He stared into her eyes without blinking. ‘That’s the problem, Suzanne, don’t you see? I’m married and you don’t seem to care. You don’t complain or ask about my wife or if we have a sex life or even what she looks like. That’s not normal. If you loved me, you’d be bugging the shit out of me about my wife. But you’ve never said a word. That makes me question your seriousness in this relationship.
‘So when you told me you were having a girls night out that Friday, I went a little crazy. You never go out with the girls. I had to know if that was really what you were doing. If I found out you were with someone else, I’d die from jealousy. I’m insane over you, Suzanne. You’ve turned me into a crazy man.’ He got down on his knees in the middle of the room and put his hands together in prayer. ‘I plead insanity. Forgive me.’
Though she wanted to be angry, the sight of him on his knees made her burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. The hysteria grew, folding her over on the sofa, her hands crossed on her stomach and tears streaming from her eyes. He wasn’t breaking up with her, and he wasn’t leaving his wife. So he had her followed. His obsession with her was that strong. Vince was looking at her like a little boy who has been caught doing wrong. When he realized her laugh held no bitterness, he started laughing too. Only his was the nervous laughter of relief.
Suzanne sat up and wiped the tears from her face. She lowered her brows and frowned at him. ‘Vince, I should be furious with you and throw you out of here. Instead I’m going to forgive you. But if you ever invade my privacy again, there won’t be a second chance.’
‘I swear, I’ll never do anything like that again.’
‘There is one thing about your confession that’s bugging me though. What made you decide to tell me?’
‘Because the police are looking for the guy I hired. Your friend Maggie gave them a phone number and they traced it to me. They have the misguided notion he might be involved in Angie’s murder. I wanted to tell you about him before they did.’
‘But why would Maggie have his number?’ Her eyes widened as she remembered the scene in The Overhang. ‘Oh, Vince, you don’t think Maggie …’
He looked away.
‘Oh my God,’ was all she said.
She fell asleep quickly after their lovemaking, and Vince lay beside her in the dark still trying to catch his breath. Even in his depleted state, a ripple of excitement flowed through him. He studied her profile in the feeble light through the blinds and thought how he could never bear to be without her. For the first time in his married life, the notion of divorce occurred to him. It was amazing how fate could step in and change a life. A wrong turn. A chance encounter. A market crash. Sometimes you have to grasp an opportunity while you have it. Suzanne was an opportunity he didn’t want to ever get away.
He knew it would cause his daughter a lot of pain. She too was the love of his life, but it was a different kind of love and he hoped she loved him enough to understand about this other one.
THIRTY-NINE
2 Days Until
Three tough-looking punks, wearing torn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps, watched me descend the El stairs at the Fullerton stop. I glared back at them, daring them to mess with me. If they beat me up and left me for dead, they would be doing me a favor. It was nine o’clock and my day was finished. True to my promise to Marian, I’d made it across the finish line. My desk was clear, my inbox empty. The only work standing between me and the wedding was running into the office tomorrow to take care of a couple of last-minute details.
However, the easing of work pressure did nothing to ease the other pressure binding me. The horrid reality was my period still hadn’t come. There was no dodging that I could be pregnant. I had actually stopped at Walgreen’s and bought an early-pregnancy test, my last desperation play. Knowing might tell me what course to take.
The evening was pleasant with no humidity for a change and a mild breeze blew off the lake. Walking down the pavement beside closed stores and open diners, I took my time, trying to forestall the inevitable. I turned onto my street and walked slowly beneath the canopy of trees until I reached my building. Then I froze. Someone was sitting on the front steps in the shadow of the porch light. There was no face. Just a mass of dark frizzy hair sprouting from a pair of shoulders. My first thought was that it was a bag woman, but when the bag woman raised her head, I saw it was Carol Anne, her face so bloated and red from crying, she was barely recognizable.
I rushed to her and wrapped my arms around her. ‘What is it? Did something happen to one of the kids?’
‘The children are fine. It’s Michael. Oh, Maggie, you’re never going to believe this.’ She was sobbing so hard I could barely understand her.
‘It’s all right. Let’s go inside.’ I fished my keys out of my purse and took her hand. We walked up the stairs to my apartment hand in hand. Once we got inside, I sat her on the couch and went into the kitchen to pour us each a glass of Pinot Grigio. Then I thought better of it and brought out the entire bottle.
I handed her a box of Kleenex and the wine and she blew her nose and took a blubbery sip. I waited for her to pull herself together. The glass was half-empty before she was finally able to talk.
‘My life is ruined,’ she moaned.
Get in line, I thought. She proceeded to unload a story that set me back on my heels: Michael’s confession of his sexual leanings toward men, his promise to change in order to keep their marriage together. I had no words. Who would have ever suspected Michael Niebaum of being homosexual, or bisexual, or whatever the hell he was? He had always seemed to be the perfect mate. And he acted so very macho. That just shows what a person should make of appearances.
‘I never wanted anyone to know – not even you – about all those years with hardly a sex life. It was too embarrassing. For the longest time I thought it was me, that I was unattractive or boring. Then, when Michael told me the truth, in a bizarre way I was happy to finally pinpoint the problem. I thought, At least I know what I’m fighting.’
