Many Bloody Returns Part 39

The change brought other changes. My skin started to sag along the jaw. The lines from my nose to my lips deepened into

trenches. My neck looked like it belonged on a stewing hen.

And my husband, the old rooster, was chasing young chicks. I knew it, but I didn't dare confront him. I'd seen what happened to my friends when they'd faced down their rich, powerful husbands. Elizabeth, courageous, I-won't-stand-for-this Elizabeth, had been destroyed. She'd caught Zack, her husband of thirty years, groping some not-so-sweet young thing in the dim lights of the local bar. Elizabeth had fearlessly confronted Zack on the spot. She'd embarra.s.sed him in front of his backslapping cronies.

Good old Zack hired a pinstriped shark-one of his bar buddies. Now the elegant Elizabeth lived in a cramped hotbox of an apartment, with a cat and a rattling air conditioner. She worked as a checker at the supermarket and barely made the rent. Elizabeth was on her feet all day and had the varicose veins to prove it.

I'd taken her out to a dreary lunch last month. I'd wanted to do something nice. We went to the club, where we'd always lunched in the old days, when she was still a member. Some of our friends didn't recognize her. Poor Elizabeth, with her home-permed hair and unwaxed eyebrows, looked older than her mother. She was so exhausted, she could hardly keep up a conversation.

That same fate awaited me. I had to stall as long as I could, until I could figure out what to do with my life. If Eric dumped me now, I'd be at the supermarket asking my former friends, "Would you like paper or plastic?"

I'd be one more useless, used-up, middle-aged woman.

I was already. In seven days, I'll be fifty-five years old. My future had never looked bleaker. I had no money and no job skills.

My husband didn't love me anymore. Happy birthday, Katherine.

"Lie still," Eric snarled. "Quit twitching."

I didn't think I'd moved. Maybe Eric felt my inner restlessness. Maybe we were still connected enough for that.

But I couldn't lie there another moment. Not even to save myself. I slid out of bed.

"Now what? Where are you going at this hour?" Eric demanded.

"I thought I'd get some fresh air. I'm going for a walk."

Eric sat straight up, his gray hair wild, his long surgeon's hands clutching the sheet to his hairy chest. "Are you crazy? You want to

go outside in the middle of the night? After that woman was murdered two streets away?"

"People get murdered all the time in Fort Lauderdale," I said.

"Not like that. Some freak drained her blood. They didn't put that little detail in the papers. The city commission wants to avoid

scaring the tourists. Dave at the medical examiner's office told me. That woman hardly had a drop of blood left in her. She went for a walk at three in the morning and turned up drained dry. For Chrissakes, use your head."

"All right," I said. "I'll sit on the balcony. I didn't want to wake you."

I put on my peignoir and padded into the living room. I never tired of the view from our condo. To the east was the dark, endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, lit by ancient stars. Straight down were the black waters of the Intracoastal. Across the little ca.n.a.l that ran alongside our building were the Dark Harbor condos. Those places started at three million dollars. But it wasn't the money that fascinated me. Florida had lots of expensive condos. There was something about Dark Harbor. Something mysterious.

Exciting. Exotic. Even at three in the morning.

I slid open the gla.s.s doors, careful not to make a sound. The warm night air caressed my cheek. I loved the night. Always had.

Moon glow was kinder than the harsh Florida sun. I could hear the water softly lapping at the pilings on the dock, seven stories below.

Laughter drifted across the water, and the faint sounds of a chanteuse singing something in French. It was an old edith Piaf song of

love and loss.

There was a party in the Dark Harbor penthouse. Such a glamorous party. The men wore black tie. The women wore sleek black. They looked like me, only better, smoother, thinner. These were people in charge of their futures. They didn't have my half-life as the soon-to-be-shed wife. They were more alive than I would ever be.

I sighed and turned away from my beautiful neighbors. I drifted back into our bedroom like a lost soul, crawled in next to my unloving husband, and fell into a fitful sleep.

Eric woke me up at five-thirty when he left for the hospital.

"Good-bye," I said.

His only answer was a slammed door.

That night, while getting ready for bed, I looked in my dressing room mirror and panicked. I'd always had a cute figure, but now it had thickened. I had love handles. Where did those come from? I swear I didn't have them two days ago. I burst into tears. I couldn't help it.

