Friday Mornings at Nine (22 page)

Jennifer tried to speak calmly. “I saw Bridget by the refreshments table not that long ago. I’ll go check with her, okay? I’m sure she’s talked with the kids and—”

“No, I’ll go,” Michael said with a huff. “And, swear to God, I’m not staying one minute past midnight. I don’t care what the Wieners say about us.”

She downed the last of her Witch’s Brew as he strode out of the room and, figuring the coast would be clear for at least five minutes, moved to a semiprivate corner to turn on her phone and check for text messages.

There were seven more. All from David.

She blinked at the tiny screen and tried to shield it from the sight of the other guests wandering past her. She knew she should just delete them, unread. But, like a four-car pileup at the end of the interstate, she couldn’t help but look. Couldn’t stop herself from clicking on each one.

The first message was a clear continuation of the Goldilocks story—David style—that he’d begun earlier in the night:
She was tired of being a good grl. Just Say No to more rules.

Then:
She snuck in2 the house like a school grl in knee highs & a shrt skirt. Little did she know she’d emerge a woman.

Jennifer swallowed and scanned the edges of the room for signs of Michael. Still clear. Next message:
She searched til she found something v. tasty.

Then:
She bit and sucked and licked…. Goldilocks was rly good w. her mouth.

Oh, God. David was such a piece of work. How was it that he always knew how to punch her buttons? He could drive her crazy and turn her on in the same breath. Such a disconcerting quality.

Message number five:
In her excitmnt she broke a few things in the house. Bad grls shd be punished—shdn’t they?

Jennifer blushed. Then:
She turned on the bedrm radio &
“Sister Golden Hair”
was playing. The music made her sleepy so she crawld in2 bed.

And, finally:
Like the song, she knew someone whod been a poor correspondent & whod been 2…2…hard 2 find. She dreamd abt him.

And that made seven. She wished there’d been another installment of the story for her to read. But the flurry of messages had begun earlier in the night, and the last one was time-stamped over a half hour ago. David must’ve given up on getting a response back from her and gone to bed.

A bit reluctantly, she deleted the messages. She was about to turn off the phone completely again when she spotted Michael’s distinctive Bear costume across the room. Not having time to do more than shove the phone into her purse before he reached her, she did that first. “You found Bridget?” she asked, probably too brightly. She stuck her hand into the purse, sniffed loudly and pretended to root around for a tissue.

He nodded. “The kids are fine.” His underlying subtext, however, was
No thanks to you.
“Veronica is behaving herself. She and the boys watched some old Indiana Jones movie before they went to bed. Shelby and Cassandra are bonding over video games.”

She ignored his tone. “Good.” She sniffed again, snatched a tissue with one hand and, without pulling her phone out of her purse, nestled the phone in the padded pocket without looking, just so it wouldn’t bump up against any noisy keys or anything and make buzzing sounds if it vibrated again. She feigned blowing her nose. “Did you want to go outside at all? There’s a fire pit in the backyard. Some people are roasting marshmallows.”

“No.” He took a step backward and managed to bump into a woman dressed as the Little Mermaid. “Oh, sorry. Sorry,” he told her. He unzipped the part of his furry costume nearest his neck and inhaled. “This thing is so hot.” He fanned himself, and perhaps Jennifer was reading too much into it, but there seemed to be a sense of accusation toward her even in that simple gesture. She had, after all, chosen the costumes along with Tamara and Bridget. The Woodsman outfit was most austere, and the Prince outfit more attractive. However, both were “cooler”—in multiple senses of the word—than the Bear. Clearly, on top of all her other faults, she was culpable for bad costume judgment, too.

“I’m feeling a little warm myself,” she whispered, thinking about the suggestive fairy tale David had been texting to her. “Do you want me to get you some more beer?”

Michael made a face. “No.”

They fell silent for a few moments, although the room around them was alive with activity. Someone had turned up the volume on the spooky mix CD of questionable origin. A couple of woodland creatures were doing the Monster Mash around a leather sofa. And a clique nearby, consisting of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Rose Red, were having an inane discussion on the merits of Maybelline Crimson Crush lipstick for keeping their lips “extra red.”

