Madam Of The House
Unfortunately, he’d planted it in a section of the yard that got about thirteen minutes of mild morning sunlight, and never managed to grow more than a single daffodil and a couple of small, rubbery carrots.
They’d eaten the carrots one night with dinner, and she’d never seen her son so proud.
She smiled. He was allowed to come home for the long Columbus Day weekend, and she had lots of things planned. A trip to the aquarium in Camden, and maybe the Franklin Institute. He loved exploring the giant replica of the human heart there, and putting his hand on the static generator so his hair stood on end.
Someday, she hoped, he’d be living with her again, and they could do fun things all the time, not just on long weekends and during the summer.
She blinked against the stinging behind her eyes— Cecilia Katz did not cry—and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray she kept on the deck.
At least she had a night out with the girls to look forward to.
The last time they’d gone out, they’d ended up in Atlantic City at three in the morning, playing craps with a busload of senior citizens from the Pleasant Park Rest Home in Jersey City.
One hot roller, an octogenarian named Myra, walked away with a stack of twenty-five-dollar chips as long as her liver-spotted arm. But Cecilia and her friends hadn’t been so lucky. They’d cleaned all the change out of the bottoms of their purses, maxed out their debit cards, and had to pay the tolls on the way home with a credit card.
But damn, it had been fun.
She needed another night like that. Desperately.
“Let’s face it, Cecilia,” she said out loud. “You need a lot of things desperately.”
CHAPTER 3
Everyone likes a new house. Everything is shiny and the roof doesn’t sag. But the older ones, they’re the ones with real character.
Caligula, the club where Cecilia was supposed to meet Dannie and Roseanna, was cool and stylish, boasting faux-marble columns and several seating areas strewn with over-stuffed throw pillows and understuffed young women.
Cecilia scanned the room, but Dannie and Roseanna hadn’t yet arrived.
She checked her watch. It was early, and the place wasn’t anywhere near capacity yet. The hard-core partyers wouldn’t roll in until the next shift. At thirty-nine and three-quarters, Cecilia was well past her partying prime, sent down to the minor leagues along with the other Gen-Xers and the kids with fake IDs.
Cecilia grabbed a table and lit a cigarette, watching the door for her friends. A heart-stoppingly gorgeous waiter in a short little toga and gold-leaf headpiece wandered over to take her order.
“Would you like a drink?”
“How about a club soda with lime for now. I’m waiting for some friends.”
“Sure thing.” He winked, and her stomach fluttered just a little.
She admired the flex of his calf muscles in the laced up sandals he wore. She imagined Jake would look pretty good in that getup.
Oops. Another impure thought for confession. She was really racking them up.
The DJ made an announcement to kick off Caligula’s ’80s night, and started with one of Cecilia’s favorites, “Superfreak” by Rick James. She watched the door as a group of twenty-something women trickled in, with tiny shirts and tiny waists and tiny rhinestone-studded cell-phone purses hanging from their wrists. They pretended to ignore the group of twenty-something guys hanging by the door who were giving them the once-over.
Dannie and Roseanna came in behind the young women, their heads pressed together, laughing. They made no bones about checking out the guys near the door, and much to Cecilia’s satisfaction, they got several appreciative glances in return.
The women located Cecilia and navigated through the growing crowd.
“Hey, chicklet!” Roseanna plunked down into one of the seats and gave Cecilia a peck on the cheek. “How’s it going?”
“Eh. How about you?”
“Eh.”
“How’s work?”
Roseanna, a die-hard music fanatic, was a writer for the local music-scene magazine. She always joked it wasn’t so much the poor man’s version of Rolling Stone, it was the really, really destitute man’s version.
“I don’t know, Cece. Maybe I’m getting too old for this job.”
“Oh, come on. You know more about music than anybody I know.”
Roseanna shook her head. “I just can’t get into the new stuff, you know? I feel like my parents sometimes. I just want to say, ‘What is this crap? This isn’t music.’”
“Well, sit back and relax, ’cause you’re not going to hear any of that crap tonight,” Dannie said. “It’s all oldies but goodies here.”
As if to punctuate Dannie’s words, a song by Roseanna’s all-time favorite band, the Aching Loins, blasted out over the dance floor. The three women screamed.
The hot waiter materialized with Cecilia’s club soda.
