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She headed straight for Pete, brushing his arm with her breasts as she squeezed by him on her way to the can. She smelled fantastic. He thought she might have a pretty face, too, but it was dark and he’d been distracted by the rest of her.
He watched the ladies’ room, looking forward to her return trip.
She emerged from the bathroom, but instead of coming back toward him she headed for the door.
Pete hustled after her, pushing through the ranks of ultrahip boys and girls pretending not to notice each other. He’d almost reached the door when a guy resembling a woolly mammoth in a tuxedo plowed in.
“’Scuse me.”
“No problem.” Pete tried to get around him, only to discover six more just like him pouring through the door. Seven equally large women in ruffled bridesmaid gowns followed close behind the men.
Pete got caught in the undertow and was pulled back into the club, surfing a wave of Aqua Velva and powder-blue taffeta. Somehow he managed to squeeze through the wedding party and reached the door just in time to see a cab pull away from the curb.
Pete smacked the door with the palm of his hand.
Now what?
He turned and went back into the club. No way was he going to let Balboa disappear.
But by the time he fought his way back into the bar, the only thing left sitting at Balboa’s bar stool was a lipstick-smudged margarita glass and an ashtray full of butts.
“Shit,” Pete muttered.
It really wasn’t his day.
CHAPTER 4
Saturday, 7:54 a.m.
Turning Japanese
Someone was sticking needles into her eyes. Not sewing needles, but long, thick hypodermics.
Wait. What was that? The smoke detector? The kids!
Grace leaped out of bed and ran for the door, slipping on the silk jacket that lay on the floor, smacking her head on the ceramic cat at the end of the bed.
She lay on her back, staring up at the frosted glass light fixture on the ceiling.
That noise wasn’t the smoke detector going off. It was her alarm clock.
“Crap.” She winced at the sound of her own voice.
She rolled onto her stomach and pushed up onto all fours. Just the thought of standing left her weak with nausea.
She crawled into the bathroom on her hands and knees and laid her cheek on the cool Japanese porcelain tile floor. Her tongue felt like one of Kevin’s gym socks and, she imagined, smelled like it, too.
What have I done to myself?
Her hand bore an ugly blue ink blot—the stamp for the club. And on her palm she’d written a number—1767. 1767? What the hell was that?
A high, wavering voice echoed in her head. “In 1767, the Townshend Acts were implemented by the British on the American colonies…” It was Mrs. Dietz, her ninth-grade American History teacher.
Grace squinted at the numbers again. Why in the hell would she have written the date of the Townshend Acts on her hand?
She debated taking a shower but imagined the water would probably feel like Niagara Falls beating down on her head. She managed to pull on a sweat suit and comb her new pain-in-the-ass haircut without throwing up.
She took three aspirins and staggered downstairs to check her Day-Timer.
Meals on Wheels, the Goodwill drop and then Tom’s.
She’d signed the papers he’d given her. No, she’d forged the papers (why not call a spade a spade?), and she just wanted to get rid of them and get on with her life.
Crap.
She dragged a giant green trash bag full of clothes from her closet. In a moment of pique over the bump on her head and her prick of an ex-husband, she stuffed the red silk jacket into the bag.
Saturday, 9:11 a.m.
Mrs. Beeber and Mr. Pickles
“Who is it?” Mrs. Beeber peered at Grace through the smeary film coating the window of the storm door. Her head resembled a small dried apple nestled atop the collar of her purple turtleneck.
“Meals on Wheels, Mrs. Beeber.”
“I didn’t think you were coming today. You’re late.”
“I’m not late, Mrs. Beeber. Will you open the door?”
Mrs. Beeber squinted at her watch, and shook her head. “You’re eleven minutes late.”
One cup of instant coffee—made with hot tap water and consumed while standing over the sink—had not prepared Grace for this day. She took three calming breaths. Nadi shodhana. Her yoga instructor would be proud.
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Beeber. I couldn’t find my car keys.”
In fact, she hadn’t been able to find her purse. She’d scoured the whole house, with no luck. She must have left it at the club.
She’d allowed herself a few minutes of heart-thumping panic. Her cell phone was in there, along with her car keys and house keys (which explained why the panty hose she’d worn last night had been covered with mulch, and the spare key she hid under a rock in the flower bed was now on the table near the back door).
But, worst of all, the papers she was supposed to return to Tom that morning were in that purse.
