Betsy laughed; Godwin meant Stash Enhancement experience, one of the terms invented by her favorite newsgroup. Betsy was not herself immune to the lure of SEX; she set the tropic sunset kit aside for herself.
At five they locked the front door. Godwin and Betsy straightened up the shop: washing out the coffeepot and unplugging the teakettle, shutting off the radio, running the credit card machine's total, counting the take. Betsy made out a deposit slip, which Godwin took along with the cash and checks to the bank a couple of blocks away. “See you later at the party,” he said. “I'll be the one with the tie that lights up.”
Â
Betsy and Sophie went upstairs, where Betsy took a quick shower and put on her prettiest party dress, the cranberry velvet, and stroked on evening makeup, more emphatic than her daytime wear. She put on her garnet earrings and necklace, inherited from her mother.
The apartment was sparkling clean, but Betsy went around putting breakables higher or into cabinets, leaving as much flat surface as possible for plates and glasses. Sophie followed her, whining until Betsy remembered she hadn't fed her pet.
Sophie was alleged to be on a diet. She was allowed two small scoops of diet cat food a day, which should keep even a lazy cat like Sophie at a svelte seven or eight pounds. Sophie, by dint of nonexistent metabolism and a lifestyle that “Less Active” overstated, had lost three pounds, gained one back, and now held stubbornly at eighteen. The problem was, she cadged treats from anyone who approached her in the shop, and would accept any offering. Betsy had needlepointed a little sign that read, “No, Thank You, I'm on a Diet,” to hang on the back of Sophie's chair, but just today, a customer, still laughing at the sign, had fed Sophie a potato chip. Betsy had thought of a muzzle, but Sophie might find it very tasty, too. And Betsy couldn't stop the lams feedings ; Sophie's diet otherwise was too unhealthy.
“You could leave her upstairs,” Godwin had suggested. But the thought of the friendly, ornamental, happy creature condemned to a life of waiting for Betsy to come home was too awful.
Two hours later, Betsy took off her slippers and put on her highest heels. The apartment was beginning to smell of hot hors d'oeuvres and rock gently to the jazz piano of Ramsey Lewis. The little table in the dining nook was laden with crystal goblets, bottles of good red and white wines, and a big punch bowl filled with something pink and fragrant. Beer and soft drinks were in the refrigerator. Betsy took a ceramic pie plate out of the freezer. Last night she had overlapped alternating slices of lemons and limes in a ring in the pie plate and scattered a few maraschino cherries on top. She had put a straight-sided bowl of water in the center, poured half an inch of water into the plate, and put the whole thing in the freezer. Now she dismantled the arrangement and put the ring of frozen fruit into the punch bowl, where it would serve to chill and ornament the punch.
By the time the first tray of hors d'oeuvres came out of the oven, three couples had arrived.
Betsy loved to give parties. Godwin was there, of course, with his lover John, a tall attorney with a distinguished profile and just the right amount of gray in his hair. He looked around her apartment and then at Betsy with the amused air of the
New York Times
home/arts editor visiting Archie Bunker's house. He was obvious enough about it that Jill Cross, Betsy's police officer friend, raised an inquiring eyebrow at her when they met over the punch bowl a few minutes later. Betsy rolled her eyes to show she didn't care what the jerk thought and went to get a fresh batch of cheesy, spicy hamburger on tiny rounds of rye bread out of the oven.
Shelly Donohue, an elementary school teacher who worked part time in the shop, came with an extremely handsome fellow she introduced as Vice Principal Smith.
Joe Mickels, Betsy's landlord, came. Betsy had an ironclad lease at a ridiculous rent on the shop, a mistake Joe's late brother had made with Betsy's late sister. Joe had made numerous strenuous attempts to break the lease when Margot had run the shop, but they had stopped when Betsy took over. She didn't know why, and it made her uneasy.
Joe was a short-legged, pigeon-breasted man with enormous white sideburns and a great beak of a nose. His winter coat with its astrakhan collar was as anachronistic as he wasâJoe should have lived in the era of robber barons.
