“Good thing I am, huh? What were you gonna do, huh, Rio?”
There’s no answer.
“What happened to your hand?” Drew asks. “You been in some kind of fight, Rio? That it?”
“I hurt it, is all,” Rio mumbles. “Working.”
“Right,” Drew says in a tone that implies whatever Rio’s selling, he ain’t buying.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Drew asks. And I plaster myself against the wall.
“Okay, look,” Rio says. “I forgot to put a tape in the machine, okay? I got the whole thing set up just like I was supposed to, but then Teddi started—”
Drew asks him if he’s blaming his ex-wife for his own mistakes.
“It’s just she—” Rio tries again.
“So it’s her fault there’s no tape in the machine?” Drew asks.
Now, there’s an interesting question.
“Did she know there was no tape in there?”
“Yeah,” Rio says. “She told me I didn’t have to put one in, but I got to thinking about it at home and—”
“Liar,” I say, tucking my turtleneck into my jeans and fastening the belt as I come out from behind the pile of Formica slabs.
Rio’s jaw drops. Drew tries to hide his amusement. I don’t know what he thinks is funnier, my indignation or Rio’s reaction.
“Holy Christ!” Rio says. “Teddi!”
“Tell him,” I insist, “that I didn’t know there was no tape in there.”
Rio can’t find his voice.
Drew begins to laugh.
“I need all the tapes,” I say, stomping in one boot to the multiplexer where I’m ready to just start pulling wires.
“You didn’t…?” Rio starts to say, but Drew interrupts him.
“Steve know you have a key to this place? Because he told me—”
Okay, we all know that Steve didn’t tell Drew anything, but I’m not about to tell Rio that.
“I’m the security company,” Rio tells him. Drew says it seems like Steve needs to be secured from the likes of Rio, showing up in the middle of the night with some half-assed excuse….
“That’s it. I’m outta here,” Rio says, slamming a tape down on the counter. “Find the damn tapes yourself.”
“Or what, Rio?” I shout after him. “You’ll sell them on the Internet?”
“Would serve you right,” he says, standing in the doorway, the light silhouetting him. He may have been stupid, he may have been cruel. Those, of course, are matters of opinion. Gorgeous? There’s no doubt.
“Why? Why would it serve me right, Rio? What did I ever do to you?”
“Besides leave me?” he asks. “And turn my kids against me?”
“Yeah, besides that,” I say, thinking that whatever went down between him and Dana, he’d done the deed himself.
He stares at me and at Drew. He looks at my naked right foot, which I try to hide behind my left boot. “It’s not what you did, Teddi. It’s what you’d never have done.” He gestures with his head towards the pool table.
He leaves me with my mouth open and Drew chuckling behind me.
CHAPTER 10
Every house has an underlying theme, though some houses don’t know it. Neither do some owners. Even eclectic is a theme. If your house is neither Asian nor antique, not modern or macho, what is it? What do you want your house to say? I’m a lover of the arts? I’m a bibliophile? I’m a sailor?
—TipsFromTeddi.com
Just two days later, Bobbie sends me off for my “date” with Milt amid great reservations. She’s not worried that anything will happen to me or that this guy will find his way into my panties or anything like that. She just couldn’t figure out how to dress me for a boating date in late October, since it’s too late for white and too cold for anything nautical either of us have in our closets.
Needless to say, this is not my biggest worry when I meet Milt at the marina in Northport. He has nothing to gain by killing me, I keep telling myself as I grip the little spray can of Mace in my pocket. I’ll just make nice noises about his new boat, ask how much it cost, whether he was saving long for it, how the hell he paid for a boat and wasn’t it a coincidence that Joey was going to buy a pool table at just the same time.
Hey, maybe they both opened those Christmas Club accounts at the bank.
Milt is waiting on the dock with two steaming cups of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. He’s better looking in the daylight, with a ruggedness I hadn’t expected. His skin is lined in that sportsman sort of way, and he hands me a foam cup before saying hello.
We stand awkwardly on the dock, me shuffling from the cold, Milt looking anywhere but at me.
