It’s true that some women are more attractive than others, but bridesmaid dresses are the great equalizer. No woman is so beautiful that she can afford to wear taffeta.
–Fatally Yours
Dena showed up at the house at two-forty-five that afternoon. Jason and Mary Ann brought her over. Everything was ready. Jason had taken care of the shower and ramp and I had made sure that everything she might need was reachable from a sitting position. She wouldn’t be able to get upstairs of course but the only things that were up there were a couple more bedrooms and bathrooms. If figuring out who had shot Dena was as easy as making my place wheelchair accessible, I wouldn’t have any problems. Why couldn’t life be like that?
I was thinking about this when Mary Ann pushed Dena through my door. Jason was right behind them waving a large silver thing in the air with both hands. “Check it out!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?” I asked as I tried to bring the interconnected silver bars into focus even as Jason whipped them about.
His grin widened as he unfolded it and put it down before him. It was a walker. I stared at it and then at Dena, who seemed somewhat nonplussed. “You can use that?” I asked, almost afraid to ask the question. It was too good to be true, wasn’t it?
“I did today,” Dena said with only the slightest hint of pleasure. “Today in physical therapy I took three steps.”
“Fuckin’ A!” Jason thrust his fist in the air like a particularly pale member of the Black Panther movement.
“So this means…” My voice trailed off as I once again struggled to find the courage to say the words.
“Sophie, I told you I was going to be walking again with assistance.”
“But so soon!”
“Yeah.” And now Dena did smile. “I’m kicking ass as usual.”
“So why aren’t you more excited? Why isn’t your fist in the air?”
Dena leaned forward in her wheelchair. “Fucking shiny peach dresses.”
I looked up at Mary Ann. For the first time I noticed that she actually seemed to be a bit pissed off. “I wish Leah hadn’t told you about that,” she muttered. “It should have come from me.”
“Why? You wanted to soften the blow?” Dena snapped. “You can’t soften a blow like that, Mary Ann. It’s not enough that I should have to suffer the pain of a gunshot wound. No, you had to go on and hurt my very soul.”
“I did not!”
“Please! Peach is a soul-killing color that should be reserved for Barbie dolls and fruit! And even then it shouldn’t be shiny! My God, you worked at Neiman Marcus!”
“Lots of major designers work with peach.”
“Name one.”
“James Clifford Black.”
“Who the hell is he?”
“He specializes in wedding—”
“Then he doesn’t count!” If Dena could walk she would have been out of her wheelchair and shaking Mary Ann by the shoulders. You could just tell. “He’s in the business of luring otherwise sane women into an institution that encourages the wearing of colors like peach! But I honestly thought you’d resist that part. Neiman Marcus!” Mr. Katz stepped into the room. He took one look at Dena’s gritted teeth and turned around and pranced right back out again.
“There are some peach items at Neiman’s!” Mary Ann protested.
“Not in their San Francisco store!”
“Okay.” I held up my hands and stepped between them. “Perhaps we’re losing sight of the bigger picture. Dena, you walked today!”
Dena shrugged and looked down at her legs, half covered by a gray crepe skirt. They were completely still, seemingly devoid of the animation needed for movement. “I worked so hard and I only took three steps.”
“Yeah, three steps!” Jason cried. He was so wrapped up in his own excitement he completely missed her tone. “You were shot less than a week ago and you fucking took three steps!” He turned to me. “You should have seen her! She was like this gothic angel slowly pushing through the excrement of diminished expectations!”
“What?” Dena looked up at him totally mystified. “What does that even mean?”
“It means your fucking Western-trained doctors told you it was going to be months before you were on your feet but you refused to buy into their bullshit. You’re like Lestat in Interview with a Vampire. Louis and Claudia think they’ve killed him but of course he’s not really dead, he’s fucking immortal! So while they think he’s rotting he’s really feeding on fucking lizards and stuff and eventually he comes back and his face is all fucked up but he’s still Lestat and he comes back and just attacks!”
