“Help yourself to some vodka punch,” I offered.
“Oh, is there vodka in here?” my mother asked, already halfway through her first glass. “I thought it was just juice.”
Ding-dong!
Saved by the bell one last time.
Pam.
Pam dressed as a giant pumpkin.
Angry Pam dressed as a giant pumpkin, staring at me with serious anger in her eyes.
There was going to be no saving me this time.
“You…bitch!” Pam seethed.
“You must be Pam,” said Pat, vodka glass in one hand, brownie in the other, shaking her hips to “Werewolves of London.”
I took Pam’s green elbow—she was wearing a green turtleneck under the giant pumpkin costume—and led her through a tentative chorus of “Hey, Pam” to the kitchen.
“What seems to be the problem?” I asked, arms crossed beneath the generous helping of cleavage created by the long V in my long and, okay, tight black dress. I noticed that, unlike the others—well, except for Pat—Pam had arrived empty-handed, save for a bottle of pumpkin schnapps. I didn’t even know anybody made pumpkin schnapps.
“You,” she spat, “you’re the problem. By wearing that costume, you’re breaking the rules.”
The costume in question involved the aforementioned dress, which had fringe on the ends of the bell sleeves and at the hemline, mile-high black heels, perfectly applied makeup, and hair, while still short, that had been gelled into a sporty, slightly spiky shape. I’d left off my glasses in favor of contacts.
“Am not,” I replied. “It’s Halloween. People get to dress up as whomever they want to on Halloween, even people like Lettie Shaw. It’s the Halloween Rule.”
“Who are you supposed to be, anyway? Vampirella?”
“I’m Morticia Adams,” I huffed.
“But Morticia had long hair,” she objected.
“So,” I said, hands-on-hipsing her as I leaned forward, the better to get myself in her face, “Morticia cut it. She cut it because she let her best friend in Danbury talk her into some insane idea.”
“But—”
“Besides,” I said, feeling very testy, “is it my fault you chose to come as a pumpkin? That with all the possible costumes in the world you could pick from, you chose a pumpkin?”
“Can I help it,” she huffed, “if I lack imagination?”
“No,” I said, “but that’s not my fault, either.”
“But—” She tried to “but” me one last time, but I stopped her.
“Look,” I said, suddenly feeling bad for her, suddenly feeling as though maybe I had done something slightly wrong, behaved deceptively, “it’s not like there are any guys here to compete for,” which was a slight lie, since I had invited Saul, but it was getting later—almost ten—and I was beginning to think he wouldn’t be coming.
“Ex-Al’s here,” she said, still pouting.
“He doesn’t count,” I said. “He’s so in love with T.B., he wouldn’t notice us if we were both naked.”
“He really is in love with her, isn’t he?” she asked.
“No doubt.”
“How do some women get that lucky?” she wondered wistfully.
“Who knows?” I said. “The point is, the only people at this party are you, me, Delta, my mother, Pat and a couple in love, so what does it matter if you’re a pumpkin and I’m Morticia?”
Ding-dong!
Just when I’d given up on my last guest arriving—it was a quarter to eleven, after all—the doorbell rang one last time. Glass of punch in hand—that cat on my glass was starting to look a little drunk—I threw the door open, only to find…
“Al Franken?”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t really Al Franken, just Saul Waters in an Al Franken disguise that involved, well, a pair of glasses. Other than that, he had on his regular black-over-black costume. I was thinking that, really, his regular outfit could have formed the springboard for something other than a political humorist—with a cape and mask, for just one example, he could have been Zorro, mmm—when he said:
“Am I too late for the party?”
“Not at all,” I said, waving my arm. “Come on in.”
“Lettie?” he said, sounding surprised.
“What? You didn’t think I’d still let you in—” I checked my watch “—if you were an hour and forty-five minutes late?”
“No. I mean, yes, I did still think you’d let me in. But no, that’s not what I was surprised about.”
