The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

by Sharon Pywell

  Ricky suddenly twisted around, frowning. There were footsteps on the stairs. I peered past his shoulder down to the street. Jane’s car. Jane—generous, perpetually cheerful Jane, dropping by because I’d told her I was watching Annie tonight and she’d decided to surprise me and keep me company because she believed everyone wanted company. The steps got closer and there she was on the landing directly behind Luhrmann. She’d been preoccupied with balancing the cake on its pink platter and the scene at my door took her by surprise. She moved toward us, very slowly, but she kept coming toward us.

  “What are you doing here?” she said loudly, but we could both see that the cake was shaking in her hands. I could feel her fear feed something in Luhrmann, make him expand into a slightly larger, leering thing.

  I said, “Jane? Thanks for coming. Is Todd right behind you?”

  Ricky looked from her to me, from me to her, deciding. “Yes,” she lied. “Just behind me.”

  Luhrmann looked me in the eyes. “It’s not over,” he whispered. “Women like you end up regretting how they act.” He pushed off from the door and brushed by Jane, hard, purposefully swinging a shoulder and arm so that the cake and its pretty pink platter flew down the steps behind her, an arc of shattered glass and broken lemon cake. I closed my hand firmly around Jane’s arm and yanked her into the apartment. We bolted the door and watched from a locked window as he made his way to his own car, got in, and drove off.

  “Aunt Neave? Aunt Jane?” Annie, ruffled and sleepy, a good deal of her hair sticking straight up from her head. She had a stuffed bear in her arms. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing,” we said as one.

  Annie considered this. “I smell chocolate!” she accused. “Did you make brownies?”

  “Nope.”

  “I smell them.”

  “It’s chocolate peanut-butter pie,” I admitted.

  “You made it after I went to bed!”

  “It was a surprise. For breakfast.” That was true, but I’d fully expected to make my way through half the pie tonight all by myself. Annie’s face got accusatory. Stern. Certainly Jane’s presence was suspicious.

  “Aunt Jane came over to eat pie with you.”

  “You promise not to tell your mom if we let you stay up and eat pie?” Jane asked. Annie nodded, hard.

  It is an absolute truth that having a little girl under your wing who thinks you can protect her makes you feel more powerful. That could be why we let Annie stay at the table until her face fell directly into her plate, at which point Jane plucked her up and carried her back to bed. We spent a half hour scrubbing cake off the stairs and sweeping up the shattered platter.

  “What are you going to say to Lilly when she comes to pick up Annie?” Jane asked.

  “The truth. That he’s a psychopath and I’m furious with her for starting up with him again.”

  “Something’s wrong with him. He’s not normal. Neave, I heard what he said.”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “He said it wasn’t over. He said you’d regret something. He didn’t come to see Lilly, did he? He came to say those things to you. He didn’t even know Annie was here. I’m calling Todd and telling him to come over and wait with us until Lilly comes home.”

  “No, you will not. He’s not coming back tonight. I’ll bolt the downstairs and the upstairs doors. Besides, Lilly will be here any minute.”

  “Oh, Neave,” my gentle and brave little sister said, her face darkening around lowered, worried eyebrows. “It’s times like this I wish you were married.”

  * * *

  When Lilly came to pick Annie up I described our evening. She got mad—not at Luhrmann, at me. “Why did you go talk to Max? Why would you do that!” she demanded. “You just went and got Ricky crazy. I told you he and Max didn’t get along. That’s all you accomplished!”

  “How can you talk to me like any of this is my fault?”

  “I told you not to talk to Max!”

  “It wasn’t Max who came here and threatened me. Neither one of us think Max left a piece of meat on my door. Do we? Or put your perfume on an animal and then broke its neck! You know in your bones that it was Ricky. What does he have to do? The dog in the car, Lilly!”

  “I know this is hard for you to hear, Neave, but you don’t understand.”

  “No. I don’t.” Lilly turned her face away from me. “Lilly? What are you thinking? Please tell me it’s done; tell me if he calls you again you’ll hang up!”

