1 Breakfast at Madeline's (16 page)

"Jacob?"

I snapped back to attention. This ability of mine to remove myself mentally from whatever is going on in my life is why I became a writer in the first place.

Looking back, maybe I should have gone into therapy instead. "Yes?"

"Am I right?"

About what? Oh
yeah, tension between us. I at
tempted a nonchalant shrug. "I haven't noticed any. I'm just a little sick, that's all."

Bonnie's jaw thrust forward, and hard green light flashed from her irises. "Look, we need to talk. Get everything on the table."

I recognized that look, all right. It meant she was about to push me to invest in her video again. "Hey, I'd love to talk, but I really need to get home—"

"I don't mean right now." She paused. "We'll get the whole grant panel together."

If she was examining my face for a reaction, she got one.
The whole grant panel.
What was Bonnie saying to me? Was this something about The Penn?

I didn't want her to realize how ignorant I was, so I just said, "Good
idea," and nodded my head know
ingly. From watching Hollywood executives at work, I've learned that
nodding your head knowingly usu
ally works just as well as actually knowing something.

"How about tomorrow morning at ten?" Bonnie suggested.

Great. After being a
way from home all day today, to
morrow I'd have to leav
e again first thing in the morn
ing. On a weekend, no less. Andrea would read me the riot act. No way could I say okay.

"Okay," I said.

"How about we meet at Madeline's?"

Between Penn's death, Marcie's near-seduction, and that lousy Ethiopian, Madeline's was starting to fill up with bad vibes. But I was too tired to argue, so we agreed on Madeline's and said good-bye without a farewell hug, though it would have been okay by now since Little Big Man had gone south.

I headed south too, to Uncommon Grounds, Saratoga's other upscale coffee shop right down the street. It's not as nice as Madeline's—it's narrow and too well lit, and feels a
little like an airport runway—
but it's passable. So I
went in, got myself some Colom
bian, and sat down at one of the two empty tables in the back. I heaved a sigh of relief.
Finally,
I would get to read the application. I reached into my back pocket.

But the pocket was empty. The application was gone.

Bonnie must have ripped it off,
was my first thought. But that was just a lame attempt to ward off my second thought:
I must have dro
pped it in the basement of Made
line's.

I'd have to go back to the devil's lair.
Not that Marcie was the devil, but you know what I mean.
I hurried out of Uncommon Grounds, regretfully leaving my undrunk java behind. I was leaving behind undrunk java at every coffee joint in town. People would start thinking I was eccentric.

If anyone wanted
even more evidence of my eccen
tricity, they got it if they were watching me a minute later. I was hiding behind a wall outside Madeline's, sneaking occasional peeks through the window. I know I was being cowardly, but Marcie was clearing tables in the front room and I wanted to make it down to the basement without her seeing me. I wasn't ready to face her again; it would be too embarrassing. And besides, I'd barely succeeded in retaining my virtue the first time around
; pushing my luck would be fool
ish. Especially since I could already feel my blood rise when she bent down to clear a table and her dress fell slightly, revealing her breasts.

If I were British, maybe I'd have tried thinking about the queen; being American, I tried thinking about
Karen Carpenter singing "Close to You." But even that didn't work. Sneaking peeks through the window was making the whole damn thing even more erotic.

Marcie looked up from her wiping, and I ducked quickly behind the wal
l. It took me a whole minute be
fore I got up the nerve to look back inside. I sang "Close to You" to pass the time. Four middle-aged couples walked up
the sidewalk, throwing me ques
tioning looks as they passed by. Maybe they thought I was singing for quarters.

Then they stopped and went into Madeline's. Screwing up my courage, I slowly eased my head around the wall and eyed the front room. Just as I'd hoped, Marcie wasn't cleaning tables anymore; she was behind the counter now, taking orders from the four couples, hemmed in.
Go
. I opened the door and slipped past the counter to the back room, pretty sure I hadn't been noticed, and hurried straight for the basement stairs.

But Jonas, the sports memorabilia collector, was cleaning tables in the back room, and he looked up at me and nodded. If I tried going down to the basement, he might hassle me. So I stopped short at the big green bookcase lining one wall and pretended to studiously examine the books, an eclectic mix of Leo Tolstoy and Danielle Steele. As slow as Sports Memorabilia was working, it looked like I'd have time to read
War and Peace
before he finished. I just hoped I could make it downstairs before Marcie spotted me, or we might end up giving Danielle some fresh material.