“What, then?”
“You just look so…incredibly different.”
“Thanks, I guess. Would you like to meet everyone?”
He nodded, but I could see he was having trouble taking his eyes off me; well, my cleavage, if you want to know the truth.
I took him around the room, feeling quite the dominatrix as he trailed behind me, curiously obedient.
“This is my mother, the Jewish princess.”
My mother offered her hand for him to kiss and he obliged with a little bow.
“This is the actress who played Helen and the actor who played Tom on The Jeffersons.”
“Hey, Roxie Roker!” Saul said to T.B.
“Who?” I said.
“The actress who played Helen,” T.B. said, pleased, “Lenny Kravitz’s mother. That’s her name.”
I turned to Saul. “Do you also remember who played Tom?”
“Sorry,” he said.
“This is Little Bo Peep,” I said.
“Delta,” Delta cooed in his direction. “I’ll hunt for your sheep anytime.”
“And Pat from the library,” I moved on, figuring there was really no way for him to rightly answer Delta’s remark.
“And what are you supposed to be?” Saul asked Pat, somewhat gently.
“Didn’t you hear what Lettie said?” she barked at him. “I’m Pat, Pat from the library.”
“Ah,” he said.
“And this is…” But as we arrived in front of Pam, I couldn’t bring myself to introduce her as I’d done with the others, as what she was dressed up as. I didn’t need to, though. She did it for me.
“I’m a giant pumpkin,” she said sourly, reaching out one orange-painted hand that was attached to one green-clad arm from out of her enormous pumpkin costume. Then she tried to turn on the flirt switch, brightening. “But you can call me Pam.”
Even when a crowd is evenly matched between men and women, there’s a tendency for the men to converge around the alpha female, with the women around the alpha male. Until the story’s finally written, until the alpha of either sex decides upon whom to bestow his or her charms, the others figure they might as well still compete since they’re technically in the running. Imagine, then, how much more competition would ensue if there were only one man—gorgeous Saul—facing off against five women. I figured it as being five against one, since T.B. and Ex-Al didn’t really count in this; Ex-Al, because he was taken out of the running by his obvious love for T.B.; T.B., because she had taken Frank Sinatra to heart and knew that if you come to the party with one guy, it’s not nice to blow on another guy’s dice.
Truthfully, though, even T.B. and Ex-Al were somewhat taken with Saul. He was that good.
“Damn,” said Ex-Al, “he knew who Roxie Roker was. I didn’t even know who Roxie Roker was.”
“And he even makes those stupid glasses look good,” said T.B. “I might get me a pair.”
No one seemed to notice or mind that Saul had brought nothing but himself to contribute to the occasion, and, thankfully, T.B. and Ex-Al were at least enough into each other that they left the Saul field clear for the five of us.
And it really was quite a competition.
I saw a side of my mom that I’d never seen before as she pulled out all the flirting stops. It was a side I’d only imagined before, a side I was sure my father had known all too well. Meanwhile, Delta did that thing that Southern women do so well, swearing like a truck driver while making it sound as though
she were talking about barbecues with Rhett Butler on the rolling lawn of her family’s estate. Even Pat got into the act, smiling more than I’d ever seen her smile at each word out of Saul’s mouth. And Pam did the best a giant pumpkin could do to look alluring, giving Saul come-hither looks from behind her orange face paint.
As for me, well, I didn’t really have to do anything. Just sitting on the couch in my Morticia getup, leaning forward occasionally to pick up an hors d’oeuvre or a vodka glass, was enough to secure Saul’s attention. Sure, he was polite to all the other women, but he only really had eyes for me.
As the evening wore on, the field naturally became less populated as others moved off or threw in the towel.
The first to leave were T.B. and Ex-Al. Walking them to the door, as T.B. hugged Delta good-night, I leaned tipsily into Ex-Al.
“You know,” I said, “you two make a great couple. You really should give it another try.”