“Jason, no one thinks I’m dead, my face is not messed up and I’m not a vampire sooo—”
“Or a bumblebee!” Jason continued. He bent and straightened his knees as if it was all he could do to resist leaping into the air. “You’re a fucking bumblebee! When the small-minded scientists or whatever studied the bumblebee’s body they realized that it was aerodynamically impossible for that bug to fly but the bees don’t care about our inane rules of aerodynamics so they fly all over the place! You’re just like that! A fucking glorious, gothic angel bumblebee.”
Dena narrowed her eyes. “Don’t irritate me.”
Mary Ann giggled despite herself.
“You think that’s funny?” Dena asked as she whipped her head in Mary Ann’s direction. “Nothing he could do could ever irritate me as much as the news about your bridesmaids’ dresses. Peach!”
I cleared my throat none too subtly. “Jason, why don’t you show Dena her room and our temporarily redesigned bathroom. Also show her the kitchen. I’ve rearranged it for you.”
Jason beamed at me and pushed Dena into her room. I turned to Mary Ann. “Leah called her?”
“She was there! She got there early in the morning before Dena’s physical therapy and told her all about my wedding plans! Dena got so mad! Her PT says that’s what got her to take those first few steps. She told him that she was going to start walking now so she could stomp all over her bridesmaid dress!”
“Oh…well, that’s a good thing then.” And Leah knew it would be a good thing. She had timed her announcement so it would be right before Dena’s physical therapy. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the desire to race over to my sister’s place and kiss her. Of course she hadn’t just done it for Dena. Her ulterior motives were pretty obvious.
“I’m happy that she’s motivated,” Mary Ann said doubtfully. “But don’t you think this is an overreaction? We’re just trying to honor Monty’s grandmother. It’s not that big a deal, is it?”
Jason rolled Dena out of the bedroom. “SHINY FUCKING PEACH!” Dena yelled as he quickly pushed her through the living room and into the dining room.
“She may be overreacting a tad,” I said. But not by much.
The doorbell chimed and Mary Ann and I exchanged anxious looks. Dena and Jason were already here and Anatoly had a key. Considering recent events, unexpected visitors made both of us nervous.
“I know you’re in there,” Marcus called through the heavy oak of my front door. “Please don’t make me play the part of the big bad wolf. I don’t mind huffing and puffing but I don’t have the energy to blow anything bigger than a male Versace model.”
Mary Ann exhaled a sigh of relief and I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before going to the door. Marcus looked glamorous as always in his Royal Underground T-shirt, William Rast jeans and black canvas messenger bag. He kissed me on the cheek and stepped around me to greet Dena as Jason rolled her into the foyer.
“Dena darling, how are you?” he asked as he bent to brush his lips across her cheek. “I should have known you’d come running as soon as I started yelling about blowing models.”
“Fuck that,” Jason said cheerily. “Dena doesn’t have time to blow a bunch of overprivileged pretty boys! She’s too busy waaaaaa-lllllll-king!”
I gently pushed the door shut and flipped the lock back in place as Marcus turned back to Dena. “Did I hear him right?”
“It was just three steps,” Dena said quietly.
“Three motherfucking steps!” Jason cheered, once again striking his Black Panther pose.
Dena shot him a quick look of irritation. “Weren’t you going to the store to get the ingredients for a Red Devil?”
“What’s a Red Devil?” Mary Ann asked absently as she pulled off her cardigan and threw it over my coatrack.
“It’s a cocktail,” I said before leading them all into the living room. “Pomegranate juice, grapefruit vodka, O.J. and cinnamon syrup.” I smiled down apologetically at Dena. “I’m so sorry, I should have stocked up on the ingredients. It’s not like I didn’t know it was your favorite drink.”
Dena dismissed my apology with a wave of her hand. She was beginning to look a bit tired…actually that wasn’t quite the right word…she looked weary. “Jason doesn’t mind going to the store.” She reached out and squeezed Jason’s arm. “If they don’t have everything just get some Pom juice. We’ll make do.”
