“Blackie, you’d better sit down,” George advised. He nodded at Charlotte and she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Something is wrong. Horribly wrong. “No, damn it!” I yelled. “What’s happened to Chris? Oh, God. Is she hurt?” Panic constricted my throat as tears spilled involuntarily from my eyes.
“No! No, she’s all right,” George said, jumping up from his seat. He put his hand on my shoulder. “She flew back to Memphis yesterday.”
“Memphis? Why?” I asked, and then had a dreadful thought. “Is it her parents, are they hurt? For God’s sake, someone, just tell me what’s going on!”
Norma walked over and put her hand on my arm. She squeezed it tight and looked at me. “Melinda, sit down this instant,” she demanded, as a mother would demand of a child.
I sat down, bracing for the worst. George went over to the breakfast counter and brought back a can of soda, which he opened and poured into my glass. That was my coffee in the mornings because I never liked the taste of coffee, even with five spoons of sugar in it. But I didn’t care about a fucking soda at the moment. I needed to know where Chris was.
“Blackie, you’ve been asleep for over sixteen hours. Do you remember yesterday at all?” George asked.
“Yesterday? I don’t give a shit about yesterday. Tell me why Chris is in Memphis?” I demanded. I was about to jump out of my skin with all these questions. Why wouldn’t they just tell me?
Norma put her hand on my arm again and shook it until I looked at her.
“Chris has left you, Melinda. She has gone home to her parents.”
I heard a scream. A loud, piercing scream, pushing up from deep in my stomach. It reverberated inside my heart, but never escaped to my lips. But I heard it, and felt the pain behind it. Chris has left you, Melinda.
“Left me? No, she wouldn’t. I don’t understand?” I yanked out my cellphone and held it to my mouth. “Call Chris,” I said, and waited anxiously for the connection to be made. It rang once and then the line was dropped. Did the satellite drop it, or had Chris?
“Blackie, she found you with another woman,” George said. “She said your head was in someone else’s boobs.”
Jumping up, I screamed, “No! Not true! I love Chris. I would never—”
“Why would Chris lie about a thing like that?” Norma asked without inflection.
“I don’t know!” I cried. Chris has left you, Melinda. “She wouldn’t lie, but I know that I wasn’t with another woman.”
“You weren’t with a woman at the pizza parlor yesterday?” George questioned me like a cop at an interrogation.
“A woman? Yes! I remember seeing someone I know, but, I, uh…” I shook my head.
George looked at Norma, and then back at me. “What’s the last thing you remember, Blackie?”
“I… I remember leaving the registrar’s office and going to the pizza parlor that I used to hang out in as a student.” That memory was perfectly clear and I envisioned myself walking into the restaurant, but that’s when the picture lost focus.
“And what happened there?” Norma asked.
“I, uh, I can’t remember.” Why couldn’t I remember?
Again George looked at Norma. I could see it in their eyes. They didn’t believe me. Why won’t they believe me? They were beginning to piss me off.
“Look, I’m not lying, I don’t remember. Please, tell me how Chris is,” I begged, needing to connect with her in any way possible.
“Let me tell you what we know and maybe you’ll understand better what Chris is feeling right now,” George said. “You were brought home by taxi, and the driver helped Charlotte carry you upstairs, where Charlotte dressed you and put you to bed.”
“That explains the pajamas, I guess,” I said, trying to squeeze the memory from my frozen brain.
“Chris called me just as the taxi pulled up with you in it,” Norma explained. “She told me what happened, how she found you in the arms of another woman, and—”
“No! Damn it! I told you that didn’t happen!” I couldn’t understand why they were ganging up on me. I did not do the things they claimed I did.
“Melinda, we are just telling you what Chris told us. Do you want to hear the rest or not?” Norma asked in a stern voice.
I nodded, and sat back down, terrified of what she was going to say next. I could feel the disappointment in Norma’s voice and it broke my heart. I had to make her believe me, but how?