She started crying again. ‘But after all his talk about trying to change, nothing’s changed. He was supposed to be home at five thirty tonight and when he hadn’t shown up by seven I called his office. He said he had a late patient, but then I heard a man’s voice in the background, and I flipped. You know all his patients are women.
‘So I called a sitter and came to see you. I couldn’t face it alone anymore. I needed to tell someone. I’ve been sitting here so long I was afraid you weren’t coming home.’ She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
We finished off the Pinot Grigio, Carol Anne chain-smoking the entire time, me fighting off the temptation to join her. I opened a second bottle of wine. Carol Anne waved off another glass saying she needed to sober up before driving home. That didn’t put the brakes on me. I had nowhere to go. I poured another glass.
‘Oh, and on top of all this,’ Carol Anne sniffled, ‘he’s a suspect in Angie’s murder.’
‘Jeez, who don’t those cops suspect? The guy I slept with is a suspect too.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems I completely forgot about you and that guy. Did you get your period?’
I pointed to the white Walgreen’s bag sitting on the table at the entry. ‘Pregnancy test. The problem is a false negative can be fairly common in the week after the missed period, so if I get a negative I still can’t be certain I’m not pregnant.’
‘But if you get a positive?’
‘Then at least I’ll know for sure. Do you think I’d make a good unwed mother? That ought to go over big with my parents. Can you imagine my mother?’
‘Forget about your mother. What about Flynn?’
I shook my drunken head. ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know. I guess I’ll wait till the last minute. They stopped the space shuttle once with twenty-seven seconds left to lift-off. I guess I can stop a wedding if I have to.’
The sec
ond bottle of wine was on its way to empty with Carol Anne’s parting words ringing in my brain. If you are pregnant you’re not doing that kid any favors drinking all that alcohol. I put the glass down and thought things over. I wasn’t facing problems. I was facing challenges. I thought about Carol Anne’s situation and came up with a drunken solution for both of us. If I had to call off my wedding and Carol Anne divorced Michael, we could live together and raise our kids as one big happy dysfunctional family like Kate and Allie. The telephone jarred me from my alternate reality.
‘Hello,’ I answered with a thick tongue.
‘Maggie? Are you all right?’ It was Flynn and he sounded irritated.
‘Fine,’ I replied, working to sound lucid. ‘Carol Anne stopped over and we had a few glasses of wine, that’s all.’
His silent reproach carried through the line. ‘You better get some sleep. I don’t have to tell you tomorrow is a big day. The Dartmouth crowd is coming in and I don’t want you hung-over.’
Hang over this, I thought, raising a single finger in the air, delighted at my private rebellion. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’
He must have sensed the potential for an explosive situation, because his tone changed. ‘Maggie, I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure. I don’t mean to pick on you. I just want everything to be perfect. Now go and get a good night’s sleep and I’ll call you in the morning. All right?’
‘OK, Flynn. Good night.’
‘And, Mags. I love you.’
‘Me too.’
I hung up thinking about the next day. Flynn’s ten groomsmen were flying into O’Hare, and they would have to be shuttled to their hotels. My side of the wedding party was small by comparison, the one concession my mother had granted me. My only attendants were my two sisters, Flynn’s sister, Nan, who was just returning from a semester abroad in Italy, and Carol Anne, who was my matron of honor.
I had emptied the last glass of wine in defiance when the phone rang again. Certain it was Flynn calling back, I snapped a gruff hello into the mouthpiece. The male voice was less familiar than Flynn’s, but familiar, nonetheless.
‘This is Steven.’
‘Where did you get my number?’ I demanded.
‘I took it off your phone that morning,’ he answered unapologetically. ‘I’m leaving the state. I just wanted to let you know that.’
‘Do you know the police suspect you in a murder?’
‘You know it wasn’t me.’
‘How do I know?’
‘Oh, c’mon,’ he said.
‘No, really. How do I know you didn’t slip me something and then sneak out?’ I asked, echoing Kelly’s theory. ‘What were you doing outside Carol Anne’s that night? And why did you follow us into The Overhang and then seduce me after that?’
‘It’s not how it looks.’ There was an extended silence, and then, ‘Can I come over to explain? It’s important to me that you know before I leave.’
‘You can’t tell me on the phone?’
‘It’s complicated.’
The wise thing would have been to answer an unequivocal no and hang up. Or just hang up. That would have been the wise thing to do. The rational thing to do. Well, no one could accuse me of being rational as of late, or even close, and having drunk myself to invulnerable, I saw no harm in letting him stop over for a few minutes. In fact, his visit might help me clear up a few questions I had within myself.
‘All right, you can come over. But you better get here fast and you can’t stay long.’
‘I’m on my way,’ he said.
I flopped down in front of the television, flicking from channel to channel in a futile search to find something to hold my attention. I was suffering through a rerun of Seinfeld when there was a gentle knock at my door.
I answered and he was there before me in the flesh, real not dreamed. He was more attractive than I remembered, his sinewy muscled arms poking from a black cotton T-shirt tucked into blue jeans. I blocked him from entering my apartment.
