“I am not. Do you think I can smoke in here?” Nina craned her neck after the waiter and lit up. “I am totally not.” Her hands moved jerkily. Her dark expressive eyes looked everywhere except at Jewel.
“Bull.” This was icky. Oh, Ed, can’t you fix your own marriage? “You are.”
Nina blew smoke. “Not.”
“Ed found the credit card charges.” You had to persist with Nina. She was as slippery as pup shit and capable of out-shouting Jewel with one vocal chord. “Three hundred and fifty dollars each?”
“I am not having an affair.”
Jewel pushed. “Do you want him to find out?” Was this the North Shore wife’s buildup to divorce—run up a huge credit card debt and then file? She gazed sorrowfully at her friend. “I love your lasagna. I love your kids. What happens to Sunday dinner?” She shook her head. “Oh, Nina.”
Nina sucked in smoke. “He’s my sex therapist.”
Jewel tossed a hand. “Quibble.”
The waiter showed up with fresh margaritas. Nina held the cigarette down below the table edge and flirted with her eyes at him.
“Ash tray, madam?” he said pointedly, setting one next to her margarita.
“Nice butt,” Nina said, stunning Jewel, bringing the cigarette up and dragging again.
The waiter smiled and left, and Nina craned her neck after him. She said, “I have never seen Clay with his clothes off.” Jewel’s certainty was shaken. “Now, the hunk in the bed, that’s another story. But I think you might argue on my side, if you were there.”
Ed should have come. “No wonder you’ve got new spring in your step. Is this why you’ve been losing weight?
“This is the truth. I go in there, I have a drink with Clay, our clothes are on. He’s not my lover, I swear it. He’s my sex therapist.”
For five years Nina had effortlessly pushed Jewel’s buttons and mothered her and driven her crazy, girl-talked her through homesickness, lovesickness, shopping crises, and guy crises. Jewel didn’t handle Nina. Nina handled Jewel.
“Tell me you’re not having sex,” Jewel begged.
“I’ve never seen the other guy either.” Okay, now we come to it. “For all I know, I made him up in a dream. It’s the truth. I can’t lie to you. It’s the plain truth.”
Jewel wanted to say, Ed’s hurt, but that would get her farther into the middle. “I am so disappointed in you.”
That should have signaled the beginning of a fight. But Nina just squinted at her and smoked. “I like your makeup today. Did I buy that for you?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to try this, you know.”
Jewel rolled her eyes.
“You haven’t had a boyfriend in six months. For you that’s an emergency.” Nina tapped ash into her empty margarita glass. “I worried about you when you were dating that creep, the one who liked to choke you during sex. Before that it was whosis, did it in restaurants. For screwing in restaurants you can get arrested, but that other guy! I don’t want to see you dead in a ditch.”
“Neither do I,” Jewel said tightly. “That’s why I dumped them.” This was not a good moment to get drawn into a discussion of her hyperactive libido.
“Yeah, eventually you dumped them. After a while,” Nina said. “You love the kinky shit. I worry.” I worry too. That’s why it’s been six months. “Here’s Clay’s cell number.” Nina pressed a card into Jewel’s hand. “Don’t rush, no pressure, think about it, will you?”
She sat and smoked and eyed Jewel. Standoff.
“Nina, this is not about who has worse judgment when she sleeps around. This is about you and Ed. I need you guys,” Jewel pleaded. “I don’t want you to divorce.”
“He’s Italian, he’ll get over it.” To Jewel’s shocked face Nina said, “That’s the quick way to say, He’s Italian, for years he screwed around with pretty girls at the department, and he knows payback is inevitable. It’s marriage. He’s not a hundred percent dumb. When you turned him down, he brought you home for me to play with.”
“I’m glad he did,” Jewel said, blinking. Ed made a pass at me? “Nina, he’s upset. He asked me to—to—”
“Snoop.”
Jewel slapped the table. “And look what I find! This is worse than an affair. Girlfriend, your husband busts bunco artists for a living. You’re paying a con man three-fifty a pop for fake sex therapy. It doesn’t take Dr. Ruth to figure this out. If you’re so mad at Ed, wouldn’t the real thing be better?”
