Danielle picked up the remote control lying next to him on the bed and switched the TV off. Benny woke up, raised his head, and looked around wild-eyed. “What time is it?”
“Ten-thirty.”
He turned off his bedside lamp, rolled over so his back was to her, and said in a sleepy voice, “How was the dinner club?”
“Good. How were the kids?”
“They fought a bit. And Alex missed you.”
Danielle took off her good clothes, hung them up, and put on the T-shirt she slept in. “I had this strange conversation with Sam Orenstein tonight,” she said. “Not strange — interesting. He came up with a crazy idea.” How much sincerity and how much wine had there been in Sam’s proposal? She wasn’t sure.
Benny’s breathing rumbled in, then out. He was asleep again. Oh well. At least he wasn’t out at a bar with someone else’s wife. They could talk in the morning. Danielle prepared for bed, lay down, and spent the next half hour imagining a life without cooking.
21
Still November 20, 2013
Chuck’s was emptier and tackier than Mary Ann would have wanted, but it was dark, there was a dance floor, and she’d hauled enough members of the dinner club along to make her presence look less like a direct attack on Sam and more like a group outing. What her mother was doing there she didn’t know, or care.
She sipped her gin and tonic, and leaned over to Drew, on her right. “Are you almost drunk enough to dance?”
He gripped his glass. “Getting there.”
Mary Ann leaned the other way, placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Sam, I’m counting on you to request ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’ now.”
He nodded and laughed in an infectious way that made her laugh along. Why hadn’t she ordered a shot of tequila instead of the gin? Because she would love to have licked some salt off her thumb bone right about then, and sucked a lemon, and lived large. Larger.
In a couple of minutes, she was going to get up and dance by herself, arms above her head. She reached down and adjusted the neckline of her top to reveal more than a bit of her black bra, and tapped her foot in time to the country song playing on the jukebox.
The evening reminded her of a school concert she’d sung in back in fifth grade, in Ann Arbor, before her family had moved to Oakdale.
She’d been chosen from her school to be in a multi-district choir giving a special performance in honour of a politician, on a now-forgotten civic occasion. The children, dressed in uniform tunics, were required to sit quietly on risers between songs while speeches were made — after the choir had sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” and before they stood up to offer “America the Beautiful.”
At the several rehearsals beforehand, Mary Ann had behaved well, like the compliant child she was. On the day of, she’d suffered having Sarah pull her hair back into a tight and shiny ponytail, lined up with the other choristers at the appointed place and time, filed onto the risers, sat down, crossed her ankles, folded her hands in her lap.
And started talking. The choir mistress had made it very clear that there was to be no talking, no moving, and no fidgeting while they were up there behind the podium, on display in front of the large audience. The kids chosen to perform had been selected as much for their ability to comport themselves in a dignified fashion as for their talent in singing, so they all did what they were told, which made it more dramatic and noticeable when Mary Ann went off-script.
She talked to the girl next to her, the ones behind and in front, ignored their better-behaved shushing. She made faces behind the back of the politician. She ignored her mother frowning at her from the audience. She laughed at the pointed finger and angry face of the choir mistress.
Mary Ann shut them all out, slouched down in her seat, talked some more. She knew exactly how naughty she was being, knew she’d get into big trouble later, but she couldn’t help it. She hadn’t been able to stop being bad.
Same thing now.
Jake was wearing black. Nothing showbizzy. A black T-shirt, black jeans, black Converse sneakers. He looked tall and fit and unpretentious, Alice thought. He looked good.
He didn’t appear to see Alice or notice the dinner club table. There were lights shining in his face, in his eyes. The band was tuning up. He adjusted a microphone.
Mary Ann leaned forward, bringing her exposed cleavage dangerously close to Sam’s hand, and half shouted to Alice, three people down, “That can’t be him. The bald one in black. Tell me it isn’t him.”
