by Marta Acosta
“I care what you do, and you’re doing a fabulous job.”
She was doing such a fabulous job that all I really had to worry about was the RSVPs, which Oswald was sending to me, and the hotel arrangements at the coastal resort town. We’d reserved a block of rooms and booked a restaurant for the Friday evening rehearsal dinner and Sunday brunch. When the hotel’s wedding coordinator called me, I hoped it wasn’t bad news and asked, “Is anything wrong with our reservations?”
“Everything is fine!” she said. “I was calling to offer you a complimentary night here to tour the rooms and finalize arrangements.”
“Really? That would be wonderful!”
I immediately called Oswald.
“That’s awfully generous of them, but I can’t get away,” he said. “Yes, book the reservation for seven-thirty.”
“What do you mean, you can’t go, and book the reservation?”
“Sorry, I was talking to someone else. I’m having dinner with Vidalia tonight to talk business.”
“Another dinner with her? I thought most business is conducted at lunch meetings.”
“Yes, another dinner. It will be a very erotic encounter. We’re going for Chinese and meeting with Sam and her attorney.”
“Have you gotten that far already?”
“I know it’s happening fast, but she wants to start soon, and the more I think about it, the more I know it’s the right thing to do for my business. And for us.”
I had the disturbing sensation that I was living in the bizarro version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’d hooked up with wild Mr. Hyde, and now career-driven, well-mannered Dr. Jekyll was taking over his body more and more often. But if I could be happy for Mercedes, I could be happy for Oswald. “That’s great, Oz. I really hope it works out.”
“Thanks, babe. You go and have fun. The hotel’s a little more comfortable than your loft, and there are a lot of good restaurants and boutiques around. Buy yourself a few new outfits on me. Why don’t you take one of your girlfriends and have a girls’ vacation?”
nineteen
one-way ticket to hell, please
N ancy and Mercedes couldn’t come and even my slacker pals were unavailable on such short notice. The next morning, I packed the green zebra case, including the wedding tunics so I could work on the embroidery on my solitary evening, and drove south.
I passed the congested urban areas, then the generic sprawl of surburbia, and finally drove along a highway that ran parallel to the scrub bushes and grasses of the coast. The drive took me in and out of warm weather and ocean coolness.
I’d called the winery where our wedding would be held, and the owners invited me to come for lunch, so now I navigated a circuitous route down into the valley of a beautiful mountain range. The west side of the range was close enough to the ocean for pines, redwoods, and firs, but madrones and chaparral grew on the warmer, protected eastern slopes.
A narrow road led through a valley of vineyards. Real operations for the winery had been moved to a new facility, and I reached the old stucco building that was now rented out for events. I got out of my truck, inhaling the scent of ripening fruit and the yeasty, fecund smell of old fermentation. Oswald and I had discovered this place when we’d had time for road trips.
The friendly owners gave me a private tasting and helped me to select wines that would complement the dinner. They told me it was too bad the fog was covering the local village where my guests would be staying. “But that’s how it is most of the time and your guests won’t even get the daytime sun here, since your wedding’s in the evening.”
“My guests won’t mind. They’re always going on about the damaging rays of the sun,” I assured them, holding up a glass of a smoky, fruity pinot to catch the light.
I backtracked to the coastal village and drove through the picturesque streets to the elegant hillside resort where most of our guests would stay. I introduced myself to the unctuous concierge, who escorted me to the complimentary room. “It isn’t as large as the honeymoon suite, but I hope it will be satisfactory.”
Then the event planner and I met and she gave me a tour of the rooms and amenities. We went over the necessities for each suite (which included cranberry juice, tomato juice, sunscreen, and canvas hats and visors).
As evening came on, I took a walk through town, which was all of four blocks long. I looked at all the expensive little shops filled with useless items and over-indulgent services. The streaked blond store clerks gave me that “Are you worth our time?” look, and decided that I wasn’t. I looked too much like the busboys in their fancy restaurants. Perhaps, too, my antipathy for the clichй landscape paintings and outrageously priced resort wear was evident.
