Not sure what she'd find, she pulled out the folder marked Grocery. Her invoices from the produce market, bakery and kitchen supply house were there, marked with the date and number of the check that had repaid her. But there were also several handwritten notes on white note paper.
'Mid-Coast Meats', one note read. '$50 cash for delivery'. Another said, '$61 cash to PTA for local honey-fundraiser' Both were marked with dates of payments.
She didn't know anything about these purchases.
"What are you doing?"
She knew she looked guilty. It was Justin, not looking hostile, but definitely curious. Laura's gaze dropped to the paper in her hand.
It read, '$40 cash for bread and cheese'. In just the past several weeks, Grace had stolen over a hundred and sixty dollars.
Helen was paying out checks for cash outlays that had never happened, and she thought Laura was the one buying those items. Grace had probably even given Laura a budget with plenty of room left for Grace to take the difference. Helen probably never looked close at the numbers.
"What's going on, Laura?"
She started again, then focused on him. He was just a boy-nearly a man-already a man in some cultures. But just a boy... Not the man of the house. Helen wouldn't want him involved.
"I was just checking an invoice. I'm missing something and I wanted to be sure I didn't pay for it."
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Then I really need to work on my tan."
He smiled and watched without any seeming alarm as she carefully tucked the folder back exactly as she had found it. She had no idea what she was going to do.
A slight case of nerves compounded by a mild reaction to the ship's motion had Helen feeling a little bit queasy just before the start of her class. She'd taught classes before, but mostly for highly enthused high schoolers as part of the Broadway Gives Back program. Her audience here appeared to be about eighty community theater actors and activists, none younger than forty and most older than she was. Women outnumbered men about four to one. She hadn't seen this much cruise wear in one place since the Tonys had featured Beach Blanket Bingo. She saw Eugene Masterson at the back, and couldn't imagine how he had justified the time away from his work-but that was none of her business.
The ship's smallest theater was a good venue for the workshops and Helen waited in the wings while Karolina introduced her. Today Karolina was wearing cream-colored slacks with a red halter top that showed off her shoulders. One elegant hand held the microphone comfortably while the other rested lightly on her hip as she read from papers on the lectern. "...Her first critical acclaim in Agnes of God, a mere prelude of things to come..."
On waking this morning, after a fevered and restless night, Helen had decided that anything she might have felt had just been the romantic aura of a cruise and Karolina's more than considerable charisma. She'd repeated her diagnosis through the quick snack of an English muffin and slice of ham that Jeffrey had brought her, and through her shower and choice of white denim trousers with a silk tank top printed with Mardi Gras-inspired fleur de lis.
The lie had shattered the moment she'd seen Karolina. There were tingles-adolescent, impossible tingles-in the pit of her stomach. She was very concerned that she was about to go out to a performance-not a play, but still a performance-while a part of her brain was thinking about what it would be like to undo Karolina's halter and touch...
"...Tony Awards with more nominations than a person can count. We are so fortunate..."
She had never been distracted by personal feelings. Never felt like a part of her was disconnected. Performing was everything, all-consuming, and she wouldn't lose it for a momentary infatuation that made no sense in her life. She was nearly fifty. How could she not...know?
"...A true light of the Broadway stage. Please join me in welcoming Helen Baynor."
She didn't inhale during the air kisses with Karolina for fear of that heady spice-and-rose cologne. It didn't help. She wanted to turn her head and discover if a woman's lips were as soft as she thought they might be. Her audience applauded enthusiastically.
She put on the demeanor of Helen Baynor, a true light of the Broadway stage, and pushed the scared and reeling Helen to the background of her mind. It was the best she could do.
After thanks and commendation to the audience for their support of a charity that ensured babies entered the world as healthy as possible, especially if born with AIDS, she took a show of hands to make sure that her audience members were themselves all performers. Most did raise their hands as having been in a play or other performance in the last five years. Most had done so on stage, a few in front of a camera, and when she asked, a woman in the front volunteered that she had acted in a series that was running on the Internet and before that, she had been on stage with the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
"The number one question I'm always asked," Helen began as part of her prepared comments, "is what I think the most important attribute of a successful actor is. In my opinion, it's not good looks and it's not skill in the craft. I'm not going to name names, but there are plenty of actors who use an unusual appearance to their benefit, and many more who aren't the best craftsmen and yet manage to land role after role. What all types of successful actors have in common is stamina." She took a moment to assess the crowd. Eyes were bright and they appeared engaged.
"Their stamina is emotional. Rejection, fickle fan support and bad reviews don't slow them. Their stamina is physical. They may not be what Vogue considers thin, but they are physically robust and able to handle a stage or production schedule without missing their times."
She went on to detail the typical work schedule for an actor on Broadway, then admitted her own was a little less rigorous, but she'd reached a position where she could ask for some leniency. "I was also just plain lucky, and in a financial position where I could turn down a part if my schedule couldn't be accommodated."
