I quietly shut the door again. “Of course I want out, but one has to make plans. You don’t just move out when you have no job and no income. Besides, my father needs me right now.”
“Your father will always need you. It’s his
modus operandi
. Trust me. I’m offering you a job, Lilly. You can have it for as long as you need it.”
“I don’t want to be a concierge, Max. I appreciate you trying to get me a job, but I don’t want to answer tourist questions all day. I think my skills entitle me to more than that. Tourists annoy me.”
“That’s fine,” he says shortly.
“Tell Lilly I appreciate what she’s trying to do, but I don’t want her help right now. I need to be here for my father.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
I place the phone back in its cradle, and I notice my bath doesn’t look nearly so inviting. She’s ruined it for me, Lilly and her incessant nagging. People are so anxious to get you work, when all they do is complain about it. I fail to understand their actions.
The phone rings again, and I shout into the phone, “What?”
“Morgan?” It’s a male voice I don’t recognize.
“Who’s calling, please?” I ask, anxious to find out if my private line got out to the press.
“It’s George Gentry. I met you today again in a hallway in the financial district.” His voice is buttery smooth, just like I prefer them. I wonder how many wives in the closet this one has.
“I know who you are, George Gentry. You’re the man who let me believe you were a journalist. Today, surprise, surprise, you’re a lawyer. What’s next—tomorrow will I get your FBI card? And are you planning to continue popping up everywhere like a terrifying jack-in-the-box? If so, please bring chocolate so that I might appreciate your presence.”
He clears his throat. “Right. Well, I need to speak with you, Morgan, on a legal matter.”
“Mr. Gentry, I have no interest in meeting with you or hearing what you have to say. For all I know, your business card is still warm from the Kinko’s printing press. You do forget, sir, that I’ve been the target of many a con man and fallen for each and every one. I’m now what you might call savvy.”
Don’t I sound the epitome of confident? But I am curious about what he has to say, what he’s up to, and what any of this has to do with me. And his sable eyes have nothing to do with it.
“You have every right to be leery, Miss Malliard, but I think you’re going to want to hear why I’ve been following you. We can meet in a very public place. You name where you’d feel comfortable. A coffee shop? A hotel lobby, maybe?”
“Now it’s ‘Miss Malliard’ you’re calling me? Such formality for someone who informed me I didn’t consummate my marriage and seems to know my every move. I would think we’re on more intimate terms, Georgie.”
I don’t like the way I feel after these words. I don’t like what I’ve become after Andy. Fearful of everyone and suspicious. It’s not becoming.
“Morgan, aren’t you even curious why I might want to talk to you? How I know so much about you?”
What really makes me curious, I suddenly think, is why I want so desperately to talk to him.
“Not in the least bit,” I lie easily. “I keep hearing that Police song ‘Every Breath You Take’ and thinking ‘stalker.’” Even if he does look like heaven on a stick. The fact is Andy looked that way, too. I’m so inclined to trust the wrong people. I can’t take a chance.
“I understand your objections, but you should know that you’ll be served papers soon. Along with your father. I don’t usually send warnings, but you’ve been through so much, and I didn’t want to catch you by surprise. Your father knows all about this. I thought you deserved equal treatment.”
He hangs up on me, and I feel my heart race. Suddenly I wish it was safe to run in the night streets of San Francisco. I feel this intense need to expel energy, and nowhere to go with it. I reach in and let the water drain from my bathtub and slip into a cashmere sweater and my Lilly jeans. I unlock my desk and pull out two hundred dollars in cash, stuffing it into the pocket of my jeans. Opening my bedroom door, I see that the destruction of my father’s penthouse is still on the table.
I rush through the apartment and catch my father’s gaze for a moment. He’s no match for the evil threesome of dire decorating, but I’ll worry about that when I get home.
“I’m sorry, Daddy, I have to run out.”
“Will you be home tonight?”
Whatever Mrs. Henry is cooking, it smells delectable, and I wish I had time to eat, but I want to escape and if there was a safe landing, out my bedroom window would have been preferable.
Lilly’s loft simply wasn’t far enough. I never truly left my comfort zone, I never got the peace I needed to figure it all out. I think best in my car. Hopefully, I’ll get in and know exactly where I’m running to.
