Danger, Sweetheart (2 page)

“I don't get it.”

“Mmm.” She climbed into her clothes while keeping a wary eye on her surroundings. She'd been hot—and he'd been gorgeous (if somewhat selfish and unimaginative in bed)—but not so lust crazed that she would let herself forget that she worked, and now had sex, in a hotel where it had once literally rained urine.

“You liked it,” her now-disgruntled bang pro tem was grumbling. “My ears are still ringing; that's how loud you were.”

“I had little choice; you weren't responding to my hand signals. No need to get miffed. You got off. I almost got off.” She shrugged. “Now we're off on our separate ways and ne'er the twain shall meet.”

“You don't talk like a waitress.”

“Incorrect, since I am in point of fact a waitress.” Ah, the beloved
all cocktail waitresses are slutty and stupid
cliché. And that observation from a man who was unable to calculate 15 percent of $150.15.

“Huh?”

So gorgeous,
she thought with mild regret,
and so dim.
He really was almost stereotypically handsome: penetrating blue eyes, deep blond hair with gold glints, long, long legs. She'd always had a weakness for the tall ones with good shoulders.

“Don't call me,” she said as she threw him a smile and gathered up her de rigueur overtly sexy uniform, “and I won't call you.”

He had by now managed to sit up in bed and looked adorably rumpled and confused. He rubbed his (blue,
bleu, azul
) eyes with the heels of his hands and squinted up at her. “Look, we can't see each other again. I'm sorry, but it was one of those boats passing in the night things.”

“Ships.” She managed not to add
you gorgeous moron
.

“Huh?”

“I will never understand how men are struck deaf post-orgasm.” She pulled on her underpants, then wriggled into the rest of her uniform. The rest = a long black satin suit jacket that buttoned low and fell high. Someday she would have a job that required her to wear pants.
Hold fast to your dream,
she thought, then straightened, turned, and spared a look at the gorgeous moron she had taken in a moment of insanity/horniness/loneliness.

He was blinking up at her like a confused, handsome possum caught in headlights. “So, going?”

“Yes, going. Thank you for six minutes of your time.” She was grumpy and anxious to get home where she could let her Hitachi, Sir Shakes-A-Lot, finish her off. But no need to be an
utter
bitch. She'd keep it at 30 percent. “It was nice to meet you.” And it was. He was all superficial charm and classic good looks: trim and tall, with eyes of direct Monet blue (post the artist's cataract surgery of 1923) and a brilliant smile she had first felt in her knees and then … higher. But not too high.

“Sorry it didn't work out. Listen, I come here quite a lot—”

“Yes. Your coin-bucket collection was a giveaway. As were the many times I've brought you Sea Breeze after Sea Breeze over the last few months. A bold choice for a straight man, by the way.”

“—and if our paths cross again, even though I'd love to see you again, I'm hoping we can be adult about this.”

“Right. Because nothing says adult like an exchange of bodily fluids followed by pretending the other person never existed to avoid conflict.” She managed (barely) to soften the observation with a smile. “Don't worry. I guarantee you will never, as long as you live,
ever
see me again.”

*   *   *

“I have to see you again.”

“How come?”

“Idjit! Not you,” she added when she heard his affronted huff, “me.” She couldn't believe her accent had slipped. Never had the word “idjit”—argh, “idiot,” she meant “idiot”—been hurled so accurately.

“Are you going to invite me in?” She looked around at the gold wallpaper, gold gilt mirror, and slightly less gold carpet as if seeing them in their tacky glory for the first time. “Or are we going to have this discussion in the hall?”

Benjamin Tarbell's bemused expression never faltered. “Look, I understand what you're going through,” he began, shifting immediately into practiced soothe mode.

She blinked. “In fact, you don't.”

“But what we had was too magical to cheapen with regular sex.”

She made a fist, then bit it to swallow the hysterical guffaw the word “magical” brought forth. “Ggghh. Mmmm?”

