Midnight Madness

3

RIDE INTO THE SUNSET together?

“So you see,” Marly said later to her business partner Alejandro, “the guy is off his gubernatorial rocker!”

They stood on the salon side of After Hours, on the zebra floor cloth and in front of a tangerine wall. The spa was funky and colorful, with Italian glass lamps, walls of all colors and a distressed concrete floor painted to look like the ocean. Every time she looked at it, Marly felt a mixture of pride and horror: she had painted it, crawling around on her hands and knees to do every lovely little blue-green swirl. Ugh. She had, in fact, driven the design of the whole place, since she’d studied art during her three years of college and had a knack for interior design.

Alejandro stretched his six-foot-four, muscular frame. A yawn overwhelmed his classically handsome face. He rubbed the day-old bristle on his square chin and sipped at a beer, his treat for passing his business school exams and squaring the books. “Oh, I don’t know, mi corazón. If I didn’t think of you as a sister, I might fall into instant love with you.”

“Be serious!”

“I am.” He rubbed absently at an uncharacteristic stain on his elegant linen pants.

Shrieks of drunken feminine laughter rolled over them, coming from the pedicure stations in the back. Marly lifted an eyebrow. “Let me guess, the Fabulous Four are here? Aren’t they early?”

The Fabulous Four was a group of women in their forties who booked their appointments together each week and got blind drunk on After Hours’ wine. At first Marly had thought it was cute. But after an entire year, it was getting a little out of hand. The Fab Four took over the place and got so loud and raunchy that sometimes other clients complained.

“They’re all going on a cruise together tomorrow,” Alejandro explained. “So they moved their pedicures—and happy hour—back to lunchtime.”

“Did they fight over you, honey?” Alejandro was often in demand for hand and foot treatments, as much as he hated to give them.

“No—when I found out they were coming, I deliberately crossed myself off the book for that time slot.” He grinned. “Now, tell me more about the governor.”

Marly frowned. “He’s feeding me lines, and I’m not going to fall for them. How many times a week do you think he tells the story of his great-great-grandfather and the mail-order bride?”

“I’ll go to bed with him,” her coworker and fellow stylist, Nicky, said with a leer. “He’s hot…for a Republican. Yeow, baby! I’d leave nothing on the guv but one of those royal-blue neckties….”

Marly shook her head at him. “I don’t think he’s bent your way, Nicky-doll. And I didn’t get the feeling he’d care much for orange spandex, either.”

“Oh, gawd.” Nicky shook his blond hair. He was like Princess Di in drag, with a California accent and a lisp. “It’s back to the Internet for me, then. Did I tell you about my date last week? Finally, finally, I thought, yay, this guy is gonna be it. He was good-looking, head to toe Calvin Klein, makes tons of money as a designer. I was ready to marry him—Even though we’d have to go to Massachusetts to do it! And then he shows up wearing those plastic food-service gloves. He wouldn’t even take them off to shake my hand! Fuh-reak, freak, freak.”

“But, Nicky,” said Alejandro. “You wouldn’t know what to do if you had a normal date. You’d have no stories to tell us and nothing to complain about.”

“So true,” said Nicky with a frown. “Do you think I should see a shrink about this?” He wandered off, one hand on his spandex-encased hip.

Marly sighed. “He makes the governor seem normal, honestly.”

Alejandro laughed. “Don’t you mean Jack?”

“I’m not going to call him by his first name. And besides, even if I was dumb enough to fall for his lines, how can I ignore the fact that he’s been seen all over the state with that debutante…you know, the one they’re expecting him to marry, like, yesterday?”

“Carol Hilliard?”

“Yeah—the one in the pastel Chanel suits and the Ferragamo shoes.”

“Nobody’s seen a rock on her finger, Marly.”

“They’re probably still excavating it, all hundred carats, from Daddy’s diamond mine.”

“Meow!” Alejandro winked at her. “What has she ever done to you?”

“Nothing,” muttered Marly. “She’s just perfect for him and I’m not. Do you know the guy had never even seen blue toenail polish before? I guess it’s not fashionable among the little debbies.”

“Marly, chica. Why does it bother you that you’re not perfect for him?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Right. That would be why you’re obsessing.”

“I’m not obsessing! I was just sharing my morning with you. A morning that happened to include a half naked governor who’s a big flirt.”

“Ooooh, is he cut?” Nicky was back again.

“Um, well, yeah.”

“Six-pack?”

She nodded.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much chest hair?”

“Five.”

“Mmm. Sounds divine. You should sleep with him.” And with that little bit of advice, Nicky disappeared to mix color for his next client.

