The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  “We’re trying to protect our passengers from Economy Class Syndrome.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  Cathy glanced up from her quiz. “It’s deep-vein thrombosis. Dr. Oz says that dehydration may be a risk factor.”

  “Your Dr. Oz is an idiot! Then why do they allow liquor in first class?”

  “Leg room,” Cathy said. “It can even be worse in a window seat.”

  “That’s a lot of hooey,” Beatrice said.

  “It’s still our policy, ma’am.”

  “What if I show you my compression stockings?” she asked, even though she’d never worn the ghastly contraptions and never planned to. “I’ll do calf exercises every half hour.”

  The flight attendant smiled patronizingly. “May I get you something else?”

  Beatrice exhaled, mostly for effect. “I’ll just have a can of Mr & Mrs T and try to use my imagination.”

  In first class a bridal party of giggling tipsy blondes had been popping bottles of pink champagne and passing around canapés since they’d reached cruising altitude. Next time Beatrice would plan ahead and sneak on one of those tiny minibar-sized bottles of booze. Freddy always traveled first class. Nothing but the best. If he were here she’d be drinking Veuve Cliquot and staying in a suite at a four-star hotel, not the Rocking Horse hole-in-the-wall Ranch. Beatrice checked herself. She’d made a promise to her mother after her father abandoned them to never be beholden to any man. And that wasn’t about to change.

  An hour later, the plane hit a pocket of turbulence. The Fasten Seat Belt sign blinked on. Cathy gasped and clutched Beatrice’s arm. “This is my worst nightmare!”

  “What is?” Beatrice asked.

  “Falling out of the sky from thirty thousand feet.” The plane hit another rough patch. Her grip tightened around Beatrice’s arm. “My father tried to convince me not to go. I knew I should have gone back for my St. Christopher Medal.”

  “Calm down,” Beatrice said. “It’s just a little turbulence. Nothing to worry about.”

  “But what if the generator blows out again? It’s not like they can juice it up from all the way up here.”

  Right before takeoff, as they had begun taxiing from the gate during the in-flight safety demonstration, the monitors, lights, and air-conditioning suddenly went off. The captain had assured them it wasn’t a safety issue and that they’d start it up again and would be off the ground shortly, which they were, and then it was smooth sailing. But it had rattled Cathy enough for her to pop the other half of some kind of tranquilizer she’d taken before boarding, which luckily kicked in quickly.

  Beatrice was starting to lose circulation in her arm. “The generator’s working fine,” she said. “The lights are on, see?”

  “Right now they are.”

  “And they’re going to stay on. Look, no one else is panicking, not even that little kid there.”

  “Are you sure we’re not going to crash?”

  “Of course not. Why don’t you take another of those whatchamacallit pills and try to sleep. When you wake up we’ll be there.”

  “I’m going to speak to the pilot.”

  Cathy unfastened her seat belt. She was fleet of foot despite three-and-a-half-inch heels and was about to cross the great divide. Beatrice wasn’t terribly worried. With a little luck she’d meet the love of her life in business class, Beatrice would get her bloody mary, and all this silly love-conjuring business would finally be over.

  The Self-Love Pulse Quiz was lying open on Cathy’s seat. True or false: Pursuing my life’s purpose takes precedence even if it means disappointing someone I love. Cathy had circled True, then crossed it out and circled False. Not true for me right now. Poor dear. She picked up Cathy’s pink pen: Follow your heart, but take your brain with you. One of her mother’s favorite mottos.

  They hit another pocket of turbulence, causing even Beatrice’s heart to skip a beat. A moment later she heard a series of loud pops. Those bridesmaids could certainly put the bubbly away! What followed next was a cacophony of muffled shrieks. Beatrice tried to get a glimpse of what the commotion was, but all she could see was a huge white cloud in the aisle. Gripping the seatbacks, she set forth until she reached the first class cabin. And there it was: a despondent Cathy was on the floor, engulfed in tulle, as a hysterical bride and her attendants frantically tried to stuff the bride’s voluminous wedding gown, now puffed up like a mushroom cloud, back into its once vacuum-sealed garment bag. It didn’t take long for the prosecutor to assess the situation. The open overhead bin and the puncture holes in the garment bag the precise diameter of Cathy’s spiked heels told the whole story. Beatrice was reminded of another one of her mother’s favorite sayings: Always put your best foot forward, but don’t step on other people’s toes. Didn’t the poor girl’s mother ever tell her to wear sensible shoes on an airplane?

