Third finger. “This means, as you know, that the Regional Office, like the Home Office, looks the other way at a lot of things. A lot. One of those things is all the old gods and local spirits who are coming out of hiding. You don’t know what this does to the big picture. Actually, I don’t know, either. I doubt if Ish does. What matters to us is, we get some recruits from off-grid.”
I examined my audience. Amanda didn’t really seem to care. Jee was glazing over. She grew up in an area that was 80% Muslim, 10% Hindu, and 4% Christian, with 52% crazy-ass tribal syncretic paganism mashing it all together. As far as Jee was concerned, all religion sucked. This was actually a fairly representative attitude among the personnel of the Regional Office.
Amanda was listening. “And Beth is one of these off-grid recruits?” she said.
“Beth is one of them,” I said.
“Does Ish know?” Amanda said.
“Yup. But don’t bring it up to him. Or to anybody else.”
Amanda shut up. She might have been thinking.
Jee said, “I always thought Ish was a spineless apparatchik.”
I made a meh face. “He’s no worse than some, and a lot better than most.”
“Except for this fucking idiot, Reg,” Jee said. “What was he thinking?”
Fortunately, at this moment the door opened and Reg walked into the kitchen.
Instantly Jee yelled, “Get out of here and knock!”
And bang, Reg turned around, went out, closed the door, knocked on it, and walked back in.
Jee glowered. “Better. Next time, wait until someone says, ‘Enter,’ before you come in.”
Reg hesitated. “I done what you said.”
Jee waited ten long seconds. “Well?”
“Blake Saunders is gonna leave his office at 33 West Monroe at five-thirty today. From there he’s post-a go to the doctor’s office with his girlfriend, over on Michigan Avenue at Washington. By seven, he should be at Barclay’s in Oak Park.”
“Did you tell him Beth would be waiting for him?” Jee said.
“‘Course not. I ain’t stupid,” Reg said in the teeth of the evidence. “He thinks he’s meeting Mrs. Blake Saunders. I din’t talk to him. I made the appointment through his assistant.”
“Did the assistant ask any questions?” Amanda said.
“No, but she sounded pretty sour when I said ‘Mrs. Blake Saunders.’ I think she has an idea that her boss is, uh....”
“A lying shitweasel?” Jee said.
“Living a double life?” Amanda said.
“Thanks, Reg, that’s perfect,” I said. “It’s almost quarter to five now. Would you tell Beth we’re meeting Blake in forty-five minutes?”
“But—”
“Just do it.”
Reg shrugged. As he turned to the door, he paused to check us out, one at a time, all three of us lying in our La-Z-Boys like bimbos in a beer commercial. He opened his mouth to make a Reg-type remark. Then he caught Jee’s eye, nodded, and left.
“Holy shit, Jee,” I said. “I think you’re getting somewhere with him.”
“Just call me the Jerk Whisperer,” Jee said and closed her eyes.
Beth
Beth dressed for her meeting with Blake a lot more carefully than she had last time. Before, Jee had dressed her up like a doll. She’d felt like a doll, or a zombie, or some girl with three aggressive girlfriends who were out to see her dated up or else.
Today she felt in charge. She had a lot of questions to ask Blake, such as, How did you get away with stealing your ex-wife blind? It might take some finesse to get answers out of him, but she was sure she’d think of the right approach. It should be a lot easier to grill him as Beth the foxy supermodel than as Beth his wronged and rageful ex-wife.
Mindful of Blake’s weakness for leg, she wore a gray suede micro skirt with an enormous belt that wrapped twice around her hips and hung there, inviting every woman who saw it to hate her for being so skinny. She paired that with a drapey silver lamé tank with spaghetti straps—she dialed her boobs back to “pert” for purposes of the tank—and some chunky silver and turquoise earrings and necklace. The outfit had seemed grossly overdone when she tried it on in Neiman’s dressing room, but now, in front of her bedroom mirror, with her hair mussed up and her eyelashes ridiculously long and dark, it looked just right.
