Vulnerable (20 page)

“Look, if you're thinking about dipping into Tamara, man, don't drink that Kool-Aid. That chick, she's that can't-get-rid-of trouble. That woman wreaked serious havoc in Henderson's life. In order to put that whole thing to bed, he silent-partnered some boutique she wanted to open in Seattle. That's where he was playing when they met, and she moved there to be near him. She makes Glenn Close look like she had an infatuation for Michael Douglas in
Fatal Attraction.
Man, she knows how to turn a brother sideways, so…”

“It's Sicily I'm worried about.”

“Sicily's a big girl who can surely take care of herself. I have to admit, though. I never would've fantasized Tamara and Sicily hooking up. Can you imagine? Whew! That's got to be…I'd love to be in the room when the lights go out, know what I'm saying?”

“Is she still mixed up with Henderson?” Rawn leaned against the kitchen counter in the dark; the full moon streaked the room with an amazing glow.

“They have this weird friendship, that's the most I know.” Khalil walked back into the well-lit cottage. He reached for the remote control to turn off the television. “There's something missing with that woman. She uses her sexuality for personal gain. There's always an agenda with her. Sicily has to know that Tamara isn't someone she can get serious with. That woman's dangerous.”

•  •  •

The following morning when the telephone brought Rawn out of a deep sleep, he was pretty confident that it was D'Becca. But he turned his back to the whole idea of getting together with her to go shopping and to catch a film. Although they made plans, he was not in the mood, pure and simple.

Less than two miles away, D'Becca slammed the receiver down and voiced angrily, “You bastard!” She was furious, and to distract
herself she started on the StairMaster until she was weak from fatigue—over forty-five minutes of a high-impact workout. She stripped the damp unitard off her moist body and took a cool shower. Towels wrapped around her head and her body, with a click of her mouse, she ordered the French
La Femme Nikita
DVD from Kozmo.com. By the time it was delivered and she sat down with a bag of Tim's to relax and enjoy the film, D'Becca was much too antsy.

Hastily, she grabbed her scarf and keys and stepped into her Z3 without knowing where she would end up. She passed by Rawn's and could officially say she had done a drive-by. Food immediately crossed her mind. D'Becca had an eating disorder—food kept her from going mad when she really wanted to go mad; it was her coping mechanism. The craving for comfort was so intense she began to shake. She needed to nourish her empty places. Barely stopping at the stop sign, she turned onto Crescent Island Boulevard and pulled into a market parking lot. Larry's was not crowded. A cashier and a bagger talked casually at the nine-items-or-less checkout lane. A couple in workout clothes strode through the aisle where the smell of freshly grounded Millstone coffee beans permeated the space. D'Becca's first stop was in the gourmet section where she reached for a box of Seattle Chocolates. After yesterday's meal, D'Becca should have a New York cleansing cocktail, but Troy's idea of eating tofu for the next few days—that was definitely not going to do the trick today. She tossed a box of tampons in the cart and headed for the ice cream section, snacking on the blissful chocolate along the way. Momentarily, she contemplated between a Ben & Jerry's fat-free sorbet and Chunky Monkey. She and Rawn got in the habit of eating Chocolate Cherry Garcia. They talked about life while they shared the pint, and it was those simple moments that made her relationship with Rawn
real.

Once home, anger still claimed every ounce of her. D'Becca felt so bloody angry she could scream at the top of her lungs! She began to pace, growing increasingly uptight, anxious, and this kind of nervous frenzy drew her to do something rash, something desperate. She continued to pace and pace, trying to avoid finishing off the bag of Tim's. She reached for her cellular and started making a call.
No
, she talked herself down.
You can't.