“So I'll have to ask you to leave,” he finished, swinging the door closed, “with only your precious memories of a lost love. It's killing me, too, baby! But it's the only way.”

Pretty rich boys should never take on country girls; she shoved past him, into the suite, and after a long nonplussed moment he shut the door and followed. She took in the dirty clothes draped on the desk, his wallet and rental car key, the room service cart, and the devastation that had once been his meal. The man had the table manners of a farrowing sow.

“There are French fries,” she observed, “on every surface of this room.” Then she stuffed her fist back into her mouth. She needed to wrap this up before she hit bone. Or vomited. Maybe both. “The reason I— What are you doing?”

He looked up from shrugging out of his robe. “Don't worry; I changed my mind.”

(don't ask,
What mind?
don't ask,
What mind?
don't)

He sat, crossed long, muscled legs, then patted the bed, which boasted rucked-up sheets and French fries. “I'm glad you came. Pretty soon I'll be glad
I
came.” He punctuated his idea of a bon mot with a lopsided leer as he stroked his burgeoning erection, which, she hated to admit, was impressive.
Ah-ha! Now I remember what I saw in you.

She tittered around her fist. Was this really happening? “Listen to me, you beautiful dolt. I am not here for another five-minute sweaty interlude.”

“No?” He wiggled dark, perfectly groomed brows
(my first tip-off; what had I been thinking? he has the eyebrows of a cologne model!),
then took a firmer grip on his penis and angled it toward her, as if it were a microphone and she his interview subject, or as if he was afraid she would have trouble finding it. Unfortunately, that would never have been difficult. The lovely dumb ass was hung like a steer. “You sure, um…” His inability to recall her name put an end to her giggles, for which she was grateful. And at least he had the grace to be embarrassed.

“I'll give you a hint: it means lily.”

“Is it Lily?”

“No,” she sighed/groaned (grighed? soaned?). “It's not Lily.” Their chat had the welcome side effect of softening his erection. Shannah (English/Hebrew origin; diminutive of Shoshannah, meaning: “lily”) had confidence that her next statement would wilt it entirely. “It's not Lily, you're not getting laid tonight—by me, at any rate—and I'm pregnant. By you.”

Going, going, gone.
Farewell, Benjamin's erection. I barely knew ye.

“No.”

“I understand,” she said kindly, “because that was my exact response when the stick turned blue. No, and then there may have been screaming. Followed by sobbing. But it's true. I've since had a doctor confirm.”

“It's not mine.”

“No need to take my word for it.” Never, she would never,
never
let him see how that hurt her. His reaction was expected, knee-jerk from a quintessential jerk.

And it hurt.

“No need,” she said again through clenched teeth, “to take my word for it. A blood test will show the baby has two dolts for parents and they're both in this room. Which stinks of French fries and your hair product. In fact—“She held up a finger, then bolted for the bathroom. She could have made it to the toilet but spitefully chose the sink. Then felt bad:
It's not like he'll be the one cleaning this up. Well, he'll have to call the front desk. It'll cost him seven seconds of his life.

From behind her, a hollow, “Aw, man,” followed by the whump of him falling back on the bed. She heard rustling and assumed he was putting his robe back on.

She rinsed her mouth and left the bathroom, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, hard, to shove back tears. She would cry; it was as inevitable as Tarbell's instinctive ducking of responsibility. But not here and not now and never in front of Benjamin Tarbell.

“So, rather like two people in a car accident, we should exchange insurance and contact information the better to wade through the legal and moral ramifications. Here's mine.” She pulled the paper with her contact info, along with a picture of the ultrasound, out of her pocket and offered them to him. When he didn't reach for them, she put them on the dresser beside his wallet. “Too soon?”

“Um…”

“Yes, I understand. I've had the better part of two weeks to adjust. In fact, I'm still adjusting. You need time.
I
need time. Once you are satisfied the babies are yours—”

“Babies?” He said it the way she would have said,
There's a rattlesnake in my soup!