Jason shook her off. “Fuck that. After what you did today you earned your drink of choice. I’ll run on over to the store.” He bent down and gave Dena a kiss that was considerably less innocent than the kiss from Marcus. “Glorious, gothic angel bumblebee!” he repeated as he strode out of the house.
“What did he just say?” Marcus asked as I went back into the foyer to lock the door again.
“Please don’t ask me that,” Dena groaned. “He’s lost his mind.”
Marcus did a quick double take. “Oh, sweetie, that happened a long time ago.”
“Yes,” Mary Ann agreed. “But now he seems a bit obsessed with bumblebees….”
“Well, he used to be obsessed with vampires,” Marcus mused as he dropped down on the sofa. “At least bumblebees are real. I think this is progress.”
Dena shook her head. “He’s still into vampires. This is just one more thing.”
“I see. Maybe not progress then. But it’s good to see him mix it up a bit. Keeps it fresh, doesn’t it? Nothing worse than a boring crazy person.” He smiled and looked around the room until he zeroed in on the walker.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Soon I’ll be graduating from an invalid to an old lady.”
Marcus didn’t say anything and then, quietly, he reached into his messenger bag. “I brought you something.”
“If it’s pain pills I’m already stocked.”
“Then you can share with me. And I’ll share this with you.” Marcus pulled out two DVDs.
“We’re having a movie night?”
“I’ll be with Zach tonight but don’t let my absence stop you. It’s Wild at Heart and Grindhouse.”
Dena immediately perked up. “David Lynch and Tarantino?”
“I know they’re your boys,” Marcus said as he examined the cover of Wild at Heart. “I also know that two of the all-time sexiest female characters ever conceived were in these movies.”
“Laura Dern?” Dena asked and made a face to show how she felt about that opinion.
“No, silly, though I did love all that hair acting.” He moved his hands around his head as if he was pulling on long strands of hair. “This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top,” he intoned in a pitch-perfect falsetto Southern accent. “But no,” he said, slipping back to his normal voice. “The sexy woman in this movie was Isabella Rossellini.”
Dena snapped her fingers in the air as the memory came back to her. “With the blond hair and the thick eyebrows. Yeah, she rocked that part.”
“Mmm, she did. Every kinky little straight boy left the theater wanting to do her and every kinky little gay guy wanted to be her. And you know what really made her hot?”
“Her attitude?” Dena guessed.
“Her cane.”
Dena hesitated. “I forgot about that.”
“Did you, now? I didn’t.” This time he held up Grindhouse. There was a woman on the cover with one leg that had been replaced by a machine gun.
“Give me a break,” Dena spat. “He replaced her prosthetic leg with a semi-automatic weapon. That’s a little different than toddling around with a walker.”
“Honey, that woman could have been sexy if they used a giant cucumber as her prosthetic. Everything about her screamed sexpot from hell, kind of like you.”
Dena bit back a smile. “You saying I’m a sexpot from hell?”
“Straight from the fire pit. You were born to lead men into the path of sinful temptation, sweetie, and now that you have this little limp thing going for you? Honey, you’re going to bring them to their knees.”
“Have it going for me? Like this is some kind of friggin’ gift?”
“Only if you treat it that way.” He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “I believe you’re the girl who makes a living by making the bizarre sexual. Rubber ducky vibrators? Flexi Felix the anal toy? These things should not be hot. And yet by the time each one of your customers leaves your store they are all having their own little Flexi and/or ducky fantasies. I can’t wait to see what you do with a walker.”
Mary Ann’s cheeks were now bright red and she turned around in a feeble attempt to hide them. But Dena wasn’t paying attention to Mary Ann. She was staring at the DVDs as though they were some kind of exotic, previously unknown treasure. She looked up from the cover and made eye contact with me.
“Did you have anything to do with this?”
I shook my head. “I wish I had but this is all Marcus.”
