Rent A Husband (16 page)

“Lottie, what an interesting effect you’re creating with your mascara. What do you call that? Ravished Raccoon?”

Darcy says this with a smile sweet enough to induce sugar shock.

Carlotta bottles her rage and heaves herself up behind the wheel of her SUV—she’s shorter than Darcy and has none of her mortal enemy’s nimbleness.

She waits until Darcy drives away before she flips down the visor and inspects her make-up.

Her eyes look stunning, she decides.

Dramatic.

But still a doubt lurks: is she overdoing the mascara?

She smacks the visor out of the way and starts her car, cursing Darcy Pringle for making her question herself.

Then she hums a little tune and, as she takes herself along the coast road—not ready to return to her house where furtive Walt Jr. spends hours in the bathroom with skin magazines and Carly grows fatter and more acned by the minute—she hits speed dial on her cell phone, eager to put to good use the fruits of her eavesdropping session in the coffee shop.

“Porter Pringle.”

As always, the sound of the man’s voice takes Carlotta’s voice away.

“Hello? Anybody there?” Porter asks in his
time-is-money
tone.

“Porter, hi, this is Lottie.”

“Yes, Lottie?” he says, impatient.

“Porter I thought you may like to know that Darcy spent last night with Forrest Forbes.”

“Come on, Carlotta, we know that whole Forbes thing was just a sham to make me jealous.”

“It was, yes. But I’ve just overheard a
very
steamy conversation between Darcy and Eric Royce. I have to say it made me blush.”

“Lottie, the last time you blushed was behind the bicycle shed in the fourth grade.”

“Oh, Porter, you have such a memory!”

“Mnnnn. Are you sure you’re not just gossiping here, Lottie?”

“Darcy left home early yesterday afternoon and only returned at dawn. And minutes ago at the Book & Bean she told Eric Royce in no uncertain terms that she spent the night with Forrest Forbes.”

 “Okay, in my experience the best way to track Darcy’s movements is via her credit card.” She hears fingers on a keyboard. “I’m just calling up her account on my laptop.”

“Porter, you’re so smart!”

A few seconds pass then she hears him say, “Sweet jumping jockstraps!”

“Found something?” she asks, all honey.

“She spent the night in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and ran up a bar tab that could bail out Zimbabwe!”

“My, my . . . ”

“Okay, Lottie, this is damned serious.”

“Most certainly.”

“That Forbes character is after Darcy’s money.”

“Of course he is.”

“Which means he’s after
my
money, since I keep darling Darcy living happily in the style to which I made her accustomed.”

“Oh, you were always
such
a generous provider, Porter.”

“I’m coming up there,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

“How masterful of you.”

“And I’m going to talk sense into Darcy’s head.”

“Well, good luck, Porter and godspeed.”

Carlotta launches into a terrifyingly tuneless rendition of “Oh Happy Day” as she drives along the coast.

43

Darcy sits at her make-up table, applying subtle lipstick and base—the memory of Carlotta’s terrifying war paint still vivid in her mind—regretting that she’s got herself into this arrangement with Poor Billy Bigelow.

Of course, the
Pygmalion
thing had been hard to resist, the synchronicity making her feel that she was still in the warm embrace of something magical.

When, really she wanted to be in the warm embrace of Forrest Forbes.

No, girl.

Stop.

There will be no more of that.

But she can’t keep her mind from replaying delicious fragments from last night, and she can’t keep her eyes from traveling across to where her phone lies on the vanity table.

What would she do if he called?

Ignore him of, course.

Would she be strong enough?

But he won’t call.

She was just a little snack for a guy like Forrest Forbes.

He’s probably in a cocktail lounge right now with some model or actress, smiling that oh-so-perfect smile of his, trotting out his irresistible stories.

The thought of this so disconcerts Darcy that she ends up with lipstick on her teeth like some old
lush,
and she has to rub at them with a Kleenex.