“Yes. Twins.” The doctor was certain she had the date of conception wrong. When she explained, at length, that she well remembered her only sexual experience in fourteen months and thus was quite, quite sure about the date, he'd given her an ultrasound on the spot. And there they were: twin harbingers of the coming destruction of her youth.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “That is the perfect response.” She absently patted her stomach.
Sorry, babies, I'll probably come to love you in time.

He sighed and his eyes narrowed. “So you want money.”

“I want,” she replied with care, “support. From the other
half
of this equation. To which I am lawfully entitled.” She summoned a smile that felt as sour as her post-barfing breath. “If you're going to be nasty about it.”

“I'm not giving you a fucking dime.”

“Please don't make me get your address, credit card information, and phone number from the nice people at the front desk.” A bluff. The nice people at the front desk thought she was a stuck-up bitch, and she thought they were boring and small-minded (in every sense of the word).

“You think you're the first bimbo to try this?”

“To ‘try' getting impregnated with twins by you when we were both in our right mind and fully consented? Yes. I think I'm the first bimbo to try this, unless you have other illegitimate children out in the world—then God help the world. And it's Ms. Bimbo, jackass.”

“I'm not giving you a fucking dime,” he said again, doubtless assuming pregnancy hormones caused selective deafness.

“That,” she replied, stepping to the room service cart and sticking her index finger through the hole in the metal plate warmer, “remains to be seen.”

“You fuckin' women, you're all the same.”

“Double X chromosomes?” she suggested. “Vaginas? Physiologically weaker but longer lived? Lack of prostate cancer?”

“You dress hot and flirt and then go out and get yourselves pregnant—”

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive!”

“—and then comes the money grab, fuck!” Benjamin Tarbell hit her with every ounce of contempt a man who had never worked for anything was capable of. His expression was that of someone ankle deep in cow shit who blamed the cows and not himself for walking through the field in the first place. “Don't any of you sluts have any fucking pride oh God
ow
.”

“Oh yes.” She had hit him with the plate cover, which made a lovely
bwoonngg
as it connected with the side of his (possibly hollow) head. “Too much pride, in fact. How do you think I ended up in this mess?”

He staggered, straightened, then seized her arm in a pincher grip and hauled her toward the door, ignoring her pained yelp. He was holding the side of his hand over the rapidly swelling bump and mumbling, “Oh God ow that hurt so bad fuck fuck God that hurt fuck ow,” as he shoved her into the hallway, then slammed the door.

“What?” she asked the door, hands on her hips. “No tip?”

A shattering clatter—his dinner plate imploding against the door?—was her answer.

“Not even a lousy eight percent? Fine,” she said to the empty hallway. “Fine. All right. Plan C.” Plan A: abortion, tell no one, resume her life. Plan B: confront Benjamin; make child-care and/or custody arrangements, or arrange for a monthly check if he wished to support, but not love, his sons. Plan C: crawl.

But where? And to whom? Back to Sweetheart and disapproval and small-town gossips who thought they knew her but never would? To the casual insanity of her hometown? No. To her father, who thought her motive for leaving was to trap a rich man? Other women could rely on their birthplaces for support, but as she had known long before the pee stick foretold her fate, home wouldn't have her, and she wouldn't have them.

She thought Robert Frost, the city boy who came to love the country, put it in a way most people could grasp:
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Mr. Frost probably meant well, but his father had died when the poet was eleven and his mother when he was in his twenties. His sister and daughter had been institutionalized and the family was plagued with mental illness, mostly depression. Of course a man with that background thought home was a mythical place both magical and beautiful, stuffed with forgiving loved ones who were always happy to see you and never dropped hints about when you should leave again. The man's entire career was a love letter to the power of wishful thinking and a denial of his sorrowful life.

Shannah preferred Stephen King's take on the poem about a dying handyman and his grudge-holding employer:
Home was the place where, when you have to go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.