Chapter Six
C HAPTER SIX
L IKE SUNSHINE, NIGHT brOUGHT OUT THE BEST IN SEATTLE . The highway—a bumper-to-bumper nightmare at morning rush hour—became, at night, a glittering red-and-gold Chinese dragon that curled along the blackened banks of Lake Union. The cluster of high-rises in the city’s midtown heart, so ordinary in the gray haze on a June day, was a kaleidoscope of sculpted color when night fell.
Meghann stood at her office window. She never failed to be mesmerized by this view. The water was a black stain that consumed nearby Bainbridge Island. Though she couldn’t see the streets below, she knew they were clogged. Traffic was the curse Seattle had carried into the new millennium. Millions of people had moved into the once-sleepy town, drawn by the quality of life and the variety of outdoor activities. Unfortunately, after they built expensive cul-de-sac homes in the suburbs, they took jobs in the city. Roads designed for an out-of-the-way port town couldn’t possibly keep up.
Progress.
Meghann glanced down at her watch. It was 8:30. Time to head home. She’d bring the Wanamaker file with her. Get a jump on tomorrow.
Behind her, the door opened. Ana, the cleaning woman, pushed her supply cart into the room, dragging a vacuum cleaner alongside. “Hello, Miss Dontess.”
Meghann smiled. No matter how often she told Ana to call her Meghann, the woman never did. “Good evening, Ana. How’s Raul?”
“Tomorrow we find out if he get stationed at McChord. We keep our fingers crossed, ?sí?”
“It would be great to have your son so close,” Meghann said as she gathered up her files.
Ana mumbled something. It sounded a lot like, “You should have a son nearby, too. Instead of all that work, work, work.”
“Are you chastising me again, Ana?”
“I don’t know chastising. But you work too hard. Every night you’re here. When you gonna meet Mr. Right if you always at work?”
It was an old debate, one that had started almost ten years ago, when Meghann had handled Ana’s INS hearing pro bono. Her last moment of peace had ended when she handed Ana a green card and hired her. Ever since, Ana had done her best to “repay” Meghann. That repayment seemed to be an endless stream of casseroles and a constant harangue about the evils of too much hard work.
“You’re right, Ana. I think I’ll have a drink and unwind.”
“Drink isn’t what I’m thinking,” Ana muttered, bending down to plug in the vacuum.
“Bye, Ana.”
Meghann was almost to the elevator when her cell phone rang. She rifled through her black Kate Spade bag and pulled out the phone. “Meghann Dontess,” she said.
“Meghann?” The voice was high-pitched and panicky. “It’s May Monroe.”
Meghann was instantly alert. A divorce could go bad faster than an open cut in the tropics. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Dale. He came by tonight.”
Meghann made a mental note to get a TRO first thing tomorrow. “Uh-huh. What happened?”
“He said something about the papers he got today. He was crazy. What did you send him?”
“We talked about this, May. On the phone, last week, remember? I notified Dale’s lawyer and the court that we’d be contesting the fraudulent transfer of his business and demanding an accounting of the Cayman Island accounts. I also told his attorney that we were aware of the affair with the child’s piano instructor and that such behavior might threaten his suitability as a parent.”
“We never discussed that. You threatened to take away his children?”
“Believe me, May, the temper tantrum is about money. It always is. The kids are a shill game with guys like your husband. Pretend to want custody and you’ll get more money. It’s a common tactic.”
“You think you know my husband better than I do.”
Meghann had heard this sentence more times than she could count. It always amazed her. Women who were blindsided by their husband’s affairs, lies, and financial gymnastics continually believed that they “knew” their men. Yet another reason not to get married. It wasn’t masturbation that made you go blind; it was love. “I don’t have to know him,” Meghann answered, using the canned speech she’d perfected long ago. “Protecting you is my job. If I upset your”— no good, lying —“husband in the process, that’s an unfortunate necessity. He’ll calm down. They always do.”
“You don’t know Dale,” she said again.
Meghann’s senses pounced on some nuance. Something wasn’t right. “Are you scared of him, May?” This was a whole new wrinkle.
“Scared?” May tried to sound surprised by the question, but Meghann knew. Damn. She was always surprised by spousal abuse; it was never the families you expected.
“Does he hit you, May?”
“Sometimes when he’s drinking, I can say just the wrong thing.”
Oh, yeah. It’s May’s fault. It was terrifying how often women believed that. “Are you okay now?”
“He didn’t hit me. And he never hits the children.”