“We are,” he said with a wink, closing the door behind them.
That made me glad.
Then my mom gave up. “I might as well leave you kids to your fun,” she said. And Pat followed suit with, “I’ve got to work the afternoon shift tomorrow. Do you think anyone will notice if I’m still drunk?”
That left Delta.
“Omigod,” she said, “is it really after midnight?”
“Only by about two hours,” Saul said, smiling at my breasts.
“Shoot!” Delta said. “The sitter’s probably been tied to a pair of chair legs for hours. She’ll never come back again. I better go.”
And then there were two: me and the giant pumpkin.
The giant pumpkin looked just about as pissed as an oversize gourd could look. I could see she was determined to play the waiting game with me: whoever waited the other out the longest would win the guy.
Maybe she’d had more to drink than I had, or maybe she hadn’t eaten enough to go with the drink. Whatever the case, she’d been schnapps-ed, and, before another hour passed, the giant pumpkin was out cold on my couch.
“Hi,” Saul said softly, saying it as though he were greeting me for the first time.
“Hi,” I said back, not sure what else to say.
“Why, Lettie?”
“Why what?”
“You must know what. Why in the world would you go out in the world looking like you did the first two times I met you, when…”
“When what?” I felt unaccountably angry. “When I can look like this?”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted.
“It’s kind of complicated,” I answered, the anger disappearing as fast as it had come. Then, feeling bold: “You want to come upstairs?”
I couldn’t believe I was being so openly…desirous, but I really couldn’t stand it any longer. It had been so long since I’d felt that I was attractive to a man, and Saul was now so obviously attracted to me, I had this overwhelming urge to pin him down before he changed his mind.
His eyebrows rose just a bit in wonderment and then he nodded, clearly pleased as he held his hand out for me to take.
It felt so good, I thought, having in my hand the hand of a man who wanted me, as I led him up the wooden stairs to the loft above, leaving the snoring pumpkin below.
When he kissed me for the first time, with those lips and mouth and tongue that I’d fantasized about that first night in Chalk Is Cheap, it was like the first time I’d ever been kissed by Danny Wilcox in sixth grade and feeling like a vixen, all rolled into one. I felt something overtake me, a desperate need for validation that could only be met by making love with this man in this moment.
Saul turned me around, slowly undid the zipper on my dress. I felt deliciously like a caterpillar, poised to turn into something else as I felt the dress fall away. Then he unhooked the back of my push-up bra, turned me to face him.
“Oh, Lettie,” he said, looking at me in light that came only from the late moon, “why in the world would you ever hide this? You’re so beautiful.”
I wanted to tell him that I was Scarlett, not Lettie. Right then, though, I felt beautiful. I also felt something else, something uncomfortable that I couldn’t name, but mostly I felt beautiful.
Wanting to hide from that uncomfortable feeling, wanting to revel in that feeling of beauty, I set to work divesting him of his clothes.
“Um, I don’t think you’ll be needing these,” I said, removing his Al Franken glasses. “This can go, too,” I said, pulling his black turtleneck over his head. “And this,” I said, using my teeth to undo the black belt on his pants. “And this, and this, and this,” I said, taking off his shoes, his socks and his black pants, in that order. “And most of all this,” I said, sliding his jockey shorts over his perfect hips.
The only thing standing between us now was my panties.
“Do you mind?” he said, laying me down on my bed, ripping the panties off me in his eagerness to get to me.
Maybe if this hadn’t all been my idea, him in my room making love with me, I would have minded the financial loss of the panties, the violence of his rip. But I didn’t mind. In that moment, getting him inside me was all I wanted.
But he wasn’t ready for that yet.
He began kissing my neck, featherlight kisses combined with insistent kisses as he worked his way down my body, stopping a long time at my breasts, trailing his tongue over my flat stomach, moving, moving, until gently, he nudged my legs open, kissing his way up the insides of my thighs.