“He hasn’t asked me!” she called after him, hands on her hips. Not that Jack Hammersmith needed to, really. She knew exactly what it meant when her body got that boneless feeling, the melted knees syndrome, the warm rushes of sensation in private areas.

“So,” Alejandro said. “You cut his hair. And you’re not sworn to secrecy, so that’s great PR for After Hours. The best, in fact. The only thing better would be for us to cut the hair of Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell. Would you get to work on that, please?” He grinned.

She heard his unspoken request. Don’t piss off the governor. We can use the cachet and the extra clients he’ll bring us.

Alejandro owned the biggest percentage of the spa and therefore owed the most money on the business loans they’d taken out. He constantly worried over finances, even though he masked the concern with his Latin charm.

She and Peggy had never told him how close they’d come to being kicked out of the retail space. He would have flunked all his business school exams or something. To reassure him, Marly said, “Hammersmith’s coming in here in a couple of days so I can do his color. I’ll have to use a private room, though—he doesn’t want to advertise the fact that he gets gray highlights to make him look older and more experienced. Isn’t that funny?”

Alejandro shrugged. “What is he, thirty-six or so?”

“Something like that.”

“You can understand it—most of the guys he’s working with in the Florida state legislature are on the far side of middle age, and he needs their respect.”

“Uh-huh.” Marly yawned. “I wish I was going to get out of here before midnight….”

“I’m sorry, mi corazón. Tell you what, dinner’s on me later. We’ll order from Benito’s. Sound good?”

“Thanks. You’re a sweetie. But what sounds good is a three-week vacation in the Caribbean. I’ve got to start limiting my schedule, Alejandro. I can’t keep going like this…. I haven’t been to see my parents in months, and as for spare time…” Spare time was a dream. And forget spare time to paint.

“I know. Give it a little longer? Then we’ll bring in a couple more hairdressers, and everyone can ease up on their appointments a bit.”

Marly nodded. “You know I don’t mean to bellyache, hon. I’ve got my dad’s medical bills, but you’re under even more stress, with the whole business school thing.”

She only had a few more months to go to pay off the thoroughly scary multithousand-dollar hospital bill that she’d had sent to her, because if her father had seen it he would have relapsed, gone into renal failure and died.

She’d worked a deal with the administrator: only a quarter of the bill balance was sent to her parents. She’d dropped out of art school and begun working immediately to pay it off, since they were on a fixed income.

The pace of her work these days was killing her, but she focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, when the balance would be paid.

What would it be like to have spare time again? A social life? She couldn’t wait. Marly went to greet her next customer and initiated the normal chitchat while she snipped and reshaped the woman’s hair.

The rest of the day flew by: she cut the hair of a city council member, wove blond extensions in for a local model, did a short, spiky style for a woman who owned a boutique around the corner. She snipped, textured, shaved, highlighted, gelled, moussed and sprayed. Then she did it all over again.

By 10:00 p.m. her feet were throbbing and she was exhausted—but they had two hours of prime party time to go. Marly looked longingly at the wine Shirlie, their receptionist, brought to the customers, thinking that just one glass would do a lot to ease her pain and give her a second wind.

But it was an extremely bad idea to cut someone’s hair under the influence…so she’d wait and have her wine after they’d locked up.

She welcomed her 11:00 p.m. client, Regina Santos, and sent her off to be shampooed. Marly’s thoughts turned renegade again, toward Jack Hammersmith, his bare chest and his mouthful of waffles. The way his tongue had licked the whipped cream from the corner of his mouth. The way he’d looked into her eyes as if he could see into her mind, and his calm certainty that she was The One.

The One what? The one who’d tell him that the Hammer wasn’t going to nail her?

JACK HAMMERSMITH successfully dodged Turl’s urges to take an extra vitamin and got dressed in front of the maid whom Housekeeping sent to remove his room service cart. He gave the maid credit for waiting until he put on his shirt and tie before she asked shyly if she could take a picture of him with her camera-phone.

He said, “Sure, sweetheart—do you want a photo of us both?” Turls pressed her lips together and did the honors, before almost chasing the poor woman out.

Jack would much rather have signed two dozen autographs or taken as many photos with hotel staff than get down to work with Stephen Lyons and Jorge Martinez, his top aide and his campaign manager, respectively.

But they barged in at 9:45 a.m. regardless of his personal preferences, and worse, they forced him to crack open the thick manila file folder on the suite’s desk. They pulled out three of the yellow-flagged documents and handed him a pen snagged from behind Martinez’s ear.

“Do you wash those ears?” Jack teased him, pretending to wipe earwax off the pen. “Because I know you’ve always got one or the other of them pressed to the ground, spying and dragging them in the dirt.”

