Know Her, Love Her: Daisy & Belmont, Book ONE (LOVE in the USA 4)

by Z. L. Arkadie

  “I did!”

  We shake hands. I put whatever issues the receptionist may have behind me and follow Dexter to my office. It’s small. The desk, chair, and one long wooden filing cabinet are against one wall, and a white board is tacked onto the other. I haven’t worked in an office outside my house since college. I shared that space with three other interns who took a lot longer to become paid travel writers than I did. Jamie Rotherham, a friend of Heloise and editor at Road Climb Magazine, published my first three articles six months after I graduated.

  “Have a seat,” Dexter says.

  I sit, clinging to my briefcase. I feel as though I’m ready to jump up and leave without notice.

  Dexter studies me with a frown. “Are you comfortable, Daisy?”

  I release the tension in my shoulders and sit back in the chair. “I am now.”

  He chuckles. “Good. I have something I want to read to you.” He opens a folder I hadn’t noticed and flashes me a quick smile. “‘My parents inflicted me with the need to travel without even knowing it. My mom was a bitch before Alexis Carrington made it en vogue. Mom got away with it because she was a stunning French woman working in Hollywood. She used to say that the executives didn’t know if they wanted her to blow them or if they wanted to slap her. It was because of that confusion, she went from fetching coffee to calling the shots in less than five years.

  “‘My father is famous. When you read his name, you’ll think, “I’ve heard of him.” You’ll think of him in all of his perfection and genius. He is Jacques Blanchard, award-winning musician and composer. As long as I can remember, my father referred to himself as the music man. He trained my brother and me very early to respect that part of him. When Papa’s practicing, he’s not to be disturbed. When Papa’s working in his studio, act as though he doesn’t exist. When Papa’s on the road, he doesn’t exist.

  “‘That was fine with my brother, Daniel, and me, because we ran wild and far. We would tell our parents we were going to the neighborhood park, but instead we’d skateboard half the way and bus the rest of the way to Olvera Street in downtown L.A. My brother and I used our allowance to buy sweet rolls and paletas, and we ate them as we sat around the white stone fountain and listened to the rancheros in their hats and ponchos sing from their souls. Then we happened on Chinatown, north of the 101 Freeway, and the Chinese New Year parade. We ran the streets of L.A. like feral kittens!’” Dexter snickers. He’s reading the introduction of my book.

  Dexter’s expression turns stern, changing with the tone of the passage. “‘It’s a wonder that the most devastating event of my life occurred close to home. My brother and I had set up a plank in the middle of our driveway. We were jumping willies off it. As always, Daniel had let me go first, and then it was his turn. He promised to show me how to get more speed and height. He took one last jump, soaring high above the ground, faster than he’d ever gone. Our smiles were as wide as the Grand Canyon. That was the last time we celebrated perfection together.

  “‘Mr. Joe Haywood was returning from a long day of crunching numbers. He was an independent accountant, and his wife, Melissa, was a caterer. Mr. Haywood always made it a point to drive the speed limit and watch for the sprightly kids in the neighborhood, who were known to dash into the street out of nowhere. He couldn’t have been more cautious when he collided with that Blanchard kid, going Lord knows how fast on his skateboard. Mr. Haywood’s car was unscathed, but my brother was dead. Our traveling days, my traveling days were over…’”

  Dexter’s voice becomes distant as he continues reading about how my strained relationship with my parents made me reclaim my love for traveling. The memory of Daniel lying in the street with his head busted open and dead eyes makes me want to weep. I constrain my tears though, because I’m not alone.

  “‘Life was peaceful on the road, and moments were perfect—like sitting on that stone fountain, licking a paleta with the sweltering sun directly overhead, mothers chasing their little ones, people in business suits rushing back to the offices. But it’s summer, and we have no place to go, and just like then, Daniel is always beside me. He says, “This is cool, isn’t it?” and I say, “Yep.”’”

  I smile, choked up.

  “That’s the voice of our narrator and the face of our host,” Dexter says. “After reading your book, I realized you’re not a traveler; you’re an explorer.”

