Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss
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“Maria,” Kane said in a soft voice.
She blinked at the sound of her name and grabbed onto the door frame as if she expected someone to try to push her out. “Whatever you’re going to say about numerology or whatnot just…just save it,” she said. “I’m giving him our condo, our house in Tuscany, I’m even giving him the damned parrot, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him my friends.” She glared at the occupants of the room. “You’re supposed to be my friends! I’m the true believer, not that fat, self-important, fettuccini-eating snob! How could you not invite me to this?”
“Some of us wanted to,” Kane whispered, then sent a scathing look at Venus who stared blankly back.
“Enrico’s a no-show, Maria,” Amelia said, struggling to give her a welcoming hug while holding her coat. “He’s being haunted.”
“Is that what he told you?” Maria said with a bitter laugh. “The only thing haunting that man is the last review he got from Michael Bauer. Did you read it? Three and a half stars. Not four, three and a half. That’s why he’s not here. The bastard is sulking, probably teaching that bird how to destroy a newspaper clipping.”
“That shouldn’t take a lot of training,” Scott said, somewhat bemused.
“I see that the table is all set up,” Maria noted. “Can we start this then? Or are you afraid I’ll taint the proceedings with my bitterness?”
“Nothing wrong with bitterness,” Scott said. “Just look what it does for chocolate, right, Soapy?” As soon as he said it you could see the regret spread across his features. It was as blatant as Venus’s scowl.
“Soapy,” she said slowly. “How adorable. Don’t you think it’s adorable, Kane?”
“We’d love it if you’d join us,” Kane said, directing his comments to Maria and ignoring Venus. “All that matters is belief.”
“And numbers,” Jason added, perhaps a bit sarcastically. “And candles and colors and fucking feng shui.”
“Feng shui has nothing to do with any of this!” Kane snapped.
“Hey, guys, remember Sophie got white candles so if this is going to work we’re all going to have to get in a peaceful state of mind!” Amelia chimed in. “At this rate we’re going to have to go out and buy some pink candles just so we can manage that, right, Sophie?”
“The pink candles are lame,” Zach sighed. “They never work.”
I raised my fingers to my temples. I had no idea what any of these people were talking about. Maria was Enrico’s ex, that much I understood. I also understood that Enrico had a parrot and Venus didn’t like me, but I was beginning to suspect that Venus disliked pretty much everybody. Other than that, I had no idea what was going on.
“I suggest we skip the meal and get right to the séance,” Venus said, staring at Scott. “Unless you would like some more time to chitchat with your Soapy.”
“I’m cool with skipping the meal,” he replied meekly. “It’s hard for me to think about food when I’m with you anyway, sweetie. All I can focus on is how flat-out gorgeous you are.”
Jason started to laugh, but managed to silence himself before Venus had a chance to whack him over the head with one of my candlesticks.
“Sophie,” Kane said, “you are the official host of this event and it sounds as if you bought the food yourself. Are you all right with our skipping the meal?”
“Absolutely, no problem at all.” I would have paid double the amount of the meal’s cost if it meant that I could have these people out of my house any more quickly.
“Well, I’m for it,” Zach said. “I think we’d all be better off talking to the dead than to each other.”
“Wise man,” Jason muttered, taking a seat next to the boy.
“I’m taking Enrico’s chair,” Maria declared.
We all took a seat and Venus announced that she was the medium. She looked at me, daring me to argue, but I didn’t. Let Venus call up her demons, I just wanted to get the whole thing over with.
Venus picked up one of the candles and held it up for everyone’s inspection. “As noted, all of the candles are white,” she said. “White symbolizes peace. Before I light them I will pass each candle around the table and when you hold it in your hands you must charge that candle. Visualize its power; visualize peaceful smoke curling from its wick, a warm peaceful glow emanating from it.”
She passed the first two candles to the left and one to the right. I shot Scott a look, but for once he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I had a feeling that he was suppressing a laugh.
