The Reckoning (10 page)

A gentle rap at the bathroom door.

“Mr. R.? Are you all right in there?”

“Yes, just trying to soak these shivers away,” he said, trembling. “I hope you and Craig don’t catch this bug from me. I feel dreadful.”

“Can I get you anything? Some Sudafed?”

“No, I took some aspirin for the fever. I think I’ll just have to take it easy for a few days. Thank goodness it’s a short work week.”

“It’s rotten, being sick for Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah, rotten.”

“I’ll turn the bed down for you. Put on some more blankets.”

“Thanks, Les. You’re great.”

Go away. Go away from that door. Go!

He was relieved to hear the flop-flop of her slippers down the hallway. So far so good. The trick, now, was to keep up this flu routine as long as he could, to deter Les from making any sexual advances, let alone see him without a shirt.

His “tits” were healing but still tender and black and blue; the nipples were misshapen. And there were these unsightly stretch marks.

Royce eased back in the bathtub and rested his neck on the back of the rim. Warm water flooded his wounded chest. He moaned. It was starting to fully sink in that something abnormal was happening here.

Women’s breasts just didn’t dissolve like hot wax, and men didn’t grow them—not in seconds anyway.

People didn’t come back from the dead.

For the first time in years, he prayed.

7

The Deal

The ferry boat buckarooed through the Caribbean, slowly chopping its way from Puerto Juarez to Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women.

There were sharks in the water.

On the splintered rough benches at the craft’s fantail, Carly and Royce were having their first spat ever.

“Don’t you like me the way I am?” she asked, a soft sob coming from her chest. “You want me to get a boob job?”

“I love you, Carly. You know that. This wouldn’t make me love you more. It would just be something we could do for each other. To bring more enjoyment to our lives.”

She sniffed. “More enjoyment for you, you mean.” In her voice was steel.

“No,” he disagreed. “It would be for both of us, or I wouldn’t have even brought it up.”

She touched the base of her throat, saying, “But I’m the one who would have to do it.”

“Well, but I’ll pay for it. The whole thing. Five thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money, Royce. I know that. Maybe you should spend it on something else. Me, I’ve only got one body. I’ve read about those things. The awful infections. Sometimes they have to go back years later and remove them. The women almost die.”

He pooh-poohed the risk. “Dr. Foglesong has done hundreds (he could not yet bring himself to say
breast implants
). It can be done right in his office. He’ll just put these silicone baggies in you and slowly pump them up. You come in in the morning, out in the afternoon. The surgery itself only takes two hours. Then a few days off from work with bed rest at home, which, by the way, you richly deserve. You work hard for those people.”

“But I already took my vacation, this trip.”

This trip
. She’d said it with no affection. His scheme to spring the breast augmentation on her in the faraway, romantic setting of Cancun had failed miserably. Carly noticed the way he brazenly stared at all the plush-bosomed jiggle bunnies on the beach—he made sure of it. Yet her response was more disgust with him than any feelings of inadequacy on her own part.

Carly’s negative karma about Mexico hadn’t helped either. As someone whose previous travel high points were limited to Yellowstone Park and Disneyland, she had a hard time accepting that Mexicans didn’t speak English (first repeating her wants to waiters and taxi drivers, finally yelling at them). And though Cancun was no raunchy border town, she’d found enough unsavory conditions (plugged-up toilets, mildewed showers, cats and dogs in close proximity to food preparation) to make her freckled nose wrinkle.

Royce dropped his pitch to her, temporarily, and turned his attention to the island. In the course of their crossing, the sun had set. Now the island’s lighthouse was sweeping the sea. It made him recall imagery from the old prison movies, where the cons were ferried across—in chains—to Alcatraz Island.

They got off the boat and pressed into the cluster of other tourists being hit on by peddlers and water taxi men (“Snorkel the cave of the sleeping sharks—only thirty U.S. dollars.”) where the dock met the Avenue Rueda Medina.

Royce guided her into the market area, where they fended off additional advances for moped rentals, blankets, hats, T-shirts and black coral jewelry. Here, it was more “native” than Cancun, and he knew the goats and bitch dogs with swollen teats did not escape Carly’s notice.

Eventually, they ended up at Ciro’s Lobster House, selected by Royce because of its Americanized appearance. They sipped margaritas (tangy and strong) and drank a bottle of Baja white (piquantly fruity) in polite silence. Carly didn’t begin to thaw until the lobsters arrived.

“Super,” she said, after dipping the succulent white flesh into a subtle garlic sauce.