“So which one is yours?” I ask, looking at the few boats still floating in the marina this late in the year. Milt gestures toward the biggest one, a cigarette racer with its nose so high out of the water it’s amazing it doesn’t just take off and fly.
Why am I not surprised?
“Wow,” I say appreciatively as I stamp my feet to keep the circulation going.
He asks if I want to check it out.
“Sure,” I say enthusiastically, thinking that if he makes a move on me I’ll whip out my Mace and run like hell. Of course, I wasn’t counting on how hard it is to get into a boat at low tide and how much harder it will be to get back up to the dock.
Milt gets down into the boat first. He’s probably in his early forties and pretty limber. Under other circumstances, like if I was the least bit interested in him or if I wanted to hire him to do some work for me or even if I wanted him to slice my bologna, that would be a good thing.
Here, now, it’s not.
“Permission to come aboard,” I say, exhausting with that one phrase my complete knowledge of boat etiquette.
He holds out his hand to help me and I hand him my foam cup, which he puts on a built-in table before assisting me down into the boat. First he takes my hand, then halfway down the ladder he takes my waist and swings me onto the boat deck. I straighten my jacket and learn quickly that even when you’re trying to seduce someone, heels don’t cut it on a boat.
Luckily Milt has a hand on me—now there’s a thought I never expected to have—and is keeping me upright.
“Milt, it’s beautiful,” I say, running my gloved hand along what probably isn’t called a dashboard in a boat. I say this as though I really, really mean it, because I do. The wood is so highly polished that it gleams like a mirror. It’s a finish I have to learn to do so that I can use it on this set of old mahogany end tables that would be so totally perfect next to a winter-white leather couch….
“I said, ‘Do you want me to start her up?’” Milt asks. He’s standing just a little too close behind me. “Motor purrs like a kitten. A big, jungle kitten.”
I tell him I’m really too cold to go for a ride, but I’m just so impressed with his big, sleek, powerful boat…“What does something like this cost?”
He’s smelling my hair, inhaling it. I try not to shudder. “Between three and four,” he says.
I can’t believe it. I thought these babies had to be over a hundred grand. “Really?” I say, wondering if he’s just renting this thing and since it’s off-season—
“New, half a mil, at least,” he says. “But this baby was a bargain since the season’s over. Got it for just under four hundred thou.”
I don’t tell him that I was off by a couple of decimal points since what are a few zeroes worth, anyway? Nothing.
I ask about how he managed to finance this purchase and he gets very cagey. I make a joke about winning the lottery and he jumps on it.
“Yeah,” he says and laughs. “That’s it. I won the lottery.”
Which makes me think that I’m totally offtrack.
And late.
I’ve got an appointment with the Krolls I’ve got to get to, and before that I’ve got to get home, change and pick up Bobbie. I explain and Milt appears genuinely disappointed. I try to appear the same.
He enj
oys helping me out of the boat way too much, his hands all over my rear.
I promise myself this is the last time I go fishing on Milt Sherman’s boat.
IN THE BIG CIRCULAR DRIVEWAY at the Krolls’ house sits an old bicycle with a horn on the handlebars and a little license plate that reads Robby.
“He must be inside,” I tell Bobbie, to whom I’ve explained all about Robby Kroll. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve seen him, and now I’m a grown-up, old enough to understand his situation. I remind myself that inside Robby’s head he is still a little boy and that he probably doesn’t understand that the things that seem cute when an eight-year-old does them are scary when done by a grown man.
Jerry answers the door when we ring and shows us into the living room, where a tearful Rita sits on one of two plastic-covered couches.
“Those have to go,” Bobbie says authoritatively before she’s even been introduced.
I explain who she is and that there are certain things we feel strongly about. And, apologetically, I say that sometimes Bobbie’s thoughts slip out from between her lips.
Bobbie’s nose goes up in the air, her hands cross her chest, and I’m guessing she won’t say another word through this entire interview.
Great. Just great.
