“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Hey, Liz, this Jack guy thinks you’re pretty wonderful. I think he’s a keeper.’ ”
I laughed, and hugged him to my breasts.
“You make me so happy, Liz. Are you happy?”
I nodded. “Can’t you tell?” I teased. “What’s more important is that you also make me happy when we’re fully dressed.”
Jack ran his thumb along my lower lip. “You’re a wonderful lover . . . and a terrific friend, as well. I enjoy your companionship immensely.” He rose and released me from my sweet bondage. The four neckties looked a bit the worse for wear. I certainly had sweated and strained against them. “Well, that’s why drycleaning was invented,” he said, and tossed them into a small wicker hamper. He opened the mirrored door that led to the head and turned the tap in the sink, returning with two wet terrycloth hand towels embroidered “Circe.” Jack sat beside me on the bed and handed me one of the towels, using the other to cool and cleanse me from head to toe, which in and of itself provided a sensual thrill. I used my towel to do the same for him. The terry went from cool to warm as it captured the heat coming off our bodies. When we were through, Jack hung the towels over a bar in the head and returned to bed.
We were both spent. My legs felt like Jell-O. My brain, equally giddy with sexual satisfaction, felt like one big, happy, party balloon.
Jack blew out the candles and we pulled down the coverlet. We snuggled close, under the bedclothes. “Thank you,” I murmured. “It’s been a beautiful day.”
Jack took me in his arms and whispered, “Sleeping together is great, but waking up together is even better. There’s something I finally get to ask you, Liz.”
“What is it?”
“How do you like your eggs?”
“Jack?” I murmured softly, feeling myself drifting off, “can you crack an egg with one hand?” His face was close enough so that the sliver of moonlight streaming through the hatch illuminated his puzzled expression.
“Of course I can, I’m a chef. I can even do two at once. Why?”
“Because . . . because maybe I’m silly . . . but I think that’s one of the sexiest things a man can do.” I kissed his lips. “Goodnight, my captain.”
I fell into the deepest sleep I can remember in years, with my head resting against the soft hair on Jack’s chest.
22/
Pet Projects
Jack wasn’t beside me when I rolled over, awakened by a shaft of sunlight that kissed my cheek as it came down through the open skylight. I sat up in bed, still feeling dazed. Wow, what an evening it had been.
He entered the stateroom with a wicker breakfast tray. “You never did say how you like your eggs, so I brought you some coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.” Jack placed the tray on the bed. “Good morning, cutie,” he said, kissing me.
“When did you get up?” I asked, sipping the juice. Very little on this planet is better than the taste of “fresh-squozen” orange juice.
“Been up for a while,” Jack shrugged. “Checked the anchor, spruced up a little of the bright work, listened to the weather forecast up on the deck, even wrote a poem. And no, you can’t see it. It’s a lovely morning, by the way.”
“What time is it?” I’d put my watch in my purse when we were sailing yesterday because I wasn’t sure how waterproof it really was.
“11:12 A.M.,” Jack answered, looking at his watch. “And time to be heading back to port before that crunching sound you hear will be our hull against a rock.”
Crunching sound.
Numbers Crunchers.
Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.
My meeting with the Numbers Crunchers client was supposed to have started on Biscayne Boulevard one hour and twelve minutes ago.
And where was I?
Off the coast of Miami enjoying the delightful and affectionate company of a new friend and lover, the afterglow of sensational sex, the first good night’s sleep I’d had in months, strong coffee, and fresh orange juice. The Circe had earned her name. Lured the unsuspecting away from duty and into the arms of passion, delayed them so long with her charms that they forgot where they were originally headed.
“How long will it take us to get back to port, Jack?”
“About three hours.”
“Where the hell did I leave my purse?” I jumped up and searched for it in the stateroom, finally locating it on the banquette in the salon. I fished for my cell phone and my little appointment book. Thank God something had told me not to take it out of my bag when I left the hotel yesterday to head off to Vizcaya. I started to go up to the deck to make a couple of rather urgent phone calls when Jack stopped me.