“Delicious,” Royce agreed, glad for an opening. “I want you to know, Carly, that I’ve never enjoyed myself more than during the days we’ve spent together down here. I just wish we didn’t have to go back to LA tomorrow.”

Her eyes brightened. “Yes, me too.”

Gears turning, he weighed the risks, the downside, and strategized his best offer.

A male trio played guitars and sang romantic Mexican ballads. Royce ordered Kahlua and coffee for both of them.

“Do you think we should?” she said. “I’m already a little tipsy.”

He smiled seductively. “I want our last night here to be memorable.”

They savored their liqueur. In the Mexican fashion, Royce had to hound their waiter for the check. The total was 150,000 pesos. In an act of bravado, he plunked down 180,000 pesos for the meal and piled on an additional 40,000 for the guitar players. He felt disdain for the Mexican currency. Play money.

“That’s very generous of you, Royce.”

He beamed. “I’m a generous man. I hope you know that.”

“I know,” she said softly, eyes downcast.

“Do this for me, for the both of us, and I’ll marry you, Carly.”

She looked at him, her eyes misting.

He reached out and took her hands, gently squeezed them. “The day the stitches come out, I’ll take you to Tiffany’s and buy you a real rock, babe.”

8

Mr. Turkey

By day four (Thanksgiving Day) of Royce’s bug Leslie expressed concern that whatever her husband had was deteriorating into something more serious, like pneumonia.

“I really think you should go to the doctor,” she said, peeling yams at the kitchen sink.

Royce was in his easy chair, swathed in a robe and blankets, watching the Macy’s parade on the tube. On the coffee table a vaporizer spit full bore.

“No, I think it just has to run its course,” he sniffled and snarfled.

“But you’ve been saying that for three days. You’re just not getting any better,” she snapped.

He understood her frustration. Here she was, shouldering the entire burden of the holiday meal, without benefit of any stress-relieving sexual contact the past five days. And Les, he knew, liked sex. He liked sex too. But for now he was glad for this respite from any libidinous thoughts. If he had his way, he would limit his penis strictly to urination for the rest of his life.

“Maybe you’re right, Les. But let me see how I feel Sunday night. This four-day weekend may just do wonders.”

“Well, we’ll see, Mr. R.,” she said, a little testily.

That morning, locked behind the bathroom door, he’d unbuttoned his pajama top before the vanity mirror and inspected his chest. The sensitivity was gone, and his nipples were almost back to normal. He made a mental note to start a push-up regime and build up his “pecs.”

“Well, I’d better go downstairs and fetch Mr. Turkey,” Les said wearily.

“Here, let me,” he offered, putting as much congestion into it as he could.

“You sure you’re up to it? You won’t fall?”

“No,” he whined, rising out of his blanket cocoon. He crept into the kitchen—giving his nose a few good blows as he went—and paused briefly at the top of the basement stairs, legs shaking. He gave his wife a parting look more appropriate for the promenade deck of the
Titanic
.

“Be careful, Mr. R.”

“I will,” he whimpered.

Royce took tight hold of the handrail and descended with the agility of a ninety-year-old arthritic crone on tranquilizers.

“You okay?” she called down.

“Oh, yes,” he simpered.

At the foot of the stairs he sprang to the fridge, thankful for the break from parade floats and having to manipulate his nasal passages for show. Royce opened his robe; gosh, he was sweating like a pig.

“Everything all right down there?” his wife yelled down.

“I’m okay, Les,” he called up, a phlegmy lilt to his words.

The floor joists squeaked. Les had left the kitchen and gone down the hall, no doubt to Craig’s bedroom. Fearfully, he gazed up and waited for an outburst, but none was forthcoming. Some progress, no matter how slight, had been made. It wasn’t as though Craig was miraculously outgoing or anything (not with Royce, for certain), but at least the boy wasn’t spending so much time in his closet.

Probably stay in his room playing Nintendo until after the bird is carved, his stepfather figured. Then, perhaps because it was Thanksgiving, he felt he should be a little charitable towards the child. Monday, the battery of psych tests would start, and that couldn’t be fun.

“Royce!”

“Coming!”

He closed his robe and tied the belt, then opened the refrigerator and lifted the Butterball off the shelf. Slowly he climbed the stairs, sighing, moaning, straining.

Leslie greeted him at the top of the stairs with outstretched hands and baby talk.

“There, there, Mr. R., good job.”

He handed the bird off to her.

“Maybe you should lie down and rest awhile.”

He told his wife that was a splendid idea and headed off to their bedroom, where he closed the door (to keep from hearing Craig’s irritating Nintendo sound effects) and stretched out on the bed with a news magazine.

