In Stereo Where Available (30 page)

“I did. I told you Dominic was his companion.”

“Dammit, Grace, that ain’t hardly the same thing at all. Blind people call their dogs that. It doesn’t mean they’re having sex with them.”

“Just to clarify,” Pete offered, “there’s much more to our relationship than sex.”

Rhett leaned across his knees and pointed a finger at Pete. “Don’t you even say ‘sex’ right now.”

Pete looked miffed. “Well, I think it’s important to distinguish—”

“It’s okay, Pete,” said Alexa. “Nobody’s accusing Dominic of being your one-night stand.”

Rhett grimaced, his face turning pea-colored. My father turned to Alexa and growled, “Where’d you learn a phrase like ‘one-night stand’?”

Alexa pointed to the bookshelves. “From Mom.”

My father turned to Melody, red-faced. If he’d stood next to Rhett, they would have looked very seasonal. Just then my phone chirped. It was a text-message from Jerry, who was tinkering with his cell phone beside me.

“I still want 2 marry U anyway,” it said.

Jerry and I arrived at our beach house the day before Valentine’s Day, and by the time he slid the key card in the lock and pushed open the double French doors, he was downright giddy. The flight had been first class, with limo service from the airport to the resort, and once we arrived at the main building, we discovered that the cute little cabins we had seen lining the beach were going to be nothing compared to the vacation mini-mansion that had been reserved for Rhett and Madison. The desk guy told us we had our own concierge service. We didn’t even know what that was.

“I never thought I’d say this,” said Jerry as he wandered into the vaulted living room with its walls of windows and view of the sea, “but I’m
so
glad your sister’s a celebrity right now.”

I lifted the tag of a gift basket placed in front of a vase of fresh flowers in the foyer. “Welcome Grace and Colby,” I read aloud. “We hope you enjoy your stay at the lovely Sunrise Resort.”

“How great is that?” asked Jerry. Our footsteps tapped against the glossy tile floor as we made our way to the freestanding spiral staircase. “Want to check out the master suite?”

“Of course I do.”

“Holy cow.”

A gigantic bed draped in a veil of netting looked out over a wall of glass that showcased the deep blue ocean just outside. Off to one side of the room was a marble Jacuzzi tub set beneath an enormous skylight; to the other, a sitting area of chaise lounges and puffy chairs decorated with a zillion little tasseled pillows.

“
Wow
.” Jerry unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it over the vanity table. “Let’s get this party started.”

I smiled.
“Men
. You’re only ever thinking about one thing.”

“Hey, it’s a big house. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover. And I’ve always wanted to try it in a Jacuzzi.” He walked over to where I was standing in front of the windows and put his arms around my waist, kissing my neck. “I’m going to keep you
soooo
busy for the next two days.”

I peered over his shoulder at a shape moving across the beach. “What’s that?”

“You have to ask?”

“No, not that.
That.”
I pulled back from him and pointed at the shape rustling in some tall beach grass. “Did you see that?”

“It’s probably a rabbit or something.”

“Not unless it’s a mutant rabbit. It looked like a guy.”

“Can’t be. It’s a private beach. See, there’s a privacy fence the whole way around.” He walked over to the window and squinted. “It
does
look like a guy.”

“Call the desk. Or the concierge thingy.”

“Later. Let’s just go downstairs for now.”

Downstairs, Jerry and I settled down onto the pillowy white sofa. His eyelids fluttered up as he kissed me, and he stopped, rubbing his lips together. “I think I just saw it again,” he said.

“You’re probably imagining it. It’s a whole other side of the house.”

“No, I’m serious.” He got up from the sofa and walked up to the windows again, putting one hand against the glass. “Oh,
great
. It’s a guy, all right. With a camera.”

