Fat Chance

by Deborah Blumenthal

  That wakes me up. “I do have a lot of skeletons in my closet.”

  “Then I’m thinking that I’m spending too much time away taking pictures,” Tamara says. “Okay, maybe I’m slacking off a bit while you’re gone, Maggie, but so what? There really isn’t that much to do when you’re not around. So I go up to his office, and his secretary waves me in. Big Daddy is sitting behind his desk, smiling at me.”

  “Then?” She has a way of taking forever before she cuts to the chase.

  “‘Sit down, Tamara,’ he says, ‘I have your portfolio right here.’ He looks through it and says, ‘You’ve certainly been busy with your camera, haven’t you?’

  “Maggie, that’s when I’m sure that he’s canning me.”

  She’s secure. It takes one to know one.

  “Then he says, ‘Have you thought much about where you’d like to go with your picture taking?’ So then I’m positive I’m being canned. I mean, ‘Where you’d like to go’?”

  “What did you say?”

  “‘For now, I’m just practicing, hoping to get good shots, but I haven’t really planned anything beyond that.’”

  “Okay.”

  “Then, listen to this. He says, ‘I have a proposition for you. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about doing a weekly photo column called Whoops. It would consist of pictures of celebrities caught unawares—like Ralph Fiennes walking down Broadway pulling up his fly, or a Ford model emerging from a secluded nightspot, on the arm of someone else’s husband. What do you think?’”

  “Unbelievable. What did you tell him?”

  “Maggie, I still didn’t realize he was offering me something. I looked at him and said, ‘Well, readers would love it.’

  “And he says, ‘Think you could handle it?’”

  I start clapping my hands.

  “A little peep came out of my throat,” Tamara says, laughing. “‘Me?’

  “And he looks at me and says, ‘I thought that was obvious.’”

  My eyes are filling with tears, but I don’t want her to know this. I’m going to cry, but I’m praying it doesn’t happen until I hang up. “So what did you say,” I say, pretending to cough, as if that’s why my voice is growing deeper.

  “I jumped up from my chair and flung myself in front of him. ‘I will not disappoint you. I promise. I’ll spend every second of my life getting pictures.’”

  “There’s nobody who deserves a break more,” I say. “I’m so thrilled for you, I don’t know what to say.”

  I know that Tamara picks up the emotion in my voice and is touched by it. I hear her voice getting softer and ragged too.

  “Can I tell you something, Maggie?” Tamara says, not waiting for my answer.

  “This is the first time in my life that hard work has paid off. I’m being judged for what I did, not the color of my skin, my sex, or where I went to school. For once, I got a break, a chance to make it. Quantum leap out of the ghetto. And with no one’s help. No handicaps, no deals. A break!”

  I’ve never heard her talk like this, and the tears are welling up in my eyes.

  All I can croak out is “I know, I know,” and we leave it at that, promising to speak again the day after Valentine’s Day.

  In the early-morning sun, the bedroom is washed with piercing white light, like an overexposed photograph. No wonder New York is so often gray, the sun here is doing double shifts. Perfect weather or not, I’m on my own today. Taylor’s in the studio. Then I remember promising to cook for him on Valentine’s Day.

  But what? Eggs? Eggs and caviar, or eggs and smoked salmon? Eggs were foods of love, and what more apt symbol of fertility, fecundity? Or maybe just a big ole tin of caviar and shrimps diavolo. Or bouillabaisse, lighter fare. Always keep the dog a little hungry. I don’t dwell on where this love feast may lead.

  It would be a switch from last Valentine’s Day when I spent the night at home alone and was tucked into bed with a book by 9:00 p.m., wearing a flannel nightgown that had been a sweet-sixteen gift. Just as I was setting the alarm, the phone rang.

  “Turn on CNN,” Tex said. “They’re doing a report on—”

  “The Valentine’s Day massacre?”

  “Awful date, huh?”

  So I lied. A woman had her pride. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Guys are assholes, Maggie…so what happened?”

  Safer not to embellish the falsehood. “There are no words…” Half an hour later, he arrived at my door, unannounced, with a red fur teddy bear slung over his shoulder. It was almost as tall as I am.