Snow White brushed a strand of black-wig hair away from her very fair complexion and pursed her lips for her friends to examine. “See?” she said. “It’s the reddest of all.”

The Little Mermaid walked by again, rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Mirror, mirror,” at Jennifer, which made her laugh for the first time in over two hours.

Michael, apparently startled by the sound of her merriment, took a quick step to the side and banged his shin against a sharp-edged coffee table. “Dammit!”

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He rubbed his fingers against his injured leg and shook his head. “I think I feel blood.”

She winced. “Maybe you should go to the bathroom and check it out. Take off the costume and, if there’s a scratch, clean it up. Here—” She dug into her purse again and retrieved a couple of Band-Aids. “Take these with you.”

“Fine,” he said, his irritation and self-involvement reminding her of a five-year-old who’d scraped his knee on the playground. He glanced at his watch again. “Thank God this is almost over.”

She exhaled as soon as he disappeared through the door and into some other part of the house. The crowd in the living room had begun to thin the closer it got to midnight. More of the guests congregated out back, and Leah, Kip and Kip’s police-chief brother busied themselves setting up a structure of some kind near the fire pit.

She pulled out her phone to check for new messages. One!

Jennifer hadn’t felt it vibrate, but it was David again. She grinned.

She glanced around her, taking in the scene and wondering how long she had before Michael returned this time. That she was annoyed with him by now was a given. That she was exasperated with his attitude and his klutziness was, likewise, undeniable. That his company bored her when he was in one of these moods was a reality of her married life. The thing she hadn’t anticipated, however, was that the mere reminder of David’s existence heightened her dissatisfaction. That her ex’s playfulness was too much of an emotional contrast in a situation that—with her husband—was stressful and frustrating just on its own.

Granted, David wasn’t actually
at
the party. In person, maybe he wouldn’t have been any fun. Maybe he, too, would’ve protested that the gathering was “so unrealistic,” like Michael had done earlier, despite the obviousness that it
wasn’t supposed to be
realistic. Maybe he would’ve been offended by the gruesomeness of the upcoming “beheading” and, like Michael, preferred the syrupy sweetness of the Disney versions of the fairy tales as opposed to the gritty violence of the Grimm Brothers’ originals.

But she doubted it.

David didn’t claim to have the “heart of a poet,” so sarcastic humor, earthiness and overt cynicism were natural fixtures in his social toolbox. And, certainly, David had unleashed his share of foul moods in her presence but, at the Hallowiener Party, she could’ve used a dash of jesting from her husband. The tiny measure of levity she got, she got only from her old boyfriend.

She clicked to read David’s text:
The man in Goldilocks’s dream is real & he does unspeakably sexy things 2 her in Big Bear’s bed. Wanna know what they R?

Oh, boy.

She wished she had more of that green Witch’s Brew. She licked the rim of her glass for the last few droplets and was about to shut off her phone again when it vibrated in her hand.

Not a text this time. A phone call.

David
.

Meanwhile, in the Wieners’ library loft, her Rapunzel skirt pushed up to her knees, Tamara sat languorously on the carpeted floor, leaned back against the smooth mahogany bookshelf and worked her way through yet another Poisoned Appletini. And while she had lost track (some two hours ago) of just how many she’d had to drink, she was pretty sure she hadn’t eaten anything since Bridget’s oatmeal-raisin cookie. Good thing she could hold her liquor so well, huh?

She slapped Aaron on his chest with the back of her outstretched palm. Whoa. Solid muscle. How freaky! She laughed at his surprise. “So, w-why’d you start getting into marathons and s-stuff?” she slurred. “Bored at home?”

“Triathlons,” Aaron corrected, sliding a couple of inches closer to her from his spot on the floor. “I can do all
three
events. Swim, bike
and
run. I’m talented that way.”

“You are,” Tamara agreed. “You surely are. I can just play tennis.”

Aaron guzzled his sixth (at least) inky black beer. “But I bet’cha you’re
great
at it. ’Cuz you’re, you know”—he studied her legs with obvious appreciation—“tall.”

