“Um…she had breast cancer last year.” I licked my lips. “Stage two, double mastectomy just to be sure they got it all. Chemo and radiation.”
I’d never have dreamed that Suzie would have chosen the mastectomy, but her drive for self-preservation outweighed even her vanity. In recovery, she’d calmly informed all and sundry that she intended to outlive me.
Damn it—would I ever talk about this without getting misty?
Sam scooted closer and put a gentle hand on my knee. “I’m sorry.”
I swiped at a tear. “She’s in remission now. It’s okay. It was a long slog, though. The chemo was just terrible…” I shuddered to remember her pallor, the overwhelming sickness from those vile chemicals, how it had sapped the fire from her voice…
“Jesus. You don’t get a break, do you?”
“Yes, I do! I have you. And my work. I’m not bitching.” I smiled, my blocked nose making my voice sound weird. “You were really wonderful. When the diagnosis came in and everything. You were my rock.”
He shrugged one shoulder, his mouth falling into a familiar smirk. “I am wonderful.” Trailing one finger down my arm, he added, “I’m also almost healthy.”
Shivers chased from the pad of his finger straight through my flimsy towel. “Oh?”
I barely found the breath to gasp that tiny word out, for he inched closer, the heat from his body washing across my bare skin like an alluring furnace.
“Tomorrow’s the day my ‘strenuous activity’ ban is lifted.”
“Oh.”
“Wife.”
“Oh.”
He leaned down and pressed a teasing kiss on my collarbone. My head fell away to let him play and, well, the rest of me just sorta leaned back onto the bed. Whoops.
He nibbled the hollow in my throat, the column of my neck. His breath dancing across my flesh, he switched directions and began to nuzzle his way toward my breasts, which I’d heretofore kept off limits. One must stick to boob protocols when one wishes to keep one’s delicate husband’s heart rate nice and— Oh, my… He took the edge of my precarious towel into his teeth.
No good would come of this.
Grinning, he backed away from me, the towel slipping from its loose tie to fall open on one side. I huffed out a breath, my breasts tingling. Never had I felt more naked. His mouth went slack, the towel falling from his open lips, his eyes devouring me. I began to shake—shake, of all things—here with the man I’d been with so very many times. But he saw me anew, and the beauty of his lust-filled gaze knocked me off my feet. Good thing I wasn’t standing on them.
“Wow,” he whispered.
I waved my hand. “They’re not that great.”
“Yes, they are.” He cocked his head, which he could do now without wincing. “I’m an artist—I can judge.”
His long fingers hovered over my breast, warming me with body heat, but not touching me. I held my breath. He licked his bottom lip and closed his eyes for a moment, before pulling the towel over me again.
My eyebrows shot up, and he said, “I can wait until tomorrow night.” Fumbling but eventually getting there, he tucked the corner of the towel into the edge. “That is—if you think it’s— That’s…if you think that we should do it at all—”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Hell yes.” I secured my pseudo-clothing and sat up, all my blood rushing to my head in protest. “If you feel comfortable—”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes! I’ve had a hard-on for a week. My hard-on has a hard-on.”
“Good!”
“Really? ‘Good’?” His eyes narrowed. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
I giggled and met his gaze, his filthy gaze full of sex, sex, sex, and the dimple that goaded me and the hard-on that had a hard-on. His mouth parted, and I watched his decision-making tilt from ‘responsible’ to ‘screw it, let’s screw’, so it was a fortuitous thing that Captain Taco jumped onto the bed just then, landing half across my lap, sharp back claws digging in for purchase. “Ow!” My leg searing in pain, I grabbed him by the belly and tossed him toward his daddy, who was only too glad to receive.
I left them there and put some clothes on—sweatpants in what I liked to refer to as ‘I have my period, get away from me’ gray, and a giant sweatshirt with a studio logo on it I’d gotten in some gift basket made for a man six foot tall. I wondered what ladies in the olden days put on to signal ‘stay away from me with that thing’. Did they have a nun habit at the bottom of the cedar chest for those not-so-fresh days? Or maybe a chastity belt was the way to go.