Dena lowered her eyes again. “I want to buy into this. I want to feel sexy again. My sexuality…it’s part of who I am. Without it I can’t be whole, you know?”
“Oh, Dena, you’ll always be sexy!” Mary Ann burst out.
“Really?” Dena’s Sicilian eyebrows rushed together in a scowl. “This from the woman who is trying to force me to wear peach!”
Marcus sucked in a sharp breath and his hand fluttered to his heart. “Oh, honey, no.” He leaned forward and looked imploringly at Mary Ann. “Not really.”
“Peach is Monty’s grandmother’s nickname,” Mary Ann said, a touch of annoyance coloring her voice. “We’re trying to honor her.”
“Then buy up some rain forest in her name or perhaps you can serve some raw salmon at the reception…that’s almost peach,” Marcus noted. “But don’t make your bridesmaids wear peach. Cruel and unusual punishment is still illegal after all.”
Mary Ann stomped her foot against my hardwood floor. “Everybody is being so mean about this! It’s my wedding and if I say I want to have a Cinderella coach and a princess gown, white roses sprinkled with glitter and a bunch of Disney characters leading guests onto the dance floor then I’ll have it! It’s my special day, damn it!”
Marcus, Dena and I all looked at each other. Slowly Marcus leaned back into the cushions. “Darling, that was such a fabulous bridezilla moment you had there. Keep that up and we could make a fabulous little reality television show out of your life.”
Dena smiled slightly but her attention was back on the DVDs. “Isabella really did rock that cane, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Marcus agreed.
Dena’s smile got a little wider. “I’m hotter than Isabella.”
“Honey, she doesn’t hold a candle.”
Mr. Katz entered the room again and peered at Dena. He apparently decided that she no longer looked predatory and this time didn’t immediately make a run for it.
Marcus casually glanced at his watch. “Jason will be back in not too long and if you look in your suitcase you’ll see I packed you your leather baby-doll negligee.”
“You have a leather baby-doll negligee?” I asked. I tried to imagine what that was, but the image wasn’t forthcoming.
Dena’s smile had moved into Cheshire cat territory. “You want to help me change, Marcus?” she asked. “Jason’s going to all this trouble to bring me my…um…Red Devil. I want to be sure I greet him properly when he gets here.”
I took a deep breath. “Mary Ann, would you like to go out for a late lunch?”
“Yes,” Mary Ann said quickly. “Can we go right now?”
I got to my feet. “Marcus, you’ll stay until Jason gets here?”
“But of course.” He pulled lazily at one of his well-groomed locks. “I’m supposed to pick up Zach when he’s done singing the blues at his weekly therapy session but that won’t be for another hour. Jason will be in…with Dena by then.”
“Wow, you’re just full of good deeds today, aren’t you?”
“What can I say? I’m a giver.”
I giggled and went to the dining room where I had left my handbag. Under normal circumstances convincing a woman to put on a leather baby-doll wouldn’t qualify as a good deed but in this case it definitely did.
Mary Ann and I decided to go to a small café only a few blocks from my home. We sat on the patio and Mary Ann was holding her cardigan together at the neck as if she was cold although she hadn’t bothered to button it. “Do you think what Marcus said helped?” she asked after the waiter walked away with our order. “Do think Dena really heard him?”
“Yes, she heard.” I was sure I was speaking the truth although not necessarily the whole truth. My fear was that while Dena had heard Marcus’s message the impact of his words might not endure the challenges ahead. What if Jason came home and Dena found that her attempts at seductions were more clumsy, less effective and perhaps even less satisfying? What if the sex itself didn’t live up to her expectations? What if it hurt? Such setbacks would devastate her. She could lose her motivation, not just for sex but for walking and for…well, for everything.
I took a sip of my water and the table wobbled slightly as I put my glass down again. The table hadn’t been placed on an entirely flat surface. Nothing about my life seemed to be stable these days.