  “You convinced me.” I clear my throat. “I have both feet in.”

  ***

  Belmont Lord

  Belmont ended the call before hearing the buzz. He’d already left four messages. Daisy was playing hardball, choosing to return his call when she saw fit. He hated waiting when it came to matters of the heart. She’d accused him of being entitled, and that had vexed him. Perhaps that’s why, early that morning, he’d tried to give it another go with Stacy. Once again, he couldn’t finish. Stacy was physically flawless, but Belmont didn’t find pleasure in having sex with her. He only wanted Daisy. Always had, probably always would.

  He and Stacy had just ended a three-hour meeting with the Voyager Group. They would’ve sold all of their Chicago holdings to him if he had included two of his properties along Miami’s South Beach in the deal. Did they really think he would give up any part of Miami for Chicago? Voyager was the one with its head caught between the ropes, not him. In the last few days, Belmont had gotten them to drop the price significantly.

  Initially, five investors had been interested in purchasing Voyager’s riverfront properties. They were all equally matched when it came to holdings, so Belmont had had to dissuade the competition. That’s where Stacy came in. She was one of the best investigators in his employment. She sniffed out their other projects, and Belmont used his contacts to sweeten those deals if they abandoned their interest in Voyager’s holdings. Their new contracts would remain legitimate but pending until Voyager’s properties were acquired by Lord & Lord Holdings.

  There was one holdout: Reece Holdings. They were just as judicious as Belmont was. Although Belmont was impatient in love, meaning in matters concerning Daisy, he wasn’t when it came to business. He worked on one major project at a time, and so did Reece Holdings. They were just as focused as he was.

  Belmont grabbed lunch at the same restaurant where he’d run into Daisy. He hoped to run into her again, so he sat at a table near the window, waiting for Stacy. She was on a fact-finding mission to unearth anything she could on Matthew Silver, the CEO and son-in-law of Holden Reece, even if it was a jaywalking ticket from 1975. Belmont was about to put his cell phone in the breast pocket of his jacket when he remembered that Daisy had asked him not to do that any more. Angelina had convinced her that it might cause cancer. He sat it on top of the table instead.

  Stacy waved as she passed by the window. She always looked appealing, but unlike Daisy, she worked at it. Her dresses were always tight, and her hair cascaded down her back like the women in magazines. She wore sweet perfume and dark eye makeup, which contrasted with her light eyes. Men liked looking at her. At one point, Belmont had too.

  “No one’s ever clean, are they?” she said as she sat across from him.

  She gave him an envelope. He eyed her curiously before he opened it and read the contents.

  “It’s not a crime, but it’s a crime in the public’s eyes,” she said.

  “How in the hell did you get this?” Belmont asked.

  They were certified bank statements made payable to a high-level politician. Basically, the man had been bought, and from the amount of money Matthew Silver had given to his campaign, strings were attached.

  “Just thank your lucky stars that there’s nothing you can do to get on my bad side.” She winked at Belmont.

  Belmont flexed his eyebrows and slapped the pages in his hand. “This, I can work with. I think our business here is finished.”

  “Is that your way of asking me to exit stage right?”

  Belmont regarded her shrewdly.

  Recognizing that look on his
face, she shrugged. “I have to go to Tokyo for a little while anyway.”

  “Oh, what for?” he asked, pretending to be interested. He wanted Stacy gone because he was already working on his next big project—getting his wife back into his bed on a full-time basis.

  “Would you want me to disclose that I’ve been working with you to any of my other clients?”

  Belmont sniffed a chuckle. “Right. Then have a safe flight.”

  They let the silence that fell between them settle things.

  “Hey, have you ever seen that movie…” Belmont snapped his fingers. “The Way We Were?”

  “I have it loaded on my home theater. Why?”

  “I’ve never seen it, but I want to.”

  “I can access it on my computer.” She narrowed her sultry eyes. “How about a nightcap?”

  Belmont was inclined to decline her invitation, but he wanted to see that movie. He was eager to know what Daisy really thought of him. So he said yes to the movie and maybe to the nightcap.