  “I’m getting a hernia,” Tex said, brushing my face with the bear’s arm.

  I’m not surprised he’s back from his V-Day dinner with Sharon. She got up early on weekdays to talk with her financial clients, and Tex couldn’t handle the alarm clock beeping at 5:00 a.m.

  “You’ll have to rent him an apartment of his own.”

  “We can share custody.”

  Before the night was over, we traded Valentine’s Day stories and finished a bottle of Merlot.

  “I took out a girl from Goldman Sachs a couple of years ago,” Tex said, nodding his head glumly. “As soon as we sat down to dinner, I knew it was a mistake. She started out by telling me that she had to be home by nine. ‘I work out with my trainer at four-thirty, and get to the office by five-thirty, then I’m putting together these billion-dollar mergers in Silicon Valley until ten at night,’” Tex said, parroting her nasal voice.

  “‘Tex, you wouldn’t believe…Microsoft’s fate hanging on issues of credibility…the SEC halting trade in the shares of five Internet-related companies…the astronomical force of deals in the global economy.’ I sat there, fixated on the size of her teeth—long, white, convex, predatory,” he said. “And then the clincher was when she said she’d be thirty in three months and that her income for the year was almost a quarter of a mil more than the last.”

  “So you ordered champagne?”

  “No, I slid her the check.”

  I can’t remember many Valentine’s Days when the night lived up to some magical level of romanticism.

  “In college, a girlfriend fixed me up with a cousin who was visiting from out of town,” I tell him. “I looked at him and wondered whether all the men in Wheeling were five foot four and sold insurance or whether I had just gotten lucky.”

  Tex smirks.

  “You just know how our dinner conversation started.”

  “‘Term or life?’” he says.

  “Yeah, it was Valentine’s Day and he was trying to sell me life insurance. So do you sell more of the term or the whole life policies? Oh, oh, I see. And then you can convert them? Really! We weren’t even finished with the appetizers. Then he bragged about how he saved money by buying chuck instead of filet mignon, because with enough pounding you could tenderize it so that no one would know the difference.”

  He also had a system for saving money on toilet paper by counting the sheets he used each time he went to the bathroom, but I didn’t share that with Tex.

  That was the last time I ever dated by default, especially on Valentine’s Day.

  It’s not that I’m after a night of endless sex or treacle romance, it’s just that I want to be with the right person. I hate the requisite roses or satin hearts filled with gummy chocolates, or the tacky gift of lingerie. (Men rarely splurge on the luscious French or Italian stuff, anyway—it never crosses their minds that there’s a difference.) And for lack of knowing what else to do, most guys seem to fall victim to cliché and mass marketing, making the occasion even more painful than if they just showed up with some great take-out food, a good movie, and a smile that would tell you that there was no other place on earth that they’d rather be.

  But now here I am three thousand miles from home, and I’m faced with cooking up a menu to make L.A.’s sexiest bachelor sizzle.

  I’m walking through the aisles of the grocery store to buy the Valentine’s Day menu, and I get an idea for my next column based
on what’s being done to our food supply.

  Food-Ceuticals

  Why can’t they leave plain old food alone?

  Every time I go to the grocery store, I notice that the food has been adulterated. The orange juice has added calcium. The cold cereals seem to be filled with ground-up multivitamins. And now I read that the new generation of comestibles coming your way will contain hidden medicines. Would you believe bananas that produce a cholera vaccine? Genetically engineered corn that contains oral vaccines for travellers’ diarrhea?

  We already have genetically engineered foods to fight off insects, but where are we headed with this new generation of “agriceuticals,” as they are dubbed? Frankly, the whole business of messing with nature this way scares me. What’s ahead? A phone call to the local pharmacist to make sure that there are no drug interactions between foods every time we eat a meal?

  As I’m stirring a pot, he sidles up to me, resting his hands on my hips.

  “What’s cooking?” Taylor says, sniffing the air.

  “Swan’s pizzle.”

  “Run that past me again.”