Jason and Al looked equally skeptical. It was only Amelia, Lorna, Kane and Venus who appeared to be clearly enrapt. Zach’s expression remained unreadable under the white powder and Maria was still too angry to convey a different emotion. I let the first two candles pass from my hands without a second thought. But when my palms pressed against the third candle, thicker and heavier than its companions, I found myself wanting to follow Venus’s instructions. Not because I believed it would do any good, but because it was fun. I was hosting this damn thing so I might as well do it right. But the candle didn’t look like an instrument of peace. It was made of beeswax, for God’s sake. Bees are not peaceful. I passed the candle to Maria. Perhaps she would be able to charge it for both of us. Then again, when you consider her state of mind, I might have more luck finding peace in the Middle East.
When all the candles had been “charged” Venus lit each of them. She left the table long enough to turn off the other lights in the living room then returned to her seat.
“Join hands,” she instructed. “Now, breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Clear your mind of everything. Absorb the peace of the candles.”
I did as Venus asked and watched the shadows cast by the flames alter the appearance of my guests. Zach’s powdered white face, which only moments ago had seemed humorously overdone, now looked preternatural and shocking. Lorna’s dark circles disappeared and the light reflected in her eyes seemed to illuminate an emotion that I hadn’t noted before. Determination? Desperation? It was impossible to say. Kane, on the other hand, was easy to read. His breaths were deep and resonating, but he was not calm. No, Kane’s excitement was mounting with each second.
“Our beloved Andrea,” Venus began after several minutes had passed, “we ask that you commune with us and move among us.”
None of us said a word as we waited for some kind of response. I didn’t know who Andrea was. I had thought that we were going to try to call Oscar back, but the surprise didn’t bother me. She could have tried to call Elvis back for all the good it was going to do us.
Of course, Andrea didn’t make an appearance, so Venus repeated her request again and again. Eventually she rephrased the question, asking the spirit to rap once if she was among us. She was answered with silence. The wax from the candles dripped down in little molded teardrops, reminding all of us of the painfully slow movement of time. Kane’s mouth turned down with frustration. His eyes met mine and I realized that without speaking he was talking to me, trying to convey some kind of message that I could not decipher. An inexplicable chill ran up my spine and I felt an ache in my chest, dull and fleeting as it was. And then there was warmth, comfort and for a second I felt the peace that Venus had tried to get me to visualize.
“Say goodbye.”
My breath caught and I looked to Maria and then to Zach to see which of them had just spoken. But both of them were looking at the candles, distracted and oblivious to my change in mood.
“This isn’t working,” Venus said with a sigh. “Someone blow out the candles.”
“We’re giving up?” Lorna asked. “But we’ve only just begun! We could at least try to call Deb!”
“If this was going to work there would have been some kind of sign by now. Time is not the problem.” Venus looked pointedly at me as if to silently say that the problem lay with me, but I was too discombobulated to care about Venus’s deference of blame. I was still trying to figure out who had spoken before. Kane? Scott? Amelia? And then another disturbing realization hit me. I didn’t know if it had been a woman or a man who had spoken. The words had been completely clear, but the voice that said them had been completely abstract. What was that about? Fifty million questions were swirling around in my head and yet those questions didn’t make any sense even to me—and I was the one forming them! I gently touched my hand to my heart where I had felt that dull ache only moments before. The ache was gone, replaced with a rapid beating.
“Sophie, what is it?” Kane was leaning across the table, agitation gleaming in his eyes. “Did you feel something?”
The entire room fell silent as everyone focused on me, waiting for me to give them some kind of hope that their séance hadn’t been a complete waste of time.
“I didn’t feel anything,” I lied. “Just a little heartburn. I ate a lot of spicy food for lunch.”
A cloud of disappointment descended on the group, but I didn’t care. I had much bigger problems. After all, I was beginning to suspect that I might actually be losing my mind.
5
Life is like a box of chocolate, and I’m allergic.
—The Lighter Side of Death
I COULDN’T WAIT FOR EVERYONE TO LEAVE. FORTUNATELY I DIDN’T REALLY have to. Once it was decided that the séance was a failure everyone left with the speed and enthusiasm of an audience who had just sat through a bad three-hour movie. Jason took the time to give me his number so we could “get together for coffee sometime.” Kane was the only one who lingered. He kept pestering me with questions about why I thought the séance didn’t work and if I knew who the disbeliever in the group was. He even asked me if I thought it would have helped to have red candles since it was Andrea’s favorite color. Like I was some kind of expert on all this. I didn’t say so, but I was pretty sure that the séance failed because séances don’t work and ghosts don’t exist.
