by Dianne Dixon
She glanced down at the portfolio and said, “Grandma MaryJoy’s restaurant was never supposed to be in California.” Morgan’s tone was angry. “By moving that restaurant, you’re saying fuck you to Grandma MaryJoy. She wanted it here. In Providence. And you know it.”
Ali did know it. She was riddled with guilt.
Morgan asked, “Did all that stuff about wanting the restaurant to be part of who you are and who our grandmother was just fly out the window because Matt slapped a ring on your finger? Grandma MaryJoy always said Los Angeles was plastic and phony. She’d hate you for putting her restaurant there.”
The guilt in Ali exploded. She grabbed Morgan and shoved her into the powder room’s only chair. Wanting to draw blood and break bones.
Ali could feel every muscle in Morgan bracing for the violence. They were in a place that only sisters can go—a place where love and competition and jealousy ignite like wildfire.
“Los Angeles is where Matt has the chance to make more money than we’ve ever dreamed of.” Ali was spitting the words at Morgan. “Without that money, I’ll never get any further with the restaurant than Grandma MaryJoy did. It’ll never happen. If I don’t go to California, the restaurant will stay nothing but a dead old woman’s pipe dream. Grandma sure wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Ali slammed Morgan against the chair back and left her there. Both of them had tears in their eyes.
“Spin it any way you like,” Morgan told Ali. “But you know you’re supposed to stay here. In Rhode Island. You know that what you’re doing is wrong.” Morgan charged out of the chair, shoving past Ali, marching toward the door. “Someday you’ll be sorry you even thought of going to California!”
Ali stepped in behind Morgan and pulled her to a stop. “I’ll miss you, too,” she said.
“Who’s talking about missing anybody?”
“We both are,” Ali murmured. “No matter what we’ve been saying, it’s all you and I have been talking about for days.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t need you.”
Morgan’s expression was stony. Her jaw was clenched. And she was shaking like a leaf.
Ali wondered how her sister would remain standing. When Ali wasn’t there for her to push against anymore.
• • •
Within minutes, Ali was outside, in front of the church. Matt had helped her into a cab. She’d set the brown suitcase at her feet, the suitcase that contained her wedding outfit and her grandmother’s portfolio.
The instant Ali felt the cab pull away from the curb, she looked over her shoulder, anxiously searching the faces of the group gathered on the church steps. Her grandfather, stately and gray haired. Her mother, as bright as a gypsy in gold bangles and layers of gauzy fabric. Her father, vaguely melancholy, with his scowling wife at his side.
When Ali’s eyes met Morgan’s, Morgan was blank-faced. Her arms were crossed, and her fingernails were digging into the crooks of her elbows.
Ali instinctively leaned forward, putting her hand against the cab window, wanting to call out to Morgan. But the cab went around a corner. Morgan was swept from view.
The cab was gaining speed. Rushing toward the airport.
Toward California.
It was as if Ali had just stepped off the edge of a cliff.
Morgan
Morgan hadn’t really needed it for this trip; the weather was mild. But she thought the sporty little trench coat Ali had left behind would make her look more sophisticated. Morgan had Ali’s coat clumsily wadded in her hands, trying to hide the embarrassing item she’d just selected. And now the salesclerk with the pink-streaked hair and tiger tattoo was swooping in, pulling it out of Morgan’s grasp, squealing, “Oh wow! You picked a great one!”
The object under discussion was a black demi-cup bra, delicately embroidered with red poppies and made of fabric so filmy it was almost transparent. Morgan was mortified.
“Are you here on business or pleasure?” the clerk asked.
“Business. I started a new job a while ago, at a museum back home in Rhode Island, and traveling’s part of it so…” Morgan let her voice trail away—worried she was talking too much, sounding like an idiot.
The clerk dropped the bra onto the countertop and rummaged through the drawers below the display case. “We’re the only place in Chicago that carries this brand. I’m pretty sure we still have the matching panties.”
