Sicily pulled her laptop closer toward her. She checked Rawn’s calendar. She sent an e-mail checking to see if they could hook up around six o’clock.
• • •
The bell chimed. Tamara looked toward the door. D’Becca entered Threads. She nearly gasped, but managed to suppress the sound. What is she doing here?
“Hi,” D’Becca said, walking toward Tamara, taking a fleeting glance at dresses hanging chicly from satin hangers, and the smoke-gray and topaz-colored hangers hung strategically from wire. I love the colors she works with. An olive-green and tomato-red pencil skirt. Bold.
“Hi,” Tamara replied. “What a surprise.”
An Everything Dayna shopping bag dangling from D’Becca’s fingers. Tamara flinched at the very idea of Everything Dayna. The chic boutique was her competitor. On any given day in downtown Seattle, one was bound to see at least one Everything Dayna shopping bag draped on the wrist of a young woman who spent her lunch-hour browsing and hard-pressed to walk out without a purchase. At least a trinket.
“I was passing by and thought I’d drop in. I know you are by appointment only, but…”
“I wouldn’t dare turn a customer away. And certainly not a friend of a friend. You’re welcome to drop by anytime.” Tamara looked at her wristwatch. “Although I do have a client coming in in a few. Did you want to look around or?…”
“No,” D’Becca said. “Dropping by. Wanted to say ciao.”
She doesn’t know. She can’t possibly know. Not that I give a damn.
“Well…” Tamara spread her long arms, and a striking bracelet that suspended from her wrist caught D’Becca’s eye. “Looking for anything in particular?”
D’Becca was about to take a step when she felt the room spiraling. With the back of her hand, she touched her forehead. She grabbed at air like she expected it to suspend her.
“D’Becca?” Tamara took a step and D’Becca gripped her wrist in order to hang on to her equilibrium. “D’Becca? Are…do you need some water? Are you all right?”
Swiftly, D’Becca pulled herself together. “Wow!”
“Have you eaten? You look a little…You’re not binging again, are you?”
“No, no. I was working in New York. I ate very little. Spent two days on the supermodel diet, save for the cigarettes. Gave those up a few years ago. I guess I should eat something…”
“I have World Wrapps. It’s chicken. Haven’t even had a chance to take a bite yet.”
The charming bell sounded, alerting D’Becca and Tamara that someone had entered the boutique. In unison, each turned to find Ingrid Michaels standing in the doorway, her cellular to her ear and stylish sunglasses masking her green eyes.
“I should go. Your client’s here.”
“Are you okay? You can go in the back and rest for a bit if you’d like.”
“No, really. I’ll grab some soup. I’ll be okay.”
“Hello!” Ingrid said.
“Finishing with a client. Ingrid, D’Becca; D’Becca, Ingrid.”
“You look familiar,” D’Becca said. “Have we met?”
“I cannot tell you how often I hear that,” Ingrid said, in a strangely good mood. “We probably have met…somewhere. You look…We’ve met, yes?” She removed the large-framed sunglasses from her face.
“It takes five minutes to circle downtown Seattle, so we’ve probably crossed paths in Starbucks. You can always find a Starbucks in this town,” she said facetiously. “Anyway, Tamara. I’ll make an appointment.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. And Ingrid. Pleasure.”
When she left the boutique, Ingrid, unconsciously intrigued, walked deliberately to the front of the store and watched D’Becca cross Second. When she could no longer see her, Ingrid walked back to greet Tamara who was bringing material out to show Ingrid, which was the reason her client made the trip downtown to begin with. When Tamara phoned her to tell her about the fabric, Ingrid was leaving Bellevue. “I can stop by on the way home. Thanks so much, Tamara.” Even then, Tamara sensed Ingrid was in one of her better moods.
“When I saw this fabric, I knew… What’s wrong?” Tamara asked.