Martinez shot him a cool glance. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

Lyons started yakking at him about pending legislation in the Florida state senate. When he paused for breath, Martinez jumped in. “I’ve hired a professional PR firm just to manage your press coverage—and consult on your image—during the campaign.”

“Great, more people to push me around,” Jack said in jovial tones. “Well, I’m sure they’ll approve of my haircut. You like it, Lyons? Marty?”

They stopped talking at looked at his hair. “It’s great, Jack,” said Martinez, and moved on to a new topic: the train wreck that a public school initiative had become. Lyons made a circle out of his thumb and forefinger, spreading his other three fingers wide in the A-Okay sign.

“Hey, Lyons? Your wife—does she ever wear blue nail polish?”

“What? No. Twelve-year-olds and rock stars wear blue nail polish.”

“And artists, wouldn’t you say? Creative spirits.”

“Jack, can I get you to focus, here?” Lyons asked.

“I’m very focused,” said The Hammer.

“Oh, Christ,” said Martinez. “What inappropriate woman are you obsessing about now?”

“She’s not inappropriate. She’s perfect.”

“Jack, if she wears blue nail polish, she is not perfect. I have one name for you—Hilliard. She’s beautiful, she’s connected, she’s got style and wit and fashion sense. You’ve known her all your life. Now will you please, for God’s sake, get engaged to the woman? It could make or break your reelection campaign.”

“That’s crazy. It’s not my prospective wife who’s running! I got elected single last time. Why is it so important that I be coupled now?”

Martinez sighed and sat in a club chair. He spread his knees and dangled his clasped hands between them. Not a hair on his head fell forward, however; it was all sprayed into place.

“The polls, Jack. People cut you some slack before because of the way Lady Annabel dumped you so publicly.”

“I dumped her!”

“A matter of spin, Jack. Poor Hammer, left practically at the altar…”

“I would never have married her!”

“Water under the bridge, Jack. The point is, now the polls are reflecting that people think you’re too wild. They don’t want a playboy running the state—they want a responsible, settled adult. They’d love to see little Jacks bouncing around the capitol lawn.”

“I fail to see how that’s anyone’s business but mine.”

“Jack. Don’t be naive. You’re a public figure with a political career at stake. You could be in the running for a vice-presidential seat in the next six years or so. Get your ass married to an appropriate woman or jeopardize all that. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Martinez.” Jack cast him a glance of impatience, bordering on dislike. The waffles sat heavy in his stomach and the syrup and whipped cream gurgled. He should have eaten the damned whole-grain toast and omelet, but he was beyond sick of being told what to do every second of every minute of every friggin’ day. Leader of the state? Hell, he felt more like a trained ape.

Jack, who’d grown up in politics like his father before him, found it hard to take it all seriously. Politics wasn’t his calling; it was Dad’s calling, but he’d found himself fresh out of law school and going into retired Senator John Hammersmith’s law firm, without even an interview. His experience was so alien compared to that of his friends, who clerked and schmoozed and interviewed wildly—everywhere from Miami to New York to San Francisco.

He’d felt guilty and not particularly deserving of his golden-boy status as John Hammersmith Jr. born with a pedigree and dimples to match.

His mother had a law degree and connections, as well. But if she wanted to, she had the luxury of fading into the woodwork and just being exceptionally well married. Jack wondered what it was like to have options like that; be female; choose your role in society.

Did she feel guilty about not being more of a trailblazer? Had she burned her bra back in the seventies, only to walk right back into its harness like an obedient broodmare? He mused about it. Jeanne kept her mouth shut about such things.

Martinez was waxing poetic about poll numbers and Lyons advocating that he play in some charity golf tournament.

Jack nodded, the waffles in his stomach gurgled around some more, and he found himself thinking about Marly Fine. He put a hand up to his neck, still feeling her cool, efficient hands in his hair and the rhythmic snipping, eyes always measuring, gauging length and proportion and thickness.

He had a lot of hair. If he ever let it grow, he’d probably resemble an afghan that had just stuck its paw into an electrical outlet.

Marly had done an exceptional job of making him look suave and goobernatorial. But suddenly Jack wished he had rock star hair and maybe an earring through his nose; a different perspective on life and how to live it. A perspective that would make him more appealing to a woman who wore blue toenail polish and no bra and a long gypsy skirt that Jeanne Hammersmith probably wouldn’t give to the housekeeper for polishing the silver.

He hadn’t lied when he’d said that the instant he’d seen her picture he’d known Marly was The One. He’d seen it in her cool blue-green eyes and the dark sheen of her hair. In the way she held herself and the tilt of her pointed little chin.

