by Jane Heller
By the same token, would I be jumping for joy at David’s dinner invitation if he weren’t so gorgeous?
Yes, I told myself. Yes. I was not a superficial person. I did not judge people on the basis of their looks. I was attracted to more than David’s handsome features and expensive clothes. It was his manner that intrigued me. His velvet voice. His smoothness. His…what? His hypnotic quality. Just speaking to him on the phone put me in a kind of trance. It was eerie and wonderful at the same time.
I paid for the dress and left the store. As I drove home, I considered Suzanne’s advice. Maybe I should see a shrink, I mused. What if I did have plastic surgery and was so conflicted about it that I blocked it out? Maybe I did feel guilty about being blonder, thinner, sexier. Maybe I was as uptight and repressed as Mitchell always accused me of being. But if I’d had plastic surgery, where did I get the money? Where were the doctor bills? Where were my scars?
David showed up at five minutes of seven. He was a vision in his crisp white cotton slacks and navy-blue polo shirt, the arms of his white crewneck sweater draped casually over his broad shoulders. Blond bangs fell across his forehead and his brown eyes sparkled as he smiled at me. I found him utterly irresistible in the true sense of the word; it was hard to look away from him even for a second. I invited him in for a drink, but he declined, saying he was hungry and preferred to go straight to the restaurant.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we pulled away from the house in his gleaming black Mercedes.
“There’s a restaurant I’ve been hearing a lot about since I moved to town,” he said. “I thought I’d like to try it.”
“Which one?”
“Risotto!, the Italian place on Island Road.”
Well, what was I supposed to do, refuse? Jump out of the car? Make a big deal out of it? Not on my first date with David. Not when he had been nice enough to invite me out.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, looking over at me.
“Not really. It’s just that my husband—my soon-to-be ex-husband—owns Risotto! and spends a lot of time there,” I said.
“Oh. Forgive me. We should go somewhere else. I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable if you ran into him.”
“I won’t feel uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to going there and seeing Mitchell. He doesn’t scare me anymore.”
David raised an eyebrow. “He scared you? In what way?”
“He intimidated me. He has this disapproving glare that used to paralyze me. I could barely talk when I was around him.”
He smiled. “I find that very hard to believe, Barbara. You seem so…so self-possessed.”
Oh, I was possessed, all right. I just didn’t know it at the time.
“I’ve gone through some changes lately,” I explained. “I’m not the person I was.”
He smiled again, a bit wistfully, I noticed. “Neither am I,” he said. “Neither am I.”
I was about to ask what he meant when he turned on the radio to the local classical station and filled the car with music.
“Ah, Mozart’s Piano Sonata Number 14 in C Minor,” he said.
I nodded, knowing nothing about classical music. Rock ’n’ roll was more my speed.
David began to hum along with the music, his voice a rich, deep baritone.
“You have a beautiful voice,” I remarked. “Did you ever sing professionally?”
“No,” he said with regret. “It was only recently that I realized I even had a voice.”
“That’s funny. It was only recently that I realized I had a voice,” I said.
“Well, then,” he said, “that’s another thing we have in common.”
“What was the first thing?” I asked.
“Don’t you know?” he asked, his brown eyes full of mystery.
I shook my head.
“I’ll let you guess,” he said, and pulled the Mercedes into Risotto!’s parking lot.
I didn’t see Mitchell when we entered the restaurant, but then the place was in absolute chaos. The blue-hairs in walkers who had shown up at five-thirty for the Early Bird Special were taking their time getting out the door, while the pumped-up, coked-out gel/mousse crowd were elbowing each other to get in. And then there was the frenetic activity on the part of the waiters and waitresses, who were dressed in black to match the furniture, which, in turn, matched the floor. The walls and ceilings were white, and the black and whiteness of the place gave it a cold, sterile, totally alienating feel. “We’re trying to achieve a look that says, ‘This restaurant cops an attitude,’” Mitchell told me when Risotto! was still in the planning stage. “Why would anyone spend money to eat in a restaurant with an attitude?” I asked at the time. Mitchell shook his head as if I were the most hopelessly dense person on the planet. “Because if people wanted a homey atmosphere, they’d stay home,” he said.
As I looked around the restaurant, it struck me that I didn’t recognize a single person. Banyan Beach had once been such a small town that you couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone you knew. But there I was, gazing out over a sea of strangers—people who moved to Florida so they wouldn’t have to pay income taxes, people who couldn’t pronounce “conch” but didn’t have any trouble with “tiramisu,” people who didn’t go anywhere without their cell phones. It was odd, really, the way the change had come about almost overnight, almost without my realizing it, almost without my caring about it. I had been so focused on my own life, so caught up in my relentless unhappiness, that I hadn’t been paying attention to anything else.
“I believe you have a seven o’clock reservation for Bettinger?” David said to the maître d’ when we had finally made our way to the head of the line.