“I think that’s her.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s the woman my husband has made it perfectly clear he is willing to toss twenty-seven years of marriage to be with. She doesn’t come across as the slutty type. She’s not only prettier in person, she’s prettier than the last one. I think I’d like her if she weren’t screwing my husband!”
Very few things took Tamara by surprise anymore, but she was nearly floored. “Are you sure?” Her face was shaped into a curious frown.
“That’s her. I found a photograph of her in Sebastian’s briefcase. She’s a model, isn’t she?”
“D’Becca models, yes.”
Ingrid crossed her narrow arms. “You didn’t tell me you knew the woman Sebastian was involved with…that she was a client.”
“I didn’t realize it was D’Becca. You mentioned she modeled, but she wasn’t in your children’s generation. That could be plenty of women, Ingrid.”
“I want to know everything you know, Tamara. Everything!”
“Go on Yahoo! There’s probably enough of her business on the Web.”
“Where does she live?”
“You can probably find that out on the Web, too.”
“Sebastian; he’d have her tucked away somewhere neat and tidy. Some back-street paramour cottage. Something rustic. Bainbridge? One of the islands. He’s so bloody quixotic.”
“Like I told you weeks ago, break down and hire a private investigator. Really, Ingrid.”
“You know something. I can feel it.”
Tamara sighed. Other than the fact that she was sleeping with Rawn—and Ingrid knew her husband’s lover was sleeping with another man because Sebastian Michaels so much as admitted it to his wife that she was in love with another man—there was nothing to tell. Fluffing out the fabric, it struck Tamara at that moment. The fainting spell, the askance look D’Becca gave her when she offered her her World Wrapps. Well, thought Tamara. Could D’Becca be pregnant?
Surely that knowledge—provided it’s accurate—would earn me a few good karma points!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It did not feel like the first weeks of their relationship, back when they could barely peel themselves away from each other; yet it was clear that Rawn and D’Becca had a connection. Rawn was not necessarily back on track, but his mind was less on Sicily and Tamara and more on skiing in Vail. He was present enough to relax and take pleasure in fleeting moments with D’Becca. When last did he think everyday thoughts? He reached over and touched her tenderly; he began to rub her lean tummy with his hand. While Rawn made small kisses against her abdomen, D’Becca’s mind drifted from moments long past to moments not yet lived. Finally, she was getting a real taste of conventional love and yet she felt quite melancholy, lost inside a deep loneliness. God, how can I tell him about this baby? How can I explain Sebastian? How would he react? What, oh my, will he think of me?
Rawn stopped at her soft pubic hair; he was not getting a reaction. For a few seconds he watched her staring into the air. “Hey! Where are you? You okay?” He laid his head on the pillow, resting his forearm against his forehead.
She mumbled something about being tired. D’Becca fibbed, “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Like a cold?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was hollow, sad. She turned to her side and made an attempt to lift the corners of her mouth. With affection, she caressed his rich Hershey’s chocolate skin. “I went by Tamara’s today. Her boutique, Threads.”
Rawn was reticent. He finally spoke, “Oh, really?”
“She’s talented. I’m not sure I liked her designs as much as I claimed to have liked them on Thanksgiving. But she really does have a good eye. The dresses I saw today look ahead of their time. She could probably do well as a costume designer.”
“Rawn?”
D’Becca lifted him back in to the present moment.
“Yeah?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I haven’t…I’ve never been here before. I don’t know what to do.”
“Been where?”
She dared not reveal the side of herself he had not been acquainted with. D’Becca could not bring herself to admit to Rawn that she was one step short of a kept woman. He knew her as this rebellious kid who got on a bus and came to Seattle when she was only sixteen, defying the odds. And from there she built a life—yes, perhaps by using her looks and unconsciously using her sexuality—and she was independent, her own person. She was not at a place yet to let him think any less of her. She could reach the precipice—giving birth to the words, the truth. But she was not there quite yet—in the place to admit that she spent years with a married man. D’Becca knew what Rawn would think of her choices. Besides, she was ashamed that she did not have enough faith in herself and thus allowed a man to influence her and to take advantage of her vulnerability. Not once, over the three years since her relationship with Sebastian Michaels began, had she felt kept. But of course she was; like her mother said when D’Becca had called and told her that a rich and very successful man was crazy about her. “Is he leaving his wife?” her mother had wanted to know. Rawn took for granted she sustained her comfortable lifestyle strictly from the money she earned. He had no idea that she was losing more and more work to girls twelve, fifteen years younger than she with breast jobs and thin as a blade of grass.