He had an attractive woman his own age with him. “Still think you're going to stay the course?” he asked Betsy with an icy twinkle.
If Betsy had the occasional tremble for herself and Crewel World, she wasn't about to show it to Joe. “We're doing fine, thank you,” she said with a determined twinkle of her own and took their coats to the back bedroom.
The part-timers came with spouses or significant others. The Monday Bunch, a needlework group that met at the shop, came mostly alone. The party divided into clusters, naturally, but Betsy went casually from cluster to cluster, taking a person from the Monday Bunch to introduce her to someone in the business discussion Joe was leading, and a person from the business world to introduce to the arts discussion, and so forth, making sure everyone got a chance to meet everyone else.
The five or six on and around the couch were into politics. “Do you think Mayor Jamison will run again?” asked Peter Fairland, Patricia's husband, a state senator contemplating a run for Congress. (The mayor, typically, was in the kitchen, helping stir up a new batch of that hamburger-on-rye hors d'oeuvre.)
“I think the job is his as long as he wants it,” said Godwin.
“I think it's time for a woman mayor, don't you?” asked Martha Winters, a refugee from the Monday Bunch.
Betsy paused to listen. She admired Patricia's smooth, classic exterior and wanted to see what her husband was like. Peter showed himself quick-witted and friendly, with piercing gray eyes and a great laugh. He was smooth in a practiced way, an intense listener, and Betsy found him not quite as intimidating as his wife.
Betsy left the political group to deal with a minor explosion in the business corner, where Joe Mickels was defending his latest attempt to squeeze yet more money out of a nonprofit group renting one of his buildings. “You all seem to forget,” Joe growled, “that our great wealth happened
because
we use the capitalist system.” Betsy asked Joe if he could help her open the sticky window in the dining nook just an inch, because it was getting rather warm in the apartment. He would have taken that as criticism of his maintenance until he recognized the look she was giving him. He came and opened the window and meekly did ten minutes of penance with the needleworkers, who were gathered around the punch bowl.
Betsy went to check on the quartet in the kitchen, who were telling favorite-pet stories while waiting for the hors d'oeuvres in the oven to come out. She stayed there only long enough to remind them that the oven ran a little hot and continued her rounds, this time bringing Mayor Jamison along.
She left him with Godwin's friend John, who was arguing probate law with Betsy's own attorney while three other guests kibitzed.
The group by the CD player were looking through the albums and not finding anything with words. “You collect only instrumentals?” asked Patricia as Betsy stopped by.
“I collect everything,” said Betsy, “but I left only instrumentals out tonight, because singing competes with conversation. If you've got to have music with words, go into the back bedroom and boot up the computer; it has a CD player in it, and I put my other CDs in there.”
To Betsy's surprise, Patricia went, taking another woman with her. Betsy thereafter checked the back bedroom twice. She didn't want them to get isolated, nor did she want anything messy or scandalous to happen. No fear; the first time she found four music lovers singing “Bar-Barbara Ann” along with the Beach Boys; the second time she found Jamison, retired railroad engineer Phil Galvin, and Alice Skoglund, who was a Lutheran minister's widow, looking through the book on Christian symbology.
They certainly are a moral bunch here in Excelsior,
Betsy thought, remembering a couple of faculty parties from her old life in San Diego.
The doorbell rang. Had someone gone for a smoke and locked himself out? The apartment was too crowded to see if anyone was missing. She shrugged and pressed the buzzer that unlocked the doorâthere wasn't an intercom to ask who was there.
She opened her door to see who would come up the stairs. Her eyes widened. A handsome face appeared, tanned and smooth-shaven, with dark brown eyes, a square jaw with a cleft chin, and a mouth just begging for a pipe. It was topped with a smooth sheaf of nearly white hair with a dramatic dark streak near one temple. The head sat on broad, square shoulders, atop a torso that looked, even covered by a trench coat, to be toned and fit. The whole rode on slim, long legs.
