HAVING SURVIVED A SEVENTEEN-HOUR trip, two plane changes, and one rambunctious five-year-old who for the entire last leg of the flight used the back of my seat as a battering ram, I’m grateful to be touching down in Hawaii, even if our jumbo jet does land perilously close to the end of the runway.
“Wow!” the five-year-old shrieks with delight as the plane comes to a screeching halt. “Can we do that again?”
I’m as white as a sheet and my matted airplane hair is in serious need of an untangling product that has yet to be invented. Still, I’ve avoided major tragedy—we didn’t crash, I didn’t get a blood clot (I popped up and down so many times to pace the aisle I practically could have walked to Hawaii), and despite feeling occasionally homicidal toward him, I didn’t kill the boy sitting behind me. Though I did scold his mother.
“You know with those manners he’ll never get into Harvard,” I’d said primly. Of course for all I know the kid with the Michael Phelps kick is a legacy.
Now that we’re no longer in the air and there’s no chance that my $150 cellphone will screw up the workings of the $150-million plane, I turn it back on to check my calls. Nothing from Peter, but I’m buoyed by the inspirational messages from Sienna, who tells me, “Kick Tiffany’s ass!,” and Naomi, who reminds me that “You’re a Finklestein, you can do anything you set your mind to. Also, you shouldn’t forget to call Jeff Whitman.”
Jeff Whitman—that’s Naomi’s mystery man. I finger the envelope with his contact information, which Naomi stuffed into my purse for safekeeping. “Just call him,” Naomi had said when I pressed her for details. “If I say anything more it’ll ruin the plan.”
The five-year-old, pulling his mother’s arm, runs past me as I shuttle off the plane. So few people check their luggage these days that I get my bag in no time and go off in search of a restroom. I readily find the men’s room, but it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that the lettering on the door next to it is missing a “W.” I reach for the knob and laugh. The first place I’m visiting in Hawaii is the omen’s room, which I hope is a good sign.
Inside, I splash some water on my face and reach into my makeup bag to pull out an arsenal of three-ounce-tubes—an unexpected plus of the security rules forbidding taking larger bottles of liquids on planes is that I raided department store beauty counters for samples and got all my favorite products for free. Time-arresting, lineless, poreless, flawless potions vie for the chance to save my skin and I dab on some undereye cream, two moisturizers, and a large dollop of sunscreen—eschewing the grander-sounding “70” and “80” for a 30 UV SPF because anything higher offers less than 1 percent more protection and needs to be applied about ten times more frequently. Finally ready, I put on my tortoise-framed sunglasses and step outside into the beautiful sunshine where, just as I expected from all of pictures I’ve ever seen, dozens of Hawaiian greeters are waiting to bestow flowery leis on new arrivees. Fortified by the festive atmosphere, I line up behind a group of fellow tourists.
“Nice custom, isn’t it?” I say pleasantly to a balding, sixty-something man who’s already changed into a Hawaiian shirt. I’m so used to the luxury of casual conversation—between my family and Sienna there’s always someone around to exchange mindless banter with—that after my long solo flight I’m chat-deprived. “You know the Hawaiians say ‘aloha’ for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ Just like ‘shalom.’ ”
Before he has a chance to even open his mouth, the woman in a bright blue flowered muumuu standing next to him spins around.
“ ‘Shalom,’ is it? Stop hitting on my Harry!”
I point to my wedding ring to assure her she has nothing to worry about. “I was just making conversation. I had a fight with my husband and I came to Hawaii to make sure his beautiful lady boss isn’t putting the moves on him.”
“Well, don’t you go thinking you can replace your husband with mine,” she warns, still suspicious.
Harry leans in to whisper something in her ear. “Oh Harry!” She blushes. Then she turns to me. “Sorry, honey, it’s just that a wife has to keep an eye on her man. Not that my Harry would ever stray on his own, but look at that John Edwards fellow. That little homewrecker came along and seduced him, then she had his baby! How dare she say that to a married man, ‘You’re so hot!’ ”
Unless “the little homewrecker” incanted her spell while casting a fishing line onto the zipper of Edwards’s pants, I don’t think she deserves all the blame. Still, I know what Harry’s wife means about the lure of temptation. Particularly five-foot-six, creamy-skinned, blond-bombshell temptation. Which is after all why I’m here.
