Playing Dirty (Stargazer)

by Jennifer Echols

  This was stupid. It was like he had a crush on her, which hadn’t happened to him since Vonnie Conner in high school. There was almost no resemblance between Sarah and Vonnie Conner. Vonnie had been blond and busty, like Erin. A cheerleader. Only the feelings of lust, wistfulness, and loss that Vonnie and Sarah evoked were similar. The feeling that he had to have this and he could not have this.

  He couldn’t have Vonnie Conner because in high school, he’d been lanky, glasses-clad, and asthmatic, without a truck. There hadn’t been much he could do about that. Sarah he could do something about. He could quit the Cheatin’ Hearts.

  No he couldn’t. The band was counting on him. And what would happen to Martin?

  What would happen to him?

  He could convince her to quit her job. Maybe Martin was right. If Sarah felt she needed a gun to protect herself against a rock star in jail in a different hemisphere, it didn’t say much for her job satisfaction.

  But this didn’t feel right, either. She did love her job. Maybe not that part of it, but she wanted to keep it badly enough that she was willing to tackle Quentin. She came on to him hesitantly, as if she wasn’t used to being sexy—though she seemed comfortable enough in those low-cut shirts and high heels. She put on a show because she loved her job. Like Quentin loved his.

  The need to go to her, bring her down off that treadmill, and take her was so strong that he could feel the blood shifting in his veins with the gravitational pull.

  It was too much.

  And Quentin knew now Sarah was holding her cards too close to the vest. He wouldn’t find out why she felt so threatened until she decided to tell him herself. He slipped back onto the elevator and headed for home.

  6

  Sweetie, I just got your e-mail from several days ago. I am not as “wired” as you are. I have been in Birmingham all week at the Vulcan Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament. Please come to the evening session after you finish work today. I am sorry that I will not be able to see you on your birthday. I am flying out early tomorrow morning for the Lake Taneycomo Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament in Branson, Missouri.

  Love,

  Mom

  Sarah stepped out of the shower still invigorated from her run and a long set of Cheatin’ Hearts on her playlist. Running had always helped her handle the stress of Nine Lives. Running with Quentin’s strong, lazy melody in her ears was at once relaxing and terribly exciting. There was no way she could miss her date with him tonight, mother or no mother.

  She toweled off and began her hundred-step beauty routine. Before her Natsuko-style transformation, she hadn’t worn much makeup. Natsuko required sultry eyes and clear skin. She called her mother on her cell phone and tried to blow her off between the moisturizer and the liquid foundation.

  Her mother asked sharply, “Are you telling me that you cannot spare three hours per year to spend with your aging mother?”

  Sarah was overwhelmed with anger that her mother manipulated her, guilt that her mother was right, anxiety that her mother would see her hair, and love. The mirror reflected her hand pressed to her cheek. Her mother’s cheek. The older she got, the more she looked like her mother. The pink hair did not fix that.

  “I’m babysitting this band,” she explained weakly.

  “The Cheatin’ Hearts,” her mother said. “After you e-mailed me, I looked them up on your Internet. I’ve heard a song of theirs, ‘Come to Find Out.’ Catchy, if risqué.”

  “That pretty much describes them,” Sarah acknowledged. “Mom, I don’t want to dis you, but I’m swamped with work today. And tonight, I’m supposed to keep up with one of the band members, who causes problems when left unattended.”

  “The one with the green eyes?”

  “Since when do you notice?” Sarah asked suspiciously.

  “I’m old,” said her mother. “I’m not dead.”

  “They’re really more hazel,” Sarah lied.

  “Bring him to bridge. He can hang out, as you say.”

  “Look, Mom, I’m not mixing business with mother,” Sarah said with finality. She needed to see her mother. She needed to see Quentin.

  After she hung up, she considered the implications. Her mother would want her to stay for dinner at the hotel after the bridge session. Strangely, Quentin seemed to have passable table manners. There had been no table when he’d stood in the kitchen to eat breakfast, but he’d chewed with his mouth closed. She called Quentin’s cell phone.

