Exactly.”

  I was glad to have something else to concentrate on besides all my current life complications, even if the pressure at these stratospheric levels was enough to give me a nosebleed. The ladies walked me through bidding slams in a trump suit and in no-trump.

  “If you’re bidding a slam in no-trump, you have to account for all the aces, so you have to ask your partner how many she has.” Once again, Linda sat across from me with Grace on my left and Jane on my right.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to talk to each other like that.”

  Linda smiled. “You ask by bidding. Let’s say you have two of the four aces in your hand and enough high card points and support from your partner to know you might have a slam. Then you need to know if your partner has one or both of the two remaining aces.”

  “Why do you need to know about aces?”

  “You need to know what kind of support you can count on from your partner. In no-trump, all the aces are winners. If your partner only has one of the two missing aces, you can only bid a little slam. But if your partner has them both, you can bid a grand slam.”

  “So how do I ask for aces?”

  Like just about everything else in bridge, it turned out to be a matter of understanding the carefully coded language. If I bid four no-trump, then I was asking my partner how many aces she had. If she responded with a bid of five clubs, it meant she either had none or all four.

  “How will I know whether it’s one or four?”

  Grace chuckled at this. “Well, if you don’t have a couple of aces in your own hand, you wouldn’t be bidding four no-trump to begin with.”

  I laughed and nodded. “Point taken.”

  “If your partner has one ace, she’ll bid 5?. If she has two, it’s 5?. Three would be 5?.”