Since I wouldn’t be spending the day on my back, I decided to clean the apartment in preparation for my mother. We did have a lovely maid who came in once a week to tidy and vacuum and such—life was damn good—but I wasn’t going to ask for special help on an off day. Besides, I’d discovered that manual labor was excellent for avoiding the demons. Husband’s brain forgot you? Scrub the kitchen counters. Mother coming to visit? Clean the toilet.
Definitely the toilet.
Chapter Five
If You Can’t Talk It Out, Screw It Out
Int: A posh living room on the UES (Upper East Side, pleb).
Angle On: Glamorous people milling around a fundraiser for breast cancer research. They pop canapés into their mouths and avoid eye contact with the wait staff as they schmooze for the film cameras.
Angle On: Suzie Lytton, cool mom and sexy commercial model (age range thirty-five to forty-five), dances on a table to a hip 80s synthesizer beat. The synthesizer is played by her bottle-blond husband Diego, who, sadly, just turned thirty. He still looks great in a leather harness, though.
Angle On: The camera swoops through the crowd to land on Suzie, the star of our music video. She belts out her hit song Do I Look Sick to You?
Suzie Lytton (singing):
I won’t let my mastectomy
Get the breast of me.
My reconstructive surgery
Left me even more sexy!
Suzie shakes her money maker and sashays around the table in hot pink kitten keels, which match her fringe dress.
Angle On: Samantha, Ellen and Nicolette, collectively known as Suzie’s Backup Girls. They wear fringe dresses in a duller pink than Suzie’s, and stand in unflattering light.
Suzie’s Backup Girls (singing):
Cancer ain’t a piece of cake,
But you’ll gain weight from things you bake (anyway).
Don’t be fat like daughter Sam—
Remission feels so ultra-glam!
Angle On: Bby Bodashus, a twenty-three-year-old rapper with blonde dreadlocks. She pushes her butt to the camera and attempts to twerk, even though there ain’t much booty there to twork with.
Bby Bodashus (rapping):
I wish I was like Suzie,
The flyest mom there can be.
Her daughter is a movie star—
How you think she got that far?
All men, like Georgie Clooney,
Just love that hot bitch Suzie
So bump like her, if you can
Before she steals your sexy man.
Suzie’s Backup Girls (singing):
Before she steals your sexy man!
Nicolette: You have got to be kidding me. I don’t have a man to steal, and thank God. And who even is this white girl? Is she having a seizure?
Angle On: Bby Bodashus flaps her hips next to Suzie on the table.
Samantha: Shh, Nicolette. If I do well in Suzie’s music video, I might get that part in Alfonso Cuarón’s next movie! He and Suzie are very close.
Angle On: Samantha dancing for her life, while her mother glares from the table disapprovingly.
Suzie Lytton: Come, Samantha, we can do better than that. If you want to be an A-lister, you need to have your bottom move like this—
Suzie Lytton twerks. The entire party bursts into applause.
Alfonso Cuarón: Cut! Suzie, that was amazing! S
amantha, you could use a little work. I’m not feeling your butt right now.
Angle On: The drummer, who fires off a rim shot.
* * * *
I’d booked a limo to take us to the fundraiser, much to Suzie’s delight. She’d once told me that when she hit the big time, it was her intention to travel everywhere in one. Her ultimate fantasy was to visit the pyramids of Giza in a stretch Hummer, and to do a photo shoot about it. When I jokingly asked if she’d just drive straight up the pyramid, she replied, “I hadn’t thought of that!”
Sorry, peoples of Egypt—you can blame the international incident on me.
During the ride there, I imagined the party that Suzie hoped would happen, and, I had to admit, I kinda wanted it to go that way, too. Although my abilities as a backup singer, or any kind of singer, were those of a deluded screeching owl.
Sam looked dashingly broken in his pinstripe deep brown suit and head bandage. A smaller one, though, just covering the wound from his tube hole. The place where he’d been hit was a splotchy purple now, but had almost faded. His new hair crept like a shadow to cover his whole head, and the barely-growing-in stubble did funny things to my lady parts.
“Can I go through it one more time?” he asked me, sounding like a nervous actor before an audition.