Nina drew her self up, stubbing out her cigarette with a much-diamonded hand. “This is not about Ed. It’s about me. I am fifty-five. I’ve only ever had Italian-husband sex, which believe me is nothing to write home about, I can’t speak for what he does with his girlfriends.” She jabbed the diamonds at Jewel. “And I. Deserve. To enjoy. Myself.”
“You don’t have to pay for it!”
“What, Ed told you to find me a cheaper lover?”
Jewel threw her hands in the air. “No!”
Nina leaned forward. “Look,” she said, in a coming-off-the-crap tone. “We talk. Clay gives me the key to the treatment room. I go in, I take a nap. That’s it.”
Jewel’s voice rose. “This mope drugs you and screws you in your sleep!”
“Nope.” There was no spin in Nina’s tone. “You look good with a light green eyeliner. Next time I’ll take you to Arden for the full makeover.”
“What about this other guy?”
Nina sighed. “I don’t think he exists. I think somehow Clay hypnotizes me and something in that brass bed, it’s gotta be that bed because it never happens at home, I dunno, but it’s like I imagine the best lover in the world and then I dream about him. Boy.”
“He’s a con artist.”
“He’s no phony. I know,” Nina’s palm came up. “I thought so too. I must have been drunk the first time.” She leaned forward. “But he’s not. It’s real. You gotta try this, I’m serious. Someone with your problems, he could be the answer.”
“I’m not having sex with your ‘sex therapist.’ Ew.”
Nina’s eyes flashed. “I do not have sex with him. It’s—oh, I can’t explain it, you’ll just have to see him yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll see him,” Jewel said grimly. “Criminently, Nina. What have you gotten yourself into?”
Chapter Two
Jewel would have preferred to call Ed and run a background check on Nina’s so-called sex therapist before phoning upstairs to his suite. She would have liked even more to have had some means of collecting a sample of whatever drugged beverages he was sure to offer her. Maybe even wear a wire.
But Nina was standing at her elbow, daring her to get help for her unquenchable sex drive, so it seemed simpler to visit him now while Nina could vouch for her. Plus, that way she could forestall any little professional advice Nina might offer this clown about Jewel’s messed-up-ness.
“I’ll handle this, all right?” she said for the fourth time.
“Of course. I’m referring you.”
“Thanks, but can you refer me from farther away?”
What am I doing here? The department cross-trained everybody, and everybody agreed: Bunco was not her gig. Jewel sucked at undercover, which was why she spent so much time busting Swiftymarts for selling short weight.
But she was sure she could hack it if she tried. She was sick of the routine stuff, sick of administering the Hinky Policy. She wanted a big case. Ed would owe her one, if she could pull this off.
“Yeah, hi,” she said into the house phone, “can you connect me with Clay Dawes, suite 807? Thanks.” Putting her hand over the receiver, she turned to Nina. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Has he ever pressured you to agree to treatment?”
Nina shook her head.
“Has he threatened you? Has he cited authority? Does he claim to be a medical doctor or an accredited psychotherapist?”
Nina kept shaking her head. The
list of prosecutable material facts was leaking out of Jewel’s memory as the phone rang in her ear.
“How about—oh, hi,” she said into the phone, trying to sound breathy and gullible, but sounding drunk to her own ears. “My name is Jewel Heiss, I was referred by a friend of mine, Nina Neccio? I’m downstairs with her right now.”
The guy at the other end of the line sounded like a pot-head, so slowly did he drawl.
“Hel-lo, Jewel, friend of Nina. What can I do for you?”
“Um,” Jewel said, sweating, feeling her margaritas and regretting them, “she recommended a, a service you offer involving a bed. A brass bed.”
Holy kazoony, it sounds like I’m propositioning him. No wonder nobody ever swears out a complaint. How embarrassing is this?
She thought of Ed, staring at charge after charge for $350 “sex therapy” sessions, and her resolve hardened.
