The Reckoning (3 page)

“Here, please!” he called at her, proffering a ten.

Melissa moved down the line, planting kisses on foreheads and cheeks, capturing donations with a snap of her g-string, skillfully—and diplomatically—avoiding feelies.

Royce flagged the ten. Melissa’s brown eyes flared, and she hurried it up a bit.

“Thank you,” she breathed into Royce’s ear, and blew with a hint of probing tongue that made him shiver. She let him kiss her on the lips.

“Excellent job—your breasts, I mean,” he said nervously, staring at them.

Melissa frowned but quickly regained her simpering composure. She snapped open her g-string, offering him a soft pocket to deposit his money.

His nose hovered at her bosom. They were deliciously scented of baby oil, hairless and smooth. “Please…”

She smiled knowingly, then hefted her breasts in her hands. Royce raised the bill and she enveloped it with her blue veined cleavage, snaring the greenback and taking it away. Just that brief touch of her sensual, pliant flesh against his hands made a shock of cold surge up his spine.

Tony had a worried look on his face. He took hold of the birthday boy’s arm.

“We gotta go. Les will be pissed.”

“Where is she going?” Royce demanded.

Melissa had retrieved her costume and the remaining dollar bills off the linoleum and was heading (her heels click-clicking) to the stairs.

Tony squeezed Royce’s arm, saying, “It’s okay. We’ll come back. Catch her another night.”

“Nooo!”

Royce shoved his friend’s arm away, stepped up onto an empty chair and mounted the stage. He waved a twenty in his hand.

“Royce!”

But he was too quick for Tony, bolting for the stairs and climbing, his eyes scoped on Melissa’s butt.

MC: “Hey, mister. That’s a no-no!”

Royce’s right hand clawed at the thin elastic of Melissa’s g-string and yanked. Screeching, the girl turned back and lost her balance, falling into Royce, her breasts softly mashing against his face and rebounding like giant Nerf balls.

They pivoted together—she into him—and fell. Royce’s right elbow struck the stairs first, breaking the fall for both of them. They settled at the bottom, their bodies sprawled akimbo on the stage.

Frantically, he buried his face between her jugs.

Steely digits took hold of his right wrist and jammed his right hand into the small of his back, bending the elbow as if it were the joint of a chicken wing.

“You done it now, asshole!” the bouncer snapped, tickled for the opportunity to pounce on something as easy as this middle-aged doofus.

Royce squealed in pain, spittle trailing from his lips to Melissa’s chest.

Royce shuddered. “Christ, Tony. What did I do?”

The attorney shrugged, nursing his beer. He pushed his hat back at a rakish angle. “It happens. Just one of those things. You just had to let off some steam. Been workin’ too hard.”

After the police had arrived, and Royce had been given a ticket for drunk and disorderly conduct, the two men had retreated to Excalibur’s, a nearby sports bar. Royce drank coffee, too upset to go home to face his wife yet.

On one of the TV screens, Raven head coach Brian Billick was trying to be optimistic.

“God, how I miss the Colts,” Tony quipped. Then to Royce: “How’s the arm?”

Royce gingerly outstretched the limb. Now, with the shock of his fiasco finally over, he was feeling the pain. The elbow was blighted by a wicked-looking bruise.

“I guess they won’t have to amputate, but it hurts like hell. What happens next?”

“You’ll have to make an appearance, probably pay a hefty fine. Five hundred bucks or so.” He grinned dryly. “And don’t forget, you’re banned from Club Pussycat—for life.”

Royce winced, obviously not cheered by his friend’s humor.

“I mean, will I serve a sentence or something?”

“Nah. Your record is clean. It’s not in the state’s interest to put upstanding citizens like you in jail. Hell, a DUI would be harder on you. And the strip bar doesn’t want to take you to court, as long as—”

“I know, as long as I never show my face there again. But what about the girl?”

“Melissa? If that’s really her real name. She probably figures such risks come with the territory. Besides, if she sued you, she’d have to spend some time in court, and I don’t think that lady wants to get up that early.”

Royce licked his lips. It felt like there was a basketball stuffed down his throat.

“What—what about the newspapers, TVs?”

Tony shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about that. The police blotter is public record, but the cop shop reporters don’t know you from Adam. I wouldn’t worry.”

“What about Leslie?”

Tony blinked. “What about her?”

“Do I need to tell her?”

Tony stared down at his beer. “That’s up to you.”

It was late—and snowing—by the time Royce and Tony left the bar.

“Just take it easy the next few days. I’ll call the DA’s office tomorrow morning, see what I can do.”

“Sure, thanks,” Royce said flatly, not thrilled about the prospect of finally having to go home to face Leslie. He walked slowly to his car, shivering. All he had was the suit coat. Christ, he couldn’t get a handle on Baltimore weather. One day in the seventies, the next day some of the white stuff.

His fingers clawed in the Cavalier’s glove compartment for a scraper. Damn, not there. No gloves either. So he improvised, using the only credit card he possessed to clear his windshield of slush.