  * * *

  Beatrice was waiting for Cathy on a huge tan Naugahyde sofa in the lobby of the Rocking Horse Ranch, a glorified Motel 6 with antlers. They’d been in Whitefish less than two hours and already the girl had spoken to her father five times. Beatrice’s cell phone rang. It was Freddy.

  “I’m not pleased, Beatrice. Not pleased at all. You didn’t even give my feelings the slightest consideration.”

  “Hello to you too,” she said. “I didn’t know I had to ask for your goddamn permission.”

  “Really, Beatrice. That sort of language is not very becoming.”

  “You know what you are, Freddy? A stuffed shirt!”

  “Think about how this looks. No wife of mine—”

  “Save that kind of talk for Muriel.”

  “I can see that I’m not getting anywhere with you. I’ll call you later when you come to your senses.”

  “Don’t bother. I have.”

  Beatrice snapped her phone shut. Let him stew in his own jealousy a bit. She was peeved, but not so peeved that she didn’t burst out laughing when she leaned back and found herself staring into the nostrils of a giant stuffed elk above the huge stone fireplace. Everything in this place was enormous. The scale had one benefit: it made her feel positively petite. To pass the time, she flipped through a book about native game and after five minutes knew more than she cared to about elks, genus Cervus elaphus. She learned that an average bull weighs over five hundred pounds (the antlers alone could weigh forty!) and that male elk prefer to live alone or with other male elk until mating season, when they roll around in the mud, sharpen their antlers on trees to intimidate other bulls, then lure unsuspecting females into their harem. If (heaven forbid!) a female elk were to wander out of the harem for greener pastures or fly to Whitefish, Montana, the bull will merely grunt. But if another bull happened to be having a birthday party, the bull will turn into a possessive beast, going to any length to reclaim what is his. The only man she could think of at that moment who didn’t fit that stereotype was Malcolm, who, at least from what she could tell, was far less testosterone-driven than his older brother. Albert had certainly had his moments of bullheadedness. If only she hadn’t been just as bullheaded herself, maybe they could have enjoyed the last six months of his life together.

  Cathy arrived and they rode the old-time trolley up the mountain to the lodge. The only other person on the bus was a geezer wearing a bedazzled white fringe jacket, Wrangler jeans, a belt with a huge buckle, and turquoise cowboy boots. He looked like he was on his way to a rodeo. When he tipped his ten-gallon hat, Beatrice smiled. After being totally ignored on the plane, it felt good to be acknowledged, even by an octogenarian Rhinestone Cowboy in Whitefish.

  Rob Roy was still the handsome engineer who’d gone off to join the Peace Corps after college. On prominent display were photographs of him with his doting wife Ursula and their five boys posing in exotic settings, riding elephants, socializing with the locals, even surrounded by pygmies.

  He gave her a huge bear hug. “You missed your chance, Red,” he said. “All this could have been yours.”

  “This l
odge?” she asked. “In Whitefish? Gee, thanks.”

  Beatrice hadn’t been aware until then that the Rhinestone Cowboy had been standing right beside her the whole time. Damn Love Book!

  After cocktails, dinner was served in the dining area, a circular room with a panorama of the mountaintop. They put Cathy at the “kids table” and Beatrice with the swinging-seventies set. She was seated next to a dapper gentleman named Harvey and across from a white-haired conservationist with a goatee who had published a book of haiku. On her other side was the conservationist’s wife, a chatty woman from South Carolina. Beatrice tried in vain to tune out her high-pitched screeching bird of a voice. The men at the table were fit and flirtatious preening peacocks, wearing brightly colored cashmere sweaters under tweed jackets, the women duller than drab hens. Beatrice stifled a laugh. Maybe Malcolm was right: she might just be a birder in the making.