When her phone rings she grabs for it so hurriedly that she sends it flying to the carpet, face down.

Snatching it up, she answers, convinced that it’ll be Forrest on the other end.

But it’s Porter who says, “Darce, it’s me.”

“Hi, Porter,” she says.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She waits for him to explode about her MasterCard, but instead he says, “You know, things weren’t great at the Ball. Kinda awkward.”

“They were a little. You could’ve handled things better.”

He exhales, battling to keep his temper.

“You may be right about that. So, look, I thought I’d come up Santa Sofia tomorrow, tie up a couple of loose ends. Maybe we can talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“I don’t want to do this on the phone, Darce. Let’s meet. Please.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice betraying her lack of enthusiasm.

“Shall I come by the house, say 4 p.m.?”

She can’t face him here.

“No, rather meet me at the Book & Bean.”

“I hate that place.”

“Sorry, Porter, you’ll just have to grit your teeth.”

He sighs. “Well, okay then. See you tomorrow.”

She ends the call, her mood a little deflated.

Come on
, she says to her reflection,
pick yourself up
.

Go and see the local librarian and the gas station owner putting on silly British accents and stumbling around the church hall stage.

She stands and drops her robe, and for just a second as she catches a glimpse of her near-naked body in the mirror, she hears Forrest playing “Let’s Do It” and feels his hands on her skin.

44

When Forrest finds himself staring at the wall again, he knows its time to get out of the apartment before he weakens and calls Darcy.

He leaves his cell phone lying on the bed, locks up and makes his way past the pool where a fat man floats on an inflatable chair, a drink with little umbrellas balanced on his massive belly.

Forrest finds himself wandering down to Rick’s bar and steps into a replay of the last time he was there: the bartender slumped at the counter reading a horseracing formbook, the old man at his station near the door, sucking on a beer.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Lucky,” Rick says.

The old man lifts a bottle in salute and Forrest says, “A round on me.”

“You’re a gentleman,” the old timer says to Forrest when Rick thumps a fresh beer down in front of him.

Forrest raises his Maker’s Mark.

“Cheers.”

The barkeep waves the formbook under Forrest’s nose.

“I see your Mr. Darcy is running again Friday at Hollywood Park.”

“Good for him.”

“You gonna give me a shot at winning some of my money back?”

“I’m done with gambling.”

The barkeep laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“But the question is: is gambling done with you?”

“Very Zen, Rick.”

A couple of men in cheap suits come in and the bartender goes across to serve them.

Forrest hears a sigh as the old man settles on a stool beside him.

“You mind?”

“No.”

“Made my day, you winning like that.”

“Made mine too.”

“So you’ve sworn off the ponies?”

“Yes. I’m done with all of it.”

“More power to you.”

The old man stares at him.

“Something wrong?” asks Forrest.

“No, just that looking at you is like looking in a mirror.”

Forrest smothers a laugh, staring into a face creased and wrinkled as a tortoise.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“You’re clairvoyant?”

“Nah, just been around a while.” He drinks. “You’re what, thirty-five?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘A very good year . . .’ ”

“Not so much.”

“Looking at me you wouldn’t think that I was quite the swell in my day, would you?”

“Oh, you have a certain . . . panache.”

“I like that. Panache.”

The man slurps the last of his beer and Forrest beckons to Rick to bring a refill.

“Appreciated,” the old geezer says as he takes a frothy sip.

“Sure.”

“Would you be offended if I offered you a word of advice?”

“No.”

“I look at you, I see a handsome guy, well brought up, but maybe down on his luck.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh. You not careful, you’re gonna go into a tailspin and end up like me, wondering where the hell all the years went.”

“Sounds bad.”

“It is. But, you’ve still got the time to set things straight.”

“And how would I do that?”

“With the love of a good woman.”

Forrest stares at the old man, trying to see if he’s joking, but he’s not.

“I’m serious. Find The One.”

“Capitalized?”