Time to catch up with the rest of the world, he told himself.

He skipped the World and Nation sections and flipped back to the Cinema, Video and People sections. Sometimes they had pictures of semi-nude women.

This act was exhausting him.

What had Tony said? He was just going through the motions? Royce made a mental note to spend less time with Tony—especially when his friend was in his cups, before dropping off to sleep.

He awoke, belly down, with the comforting smell of roasting turkey in his nostrils.

And a hard-on drilling into the mattress.

Infant-like, he rose up on his forearms and wriggled his hips on the bed.

Warm, comfy, cozy. Hornier than a he-goat. Too bad the thing with Monica hadn’t worked out. Actually, it had worked out just the way he wanted. Tuesday morning, he’d messengered a letter to Monica terminating his business relationship with Naughty’s and returned her retainer check. All day Wednesday, flinching with each phone call, he waited for a response. At five-thirty he claimed victory and left his office to commence the four-day holiday weekend.

The bitch was toast, which he regretted with a certain perversity.

There was a gentle rap at the bedroom door.

“Mr. R.? Are you awake?”

Royce rolled to his side and bunched his knees up to cloak his boner. If the tone of his wife’s voice didn’t tip him off to her anger, the rigid smile on her face did.

“So nice of you to invite guests,” she said. “But you should have told me,
honey
.”

He licked his dry lips. “Guests? I’ll be right out.”

“Good,
dear
. And though you aren’t feeling too well, do hurry it along!”

She slammed the door shut.

Hurriedly, he slipped out of his pajamas and into a pair of slacks, shirt and pullover sweater, all the while wondering who these mystery guests were. Tony? No, at his sister-in-law’s. And Brenda had taken the kids to her mother’s.

Wait a minute. Had he invited Tony and Carmen over to have a holiday toast before they went to Carmen’s sister’s house? Like last year? Damn, and he’d forgotten to pick up some Samuel Adams at the liquor store. Well, Tony would just have to settle for a Bud, if Royce even had that.

His nostrils tweaked just before he came upon Monica Pleshette in his kitchen; she was putting away a plastic wrap-covered dish in their refrigerator.

Royce stopped short, his chest filling with frosty lead.

“Royce, so glad to see you again,” Monica said, closing the refrigerator door and extending a perfectly manicured hand for his attention. “You departed so quickly from our last meeting, as if you’d committed a crime!”

Leslie brandished a turkey baster at him, weapon-like, as if she wanted to thrust it somewhere dark and moist.

Wincing, he gently squeezed Monica’s fingers, smelling her strong perfume over the turkey smell wafting from the open oven. He quickly took note of the luscious way she filled out her cranberry-colored sweater.

Bending over the oven door, Leslie finished basting the bird and looked up to give her husband a chilly smile.

“Mr. R., Monica was sweet enough to bring a salad.”

Monica giggled, saying, “Well, it’s really more of a dessert. Cherry Chiffon Surprise. Just something I whipped together with sweet, dark cherries, Jell-O and Cool Whip.”

“Sounds super,” Les mimicked.

“Yes, super!” Monica said with good-natured mirth.

He sensed there was already some kind of understanding between these two females, like they had been talking about him.

Les, with gritted teeth, said to her husband, “Honey, why don’t you greet orphan number two at the front door and offer him a drink? Must be some kind of inside joke between you two. He absolutely won’t step into the house without your personal invitation.”

Royce swallowed, a bur in his throat. “Number two?”

“Here,” she said, thrusting a Cuervo bottle in his hands. “I guess you told him it was BYOB.”

Royce went to the door. There, standing in the doorway, was Cliff.

“Hey, old buddy, you gonna invite me in or what? Sun’s kinda bright out here.”

“Yeah, sure, come in,” Royce said numbly.

Cliff stepped into the foyer, extended his right hand. Royce hesitantly wavered his hand in Cliff’s direction. Cliff snared Royce’s hand in a vise grip and squeezed, ropes of muscles dancing up his thick right arm. On the wrist was a purple death’s head tattoo and the inscription,
Dead Already
.

Within minutes—after asking Royce to close the blinds—orphan two was lazily reposed on the couch, drink glass and cigarette in hand, watching a football game on TV.

Royce knew Les wouldn’t be thrilled about Cliff smoking in her living room, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

“Hey, how about those Lions,” Cliff said, raising his glass to toast Royce. As he did so, a foul stench of Brut and perspiration came from his stained leather armpit. Christ, Royce thought, the clown had sweat through that grungy vest of his. Didn’t he ever change his clothes? Bathe?

“Yeah,” Royce said warily.

