Devil's Food (33 page)

Finding no problem whatsoever with that story, Aidan soon had the computer churning page after page onto the floor. “I had
no idea I was so popular,” Emily said.

“Phil, you’re not popular at all. You’ve just got a great sales force.” Aidan laughed sort of sincerely. “I’ve been in the
office at seven in the morning for the last three months.”

As soon as possible, Emily left. She swung by her hotel, ditched Philippa’s wig and fluorescent pantsuit, and went to the
airport. A Boston flight was just leaving; Emily eked aboard. Suddenly she was anonymous again. It felt odd not to have people
stare at her; over the last few hours, she had grown quite accustomed to peripheral curiosity and admiration. Now she was
just another drone? Blah. High over Colorado, as she was consoling herself with champagne, Emily took Aidan’s printout and
began skimming through the names on his fan-club list. He had meticulously logged the date and content of each inquiry, as
well as his response to it. Someone had sent Philippa a hand-crocheted bra? A trivet made out of bobby pins? Emily turned
page after page, trying to picture the Jo-Lynns and Arnies from towns she had never hear of, in states containing the Mississippi
River. Virgils, Nelsons, and Platos were easier to imagine since they wrote from prison. Many of them had asterisks beside
their names. What did that mean? Emily turned to last page: Aha, they had proposed marriage to Philippa.

She had skimmed two lines beyond Charles Moody when her subconscious tugged her back to his name. Something about it had seemed
familiar. Her eyes traveled across the page, her stomach rolled: He occupied P.O. Box 274 at South Station. Charles Moody:
how vapid, pseudonymous. No asterisk beside his name. According to Aidan’s records, Moody had received an announcement of
the
Choke Hold
opening in New York. Emily let the printout drop to her lap. Had this person been there? If so, he hadn’t introduced himself.
She read the postbox number
again, not quite believing it. No need to panic; maybe someone named Moody had vacated the box a month ago and Slavomir had
chanced to occupy it next. Things like that happened all the time. In the movies, anyway.

No other names or addresses meant anything to her so Emily put the list away. Wait until Philippa heard that this trip had
been totally unnecessary, that the role had been in the bag all along, and shooting began in two weeks. She had probably been
up all night worrying about Emily’s portentous breakfast with Simon and The Producer. By now the poor thing was probably surfing
between soap operas, drinking back-of-the-cabinet crap like Cinzano as she tried to figure out who could have slipped those
four cherries into her drink the other night. That episode with the mad dentist had definitely shaken her up; ever since the
attack, Philippa had been oddly subdued. Emily worried about that. Perhaps tucking her in the woods, alone with her thoughts,
had not been such a great idea. Philippa never did well contemplating life, tortuously gleaning wisdom from the ether. She
preferred to frame her fan mail.

As an in-flight movie blurred across the screen, Emily wondered how Ross had entertained himself last night. All he’d ever
confess to, of course, would be work. Had he taken another of those long midnight walks, careful to return by two o’clock,
in case she called? Or had he just thought, The hell with it, and slept at Marjorie’s? Emily would never know; she had not
had the courage to call. What would Marjorie be like in bed? Stenographer or nymphomaniac? And what would Ross be like with
her? Emily chuckled acidly. Excellent, no doubt. He made love the way he drew buildings, elegantly, presciently: science advancing
art. Marjorie was going to get a piece of that? Christ! She’d never let him go! Maybe Emily should corner her at the water
fountain and convey a friendly female warning, whatever that was. Maybe she should smother Ross with kindness instead, make
him feel so horrendously guilty that the sight of his secretary instantly squished any erection. And maybe she should just
let it happen, swallow the consequences. God knew these things were fairly unavoidable, a sudden conflagration of desperation
and longing. Look at her and Guy. Could Ross have prevented that? No. But ultimately, by his simple presence, yes, he had
ended it. Emily could at least have the grace to return the compliment. Would it kill her to let him run loose for a little
while? Marjorie was not serious competition. She was probably disease free. So Ross slept with her a few times, big deal.
It wasn’t the end of the world. Emily stared miserably at the white, billowy clouds beneath the airplane. From this distance
they looked so dense, so magically strong; just like her fifteen years of marriage.

Beneath the clouds, all was rain. Landing in sheets of wind and water, Emily’s flight wobbled to a halt at the terminal. She
wearily deplaned, suddenly and violently hoping that Ross would be inside to greet her. No way, of course; life never glittered
like the movies. Emily called the cabin. Nearly eight o’clock: Philippa should be in a frenzy by now. Emily waited as the
phone rang and rang. Where the hell was her sister? Swimming? Finally she hung up and called home. Got the damn machine. In
a fit of bravado, Emily called Ross at the office. “Enjoying the sunshine?” he asked cheerfully.