Mary Ann used her free hand to toy with the straw sticking out of her glass of Pepsi. “Do you think having Kim home will help her?” she asked. “She spoke to him again this morning and he says he’s going to be back by tomorrow night.”
“Maybe I—”
“Excuse me.” I looked up to see a man with blond hair and brown roots standing over our table. “I just have to ask you…has anyone ever told you that you look like Alicia Keys?”
“No,” I said in mock surprise. “What is it about me that reminds you of Alicia?”
“Well,” he said as he flashed me a mouthful of obviously whitened teeth, “you’re both extremely hot.”
“That is so sweet!” I turned to Mary Ann. “Isn’t that sweet?”
Mary Ann gave me a funny look. She knew I was messing with him but she didn’t know what tack I was going to take.
“But there are lots of hot celebrities,” I went on. “Why didn’t you say I reminded you of Keri Russell or Minnie Driver? Their hair is a little bit more like mine than Alicia’s.”
“Um…”
“But maybe it’s not the hair. Body type perhaps? No, that can’t be it, we have very different body types…perhaps it’s our facial features? Oh, that’s right, our facial features are totally different, aren’t they?”
A cloud passed over the lowering sun and our visitor glanced around nervously in hope of escape.
“So what is it about me that specifically reminds you of Alicia Keys?” I cooed. “Perhaps in your haste to pick me up you decided to compare me to the first light-skinned Black female celebrity you could come up with?”
“I think I gotta go,” he said. He turned and wove his way through the tables as he hurried toward the exit.
“You’re so mean.” Mary Ann giggled.
“I just get tired of being compared to any celebrity that has my skin tone,” I said mildly.
“You know, Kim complains about the same thing. He says that before he turned twenty-one all he had to do was borrow the license of any Eurasian and he could get into all the clubs. He said everybody just thinks they all look alike even though they totally don’t.”
I nodded and brushed aside a fly that was trying to land on my fork. “I did the same thing when I was under twenty-one. As long as the driver’s license picture was of a light-skinned Black woman or a Latina for that matter, no one questioned me…not even the cops. I bet I could even fool those guys at the airport…” My voice trailed off. Kim could probably fool the guys at the airport, too, if he wanted to. He could have given his ticket to any man who looked even a little bit like him. Would the security really question his identity? Probably not. Who looked like their driver’s license picture anyway?
I scooted my chair closer to the table. “Are things okay between Dena and Kim?”
“I think so, yes.” Mary Ann paused as a busboy brought us a basket of bread before continuing. “He thinks Dena’s the best and she…um…okay, she doesn’t love-him love him. Not the way she loves Jason anyway but she seems to like him a lot.”
“She likes him,” I repeated. It’s not that I hadn’t realized that Dena cared more for Jason than for Kim but I had never really thought about it before. Furthermore Kim had never been good at picking up on emotional subtlety. Did he realize his place in the pecking order? If he did was he angry about it?
“Mmm-hmm, she says he has a really big…well, you know.” Mary Ann’s cheeks colored as she broke the tip off a soft breadstick.
“Does Kim know that Dena likes Jason more than she likes him?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s very smart.”
That was quite an insult coming from Mary Ann. But I had known lots of people who had convincingly played dumb for their own purposes. Could Kim be one of those people? Perhaps…no. What were the chances that Kim would find a Eurasian guy willing to switch identities with him? And that’s exactly what would have had to have happened. Someone would have had to use Kim’s passport to take a flight before the shooting and Kim would have had to use the other person’s passport to take a flight after the shooting. Double the risk. If anyone got caught doing something like that they’d have to do so knowing that they could end up in one of our illustrious penitentiaries if they were lucky and a Nicaraguan jail if they weren’t. Kim never struck me as a risk taker. No, he wouldn’t do it. He was every bit as innocent as Amelia. He had to be.
“I haven’t spent as much time with Kim as I have with Amelia and Jason,” I said softly. “But he does seem nice. You think he’s nice, right?” I looked up at Mary Ann hoping to see confirmation in her eyes. But what I saw was the building of panic. And she wasn’t looking at me but past me. I turned around to see what had changed.
