I have to admit it had looked really good on me, too. I had no idea my waistline was as small as Nell’s was. And we all do borrow one another’s garments from time to time; we just tend to ask first. I asked Jem about her plans for the next episode of Bad Date.
She went over and opened the living room window to release some of the cigarette smoke from the room. “What do you think?” Her tone was surly. “Unless someone gets bounced for lying, it looks like a sure thing that I’m going to be the next person off the show. Congratulations, ladies, you’re both one step closer to a million dollars. Do me a favor and remember me in your wills!”
Jem left the living room and removed a thick volume from her shoulderbag. “I finally finished the Katharine Graham bio,” she said to me, “so you can have it back. What an amazing career she had.” Jem headed off to my bedroom to deposit the book and, before I could stop her, she’d opened the door and entered the room.
“What the f—?” she said, staring, stunned, at a long blonde dynel tendril hanging from my underwear drawer. I had no place to stash the wig so I’d stuffed it in my drawer. My bedroom is near the front of the apartment so I didn’t need to pass the living room to get there. Nevertheless, in my haste to get undressed undetected by Nell, I’d just sort of shoved away the elements of my disguise as quickly as I could. I managed to return Nell’s D&G mini by sneaking past her with the leather skirt hidden under my bathrobe as I claimed to be heading to take a shower.
“Wait, Jem!” I cried, putting out my arm to try to stop her from opening the drawer. I wanted to say, “There’s a good explanation for everything.”
“You evil little witch,” Jem said to me, quietly, evenly. “Some fucking friend. I’ll just take this, if I may,” she continued, even more quietly, removing the wig from my bureau drawer.
She left my bedroom without saying another word, just slunk out, feline, in control.
I sat on my bed and cried. A couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Nell, still draped in the granny square afghan, pushed it open. She’d been crying, too. She looked at me with the saddest little tearstained face. I’ve seen her cry before, but this was the first time I’d noticed how bloodshot her blue eyes had become. “Why me, Liz?” she asked in a small voice. “Did I ever do anything to deliberately hurt you? And if I did, whatever it was, I’m really sorry.” She slid the crocheted blanket from her shoulders and balled it up in front of her. “Here,” she said, trying to throw it at me. It landed in an oddly shaped heap on the floor. “Take it back. I don’t want it anymore.”
For a moment we just looked at each other, huge, silent tears rolling down both our faces. I reached out my arm to her but she shrank back, still holding my gaze. After another few moments, she turned and left my room. I wrapped myself in the afghan and sat staring at the door. “Nell, wait!” I called to her.
I found her in the living room sobbing in front of Notting Hill . “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or Jem either.” I extended my hand to her. “Come with me. I want to talk to Jem.”
I knocked gently on the door to Jem’s bedroom.
“What?” came the muffled response. “You’re not coming in.”
“Then I’ll stand out here. Jem, I sent over the Bolly. In fact I followed you from the time you and Carl left 4-C until just after you got the champagne. I did it— trailed you—because I was dead curious to see what this guy you’ve been deriding for the past seven-plus years was like in the flesh. And not only was he great-looking, with the manners of an angel and the patience of a saint, considering you tried to ruin the date every step of the way . . . but you were having so much fun it was breaking my heart that you were trying so hard to manipulate the evening into a disaster.”
“It was none of your damn business, Liz.”
“I know . . . but I saw how happy you looked this evening. Jem, you laughed! And you don’t even laugh at the Marx Brothers.”
“I hate choosing sides, Jem,” Nell added urgently. “But I think we should consider forgiving Liz. She might have acted like a dodo bird, but at the time she thought she was doing a good deed.”
I heard Jem sort of growl through the door. “What you decide to do is up to you, Nell. Now leave me alone.”
Nell and I exchanged a glance, then a hug. I’d come clean, confessed, and at least Nell had understood and absolved me. But Jem? I had no idea where things now stood between us. All I could do was wait anxiously for the other shoe to drop.
19/
The Roach Motel
For the first time in ages, I had actually been looking forward to coming into work. It got me out of the house and away from Jem who didn’t teach morning classes, although I admit I spent the day having a mild anxiety attack wondering what she might be up to.