“What sunshine? I’m at the airport.”

“Great! When’s the flight getting in?”

“It’s in, Ross. I’m at Logan.”

“Which terminal? I’ll pick you up.”

“Don’t bother. My car’s in long-term parking. I think I’ll go up to the cabin tonight. Keep Philippa company.”

“I wouldn’t, darling. She’s gone.”

“What! How do you know that?”

“Because I took her to the airport last night. She took the late flight to Kennedy.”

“Where’d she go from there?”

“I got the impression she was going to take the first thing anywhere.”

“And you just let her do that? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I’d say I drove all night in the pouring rain to indulge a raving lunatic. Look, I’m trying to wrap up a long day. See you
in an hour or two.”

Philippa had called
Ross?
And he had actually gone to New Hampshire to pick her up? Feeling faint, Emily went home.

Ross shuffled in around ten o’clock, inexplicably jovial. When he saw his wife waiting for him with a pitcher of martinis,
he hugged and kissed her for a long time. “Tell me about your trip,” he said, taking his first icy swig of gin, blessing the
genius who had invented distilled spirits. He led her to the couch.

“Not much to tell,” Emily replied. “I slept in a noisy hotel for three hundred bucks. Then Simon took me to an incredibly
phony restaurant for breakfast. This Czech producer never even showed up. A waiter threw a script on the table and said that
shooting began in two weeks. Simon was too cheap to spring for food, so we left. I went to his office and checked in with
the president of Philippa’s fan club. Then I came home.”

“That’s it? Why did you go out at all?”

“Philippa thought this producer wanted to meet her before making an offer.”

“Something odd there,” Ross said helpfully. “Kind of a wild goose chase.” He let that petite stink bomb roll around a moment.
“What were you doing with the president of Philippa’s fan club? Forging autographs?”

Had he not gently mocked her, Emily might have told him about Charles Moody. But that would have involved an explanation of
Slavomir, postboxes, and her Mad Stalker theory. Ross would have laughed some more. So she changed the subject. “What happened
last night? I can’t believe Philippa called you from the cabin.”

Ross refilled his glass; he was about to enjoy himself. It was really quite a hilarious story if one knew all the facts. Poor
Emily didn’t, of course. That made it doubly hilarious. “I got a call at the office around nine-thirty,” he began. “Philippa
was nearly incoherent. But we have to remember she’d been drinking our booze for days. ’Ross! Help! Someone’s outside trying
to kill me!’ she was blubbering.”

“Poor thing. What did you do?”

Actually, he had laughed. Ward was probably outside the
cabin throwing rocks at the roof, waiting in ambush for Guy Witten, scaring Philippa out of her mind. “I tried to calm her
down,” Ross said. “Told her she was imagining things. She didn’t like that, of course. Became quite abusive.”

“Oh stop. What did she say?”

“Really want to know? She said, ’Listen, you motherfucker, if I’m lying here in a pool of blood tomorrow morning, it’s all
your fault.’ I heard some thunder in the background and she screamed like a crow. A wild sound. So I told her I’d be right
there. I came home, got the car, and drove up. The cabin was completely dark. I pounded on the door but she wouldn’t answer.”

“I would have been scared stiff!”

“Emily, there was nothing to be afraid of. She probably heard a moose outside and let her imagination run away with her. Anyway,
I unlocked the door and turned the lights on. Your sister was lying under the bed whimpering like a puppy. Quite a mess.”

“I don’t believe it! What could possibly have happened?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.” Ross smiled to himself. Guy Witten had probably shown up for a romantic little tryst and gotten tackled
by Ward on the front porch. After exchanging a few black eyes, they had both staggered home. End of story. “Once she recognized
my shoes and came out from under the bed, Philippa began packing her suitcases, demanding that I take her to the airport.
I wasn’t about to argue with her in that condition.”

“What did she say on the way back to Boston?”

“What could she say, Emily? That she was having an attack of DTs? She turned the radio on very loud and kept changing stations
every twenty seconds. Didn’t say two words to me the entire trip. It was a miserable ride, pouring rain, accidents everywhere.
At the airport, she said she’d call you. Then she ran into the terminal. Wearing all your clothes, by the way.”

“What about her face?”

