All That Was Happy (15 page)

“
By the real ugliness,” Huntington
said, “I mean the ugly part where they tear you apart publicly and
ruin your good name, at which point your closest friends abandon
you and you become the town leper.”

Beckie shuddered at the thought, which
crowded its way in among her other fearful festerings, mostly
financial. She had used Huntington’s car phone to call her bank and
verify the bad news about her sudden impoverishment, and was
feeling the first icy fingers of shock seeping into her system,
fingers which had, at the moment, begun to squeeze her heart.

“
My Citibank Platinum Preferred
Business Customer Visa had a special credit limit of two-hundred
grand,” Beckie said. “It was something we got from our personal
banker, Jeff Santorini a few years back. Now the jerk won’t even
take my call.”

“
You can stay with me as long as you
like,” Huntington said, taking a shortcut from Sunset to Wilshire
Boulevard.

“
You don’t understand,” Beckie said. “I
can’t live with you--I’ve only known you two days. It’s wrong to
even think of it.”

“
I understand,” he said. “We’ll get you
a room at the Plaza when we get to Century City. You can stay there
until Lauren is finished dismantling Bernie’s two-bit legal
defenses.”

“
Huntington,” she said. “You’re still
not getting it. I can’t take your money. I can’t even let you pay
for my lawyer. That’s something I’m going to have to work out with
her.”

“
Look,” he said. “I understand how you
must feel--you don’t want to be obligated to me. But you need
somebody to help you through the minefield. Why can’t it be
me?”

“
You can’t possibly understand how I
feel,” she said. “Do you realize that right at this very moment, if
it weren’t for you, I’d have nothing? No home, no car, no money? Do
you have any idea how that must feel?”

“
Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I have
no idea.”

“
I shouldn’t even be going in to see
Bernie’s lawyers--what I should do is call Bernie and beg for
mercy.”

“
You don’t mean that,” he
said.

“
I can’t win this fight. You don’t know
Bernie--he’s like a little pit bull. How do you think he built a
tool business from scratch into a multi-million dollar
enterprise?”

“
He can’t be that tough,” Huntington
said.

“
When we were new in the business,”
Beckie said. “Bernie crawled over a competitor’s fence one night
and went through their garbage to find out what they were charging.
But before he went over that fence, he shot the guard
dog.”

“
That’s not tough,” Huntington said.
“That’s just mean.”

“
I’m going to ask Lauren to see if she
can get me some kind of settlement,” Beckie said. “Maybe she can
get me a hundred grand if I agree not to contest the divorce. After
legal fees, I’d have enough to make it through the first year until
I can get some kind of job or something.”

Huntington, having reached Wilshire
Boulevard, suddenly pulled into the parking lot of Simonson
Mercedes. Reaching into his glove box, he extracted a checkbook and
began to scribble.

“
Here,” he said.

The check was in the amount of five million
dollars.

“
Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh,” Beckie
chuckled. “Okay, Huntington, it’s funny. You made me laugh. And
you’re right--I was taking myself too seriously. The truth is, I’m
not totally without resources--if it comes right down to it, my
friend Leah will let me stay with her. Or I can call Doctor
Black--I’m a member of a self-help group called WE, which is short
for Women Empowered--I’m sure they have some sort of assistance for
a woman who’s being financially pounced upon by her greedy husband.
All in all, I suppose I should be ashamed for feeling sorry for
myself like I have been. After all, there are fifteen million
people crossing over from Tijuana every year with nothing but the
clothes on their backs and they’re not complaining.”

“
The check for the five mil is real,”
he said. “It’s yours. I told you I found the woman I’ve been
looking for.”

He got out of the Suburban, walked around and
helped her from the jump seat. A salesperson approached, her eyes
trying not to register shock at the sight of Beckie’s swollen nose
and black eye.

“
I’m Kasha,” the salesperson said.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it? Are you folks in the market?”

“
Kasha,” Huntington said. “I want you
to witness something. My name is Huntington. This is Beckie. I’m
about to hand her a check for five million dollars. I’m doing this
of my own free will. There are no strings attached of any kind
whatsoever to this gift. She does not have to date me, or love me,
or be my friend, or anything else. I’m doing this because of
something she told me earlier, something she learned from her
mother. Her mother said that if you find your dream, don’t pass it
by. She said that if you pass your dreams by, you can never go back
and find them again.”

Huntington got down on one knee. “Beckie,” he
said. “You are my dream. Please accept this small gift in token of
my undying appreciation for the two days of heaven I’ve experienced
with you.” He handed her the check. “This is my pledge to you that
this is one Old Fogy who will never pass you by. It’s my hope that
you’ll use this money to start a new life--with this money, you
won’t have to be dragged through a messy divorce--you can simply
sign off on whatever Bernie wants and get him out of your life.
Then you’ll be free to see if I’m the man you’re looking for.”

With a flourish, Huntington stood up, reached
into the Suburban, retrieved Beckie’s straw bag containing her
bathrobe, her gun, and her dog. Climbing back into the driver’s
seat, he rolled down the window.

“
Don’t forget,” he said. “You’re going
with me to the United Way dinner tonight--I still have to prove to
you who I am by introducing you to charitable important persons of
substance who’ll vouch for me. Call me when you get situated.”
Blowing her a kiss, he drove away.

“
We’re on Candid Camera, aren’t we?”
Kasha said. “I recognize you--you’re Suzanne Sommers--at first I
thought you might be Barbra Streisand--but now I see the
difference--you’ve got more you-know-what than Streisand
does--that’s a pretty good disguise job they did with the black eye
and the short hair, but I recognize your figure and your smile. I
love your show.”

The two women stood there in the crisp, but
warming morning breeze.

“
I’m not Suzanne Sommers,” Beckie
said.