The dynamic duo, Jason and F.X., knocked on my door sometime around eleven and told me they had good news for me. At least they hoped it was good news. They were sending me to Miami for a couple of days to meet with the Numbers Crunchers clients.
“Why isn’t F.X. going?” I was puzzled. Ordinarily, it’s the account execs who interface with the clients; they don’t send copywriters on road trips, especially when hotel accommodations and per diems come into play.
“His wife’s family is in town from Madison . . . or someplace with an M in it,” Jason said, responding for his corporate partner. “And she’s throwing a hissy fit because every time her parents come in to the city, F.X. pulls a disappearing act.”
“Liz, the client loved the stuff you worked up, but he wants to make just a few changes. And at this point it makes sense to have you down there to work with him and his team, rather than postpone the meeting. You’re the one who has to do the rewrites, anyway.”
I wondered why the other account exec in the office wasn’t anxious to go. After all, from what I’d heard of the demographic of the South Beach area lately, it was Jason’s kind of town. So what the hell was Jack Rafferty doing living there?
Oh, shit. Jack Rafferty lives there. And yet he was the one person I most wanted to see. Maybe, away from my home turf and the tension caused by my roommates and the television show, we might have a chance to explore what was going on between us.
“Numbers Crunchers is F.X.’s account, not mine,” Jason said simply. “And we’ve just landed a new account that I pulled the short straw on, so I’ve got to meet with the client on that one.”
“It’s a newly minted show for the Food Network,” F.X. said. “Spiritual Chinese Cooking. Set to run on Sunday mornings. The show is called Wok with Mee. Don’t give me that look, Liz. I don’t make these things up.”
So, I was being packed off to Miami. Land of sun, sand, and spring break. Land of prunes, plaid polyester golf pants, and early bird specials. Land of Tito’s Famous South Beach restaurant . . . and Jack Rafferty. The meeting with the Numbers Crunchers folks was set for Friday morning. I was supposed to catch a flight back to New York that evening. Then there was the fifth episode of Bad Date to hurdle on Sunday.
Actually, it felt pretty good to have an opportunity to get out of Dodge after the debacle of Jem’s good-bad date. And I was getting an extra day and a half in the bargain that I could use to sightsee, or just veg out on a wicker chaise by a green-blue swimming pool and sip umbrella drinks with silly names in improbable colors.
F.X. handed me a thick envelope. I opened it and found my round-trip airline ticket, rental car voucher, and the hotel confirmation for the trendy new Palmetto hotel in South Beach. Attached to the Palmetto reservation was a splashy article from Architectural Digest, citing the hostelry as one of America’s top ten newly renovated hotels, offering any number of quirky perks. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to name a four-star hotel for a cockroach the size of a Honda Civic.
“Look,” Jason said, pointing to a paragraph of the article, “you can tell them ahead of time what your fantasies and pleasures are and they try to accommodate you—within reason, of course. Their motto is �
�Just so long as no one gets hurt.’ ”
“In that case they can take the bugs out of my room,” I said.
“Oh, come on, Liz, it’ll be fun. To be honest with you, I really do wish I were the one who was going on this field trip. I hate my in-laws. They must be the only people from Wisconsin who consider Cheez Whiz a delicacy.”
“Well then, F.X., if I get my fantasy treatment, tell them to float lavender rose petals in my bath water every day. Have a masseuse on call for me twenty-four hours—”
“Oh, that’s so tame,” Jason said.
“Yeah,” I quipped. “You’d want a twenty-four-hour well-oiled cabana boy.”
“And on that note, I think it’s time we all got back to work,” F.X. said. “After the client meeting, give us a call with a postmortem.”
All during my flight to Miami the following day, I thought about Jack Rafferty. Did I want to initiate contact with him? Something drew me to him, yet managed to put me on edge at the same time. He was gorgeous, funny, fun to be with, but I couldn’t yet figure out whether his romantic interest in me was genuine. One thing was for sure, I still didn’t totally trust him . . . like when he told me he did want something and the something was simply to get to know me better. Although I couldn’t forget his words, for the most part he just seemed too nice to be on the level.