While she lay beside Rawn, thinking and organizing her thoughts, she tried to calculate whether she had enough in her various accounts to no longer need Sebastian and still hold on to what she had—the Z3, townhouse, the lifestyle she had adapted to years ago. Although D’Becca had a diverse portfolio, she invested in a few dot-com startups primarily because she was advised to do so. But there was a buzz—and economists were predicting it so—that NASDAQ had reached its peak and the bubble, essentially due to the dot-com mania, was not sustainable. Would such a burst create a Wall Street crash like in 1987? Should she take the risk and sell her dot-com shares? The idea started to take hold of her imagination.
Dear God, what if I lost Rawn and Sebastian? Troy was right: what choice do I have?
D’Becca was not the type of girl to pray. She needed to learn how to pray. Rawn once said to her, “You can always find God in the details.” Fix this; please make it right, God. Deep down, D’Becca had no real individual understanding of God, not even a mere image. She could never forget, when she met Sebastian in Rome, how moved he was when he stared solemnly at Michelangelo’s depiction of God painted on the Sistine Chapel: The elderly man with a beard—intimidating, aloof. D’Becca did not relate. The idea of Rawn—his thoughts, his laughter and humor—not flowing through her days, her life…She had fallen in love with him. It was Rawn she truly wanted to spend her life with. Now, on that night, she understood it so fully. I want Rawn’s child.
“Remember that night…not long after we met? When I bought all those candles at Pier 1 and we soaked in your tub…”
“Oh, yeah. I said that was my first. Firsts, no matter what, will always stick with you.”
It had been days since she laughed freely, genuinely. “Right. You did say that was your first time.”
“Thank you for that, by the way. Soaking in a tub with a fine woman by candlelight…Every man should have that experience.”
“You said…”
They spoke in unison: “I thought this only happened in the movies…” A spark ignited, and they were making their way back to the deeper meaning behind their relationship. They were close again.
“What made you bring that up?” Rawn asked.
“You told me that night that you wanted children someday. You never did tell me how many you would like to have.”
Rawn’s mind wandered momentarily. He then looked over to her and said sincerely, “As many as we both agree to. That is, the woman that I end up having children with. I refuse to be one of those men who has one kid by this woman and one kid by that woman…I want one woman to be the mother of all my children. And when I do marry, it will be once. If I mess it up, I’ll never make that mistake again.”
All of a sudden her heart began to race. I can’t do it. I don’t know how to do this.
Something—instinct, desperation—made her blurt out, “Would your parents approve of you having biracial children?”
“I don’t think they would take issue with who I marry. I’m confident my father would prefer that I keep the bloodline thick, but… Hey, he’s warm and fuzzy on the inside. Half the time Tera and I feared him growing up, but he’d probably be okay with it. Eventually. My mother’s as open-minded as they come. Her parents used to travel all over the world. They were artists. Truthfully, I have no idea how my mom and dad ended up together. She sees the world—she sees life—differently than he does, in nearly every way.” Rawn was talking more to himself than to D’Becca when he said, “That’s really what Sicily’s play was all about: how we go for the thing we are most attracted to and yet it’s the least appropriate thing for us.”
“I love how you speak of your parents. I envy you.”