The twenty-something maître d’, who sported the obligatory earring and ponytail, looked up at David and nodded. “Mr. Bettinger,” he said without smiling, holding fast to the restaurant’s no-smile rule. “Your table isn’t ready. Why don’t you have a drink at the bar and we’ll call you when—”
“I reserved a table for seven o’clock,” David interrupted, politely but firmly. “It’s just after seven. I expect to be seated. Now.”
I looked at David with admiration. So did the maître d’, who studied his reservation book yet again and this time came up with a table.
He led us through the maze of diners toward the rear of the restaurant, to one of six banquettes that lined the back wall.
“Your waitress will be with you shortly,” he said when we were seated. Then he hurried off, leaving us in a cloud of Polo Sport.
“Mr. Personality,” I said, gesturing toward him. “He must be new. I don’t remember seeing him before.”
“He reminds me of Palm Beach,” said David. “I think the maître d’s there must go to a special school where they’re taught to make people feel insignificant.”
“Maybe so, but you showed this one who was boss,” I said. “I’ve always had trouble being direct like that. Until recently, that is.”
“I know what you mean,” said David. “I wasn’t always so sure of myself.”
“You weren’t? I can’t believe that.”
“It’s true. You’re not the only one who’s done some changing, Barbara. My move to Banyan Beach is just part of my transformation.”
I regarded him. “What were you like before this ‘transformation’?” I asked.
He grinned. “I’ll tell you after we’ve gotten to know each other a little better.”
I was about to respond when a young woman with very short, spiky red hair appeared, introduced herself as Nikki, and tossed some menus onto the table.
“Do you want to hear the specials or not?” she asked with the warmth of granite.
“Not if you’d rather not share them with us,” David replied, winking at me.
“Whatever,” she shrugged.
“Why don’t you take our drink order first,” he suggested.
“Okay,” she said. “Whaddyawant?”
David or
dered a Dewars on the rocks, I asked for a club soda with lime. Ever since my run-in with the thunderstorm two nights before, I’d been laying off the booze. I had enough going on inside my body. I didn’t need a hangover to complicate matters.
“Tell me,” David asked. “Do you see your husband anywhere?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But the night’s still young.”
“And you’re sure you’re all right about seeing him?”
“I’m sure. Really.”
We had our drinks, discussed David’s purchase of the Nowak house, and went through the fine points of the contract, which he signed. Then we moved on to more personal subjects. We talked about our families, our childhoods, our work. David’s business, he explained, took him to Europe, the Orient, and South America. He related fascinating anecdotes about the cities he’d been to, the hotels he’d stayed in, the people he’d met. As I had never been out of the state of Florida, except to New Jersey, where I had relatives, and to St. Barts, where Mitchell had taken me on our honeymoon because a CPA friend of his had told him it was chic, I felt incredibly provincial. David was obviously a sophisticated world traveler, a man who had been there, seen it, done it, while I was a small-town nobody, a woman whose idea of adventure was trying a new brand of paper towel. I wondered what he could possibly see in me. He was wonderful company—interesting, intelligent, confident, yet with a surprising, self-deprecating humor. And then, of course, there was his face, which was so handsome I couldn’t help studying it. There were moments when he seemed too perfect—unreal, fabricated. And then there were moments when he was so real I wanted to leap across the table and wrap my legs around him.
Fortunately, I didn’t act on my desire. I sublimated it by stuffing myself. Bread sticks, penne puttanesca appetizer, Caesar salad. Never mind my Brussels sprout breath, which David didn’t seem to notice. By the time the main course arrived, I was expelling enough garlic to offend everyone in the place.
Nikki delivered our entrées with the lack of enthusiasm we had come to expect from her. David had ordered one of the specials, which was risotto with several types of mushrooms I’d never heard of. I had opted for the oak-grilled tuna, in spite of the fact that it made me think of Jeremy, who had gotten his picture in the paper the week before for winning some dumb tuna-fishing tournament.
We were sampling our food when I spotted Mitchell. He was making his rounds, just like a doctor, only without the stethoscope; what was hanging from Mitchell’s neck was a cross. A large, gold cross. Mitchell was Jewish, but he had seen the owner of several very successful Manhattan restaurants wear a cross and figured there must be something to it.
There he was, going from table to table, bowing and scraping and saying things like “Is everything all right?” and “You absolutely must try the calamari.” I did not see Chrissy and guessed she was at the condo, leafing through back issues of various home decorating magazines in anticipation of taking possession of my house and putting her own personal stamp on the place.
“There’s my husband,” I whispered to David, then pointed at Mitchell.
David turned around to look. “I think he’s walking this way,” he warned.
My heart began to beat faster as Mitchell moved in the direction of our table. He looked as intense as always—dark, thin, wiry, hyper, a mass of nervous energy. I had no idea how he’d react to seeing me with David—or to seeing the new me, for that matter.
As he came closer, I held my breath and braced myself for a confrontation. Then, suddenly, a blond woman intercepted him, slid her arm around his skinny waist, and began to pull him in the opposite direction.
