Rent A Husband (22 page)

68

It’s night by the time Darcy drives the SUV into her garage and triggers the remote that lowers the door.

She sits in the gloom, listening to the car click and ping, loathing the idea of going inside the house that is nothing so much as a monument to her bastard of an ex-husband.

How could she have kissed that loathsome reptile?

She scrubs her lips with a Kleenex, as if that will rid her of twenty years of stupidity.

What need you need is a glass of wine and a long soak in the tub.

In the morning you can start afresh.

Start living your life.

The memory of Forrest Forbes and his hands and his tongue and his skin wafts into Darcy’s consciousness and almost brings a smile to her face.

She leaves the car and lets herself into the kitchen.

Heading straight for the fridge she splashes white wine into a glass, throws most of it back and fills the glass again.

As Darcy walks through to the living room she hears the front door bell.

Porter.

The selfish, egocentric creep has followed her home.

She slams her glass down on the table and yanks open the door, ready for mortal combat.

Eric Royce, seeing her face, quickly raises his hands in dual V signs.

“I come in peace, neighbor.”

Darcy sighs and slumps against the door.

“God, Eric, am I pleased to see you.”

She stands aside to let him enter.

He stares at her.

“Tough day in paradise?”

“Yes.”

She drops down on the couch and glugs her wine.

“Porter?” he asks.

“Yes, Porter,” she says with a moan, closing her eyes.

“Did you see Forrest?”

She blinks and stares at Eric.

“No. What are you talking about?”

And he tells her about Forrest Forbes appearing at her door in a taxi, then heading off toward town on foot.

“I tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up,” he says.

Darcy fishes her muted cell phone out of her jeans and sees a missed call from Eric.

And a missed call from Forrest.

And she knows with an awful certainty that Forrest went to the coffee shop and the vile Carlotta McCourt sent him off to the beach where he saw Darcy kissing Porter.

She dials his number and when it goes directly to voice mail she kills the call, and slumps back with her eyes closed tight.

A horrible, horrible day has just got even worse.

The one thing that had still glowed like a small symbol of hope—the fantasy of another liaison with Forrest Forbes—had now been trashed.

“Eric, be an angel and pour me another glass of wine. In fact, why don’t you bring the bottle?”

“It’s like that is it?”

“Yeah,” she says, “It’s like that.”

When he returns he carries not only the wine bottle, but a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy and two spoons.

“Eric, your feminine side is
way
too developed.”

“That’s what my dear old pop used to say when he was beating the stuffing out of me.”

He scoops a spoonful of ice cream and licks it.

“Mnnnn. But, as they say, living well is the best revenge.”

He hands the tub to Darcy.

“Eat and drink, darling. You can fight on tomorrow.”

She eats.

She drinks.

She even smiles.

“So,” he says. “Dish.”

And dish she does, telling him all about Porter and his slimy maneuvers.

“He’s a cockroach, Darcy. The lowest form of life.”

“He is. How could I have fallen for it? And how could I have
kissed
him?”

Eric takes her hand.

“Because you’re human, and because you loved him deep and true for many long years.”

“I did. What a loser I am.”

“No, sweetheart, he’s the loser. Now, give yourself some props girlfriend and forget the kiss. I want you to remember the slap and the kick and savor those memories.”

She laughs as she sees Porter sinking to the sand, clutching his middle.

“Boy, I got him good.”

She spoons ice cream.

“Poor Forrest. What do you think he was doing up here?”

“Well, he wasn’t canvassing for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was he?” Eric says around a mouthful of Benny and Jerry’s. “He’s smitten, Darcy, and clearly he came up here to tell you as much.”

“And now he’s fled, never to be seen again.”

“Nonsense. Tomorrow you’re going to drive down to LA and make nice with Mr. Forbes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And tonight?”

Eric tops up her wine glass.

“Tonight you’re going to get completely stinko and have a slumber party with little old
moi
. Up for it?”

“You’re the doctor,” she says throwing back half her glass. Then she moves a strand of hair away from her face.
“You’re a good friend, Eric. Thanks for being here.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be, Darce, nowhere at all.”

Later, when the wine and the ice cream have worked their magic and Darcy snores softy on the couch, Eric tiptoes into the kitchen and thumbs Forrest Forbes’s number on his cell phone.

“Just let him answer,” he says to the kitchen ceiling, “and I promise I’ll quit trying to do your job ever again. Deal?”

But nobody is listening, because Forrest Forbes’s phone goes straight to voice mail.

 Eric sighs and returns to the living room to watch over his sleeping friend.

69

Humiliated, depressed and defeated, Billy leaves the Santa Sofia sheriff’s office.

He has been released after formally apologizing to the members of the Children’s Orchestra and their shrewish mauve-haired chaperone, a woman who’d demanded that Billy
rot in jail
before the sheriff suggested she turn the other cheek.

“I would,” she’d said. “But it’s bruised!”

She relented, however, and Billy is free to go.

Walking out into the night he thinks that the name Poor Billy Bigelow has never suited him better.

Bill
be damned.

William
be damned.

It will be Poor Billy Bigelow carved on the headstone the day he’s buried in the Santa Sofia cemetery beside his mother, father and sister.

And, as he shuffles down the stairs to the sidewalk, Poor Billy hopes that day isn’t long in coming.

Then he hears two sheriff’s deputies leaning on a patrol car, talking about a freight train derailed down near Los Angeles.

Billy recognizes one of the men from school, a thickset bully by the name of Bucky Eckhard.

“Evening, Bucky,” Billy says.

“Hi, Billy. Run into any interesting musicians lately?” Eckhard says in his braying voice and his pal slaps the roof of the cruiser in appreciation.

