(1987) The Celestial Bed (23 page)

‘So you divorced?’

‘After a year,’ said Brandon. ‘But I remained haunted by a kind of guilt. Let’s say an uncertainty. I’d had affairs. She’d had affairs. But somehow we couldn’t make it good together. I was the one who was dysfunctional. But, in a sense, so was she. Anyway, I read about a sex encounter group that had a programme run by two psychologists down in La Jolla. So I enrolled. Actually, very enlightening. I found out my case wasn’t so unusual. Deep down I didn’t like the lady I was married to. I wanted to get away from her, and my body got the message before my head did. The experience stimulated my interest in sex education once more, and I returned to Oregon to resume teaching. When I heard Dr Freeberg was looking for a male surrogate, I applied. Here I am.’

‘Are you interested in it only as a way to make a living?’

‘Truthfully, I don’t know yet. I guess I feel now there’s more to it than that.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Gayle, relieved. ‘Do you have a family?’

‘No brother, no sister. In a sense, no parents. I have parents, but they divorced maybe ten years ago, and since then each has remarried, and mostly we’re out of touch.’ He appraised Gayle. ‘You can say I’m a loner like yourself. Not that I want to be. Obviously, that’s why I’m here.’

She met his gaze. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Because I don’t like being without you.’

She smiled. ‘Well spoken.’ She set down her empty glass and stood up, reaching for his hand. ‘Let’s have dinner.’

Brandon came to his feet. But instead of letting her take him into

the dining room, he pulled her firmly to him. She did not resist.

‘Dinner can wait, can’t it?’ he whispered into her ear.

‘Do you — do you have something better in mind?’ she said weakly.

‘This.’ He brought his face down to her, and pressed his lips to hers, and kissed her hard. ‘I’m trying to tell you I love you’, he said.

Momentarily, she drew back. ‘Paul, I love you, too. Let’s stop wasting time …’

‘I was hoping you’d - ’

‘ — go on from here? I can’t wait.’ She linked an arm in his. ‘My bedroom’s off the hall’

He followed her into a small but pretty room, with flowered chintz chairs and curtains, a pair of lampshades in pink, and a queen-sized bed, ready for occupancy.

Gayle stood silently as he undressed her, then himself. She watched him stiffen and felt herself grow damp.

He grabbed her, smothering her mouth with kisses, and slowly moved his mouth down to her breasts, tonguing and kissing each until the brown nipples were enlarged and firm.

She took him by the arm and led him to the bed.

‘I’ve been dreaming of this all day,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Even while I was working.’

As she dropped down on the bed, he said, ‘Working? Working with whom?’

‘First with the impotent patient from Chicago. It was very successful. I came.’

‘You came?’ Brandon lowered himself on the bed, eyes on her. ‘How did it affect him?’

‘He got his first hard on. I mean, that’s the point, you know, no pun intended.’

Brandon frowned. ‘Then what did you do?’

‘I congratulated him. Wouldn’t you?’ Touching Brandon, Gayle said, ‘There’s just one thing, Paul. If I’m a little slow tonight, just have patience.’

‘Why? Did you also see your second patient today?’

‘The premature ejaculator? Yes, he’s on intensive.’

‘What did you do with him?’

‘The usual. I introduced him to the squeezing technique.’

‘How?’

‘Paul, for God’s sake, by squeezing his penis before he came, of course. It worked.’

Brandon remained very still. ‘You don’t have to be so graphic’

She was staring at his deflating penis. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Let me help you. Come here.’ She patted the bed beside her.

Shaken, Brandon obeyed her. ‘What do you intend to do?’

‘Relax you. Let me give you a facial caress, maybe a back caress, some pleasuring - ’

‘Hold on there. I thought this was purely social, not business as usual.’

Gayle was confused. ‘But it is. I only wanted to - ’

‘No, none of those damn exercises. I don’t want them tonight.’

‘Well, let me do something else.’ She sat up, taking his limp penis in her hand. She leaned down, began to bend her head toward it.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’

‘I’m going to kiss you there. I’m sure that’ll work.’

Brandon grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. ‘Kiss me there? Listen to me, I wouldn’t mind that ordinarily, but I just have a feeling this is something you do with your patients. Do you go down on them?’

She faltered. ‘I’ve never had to. Not once.’ She met his eyes frankly. ‘But if I had to, I suppose I might do it if it was necessary.’