I groaned. “You know what, they probably think we’re Rhett and Madison.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Well, they’ll figure it out soon enough.” He breathed an aggravated sigh and trudged upstairs to find his shirt. “Let’s just unpack for now. I’m sure they’ll be gone by tonight.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jerry whispered to me the next morning, as we lay cuddled up under the blankets of that beautiful bed. “Shouldn’t there at least be blinds or something?”

He’d spent an hour and a half on the phone the night before, first with the concierge, then with the desk clerk, and finally with the resort manager. They had passed him around like a hot potato until he eventually realized that although we were paid guests, we were insignificant ones, and they were peeved at getting passed over for Rhett and Madison’s other engagement. I thought he was being a little compulsive about it, and that annoyed him.

“You can’t put blinds on windows that big,” I told him patiently. “Anyway, that’s why it’s the Sunrise Resort. Look, you get a beautiful view of the sunrise.”

“Yeah, well, right now we’ve got a beautiful view of that ship that’s got a bunch of guys with telephoto lenses pointed at us. Don’t they ever go away?”

“Maybe we could try moving down to the living room.”

“We tried that last night, remember? They just jumped around in the grass like the VC guys in those old Vietnam War movies. Come on, let’s make love anyway. They probably can’t see anything through the netting.”

“You want to bet?”

Jerry sighed and rolled over onto his back. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Phoebe. You’re really going to let a bunch of paparazzi ruin all the romance?”

“I’m just pointing out to you that we’re being watched. I mean, they probably can’t get any good pictures from here, but they can still see in. So it’s up to you if you want to let a dozen people watch us having sex.”

“We’ll stay under the covers.”

“You, stay under the covers? What are you planning to do, safety-pin them down?”

Jerry threw off the blanket and walked up to the windows in his boxer briefs, waving both of his middle fingers at the ship floating just past the breakers. He turned around to face me. “There’s two of them now. Can you see the other one? It’s smaller, over to the left. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. They’re spending thousands of dollars, and we aren’t even who they think we are.”

I nodded sympathetically. Paparazzi or no paparazzi, he was in coffee withdrawal. After six weeks of living with him, I was starting to learn the nuances of his personality. Sex, food, caffeine, and even the need for order—his desires hit the critical level quickly, and the discomfort made him explosively cranky. It was beyond me how he had ever managed to quit smoking. This morning, all of his hot buttons were being pushed simultaneously. It was probably the worst possible way to kick off Valentine’s Day.

“Come on, Jerry,” I said. “I’ll call room service, okay? We’ll get some breakfast.”

“Go right ahead. Get me a cup of coffee and a bagel, with an AR-15 on the side.”

“Don’t start getting violent. Jesus said we’re supposed to turn the other cheek, remember?”

Jerry reached into his suitcase and took out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “Yeah, easy for Him to say. He was a celebrity before there were paparazzi.”

“Jerry.”

He raised his eyebrows at me as he pulled on his shorts. “No, you know what? I’m not having this. I’m not going to let it ruin my vacation. It’s our first Valentine’s Day together, and it’s going to be romantic, damn it.”

“That’s fine. You want to take a shower together? There’s no windows in the bathroom.”

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and nodded toward the hot tub. “No. I want to get in the Jacuzzi together. All my life I’ve fantasized about getting laid in a Jacuzzi. There’s no way I’m letting anybody get in the way of my big chance.”

“So why are you getting dressed?”

“Because I’m going to run down to Housekeeping and see if I can get some extra sheets to—”

His voice vanished into a thunder of noise overhead. We both looked up and, at the same moment, saw a helicopter pass directly over the skylight.

“That does it,” said Jerry. He crossed the room in three steps and grabbed his glasses from the night table. “This means war.”

I scrambled out of bed and followed him to the bathroom, where he jerked the trash bag out of the wastebasket before heading for the stairs.

“What are you doing?” I asked, hurrying down the stairs behind him.

He bent over the kitchen trash can and fished out whatever he could find: a limp coffee filter speckled with spent grounds, the fat from the room-service steak we’d eaten the night before, a pile of shrimp shells. He tossed it all into the bathroom trash bag and deftly tied the corners in a knot.