The face looked sideways at Betsy and assumed an abashed air, a handsome comic caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
It was Hal Norman, Hal the Pig, Betsy's ex. The one who was ratted on by a college freshman after he dumped her too abruptly for another college freshman. Which turned out to have been a pattern of behavior dating back God knew how many freshmen, and all while married to Betsy. “Hâlo, Betsy darlin',” he said. “I've come back to you.”
“IâI
beg
your pardon?!?” said Betsy.
Hal began to chuckle. He bounced up the last few steps and strode quickly to her. He was smiling, which made his dimples extra deep. “No joke, darlin', it's
so
good to see you!” He would have taken her in his arms had she not stepped back inside. When she tried to close the door, he put a hand on it.
“Hey, what's the matter? Please, won't you listen for just one minute?” His voice was surprised and hurt, which amazed her.
“Who is it?” asked Jill, coming up behind her.
“It's my ex-husband.”
“The one you left in California?”
“I thought I had.”
“What does he want?”
“I don't know.”
Hal's voice asked plaintively, “You mean you're going to leave me standing out here till the mice get round-shouldered?”
“What'd he say?” asked Jill.
“It's an old joke,” said Betsy, then added to Hal, “Until they are positively hunchbacked.”
“But, darlin', I don't have anyplace to stay!”
That surprised Betsy so much, she released her pressure on the door, which he promptly pushed open. She said, “You mean you actually thought you could just come here and I'd let you in? And let you stay
overnight?”
“But why not? I drove all the way from California just to see you.”
“That's too bad.” Betsy started to close the door again, but he put his hand on it again.
He said in a humble tone, “You're right. I shouldn't have presumed anything. I should have stopped at a motel and phoned you. But darlin', the closer I got, the more I got to thinking about what it would be like to actually see you again, talk to you face-to-face, and I just couldn't put it off another minute. Say, what's the noise? Have you got company? That should make it all right for me to come in and use your phone, shouldn't it? I need to find a motel.”
“No, you can't come in. I'm having a Christmas party for my employees and some friends.”
“Really? Why, say, I'd love to meet them. I understand they were a real help to you when Margot died. I'm so sorry about Margot, by the way. I wish I could have been here to support you through that awful timeâ”
The idea of Hal here during those early weeks, making himself at home in this place, helping her with the funeralâBetsy heard herself make an odd sound and heard an inquiring noise behind her. She glanced back.
Jill, reading the look on Betsy's face, immediately stepped forward to say over Betsy's shoulder, with that wonderful authority cops can summon, “There's a motel back out on the highway. You can't miss it.” And she gave the door a hard shove to shut it.
Betsy said, “Thank you! I think I was about to barf on his shoes.”
Jill smiled. “That message might have penetrated.”
Betsy laughed. “I can't imagine his turning up here. I wonder what he really wants?”
Jill said, “Have you told anyone in San Diego about the money?”
“Oh, the money! Of course!” Betsy's sister had turned out to be wealthy. In another month or so, when probate was finished, Betsy would be an heiress. “Yes, I told three friends. I wonder who let me down and told him.”
“I suppose he lost his job at the college?”
Betsy nodded. “Despite his tenure, yes, and it got into the papers, so he won't find another teaching job anytime soon. Our house was supplied by the college, so we lost that, too.”
“I'm sure that if one of your friends saw him flipping burgers somewhere, they thought they were doing you a favor by letting him know his loss was even greater than he thought.”
“So here he comes, playing penitent, hoping he can worm his way back into my life!”
“Worm being the operative word here,” said Jill. “Is he from California originally?”
“Yes, born in Redondo Beach.”
“Then he'll probably take the next bus home. Native Californians don't transplant well to climates like this.”
But Betsy, as she returned to the party, wondered. Three million dollars was an excellent incentive to learn to like snow.
4
B
etsy woke with a dry mouth and a headache. She opened her eyes and immediately closed them again. The bedroom was flooded with painfully bright sunlight. Why was that wrong?
Because she'd been waking to darkness lately, hadn't she? It was December in the northlands, and on work-days she awoke before dawn. Was this not a workday? Or had the clock radio not gone off? Or had it come on and she'd shut it off and fallen back asleep again?