“You don’t need to bother. You’re probably about ready to close and—”
“No problem.” The clerk smiled. “It’s only eight thirty. We’re open till ten.”
“I was just looking. I’m not really shopping, not seriously.” Horribly uncomfortable, Morgan glanced toward the entry to the hotel boutique, thinking of running.
The clerk peeked up at her and flashed a playful grin. “This stuff is definitely for something special. What’s the occasion?”
Morgan’s stomach flipped.
She was thinking that the normal Morgan, the Morgan she was when she arrived at the airport this morning, wouldn’t even be in a place like this—a frilly cubbyhole of a store filled with ridiculously expensive, very sexy lingerie. But the normal Morgan had been transformed by a last-minute miracle on an overcrowded plane.
Instead of having to fly to this Chicago convention seat-belted next to her sharp-tongued boss, Morgan had ended up sitting beside a friendly, talkative copier salesman from Newark, New Jersey. By the time they’d gotten off the plane, the chatty salesman, who was staying in the same hotel as Morgan and her colleagues, had managed to push past her shyness. And Morgan had done something she’d never done before—struck up an in-flight friendship with a total stranger.
Later, in the hotel, Morgan had bumped into the salesman again. When he said, “Hey, wanna join me for a drink?” Morgan was thrilled. And she realized that for the first time, she was happy Ali was gone. Happy that no one in this hotel even knew Ali existed. If he’d been aware of Ali, Morgan was convinced that instead of asking her out for a drink, the copier salesman would have shoved her aside to get to her sister.
Morgan had walked into the hotel bar excited. She was also nervous, awkward, and stammering.
It wasn’t until midway through the second glass of wine that she began to relax and have fun. Then a little while later, in the low light of the bar, she noticed that her boss, Veronica, a woman with thin lips and fat calves who was constantly trumpeting her devotion to her church and her rock-solid marriage, was at a nearby table.
Nursing a bottle of ginger ale, Veronica was watching—pious and judgmental—as the copier salesman wrote his room number on a cocktail napkin, sliding it toward Morgan. The look on the salesman’s face was telling Morgan (and the eavesdropping Veronica) exactly how he wanted Morgan to use the scribbled information.
Painfully aware of Veronica’s scrutiny, Morgan wavered, debating whether to take the napkin or walk away and leave it on the bar. The decision wasn’t easy—the smoldering look in the salesman’s eyes had put a heat into Morgan, which had started low and was steadily climbing higher.
Remembering that moment of decision had Morgan lost in thought. It took her a second to snap back to the present. The pink-haired clerk was holding up two pairs of lacy, black panties. “So what’s it gonna be? Bikini or thong?”
The see-through skimpiness of the underwear made Morgan blush.
“Who you gonna be wearing these for?” the clerk asked. “Your husband or your boyfriend?”
Well, Morgan thought, maybe someday he could be both. But right now, he’s a guy I said no to when he asked me to come to his room. Because my boss was looking. And because I was sure that after he saw me naked, he’d be wishing he was with somebody like Ali. But then, as I was leaving, he tucked his room number into my coat pocket and said it was in case I changed my mind. Right then, he made up for every boy who’d ever handed me a folded
piece of paper and mumbled, “This is my number. Give it to your sister.” So. I guess you could say I want to wear this stuff for a man who made me feel like a princess.
“I’d go with the thong.” The clerk held out both pairs of panties. “But the bikini’s cool, too.”
In the dressing room, Morgan had trouble keeping her balance while she tried on the bra and panties. She was anxious about having sex with a total stranger. At the same time, she was remembering the sex she’d almost had with Logan, the groom at the Newport wedding—the pleasure she’d experienced that night. The thrill.
And, in the sensual tease of the lingerie she was wearing, she was picturing a bold new version of Morgan Spencer—seeing herself knocking on the copier salesman’s door, pulling out the cocktail napkin with his room number on it. Flirtatiously telling him, “I’ve changed my mind.”