“You’re naked, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. In the immortal words of Jack Rafferty, ‘Who’s going to see me?’ ”
“When I went on deck naked it was around two A.M.”
“Screw it.” I grabbed my white linen blouse, slipped my arms through the sleeves, and went up top. Before I alarmed Jason and F.X. it made more sense to locate the client and see if we could move the meeting to sometime later in the afternoon. I phoned the client’s office, fudged by telling the receptionist that I had gotten tied up—well, that was true, wasn’t it?— and missed the ten o’clock start-time for our meeting. She very nicely informed me that my client Mr. Grossman had waited for me as long as he could, and that he had just left for his noon golf date with his local congressman, was heading straight from the course to his brother’s wedding in Baltimore, and wouldn’t be back in the office until Monday.
Shit and double shit. This wasn’t good. I phoned SSA and got Jason on the line. The getting tied up line wouldn’t work with him because he had sent me down there to do only one thing: meet with Grossman to finalize the Numbers Crunchers copy. What could I use? Kidnapped by a pirate captain to whose lustful desires I most willingly submitted? Food poisoning?
Good enough.
“I found out I’m allergic to shellfish, Jason. And I missed the meeting.” Both sentences were true. They just had nothing to do with one another. So, technically, I wasn’t lying.
“Liz, you’re already on probation,” Jason reminded me. Now I felt sick to my stomach. “Look, obviously there’s nothing we can do about this now . . .”
“I did try to reschedule for later in the day. My flight doesn’t leave until close to dinner time. I’m really, really, really sorry about this. It was just an . . . extenuating . . . circumstance.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“We’ll talk about this first thing Monday morning,” Jason said. Then, in what sounded like an afterthought, he added, “Fly safe.”
Jack came up on deck, holding my coffee cup. He saw me fold up the cell phone and must have caught the look on my face. “What’s up, pumpkin?” he asked, handing me the mug.
“Guess where I was supposed to be an hour and a half ago? And guess what couldn’t be rescheduled? So, guess who’s fucked?” I exhaled an exasperated sigh. “I blew my assignment. Only one goddamn thing I had to do down here in three days, only one brief meeting, only one place where I absolutely had to be at a specific time on a given day, and I blew it.” I took a couple of sips of coffee. “I’ve never been like this, Jack. When it comes to assignments, I’m the fucking Rock of Gibraltar. It’s only since I auditioned for Bad Date—since I met you, as a matter of fact— that I’ve been screwing up everything at work. I haven’t always loved every product, but at least I did a good job with its ad campaign. In the past month, I have walked out in the middle of a pitch for one client and totally blown this meeting with another. If the Number Crunchers thing had been across town, it would have been bad enough, but this entire field trip—the airfare, hotel, per diem—is on the company dime. SSA can’t possibly charge the client for it; I never showed up! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, and wouldn’t blame them, if Jason and F.X. expected me to reimburse the agency for this whole debacle.”
Jack stood behi
nd me and massaged my shoulders, then gently stroked my hair and placed his arms around my neck. “Tell you what; I’ll take full responsibility for this ‘debacle.’ After all, I did whisk you off to a place where the only way back to shore on your own was by breaststroke. If reimbursement becomes an issue, I’ll take care of it. Okay?”
“Thanks. That’s very sweet of you.” I stretched my arms overhead, reaching for his neck and pulled him toward me, kissing him fully, deeply.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, Liz.”
“But there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Havasu that I’d ever accept your offer. I don’t want your money, Jack. It’s noble of you, but I don’t need rescuing.”
I went below deck, got dressed, and we weighed anchor and headed back to Miami, taking turns at the helm. “I want to be sure you know this,” I told Jack. “That despite the fact that I missed an incredibly important business meeting, despite my little tirade, despite the fact that I may not have a job to come home to, I would not have traded anything in the world for what we shared yesterday and last night.”
“They won’t fire you,” Jack said reassuringly. “Trust me, you’re too good to lose.”