  He sounded like he was standing in a blender full of margaritas. “Are you in your car?” she asked. She only became more confused when he said yes. They had made their ill-fated trip to the firing range last night in Martin’s truck, with Martin driving. She’d concluded Quentin was the Cheatin’ Heart without wheels. “Are you driving?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Who’s driving?” she asked in a panic. He’d better not be with Erin.

  “The guy I hire to drive me.”

  Oh. “But in your car?”

  “Well, in the car I hire to go with the driver.”

  Right, the car service he’d mentioned several times. Sarah was exasperated. She was trying to put together the puzzle of the Cheatin’ Hearts, but he was hiding the pieces from her. “Quentin, why don’t you drive yourself?”

  “Because I don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t need one when I’m hiring someone to drive me.”

  “You’ve been rich for two years,” Sarah said. “How did you get around before that?”

  “I lived on the bus line.” He paused, then said, “Good morning, sunshine,” and laughed and laughed until she laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just hate it when you hold out on me.”

  “I understand,” he said, still holding out.

  “Why aren’t you recording my album?” she asked.

  “That’s where I’m headed.”

  “Really? Then where have you been this early in the morning?”

  “Fishing.”

  She sighed. He was so friendly and open, mostly, but when he chose to close down, it was like talking to a wall. “Quentin,” she said, “I don’t want to cancel our date tonight—”

  “You’d better not,” he warned her.

  Suddenly she was aware that she was standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror. She slid her thumb slowly across her nipple. Shuddered. Reached for her bathrobe.

  “I don’t want to,” she repeated huskily, “but something’s come up. I have to play bridge. You can still go with me so Erin thinks we have a date, but you’ll just be sitting there while I play bridge. Is this too uncool for you? Would it ruin you if a photo ran in the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch that showed you with me while I played bridge?”

  “Unless I’m at one of my usual bars, or in the town where I grew up, I don’t get recognized. We’re careful to keep our hats on when we’re performing.” Slow on the uptake, he asked, “Bridge, the card game?”

  If she didn’t tell him the whole story, he’d keep asking. She lay on the bed and hugged herself into a ball. “About four years ago, my dad retired, and he and my mom set off on a bridge tour of the United States. I never understood it myself. I guess some retired couples have their RVs, or their gardens, or their grandchildren, and my parents had bridge. Then, about two years ago, my dad died of a heart attack.”

  Quentin was saying he was sorry, but Sarah didn’t want to hear it, only wanted to get this story out and over with. She interrupted him, “And then my mother started her solo bridge tour of the United States. I know what she’s doing. She’s looking for my dad. You’ll hear her. She has a different partner every time, and every one drops tricks or passes her forcing bid. She wore her poker face at the funeral, didn’t shed a tear. I know this is it. This is the tears. This is her sick style of mourning. She left so fast that I had to clean up her house after the wake.”

  Sarah was spilling this story maniacally. She forced herself t
o take a deep breath before finishing slowly, “My mother never comes to see me. She hardly ever goes home. We usually see each other at Christmas, but not last year. I was in Rio.”

  “So, you’re her bridge partner for a few hours,” Quentin said, accepting casually, which Sarah appreciated.

  “It doesn’t even make that much sense,” she admitted. “Beulah has been her partner for the whole tournament, even though the very first morning, Beulah put Mom in slam missing two aces. I’m sure you’ll hear all about this, too. But Mom’s made a commitment to Beulah until the end of tonight’s session, and she won’t break it. Besides, she and I had a little altercation when I was thirteen, which I won’t get into, and I swore I’d never be her partner again.

  “No, I have to go to the partnership table and get paired with someone. There are a few normal people. And some people who eat paste. And some hardcore people like my mother. Luck of the draw.”

  Quentin said, “I play bridge.”

  “You do not.”

  “I play all the games.”