Her hour's talk, including exercises for motion and breathing that she'd learned decades ago in an L.A. workshop and a few funny anecdotes of props and lines gone awry and how different performers had coped, stretched to an hour and a half. The audience was enthusiastic and receptive, and she promised them her next session on Monday would cover how to evaluate a character when taking up a new role. If it hadn't been well into lunch service they might have lingered, but instead the audience quickly cleared.
Karolina was effusive, giving her a quick embrace. "That was smashing! You were perfect."
She had to force her gaze from outlining Karolina's lips, and immediately spotted Eugene Masterson bearing down on them.
Karolina must have felt her stiffen. In a low voice she asked, "Is it the bad penny?"
"Yes, but I'm going to deal with it. I'm not going to spend the cruise ducking him." Her body was in danger of melting from contact with Karolina-how could it not show? "Thanks for the smoke screen, but I'll take it from here."
She nodded and let go of her just as Eugene arrived.
His greeting to Karolina was pleasant enough, but laden with a dismissive aura of "I'm here now so you can go."
"I need to see to a few things," Karolina said. "Helen, I'd like to talk to you this afternoon about a scheduling wrinkle. Around two?"
"That would be great. Can we meet out in the sunshine?"
"I'll be the one on the Lido deck with a blue drink that has some kind of umbrella in it." She waved cheerily at both of them and departed.
"I was wondering if we might have lunch together." It wasn't really a question.
"I'm starving," Helen said. "The main dining room?"
"Certainly." He made a courtly gesture for her to precede him up the theater aisle, which was somewhat odd from a man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt. His sandy good looks drew eyes to him as she led their way to the main dining room. Helen knew most other women would be flattered, but she felt nothing for him and more familiarity was going to breed outright contempt.
In the dayligh
t the view from the windows on both sides of the main restaurant was filled with a sensational blue sky and the green-blue of unbroken ocean. She really wanted to get outside and into the sun for a while.
She supposed some women would be enthused at his show of opening doors and pulling out her chair. It was gentlemanly, but done with an exaggeration that said it wasn't ingrained in him but rather done precisely so that she and others would notice. She couldn't recall the play, but she remembered the line, "Darling, if you're acting like a gentleman, then you aren't one."
She ordered the lobster bisque and an artisanal salad from the attentive waiter. Eugene ordered the same and then leaned back like a man well-pleased by his success. "I have to admit I never dreamed that I'd be having lunch with my longtime stage idol."
Yes you did, she thought. You never doubted that you would. "I'm flattered, but that makes me feel old."
"Not my intention in the least. You're a very attractive woman."
And you are so very married, she wanted to say. She chose the more subtle, "Is your wife a fan of the theater?"
"No. She has other pursuits." He settled his napkin into his lap.
"What a pity. I'd like to meet her. Neither of my children have an interest in the stage as a career. What about yours?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "My youngest is a thespian of sorts. I think it's more that he likes hanging around with certain elements in the theater world."
"We're an interesting and diverse bunch." Though she didn't want it, she broke open and buttered a roll to busy her hands.
He waited for the delivery of his cocktail and her iced tea before clearing his throat slightly and leaning forward, as if he did not want to be overheard. "This is somewhat awkward, but modern life being what it is... I have to say yesterday I rather got the impression that you were part of the more diverse element of the theater."
Puzzled, she asked, "How so?"
"According to her own website, Karolina bats for the, uh, other team. It's in her bio, several awards from gay groups and so on."
So he had noticed their little interchange yesterday. He wasn't as thick with ego as she'd supposed. Really, she tended to like men. She'd married one. She'd worked with perfectly wonderful guys, many, many times. But everything about Eugene rubbed her the wrong way. "We enjoy each other's company."
"But I didn't think you were..."
"Are you asking if I'm a lesbian?"
"I guess I am. I don't want to be obnoxious."
Oh, you've already been that, Moxie Taylor would have said. "Whether I'm with someone isn't really the issue. You're married. That disqualifies you from my thinking of you in that way. My late husband was a very special man and you're..."
He was plainly disappointed and a bit angry, she could tell. "And I'm not."
"You're nothing like him, no. I don't know exactly what I might want in a relationship when my kids are finally grown, but I'm not drawn to you in a way that would make me want to find out. I'm sorry, I know that's not easy to hear, but I'm simply unavailable."
"I don't think 'Ms.' Tavitian thinks so."
She wanted to say that it was none of his concern, but she wasn't going to let him change the subject. He also had a way of saying Ms. that contained a sneer. "That's not really relevant, is it? I'm not looking and you're not available."
"I know..." He cleared his throat. "We both move in circles where people don't follow the usual rules. I am married to the mother of two of my children and we live in completely different worlds at this point. Our paths cross when necessary. I'm discreet and so is she."
Helen held back her answer until after her soup and salad were set down and the waiter had departed. He refused to hear her point and she couldn't imagine spending time with anyone who didn't listen. "I don't care what anyone else in any circle does. I can't overlook that you're married." She tasted her soup and said brightly, "This is delicious."
"I had hoped that as a show person you had a more cosmopolitan outlook on such things." His food was untouched.
She was going to get angry-fine, she was already angry. "I don't think that an emotional relationship of any kind can be started with a cold-blooded negotiation about basic values." She softened her tone but kept an edge of warning. "This merger isn't going to work, and we'll be better acquaintances if that's accepted right now."