  “Don’t ask…” I take a spoon of bouillabaisse, blow on it, then hold it up to his lips.

  “Mmmm…I’m yours!”

  I blush. Leave that alone. I lean over and kiss his cheek. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Taylor.”

  “Same to you, O’Leary.” He hoists himself up on the kitchen counter. “So this is my aphrodisiac special, right? Gonna drive me out of my gourd?”

  “Possibly. Of course there’s always the chance that it could have a reverse pharmacological effect.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  I take a caviar pie out of the refrigerator and gently slide a knife through the layers—a topping of shimmering black Beluga pearls resting on a bed of cream cheese and egg salad. I cut a thick wedge for him and a wobbly sliver for myself.

  “Should I cut a third for—?” Why do I hate to say her name?

  He shakes his head. “She’s staying with someone in Beverly Hills tonight. She wants to show me…”

  “I hope I didn’t screw things up for you—especially since I’m clearing out in a few days.”

  “You don’t have to. Camp out here for a while.” He eases me in between his open knees. “Give L.A. a shot. What do you think?”

  “Taste the pie.”

  I watch him taste it and see the corners of his mouth curl. I sweep a tiny pearl from the side of his lip with my finger. He reaches for my finger, and licks it off.

  I cut two more pieces and we move to the table, eating without speaking. The blood rises to my face. I hate that! My stupid, pale Irish complexion always gives me away. I glance over at him, then lower my eyes the moment he catches my gaze. I follow his tanned fingers guiding the fork up to his lips, then look back at his eyes.

  “Good?”

  His head moves up and down slowly.

  It’s a game now. But who is the fish, who is the fisherman? Whichever, carpe diem!

  I rise from the table and stir the vermilion-red broth, inhaling the pungent bouquet of simmering clams, mussels, scallops, lobster and red snapper. I set the steaming pot before us and ladle it into two bowls, then serve salad and French bread.

  “Maybe we should just sniff this,” Taylor says. “Get high on the scent.”

  “I’d like to invent a dish that you could inhale instead of eat. Wouldn’t that make me the health guru of all gurus? Please the senses, satisfy the stomach, without touching a drop. We could go into business. I’d cook it and you’d serve it. We’d be rich. I could even write the screenplay.”

  Taylor shakes his finger admonishingly. “Careful. If you’re thinking about screenplays, you’re becoming one of us. Soon you’ll get silicon breasts and cheek implants.” He pushes his chair back, as if in horror.

  “Yeah, then I’ll never get out of this roach motel.”

  He tears off some French bread. “You’d miss New York. You wouldn’t feel comfortable here, would you?”

  “Not unless I sent for my Testarosa and my furs,” I intone theatrically. “I live a lavish lifestyle in the city.” I look around, feigning disgust. “How could someone like me rough it in a place like this?” I say, lapsing into Bette Davis. “What a dump.”

  Taylor stares back at me. “You scared of me, or just hostile?”

  I’m silent for a moment, looking down at the table. “Both.”

  “Don’t be.” He lifts the champagne flute and takes a sip, watching me over the rim. “The meal’s working,” he says, holding my gaze.

  I smile, then unconsciously swallow. “Dessert?”

  He just smiles, takes my hand and leads me up the stairs. This feels so surreal. I’d imagined it over and over again, heading to the bedroom I was about to see for the first time. It’s as if I’m watching a trailer, but the picture has never gotten made. I picture the king-size bed swathed in gray, see myself lying down, him above me…propping himself up with those arms.

  He pushes open the white lacquered door, and there it is, shadowed by night. Opposite the bed is a glass wall and beyond it only blackness and twinkling lights and the bleached yellow of a three-quarter moon. In the daylight, the view will sharpen into focus, like a developing photo, to show an endless panorama of sunlight and blue ocean. He turns on a small steel wall lamp, and then kneels and lights three thick white candles on a red lacquer tray on the bedside table. I watch his lips come together to blow out the match.

  “C’mere, sex symbol.”

  He stretches out next to me, pushing back hair from my face and blowing off stray strands with a puff of breath. “Nobody can live up to that.”

