Fortune Is a Woman (11 page)

“Are you bad, Mommy?”

Sharon balked. “We’ll discuss that later.”

“When?” Helen pressed.

Sharon picked her up and walked to a waiting car. “When you’re thirty.”

Inside the car she smugly informed her mother, “You said it.”

“Said…?”

Helen lowered her voice and managed an authentic whisper. “Prick.”

Sharon groaned. “Oh, well. Somehow that just doesn’t surprise me.” She studied her daughter, her head cocked. She did not deserve this child, she frequently found herself thinking. “Okay, but what did I say about using that word?”

“Not in public,” Helen repeated.

Sharon nodded approvingly.

“You said it after you hung up on your lawyer.”

Sharon glanced at her daughter. She had argued yesterday afternoon with her attorney. She wanted to break a gag order. For years she had been constantly bugging him to break that gag order, to release the book. It had become an obsession. “Why don’t you read to me? I think we’ve exhausted this topic.”

“Exhausted this topic,” Helen murmured. “That means shut up?”

Sharon laughed. This was pay-back of some sort. This brilliant little gadfly she had birthed. It giggled back at her.

“You’re so pretty, Mommy. Pretty when you laugh.”

At that Sharon cleared her throat. She was thirty…something. Nothing to laugh about. “I was,” she replied, stroking the child’s dark hair.

“Will I be pretty?” Helen asked.

“Yes, Helen Chambers. You already are.”

“So then I’ll be bad, too?”

Sharon gazed out the window. There were questions like this popping up all the time lately. Bad this, bad that. She didn’t want it to become a theme between them and yet she knew it was inevitable, that one day her daughter would learn more than she needed to know about her mother, if not from her then from someone else.

Super-model Sharon Chambers had lived wildly and recklessly and every unglamorous minute of it had been captured on tape or in snapshots. That left nothing that could be denied. And she had lost Helaine Kristenson as a consequence. Lost other things, too, but those losses were nothing compared to losing Helaine. At the end of her career all that she had to show for it was sitting beside her with adoring eyes, in a fancy car, headed for their fancy address. She had never contemplated having a child, let alone one as quick and sharp as this one. She did not know how to deal with the subject of
bad
and how to present her good girl with such a bad legacy, nor was she ready to.

“Helen, please…just read to me.”

Helen read to her.

_____

Dr. Kristenson was daydreaming at her desk. The rest of the afternoon belonged to her and she was spending it like this, with her chin resting on her hands and her notes from her earlier sessions scattered around her in disarray.

It’s a delicate science, psychoanalysis, and it requires tremendous objectivity. The current problem was hard to be objective about. Lydia was talking in her sleep. No, no, no, the doctor would hear the woman muttering night after night. No…no…no...no…no. Not too terribly incriminating, Dr. Kristenson realized, but shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

From the standpoint of psychology, she understood that Lydia was not so much wrestling with Venus Angelo as with herself, in an effort to suppress her desire for Venus Angelo. Very honorable. From the standpoint of marriage, however, the situation was a total bummer and she had to wonder how it might end, how near to or far from defeat Lydia might be if she was having to fight herself and Venus every night until morning. How far could she be from falling in love at this rate?

That no one could know. Not even Dr. Kristenson.

What the doctor did know was that Venus Angelo was a noble human being and that desiring a noble human being who is also very attractive makes the battle that much harder to win. There was no comfort in this knowledge, no comfort in knowing that whatever progress Venus had made in exciting Lydia’s id, she had not accomplished it through villainy. This offered a wife precious little by way of a tactical defense and any offense that Helaine might be contemplating was itself fraught with many perils.

Indeed, it seemed that it was all up to Venus then. It was hers to lose. She would, if she was actively endeavoring to get Lydia, somehow have to fatally blunder, though Helaine rather doubted it would happen that way because, save for falling in love with a married woman who would not reciprocate her affections, noble Venus Angelo had evidently never blundered at anything.

The doctor could say now, because of their luncheons and her skillful probing, that she knew Venus Angelo very well. She knew, for instance, that Venus was deeply in love with Lydia. It was a very big love. She knew, as well, that if ever it came to fruition the two women would be good for each other. The doctor was expert in judging such a matter.