  The waiter brought out cold Waldorf salads doused in a thick creamy dressing. As the dinner wore on and the wine glasses were filled, emptied, and filled again, the men became even more flirtatious, the women red-faced and giddy. When Beatrice stood to go to the ladies’ room, her chair was swiftly pulled out as though she had a personal butler at the waiting. It was the cowboy!

  “At your service, ma’am.”

  The rest of the evening, Ed chased her around like a prize steer. He was dumb as a post but very good looking, and she found the attention, even from an old coot like Ed, undeniably appealing. After dinner, when the men retired to a wood-paneled smoking room, Beatrice followed. As a former prosecutor she was accustomed to being the only female in a room. It reminded her of those early heady days when she’d had to earn her chops in the male-dominated world of the DA’s office, following the path blazed by Charlotte Smallwood-Cook, the first woman district attorney in New York.

  She’d only had one scotch, but she was tipsy enough to burst into song. She touched Ed’s knee. “I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”

  Ed glanced down at his slightly worn fringed jacket. “I saved my best duds for tomorrow night.”

  She hit him playfully on the arm. “I think you look just fine.” Never mind that he didn’t get the reference to that old Western song, he was damn cute and getting cuter by the minute. “Where are you from, Ed?” she asked, leaning on the arm of his chair.

  “Wild Horse Canyon. Lived there since I graduated from Worcester Poly Tech. I’m a civil engineer, just like Robby.”

  “I’ve always wondered if the rumor about cowboys is true . . .”

  “Say?”

  “You know, that cowboys are supposed to be the best in the West!”

  He laughed. “You’re one spicy gal, Beatrice. Mind if I call you Trixie?”

  “Suits me. I’ve also heard that engineers do it to specification,” she said, winking.

  She felt a tap on her shoulder. Cathy motioned for Beatrice to follow her. What could have flustered the girl now? She hoped it wasn’t something with her father.

  “Don’t be gone long, Trixie,” Ed crooned like a sick cow.

  “Be back in two shakes!” she replied.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Cathy said, “Beatrice, you’re flirting!”

  Beatrice smiled. “I’m not flirting; I just want Ed to know how cute I think he is.”

  “But you’re betrothed! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the expression, Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice? That’s a line from Jane Eyre. You should read it.”

  “Dr. Phil wouldn’t approve,” Cathy said.

  “Like I give a hoot. Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, they’re both quacks.”

  “What about Freddy?”

  “What about him? He’s in Westchester with his wife and I’m in Whitefish. Don’t worry, I’m not about to run off with an old cowboy to Wild Horse Canyon. I’m just having some fun.”

  Cathy glanced at Beatrice’s glass of scotch. “I think you’ve had enough.”

  “Loosen up, babe. It’ll do you good. Now if you’ll excuse me, my cowpoke awaits.”

  It wasn’t until the end of the evening that she realized Cathy had taken the trolley back to the Rocking Horse Ranch. She wasn’t Cathy’s babysitter. Or her mother, although it felt that way sometimes. Right now she had more important things on her mind, like the nightcap she was planning to have in the Jacuzzi with the Rhinestone Cowboy.

  * * *

  Snowflakes were falling like fairy dust. Beatrice sipped her champagne, mesmerized by the curls of steam coming off the warm bubbling water, trailing up into the night sky. Ed refilled her glass. She felt like she was back in college, hoping she wouldn’t get caught skinny-dipping in the Notch.

  Ed sidled up closer. “I’ve never met a woman like you. You make me want to be a better man.”

  Albert had said that too. If only he’d meant it. Beatrice had learned long ago to take people as they were. They weren’t about to change and neither was she.

  “You’re just drunk.”

  “I’m not. I swear. It’s like I was struck by lightning.” He leaned over and before she could turn her face away, his lips were on hers, and they were soft lips, not chapped, home-on-the-range cowboy lips.

  “Beatrice!” It was Cathy, zipped up like an Eskimo in her puffy sky-blue parka, her hands on her hips.

  Ed slid down lower in the water, hiding his face under the brim of his hat.

  “Hey, babe,” Beatrice said, “what’s shaking?”

  “I thought we were friends,” Cathy said.

