He convulsed more forcefully and pushed her off of him, sitting up. "What are...you...stop..."
Standing in front of him, she grabbed his limp hand and put on her breast, but he pulled it away as if burned.
"What are you doing?" Grant said, trying to focus his eyes on Bianca and failing.
"Helping you," Bianca said, and pushed him down before kneeling beside the bed. She yanked his pants wide open, reached in, and pulled him out, gratified to see how much he would please her. "Now...here we are," she remarked softly and leaning down to take him in her mouth.
There was a little screeching sound and Bianca startled, looking up. Kate stood in the bedroom's doorway staring at them, her once-rosy face now a pale moon that floated in the shadows.
Corona
Kate rinsed her face in the bathroom sink, grateful not to be wearing any makeup other than some waterproof mascara, and then scooped handfuls of cool water into her mouth and spat, trying to remove the terrible taste that lingered there. Finally, her mouth reasonably clean and feeling fresher, she sighed, dried her face on a towel, and looked in the mirror. The high color of her earlier excitement and enthusiasm had drained away. Instead she was wan and thin looking, her freshly highlighted hair clinging in dark moist pieces to her face and neck.
She smiled ruefully at her reflection. She had never been a beauty queen and that wasn't about to change now. And she was okay with it. All she really wanted she already had: her own family, her darling Grant and a baby on the way. And she would get over missing Vermont, she was sure of it, especially now that she had friends in the area. Well, the one who mattered most was Bianca, her very best dearest friend who was at this moment trying to help as usual, having taken Grant away to presumably consult him about whatever anti-nausea medications were in her medicine cabinet.
Turning away from the mirror, Kate left the bathroom and headed down the hall searching for them. She didn't need the medicine anymore and the nausea could just be pregnancy-related. But no...what about the others? Everyone seemed to run away from the table in pairs, jumping up so quickly they startled Kate, who began feeling sick halfway through her duck and was trying to fight the feeling, not wanting to spoil Bianca's party or disappoint Lucie. But then it had happened anyway, everything spoiled, even Edie and Stuart leaving before dessert was served. After that, when Kate was hit with an even bigger wave of nausea, making bile rise dangerously into her mouth, she gave in and ran.
Walking down the hallway and peering into rooms as she passed, Kate wondered what had happened. Could it possibly be food poisoning? But no, Lucie seemed like such a careful person, so precise. It was hard to imagine. There had to be another explanation.
The last doorway in the hall was Bianca and John's bedroom, a sumptuous room where Kate had been coached by Bianca about how to style her hair and apply makeup, sitting at an ornate dressing table while Bianca hovered over her. That's where they had to be, in the enormous attached bathroom discussing the advantages of Pepto-Bismol over Emetrol.
Walking into the bedroom and seeing them, Kate stumbled to a stop, unable to believe her eyes.
Grant sat on the side of the bed, Bianca standing in front of him wearing a red lacy nightie. Kate shook her head, trying to clear her vision. That wasn't what Bianca had been wearing earlier? At that moment, Bianca leaned down, picked up Grant's hand and placed it on her breast. Kate jerked back with surprise. Grant apparently was surprised too, snatching his hand away.
"What are you doing?" Grant said in a blurry voice, squinting at Bianca. He looked half-asleep.
Kate nodded in agreement. What was Bianca doing? What was going on? And why was Grant sleepy? He'd been acting strange sitting next to her in the bathroom, speaking so slowly she couldn't understand what he was trying to say. At the time she'd felt so ill it was hard to focus on anything other than getting whatever it was out of her stomach, but she had registered Grant's behavior peripherally, out of the corner of her mind. She tried to remember how many drinks he'd had, but she could only remember the vodka cocktail and the one glass of wine. He must have had more, much more, and somehow she hadn't noticed.
"Helping you," Bianca said in a soft voice. Then she pushed Grant down, knelt between his knees, and yanked his pants violently open.
Kate's eyes grew wide. Bianca wasn't about to...but she was reaching into Grant's open fly, right into his boxers, and Kate heard her say, "Now...here we are," in a flirtatious voice. Then Bianca started to lower her head and Kate let out a high-pitched screech of shock.
