Bubbles All The Way (24 page)

Putting my ear to the door of room 238, I could make out a woman’s flirtatious laughter followed by a man’s baritone. Then there was more conversation. I didn’t want to interrupt him too soon, before he’d been able to get Tess to spill about Debbie’s cruises. Then again, I didn’t want Dan to get suspicious.

I waited for a few minutes—during which there were several disturbing moments of silence—until I heard the
bing!
of the elevator. The same waiter I’d accosted in the lobby stepped out. He was carrying a tray and headed my way.

“You again,” he said. “Still looking for that water bottle?”

“Actually, just waiting for a friend.”

He stopped at Stiletto’s door. I thought he might call hotel security, but he didn’t. He knocked. I crossed my fingers that Stiletto would open the door and not Tess because if Tess opened the door and saw me lurking in the hallway, I was cooked.

“Room service,” the waiter said.

The door flew open and there stood Stiletto. I mimed crafty hand signals for him to talk to me.

The waiter took the tray inside and I caught a glimpse of Tess sitting in a chair, her hair tousled and her dress askew. She was sipping something. Stiletto put his finger to his lips.

When the waiter returned, Stiletto took out a wad of bills and pressed them into his palm. “One other thing,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“Yes?” the waiter said, staring in amazement at the amount of money.

“Would you mind entertaining my date for a few minutes? You know, run through the highlights of the dinner you’ve brought us.”

“But it’s chicken Caesar salad.”

“The wine then. Uncork it. Rave.”

“You didn’t order wine. The dinner came with water.”

Stiletto ended up pushing the kid inside.

“Okay,” he said to me, once the door closed. “What’s up? You’re not in 236.”

I did my best to ignore the definite lipstick stain on his collar. “Dan moved us to the penthouse as a surprise.”

“Oh, boy, the penthouse. He’s really determined to get some action if he’s forking over his precious money for a penthouse.”

That old sick-in-the-stomach feeling again. “Please. Don’t remind me.”

“What are you going to do for the rest of your life? Lie back and think of Lehigh?”

“Not tonight at least. Dan threw out his back carrying me over the threshold.”

It was all I could do to stop Stiletto from laughing so hard Tess would burst out, demanding to know what the ruckus was about.

“Shut up!” I hissed. “You’ll blow everything.”

“I could go there,” he said, “but I won’t. Damn, that’s priceless. Where’d you leave the sad sack?”

“On the bed. I shoved a champagne bottle up his back and now I’m going for a hot-water bottle. Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot.”

“Jesus. You don’t have to torture him.”

“Don’t I?”

Stiletto shook his head. “Remind me not to get on your bad side. I always knew that underneath that fabulous body and blond hair hid the soul of a suppressed sadist.”

“You wish. Listen, what have you found out from Tess?”

Stiletto checked the door. “Here’s what she told me. Debbie Shatsky sent Tess a personal invitation a few months ago. It had a Lehigh Steel logo on it. Looked very official. Same Steel letterhead. The works.

“Anyway, the invitation made it sound as if Get Together Now! Travel and Lehigh Steel were jointly holding a one-night affair on a yacht so that loopers could meet Lehigh’s most sought-after single women. A space was reserved for Tess, provided she paid a small fee for, quote, ‘incidentals.’ ”

I sniggered. “Guess my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, say?”

Stiletto missed the joke. “Exactly. Tess said she called Debbie after getting the invite, to check it out, and Debbie alluded to choosing her name from some blue book or society directory and that Tess had been recommended by so and so who knew so and so.”

“In other words, she picked Tess’s name out of the phonebook.”

“Who the hell knows? Anyway, Tess RSVP’d. Two days later, she receives a packet in the mail with a listing of all the loopers who were to be on board. Every one sounded better than the last. Harvard MBA grads, Heisman Trophy winners, you name it. In addition, all the men claimed they were eager to settle down.”

“That old line.”

“It also included a form Tess had to fill out, including a space for her credit card number and expiration. Allegedly, to hold her reservation on the cruise.”