“Go.”
He took a swig from his water bottle. “Taylor Monroe is the director of your next film. He does a lot of intellectual stuff set in New York, none of which I have ever watched for whatever reason. His wife is Billie Monroe. We’ve been to their place a couple of times to help plan the event. His mother had the disease.”
“Perfect.”
“What is Taylor Monroe like? I bet he’ll just love Suzie.” Diego winked and snuggled Suzie closer into his chest.
Thank goodness he wore an actual suit tonight—Suzie tended to keep him in clothing appropriate only for gay porn, Miami, or gay porn shot in Miami.
“He’s bigger than life, but semi-sincere, for a trust fund kid who makes films,” I said. Sincere was a scale in Hollywood, ranging from ‘is polite to the catering staff’ to ‘upbeat because of their coke habit, but might stab you for a co-star credit’.
Sam put a sweaty hand on my knee. ”What does Billie do?”
“She’s a psychic!” Suzie shifted her gorgeous new boobs in her plunging pink neckline.
My imaginings had been correct—her frock shimmied with fringe, although the color was more fuchsia than I’d thought.
“I can’t wait to ask her to give me a reading,” Suzie said.
“Mom, please tell me you’re not going to waste a thousand dollars having that crackpot blow smoke up your ass.”
“I need her to tell me if I’m going to get this TV show I’m up for!” She ran a hand over her wig. Her newly-grown hair was adorable, but she said that boy hair was for boys—that’s why they called it boy hair. Logic! The blonde bob she sported suited her well. “I mean, of course I’ll get the role, unless the producers are blind and deaf.”
Suzie used to be a housewife while I was growing up. Now she was using my coat tails and her unbelievable sense of self-worth to climb the ladder from senior model to comically hot sitcom grandma.
Sam could not stay still, and his nervousness stabbed me in the heart with a knife made of terrible wife. Taylor had called and asked me to specifically bring Sam, as he really liked the guy. Besides, we couldn’t hide forever. But my brain still muttered, jerk face, jerk face, you’re a pimply jerk face, at me the whole way there. I squeezed the hand clawing at my knee and whispered, “I won’t leave your side all night.”
He nodded in a distracted way and stared with unseeing eyes at the door opposite. It shook me to the core to witness Sam robbed of his swagger. This man could usually Fake It on a level reserved for prime time game show hosts. “Sam?” I said close to his ear.
“Yeah.”
“You’re still you, baby. I know you’ve lied your way through worse situations than this.”
Suzie giggled, and we looked up to see Diego half on top of her in the very back of the limo.
“I don’t know,” Sam muttered. “Does it get worse than a guy younger than us sporting bleached tips groping your terrifying mother?”
I put my hand over my mouth to stop the laugh. Or the barf. The blarf. “My point exactly.”
The left side of his mouth curled up—the dimple side. “And what do I get if I fake it like a champ?”
The fingers on my knee trailed up and disappeared into the hem of my mini dress. I didn’t know if I could fake it all night—not when a marching band paraded through my head beating a drum and chanting hump, hump, hump. Tonight was the night! Maybe. If everything went well. No pressure. “If you successfully tell three outrageous lies tonight, I’ll… I’ll…let you do whatever you want to me.”
He huffed. “You’re gonna do that anyway.”
I squeaked. My mother lifted her face from Diego’s to give me a sour look. I said in Sam’s ear, “Maybe I won’t!”
His eyebrow cocked while he appraised me from head to toe. “That dress says otherwise.”
“My dress is not an invitation, sir. It’s fashion.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I wear my clothes for me. The fact that you admire my amazing, sexy, irresistible body in it is inconsequential.” This was absolutely, one hundred percent true. Nothing a woman wears is an invitation in and of itself to smarmy men.
However, I may have worn my husband’s favorite color on me—midnight blue, to match my eyes—in order to catch his notice. And there may have been some sexy black silk stockings held up with a garter that only he would see. But the rest of the vintage dress—the lace overlay, long sleeves ending in a slight bell and an A-line miniskirt, were all for me. Sure, even with my velvet coat I was colder than moose poop in Alaska, but who cared? My insides jumped at the chance to get out of the amnesia apartment and pretend to be a normal human being. Well, a rich-normal human being, if there was such a thing.
