I sat in the lobby of Mike’s office, peering over the top of a year-old copy of Redbook and watching Beebee make appointments over the phone. And trying to make her head explode though telekinesis.
I’d waited until Mike had gone to lunch to come by the office for her “interview.” Oh, I had a whole list of questions for her, like, “Who the hell do you think you are?” and “Do you have a history of sexually transmitted diseases?” But I doubted I would be able to use the newsletter as an excuse for those.
Watching her, I bounced between wondering how I was expected to compete with someone as outrageously sexy as Mike’s secretary and thrilling at every little fault I could find, like a weirdly shaped mole at the base of her neck or the fact that one of her eyebrows was slightly longer than the other. How could Mike cheat on me with someone who drew her eyebrows on and still got them asymmetrical? I knew that when it came down to it, a man didn’t give a damn about eyebrows when you had a butt they could bounce a quarter off of, but it helped me cling to a shred of superiority.
Beebee had caused quite the stir when she arrived in town. The fact that Mike had hired an unknown was highly unusual in the first place, as knowing someone who knows someone is half the battle of the Singletree employment market. The only reason Singletree parents joined churches and bridge clubs was to guarantee that their children could move out of the house one day.
Beebee had charisma, this aura of intimidation that had the local women talking about her at the gym, at the grocery, at our club meetings. Because, basically, the people I know never left high school and Beebee was the cool new girl that scared us. At the office she dressed in pencil skirts, leopard prints, and Mamie Van Doren sweaters. It was edgy and sexy but managed to keep her just outside kissing distance of tacky. It was like someone had told her “Leave them wanting more.” Tragically, that person failed to tell her “less is more” when it came to tanning and tooth whitening.
My first face-to-face interaction with Beebee was about two weeks after Mike hired her. I finally worked up the nerve to see if she lived up to the hype and made an excuse to visit Mike at the office. When I walked in the front door, she was facing away from me and she was lecturing someone named Leslie about dating the wrong kind of man.
“Sweetie, you’re never going to move out of that double-wide if you don’t start thinking with parts of your body above the waist,” Beebee snorted as I walked through the door. Her back was turned to me as she twisted the phone cord around her fingers. It was the first time I’d heard Beebee’s real accent, a far cry from the melted sugar tones she used when I called the office. Her natural voice was lower and sort of harsh, like crinkling aluminum foil. “You can’t keep dating these guys. They’re no good for you. They don’t take you any place nice and then they always expect you to put out at the end of the night… I don’t care that you would do that anyway. You could at least go after someone with a nice clean office job. Someone who will spring for a place with cloth napkins. I mean, at the rate you’re going, why not just marry a carny and be done with it?”
“No. No, you can’t date both.” She grunted. “That’s the thing with these white-collar, middle-class guys, they need to think that they’re the only ones or it’s no fun for them. And if you’re going to get knocked up -”
Unfortunately, this was the moment Beebee checked over her shoulder and saw me standing there listening. She dropped the phone in the cradle and greeted me in that sweet, fake voice. That was the first time I realized Beebee was not nearly as dumb as she looked.
What really killed me about this whole situation is that the affair was the second thing Mike and Beebee had pulled over on me. On August 23 of the previous year, I’d turned thirty. When Mike asked what kind of party I wanted, I suggested something low-key; maybe going up to our little cabin at Lake Lockwood with friends and family and having a nice weekend together. But while my brother sent a dozen candy-pink roses and a gift certificate for a seaweed wrap, my birthday came and went without so much as a card from my husband.
So I held a twenty-minute pity party, ate half a fat-free cheesecake, and allowed spa technicians to wrap me in a detoxifying kelp burrito. That Friday, Mike said he wanted to take me out to a nice dinner to make up for not having time to get me a present.
He took me to the Singletree Country Club, where about one hundred fifty people jumped out at me and yelled “Surprise!” I was surprised, all right. I didn’t know who the hell these people were. I recognized my parents and Mike’s parents, and that was about it.
“Happy birthday, honey!” Mike yelled, kissing me on the cheek with a loud smack.
Through a tight smile, I asked, “Mike, what is this?”
“It’s your birthday party, silly,” he whispered under the guise of kissing my cheek again. His voice rose as he said, “I bet you thought I forgot, didn’t you? I know you said you didn’t want a big fuss, but you only turn thirty once. And I thought a surprise party would be fun.”
I looked around the room at the smiling, expectant faces. You couldn’t really tell this was a birthday party. The reception room, one social step down from the sacrosanct “for weddings only” banquet room, was tastefully decorated with votive arrangements of white roses. A piano player played low jazz tunes from the corner. There was an open bar and a beautiful buffet set up with seven different kinds of shellfish, all of which would make me break out in hives as I was allergic. It looked like a really nice cocktail party for a humane society or something.
“Mike, who are all of these people?” I asked quietly.
“Our friends.” Mike shrugged, sipping champagne.
“None of our friends are here,” I said through my smile, waving at an elderly woman in the back of the room who seemed to recognize me. Or she could have been trying to flag down a waiter. “In fact, I don’t recognize anybody. How did you manage to host a party in this town without inviting a single person I know?”
“They’re clients, Lacey,” he said in a low tone. “And potential clients. I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to get to know them on a personal level, to show them that we appreciate their friendship.”
“What about Scott and Allison? Or Charlie and Brandi?” I asked, naming two of Mike’s best friends and their wives, both of whom were our designated weekend barbecue buddies.
“There wasn’t room on the guest list.”
“Okay, where’s Emmett?” I asked, looking around the room. My brother loved all birthdays, though the roses and spa certificate were among his tamer offerings. On my twenty-eighth, he had his friend, Tony, the only working drag queen in the county, dress up like Marilyn Monroe and sing “Happy Birthday” to me. While Mike’s grandma told Tony he was a very talented girl, Wynnie and Jim Terwilliger sat there stone-faced and left right after cake.
Mike shrugged. “Beebee said he didn’t RSVP.”
“You didn’t call him?” I asked.
“I just figured he knew he would be uncomfortable and didn’t want to come,” he said. “Besides, I don’t think he’d make a great impression on the guests.”
My eyes narrowed at Mike. He had never been comfortable around my brother. He always tried to make conditions and restrictions on the time we spent with my family because he didn’t think he should have to put up with Emmett. He would go to Easter at my parents’ house as long as Emmett didn’t bring a date. He would go on a golfing weekend with my dad as long as Emmett wasn’t invited. It was like he thought the “gay” could rub off or something. “I thought that this was a birthday party for me. I told you I just wanted something small, something with my family -”
“Why would we want something small, when I’ve given you all this? Why can’t you just say thank you?” he said, gesturing across the room to his scantily clad secretary. Stunning in an off-the-shoulder black cocktail dress, Beebee was carrying a clipboard and intently instructing the waitstaff on the placement of an ice sculpture swan. “Beebee and I worked really hard to set this whole thing up and it wasn’t easy after just coming off the end of the fiscal year. Why can’t you just enjoy this?”
“Because I didn’t ask for it.” I poked my finger into Mike’s chest. “As usual, you just -”
I felt my mother’s arm slide around my waist and heard her tinkling laugh as she announced she was taking me to the ladies’ room to “freshen my lipstick.” Apparently, I’d chewed all of mine off.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I demanded the moment Mama shut the door behind us. She waited until she checked under the stall doors for feet to answer me.
“I thought you knew!” Mama exclaimed.
“But I told you about the lake thing; I even asked which weekend would work for you.”
“I thought you were trying to get information out of me,” Mama said, tutting sympathetically as she dabbed