Sports Memorabilia finished wiping a table and headed for the front room, so I sidled toward the back stairs. But then he did a nifty 90-degree turn and walked up to me.
"Hey, did you hear the Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs signed Bam Bam Mueller to a two-year contract?" he asked.

I contemplated braining him with a Tolstoy tome. But instead I just smiled slightly—
very
slightly, so as not to encourage him.

Unfortunately, th
e guy didn't need any encourage
ment. He spent the next ten minutes telling me in painful detail about every single one of the Diamond Dogs' offseason roster moves, as well as the moves made by the Catskill Cougars, the Elmira Pioneers, the New Jersey Jackals, and all the other teams in the Northeast Independent Baseball League.
War and Peace
wasn't nearly heavy enough, I realized; true justice would require that I drop the entire seven-foot-tall bookcase on his head.

Finally, after one last parting comment about the Allentown Ambassadors, Sports Memorabilia moved off.
I glanced around quickly, unlocked the gate, and dashed down the back stairs.

My eyes took a fe
w moments to adjust to the dark
ness, but then I found the aisle where I had almost sampled Marcie's forbidden fruit. I was in such a hurry to find the application and get the hell out of there, I tripped on
a coffee sack and sprawled head
long. Marcie's scent was
still lingering in the air, im
pairing my ability to think straight. As I stood back up, I wondered if my concussion had somehow improved my sense of smell. I couldn't believe Marcie's odor was still so powerful, even though she hadn't been down here for fifteen minutes, maybe more—

"Hi," Marcie said.

I jumped, tripped on another coffee sack, and landed back on the floor. Marcie came and stood over me. "Are you all right?" she asked in her husky voice.

From where I lay, I couldn't help but look up her dress. And her smell was stronger than ever—so that's where it comes from, I thought...

And then my brain just plain gave out. My synapses exploded.

Helpless with lust, I reached up to pull Marcie down on top of me. My hand
s stretched toward hers, my fin
gertips shivering as they rose through the air.

21

"Looking for something?" Marcie asked, her eyes on my outstretched fingers.

"Yes," I breathed.

"Here." She brought her hand close to mine.

I started to grab her. But then I saw she was holding out some sheets of paper in her hand.
Huh?
I stared blankly at them for a few moments before the lust fog finally lifted enough for me to recognize The Penn's application.

I blinked up at Marcie, then took the application from her fingers and s
tood up. The act of standing fi
nally got my brain synapses working again, and I started coming back to myself.
I am Jacob Burns,
I thought,
I'm married with two young children.
My mind repeated it like a mantra.
I'm married
—

"Jacob, there's something I have to say to you."

—
with two young child
ren.
"Sure, yeah," I said, smil
ing with false cheer that fooled neither of us. "Let's go upstairs, we can talk there."

I started past her, but she put a hand on my chest. "I'd rather talk down here."

My lips flopped around for a while, then I found my voice. "Marcie, I know how you feel. But—"
But I'm married with two young children,
I was about to say, until she interrupted.

"Yeah, I figured you knew," she said bitterly. "It's in that dumb book he was writing, isn't it?"

Now my synapses all began firing simultaneously.
What
is in that dumb book?

When in doubt, nod knowingly,
I reminded myself,
just nod knowingly.
So I did. I was glad my body was more or less following my brain's instructions again. Though to be honest, my head wasn't the only part of me that was nodding knowingly.

"It was just a one-time thing," Marcie complained, her baby blues looking pained. Still at sea, I nodded knowingly again. Marcie shook her head, e
xasper
ated. "I can't believe he made such a big deal out of it. It didn't
mean
anything.
It would be like if we did it—
I mean, you and me. Just a fun thing, you know?"

Holy cannoli, what was Marcie telling me here? Had she made love to
Donald Penn?
I was
so baffled, I for
got to nod. This seeming lack of sympathy got Marcie even more riled up, and she started whining. "It's just so unfair. I mean, Madeline is my cousin. She's like my
sister
. I'd never do anything to hurt her."

Come again? How would Marcie's one-nighter with The Penn hurt Madeline? But then, finally, I started to get a glimmer of understanding.