But Helaine was torn by it.

Exhortation to Liberate

“What in the hell is the matter with you, Liddy? You’re acting like a caged animal.”

She was turning forty-two. She could start with that crisis and go on endlessly from there. Like what the heck was she supposed to do with herself while Helaine was off on her world tour globetrotting for the Kristenson Foundation for five months? That was, she learned, looming in her not so distant future. Their first significant separation and, she worried, perhaps not their last.

Lydia took in Delilah’s expression.
Oh, here we go again
, she said to herself. She needed a vacation. The apartment in Paris would be nice for a couple days, for a week, for a year. That’s what she should do about everything. Swoop up Helaine and get the hell out of here. Enough of this…this…she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Where’s our martinis?” she demanded.

“Well, Liddy, mine’s in my hand and yours is in your–?”

Lydia put her drink down. “Let’s get out of here. I need to walk.”

_____

“Out!”

“Out?”

“Out.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, Sebastion. I’m not.”

“But baby–”

“I am not your baby. Now get out, I said.”

“But–”

Venus grabbed him by the tie. “Don’t make me say it again, Sebastion Jones. I’m tired of your buts and I want you to go.”

“But what about my things?”

“What things? It doesn’t even look like you live here. Go!”

Sebastion made for the door and then stopped. He scanned her apartment. It was true. He had no things there. Just Venus. “What’s got into you, girl?”

“Fix your tie.”

He glanced in the mirror. “Shit! Look at my tie! Look what you did to my tie!” He tried to straighten it, but it was beyond straightening. “What’s wrong with you, girl? Here I am trying to abide by your–”

“Nonsense! I don’t want to hear it, see? I’ll send you another tie. I hate to sleep alone. I’m sleeping alone all the fucking time! Now go!”

He struggled with the tie in the mirror and complained under his breath. “She hates to sleep alone, Sebastion. She hates to be tied down, too. What you think of that, fool? She hates to be alone. She hates to be tied down. She needs her freedom. She hates to be alone.” He turned and faced her. “What do you like, Venus? Bet you wouldn’t muss Lydia Beaumont’s clothes, would ya? Bet you wouldn’t toss her out on her ass after you ruined her FIVE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR TIE!”

Lydia Beaumont. Venus glared at him. “Five hundred dollars, Sebastion? You’re shitting me, right? Five hundred dollars for a strip of cloth? Here! Here!” She snatched her checkbook and waved it at him. “I’ll write you a check for it. How ’bout that? How much you need for that silly-ass rag hanging off your shabby-ass neck? Huh? You want me to make it a six-hundred-dollar tie, Mr. Jones? Okay! Let’s do that. Yeah, yeah! I can do that. Hey, everybody! Did you know Sebastion Jones has a six-hundred-dollar tie? Ain’t he special?”

“You’re nuts.”

“Six hundred dollars? C’mon, that’s more than you ever spent on me. Here let’s do it. Six…hun…dred…dol…lars…and no fuckin’ sense.” She was writing a check for six hundred dollars and no cents. She was a little pissed off about his remark. “There.” She was flinging the check at him. “Going, going, gone,” she taunted, as he bent to the floor and picked it up. “Going, going, gone,” she repeated, as he ripped it up.

“Something wrong with you, woman,” he said. “Something really, really wrong.”

“Nothing wrong with me,” she lied. “Now git.”

_____

Delilah and Lydia worked their way downtown, stopping every ten blocks or so to order themselves yet another gin martini. Some of these they drank, some they didn’t. Consequently, by afternoon they had completely lost track of how many they had actually consumed and, frankly, by then they had ceased to care. Today, Saturday, with the markets closed for the weekend, the temperature so comfortable, the air so cool and refreshing, they felt carefree and liberated. Of course, this was a delusion, a shared delusion. They were only drunk. Executive officers of major corporations are never truly free.

They were headed homeward when the alcohol at last hit them. It struck Lydia the hardest because she had been drinking the most. It was when she began weaving and wobbling that her companion suddenly noticed her condition. At the next corner, when she attempted to reenter a bar the two had left only a few hours earlier, Delilah commandeered her in the opposite direction.

