Once More with Feeling (23 page)

Along the entire back wall of the restaurant, a good ten or twelve feet high and at least thirty feet wide, were bas-relief sculptures, the stylized, somewhat crude forms of men and women. Al! of them were engaged in different and creative variations on sexual positions.

“Oh, my God.”

Richie looked pleased. “I told you this place was somethin’ else.”

Suddenly it all made sense. Vishvanath, the temples at Khajuraho ... They were religious buildings, all right. Although what their significance was, other than as a shrine to fertility, no one had ever explained.

She was hardly in the mood to play do-it-yourself archaeologist. When the headwaiter led them to a corner table, Laura darted for the chair that would place her with her back to the wall. Once she was settled in, however, she realized she’d made a mistake. Richie now sat opposite her—with a first-rate view of couples demonstrating the Top Fifty positions of the Kama Sutra. She forced a weak smile as she peeked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of thighs, shoulders, and taut round breasts. Richie beamed at her. She couldn’t tell whether the glint in his eye was because of her or because of the athletic foursome on the wall directly over her head, doing things she’d never dreamed were possible without the assistance of a chiropractor.

“Gee, it didn’t even occur to me to ask if you like Indian food,” Richie said apologetically.

“Oh, I love it,” she assured him. She made a point of keeping her eyes fixed on his. The need to make unwavering eye contact had never been so strong. “In fact, I like all kinds of exotic—uh, food.”

She threw open her arms to illustrate just how expansive her taste in international cuisines was. As she did, her left hand hit the wall, coming directly into contact with a bulbous penis, fully erect and pointing upward.

Richie didn’t appear to have noticed. “Me, too. I’m one of those people who’ll eat anything that’s put in front of me. Now, my wife, on the other hand—my ex-wife, I mean—she was the pickiest eater you ever saw.”

“Really?” Laura folded her hands in her lap.

“Oh, sure. We’d go to a restaurant, even a fancy place, and whatever the waiter brought, you could bet your bottom dollar good old Jeannie would send it back to the kitchen. Too rare, too well done, too spicy, too bland ... It was always something.”

Laura forced a polite smile. “Perhaps we should order.” As she opened her menu, roughly the size of Bangladesh, she was careful not to brush against any body parts.

‘The tandoori sounds good,” she said pleasantly, scanning the menu. “Of course, Indian curries are always so delicious....”

“Hah! My ex-wife refused to eat curry. She said it was so spicy it made her nose run.  I always said, What the hell, let it run. It’s like two for the price of one: not only do you get your belly full; you get your sinuses cleared, too.

“Of course, we never agreed on anything. That was the problem. Take where we lived, for example. Me, I love Long Island. As far as I’m concerned, the beaches are the best in the world. You can have your French Riviera, your Waikiki. And on top of all the natural wonders, you’re only a short drive from the city.

“But no-o-o, my wife didn’t see it that way. She was always nagging me about moving. Her sisters live down in Florida, and she was hot to move down there, too. I used to say to her, ‘Look, Jeannie ...’”

You survived childbirth, Laura reminded herself.
Without
a spinal. Surely you can make it through one short evening. Just me, Richie, the winners of the Sexual Olympics . . . and, of course, Jeannie.

* * * *

The next morning, as she sat nursing a second cup of coffee, trying to get rid of her curry-flavored morning-after mouth, Laura vowed never to date again. Nor would she ever again speak to a man who wasn’t a blood relative, gaze at someone across a crowded room for longer than a millisecond, or even glance at the personals in a newspaper or magazine.

“Mortuary supplies,” she mumbled. “Well, at least it’s an honest living. Good steady work. With an emphasis on
steady.”

When the telephone rang, she was tempted to ignore it. It was probably Richie. Perhaps he’d left some important detail out of their conversation—like what color shoes his wife wore on their eighth wedding anniversary.

“Hello?” She was ready to affect an accent and claim she was the housekeeper.

“Is this Laura Briggs?”

A male voice, all right, but one she didn’t recognize.

“Yes,” she said hesitantly. “Who’s this, please?”