“Credit card fraud. Maybe that’s what Debbie’s boss was talking about today. Ken—”

There was a commotion on the other side of the door. Tess’s voice was raised and the waiter was sounding frantic. I swore I heard him exclaim that the curtains were hand sewn in Delaware.

Stiletto talked faster. “Bottom line is, if Tess’s appetite had been whetted after reading the bios on the loopers, any suspicions she had vanished when she saw M and B and A. She stupidly gave Shatsky her credit card number and wasn’t billed until two months later. Not by Get Together Now! but by a nonentity called findamannow. com.”

“How much?”

“Four hundred bucks.”

Holy crapola!

“She should have gone to the attorney general’s office. But she was so embarrassed by having findamannow. com on her credit card bill she couldn’t. Of course, she really was trying to find a man, so that made it worse.” Stiletto shook his head. “I had to pour a fourth cosmo into her to get that out.”

This was fascinating, though I suspected Debbie had more on Tess than Tess was willing to tell Stiletto, no matter how many cosmopolitans she had in her.

Stiletto frowned at me. “What? I didn’t do good?”

“You did good. Probably too good.” I reached up and tried to wipe off the lipstick.

“Oh, that. Well, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“You and James Bond.”

“Hey. It’s a public service I provide, sacrificing my body for the pursuit of truth.”

“What a noble ethic.”

He grinned. “Ethics have nothing to do with it, I’ll have you know.”

“Yes,” I said, “that doesn’t come as a surprise.”

He put his hand up against the wall and leered down at me. “Any more sacrifices I can perform on behalf of . . . the cause?”

I took a minute to think. “Three things. The most important is that you convince Tess to talk to me on the record.”

“Consider it done.”

“And if she won’t talk to me . . .” I paused. Man, it sucked to say this. “Ask her if she’ll talk to Lawless.”

“He of the vending machines?”

“Like you said. A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do. We also need the names of more women, especially this nurse in Debbie’s allergist’s office, Zora.”

A phone rang inside. We both jumped. It wasn’t a cell phone. It was a hotel phone. I tried to think positively. Maybe it was the front desk looking for the waiter.

Stiletto and I stared at each other, breath held.

The door opened and the waiter came out, discreetly closing it behind him. “I’m guessing that of the two of you, you’re Bubbles,” he said.

“Oh, no.”

“That’s right. The phone’s for you.”

“Who is it?” As if I couldn’t guess.

“Your husband. He sounds pretty, um, upset. He wants you to come upstairs right now and to stop making out with what he called the Italian gigolo.” And then he gave Stiletto the kind of look that for as long as I live will make me laugh so hard, tears will roll down my cheeks.

 

Dan was standing.

That in itself described how angry, how furious, how ready to rip my head off he was.

He was also beet red and, possibly, foaming at the mouth.

“So you were with him, like Wendy said.”

“Wendy couldn’t wait to call you, could she?” I walked past him and got my purse. “Stiletto and I weren’t making out. We were talking in the hallway. It was hardly a scandal. I see your back is better.”

“What were you doing, then?”

“Work. We were talking about work and I can’t discuss it with you because you’re representing Phil Shatsky on a related matter”—I paused—“unless he fired you already.”

“He didn’t fire me. That’s not the point.” He took a step and grabbed the small of his back. “It’s a spasm,” he hissed. “I’ve had them before. They’re killers.”

“Maybe you should go home and take a nice hot bath, pop a couple of Tylenol and call it a night.”

Dan regarded me through pain-filled eyes. “I get what this was about now. The sex. The room here. You had no interest in sleeping with me tonight, did you? You just wanted to be under the same roof as Stiletto.”

I slapped my hand to my chest in exaggerated indignation. “Why, Dan Ritter, how could you say such a thing to me? You know I find you the sexiest, studliest man on Earth.”

He hesitated, debating whether to allow himself to believe I was sincere. Men can be so gullible that way.

“And I knowww you find me the sexiest woman, too. I also know that after we’re married you’ll be just as loyal as before we got divorced. Oh, that’s right. You cheated on me, just like you cheated on Wendy with your secretary.”

He winced again, though I couldn’t distinguish whether this was because of his back or because of what I said.

