In Bed with the Wild One & In Bed with the Pirate

by Julie Kistler

  “Thought you were serving breakfasts, I mean, lunch,” Toby said, catching his breath. “What are you doing out here?”

  “And what the hell are both of you doing out here?”

  They looked over at Melanie, who stood in the doorway to Pollyanna, dressed in a crisply ironed lime-green and fuchsia-flowered dress with matching lime-green pumps. Her dark pink lips, which cannily matched the fuchsia of her dress, formed a thin line as she pursed them disapprovingly.

  “Mother, I can’t believe you’re cussing in public.”

  Melanie’s penciled-in eyebrows curved like two McDonald’s arches. “And daughter, I can’t believe you’re calling me ‘Mother’ in public. But skipping that, I can’t believe you look as though you’ve spent a night making wild whoopee with—”

  “Tarzan!” squealed an elderly woman’s voice. “Bernie, come out here and get a load of this!”

  Toby, his hands folded over his privates, looked upward as though divine intervention might occur any moment.

  “You’re causing a spectacle!” Kate whispered irritably to Toby. “Get back to our—I mean, your—room!”

  Toby, not budging, continued staring skyward. “Which one might that be?” he asked casually. “I’m locked out of both.” He lowered his gaze to Melanie. “Unless your mother wants to take me in.”

  “I’m not that kind of woman!” Melanie snapped, stepping back as though she might be forced to do something against her will. “Katherine, what kind of place are you running?”

  “I figured you might be a while,” Toby explained, ignoring her mother’s question, “so I thought I’d slip down to Kismet and retrieve Verna’s clothes. But the door was locked. So I about-faced and raced back to The Pirate, which, unfortunately—”

  “Was locked.” Kate groaned. “The doors automatically lock when you close them.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “See Bernie,” said Mrs. Riddick, oblivious to the discussion in progress. “Other guys dress like Tarzan.”

  Bernie, dressed in faded gray-and-white-checkered flannel pajamas, gave Toby a bored once-over. “Janie, I love you, baby, but I just don’t want to go the Tarzan route, okay? Let’s eat our biscuit lunch and visit Fisherman’s Wharf.” On that pronouncement, Bernie lumbered back into The Wild One, taking Janie with him, and shut the door soundly behind them.

  “I like that guy,” said Toby. “If I run out of more clothes, maybe he’ll let me borrow his pajamas.”

  More clothes. Kate looked at her mother. “Can you fix that rip in Toby’s leather pants?”

  “The ones you bought him?”

  Kate gave her a perplexed look. “Yes, those.”

  “Did you also buy him those—” Melanie pointed at Toby’s briefs “—leopard underwear?”

  “They’re tiger-striped,” Kate corrected. “And yes, I bought those, too. But back to the pants.”

  “I must ask,” continued Melanie, folding her hands primly in front of her. “Did you also pay him for last night?”

  “Pay him for what?”

  Melanie rolled back her shoulders. “For his services.”

  Kate felt her skin go hot. What was her mother talking about? It had to be about cooking. “For helping me bake?” Kate asked incredulously. “I mean, I know I’m not the best in the world, and I tend to get a little out of hand, but I don’t need to pay for that kind of help! Well, except Verna, of course. I pay her. But I didn’t pay him!”

  Melanie blinked so rapidly, Kate wondered if one of those false eyelashes would break loose and fly away. “I told Max we never should have had a child in the summer of love.” She glanced from Toby’s underwear to her daughter. “As for the pants, I’ll get to those as soon as I can. After all, when no one prepared breakfast this morning, I had to scurry and pull that together, although The Wild Ones didn’t receive theirs until almost noon. And then I spent thirty minutes on the phone with your father.”

  Kate’s mouth dropped open. “You did?”

  “Yes. We’re discussing my independence. My future role as a woman. A new woman.”

  Kate, speechless, just stared at her mother. “Mom, don’t tell me you’ve discovered the feminist movement.”

  “Heavens, no!” Melanie patted the back of her bouffant hairdo. “What’s there to discover? We’ve always been the stronger ones. It’s just time your father figured that out.”

  “But Brad…” Kate said under her breath. “College…”

  “This is all fascinating,” Toby said edgily, tapping Kate on the shoulder, “but I’d really like to get into a room.”