  Beatrice grabbed a towel and carefully made her way out of the Jacuzzi. “What are you talking about? Of course we’re friends.”

  “A real friend wouldn’t make me an accomplice.”

  “Listen, kid, I was a DA for twenty-five years and sitting in a Jacuzzi with a pruney old cowboy is not an actionable offense, even in Whitefish.”

  “Maybe it would be a good idea if I change my flight and leave first thing in the morning. I don’t want to waste another personal day.”

  “Suit yourself,” Beatrice said. “But if I were you, I’d spend less time meddling in other people’s lives and more on yourself. You have a lot of growing up to do.”

  “At least I wouldn’t be cheating on my fiancé.”

  “But you don’t have one, do you?” Beatrice said.

  “I will.”

  “Not with that attitude you won’t.”

  Ed pushed back his hat and, dripping wet, slowly made his way out of the water. His boxers looked like they were about to fall off his skinny hips. Maybe that was why cowboys wore chaps.

  Beatrice put on her robe. “I’m going to see about changing rooms for the night.”

  “Don’t bother,” Cathy said. “I already tried.”

  “Great. And thanks to you, my only other option is hobbling away. And let’s consider this my resignation from your ridiculous Love Club.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  As they walked to their room in stony silence, Beatrice had a sense of déjà vu. She’d painted herself into a corner again, just the way she’d done with Albert.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LOST AND FOUND

  EMILY SAT IN A TAXI, waiting for Zach to finish soccer practice. It was Friday, early dismissal. The driver was growing impatient. “He’ll be out in a minute,” she told him, not even aware that it had already been fifteen minutes. She was replaying a telephone conversation she’d had with Duncan last week. I’ve decided to forgive you, he’d said. Forgive me? She’d forgotten what they were currently fighting about. Yes, I forgive you. I’m a very forgiving man. No need to apologize. I can’t fault you for your shortcomings. Duncan was the keynote speaker at a symposium in Chicago. Emily had been looking forward to the trip for weeks. No distractions, no Astrid, no Charles, just the two of them. She assumed he was calling to cancel. I understand if you’d rather I not go, she’d said. No, I’m a man of my word. And it’s already booked. But this i
s going to be a make-it-or-break-it weekend.

  Finally, a little after one, a flood of sweaty boys in soccer uniforms burst out of the school. Zach slid into the back of the cab. His face was flushed and he had an icepack on his wrist.

  “What happened?” Emily asked.

  “Jeremy kicked me with his cleat.”

  “What did the coach say?”

  “He told me I should get it X-rayed.”

  Emily checked the time. She was picking Duncan up to head to the airport in an hour. “Should I take you to Dr. Kahn?”

  “I’ll just wrap it with an Ace bandage when I get home.”

  Zach still had his doctor’s kit from when he was in nursery school. One or another of his stuffed animals was always in the ICU, wrapped head to toe in an Ace bandage.

  “You’re going to the Rangers game tonight. I’m dropping you at Daddy’s office. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  “It’s fine, Mom. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Totally. I can get more ice at the Garden.”

  Her phone rang. It was a friend from journalism school who worked at the Library of Congress. Emily had asked her to help track down the author of The Love Book.

  Zach was playing with his talking Lost in Space keychain attached to his backpack. “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

  She shushed him. “Zach, quiet, I’m on the phone.”

  “Hey, Mom, Ben invited me to his birthday party. It’s a scavenger hunt. Can I go?”

  She put her hand over the phone. “Go to what?”

  “Ben’s birthday party. We’re going to drive around in stretch Hummers!”

  “We’ll talk about it later. Mommy’s working.”

  “Sorry, Mom. One more thing: Sasha and I broke up.”

  “One sec, Zach,” she said, continuing to jot notes in her date book. It looked like she might finally have a lead. By the time the cab arrived at Charles’s office building, it turned out to be another dead end.

  * * *

  Duncan was on the phone when Emily picked him up in the taxi, and still was when they passed the World’s Fair Unisphere in Flushing Meadows on their way to LaGuardia Airport. When she’d told Charles she was going away for the weekend, she was surprised that he was so accommodating. I’m not the enemy, Emily.