  “Stop worrying,” she said, and I don’t know how I knew but it was clear and sharp and certain. She was going to see him again.

  NEAVE

  What Could Be Worse?

  For the first time in my life I felt like I couldn’t reach my sister, couldn’t find any way to make her see me, listen to me. She said there was nothing to worry about, which was clearly a lie. I went to Jane, who had no advice or guidance to offer. It was surely a sign of how helpless and crazed I felt that I brought the whole subject up with Snyder. We had just gone over a month’s cash flow for his business, which was doing so well that he’d had to hire an assistant and get a second telephone line.

  “I knew guys like Ricky in high school.” He shrugged. “That dog thing you’re talking about, I knew two guys who had dead cats left in their lockers. That happens to you, you tell nobody or the next thing you find in your locker’ll be worse.”

  “What could be worse than a dead cat in your locker?”

  “Just the head of the cat.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I was one of the two guys.”

  After a moment of silence in which it was clear that I felt a little stricken on his behalf he added, as if to comfort me, “The head was just a threat. Never actually materialized.”

  But the dead cats had.

  I tried to talk to Charles but took care to stop short of speaking about the things that really scared me. I told him about the threatening visit, but not the dog.

  “You’re overreacting again. This ex-husband of your sister’s sounds shallow and a little stupid. Even if he did actually do these things—trying to scare you, playing pranks and yelling … those are the things a little boy does. They’re childish. Doesn’t your sister have a few other ex-husbands? I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

  I was of two minds about this reassurance. I was grateful, because I’d wanted to be reassured and he offered this; I was disgusted, because the reassurance felt so blind and dumb and cowardly, so far from the reality of Ricky Luhrmann at my door, whispering “Bitch” with white spittle at the corners of his mouth. Charles Helbrun III didn’t believe in evil. What good was he when it raised its head and hissed?

  It’s a lonely thing to be the only person who sees what’s sitting coiled right in front of you. So one afternoon when Ruga Potts and I sat over a row of sample lipsticks to compare color and texture, I told her about Ricky Luhrmann’s visit. Also the meat and the dog. Ruga Potts had met Ricky Luhrmann on a couple of occasions when he’d come to the office to pick up Lilly. Ruga reacted with a shrug, like Charles Helbrun had done, but she had lived in places Charles Helbrun had only read about in the newspaper. “That kind of man,” she said, “you try to ignore him he just comes back and lines your family outside your front door and shoots them. He only leaves you alive so you can tell others what he did. So he can poison their sleep as well as yours.”

  I nodded. That was more like it.

  LILLY AND BOPPIT

  Are You Made for Fire or Ice?

  “Look at this Revlon advertisement, Boppit. This ad launched a million nail polish sales. It’s the reason Be Your Best started to make money on the stuff.”

  “I know that.”

  We were looking at the “Fire and Ice” nail polish advertisement that changed the beauty business. There was a statuesque model in a skin-tight sequined dress, her gleaming nails fanned across her face and hip. A red cloak was gathered and draped through her arms and behind her
shoulders, framing her. “That brilliant little quiz they included in the ad,” I went on. “Look at this woman, all lit up like a silver goddess with red talons: ‘Question one: Are you made for Fire and Ice? Question two: Would you rather have a cocktail with Mata Hari or tea with Florence Nightingale?’”

  “Well, of course the correct responses are ‘Hand me that martini,’ and ‘Hello, Mata Hari,’” says Bop. “Did you know that Mata Hari was executed wearing a Creed suit?”

  “The suit is not the point, Dog.”

  “Oh, but it is. She was Mata Hari, in part, because she knew what a Creed suit could do for her waist and because she carefully chose her execution outfit. That, my dear, is class. But the real point is that glamour has always required a little touch of tramp. It’s why your ‘Fast Girl’ hot pink and ‘Vampy Red’ flew out the door. Every girl wants a little Pirate Lover in her life.”

  “A little what?”

  “You know. Like that book. Evil threatens; people experience sexual adventures, some of a very sordid nature; love triumphs. All that.”

  “Damn book. She should never have stolen it.”