“What about it? It matched her outfit.”

Emily frowned. “You seem to think this is funny.”

God yes
! “Of course I don’t, darling. It was just so ... theatrical, that’s all. I’m sure Philippa will call in the morning full
of apologies. She’s got to be curious about your trip, at any rate.” Putting down his drink, Ross loosened his tie. “Is that
dinner I smell, sweetheart?”

The next morning Ross crept out of bed, careful not to wake Emily, who was curled in a ball, snoring femininely. Now that
nights were becoming cool, she was wearing pajamas again; rutting season had ended, snuggling season had begun. Another winter
already? Seemed like only yesterday she had tucked her flannels in the bottom drawer. Ross prayed that the weather would remain
mild for another month or two, in which case she’d wear cotton nightgowns with nothing underneath. Easy to push up. Nothing
to pull down, unbutton, wriggle out of ... weren’t women supposed to be the ones with an extra layer of insulation? Yet they
insisted on wearing pajamas to bed whenever possible, claiming to be cold. Ross remembered a discussion with Dana upon this
topic last autumn, when Emily had returned to her fleecy armor. Not to worry, Dana had said, pajamas were mere props in a
seductive obstacle course. Ladies loved to be stripped slowly naked. Until they became wives, of course. Then their metabolism
plummeted, modesty skyrocketed; achieving nudity required an entirely different approach. Dana hadn’t quite figured out a
reliable strategy here, but he was married to Ardith, Queen of Glaciers. Left to his own devices, Ross was forced to rely
on his two old mainstays of cold-weather seduction, down comforters and patience on Sunday mornings.

He tiptoed into the shower, dressed, and went to the kitchen. Ross missed his wife at breakfast; he had become accustomed
to reading the newspaper to the sound of her crunching toast across the table. Perhaps she’d come downstairs when she smelled
the coffee. He ground a double dose of beans, put the kettle on, and went to get the paper from the front stoop. It was a
cool, foggy morning, thick with the ocean and incipient winter; one was tempted to hibernate with the bears. Ross waved to
his neighbor, a surgeon at Mass General who did all the society bypasses. Returning to the kitchen, he toasted the last two
slices of bread in the house and opened the paper.

The international news, an ongoing
opera buffa
composed by an amateur, hadn’t evolved much since yesterday; Ross read a few headlines and kept turning the page. He decelerated
somewhat at the business section and obituaries, then read in micro-scopic detail about the Red Sox, who were tormenting their
fans with another peek-a-boo pennant race. The team had a genius for floundering like a gasping fish on the brink of elimination,
sending the local sportswriters into a frenzy of hopeful speculation. Eleven more wins—
eleven
—and the Sox were in the playoffs. Once again, as he had for the last forty-odd years, Ross allowed himself to believe that
a fundamental dearth of cunning, speed, and power could be miraculously overcome by the wishful thinking of five million baseball
fans.

Ross was still plotting the ultimate pitching rotation as he skimmed over the New England news briefs, a last-minute assortment
of stabbings, fires, and moose sightings tucked in the rear of the paper. He was an inch into the article titled
ACCIDENT CLAIMS RESTAURATEUR
before he realized that Guy Witten was dead. Suddenly out of breath, ill almost, Ross put down his coffee and stared at the
words in front of him. Guy? With full attention this time, he reread the small paragraph: The other night, in the rain, a
few miles north of Boston, Guy had hit the median on Route 93 and spun into a ditch. Police were investigating whether he
had died of injuries sustained in the accident or of abdominal wounds he had apparently received prior to the crash.

“Hi, bubbala,” Emily said sleepily, padding into the kitchen, kissing the top of his head. “I smell coffee.”

He only stared, torn between telling her the bad news himself or scuttling away to the office and letting her trip upon the
article the same way he had. Ross wasn’t really afraid to tell Emily that Guy was dead; he was only afraid of her reaction.
Was he better off abandoning her to her grief and guilt, letting her privately swing in the wind? Or was it better to play
Mr. Rock of
Ages and be there to catch her? Oh Christ! He wished she had never met Guy Witten! With him alive, now even with him dead,
things would never be the same. Ross watched his wife pour a cup of coffee and slosh into the chair opposite him. Her glasses
tilted across her nose, her hair skittered against the laws of gravity. She looked like a girl, a daughter—his: no way could
he leave her alone with news like that and still call himself a man. Ross waited until she had taken a few sips of coffee,
then said, “I’m afraid there’s some bad news in the paper today, darling.”