Alice put a finger to her lips, hoped Jake hadn’t heard Mary Ann above the sound of the guitarist trying out a riff, the keyboard player playing a few chords. “It’s him.”
Mary Ann’s mouth was agape. She took a second look. “I would never have recognized him. Never in a million years.” Mary Ann turned to Drew and started talking to him, probably telling him how much Jake had changed, how good-looking he used to be.
On Alice’s other side, Phoebe gasped. “Will you look at that?”
A young black man stood in front of the center microphone. He wore a tight white T-shirt, black pinstripe dress pants, polished wingtips. What Alice could see of his body — entire upper — was buff.
“That’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” Phoebe said.
“I think his name is Tristan,” Alice said.
“Tristan,” Phoebe repeated, dreamily. And Alice hoped Mary Ann had not done anything insane like spike the soup with an aphrodisiac. Before she could ask, the band played a familiar riff, and in a falsetto voice, Tristan began to sing a Temptations song — “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”
Mary Ann was up dancing within the first eight bars, up and facing Sam, beckoning to him in a way that she must have meant to be sexy but that Alice found ridiculous. What on earth, Alice thought, even while she found herself gazing fondly at Sam. At his finely shaped nose and his juicy, kissable lips —
“Aaagh!” Alice clapped her hand over her mouth.
Beside her, Phoebe said, “What? What’s wrong?”
Alice shook her head. “Nothing.” Except that she hadn’t been mistaken earlier — the damned telepathy was back. She stood up, sat down, moved her chair back, and tried to distance herself from Mary Ann, whose mind was clearly in overdrive, and taking over Alice’s own.
Alice erected a mental barrier in an attempt to shut out Mary Ann’s thoughts, and concentrated instead on Jake, watched him sing backup and adroitly perform some guy-group dance steps. He was enjoying himself.
Mary Ann, meanwhile, had enticed Sam onto the dance floor, and had dropped the Veronica role in favour of a new comic-book super heroine — Sultry Woman, who could bewitch grown men with her come-hither gaze and bend males to her will with a flick of her finger. Sultry Woman danced with Sam a while, got him going — please no, Alice prayed, not the Bump — and when Sam was well-launched into the sort of gyrations Alice had previously associated with recreational drug use, Mary Ann started working on Drew.
Alice read Mary Ann’s thoughts, turned to Phoebe, said, “What’s wrong with Drew? Why does Mary Ann think he needs cheering up?”
Without taking her eyes off Tristan, Phoebe said, “He was recently dumped by someone. And I’m in love.”
Alice tore herself away from staring at Jake, from checking for signs that in the past few days she’d built up some huge sexual fairy tale that had no bearing on any attraction she might feel for the actual person, and spared a moment to study Tristan. Undeniably hot would be her objective assessment. One she might have expressed if her mind hadn’t been seized by an image of a woman in black satin lingerie, table dancing before a group of slavering men.
“Aaagh!” she cried again. She received an irritated look from Phoebe in response, and jumped at the touch of Sarah’s finger tapping her on the shoulder from behind. “I’m leaving, Alice. Goodbye. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Let me walk you out to the parking lot.”
“Don’t worry about me. Stay and watch the s
how.”
“No, I’ll come. If I were leaving alone, I’d want someone to walk me out. And I could use some air.”
Sam loved the band, loved the song, loved dancing. He performed his best moves, steps he hadn’t pulled out in years — okay, decades — and didn’t look half-bad doing them. And Mary Ann was such a good dancer. Loose and rhythmic and coordinated and laughing and happy and sexy.
The song ended, he clapped, and Mary Ann hugged him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his so that he felt the soft mass of her breasts against his chest and a jolt of arousal in his dick and he didn’t care that he was sweaty.
One of the backup singers, a bald guy, said into the mic, “I’d like to dedicate this next tune to all the women in this room who remember when …”
Mary Ann said, “I need water,” took his hand, led him to the bar, and asked the bartender for two glasses, with ice.
