My Three Husbands

by Swan Adamson

  At one point Daddy looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “Were they planning to burn down my building, too? Earth Freedom?”

  “I think they’re trying to stop a timber sale,” I said.

  “Because they’ve destroyed other buildings,” Daddy said. “We did a search on the computer this morning. We checked all the newspaper stories about Earth Freedom.”

  “Daddy, I don’t know.”

  “It’s a very shadowy group,” Daddy said.

  My faux pa turned around to look at me. “The next time you say you’re getting married, we’re going to run an FBI background check on the guy.”

  “I’m never getting married again.”

  I don’t think Whitman heard me. “This must be the shortest marriage on record,” he said. “No, I think there’s one even shorter. I read about it in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The couple drove directly from the church to the lawyer’s office and filed for divorce.”

  He was probably trying to cheer me up. But he was also reminding me of my tendency to leap before I look. I think the dads thought I was mad at Tremaynne. Hated him for betraying me. And I did, of course. But I didn’t see him as a criminal or a dangerous terrorist. Those were words used by the other side.

  I stared vacantly out the window as we sped along the blacktop, past mile after mile of tall pines. It was hypnotically monotonous. Unless you got off the road and out of your car, you’d never have a clue as to what was really out there, in those deep canyons and high plateaus and mountain peaks already dusted with snow. You had to feel the earth beneath your feet. Hear it with clean ears. Smell its powerful but elusive scents. You had to put yourself right in the middle of it, without any of your daily props, and accept it as something that existed in and of itself, for itself, beyond your grasp. It was a home for creatures that didn’t obey human laws. For whom humans were the enemies.

  The bouquet of flowers Marcello had given me sat on my lap, along with his card. Marcello Brunelli. Lumina International. That’s all it said. There were two telephone numbers, a fax number, and an e-mail address. I turned it over and studied his handwriting, the way he formed numbers. Figures were important to him. Each numeral was very clear. The sevens had lines drawn through them, the European way.

  All I had to do was pick up a phone and dial.

  The afternoon sun beat down on the speeding SUV, releasing the scents of the wildflowers and sandwiches and fruit supplied by Pine Mountain Lodge. We’d decided we’d stop only for gas and toilets. If we kept up our pace, we’d be back in Portland by ten that night.

  Every mile took me farther and farther from Tremaynne.

  Every mile brought me closer and closer to Portland, where I’d have to resume a life that suddenly seemed terrifyingly meaningless. I’d have to go back to work at Phantastic Phantasy. Stand behind the counter in that stuffy, smelly porn shop with tinted windows and cum stains on the carpet and help men check out their sexual fantasies. Or rap sharply on the doors of the video booths to remind them that they had to spend money. Run the barcodes for D Cups and Rump Roast and Manmeat and other magazines across the scanner. Order new dildos and buttplugs.

  And go back to my tiny apartment and deal with things like what I’d microwave for supper.

  Go over to my mom’s and hear about her latest self-esteem serum.

  Unless I made some changes in my life, big changes, humongous changes, I was headed nowhere fast.

  School? Maybe.

  Possibly.

  A baby? Maybe.

  Possibly.

  All I knew was that I couldn’t go back to being what I was. Something in me had changed. I didn’t know what it was or how, ultimately, it would affect me. I had followed the river and crossed Dead Horse Canyon and traveled to places most mortals don’t even know exist. I’d been Venus, Godiva, and Laurie Ann.

  I’d done it, and I’d come back, and if I didn’t find some new way to keep moving ahead, I would never find fulfillment.

  Maybe there was no such thing as fulfillment. Maybe it was all in the doing.

  I looked at the dads. They were holding hands. They were in love. In their own way, they had followed the river and crossed the canyon.

  I saw a sign for Hell’s Canyon.

  I waited until Daddy was just about to head down the first stretch of the narrow, hairpin canyon road.

  “Let me drive,” I said.

  The dads looked at each other.

  “What?” Daddy sounded alarmed. “Why?”

  “I just—want to.”

  “It’s not an easy road,” Whitman said. “Remember what happened on the way out?”

  “Please,” I said. “It’s important. It’s something I need to do.”

  They looked at each other again. Daddy pulled over. “I’m putting it into four-wheel drive.”

  “I want both of you to sit in the back,” I said. “You’ll make me too nervous up front.”

  Whitman made the sign of the cross and got out. Daddy got out. I got out. The wind was blowing up the canyon. A mile down, the Snake River wriggled along the canyon floor. The sky was completely clear, the hot sun scouring down from the western sky.

  The dads climbed in back. I got in the driver’s seat. We all buckled up.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Whitman said.

  “I’m taking you guys for a little honeymoon tour.” I adjusted the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of their tense faces. They were clutching each other’s knees. “Trust me?”

  Daddy said, “We trust you, Venus. We know you can do it.”

  “Just keep it slow,” Whitman said, “so we can admire the view.”

  I turned around and said, “I love you guys.” Then I released the brake, slipped the gear into Drive, and started forward with the sun in my eyes.