But what about those words:
Say goodbye.
But I didn’t tell Kane about that and eventually he left, too, leaving me alone in my new house. It was just as well, Anatoly was supposed to come over later. I hadn’t asked him to move in yet—I had decided to wait until after escrow closed, but still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t help me keep the bed warm. And he could also distract me from what had turned into a rather disturbing evening.
Now alone, I turned on all the lights in every room and tried to focus on the more mundane aspects of life. I desperately needed to do laundry, but in order to physically reach my washer I’d have to relocate several heavy boxes. Then there were the boxes in the garage. Normally I would just leave those there and park my car on the street until I had a little more energy, but now I had Venus to consider. I knew from experience that it was impossible to be with Scott and not see other women as threats, fidelity not being his strong suit. Now Venus knew that Scott had been with me, after dark, in a house that he had expected to be empty, and to make matters worse he had called me Soapy right in front of her. Add that to the fact that she was obviously completely out of her mind, and I had to conclude that parking my car on the street might lead to a few slashed tires.
So when Anatoly finally showed up at 10:30 p.m. with his sexy half smile and a bottle of Merlot I was sweaty, exhausted and doggedly filling my living room with all my packed-up odds and ends.
“Interesting decorating choice,” he said as he navigated through a field of brown boxes with cryptic labels such as “Knickknacks” and “Miscellaneous.”
“I don’t know how I managed to collect so much stuff,” I said, wiping my hands on my clothes before leaning in for my kiss.
“Why did you move everything all at once? You still have your apartment until the end of next month. Why didn’t you take a little at a time?”
“I don’t know, anxious to get started, I guess.”
“Yes, you were quick to pack,” Anatoly acknowledged, taking in the scene. “It’s the unpacking that seems to have slowed you down.” He threw his jacket over one of the boxes and then found his way to an empty chair. “Is that because this isn’t your place yet?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s my place. I signed the papers.”
“For an escrow that won’t go through for another week, if at all. If you ask me, $20,000 is worth showing your new residence a lot of disrespect.”
“But I’m getting the house for hundreds of thousands of dollars below market, so it’s not like six of one, half dozen of the other,” I pointed out.
“Has Kane even transferred the utilities over to you yet?”
I swallowed and looked away. “He’s insisting on paying them until escrow goes through, but that doesn’t mean…”
“Sophie, you’re practically squatting.”
“Are you purposely trying to piss me off or do you really not get it?” I snapped. “I don’t want his $20,000. This is my house! I have always wanted to live here and now I finally do!”
“‘Always?’” Anatoly repeated. “‘Finally?’ Sophie you first saw this place five weeks ago.”
“Seven,” I said stubbornly, but I did see his point. Why did it feel like I had been fighting for this place for years? And why was I jumping all over Anatoly for pointing out the obvious? I did some quick calculations in my head, but that didn’t give me an explanation for my temper tantrum; I wasn’t due to get my period for another two weeks.
Anatoly considered me for a moment then lowered his gaze to the wine bottle as he shifted it from hand to hand. Something was bothering him, but instead of opening up he said, “So tell me, Sophie, how was the freak show?”
“What?” I asked, not following him at first. “Oh, the séance. Well, it was…weird—but I suppose weird’s normal for a freak show. You’re not going to believe this, but Jason Beck was there. He’s a bona fide member of the Specter Society.”
Anatoly looked at me blankly. “Who’s Jason Beck?”
“You remember Jason. One of Dena’s GBCs…you, know, Mr. Velvet Pants.”
“Right.” Anatoly laughed appreciatively. “How could I forget him? And GBC stands for…?”
“Glorified Booty Call.”
“Right. It makes sense that he would be part of that group, he was crazy enough.” He looked back down at the wine. “Did Scott give you any trouble?”