Rick Wilkes was coming toward our table. He was dressed in one of his suits but it was wrinkled, so wrinkled it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had slept in it. His tie was askew and his hair mused.
He looked insane.
When he reached us he offered Mary Ann his hand and a manic smile. “What a coincidence!” he bellowed. A couple of the people at nearby tables looked over at us. His voice was too loud and exaggerated in his cheerfulness. Mary Ann stared at his hand as if it was the mouth of a cobra.
“A coincidence?” I repeated. “You expect us to believe that you just happened to come to this café less than twenty minutes after we arrived? A café that is nowhere near your home or anywhere you would need to be?”
Rick turned to me, his smile unmoving but his eyes hard. “You have such a suspicious nature,” he said. “But then perhaps you’re right and it’s not a coincidence at all. Perhaps it’s fate.” He turned back to Mary Ann. “Do you think it’s fate?”
“No.” Mary Ann’s voice was both small and tremulous. “I don’t think this is fate, Rick, and I…oh, this isn’t a coincidence either, is it, Rick? You’re following me? Why would you do that?”
For the first time Rick’s smile seemed to waver. He reached out both hands to Mary Ann as if in silent entreaty and then as if recognizing the melodramatic nature of the gesture quickly pulled them back and stuffed his fists inside the pockets of his trousers. “I had to apologize,” he said quietly.
“But you have!” Mary Ann cried. A busboy with a pitcher of water approached us only to turn on his heel the moment he was close enough to pick up on the hostile energy emanating from our table. “You keep saying you’re sorry, over and over again but you don’t go away!” Mary Ann continued. “And now you’re following me and you’re all…messy! You know that messy-looking people make me nervous, Rick!”
“Darling, no!’ Rick gasped. “Please…please don’t let the wrinkles in my suit scare you. I’ve been in the car for a while and this fabric…well, it’s expensive but very light. Perhaps I should have worn something in a polyester blend but I just didn’t think!”
I cocked my head to the side. “Do you really think that’s the problem here? That you chose to stalk her while wearing natural fibers?”
“I’m not stalking her!” He glanced to both his right and his left, checking to make sure no one had heard my accusation. “All right, I did follow you but only because I know how inappropriate my last visit to your house was and I had to explain. Please let me say my piece and I’ll go away immediately. You’ll let me do that, won’t you, Mary Ann?”
“Wait, let me get this straight,” I said. “You followed her from her fiancé’s house to the hospital, to my house, to here, all so you could find a way to justify your last intrusion? Do you see any irony in that?”
“No! I would never do all that!” He wouldn’t look at me now, only at Mary Ann. “I was nowhere near Monty’s house today! I went to the hospital hoping that you might be there and when I spotted you leaving with Dena then I followed you to Sophie’s and then to here. Just a couple of places—that’s all! And it wasn’t planned! I swear!” He reached out for Mary Ann again but she drew back so quickly she accidently knocked her butter knife off the table. It hit the paved ground with a high-pitched clang.
“I am scaring you, aren’t I?” he asked. He took a small step back. “I never wanted to do that. I’m…I’m so sorry.” He bent down and picked up Mary Ann’s knife and put it on the edge of the table. “I won’t bother you again, I promise.”
Rick turned and began to walk away. Mary Ann let her fingers rest on the retrieved knife. “Rick, wait.”
She had said it so quietly I doubted he would be able to hear her but he stopped, slowly turned around and came back. Now he was the one who looked nervous. Nervous and horribly sad.
“What did you come here to say?” Mary Ann asked.
He stared at her for a beat and then in a low, pained voice he answered. “I shouldn’t have come to Monty’s with Fawn. That was insensitive. And I shouldn’t have asked for your friendship because I don’t deserve it.”
“You got that right,” I muttered but Mary Ann shot me a pleading look and I pressed my lips together forcing myself into silence.
