Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) (2 page)

And maybe I could wash some other
feelings away too.
 
Like love, and
longing…but mostly pain.
 
I would
stand in the shower for ten hours straight if I thought it could make this pain
go away.

“I want you to go now.”

“Sophie—”

“No.
 
I mean it.”
 
My
voice was so quiet it was amazing that he could hear me.
 
Then again, maybe he couldn’t.
 
Maybe all he had to do was look at my
face to understand what I was saying.

“I’m going,” he said
quietly.
 
“I’ll be out of town for
a few days taking care of some....some business. But I’ll be back.
 
I am going to fix this.”

He turned and started for the
door.

“You can come back for your
things but not for me,” I called after him.

“Ah,” he said as he opened the
door to leave, “but you’re the only thing I want.”

I managed to hold back the tears
until the door was closed behind him.

“After a bad breakup women should
distract themselves but they shouldn’t rebound. Hooking up with some man just
to get over another is kinda like kicking an alcohol addiction by picking up
meth.”

--Death Of The Party

“He told you he married into the
mob?” Dena asked as she stared at me from the other end of the couch, her thick
Sicilian eyebrows raising almost to her hairline. I had called her and Marcus
two hours after Anatoly left.
 
For
those hundred and twenty minutes I had thought I needed to be alone.
 
But the silence of the house, which had
always been a comfort to me before, suddenly felt oppressive.
 
I tried to fill the void by talking to
Mr. Katz but while my cat was a great listener he consistently refused to add
his voice to our conversations.
 
Dena and Marcus had responded immediately to my summons, arriving within
ten minutes of one another. Dena, looked fierce as always.
 
Marcus had given her a new haircut only
last week and it was even shorter and more stylish than normal.
 
Her thick Sicilian eyebrows made her
look a little like a young Gina Gershwin and her black cane with the silver
jaguar-shaped handle added rather than detracted from her sex appeal.
 
Marcus was looking rather yummy too in
his cashmere, camel-colored blazer worn over strategically faded blue
jeans.
 
His mocha skin was glowing,
hinting at the possibility of a recent facial.
 
They were both making me look bad.

But then perhaps anyone could
have made me look bad at that moment.
 
I had immediately laid down on my bed after taking a shower so now my
hair was not only frizzy but also shaped in a rather lopsided manner.
 
I had no make-up on, my eyes were puffy
and red and I was wearing biker-shorts and a t-shirt with a big bleach stain on
the front of it.
 
If it had been
Halloween people would have assumed I was dressed up like a clinically
depressed hobo.

“Married to the mob.
 
It all seems so needlessly dramatic,”
Marcus mused.
 
He crossed over from
my fireplace and found a spot in the leather armchair nearest me.
  
“And so 80s. It’s like you’re
dating Michelle Pfeifer. You know the movie I’m talking about, right?”

“Um, not quite,” I said dully as
I tucked my legs underneath me and leaned back against my sofa cushions

“Well no, not quite,” Marcus
agreed wryly. “Anatoly’s considerably more butch.
 
You have to give him that.”

“No, I meant that Michele Pfeifer
was the victim in that movie. Anatoly’s not a victim. He chose to marry this
woman and he chose to make up this stupid story about the mob!”

“Are we sure he’s making it up?”
Dena asked.

I gave her a sharp look. “You
think Anatoly used to work for the mob.”

“Well stranger things have
happened,” Dena pointed out. “In a million years I never would have thought
some psycho would try to copycat the murders in your first book but there it
is. It happened.”

“OK, I’m having a hard enough
time dealing with what’s going on right now.
 
Can we not revisit the ugliest part of my past?”

“You’re right,” she said. She
glanced out toward the street as a truck rumbled by the house. “There’s no need
for me to go that dark, not if all I’m trying to prove is that strange things
happen. For instance, you remember when that weirdo tried to convince you that
your house was haunted? That was pretty out there.”

“Or the time your former
brother-in-law’s family went on the news and claimed your Brooks-Brothers
wearing sister was a gangsta from the hood!“ Marucs chimed in. “Oh, or how
about that politician who liked to have sex with stuffed animals?
 
Anatoly having mob connections wouldn’t
be half as strange as that.”

“No, no,” Dena corrected, “that
politician liked to have sex while dressed up
as
a stuffed animal. In the world of
sexual fetishes there is a huge difference between those things.”

“Um guys?” I said meekly.

Both Dena and Marcus turned to me
as if suddenly remembering that I was there.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to
STICK TO THE CRISIS AT HAND!” I yelled. “No one is currently trying to gaslight
me or do a smear campaign on one of my relatives and I’m not sitting here
crying my eyes out because Anatoly tried to get it on with Scooby Doo! I’m
crying because he GOT it on with a wife I didn’t know about! He didn’t even
take the time to come up with a good lie to help me get over it!”

There was a long pause as Marcus
and Dena considered this.
 
Mr. Katz
removed himself from his spot under the coffee table and left the room.
 
My cat only enjoyed watching
substantive arguments.

“Maybe we’re not looking at this
the right way.” Dena tapped the top of her cane with deep purple painted nails.
“Anatoly didn’t tell you he was married and that’s bullshit no matter how you
spin it. But if you haven’t seen or even spoken to your spouse in over six
years I think it’s fair to say the relationship is over, even if there is a
piece of paper somewhere saying otherwise. So in every way that counts, he’s
single.”

“Dena! He’s been lying to me for
years!”

Dena nodded and then fixed me
with a stare.
 
“Like I said, it’s
bullshit. But Sophie, you haven’t always been honest with him either.”

Her words hit a little harder
than I think she intended them to. I wasn’t near ready for her to look at this
from both sides. I was so angry and although I really wanted to deny it, some
of my anger was directed inward. How could I have missed this? I pressed my
fingers to my temples. The hammering had never really let up and I was moving
past dizzy and into serious nausea.
 