The guy calling himself Clay Dawes drawled, “I totally understand, Jewel-friend-of-Nina. Why don’t you come up and we’ll talk about it?”
“Love to,” she said, and hung up. “You better not be setting me up for any shit,” she told Nina. “I will totally kill you.”
“You won’t regret this,” Nina assured her.
“That’s a comfort.”
The elevator dinged.
Clay Dawes turned out to be a hyper-blond. He looked like a surfer bum from Margaritaville in his Hawaiian shirt and chinos. He smiled at Jewel with thirty-something crinkly blue eyes as he swung open his door. She tried to look dignified and sexually non-desperate.
“I’m not used to doing this,” she said haughtily. God, I sound drunk.
“Of course not.” She couldn’t tell if he was pooching his lips out to keep from laughing at her or if he had naturally kissy-face lips. “Can I offer you a glass of wine?”
“I don’t take drugs from strangers,” she said sharply, then remembered to act gullible. “Maybe later.”
He didn’t react. “Let’s sit down.” He led her into an olde worlde living room full of gold-legged furniture and sat down across a coffee table from her. “Nina’s one of my clients, so I can’t talk about what the treatment has done for her. You probably heard it all from her anyway.” His drawl was not Southern but a nasal, boy-next-door, easygoing voice that said, I’ve never been bent out of shape in my life. “Girl talk.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t advertise the treatment. I don’t have to.”
She swallowed. What have you done to my Nina? He was sitting too close. Her palms prickled with a sense of danger.
He looked at her seriously. “You know the fee is three hundred fifty dollars.” She nodded. “I suggest we run your credit card and then hold off before you sign for the charge. After the treatment. No satisfaction, no fee.”
That’s some little guarantee, she thought. Silently, she presented her credit card. He touched her fingers as the card exchanged hands and she felt a little zing.
Don’t let me breathe liquor fumes in his face.
He swiped the card. “This can be a difficult moment for my clients. I hope you won’t mind, I’ll keep talking until you feel ready to ask me something. Will that be all right?”
She tightened her lips. She felt her eyes getting bigger.
“The treatment was designed in the late eighteenth century by a guy who believed in electricity. In those days, electricity was the new Viagra. Of course he only offered it to men.” He made a face and rolled his eyes, and Jewel felt her own eyes rolling too. “He was treating impotence in men. The client takes a simple nap. The treatment does the rest.”
He leaned forward. She began to lean forward, too, and stopped herself.
“I want to make it clear right now that ninety-nine percent of my clients are not really frigid.”
The word flopped out between them. She sucked in a gasp. I may be as kinky as a split-rail fence but I am not frigid.
I need therapy. But not from this guy.
“They’re nice, normal women, maybe married but somehow still lonely. They’re sexually dissatisfied. That’s different from frigid.” Betcher butt, beach boy, she thought. “Usually it’s not their fault. Their husbands may be no good in bed. But, as women will, they blame themselves.”
She felt a stab of guilt; what was that about? He couldn’t know that she was feeling, well, horny. Her margaritas hung in her throat, making her breath tequila-hot, and she was glad he was doing all the talking.
She knew she should ask him point blank if he could cure her frigidity. It wasn’t going to happen. I so suck at undercover. She fantasized that he might be dumb enough to blab a material fact. Then she could ticket him without going a step farther.
“I won’t ask you to talk about why you’re here. That’s too hard in the early sessions,” he said.
It was like he could read her mind, slathering on all the guys-R-jerks sympathy and suggesting she was too shy to talk about sex. She looked deep into his eyes, faking dumb.
“Part of the success of my work is being able to empathize with women, sexually speaking.” He drawled so slowly that every word sank into her like a big dollop of codeine syrup, soothing her nerves and numbing her common sense. “But the miracle is the opening of the human heart that comes with hope. With hope, these women feel ready to take a risk on treatment. And that openness to risk helps create the success they’re paying for. There’s no healing without risk. That’s what hope is for.”
Why did her heart jump every time he said risk? The pupils of her eyes shrank and the room dimmed.
