“Haven’t I been?” he asked, as he leaned in to nuzzle my neck. I knew he was referring to his sexual prowess, which I’ll admit left me aching for more.
“I guess so. But you’ll just have to wait until tonight,” I said, and then gently pushed him away. If this kept up we’d never get out of here.
Robert had offered to drop me off, but it was so beautiful outside, I wanted to get a little exercise. The sun was shining and it seemed warm for October. I walked three blocks to the restaurant that Lessie had chosen.
When I reached the restaurant, there was Lessie by the doorway. I wasn’t prepared for seeing Lessie pregnant—I mean really pregnant. She was finally showing and wearing maternity clothes. But she was the best-looking pregnant woman I’d ever seen in person and one of the only women I knew who could get away with wearing this outfit: a black beret, a tight white long- sleeved turtleneck that proudly showed off the curve of her belly over a three-quarter-length jean skirt and black cowboy boots. She hadn’t gained any weight in her face, arms, or legs and looked radiant.
“Cute,” I said and patted her hard tummy.
“I’m almost five months’,” she said, “can’t hide it forever.”
“It’s so good to see you, Lessie,” I said, after the hostess had settled us into a booth next to the windows. “How have you been?”
“I’m great,” she said with a smile. I could see that Lessie had changed, and not just physically. She seemed peaceful and at ease with herself. “It really helps that my mom has been great about the whole thing. I think she figures this will be her only grandchild so she’s going all out. She’s driving down from Minnesota next weekend with my old crib and a bunch of baby clothes.”
“How did it go at work when you told them?” I asked her, after we had each ordered a salad.
“They’re not thrilled. I’m supposed to be a role model, and an unwed mother is not the role model they typically have in mind for high school students. But they can’t fire me, so they’re handling it.”
“Have you heard from him?” I asked.
“Nothing. Javier told me that he’d had to break it to their parents. His father hit the roof. The roof, get it?”
At least Lessie hadn’t lost her sense of humor, but it made me sad all the same that Eliseo had turned out to be a cad.
“I found out more,” Lessie continued. “The other woman Eliseo got pregnant has taken him to court a bunch of times and he owes her thousands in back child support. I’ll be lucky to get a dollar from him.”
“Are you going to be able to make it, financially I mean?” I asked her, knowing that teachers weren’t particularly well paid.
“I’m bringing in extra money with the freelance photography I’m doing and I have some saved. You know, Sam, I just can’t believe I was so stupid to fall for someone like Eliseo,” said Lessie.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said. “I’ve never been able to make my heart and brain work together.”
“Well that’s what I’m trying to do from now on. There’s another teacher at school, Marty, and ...” she paused, looking a little flustered.
“And?”
“And, he’s just a friend for now, but he’s been really good to me. He’d marry me tomorrow if I’d said yes. But I’m taking this one slow, not jumping into anything with a man anymore. You know, Sam, I think I’ve finally grown up. I’d never had to before. I let my ex-husband, Steve, take care of me, and then after we got divorced it was like being let out of jail.”
I filled her in on my life, giving her all the details I hadn’t had time to go into in the few phone conversations we’d had since I’d left Milwaukee.
“Are you coming to the wedding?” I asked her.
“No,” she said seriously, as a smile snuck out of the left side of her mouth. “An invitation to the Mystery Woman’s wedding? This is the hottest ticket in the country. I’m going to auction it off on eBay and retire off the proceeds.”
“Very funny,” I said with a laugh. But I’d much rather have a normal wedding, outside of the prying eyes of the public. Elaine was planning a special Tres Chic wedding issue, and trying to squeeze as much free publicity out of this as she could.
“Of course I’ll be there. But I might need two seats. In two months I’ll be as big as a house,” she said, patting her stomach.
“I doubt that. So, how is Javier?” I asked her, forcing my voice to sound light and carefree as if this question had just popped into my brain even though I’d been dying to ask her for the past hour.
Lessie looked down and didn’t say anything. My heart fluttered.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, finally looking up at me. My throat went dry. “He’s been seeing someone. It’s that Latina woman that we saw that night at Babalus, the tall one with the red and blond streaks in her hair.”
The one who’d had her eyes on Javier’s package, and by now probably her hands and mouth on it too.
“Are they just dating or ...?”
“I hear that it’s pretty serious,” she said carefully.
I forced a smile, but inside I was devastated. That would explain, at least partly, why he hadn’t returned my calls. “I’m happy he’s found someone. He deserves it.”
Lessie looked at me pointedly. “Sam, he only mentioned it to me once. I think he felt uncomfortable talking to me about you because he knows we’re friends. But Javier really loved you.” Loved. Past tense.
“Are you okay, Sam?” asked Lessie. “You look really upset.”
“Of course, I’m great,” I said, and began to tell her about my birthday plans for Robert. I’d spent countless hours thinking that if only I’d known then what I know now things might’ve turned out very differently. I guess that until this moment, a part of me kept hoping for a miracle, that somehow Javier and I ... But now it really was too late.