  They walked to his hotel, which was the same one he’d been staying in since arriving in Chicago two weeks ago. It so happened to be the same hotel Daisy stayed in. Stacy asked what he planned to do with the lakeside property once he acquired it. The easy answer was make it better, but for a moment, he embraced the truth.

  When he’d heard that the Voyager Group was selling off their Chicago assets, he thought getting into the bidding would be a good way to forget he had walked out on the only woman he could ever love. It had worked in conjunction with keeping company with Stacy, but then he saw Daisy in that restaurant. Since then, he had craved Daisy constantly, just like he had when he saw her in the Day Harbor Café on Martha’s Vineyard. Fate had been on his side then. Belmont hoped she hadn’t abandoned him.

  He entered Stacy’s room, which was one floor below his. He took off his jacket, loosened his collar, took off his shoes but kept his socks on, and sat against the headboard. Stacy excused herself into the bathroom to get comfortable. She came out in a silky slip dress. Belmont pretended not to notice how scantily clad she was. He wasn’t in the mood for sex.

  As she crawled to the foot of the bed to set up her computer, she made sure Belmont got an eyeful. “You never told me why you want to see this movie.”

  “I heard it was a classic,” he replied.

  “So is Casablanca. Have you seen that?”

  “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said in his best Humphrey Bogart voice.

  “That’s a yes. What about The Maltese Falcon?” She posed her body in a sexual way to look back at him.

  “I haven’t,” he admitted. Suddenly he recalled Daisy inviting him to divorce her. He squeezed his eyes to stop his head from spinning. Hell, they’d been throwing that word around a lot lately. “Vertigo. Now that’s a classic movie I’ve seen.”

  Stacy giggled. “And it’s on.” She crawled up the mattress to cuddle.

  He put his arm around her because that was what she wanted. The movie started. Belmont studied every frame, trying not to miss a thing.

  “He’s chewing the hell out of that gum,” he said. That bothered him. Right away he found Hubbell to be a cocky son of a bitch.

  “What did he say?” Belmont later complained.

  “He said he was a lot like the country he lived in,” Stacy replied.

  “Yes, that. If he thinks everything came easy to this country, then he’s a stupid ass.”

  “It’s just a movie.”

  Belmont gave Stacy a quick side-eye. It wasn’t just a movie, not when his wife had compared him to that prick. He seethed but decided to keep his outbursts to himself.

  Stacy was frisky, kissing him and massaging his dick until it turned firm. At one point, she tried to give him a blowjob, but he rejected it. He didn’t want to miss a beat. Hubbell was a dick. A stupid dick who chose the boring chick because she fit the mold. Belmont wasn’t that guy, and he was pissed that Daisy thought so. Hell, she really didn’t know him at all. When the movie ended, he sat against the headboard staring at the credits.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Stacy asked.

  He threw up his hands. “‘Your girl is lovely’? That’s it? That’s all she could say?”

  “That line’s a classic,” Stacy said.

  “But all she had to say was, ‘Hubbell, I want you,’ and he would’ve given up that other woman in a heartbeat. She just had to say something.”

  “Then maybe you should’ve written the script. I didn’t know you were this sentimental about movies,” she said.

  Belmont shifted to sit on the side of the bed. “I’m not. But I don’t get why that’s considered a masterpiece?”

  “Because it’s Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford.”

  He bent over to put on his shoes.

  “Are you leaving?” Stacy asked.

  “I’m tired.”

  “What’s going on between us, Jack? I’m ready to know.”

  He sighed despairingly. Finally, the time had come. “Let’s not do this now.”

  “Then when? Tomorrow? Because you clearly want me to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “You’re the one who said you had to go to Tokyo.”

  “I said that because you were being a jerk!”

  Belmont studied her angry face. He wished Daisy would fight that hard for him. When he’d walked out on her, he hoped she would run after him. He wanted her to tell him to stay until she figured shit out. He knew Daisy had no idea what her problem was, but he knew. She was void. Daisy probably didn’t know that he’d read her book multiple times. Each time, he came to the same conclusion. He shouldn’t have to compete with the deceased, especially her brother.

