Million Dollar Road (13 page)

“Hey—I'm going in there,” Lireinne said firmly. The Godiva window display was piled high with tantalizing golden boxes, promising rare delights. She was dying to have one chocolate, just one. It had been a long time since she'd eaten chocolate, and never anything from
this
fabled store.

“Come with me?” If the salespeople were snotty, Lireinne didn't want to go in there without backup.

With a shrug, Emma said, “If you want.”

She didn't sound like it was a big deal to her, but there were so many delicious-sounding choices in the Godiva store that after five minutes of agonized indecision, Lireinne let Emma choose for her—a champagne truffle that tasted like what she imagined rich angels could afford to eat in heaven.

Outside in the mall Emma finished her own chocolate quickly. She hadn't seemed to enjoy it much. Lireinne tried to make hers last, taking mouse bites until the truffle was gone.

“Oh my God, that was, like, so freaking yummy! How was yours?”

“Fine,” Emma said. In passing the food court she went to throw the Godiva store's little glossy bag in a nearby wastebasket, but Lireinne held out her hand.

“Can I have that? It's so pretty, I hate to just throw it away.” She could use the black-and-gold bag to hold her cotton balls. Besides, black and gold were Saints colors.

“I'm sorry.” Emma's closed expression changed, softening as she said, “Of course you can.” Lireinne carefully folded the Godiva bag and put it in her purse.

Emma watched her intently, as if she had something on her mind, then looked away. People streamed past them into the food court like a human river. Finally, Emma turned to Lireinne with a forced-looking smile.

She said, “When we get done at Banana Republic, before we head home we could have dinner afterward, if you want. That would be a nice way to wind up our trip, and we could . . . get to know each other better.”

“Here?” Lireinne was a little intimidated by the loud, busy crowds of diners laden with trays, the raucous gangs of teenagers camped at the tables, by all the fast-food choices of the food court. A yeasty, mouth-watering aroma of pizza floated out into the mall. That would be
awesome,
Lireinne thought. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had pizza that wasn't frozen: this smelled like it would be a huge improvement over a pepperoni-studded floor tile from Walmart.

“I could go for some pizza.”

“If you want,” Emma said diffidently, “but I was thinking we'd go all out and have dinner at P.F. Chang's. It's a pretty good Chinese restaurant on the other side of the mall. My treat.”

They walked on, but Emma's silence didn't feel so strange anymore, and, approaching the Banana Republic store, Lireinne's spirits rose once again. The wide windows displayed groups of headless mannequins, all of them draped in the kinds of clothes Lireinne had hoped she'd find for her new work wardrobe, only much, much cooler.
This,
she decided as they walked in the doors, was the place!

And, as promised, there was a sale on.

 

An hour and a half later, a hostess led Emma and Lireinne past P.F. Chang's long bar, packed three-deep with chattering, well-dressed people sipping cocktails. They sat down in a booth, piling Lireinne's white paper bags on the seat beside her. The shopping at Banana Republic had been resoundingly successful. One bag held a very special purchase: a sleeveless sheath in a green silk, a perfect dress the color and texture of sea foam.

“Can I wear this to work?” Lireinne had asked Emma doubtfully in the changing room.

“No—it's just for fun,” Emma replied. “I'll buy it for you.”

Lireinne demurred, but Emma insisted, and now the beautiful dress was hers, all hers.

P.F. Chang's smelled like there was something wonderful going on in the kitchen. Except for the few times Bud had taken her and Wolf to the Pakistani seafood place up by the gas station in Folsom, Lireinne had never been in a real restaurant before. McDonald's didn't count. She watched Emma carefully, wondering how to act. She didn't want to look like country-fried trailer trash out on the town, not in here.

Emma unfolded her napkin, a heavy black linen square, and put it in her lap. Lireinne did the same. Emma took a sip of water. Lireinne did, too. They both studied the menu and Lireinne realized she'd never heard of anything on it: the descriptions seemed strange, like the food might taste weird. Like, who ate cashews and broccoli together? And what the hell was oyster sauce? Nothing sounded good. She put the menu down and took another nervous sip of water. Emma hadn't offered anything in the way of conversation, and after a few minutes of increasingly awkward silence, to Lireinne's relief the waiter in his black pants and white shirt came to the table. He asked for their drink order. Emma said she wanted hot green tea.

“Can I have a Coke?” Lireinne asked, wondering if green tea would taste like soap. Some of the shampoos at Walmart were made with green tea. They smelled nice, but nothing like regular tea.

“Sure thing.” The waiter winked at her. “Be right back.” With a flattering smile, he hurried through the maze of tables to get their drinks.

