Casa Dracula 3 - The Bride Of Casa Dracula (4 page)

The audience was more focused than a lobbyist on a drunken politician. Don Pedro’s knowledge of plants was disappointing. He claimed that the Aztecs had used Copelandia cyanescens, or Blue Meanies, to establish a state of communion with their gods. A former F.U. beau, devoted to exploring altered states, had informed me that that particular ’shroom was native to Australia.

I snuck out early, thrilled that I could completely fictionalize Don Pedro’s memoir because there had seemed to be no border between fact and fantasy in the adventures he’d just recounted.

I hied myself over to the closest main thoroughfare to grab a cab. I was surprised to see Joseph Alfred closing the trunk of his car while the traffic zoomed by him. He moved into the street and was about to open the driver’s door.

“Joseph Alfred!” I called, raising my arm.

He looked up, and when he saw me, he walked back around the car at the very same moment that a black sedan raced by, gathering speed as it approached. Joseph Alfred jumped out of the way and onto the hood of the car behind his, setting off a blaring alarm. There was a long painful screech as the black sedan scraped along the side of his car.

In the few short steps it took me to get to him, the black sedan was gone, hidden in the crowd of cars that followed.

“Are you all right?” I said.

Joseph Alfred slid off the car’s hood to stand on the sidewalk.

After he finished a long stream of curses he said, “Huh? Yeah, I think so.”

“Damn, that was close. Did you get the license plate number? We can call the police.”

He blinked and said, “Forget about it.”

“You could have been killed!”

“Nah, I don’t think so.” He smiled and said loudly over the car alarm, “I think she just wanted to scare me.”

“She?”

“It was my bitch of an ex-girlfriend,” he said with a shake of his head. “So where you going, cookie?”

“Back to Hotel Croft. I was going to grab a cab.”

“Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.” He went out to the driver’s side and I followed to examine the long, shallow dent. “This is gonna cost me.”

“I can’t believe how blasé you are about this.” We got in his car and he merged into traffic. “You should bring charges against her.”

“No way. She’d love the attention. Look, I don’t feel like dwelling on it right now. Do you want to get some coffee or a drink?”

“I can’t. I’ve got two appointments to interview wedding planners. My fiancé and I are getting married at the end of summer.” “Fiancé” still sounded like a joke word to me, like “fricassee” and “fiduciary.”

“All the sane ones are taken.”

I was flattered that he considered me sane. “So why does your ex hate you so virulently?”

“Because she’s a psycho.” He let out a sharp snort of laughter. “I had to chew my arm off to escape that trap.”

“Everyone has her quirks.” What would he think if he knew about mine? “Was your girlfriend also a plant biologist?”

“She’s in the medical field and was interested in my work on transgenic plants and recombinant DNA. I was checking out her body and missed the crazy behind the eyes.”

“That will teach you to look at a woman’s face.”

“I’m a man. I can only focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes two,” he said with a wolfish grin.

We were discussing bioethics when we arrived at the Croft. I thanked him for the ride, urged him to contact the police, but he just laughed and grabbed my hand, sending a little zing through me. “So when am I gonna see you again?”

“What part of ‘engaged’ didn’t you get?”

“That’s what makes you more…interesting.” He turned his body toward mine and continued grinning. “It’s the chase. The rush of the deer bounding away, trying to escape. You wouldn’t understand what a turn-on that is.”

I looked down at his hand holding mine. Then I took my free hand and took his wrist and squeezed. Not hard enough to crush bone, but hard enough to see the surprise in his pretty blue eyes. “But you see, I’m not prey-I’m a predator. Hasta la vista, Joseph Alfred.”

I hopped out of the car and sashayed merrily to the hotel entrance. The cute new doorman said, “Afternoon, ma’am,” as he pulled open the heavy glass-and-brass door.

Ma’am! I felt a million years away from the impoverished girl who used to come to the hotel bar and nurse one drink for hours while gossiping with her friends.

The thick burgundy carpeting in the lobby was pleasantly squooshy underfoot. I got my room key from the front desk and then entered the elevator. I remembered the first time I’d been upstairs, lured by Oswald on a false premise. He’d wanted information about my sleezoid ex-boyfriend, and I’d convinced myself that he was interested in my writing. Neither of us had been what the other expected.