“I’m setting a trap,” he said.

“A trap.”

“Yes. I’m fed up. I thought about this last night while I was lying there feeling pissed off and horny. I’m a hundred percent sure it’ll work.” He carried the trash bag over to the front door. “Come help me out.”

“Help you out with what?”

“I just need you to stand right inside the door and wait. When you hear screaming, open the door.”

“Screaming?”

He peeked out the front door and looked both ways. The front of the house had the fewest windows, and so we hadn’t really had any photographers hanging around on that side. Jerry took off his glasses and handed them to me. Then he set the trash bag at the edge of the porch, stepped down the two stairs to the ground, and crawled under the lattice on his stomach.

“You’ve really gone crazy, haven’t you?” I asked rhetorically. “Jerry, come on back inside. You know you haven’t had your coffee yet this morning? They’ve got all kinds of gourmet stuff in the gift basket. And vanilla sugar. That could be interesting, huh?”

“Maybe in a few minutes. Go on back inside. Whatever you do, don’t come out until you hear yelling.”

“We can ask to be moved to a smaller cottage. Did you think of that? We could probably be in a different place in twenty, thirty minutes. Then we can be as romantic as you want. Did I tell you I packed the baby oil? I can give you a really nice backrub.”

“I want the Jacuzzi,” he said from under the floor of the porch. “Go back in the house. This won’t take long. Go.”

I closed the door with a sigh and went over to set up the coffee machine. If I opened a window, the smell would probably draw him back inside. Just as I tore open one of the little foil packs from the gift basket, I heard a high-pitched shriek from just outside the door, followed by the sounds of a struggle. I rushed to the door and threw it open.

“Get off of me, you son of a bitch!”

A short, unshaven guy in a trucker’s cap was hopping around next to the patio, his camera swinging from a black strap around his neck. His belly jiggled beneath his undersized T-shirt. Jerry was still under the porch, but his fingers were wrapped in a death grip around the man’s white-socked ankle. The trash bag had tumbled down the steps and ripped open, spewing out a pile of Kleenex and a blue disposable razor.

The screen door slamming shut behind me caught the man’s attention, and he snapped his head around to look at me. With that, Jerry jerked hard on his ankle and he lost his balance, falling flat onto his back on the sandy lawn. Without letting go, Jerry wrestled himself out from between the pieces of lattice and pinned the man’s body down with his own. The guy was at least six inches shorter than Jerry, but probably weighed about the same. Jerry twisted his wrists and held them against the ground. Suddenly I understood why Jerry was constantly being called on to break up hallway fights. I was impressed.

“We’re not Grace and Colby,” Jerry hissed.

The guy huffed indignantly. “I don’t give a crap who you are.”

“They’re not here. You got it?
They’re not here
. Tell all your
colleagues
to leave us alone. We’re teachers. We’re not on TV. We’re the most boring people in North America.”

“Get off me, asshole. I ought to have you charged with assault.”

Jerry shifted his weight and shoved a knee into the man’s beer gut. The man’s eyes goggled, and he rapidly exhaled whatever air had been left in his lungs.

“You going to tell them to leave us alone?” Jerry asked threateningly.

“What do you think, we’re all hooked up by walkie-talkies?” the guy replied in a strangled voice. “I don’t know who they are. I work for myself. You want to tell them, go swim out to the damn boat. And get your friggin’ knee out of my intestines.”

Jerry let go of the guy and stood back up. He still looked intimidating, but also defeated. His knees were gritty with sand, and there was a dirty wet patch on the front of his shirt.

“Get out of here,” said Jerry, “and stay out of my trash.”

“You got it, Poindexter.”

The guy shuffled off through the tall grass that lined the access road. He hadn’t been the same one we’d seen the day before. The one from yesterday had been olive-skinned and skinny.