Ignoring her, I tell Rita how sorry I am about her brother, how she probably remembers that I actually know from firsthand experience what it’s like to lose a brother and she has my sincerest condolences.
Since she’s an old neighbor and a friend of my mother’s, she knows about Markie and so I don’t have to go into the whole story of how my little brother drowned in the family pool when he was a baby. At the moment, she isn’t interested in anyone’s misery but her own.
“He was so happy,” she says three or four times, until Jerry gently tells her that she’s repeating herself, which, it seems to me, she’s entitled to do. “He talked about getting a new car. On the very day he died, he told me he was going to get a new car. A Corvette or a Maserati, even.”
“Wow,” I say and smile wistfully. “I owned an old Corvette once upon a time.”
“I remember,” Rita says, her head bobbing. “Isn’t that how you wound up with your first husband?”
“The way my mother tells it, it is,” I agree. Which reminds me to convey my mother’s regards and her sympathy. Not that she actually sent either, but I’m sure she meant to. And she no doubt sent a tasteful bouquet of flowers to the funeral home, as required by The Handbook, though she probably didn’t attend the funeral since Rita moved beyond the distance requirements.
I ask after Robby and Rita tells me he’s out on his new bicycle. “Jerry bought him one with all the bells and whistles,” she says, looking adoringly at her husband of maybe a million years. “Nothing is too good for our Robby. Not according to Jerry, anyway. Like we’re made of money, nothing’s too good for the people he loves.”
Embarrassed, Jerry cuts short the discussion, claiming that Rita needs to move on and put all this sadness behind her. He asks what I think about a fireplace in the living room.
“There isn’t one,” Bobbie says sullenly, which isn’t much better than her just remaining silent.
Jerry is well aware of that, but he is thinking about having one put in. What do I think?
“It’s costly,” I say, but his shrug indicates that isn’t a concern for him. “Eventually though, when you sell, you’ll get back close to twice what you’d pay to put it in.”
He seems utterly unconcerned with the money and insists on knowing how I think it would look.
“Wonderful,” I admit. “And it’s a great place for all these family photos,” I say, noting the shrine to her brother that Rita’s got going on the side table.
And then I notice something familiar about the framed pictures that are draped in black. And the breath catches in my throat.
Drew keeps telling me I’m seeing murder everywhere I turn, but now I’m seeing murder victims. I figure I must be wrong, but I have to know.
So I say, “You could put pictures of…?” And I wait for her to fill in a name.
“Joey,” she says. I swear I feel my heart stop beating for a second. “Joseph. My baby brother, Joey.” And she begins to cry softly yet again.
I go to say something, but no words come out. I pat Rita gently on the shoulder and shake my head sadly. I sniff along with her, but inside my head, bells and whistles are going off like it’s jackpot time at Caesars Palace.
“Okay,” Jerry says, clapping his hands together like that will snap Rita out of it. “So a fireplace. What else?”
I suggest that maybe Rita could use a little tea about now, and I offer to make it. Without enthusiasm Jerry says he’ll do it and he leaves Bobbie and me alone with Rita just long enough to get a conversation about her brother started.
“What did Joey die of?” I ask, and Bobbie elbows me hard in the ribs. I give her an I-know-what-I’m-doing glance, but she isn’t buying it.
Instead she looks around the room and proclaims, “A dark rust would look good on the walls in here. Don’t you think so, Teddi? Unless they’re going to do wood for the fireplace. Rust would be striking with a pale marble.”
The two subjects hang out there, waiting for Rita to respond to either one.
“He had a heart attack,” she says. Yesss, I think, despite feeling a little ghoulish at my delight.
“Just suddenly?” I ask. “Or did he have some sort of condition?”
Bobbie looks at me like I’ve gone too far.
“You know my Dad has a heart condition now and I just, I don’t know, want to do everything I can to prevent anything happening to him, you know?” God will get me for this, I think. If I am barking up the wrong tree and pulling my father’s illness out for a fishing expedition…
But, I don’t think I am.
She tells me that Joey had coronary artery disease for years before his heart attack. “It runs in the family.”