On the drive home, he mulled over what he would tell Leslie. She deserved to be told the whole truth. He knew that. But it was all so sleazy, so shameful. In the nearly two years of their perfect marriage, nothing like this had come up. He clenched the wheel tightly. God, what had happened to him? How could he have actually done something like that?

Royce winced, recalling how he had climbed onto that stage and accosted the girl. What would he tell Leslie? A white lie, maybe, or just the partial truth. He’d done it before, hadn’t he? Not to Leslie, but there had been other times. Sincerity came easy to him. Could he get away with it?

Luckily, Royce didn’t have to tell the truth—or a revised version, either—when he arrived home.

Leslie and Craig were in bed. There was only one light burning in the dining room. On the table was a partially consumed pizza, his favorite, a thick crust from Piezano’s. He noticed the candles poked among the pepperoni. Shit, his party.

There was a card, which he opened. The cover sweetly congratulated him on his fortieth birthday, with the inside punch line, “Better you than me.” Leslie had signed it, and she had signed for Craig as well—”with much love.” On the table was also a small gift. He unwrapped it: a gold Seiko watch with a lizard band, engraved with “40th. Your loving wife.” Feeling like a total, unmitigated shit, he slipped the Timex off his left wrist and replaced it with the Seiko. It felt rich, light as a feather compared to his old clunker.

You shit.

Upstairs, he quietly undressed and slipped into bed. Oh no, Leslie was wearing her white cotton socks and her heavy-grade flannel nightgown. She mewed softly, pulling the blankets away from him and tightly bunching them around her neck.

“Cold,” she murmured.

Okay, okay. The damn furnace. Frigging furnace.
Fucking
furnace. Goodness, his language—and thoughts—were becoming foul. All right, so he’d go downstairs and fiddle with it, as just and fitting punishment.

“Probably the pilot light went out again,” he muttered angrily to himself, taking baby steps down the narrow cellar stairs to keep from falling in the half-lit murk.

The furnace was one of those antiquated octopus things converted from coal to natural gas before Royce was born. It looked like the boiler bowels of the
Queen Mary
, what with its fat, stubby body and thick pipes swathed in deadly asbestos.

It was also Leslie’s furnace, which irritated him a little more than usual tonight. Her furnace. Her house. He was practically a tenant, though she was always careful to say “Our house this” and “Our house that.” With his credit history, he was damn lucky to have one MasterCard with a thousand-dollar credit limit.

He went to his knees, praying before the beast. His fingers tenderly opened the little iron door at the base. The pilot light had indeed gone out.

Okay, okay.

Royce turned the gas valve, then went in search of a match. He couldn’t locate one of those special long ones, just a book of paper ones on a shelf above the washing machine. He again genuflected before the furnace. Something sour made his nostrils twitch. He struck the match.

Whush.

It was as if Royce McCulloch’s cellar had seen the cataclysmic birth of a new star.

3

Viva Las Vegas

On those very rare afternoons a decade ago (most often, Monday holidays on which the market was closed) when he could escape the ceaseless phone calls and the insane dealmaking of Drexel’s junk bond mill in Beverly Hills, he’d tuck himself into the buttery leather of Darth’s cockpit and speed down to have lunch with Carly.

She worked as a secretary for an insurance company on Von Karman Boulevard in Newport Center. With only a half-hour (she could occasionally push it to forty-five minutes) permitted her for lunch, they’d grab a quick picnic lunch at a greenbelt table near her building.

It was his responsibility to bring the beverages (diet Coke for her, a canned martini cocktail for him); her responsibility to pack the food. Sometimes, it was cold fried chicken or pasta salad with ham and green peas.

Today, it was tuna fish salad sandwiches—made with yogurt, instead of mayonnaise—on whole wheat bread, with dill pickle spears, black olives and cream cheese-stuffed celery on the side.

“Do you like it?” she asked, after he tried a bite.

“Sure.”

She beamed. “That’s good.”

He took a stiff pull on his martini, sucking it down like a beer to flush the taste out of his mouth. Why was everything she cooked so cutesy?

“How’s work?” he asked.

“Super.” She carefully chewed her food and swallowed. Carly’s brown eyes brightened. “Mr. Amburger is going to send me to a computer course to learn Excel. The company is going to pay for it.” She told him all about it in the same tone she’d use had she suddenly inherited a million bucks from a long-lost aunt.

“Great,” Royce said. He wished his own hot buttons were that easy to push. A course on spreadsheets, for Christ’s sake. The company is going to pay for it, for Christ’s sake.

“Sounds like a great opportunity, Carly.”

“Yes.”

He gobbled down a couple black olives, liking their fleshy feel on his teeth and tongue.

“I have to attend a seminar this weekend in San Francisco—on bond underwriting. You’re more than welcome to come along. I don’t know how exciting it would be for you. Probably pretty boring.”

“Thanks, anyway. I should probably wrap a present for Susan’s bridal shower.”

He nodded. “Okay.” He knew Carly could indeed spend all day wrapping a gift, making sure the paper matched the bow, and the bow was tied just right and decoratively curled with a pair of scissors.

“As long as you’re not with that Cliff, I’ll know you’ll be okay. The way he wears those dark glasses all the time. Gives me the shivers.”