* * *
An hour later I let myself into Robert’s apartment. It was strange to be in his condo alone. The skylights let in the last of the late afternoon rays that fell over the wood floors. I took a shower and then sat at his tiny kitchen table and polished my finger and toenails. I was taking Robert to the Italian restaurant where we’d become engaged. I’d even called up ahead of time to see if our waiter, Todd, was working tonight and had arranged for us to be seated in his section.
As I got dressed, slipping on a pale green strapless raw silk cocktail dress and matching long-sleeved bolero jacket, I wondered where Robert was, mildly annoyed that his meeting was going longer than expected. By the time our scheduled dinner reservation had come and gone, I was furious, thinking that once again he was letting his job take priority over our relationship. But an hour after that I was completely panicked. I called the police.
“He’s an adult,” said the kind but clearly bored desk officer assigned to answer what to him was merely a routine call. “I’m sorry, miss, we can’t do anything until he’s been missing for twenty-four hours.”
I paced back and forth across his apartment wondering what I should do. I wanted to call Elizabeth or Lessie, but I didn’t know if Robert had Call Waiting so I didn’t want to tie up the phone in case he called. Sometime just before dawn, I changed into my sweatpants and one of Robert’s T-shirts, crawled into his bed, and cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up it was mid-morning, and I felt ashamed for having slept, but didn’t have much time to dwell on my guilt since a moment later, the doorbell rang. I flew across the room. Robert had probably lost his key, but the important thing was, he was all right!
I flung the door open.
“Can I come in?” he asked. I’d forgotten how tall he was. He seemed to tower over me. I stood there speechless until the lenses of my brain came back into sharp focus.
“No, you can’t come in. What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“That’s what I’d like to discuss with you, inside, so we don’t disturb the neighbors,” he said in his silky smooth voice. Then he tipped his he
ad toward the hallway as if I’d forgotten we were in a building with multiple condominiums.
And then my brain suddenly took a detour.
“Is this about Javier?” I asked, my stomach suddenly in knots. “Is he okay? He’s not hurt, is he?”
He got a strange look on his face and then quickly recovered his mask of indifference.
“Javier is fine,” he assured me. “But I would think your first concern would be for your fiance.”
“Never mind what my concerns are. And how do you know Robert is missing?”
His massive hands hung at his sides until he slowly reached into his breast pocket, handing me a flat black leather case that looked like a cardholder. When I opened it, I saw a badge for Special Agent Sebastian Diaz of the F.B.I.
Twenty-two
Bar None
I’d fully expected, given what Sebastian had told me about everything Robert had done, to be led through three or four solid steel and barred doors and then into one of those rooms with the two-way mirrors, where I’d find a frightened and disheveled Robert, fastened to a metal chair by leg chains, with the wild desperate look of a trapped animal.
Instead, Sebastian took me to his office, which had a desk, a couple of metal filing cabinets, two chairs, and a partially obstructed view of Lake Michigan. This was what watching too many cop shows and reading too many legal thrillers did for the ordinary person. Mass media completely warped your expectations. If I’d still had my sense of humor I would’ve been able to laugh at my momentary disappointment at the too-ordinary surroundings.
“Can I get you anything?” Sebastian asked. “Some coffee or soda?”
I shook my head no. I was too shocked by everything Sebastian had told me at Robert’s condo to think about eating or drinking. I looked out at the lake. It was another warm, gorgeous day. But I couldn’t appreciate it. Without any warning my life had completely fallen apart.
“There’s something you should know before you talk to Robert,” said Sebastian.
“There’s more? I don’t think I can handle anything else.”
“I don’t think Robert would tell you this himself, so that’s why I’m going to tell you, for what it’s worth. He insisted that I bring you here before he agreed to cooperate with us. He wanted to talk to you in person. Girlfriends are not normally our concern, unless they can screw up or help an investigation, but ...” There was a soft knock at the door, and when Sebastian opened it, Robert walked in, un-handcuffed and looking exactly as he had yesterday when I’d kissed him good-bye. Obviously, he had gotten a full night’s sleep. I couldn’t look at him, but I felt him staring at me as he sat down in the chair across from me. Sebastian nodded to the other agent who’d escorted Robert here. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” said Sebastian. “Knock if you need one of us. There will be an agent right outside the door.” The door had barely closed before Robert blurted out, “Sam, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry! How could you do this to me? You lied about everything!” I shouted. After Sebastian told me everything about his investigation and about Robert, the real Robert, whom I didn’t know at all, the only thing left inside of me was anger.
“I didn’t lie about the fact that I loved you,” he said. “I still love you, very much.”
“Love,” I snorted. “That’s rich. You obviously don’t know the first thing about love.”
“Listen, I’d never planned on going out on any Single No More dates, and certainly not falling in love. But when I found out you wanted to meet me, and I saw your photograph and video, I think I fell in love with you right then and there. I had to meet you.”
I felt his eyes on me, but I refused to look at him.
“Sam, you’ve got to believe me,” he pleaded. “I wanted to start a new life with you in New York. I was going to go clean and get a real job.”
“Oh, you mean like your real job as a lawyer, before you stole all that money from your clients and went to prison?” Robert winced. Apparently my words had landed like a slap across his face. And then it hit me.