Bianca turned and looked at her, her mouth still soft and open. Then it snapped shut.
Kate goggled at Bianca. She couldn't believe it. It wasn't possible. But she'd just seen it: Bianca about to go down on Grant, who had been struggling to get up on his elbows. She saw then that something was wrong with Grant, off, not just alcohol. Something was even more wrong with her so-called friend. How could she?
Kate found her breath in that moment and said it, "How could you?"
Bianca was shaking her head, getting to her feet. "It's not what it looks like. I was concerned...about..." She paused, apparently flummoxed.
Grant pulled himself upright and looked up at Bianca, narrowing his eyes at her. "What? Concerned?" he said and gave his head a little shake, blinking and looking with surprise at his wide open pants and what they exposed before fumbling awkwardly to tuck himself back in, close his fly, and zip it up.
Kate felt something steel-like go through her, cold and hard and completely foreign. "No," Kate said, straightening. "No, you're right. It's not what it looks like. Nothing is with you, is it? You pretend to be a friend, but you're not, are you?"
"No, I am your friend. You're wrong," Bianca said and stepped towards her, her beautiful face open and innocent, hands held out to Kate. If it wasn't for the red negligee she was wearing, if Kate hadn't seen it all with her own eyes, Bianca's act would be completely believable.
Kate heard an unfamiliar mirthless chuckle rise up out of her own throat. "You fooled me. I've been fooled the whole time. What a country bumpkin I was for you, ripe for the picking. And you picked. And you pushed, too, didn't you? That warm feeling on my back that night?"
Bianca's eyes grew wide. "Oh, no! Kate? No!"
Looking at Bianca, Kate felt the pressure again on her back from that night. It had fingers. "And now, with my husband. Going after him like this. Well, he doesn't want you, Bianca. Can't you see that? I would think that someone as smart as you could see that."
"Oh," Bianca said, her face morphing, becoming cruel. "No. Grant wants me. Badly. Always has. He's just a good boy. Does the 'right' thing. He just needed an excuse. I gave him one. He couldn't wait to sleep with me."
Grant got to his feet, and though he was unsteady on them, he managed to stay upright, shaking his head. "No. I don't want you," he said, his tongue sounding like it was too large for his mouth. "You disgust me."
Bianca turned to him and straightened, thrusting her breasts up. "No, I heard you groan. Don't lie."
Grant looked at her with a derisive look of condemnation. "I was groaning because you were making me want to throw up."
Bianca's head pulled back sharply, as if he'd reached out and slapped her.
Hearing the unshielded honesty in Grant's voice, Kate felt a piercing joy and bone-deep love for her husband. She reached out her hand and said, "Come on, honey. We're going home. Oh, and Bianca?"
Bianca turned to her, her typically sleepy and content face looking suddenly older and pinched, her eyes darting to Grant as he walked away and then back again at Kate. Bianca snapped, "What? What do you want?"
"Nothing. Not a thing. Never a word, not the sight of you, not even a hint. You don't exist. Understand?"
"You're making a big mistake. I'll ruin you. I've got connections. You'd be surprised," Bianca said, her voice calm but her eyes hard and bright, burning with that frightening energy Kate had always felt in her presence.
The steel within Kate grew harder, impermeable. Grant
reached her side and reached for her hand. She took it. "Do you understand, Bianca? You don't exist," Kate said.
They didn't wait for a reply, only turned and made their way out of the house, their hands locked and as solid as they were.
Vodka Martini
Sharon paced next to her parked car, stopping occasionally to start dialing Dean's number and then hitting the end button. She muttered to herself, arguing the pros and cons of calling him, wishing they hadn't had their argument in the first place. But if they hadn't argued, she wouldn't have gotten on the Internet, wouldn't have been sitting quietly in her house where she could be tuned in enough to pick up on the subtle danger signals coming from her friends, signals that now wailed like sirens in her head.
