bay on his new Bertram. Wouldn’t you know it, we’re halfway to Bimini, and it’s the same old story. Suck or swim. Spread or tread.”
“A real Hobson’s choice.”
“Huh? This guy’s name was Kornblum. He sells insurance.”
Mickey loaded Wanda’s tray with a green slushy drink, a watery red one, and two bottles of expensive water. Wanda turned and high-heeled it to a corner table where two young men had stripped off their suit coats to reveal suspenders and custom-made shirts with shiny cuff links. I would have known they were lawyers even if they weren’t loudly boasting of recent courtroom triumphs, real or imagined, ridiculing judges and their vanquished opponents. With them were two women dressed for success in designer suits-one blue, one peach-that were probably designer labels from Bal Harbour Shops. I analyzed the two couples in my detached, objective, nonjudgmental way and concluded they were Republican-voting, squash-playing, Volvo-driving Yuppie scum.
I caught Mickey’s eye and made a stirring motion with my index finger. He nodded and reached for the bottle of Plymouth gin.
I thought about it some more, the ethical morass I had wandered into. Hell, had created, if we’re being honest. I thought about taking the easy way out. The case was over, so forget it. Gina was out of my life, so forget her. Whatever Nicky Florio and Rick Gondolier had done was none of my business. I did my job, won the case. But I kept wondering. What had Peter Tupton seen on Florio’s desk? What were Florio and Gondolier up to? I waited for the cool drink to erase the thoughts, to clear the mind by muddling it.
Just walk away.
It would be so easy.
Get back to the old routine, a reception room full of clients, a beach full of women. Meaningless work, meaningless play.
Mickey delivered another martini. The first sip seared my throat with its icy heat. The second sent a shiver through me. I felt Wanda’s presence behind me. Actually, I felt her breasts pushed against my back. “I get off at one,” she whispered.
I tried to say something, but my lips were numb. I felt myself nodding, my head too heavy a load for my shoulders to support.
Wanda ran a hand through my hair and pulled hard. “Don’t fall asleep on me, big guy.” She let go and raised her voice a couple of notches. “Hey, Mick, give Jake a cup of coffee, will ya, hon?”
Wanda had a town house in one of those clusters on Kendall Drive west of the Turnpike. All asphalt parking lots and wedge-shaped buildings. Not a blade of grass in sight, even if I could see. The place was furnished in fifties’ ultra-feminine. Fluffy pink pillows, fluffy cream drapes, fluffy white cat. Stuffed animals on the sofa, reproductions of Degas nudes on the living-room wall, a wooden wine rack on the kitchen counter. She slid a CD into the player, and Natalie Cole sang “Unforgettable.” Her dad joined in, thanks to some electronic wizardry.
Wanda cooed sweet things at me and undid my tie with swift, sure fingers. My awesome powers of deductive reasoning told me she had done this before. I got my shirt off without any help, but she intervened when I tried to take off my pants before my shoes.
In her bedroom, I leaned forward to kiss her but missed, my nose ending up in a sweep of red hair that smelled of cigarettes. She turned toward the bed, steadied me with one hand and used the other to pull back a thick white comforter. Then she effortlessly stepped out of her waitress mini, took me by the hand, and pulled me on top of her. My head touched down between her large, freckled breasts. I was aware of the white smooth expanse of her, the womanly scents. From somewhere, she produced a stack of foiled condoms, connected along perforated lines. There must have been a dozen. Either we were going to make party balloons, or she had confused me with somebody else. I fumbled with one of the foil wrappers, before she took it away and expertly opened it. The latex kind. White and cold and sexy as a surgical glove. Prevents disease, pregnancy, and nearly all pleasure. Like having sex through galoshes.
Wanda was one of the sighers and moaners, the omigod-I-never-dreamed-it-could-be-like-this types. I took a few bows, but if you’ve been around the track a few times, you don’t take your press notices seriously. When she wasn’t purring with cinematic sincerity, she was a warm and giving bedmate with the full complement of womanly slopes and curves and warm, tender places.
Sometime around dawn, she told me I looked like Harrison Ford.
Or was it Henry Ford?
I drifted in and out of sleep. I dreamed I was blitzing a quarterback on a rainy day on a field covered with knee-high mud. I moved in slow motion. An offensive lineman stood on sturdy ground and laughed at me. I tried the swim move, a high-arm maneuver, but he got underneath and pancaked me into the cold mud, which filled my nose and mouth. Just before I sank below the surface, I saw his face: Nicky Florio.
I was alone and shivering in a bank vault. Lots of money and no way to spend it, no way to get out. It was hard to breathe. Then it got colder still. I was naked. The vault became a meat locker. Beef carcasses hung from shiny hooks, blackened blood puddling on the icy floor. I fought my way through fat-streaked slabs of meat, desperately trying to escape, my feet slipping out from under me. I raced crazily down an endless row, my hands raised in front of my face, fighting through the carcasses, slick with gristle and bone, smacking against me. Suddenly, I was hit hard and knocked to the floor. A shadow swung back and forth over me. Filled with dread, I looked up. Suspended from a grappling hook, rocking crazily from side to side, was the corpse of Peter Tupton, a ghastly smile frozen on his face.
Laughing at me.
I awoke to find myself alone, the sheet and comforter kicked to the floor. The air-conditioning vent was right above the bed, louvers pointed down. My bare body was a forest of goose bumps.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to kitchen noises-cabinet doors closing, silverware clattering, the beep-beep of a microwave. I got up and pried my eyes open. In the bathroom, I realized I wasn’t home when I found the toilet seat down. In the kitchen, I found Wanda singing to herself as she made breakfast. An old Diana Ross song, “All Night Lover.” Wanda squeezed fresh orange juice, sizzled three eggs sunny-side up, topped by half a dozen strips of bacon, toasted some cinnamon bread, then watched me eat, explaining how it’s a woman’s pleasure to see a man enjoy himself. She allowed as how I had been pretty wonderful, considering my condition.
While we ate, she was moved to ponder how strange it was that we were drawn together after all these years as friends, or at least acquaintances, and isn’t life weird, and what does it all mean, and will I call her later, and maybe we could go to the antique show in Boca Raton next weekend, and would I like it if she cut her hair short.
Antique show?
That old feeling. Total displacement. What have I done? Who is this person, and why am I here? It had been years since I had a one-night stand. Sad then, sadder now. The total futility of the random joining of persons unconnected in any other way.
By the time I headed the old convertible east, the sun glared angrily in my face. I felt pasty, bloated, out of sorts. My mouth was parched. I wanted to run on the beach and swim in the sea. I wanted to cleanse my body and my mind and my soul, if I had any.
I thought about my dreams. Charlie Riggs once told me that Freud was all wet. “Dreams as repressed wishes, what hogwash! A pity Freud didn’t have the benefit of research into brain chemistry.”
I had waited for him to go on. As usual, he didn’t disappoint me. “Dreams let us work on unsolved problems or unfinished business from the day and allow brain cells to recharge their transmitter chemicals.”
Unsolved problems.
Unfinished business.
Story of my life.
Maybe it was time to finish something and not be stuck somewhere between the dreamscape of a muddy football field and a meat locker.
And that’s just what I wanted to do now.
I wanted to play poker with Nicky Florio.
Chapter 13
