Scrambled Babies (33 page)

Then a shiver crossed Paeton’s soul like the long, jagged shadows thrown by the Embarcadero buildings.  Could anything prepare her for the new life this destiny had lured her into?

#

Steve’s eyes caressed a sleeping Paeton as he dialed room service.  His voice roused her and she sat up.  Her modesty had returned somewhat; she held the sheet against her still-ripe breasts while observing Steve on the phone.

“Trouble?” she frowned.

Steve shook his head grinning and held up his hand.  “Yes, room 1201.  Thank you.”  He hung up the phone.  “Breakfast.”  He came over and kissed her gently, not ready to awaken any new frolicking at the moment.  But he could feel the kiss perhaps encouraged Paeton to start their lovemaking anew.

It was true.  Everything felt so right for lovemaking.  As if they’d been waking up together forever.  There was an eerie ease about them.  A rhythm that hinted they had been doing this perhaps in another life.

As Steve approached the bed, Paeton clicked the remote control to turn on TV, probably out of habit.  The local newsbreak blipped on.  He sneaked in between the sheets next to her.  He put his hand on her thigh.  Still only friendly for now.  But not for long.  He had never been so completely fulfilled.  She wriggled and gave Steve a morning kiss—past friendly.  He still held back for now.

“And now the headlines.  CBS sportscaster and columnist Steve Kaselman has blamed Paeton McPhilomy for the baby mix-up that occurred at JFK International a month ago.  This from
In Your Face
.  The article quotes a cell phone conversation between Kaselman and his agent, Maury Cohen, and claims Kaselman said, ‘She left me with the wrong baby.  What else could I do?’”

Paeton turned her head to him, her eyes glazed with disbelief, anger, and pain.  She vaulted from the bed and stumbled hysterically into the bathroom.  Steve shuddered at the grotesque sounds she left in her wake.

He raced after her only to have the bathroom door slammed in his face.  “Paeton!  Paeton!  Please!  It’s not what you think!  I can explain!  Paeton!”

Paeton’s hoarse voice gagged out, “Explain-to-my-lawyer!”

Steve pounded on the door frantically.  He couldn’t believe what was happening.

“Go away!” Paeton screamed.  “I never want you to darken my life again!  You—you traitor!  You jock-traitor!  House-stealer!  I hope you rot in that house.  Now get out of my room!”

Steve tried to suppress an automatic chuckle.  “But this is
my
room.”

“Kaselman!  Leave me alone!  Now!  I mean it!  There is no making up after this.  This is not a fight!  This is a lawsuit!  Leave!”

Steve heard the shower go on full force.  “But—”

He turned and saw the unmade bed.  The place where he had, moments ago, made a trip with the most bewitching woman in the world.  A trip he wanted to book permanent reservations for.  Now, from the sound of this woman who had seized his entire being, he instead had a one-way ticket to Legal Junction.

Steve retreated from the bathroom door.  He sat on the bed staring blankly, stupefied.  For the first time in his life, he could find no humor in a situation.

#

The impossible news story had drained Paeton of any feeling.  She stood under the stinging shower of ice cold water, bile rising in her throat, hoping to numb sensation from her body.  She was traumatized!  Decimated!  She began cursing herself for committing the most colossally stupid blunder she had ever made.  After all her years of vowing never to put herself in a situation where she could again suffer jock-betrayal, she had put her entire soul precisely on that sacrificial altar.  There, while beating most fervently, her heart had been cleaved indifferently from her body!

The shock was stunning.  She looked down, the water running off her breasts, rather expecting to see an empty cavity where her heart had resided, blood mingling with water. 

Reality began to invade her mind.  Feeling was returning.  Her legs started to give way.  She thought she might vomit.  She cringed now as she felt the strike of each icy needle of water, a piercing kiss from her former lover. 

She fell to her knees in the pelting spray.  She had never felt so alone.  There was no comfort. 
No comfort!
 

Suddenly, the pain!  It took her breath away.  She struggled not to be swept away in despair.  She reached out to her courage, searching for a path of action.  She found her spirit.  And her spirit told her that at all costs, she must take charge.  Her brain told her that the only road up from hell was anger.  She had to move from hurt to hate! 

She swallowed back the rising bile and rose from her knees, feeling like a maimed animal.  She summoned a fiery ball of hate from the depths of her bowels.  She gripped the shower curtain with all her hurt, and ripping it violently from the rod, she vented the longest, most primal scream of her life.

Yes!
Now she was hateful!

#

Paeton was standing, quaking with rage, in front of Fred’s desk.  It was the morning after the hideous betrayal in San Francisco.

“I told you to watch out for that guy.”  Fred was covering his bases.

Paeton rolled her eyes and spat out, “You never said anything of the kind.  You said, and I quote, ‘You must work as a team with Kaselman.’  Remember?”

Fred couldn’t face her.  “Well, what I meant was—”

“It doesn’t matter.  We’ve cleared all the hurdles.  My sales are up, right?  Except for this poor-excuse-for-a-human-being jock, I’m back on track with my career, right?”

“Right.  The scrambled-baby business has blown over, and now all you have to do is get back on track with the screenplay and book tours.”

