Barefoot Beach (31 page)

At the door, Scott gave me a brush of a kiss. “To be continued,” he murmured, though he didn't say when. His walk down the path was jaunty,
which could have been the spring mechanism in the revised prosthetic foot, but I didn't think so.

It didn't take long before I was wishing I could order a new foot for myself. The last one was stuck in my mouth, making it hard to breathe. Seriously, I asked myself, what had I been thinking? As the wine fog cleared, the impact of what I'd just promised hit me. I'd said I'd wait indefinitely for someone I barely knew except by reputation and the first thrilling rush of feeling, which in my experience were never the most reliable measures of anything. I'd just made a promise I wasn't sure I was ready for, wasn't sure I could keep.

As if Scott Goddard hadn't had enough of broken vows.

I slipped into the director's reserved last-row center seat for the final few minutes of
The King and I
. It was closing night, which called for an encore of “Shall We Dance?” and Margo's traditional thank-you speech that included the crew by name and such notables as Tuckahoe's mayor (present) and her parents (dead), who would have spun in their graves had they known she was frittering away her life on such stage nonsense. No mention of Pete, sitting up front.

Only once in my memory had Margo included Pete in one of these closing-night salutes. That was a decade ago, after the run of
Damn Yankees
. Otherwise she claimed he was a distraction. “Everybody cranes to see him and suddenly it's all about the Greek Icon and the cast gets lost in the shuffle.” In the interim, his star had faded, so I doubted there would have been a major buzz and she could have thanked a generic husband, but Margo wasn't inclined to make nice to the Big Cheat these days.

After the final curtain and a stop at the restroom, I ducked outside for a breath of unconditioned air and was inhaling the intoxicating fragrance of gardenias when Emine's SUV pulled up, the passenger door flew open, and Merry leapt out.

She dashed past me, calling on the run, “Hi, Aunt Norrie. Party started yet?”

“Not yet but about to,” I said.

“Made it. Yesss!”

Em flipped on the inside light and waved me over. She zipped down the driver's-side window and I leaned in.

“Congratulations.” I hitched my neck toward the stage door. “How'd you manage that?”

“It was like working out the Treaty of Versailles, but I came up with a compromise. Merry agreed to go to the Iftar, which started at sundown. Adnan agreed that she and I could leave right after dinner before the speeches started.”

“And everyone was happy?”

“Of course not. No one was happy. Merry sulked through dinner and hardly touched the food, which she whispered to me was gross. In fact, it was delicious. But she needed a reason to pull a long face.” Em drew her mouth down with two fingers at the edges. “The father and the daughter glared at each other. She complains he disses her. But she disses too. Before dinner, he introduced us to these people he was trying to impress. Erol shook hands. Merry never even smiled.”

I laughed a little. “Payback is hell.”

Emine's kohl-lined eyes flashed. “Payback is not one-sided and it is not over. Adnan is burning up at her. ‘The tree branch should be bent while it is young,' he tells me. Soon it will be too late to bend her. For this, he brings in someone who will try to break her.”

“Oh God, oh Em,” I said, not necessarily in that order. “His mother?”

My friend heaved a giant sigh.

“He's sending Merry there?”

“His first choice, but I wouldn't allow it. Selda's coming here. I think Margo would call it caving. But that was my compromise.”

“Your sacrifice,” I said, remembering her mother-in-law's last visit.

“A mother makes sacrifices. Selda will tell you all about hers when she sees you.” Em made a wry face.

“And when is that?”

“Adnan was calling her when we left the dinner. But I have a feeling they have talked before. I think he's been planning this for a while.”

Suddenly a swell of music followed by a collective whoop of laughter surged from the theater.

“The party,” I said. “I'm heading in. I'll keep an eye on Merry.”

“I hope she has fun, my daughter. If her grandmother has her way—and Selda always does—it will be Merry's last fun for a long, long time.”

Everyone was having fun. The set was still up. It would be stripped after the party in a twenty-minute flurry of activity, then stored for possible future use. Margo was seated on King Mongkut's throne, singing along with the rest to her pianist's rendition of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” from
South Pacific
. Pete, sitting on one of the stools at a makeshift bar, called me over. “Hey, Nora.” He removed a Trader Joe's shopping bag from the next stool and patted its seat. I popped a Guinness and planted myself.

“So how are you doing?” He never moved his gaze from his wife.

“We're all fine,” I said. “It's been a busy season so far. Some new sign-ups at the dance studio. Summer people. The weather has been . . .”

Pete didn't want to talk about the weather. He cut me off. “Margo told me a while back you and the war hero were seeing each other. That still going strong? Because if not I've got someone you might hit it off with. This guy owns the new resort up the coast. Upton Abbey. Name is Max Cassidy.”

“Right. Margo mentioned him. The gazillionaire.” I didn't say I'd seen him in action and had been pleasantly surprised.

“Don't blame him for his money. He came by it honestly. He's a smart guy, lots of irons in the fire, big giver to charity. No airs. I mentioned you and he's interested. Can I give him your number? He's a hot commodity.”

As if I were a hot commodity, I said, “Let me think about it.”

Pete gave me a bemused look. “Well, uh, sure. But not too long. I know someone who'd jump at the chance to date him, but if I bump you for Dana, my wife will hand me my head on a platter.”