“My name is Gil Plympton.” The caller paused as if waiting for a reaction. When he was greeted by nothing more than Laura’s confused silence, he explained, “I’m Melanie Plympton’s husband.”

Chapter Fourteen

The Starlight Diner
was one of hundreds of such places dotting Long Island, offering in convenience and bizarrely extensive menus what they lacked in charm. Inside, Laura found herself surrounded by the usual glass, chrome, and vinyl. The restaurant had an antiseptic feeling, as if at any moment one of the waiters might suddenly put down his matching pair of coffeepots—brown for regular, orange for decaf—and perform surgery.

Glancing around, she surmised that Gil Plympton hadn’t arrived yet, and followed the hostess to a corner booth. She sat patiently while the waiter did his little dance with water glasses, a relish tray, and two red plastic menus.

As she scanned the luncheon selections Laura thought about what a strange encounter this was. How many ex-wives throughout history had shared pickles and coleslaw with the soon-to-be ex-husbands of their soon-to-be ex-husbands’ new girlfriends? It boggled the mind. This, she decided, was an occasion that warranted throwing caution to the wind and bypassing the Dieter’s Corner.

She was trying to decide between a bacon cheeseburger and a pastrami on rye when the waiter returned. This time he brought with him a man who could only have been Gil Plympton.

“Laura?”

“Gil?”

She was struck by how much the slender, gaunt-faced man sliding into the seat across from her resembled her ex-husband. It wasn’t only that his coloring was similar. Nor was it simply that the structure of Gil’s face was so much like Roger’s. He even dressed the same way. The slightly crumpled khaki pants and the muted green cotton shirt with the threadbare cuffs could have come from Roger’s closet.

At least ol’ Melanie’s consistent, she thought, amused.

What was different was the hangdog expression on Gil’s face. Even more than his tense forehead and the lines around his mouth, his eyes betrayed his emotions. The sadness and confusion reflected there were unmistakable.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me.” He folded his hands in front of him on the table. Laura noticed that he still wore a wedding band.

“It is a little unusual.” Laura closed the menu and put it aside. “I mean, your wife, my husband ... Hardly the basis for a friendship.”

“But we have so much in common!”

Laura blinked.

“I still haven’t come to grips with this,” he went on. “I don’t know how you’re handling it, but to me it’s like a dream. No, a nightmare. Everything around me has taken on a surreal quality. Even my psychic’s commented on it. She says she can see my confusion reflected in my aura.”

He shook his head slowly. “I just hope Roger knows what he’s got. Although how could he not? In a way, I don’t blame him for wanting Melanie.” Gil spoke quickly, in a monotone. Laura was finding his stream-of-consciousness discourse disconcerting.

“I mean, what man
wouldn’t
do anything to have her? She’s got everything. She’s beautiful, smart, sophisticated, creative. . . . Let’s face it. She’s an exciting, desirable woman.”

Excuse me? Laura was tempted to say. Are we talking about the same woman here? The one with the pots? The one whose idea of high fashion is kneesocks with clogs?

“Still, even though I can understand why he did it, I can’t help being angry. He did break up my marriage, after all.”

Laura’s eyebrows shot up. “Roger?
My
Roger? I knew she was still married to you when they met, but do you expect me to believe a man incapable of answering a want ad actually got his act together enough to break up a marriage?”

The waiter chose that moment to return, his pen poised purposefully over his pad. But Laura had lost interest in food. Even the promise of more grams of fat than she usually allowed herself over an entire week paled beside the chance to get the inside scoop on the Roger-and-Melanie scandal. She quickly ordered a salad, then waited impatiently while Gil agonized over the Sandwich Board.

“They met at a PTA meeting, you know,” Gil told her when they were alone again.

“I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know Roger even cared about the PTA.”

“Melanie’s very active in the PTA.” Gil spoke with pride. “She runs the arts program, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve heard. Pots for Tots.”

“Their most popular program. Anyway, she decided to try expanding the after-school enrichment classes to include sports. Somebody told her Roger was into sailing, so she called him up and invited him to a planning meeting.”

“Sailing, huh? Don’t tell me. Their eyes met across the crowded school cafeteria and violins played.”

“Believe it or not, that’s pretty much how it happened. At least, from
what I’ve been able to piece together.”