George picked up the story next. “Chris said there was an empty bottle of whisky beside you, and that you reeked of liquor. She said the woman, whom she thought was a prostitute, asked if she wanted to join you, and that’s when Chris left. But then she changed her mind and came back, and you were passed out on the pool table, and the woman was gone. Chris put you in a cab and sent you home. Then she boarded a plane for Memphis.”
“Please, you have to believe me. I don’t remember any of that,” I groveled, ready to beg if necessary.
“Then tell us what you do remember,” George said in a non-accusatorial way.
“I went to the pizza parlor as a nostalgia thing. When I was in college that was the place to hang out because it was off campus and would serve drinks if you had an ID. It wasn’t the kind of place that looked closely at the ID, especially if you held a twenty dollar bill behind it. But I had no intention of drinking. Like I did in my freshman year, I offered to buy everyone’s lunch. The kids got a real kick out of it. Then I went to the bar and ordered a beer. But I assure you, I stopped after the second beer because I had promised Chris that I wouldn’t drink more than two. And I didn’t, I swear it. Just as I was paying the tab, the bartender handed me another glass of beer, pointing at someone behind me, who had ordered it for me. When I turned to see who it was, I realized that I knew her.”
“Who was it, Blackie?” George asked.
“It was a girl I dated back in college.”
George cocked his head. “Can you describe what she looked like?”
“The same as she did in college, pink hair, big boobs, and… shit! Was that…” Oh, God! “Was that who Chris saw me with?”
“Yes, she said that the woman had pink hair and looked like a prostitute,” George stated, shaking his head. “It’s the same woman, Blackie.”
“No, it can’t be. I only said hello to her and she asked me how I was. I remember sitting down across from her in a booth, and we chatted for a couple of minutes. And then I got Chris’ text to come pick her up… but…” I turned my head, trying to catch the memories that were alluding me. “I can’t remember what happened next.”
“Did you eat or drink anything while you were with her?” George questioned.
“I remember her perfume was choking me, so she offered me her glass of tea.” I turned to Norma, who looked at me as if I were guilty. At least that’s what my frayed mind saw. “Norma, please, you have to believe me. I did not get drunk and I did not make out with that woman. I love Chris. I would never do that to her. It’d be like sticking a knife in my heart.”
“Melinda, dear,” she said in that comforting voice of hers. “I do believe you.”
My voiced trembled with relief. “You… you do?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Not even your alter-ego, Blackie Blackstone, would betray someone she loved like that.”
“Oh, my God, thank you,” I cried, jumping up to hug her.
“I believe you, too, Blackie. I think you were—”
I ran to George and hugged him next, completely out of character for me, but their belief in me meant everything. “No one has ever had such faith in me as you two do,” I said, sitting back down. “No one except Chris, that is. How can I convince her that what she saw wasn’t me when I don’t remember any of it?”
“Ahem. As I was saying,” George interrupted my ramblings. “I think someone slipped you a roofie.”
“A roofie? What’s that, George?” Norma asked.
“A roofie. That would explain everything,” I m
umbled to myself. “Why the hell would someone do that to me?”
“Norma, a roofie is a drug called Rohypnol and it’s used in date rapes,” George explained.
Oh, my, God. Was I raped? I shook my head. No, I’d feel it if I had been… right?
“It renders the subject semi-conscious, and unable to resist, yet seminally aware. But the drug leaves the person with no memory, as is the case with Blackie.”
“That would explain everything, but it doesn’t explain why someone would do that to me. Tori, that’s her name, Tori Wilson, and I used to have wild sex wherever we felt like it, and she preferred me conscious when we did. I can’t believe she would do something like that. Not the Tori I remember.”
“Well, if you’re going to convince Chris that she didn’t see what she thought she did, you’ll need proof,” George stated. “I think you should call your detective friend. She can get to the bottom of all this.”
