The Wives of Beverly Row 2: Lust Has a New Address (3 page)

She felt a little overwhelmed as she clicked through the big websites, she was thirty-four, she’d been working in the art market since dropping out of college, and she felt like she was going to have to start all over again, right from the very beginning.

She looked up the contact information for one of the sites, Artsy. It was probably the largest online platforms for connecting collectors to the art they were interested in buying. The company was based in New York but had openings for liaisons in various cities around the globe, including Los Angeles. She clicked on the link and read the job description. It sounded like something that would interest her. The job was to liaise with art galleries in the Los Angeles area and make sure they were a good fit. It would include building strong relationships with the best galleries so they would list their best work on the site. She would also have to ensure Artsy was represented at all the major art fairs and exhibitions in the city. There was no information about the salary she could expect to receive but it certainly looked like a good job. She would even have to liaise with The Getty and other important art institutions. It sounded like a dream job.

Application was by cover letter and resume. Ariel had never written a cover letter or prepared a resume in her life. She’d never even applied for a job. She’d started the gallery with Gabe and had worked there since before Becky was born. She had no idea how to go about starting her application.

She shut her laptop with a snap and got up from the table. She got a bottle of water from the fridge and drank half of it in a single go.

This is what it’s like to start from scratch
, she thought.

*

A
RIEL THREW ON A PAIR
of shades and grabbed her purse and keys. She got in her car and drove down the steep incline toward the city. Before she knew it she was on Sunset Boulevard and headed for the beach. Sunset was narrow and hilly as it wound its way out of the city and descended to the ocean. She didn’t have any destination in mind, she just needed to get out of the house and clear he mind, but when she hit the Pacific Coast Highway she didn’t head north toward Malibu but went south, back into the city. Pretty soon she was in Santa Monica.

She headed straight for
Monochrome
, the gallery she and Gabe had run together for the entire sixteen years of their marriage. She looked at her watch. It was still before noon. Gabe probably wouldn’t be there yet.
There’s no harm in dropping in
, she thought,
the place is still technically half mine
. It was half hers until the final processing of the paperwork took place. The share transfer hadn’t been finalized yet. She’d signed her interest in the gallery over to Gabe as part of their divorce settlement. She’d been certain she never wanted to work with Gabe again and he’d offered her a very generous amount for her fifty percent share in the gallery.

She found a parking spot and quickly touched up her makeup in the car mirror before getting out.

“Ariel,” the receptionist said when she stepped into the cool, air-conditioned gallery.

“Lucy,” Ariel said, giving the girl a thin smile. Ariel had spent her entire marriage worrying about girls like Lucy. Gabe seemed to go through them faster than the art colleges could pump them out, hiring them, fucking them silly, and moving on within the space of a couple of months. Gabe had had so many affairs with receptionists and interns at the gallery that Ariel had long stopped keeping count. She assumed he was fucking Lucy without actually knowing it and as she pretended to look at the art she told herself that it wasn’t her problem anymore. She didn’t have to worry about it. She didn’t have to care about who Gabe fucked ever again. If anything, she should probably have taken it as a complement that the girls he went after were so similar to her. They were all nineteen-year-old versions of the girl Ariel had been when she’d first met Gabe. They were all art majors, innocent with a hint of vulnerability, petite, and pretty. Gabe definitely had a type and it hadn’t changed since his divorce. Ariel still liked to think that he was trying to recapture the feelings he’d felt when he’d first fallen in love with her.

In fact, the only thing that surprised Ariel about Lucy was the fact that she was still there. It had probably been six months since Ariel had set foot in the gallery and Lucy had been the receptionist then too.
Was Gabe slowing down in his old age
?
Had he found in Lucy something he’d been looking for all along
?

IV

V
ERONICA CAME DOWN THE STAIRS
and turned on the television in the kitchen. She always watched television when she was upset. She hardly ever fought with Hank and the fight they’d had the night before had completely caught her off guard. Trying anal sex had been his idea. She hadn’t suggested it. He had. All she’d done was told him honestly that it was a fantasy of hers.