An hour later he left her apartment. When Rawn met the sidewalk, a stranger startled him. They exchanged fleeting gazes, and Rawn said, “Excuse me,” and moved around him and continued in a brisk pace. Over his shoulder, he took another—a better look—at the man once more, because he looked familiar. Dressed in a sophisticated overcoat cut in sheer detail, the man’s salt-and-pepper hair blended evenly with his strong face. Rawn knew he had seen him before. He jumped into his Jeep and headed home. At the stop sign, from the corner of his eye, he caught a Beamer parked along the curb. Had the parking lights not been on he would have missed the BMW altogether. The night was misty, a deep dark. Turning onto Lesley Avenue, a white SUV came dangerously close to side-swiping him. The luxury vehicle continued at a high rate of speed along the residential street. Rawn was certain that the driver was completely unaware that they even shared the road. He observed the fast-moving vehicle in his rearview mirror. For a split-second he was flustered, but once the vehicle was out of eyesight, Rawn continued toward his apartment, being mindful while he drove through the thick fog. A hushed mystery fell over the empty streets.
• • •
Not two minutes after Rawn left, Sebastian dropped by. They talked briefly before he told D’Becca he had something he needed to take care of and said he would be back in roughly fifteen minutes. D’Becca stared dreamily into the quietness of her room. Her eyes wandered to the walls she had had painted the color professionally known as Winter’s Silence, a calming avocado-green. It felt as though she stared robotically for a very long while, but it had only been minutes. I should change the color of this room. It would look good in apricot. She decided to take a warm bath, and she would add one of those aromatherapy bath bombs she bought at Lush when she was last in Victoria. The thought of it was making her feel somewhat better by the idea itself. While the steaming water ran, she sat on top of the basin and reflected on her conversation with Rawn earlier. Should she tell him about her pregnancy first, or tell Sebastian when he returned from taking care of something? She was not 100 percent sure who the father was. Unless the baby looked indisputably biracial, D’Becca could not know without a paternity test. Never could she have imagined her life coming to this strange place, this unforeseen moment. Plenty of scenarios played out in her head over the years how things would work out for her, but nothing could have prepared her for being pregnant, and at the same time, not knowing who the father was. Under such twisted conditions, how could she tell Rawn she was pregnant? She got lost in her sadness for
quite some time.
The bath water was nearly full when the doorbell rang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
D’Becca lay bleeding, shivering, and her head throbbed. She felt disengaged from her body, and everything in the room was spinning. In the back of her mind, she thought she heard whispering. Every muscle in her body seemed to ache. Her mind flickered in and out of consciousness. Snippets of detail in her mind’s eye came and went: a female voice asking if she was okay; Sebastian standing over her; the urgent sound of Sebastian’s voice talking to someone; a hard blow against the side of her face. The sequence of events did not make sense to her fractured mind. Is this how it feels when you have a lobotomy? Darkness, and then light again. She could not decipher between what was happening and what had already occurred. In the back of her mind D’Becca heard two voices, but she could not trust herself to make sense of what her mind was telling her. Flashes. Darkness. And glimmers of light again. She felt the pain press against her brain. “Sebastian,” she whispered. “Sebaaaastian…” her voice slurred. She made out Sebastian’s voice; it was his words she could not discern. Blood flowed evenly from her nose, stopped at her upper lip, and then proceeded to trickle to the edge of her chin. “Seba…”
She attempted to move, to crawl for help. A black boot came into view. Then pain, piercing and jagged, shot through her face and the sting ricocheted against her skull. She could hear sounds, like a band, echoing loudly in her right ear. The horns grew louder and louder in each ear. In and out of consciousness, D’Becca pushed back a similar scene when she was a little girl. Her eyelids felt heavy and her vision kept slipping away. Her mind was failing, yet the memory was terribly real, so exceedingly clear in her reverie. Her mother lay on the kitchen floor, blood dripping from her mouth, landing onto the linoleum floor in tiny droplets. It had been D’Becca who washed up the blood; her mother went to the sofa and had a drink, the glass wobbling in her blood-stained hand.
Vulnerable Page 21