“I’m Elaine,” says Harry’s wife. “And shalom to you, too. My Jewish grandmother told me it also means ‘peace.’ ” Midwest Elaine has a Jewish grandmother? You just never know about people, I laugh to myself. Or, as it turns out, customs.
Harry and Elaine step up to get their leis and the greeter drapes a pretty strand of flowers around each of their necks.
“I’d like the double row of orchids,” I say, pointing to a luscious white-and-purple necklace.
A look of dismay crosses the greeter’s face as he scans a list of names. “No, no Tru Newman,” he says. “Sorry, lady.”
“That’s okay, a single strand of carnations and shells looks fine,” I say, downgrading my expectations. But still no dice.
Harry reaches into his wallet and hands the greeter his credit card. The flowers, it turns out, aren’t free. I wonder what other surprises await me in Hawaii. Now that I’m within spitting—or hopefully kissing—distance of Peter, I cross my fingers and say a little prayer that he’s as happy to see me as I know I will be to see him. What husband wouldn’t be touched that his wife flew 5,000 miles to surprise him? I won’t even let myself consider an answer like “A husband who’s still angry.”
Elaine smiles and adjusts my lei so that, island-style, the fragrant flowers are equidistant front and back. “Welcome to Hawaii,” my new friends say, as I get into a taxi. “Go get your fella.”
IT’S NOT UNTIL I’m in the cab careening toward the hotel that my stomach starts doing cartwheels. We barrel past a skyline of skyscrapers that might lead me to believe I was still in New York if it wasn’t for the idyllic stretch of sandy beach and the emerald ocean that seemed fashioned by a different creator than the one who made Coney Island. Dramatic peaks rise out of a lush mountainside and the driver points out Diamond Head off in the distance. “The world’s most famous volcanic crater,” he says proudly.
No, it’s not, I think, clutching my stomach, which is churning 2,000 rpms with the intensity of a high-powered washing machine. Mercifully, just as I’m considering asking the driver to pull over, we arrive at the hotel. I pull my luggage up the steps and stumble into the lobby, where the very first thing I bump into is Tiffany Glass. A life-sized cutout of Tiffany, anyway, holding a BUBB compact in one hand and powdering her cheek with the other. She’s wearing a bikini and a bubble coming out of her head invites customers to sign up for free consultations. “Bubblehead,” I mutter, slapping past the sign and smack into a concierge. My luggage goes skating across the lobby and the entire contents of my purse empty onto the marble floor. I’m bending over to pick up a good luck tiger’s-eye charm and a tube of Frizz-Ease (which I’d hoped would tame my hair in the tropical humidity) when I feel my knees buckle.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the concierge asks, holding out his hand to steady me.
“I’m Tru Newman, Peter, my husband, his room …” The lobby whirs around me. Then suddenly I feel another sharp cramp in my stomach as I faint to the floor and land on top of my suitcase.
“FLU,” SAYS A MAN whom I can only hope is a doctor. He’s wearing shorts, sandals, and a red-striped polo shirt, but he does have a stethoscope and he seems to be writing a prescription. “In twenty-four hours you’ll feel like new. Or at least as good as your old self.” He chuckles.
“Oh thank goodness, darling, I was so worried,” Peter says, rushing across the bedroom to take my hand. Except that as he approaches my bedside I realize that the tall, silver-haired, deeply tanned man isn’t Peter.
“Who, what …?”
“Confusion, perfectly normal with her fever,” the sandal wearer says as he walks toward the door. “I’ll be on the golf course if you need anything.” The second stranger thanks him for coming and promises that I’ll get plenty of rest and fluids.
I struggle to sit up and take in the scene. The room, which is about four times the size of my bedroom at home, is decorated in soothing shades of cream and blue, and through the floor-to-ceiling-windows I see an oversized lanai and a stretch of ocean dotted by white sails. But who’s the mystery man and how did I get here? Images from an endless parade of movies-of-the-week swirl before my eyes—movies in which an unsuspecting heroine puts down a soda can at a frat party and damn if before you can say “Diet Pepsi,” she isn’t immediately drugged and date raped. Still, I don’t think that any of those heroines were tucked into a cozy carved cherrywood bed or attended to by a guy solicitously pouring her a tall glass of Gatorade.