He shook his head with disgust. ‘Shit, you are something, you really are.’ He rolled sideways and left the bed. ‘You’re on a power trip, that’s all. You don’t give a damn about love. You just want to show how great you are, how you can dominate any man. I think that’s shit.’

Gayle was aghast. ‘Paul, are you crazy?’

He yanked on his jock shorts, and was pulling on his trousers. ‘Crazy to be here, to believe that a sex surrogate could be a real woman.’ He stuck his bare feet into his shoes, swept up his socks and shirt and jacket. ‘No way. You go down on your patients, or do anything you like with them — but not with me. I should have known. With two sex surrogates — zilch — never the twain shall meet. Sorry, Gayle, my young pro. It won’t work. Good-night!’

By the time she had pulled on her robe and chased into the living room to explain it all better, to persuade him to calm down, it was too late.

The front door had just slammed. The living room was empty.

Seven

When Tony Zecca awakened in the morning, he was surprised to find that Nan was not in the bed beside him. This was unlike her, since she was usually asleep when he left for the restaurant. Although, several times, he remembered, she had risen before him to do some shopping for the house.

Zecca dressed hastily, without further concern about her absence, because he had arranged to be at his office early to interview two more applicants for the temporary job as cashier. Then he would return in time to take Nan to her doctor and have it out with the bastard.

Once dressed, Zecca had gone into the dining room, calling out to his housekeeper in the kitchen that he was ready for his breakfast.

Sitting down at his place mat, he folded the morning paper to the sports section while Hilda appeared with his orange juice and hot coffee. He was finishing his orange juice and reading the box scores, when Hilda reappeared with his eggs and bacon, and slices of toast.

Attacking the eggs and bacon, concentrating on the sports results, he asked Hilda absently, ‘What time did my lady friend have her breakfast?’

‘She didn’t,’ said Hilda, disappearing into the kitchen.

Zecca banged down his fork, then twisted in his chair. ‘Hilda, goddammit, come back here!’ He waited for his overweight German housekeeper to return. Seeing her materialise in the kitchen doorway, he barked, ‘What in the hell do you mean, she didn’t have breakfast? She never goes out with no breakfast.’

‘Who says she went out? I didn’t see her go out. She must be around somewhere.’

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ agreed Zecca. He shoved what remained of his

eggs into his mouth, pushed away the sports section, and left his chair. He meant to head straight for the restaurant, but then he remembered he had planned to return to the house to pick up Nan and drive her to her phony doctor for a showdown. He’d give that phony doctor a piece of his mind, and then some, and once and for all make him stop stalling Nan along and interfering with their normal love life. He didn’t know the time he was supposed to meet Nan for her appointment, and he decided he’d better find that out before he went to work.

Nan’s bathroom door was closed. Zecca yanked it open and barged inside. No one there. Then for sure the bitch was in her dressing room. Why those fucking women always took so much time dressing up he didn’t know, when all you wanted with them was to have them bare ass.

Zecca jerked open the door to the dressing room, shouting out, ‘Nan, goddammit!’

No answer. The dressing room was empty.

Zecca spun around. Something fishy. Her clothes rack was empty. He pivoted all round, and his eyes fell on the note Sellotaped to her mirror.

He strode to the mirror, tore off the note, and tried to make out her shaky handwriting. Something real crazy about leaving him. Leaving him! He held the note closer, and read each word carefully. He had it now. She’d walked. The bitch had walked out on him, something no woman since Crystal had ever done or even dared think about.

In a fury, Zecca crumpled her note, balled it up and crushed it in his huge fist.

Anger wrestled with bewilderment. Why would she have done a cuckoo thing like that? He’d been good to her, given the homeless nobody a home and a job, yet she’d walked off. How come? She had nowhere to go, nowhere on earth. She knew no one else, as far as he knew, except…

Except the fucking doctor she’d been seeing almost every day.

That knowledge, and the recollection of their talk yesterday when she so desperately tried to keep him from seeing her doctor, fitted together and told him the whole story.

Nan had thrown him over, left him to shack up with her doctor, who’d probably been screwing her regularly from the first day.

Well, goddammit, Zecca told himself, neither of them would get

away with it. He’d find that hot-nuts doctor and punch him out so he’d never forget not to fool around with anyone else’s woman. Then he’d get his mitts on Nan and drag her back where she belonged. That was it. His course was clear.