“No, he was fine. I still can’t believe he’s with Venus. I mean, yeah, she’s got money, but they’re such a mismatched couple. It’s like if Owen Wilson hooked up with Greta Van Susteren. It’s just strange.” Anatoly continued to study the wine bottle as if I hadn’t spoken. Something about his demeanor made me nervous. I took a few steps toward the window seat before changing my mind and converting one of the boxes closer to him into a temporary stool. “How was your stakeout?” I asked, grasping at the one question that I knew could get him talking again.
“Boring,” he sighed. “My client hired me to see if her ex is using. There’s a custody thing going on and she’s looking for ammunition. But as far as I can tell all his vices are legal. Women, alcohol, that kind of stuff. Nothing that will cost him his visitation rights.”
“It may be legal, but too much alcohol tends to hamper people’s ability to parent,” I pointed out. “That’s why I’ve chosen to remain childless.”
He laughed and I immediately relaxed. “Speaking of which, why don’t you open that wine,” I suggested.
“I can do that.” I waited as he went to fetch a corkscrew from the kitchen. My corkscrew and glasses were the first things I had unpacked. I had my priorities.
“Wine for two,” he announced as he returned with a couple of filled glasses.
I smiled gratefully. “Leah put some logs in the fireplace in case my guests wanted more ambiance. Shall we light it?” I asked, turning toward the fireplace as he came to my side. But then my smile froze on my face as I noted the photo above the mantel.
Anatoly turned to see what I was looking at. “What’s wrong?”
“That picture of me and my father…” I whispered.
“It’s new, right? I don’t remember seeing it before.”
“It’s new, but it’s also…straight.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was crooked by, like, half an inch. And now it’s not.”
“Someone at your party must have fixed it for you.” Anatoly handed me the glasses before crouching by the fireplace and picking up the long matches that Leah had conveniently left there.
“I don’t think they did,” I said.
“Then perhaps it wasn’t crooked at all.” The fire sprang to life and Anatoly quickly closed the curtain as the sparks reached out for him. “Maybe you were just looking at it from the wrong angle.”
“No, I know it was crooked. Leah was the one who hung it and she was trying to even it out before she left.”
“And she succeeded.”
“No, she didn’t,” I said firmly.
“Sophie, what are you trying to say?” Anatoly straightened up and took his wineglass from me. “Do you think the picture was crooked and then it just magically corrected itself?”
I finally tore my eyes from the wall and looked at Anatoly. “No…no, of course that’s not what I’m saying.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “All I do know is that I’m going to need more than one glass of this.”
“You haven’t even started your first one.”
In three large gulps I downed my entire glass of wine.
Anatoly laughed appreciatively. “All right then, why don’t you take my wine and I’ll pour myself another. And then maybe I can talk you into a few more indulgences.” He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear before gently nibbling on the lobe. “A full body massage? I’ll start here—” he carefully cupped my left breast and let his fingers graze my hardening nipple “—and work my way down.”
“You just assumed that I invited you over for sex?” I asked with mock indignation. “Maybe I wanted to talk.”
“So talk,” he murmured. He slipped his hand under my shirt and resumed the massage.
I smiled and took another sip of wine, this time from his glass. “All right, I will. How was your day, Anatoly?”
“I already told you it was boring,” he reminded me. “The night looks a lot more promising.”
I laughed softly and drank more of his wine. I thought of the séance, of what I had heard, but hadn’t heard at all. I could talk to him about that. But as his other hand began to work its way up my inner thigh, the warmth of his skin burning through my jeans, I quickly dismissed the idea. I didn’t really want to talk or think. Right now I was content to just feel whatever it was that Anatoly planned to do to me.
And just as I began to relax, the wine and his touch finally lightening my mood, the doorbell rang. It was a melodic chime, but it might as well have been the obnoxious scream of a smoke alarm for all the irritation it provoked.
“Were you expecting someone?” Anatoly asked.
“Just you.”
He furrowed his brow and then reluctantly removed his hands and went to see who had interrupted us. He peeped out the little leaded, textured glass window built into the top of the door and frowned. “It’s a woman. Italian, I think.”
“Sophie?” I heard a muffled voice come from the other side of the door. “It’s Maria Risso. May I please come in? I must speak to you.”