“You need your rest now,” says the attractive-as-Harrison-Ford fellow, urging me to lie back on the pillows that he’s freshly plumped. “By the way, I’m Jeff Whitman.”
“Jeff Whitman. Naomi’s Jeff Whitman?” I say with a start.
“The very same.”
“But how?”
“The concierge took you to your husband’s room, but Peter’s away until tomorrow, working on another island. Then the concierge saw the envelope in your purse that had my name and number on it so he phoned me. Get some rest, Tru,” Jeff says, patting my hand. “We’ll talk about it more in the morning.”
“Okay, Jeff Whitman, I think I’ll get some sleep now,” I say, sinking into the pillows as instructed, way too tired to resist. “By the way, how do you know my mother?”
“Ah Naomi.” Jeff Whitman sighs wistfully as he drapes the top sheet over me and turns down the bedside light. “She was my first love.”
IN THE MORNING, I awaken to a stream of bright sunshine pouring through the window and Jeff Whitman asleep, his six-foot frame sprawled awkwardly over the rattan chair just a few feet away from my bed. The doctor was right; except for the unsteady-on-your-feet feeling of having been in bed for almost twenty-four hours, I’m feeling much better. I’m wrapped in a hotel robe that I remember stumbling into sometime in the middle of the night, but now, I slip out of bed to find something more appropriate to wear. I check my suitcase, which is empty. Guessing that Jeff or someone from the hotel has helpfully unpacked for me, I fling open the closet looking for a sundress or maybe a pair of shorts—but all I see are the purple body-hugging knockoff Versace cocktail dress I wore to Lincoln Center, my tightest white jeans, and assorted rainbow-colored miniskirts and a see-through leopard-print blouse, which I’ve never laid eyes on before and that still have tags on them. The loose hoodie and sweatpants I wore on the plane are nowhere to be found, and the drawers are filled with sexy lingerie and only my skimpiest bathing suits. A quick check of the shoe tree tells me that yup, I have the requisite twenty pairs, but there’s not a sneaker or a flip-flop in sight.
“That’s what I get for letting my mother pack.” I laugh, pulling out a stretchy baby-sized tee and a bright orange mini, wondering how I’m going to get through the next few days dressed as Charo.
Jeff Whitman lets out a sigh, and I see him flopping around trying to find a way to make himself comfortable in the chair, which is about two sizes too small for his body.
“Jeff,” I say gently, shaking his arm. “I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you move to the bed, you’ll be more comfy.”
Half-asleep, Jeff thanks me and takes me up on my offer. I’ve just started running the water when I hear the door swing open and the thump of a bag landing on the polished stone floor.
“Peter!” I say, running out to greet my husband. And then before he has a chance to think or react or know what hit him, I pull him toward me and kiss him like there’s no tomorrow.
“Peter, I’ve missed you, I love you, I don’t care that you didn’t tell me about your job, and I hope you can forgive me for not telling you about mine. I want to, I will, I’m going to tell you everything. No more secrets, just like you said. But I’m not going to let the last few months wreck twenty years,” I say determinedly, stepping back and finally coming up for air.
Peter reaches for me and runs his hands across my body, as if he’s reacquainting himself with a familiar landscape, or he just wants to make sure that I’m really here in the flesh.
“I love you too, Tru,” he says. “I’ve missed you like crazy. All this fighting—I’ve been trying to make sense of it.”
“Maybe it’s because we’re in the adolescence of our marriage.”
Peter looks at me quizzically.
“Oh, I just read that on the plane in one of Naomi’s magazines. How somewhere around the midpoint of a long marriage, people push and poke at each other, testing, just like a teenager does with his parents.”
“But teenagers are getting ready to leave,” says Peter, wrapping his arms around me even more tightly. “And I’m not going anywhere. Not if you’ll have me.”
“I’ll have you and have you and have you,” I laugh, reaching up for Peter’s lips.
We still have a lot of things left to say, but we’ve said the most important. I let the robe slip off my shoulders and Peter lifts me in his arms with the eagerness of a groom. We’re kissing and cooing when my handsome husband bends over the side of the bed to set me down and we hear a thwack.