Pog drove her downtown with Jee in the back seat again. As they handed the Beemer over to a valet at Don’s Fishmarket near Blake’s office, she told Beth:
“We’ll be sitting nearby. Do not try to run away from him on your own. You have backup.”
Beth heaved a huge sigh. “Thanks, you guys.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Jee said, showing her teeth. Her eyes flashed, a sure sign she was ready for battle. “Wave me over if you want us to double-team him.”
“Thanks,” Beth said with more reserve. “But I hope—let me try this.”
Jee smiled warmly. “You’re gonna be fine.”
The three of them strode across the street and into the giant white lobby of 33 West Monroe. Beth checked the jeweled watch she’d bought yesterday to replace the one she sold two years ago to pay Jeff’s rent during his last semester of graduate school. Blake ought to be coming down any minute.
And here he came. The elevator doors opened and disgorged half a dozen of Blake’s sleek, amoral fellow executives. Looking at them now, Beth wondered how she could have failed to see how casually evil they all were. It wasn’t even as if they knew they were evil. They simply did what they wanted and broke the rules and took all the cream and left everyone else with nothing. Business was business.
And Blake, hustling through the lobby among them, suddenly looked doughy and half-assed, like a cartoon shark among real sharks. She wasn’t in the least surprised when her roommates swept down on him and skillfully separated him from the sharks. The sharks never looked back or noticed he was gone. Beth waited for them to bustle out of the building before she sauntered over to join Blake.
“Mine, ladies,” she drawled. Today she would keep her focus. Since the thing with her breasts and Reg’s “nice tits,” she had learned her lesson. She put her fingertip under Blake’s chin. “C’mon, sugar, we have time for a drink.”
“Uh, hi—”
“Beth,” Beth prompted.
“Beth.” Blake smiled, looking dazzled by the hotness and apparent willingness of all these women. “I’m supposed to—”
“You’re supposed to watch me get tipsy and tell me all your troubles,” Beth said firmly. She led him outside. She’d meant to take him to Don’s Fishmarket across the street, but, just at that moment, she noticed Blake’s coworkers going into Don’s themselves. Rats.
Holding Blake by the hand, she stuck her other arm in the air. A cab pulled to the curb beside them immediately. “Renaissance Hotel,” she told him, and shoved Blake into the back seat.
Whatever objections to being kidnapped Blake may have had, they died at these words. “You won’t believe my week,” he said to the hot blonde beside him.
Beth took Blake to the restaurant on the first floor of the Renaissance. Apparently this was close enough to a bed to release all Blake’s inhibitions. He told her about his ex-wife’s disappearance. He told her about being questioned by the police. He complained of being detained overnight, and, on a rising whine, of how hard it had been to get his lawyer on the phone.
Beth soothed him and petted his arm. She was sure it was all a terrible mistake. “But at least your ex-wife has disappeared. Now you won’t have to pay her off.”
“Fat chance,” he grumbled. “She called my daughter yesterday.”
And that’s the last time I do, Beth thought. “Why didn’t you tell the cops?” she said aloud in a reasonable tone. “Your daughter’s testimony should clear you right there.”
“I thought about that. The thing is, I gave her a little something extra to report my ex-wife missing. As long as she really isn’t dead—I mean, how should I know if she’s dead or
not?—if she’s just run off to Jamaica—well, as you say, it saves me money. I can’t pay it if I don’t know where to send the check,” he said triumphantly.
Stifling her rage, Beth said, “Feed me dinner, Blake honey. I’m about to gnaw your leg off.”
He shot her a leer that turned to a look of alarm when she met his eyes squarely. He beckoned a waitress. Beth ordered everything on the appetizer side of the menu and three more beers. Blake ordered his fourth double martini. Then he resumed whining.
“Now Darleen wants to know if her mom really has been murdered. As if I would do that!” He trembled with indignation, and Beth warmed to him a little. “Right after the divorce? How dumb do I look?”
Her indignation died. She found herself wishing that someone had disrespected Blake in the lockup, same as Reg.
The questions she most wanted answered rose up in her throat. Careful, she thought. How to phrase them?