  “Try.”

  He runs his fingers lightly over the outside of my dress, easing each button open, and then slowly sliding the silky fabric down until it reaches my waist. His lips brush my bare shoulders, and a hand slips behind me. With just a touch, my bra loosens. Does everything go easily for this man? His lips run along the hollow of my shoulders and down toward my breasts. I lean into him, and moan.

  “Who taught you how to do…that?”

  “This?”

  “Umm…yes…”

  “Or this?”

  “Yes…God…”

  “What if I stop?”

  “I’ll…oh…kill you…”

  The mouth stops. So does the slow stroking finger playing on the outside of my panties. “No, you won’t,” he whispers.

  My arms tighten around his neck, but he eases back. Payback. I try again to pull him toward me, but he resists. A slow grin spreads over his face.

  “What?” I whisper, pleading.

  “Want to throw your fuck-me pumps out the window again?”

  I bite his lip suddenly. “Only if you crawl around with me to look for them.”

  “Mmmm, sounds like fun.” He lifts my shoes from the floor and arches his arm back as if to hurl them out of the window.

  “Taylor…please…” He wrestles me down to the bed, dangling them high above my head with one hand, while the other pins my wrists together over my head. I push against him, fighting to reach them.

  But with a learned cool, he leans over, caresses my ear with his lips, taunting me. Then, pressing himself against me, he whispers, “Put them on…”

  “The dinner went perfectly, by eleven we were in bed, and then, in the middle of the night, I heard the moan.”

  “The what?” I’m sitting up in Taylor’s bed now and checking my watch. Fortunately, he isn’t awakened by the ring of my cell from the room down the hall from his. It’s 4:00 a.m., and Tamara is calling me from the hospital. It doesn’t help that she’s whispering from the opposite end of the country, and I’m half-dead.

  “The moan. I ran to the bathroom door and called him, Maggie, and there was no answer. Finally, there was this terrible croak. ‘I’m dying,’ he said. ‘It must have been something I ate.’”

  I know what’s coming.

  “So he stumbles out of the bathroom looking like he�
�s dying. Says he lost half the fluid in him, so we dash down and jump into a cab to the emergency room. Ty’s lying back in his chair in the E.R., looking pale and faint. Finally they call us and ask him what he ate.”

  “The oysters,” I say, so low that I think she can’t hear me.

  “Uh-huh,” she says, “uh-huh. A bad oyster. ‘Happens every year on Valentine’s Day,’ the doctors says, glaring at me. ‘Why don’t people ever realize what a dumb idea it is to eat raw shellfish?’ he says. Do you know how guilty I felt, Maggie?”

  “How’s he doing now?”

  “He’s going to be okay,” Tamara says, glumly, “no thanks to—”

  “Don’t blame yourself. Millions of people eat oysters, and it just happens that some of them are bad.” I turn and look at Taylor, who’s slept through this, so far. Thank God I didn’t make him oysters.

  I hear her breathing. She’s sitting in the No Smoking lounge now, she says, watching a gray-haired woman in a hospital gown with spongy slippers who’s attached to an IV pole. “Sitting right under the No Smoking sign,” Tamara whispers. “The red tip of her cigarette is glowing like she’s radioactive.”

  I’ve never felt so glad to be so far away.

  It’s Valentine’s Day, and Tamara is now in the least romantic spot in the universe. For some reason, that makes both of us laugh.

  “If you weren’t sick enough when you came in,” she says, “the sight of people moaning, being wheeled from ambulances with heart attacks, strokes, gunshot wounds—and one bum oyster—could make you keel over.”

  “Sick,” I say, starting to laugh.

  “You know, Maggie, there have been a few men in my life who I could imagine myself killing—shooting them, or maybe strangling them. But in my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me to use an oyster!”

  How refined a murder, how deft. “One swallow of the soft, gray, slimy little bivalve, and the deed is done.”

  “Oh God,” Tamara says, hysterical now. “If he pulls through, I’ll do all I can to make it up to him.”

  “Everything,” I say, “except cook.”

  seventeen