“I hope you’re right, Jack, because if I really do lose my job, winning that million dollars is going to become more than a pipe dream.” I took a deep breath. “And speaking of dreams, Jack . . . What are we going to do about ‘us’ when we’re both in New York for the show? Remember the no-fraternization clause?” I felt my heart pounding and realized I was terrified of what Jack might say. He certainly had given me no indication that what we just had was a mere fling . . . but you can’t always tell with guys. In my experience, it’s always been safer never to assume anything.
Jack looked me straight in the eye. “Option one: We work very hard to keep ‘us’ a secret and continue to explore our relationship. Option two: It ends as soon as we tie off the spring line. Assuming I get a vote here, I think option two sucks.”
“I agree,” I said, breathing a tremendous sigh of relief. “But option two is risk-free.”
“Option two is stupid. Is that where you’re casting your vote?” Jack asked anxiously. “In fact, there is no option two, as far as I’m concerned. I only invented it so that it looked like you had a choice.”
“It’s not about ‘I.’ It’s about ‘us.’ I don’t do one-night stands, Jack. I play for keeps.”
“Then why did you say that option two was ‘risk-free,’ as though you wanted me to strongly consider it?”
“Giving you an out, I guess. Just in case.”
Jack shifted my body so that I was standing in front of him. He placed my hands on the wheel, and then rested his over mine. He nuzzled his face in my hair. “Then our course is charted, Liz. We take the risky route but, ultimately, the more rewarding one.”
“Relationships are about risks,” I agreed.
“Love is about risks,” Jack said.
The “L” word. He mentioned the “L” word! I was soaring higher than the gulls. After Jack brought me back to my hotel, I took a walk and found a yarn shop where I bought several skeins of a nubby Irish tweed. Enough for a man’s sweater.
I came home, with much trepidation, to a catfight. Jem’s eyes were red. Nell’s hair was green.
“She and that new boyfriend of hers voodoo-ed me,” Nell wailed when I saw her.
“I’ve already told you twice that I apologize. It backfired.” Jem couldn’t stop rubbing her eyes. I realized the reason when I saw a tiny kitten brushing itself against Nell’s ankle.
“Is that your familiar?” I asked Jem. “Do witches-in-training get kittens nowadays and they get full-grown cats when they graduate to perfecting their spells?”
Nell scooped up the cat. “She’s mine. Some bone-head left this little baby in a Dumpster across the street; you know, where they’re doing construction work in front of the brownstone just off the corner of Seventy-fourth Street. I was on my way home from the subway station and I heard this little pathetic whimper and so I tried to balance myself on the edge of the Dumpster and look over the top of it and there she was, looking all scared and hungry. How could I have left her there? It was a moral imperative to bring her upstairs.”
Nell deposited the new arrival on our sofa. The cat immediately began to test the upholstery as potential scratch-post material.
“Nell!” I screamed, trying to grab the kitten without taking too much of my loveseat with it. “This was my grandmother’s couch. You can’t even begin to imagine its sentimental value to me, not to mention the fact that by virtue of its age, it’s an antique. If your stray ruins it, I may have to kill you.”
“Brutalize me all you want; just don’t hurt Johnnie Walker,” Nell answered.
“Who’s Johnnie Walker?”
Nell pointed at the kitten. “Her.”
“What kind of a name is Johnnie Walker for a female?” I asked.
“You’re worried about a damn piece of furniture,” Jem wheezed. “That stupid cat ruined my face! She knows I’ve got asthma.” Jem leveled an accusing finger at Nell. Not only were Jem’s eyes red and swollen, but so was her nose. It looked like she’d taken to tippling. “Liz, do you have any idea how many Seldane I’ve taken in the past three days?” She reached for her inhaler for the fourth time since I’d walked in the door.
Nell stood up, holding the kitten in the cup of her palm. “How could I leave this little pookie to die out there in the vast wasteland of Manhattan inhumanity? It would have been cruel. Besides, Jem, all bets were off once you made my hair turn green!” Nell bent down and released the kitten, who scampered off to explore new territory, i.e., my luggage.
“Jem, how did you make Nell’s hair green?”
“First of all, it wasn’t me; it was Carl. Well, he gave me an incantation to do, and I must have left out a step or something.”
“And why did you want Carl to give you a spell?” I felt like a district attorney.