  You sure do, Sarah thought. She arranged to pick up Quentin for the bridge tournament that night. Then she called her mother back. “Now, listen, Ethel. This band is worth millions of dollars to Manhattan Music, and therefore, it’s worth my job to me. Please remember that when you foil me.”

  “You could always get a job at the Fairhope Country Club,” her mother drawled elegantly. “They need a public relations expert. Their Cobb salad is an absolute shame.”

  Sarah tapped one fingernail on her phone in irritation. Yesterday she’d handled the New York Times and Vanity Fair, but she couldn’t handle her own mother.

  “I’m just joshing, sweetie,” her mother finally said. “Stop tapping.”

  “Do not josh me about this. If you want me to play bridge, you have to help me keep up the image to Quentin that I’m a tough New Yorker.”

  “And I’m supposed to be a New Yorker?”

  Her mother was right. That was ridiculous. “I’ve never specified that I grew up in New York City. I could hail from somewhere else in the area. Maybe Schenectady.”

  “Gracious, how do you expect me to pull that off? I’m bound to slip up and order a glass of iced tea. Couldn’t you move us to Louisville, or Richmond?”

  “Richmond doesn’t exactly have that hard rockin’ edge I was looking for.”

  “Schenectady,” her mother repeated. “You might as well have made me from Los Angeles.”

  “You don’t have to be from Schenectady,” Sarah explained. “You grew up in Alabama, but you moved to Schenectady when you were—”

  “Twenty,” her mother finished. “And had you right away. That would make me fifty now.”

  “I’m glad you’re into the fantasy,” Sarah said dryly.

  “And I’ve moved back to Fairhope to live out my days in quiet solitude, without my only child interloping at inopportune times, such as Christmas.”

  “I was in Rio!”

  “They have airplanes in Rio.”

  Theoretically, Sarah thought.

  That night, she drove Quentin to the hotel where the bridge tournament was held. She marveled that in the car, he never once complained about the strange turn their date had taken. When they registered in the lobby, he towered over the women and stooped elderly men wandering about, yet he seemed completely comfortable. The uncomfortable one was Sarah.

  The moment came. Her mother stood at the edge of the lobby, watching for Sarah, silver hair coifed in its neat bob, chic pantsuit impeccable. Her mother didn’t recognize her.

  Sarah took Quentin’s hand and pulled him toward the inevitable. Her mother noticed them then, but she seemed to recognize Quentin first. Only then did she turn her gaze to Sarah. She wore her poker face, without even the raised eyebrow. Absolutely no reaction. It was almost worse than screams of What have you done to your hair? which was why, as a teenager, Sarah had never attempted to shock her mother.

  Then they embraced, and Sarah introduced her charming mother to charming Quentin. For a few moments, she could almost imagine that she had a normal, loving mother. Even the mother she’d had before her dad died, though not normal, would do. She could almost imagine that she was introducing her normal mother to her handsome boyfriend, who was not in love with someone else.

  Her real mother returned. “I never thought I’d say this,” she drawled, “but I do believe I’ll be glad when this tournament is over tonight. In one hand during the afternoon session, Beulah didn’t lead my suit after I bid it three times!” She glanced at her watch, then toward the ballroom filled with card tables. “Almost time!” She patted Quentin’s arm. “Have fun!” She swept into the ballroom as if she owned it and her partner, cowering at a table, was her maid.

  Quentin stood directly in front of Sarah and looked down at her. “I see where you get your poker face,” he said. “But you kept yours, too. You took it real good.”

  “Thanks.” She looked up into his beautiful green eyes and wished she could spend the evening in his arms. Without even having sex. She just wanted to be held by him. “I hate bridge.”

  They took their assigned places at one of the tables and played for three tedious hours, with their opponents rotating to new tables every so often. Most of the other players seemed to be of the paste-eating variety, and some of the women and all of the men alternately stared at Sarah’s hair and ogled her cleavage. Natsuko would have accepted this as part of the territory, but Sarah minded.