“You used my mother to get you a job working for Martha Smith’s nephew! You played her perfectly. How convenient. You’d marry me and then waltz into a job that would pay you more money than working for God. And then, by magic, your past is wiped out. Presto, you have the perfect legitimate life.” “It wasn’t like that, Sam,” he said. I could see more of his phony tears in his eyes. He had played me perfectly too.
“You even lied about having a dead wife. Sarah this and Sarah that. Let’s all feel sorry for Robert Mack, the poor widower.”
“For what it’s worth, there really was a Sarah,” he said softly. “She was my girlfriend when I was eighteen. She died in a car crash. She was the first ...”
“Just stop. Stop!” I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear any more of your fucking bullshit! ”
He looked shocked. I’d actually shocked myself. I’d never been so angry in my entire life. I stood up and walked over to the door and knocked on it. The agent opened it.
“Wait, Sam. You have to know, I never meant to hurt you, I love you,” he pleaded, and then started crying.
For a brief moment I felt sorry for him. But it passed. “Good-bye, Robert.” I turned and walked out without looking back him.
Twenty-three
Meltdown
For several long minutes after I told her everything, Elaine sat behind her enormous teak desk saying nothing. Her face was a blank page, impossible to read. As for me, I was beyond white-knuckled. My hands had permanently bonded to the black lacquered armrests of my chair.
I wish she’d start her tirade so I could get this over with. I had steeled myself for an explosion to rival the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. I could imagine confused geologists in California noting unusual seismic activity in Manhattan after Elaine went ballistic. As I waited for her response, I heard sounds I never usually noticed. The chair I sat in squeaked every time I moved, and I heard my heart thump inside my chest.
“Samantha, dear, you must be devastated,” she said finally, in a voice that bordered on a whisper. She leaned forward in her chair with her arms extended out over her desk, her hands folded together as if in prayer.
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea Robert, that he was actually ...” Elaine’s unexpected kindness brought another wave of tears to my eyes. I began crying. Again. I hadn’t thought it possible. I know the body is sixty to seventy percent water, but I’d cried so much in the past two days that I couldn’t believe I had a drop of liquid left inside of me.
“Of course you didn’t. Men can be such selfish bastards. I’m just wondering, do you know when this will hit the press?”
“I’m not sure. I think in the next day or two,” I said between sobs. “The investigation is done.”
She rose and walked over to the windows and gazed out for a long moment. Finally, she turned back to face me.
“Samantha,” she said gently, but firmly, “I think you need some time off to collect your thoughts and get your life back together.”
“Yes, I do,” I agreed. “But what about my column?”
It felt good to say “my column.” It should. I’d worked hard to get it. For a half a second I forgot about Robert and felt proud that I’d accomplished something I’d wanted for a very long time. My first three columns had attracted hundreds of warm letters from readers with comments like, “That’s exactly how I feel!” and, “You are hilarious. Please don’t stop!”
“Don’t worry about a thing. You just take care of yourself,” said Elaine.
She escorted me out of her office like a mother taking a child who’d skinned her knees to get a bandage.
“Take all the time you need, Samantha.”
“Elaine, I don’t know what to say. Thank you for everything,” I said. We stood there for an awkward second. Although the moment called for it, I’d sooner hug a drooling werewolf than Elaine, so we shook hands.
I went home to my apar
tment, but I felt like I didn’t belong there. It was the middle of the day on a Monday and everyone I knew was at work. Their lives were humming along smoothly, gearing up for the rest of the week.
I sat in my favorite chair and stretched my legs out onto the ottoman. Every move I made had a surreal, slow-motion quality to it. I had the feeling that if I weren’t very, very careful, I’d have the reverse-Midas touch on everything I did. Plug in a lamp and I’d short-circuit my entire building. Call for my investment account balance and I’d trigger a stock market collapse. Put on a new pair of nylons and I’d get three runs in each leg within two seconds—well, that happened anyway, even when my life was going great.
I was too tired to be angry, and the shock had worn off. The only thing I could feel at this moment was overwhelming sadness. But I tried to console myself with the thought that things couldn’t possibly get any worse. Things could only improve from this point. Right?
On the bookshelf opposite me there was a framed photograph of Andre and me, snapped at the top of Machu Picchu just after we’d finished the climb. We had our arms over each other’s shoulders, both of us smiling and triumphant. It had been taken six months ago, just before this whole thing had started. I couldn’t imagine ever again feeling that kind of carefree happiness. It was difficult to comprehend that at this very moment there were people laughing, making love, falling in love, and having babies, when I couldn’t foresee doing much of anything ever again.
My mind drifted back over the past two days since Sebastian had rung Robert’s doorbell, and the perfect life I’d imagined for Robert and me had dissolved in an instant. After I met with Robert at Sebastian’s office on Saturday, Sebastian had taken me back to Robert’s condo so I could get my things. Sebastian then drove me over to Lessie’s house. Just before I got out of his black sedan, I finally remembered to ask him about something that had been bothering me ever since last summer.
Adventures of a Salsa Goddess Page 25