“No way, Spartacus. Take that back,” Dannie said. “And bring us a round of Gladiators.”
In a couple of minutes he returned with a trayful of pretty pink drinks.
Cecilia removed the pineapple wedge and took a sip. “Why do they call this a Gladiator?”
Dannie gave her an evil grin. “Because it’s gonna kick your ass.”
The Gladiator, did, indeed, live up to its name, and by the second round, the girls were making some noise.
They tore up the dance floor to “Love Shack” by the B52s, “You Spin Me Right Round” by Dead or Alive, and “Head to Toe” by Lisa Lisa, and had returned to the table when Roseanna pointed to someone who’d just come in the door. “Look.”
A tall woman in a red silk jacket scanned the crowd. She looked familiar.
“OH. MY. GOD. It’s Grace Poleiski,” Dannie said.
“I saw her at Beruglia’s when I went there for lunch today,” Roseanna said, grinning. “I didn’t think you guys would mind if I invited her.”
“Are you kidding!” Cecilia laughed. “It’s gonna be just like old times.”
AFTER THE USUAL NICETIES about who’d lost weight (Cecilia and Roseanna), who’d lost a husband (Grace, Cecilia and Dannie) and who’d lost the ability to party all night and still function in the morning (all of them), the waiter appeared with a tray of pale-orange shots.
He set one in front of each of them, pulled a pack of matches out of the folds of his toga and lit the shots. Low blue flames danced on the surface of the liquor.
“Don’t forget to blow ’em out before you drink ’em,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of mishaps.”
Roseanna smiled. “Remember when Dannie accidentally lit her hair on fire while she was smoking a cigarette in the girls’ bathroom?”
“What did she expect?” said Cecilia. “She used so much hairspray, her hair wouldn’t have moved in a hurricane.”
“Come on.” Dannie laughed. “My hair wasn’t any worse than anyone else’s. In fact, I remember Grace getting hers tangled in the volleyball net in gym class. That hairdo had to be at least a foot high.”
They all cracked up.
The waiter walked away, his tight little butt all but peeking out from under the toga.
Dannie propped her chin up on her hand. “Those look like my sheets he’s wearing.”
“You wish,” Cecilia said.
Grace pulled a bunch of pictures out of her purse and passed them around.
“Oh, God. I remember this skirt,” Roseanna said. “I couldn’t get one thigh in there, now.”
“Sure you could,” Dannie said. “It would be a little tight, though.”
“Ha, ha.” Roseanna passed the pictures to Cecilia. “Hey, remember when we used to play Truth or Dare in study hall?”
“Yeah. I think Mr. Montrose almost had a heart attack,” said Cecilia. “You’d always dare me to lean over his desk to ask him a question.”
“He couldn’t stand up for the rest of the class,” Dannie said.
“In his defense, you did have some pretty nice boobs,” said Roseanna.
“To Mr. Montrose.” Grace raised the shot the waiter had just delivered. They all toasted Mr. Montrose and blew out their Flaming Togas.
“Let’s play,” said Roseanna.
“Play what?”
“Truth or Dare.”
“Here?” Grace said. “You’re crazy.”
“It’ll be fun,” said Dannie.
“Why not?” said Cecilia.
Music thumped in the background. Motley Crüe belted out, “Girls, Girls, Girls.”
“What the hell,” Grace said.
“Who’s going first?” Dannie asked.
“I will.” Cecilia had been first in lots of things. She’d been the first to get a bra, the first to get her period, and the first to wear gauchos to school.
She was the first girl on the debate team (she never lost a debate), the first freshman to go to the senior prom (with Kyle Farber, the captain of the debate team), and the first one to let a boy see her underwear (Kyle Farber, the night of the prom).
So it only followed that she’d go first. At least, this was the logic after three Gladiators and a Flaming Toga.
“Okay, Truth or Dare?” Grace said.
“Dare,” said Cecilia.
Dannie rubbed her hands together. “Great. Here’s one. Get our waiter to bring us a round of shots on the house. By whatever means possible.”
“Nah, that’s too easy,” Grace interrupted. “How about she has to get the waiter’s phone number?”
“Oh, that’s good.” Dannie laughed.