“Long time no see, old buddy. Been a long time.”

“More than ten years, I guess.”

“How you been?”

“Okay. And you, Cliff?” Royce took a chair as far away from his guest as possible.

Cliff shrugged. “Fair to middlin’.” The man scratched at his skanky, sweaty scalp. The TV screen was reflected in the lenses of his dark glasses.

“Married life seems to have suited you. Looks like you’ve put on a few pounds of love handle.”

“How do you know Monica?”

Cliff flashed a cheesy grin, gestured towards the kitchen and said, “I’m a silent partner in that sleazy shop of hers. It’s a diversion.”

Royce offered his guest more tequila.

“Thanks,” Cliff said.

Royce held his breath as he got close enough to freshen Cliff’s drink and made a quick retreat back.

“Not joining me, Royce?”

“Maybe some wine later. I don’t drink as much as I used to.”

“You off the blow?”

“I don’t touch the stuff anymore,” Royce snapped. “That’s all behind me, way behind me.”

“Ah, yes, the carefree, goatish days of youth,” Cliff reminisced. “Frankly, I’ve slowed down myself. Got into a fitness routine.”

“It shows, Cliff. You’ve really pumped up.”

“I don’t do drugs any more, and alcohol doesn’t seem to have the same hold on me as it once did.”

“That’s good.”

Cliff winked slyly. “Still see you have an eye for buxom ladies. I saw the way you were ogling Monica’s rack. We’re not involved, if that’s what’s worrying you. I think you make her wet.”

“I’m married now,” Royce said defensively. “Even have a stepson.”

Cliff gave a sidelong look at Leslie, who was placing tortilla chips in a bowl around a dish of guacamole dip.

He sneered and said, “I don’t know. She doesn’t look your type. You know.” Boorishly, he cupped his palms at his chest. “Not enough meat up here for you, Royce.”

“What do you want from me, Cliff?”

The man swirled the golden liquor in his glass, saying, “a business deal.” Cliff swallowed some booze, wetly smacked his lips. “Not a fly-by-night scheme this time, but a sure thing. All pretty much legal, and stronger than a truckload of garlic.”

Royce grinned wryly. “It was always the deals with you.”

Cliff reacted with resolve. “Yeah, but I’m not as dumb as I used to be. I’m a new man, sharper, reborn.”

Holy shit. So Jesus has come to Andy Hardy. Royce was expecting some kind of religious b.s. from Cliff when Leslie announced, “Some goodies, gentlemen?” She carried in the chips and dip; Monica brought up the rear with a dish of mixed nuts.

“Yeah, man,” Cliff said, and scooped a bulldozer-sized glob of guac onto a chip and brought it within the general vicinity of his mouth. He snapped at it, the chip breaking and avocado dip plopping on his vest. “Damn,” he said, surveying the damage. “Looks like baby poop.”

“Cliffie!” Monica reprimanded her business partner, passing him a napkin. “Honestly,” she told her hosts, “I can’t take him anywhere.” Then to Cliff: “That’s leather. It will stain!”

Leslie said, “So tell me more about your business, Monica. Some kind of boutique, you said?”

“Ask your husband, not me,” Monica chortled, and carefully maneuvered a dip-heavy chip into her mouth, left hand palm up to shield her expansive chest. She chewed ravenously with much finger-licking and sensual lip smacking. “Yum, I simply must get this super recipe from you,” she said, inserting a middle finger deep into her mouth and slowly withdrawing it.

Royce received a questioning look from his wife.

“I did a little consulting work for her new company,” he explained, giving it the sound of a throwaway. His face was warm, itchy.

“A little consulting?” Monica retaliated at Les. “Why, your husband is pivotal to my whole operation. With his expertise I want to make Naughty’s the most successful chain of lingerie shops in the country.” She popped her big blues at Royce. “Royce and I are in the throes of doing a business plan. I’ve had to tell him all my secrets, I’m afraid.”

Les forced a smile. “Super. Is that what you call it? Naughty’s?”

Monica beamed as she consumed another dip-laden tortilla chip. Then: “Yes, part virginal innocence, part kink. You know, Leslie, the old Madonna-whore thing. The Naughty’s woman relishes being an angel
and
a slut. Sometimes at the same time.”

Royce’s wife blushed. “Fascinating.” She fired another incredulous look for Royce’s benefit and said: “I didn’t realize my husband’s clients were so diverse.”

Royce blurted, “My first foray into retail. Would anyone care for a drink?”

“Not for me,” Monica said, smiling slyly. “It’s the one vice I’m afraid I never developed a yen for.”