The mirrored doors of the elevator slid open and I walked to our suite. It was the same one Oswald always reserved, decorated in masculine coffee colors of mocha, latte, and espresso. The outer room had views across the City to the bay, and the bedroom beyond was plush and comfortable.

It was well past lunchtime and I was starving. I kicked off my stilettos and then called room service and ordered cranberry juice and an extra-rare burger. At the ranch we kept animal blood in stock, but rare red meat and red drinks were enough to stave off my cravings for a day or two.

Within seconds, there was a brisk rap at the door. I’d said, “Barely cook the burger,” but this was amazingly fast service.

I opened the door, and Nancy, my best friend from F.U., breezed in. Her blond hair was in loose curls to her shoulders and she wore an apricot blouse with a sea green cotton skirt and flats. Lithe and petite, she looked as full of mischief as a newly paid sailor on shore leave.

“Hi, honey pie,” she said, giving me a hug. She threw her straw tote onto the sofa and picked up the phone. “Champagne and a fruit platter, please. No honeydew. Merci.” Hanging up the phone, she smiled at me.

“I’m confused,” I said.

“Have I not taught you anything? Honeydew is never ripe enough. Escrew honeydew.”

“Eschew,” I said.

“Gesundheit.” She dropped into an armchair and swung her legs over the side.

I sat on the chair opposite her and said, “I’m confused because I wasn’t expecting you. I have a couple of appointments today.”

“I’m confused because you set up appointments with wedding planners and didn’t tell me. Luckily, I saw Gigi Barton at a gala for needy hermaphrodites or something, so naturally your name came up, and Gigi told me what you were doing today.”

I hadn’t told Nancy because she thought weddings necessitated expenditures on a par with the annual GDP of a midsize nation. “I didn’t want to bother you. I know how busy you must be, trying to get pregnant.”

She made a pfft sound. “That was Todd’s financial consultant’s idea, but he never had to take his hoo-ha’s temperature three times a day and only do it doggy-style to have a boy. I hired my own financial planner, who says I can wait. I have a pergola of opportunity to guide you. Where’s Oscar?”

“Oswald,” I said. My relationship with Nancy had gone through difficult times, especially since Nancy’s husband and I despised each other. On the one occasion that she’d met Oswald, she’d interrogated him on plastic surgery innovations while contorting her face with her neatly manicured hands. “Oswald is doing consultations today, and I seriously doubt you can influence the gender of a baby by using a certain position.”

“Don’t be silly, Milly. It’s got an amazing fifty percent success rate. Don’t try to change the subject. I bet you want some weird little ceremony in Mercedes’s scuzzy nightclub where you quote odious poetry while a hippie plays the bongos.”

“Mercedes renovated the club. It’s swank and swell.”

“You don’t deny the bongo music and bad poetry!”

I would have objected further if I hadn’t already suggested a nightclub wedding, only to have Oswald burst out laughing. When he’d relayed his mother’s elaborate plans, I realized that I needed professional help.

Room service arrived, and Nancy grabbed the tab and signed my name with a flourish. She lifted the cover off the food plate, took one glance at the blood soaking the burger’s bun, and said, “Major eewh. This isn’t even cooked.”

“I like it rare.” While Nancy poured champagne, I took my food to the table and bit into the hamburger. The salty rich juices from the organically raised, grass-fed, nearly raw beef filled my mouth. Warmth hummed through my body.

“This is the perfect daytime drink,” Nancy said, and I froze, thinking that she’d read my mind. But then she handed me a flute of champagne. “You can drink gallons and never get sloshed.”

“How true.” It was especially true for me: I could drink turpentine and not feel a thing. I wished I could tell Nancy about my condition, but she wouldn’t understand. “Nancita, I’m happy to have your advice, but there’s no way I’m having an extravagant, exorbitant wedding.”

“Why not? Is not Dr. Oscar picking up the tab?” she asked. “Have you even told your parents yet? Not that they’d care.”

“It’s Dr. Oswald. No, I haven’t told them yet.”

“Dr. Oscar’s funnier. Your mother Regina is a sociopath. It’s a miracle you’re only a little slutty instead of completely bonkers like those baby monkeys who are raised with a metal doll instead of a real monkey mommy.”

“We can thank my grandmother for saving me from unmitigated skankitude,” I said, and then sighed. I’d loved my small, brown abuelita, who had raised me until I was ten. “It would be different if she was alive. A wedding is supposed to be a family celebration, but how can I celebrate when my mother Regina will be there looking at me like…like she does? Oswald says I have to invite them anyway.”