The car slowed, and we arrived outside the ultra-chic address of Taylor and Billie Monroe, cynical New York royalty. A doorman hurried over and opened the door to the limo with the obsequiousness of a kid to Santa. Suzie shimmied out of the car, nearly squealing with excitement. She accepted limos and red carpets as her long overdue. It all seemed too weird to me, even now, even when I’d been living this bizarre alter-life for a while. I guess you can’t take the ninety-nine percent out of the girl. I was a commoner from North Carolina and, while I squeezed the hand of my common boy from the same place, we wore our fancy clothes into this fancy apartment to mingle amongst the fancy people. Sam wasn’t the only pretender, and it wasn’t so much butterflies in my tummy as a murder of crows.
Taylor must have been watching, for no sooner had we entered the overtly pink decorated wonderland—breast cancer, y’all!—than he rushed up to me and Sam. Well, not rushed. Nobody in this room would rush, as that might express desire, and desire was for people who didn’t have everything.
“Samantha,” said Taylor. Most of what Taylor said came out with a whiff of on-purpose irony, as if he knew something you didn’t, and he wanted you to know that he knew.
“Taylor,” said Samantha, returning the cheek kiss he graced me with.
Taylor was in his early forties and stood about Sam’s height, five-nine or so, with a shock of curly medium-brown hair and a beard the size of a small dog. He wore an ugly knit cap everywhere, even with his Dolce & Gabbana suit. I think he meant it to make him look like an auteur, but it was more ‘lumberjack who got lost in NYC but stayed for the organic lattes and book release parties’. Everyone worshiped him—half the dudes in the room wore a similar hat, to the chagrin of good taste.
The man made brilliant and witty films—that much couldn’t be denied—and it was an honor to play the romantic lead in the movie we’d soon begin shooting, It’s Not What You Think. It mocked the ennui of rich people even while it navel-gazed with microscopic myopia. My role was definitely in t
he ‘manic pixie dream girl’ realm for the ennui-d, middle-aged male lead, but I hoped that we could elevate the cliché. Perhaps ‘manic pixie who calls your bullshit dream woman’.
I prodded Sam toward our host, but my husband’s face had lit up in awe of the shocking array of expensive artwork on the walls. Sam glowed to behold a cornucopia of Impressionists in the enormous living room. They crammed onto the golden wallpaper in an on-purpose but slapdash way, as if Taylor had merely collected this stuff from lucky estate sales and thrown it on the wall. “That’s new.” I pointed to an amazing, huge painting of water lilies. “Monet? That wasn’t here last time.”
“Not that I would know,” added Sam with a twinkle in his eye. He shook hands with Taylor, who beheld Sam with amazement.
“Epic wounds, man. You’re strong.” Taylor pumped a fist and nodded sagely. “You’re free of the confines of the past. That’s epic.”
Oh, this was good on two levels—one, Sam had decided to embrace his current state of forgetting and use it to charm the masses, and two, Taylor had decided that Sam’s amnesia was cool and, therefore, he was in favor of it. Taylor could decide tomorrow that brain-eating parasites were cool and half of Brooklyn would gleefully drop dead before the week was out.
A sharp poke in my back nearly knocked me off my too-tall shoes.
“Taylor, this is my mother, Suzie Lytton, and her husband Diego.” I waved my hand in my best stage-magician’s-assistant fashion to present Suzie, who pumped her smile into megawatt territory.
A warm glow permeated my chest, as Suzie really was one of the guests of honor. Thanks to luck or the great sky unicorn, she’d survived the cancer, and her obvious delight in being here nearly made my waterworks go. How lucky I was to even be having this moment!
“Steady,” whispered Sam in my ear.
I glanced up into his olive-green eyes to see understanding there. The warm glow spread to my unmentionable places, and I took his hand. He immediately intertwined his fingers with mine and leaned closer. My shoulders dropped—the dull throb there told me how freaking tense I was pretending not to be.
The Wrath of Dimple Page 7