I turned away from the shops and went down to the beach, taking off my shoes so I could walk along the shore. An afternoon party was winding down on the terrace of a waterfront restaurant. I listened to the bright laughter and talk and watched as people began to leave the paved terrace and walk toward the street. They were the sort of people who bought resort wear. The women’s pastel dresses billowed in the ocean breeze and they clutched sun hats to their blond heads.
“Milagro! Milagro!” a voice called out. I looked through the group until I spotted my friend and gardening client Gigi Barton. A former model, the socialite was a marvelous stretch of a woman, clad now in nautically inspired navy and white, with a red scarf tying back her golden mane. She must have been wearing ten pearl necklaces, from chokers to long ropes. She was as famous for her fake jewelry as for her real wealth.
I waved to her and went to join her, brushing the sand off my feet near the restaurant’s deck and putting my shoes back on. She came forward and gave me a hug and two air kisses with her bright red lips. “Thank God you made it!”
I hadn’t been invited, but Gigi always made the endearing assumption that I was part of her crowd. “Gigi, how’ve you been? This is amazing-I just called you, because I wanted to do a checkup of your garden.”
“When you know everybody, you always see them everywhere. It’s so convenient, because you’re never a stranger anywhere.” By everywhere, she meant wealthy enclaves, and by everybody, she meant the rich who inhabited them. By this thinking, one was able to ignore inconsequential people who populated those vast wastelands without boutiques and Michelin-starred restaurants.
“How have you been? Is Bernie here?” Bernie, the tabloid stringer, dated Gigi.
“Oh, he’s out in the desert again. He said he doesn’t have time to read with all my activities. I’d almost believe he loves his first editions more than me. Where is your handsome fiancй?”
“Oswald’s working. I’m here finalizing a few things for the wedding.”
“Of course, Bernie and I will be there, and I know Nancy will do a wonderful job planning things, but you can always ask me, too! I think my fourth wedding was the most elegant, but my first was the wildest. I’m showing my age, but that’s when trashing hotel rooms was de rigueur.” She turned and called, “Lord Ian, which was my best wedding?”
The crowd of people behind her shifted, and then I saw Ian Ducharme. He came forward, more casually dressed than I’d ever seen him, in a dark blue sweater over a pale blue shirt, jeans, and a panama hat tilted at a jaunty angle, casting his eyes in shadow. He saw me and his eyes widened a little, but otherwise his demeanor remained the same as he said, “I was only at the second, Gigi, and it was splendid. You were a dazzling bride.”
Gigi laughed and gripped his arm affectionately. “Oh, that was my famous white-bikini beach wedding! Milagro, we’ll see you at dinner and after,” she said as her friends began to drag her away. In another minute everyone else was gone; only Ian and I remained.
Panic rose in me, and I considered running into the ocean and swimming out far enough where all I had to worry about was the sharks. But what did I have to be nervous about? I smiled politely and said, “Hello, Ian. I meet you on one coast and then the other.”
“Another coincidence?” he
said dryly.
“Do you think I’m stalking you now? The hotel invited me to visit and I’m finalizing arrangements for the wedding.” I was silently cursing Oswald for not joining me here. “And you? Where is Ilena?”
“She has other obligations.”
I didn’t ask if he meant that she had other obligations at the moment, or if she wasn’t here at all.
“I’m sorry we ended things on unpleasant terms,” I said. “I do hope we can continue to be friends.”
I didn’t expect him to burst into laughter, but he did, and I snapped, “What is so damn funny?”
When he finally stopped laughing, he looked more relaxed and said, “You and your attempts to be polite.”
“You think I’m incapable of fitting in with your swanky society pals?”
He stepped forward and took my hand. At his touch, a hot fizz went through my body. He looked into my eyes and asked softly, “Why are you so eager to be like everyone else when you’re Milagro De Los Santos?”