When she went out to the garage, she realized she had to go back to Caligula anyway, to pick up her car. Surely her purse would be there, safe and snug in the arms of the Game Boy–playing bouncer.
She’d chosen to ignore all logic to the contrary. Her stomach just couldn’t take it.
So she’d snagged her spare keys from the hook by the door, and took the minivan for her morning appointments.
“Helloooo?” Mrs. Beeber called her back to Earth, and made a sour face. “Are you coming in with that?”
She held the screen door open and Grace entered, bearing a white tray covered with plastic wrap she’d picked up on her way there.
Mrs. Beeber squinted at the tray. “Is it a kosher meal?”
Grace bit the inside of her cheek. “You aren’t Jewish, Mrs. Beeber.”
“Yeah, but they give you more with them kosher meals.”
Grace set the tray on Mrs. Beeber’s mutton-gray Formica countertop. “I’m pretty sure everyone gets the same amount, whether it’s kosher or not. Is everything okay with you?”
“As a matter of fact, my sciatica’s a bitch and my son never calls me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“And I got the runs from that ham casserole you brought the other day.”
“I didn’t bring you a ham casserole.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
Mrs. Beeber scratched her chin. “Now wait, I remember. It wasn’t you. It was my neighbor, Peggy. I should know better than to eat anything she gives me. One time, oh, I guess it was nineteen-seventy-eight or nine…I remember I was watching Dallas…she brought me this disgusting meat loaf—”
“Mrs. Beeber, I really have to get going. I have three more meals to deliver.”
“Oh. Well. Can you help me with something before you leave?”
“You know I’m not supposed to…”
“But it isn’t for me. It’s for Mr. Pickles.”
Mr. Pickles was Mrs. Beeber’s cat, a giant old Persian with male pattern baldness and a lazy eye, who’d hissed at Grace on more than one occasion. Not a huge motivator.
“Please?” Mrs. Beeber’s wizened face sank deeper into the turtleneck sweater.
Grace sighed. “Okay. What do you need?”
Saturday, 10:41 a.m.
Shake It Up
“Rough night, eh?”
“Will you just help me, please?” Grace struggled under the weight of the bag filled with clothes, her arms weak from hefting a fifty-pound bag of cat food up forty stairs from Mrs. Beeber’s cellar.
Grace doubted Mr. Pickles would live long enough to see the food at the bottom of that bag.
Martha Moradjiewski, the clerk at the Goodwill, grabbed one side of the garbage bag and helped Grace drag it across the floor to the counter.
“You look hungover,” the clerk said.
“Just a little.”
“Try a vanilla milkshake. They always help me.”
Grace imagined Martha drank a lot of milkshakes, what with having a couple of sons who spent the day sniffing nail polish, a live-in mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s and a husband who considered pot a major food group.
Grace slid her sunglasses on. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Six minutes later she pulled out of McDonald’s, shake in hand, heading for home. She took a sip, her eyeballs nearly imploding from the suction necessary to draw a mouthful of the stuff.
“Ugh.”
She stuck the shake in a cup holder and rolled down the window, trying to clear her head. What happened last night?
There were togas, of course. And cigarettes. And primo butts.
She remembered shots. Lots of shots. And lots of margaritas, too.
She remembered talking about movies and music and high school haircuts. And boys. And men.
Beyond that, nothing.
She pulled into her driveway, not too sick to admire the bright red Japanese maple near the front door. She couldn’t imagine not seeing that maple every day.
What she’d done in order to keep it crept back into her consciousness. One small act of forgery, and the landscaping was forever hers.
She gagged and shoved a fist into her mouth to keep from barfing into the bushes.
Hey, at least they were her bushes. Right?
Saturday, 11:39 a.m.
Lord of the Ring
After the needles in her eyes had been replaced by tiny straight pins and there was absolutely nothing left in her stomach to puke up, Grace made a pot of coffee and braved the thirty seconds of blinding sunlight to fetch the paper from the lawn.
She needed a few minutes to get herself together before she called a cab and went back down to the city for her car.
She sat down with her World’s Best Mom mug and opened the obituaries, half expecting to see her own name, when she stopped short.
Her anniversary band.
The twenty-thousand-dollar diamond and sapphire Tiffany anniversary band.
It wasn’t shooting spectacular prisms of light across the kitchen ceiling. Nor was it catching on the edge of the paper like it always did or digging uncomfortably into the sides of her fingers.
It wasn’t there.