“That’s a good one, Bucky.” Billy stretches his face into an ingratiating grin. “What’s this I hear about some trouble with the railroad?”

“Yeah, a freight train jumped the tracks down near Oxnard.”

“So, it’ll delay the passenger train from Santa Sofia?”

“Reckon it will, unless it can sprout wings and fly,” Eckhard makes flapping motions.

The other deputy takes pity on Billy. “You got somebody on that train?”

“Yes, a close friend.”

“Okay, latest we heard is that there’ll be at least a two hour delay. So just call your buddy and tell them to sit tight.”

Billy turns and sprints to where his old station wagon is still parked outside the train station.

Two hours to get from Santa Sofia to Union Station in LA.

Can he make it?

He has to.

70

Forrest, as the old saw would have it, can drink as if he has a wooden leg.

He’s one of those people who reach a level of inebriation and then, rather then plummeting into oblivion, plateau out and seem to be able to keep on drinking forever.

Of course, sitting in the train that’s stalled somewhere in God-forsaken SoCal (how can people use that hideous abbreviation?) he knows that this isn’t quite true.

There is a drink out there waiting for him, a drink with the power to drop the hammer that’ll send him into a state of unconsciousness that could last for as long as a day.

He raises a fresh glass of Scotch and says, “Do your worst,” before he throws it back in one gulp.

Nope.

Not that one
.

He’s still upright, still staring out into the darkness.

Still able to summon his very special friend the waiter, who—he has come to believe—has a bet going with the barkeep, a hirsute fellow with a forehead like a motorcycle helmet, on how many more drinks Forrest will be able to absorb.

The new quintet of drinks arrives and Forrest starts in on them.

The notion of a bet sets his addled mind off on a toxic train of thought.

He sees another bartender, the oily Rick, polishing a clean glass with a dirty rag saying, “Your Mr. Darcy is running again Friday at Hollywood Park.”

Friday.

That’s tomorrow
.

Friday has another significance, Forrest knows, and tries to tease an answer from his brain that, quite pleasantly, feels as though it’s wrapped in cotton wadding.

Music gives him the cue.

A few bars of an Indian raga.

Whether it comes from inside the train before it is abruptly silenced, or whether it’s a product of his imagination is unimportant, it takes him back into the stinking alley behind the Jaipur Palace, Lakshmi’s thuggish landlord threatening her with eviction if he doesn’t get the rent money on Friday.

Forrest feels a moment of booze-fueled affection for Lakshmi that almost has him weeping again.

She is his oldest and dearest and truest friend and he’s ignored her plight, so wrapped up was he in his teenage passion for Little Miss Girl Next Door.

A gut-twisting flashback of the kiss on the beach damn nearly pitches Forrest into that looming coma.

Enough.

He slams down his glass on the counter, waving away the waiter who is as keen as a greyhound at the starting gate.

The starting gate.

Yes.

Mr. Darcy at Hollywood Park.

Yes, yes.

Forrest will win a bundle of cash tomorrow and square Lakshmi’s debt.

A deflating thought needles its way through the protective layers of booze: how can he expect a repeat of that fluke win the other day?

Is it likely that another jockey will tumble from his mount?

No
, he decides, drinking deeply.

Then the alcohol—
what a magical potion it is
!—allows him an insight that he would never have sober.

He’s back in the final moments of the race the other day, the almost-victorious jockey urging the favorite toward the finish, raising his arms and half-standing in his stirrups, pumping his fists in celebration.

Then Forrest sees—as clearly as if he’s right there—the little man dive from the horse, rolling himself into a ball to protect himself from injury as Mr. Darcy leads the rest of the field home.

Forrest laughs out loud.

Of course! The race was fixed!

And Forrest’s mind, made so nimble—
almost acrobatic
!—by the booze takes him into a smoky backroom, where swarthy men in check sports coats and green eyeshades, stogies clamped in their jaws (men whose surnames all end in vowels) hatch a diabolical plan to make a chunk of money off of a half-ton of horsemeat called Mr. Darcy by buying jockeys and fixing races.

Brilliant
, Forrest says out loud, referring both to their dark scheme and his ability to detect it.

I’ll bet on Mr. Darcy tomorrow.

And I’ll bet heavily.

Another brief moment of deflation.

All he has in his skinny wallet is a couple of dollars.

How, then, is he going to finance this bet?

His hand answers him, delving beneath his shirt, fingers finding the comforting contours of his mother’s ring.

He’ll use the ring as collateral.

Raymond, his bestest old buddy boy, will not refuse him.

As Forrest raises a triumphant hand and signals for more drinks the train jolts and groans into motion.

71

Poor Billy Bigelow has never driven his car beyond the outskirts Santa Sofia.

He seldom travels out of town, but when he does—occasionally visiting the Los Angeles Book Fair—he uses the train.

So, hunched over the wheel of the station wagon, peering into the night, his foot flat to the floor, the old car wallowing on the highway like a whale, he’s terrified.

Terrified of losing his once-in-a-lifetime shot at love, sure, but it is an older terror that causes rivers of sweat to flow from his body.

Memories of the runaway ice cream truck and that awful collision that killed his mother and sister fill his mind, and when, down near Carpinteria, he drifts from his lane and a huge, rumbling rig nearly turns him to hamburger beneath it eighteen wheels, the theme from
The Sting
plays loudly in his head.

But once the rig, air horns blaring, speeds away into the night, Billy feels a strange kind of fatalistic calm settle upon him.

He will get to Union Station or die trying.

So Billy races toward Los Angeles in some sort of trance until he sees the city’s infinity of lights spread before him, and a new fear seizes his gut.

How will he not get lost in this vast metropolis?

The old car, needless to say, has no GPS, and even if it was furnished with one, Billy wouldn’t have a clue how to work it.