So not to go to a dark place, she tried to busy herself by cleaning the townhouse from room to room, moving and singing to the sounds of Seal over and over again—“Bring It On,” “Dreaming In Metaphors,” “Kiss From A Rose”—until she was plain sick of Seal. She reached for another CD from the stack—Taylor Dayne. The sound of her voice singing “Tell It to My Heart” added to the depth of her implacable sorrow. D'Becca needed to push back her misery, her emptiness. The thought of
stuff.
Which emotion was she experiencing, of the four primary emotions characteristic of emotional overeating: fear, anger, tension, shame? She wanted desperately to
be
with her feeling, whatever that feeling was. She began to overthink. Rawn, was he
with
Tamara? Something was going on between them; their body language at Thanksgiving was adequately transparent. Jealousy was not D'Becca's thing. She felt it deep in her core—Rawn wanted Tamara. She walked through every room. With love songs playing—songs about desperation and despair—she let her weakness take over and pulled out the Chunky Monkey. Her willpower could be so unreliable. It was food that knew how to soothe her emotional distress. Unlike people—
men
—food never let her down.

It had all started when she went to Milan—the bingeing, the purging. The powers that be told her she needed to lose at least ten pounds, and D'Becca could not believe it. All the boys who gave her attention back in her small hometown in North Dakota had told her she was
too
skinny. But she did lose ten pounds; in fact she
lost fifteen pounds, and she worked throughout the season. She was told she would make it in Paris. But when D'Becca went to Paris, she was told she needed to lose a few inches off her hips.
Lose ten more pounds, ma chère.

Chai was fed and she cleaned her litter box, but D'Becca found she had nothing else to do. The boredom overwhelmed her. She could very well go to Pacific Place and shop alone, or perhaps make an appointment to get a massage. But D'Becca wanted to spend the day with Rawn, and she had been looking forward to spending time with him. She thought to herself,
I could be like the young woman in the TV commercial: I could study a sunset or discover a color or memorize clouds or be amphibious.

Fed up, lonely, D'Becca breathed deeply, leafing through her tattered black book with dozens of international numbers. Everyone was far, far away. Spontaneously, she called Sicily, and by chance she would discover that Rawn was with her. She was oddly relieved when Sicily answered on the second ring. When she said she was about to head out to take advantage of Black Friday, D'Becca said, “Is Tamara joining you?”

“Are you kidding? This is a big day for Threads.”

“Do you mind if I come along?”

“Sure, it sounds like fun. You want to drop by and park your car, or do you want to meet at the mall?”

“Well…”

“Have you eaten?”

“Chunky Monkey.”

“Girl, doesn't that do the trick?” Sicily laughed.

“Every time,” D'Becca managed to say in a definite voice.

“Well, look, we can grab something light at Il Fornaio. After last night… Tamara's cheesecake—with espresso
and
sweet potato—was so-so divine…” Sicily laughed even louder.

Is her happiness all about being in love?

Sicily continued. “We couldn't miss each other if we met at the open café. Whoever arrives first grabs a table,” she suggested.

The idea of not being alone lifted D'Becca's spirits.

“Say three?”

“Three's good.” D'Becca made note of the time on her two-time zone watch. Chai leapt on top of the table and she gently nudged her off.

“Three,” Sicily confirmed. “In the terrace, yes?”

Sicily was a lifesaver.

•  •  •

“No, no. Don't worry. It's my pleasure,” Tamara said, reaching for a straight pin from the wrist-held pincushion. She inserted a pin on the side of the sleek black dress. The glamour of the dress was the delicate flare directly above the ankle, and the hem ever so subtly brushed against the ground.

“Have you had an exhausting day?”

“It was really a zoo this morning. This small place—I had ten women in here at one point. Imagine the energy. It's the only day of the year I allow clientele to shop without an appointment. I finally managed to sell that mini you liked but dared not wear in public. By one o'clock I had the nerve to feel lonely. I managed to rush over to Briazz and grab a salad. Not two seconds after I returned, you popped in. I'm glad you caught me.”

“You need to hire help, Tamara.”

“I'm going to call an agency Monday. Good help doesn't come cheap.”

The thin, pale woman gazed at her reflection in the mirror, her arms raised while Tamara continued to take in the dress. Her client always had a rather melancholy cloud hovering over her, and she was desperately unhappy. No, the better word would be
miserable.
Six months ago she designed the black dress for Ingrid Michaels—the one she was now taking in. It was a first for Tamara. No client had ever come to her and requested to have a dress taken in.