  “Good morning!” called a female voice from the bottom of the stairs.

  “I really don’t want anyone else seeing me dressed in these tiger things,” Toby nearly yelled. “Can you get me into a room, now, please?”

  “Oh, right. I’ll get the keys, put you back into Kismet.” But just as Kate turned to head back down the stairs, Verna appeared on the landing.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Verna said shakily.

  “Mine, too,” added Melanie.

  Verna seemed to have trouble breathing. Patting her chest as though that might force more air into her lungs, she stammered a string of incoherent words, “I-I…me go…back…biscuits…hot-hot-hot…” Her gray eyes zeroed in on Toby’s undies.

  “Let’s go downstairs and talk,” Kate suggested, taking Verna by the elbow and turning her away from the tiger stripes. “Mom, please go back into your room so Toby can have some privacy until I can get him into a room again.”

  “Again!” Melanie’s voice rose several octaves. “Look at you! Barefoot! Disheveled! Wasn’t last night enough!”

  Verna shot Kate a pleased look. “Was my matchmaking finally successful?”

  Kate, taken aback, stared at Verna before shifting her attention to her mother. “Please go to your room!” Kate, flustered, steered a triumphant Verna down the stairs.

  Melanie started to turn, then stopped. Looking Toby in the eye, she said authoritatively, “Young man—”

  Toby held up one hand, palm out. “I know, I know, you think I’m a disgusting, degenerate, debased—”

  “Oh, no!” Melanie glanced down the stairs. Lowering her voice, she looked back at Toby and said in a stage whisper, “Now that I’m a new woman, I was wondering if you’d give me a few pointers. You know, some things I might suggest to my husband.” Melanie gestured toward Toby’s underwear. “I’m not sure if Max is willing to play Tarzan, but maybe, if I got him a pair of those red stretchy ones, do you think he’ll play Santa Claus Has a Special Treat?”

  9

  “I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE with your mother anymore.” Toby, dressed in Verna’s husband’s jeans and a black T-shirt, sat at the butcher-block table in the kitchen and started scribbling his grocery list for lasagna.

  “Why?” Kate leaned against the wall. “Because she thinks you’re a gigolo?” Kate giggled at the look of shock on Toby’s face. “I confess, it was one of my defensive mother comments from yesterday.” She skewed her mouth as though mulling something over. “You know, I don’t feel the need to be doing that anymore.”

  “About time.” He shot her a look. “So if I’m a gigolo, how much was I worth?”

  Her eyes grazed over him. “More than you’ll ever know,” she blurted. As pink flooded her cheeks, she looked away. “I need to plan your cruise,” she mumbled.

  The cruise. He felt like a cad, not explaining the reasons behind this bogus cruise. But if he started to make such confessions now, everything—his job, his future—might blow up in his face. He tapped the pencil against the table several times, unable to decide what to say or do next. Angry at himself, and feeling worse than ever over deceiving Kate, he bent over and started scribbling furiously. “I need to wear something decent for dinner tonight,” he muttered, changing the subject.

  Kate fiddled with the phone cord, wrapping it around her finger. “I could shop for some more clothes for you.”

  He looked up. �
��No!” He tried to laugh but it came out like a bark. Beau, resting on the edge of the counter, jumped and looked around. “I mean, no thank you. I don’t want to end up looking like Captain Hook or Captain Marvel or some other Captain.”

  The way she looked at him with that dewy expression, he knew what she was thinking. In her mind, he was her pirate. And in his heart, he felt the same.

  “I should call my travel agent,” she whispered, turning away.

  Kate had wanted to call her agent earlier, but things became a bit chaotic after Verna, Melanie, and Mr. and Mrs. Wild One had gotten an eyeful of Toby the Tiger. It had taken a solid thirty minutes to calm Verna down, who kept pressing for facts, asking if she’d finally achieved matchmaker status. Although Kate normally spilled all to her friend, this time she denied anything had happened. After all, what had occurred between her and Toby was precious, a treasure, not to be shared with others.

  Meanwhile, Toby and Melanie had had some kind of heart-to-heart upstairs after which Melanie had sequestered herself in her room to call her husband. The two of them must have stayed glued to the phone like a couple of teenagers for nearly an hour.