“Yessir, capitalized. The. One,” he says underscoring the words with his finger.

“Did you find her?”

“I did. And I’m ashamed to say I let her go. Too busy chasing tail and drinking and throwing money away on the ponies. Got nothing to show for it but these arthritic old bones inside a sack of wrinkled skin.”

“Where is she now?”

“Hell, I lost track of her in Cleveland back in ’72. But hear me, son, and hear me good. You find The One you hold onto her real tight.”

Forrest downs his drink.

“I hear you.”

He tips a salute to Rick and walks out into the gasoline scented night, feeling a yearning that reminds him of another lifetime . . .

45

The stuff of dreams, Billy.

No, let’s try that again: the stuff of dreams, William.

As he speaks to himself in the mirror, preparing for his momentous date with Darcy Pringle—
Darcy Pringle!
—Poor Billy Bigelow feels a momentary twinge as he remembers Brontë Baines looking at him with those huge eyes saying, “You look like a William to me,” and he finds himself wondering what she’s up to, in the little room adjacent to his apartment.

Then all thoughts of Brontë are banished when he sees Darcy smiling up at him earlier, her beautiful face aglow, saying in her breathy voice, “I’d
love
to go to the theater with you.”

As he runs a brush through his hair in a futile attempt to tame it, Billy marvels at how she read his mind, intuited the words that his twisted tongue had been unable to speak.

What a wonderful woman.

How had she tolerated that oaf Porter Pringle for all those years?

Another flashback hits Billy, this one from long ago, but it’s lost none of its power to hurt.

He sees himself at sixteen, a few months after the deaths of his mother and sister, still locked in a private hell of grief and guilt, walking out of the high school, past a knot of kids gathered around the brand new convertible Porter got for his sixteenth birthday.

Billy didn’t really see them, deep in a funk.

Didn’t see the trash can either, until he’d ploughed into it and sent it flying, the garbage inside flung at the feet of Porter and his friends, and some of it striking the shiny red paintwork of the new car.

Billy felt hands on him and then he, too, was flying, as Porter and his acolyte Walt McCourt upended him and shoved him head first into the trash can.

Then they’d loosened his jeans and pulled them to his ankles, the kids sniggering as he kicked his legs and bellowed.

It was Darcy who’d saved him.

He couldn’t see her, of course, but he heard her voice, saying, “Get him out of there, Porter!”

“He messed with my car.”

“I said get him out of there. Now!”

And the boys pulled him out and dropped him to the asphalt, where Billy hitched up his jeans and wiped crud off his cheek with his sweater.

Darcy knelt beside him, her lovely face blurred through his tears of humiliation.

“Are you okay, Billy?”

He’d said nothing, just grabbed his backpack and fled.

Billy Bigelow shakes his head at his reflection in the mirror.

No time for nonsense like that.

Not now.

He reaches for a pair of cufflinks on his dresser—a gift from his mother on
his
sixteenth birthday—and sends them flying to the floor, where one of them skids under the bed.

As Billy gets down on all fours, reaching for the errant cufflink, he hears the pants of his suit rip at the backside.

The cufflink forgotten, Billy rockets to his feet, striking his head a painful blow on his beside table and sending the lamp flying, plunging the room into darkness.

A minute of muffled oaths and bumps and groans follows, before he manages to find the lamp and plug it in again.

When he rises and inspects his rear in the mirror, he can clearly see the white of his underwear showing through the tear.

He’ll have to keep his suit jacket pulled low.

Billy sees that his hair looks like the coat of a rabid dog.

He rushes into the bathroom and wets his wiry curls at the sink, plastering them down on his head, toweling away the rivulets of water that trickle down his face.

He selects a necktie from his closet and as he returns to the mirror he takes a deep breath.

Neckties are his mortal enemies.

The last time he’d worn one, to his father’s funeral, he’d been unable to tie the thing and had to undergo the humiliation of asking
Peggy
at the diner to do it for him.