A slender, not a minute older than twenty, hip-hop artist was finishing up the West Coast leg of her U.S. tour, and while playing one sold-out night at the Tacoma Dome, dropped in Threads with her entourage. She bought a seductive Tamara Original that Tamara had not been able to sell to any of her regular clientele; perhaps because it was a smidgen too revealing. But the very young artist showed up wearing it at a glitzy red carpet event and dozens of photographs were published capturing the flavor-of-the-month hip-hopper in the Tamara Original. The next day Tamara's telephone would not stop ringing.

Six months ago the elegant black dress fit Ingrid Michaels like a Maserati on the Autobahn. Now, as she stood in front of her, Tamara tried not to state the obvious:
Woman, you are skin and bones.
“So what's the occasion?” she asked to take her mind off other things. Not only for the sake of Ingrid, but likewise herself. Tamara was trying out this staying present idea Sicily talked about, and Pricilla wrote about in her
Times
best seller.

“Our last one…She's soon off to Cambridge. I'm going to miss her.”

“She'll love being near London. It's no more than an hour by train.”

“It's her seventeenth birthday this Saturday. I can't believe how fast time flies.” Her voice was hollow and pathetic.

There was nothing Ingrid Michaels could not acquire if she wanted it. The idea that happiness was not for sale applied in her case. She was the least cheery, least fulfilled woman Tamara had been around, and certainly the most depressing client. The bulk of her clientele were career women in their thirties; some in their
early forties. They wanted the East Coast look, and while some of the popular department stores—The Bon Marché, Nordstrom—carried the latest styles, Tamara emulated the East Coast trends and her designs were never, never duplicated. While a few regulars had seen her dresses worn by a public figure and tried to talk her into having the design made for them, Tamara was firm. She had an implied contract with each client: she would never produce two of the same design. It was precisely why she never agreed to have her designs sold in major department stores, even when she had been approached numerous times. Once she used the design, she handed it over to her accountant, who had each Tamara Original locked in a vault.

But dear Ingrid loved to spend her unfaithful husband's money. She would have a dress designed because. Tamara did not really care whether she ever wore them, yet Ingrid did wonders for her business. Each season she had a well-publicized auction to raise money for one thing or other, and Tamara's designs were exposed to women married to some of the wealthiest men in Washington State. Ingrid was genuinely altruistic, and her business sense was to be admired. The woman knew how the marketing game worked because prior to marrying her entrepreneurial genius of a husband and having back-to-back children, she was VP or some such thing at a Fortune 500 company marketing their products in New York and Chicago. Tamara imagined her being like Diane Keaton in
Baby Boom
—before Keaton's character inherited a baby.

“Time does have a way of flying by, doesn't it? I remember when I was living in Amsterdam. That was the very best time of my life. What was yours, Ingrid?” Tamara slipped the last pin into the delicate fabric.

“I thought your best time was with Henderson Payne.”

“Shock!” Tamara laughed.

Ingrid managed to lift the corners of her small mouth ever so faintly. “The West Village and NYU. I loved New York back then. And I was so pathetically naïve.”

“Oh, what it would be like to still be pathetically naïve—to not know what you now know. Anyway, what would we do differently if we could go back and rearrange things, even with the knowledge we now have?” Tamara stood and looked into Ingrid's pale green eyes reflecting back at her. “Velvet will be out of style next season,” she warned her client. “Okay. Three inches, that's what I'll need to take in. I'll definitely make sure my seamstress has it ready no later than midmorning on Saturday.” She could not miss the watery eyes, and prayed a tear would not fall. She could not deal with some rich woman's issues today.
The downtrodden always managed their tribulations with some dignity.
“Ingrid?” Tamara said.

“Oh, yes.” Habitually, she tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears which exposed a pair of stunning ruby studs. “Three inches. I like velvet. I love this dress.” She looked up into Tamara's reflection in the wardrobe mirror and pantomimed, “Thank you.”