flowers, Dolly coming up for air just long enough to mention that she had to take more things out of the oven. Mitch asked her if she needed any help. She allowed as how she did. And so he joined the two of them in the kitchen, where they immediately lit into Mandy’s outfit.
“If the poor dear’s going to wear her dresses that short,” observed Dolly, “then she should really do something about the backs of her thighs, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Bitsy concurred. “She’s not sixteen. Then again, maybe men don’t notice or mind the pronounced wattling. Do they, Mitch?”
“She’s a good-looking woman.”
“Well, if you’re going to spout baloney like that you can go back to the study with the men,” Bitsy said merrily.
“Mitch is planning to revive Niles’s vegetable garden,” Dolly informed her as she slid a sheet of egg rolls out of the oven.
Bitsy let out a squeal of delight. “Outstanding! I can get you started whenever you’re ready, Mitch. I have dried chicken manure. I have bunny dung. I have the hugest compost pile in the state. They call me the Compost Lady. You’re welcome to as many wheelbarrow-loads as you can handle!”
“That’s very nice of you.”
“Now tell me what you want to plant,” she commanded him.
“I was thinking about tomatoes.”
“Oh, excellent!” she exclaimed. “I am doing several heirlooms this year, but I also have Sweet One Millions and a few early disease-resistant varieties. Your timing is perfect. The soil temperature is ideal. And if you move fast you can still get your cukes in. I have a whole forest of lettuce you can have, too. The season’s running a bit late this year.” She paused to sample an egg roll, nibbling at it delicately. “Tell me, did your wife garden?”
A sudden tidal wave of emotion came crashing over Mitch. His Adam’s apple seemed to double in size, eyes stung, chest tightened. It still happened to him sometimes when Maisie came up unexpectedly. “Yes
…” he responded hoarsely. “Yes, she did.” Then he excused himself and fled for the powder room.
Only there wasn’t one. No bathroom downstairs, period. He finally found one at the top of the stairs. It was the master bath, complete with claw-footed tub and festive wallpaper featuring horseless carriages and men wearing goggles and long duffel coats. Mitch rinsed his face and gazed at his reflection in the mirror, breathing in and out. His eye strayed over to a cluster of prescription pill bottles on the top shelf of a white wicker unit next to the sink. It was, he observed, a full-fledged dispensary of mother’s little helpers. Dolly Seymour had prescriptions for Prozac, for Valium and for Vicodin, also known as housewife’s heroin. Dolly also had a prescription for lithium, which was serious medicine for serious manic-depression. This was, Mitch reflected, one hurting lady. There was a bottle of Relafen, an anti-inflammatory, that was in Niles Seymour’s name. Also a bottle of Urispas, a prostate medication. The man had left his pills behind when he flew the coop. And Dolly had kept them. Mitch found this mildly curious.
Mandy Havenhurst was seated on the stairs when he came back down, blocking his way. Her skirt was hiked up very invitingly on her thighs. From where Mitch was standing, there was not a thing wrong with them.
“You didn’t have children?” she asked, tossing her long blond hair at him provocatively.
“No, we didn’t.” Mitch was trapped there on the steps. He couldn’t go around her. He couldn’t go over her. He sat down on a step above her and said, “We weren’t ready.”
“I’m so ready I could bust. I’d like to have at least two. Maybe three. But Bud keeps saying he’s too old to be a father all over again.”
Mitch nodded, wondering why she was telling a complete stranger this.
“I’m in the city a lot,” she went on. “We should go to a museum together or something. I know nobody. And Bud will never go in. He’s afraid of New York, I think. He grew up out here. Everyone he knows he’s known since childhood. I can’t imagine that, can you? Knowing all the same people your whole life?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Don’t get me wrong-I love it here. But it can be so insulated. I’d go stir-crazy if I had to be out here full- time.” She hesitated, glancing up at him through her long eyelashes. “What I mean is, it’s nice to meet up with someone who’s real.”
“Thank you,” he said, suddenly aware that they were not alone.