She put a capsule in her Nespresso machine and watched the frothy coffee drip into her cup. She flicked through the channels on the TV without paying any attention and played the events of the night before over in her head. It had been unfair. Hank had no reason to take out his frustration on her. The only reason he was upset was because he couldn’t figure out how to do it, how to get his cock into her anus. That was hardly her fault. And besides, it wasn’t a big deal. It was supposed to be fun. There wasn’t supposed to be so much pressure. That was the thing about Hank and sex, he took everything so seriously. He treated sex like it was a challenge he had to overcome, a place where he had to prove himself, but sex wasn’t like that.

She hadn’t been able to fall asleep after the fight and then she’d slept in. She looked at her watch. It was after eleven. Her morning was almost completely wasted. She picked up the phone and thought about calling Hank. She knew she needed to sort things out with him or else she’d fret about it all day. She hated having fights. That was why she’d married Hank. They never fought about anything.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. She made sure her robe was fastened and went to the door. It was probably Trudy. She was always popping over in the morning for one thing or another.

“One second,” she called out as she made her way to the door. She opened it and it wasn’t Trudy at all, it was a good-looking Mexican man in his mid-twenties wearing the uniform of a delivery driver.

“Oh,” Veronica said, surprised to see him standing there.

“Veronica Roycroft?” the man said.

“Yes.”

He held up a beautiful bunch of yellow roses. “These are for you.”

So was filled with relief. This meant her fight with Hank was over.

As she took the flowers from the man, a wicked thought flashed through her mind. All she had on under her robe was the thin nightdress she’d slept in. She’d heard of women
accidentally
answering the door naked and letting delivery boys catch a glimpse of their
assets
. The thought of it thrilled her. It was so naughty. She was always getting thoughts like this at the most inappropriate of times. Hank had sent her flowers to show her that he loved her and all she could think about was flashing the delivery boy! What was
wrong
with her?

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Hang on, one second,” she said. She ran back to the kitchen to get a tip for the man. As she took the ten dollar bill from her purse she felt again the thrill of the wicked thought she’d had at the door. What was happening to her? How had her life become so
desperate
. She’d been such a risk-taker when she was younger. She’d had sex on the naughtiest beaches of the French Riviera with audiences of sexy European men looking on, stroking their cocks as they watched her copulate on the beach. She’d really lived. Now she was here in the suburbs, a house surrounded by a manicured lawn, sprinklers working on timers like clockwork, and she was so starved for sexual satisfaction that she was fantasizing about the UPS guy.

Without thinking she let her robe fall to the floor. She looked at herself in her nightdress. She pulled the neck down as low as it could go, revealing as much of her cleavage as she thought she could get away with without looking foolish. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and the skirt of the nightdress hardly went down to her thighs. Her vagina was bare and only ever so slightly covered by the soft skirt of the nightdress.

She took a deep breath and made her way back to the door. She didn’t know what she was doing, she didn’t even let herself think, it was completely out of character for her and she knew the delivery guy would see her for exactly what she was,
a desperate housewife
.

She passed the mirror in the hallway and glanced at her reflection. She looked hot.

“Here you go,” she said to the delivery man, the ten dollar bill held out in front of her.

A slight breeze came in and caught her skirt. The air flew up around her legs, reminding her of how exposed her vagina and ass were underneath. The feeling of it gave her a courage, a boldness that she didn’t even know she possessed. She opened her fingers and let the bill fall to the ground in the breeze. It blew behind her.

“Oops,” she said, flashing the man a provocative smile. She turned around to pick it up.

Instead of squatting down modestly, she bent over at her waist as she picked up the bill and gave the delivery man a delicious, exquisite, blatantly obvious look at her bare ass. She didn’t dare look back at him. She knew she was being the complete cliché of what a desperate, spoiled wife should be. She was almost ashamed of herself. But the thrill of revealing herself to this complete stranger outweighed the shame of it. She paused with her hand on the bill and made sure she gave the man a good, long look at her shapely ass. She pushed it out and spread her thighs ever so slightly so that her buttocks would open. She knew he could see her anus and pussy. The thrill of it was almost too much. Her pussy was quivering with excitement.