After that, Lireinne found herself beginning to relax. That guy had been supernice to her, even if Emma had decided not to talk again. Soon their drinks arrived and they got their dinner order placed with the now openly flirting waiter—something called Vegetarian Mu Shu for Emma and some mysterious chicken-and-rice-noodle dish she recommended for Lireinne to try.

Lireinne sipped her Coke and tried to act as though she ate in nice places like P.F. Chang's all the time. Even if Emma didn't seem to be enjoying herself, this, she decided, was turning into
fun
. That table of guys over there was definitely checking her out with sidelong, appreciative glances and she wasn't even wearing her new clothes yet.

“So you're working at the alligator farm.” Emma took a sip of her green tea. She looked into the cup, not meeting Lireinne's eyes. “I wonder if you know . . . Mr. Costello?” She put her cup down and some tea slopped over the rim onto the table. Her hand was shaking.

Lireinne was surprised at her question. A lady like Emma, knowing Mr. Con? she thought in some confusion. The alligator farm was one dirty, messed-up place, the opposite of what she imagined being Emma was all about. People like her had the kind of life where everything worked out just fine all the time and nothing ever, ever went wrong. A creep like Harlan wouldn't even dare to
speak
to someone like Emma.

“You mean Mr. Con? Yeah, he's my new boss,” Lireinne said, cautious now. Why would Emma care who she worked for? “You know him?”

“Yes. It's a small world, isn't it.” Not looking at Lireinne, Emma arranged her chopsticks neatly in front of her on the shining teak tabletop. “He's my . . . he's my ex-husband,” she said, her voice low. Emma clasped her hands tight together, gazing across the crowded restaurant, her face tense and troubled.

Lireinne, however, felt much more at ease. So that's it, she thought. Everybody has an ex-husband these days—even Bud's an ex-husband—and most people aren't on the best of terms with their exes anyway, right?

“Wow,” Lireinne said. “Who knew? Small freaking world, for sure.”

“Who knew,” Emma agreed, and her voice was grim. She met Lireinne's eyes at last and it seemed as though she was ready to say more, but at that moment the waiter showed up with their food.

“Here you go, ladies.” He began mixing three different kinds of sauces, adding vinegars and chili oil, explaining what each one was like. It was a complicated process and a lengthy one.

No big deal, Lireinne reflected, picking up her fork. Too bad about Emma and Mr. Con, though.

Her dinner, as it turned out, was delicious.

“S
o then that frog bastard had the brass-balled nerve to ask me to put my money in his vineyard! Now what in the hail am I going to do with a got-damn vineyard?”

Fat Roger Hannigan threw back his head with a self-satisfied roar of amusement at his new French son-in-law's expense. Sitting next to Lizzie on the recently acquired living room sofa, his wife, CoCo, lean as an Italian greyhound in a pair of skintight black pants and a hand-painted silk tunic, added her own two cents.

“I was plain knocked for a
loop,
” CoCo said. She placed her icy pre-dinner tumbler of vodka and very little tonic on Lizzie's prized antique end table. It was sure to leave a ring, but Liz didn't dare hand her a coaster. Dinner with Con's boss was an Occasion, so tonight CoCo Hannigan could put her glass down wherever the hell she wanted.

“I mean, there he was,” the boss's wife said, “looking just like a little bug in those funny glasses they all wear over there—kind of like that Buddy Holly, you know?—and don't you know Henri got right up in Roger's face, wanting a loan!”

CoCo's practically pupil-less hazel irises glittered in her taut face, her jawline as sharp as the Chinese cleaver in the kitchen knife block. She appeared to be trying to raise her eyebrows while her disdainful glance implied Liz was bound to know all about the travails of being so wealthy that everyone of your acquaintance wanted a handout,
tout suite
.

“Um.” Lizzie wanted to be agreeable. In her newly gained experience, however, the seriously rich were so close with their money that, like squirrels, they might as well keep it hidden in the walls. Despite their miserliness, they still wanted to act as though they never gave all that money a thought and neither should anybody else. Liz knew she'd never have
that
much money, not enough to forget about it. She'd never be able to forget all those degrading moments before marrying Con when her credit card had been turned down. She'd had to watch her own mother suffer that same ordeal on more than one occasion. Raising four girls on her husband's schoolteacher salary had been hard—especially when that schoolteacher had a little gambling problem. Mrs. MacBride often had to return half a basket's worth of groceries to the shelves and get back in line, humiliated. Little Lizzie had been even more embarrassed than her mother, learning to dread having to go with her to the supermarket. She'd been determined that miserable experience wouldn't happen to her, ever, not once she was a lawyer and making a salary that had, at the time, seemed more than adequate. But after the first excruciating moment when the saleslady had run Liz's Visa three times with no success and handed her back her card, she'd been forced to relive her mother's humiliation more times than she wanted to recall.

“I can't imagine how you must've felt,” she said to CoCo. “What nerve, asking y'all for money!”