“Call Meg? No, she’s Chris’ friend, and she won’t believe me. She hates me.”
“All the more reason to call her, dear. Chris will believe your story if it comes from Meg.”
I looked at Norma and nodded. I knew she was right, I just didn’t want to face Meg, who could be a real hard ass when it came to Chris. She believes that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. And I’m innocent. Someone is trying to discredit me in my wife’s eyes and damn it, I’m not going to let that happen.
Groveling at Your Feet — Melinda Blackstone-Livingston, Meg Bumgartner, Norma Shelby and George Kirk
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Meg asked angrily.
At George’s suggestion, I called Meg and asked her if she would Skype with me. Apparently it was still early in the morning, and I think I may have woken her up, which was strike number one. It couldn’t be helped. I needed her to fly out here and help me clear my name. But first, I had to get her to listen to me.
“Would I be groveling at your fucking feet if I were fucking kidding you?” That wasn’t the way I wanted to ask for her help, but she has always had a way of bringing out the worst in me.
“Chrissie finds you with another woman and you’re only lame excuse is that you don’t remember it?”
I could hear the sarcasm dripping from her words.
“Are you listening to me? Someone is setting me up and I don’t know why. No, I don’t remember what happened. I don’t remember being in that pool room or on that pool table with another woman. I love Chris too much to do something as disgusting as that. I would never hurt her like that.”
George jumped in and added his reasoning behind my memory loss. “Meg, I believe her. Blackie has done some questionable things in her life—”
“You’re not helping, George,” I said desperately.
“Let me finish,” George demanded. “I’ve known Blackie all her life and she has never done anything like this before. I remember that pink-haired girl Chris found her with. She’s from Blackie’s college days. She was wild, uninhibited, and didn’t care who she fucked.”
“And what the hell does that have to do with anything?” Meg asked.
George replied, “Because, Blackie broke it off with her when she tried to extort money from her. Maybe this is some kind of payback?”
“Oh, my, God. I had forgotten about that,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. Tori was a handful, even for me, but I enjoyed her lovemaking. It was, as George said, uninhibited. Tori had several girlfriends, and sometimes I’d get together with a few of them and make out, which was fun, but I preferred Tori to myself. No place was off limits for sex. Which added credence to how I ended up on that pool table. Oh, shit! No, I wouldn’t be there willingly, no way.
“And how did she do that?” Meg asked.
“She somehow got pictures of me at an um, uh, at a frat party,” I said. I couldn’t believe that I was embarrassed. Before I met Chris, I would have bragged about hosting an orgy party, but now I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud in front of Norma.
“And what happened to the alleged pictures?” Meg asked condescendingly.
I had just begun to win Meg’s respect, and now she hated me again. Even when she proved me innocent, she would still hate me. In a strange way, I respect her for that.
“She threatened to send them to my father, and I laughed at her,” I explained. “Then she threatened to put them on the Internet, and I said to make sure she spelled my name right. Pictures like that, back then, would have made me infamous.”
Meg shook her head. “And now?”
“And now?” Is that a trick question? “And now that would never happen because I love Chris and want her to respect me.”
“Again, what happened to those pictures?” Meg repeated.
“I paid off the person who took them,” I replied.
“That’s not exactly the whole story, Blackie. Your father also paid him off with one of your sports cars,” George said.
“Huh?” I asked disbelieving. “That’s the first that I’ve ever heard of it.”
“Really? He never told you that he wanted assurances that those photos wouldn’t surface later, and if the young man could prove all copies had been destroyed, he would set him up in a different college and gave him the choice of one of your cars? He had to sign a legal document stating he would never do anything like that again. As far as we know, he never did.”
“Wow, my father did all that?” I couldn’t believe it. My father ran hot and cold with his good deeds. It was always hard to tell if it was actually a nice gesture or a business deal. “Now I know what happened to my favorite Lamborghini, a gift from my father for my eighteenth birthday. Damn it, I loved that car.”