“You’ve had enough, I’d say.” She was thinking now of what Helaine’s reaction would be. She checked the time. Four o’clock. Lydia was already two hours late, three sheets to the wind. Maybe they should stop somewhere for coffee.
Does coffee really sober you up?
Delilah wondered.
Maybe we should call Helaine and tell her we’re having coffee somewhere
.

“I sure have…enough what?”

Delilah covered her eyes. Watching Lydia was making her feel drunker and drunker. She was visualizing a plush sofa and jumping in it. Maybe Helaine wouldn’t mind if she took a quick nap when they got there. Oh boy, Helaine. This would not bring her pleasure.

Coffee was a must.

“Enough what, Del? Gin?”

Gin. Delilah groaned in self-disgust. “We’re very, very drunk, Liddy. How come we’re so drunk?” Ridiculous question. Because they drank too much. She had never seen Lydia so drunk. “Have you ever seen
me
this drunk before?” she asked of her.

Lydia shook her head. “No, you’re pretty wasted, Del. How about me?”

Delilah squinted at her. Lydia was a mess. She wore a stupid smirk. They both laughed. “Oh, brother, Liddy.”

“What?”

“Liddy?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think Helaine will notice?”

The answer was so obvious, even to the drunken.

“The question is,” Lydia replied, “not whether she’ll notice, but whether she’ll ever forgive us.”

That was unlikely because they were ruining her plans tonight.

“What are we supposed to be doing again?” Delilah asked.

“Opera.”

“Oh, geesh, Liddy. Which one?”

Lydia was dizzy. “Umm…
Merry Widows
…I think.” Another opera missed. She wiped the smile off her face, but it was happy there and returned again.

“Oh, I already seen it,” Delilah joked. They were conspicuous on the corner and the passersby were cutting them a wide berth. “Do you think coffee will help?”

Lydia steadied herself, one hand on the lamppost. Coffee? She shook her head again and laughed. No nightmares tonight, she thought, her head spinning. She had been having nightmares about Joseph Rios ever since she heard from the grapevine that he was getting out. Every night for nearly a month she had been running and hiding from him. Oh–the lamppost was moving! The street felt like a raft beneath her. She hadn’t been this drunk since…maybe high school. Sinister Rio Joe. She shuddered despite her good mood. What was she afraid of? She couldn’t recall right at this moment what she was so afraid of. Hair fell around her face, covering her eyes. She brushed it back with her free hand and grinned foolishly at her friend, amused at the idea of coffee and its alleged healing properties. Helaine had never seen her this intoxicated before and she didn’t think it was going to impress her much. Meaning, she’d sleep well tonight, but probably on the couch. “We’re screwed, Del. She’s going to be furious.”

“Ooh.” Delilah reflected on this for awhile. It had a somewhat more sobering effect. “How about Irish coffee then?”

Lydia reflected on this for awhile. It had a somewhat more intoxicating effect. “Why not?” she finally said.

_____

“Haven’t seen her. But she hates the opera. You know that.”

“Still, it’s not like her to forget.”

“What’s going on, Helaine? Spat?”

“Robert, no. She’s out with Del somewhere. They’re late.”

“Flew the coop with Del Lewiston! Doubt it.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking. She’s been…troubled. Nightmares and such.”

“Oh? Let her have some fun then, Dr. Kristenson. Can’t be too much fun running Soloman-Schmitt. That’d give me nightmares, too.”

_____

Venus locked her door and swept up the scraps of a six-hundred-dollar check. He should have taken it, she mused. She felt bad about the tie, but was glad he was gone.

The dig about Lydia still smarted. It shot into her brain and ricocheted against her skull bones like a bullet till she had a splitting headache. So she could add Sebastion Jones as yet another person in the universe who knew or suspected she had the hots for the woman. She could pout about this or move on to a new lover. She could hang low for a day or two or just go out tonight and start to live it up again. Forget all about Mr. Jones and Ms. Beaumont and Dr. Kristenson and whoever else might be destined to cross her path and romantically perplex her.

She should get an aspirin. Nah, she should get out of the house. Eat, drink, be merry. That’s the cure for this kind of malady. Or was it malaise?