From where he was lounging in the armchair in front of the marble fireplace, her husband crossed his sockless ankle over his knee and chuckled.

“Damn, Rog,” Con said easily. “You're plenty liquid. Buying into something like a vineyard wouldn't hurt your bottom line at all. Besides, you knew your son-in-law was a deadbeat when you met him. This could be a win-win situation, you know. If he's busy making wine, he won't have time to get himself into trouble with your little girl.”

At that, Hannigan howled with laughter,
har har har
. CoCo's face stretched horizontally into a different kind of grimace.

Con exchanged a glance with Lizzie from across the living room, recently redecorated out of the Restoration Hardware catalog. It was a crowded upscale photo shoot of white linen slipcovers, vintage-inspired lamps, and oversized, distressed pine furniture. Liz had been thrilled, seeing the glossy pages re-created in her own living room—down to the silk orchids in pots, domed bell jars, and coordinated architectural drawings in ebony frames. The space was
perfect
now, except for these Hannigans in the middle of it. Liz peeked at her watch. It was only seven fifteen. This evening was never going to end.

“Don't you need to check on dinner, honey?”

Lizzie looked up with a start to meet Con's questioning gaze.

“I think our guests would like a refill,” he said. “I'll join you in the kitchen.”

Damn. There'd be no quick, surreptitious drink for her now. “Dinner's only about ten minutes away, y'all,” Liz said, a resigned smile on her numb-feeling lips.

Three glasses of white wine on an empty stomach were probably two too many, but she'd needed the clandestine, golden calm to settle her nerves before the Hannigans had showed up at the front door and Con went into that overdrive thing he always did. Nothing in Lizzie's previous life had prepared her with the skills necessary for these dinners, where all the details were in her unequipped hands. Supper at her parents' house had always been a grab-and-go kind of meal: you had to snatch it while you could before someone else got there first and there was nothing left for you except scraps, crumbs, and burned pieces.

CoCo held out her glass as Con rose from his chair. “Remember—just a splash of tonic, sugar,” she simpered.

“Coming, Liz?” Con asked, picking up Roger's empty beer bottle.

Lizzie didn't answer, focused on trying to rappel her way up out of the deep, upholstered sofa. Halfway to her feet, she almost toppled like a downed tree onto the Berber carpet because her long, voluminous hostess pants were trapped under the cork soles of her high-heeled sandals. Liz tugged the hems free, only to find herself swaying alarmingly. With an effort she recovered her shaky balance, hoping no one saw the slip.

Con followed her into the butler's pantry on the way to the kitchen, much to Liz's aggravation. So far he hadn't seemed to notice she was a little tight. After that memorable night at the Lemon Tree, he'd been a real ass about her drinking.

“Look, Liz—don't screw up
this
dinner,” he'd said. “Roger's hinting he might retire to Provence in a year or two. It'll mean a promotion for me, so keep your goddamned drinking under control for a change. The last thing I need is him thinking my wife's a lush. The way you spend money, we need every damned dime I make.”

Positive that drinking—copious drinking—was going to be the only way to get through this dinner, still Liz had to ignore Con's unfairness if she didn't want a repeat of several recent arguments. So, even though she was still more than halfway convinced Con was running around on her, Lizzie had backed her suspicions into a corner with a whip and a chair, swearing piously there'd be a fabulous meal and a tranquil atmosphere for this all-important dinner party. Since it wasn't as if she had a choice anyway, she'd thrown herself into the preparations, hoping for the best.

Once in the kitchen, though, hoping for the best proved pointless when Lizzie discovered Con wasn't fooled at all. “What's your problem?” he demanded in a low voice. “You're sitting there like a damned stuffed animal. Didn't you hear CoCo asking you to be on that Downtown Arts committee of hers? Really big deal, Liz, she was serious about it. What, are you drunk?”

“I most certainly am not.” Somehow Lizzie managed to keep her voice even. “I can't help it if I'm not thrilled about CoCo's stupid committee. Covington's art scene is bush-league anyway. I swear, if I get dragged to another opening and have to
ooh
and
ah
at one more bad watercolor show, I'll . . . I'll do a performance art piece of my own. I'll rip off my clothes and run naked down Boston Street, screaming. Even the wine is awful at those things. And for your information, I'm not
drunk
.”

“Good. Be sure to accept, tell her thank you, and act happy about it. How's dinner going?” Con was busy getting ice for CoCo's vodka.

Lizzie peeked in the oven. The quail were browning faster than they should—they were practically burned. She'd have to take them out right away or they'd be reduced to charcoal. The Marchand de Vin sauce had separated in its copper saucier while waiting on a dinner that had been too slow to cook and now was black on the outside and probably raw on the inside. The potato gratin was soggy, the salad wilted. It had turned out to be a very bad idea, cooking something she'd never attempted before on this night of all nights. What had she been thinking? Liz thought, filled with a wobbly panic.