“Are you kidding me? Shots? Phone numbers? That’s lame.” Roseanna closed one eye and tipped her glass toward Cecilia. “Here’s a dare. You have to get the waiter to give you…a lap dance.”
The three other women hooted and clinked glasses.
“A lap dance?” Cecilia shook her head. “Are you insane? I can’t get that guy to give me a lap dance. I can barely get him to give me a straw with my drink.”
Roseanna snickered.
Dannie shrugged. “Hey. You picked Dare, and that’s the dare. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, you know what happens.”
The Alternate Dare.
“In the case of forfeit of an Official Dare,” Cecilia intoned, “the daree shall be forced to perform the Alternate Dare, which shall consist of phoning her current crush, and confessing all feelings she might have for such crush.”
Cecilia imagined how that phone conversation might go:
“Hello, Jake? This is your boss, Cecilia. I’m calling to tell you I think you’re really, really sexy. You smell great, and I love the dimples on your earlobes. I want you to know that even though you are my assistant and I’m just about old enough to be your mother, I have smoky sex dreams about you almost every night.”
A wave of queasiness washed over her.
“No copping out,” Roseanna warned. “We swore on our posters of Jon Bon Jovi.”
“I remember. Jeez. Did I say I wasn’t going to do the dare? I never said I wasn’t going to do the dare.” Cecilia sucked down the rest of her drink and ran her fingers through her hair. “Just…get him over here.”
Dannie waved to the waiter, who stood near the drink station at the bar, as still as a Roman statue and twice as gorgeous.
Cecilia’s heart sped up to Moderately Dangerous on the heart attack scale. As the waiter neared, he morphed for a moment into Jake.
Cecilia blinked and Jake was gone, but the stud-boy who now stood before her was only a slightly less fantasy-inducing alternative.
She forced herself to stay cool. “Hey, Spartacus, how about a lap dance?”
Grace spewed a mouthful of Gladiator all over the table. Dannie covered her face with her hands. Only Roseanna was able to keep a straight face.
The waiter’s eyes grew wide. Cute. Like Bambi.
Oh, dear Lord. She was propositioning Bambi.
She quickly banished that image from her mind.
“Pardon me?” The waiter said, apparently believing he’d misunderstood.
If only.
“May I have a lap dance, please?” Cecilia waved two twenty dollar bills in front of him, which he pretty much ignored.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but this isn’t that kind of establishment.”
She ignored the ma’am thing. “What kind of establishment is that?”
“The management doesn’t allow hands-on entertainment, if you know what I mean. We have strict rules.”
She fished another twenty out of her wallet and added it to the others, fanning herself with the bills. “It wouldn’t exactly be hands-on, now would it?”
Spartacus had finally taken notice of the bills, and moved a little closer. Close enough for her to smell the fabric softener on his toga.
She fished another twenty—her last one—out of her wallet. There went her lunch money for the next two weeks. She was quite fond of lunch. This lap dance had so better be worth it.
“And if there were no hands involved,” she continued, “you wouldn’t exactly be breaking the rules, would you?” she said.
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” He glanced around, presumably to make sure no management was watching.
Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” blared over the sound system. Perfect.
Cecilia drove it home. “What do you say, Spartacus?” She waved the eighty dollars in front of him.
The waiter took the money and tucked it into the folds of his toga. “I say, get ready for the best lap dance you ever had.”
“TONIGHT’S GOING TO go down in history as the best Truth or Dare game ever,” Dannie said, rubbing an ice cube on her neck.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Cecilia puffed on a cigarette, making tiny smoke rings by tapping on her cheek. She glanced over her shoulder at Grace, who sat at the bar sucking face with an unbelievably hot stranger.
They’d dared her to give him the undies she was wearing. And now, it seemed, she might end up giving him a whole lot more.
“I don’t believe it,” Dannie said. “Look at her. She actually did it.”
“She always had guts.”
“She sure did.” Dannie’s eyes held a faraway look.
Cecilia had always been a teeny bit jealous of Grace’s in your-face audacity. Cecilia may have been first at lots of things, but Grace was the group’s official rebel. The one time Cecilia had been a rebel herself, she’d gotten nailed for smoking in the dorms at cheerleading camp.
She and her roommate had caused the whole squad to get kicked out of camp, and they had to spend the entire football season on the sidelines, freezing their butts off in those short little skirts.
