I was really happy that Liz’s dinner was so successful, but my best friend was swinging in the breeze and I needed to get to my office! Why did Sophia lock me out? Didn’t she see the rest of my clothes draped across the chair? What was she telling me? Did she lock me out on purpose? Did she think this was funny? I pulled on the terrace door about fifty times.
This was not funny.
I was finally able to get Liz to stop talking and we hung up. I had to think for a moment. I could not call Liz back. Or 911. There was no way to get out of this situation without a major awkward moment. I had to call the building super. It was much better than trying to scale the side of the building to see if maybe the bedroom window was unlocked. I could just slip inside a window and none of us would be worse for it. But if I did scale the side of the building—the ledge was wide enough—and I couldn’t get in or back to the terrace? Everyone below would see and they’d call the fire department and I’d be on the six o’clock news all around the world. I called the super.
“Manuel? This is Clayton Waters calling. I’ve got a bit of a situation and I need your help. Right away?”
That was when I heard the sirens. I looked over the side of the balcony to see them pulling up in front of my building.
“Manuel? There’s a hundred dollars in it for you if you get me out of this in like two minutes.”
“Mr. Waters? The police are here and I have to go to see why first. Then I come to you.”
“Manuel? The police are here because I am locked out on Ms. Bacco’s terrace. Without my trousers. Please tell the police they can go home. It’s a big mistake. Just a big silly mistake.”
There was a momentary silence as the lightbulb clicked on in the brain of my superintendent’s head.
“Ah!” he said. “Just give me a few minutes.”
I leaned over the balcony and watched Manuel talking to the police. He pointed up to the roof and they looked up. I waved at them and they waved back. One officer even took a picture with his phone. Eventually they got back into their cruisers and pulled away from the curb. An eternity later Manuel was on the other side of Sophia’s sliding glass doors pulling them open.
“There you go, Mr. Waters. Now about that hundred dollars? Let’s forget about that. I mean . . .”
He wasn’t kidding me for one second. He wanted his money.
“Just give me a minute, Manuel. It’s not like I had my wallet with me out there.” I went to my trousers and took out my wallet, handing him two fifties. “I know I can depend on your discretion.”
“I don’t see anything,” he said and struggled to suppress a smile as wide as the Mississippi River.
Why was Sophia treating me this way? This had to be intentional.
CHAPTER 11
Ashley—Late for a Date
Porter and I have had three dates, not including the stupid night he wanted me to come to his room. First was steak night at Hall’s, second was dinner at Langdon’s in Mount Pleasant, and the third was also in Mount Pleasant at Basil’s. I guessed that he wanted to go places where he thought he wouldn’t be recognized right away. This was pretty dumb because in our neck of the woods it was like going out for dinner with Stephen Colbert or Joe Riley, both of them huge homegrown talents whose faces were plastered everywhere. Was he for real? Little old ladies could recognize Porter by the back of his head. They’d come up to him all the time and ask for a kiss or a photograph with their cell phone. Yes, even grannies in orthopedic shoes knew how to use cell phones that took pictures. They probably put them on their Facebook page for all I knew. Anyway, I didn’t mind dinners in what he considered to be off the beaten path restaurants because we didn’t need big attention as a couple. Not quite yet anyway. Somehow we had escaped the notice of the newspapers and I was actually glad about that. It took some pressure off both of us. And we talked on the phone like every other day. That was enough for right now.
And somehow, so far I had managed to avoid sleeping with him. There was a lot of heavy-duty kissing and fooling around and points where I was sure I was going to lose my mind, but so far, nada on the big one. We’d almost get there and then something would make me stop. Of course, the more you tell a man he can’t have something, the more he wants it. And I wanted him too, in the most urgent way, but something was holding me back.
I had not gone to Columbia for that dinner he asked me to go to because it made me feel uncomfortable. And staying in a hotel wouldn’t have been the answer either. I didn’t think it was right for him to pay for a room because the whole world would know it in about five minutes. Columbia may have been the capital of South Carolina but it was still a small town where everyone knew everyone’s business. Anyway, I didn’t feel right about the whole thing. I kept thinking about what Maisie would say if she knew I went on an overnight with him and the decision was made. Weirdly? Porter understood. He probably went home and thought about it too, deciding it was more trouble than it was worth because taking me to some official event was making a public statement that we were a couple. We weren’t quite ready for that.
So time was running out on not having sex but I was holding out for as long as I could. He was not exactly angry about it not happening but I thought his patience was wearing thin. He was probably used to girls throwing themselves at him. I guess that at the end of the day I just didn’t want to hop in the sack with him before I felt like there was some real substance to our relationship and that we weren’t playing a stupid game of cat and mouse. And maybe this is super old-fashioned, but I didn’t want it to be sex. I wanted it to be romantic. Besides, if I was going to marry him, he wouldn’t want a total slut to be the mother of his children, now would he?