Confused and slightly inebriated, I walked to the door as Anatoly opened it. “Did you forget something?” I asked as I acknowledged Maria.
“No, I…may I come in for a moment? I promise not to be long.”
I glanced at Anatoly who looked more than a little peeved at this point. Reluctantly, he stepped aside as I waved her in. She was frowning, intensifying the few wrinkles in her face.
“Maria, this is my boyfriend, Anatoly.”
Maria either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. “Did Enrico call and tell you why he wasn’t coming?” she asked, glancing at the round, rented table, now the only piece of furniture not holding a box.
“No,” I said carefully, not really wanting to relive that particular phone conversation. “He just said he was having a bad day.”
“Did he say he was going somewhere?”
“No.”
“Did he say he was feeling ill?”
“Why are you bothering me?” I asked bluntly. I was required to attend these people’s séances, but there was nothing in my escrow that stipulated that I had to play twenty questions.
She sucked in a sharp breath and toyed with the belt of her trench coat. “I went to see him.”
“So?” Anatoly asked impatiently.
“I still have the key to the building, so I let myself in, and when I was standing outside the door to his condo I smelled food and I could make out the sounds of Gabrieli playing on the stereo, but he didn’t respond to my knock or to the doorbell. When I called out to him, the only response I got was from that damn parrot.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want company tonight,” Anatoly suggested. “Maybe he has a guest over and he’s in the middle of enjoying some wine and other pleasures and your presence would have been an intrusion.”
I suppressed a smile. Subtlety was not something that Anatoly was comfortable with.
“I didn’t see any evidence of a guest.”
“How could you see evidence of anything when you’re standing outside a door?” Anatoly continued reasonably.
“Because I have the key to his apartment,” Maria admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “I tried to let myself in, but the chain lock was on. Enrico may want to avoid me, but my trying to come into the condo on my own accord should have thrown him into a rage. I expected a confrontation of some kind. But he didn’t scream at me or even acknowledge my attempt. I’d say that he might not have been home, but then he wouldn’t have left the CD player on.”
“And he wouldn’t have been able to chain lock the door,” I pointed out.
“Well, that would be explainable, but the music…”
Her voice trailed off and Anatoly and I exchanged looks. Last I checked it was a lot easier to leave a stereo on than chain lock a door from the outside. But I didn’t really want to argue the point.
“Maria, I don’t know where Enrico is or why he has his music on,” I said slowly. “All he essentially told me was that he was having a bad day. His exact words were that he was being haunted, whatever that means. He said he was going to be late and then we kind of got into it.”
“You got in an argument? What could you two possibly argue about? You don’t even know one another.” Then her eyes widened in horror. “You didn’t insult his food, did you? Or did you praise another chef? Perhaps you said something nice about Wolfgang Puck. Enrico is very jealous of Wolfgang Puck.”
“Wolfgang never entered into our conversation. I was just a little flippant when he said he was being haunted.”
“Enrico doesn’t believe in ghosts,” Maria said firmly. “He comes to the Specter Society meetings because he finds them amusing…although now I suspect his reasons for coming have more to do with me than anything else.”
“I don’t know anything about any of that,” I said. I was beginning to lose patience with this line of questioning. She was uninvited and she was preventing Anatoly from ravaging me. “All I know is that he told me he was haunted, I made a joke about that and then he called me a fucking bitch and hung up on me.”
“What!” Maria gasped. “But he only uses such profanity for food critics and diet gurus!”
“Yeah, well, I’m neither,” I said drily.
Maria now looked even more agitated than she had when she walked through my door. She started wandering around the room, weaving in and out of boxes like a confused rat aimlessly exploring a maze. “Something is amiss.”
“It might be,” Anatoly agreed. “But it’s not our problem. Now if you’ll excuse us.”
Maria glanced down at the empty wineglasses on the box near where I had been standing and comprehension spread across her countenance. Unfortunately, the comprehension didn’t seem to be mixed with even the slightest bit of acquiescence. “If you’re right,” she said, directing her comments to Anatoly, “if Enrico isn’t answering the door because he specifically doesn’t want to talk to me, then I’m going to need another person to act as my decoy.”