  “It’s almost one-thirty,” Kate said, picking up the receiver in the kitchen. “If they’re still on the phone, I’m going to ask them to clear the line because we have a cruise emergency.” Kate listened to the receiver. “Well, get a load of this,” she said to Toby as she punched in numbers. “Melanie and Max have finally ended their phone-a-thon. Wonder what they were talking about?”

  “Santa Claus,” Toby mumbled as he continued writing.

  “Santa Claus?” Kate tapped in the last number. “In August? I know my mother likes to be prepared for the holidays, but isn’t discussing Christmas in August pushing it just a little—oh, hello, Gwen!” Gwen Gossett was her travel agent. Although Kate often called her Gwen, she sometimes called her “my other mother” because Gwen had often lent an ear when Kate needed someone to confide in. “Gwen, I need to plan a very special cruise.”

  Toby tried not to listen. After all, he needed to make up with Free, get past the Dobermans—who’d been yapping off and on this morning—get the promotion. Plus he needed ingredients for dinner. He quickly scribbled parsley flakes, tomato paste, Kate. I need Kate.

  “To the Caribbean,” she continued. “Next December, right?”

  Toby looked up. Kate’s eyes were focused on him, waiting for confirmation. Those big blue eyes that sparkled like sunlight on the ocean. That’s probably how the light would play on the waters of the Caribbean. “December, right,” he mumbled, although he didn’t give a damn what month—he’d probably agreed to December because of all those Santa Claus questions Mrs. Corrigan had grilled him with earlier.

  “Yes, a spacious room, not one of those below-the-deck numbers. How about one of those cruise liners with a spa onboard?” Kate cupped the receiver and whispered loudly to Toby. “You like mud baths?”

  He cocked one eyebrow.

  “Forget the mud bath, but do they have some kind of herbal spritzer?”

  Toby couldn’t stop himself from smiling. That was Kate, stirring a little humor, a little mischief into life. Even the fact that she’d blown up his car started to seem a little funny, and that was something he never thought he’d laugh about.

  “Yes, yes, gourmet meals, dancing, the works. One or two weeks? Let me check.” Kate cupped the receiver again. “Do you want to be gone for one or two weeks?”

  “One.” Because he was never going on this cruise, anyway. He wished he could say that to Kate now.

  “One,” Kate repeated into the receiver.

  Only one more day and he could explain this entire scam to Kate. One day. Toby tapped the end of the pencil against the butcher-block table, beating out time. Tap-tap-tap. Seconds, minutes, hours. And then he’d explain, and everything would be different. Better. He hoped.

  “Sounds good,” Kate said into the receiver, sounding a little too upbeat, a bit too forced.

  He pretended to write as he sneaked a glance at her slim frame, today encased in another wild color combo—pink pants, pink-and-white-striped blouse and a pair of white sandals. Last night, in the dark, he hadn’t noticed that her toenails were a bright red. Red. Of course. Her favorite color.

  “Bye, my other mother,” Kate said, just as Melanie sauntered into the room. As Kate hung up the receiver, Melanie looked a bit taken aback.

  “Other mother?” she asked.

  “Oh, that was Gwen, my travel agent.” Kate joined Toby at the table.

  “Have you always called her your ‘other mother’?” Melanie asked, her voice rising higher.

  If Toby wasn’t mistaken, Melanie looked crushed, like a fuchsia flower that had been stepped on or pushed aside. Toby already felt uncomfortable playing this cruise-planning game. Now he was in the middle of some mother-and-other-mother-a-thon. “Maybe I should finish my grocery list in the other room,” he said, starting to get up.

  “No!” Melanie and Kate said at the same time.

  He sat back down. Great. He was stuck. He hunched over his list, adding more ingredients than any lasagna had had since the beginning of time.

  Kate sighed, then said sweetly, “I call her my ‘other mother’ because that’s what she’s been to me.”

  “But you already have a mother,” Melanie said tightly. “Me.” Peering over the edge of his glasses, Toby watched Melanie point one peach-polished fingernail at herself in case “me” might not be obvious.