“Chrissy,” I muttered, recognizing her from the Evening News. She was even more dreadful-looking in person. Big, poofy platinum hair, buck teeth, tacky outfit, the works.
“Someone you know?” David asked, watching me watch Chrissy.
“You must not be a fan of Channel Five,” I said. “That’s Chrissy Hemplewhite. She does the weather on the Six O’Clock News. She’s also my husband’s new love.”
I hated Mitchell and didn’t want him back under any circumstances, but the words stung nevertheless. So did seeing Chrissy with her arms draped all over Mitchell. I stared at the two of them as they flaunted their adulterous behavior in front of everyone in the place, totally unaware that I was sitting a few feet away from them. Not that they’d care. I was the old shoe, the ball and chain, the one who got dumped, discarded.
“Let’s leave,” David said after my face must have revealed my feelings. “We’ll have dessert somewhere else.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to let them chase us out of here. No way.”
I narrowed my eyes and continued to watch Mitchell and Chrissy as they strolled from table to table, shmoozing, joking, showing off. It was nauseating.
“I hope the two of them burn in hell,” I said suddenly, then flushed with embarrassment.
I was about to apologize for harboring such an unkind thought against my husband and his mistress when Nikki, our warm and fuzzy waitress, whizzed by Mitchell and Chrissy carrying a tray of six cappuccinos. In what seemed like a scene shot in slow motion, she appeared to lose her balance—and her control of the tray—and before you could say “burn in hell,” the boiling hot contents of all six glasses rained down upon the lovebirds! Chrissy screamed as the coffee tore into the skin on her back. (She was wearing a skimpy little halter top, poor thing, which goes to prove that when you dress like a slut, you take your chances.) Mitchell, who had been in the midst of an obsequious bow when catastrophe struck, was hit with the hot stuff on the back of the head—right smack on his bald spot. So much for the Rogaine.
There was a big commotion, of course, as everyone hovered around Mitchell and Chrissy, offering their opinion about how you should treat a burn.
“Put butter on it!” a man shouted.
“No, ice!” another man volunteered.
At one point, Mitchell actually yelled, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
The whole thing reminded me of the pandemonium that breaks out when somebody starts to choke and the people he’s with don’t know how to do the Heimlich maneuver.
Eventually, Mitchell took Chrissy out of the restaurant, to the hospital, I assume. The rest of us went back to our meal.
“Are you all right?” David asked when the tumult had died down.
I didn’t know how to answer. I was all right, except that I was convinced that I had caused Mitchell and Chrissy’s accident. I had said that I wanted them to burn, and then they did. I’d expressed the wish—out loud—and then it had come true.
For the first time, it dawned on me that I might have some sort of weird new power. Over myself. Over others. Over events.
And yet, in other ways, I felt utterly powerless. I seemed to be able to lose weight without dieting, turn my gray hair blond without coloring it, speak my mind instead of holding back, but I couldn’t really control any of it, couldn’t make it stop. I seemed to be able to cause our waitress to drop a tray of hot coffee on my miserable husband and his girlfriend, but I had no idea how I did it or how not to do it again.
“Maybe I should have a drink after all,” I said as my hands began to tremble. “A real drink. I’m feeling a little shaky.”
“Yes, after-dinner drinks,” David said. “But not here.”
“No, not here,” I agreed. “I don’t want anything else to spoil our evening.”
David nodded and signaled for the check. When it arrived, he paid quickly and guided me out of the restaurant. As we waited for the valet-parking attendant to bring the Mercedes around, he took my hand and squeezed it.
I suddenly felt light-headed, dizzy, tingly, the same odd sensation I’d experienced the last time David had touched me. That time, I’d chalked the feeling up to a hangover. This time, I attributed it to the overwhelming attraction I felt for him. Even the slightest physical contact sent electrical currents through my body. Sure, it had been a long time since I’d been w
ith a man, but I was drawn to David in a way I’d never been drawn to Mitchell. Mitchell held about as much mystery and passion for me as doing the laundry. David inspired thoughts of taking off my clothes, not washing them.
He wrapped his arm around my waist and steadied me, then drew his face very close to mine.
“Now,” he whispered. “We have a decision to make.”
“A decision?” I said, feeling myself flush from his nearness. As he spoke, his lips were practically brushing my cheek.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Your place or mine?”
I swallowed hard. The question was provocative, or so it seemed to me in my feverish state. I had only spent a couple of hours with David, hardly knew the man. He could have been a serial killer on the prowl for his latest victim—the type that went after real estate agents instead of prostitutes or strippers. And yet I was ridiculously trusting of him, enthralled by him, captivated by the penetrating look in his brown eyes, and didn’t even think about the fact that we were complete strangers. Normally so cautious, so timid, so uptight when it came to giving in to my feelings, I was, at that moment, willing to go anywhere with David Bettinger.