Maybe I should track him down, I thought to myself. In the guise of saying hey, I’m in town on business for a couple of days and I sure would love a local tour guide. Whaddya say, Jack? Then I could scope him out a bit. If Jem and Nell were correct in surmising that he befriended me for a reason, my best guess was that it had something to do with our competing against one another on the show. Yet that kind of underhanded behavior flew in the face of the personality of the man I’d come to like so much. The Jack Rafferty who’d stuck it out in the Mount Sinai ER with me was not a manipulative guy. I was eager for an opportunity to cozy up to him and hopefully prove that my roommates’ opinions had been all wrong.
The Palmetto was one of those newly renovated art deco hotels on Collins Avenue. It had been a long time since I’d been down to Miami. In the South Beach area anyway, the gay scene was indeed very much in evidence. I regretted SSA’s not having sent Demetrius down here, too. A few doors from the hotel, I spotted an old-style Jewish deli called Ess SoBe and laughed. Yiddish flavor, modernized. I pulled into the semicircular driveway and a valet materialized, wearing a white polo shirt with a golden bug insignia—a palmetto—over the left breast. I showed him my hotel room confirmation, he handed me a ticket, and after a similarly attired bellhop unloaded my luggage from the trunk, he disappeared with my rental car into an underground garage.
Imagine a science fiction/horror movie with a Midas touch. Everything in the otherwise all-white lobby was adorned with gold palmettos, from the design woven into the carpet runner on the marble lobby floor to— ugh—the service bell at the front desk. The Architectural Digest article Jason and F.X. had given me didn’t begin to capture the ambiance. I guess they didn’t want to freak out the tourists. Since there was no one around to help me check in, I tapped the bug-shaped golden bell. Its wings flew out and the bell emitted a noise that summoned the concierge. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
My bedroom, white on white on white, with overstuffed sofa and armchairs and a fluffy white downfilled comforter on the king-sized four-poster bed, was accented with palmettos. They were everywhere, from the finials on the four-poster to the finials on the curtain rods, to—and this really grossed me out—the handles on all the water faucets in the bathroom. Even the house stationery and note pads were embossed with a golden flying cockroach. What I wouldn’t have done for a can of Raid. I could predict having nightmares in this room. Who the hell did they think their target customers were? Entomologists?
I found a local phone book in one of the desk drawers and looked up Jack Rafferty. No listing. Then I checked for Tito’s Famous under the business listings and found the restaurant. I couldn’t figure out where it was in relation to the Palmetto and I didn’t feel like getting back in the car and looking for it. It was probably a better idea to call the restaurant first anyway, rather than pop by on the chance that Jack was on the premises. I had no idea what his hours were.
I rang the number and was immediately put on hold. After what seemed like forever, a woman with a pleasant Latina lilt to her voice apologized for keeping me waiting. I asked her if Jack was there and told the woman I was a friend of his from New York who was in town for a couple of days. “Tell him it’s Liz,” I said. The woman apologized again for needing to put me on hold. About a half minute later, Jack picked up the phone.
“Hey there.”
“Hey there yourself, Jack.”
“So what brings you to our fair city? Weather to your liking?”
“A bit too hot, if you really want my opinion on the subject. Down here you may call it ‘sultry,’ but we Yankees just call it ‘muggy.’ ”
“Well, let’s see what we can do to cool you off. Had dinner yet?”
“Jack, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Sorry, I’ve completely lost track of time. Things are crazy here today. The sous-chef called in sick, my hostess never returned from her lunch break, and the Easter baskets I ordered for my staff were just delivered a mere week and a half late. Have you got plans for dinner, then?”
“Not a thing.”
“Tell you what. I’ll swing by, pick you up around seven o’clock. Does that sound like a plan?”
“Sounds terrific. Are you clairvoyant?”
“Not the last time I checked. Why?”
“How can you pick me up if you don’t know where I am?” I told him where I was staying, describing the bug motif in detail, including the mosquito netting– style draperies hanging from the four-poster that gave the bed a casbah fantasy sort of appearance. “I suppose it’s to keep all the palmetto representations in the room from disturbing one’s slumber. I have to get out of here, Jack; I’m beginning to itch. See you in the lobby at seven.”