She exhaled a cloud of smoke. She really had to quit smoking. She’d promised Brian months ago that she’d stop by the time he came home for Columbus Day weekend.
She checked her watch. Midnight. Time was officially up.
“Okay, we’ve lost Grace,” Dannie said. “And Roseanna’s no good anymore.”
Roseanna’s head currently lay on the table, on a pillow of cocktail napkins.
“Doesn’t matter,” Cecilia said. “You’re the only one who hasn’t had a turn at the game, and I can handle it. Truth or Dare?”
Dannie slumped in her chair. “I dunno. You pick for me.”
Cecilia chewed on her straw for a minute. “Okay. Truth. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“What do you mean?”
Cecilia leaned in. “I know you, Dannie. Something’s wrong. Are you missing Roger?”
Dannie snorted. “Yeah. I don’t know what I miss more, the lying or the cheating.” She shook her head. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was such a shit.” She began to cry.
Cecilia lifted Roseanna’s head and retrieved a cocktail napkin, which she handed to Dannie. “He cheated on you?”
Dannie nodded. “At least once that I know of. But probably way more than that.” She sighed. “He was a good father, though.”
That was Dannie. Always looking at the shiny side of the penny.
“I’m so sorry,” Cecilia said. “But you know you could have talked to me about it. Anytime.”
“I guess I was embarrassed, which is just silly. Life would be so much better if we could all just share our secrets and get them off our chests. Don’t you think?”
“Hmm.” Cecilia chewed on an ice cube. “As a matter of fact…”
Dannie dabbed her eyes with the now-soggy napkin. “What? You have a secret, too?”
Cecilia pushed her shot away. “I really have to sober up.”
Dannie squeezed her hand. “Come on. I’m your friend. Maybe I can help.”
“Well, the thing is, I’m—” Cecilia sighed “—well, I’m flat broke.”
CHAPTER 4
Everything is negotiable.
As soon as she said it, she regretted it.
Here she was, complaining to Dannie of all people. Dannie, a widow with four kids, who never had enough of anything.
“Cece, let me help you,” Dannie said. “I can lend you some money.”
Cecilia shook her head. “No, I’m going to get out of this somehow.” She didn’t want to tell Dannie that whatever she could lend her wouldn’t pay the charge-card bill for Ben’s golf shirts.
Dannie looked as if she were going to say something, but stopped.
Cecilia sighed. She supposed getting everything off her chest couldn’t hurt. It was a night for truths as well as dares, wasn’t it? “The truth is, Ben never even tried to find a job after he was laid off. He started day-trading instead. In the beginning he made some money, but mostly he’s been losing. A fortune. My fortune.”
“But your job…” Dannie said.
Cecilia shook her head. “The real estate market is tanking. I can’t sell a house to save my life. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to start doing open houses again.” She felt the dreaded sting behind her eyes again.
Dannie gave her a sympathetic look. “Anything I can do, let me know. Okay?”
Cecilia nodded. She sucked down a glass of water and chewed on the ice as she and Dannie sat there together, lost in their own thoughts.
The first few notes of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” blared over the speaker system. Tom Cruise slid through Cecilia’s mind in his underwear, and she smiled. “Oh, screw it. Let’s just have a good time.”
She and Dannie sang along with the song and reminisced about the night they’d sneaked into a movie theater to see Risky Business. They’d only been fourteen, not legally allowed into an R-rated flick, but a friend who worked at the Cineplex let them in.
Years later, Cecilia realized that most of the movie had gone right over her head, but the image of Tom Cruise in his tighty whities had certainly stuck.
“Hey, I know,” Dannie yelled over the music. “You could do what Joel did in Risky Business.”
“What? Hire a hooker?”
Dannie laughed. “No. You know, have a party. Round up some call girls and show some rich boys a good time.”
“Right.” Cecilia laughed, trying to picture herself arranging a “good time” for her friends’ teenage sons. Yuck.
Roseanna raised her head. “Party?”
Cecilia stubbed out her cigarette. “Yeah, there’s a kegger out on Creek Road. Wanna go?”
Dannie laughed at the mention of their favorite high school hangout. “Come on. Let’s get Rosie out of here.”
“Okay, just let me check on Grace first.”
Cecilia pushed her way through the crowd to the other side of the bar, where Grace was still sucking face with the leather-clad hottie.