Bud Havenhurst was hovering in the doorway, jealously watching the two of them. Dolly’s ex-husband was positively coiled with tension, his eyes agleam. He reminded Mitch of Claude Rains in Notorious any time Ingrid Bergman got near Cary Grant. Clearly, Bud could not believe that this lovely blond trophy was his. Clearly, he did believe that every other man wanted her as much as he did. Did Mandy encourage this belief by being just a bit too attentive toward younger, available men? Mitch wondered. Because they did seem to be playing some kind of a game. She was staring right back at her husband now, her chin raised, a look of brazen challenge on her face.
I do not want to get mixed up in this, Mitch said to himself.
“Freshen your drink, Mitch?” Bud asked him tightly.
Mandy had to let him pass now. He joined Bud in the study. There was a love seat and a pair of matching armchairs in there. Also a desk with a computer and printer on it.
“I wanted you to know, Mitch, just how great I think it is to have some new blood out here,” the lawyer said as he mixed his drink. He sounded very edgy. And he was gripping the glass so tightly Mitch thought it might shatter in his hand. “I hope you didn’t think I was being rude to you the day you came to my office. I’m just very protective of Dolly. We all are. Niles Seymour put her through hell.” He handed Mitch his refilled glass, peering at him carefully. “Fine girl, Mandy, don’t you think?”
“She seems very nice.”
“I’m a lucky man,” Bud acknowledged, beaming. “There are some mornings when I wake up… Hey, boy, I can’t believe how happy I am.”
Mitch heard jovial voices coming from the entry hall now. Young Evan had arrived with his companion, Jamie. Evan was in his mid-twenties, tall and slender and tanned, with wavy black hair and Dolly’s delicate features and blue eyes. He wore a gauzy shirt unbuttoned to his stomach, jeans and leather sandals. Jamie was about fifty, trimly built and fashionably turned out in a blue blazer, yellow Sea Island cotton shirt and white slacks. Mitch was positive he looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him.
“So you’re the heavy metal metal guitarist,” Jamie exclaimed, pumping Mitch’s hand.
“Blues, actually. Just loud. I guess I’ll have to amp down.”
“Not on our account,” Evan assured him.
Jamie nodded in agreement. “‘To each his own, said the old woman as she French-kissed the cow.’ An old expression of my dear mom’s, slightly embellished by myself. Welcome to B.S., Mitch. I’m a huge fan of your work. For one thing, you actually know what you’re talking about-which is shockingly unusual. And you are not personal or mean. So many critics these days just want to land a zinger. They don’t realize how much words can hurt.”
“Sure they do,” Mitch countered. “That’s why they do it.”
“You’ll have to come see our lighthouse,” said Evan. “It’s way cool. Second tallest on the Southern New England Coast. The Block Island Lighthouse is taller by ten feet.”
“I’d love to. Is it used for anything anymore?”
“Absolutely,” Jamie replied cheerfully. “It’s a great place to get high.”
Now it clicked-it was the drug reference that did it. “I just realized something,” Mitch said. “You’re Jamie Devers.”
“It’s true,” Jamie confessed, smiling. “I was.”
Better known to the world as Bucky Stevens, the resident little cute kid on Just Blame Bucky, which ranked as one of the classic fifties family sitcoms, right up there with Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. In his heyday, Jamie Devers had been one of the biggest stars on television, a round-faced little munchkin with freckles and a cowlick and an amusingly adenoidal way of saying, “I didn’t dood it.” But, as so often happened, he outgrew his cuteness. And the show got cancelled. Jamie Devers grew a beard and got mixed up with the Peter Fonda-Dennis Hopper Hollywood drug scene of the late sixties. Got himself busted several times. Then disappeared from public view altogether. Until he’d surfaced a few years back with a highly controversial tell-all memoir, which alleged that during his prepubescent heyday he had regularly been sexually abused by a secret gay fraternity of male studio executives, agents and actors. His scathing memoir, entitled I Dood It, also claimed that the actress who’d played Bucky’s television mom had carried on a long, secret love affair with a black L.A. Dodgers