  And it wasn’t even any fun to play bridge with Quentin. Playing poker with novices was difficult for Sarah, because she never knew whether they were making a savvy move or just getting lucky as they bungled their way through the game. Bridge was similar, except that in bridge, Quentin was supposed to be her partner. It was almost impossible to play this partner game by herself. Now she knew how her mother felt.

  A collective gasp echoed in the ballroom. Sarah looked over to see a large elderly lady at another table melt out of her chair and puddle onto the floor. Instantly a man was on top of her, pressing her chest and giving her mouth-to-mouth.

  “Your turn,” the west player said.

  With a shocked look at Quentin, Sarah set down a spade, then glanced back at the woman and the man performing CPR. Other people watched, too, and were periodically hounded by their opponents to keep playing their hands.

  The east player suggested, “We should move our table so the stretcher can get through.” The four of them picked up the table and shifted it toward the wall to clear a path on the ballroom floor.

  “Your turn,” West said again to Sarah.

  The hand ended. They had to wait for the other tables, slowed by rubberneckers, to finish before their opponents could rotate to different tables.

  Quentin stood and stretched. “I’m taking a little break.”

  Sarah nodded. Probably he needed a moment in the lobby, or a drink from the bar, to collect himself after witnessing the shadow of death, or the Vulcan Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament’s crassness in the shadow of death.

  Instead, he walked to the supine woman, tapped the now slowing man on the shoulder as if cutting in at a ball, and took his turn pressing the lady’s chest and giving her mouth-to-mouth.

  West asked East, “How does Annabelle look?” East shook his head.

  “Is she a friend of yours?” Sarah asked in horror.

  “A dear friend,” East said. “But she was doing what she loved to do.” He turned to West. “You really should have led the three of diamonds on that hand.”

  The ballroom doors burst open and two paramedics rolled a stretcher in. It took both of them plus Quentin to lift the lady onto the stretcher, and it was Quentin rather than one of the paramedics who placed an oxygen mask over her face. Finally, as the paramedics wheeled the burdened stretcher out, Sarah thought she heard one of them call to Quentin, “Queen to king two.”

  The ballroom door closed behind them. The hand ended. The east-west pairs switched tables, with the bustle mo
re animated now that there was something to talk about. Several people patted Quentin’s back as he made his way to Sarah, sweat glistening at his temples.

  Sarah asked a passing waiter to bring Quentin a glass of water. She was going to hug him, but he bent over to look into her eyes first. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Your dad didn’t die playing bridge, did he?”

  “Oh, no,” Sarah assured him. “Sitting at home in his favorite chair, listening to Bach.” She shook off a sob. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “No,” Quentin said with finality. “She was already dead when I took over.”

  “Then why’d you keep trying?” Sarah whispered, flashing back to Quentin’s strong arms pressing the dead chest.

  “You have to try,” he said calmly. “You never can tell.”

  Sarah turned to the closed ballroom doors. “Did you know that paramedic?”

  “Yeah,” Quentin acknowledged. “When the Cheatin’ Hearts hit the big time, I was working at the hospital.”

  She murmured, “That explains your cavalier attitude toward IVs.”

  Lost in thought, he looked through Sarah. “Did he say queen to king two?” He swore. Then he focused on her again. “We’ve had a chess game going for three years.”

  He moved past her to pull out the chairs for their last opponents, Sarah’s mother and Beulah. Sarah’s mother asked, “So, enjoying this geriatric excitement?” as Quentin scooted her up to the table.

  “You mean sitting around playing bridge for kicks, right?” Sarah said reproachfully. “I know you’re not making a joke about that poor woman.”

  “I suppose I’m inured,” her mother said. “It happens so often. It happened to my partner at the Fort Custer Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament in Kalamazoo last year.”

  Beulah eyed Sarah’s mother uneasily.

  Sarah exclaimed, “Oh my God, Mom! What did you do when she died?”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, sweetie. It’s not polite. I was able to find another partner by the afternoon session.”

  Quentin made a noise, about to burst into laughter. He covered it by clearing his throat.