  “It wasn’t really stealing. Mrs. Daniels knew she had it.”

  “Really?”

  “Mrs. Daniels is a woman who paid attention. Actually, she was charmed when she noticed the book was missing. She knew where it was.”

  “This is all taking so long, Boppit. How are we supposed to get to Neave?”

  “We think and think until we’ve got her clear in our mind. We concentrate. First she’ll be like a picture in a frame; then the picture will start to move so it feels like a movie; then it gets its real depth and heft, like a hallucination.”

  “So it’s imaginary. Not true.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the most true. We get her firmly in our minds. At first she’ll just feel us like a memory. Or a dream. We move closer. We concentrate. She thinks of us. We think of her. It’s only a matter of time before she sees us, and we’ll help her deal with her situation.”

  “Which is very bad,” I said.

  Mr. Boppit nodded. “It is.”

  NEAVE

  I Am Not Alone

  Going back to Max Luhrmann made no sense, maybe, but it was what I did. He was in my head. Actually, his throat, the part of the throat just above the collarbone that shows when a shirt’s top button is open—that was in my head.

  I found him sitting at his desk working something out with a slide rule. He went very still while he listened to my description of Ricky’s visit: the smashed plate, the spittle on the lips. He stayed still for a full two minutes, which is a long time if you’re sitting in front of somebody trying not to stare.

  “He said it wasn’t over? That you’d regret it? He used those words?”

  I nodded. “He said that women like me end up regretting the way we act.”

  “Well, you wanted to find him so you could speak to him. Now you’ve spoken to him and you know how helpful talking to Ricky really is.”

  “You hate him.”

  “I wouldn’t use that word.”

  “What words would you use?”

  “Every choice I’ve made I’ve made because I thought that Ricky would not make it. It’s given him a strange power over my life. He’s shaped it because I made myself in direct opposition to him. We know each other so far under the skin that I feel a buzz in my scalp when he gets too close to me. Neave, trust me when I say that you don’t want him to show up at your apartment again. Don’t stay there alone. Reconsider moving in with your sister or your brother.”

  I ran through this idea again. Again, I imagined Luhrmann arriving at Janey’s door, Annie answering his knock, Luhrmann smiling, the tiny girl alone there in the doorway with him for just a little window before anyone knew what was happening. I imagined Luhrmann at Snyder’s door, towering over my brother, pushing past him into his apartment or studio, driving him into a wall with the force of nothing but his own bulk. I said, “I’m not going to their houses.”

  “Then you have to at least get harder to find. Take my offer to let you use the Rubber Duck. Don’t be alone nights. Sleep on board until this blows over.”

  Things were not likely to blow over. The Ricky Luhrmanns of the world don’t lose interest and stroll away. They slither out of sight under an abandoned car or wood pile, and next thing you know they’re back, coiled in your bathroom sink when you go to get a glass of water in the middle of the night.

  “Max, do you believe in evil?” I asked him.

  He responded immediately, easily. “Of course I do.”

  My response was as quick and artless as his had been. “Thank God,” I said.

  Which made him laugh.

  “You don’t think things are going to blow over, do you?” I said.

  “No.” The word was frightening, but Max looked alert and calm. Just facts, his manner seemed to say. You have to work with the facts. “Neave, I grew up with him. We know each other. I didn’t want it to get to this point, but here we are. Let me help you.”

  I felt a kind of cool rush move through my abdomen and up to my chest. It wasn’t fear. It was something else.

  “Just think about it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking about him. Max Luhrmann was in my head and Max Luhrmann believed in evil.

  I was not alone.

  THE PIRATE LOVER

  Saved

  The cold shock of immersion was so total, so encompassing, that at first Electra could not draw a breath. She sank down, struggling. Then she felt a hand around her body, another body rising up in the water beneath her and lifting her, pulling her to the surface. She gasped and her chest opened to accept the bracing air.