“You are so incredibly beautiful,” he murmured. “I just want to make you feel good.”
So I let him.
It wasn’t until I’d come several times, experiencing the first orgasms I’d had in months that hadn’t been self-administered, each time thinking to myself, Yes, this is what it feels like to be worshipped, that he moved up again.
All of a sudden, I had an awful realization.
“I’m not prepared,” I said anxiously, thinking how even when I’d been sexually active on a regular basis, I’d never been the kind of woman to keep condoms in her drawer. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being the kind of woman who does keep condoms in her drawer, I’m just saying I’m not one of them. “I don’t have any—”
“Shh,” he put his finger to my lips. “It’s no problem.”
He gracefully got off me and the bed, and crossed the room, removing a foil-wrapped item from his pants pocket, ripping it open with his teeth.
“You came prepared?” I don’t know why, but I felt surprised. “But you were coming to the party as just my friend.”
“Sure,” he said easily, “but who knew in advance who you were inviting? Maybe one of your other guests would turn out to suit me. Besides,” he added, rolling the condom on, rejoining me on the bed, “I was a Boy Scout. I always come prepared.”
I pushed back the residual unease I was feeling as he kissed me again, letting me taste myself on his lips and tongue as he moved his hips between my open thighs and I wrapped my legs around his naked back to pull him deeper into me.
“I just can’t get over how beautiful you are,” he kept saying, like I was some kind of eighth wonder of the world or something. “I can’t get over how beautiful you are.”
And, in that moment, I was.
33
I woke the next morning, just a few short hours later, feeling awful, and not just awful because of my raging hangover or the fact that Saul was gone—I could see that, as soon as I opened my eyes—but truly awful, guilty awful, like I’d done a bad thing that I couldn’t take back.
Saul might have been gone, but he’d left behind a note on the pillow:
Lettie, I had a fantastic time with you last night, but I needed to leave early to meet a tennis date. I’ll call you, though. I’ll definitely call you.
Saul.
The note should have made me feel better, but somehow it didn’t. We’ll see, I thought.
I lay in bed, trying to figure out why I felt so awful. It wasn’t, after all, like an adult wom
an sleeping with an adult man was some kind of crime or something. I hadn’t killed anybody.
So why did I feel as though I had killed somebody?
Admittedly, feeling as though I’d killed somebody was a little bit extreme. Still, I did feel as though I’d somehow lured Saul into my bed under false pretenses. But wasn’t that insane? It was the Lettie person I’d become who was the false pretense, with her Mother Hubbard dresses and her tentative speech. It had been Scarlett who had slept with Saul last night. Well, okay, a Halloween version of Scarlett, but still Scarlett, right?
But it didn’t feel that way. It felt as though the woman I had been the night before, the woman who had invited Saul to sleep with her, was a woman not myself.
Who was that woman? I wondered.
But I knew the answer: she was a woman who just wanted and needed attention, validation and, yeah, maybe love, I guess.
I wrenched myself away from the pleasure of beating myself up, went to the bathroom, threw water on my face, brushed the grit from my teeth and threw on a navy silk robe, tied the sash around my waist and headed downstairs. I may not have been a coffee person, but I was going to need something caffeinated to help me restore my physical sense of balance. Maybe if I felt physically better, I’d feel less like someone should take me out in the yard and shoot me.
Unfortunately, when I got down to the living room, there was someone waiting there to shoot me.
“Well, at least one of us had a good time.”
Apparently, the angry pumpkin had never left, because she was still on my couch, some of her orange makeup having faded overnight.
“I had an okay time,” I said. “Coffee?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Even I could boil water for instant. As I put that together, along with a serving of leftovers from the night before, the phone rang.
“Scarlett!”
“Mom!” I tried to sound equally enthusiastic, but: “Um, didn’t I just see you last night?”
“I just wanted to know how things went with you and Saul after I left. Did Pam succeed in waiting you out?”
A Little Change of Face Page 17