Only one roadblock.

Who in the fuck was her fucking doctor? He had to know who deserved a beating before going to wherever they were shacked up and dragging her back with him.

Who in the fuck was her doctor, dammit?

She’d never told him, clever bitch, as far as he could remember. And he could kick himself in the ass for never having bothered to ask her. He just hadn’t bothered, and now his fury mounted once more at her cheating on him.

He tried to think. To go to a doctor, you had to pay him. Therefore there should be bills around. But he always kept track of her bills and filed them at the restaurant office for his accountant and the IRS. Yet he’d never once seen a receipt, or a bill from her so-called doctor. Obviously she paid in cash always, out of the small savings she’d had when she’d moved in or out of her earnings or whatever she skimmed off her household allowance.

No bills, not one.

Wrong. There had been one bill, he remembered, one bill on an MD’s letterhead way back in the beginning. It had slipped through before she got smart. And Zecca had it, and if he remembered right, it had been on the doctor’s letterhead stationery.

He snatched up Nan’s telephone and dialled his restaurant, and got his head waitress who was also his floor manager.

‘Marge,’ he said, ‘I’m coming in, but I have no time for those interviews with the temporary cashiers. Cancel them out for today, and let that bimbo we have stay on and keep robbing us until I throw her out. I’m coming in on something else, a tax matter, so I’ll be in my office and don’t let anybody bother me.’

Leaving the bitch’s dressing room, Zecca tore out of the house, jumped into his Cadillac, and was on his way to sweet revenge.

A half hour later, in the rear room cubbyhole office of his restaurant, he’d checked when Nan had started working for him, knowing she’d gone to fix her fanny with the doctor some time after that.

Ten minutes passed before he had the doc’s receipt in hand. He felt triumphant.

Dr Stanley Lopez - a spic yet - and his charges for the first overall checkup.

The only receipt. No others either because she paid him in cash, or more probably, because he paid her for banging her. Some shots she was getting!

Receipt in hand, with Dr Lopez’s address on it, Zecca turned his Cadillac toward the downtown district of Hillsdale.

Fifteen minutes later he slowed in front of a six-storey medical building with a parking lot underneath. Zecca drove down the ramp, left his Cadillac with an attendant, found Dr Lopez’s name on the directory beside the elevators, then took the first elevator going up.

He got off at the fourth floor.

The frosted glass door just to the right of the elevator read: Stanley M. Lopez, MD. Zecca pushed open the door, balled up his fists, and almost bounded across the fancy reception room to where some kind of good-looking Latina gal was busy over some paperwork.

Her expression was startled when she saw Zecca.

He guessed it showed on his face, how he felt, so he tried to contain himself.

‘Yes?’ the receptionist asked.

‘I want to consult with Dr Lopez about my — my wife.’

‘She’s a patient here?’

‘A regular.’

‘Her name, please.’

‘Zecca,’ he said automatically, and then he corrected himself. ‘No, actually she likes to use her maiden name. Her name — my wife’s name is Nan Whitcomb. She was coming in to see Dr Lopez today.’

The receptionist furrowed her brow. ‘That can’t be, I’m afraid. Dr Lopez had no appointments today. He has to conduct a seminar at USC. You’re sure your wife is a patient who comes here regularly? I just can’t seem to place her name.’

‘I’m sure all right,’ said Zecca grimly, digging into his jacket pocket for the receipt he’d brought along. ‘Have a look. Here’s your receipt for a bill she paid.’

The receptionist took it, stared at it puzzled, then slowly got up and made her way to a file cabinet behind her. She knelt down, pulled out the bottom file drawer, fingered through the tabs, and

then pulled out a manila folder. ‘You’re right, sir. We have a file for “Whitcomb, Nan”. Let me have a look.’

Walking slowly back to the counter, the receptionist had opened the folder and was studying the contents inside. Suddenly, she raised her head, smiling at Zecca. ‘I think it’s all clear now. I was actually right. Your wife isn’t Dr Lopez’s patient. She just visited him the one time for a physical checkup. She was a referral from Dr Freeberg. He always has his patients come to Dr Lopez for a checkup before working with them. Dr Freeberg’s the one you want to see for any consultation.’