Marcie put her han
d on my shoulder, and I was sur
prised that for some reason it didn't turn me on. Strange. "Hey, Jacob, you and I almost made love, right? But that wouldn't have made us
bad people
. It wasn't something we should be
punished for."

She threw me a desperate look, then started up again. "So did he write down the whole thing? How he heard me and Rob in the basement?"

Me and Rob in the basement.
So my glimmer had been right. I nodded to myself. But Marcie thought I was nodding yes to her question, and she let out a petulant
growl. "That pathetic little
shit,"
she spit out, "did he write down about how he was
blackmailing
me?"

Whew, this Penn
guy was some piece of work. Mar
cie kept on going, dri
ven by fury. "Every single morn
ing I had to give him
ninety-seven fucking cents
for a cup of coffee. I had to sneak it in a goddamn envelope and then hide it under the magazines so he could get it when he came in. And it had to be exact change, or the bastard wouldn't
accept
it!" She swatted a coffee bag angrily. "If anyone ever deserved to
die
, it was
Donald fucking Penn."

I stared at Marcie, wondering something, and I guess you know what it was. But
Marcie was wonder
ing something else. "So what are you gonna do?" she asked, with a hard stare.

I didn't know, so I nodded knowingly. I figured that would provoke her into talking some more, like it had before. But it didn't. She just stood there, her hard stare icing over.
So I sighed thoughtfully, then nodded noncommittally, then tried raising my eyebrows questioningly, but nothing seemed to work.
Marcie's glare was so fierce it definitely made me think she was capable of murder, but she still wasn't saying anything. Finally I gave in and broke the silence first. "What do
you
think I should do?"

"Just shut the fuck
up!" Then she pulled herself to
gether, and softened. "Look, I know you're a serious writer and everything, and I respect that, and you probably don't want to interfere with that asshole's
artistic integrity
or whatever the hell you call it when you get his book published"—she paused for breath, and to bat her big blue eyes at me—"but would it be so hard to just, you know,
leave out
the part of the book that's about me and Rob?"

I took a moment to
try to frame an answer, and Mar
cie started to cry. He
r tears would have been more ef
fective if I hadn't suspected that she knew the same actor's trick for making yourself cry that I did. "Jacob, you gotta understand, if Madeline finds out he slept with me while he was engaged to her, it'll just
kill
her. She's so
old-fashioned,
white wedding dress and all that stuff, I mean Rob is only, like, the second guy she ever slept with." Marcie wiped away a tear. "Please, Jacob, Madeline doesn't deserve this. You can do anything you want to me, but not to poor Madeline," she ended melodramatically.

You can do anything you want to me.
My chest sagged.

So that's why Marcie had been so eager to wiggle out of her clothes. It wasn't because I was so incredibly desirable and sexy, it was because she wanted to buy my silence.

Or maybe
blackmail
my silence. Maybe she was tear
ing a page out of Donald Penn's book, as it were. Man, what a comedown. Here I'd been burning with insane ballbusting desire, and the whole time the woman was just playing me like a kazoo.

I would have felt worse, except for one thing: as I looked at Marcie's mute pleading face, I realized that my crush on her h
ad dissipated somehow. Maybe be
cause in the last few minutes Marcie had transformed from a gorgeous fantas
y queen with perfect smile, per
fect breasts, and even p
erfect coffee, to a regular per
son who pleaded, sighed, and got self-centered and furious just like everyone else in the world. Now that I'd seen the reality of her, it only took a short mental jump for me to picture Marcie as a harassed thirty
-
something married
woman with young children, nag
ging her husband to change a damn diaper every once in a while.

In other words, I belatedly understood, Marcie was not all that different from my wife. Except, of course, that I love my wife.

I allowed myself a small smile. I felt like I had dodged a bullet tonight.

"What are you smiling about?" Marcie broke into my thoughts.

"Nothing," I answered, and quickly shifted gears from 90s sensitive guy back to 30s private dick. What was the score now:
one murder, two burglaries, as
sault, arson, following me around town, throwing bricks through windows... It seemed like too much for Marcie to pull off al
one. But what if she'd con
spired with Rob? "So was The Penn blackmailing Rob too?" I asked.