I had not forgotten about what Cindy Elder said. I never heard from her again, which suited me just fine. The poor thing. Porter a screamer? Not to me. She must’ve really done something terrible that mashed all his buttons at once, I thought. Suddenly I remembered what Maisie said to me at the gallery the night I met Porter. It was one of the few times I could remember that she was wrong. He may have been a bratty kid but he wouldn’t have gone this far in his career if he wasn’t a great guy. Between the Internet, the media, and the government, there was no such thing as personal privacy anymore. Even I knew that. Every time you picked up a People magazine there was an article about some famous actor or actress and what some obnoxious reporter found in their garbage cans and used to ruin their reputation, like kiddie porn or something just as disgusting. I mean, I can’t think of anything more disgusting but there probably is something out there. No, Cindy Elder was just a really sweet girl but a poor thing who didn’t know how to handle a powerful man like Porter.
In any case, it was the evening of our second sunset party. Guests were to arrive at seven and be gone by nine. Sunset was to happen around twenty minutes after eight. Funny how they could predict that, wasn’t it? Tommy, Mary Beth, and I were at the house prepping everything with Mary Beth’s catering friend, Ursula, and Tommy’s bartender friend, Ed. I had told a white lie to the Turners, that I had a dentist appointment, and asked could I please leave early. Of course they said yes. It was a ton of work to set up an event for fifty people, as I now knew. But at least we already had glasses, ferns, candles, and a piano that was tuned.
Yesterday, on our Twitter blast we’d said it was a black and white party, meaning guests should be wearing black, white, or a combination of black and white. I liked the idea of theme parties because it would keep it interesting. Tommy said it was only one step above a toga party and Mary Beth agreed with him.
“Oh, come on, y’all,” I said. “Do you really think we wouldn’t let someone in if they were wearing pink or green?”
Tommy said, “I’d be more worried about who won’t show up because they wore the wrong color to work today. You could lose a lot of people.”
“Oh, no!” I said. “I didn’t think about that!”
“
Besides,” Mary Beth said, “black and white clothes don’t have much to do with my sort of Mexican themed food.”
“True,” I said. “Maybe we should have margaritas?”
“Tequila is nasty,” Mary Beth said. “It really is.”
“Yeah, I guess. And margaritas are a sticky mess to clean up,” I said.
“So that’s settled,” Tommy said, like he thought he was entitled to an opinion.
So we sent out a second tweet that forgave all other colors and patterns and mentioned optional south of the border. We’d just have to see what happened.
“We sure do have a lot of chicken salad,” Mary Beth said as she began placing tiny sandwiches on a large tray with sprigs of curly parsley all around the edges.
“And a lot of sangria,” Ed said. “Y’all might’ve gone overboard on this one.”
“Honey,” Mary Beth said, “that wine’s so cheap we won’t lose too much. Costco was having a major sale on Chilean malbecs.” She picked up a handful of minced parsley and sprinkled it all over the tray. “We call this confetti in the food world.”
“Confetti,” Tommy said deadpan and shook his head.
We had planned for four hors d’oeuvres—chicken salad on white bread, no crusts, thank you very much; pigs in blankets with mustard for dipping because everyone loved them; cheese and fruit of course; and a Mexican shrimp salad in phyllo cups because shrimp was also on sale at Magwood’s. We had big bowls of corn chips and small bowls of salsa on two of the tall tables. It seemed like a feast to me. I sure hoped that our guests would think they were getting their money’s worth.
At six thirty, I double-checked the powder room, hung the ferns, and began lighting tea candles. Ed and Tommy had the bar under control and Mary Beth had the food ready to go. Cars began to arrive and I answered the door, directed people to the portico, collecting their money. One cute guy came in wearing a giant sombrero with his pale blue seersucker suit and his red bow tie. He looked like a Broad Street lawyer gone loco. His date was wearing a Mexican wedding dress with a sprig of red oleander stuck behind her ear.
“Love the hat!” I said.
“Gracias!” He bowed and smiled.
“Olé!” His date threw her arm over her head and snapped her fingers.
“De nada!” I said and thought, Wow, there went all the Spanish I remembered. “Make sure someone takes y’all’s picture!”
Tommy was playing some Billy Joel and I was humming along, feeling pretty good about the world. When people stopped arriving, I stashed the cash in my shoebox and went outside. I gave the crowd a solid once-over and decided they were a good group and that there was no harm in what we were doing. The crazy sombrero was traveling from person to person, flapping in the breeze. People were laughing and snapping pics with their phones and peering through the telescope at the ships leaving and entering the harbor. I thought I recognized a few people from our first event and took that as a good sign. As they had the last time, people were out in the yard by the gate to the beach taking more selfies with Fort Sumter in the background. The sun was low, on a slow descent, turning the horizon every color you had ever seen in an evening sky—rich purple, delicious mango, and deep rose, all of it streaked and swirled with a strange gold light. It was just beautiful.
Finally, it began to get dark and I slipped inside the house to check the bathroom, because, ahem, recently the bathroom had been a cause for concern. Thank goodness, it was unoccupied and reasonably clean. I took the wastebasket to empty and on the way to the kitchen I looked out the window. To my surprise Porter’s car was pulling into the yard.