He smiled, though it was strained, and won a few points with her for saying, "Perhaps I've been a bit of an ass, thinking you a mortal woman. I've wanted to know you for years."
If some kind of pedestal made him believe that she had zero interest in him, then fine. "I'm not a mortal woman, then. How about you tell me which plays you've seen while we enjoy our lunch? We can look at the gorgeous sea and revel in schadenfreude about those who are sitting at a desk today."
He was, in the end, enough of a gentleman not to sulk openly. By the time they made it through their salads, the conversation had eased. She'd had suitors before but none so arrogantly assured of his ultimate success and so quick to be angered by a hint of failure. He was, as Cass would say, Bad News on a Stick. She hadn't been interested in him before she'd met Karolina and what did Karolina have to do with it anyway? It wasn't like... It wasn't as if...
"I hope you'll let me take you dancing one night this week," he said as they parted. "Just so I can say that I've danced the night away with a glamorous star."
"Perhaps," was her only answer and she was glad to escape to the deck and drink in the sea air.
If they hadn't been moving at however many knots, the temperature would have been unpleasantly hot and the air unrelentingly humid. But the breeze on the windward side of the deck was perfect. Maybe it was time to break out the swimsuit. Glancing at her watch she saw that she'd be able to meet Karolina on the Lido deck right on time.
She wasn't used to wearing as little as a swimsuit. Julie had thought she should get a bikini, but a more sensible one-piece had been the final purchase, in a soft green that heightened the slight red undertone in her otherwise dark brown hair. She wasn't sure she came off as trim and elegant as Karolina, but it wasn't bad for kissing fifty. If she had a hot flash she could blame the sweat on the sun.
She was dressed before she really looked at her face in the mirror. She'd spent hours every day doing just that, watching someone else layer on makeup while she took inventory of new wrinkles, her nose-just a bit too long-and worried if the color of her lips meant she was losing her alluvial pigmentation or whatever the heck the aesthetist at the spa had been talking about. Today she was reluctant to look, as if she was afraid something had changed. That something she felt inside would show.
What was wrong with her? What was the big deal? She knew many gay and bisexual and transgendered people-there were plenty of all of the above in the theater world. This was just a humorous moment in her life, actually feeling like she might be gay, but she wasn't. Was she? And even if she was, why was she freaked out? She wasn't homophobic, but if she wasn't afraid and scared of being gay, then why wasn't she celebrating in the hallways and thinking about maybe having lesbian sex for the first time? What was so terrifying?
Her unchanged face held no answers. Her eyes were the same gray-blue as always. Only her mouth might be different. It looked fuller, softer even.
As she went up the stairs to the pool deck she asked herself how she knew she wasn't gay. It wasn't as if she'd had more than the one experience with sex, which, if she thought about it, was pathetic for a nearly fifty-year-old woman. She'd been married, had very good sex with her husband, created two beautiful babies. For years the sexual part of her had seemed dead, and when it might have come alive she was busy working and being a mother. She couldn't remember the difference between third grade and seventh grade. Even some shows she'd been in blended together. Time flowed like a steady stream that hadn't seemed to change until recently.
She had reached the point of wondering if she was bisexual, and thinking she really was out of her depth when it came to unders
tanding what was what, who was who, and what got called which by whom when she spotted Karolina stretched out on a chaise in the filtered sunlight of the pool deck awning.
One thing crystallized-an L-word did apply to the situation: Lust, with a capital L. Not blind sexual lust for a body colliding with hers, but lust precisely because Karolina had soft, alluring outlines she wanted to touch with her fingers, and curves at her hips that she was thirsty to trace with her tongue. The surge of desire took her breath away and for a moment she thought she was having a hot flash.
She was, apparently, but not that kind.
For a moment she just looked at Karolina's body, drinking in the desire. There was a hum of electricity in her spine. Glancing around the deck there were certainly a great many male bodies and for some she might feel a definite appreciation, but she didn't want to touch them. She didn't think about their bodies with hers, not the way she was thinking about her breasts against Karolina's and her hand touching intimate and warm places.
Fifty, she told herself, you're nearly fifty, and you haven't the first clue about what your heart wants. That makes you a chump.
Your heart?Moxie Taylor mocked her. Your heart's got nothing to do with this. Tick-tock, dollface.
No, she answered, there's no rush here. She didn't have to jump into something without careful consideration. She had to think about the kids and her career and her schedule... Her thoughts trailed off the closer she got to Karolina.
She had not known that her body could feel the way Karolina looked, like poured out silk. She had loved being with Justin Senior, she remembered the first time even, and it was a good memory. But that experience had nothing to do with these feelings. This was new. And she was scared. Wonderfully scared.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On Sunday Laura approached the Baynor house filled with trepidation. She didn't see how she could go on working with Grace when she knew what Grace was up to. But Helen was reachable only for an emergency, and she didn't think this counted as one. Knuckling under was not her strong suit, and the stress over it had disturbed her sleep more than the hurt from Suzy's diatribe.
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