“You absolutely have to invite your parents. You’ll invite my husband, too.”

“Toad and I have a mutual animosity for each other.”

“Toad? I like that. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t all about you.” She went to my new shopping bag and lifted the plastic miniskirt. “Muy interesting.”

“Since when do you know any Spanish?”

“Oh, darling, everyone’s using Spanglish. How else would you communicate with household staff?” My friend looked me up and down. “Fab ensemble, and the broach really makes it work. Broaches are shockingly underused.”

“Thanks. I put it there to cover a moth hole.”

“But you want to show the wedding planner that you have an edgy contemporary fashion sense. Go change into this skirt. If she comes, I’ll entertain her.”

Nancy was being surprisingly helpful. “Okay.”

I took the skirt into the bedroom and closed the door. I changed into a stretchy black T and tugged the white skirt over my hips. It seemed tighter than it had been at the boutique. When I went back to the other room, Nancy had turned on the stereo and was dancing by herself to an old swing song.

“Good, she’s not here yet,” I said.

My friend took hold of me. “Todd hates dancing. He thinks it leads to liberal politics and free-trade restrictions. How do you and Osgood dance together?” She tromped on my feet.

I winced and said, “Like angels on clouds.” But Oswald and I weren’t very good at partner dancing.

“Your lover was a fabulous dancer, all oozy sex,” she said. “Why don’t you marry him?”

“Oswald is my lover, and I am marrying him.”

“No, I mean the lover you brought to my wedding. Lord Ian.”

Old beaux, already insubstantial in character, had faded in my memory as quickly as badly dyed cotton in the wash. But I recalled Ian’s face, his voice, his touch just as clearly as if he’d been groping me yesterday. Sex with Oswald was joyous and fun. Sex with Ian had been exquisitely pleasurable and highly unsettling.

“One, Ian’s not my lover, two, how come you can remember his name, but not Oswald’s?”

“A, I know you had the dirty, dirty sex with him. B, I couldn’t tell if I was terrified of him, or wanted to submit completely to his will. C, I wish you wouldn’t talk in outline form because it reminds me of school, and I miss school.”

I had recalled the dirty, dirty sex more times than I was going to admit, even to Nancy. “Ian’s amusing company, but not exactly marriage material.” He was the kind of man who would slash someone a hundred times as revenge for one cut I’d received. He was the kind of man who had human thralls service his various sordid whims. “Speaking of school, I’m seeing Toodles on my trip east.”

“J’adore Toodles, but I think that if she takes off her pearl necklace, her head will fall off. Let me see your ring.” Nancy turned my hand to examine it. “Brilliant-cut canary stone with lateral diamonds in platinum. Compare and contrast.” We held our left hands together. “You bitch, it’s bigger than mine. I’m going to tell Todd we’ve got to upgrade.”

“You know, I hate to say anything in Todd’s favor, but he did take you on a long honeymoon to Tahiti.”

“Where are you honeymooning?”

“Oswald can only take four days off and we’re going to Baja.” Oswald would be performing cleft-palate surgeries for the poor during the day, and we’d frolic on the beach at night.

“Baja isn’t Bali,” Nancy said as she gave me a final twirl and let me go.

I turned down the music and stared out the window. “You’d think this wedding planner would call if she’s running so late.”

“She’s appallingly irresponsible.” Nancy joined me and we stared down at the street below. “But so are you, waiting all this time to hire someone. Have you even ordered your dress yet?”

“The wedding isn’t until August. I’ve got almost four months.”

“Shame on you! When you’re planning a wedding, you don’t have months, or weeks. You have days and hours. Right now you have a mere one hundred and seventeen days to put together the biggest event of your life.”

“It’s too daunting. I’m totally daunted. Oswald’s mother thinks it will be a nightmarish carnival of mariachis, chili pepper string lights, and taco tables, and I’ll wear a gown made of purple polyester lace. Why does she think I’m tacky?”

“You’re a lavish girl, and people mistake subtlety for style, when it is no such thing. I’m developing an entire thesis around this. Chapter titles will tell you what isn’t style, such as ‘Mono-chromaticism Isn’t Style.’”

Leaning my forehead against the glass, I said, “I wanted a simple ceremony. But at least we’ve got a location I like.”