Secrets of a Shoe Addict (15 page)

“Mom, please!” The words came out without thought. Without consideration. Just the primal pleading of a child to her mother, begging for help.

But it was too late for that. Far,
far
too late.

Her mother had already hung up the phone.

Abbey sat still. Motionless. What else could she do, with her life spinning out of control?

Becky had kids: two sons. She’d named one after her and Abbey’s father, Kurt.

He would have liked that.

Or he
probably
would have liked it. He died when Abbey was fourteen and Becky was just six, so what did she really know about him, besides the fact that he smelled of Old Spice, always had those round red and white peppermints in his pockets, and was soft-spoken? Like Brian.

And once he’d gone, it was as if Abbey had been left with a mother who more resembled a wicked stepmother from a fairy tale. The more she tried to get her mother’s attention, the more her mother hated her. Until they’d finally reached this peak that her mother had apparently never come down from. She hated Abbey. She hated her enough not even to care that she had a grandson through Abbey.

Poor Luella Parker Generes.

She’d never know what her hostility had lost her.

And what it had cost her daughter and her grandson.

Chapter
        
9
   

T
his is Mimi,” Loreen practiced in a sexy whisper. She was holding her new pay-as-you-go cell phone in her lap, waiting for her first phone sex call. She wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. “Hello, there,” she said, in a lower voice this time. “I’m Mimi, who are you?” Only she sounded more like Rula Lenska from those old Alberto VO5 commercials. “Mimi here,” she tried, with a crisp British accent.

Nope. Decidedly unsexy.

The phone rang in her lap and she was so startled she jumped and it went skidding across the floor.

The ringing stopped.

She scrambled to grab it. “Hello?” Nothing.
“Hello?”
she repeated, more frantically.

A man cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “I—I’m not sure I have the right number.”

“You do!” She was too eager. “I mean, this is Mimi,” she added, shooting for sexy but hitting psychotic. “What can I do for you? To you? What can I do
to
you?”

Silence.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Good. So what do you want to do?” She sounded like she was setting up a playdate.

“Uh . . . nothing. Thanks.” He hung up the phone. And who could blame him?

Jeez, she’d really messed that up.

Hopefully he’d call back.

She waited for a few minutes, phone in hand, but it didn’t ring again.

Wearing the new shoes Sandra had given her for inspiration, she tiptoed into Jacob’s room, for about the twentieth time, to make sure he was really asleep. He was. Until the phone in her hand rang. She clutched it and ran from the room so it wouldn’t wake Jacob up, but in the process she pushed the
OFF
button and hung up on her second caller.

Why was this so
hard
?

So she wandered back into her own room, hoping the phone would ring again so she could at
least
save her pride and try again.

It did ring again. This time she was ready. Or so she thought.

“This is Mimi,” she said, and was actually impressed with her own calm, sexy intonation. “Who’s calling?”

“Mom? I’ve been naughty.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, honey, you have the wrong number.” She hung up quickly so the poor kid didn’t have to incur a big phone bill that he’d later have to explain to his parents.

Then she realized that (1) the caller hadn’t sounded like a kid, and (2) every caller got a warning message before the charges started, stating the cost-per-minute and the fact that they needed to be over eighteen. Now, that didn’t preclude a younger kid from calling anyway and pretending to be eighteen or older, but it
did
mean that no one could possibly call and sit through all of that and then think he was talking to his mother.

So she’d just lost a
third
caller.

Zero for three.

What was she going to do?

Midnight. Time for Tiffany to be Crystal.

Tiffany crept around the house from room to room, like Santa Claus making sure everyone was asleep before she pulled out her bag of tricks.

In this case, though, her bag of tricks was a crib sheet of dirty talk she’d gotten from Sandra. She called the relay computer and logged in, turning on the virtual neon
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
sign.

Then she waited in the basement, by the washer and dryer, for calls to come in on her new designated phone. In the meantime she folded laundry, dividing everything neatly into four piles—one for each of them.

When she found a man’s bathing suit with huge hibiscus flowers splashed on it in Charlie’s things, she hesitated. Why would Charlie have a bathing suit out at this time of year? The community pool didn’t open until next week, and his last couple of business trips had been to Cleveland.

Hadn’t they?

Was Charlie
lying
to her?

Tiffany pondered this for a few minutes, almost as puzzled by her own lack of feeling as she was by the mystery of the swimsuit. It was possible, of course, that there was a logical explanation for it. Maybe there had been a mix-up at the hotel cleaners; maybe the hotel had even had an indoor pool and Charlie had decided to use it.

But what about when Charlie had called her from Cleveland, supposedly, and she’d thought she heard a steel drum band in the background?

There was only one reason Charlie would lie about being someplace that had a steel drum band, and that was because he was there with someone else.