“If your wife—your ex-wife has disappeared, you won’t have to pay the settlement, right?”
“Yeah, but will she stay disappeared? You never met her. She was constantly asking for money. I’ve had to hide my bonus income for the past nine years.”
Steam began rising out of the top of Beth’s head. She was constantly asking for money to pay for the mansion you wanted, and the boat you wanted, and the two and a half vacation homes you wanted, and the new cars you wanted—
Thank goodness, the waitress showed up with her food.
When she left, Blake said in a lowered voice, “Normally I’d be screwed now, because Uncle Sam isn’t as dumb as she was. Uncle Sam would tell her lawyer exactly what I declare.” Blake helped himself to one of Beth’s beer-battered french fries, and she forced herself not to smack his hand away. “But I blocked that punt. One of the guys taught me this trick. You get a new social security number and establish a separate identity and pay all that side income into it. Long as you pay your full taxes on it, the government won’t squeal on you to your ex’s lawyers.”
That explained “Blake Shanley.” And how have you managed to pay taxes on that, you dumb jerk? Beth thought. You never knew how before. I did all your books.
“Aren’t you clever?” she purred.
“You’re so sympathetic,” Blake returned in a gooey voice, laying his hand over hers, giving her combination hot flash and cold ickies.
The busboy removed the empty fries plate, the empty jalapeño poppers plate, the empty nachos plate, and the plate that had held the rib tips and buffalo wings combo. The waitress arrived on his heels with a big tray carrying Beth’s charcuterie sampler, bacon sliders, lobster mac and cheese, poutine, seared ahi tuna bites, and green salad.
“Are you going to eat all that?” Blake said, less gooey.
Beth held up her fork and squinted at him across its long sharp tines. “You got a problem with it?”
“How is...everything?” the waitress said, clearly also incredulous that Beth was eating...everything.
Beth turned on her. “You judge, no tip.” She felt very Pog-like.
“I’ll go get those clams,” the waitress said hastily. “Another beer?”
“Two.” Beth held up two fingers. “He’ll have another double martini.” She smiled maliciously, remembering how many times Blake had humiliated her in front of waiters. “He’s watching his weight.”
The next half hour went much the same way. Beth ate. Blake whined some more, blaming everyone but himself for his troubles. The waitress brought her a personal pizza and kept her opinions to herself. Blake bragged some more about his flagrant and pervasive dishonesty in his marriage, spinning elaborate lies to justify it.
Her hunger finally blunted, Beth recognized a new bodily want that was rising to take its place. To her shock and disgust, she realized it was lust.
She looked Blake over coldly, trying to pull away from her body the way she used to do, huh, for years. Blake was slack and cruel the way selfish people are cruel, without meaning to be. He had gone to seed since she first married him, over imperceptible decades, and greatly more to seed in the months since he’d divorced her.
And yet she wanted him. It was sick. She wanted to push his pants down and fuck him here in the restaurant booth. What is wrong with me?
Amanda’s comment came back, the warning that if she didn’t get laid soon, she would sleep with Blake.
Beth slid her hand out from under Blake’s just as a brassy, indignant female voice behind her said, “Well!”
Pog
Beth had said Renaissance Hotel loudly enough that we knew where to go. But the Beemer had just been valeted away. Jee wanted to get it back out of the ramp, but I thought that would be too slow, plus, we didn’t want Blake getting to know what the Beemer looked like. He may have already had a glimpse of the van, that night we rescued Beth from him at Barclay’s. We could disguise ourselves, but the vehicles, not so much. I flagged a cab while I was explaining all this to Jee. We were a block behind them when Beth and her ex got out of their cab and went into a hotel near Wacker and Wabash.
“Fuck, she’s gonna do it,” Jee muttered.
“Have some faith in the kid,” I said.
We checked out the lobby first. No Beth. Jee sprinted to the registration desk. We should be in time to catch them booking a room, if they were doing that.
No Beth.
We found them in the back of the first-floor restaurant.
Jee and I exchanged glances.
Not such an idiot, my glance said.
We’ll see, hers said.
We sat three booths back and ordered drinks.