“Great!  But that’s not
all
I have to do.  I’m going to make that jock’s life so miserable that he’ll wish he’d never gone to any airport, ever!  His new diaper endorsement, that’s a good place to rake in some money, right?”

Fred looked across the desk in silence.

“Don’t look at me that way, Fred.”  Paeton could tell Fred was upset with her apparently greedy intentions.  “It’s not his money I want.  What I want is—”

“You slept with him, didn’t you?”  Fred spoke matter-of-factly, but was unable to mask the pain in his eyes.

Fred’s words made Paeton realize her heart had not left her body after all.  Fred had cleaved it in half again.  She tried to stay on the offensive.  “When’s Larry going to get here?”

“Supposed to be here now.  But you know lawyers.”  Fred rolled a pen around from one hand to the other.  “What are we suing Kaselman for again?”

Paeton jumped out of the plush leather side-chair.  “How should I know?  Libel, mental distress, something, anything!  I want to see the bastard squirm!  I want to see his career hit bottom.  I want him to be the most miserable human being—pardon the compliment—on earth.”

“Aren’t you being a little extreme?  All he said was—”

Paeton came over, leaned on the desk, and seethed, “I-know-what-he-said, Fred.”

Buzz!  Fred’s intercom broke into their conversation.  “Fred, line three.  Can you take it?”

Paeton turned away from the desk.  “Please take it.  Don’t let me interrupt your business, Fred.”  Then before he could pick it up, she turned back to him.  “I’m sorry you’re the one who gets my anger.  You don’t deserve it, Fred.  You’ve been the best.”

Fred reached out and squeezed her hand.  “It’s okay.  I understand.”  He picked up the phone.  “Fred here.”

Paeton paced as she waited for Fred to speak.  When Fred was silent for too long, Paeton came back to the desk. 

“It’s for you.”  Fred held out the phone.

Paeton staggered slightly in her three-inch heels.  She knew who it was.  She folded her arms.  “Tell him he’s talking to you because that’s as close as he gets to me.  You or Larry!”

Fred extended the phone farther across the desk.  “He says it’s a mistake.  He can explain everything—soon.”

“Soon?  Soon?  So he can’t explain it right now?  He needs some time to fabricate some elaborate lie?”  Paeton could feel the hurt smashing through the hate.  The room started to close in on her.  She spun and made for the door, calling over her shoulder, “Text me when Larry gets here.  I’ll be in the coffee shop.”

Paeton reeled crazily out of Fred’s office and got on the elevator.  She started the thirty-story ride down.  The door slid open at floor twenty-nine to admit Steve Kaselman.  She gasped.

“Hello, Paeton.  Whoops, I’ll get your lawyer.  So we can talk.”

Paeton flushed in spite of herself.  She was careful to keep a grave face.  “Well, if it isn’t humor-in-every-situation Kaselman.”

“I try.”

“Well, your humor leaves me yawning.”  Her breathing shallow, she strove for an unperturbed front.  “You knew very well I would be on this elevator, didn’t you?”

“Guilty.  Ask me how I did it.”

“I don’t care how you did it.”  Although Steve made no move toward her, Paeton backed away from him.  “Keep away from me.”

Steve kept his distance.  “I’m not going to cause a scene.  I want to talk to you privately.  I figured this was one way.”

Her breathing eased some.  “You should know I’m actively pursuing a lawsuit.”

Steve leaned toward the elevator-button pad and pushed every button.  “You mentioned that yesterday when you slammed the bathroom door in my face,” he said bitterly.

His forcing up the memory of the betrayal made her blood run as cold as the shower she had turned on herself.  Her knees warned of collapse, but Paeton knew she had to maintain a strong posture against his attempt to re-establish something positive between them.  “What—what are you doing?   We’ll stop at every floor.”

“Exactly.  I want to spend some time with you.  Here wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s better than nothing.”

The elevator stopped at twenty, and no one got on.

“I’ll push the alarm.”  She took a faltering step toward the button pad, but Steve was blocking it.

Steve gave no ground.  “Don’t, Paeton.  Please.  Paeton, I know I never said it during, you remember when, but you must know I love—”

“I’m going to marry Fred.”  She rode over his words.  She started to look him in the eye, thought better of it, and looked away.

Paeton could see Steve’s eye twitch.  “Does Fred know about this?”

Paeton felt a twinge of guilt.  “Well, not yet, but—”

“It’s not fair to him, you know.  You won’t come close to having the times you know we can have.  You’ll yearn for those times.  You’ll resent Fred for not being able to give them to you.  If you’ll please give me a chance, I’ll prove—”

“I simply want a normal life, Ste—Kaselman.  You betrayed me.  Betrayed me like all the others.  I thought there was hope you might be different.  But you’re the same.  You are a selfish, traitorous jock.  I can never get over that.”

“I didn’t betray you.  In your heart you must know I could never do that.  They doctored the conversation.  I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

“The fact that you even had the conversa—it doesn’t matter.  I heard the words.”  She fought the faltering in her voice, but the path of a single tear betrayed her.  “You’re just like Tommy and Woody.  They came.  They conquered.  They left.”