Pacing helped. She hadn't been able to stay seated any longer, the thrumming anxious energy too intense to sit passively in her car waiting for a call-back. She had swung by the community's security booth one more time hoping that, although she hadn't heard back, perhaps the guard had received a call. He hadn't.
She'd left multiple voicemail and text messages for all of the girls except Bianca, messages pleading for a return call, it was urgent. Only Bianca had received a plain-vanilla message, please call. Sharon's instincts told her that saying anything more would be a dangerous thing to do.
Those same instincts were telling her to call Dean, but her brain kept overriding them. She had picked a fight with him. He was angry. And besides, what could he do?
As she made another circuit beside her car where it sat in the parking lot that was growing darker by the moment, the last rays of sun snuffed out, a message from deep within her pulsed again: call Dean!
"Okay, okay!" Sharon said, stopping in her tracks and pressing his programmed number quickly before her common sense started arguing its case again.
"Sharon," Dean said, his voice on the other end of the line uncharacteristically cool and guarded.
"Hi."
"What's up?"
"I...I'm sorry."
There was a pause and then Dean let out a little laugh. "Me, too. I shouldn't have made such a big deal out of it."
"I'm the one who made a big deal out of nothing."
"No," Dean said. "We have been spending every second together, at least when we're not at work. We've been a little extreme, especially at our age. I just..."
"Wanted to hang out with me?"
"Yes. Exactly."
"Me, too," Sharon said, realizing how close they were coming to saying the love words that they danced around but never uttered. They scared her, the need they implied. She rushed to change the subject, not wanting to tell him about Bianca but feeling compelled to. "Anyway, guess what?"
"What?"
"I was doing a little research on the Internet and I found-"
"The nude photos! Shit! I swear, I only had those taken to pay the bills while I was working my way through college! The devil made me do it!"
"What?"
"Where did you find them? You did, didn't you?"
"Photos?"
"Seriously now, I was drunk. It was spring break! What was I supposed to do?"
"Okay, hold on. I wasn't talking about any nude photos of you, but I have to admit that I'm curious now. I'm definitely looking those up."
"Shit! I knew I shouldn't have said anything!"
She heard him take a slurping sip of something. "Are you drinking?"
"Just a beer. I'm out on the boat. I needed to cool off after our fight and it's impossible to stay mad out on the water. It's beautiful tonight."
Sharon's eyes widened, an idea taking form in her head. "You're out on the boat?"
"Yeah? Is that a problem?"
"No! It's...perfect! Where are you? Can you meet me? I need a small favor. Actually, it's huge, a huge favor."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't waste a minute. It's really urgent. I'll tell you on the way."
"On the way where?"
"Bianca's house, it's on the water."
"Bianca's? What's going on?"
"I promise I'll tell you everything. Just hurry!"
Dean grudgingly gave in and they made arrangements to meet at the public dock in Greenwich Harbor. He was only a few inlets away in Riverside. She begged him again to hurry before she said goodbye, hung up, and jumped in her car.
As she sped out of the lot trying to remember Chelsea's description of Bianca and John's unique dock, the warning sirens in her head rose to a shriek.
Mojito
Bianca, for the first time in her life, was frozen by confusion. She stood like a statue, staring at the doorway that Kate and Grant had vacated, hearing Kate's words and then Grant's over and over, an echoing chattering staccato that, instead of fading, only grew louder.
"You don't exist."
"You were making me want to throw up."
"You don't exist!"
"You were making me want to throw up!"
At that moment, a beetle crawled in Bianca's ear and her hand flew up to the side of her head and started batting at her ear, trying to knock it out before she remembered. They weren't real. There were no bugs in her ears or her nose or climbing up her throat. She had to remember that, remind herself every day.
As a young girl she had started experiencing a terror of bugs. Their family doctor called it "entomophobia" and assured her parents it would pass. It hadn't. Then fuel was poured on the fire. While she was incarcerated at the convent when she was seventeen she misbehaved several times, failing to do her assigned chores and once ignoring the rule about a single serving of dessert. For that she received the standard punishment: a day in the "cottage".