“Dana Montagne?”

“One and the same.”

Interesting. If he was thinking about fixing the anchorwoman up with Max, where did that leave my Pete-beds-Dana theory? “Hold on,” he was saying, “here comes the gift presentation.”

Another tradition. After the annual musical, the cast and crew presented Margo with a remembrance gift. She had a collection of these cherished souvenirs. An Empire State Building snow globe for
On the Town
, a gold baseball charm for
Damn Yankees
, a merry-go-round music box for
Carousel
. None of them was outlandishly expensive, but they always evoked genuine feeling. Now Merry walked onstage hugging an elaborately wrapped box while the pianist switched to “The March of the Siamese Children.” Owen, the lead actor, made the speech on behalf of all the Driftwood Players out front and behind the scenes, and with a “We love you, Margo,” he laid the box in her lap. The circle closed around her as she tossed tissue paper. She held up for display a silk robe with the mythical half-man, half-bird Garuda symbol of Thailand embroidered on the back. Stunning, it deserved her gasp. “Wow! Thank you, all. You love me? I love you more!” She meant it.

As the applause died down, she said, “Okay, people, all hands on deck. Time to—” She never got to finish, as the baritone of Pete Manolis resonated through the theater. “Whoa, Team Driftwood. If I can have your attention for a minute, please.”

Pete loped to center stage, carrying a small bag he'd taken from the larger one. I knew that logo.

His speech began with congrats on a great run and segued into Margo's dedication to the theater dating back to when they first met. “And now we're celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of her degree in theater arts.”
If Margo had arms his length, she would have reached over to strangle him. She didn't appreciate allusions to the passage of time, especially her time. “As you can see, my lovely wife is still going strong, stronger than ever.” His lovely wife was furiously tapping a foot. “To mark that occasion and to celebrate the success of
The King and I
, I have a gift for her as well.”

Pete went to her, took her hand, and tugged her to stand next to him as he removed from the signature Svengali and Trilby Jewelers bag a satin quilted jewelry box. He pressed it into her hand. The circle tightened around them. Margo seemed to weigh the box, and then she raised the lid.

A bracelet, brushed gold wrought into an Oriental cobra design centered with a ruby the size of a cherry.

“That's a Chanthaburi star ruby from Thailand. Violet red with a six-point asterism.” Pete must have memorized Trilby's description. “Top quality. And the gold's twenty-two karat. That's almost pure.” It didn't sound like bragging, I'd have to argue with Margo later, since I could tell from the set of her jaw, she thought it did. To me it sounded like a man who wanted to score points with his wife, thought she was the best, and wanted her to have the best.

Margo eyed the bracelet and Pete suspiciously. Merry was the first to kick off the chant, “Try it on, try it on.” Margo slipped the snake of a bracelet onto her sparrow-sized wrist. Perfect fit. She held her arm up so everyone could see it.

When the oohs and aahs died down, she said, “It's lovely. Thank you, sweetheart,” in a tone much too flat for at least three carats of gem and twenty-two-karat gold.

As he picked up on her mood, Pete's expression became a mudslide of disappointment.

“You do like it, right? Because it's one of a kind. Trilby designed it herself.”

“I do,” Margo said, grinding out the phrase as if she wished she hadn't said it in the wedding vows twenty-plus years before. She pecked her
husband's cheek with what struck me as a dry dismissal of a kiss. “Here I'm supposed to say, ‘You shouldn't have,' right? Well, that ain't gonna happen.” Now I could see she was playing to the crowd. “Because I'm glad you did.” Which sounded to me like a Noël Coward exit line, witty but lifeless. I didn't hear the beat of a heart behind it. Still, it drew the laughter she was going for.

She checked her other wrist, a moon-faced watch with giant numbers that she'd bought for thirty bucks in the Ocean City flea market. “Company, it's late; we're running way over time here. So while we still have some willing and able left, let's get this show on the road. Strike the set.”

Pete stood, broad shoulders slumped, as Margo bustled off to supervise the deconstruction. Then he walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of vodka. He carried it as he took the four steps into the orchestra seats and sipped it as he walked up the aisle.

I took off after him and trotted to keep up. “That was great, Pete. The speech and the gift.”

“You think so? I think it was a washout.” Sip, swallow, stride.

“No, really. Margo's tired; that's all. It's always a brutal two weeks when she does the musicals. And you know how she is at closings. She gets something like postpartum depression. Tomorrow she'll be all smiles and flaunting the bracelet to the world. It's absolutely stunning.” My thinking cleared to an aha. “You picked it out yourself?”

He stopped then, at row QQ, and faced me. “You have got to be kidding,” he said. “Ask Margo about my gift history. It's a running joke between us. But this time, I got smart. I brought along a jewelry maven. Dana.”

Right, okay . . . so Dana Montagne helped him choose the bracelet. That explained the giddy conspirators. A breath of relief whooshed from me. “Dana Montagne,” I repeated.

“Yeah, but don't tell Margo, okay? I'd like her to think I did it on my own. I could use a little spousal-caring credit. Not that she was impressed. Shit, we thought we had a hit on our hands. Something that would knock her on her ass. Obviously it flopped big-time.” He gulped the last inch of vodka. “I just don't get it.”