• • •
Her heart was banging. Morgan had stepped out of the elevator wearing nothing under Ali’s trench coat but the see-through black bra and panties she’d just bought. Her clothes were downstairs in the hotel lobby, in a shopping bag from the lingerie store. She had handed the bag to the concierge and told him she’d pick it up later.
This was the most daring, exciting, moment of her life.
The cocktail napkin with the copier salesman’s room number on it was clutched in her hand. When she knocked on the salesman’s door, she was so exhilarated she was on the verge of passing out.
From inside the room, the salesman’s muffled voice asked, “Who is it?”
“Room service.” A trickle of nervous sweat raced down her back. Morgan felt giddy. Scared. Ready.
She waited anxiously for the door to open. For the space of a blink, there was complete stillness. Nothing happened. In the next millisecond, everything was happening at once.
The door handle being turned from the inside.
Morgan loosening her coat, revealing that she was unclothed except for the wisps of black fabric that were her bra and panties.
The door swinging open.
The salesman, lardy and bow-legged, a towel clutched at his waist, gaping at Morgan, caught off guard.
Morgan glimpsing movement inside the room.
A woman. In the salesman’s bed. Naked from the waist up.
• • •
The moment Morgan had locked eyes with the woman, she’d comprehended exactly what had happened. The salesman hadn’t wanted her, Morgan. He’d wanted sex. With somebody. Anybody. Morgan understood that the woman in his bed had simply walked across the bar and said yes after Morgan had said no.
Morgan also understood she’d soon be out of work.
There was no way Veronica, the thin-lipped champion of family values, could allow Morgan to go unpunished. Not after Morgan had caught her answering a booty call issued by a copier salesman from Newark.
In the time after she left the salesman’s hotel room and arrived back in her own room, Morgan didn’t display any emotion. She simply changed into her pajamas and lay on the bed, letting the black bra and panties stay on the floor where they had fallen when she’d stripped them from her body.
Morgan studied the bra and panties for a long time before she decided to get out of bed and pick them up. She carried them into the bathroom, held them over the toilet, and let them drop. Then she pushed the toilet’s chrome lever and watched the bra and panties disappear in a rush of swirling water, vanishing like wisps of smoke.
Once they were gone, Morgan did exactly what she’d done on the day of her grandmother’s funeral. She went back to bed—and gave up.
She’d put on Ali’s coat and tried to be like Ali, spontaneous and interesting. Instead, she’d been fumbling and stupid. So stupid she created a situation that would cost her her job.
It seemed to Morgan that no matter how hard she tried, she would never get it right—never be able to navigate the world on her own.
She was scared to death.
All she wanted now was a place to hide.
She crossed her arms, dug her fingernails deep into the crooks of her elbows, then closed her eyes and saw her sister’s face. The only way to survive was to surrender, go back to living in the safety of Ali’s shadow. A place where her existence would be what it had always been—small, and cramped, and secondhand.
Morgan honestly didn’t understand that she had other choices. She believed that life had defeated her by giving everything to her sister, leaving her with nothing.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. And it wasn’t long before Morgan had a burning desire for revenge.
Part Two
CALIFORNIA
Ali
“Like watching a movie on fast-forward.” That’s how, in a recent phone call to her mother, Ali had described her California experience.
In the year that Ali and Matt had been there, all the things Matt promised had come true—most of them with incredible speed. Speed that had caused contact with Morgan to be sporadic. Ali thought about her sister often, but hadn’t spoken to her much. The distance between them, created by their fight on Ali’s wedding day, had remained unrepaired and awkward.
The apartment where Ali and Matt lived was comfortable and only fifteen minutes away from Jessica’s house, making it easy for Ali and Jessica to have afternoon walks and girlfriend time. Matt’s income from the television show was, by Rhode Island standards, enormous. It had seemed so enormous that when they’d discovered the perfect space for Ali’s restaurant—an old, quirky, triangle-shaped building in South Pasadena—they leased it the minute they found it. Ali had named it JOY, in honor of her grandmother. A few months later, she and Matt giddily closed a deal to buy their first house.