The cheap plywood shed that was so quaintly named bore little resemblance to a real house: it had a dirt floor and no windows and its door was padlocked. Sitting in the darkness for hours, the beetles and millipedes that favored the cool damp shed crawled out of their hiding places and all over Bianca. No matter how loudly she screamed and pleaded, none of the nuns would unlock the door and release her. By the end of each day's punishment, she would be hysterically squealing while dancing around on the packed earth in the dark, trying to keep the bugs off of her. But they crawled, somehow finding their way into her ears, nose, and throat.
Even now, especially when things didn't go her way, they appeared again, black and shiny, their many legs tickling. Bianca forced herself to stop smacking at her ear, even though she could still feel its little legs moving there. "Now," she chided herself. She had to get it together. But...
It was impossible that Grant didn't want her. Every man wanted her. But he said-
His voice echoed, "You were making me want to throw up."
Bianca shook her head, trying to shake the words off, but they clung. He had to have been lying, for Kate's sake. But why had he sounded so sincere, so genuinely disgusted?
A bug, this one long, a slimy millipede, filled Bianca's throat, choking her. She coughed violently, pounding repeatedly at her chest.
She couldn't get air! She couldn't breathe! Stop!
Then it was gone and swiftly taking its place was rage, blowing hot. She was supposed to win! Tonight was her night! She and Grant should've been on the bed next to where she stood right now, arching and moaning with pleasure, Grant's constraints tossed away recklessly in the heat of the moment, his hands going everywhere, grabbing what he wanted at last.
Instead, the bed beside her was only slightly rumpled, her mission incomplete. Staring at it, teeth clenched, Bianca made her decision. If she couldn't complete her original plan, she would complete the other. She had seen Chelsea's date, Aaron, pulling away in his silver Lamborghini Murcielago as she'd passed a window overlooking the driveway on her way upstairs. Lucie had to have left by now, driving off in her ugly rental van. Only Chelsea and John remained.
Better, the jealousy that would unleash Chelsea's previously unknown violent side would be more easily explained: John had told everyone at the dinner table that he would be buying his
wife an extremely expensive emerald necklace for Christmas. For a mistress expecting an imminent divorce, Christmas was a long way off in June, eons away. And such a romantic and luxurious gift for a woman he claimed not to love! Perfectly understandable grounds for a bitter confrontation.
Back in control, the bugs retreated. Bianca squared her shoulders before crossing back over to her closet. In a shoe box in the corner of the closet she found the gun and silencer she'd placed there and crouched on the floor to load the gun and attach the silencer. As she did, she decided she would still shoot John first, who was most likely to put up a fight. Then Chelsea, making sure to be at close range and angle the gun. To get Chelsea to stand still long enough, Bianca would tell her the true story about Jenna Butler's death: that would give her enough of a shock to hold her in place.
But, before Bianca did anything, she needed to get back her mojo, charge up the old power-battery that had been depleted by Kate and Grant, so instead of a quick one-two shot, she'd pull John and Chelsea's strings a little first, see them dance. That would be fun.
Tightening the silencer on the gun, Bianca decided she'd stay dressed in her negligee. After all, she'd saved it for tonight and she'd look even more innocent if it appeared that she'd already retired for the evening, changing into her nightie in her bedroom, completely unaware of the jealousy-fueled and deadly scene about to unfold between her husband and her best friend downstairs.
Strawberry Daiquiri
Chelsea straightened up and strolled down the hallway from the bathroom near the kitchen, heading back to the dining room and hoping no one would comment on her rude dash from the room. Well, she had also faintly heard Aaron excusing himself as she exited the room, so perhaps they would simply remember her as politely excusing herself, too.
But she hadn't had time. Had barely made it to the closest bathroom before all hell broke loose. It had lasted twenty-five agonizing minutes and then there was nothing left in her stomach and she stopped heaving. She wondered if she'd caught the flu and how. Being alone all the time had its benefits: you weren't exposed to viruses that were being passed around. Had John given it to her? But no, he hadn't been sick any time recently.
Cocktail Hour Page 39