  When Marcello Brunelli—aka I1 Principe of one of Italy’s oldest and most fabulous families—declared his love to down-on-her- luck, done-with-men Venus Gilroy, she learned a few eyebrow raising things about love and life. And now she’s willing to share . . .

  PORTLAND, OREGON, REALLY IS A LONG WAY FROM ROME.

  When a prince invites you to his place, it’s not for take-out Chinese and a DVD. No, Marcello flew me home, a sprawling palace where we could be under the same roof and still a mile away from each other. It was a far cry from my ratty apartment and my usual luck with men. Turns out Marcello wanted me to teach him about slacking, while he did his suave Italian best to seduce me . . .

  LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND ROYAL ARE KIND OF . . . BORING.

  Prince or not, Marcello was an everyday workaholic. Well, “everyday” in the “jetting off and meeting with other captainsof industry” sense. Which left me noodling around the palazzo with his suspicious adult daughter, his more- royal-than-thou mother—and Johnny, his hot-and-hunky chauffeur, as my Vespa-driving tour guide.

  THERE’S A CHANCE FAIRY TALES JUST MIGHT COME TRUE ANYWAY . . .

  Romance and Rome match up like a little black dress on a blonde, and it didn’t take long for me to fall head over high heels for Marcello—for real. But sometimes even fairy tales can surprise you . . .

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of

  Confessions of a Pregnant Princess

  coming next month in trade paperback!

  Chapter

  1

  I believe in love.

  At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Not how much money you made, or how many people you cheated, or if you got your name into the papers.

  The question isn’t Were you loved? The question is Did you love?

  She loved.

  That’s one thing they could say about Venus Gilroy.

  But they don’t. They say a lot of stuff about her, but never that.

  I thought I was pregnant when Marcello asked me to marry him. We hadn’t had sex yet—except for those times when I was working as a lingerie model, back when I was married to Pete, my second husband. It was never real sex.
Marcello would ask me to pose for him and then furiously J.O. into a white linen hanky as I lounged around in my negligee. He had this thing about seeing my naked body through thin, sheer fabric. House rules were that girls could pose, and men could watch, but they could not touch you. According to the law, if I allowed Marcello to touch me, I became a prostitute and he became a john. Felons. Both of us. Liable to jail time and a fine.

  All he could do was look at me and whack off.

  That’s how we met, dear reader.

  I lived strictly according to the letter of the law back then. When was it? Only last year?

  I didn’t want Marcello or any of them to touch me. When they offered me an extra fifty for some “one on one” out in their car, or in the stinky motel next door, I was always firm but polite. “No, thank you,” I’d say.

  Working in the sex industry is enough to put you off sex forever.

  I wasn’t completely coldhearted, though. I picked up on the vibes.

  I knew that Marcello wanted more. He wanted all of me. But back then, last year, before I even knew he was a prince, I just never took him seriously. Why would I? He was older than my dads. He was foreign. Wore tailored suits and shirts with starched cuffs and pearl-studded cufflinks. To me he was just another horny guy lusting after my body.

  But Marcello was persistent. He kept after me, even when I rebuffed him. First he asked me to go out, “just for a coffee and a little conversazione.” I said no. I couldn’t: I was married. I used Pete as my excuse, even though our marriage was getting as bad as my credit rating. I felt kind of sorry for Marcello because he seemed like a nice man, but I was not interested in a platinum-haired lover twice my age.

  Then he asked if I’d consider being his mistress. Me, a mistress! It sounded weird and so old-fashioned. Conjured up images of sitting alone in an apartment waiting for some dude to show up with a box of chocolates and a hard-on.

  I said no. Thank you, but no, thank you. Firm but polite.

  And I thought that was the end of Marcello. I stopped the lingerie modeling, divorced Pete, and met Tremaynne, my third husband, in bankruptcy court. I was on my honeymoon with Tremaynne and the dads when I ran into Marcello again.

  We were all at the opening of Pine Mountain Lodge, this glamorous new wilderness resort in Idaho. Daddy had designed it, Whitman was writing about it for Travel magazine, and Tremaynne and I got to go along for free because I’d never had a honeymoon and the dads thought it was about time. There was this big party with Hollywood stars, and I was coming down Daddy’s signature staircase wearing stiletto heels when I tripped and literally fell into his arms. Marcello’s arms, I mean.

  I was shocked. So was he.

  I look back now and think it must have been fate.

  I think about fate a lot these days.

  Out there in the middle of Nowheresville Idaho I discovered that the man I knew only as Marcello was, in fact, Prince Marcello Brunelli, one of the richest men in Italy and the major money source behind Pine Mountain Lodge. I wouldn’t have known any of this if the dads hadn’t told me.

  Sometimes life is just too weird to be believed.

  Well, I was madly in love and on my honeymoon, so Marcello, no matter who he was, was no more than an inconsequential blip on my radar screen. But he came after me again. Caught me alone. Said he thought of me always. Said he “desired” me more than ever. Offered me a thousand smacka-roonies just to look at my tits.