I hung up the phone and changed into my bathing suit, immediately thinking it was a mistake not to have brought my “slimsuit,” having opted instead for the first two-piece I’d worn in decades. It exposed parts of my body I didn’t even remember. I grabbed the complimentary bathrobe with its golden palmetto insignia embroidered over the left breastal area and checked the informational looseleaf (with a gold bug in relief on the book cover) for directions to the pool. I really hoped the swimming pool didn’t resemble what I feared it might.
It did.
Hadn’t these people heard of overkill?
I did a couple of laps in the belly of the bug, pausing momentarily to chuckle at the giant butterfly nets at the end of long, telescopic poles, poles that are usually used for scooping bugs and other detritus from pools. I had visions of a giant bug wielding the pole and scooping up all the humans from the pool in an extra-large net.
I toweled myself dry and summoned one of the roving staffers to ask about their drinks menu. I was swiftly handed a laminated card listing the usual “umbrella” cocktails: piña coladas, planters’ punch, hurricanes, mai-tais, and the specialty of the house—a Jem-like concoction combining Cuervo Gold, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, and Galliano, that yellow liqueur they use to make Harvey Wallbangers—called, what else? A Palmetto. When in Rome, I thought, and ordered one.
Two-thirds of the way through the second Palmetto, I was feeling no pain.
When the sun finally dipped past the horizon, I headed back up to my room to shower and dress. The creepy bug faucets didn’t bother me as much now that I was comfortably anesthetized. I had no idea how women dressed for dinner in South Beach so I went with something I knew I looked good in, a princess-seamed silk dress in tiny turquoise gingham checks with spaghetti straps that had the habit of slipping off my shoulders. Bare legs. My only pair of Manolos, bought years ago on final sale.
At precisely seven P.M., I headed down to the lobby
. Jack was waiting for me, looking damn fine. His white shirt set off his light tan, giving him a healthy glow. We embraced casually, his lips brushing mine in a friendly, unromantic kiss.
He pulled back to get a better look at me. “You look fantastic, Liz. That’s a great color for you.” He put his arm on my shoulder and steered us toward the front door.
“So, are you taking me to Tito’s Famous?”
Jack gave me a “you must be mad” look and shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I don’t mix business and pleasure. Besides, I’ve told you I’m not proud of our kitchen.”
“I take it you and Tito aren’t seeing eye-to-eye lately.”
Jack sighed. “It’s been that way for a while now. Call me madcap, but it just seems to me—speaking as a businessman as well as a chef—that the food should be a restaurant’s main attraction.” His look didn’t invite further comment from me.
I couldn’t believe the car that appeared a few minutes later, a deep midnight blue convertible with a right-hand drive. “Is this yours?” I asked, totally blown away. “It’s gorgeous—and I’m no car connoisseur. What is it?”
“A 1964 Aston Martin.” Jack pulled out of the driveway. “Lovingly restored and maintained by yours truly. I figured if I wanted to drive around in something like this, I’d better get to know it intimately. Try finding a good mechanic for a forty-year-old classic. Now, where shall we go for dinner? How about one of Miami’s most celebrated restaurants for something you can’t get in New York. C’mon, it’s not fancy, but I’ll take you to Joe’s Stone Crab House.”
“You must be joking.” I looked over at him. “Jack? Do the two words anaphylactic shock mean anything to you?”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. You must think I’m a total idiot.”
“Not totally,” I teased. “ Just nefarious.” DEATH BY SHELLFISH, I could just see the New York Post headline proclaim, with an article that began: “Gotham copywriter Liz Pemberley was found dead in the posh Palmetto hotel Wednesday night after dining with one of her competitors on television’s hottest new reality show, Bad Date. Miami restaurateur Jack Rafferty, who once tried unsuccessfully to knock Pemberley out of the running for the million-dollar jackpot by cooking her a lobster dinner, finally succeeded in his mission by force-feeding her a local Miami delicacy, stone crabs.”
Reality Check Page 15