Still . . . it was hard to imagine. If he was having an affair, wouldn’t he be sucking up to her and being nicer than ever? Instead he’d been the same bear around the house that he’d always been.

She folded the bathing suit and put it on top of Charlie’s pile, where he couldn’t help but see it and know that she’d seen it, too.

It would be interesting to hear what he had to say about that.

In the meantime, she wasn’t going to feel quite so guilty about having virtual sex with strangers. If anyone called, that was.

By 12:20, the phone still hadn’t rung, and Tiffany was starting to feel like an idiot for sitting in the darkened basement, among the brooms and mops, boxes of Christmas decorations, and the large highly scented boxes of Bounce dryer sheets she’d bought at Costco. At one point, someone had sent her an e-mail with about a hundred things one could do with Bounce sheets—everything from taping them under the kitchen counter to get rid of ants to soaking one in your lasagna pan overnight to loosen the baked-on cheese and sauce.

Rubber banding them to the receiver of your phone in hopes of
disguising your voice in case someone you knew called you for sex hadn’t been on the list.

But she hoped it worked.

Five minutes of finger-tapping later, there were still no calls, and she was beginning to grow offended that no one liked Crystal. Which was absurd on just so many levels, because Crystal was an amalgam of some of the sexiest women in show business and porn sites today. Tiffany had anticipated more calls than she could keep up with.

She got up and made her way to the spare fridge they kept drinks and overflow items in. There was a box of Franzia wine she’d been keeping for ages because she’d seen on a cooking show that boxed wines were the best to keep on hand for cooking because the packaging really did keep them fresh.

Well, right now,
Tiffany
needed to feel a little fresh. So she rinsed out the lid of the detergent bottle and tapped some wine into it, then returned to her place on a pile of clean folded towels and felt pathetic drinking out of the still-slightly-soapy plastic.

She was so deep in self-pity that when the phone did actually ring, she was so startled she dropped it, knocking the battery out. She scrambled to put it back together, hands shaking with frenzy, but it was too late, the call was lost.

And with it, perhaps the only ego gratification she was going to have all night.

When the phone rang a moment later, she was
still
unprepared, but she made an effort to collect herself and answer, in the most seductive Jessica Rabbit voice she could, “This is Crystal—”

“Tiffany Dreyer?”

Oh
, shit! Had she accidentally been sitting here holding her regular
cell phone instead of the pay-as-you-go one she’d purchased for
Crystal
?

Tiffany put the phone back to her ear. “Yes?”

“Yeah, look, this is Ed at the relay center. It looked like a call was just cut off on your line. Was that on purpose?”

“No, I dropped the phone.”

“So you
do
want calls?”

“I’m available for them,” Tiffany corrected carefully. She didn’t want to put the word out into the universe that she
wanted
calls, exactly. Then again, she didn’t want to sound like a petulant brat who was doing this grudgingly.

“Cool,” Ed said. “You were specifically requested, so the next time your phone rings, it won’t be me.”

Tiffany waited just a couple of minutes, flattered that she’d been
requested
, before the phone rang again.

By now, the wine was warming her up a little, so she took a quick breath and flipped the phone open. “Hey . . . this is Crystal. . . .” She turned it up at the end like a question.

“Hey, um . . . Crystal?” It was a husky male voice, not remotely familiar. At least not so far.

“Yes, who’s this?” Tiffany cooed.

“This—” He cleared his throat. “—this is Pete, er, Derek. This is
Derek.
”

“How are you doing tonight, Derek?” This was easy. So far, anyway.

Particularly since Pete/Derek sounded so much more nervous than she did.

“Good, good.” There was the faint sound of him clapping his hands together nervously.

At least, she
thought
it was his hands.

And that it was nervousness.

“Where are you tonight, Derek?” She had her notes from Sandra on hand, but so far she hadn’t needed to consult them: (1) call him by the name he wants, even if it’s obviously fake, and (2) ask questions to draw him out and use up time
before
getting down to business.

Frankly, she wasn’t looking forward to the
getting down to business
part.

“I’m at home.”

“Where is home?”

“Kensing . . . uh, Potomac, Maryland.” The guy was a terrible liar. It was almost endearing.

“Oooh, I like Potomac. Do you have a nice big house?” Sure. It was probably right down the street from Ted Koppel’s place.

“Yeah.” He took a shuddering breath she later realized must have been the gathering of his nerve. “And I want to fuck you with it.”

Crystal should have gone with this, but Tiffany was so shocked by the change of subject that she said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Huh? Oh. Hey, that’s good. So I say I’m from Potomac and you get all hoity-toity like you’re from Potomac.” He gave an earthy chuckle. “That’s good, I like that. Take off your diamonds and jewelry, bitch.”