She picked up the bill and turned to the man. She was embarrassed now. She knew what she was, a horny, desperate housewife, and now he did too. She was a slutty, immodest, rich, spoiled bitch. The man would go back to the depot and tell all the other delivery guys. They probably collected stories of desperate women like her. As she handed him the bill he caught her eye.

“You like, I can come in.”

Those few words, so much was in them, so much temptation and lust and desire for her, and so much guilt. She knew it, she knew how she would feel as soon as it was over. She wanted to let him in and let him fuck her till she orgasmed like a Fourth of July fireworks show. She wanted it so badly it hurt.

She looked out beyond him down to the end of her property. There were no cars driving past. No one was watching her. If it wasn’t for the delivery truck in the driveway, no one would have known he was there at all. But she couldn’t risk that. She couldn’t let him leave that truck in her front driveway all morning. Plus, she couldn’t cheat on her husband. She wasn’t exactly behaving like a dutiful wife, she knew that, but she wasn’t ready to throw all of her vows, all of her marital loyalty, out of the window.

She shook her head.

“I’m being so foolish,” she said quietly. “I’m a married woman.”

The man nodded, knowingly.

“It’s just, sometimes, I get so lonely.”

The man nodded again. The look on his face told Veronica that he understood her completely. It made her remember that he wasn’t just a delivery guy, he was a person with a life of his own, he probably even had a wife waiting for him at home.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

He looked down over her body. She knew she was still alluring in her nightdress. She smiled at him. His eyes lingered on the shapely cleavage between her breasts.

He spoke in Mexican. “
Solo el que carga el cajón sabe lo que pesa el muerto
.”

She looked at him. She spoke Spanish. She knew what the words meant literally. “Only the person carrying the coffin knows the weight of the dead.” She wasn’t sure what
he
meant by them, though.

“It means I won’t judge you,” the man said. He tipped his hat to her and made his way back to the truck. As she watched him pull down the driveway she was grateful that he’d left. She wasn’t sure she’d have had to strength to send him away.

She went inside. She turned off the TV and poured herself a tall glass of cold water. She stood by the sink and drank it.
What had she just done
?
What was wrong with her
?
Was she finally losing it
?

She put the flowers Hank had sent her in a vase and dialed his office number. His receptionist put her through.

“Veronica, honey, did you get the flowers?”

“They’re beautiful, Hank. Thank you so much.”

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” she said.

“I was just embarrassed. I was being defensive.”

“It’s alright.”

“I love you, honey. I just wanted to please you.”

“You please me in a million ways, every single day.”

“Well, I’m very sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.”

“I love you, Hank,” Veronica said. She had no trouble saying it because it was true. She did love him, she just wasn’t sexually fulfilled by him.

“Let’s go out tonight.”

Veronica smiled. She loved when he suggested a date. “Where?” she said.

“La Toscana.”

It was one of her favorite restaurants, an ultra-expensive Italian place close to Rodeo Drive that served the best handmade pasta in the city. “Hank, I’d love to.”

“Oh, shit,” Hank said suddenly.

“What is it?”

“I just remembered, I told Matt I’d meet him tonight. He wanted some advice on a tax issue.”

“Tell him to come to dinner.”

“Really?” Hank said.

“I’ll invite Ariel. It’ll make a perfect set up.”

She hung up and drank her coffee on the couch in the living room while Oprah was on. She didn’t want to admit it to herself but she had the biggest crush on Matt Harkness. He was a contractor who Hank had done a lot of work with and Veronica just turned to jelly when she saw his big muscular arms and handsome chest. He’d redone their patio in the spring and she’d watched him work from her bedroom where he couldn’t see her. She would never admit how many hours she’d sat up on her balcony behind the ferns and azaleas. She knew if she was single like Ariel was she’d die for a chance to be set up with him.