Beth handled her ex okay. She was clearly in fact-finding mode, and from the number of times she flushed red, I guessed that the facts she was finding didn’t please her much. Blake was apparently spilling his guts.
Blake drank. Beth ate. Watching Beth pack lunch away made us hungry, so we ordered a snack.
And then, right when he touched her hand and she started breathing heavily and I thought we would have to pour a glass of icewater over her, a skanky, underage-looking redhead stormed up to their booth and started yelling.
We hadn’t been close enough to hear what Beth and Blake were saying, but we got the redhead loud and clear.
“What kind of a man,” she was yelling, “promises to go with a girl to the clinic and then doesn’t show up? A weasel, that’s who!” Then she hauled off and clobbered Beth on the ear with her handbag.
Jee was out of her seat and down the aisle in a heartbeat.
I followed slower. Clinic? Oops, Blake.
“Farrah, honey,” Blake was saying. He hadn’t moved.
I caught up with Jee and grabbed her wrist just as she reached for the redhead’s hair.
“I guess she found those pictures at the Doral, Blake,” Beth said calmly, sounding apologetic. “You shouldn’t have printed them out.”
He looked dumbfounded. “I what? Doral? What pictures?”
The redhead’s eyes narrowed suddenly. I guessed she knew about the Doral apartment. I maneuvered into the next booth behind Blake so I could watch her.
“Oops.” Beth turned back to Blake. “You still have time to get back there and destroy them. That’s my best advice.” She picked up her clutch and stood up, right on the redhead’s toes. She was easily a foot taller. She bent down and whispered into the redhead’s ear, “Don’t let him kneel too long. His left patella tends to rotate.”
She put one hand on the redhead’s chest and shoved. The redhead flew back, bumped into Jee, who was standing behind her like Death waiting to be noticed, and stumbled forward again. By then, Beth was striding for the door.
We chased after her.
“He didn’t tell me everything,” she said out on the sidewalk as we turned down Wabash Avenue. “I think he has some emergency plan he wouldn’t talk about. If I’d had more time—”
“If you’d had more time, you’d have fucked him,” Jee said crossly. She was madder than Beth. “You idiot.”
“She
’s right,” I said.
Beth bit her lip.
“I need jewelry,” Jee growled. We walked two blocks to Marshall Field, where she calmed down enough to ask Beth, “What kind of emergency plan? Do you mean, when and if he decides to dump Farrah?”
“I can’t believe he blew off her appointment at the clinic,” I said. “That boy is in for a thumping.”
“Now will you stop taking these people’s calls?” Jee demanded. “That reminds me, here. Amanda made these for you.” She produced a handful of business cards rubber-banded together. “In case you ever get cornered and have to give an address.”
Silently, Beth took them and put them in her clutch.
Jee dragged us up to the fancy jewelry department, tried on thirty-one bracelets by actual count, and bought four tennis bracelets for forty-five hundred dollars apiece, one for each of us. That seemed to settle her down.
Beth
In the car on the way home to the Lair, Beth reflected that all her roommates’ slutty talk made sense in a twisted way. If a woman happened to find herself completely outside the world’s mores—out here on her own, all alone, desperate to understand what and who she might really be, without the protective boundaries of convention and good behavior—well, at a time like that, maybe the sluts might help her find an anchor.
The anchor, she began to realize, was within herself.
She was shocked by this thought. Jee’s selfishness must be rubbing off on her. What kind of person put herself first? Someone horrible. Or, as Pog might put it, a man.
The contractor’s night crew was hard at work when they got home. Power saws whined and jackhammers shook the floor.
Amanda greeted the sluts with a big pitcher of mojitos and made them watch something she’d TIVO’d off the news. “Get a load of this!”
There was the front of the Doral, where “Blake Shanley” had his man lair. An evidence tech car was parked in front. Photo inset: Beth, the old Beth, wife of Blake and mother of Jeff and Darleen, looking middle-aged and, to the new Beth’s eyes, as if she was pretending something just as hard as she could. That was me. “Everything’s fine.” I had no idea then how not-fine everything was.
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