“Excuse me, can we get back to the fucking problem at hand?” Meg barked.
“Meg, dear.” Norma walked up behind me and leaned into the monitor.
Meg stopped frowning and her face became placid.
“I was at their wedding last week and witnessed their desire to be together,” Norma stated. “Their love is real.”
“They got married and didn’t invite us? Yeah, I’m not surprised by that,” Meg said heatedly.
This was not going well. She was looking for any excuse to hate me. “We didn’t invite you because it was a spur of the moment decision. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Supreme Court ruling by now?”
“Yeah, I heard about it,” Meg confessed. “Okay, I’ll give you that one, but that’s not the problem.”
Norma leaned in again. “The problem is that you refuse to believe Melinda. George has told you that he thinks someone slipped a drug into her drink. Why is that so unbelievable in this day and age?”
You tell her, Norma!
“It’s unbelievable because it’s too convenient, Norma,” Meg responded.
“Meg, right now Chris is at home with her parents,” Norma continued, “thinking the worst of Melinda. Her heart is broken, she’s devastated, and you are the only one who can help her.”
I couldn’t stop them. Norma’s words brought tears bursting from my eyes, and I buried my head in my hands. It was beyond guilt, it was anger, because I was the one who had caused her pain. If only I could see her, touch her, love her, I could mend her broken heart.
“And what if I find that George is wrong?” Meg asked.
I jerked my head up, rubbing the tears away with the back of my hand. “Then I will join the first AA program I can find and spend the rest of my life begging Chris to forgive me,” I proclaimed.
“It’s too late for Alcoholics Anonymous, Blackie,” Meg admonished. “Norma’s right, you broke her heart and I can never forgive you for that.”
I leaned in closed to the camera on the monitor. “Meg, come out here and prove that I’m guilty of adultery. Please. I want you to. I’ll send my private jet to pick you up, and I’ll also pay for anything else you need. But when you find that I’m innocent, and you will, I want you to be the one to tell Chris.”
“All right, Blackie, I accept your challenge, but on one
condition,” Meg responded.
“And what is that?” I asked, already knowing what she was going to say. If she couldn’t prove my innocence, she would demand that I divorce Chris. It was a huge risk considering that I couldn’t remember what happened. But my heart assured me that I was innocent.
“If I find you guilty, you will never see Chrissie again,” Meg proclaimed.
“No!” Norma exclaimed. “That’s not fair, Meg. Think of what you’re saying. Even if Melinda was fornicating with that woman or a thousand women, it should be Chris to decide whether to forgive her or not. You are making that decision for Chris, and that isn’t right.”
“That’s all right, Norma,” I said, patting her hand. “If Meg can’t find me innocent, I don’t deserve to be with Chris.” My heart burst into flames as I said those words. How can I live without her?
Meg nodded. “I’ll catch the first flight out and be there in a few hours. But you should know, I’m going to call Chrissie before I leave and advise her of what we’re doing. And I’m going to tell her I think it’s futile. I think you’re guilty as sin, Blackie.”
Condescending bitch! “As I said, Meg, you will be the one to tell Chris that I’m not guilty based on your unbiased facts. And I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that I hope you fucking choke on your words when you tell her!”
I clicked off the connection and looked at Norma and George. “What? Too much?”
Facing My Parents — Chris Blackstone-Livingston and Felicia Livingston
“Did you get any sleep last night, honey?” my mother asked as soon as I walked into the breakfast nook.
“No, not much,” I replied, slumping into the chair. In fact, I didn’t sleep a wink. I tried but I always ended up in tears, so I spent most of the night pacing. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s already left for work, but he said to tell you that he loves you, and he’s only a phone call away, if you need him.”
“That’s sweet, thanks,” I said, imagining him saying that. I knew he meant it, but I also knew that he would be uncomfortable talking about girl troubles with me.
Separating Riches Page 13