“Oooh,” Jeff Whitman moans as I hit him like a sack of potatoes. I quickly pull the sheet around my body to protect whatever modicum of modesty I have left. Jeff instantly recoups his savoir faire and plants a big smile on his face. Then, as he’s sitting cozily next to me in bed, I feel his arm reaching around my shoulder.
“Stop that,” I say, lightly smacking his fingers.
“What’s going on? Who is this man?” Peter demands as hurt, confusion, and anger flash across his face.
Jeff Whitman, on the other hand, looks merely amused. “I was just going to ask the same question, darling. Who is this man? Is this the husband?” Jeff asks in a tone that suggests that whoever “this man” is he’s no more an important figure in my life than the toll taker I see from time to time on my drive up to Woodbury Commons.
Jeff swings his legs over the side of the bed and faces off with Peter.
“Peter, sweetheart, there’s a simple explanation,” I say.
“That’s right,” says Jeff Whitman, reaching for my hand. “I’m in love with your wife.”
“I thought you were in love with my mother!” I protest.
“That was then, this is now. Peter, I’m in love with your wife.”
“What the fuck?” mutters Peter.
“Jeff, are you crazy? You sound just like Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. Your mother, your wife. Are you going to make me slap you?” I ask, remembering how Jack Nicholson got Faye’s character in the movie to make up her mind. Then I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the whole scene.
Peter takes a step closer to Jeff to try to get to the bottom of things. He fastens his hand under Jeff’s chin and pivots it from side to side. “He does look a little old for you.”
“I am neither too young nor too old,” Jeff exclaims. “I was in love with the mother and now I am in love with the daughter. It is a perfectly natural situation.”
“Perfectly natural if you’re French,” Peter says.
“I am half-French,” Jeff parries.
“Gentlemen, please. This isn’t about your heritage, it’s about my future. Peter, I love you. I came out here to make up, I got the flu, the concierge let me into your room, and he found a piece of paper with Jeff’s name and phone number on it in my purse. Naomi masterminded this whole fiasco. My guess is she wanted to make you jealous. Help me out here, Jeff. Am I on the right track?”
“Yes, my darling, you’re absolutely correct! My job was to bring you two back together, and I can see that I’ve done that,” Jeff says, missing the point that this half-baked scheme might just as easily have wrecked everything. He leans in to kiss me on both cheeks, “the French way.” Then he pats Peter on the back and hangs the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob as he makes his exit. “Ah, amour. I envy you two lovebirds the making up. You are about to have the most wonderful, wonderful sex.”
JEFF MIGHT NOT have had the right idea about how to bring us back together, but he was 110 percent on the money about makeup sex. Peter and I spend the next few hours in bed kissing and caressing, teasing and pleasing each other with an intensity that makes me understand what people mean when they say that the earth moved or “I felt liked we merged into one person”—empty-sounding clichés until they happen to you. Despite the air-conditioning and the whirring overhead fan, Peter and I are drenched in a pleasant shared sweat that makes our smells and our bodies indistinguishable from each other’s.
“I can’t move.” Peter chuckles as he strokes my salty skin.
“I think we’re going to have to.” I nibble at the tip of his finger. “I’m starving.”
“Oh, Mrs. Newman,” Peter sighs, turning to face me and pretending to feed me his entire hand. “You are so sexy when you’re hungry.”
“And you’re so corny,” I say with a giggle.
“I know, just one of my many lovable qualities.” Peter pauses. “I do still have some lovable qualities, right? Tell me I haven’t ruined things completely, it must mean something that you’re here?”
I look at my husband, really look at him. How could he ever imagine that I’d want to be anywhere but with him? If anyone had asked me six months ago which one of us was the vulnerable one, I would have had to say me. Still, I’ve changed in these last few months; I’ve had to. The old Tru wouldn’t have had the nerve to come down here after Peter or to start the Veronica Agency, but after everything that’s happened I’ve learned you have to fight to keep the things that are important. And truth be told, I was probably never the hothouse flower that either of us made me out to be. Just as Peter is more, much more, than the I’ll-take-care-of-everything Wall Street banker. Molly could see that her father was the kind of man a girl should marry—even if she was momentarily sidetracked by that smarmy Brandon. And like daughter, like mother.
“Sweetheart, how can you even think you have to ask?” I say, leaning in to kiss him.