“To get back at you, Liz! For playing Cupid and sabotaging my bad date. So I took the blonde wig you were wearing that night and I showed it to Carl because he’s always talking about spells needing strands of the person’s hair in the recipe, and he told me what to do, and I did it, and the next thing I know, it looks like Nell has been swimming in a heavily chlorinated pool without a bathing cap for about five years running.”
The color of Nell’s hair was a sort of deep chartreuse.
“And I don’t know how it happened, but the spell somehow ended up working on the real blonde and not on the fake one— you—who was the one wearing the wig.”
“Jem, your spell might have had an effect on me after all. I ended up missing my client meeting this morning and couldn’t reschedule. I dread the thought of Monday.”
“Fuck your client meeting!” Nell shouted. “How am I going to go on Bad Date Sunday night with fucking green hair?”
Nell rarely cursed. But her hair was her crowning glory, and a matter of extreme personal pride.
“You can always dye it,” Jem responded.
Nell switched from anger to indignance. “I have never colored my hair—not even so much as getting highlights—and I won’t do it now. I’m probably the last natural blonde left on this island.”
It’s true that the pre-spell color of Nell’s hair was gorgeous, made even more so by the fact that Nell was born with it.
“I’m holding you partially responsible too, Liz,” Nell sniffled.
“I’m sorry, Nell. I’m really, really sorry. Jem, you have no idea how bad I feel about this.”
“My haaaaair,” Nell continued to wail.
“You could go on the show looking like a mermaid,” I said, trying to be helpful. “Pick something flowy in sea colors. Allegra would love you for it.”
Nell sneered at me.
“And what am I supposed to do?” Jem demanded. “Go on the show looking like Puff the Magic Dragon? As long as Johnnie Walker stays here, I’m going to look like this!” She pointed
at her swollen face.
I turned to Nell. “Nell, can Johnnie Walker stay somewhere else for a while? Please?”
Nell shook her head.
“Jem, keep popping those Seldane and wear shades on Sunday night. Nell, I know you’ve got a big heart and want to take in strays, but you’ve got to remember that you don’t live here alone and—holy—!”
I rushed over to the plastic bag that contained the yarn I had purchased in Miami that afternoon. I had made pretty good headway on a sweater for Jack while I was waiting in the airport.
“Nell, nooooooooo.” I tried to pry Johnnie Walker from Jack’s double cable stitches with little success. Already the eleven or so inches I’d done on the back of the sweater had become unsalvageable.
“Don’t hurt pookie,” Nell gasped, reaching for the kitten. “She’s just curious. That’s what you are, aren’t you,” she cooed to the cat, extracting lengths of imported Irish tweed from its sharp claws. “It’s not her fault.”
“No, it’s not her fault,” I agreed, though it was a struggle for me at this point to summon up much sympathy for the stray. “We three have had our squabbles in the past, but we’ve always managed to work things out and continue to live harmoniously. And now we’ve got green hair, red eyes, and a ruined sweater—”
“Not to mention bad karma all around,” Nell interjected. “And we’ve all got to appear on TV on Sunday night.”
“It’s not Nell’s fault. It’s yours, Liz. You started it by ruining my date with Carl.”
I wasn’t going to let Jem make me feel guilty for my actions at Pywacket. “Jem? You and Carl were having the time of your lives before I decided to play Cupid. Even if I hadn’t done that, you two were still having a fantastic date.”
“Jem’s right. It’s still your fault, Liz,” Nell chimed in. “Because even if you had good intentions, Jem believed you sabotaged her date so she voodoo-ed the wig, which turned my hair green.”
This whole mess may have started with my behavior during Jem’s date, but I was getting angry with the two of them for ganging up on me, assigning me the lion’s share of blame. “Still, Nell,” I said, “you brought home the cat, maybe out of your innate sense of rescuing a creature that might have eventually died out there on the street, but don’t tell me you didn’t see it as a great chance to get back at Jem, knowing she’s asthmatic. And your pet project just ruined something that was important to me.” I pointed to what was left of the sweater and the bag of yarn with half its skeins all ratted and snarled.
Reality Check Page 18