“I knew you and Vern were gossiping in the clerk’s office.” He twisted as if in agony, as if somewhere Wendy had a voodoo doll of Dan and was poking pins in him, which, now that I thought about it, was not such a bad idea. I would have to look into getting one of those dolls for myself.

“Maybe if you hadn’t made the poor clerk stay after hours and if you hadn’t stiffed her the mere forty bucks, which will undoubtedly have to come out of her wallet, she wouldn’t say such nasty things behind your back.”

“All right, all right. I get your point. Now come over here and massage my back. Where’s that hot-water bottle?” He tottered to bed and fell with a crash, like a giant redwood.

I walked over and stared down at him as he barked orders.

“Don’t just stand there. Get the Tylenol. And some ice. I’m going to need round-the-clock care. This is all your fault, Bubbles. If I could sue you, I would. Now go get a doctor!”

“Okay.” I bent over and removed Dan’s wallet from his suit jacket, pulling out the hundred-dollar bill I’d seen him waving about earlier.

“What are you doing?”

“You want me to get fast service, don’t you?”

He grumbled that fast service would be damned nice for a change.

I stuffed the wallet back in his jacket and slid the hundred neatly in my cleavage. Then I kissed my finger, pressed it on Dan’s cheek and went to the door.

“Don’t take too long!” he hollered after me.

“I won’t. I promise.”

I exited our presidential suite and hit the elevator button. It arrived creaking and lurching ominously. I went down, passing Stiletto’s floor and trying not to be bothered by the idea of him with his lipstick-stained collar in a room with Tess. I hummed “Silver Bells” to keep my mind off their hot and heavy petting. The tune was stuck in my brain from the earlier elevator ride up. It struck me as oddly romantic.

The lobby was a lot less crowded now that the Help the Poor Children couples were all tucked away in their rooms, getting to know one another. I went to the front desk and politely reminded them of the hot-water bottle.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” the man in the dark green jacket said. “It should be on its way up. We’re somewhat busy tonight because of a special event we’re holding.”

The Help the Poor Children event, I assumed.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Yes, I told him. I wondered if he could be so nice as to call me a cab.

Had I been wrong to leave Dan?
I halfheartedly asked myself as I looked out the window and admired the star of Lehigh on the top of South Mountain, lit up as it only was during the Christmas season. I rolled down the window and let the brisk night breeze fly into my face as we crossed the Hill-to-Hill Bridge.

Someone had put a lone electric candle in one of the mill’s dirty windows, and through the grime and soot, it still shone bright, a testament to the spirit of people like us. People who’ve grown up under the spewing smoke-stacks, the clouds of orange sulfur and snow of ashes. We still shine through. We cannot be extinguished.

“Is this okay?” the cab driver asked as we pulled up to the
News-Times.

“This is fine.” I handed him the hundred.

He let it lie in his palm. “I don’t know if I got change for this. This is a big bill.”

“I don’t want change. Merry Christmas.” And I got out. There is no satisfaction so sweet as spending the money of a person you truly despise.

It was after nine and there was no point in me returning to the newsroom. All I really wanted was to go home, take the phone off the hook (so Dan couldn’t call) and indulge in a long, hot shower.

Then I would pad downstairs in my slippers and robe, where Mama would have dinner waiting for me. Sauerbraten, marinated since Saturday, made with ginger-snaps, and German spaetzle with green beans. A baked apple and cranberry crisp topped with vanilla ice cream and a handful of chopped walnuts and raisins for desert. Yum.

The Christmas tree would probably be decorated to ridiculous lengths. Those big, multicolored lights, crazy glass balls and all the ugly ornaments Jane and I had made in elementary school, which Mama had saved carefully. Tinsel, of course, and gold garlands. And how could I forget the angel on top.

The house would be perfumed by the cinnamon of the baked apples and the metallic odor of Genevieve’s musket grease, since she never went to bed without oiling her musket. I could see the two of them in my living room, finalizing the last-minute details for their senior citizen Christmas pageant and fair while Jane sat at the kitchen table doing her homework.