“We can live in SoHo or eat peas out of a can,” Peter says, remembering our disastrous dinner at the Hudson Cafeteria when I accused him of not letting me make decisions. “I want us to make a fresh start.”
“I like our home just fine,” I say. “I’m just grateful that we’re going to be able to stay there.”
“Me too,” says Peter, relieved by my reassurances that I’m in this for the long run. Marriage, mortgage, mistakes, and—knock wood—many more happy years together. He playfully pats my backside. “Okay, you, let’s get that lunch. Unless,” he says, in the spirit of not forcing me to do anything I don’t want to, “you’d rather stay here.”
“No, I’m famished,” I say. “But if we’re going to make a fresh start, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“About your business, the one you started with Sienna, and that woman we ran into … what was her name?”
“Georgy.”
“Right,” says Peter, standing up to put on a pair of khaki shorts that I swear he’s had since college. Then he pulls on a blue oxford shirt that’s the same color as his eyes. “What an idiot I was to be so upset because you hadn’t told me about it. But don’t worry, sweetheart, Paige and Molly explained everything.”
“They did?” I ask, alarmed.
“They said you’d opened a temp agency but you didn’t want to tell me about it until you were sure it would be a success. It was the morning I went into their room to kiss them goodbye before Tiffany and I left for Hawaii. Shit, Tiffany!” Peter cries, echoing the first word that comes to my mind when I think of his vixenish boss. He looks at his watch and scowls. “Tru, sweetheart, I’m sorry, Tiffany’s waiting, I was supposed to be at a meeting on the beach half an hour ago, it’s with the head cosmetics buyer for the largest department store chain in Hawaii. I’ll make it up to you, I’ll … come with me!” he says, pulling me toward the door.
I look down at my robe and tell Peter to go ahead. “I’ll be down in a minute. I just have to get dressed. And by the way,” I call after him as he’s hurrying off to his appointment, “it’s not exactly a temp agency. Sienna and Bill and I are running an escort service. For high-class courtesans. And they’re all over forty.”
Peter spins around and his jaw drops open. “What the hell? No wonder you didn’t want to tell me where you were sneaking off to, I … I have to go, is what I have to do,” Peter says, stabbing a finger at his Timex. “Besides, I wouldn’t have a clue what to say to you now, anyway.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER I’ve summoned my courage to stuff myself into one of Naomi’s postage-sized outfits—and to face Peter. As if there aren’t enough crazy things going on at the moment, when Peter had said that their meeting was at the beach he neglected to add that we wouldn’t be sitting around a table, we’d each be sitting on one. Who else but Tiffany Glass would do business with a big-shot client while the group of us has massages?
“Why, Tru, how sweet to see you. Peter said you were here. The little wife coming down to check up on her husband?” Tiffany squawks as she rolls over on her massage table, which is lined up in tandem with three others. The sky is a cloudless blue, yellow trumpet-shaped hibiscus dot the screened-off-for-privacy beach area, and the pink sand beneath my feet is as fine as powdered sugar. The only sour note is the tiki torches—a little touristy and frankly they remind me of Survivor. I only hope I’m not voted off the island.
Peter emerges from a thatched-roof hut with a sheet wrapped around him. He looks at me searchingly. I can’t tell if he’s just surprised and confused or really angry. Peter grips his hand firmly around mine and pulls me toward Tiffany. “Tru and I are going to go down the beach a little ways. Give us ten minutes,” he says.
We walk at a clipped pace, past languid sunbathers and a group of children building sandcastles with the intensity of future I.M. Pei’s. “They remind me of Paige and Molly,” I say, conjuring up memories of our family in calmer times.
Peter nods. Then he kicks the sand. “I’m trying to understand, Tru. Really. But if we’re talking about Paige and Molly … isn’t what you’re doing illegal? Couldn’t you get into a lot of trouble?”
“Bill’s set up the business so that no one will know what we’re up to. We’re incorporated as a temporary help agency and we even pay our taxes,” I say, repeating the line I always tell myself when I wonder if we’re doing anything wrong. I just pray that Bill is right and that that miserable S.O.B. of a D.A. Colin Marsh isn’t onto us. Still, right now I have more immediate worries.
“Do you hate me?” I ask haltingly.