  “You are strong, Electra. You can reach safety with me.” His voice was so clear! It penetrated the deepest parts of her. A wind behind the change in the tide cut the water’s surface up, a turmoil of foam around them and the waves building higher. Lightning again, and in its light she could see Henri Le Cherche’s black ship behind them and the Cat half a league away and firing steadily toward their enemy. Waves broke around them in lacy confusion. But Basil Le Cherche’s powerful body swam now alongside her, now beneath her, and she glided beside him, taking whatever risk there was with a high heart and more confidence in this strange man than she had ever felt for any other human being. She did not fear the future or consider the past—there was only this moment with this figure pushing through the waves, pulling her along with him.

  He felt the change in her body, the fluid reengaging of thighs, arms, the coming to life in the water. Still he held her aloft and she let herself be held as he swam in steady great thrusts away from their captor’s ship. They could see the silhouettes of sharpshooters in the Cat’s rigging, waiting for Henri Le Cherche’s ship to get close enough for them to do their deadly work by light of cannon fire and lightning.

  Electra felt her body pressed to Basil Le Cherche’s, moving with him stroke for stroke. They moved in a dark waste of water while the world above and beyond them seemed full of fire. She felt something she could only call joy—a keen sense that she was thoroughly present and struggling for survival alongside a man who was thrillingly alive, whose touch had changed her irrevocably.

  “Are you with me, little witch?” he called to her over deafening sounds around them.

  “I am, truly!” she cried.

  Another flash of lightning and she saw that Basil Le Cherche was smiling at her—smiling in this moment when they struggled through what might become their watery grave. She threw her head back and laughed. “Let Destiny take me where she will,” she cried, “for she led me to you, Basil Le Cherche. If death is the price I pay for that leading, I shall tender Destiny what I owe her.”

  They met each other’s eyes then in the enormity of the night sea as if there were only them, only these two beings in the entire universe.

  A rending crash behind them and they twisted around together to
see—the broad expanse of one of Judge Henri Le Cherche’s convoy’s mizzen sails was slowly, slowly, collapsing over the side, bringing a mass of spars and ropes with it as it fell. Electra and Basil witnessed the destruction, heard the screams of men pinned and broken beneath it, the shouts of others cutting away the rigging so the ship could make way again and not be turned to take the waves directly against her exposed starboard side, leaving her wallowing between troughs and in danger of capsizing. The other ships in the convoy let loose their sails, temporarily stopped their chase of the Cat, and made for their crippled companion.

  “We will be within hailing distance of the Cat in but a few strokes! If they know their captain and their profession, they will be scanning for any sign of us,” Basil cried. “We have but the narrowest window, and have no doubt about it, my brother will be shipping a launch over the side to search for us the instant he realizes we are gone.”

  No sooner had he said these words than Electra saw a darker shape in the water ahead: a barge, oarsmen pulling hard, every man scanning the waves in search of them.

  “Basil!” she cried. “Ahead of us! Is it your brother’s?”

  Basil peered into the darkness and though she could not see it, the changes she felt in the body gliding by her side made it clear that he was smiling still. “It is the Cat’s launch—our own Cat.” He bellowed out in a gale wind voice. “Ahoy, Cat!”

  “Cap’n? Cap’n, keep up your calling, sir, in this flaming bloody dark so we can find you and get you aboard before those swabs sail around that goddamn mess and come to blow us to Kingdom Come!”

  And so they were dragged, dripping and shaking, into the boat and swathed in cloaks as the barge crew pulled madly back to the ship. Within the hour they were on the quarterdeck of the Cat, the ship running for its life, skipping into waters threaded through with sandbanks and islands—places that Basil Le Cherche’s somewhat piratical crew knew intimately but that would be death to the deep-bottomed ships of Henri Le Cherche’s convoy. Anchor dropped, night watch set, Basil Le Cherche took Electra Gates’s hand and led her to his cabin. He peeled the storm-soaked silk from her body and stood gazing upon her, and she let herself be regarded. In his eyes she saw things that made her feel feverish, urgent. She stepped toward him, wound herself around him, felt in his body the clear proof of his answering feelings. “Take me now, Le Cherche, or I will not be able to bear it,” she whispered. “Now!”