“Of course,” Les said coldly, and declined a drink. Cliff helped himself to the tequila bottle on the coffee table while Royce headed off to the kitchen. There, he opened the top cupboard above the stove and reached far back to retrieve a dusty bottle of J&B, a gift from a couple Christmases ago. Normally, he didn’t touch hard liquor, but this was a special occasion. Royce poured himself a stiff Scotch on the rocks and gulped a burning jolt on his way back to the “party.”

He was not pleased to see Cliff had lit another cigarette in his absence. There was his distressed wife, hungrily sniffing the smoke in the air like a bloodhound. And Monica was standing by the fireplace, her arms crossed tightly beneath her swelling bosom.

“Brrr, is it cold in her or what?” she complained. “How about a fire?”

“Yeah,” Cliff whined. “Bein’ a little niggardly with the heat, aren’t you, old buddy?”

“I’m not even sure the fireplace works,” Royce said. Christ, it must have been close to seventy degrees outside, a typically perverse, warm Maryland November. “The last time we tried it we roasted a family of birds.”

Leslie made a sour face. “Mr. R., why don’t you go to the store and pick up a fire log?”

Monica chimed in, “Is that what you call him? Mr. R.? How sweet.”

He tried to explain to his wife that maybe they shouldn’t start a fire, that maybe the bird’s nest was still wedged up the chimney.

“Get a god dang log!” she barked back.

Okay. Okay. He sucked down the last of his drink and departed, chilly with the prospect of leaving his wife (and Craig, too, he reminded himself) alone with Monica and “Cliffie.” He made short business of the fire log, purchasing it at an exorbitant price at a nearby Seven-Eleven. Upon his return, he was aghast to see Craig had joined in (sleepy-eyed from nearly four straight hours of video gaming) and that Cliff was playing raconteur, in the midst of some kind of yarn that Royce didn’t like the sound of.

“So there Royce and I were, footloose and fancy free at a Vegas swinger’s convention.”

Oh Lord. Grimacing, Royce drew open the screen and set the log on the grate, swung the damper handle forward and craned his neck under and up to discern any obstruction. He heard Cliff whinny.

“Hell, a ballroom packed with horny, half-naked broads and we couldn’t get laid if our lives depended on it!”

Cliff guffawed, then Craig asked him why he wore the dark glasses inside.

“An eye condition, Craig. Your Uncle Cliffie is sensitive to light.”

Royce lit a match, touched the quaking flame to the log’s wrapper. The paper took with a colorful sputter. It was then he caught Monica showing Craig her Naughty’s portfolio. He gasped “no,” leaped to his feet—knees straining—and snatched the book from his stepson’s hot little hands. The boy, all wide-eyed now, had gotten a juicy peek.

Cliff jacked his mouth on: “I thought we were shit out of luck until I was lucky enough to run into…say, Royce, what were those two broads’ names? You know, the twins.”

Royce shook his head, saying, “I have no idea.” He had started to perspire profusely.

“Here, let me see,” Leslie told her husband, and reached for the book. Royce tried to secret it away, only to have his wife spring up from her chair and seize it.

“I remember now,” Cliff went on. “Tawny…and yeah, can’t forget Plenty. Royce still owes me one for fixing him up with those two sluts.” He turned his hands palm up, bagging thin air. “Man, you should have seen the jugs on those bitches!”
Guffaw, guffaw
. “I thought Royce’s dick was gonna bust right out of his shorts when he first laid eyes on them.”
Guffaw-snort-guffaw
.

Leslie, her face beet-red, shut the portfolio, carefully set it on the far end of the coffee table and announced soberly, “Mr. R., I think you can carve the turkey now.”

Gong. Saved by the bell.

In the kitchen, Royce carved the bird with what he hoped his spouse saw as redeeming enthusiasm. Cliff certainly wasn’t helping his cause, though, by gluttonously snaring slices of breast—with grimy fingers, no less—as fast as Royce could carve them.

“I was hopin’ you’d have prime rib,” Cliff said with a mouth full. “But this is good. Little overdone. Got anything with some blood in it?”

“No, Cliff,” Royce whispered. “Shut up, and save some for the rest of us.”

“Oh,” Cliff belched, mouth stuffed with turkey meat. He swallowed, python-style, looked sheepish.

Meanwhile, Leslie and Monica finished setting the dining room table. Royce carried the platter of turkey to the table, then uncorked a bottle of German white wine Monica had brought.

Monica told Les, “I’ve been noticing your husband’s hands, very pretty for a man’s. Such slender fingers. I bet he gives great massages.”

It was Royce’s turn to blush.