“I could never hate you. It’s just that … an escort agency?” Peter pauses. “The night I ran into you at Lincoln Center, when you said you were on a date …”
“Oh no. No! I run the agency. That night? Bill’s friend just needed someone to go with him to a party, to impress his boss. No sex, no touching, nada, zip, nothing, no physical contact at all. And it was only that one night, usually I never even meet the Johns.”
“The Johns?” Peter repeats.
“The men. The very nice men, who are all Bill’s friends, whom we set the women up with. And I got five thousand dollars for just being charming,” I say with a hint of pride. “Well, I would have, if I had stuck around.”
Peter stands there silently for what seems like an eternity.
“I should have told you,” I say, reaching out for his hand.
“I need to figure out how I feel about all this,” Peter says, squeezing my fingers, and then letting them go.
A well-built man who I recognize as one of the masseurs comes up behind us and puts his arms around our shoulders. “Feel, schmeal. No time for talk. Time for Lomi Lomi.”
Peter seems relieved for the interruption.
“We’ll talk later,” Peter says hastily, walking a few paces ahead of me. Then, wordlessly, the masseur ushers us back to the massage area and I duck into the thatched hut to change out of my clothes.
I CLIMB ONTO the massage table a few minutes later feeling vulnerable, and it’s not just because I’m naked under a flimsy sheet. When I reach out to touch Peter, he turns away. Peter’s table is sandwiched between mine and Tiffany’s. And I see, with a start, that while I was undressing, their big deal client took the spot on the other side of Tiffany. Their big deal client, who’s “the head of the largest chain of department stores in Hawaii”—who also just happens to be none other than the wily Jeff Whitman.
“Ah, the Newmans, such a lovely couple,” Jeff Whitman tells Tiffany. “I met them earlier and we spent the most delightful time together. I feel like they’re practically family.”
“Is this for real? Or is it another one of Naomi’s crazy schemes?” I whisper to Peter.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he says.
The head masseur steps forward to swing a brass mallet against a flat metal gong, producing a roaring boom that sounds like waves crashing against the shore. “I am Kawikani, the Strong One. We start now,” he says.
“And I am Alana,” says my masseur, “Hawaiian for ‘awakening.’ Or Alan.”
Alana rests his hands on the small of my back. Kawikani stretches his arms toward the heavens to offer a prayer. “Renew, revive, revitalize,” he says, sounding like a spokesperson for Lancôme.
Tiffany starts giggling, but Alana shakes his head. “Take seriously. The Lomi Lomi is not just to heal physical pain. It is to heal the heart, to bring mental and spiritual resolution. Whatever is blocked, let it out, get rid of it, go with the flow.”
Alana motions for Kawikani to come over and the two of them spend a few moments whispering.
“Okay, for this group, we give them the tea, too,” agrees Kawikani, who returns with a tray and four steaming cups. Obediently, we each take a sip.
I settle back onto the cushioned table and close my eyes. Alana hums softly, telling me, “Take deep breaths and enjoy the rhythmic sensations.” Given the tension between me and Peter, it’s going to take more than some crazy Hawaiian massage to make me unwind, but as instructed I close my eyes. Alana’s hands move over me like gentle waves and I feel a small jolt of energy surge through my body. I feel deeply relaxed, yet energized at the same time. My back muscles are about a thousand times looser. And, strangely, so is my tongue. I haven’t felt this uninhibitedly talkative since the dentist gave me a shot of Sodium Pentothal—and I’m not the only one.
“Alana, your hands are so strong and powerful!” I squeal in stream-of-consciousness admiration.
“I love a man with strong hands. Peter has strong hands,” Tiffany purrs.
“I do, don’t I?” says Peter. He spreads his fingers apart and flexes them into a fist.
“Um,” says Tiffany. “Your hands are big, but Kawikani’s are bigger. Jeff, what kind of hands do you have, are they huge?”
“Naomi used to say they were so large that I could hold the whole world right in my palm.”
“Naomi has long fingers, perfectly shaped. She posed for a magazine ad once,” I say, recalling a moment of my mother’s faded glory. “Her index finger was polished a deep shade of red. And she was pointing to a toilet seat in the Ladies’ Home Journal.”
“That’s why I love her,” says Jeff dreamily.