“How did you manage to find all this out?”

“It took me a while,” Gil admitted. “Oh, I had my suspicions that something was going on. Melanie was acting distant. Of course, she’d been distant for years, but this was different.” He paused. “She started going on these ... walks.”

“Walks?”

“Very long walks. Late at night. She’d leave me home with the kids around seven, then show up at midnight.”

“I take it you didn’t notice any improvement in muscle tone,” Laura commented dryly.

“She didn’t give me much of a chance. Whenever she came in that late, she’d sleep on the couch. The next day she’d tell me she hadn’t wanted to wake me.”

“How considerate.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together, but I still had to find out for sure. So I did what any other self-respecting husband who thinks his wife may be cheating on him does. I went to Radio Shack and bought a bugging device. All it took was listening in on one phone call, and I knew everything I needed to know.”

Shades of Irwin Hart, Laura thought in amazement. Maybe the man with the silver balls really did know what he was talking about.

“What exactly did you hear?”

“Not too much, actually. But I could tell by the way they talked to each other that their after-school activities involved a lot more than sports planning.”

“I had no idea,” Laura confessed. “Of course, by that time, Roger and I were barely speaking to each other. I’d told him I’d wanted a divorce weeks earlier. I wasn’t paying much attention to his extracurricular activities.”

The waiter returned, plates in hand. Laura had almost forgotten that food was why they’d come here in the first place.

“I can’t believe this.” She shifted her gaze from Gil to the mound of raw spinach the size of a compost heap that now sat in front of her.

“Believe it,” Gil insisted, misinterpreting her comment. ‘Things between Melanie and me weren’t that great; I’m willing to admit that. Still, I had no idea she wanted out. Now she claims that she’d been contemplating divorce for a long time.”

“I guess she was just waiting for someone to come along and give her a reason.”

“Or make it easy for her,” Gil said bitterly. “If only she’d been open with me. If only we’d been able to talk—”

“Gil,” Laura pointed out, “the problem with ninety-nine out of a hundred marriages is that the husband and wife can’t talk.”

“Well, it’s water under the bridge now,” Gil said with a sigh. “What I’m left with is dealing with the fact that my twelve-year marriage is over. Melanie’s planning to move out—and take the kids with her. By then, our separation agreement should be signed. We’ve decided that until then, we’ll continue living under the same roof, doing our best to keep out of each other’s way.”

“Who’s got the couch?” Laura asked cheerfully.

“Melanie. Laura,” Gil continued earnestly, “it’s really good to have someone to talk to. Someone who knows the people involved ... somebody who understands.”

Laura nodded. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea for us to keep communication open. The more we know, the better off we’ll be.”

“I think we can do much more for each other than that. I think we can help each other.”

“How?”

He cast her an odd look. “By sharing our pain.”

Laura was struck by how much further along in the separation process she was than he. Her roller-coaster car was miles ahead of Gil’s. She even had her first date behind her.

* * * *

“We’ll definitely have to do this again soon,” Gil said earnestly, standing outside the Starlight Diner with his hands stuck deep in his pockets.

“Okay,” Laura agreed. “And if you need to talk, feel free to call me anytime. I think you were right, Gil. This is something we’re both going through, and I believe we really can help each other—”

She stopped, having realized that Gil wasn’t listening. He was looking over her shoulder at something behind her, so fascinating that even gossiping about their spouses couldn’t compete.

Automatically Laura turned. “Claire!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

“Meeting some clients for lunch.” Her words were directed at Laura, but her eyes were fixed on Gil. She strode toward them, a startling Day-Glo vision. Against a dreary backdrop of mounds of gray snow, shoved to the side of the parking lot by a snowplow, her choice of blinding colors seemed even more dramatic than usual. With a hot-pink car coat she wore turquoise stretch pants, her long legs sticking out beneath the hem of her jacket like a Barbie doll’s. Her white crew cut gleamed in the wintery sunlight.

“Hello,” she said, her voice suddenly so deep and throaty she sounded as if she were doing a bad Kathleen Turner imitation.

Gil responded immediately. “Hello. Are you a friend of Laura’s?”