She was the kind of woman who inspired love songs. She was a Helen…a woman who caused men to do crazy things. Such as tell her within moments of meeting her that she was The One.

Jack grinned. Because she hadn’t giggled and blushed; she hadn’t taken it as a come on that could help her career if she played ball. She’d just told him flat-out that he was nuts.

The general public didn’t tell Jack that he was nuts—only his inner circle did. So Marly had stepped into that circle without even trying.

The public treated him with deference and respect that he wasn’t convinced he deserved. Then there was his father, who didn’t respect him much at all—but who envied him.

“I didn’t have anybody’s coattails to ride when I got elected senator,” he was fond of saying—especially when he’d had a couple glasses of Basil Hayden’s finest bourbon. “I did it on my own steam.”

Yeah, well, some of us have more steam—aka hot air—inside us than others, Senior.

Rock star hair. Yup, that’s what he needed for the reelection campaign. And maybe a sapphire nose ring instead of the blue silk power ties. He’d appeal to the younger demographic, create an identity for himself apart from the Hammersmith name.

Jack blew out a cynical breath. Yeah, right. And I’m gonna grow a breast on my forehead, too.

Because he was stuck with the Hammersmith name—and even worse, he was Hammersmith Junior. Chip off the old blockhead.

He tried to focus on what Martinez and Lyons were droning on about now, but he had a hard time caring. Instead he wondered exactly what his great-great-grandfather had said first to the Italian girl he’d crossed continents to find.

Had he said, “Signorina bellissima, I know you are The One?” Or had he actually employed some subtlety? Jack had never found subtlety particularly useful. Either people didn’t catch it at all or your message was diluted entirely.

Subtlety was not to be confused with the fine arts of political innuendo and favor-currying. Now he excelled at those…but wasn’t exactly proud of the fact.

Yeah, the more he thought about it, he needed to cultivate rock star hair and maybe one of those terrible little soul patches on his chin. That sure as hell would appeal to the conservative voters—about as much as a girlfriend who wore a long braid down her back and no bra.

No bra…hmm. The Hammer suddenly wondered if Marly had a policy against underwear altogether. He really wouldn’t mind finding out.

4

“SO?” SHIRLIE, the receptionist at After Hours, nudged Marly the next day. Her pale blue eyes sparkled with curiosity and every spiky, mascara-covered eyelash jutted forward eagerly, like antennae wired to collect information.

“So, what?” Marly looked through a stack of pink message slips for any calls that needed to be returned before the evening. Misty Horowitz, Sandra Tagliatore, Janine Burbank. No—she could call all of them later.

“The governor!” Shirlie kept probing. “What’s he like in person? Is he as hot as he is on TV?”

“Hotter. Though he’s going to develop a belly to rival Buddha’s if he keeps on eating the way he eats.”

“What does he eat? Is he nice?”

Marly laughed. “He eats little boy food—waffles and syrup and whipped cream.”

“So was he nice or did he treat you like the hired help?”

“He was…very affable.” Besides being crazy and trying to use a bad line to get me into bed. Who does he think he is?

“So what’s his body like? It’s hard to tell under those suits.”

“Nothing wrong with the man’s bod,” Marly said before she could censor herself. “He greeted me without a shirt or shoes.”

“No!”

“Yup.”

“How big are his feet?”

Marly sighed. “You know, your obsession with penis size is really not healthy, Shirl. How many times did you try to find out the number of inches Troy Barrington sports?”

Shirlie didn’t bother to blush. “I’m taking a survey for scientific purposes.”

“Right. And my grandfather was a prima ballerina.”

“So I’ll give you the goods on T.B. if you tell me The Hammer’s foot size.”

Marly rolled her eyes. “That’s a myth, the foot size thing.”

“It’s not! Research shows—”

“Whose research? Let me tell you, the shortest guy I ever slept with, the one with the smallest feet, by the way, had the most gargantuan schlong.”

Shirlie’s eyes widened. Then she thought about it. “Well, Troy has giant feet, judging by his shoes, but Peggy told me he’s hung like a piece of elbow macaroni. This blows all my survey results out of the water.”

Marly poked her tongue into her cheek. “Did Peg tell you that when she was angry? Because I don’t buy it.”

“Ohh.” Shirl stuck the eraser end of her pencil into her ear. “I didn’t think about thaaaat.”

Be careful, hon, or you’ll shove it right out the other side. Marly grimaced at herself. She shouldn’t be so bitchy—Shirlie was a great receptionist and all the customers loved her. They hadn’t hired her because she had a Ph.D.