  “We’ll have breakfast in the morning. How about that?” he said.

  Stacy stood on her knees. “Why don’t you spend the night here and we’ll order room service in the morning?”

  “You know I’m still married, right?”

  She laughed. “I didn’t think that was a concern of yours.”

  “Daisy is always going to be a concern of mine.”

  She grunted, rolled her eyes, and flopped on the bed.

  Belmont grabbed his jacket. “Breakfast in the morning,” he said and got the hell out of there.

  It was late when he walked out of the hotel lobby and made a series of right turns until he ended up on Grand Avenue. He stepped over fresh vomit as he passed a half-empty parking lot. It was chilly, but his brisk pace helped him work up a sweat. The Chicago skyline boxed him in, changing constantly to give him different angles of the same skyscrapers. He crossed under a bridge and admired the concrete, steel beams, and multidirectional lanes of traffic. Mankind’s inventions momentarily took his mind off of that lousy movie.

  Maybe Daisy didn’t know that nothing came easy to him, not even her. The first time he saw her inside the Day Harbor Café, it hadn’t been easy to muster up the courage to say something to her. The day before on the docks, she had walked by him as though he didn’t exist, which rarely happened to him. But when she passed him, everything about her felt right. So the next day, when she happened to show up at the café, Belmont figured he couldn’t go wrong by inviting her to his birthday party. But hell, she left the card he gave her on the table! When he saw her again in the grocery store, he knew that he had nothing to do with them meeting. Fate did.

  He made a right on Dearborn and continued north. For some strange reason, the rustic brownstones made him think of Daisy. They were just the sorts of homes that turned her head. He made a left on Elm, hoping Fate would continue working her magic and make him collide into Daisy. When that didn’t happen, he turned up Clark Street. A kid was barfing into a sidewalk garden while his friends stood around laughing.

  Belmont had never been that stupid and young. He’d never equated being inebriated with having a good time. He was his own unique brand of stupid ass in his early twenties. He’d probably had a bit of Hubbell in him back then. He’d been good-looking all his life. Wher
e he came from girls threw themselves at him, and guys respected him for it. He would give Daisy one point for that. He had benefitted from his good looks. He’d subconsciously despised it, so he jumped at the chance to be different.

  Belmont was seventeen when he left home. He’d spent a year at Chicago University, but he believed his destiny was in Los Angeles, so he transferred to USC in L.A. He wanted to be free of his father’s money, and he convinced himself he could be the next Brad Pitt. If looks were all it took, then he surely could’ve been the next major heartthrob.

  Acquiring an agent had been easy. He had no headshots or previous acting experience, but he did have the gift of persuasion. His agent’s name was Francis Lineman, and she was nothing like the women where he came from. Francis wasn’t polite, and she distrusted charm, but Belmont knew how to make her feel less like a hard-ass. She didn’t drop him from her client list even after she received warnings from male producers never to send him back to their auditions. Certain female producers requested him continuously. They came on to him, and he succumbed to their objectification. Not because he wanted the parts, but because he loved taking their hard shells and turning them into jelly.

  Lorena Sheimann, a TV producer, had been the one to tell him to stop making a mockery out of acting and put his talents to better use. She knew he had just bought a couple of properties in the Hollywood Hills and that he was interested in commercial real estate. Lorena told him the way into a man’s wallet was through an ambitious woman who wanted to be pounded by someone like him while married to someone like her husband.

  “You’ll always have your daddy’s money, but if you’re going solo, then they’ll get you there just as fast as you can get them off,” Lorena said.

  He’d moved to Vegas to start his corporation and to service those powerful women. They were interesting, so making love to them was easy. Their husbands never suspected a thing. They couldn’t believe someone like him would have sex with their wives, especially when the husbands were chasing tail that was twenty to thirty years younger than them. Those women came through for him in many ways, and sometimes, they still did. But seven years later, after he’d acquired his first set of beachfront high-rises off South Beach, the sex without love had started to erode his soul, and he knew it was time to give it up.