‘Well?’ I demanded.
‘Can I at least come in?’
‘Are you sure you’re not dangerous?’
‘No more dangerous than you.’
I moved aside and let him enter. ‘You look nice,’ he said casually, walking past me and settling into the same chair he’d sat in that morning way back when. He acted like a casual date for the evening. I wondered how he would feel if he knew my very life was poised to fall apart on his account. I perched on an arm of the sofa, working to exude an impersonal manner and keep my balance at the same time.
‘I didn’t invite you here to make comments on my appearance. I want some answers. You can start with your explanation of what you were doing in Kenilworth that night.’
‘I was doing my job. I was hired to follow you girls around.’
I nearly fell off the sofa. While I listened in stunned silence, he told me about his boss and Suzanne being lovers and how his boss paid him to report back on Suzanne’s activities. Though I was the other side of shocked to learn of Suzanne’s affair, I pretended to have known about it all along.
‘So were you spying on us the whole time we were at Carol Anne’s house?’
‘I spent most of my time in the truck. Though I did sneak around back after the stripper came and saw you handcuffed to the chair. That was the first time I noticed you, and I thought you looked pretty cute.’
My face heated up. Was it him or the wine? ‘What then?’
‘When you all were leaving I heard you tell Suzanne you’d meet her at The Overhang. So I stopped at a payphone to tell Vince what was going on and he told me to stick with Suzanne no matter what.’
I thought of first noticing him, sitting alone at the bar, his curls nearly in his beer. And then how my little joke of trying to pay for his drink had spelled my demise.
‘So why didn’t you follow Suzanne when she and Angie left? Why did you stay?’
Steven looked down and scratched the rug with the toe of his boot. I found the action endearing and couldn’t help but think it was so refreshing he wasn’t an MBA or an investment banker. His hands hung idly at his sides, those strong capable hands. I liked that he worked with his hands and created things that endured, things of real value, not money making money for more money’s sake.
He looked up and gave me a smile that made me feel like Scarlett O’Hara with Rhett staring at her from the bottom of the stairs.
‘I guess you could say, I got distracted by something a whole hell of a lot more interesting than Vince Columbo’s girlfriend.’
I wanted to hate myself for the tingle that climbed my spine. Oh, Lord, this is where I came in. There was an inexplicable connection between us, an unspoken chemistry charging the air with desire. I thought about the possible child growing in my womb, an intimacy nothing could transcend. Before I could say anything, Steven was articulating my feelings. ‘Do you believe in destiny? That we are meant to be together? Tell me you’re not feeling it right now.’
Without intending it, I was leaning toward him, steel to a magnet. Every bit of decency in me told me this was immoral, but the indecent atoms kept pulling me closer. Then sanity prevailed momentarily and I drew back.
‘You have to go now. I can’t make this mistake again.’
Determination sparked in the coffee-colored eyes. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, Maggie. Maybe it was meant to be.’
And then, I put my drunken mouth in gear without engaging my drunken brain. ‘Yeah, like my being pregnant was meant to be too?’
The moment the words rolled off my tongue I wanted them back, but that would be like bringing water up a drain. They could not be retracted. And though the words were intended as a slap, he took them as an invitation.
He crossed the space between us and lowered himself to the floor and buried his curly head in my lap. You don’t understand. This is all wrong. It was the moral tug-of-war all over again. As much as I wanted to do right, my mental nos were giving way to maybes. He
reached up and touched my face and I turned to gelatin, sliding from the sofa to the floor. Then I was on my back and his weight was upon me entirely, the hardness of him through his jeans a paradise just beyond reach.
My desire for him was so strong, there was nothing else. There was no Flynn, no wedding, no baby in my womb. His hands undid my bra and his mouth was at my breast. My mouth was hungry for him and I took his lips from my breast and covered them with mine. The lower hemisphere of my body was rotating, slowly at first, then faster, moving with him and then away, teasing him with delicious deprivation. Every bit of me was on fire, my face, my fingers, my toes. Even my ears throbbed with heat. I wanted so much … so much.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound was disorienting. At first I thought we had knocked over a lamp, but the noise persisted, continually growing louder. With a passion-dousing gasp, I realized someone was pounding on the door. My heart stopped for a three count. Flynn had come to check on me. I could read the shock in Steven’s eyes and his grip on me relinquished. I thought how pathetic it would be for Flynn to catch us like this.
Then came the voices and they sure didn’t belong to Flynn.
‘Police. Open the door. You have ten seconds or we break it down.’
‘The bathroom,’ I said to Steven, pointing down the hall. I jumped to my feet and tucked in my blouse, counting to ten before turning the knob. O’Reilly and Kozlowski burst into the room followed by two uniformed cops.
‘Where’s Kaufman? We have a warrant for his arrest,’ O’Reilly demanded, barely giving me a look. His eyes went to the hall where a beam of light peeked out from under the closed bathroom door. ‘There,’ O’Reilly shouted. Kozlowski and the two uniforms positioned themselves outside my bathroom. ‘Give him two seconds and then kick it in.’
The Last Night Out Page 24