“Oh no. Cliff has nothing to do with this. I just wish I didn’t have to be gone most of the weekend.”

Carly disliked Cliff. Most women, most decent women, did.

“I understand, Royce.”

He knew she was telling the truth. One thing about Carly, she wasn’t possessive like most of the ladies he had dated (he referred to them as “ladies” when, in fact,, most of them were “bitches”). Even after sleeping with him for the first time, she put no hooks in him.

Still, he knew she was very fond of him, counted on marrying him one day. She wanted what most twenty-two-year-old girls with her type of blue-collar background wanted: the status (and security) of being part of a wedded couple.

And children too, he knew, from the mushy way she scoped out rug rats when they went mall hopping.

She consulted the Pulsar on her wrist and sealed the sandwich bag containing the remaining two celery pieces (for her “munchies” later), then carefully folded her sandwich wrap and tin foil and put it all neatly away in her tote bag. He handed over his own trash. That, too, went into her bag. A tidy lady, Carly was. Standing, she demurely smoothed her light summer dress.

He admired her long-stemmed beauty. Tall, and with dancer’s legs, she might have been a model, save for her nose, a trifle pronounced. She possessed soft, brown eyes and cute freckles in various places. Not much of a bust to speak of, though, and he wished she’d stop dying her hair blonde and cutting it gamine short (she’d dreamed of being the stereotypical blue-eyed blonde). It made her look cheap. Her clothes were a little on the school girlish side. But she carried herself well, almost regally, although he knew for a fact she’d grown up an oil refinery worker’s daughter in some horseshit town in Wyoming, was a tomboy in her teens, and could shoot a rifle better than many sportsmen. He’d seen an old photo of Carly in her scrapbook, posing with a deer she’d just dispatched. The freckle-faced girl had a sick smirk on her face. (Carly hated that picture, so Royce loved to tease her about it.)

Since then, she’d managed to polish her rough edges, all pretty much on her own, from what Royce could fathom. If she hadn’t been a secretary, he would have figured her for a registered nurse or a social worker.

True, she could use more sensual skills, but sex with her was far from disappointing. Their coupling was loving, gentle. And it delighted Royce to introduce her to (and even shock her with) new lovemaking practices—more ambitious positions, the plundering of new erogenous zones.

“I do have to get back, Royce.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He planted a kiss on her left cheek.

“If I’m back early enough Sunday night, maybe we can barbecue or something.”

“Okay.”

She headed off towards her glass box and Royce strode quickly to his car. Time was money, especially in a racket where fortunes were made or lost in the time it took to go take a pee. He powered up the black Porsche Carrera and bolted out of the parking lot.

Seconds later, he was tooling north on the Pacific Coast Highway (radar detectors scanning fore and aft) with his car phone clinched tightly in his right hand, weaving in and out of traffic with an acute, egocentric aggression that garnered him plenty of screeching brakes and up-thrust fingers.

“Michael is furious,” said Sheila, his administrative assistant. “He wants to know where the fuck you are.”

“And you told him what?”

“That you were getting a manicure in the event you ended up picking shit with the chickens.”

Royce winced painfully. That Sheila. What a cunt. Proving he could handle the pressure with grace, he managed some bravado: “Oh yes, mistress. I’m coming, my mistress. Don’t whip me, my dominatrix.”

“Fuck that mistress crap. The Staley deal is leaking like a ruptured douche bag. Seems some companies don’t want us to ream them. If you’re not back here with some bright ideas pronto, it won’t be me who flays your ass.”

Royce swallowed, dry-mouthed. “Yeah, I know,” he said soberly, envisioning Milken’s malevolent, smarmy pus. “Any other calls?”

“That analyst from Merrill Lynch called to suck up again. What a whiner. The usual pencil dicks and numb nuts, of course, and that bloodsucker Cliff Wells again. Gives me the creeps. That boy needs to be weaned. You and he an item now? Have you given up on girls all together?”

“Sit on it and rotate, Sheila.”

“Oh, yum.”

In Long Beach, he caught I-405. Now he could really sail. The apprehension was building, making his guts feel as though they’d been stuffed with hot oatmeal. Visiting Carly had been a mistake, what with M.M. on the prod about the Staley Continental situation. The Chicago food producer’s management wasn’t going along with the buyout.

His cellular sounded off.

“Yeah?” he snapped.

“Cliff here, old buddy.”

“Yeah, what can I do for you?”

“Hey, do I detect a little tension in your voice or what? You forgettin’ to do your biofeedback?”

“Come on, Cliff. What do you want? I’m up to my ass in alligators.”

“We still on for Vegas?”

“I may have a complication.”

“May I remind you there will be three-thousand swingers there? Half of ‘em horny women just dying for an infusion of fresh beef?”

“Yeah, but I may have to go to Chicago. Put the fear of God into some human dildoes.”

“Go after,” Cliff whined. “I got us a room in the Hacienda’s tower, close to all the action. We’re gonna be sore for days!”

“Okay, okay! I’ll see what I can work out.”

Royce jammed the phone down in its cradle. God, he hated it when Cliff whined. If it were true that people judged you by the company you kept, then Royce was in deep shit.