And tonight, they were in the midst of their housewarming party.
“Careful…don’t burn the place down,” Ali told Matt. He was leaning around the Christmas tree, handing her a lit fireplace match.
While she put the match to the kindling, Matt gave Ali a quick kiss—and before she could kiss him back, he’d managed to hurry away.
“Where are you going?” Ali had to shout to be heard. The house was crowded with people. Music was playing in every room.
Matt’s voice came to her faintly, from somewhere down the hall. “I need to talk to Aidan about changes he wants me to make on next week’s script.”
This had become their new normal—Matt constantly moving away from Ali. Disappearing down corridors, around corners. Obsessed with his job. She hated it. And watching him disappear from her now reminded her of the way she’d felt on her wedding day—the little, brown suitcase at her feet and the cab rushing her toward the airport, feeling like she was headed toward the edge of a cliff.
Ali quickly stepped into the hall and ran the length of it. After she caught up with Matt, she grabbed his arm and held on as if she were trying to keep him from escaping. “It’s our housewarming,” she whispered. “Just for tonight…can’t work wait?”
“No,” Matt whispered back. “I need to keep Aidan happy because I need the money I make from this show. To pay for our new home.”
At the mention of money, Ali’s stomach tightened. It was true that Matt’s Hollywood salary had managed to fund the opening of her restaurant and cover the down payment on this house, a gracious, old, two-story Monterey colonial on a tree-lined street in west Pasadena. It was also true that the restaurant was a huge money drain—it would be months, if not years, before it turned a profit. And the mortgage payments on the house were big. Big enough to sink Ali and Matt’s financial boat if anything went wrong.
There was another issue, too—one Ali hadn’t yet mentioned to Matt. She was waiting for the right time to bring it up. It was something she’d started to want with her whole heart and soul. She wanted to have a baby. Soon.
Ali was talking to herself as much as she was to Matt when she said, “It was a mistake to rush in the way we d
id. The restaurant. The house. We should’ve waited.”
Matt leaned in close. “Al. Tell me how much you love this place.”
“I’m crazy about it. It’s a dream house. I love everything, even the address, seventy-six Paradise Lane. But—”
“No buts. End of story.” This time Matt stopped long enough to kiss Ali deeply before disappearing into the group at the end of the hall, all of them show-business people.
Ali was in the grip of an overwhelming sense of loneliness. And the celebration of her new California life was in full swing.
There were more than thirty guests in the house, along with truckloads of food and wine. There was fabulous music. There were garlands of white Christmas lights on every doorway, every window. And not a single piece of furniture anywhere.
Earlier in the evening, when Jessica, the bride from Newport, had walked through the front door, she’d told Ali, “Doing this party before you actually move in? It’s genius.”
“I know,” Ali had agreed. “This way, Matt and I, as the housewarmed, get to really have fun because we know the housewarmers can’t possibly spill anything on the brand-new furniture. Which isn’t being delivered until tomorrow morning.”
Jessica had let out a whoop of laughter as she went off to join the festivities. The party guests included people from Matt’s television show, acquaintances Ali had made at her recently opened restaurant, and neighbors from the apartment complex that had been home to Ali and Matt since they first came to Pasadena.
One of those neighbors, a tall, good-looking Texan named Peter Sebelius, was now walking toward Ali, saluting her with a raised beer bottle. “Great house,” he said. “But I’m gonna miss having you around the complex. You really class up the joint. Especially when you bring yourself out by the pool in that little green bathing suit I like so much. When’s the official moving day?”
“Tomorrow. The apartment’s all packed. So in the morning, all I have to do is deal with the movers while Matt’s over here taking delivery on the new furniture.”