"No, I made him promise not to tell Rob. That was part of our deal." She sighed. "See, it wasn't really Rob's fault we slept together. I seduced him."

Suddenly she surprised me with a girlish giggle. "I couldn't help it. I mean, I worked right next to him for ten whole months, just
dying
to sleep with him, and I couldn't stand it anymore." She gazed up at me, her eyes getting that familiar lewd twinkle. Her nostrils flared a little, and she moistened her lips. "Just like I've been watching you every morning for two years. And getting hotter and hotter for you every single day."

Our eyes locked. My head pounded. Maybe she meant it. Maybe not.

But one thing I was sure of: I wanted coffee right now more than I had ever wanted coffee before in my life. Maybe more t
han I had ever wanted sex. "Mar
cie," I said, "let's g
o upstairs."

She didn't miss a beat. "What about Penn's book? Will you take out the part about me and Rob?"

I would have reassured her, but I guess I was still pissed off about being a kazoo. So I just said, "I don't know what to say," and led the way upstairs.

After we got there, it occurred to me that for all of
my lustful ogling, I had never once thought to look at Marcie's feet. Must be a shortcoming in my erotic makeup. So I turned and looked.

Like the rest of her, Marcie's feet were gorgeous. And two other interesting things about them:

They were medium sized
...
and they were clad in high-heeled shoes.

They weren't silver, but they were definitely high heels. This gave me yet another thing to think about as I headed back to Uncommon Grounds with The Penn's application f
olded up small and stashed care
fully in my front pocket. It wa
s 10:50 already and I re
ally should be going home, but I figured Dave wouldn't mind staying a little late. And I didn't feel like going home to my wife right after Marcie.

Not that I had anythi
ng to feel guilty about, I reas
sured myself. Hell, I'd been a veritable pillar of virtue. Okay, so maybe I did sway a bit, but I didn't fall. The devil thought he had a slam dunk, but I blocked his shot. I had been tested, true, but I'd passed with a C minus.

I was still thinking up metaphors as I ordered Colombian, headed f
or an empty table... and practi
cally ran into Madeline and Rob. I was so taken aback, I spilled my drink. Sh
oot, another java wasted. Fortu
nately Uncommon Grounds offered free refills, so I was able to get myself another hit of caffeine without forking over my fourth dollar bill of the night. Also, the whole episode gave me time to rearrange my face so I could act nonchalantly cheerful when I passed Madeline and Rob's table again. "Hey guys," I said, "how come you'
re giving money to your competi
tion?"

Madeline grinned. "They have better coffee here."

"No way, Jose."

"Yo, what about you?" Rob asked. "How come you're not at Madeline's?"

Because Marcie was playing my kazoo, just like she did yours,
I thought. Out loud I said, "Hey, nobody goes to Madeline's anymore, they're too crowded."

Madeline thought about that one, then laughed. "Hey, good line. No wonder you're a writer."

Actually I stole that line from Yogi Berra, but I didn't correct her, just shrugged modestly and changed the subject. "So what's that, an invitation list?" I asked, pointing to a long han
dwritten list of names on a yel
low legal pad in front of them.

Madeline nodded. "How many people did you have at your wedding?" she asked me, glancing sideways at Rob.

"Including all my great-
aunts and my long-lost rela
tives from Philadelphia, about a hundred and fifty."

She turned to Ro
b triumphantly. "You see? A hun
dred and twenty really isn't all that much."

Rob looked pained. "At sixty dollars a person?"

"Don't worry. We can afford it."

"I just don't feel right. I mean, it's your money."

"Honey, it's
our
money
. Please, you gotta start think
ing like that." She stroked his cheek. "Besides, once you sell your sofa and the rest of your stuff, that'll take care of twenty people right there."

Rob looked to me for support.
"Women,"
he said.

"Women,"
I agreed.

"What about women?" Madeline asked.

Rob kissed her on the lips. "Did anyone ever tell you, you look just like Andie MacDowell in
Groundhog Day.
Except with more freckles."

I watched as they started cooing and rubbing noses. It did my heart good. Sure, Rob had his moment of weakness with Marcie, but God knows the temptation had been strong, and besides, he hadn't been married
yet. One last little premarital fling didn't by any stretch of the imagination mean their marriage was doomed. Far from it. Madeline and Rob truly loved each other, and they were perfect together.