“… It’s been more than a few years since high school …”
She grabbed a glass as soon as it was set down on the bar, drank from it, and so did he, and it tasted like standing under a waterfall on a hot day.
“… We all remember some missed opportunities, some people we regret passing up, not getting to know better …”
Mary Ann turned to face Sam, and said, “You’re so gorgeous. So, so gorgeous.”
“… So, tonight, for one night, let’s travel back to the past, back to the way things should have been …”
Sam put his arm around Mary Ann’s shoulders and pulled her close and kissed her, and it was a goddamned movie kiss, with music swelling all around — or was that the band, finally starting the next song? — except more lustful and drunk and heady. He chewed on her neck, and kissed the curve of her breast — the curve he’d been salivating over for the last half hour — and tasted perfume on her skin, a spicy taste completely unlike the floral scent Hallie used. He stopped his gnawing to take a breath (he was feeling a little dizzy), repeated the Hallie thought in his mind, and waited a second to see if conscious acknowledgement of his first stab at infidelity would affect his desire at all.
Nope. Before the betrayal idea could make its way through his sodden brain from the morality quadrant to the penis-control zone, Mary Ann took advantage of the break in the proceedings to climb onto his lap, fan out her skirt around her, and ride his bucking bronco. His fucking bucking bronco, which bounced right along. No qualms there.
The tremors started again in Alice’s head when Jake was introducing his song and — could it be? — speaking directly to her. Though he wasn’t looking at her, because the lights were still in his eyes, and she was moving around the room, trying to find a lead-lined pillar or bulletproof room divider to take refuge behind, to shield herself from Mary Ann’s thoughts.
She settled on a chest-high, vinyl-covered booth back, and from behind it she listened to Jake, at the mic, talk about high school, about regrets and lost opportunities. He had a good speaking voice — soft and deep. The sound of it touched Alice, suffused her with a spreading lightness, a thrill she could feel right down to the rosy tips of her —
NO. That soft-porn thought had not originated in Alice’s mind. That sex yodelling could only be coming from Mary Ann.
Alice turned and looked around the room. Where were they? From the sound of the fevered mind noises Alice was hearing, Mary Ann and Sam must be necking by now, if not all-out fucking. Though not in this room, Alice hoped.
She spotted them, bodies melded together, jammed against the bar. Mary Ann’s top was half-off, and one leg was wrapped around Sam’s ass. She was riffling his hair, while Sam administered a lovebite that Mary Ann seemed especially responsive to, if the escalation in the pace of the panting in Alice’s mind was any indication.
Alice set off toward them, tried to obliterate the mental image of waves crashing on surf that Mary Ann was projecting — how cliché — noticed that Mary Ann still had on at least one shoe, and hoped that underneath Mary Ann’s skirt, everyone’s underwear was still on.
Alice reached the entangled pair, tapped Mary Ann on the shoulder, and said, “You have to stop.”
Between kisses and sighs, Mary Ann said, “Can’t stop. Feels too good.”
Over the music, Alice yelled, “Don’t stop making out. Just stop broadcasting it!”
Mary Ann broke free, said, “What did you say?” and let go of Sam, who slumped over and rested his head on her shoulder.
Alice took hold of Mary Ann’s face with both hands and looked into her dilated pupils. “I’m reading your mind. All of it. In detail. AND I DON’T WANT TO!”
Mary Ann licked her swollen lips. “Are you kidding? The telepathy’s back?”
“Yes. And you’ve got to stop sending out signals. I don’t want to see your crashing waves.”
Mary Ann’s smile was smudged. “They’re pretty spectacular waves, aren’t they?”
Alice elbowed Sam. “Get up, Sam. Grab your purse, Mary Ann. I’m taking you two someplace private. And hurry. I’ve got my own party to attend.”
Kate and Tom danced, arm in arm, to the Four Tops tune the bald singer had introduced. “This whole scene is incredible,” Kate said. “Like a party out of the eighties. Any minute now, someone’s going to lay down lines of coke on the tabletop and hand us a rolled-up hundred dollar bill. What’s come over these people?”