I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t skip a beat. I wasn’t expecting him! I knew he had to be in Charleston today for some meeting about dredging the Cooper River and some business with the cruise ships and what a nuisance they were with their sooty smoke and how it got all over the houses downtown or something like that. Anyway, Porter was coming up the steps and I was holding a wastebasket so I stuck it on the floor behind the curtains and went to the door.
“Hey!” I said. “How nice to see you!”
“You too! What are all these cars doing here? You having a party without me?”
“Never! Come on in!”
He gave me a kiss on the cheek and walked past me into the house. Then he stood in the center hall, facing the portico and all the people outside. He put his hands on his hips and then in his pockets and then he looked at the floor.
I hadn’t thought a thing about what he might think of this excellent adventure until he showed up. He was obviously dumbfounded.
He turned to face me.
“Ashley? If this isn’t a party, would you mind telling me just what the hell is going on here? You’ve got a yard full of German cars and a pile of people here who are probably close to ten years older than you.”
He was upset and he didn’t like what was happening.
“Well, of course, there’s an explanation.”
He started back toward the front door.
“Tell you what. It’s probably better if I’m not seen being here right now. So I’m going to go down the island to that restaurant—what’s it called?”
“Poe’s? Dunleavy’s? High Thyme or SALT?”
“SALT. That’s the one. So when all these people leave, come there to meet me. I’ll wait. When do you expect this whatever it is to be over?”
“They’ll be gone by nine.”
“One would hope. So you’ll be there at nine.”
“Sure,” I said. I kept trying to smile as though nothing was wrong, but I knew in my heart that he was really pissed. “Maybe nine fifteen.”
Porter couldn’t get out of my house fast enough or get to his car and back it out of my yard fast enough either. Nice, I thought. I knew exactly why he was angry. He was angry because this, that is to say my scheme, might not play well in the media. Did he think CNN was following him around all the time? I mean, he wasn’t like Justin Timberlake or something. Was he always this judgmental? Well, my good mood was gone.
I went around the house, picking up dirty glasses and wadded-up napkins. Tommy stopped me. I noticed that his tip jar was jammed with money. Good for him.
“Somebody made out like a bandit tonight,” I said.
“I guess. What’s wrong with your pretty face?” he said. “Wasn’t that Galloway?”
“Yes, it was him but don’t tell anybody,” I said.
“Oh? Why not?”
“Well, he stopped by to surprise me and when he saw all these people, he completely freaked.”
“He’s a total asshole,” Tommy said.
“Well, think about it from his side. He’s in a weird position, you know. And what we’re doing isn’t exactly legal.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ashley. You’re not dealing drugs. You’re not running a whorehouse. Nobody’s gambling or getting hurt. Right?”
I looked at Tommy and thought, Right! If Porter gave me a hard time, that’s exactly what I’d tell him.
“Thanks, Tommy! You’re absolutely right!”
“I’m just telling you, this guy’s a self-righteous asshole who thinks he’s God or something.”
“He can be a little arrogant. I’ll give you that. But he’s really a pretty nice guy. And I guess politicians can’t be too careful these days. Remember Sanford?”
“Uh-huh. Okay. Whatever you say.”
I looked at Tommy and thought, You know, he’s really pretty sweet to even notice that I didn’t seem happy. But honestly, just between us? I think he’s jealous.
When everyone left, we cleaned up the house and divided the money. This time we made a little more.
Mary Beth counted up her share. “I think this went great!”
“Here, Tommy.” I slid a pile of twenties across the table. “And give this to Ed.”
“Thanks! Maybe I�
�ll have a glass of sangria now,” Tommy said. “Is there any left?”
“Not much but go on and help yourself,” Mary Beth said. “These folks drank like fish! How about you, Ash? Want a glass of El Cheapo sangria?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to go meet Porter.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you had a date with him.”
“Well, I didn’t. He came by earlier and almost had a breakdown when he saw what we were doing. I think he’s upset with me.”
“Why don’t you get going?” Tommy said. “I can help Mary Beth clean up.”
Mary Beth said, “Yeah, well, you’ve got a pile of money in the bank that you didn’t have a month ago. Hey! Why don’t you ask him how you’d go about getting a license for a private club so you could serve alcohol? Don’t the firemen on this island run the island club? ”
“Yes! They sure do! Thanks, Tommy. What are you up to tonight?”
“Like what if you wanted to rent the house for a wedding or something?” Mary Beth said.
We all paused for a moment to consider that.
“Nah,” Mary Beth said, “too complicated. Anyhow, Samir’s boat is in the harbor and he’s invited me to come over to meet some of his friends and sail around.”
My face must have looked odd. The minute she told me what she was doing I started getting anxious for her.
“Just be careful, okay?” I said.
“Ashley? I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself.”
“Okay. I know. It’s just that . . .”
“Please, don’t worry. If it gets funky, I’ll leave.”
“Okay. I won’t be late.”
“Me either.”
I looked in her eyes and I wanted to tell her what I knew but I couldn’t. It wasn’t my business and I wasn’t her mother.
“Thanks, y’all!” I said and hurried to the powder room. I ran a brush through my hair and put on some lipstick. Well, I didn’t look like Miss America but I looked just fine considering I’d had a very long day—one that wasn’t over.
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