“Would have happened sooner or later. I mean, the man ate like a pig, he should rest in peace,” Jerry says, coming back into the living room with a cup of tea for his wife. “You want?” he asks Bobbie and me.
Rita says she should get up and get it for us, but doesn’t. We encourage her not to give it a thought.
“He tried to diet,” Rita says. “But he was around food all day. Who can resist those Jell Rings? And there was all that medicine after the surgery…”
“He had surgery?” I say, feigning surprise. I really don’t think that it would give Rita any comfort to know that (a) the police aren’t the least bit interested in her brother’s case, which (b) I suspect was murder.
“Not six weeks ago,” Rita says. “That doctor who just got killed did it. At Plainview Hospital. Such a nice woman she was. What a pity.”
“That’s who it was?” Jerry asks. “Small world.”
“Small, sad world,” Rita agrees. “Six weeks ago she was doing a very tricky procedure on my Joey, saving his life. And now she’s dead and so is he. Small, sad world.
“And you were the one who remembered her, Jerry. Not me,” she adds.
Jerry gives me the look my father often gives me about my mother. It says that the wheels have come off the cart and she’s careening down a steep decline.
“Whatever you say, dear,” he says, patting her shoulder. “Though I do remember we were in the bedroom when the news about the doctor came on the television and you asked me how many vascular surgeons named Doris I thought there could be in North Shore. Remember?”
“I said that?” Rita says. “Now, if I remembered the doctor’s name, but I don’t remember remembering it, does that mean I’m getting Alzheimer’s or not?”
It all becomes clear how Rita and my mother could be friends. They share the It’s All About Me philosophy of life.
Bobbie plunks my portfolio on the coffee table with a resounding thud, reminding us all that the reason we’re here is to offer our decorating services.
“Jerry’
s probably right about trying to put all this behind you,” I say, having had all the questions I have about Joey answered. At least, for now. “Tell me about the nicest room you’ve ever been in. What was it like? What were the colors? How did it make you feel?”
“We like blue,” Jerry says.
Of course. Blue is a what I call a safety color. Unless it’s deep midnight blue or vibrant turquoise, it says absolutely nothing, which, in its own way, speaks volumes, doesn’t it? After white, in all its various shades, pale blue is the most common wall color going.
“Blue,” I say, nodding my head and keeping my opinion to myself. “Deep midnight blue with yellow could work in here. Chinese theme, ming vases, oriental rug.”
“Light blue,” Jerry says.
Bobbie rolls her eyes. I’m praying she won’t blurt out, “Boooorrring.”
“Light blue with mushroom can be very soothing,” I say. “Or we could go with light blue and a parma violet.”
They look at me blankly.
“Very dark blue-violet. It would play off the pale—”
“Cream,” Jerry says. I’m beginning to hope Rita will weigh in on some of this. “We like light blue and cream. Right, honey?”
Rita smiles weakly at me.
“With peach or something like that.”
I’m praying I don’t look as sick as Bobbie. I mean, really. What could be worse than a peach, light blue and cream room?
“Actually,” Rita says, and I hold my breath, hoping she’ll say that she is looking for something with a little more drama, a little more pizzazz…. “I’ve always liked your mother’s house.”
I can see Bobbie trying to hold it in, but losing the battle.
Her laughter comes out like an explosion.
“Beige,” I say. “Just beige.”
Jerry and Rita smile at me.
If not for Rita’s loss and the fact that the house is new and does need to be decorated, I’d swear my mother put them up to this.
CHAPTER 11
Here are some helpful guidelines for designing your bedroom: do not place furniture between your bedroom and bathroom or you are guaranteed to stub your toes in the middle of the night. That closet you are planning will not be big enough—no matter how big you make it. You need room-darkening shades on your windows because, after too much merrymaking, the sun shouldn’t be able to do what you’ve warned your children not to. There should be a lock on your door for private moments which could, if interrupted, scar your children for life. And your bed should be placed where you have a view of your door.
Whose Number Is Up, Anyway? Page 9