I ran into the bathroom to stifle the sobs I knew would irritate Eric. But it was too late. "Now what?" he snarled. "I can't take

these mood swings. Get hormone replacement therapy or something."

He was definitely getting something. I'd found the v.i.a.g.r.a bottle in his drawer when I put away his socks. It was half empty. He wasn't popping those pills for me. We hadn't made love in months.

No pill would cure my problem. Not unless I took a whole bunch at once and drifted into the long sleep. That prospect was

looking more attractive every day. Didn't someone say, "The idea is to die young as late as possible"? Time was running out for

me.

I spent another restless night, haunting the balcony like a ghost, watching another party across the way at Dark Harbour. Once again, I drifted off to sleep as Eric was getting ready for work.

Tuesday was a brilliant, sunlit day. Even I couldn't feel gloomy. I was living in paradise. I put on my new Escada outfit-tight black jeans and a white jacket so soft, it was pettable. I smiled into the mirror. I looked good, thanks to top-notch tailoring and a body shaper that nearly strangled my middle.

I didn't care. It nipped in my waist, lifted my behind, and thrust out my b.o.o.bs. I sashayed out to the condo garage like a model on

a catwalk. A s.e.xy, young model.

I had a charity lunch at the Aldritch Hotel. I was eating-or rather, not eating-lunch to support the Drexal School. I didn't have any children, but everyone in our circle supported the Drex. As a Drexal Angel, I paid one hundred dollars for a limp chicken Caesar salad and stale rolls.

My silver Jaguar roared up under the hotel portico. A hunky valet raced out to take my keys. The muscular valet ogled my long legs and sensational spike heels, and I felt that little frisson a woman gets when a handsome man thinks she's hot.

Then his eyes reached my face and I saw his disappointment. The valet didn't bother to hide it. I was old.

I handed him my keys. The valet tore off my ticket without another glance at me. I felt like he'd ripped my heart in half. I used to be a beauty. Heads would turn when I strutted into a room. Now if anyone stared at me, it was because I had a soup stain on my suit or toilet paper stuck on my shoe. I was becoming invisible.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the hotel's automatic doors. Who was I kidding in my overpriced, overdressed outfit? I was losing

my looks-and my husband.

I stopped in the ladies room to check my makeup. My lipstick had a nasty habit of creeping into the cracks at the lip line. I used my liner pencil, then stopped in a stall, grateful it had a floor-to-ceiling louvered door. I needed extra privacy to wriggle out of the body shaper.

I heard the restroom door open. Two women were talking. One sounded like my best friend, Margaret. The other was my neighbor, Patricia. I'd known them for years. I nearly called out, but they were deep in conversation and I didn't want to interrupt.

"...such a cliche," Margaret said, in her rich-girl drawl.

"I can't believe it," Patricia said. Her voice was a New York honk. "Eric is boinking his secretary?"

Eric. My husband, Eric? Panic squeezed me tighter than any body shaper. There were lots of Erics.

"Office manager," Margaret said. "But it's the same thing. She's twenty-five, blond, and desperate to catch a doctor. It looks like Eric will let himself get caught."

"Can you blame him?" Patricia honked. "Katherine's let herself go."

Katherine. No, there weren't many Erics with Katherines. I felt sick. I sat down on the toilet seat and listened.

"She won't even get an eye job," Patricia said. "And her own husband is a plastic surgeon. How rejecting is that? Eric did my

eyes. Then he did the rest of me." Her words filled the room. I couldn't escape them.

"You slept with him?" Margaret sounded mildly shocked.

"Everyone does," Patricia said.

I could almost hear her shrug. I wanted to rush out and strangle her. I wanted to blacken her stretched eyelids. But I was half- dressed, and my jiggly middle would prove she was right.

"It's part of the package," Patricia said. "My skin never looked better than when I was getting Dr. Eric's special injections."

"You're awful," Margaret said. Then my best friend laughed.

"It's part of my charm," Patricia said. "But someone better clue in Katherine, so she can line up a good divorce lawyer before it's too late."

"It's already too late," Margaret said. "Eric's already seen the best lawyer in Lauderdale, Jack Kellern."

"And you didn't tell Katherine that Eric hired Jack the Ripper?"

"How could I? He's my husband."

And you, Margaret, are my best friend. Or rather, you were. Margaret had also had her eyes done by Jack. Did she get the full