“
Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh,” Kasha chirped.
“Where is the camera? Is it over there behind the pre-owned
vehicles or something?”

“
We can’t turn back the days that have
gone,” Beckie said. “I learned something last night--I learned that
when you get your chance to ride a really good wave, you better
take that chance, because that wave may never come again. Even if
you can’t stay on the wave--even if you can’t catch it, you should
at least try.”

“
That man really gave you five
million?” Kasha said.

“
He wanted to strut his stuff,” Beckie
said. “Apparently, he wasn’t having much fun until I came along.
Life had been cruel to him--he’d never found his match.”

“
I have seen many strange things in
this town,” Kasha said. “But I have never seen a man hand a woman
five million dollars and then drive off. I’m thinking it must be a
joke--that check isn’t real.”

“
It’s real,” Beckie said. “It’s my
reward for something I did early this morning. I gave him something
priceless. Something I can never give any man again. I gave him my
first passion.”

“
What are you going to do now,” Kasha
said.

“
Well, I’ve been giving that some
thought,” Beckie said. “After all, this is Los Angeles. This is the
town where nobody walks.”

“
You should maybe buy yourself a new
car or something,” Kasha said.

“
That’s exactly what I was thinking,”
Beckie said. “Have you got any Roadsters left?”

Chapter
26

“
It took them awhile to accept the
check,” Beckie said. “And after they called all the right good old
boys and made sure the funds were good, they really freaked out
when I asked for a “less cash” of a hundred grand. They took me
into a special room they had so nobody would see me put their bank
bag holding the hundred grand into my straw purse.”

“
I don’t imagine too many people come
in to World Savings carrying personal checks for five million
dollars,” Dr. Black said.

“
They were kind of suspicious,” Beckie
said, “--in fact, so were the Mercedes people--they followed me
over to the bank to make sure they got their hundred-and-sixty
thou. It didn’t help when they asked me for my address and I
couldn’t give them one--they finally accepted the address of
Century Plaza.”

“
I’m not surprised they were
suspicious,” Black said. “The banks didn’t get where they are now
by trusting anybody. Now tell me, why the hundred grand in cash in
a bag?”

“
I’m through trusting banks,” Beckie
said. “If they ever freeze me out again, I’ll at least have bus
fare.”

“
Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous
to carry a hundred thousand dollars around in a straw
purse?”

“
Maybe,” Beckie said. “But Mr. Boopers
will be on top of it--and I also have my gun.”

Black frowned, not from displeasure, but more
from the effort to keep her mouth from simply gaping. “The real
issue is,” Black said, “how does it make you feel accepting a gift
like that from a man you only met yesterday?”

“
What can I say,” Beckie said. “I
needed lipstick and foundation.”

Beckie--having purchased a new dark-blue
Mercedes SL-600 Roadster convertible, the Black Diamond Edition
complete with hands-free telephone, plus a six-thousand
cubic-centimeter 48-valve V-12 engine and a one-button electric
top--which she’d put down to feel the warming April breeze on her
way to open a new account and deposit her check before her
appointment with Doctor Black in her office high up in the World
Savings building at Wilshire and Barrington--was searching her
feelings with the Doctor’s help trying to make sense of the recent
events of which some had befallen her and of which she’d in turn
befallen some.

“
The Roadster has a satellite to tell
me exactly where I am,” she said. “The problem is, where I am on
the planet seems to have nothing to do with where I am in my
head.”

“
When you accepted the gift, did you
feel any loss of integrity?” Black said.

“
Not at that moment,” Beckie said. “The
truth is, I had already lost my integrity. Just moments before, I
had made a decision to cave in to the pressure Bernie was applying.
I was going to have my lawyer attempt to negotiate a flat fee and
get the whole thing over with. But now that I have five million
dollars in my new money market account, less of course, the
hundred-and-sixty-thou for the car, and a few bucks for my lipstick
and foundation, I think that I’ve actually had my integrity
restored. But I learned a lesson.”

“
What lesson was that?” Black
asked.

“
I learned that in some ways, as
regards my relationship to Bernie, I’m a wimp. I thought I had more
backbone than I did. It took Bernie only two days to cave me in. I
guess I’m really a weak person--maybe that’s why I grabbed the five
million dollars.”

“
Giving in has a heavy price tag,”
Black said. “It can take a toll on your self image.”

“
I’m starting to have a real sense of
shame,” Beckie said. “These last two days have been crazy. I’ve
been thinking of my mother a lot--she was a woman of iron. If any
man had tried to give her five million dollars, she would have torn
the check in half. My mother used to tell me over and over that my
soul isn’t for sale.”

“
Did you sell your soul just now?”
Black said. “Did you sell it for five million dollars?”

Beckie thought this over. “It’s just that I
was under such inhuman pressure,” she said.

“
I’ll answer the question for you,”
Black said. “You did not sell your soul. If my understanding was
correct, the money was given freely to you by a friend with no
expectation of repayment, or favors of any kind in return. The
amount of the gift is not important.”

“
But I was caving in to Bernie, and now
I’m not,” Beckie said.

“
You hadn’t caved in to Bernie,” Black
said. “You were only entertaining the thought. You had yet to
perform the action of caving. Actually, if you think about it, you
had made what may have been a very wise choice. You’d decided to
settle for a small amount in exchange for your freedom. You were
giving up a lifetime of court battles in exchange for a chance to
live your new, passionate existence. In my opinion, you weren’t
caving in, you were affirming yourself to be someone to whom a
price tag could not be assigned.”

“
You’re right,” Beckie said. “Besides,
it was a totally no-win situation. I had little choice but to try
to negotiate a small settlement and get the thing over
with.”

“
So where do things stand now,” Black
said. “Now that you’re financially independent?”