From the corner of my eye I
caught Marcus shooting Dena a quick warning look which Dena acknowledged with a
shrug and a sigh. “I’m not taking his side,” she said carefully, “but maybe we should
consider the possibility that the reason Anatoly left his wife without taking
the time to fill out any divorce papers was because he just needed to disappear
without pissing off the in-laws.
 
If I was married to someone who had mob connections I wouldn’t be
pushing for alimony when things went sour.”

“You
really
think Anatoly married into the
mob…that he would actually do something that stupid?”

 
“Well he’s a man, so yes, I think he’s capable of doing
incredibly stupid things.”

“I’m sitting right here, Dena,”
Marcus said dryly.

“A straight man,” Dena corrected
herself, but her tone implied that the caveat was only added to placate
him.
 
“Anyway, I think marriage in
general is rather stupid. I’d rather get it on with a fat Marlon Brando than
let someone rope me into domestic servitude.”

Underneath the flood of turbulent
emotion was a nagging feeling. Had Fawn told me that Anatoly had married
into…into something? I had been so shocked by the call I hadn’t been able to
absorb every word. “If he was really on the run from the mob shouldn’t he be
running?” I asked.
 
“He’s been in
San Francisco for—“

“Six years,” Dena finished for
me.
 
“Yeah, but maybe he settled
here because it’s the last place the mob would look.”

“Why would San Francisco be the
last place the mob would look?” Marcus asked.

“I don’t know, but in New York,
Chicago and Vegas you occasionally hear about some sort of mafia something. But
the mafia never makes headlines here in San Francisco. Maybe they don’t like
our weather.”

“Right,” Marcus said smoothly,
“or maybe they’re just rainbow-phobic.”

“None of this matters,” I
moaned.
 
“What matters is that
Anatoly’s been on my case to be more open with him and all the while he’s been
hiding a wife.
 
That’s why he didn’t
want to marry me.”

“Okay, hold up.
 
You didn’t want to marry him either,”
Dena pointed out. “You said you were done with marriage and that you would
rather live with him without a government certificate.”

“Would you stop being so damn
reasonable and start indulging my righteous indignation?” I cried and then
buried my face in my hands and started sobbing in earnest.
 
I heard Marcus get up from his seat and
perch himself on the armrest nearest me so he could make soothing little
circles on my back.

“Look at me! I’m a mess,” I
choked when I finally found my voice.

 
“We’re all allowed to be messy every once in a while,” Marcus
cooed. “There’ll be plenty of time to tidy up your life later.”

“The thing is,” I moaned, “if he
had told me right at the get-go that he had an estranged wife who he never
planned to reconcile with I might have found a way to be okay with it because,
well, you know,” I reached out and took Dena’s hand in mine, “you’re right, I’m
not exactly biting at the bit to get married again.
 
Even if he had told me about all this a year or two into our
relationship we might have found a way to work through it.
 
But he never
did
tell me!
 
He was never going to say a damn word and so I had to find
out about his wife from the person who has caused more pain to those I love
than anyone else on earth.”

“Yes,” Dena said darkly, “that
part is seriously inexcusable.”

 
“It’s the lying,” I insisted again.
 
“The total deceit and the secretiveness.
 
You know he’s been getting calls
lately, calls that he’s been trying to conceal from me.
 
He said it was business but now I think
it was her.”

Marcus lifted his eyebrows. “Why
would she start calling out of the blue after six or more years?”

“I don’t know, maybe she found
him on Facebook,” I snapped.

“Ah, another good Facebook
security tip,” Marcus said sagely.
 
“If you’re running from the mob set your profile page to private.”

I almost smiled. Almost. “I just
have this feeling that the calls were coming from her,” I said. “There’s a
reason this whole thing is coming to a head now.
 
I just know she’s not totally out of his life. I know it the
way I knew that he was keeping a secret from me.
 
I should have listened to my gut from the start.” I shook my
head vehemently.
 
“God, I feel like
such an idiot! Like I’m one of those women you see on daytime talk shows who
needs to learn how to stop being a victim.”

“Honey,” Marcus said with a sigh,
“who in their right mind thinks their live-in-boyfriend is secretly
married?
 
And when you
did
find out
you kicked his booty to the curb.”

“That’s not being a victim,” Dena
agreed.
 
“That’s taking care of
yourself.”

“And now I’m alone.”

“No,” Dena said firmly, squeezing
my hand a little tighter.
 
“Alone
is something you’ll never be.”

 
“I know.
 
I have
family and friends and one reasonably affectionate cat. But it’s not the same.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Dena said and
then cursed softly under her breath.
 
“This whole thing is so fucked up.
 
How did Anatoly react when you confronted him?”

Immediately the look on his face flashed
before my eyes. There was the façade of cool but it had been thin this time,
even transparent, and behind it I had seen the pain both pure and intense.
 
These were
his
lies that we were dealing with.
His
manipulations
and yet when I had confronted him it was
me
who was causing that pain.
 

I started crying harder and Dena
and Marcus slipped into silence as they waited for me to get it out of my
system.

When the sobs were finally
reduced to sniffles Dena put her cane gently on the redwood coffee table before
scooting even closer to me and putting our joined hands in her lap.
 
“You’ll get through this.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

 
I used the back of my free hand to wipe away my slowing tears
and stared out the bay window.
 
The
street light outside my house flickered and died and suddenly all I could see
of the outside world was darkness.

“I’m sorry I defended him,” Dena
said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly.

“No, it’s not.
 
It’s not what you needed to hear.” She
paused and then took in a quick startled breath. “Wait! I know what you
really
need!”