  Kate rolled her eyes. “But you’re three thousand miles away! And Gwen is here! What did you expect?”

  Toby winced. Powerful words, but he knew better than to intervene. This was between Kate and her mother, just as it had been between him and his mother when she’d tossed those same words at him, “What do you expect?” The same words Free had used with him, knowing the impact they’d have.

  Melanie pretended to swipe something from the corner of her eye, which Toby well knew was a tear. He thought about making another exit attempt, but had a feeling these two wanted him here. Maybe it was because he was an impartial observer. Or maybe it was because they knew he cared about them. Odd. A little over a day ago, he’d been almost a total stranger. Now he was like part of this family.

  Hell, he was wearing Verna’s husband’s clothes. He was living here. He’d counseled Mrs. Corrigan on some rather intimate details about her and her husband. If that didn’t make him family, what did?

  In a shaky voice, Melanie continued, “It wouldn’t matter if I was halfway around the world, you’ll always be my baby, and I’ll always be your mother. It’s like an invisible string that has always connected us, will always connect us. Maybe even beyond life.”

  Now Toby had to swipe at the corner of his eye. That summed up family right there. An invisible connection, unbroken by fights, distances, even death. This family could get emotional. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear there was some Italian blood in this Irish clan.

  Kate suddenly stood and began pacing. “But I can’t sew. And I can’t cook. Last night I pretended I could do biscuits, but actually Toby saved me there. I can’t clean. I don’t even know how to fix myself a hairdo—it’s just a stroke of luck that this unkempt, sporty look is in these days.”

  There was a long, drawn-out pause broken only by the scratching of Toby’s pencil on the paper. What they didn’t know was that he’d run out of ingredients and was now playing ticktacktoe with himself. So far, he was winning.

  “But you have the loveliest sense of color,” Melanie finally said, “always have.”

  Kate stopped. “You hate red.”

  Melanie glanced at Toby. “Not anymore.”

  He nearly broke his pencil on an x. Some of those Santa Claus questions she’d asked earlier had seriously unnerved him.

  Kate crossed her arms under her breasts. “I’ve always felt like a failure around you.”

  Melanie drew in such a long breath, Toby held on to his paper, just in case it blew away. �
��And I have always felt like a failure around you.”

  The two women stared at each other for so long, Toby won two more games of tick tack toe.

  Kate uncrossed her arms, obviously taken aback by her mother’s confession. “You’re so perfect. How could you possibly feel like a failure around me?”

  “Perfect? Me?” Melanie blinked with surprise. “You’re the one I always admired. You were always so…adventurous, so unafraid of the world. I cleaned and cooked and sewed, but that’s because I only knew how to control the world within my four walls. But you…” Melanie’s hazel eyes glistened with pride. “You knew how to go out into the world and get a job. You worked at resorts, doing all kinds of interesting things. I still don’t know what a concerta is.”

  “Concierge,” Kate corrected.

  “See? You even know a foreign language.” Melanie was trying to smile, but her quivering fuchsia lips gave her away. “And then you got your trust fund and you moved away. Far, far away.”

  “I only moved to San Francisco.”

  Melanie gave a small shrug. “But in my entire life, I never left Beaufort. To me, my adventurous, free-spirited daughter picked up her life and traveled to a new world. Something I’d never have the guts to do.”

  Now Kate’s eyes watered. “But you had the guts to run away from home.”

  “Yes, I ran away. But I was also runnin’ to you.”

  “To me?” Now Kate blinked with surprise.

  “I wanted us to have a second chance to be a mother and daughter. As you grow older, you realize more and more how precious life is. And the people in it. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Kate, sniffling back a tear, stepped forward. Melanie, swiping again at her eye, stepped forward too. The next thing Toby knew, they were clutching each other and crying, blubbering things like, “I’ve always wished I could be more like you!” and “There’s no other mother, just you.”

  Toby, tired of ticktacktoe, moved onto hangman. He was well into winning his first game when Verna suddenly entered the room. Now, if a man entered this room, saw a couple of women crying and clutching each other, his first thought would be that someone had died and he’d pray to God it wasn’t the Forty-Niners’ quarterback. But women were different. They’re born with built-in radar that instantly deciphers an emotional situation with the precision of a laser beam.