She cleared her throat. “How fake is that? They’re paying you for something they do for themselves.”
He smiled wryly again. Maybe that wry thing was part of his mouth, all plump poochy lips and dimples. “That’s the spiritual aspect. It’s me showing you the door and then getting out of your way. Because sex, good sex, involves a person’s soul.”
What does that make me? She felt weird about herself.
“Well, a woman’s soul,” he said, and did the poochy smile thing again. “No proof yet that men have souls.”
She couldn’t help laughing. This is scary. I’ve got to get out of this room. I’m turning into a mark.
She said, “Don’t you think women just want to have sex sometimes? If your customers are, like, desperate housewives, maybe their problem isn’t soul sickness. Maybe you’re trying to read too much emotion into their sex lives.” Thinking of Ed screwing around on Nina, she hardened her voice. “Maybe they don’t want to have to consider their husbands’ feelings. Maybe they don’t want to have to be sensitive souls. Maybe they just wanna fuck.” That came out loud. “The healthy animal thing.” She lifted her chin, thinking longingly of 4H days back in Wisconsin. “It’s perfectly possible for a woman to enjoy healthy sex without emotional involvement.”
He leaned back in his chair, acting relaxed, but she was sure that was phony. “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes love is so risky, sex is a cop-out.”
How dare he say “cop” to her face!
She leaned forward. “I’m not here about love.”
He chuckled, and she was grateful for her rush of anger. He said, “You know, this conversation is word-for-word the conversation I have with every one of my customers.”
Oh great, now she was a mark and frigid. Had he figured out who she was? He’s messing with my mind and I’m helpless to stop him.
Narrowing her eyes, she said, “So far you haven’t proved you’re anything but a smooth talker.”
He spread his hands. “Look, if I were trying to con you, there are a lot of things I could say.” You’ve already said them. The hands came out, pushing at her. “But since you don’t trust me, I’ll give you the key and let you test the treatment for yourself.” He laid a hotel room key card on the coffee table between them. “I just hope it’s not too much for you.”
Now there was a god damned twinkle in his eye.
The thing was, if Nina weren’t involved, if she didn’t already know he was a fake—well, she might
have been tempted.
She pulled herself up straight, breathing deep. “Oh, no. No, I will not. That proves your operation is a con, that double-bind crap.”
“Really?” he said in that slow voice. “And why is that?” All of a sudden she knew that he knew that she was waiting to bust him. They both knew he had an invulnerable line of bull and it only made her madder.
She sputtered, “If this ‘treatment’ doesn’t work, you call me frigid. And if it does, I’m supposed to let you off the hook. Tell me this,” she said, roostering up. “How exactly will I know if it works?”
He smiled a self-deprecating smile that pooched his lips together. “Oh, you’ll know. It’s unmistakable.”
She snatched the key. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
He murmured, “Word for word.”
Her head filled with hot rage.
He stood and pointed to another door.
She marched past him and stuffed the key in the lock, yanking open the door to his “treatment room.”
He said, “I’ll knock in three hours.”
She slammed the door in his face and threw the deadbolt.
Chapter Three
With her back to the door Jewel thought, That went well. He might guess she was the law, but he’d let her in, and she wouldn’t come out until her three hours were up and she’d caught his accomplice redhanded.
With the door between them she admitted that she had stepped into every one of his verbal traps. She had to think outside the box of his con. If only she didn’t feel so damned drunk.
She went to the bathroom and rinsed her mouth. What the heck, he can’t drug the tap water. She drank from her cupped hands, not trusting the white-paper-capped glass. The water tasted like chlorine. That made her regret again that she hadn’t brought a sample bottle. Went off half cocked.
Her heart still beat too fast, as it had every time he said risk. Whether it was his line of bull or the plain fact that he was a con artist selling sex, he’d pushed every single one of her kinky little buttons. She felt swollen and slippery and pissed off.
Thinking of Nina’s “hunk in the bed,” Jewel checked the windows. Locked. There was no outside door to the bedroom. Checked the closets for hunks and secret doors.
Walking on Sunshine Page 38