  No. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. All I wanted was Tremaynne. But then Tremaynne disappeared and all the rest happened. I went out into the wilderness to find my husband and Marcello chased after me. I headed him off at Dead Horse Canyon and pushed on to Devil’s Spring, where I found Tremaynne, but the two of us were almost killed by these paramilitary maniacs who were going to set fire to Pine Mountain Lodge and blame it on the environmentalists. The maniacs tied us up, me and Tremaynne, and threw us in the back of their pickup, and if it hadn’t been for the dads, who appeared just in the nick of time and chased after us, I wouldn’t be here, in Italy, today.

  When I arrived at Pine Mountain Lodge, I was on my honeymoon. Three days later, when I left, I was on a marital death march. My husband Tremaynne had vanished into the wilderness, vanished into the mysterious life of a radical environmentalist. He was a revolutionary, Tremaynne was. I hadn’t known that when I married him.

  I would have done anything for Tremaynne. I would have run off into the woods and foraged for food. I would have lived in a tree. Even sabotaged lumber trucks.

  Because I loved him. I would have done anything he asked. But in the end, I knew that it was futile. My husband was wedded to his cause, not to me.

  Before he slipped off into the forest, he told me that the marriage had been a mistake and that I should get a divorce.

  Oh God, the misery.

  But some part of me knew with a cold, dull finality that it was over. Some part of me accepted it, almost at once, and started thinking about what I had to do next.

  Before I left Pine Mountain Lodge, Marcello made one last play for me. I was half-dead with misery and exhaustion, but even in my zoned-out state I knew he was for real. When he wrote a number on the back of his business card and said, “This will reach me anywhere,” I knew he wasn’t just handing me a line. He wanted me to call him. He hoped that I would call.

  Of course I didn’t.

  Not for two weeks.

  When the dads and I got back to Portland, I quickly and quietly filed for divorce. I don’t know how I got through that period. I just kept moving forward. I didn’t let myself think about it. I just did it. If I had stopped to think about it, about Tremaynne, about my third divorce, about the huge uncertainty of the future, I would have just collapsed in a flood of tears. So I didn’t.

  It takes two weeks for an uncontested divorce to go through in Oregon.

  Suddenly I was Venus Gilroy again, back in my dinky, messy apartment and working at Phantastic Phantasy for minimum wage, seven bucks an hour.

  Things looked pretty bleak.

  I shut everyone out. I just did not want to interact. I did not want to talk, or explain, or voice an opinion about what I would do next.

  I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that this desperate feeling would come over me at times. It was terrible. Almost like a panic attack. My breath would get all shallow, and my head would feel light, like I was going to pass out, and this hideous anxiety would start gnawing at my chest. Fears would start skittering around like cockroaches in the dark. My heart would race for no apparent reason.

  Later on, when I talked to the dads about it, they said it was probably post-traumatic stress syndrome. A reaction to almost being killed in Idaho.

  Maybe.

  All I know is that the rent was due, they were threatening to disconnect my phone, and I was a three-time divorcée working in a stupid and disgusting dirty-video store, but I didn’t know what else I could do because the rent was due and they were threatening to cut off my phone and I was a three-time divorcée and . . .

  Circular thinking, it’s called.

  I sat and stared at his card for a really long time. Marcello Brunelli. President, Lumina International. No address. One office phone number with a Los Angeles area code, another with a 396 prefix. I called and asked the operator. She said 396 was Rome.

  On the back of the card, a neatly penned number with a really long prefix. I called and asked the operator about that one, too. It took me about ten minutes and about twenty different operators. Finally, one with a foreign accent told me that it was a special “international prefix code” hooked up to a special satellite telecommunications system.

  I sat and looked at the card. I chewed on my lips. I wanted a cigarette so bad . . . but I’d quit.

  Finally, heart pounding, not knowing what I was going to say, or even why I was calling, I punched in the numbers. Funny sounds, a screech of static, then a distant ring. In outer space somewhere, for all I knew.

&nb
sp; I let it ring four times. Then I lost my nerve and hung up. Pushed the phone away from me.

  I tossed and turned and sighed and moaned and I was just finally slipping into a light doze when the phone rang. Four A.M. Nobody calls at that hour unless they’re drunk, stoned, or something terrible’s happened.

  My voice was a croak when I answered.

  “Hello?” said a male voice. The voice didn’t register. It sounded tiny, distant. “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Marcello,” the voice said. And a second later, “Marcello Brunelli.” And a second later, “I am returning your call.”

  I hate technology. Some little thingamajiggy in outer space had registered my telephone number even though I’d hung up.

  “I was unable to take your earlier call,” Marcello apologized. “This is the first free moment I have had.”

  I was completely tongue-tied. Had no idea what to say.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Where are you?”

  “I am in Osaka.”

  “Where’s that?”

  I had never heard him laugh before. It was a deep, friendly sound. “Japan.”

  “Oh.” My mind went blank again.

  “You called me,” he prompted.

  “Well, sort of. Not really.”

  “But I have your number here in front of me. You are in Portland, Oregon.” He pronounced it Orry-gone.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I have given that number to only a handful of people. I know every one of them.”

  “Oh.” Tongue in knots. Heart beating fast.

  “You called me,” he said again.

  “I was going to. But I hung up.”