I wanted to step closer, close enough to smell his cologne, feel his warm breath on my face. I wanted to reach out to confirm that his sweater was cashmere, and then press myself along his body, extending the low electric buzz wherever flesh touched flesh. But I yanked my hand free and said, “I don’t want to be the miracle of the saints. I never applied for the job, I don’t like the hours, and I sure as hell don’t like the company. Damn vampire councils, creepy rituals, and people kidnapping and trying to kill me. Your people treat me either like a carnival freak or as a container of high-grade recreational substances.” I stopped because I remembered that Ian’s own parents had treated him like their personal drugstore.
“Now you sound more like my own girl,” he said.
“‘Your own girl’ is five-feet, eleven-inches of taciturn attitude dressed in designer rags.”
He looked satisfied, as if he had won some point. “I must be on my way. I’m confident you’ll be able to stave off any attacks by wharf rats.”
“I already apologized to your sister! It’s not as if she hasn’t been vile to me in the past. You told me yourself that she and Oswald-”
“She’s moved on and is quite infatuated with her friend Joseph.”
Was he assuring me that he had moved on, too? “Yes, we’ve all moved on, and I’m very glad of it.”
“I’m so very glad you’re very glad,” he said smoothly, making me want to scream. “Perhaps I’ll see you at dinner. Good-bye, Milagro.” He turned and began walking in the opposite direction of town.
I watched him go, feeling an unwelcome pang. “No one invited me to any dinner,” I muttered into the wind.
But when I returned to the hotel, the desk clerk handed me a note scrawled on one of Gigi’s hot pink note cards. It said, “8 p.m., Hayden’s,” with a surfeit of x’s and o’s in lieu of a signature. The clerk told me that Hayden’s was a restaurant and gave me directions.
I went upstairs to my room and called Oswald’s office, but he’d already gone off for his meeting with Sam and Vidalia. I left a message for him that I’d run into Gigi and was joining her group for dinner. “You know Gigi. I won’t be back until late so let’s talk tomorrow.”
I took a bath and luxuriated through my important girly grooming steps. I was a fabulous chica and I would look fabulous tonight. I poured myself into a red silk dress, applied too much eye makeup, and dabbed on the hotel’s complimentary eau de toilette sample.
I put on a lightweight coat and walked in my silver high-heeled sandals to Hayden’s. I stood at the entrance of the dark-paneled restaurant. The room was filled with laughing, chattering people, but my eyes went right to Ian, who was with a small group at the bar. He turned and looked at me as I took off my coat and checked it. He nodded in greeting, and I gave a little wave in his direction.
I said hello to Gigi and got involved with a group of her friends who were talking about one of the hot new memoirs. They all knew the author and claimed he was a habitual liar. The conversation was most illuminating, but I was always aware of the vampire on the other side of the room.
Hayden’s was a seafood restaurant, and our group was served huge quantities of prawns, crab, scallops, and oysters, and the white wine flowed. Ian was sitting at Gigi’s table, and I could hear her peals of laughter over other voices.
As we finished our meal with after-dinner drinks and desserts, Gigi came by each table and handed out a list. “Two-hour time limit, everyone!”
“What is that?” I asked the man next to me.
“It’s for the scavenger hunt. Each table is a team. Can you run in those shoes?”
“Like the wind.”
Ninety minutes later, my dress was hiked up to my hips as I balanced on his shoulders and pried off a nautical street sign (Anemone Way, for 125 points). When I spotted the flashing red light of the police car, I shouted, “Cheese it! It’s the cops!” to my team. My partner nearly dropped me, but another teammate caught me. I made it safely to the ground, handed one of the guys the sign, and we scattered in all directions.
The emergency plan was to meet back at Hayden’s. I was the first from my group to return. My stomach cramped with a craving for something red, and I went to the bar. “What red wines do you have by the glass?” I asked the bartender.
I felt someone standing close behind me. I looked into the mirror above the bar. “Hello, Ian.”