“You okay?” she asked.
Grace nodded.
“How are you getting home?”
“I’ll call a cab.”
“Okay.” Cecilia winked at the guy. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he said. Rose Frost lipstick smeared his lips.
Cecilia felt a flash of envy for her friend. She still remembered that feeling—that out-of-body high—that always accompanied brand-new kisses.
Cecilia returned to the table and waved to Grace. She made a fist and held it to her cheek like a telephone receiver, mouthing the words, “Call me.”
Then she and Dannie slung their arms around Roseanna and dragged her through the crowd toward the door.
“Come on, gorgeous. Let’s try to get you home before you lose your cookies.”
A DULL PAIN throbbed behind Cecilia’s eyes as she brewed a pot of coffee the following morning. Her breath smelled like a burned-out distillery, and her fingertips were yellow from nicotine.
She had to stop drinking. She had to stop smoking. Today. Now.
She took the pack of cigarettes from her handbag and emptied them into the sink, firing up the garbage disposal. The sound bore into her brain like a jackhammer.
Oh, man. This might not be the best day to quit smoking.
Her malaise eased a bit when she realized that in just a few hours she’d be on her way to pick up Brian at the Catalina School.
She hummed “Old Time Rock and Roll” as she flipped through a shoe catalog, planning her afternoon with her son until an annoying beeping sound coming from the street disturbed her thoughts.
It sounded like a trash truck, but it wasn’t trash day.
Coffee mug in hand, she wandered through the dining room and into the formal living room, to the bowed window overlooking the driveway. A green-and-yellow truck was backing into the drive. Sunlight glinted off the shiny silver flat bed, which seemed to be falling off the truck.
No, it wasn’t falling. It was tilting.
She squinted, unable to see too clearly without her contact lenses. What…?
“Shit!” She bolted for the front door, spilling coffee down the front of her robe and onto the white wool carpet.
She reached the steps that led down to the drive just as a large man with an obscene amount of butt-crack showing hooked the rear axle of her Cayenne to a winch.
“Hey!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”
He stood up. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re trying to steal my car.”
He guffawed. “That’s a good one.”
“No, really. What are you doing?”
The guy grinned. “I’m repossessing your vehicle.”
“What!”
“Look.” He waddled over and handed her a clipboard with a blue form containing her name and address, a description of the Cayenne, the VIN number and the license plate number.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the lawn. “You ain’t made your payments, lady. I’m taking the car.”
“Oh, no. No no no.” She read the name in the blue oval above his shirt pocket. “Ed, you can’t take my car. I need my car.”
“Sorry. I guess you shoulda thought about that when you weren’t writing those checks.” He walked to the back of the truck and threw a lever. The Cayenne slowly began to move up onto the tilted flatbed.
“Stop! You’re not listening to me. I—”
Oh, God. What was she going to do?
“I have an emergency. I’m supposed to donate a kidney this afternoon.”
Ed snorted. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
“I’m delivering toys for underprivileged children?”
Ed shook his head.
She exhaled through pursed lips. “Hang on, please. Wait here one minute.”
She ran into the house and found her purse, digging out her wallet. Damn it! Empty!
She’d given that waiter every penny she had for the lap dance.
She ran for the door, stopping briefly at the hall mirror to smooth down her sleep-rumpled hair. Discarding her coffee-stained robe, she ran back outside in nothing but her baby doll pajamas.
Ed’s eyes bugged.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m begging you. You can’t take my car.”
Ed’s eyes gravitated to her chest, as if they were magnets and her breasts were little refrigerators.
“If I had any money I’d give it to you, I swear. But I spent it all on a lap dance last night.”
She could see Ed working the image through his head, and she realized it was probably a much different scenario than the one that had actually occurred.
She wasn’t about to bust his bubble.
Tiny beads of sweat formed on Ed’s upper lip. He shook his head. “I can’t. I have a repo contract with the bank.”
“It was a great lap dance,” she said, pooching out her lower lip and thrusting a hip toward him.
“Lady—”
“Please, Ed.” She reached out and touched the collar of his blue work shirt lightly. Beseechingly. “I’m having a really, really bad week.”
Dear God, I’ll see you in confession on Sunday. I swear. Until then, just one more little favor?