“No, Daddy,” I shake my head. “I won’t be home tonight. I have some things to figure out.” As Gwen is deeply entrenched in conversation, I stare deeply into his intense black eyes. “Have you ever heard of a George Gentry?”
My father grabs my elbow and pushes me backwards into my bedroom. “Where did you hear that name?”
“You know him?”
“Has he contacted you?”
“Sweetie!” Gwen’s whiny voice screeches from the dining room, echoing off the travertine floors. “We need you to tell us how high the bookcases should be.”
“I’ll be right there,” Daddy growls. “Has he contacted you, Morgan?”
“Who is he, Daddy?”
“Just another leech, Morgan. No one you need to concern yourself with. Make sure you stay away from him until I tell you differently.”
I think about relaying the information about papers and being served, but something holds me back. “Right, Daddy.”
Mrs. Potatohead hollers again.
“Daddy, you should really tell her we don’t yell in the house. An inside voice, I think they tell the preschoolers at church.”
“You’re going to love her, Morgan. I know you will. It will just take some time alone for you two to get to know each other. She’s brilliant.”
His comment is really more command than gentle prophecy. Somehow, I don’t see myself feeling the love.
F
or lack of a better place to escape, I drive straight to my health club. After placing my car in the skillful hands of Johnny, the best valet on earth (my father simply must put him in his will), I enter the hallowed halls of Square One. Kingston Crane is working behind the long, rock-faced counter, the song of dripping water in the wall-length fountain behind him giving the eerie echo of a natural fountain in a well-equipped cave. I want to feel relaxed walking into the carefully architected building, but Kingston’s presence unravels any sense of well-being with his creepy gaze and moist, glossy, maraschino lips.
Kingston is the living, breathing clarification of why I will never be a concierge. With a shrewlike face and black, darting eyes, Kingston is the boy who ate paste in school. The boy whose mother glued his hair down in a shellacked side part. He moves frantically and erratically, like a rodent caught in the bottom of the garbage bin looking for his way out. I can only imagine how he got this job, since I’m pretty sure he strikes the entire club the same way. He’s the face you will eventually see on an episode of
48 Hours
with someone commenting, “There was always something not right about him.”
“Miss Malliard,” Kingston mews.
“Kingston.”
“May I help you, Miss Malliard? Did you have a question for me?” He leans over the counter and licks his lips freshly.
“Is there someone for a pedicure at this time of night? Perhaps Julia’s still here?” I look at the clock above Kingston’s small head, and it ticks loudly at three minutes before eight.
“Of course there is. Why don’t you relax in the sauna, and I’ll get the room set up. We haven’t seen you in a while, though you have been keeping yourself busy, I suppose. You look as though you’ve gained a little weight, so it’s good to see you back. Maybe you’d like some personal training?” He grabs a calendar from behind the counter.
“I’ll be in the whirlpool or sauna when Julia is ready for me.”
It takes every Christian principle I’ve been taught not to comment on his lack of masculinity as I head down the glass-mosaic hallway into the changing room, mumbling the entire way, and unlock my locker. My swimsuit hangs neatly alongside my goggles, and I reach for the suit and a fresh club robe. The towel girls, as Lilly calls them, have all gone home for the day, so I pick up a fresh towel, ponder the nearby whirlpool for a moment and then decide the sauna is more of a departure from my regular reality.
A charge of cold air hits me as I exit to the hallway. But it’s nothing next to the icy chill of reality that next bolts through my system. Outside the door, leaning against the wall, is something I never thought I’d see. I feel my soul flutter within at the sight of Andy Mattingly. (Or Arnold, depending on who you believe.)
“Andy, what are you doing here?”
“You won’t answer my calls. My brother’s a private investigator, and I had you followed.”
Right. And Agent 007 is on the case. This guy wouldn’t know the truth if it sprouted eight legs and crawled up his back. “How did you get in here?”
“Turns out Kingston was a little short today.”
“He’s a little short every day.”
“On cash. He was a little short on cash.”
Andy or Arnold, whatever his name is, strikes such an image. His well-groomed, sandy-brown hair is so upstanding and proper. His amazingly sincere hazel eyes are dazzling and captivating. And every last inch of him is a mirage. A hauntingly gorgeous oasis I want so badly to be true, but that has evaporated, along with all my dreams that anyone will ever live up to what I hope for.