“Hello, Young Lady.”
The bartender handed me a drinks menu and I turned to Ian and asked, “Where’s your group?”
“They’re on their way back with our haul. I believe they had to collect one last lawn gnome.”
“One hundred and ten points,” I said. “That might give you the win. Although we did get a photo with twins, which is worth two hundred points. They’re fraternal, not identical, twins, but it still counts.”
“It will be a close contest.” His smile showed only in his eyes, and they crinkled at the corners.
I looked down at the menu and said, “I need something red to drink, or maybe I’ll get a burger.”
“I know a place,” he said.
“You always do.”
We said good-bye to those members of Gigi’s party who were straggling in, dragging traffic cones, cases of Spam, and Dalmatians, and walked down the main road through town. We commented on the charm of the town, the quaint architecture, the sound of the water, safe topics.
Ian led me down a dark side street and to a small but lovely stone building, with wild California grape scaling the walls and covering them in red-hued leaves. Light glowed through the amber windows. Bar None was painted in delicate black script on an unobtrusive driftwood sign.
Instead of going to the front entrance, Ian said, “This way,” and we went in the small alley between buildings. He knocked on a side door.
“Your life is full of back alleys and side doors,” I said. “Is anyone going to answer? Is this even a restaurant?”
“It’s just the sort of restaurant you need.”
The door opened a few inches, a gaunt man dressed in a gray shirt and black slacks peered out, and then he opened the door fully. “Welcome, sir!” he said. We stepped into a hallway with plastered walls and a dark plank floor.
“Hello, Nelson. This is my friend Milagro.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Milagro.” Nelson walked toward the end of the hall, saying, “We’re quiet this evening, but I hope we can offer something to please you.”
We followed him upstairs to a large landing with a rough-hewn wooden door. Nelson opened it and we walked into a cozy room that looked more like a living room than a restaurant. Oxblood leather armchairs were grouped with sofas in conversational areas. Seascapes hung on the pale blue walls, and seashells and nautical ephemera decorated tables and walls.
A few attractive middle-aged couples sat here and there, sipping what looked like red wine. They looked at us as we walked in and smiled in recognition at Ian. Nelson showed us to two chairs in a corner. “Your server will
be with you shortly, and if there’s anything else you want…”
“Thank you, Nelson,” Ian said, and the man left us.
“I don’t see any food. I don’t see any food because this is a vampire bar,” I said. I had been to a vampire bar once before. It had been filled with young vamps and their thralls, all black leather and PVC. This was a different scene. “This town is a vampire hangout, so I should have expected a vampire bar, right?”
“It’s one of the town’s attractions. I assumed you knew about it.”
“Oswald tries to protect me from things he thinks will shock or offend me.”
“He has gentlemanly instincts,” Ian said. “Although you don’t seem to be pleased about his efforts.”
“I like to make those choices myself. I’m not a hothouse flower.”
“I’ve never mistaken you for one.”
An attractive waitress came to our table, wearing the same black and gray combination as Nelson. “Good evening. May I tell you our specials?”
“Sure,” I said, waiting for her to describe some local sheep breed, or maybe even fish blood.
She signaled to other staff, who came forward. “We have Helen, who is a lactovegetarian and B positive,” she said, and a young woman smiled pleasantly, all whole-grain goodness.
The waitress smiled toward a buff young man. “We have an excellent O positive, Bob, a personal trainer, who is on a high-vitamin and antioxidant regimen.” Bob nodded his head toward us, then stepped back.
“We’ve also got something very rare-Sandra,” she said as another woman came forward. “She’s been completely organic for twenty years and is AB negative.”
“You’re talking about these people,” I said quietly.
“We draw the blood and serve it at body temperature,” the waitress assured me. “You can witness the draw if you like. We guarantee the quality and source.”
Ian sighed and said, “Bring us a bottle of your freshest animal.”
“But…,” she began before realizing he was serious. “We have a refreshing wild otter, caught and released after harvest just this morning.”