“Tru grew up with a mother who took more pleasure out of pointing to toilet seats than raising her daughter. But that didn’t stop my honey from becoming a great wife and mother,” Peter says. “That’s why I love Tru.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh,” says Peter, who’s unflexed his fist and now is staring at his palm.
“He loves me.” I giggle. “Because I’m a wife and mother …”
“And a businesswoman. A businesswoman with a stable of forty-year-old hookers.” Peter laughs, pressing his outstretched fingers against his face, as if he’s trying to locate his nose.
“Hookers.” Tiffany giggles. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to give good head. Do the hookers give good head? Do they use BUBB?”
“BUBB-de-BUBB-BUBB,” Peter sings. “I didn’t know from Adam but I’m married to a madam.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I ask.
“I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay,” Peter croons. “O-kaay!”
For a moment I have to wonder if Peter’s talking from the tea. Or the massage. Or his true feelings. Then he wraps his sheet around his torso—his torso that is brown as a berry from having already been several days in the sun—and comes over to sit down next to me on the edge of my massage table.
“I’m not as zonked out of my mind as I may seem. Well, maybe not quite as zonked out of my mind as I seem. I think your business choice is … unusual, honey. And I’m having a little trouble picturing you, you know,” he says sotto voce, “running a call girl operation.”
“I would have said the same thing. But it’s not much different from running a benefit committee. You have to be organized and diplomatic. And you have to be sure you make your nut.”
“Your nut?” Peter laughs.
“Your number, your net, the figure that’s going to put you in the black. Though, frankly, I prefer thinking of it as being in the pink. Pink is a much more cheerful victory color.”
“You’re the nut,” Peter says, bending over to kiss me. “I love you, Tru. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have liked it better if you’d opened a catering business.…”
“Not really an option. Remember me? I’m the wife who doesn’t know a carving knife from a broccoli spear.”
“Good point. And if running an escort agency makes you happy, I want to be supportive. God knows you’ve put up with my crazy hours and everything else about my work for all these years,” Peter says, pointing toward Tiffany.
“You, sir, are very, very nice.” I say reaching up to wrap my arms around his neck to press my lips against my husband’s.
“Nice, who’s nice?” Tiffany says, propping herself up on her elbow. “Jeff is nice.”
“Yes,” I say with a laugh. “Jeff is nice.”
Jeff looks over at us and winks. “Tiffany, what do you say you and I go find ourselves a quiet place to talk? You can tell me all about your makeup and I’ll show you around the island. You two skedaddle.” Jeff waves his hand in our direction—his strong, large, he’s-got-the-whole-world-in-it hand, which he’s got Tiffany eating out of.
“Yes, you two skedaddle,” says Tiffany. “Peter, you can go home to New York now. I’ll see you next week when I get back. I’m going to stay in Hawaii and get to know Jeffy better. I always had a thing for Harrison Ford, and Jeffy, you do look a lot like Indiana Jones.”
And just like that, Tiffany switches her affections from my husband to my mother’s ex-boyfriend, who’s old enough to be her father.
“Who would have guessed that Ms. Glass was so fickle?” I laugh as I slide off the massage table and Peter enfolds his sheet around us both in a cozy cocoon.
“Tiffany’s got a good head on her shoulders; she knows when something’s a lost cause.”
“You’re not a lost cause,” I tease.
“I am romantically as far as Tiffany’s concerned. I always have been. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”
I nod. “And I’m not sure that girl’s going to have any more luck with Jeffy-poo. If he’s a cosmetics buyer then I’m Mahatma Gandhi.”
“You do have pretty good peacemaking skills,” Peter says with a kiss. We move forward under our shared toga, feeling as young and carefree as a couple of preschoolers giggling themselves silly under a tent.
“Kawikani, Alana, thank you. I wasn’t sure about the Lomi Lomi, but you’ve made me a believer.” We say goodbye and Peter and I start to walk down the sun-kissed beach toward a woman in a grass skirt who’s giving a hula demonstration.
“Yes, Lomi Lomi very good, ancient Hawaiian tradition,” Alana says as he packs up his equipment. “But to make massage work even better,” he calls out as I turn around to wave one more goodbye, “always drink the tea.” Then he laughs and raises the cup to his lips.