Kingston must be his spy, his undercover agent in the pathetic surveillance he’s set up. “I don’t imagine Kingston will be much richer when management learns he let a felon into the club.”
I’m walking briskly toward the exit to the foyer when Andy steps forward and stops me with his eyes. Those gentle eyes that belie everything he personifies.
“I’m sorry, Morgan,” he says with a convincing tear. Straight out of the soap-opera playbook. He’ll be taking off his shirt for his close-up any minute now. How did I miss this the first time?
I just stare at him, blinking away my own sudden tears. Partly because I loved this man, but mostly over my own stupidity at having loved a fantasy. I can hear his words, and I know now there is not an authentic one in the whole verbal string. But here’s a question or two I’ll have when I meet my Maker:
Why give this guy those eyes? And the ability to talk like
that?
I know I won’t be the only one with those questions. Heck, I know already I was one of two.
“You should use your powers for good, Andy Mattingly, or whatever you’re calling yourself today. How could you marry two women? How could you possibly think you’d get away with it?”
“I wanted to start fresh. I didn’t target you, Morgan. You weren’t a financial mark like they keep saying. I truly fell for you when I saw you in church that day. I was going to leave the life of crime behind me and—”
“Sing? Which is why you went to Nashville, right? Oh wait, you didn’t actually go to Nashville; you went home to your wife.”
“You said you loved music, and I wanted you to love me, Morgan. I would have learned to play the guitar.”
“Oh brother. Really, you can do better than this.”
“I would have been good for you, Morgan. I would have treated you like the queen you deserved to be.”
“You are positively pathological.” I’m trying to step around him, but he keeps forcing his way into my path.
“I’m starting fresh. Karen has applied for a divorce.” Andy/Arnold bends down and flashes me a small gold ring. “Marry me, Morgan. You married me once; marry me again.”
Out of curiosity I pick up the ring and notice the inscription within: “Karen, my love always, Arnold.”
For some reason, this strikes me as hysterically funny, and I start to laugh uproariously.
“Karen wanted you to have it to show you we have her blessing.”
Oh heavens, was I ever this stupid? “God rescued me that day, Arnold. There is nothing so beautiful as the crisp white linen of a Reno annulment, and I own one and my consummate freedom.” I let out
a ragged breath. “I hear divorces are a little trickier, a little harder to come by. Good luck with that.”
I start to walk away, and then turn back. “Although, you may not want to lose Karen so quickly; she must be a saint.” I drop the ring on the floor and it clinks down the glass tile, bouncing several times before stopping in the corner. Arnold dives for the wall, and it occurs to me: Karen has no idea where he is tonight or where her ring is. My heart breaks for her. What did he tell her to get the wedding ring wrenched from her finger?
I turn completely around and face him, unbothered by his presence or his good looks. “Did you tell her you were going to buy her a bigger ring tonight?”
He physically gulps, and I guess we have our answer.
And then, as Andy bends to pick up the ring, reality twists again and I see another man walking down the hallway. He’s wearing a suit. A familiar suit. Once again, I’m face to face with George Gentry and his forest-brown, compellingly beautiful eyes. If the Lord wanted to send me a temptation, George is wrapped and ready to go. Just like a puppy in the pet store at Christmas.
My first thought is shame. Shame that he should see me with Andy as if solid proof that the tabloids have their stories right.
I pull myself together. “Is this suddenly a public health club? Because if it is, I’ve got to tell my father he’s paying way too much in dues. Clearly, they’ll let anyone in here.”
George gives that smirk of a smile and walks towards me. “If you won’t come to me, I’ll come to you. I followed you here.”
“Did you give me a chance to come to you?” I look over towards Andy/Arnold. “I can’t even give you points for originality. It seems to be the method of the day, Mr. Gentry. If you were searching for originality, you missed your cue.”
“So I see.”
Andy and George make eye contact, and a flash of recognition flickers in their private, silent communication. I can only imagine what they each see, but my own imagination turns several corners. George says he’s my father’s lawyer, but the fact is he could be Andy’s criminal defense attorney, and I may have walked right into both of their plans.