Her only hope lay in the fact that CoCo was a perpetual dieter, rumored to live solely on vitamins, weight-loss drugs, and vodka, and Roger's palate was pure country. Con said he loved lunches of fried bologna sandwiches made with Miracle Whip and pickles, that Hannigan had Miz 'Cille out at the farm prepare him three of those revolting sandwiches every day without variation. It was an appetite left over from the old days of his one-man operation, Con told her, back when Wife Number One had packed his lunch.

It was too goddamned bad, Liz thought with a mounting sense of her own doom, there wasn't a flap of bologna in the house to feed him if the quail proved inedible.

Unaware of the culinary disaster on the horizon, though, Con raised an eyebrow. “We ready?”

“Go on—bring them another drink,” Lizzie hissed. She gave him a shove. “Would you
go
? Don't leave them in there by themselves!”

With a shake of his head, Con took the fresh drinks out to the Hannigans. Alone in the kitchen, Liz made a frantic attempt to resurrect the Marchand de Vin sauce and ran the potatoes under the broiler, vainly hoping to re-crisp the gratin's Gruyère topping. She could do nothing about the salad.

“Soup's on!” Lizzie called to the living room with forced gaiety. “Y'all come and eat.”

 

Dinner was a lugubrious affair. Roger talked business nonstop to Con at one end of the table, leaving Lizzie to make desultory conversation with CoCo. The other woman was rearranging the food on her plate in obvious distaste, having discovered the underdone quail as soon as she'd sliced into one burned breast. CoCo didn't even pretend to eat anything else, although she'd worked her way through better than half the luscious bottle of cabernet Con had decanted.

Now CoCo leaned in Liz's direction, her gravel-road contralto lowered in tipsy confidentiality.

“It's not easy, being a second wife.” CoCo was Roger's third wife, actually, but that didn't stop her from dispensing advice on being a second one.

CoCo said, “You two are
such
an attractive couple, but you should never agree to let him take business trips without you, darling.” She swigged the last of the wine in her glass. “And if he's coming home later than he should, well . . . I wouldn't tolerate it, not if you know what's best. Even though you two are practically newlyweds, you've got to keep an eye out for all the little whores in this world. Those gold-digging bitches—they'll try to steal what belongs to
you
.”

CoCo looked meaningfully down at the other end of the table where Con and Roger were absorbed in talk of kill-schedules, alligator parasites, and someone called Lireinne who'd just gotten a promotion.

“It's sad but true—all men cheat. They're such dogs, always sniffing around.” CoCo lowered her voice further. Liz had to strain to hear her. “I hate to say it, sugar, but I've heard some . . . well,
things.
Now that's probably just the usual nasty old gossip from the usual nasty old people, but even though I'm sure Con is madly in love with you, Lizzie dear, it's better to be safe than sorry. Believe me, I know.”

Things?
Con's second wife had twisted the linen napkin in her lap until it was a damp, shapeless rag.

“More wine?” Liz asked, changing the subject in a flustered hurry.
Things?
Appearing unconcerned about this revelation took enormous self-control. Lizzie blinked, forcing herself to concentrate on getting through this interminable dinner.
Things
were going to have to wait until after these Hannigans finally left. She'd have to swallow her outrage over this disturbing gossip of CoCo's now.

Oh, but there definitely needed to be more wine to chase that outrage, Lizzie thought, her eyes narrowing. Like right this minute.

“Con, honey, can you open another bottle of wine, please?” she said, her tone syrupy. “CoCo could use a refill.” Her own glass was empty, too: her mouth was as parched as dryer lint.

“What's that?” Con looked up from across the dining table's crystal wine goblets and silver candelabra, the Limoges plates full of mostly uneaten food. He looked especially handsome tonight in the white-on-white patterned dress shirt Liz had bought for him on her latest shopping trip in New Orleans—the collar open at the throat, the cuffs folded back above his elegant wrists. “Did you say something?”

“Another bottle of wine, dearest?” Liz said sweetly. CoCo's empty glass was a godsend. Now she could have more wine and Con couldn't blame her, that bastard. She was being
such
a good hostess, she thought, suppressing a fresh wave of fury.
Things?
Damn him, what was
that
all about?

“Sure, honey.” Con got up to go to the wine rack in the kitchen for another bottle of Chateau Montelena.

As soon as he left the dining room, Roger fielded a very small forkful of quail.

“Mighty fine dinner, Miss Lizzie.” Hannigan took a gulp from his glass. “Never had these here lil thangs done quite like this before.” He looked down at his quail dubiously, as though they were some alien species come to a bad end on his plate, far from their home planet.