“For almost a year now I’ve lived in hope that you would find it in your heart to forgive me and take me back and yet I was so weak. So weak that I wasn’t even willing to let go of Fawn! I just couldn’t be alone with my guilt. I didn’t want to be alone because I knew if I was I’d have time to really think about everything I lost when I betrayed you.”
“Rick—” Mary Ann began but he held up his hand to stop her.
“If I had really been ready to repent then I would have allowed myself to suffer alone. My loneliness was supposed to be my penance, but I wasn’t man enough to accept that.”
Mary Ann blinked rapidly and looked away.
“I want you to know that I broke up with Fawn,” he continued. “We’re over.”
Mary Ann tried to speak and again Rick interrupted her.
“You don’t have to say it. I know you’re never coming back to me. I know you are in…in love with another man.” He put his hand to his throat as if the words had been physically painful to produce. “I just want you to know that I’m going to pay my penance now. And although I’ll never have another chance with you I can at least promise you…and myself…that I will never treat love so casually and…and cruelly again.”
This time Mary Ann didn’t try to speak. I waited for a moment and then put my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my hands. “Wow,” I said. “How long have you been practicing that speech?”
“Sophie,” Mary Ann hissed.
I looked at her at first confused, then startled and finally enraged. She couldn’t possibly be buying this! He had been stalking her! It was entirely possible that he had shot at her and her cousin! And now he showed up with some lame-ass apology and we were all supposed to be nice to him? Forget that!
I shifted my body in my chair so that I was facing him. “It was a pretty speech and you have clearly moved Mary Ann but I’m not buying it. I don’t think you’re sorry. I don’t think you have any intention of paying a penance. What I think is that you want to hurt everyone who’s hurt you.”
Rick’s face was completely impassive. His hands were still at his sides, but his right foot began to tap and the sole of his shoe beat out a slow but quickening rhythm against the cement.
“You’re an obsessed, jilted ex-lover,” I said. “A stalker…maybe worse.”
“Worse?” Rick’s voice was steady but his foot continued to tap faster and faster.
“Yes. We all know that you cheated on Mary Ann but I seriously doubt that’s the worst of it.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rick wasn’t meeting my eyes anymore. “If you think there were others beside Fawn…”
“Oh, Rick!” Mary Ann cried.
“Listen to me.” I stood up. There was about half a foot between Rick and me now and I had to crane my neck to look at him. But I wasn’t intimidated. His tapping foot and the beads of sweat forming along his hairline made it clear that I was the one with the upper hand. “You will pay a penance for what you’ve done but it won’t be voluntary. We know who and what you are now and it is in your best interest to back the fuck off!”
Now the people at the other tables were looking at us again. A chorus of excited whispers rose around me and the tap of Rick’s shoe was keeping time with my racing heart. All my vague suspicions about Rick were now very clear and acute. From the corner of my eye I could see that Mary Ann was crying into her napkin, but I couldn’t tend to her now because if I moved, if I so much as lifted my hand I’d punch Rick. Punch him harder than I had punched Chrissie and furthermore I wouldn’t be able to stop punching him. If I could only keep completely still until Rick slunk out of here…if I could only keep myself from pummeling him in front of a restaurant full of people…
Rick finally looked in my eyes. He must have seen the hate. He then glanced at the weeping Mary Ann and backed away then turned around and walked out of the restaurant at the exact same time as the restaurant’s manager came rushing out to see what the commotion was about.
“Is everything all right?” the manager asked as she turned to watch Rick leave.
“It’s fine,” I said in a voice that was much calmer than I felt. “He was an ex-boyfriend who wanted to cause problems but he won’t be back.” I felt my violent impulses slipping away and I went to Mary Ann and gently stroked her hair. “His name is Rick Wilkes,” I said to the manager. “We think he may be stalking her. If we need to get a restraining order we might need you to testify to the fact that he showed up here after we arrived and caused a scene. Can we count on you for that?”
The manager nodded and Mary Ann started crying harder.