“I don’t know what’s possessed Mary Ann. And Sam. Perhaps it was something they ate.”
“Not just them. That young woman Phoebe is enthralled by the lead singer in the band. See how she’s dancing near him, trying to catch his eye?”
“At least Alice seems unaffected. Look, she’s at the bar with Mary Ann and Sam. Let’s hope she’s trying to talk sense into them.”
“Don’t be so sure. She’s a part of this, too. Check out the guy who’s singing now. Aren’t we here because her friend plays in the band? Did you hear what he said before, about reconnecting? Now we know what kind of friend. You’re looking at public foreplay, all around us.”
Tom snuck a glance back at Sam and Mary Ann, on their way out the door with Alice. “Do you think it’s still considered infidelity if your spouse is likewise engaged?”
Kate felt something like frustration, or irritation, or anger, or all three, boil up inside her. Something that made her reach down and grab Tom by the balls.
He stepped back. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking to see if you’re as aroused as everyone else in the room.”
“I’m not, thank you very much.”
“And why not?”
“So how do I do it again?” Mary Ann said.
Alice was patient. “You construct walls around your thoughts, and I won’t be able to read them. Remember?”
They were in Alice’s car. Alice was driving. Mary Ann and Sam were in the backseat. Sam was humming — too far gone, Alice hoped, to follow the conversation.
Alice said, “I think it’s the sender who has to block off transmission, not the receiver. And having physical distance between us should help. If we do both these things, I might be able to survive the rest of the evening without experiencing your rapture in living colour.”
“To 96 Maple, if you please,” Sam said from the back seat. “And step on it.”
Mary Ann twirled a strand of hair with her finger. “Okay. I’m going to think about what I’d like to do to Sam when we get to his house, then I’ll construct walls around my thoughts. Brick walls, right?”
“Brick, stone, concrete, whatever. Just stay away from the sticks and hay.”
“I’ll huff,” Sam said, “and I’ll puff.”
“Brick walls, then.”
“Make them thick. I don’t want to see that thought. Now, go.”
Alice opened her mind a crack, saw Mary Ann throw together a brick tower that could have belonged to Rapunzel. “Cute,” Alice said, “but you forgot the rose bush.”
Mary Ann dabbed in a rose bush, leaned out the window and waved at Alic
e, blew a kiss, then bricked up the window behind her, disappeared from view.
“Good so far.”
“And I’ll blow your house down,” Sam said.
“Here goes,” Mary Ann said. “I’m going to get dirty now.”
Alice cringed, waited, still saw only the tower, the rose bush. “Very good. I can’t see anything of what’s going on inside. Unless you’re not actually thinking your lascivious thoughts. Are you?”
“Should I let the walls down so you can see?”
“No, don’t.”
“The only thing is: that takes a lot of concentration. What if my mind gets distracted by what my body’s doing?”
Alice sighed. “You may as well go ahead and test it. Kiss him or something, and I’ll see if the tower stays up.”
“Come here, bubba,” Mary Ann said, and beckoned to Sam. Sam leaned in, and off they went.
Alice averted her eyes from the rearview mirror, listened with distaste to their lip smacking and slurping and vocalized heavy breathing, and watched the tower in her mind’s eye. It shook and it swayed, but it did not fall down.
“Very good,” Alice said, “keep it up.” She pulled into Sam’s driveway.
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” Sam sang.
“Have fun,” Alice said, and watched them walk up the driveway, arm in arm.
At the front door, Mary Ann turned back for a second, clutched her forehead, and sent Alice a picture of Jake, singing on stage. You, too, said her voice in Alice’s ear.
Tom opened the driver side door of his car and got in.
“Is Drew okay?” Kate said.
“Other than sobbing quietly and repeating Hallie’s name, yes.”
The Oakdale Dinner Club Page 19