“Exactly,” she said, impressed by Aaron’s perceptiveness. He was
such
a good friend to her. She didn’t have a lot of good guy friends. Just Aaron…and Al. And Al had been kind of avoiding her lately. Well, her phone calls. Sort of. She understood it, though. He wasn’t trying to be mean to her or anything. He even explained it. That his grief overwhelmed him when he dwelled on Aunt Eliza’s death, and he dwelled on it when he talked for too long with Tamara. So, for the sake of his old, aching heart and for the sake of his worried children and grandchildren, he was making an effort to lighten up a little. To get out a bit more. To start the process of moving on.

She sighed. This grief stuff was
so
exhausting. That was why it was good to just relax. In a quiet, comfortable place. With a friend and a drink…or seven.

Every so often, some couple or small group would climb the stairs to the library loft and talk to them for a few minutes. A few partygoers even nabbed extra drinks for them. People could be so
nice
sometimes. One couple even brought them a few Spider Sandwiches. Aaron had one, but Tamara couldn’t bring herself to eat it. Who knew what Leah put in there? Maybe they weren’t just
shaped
like spiders. It’d be just like Leah to stuff them with real black widows.

Aaron asked her about her favorite story as a child, which was funny because it involved spiders.

“Charlotte’s Web,”
she told him.

He nodded. “I liked that one, too. It’s about the cycle of life, and how precious our friendships are.” He took another chug of beer. “How they give us meaning. And hope.”

This, she decided, was a
really deep
thing to say. But, before she could come up with an equally philosophical point for Aaron to ponder, too, Jon—to her astonishment—staggered into the room.

Her husband took in the sight of her sitting on the floor next to their neighbor, surrounded by their collection of empty martini glasses and empty beer cups. He looked confused and oddly displaced without his mayoral sidekick, but no less arrogant.

So Tamara said, “Hey, there you are. Where’d you hide Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Probably in a very small, windowless room,” Aaron suggested thoughtfully before Jon had a chance to answer. “Spinning straw into gold.”

Tamara giggled at Aaron’s extremely clever comment, and added, “That’s the only way he’ll get enough money to pass his stupid referendum.”

Aaron thought this was a hilarious response (because—c’mon—everyone knew Mayor West was a pain in the ass, always wanting to raise taxes for his pet projects), but Jon narrowed his eyes at both of them. “Lower your voice, Tamara.”

She shrugged and slurped a little more of her Appletini. “So are you having a good time? Getting in lots of n-networking?”

“I’ve talked with a few people, yeah,” Jon said, his Prince crown resting high on his head and his pose making him appear particularly regal. “Men who make things happen in our community.” The expression on his face indicated that Aaron wasn’t one of those men, and that Tamara—due to the inescapable fact that she was female—was incapable of “making things happen” in their community or, indeed, anywhere.

Huh. Well, fuck that.

Tamara eyed Aaron, whose Prince crown was tilted at a precarious angle and in danger of sliding right off. She was tempted to reach out and straighten it for him, but there was something odd about doing so while her husband was standing there. She couldn’t figure out why at the moment, though. She did glance from one guy to the other…the same sex and, yet, so different. “Look! Two Princes.” She rested her head against the bookshelf and sighed. “There are lots of you out there tonight,” she murmured, wondering vaguely how any woman was supposed to choose the right prince when there were so many masquerading as the real deal.

Aaron, who’d been handed an Appletini a half hour ago that he hadn’t yet gotten around to drinking, ignored both Jon’s insinuations and Tamara’s mutterings and took a taster sip. “Not bad,” he pronounced. Then he dumped about a quarter of his black beer into it and swirled the two beverages together with the apple slice. “This is a magical potion. A good-health elixir.”

“It looks disgusting,” Jon commented. And even Tamara couldn’t help but silently agree.

“Looks can be deceiving,” Aaron said, swigging half his potion. “I spend my life helping men improve their
look,
but really”—he shrugged—“really, it’s futile. Really, the truth is”—he leaned forward toward Jon in a sagacious, rumor-divulging mode—“there’s no special formula. There’s no big secret. A guy can dress up, slap on some expensive aftershave, work out with a trainer four times a week and gel the hell out of his hair, but it won’t matter because, in the end…All. Will. Be. Revealed. The kind of people who resent you when you’re successful will resent you even more if you look good doing it. The kind of people who are there for you when the stock portfolios are down will still be there for you no matter what you’re wearing. You can’t fool anyone worth fooling. Not for long.”