Meghann didn’t say what came to mind. Instead, she said, “That’s good.” If she’d been with May, she would have been able to look in her client’s eyes and take a measure of the woman’s fragility. If it seemed possible, she would have given her statistics—horror stories designed to drive home the ugly truth. Often, if a man would hit his wife, he’d get around to hitting his children. Bullies were bullies; their defining characteristic was the need to exert power over the powerless. Who was more powerless than a child?
But none of that could be done over the phone. Sometimes a client sounded strong and in control while they were falling apart. Meghann had visited too many of her clients in psych wards and hospitals. She’d grown careful over the years.
“We need to make sure he understands that I’m not going to take his children from him. Otherwise he’ll go crazy,” May said. There was the barest crack in her voice.
“Let me ask you this, May. Say it’s three months from now. You’re divorced, and Dale has lost half of everything he owns. He’s living with Dance Hall Barbie and they come home drunk one night. Barbie’s driving because she only had three margaritas. When they get home, the baby-sitter has let the kids demolish the house and little Billy has accidentally broken the window in Dale’s office. Are your children safe?”
“That’s a lot of things going wrong.”
“Things go wrong, May. You know that. I’m guessing that you’ve always been a buffer between your husband and kids. A human shock absorber. You probably learned how to calm him down and deflect his attention away from the children. Will Barbie know how to protect them?”
“Am I so ordinary?”
“Sadly, the situation is. The good news is, you’re giving yourself—and your children—a new start. Don’t weaken now, May. Don’t let him bully you.”
“So, what do I do?”
“Lock the doors and turn off the phone. Don’t talk to him. If you don’t feel safe, go to a relative’s or friend’s house. Or to a motel for one night. Tomorrow we’ll get together and come up with a new game plan. I’ll file some restraining orders.”
“You can keep us safe?”
“You’ll be fine, May. Trust me. Bullies are cowards. Once he sees how strong you can be, he’ll back down.”
“Okay. When can we meet?”
Meghann dug through her bag for her PalmPilot, then checked her schedule. “How about a late lunch—say two o’clock—at the Judicial Annex Café by the courthouse? I’ll schedule a meeting with Dale’s lawyer for later that afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“May, I know this is a sensitive question, but do you by any chance have a photograph of yourself … you know … when he hit you?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then May said, “I’ll check my photo albums.”
“It’s simply evidence,” Meg said.
“To you, maybe.”
“I’m sorry, May. I wish I didn’t have to ask questions like that.”
“No. I’m sorry,” May said.
That surprised Meg. “What for?”
“That no man has ever shown you the other side. My father would have killed Dale for all of this.”
Before she could stop it, Meghann felt a sharp jab of longing. It was her Achilles’ heel. She was sure she didn’t believe in love, but still, she dreamed of it. Maybe May was right. Maybe if Meg had had a father who’d loved her, everything would be different. As it was, she knew that love was a rope bridge made of the thinnest strands. It might hold your weight for a while, but sooner or later, it would break.
Oh, there were happy marriages. Her best friend, Elizabeth, had proven that.
There were also forty-eight-million-dollar-lottery winners, five-leaf clovers, Siamese twins, and full eclipses of the sun.
“So, we’ll meet at the Annex tomorrow at two?”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Good.” Meghann flipped the phone shut and dropped it in her purse, then pushed the elevator button. When the door opened, she stepped inside. As always, the mirrored walls made it feel as if she were stumbling into herself. She leaned forward, unable to stop herself; when a mirror was near, she had to look into it. In the past few years, she’d begun to search obsessively for signs of aging. Lines, wrinkles, sags.
She was forty-two years old, and since it felt as if she’d been thirty a moment ago, she had to assume it would be a blink’s worth of time before she was fifty.
That depressed her. She imagined herself at sixty. Alone, working from dawn to dusk, talking to her neighbor’s cats, and going on singles’ cruises.
She left the elevator and strode through the lobby, nodding at the night doorman as she passed.
Outside, the night was beautiful; an amethyst sky gave everything a pink and pearlized glow. Lit windows in towering skyscrapers proved that Meghann wasn’t the only workaholic in the city.
She walked briskly down the street, bypassing people without making eye contact. At her building, she paused and looked up.
There was her deck. The only one in the building without potted trees and outdoor furniture. The windows behind it were black; the rest of the building was a blaze of light. Friends and families were in those lighted spaces, having dinner, watching television, talking, making love. Connecting with one another.
I’m sorry , May had said, that no man has ever shown you the other side .
I’m sorry.
Meghann walked past her building. She didn’t want to go up there, put on her old UW sweats, eat Raisin Bran for dinner, and watch a rerun of Third Watch .
She went into the Public Market. At this late hour, pretty much everything was closed up. The fish vendors had gone home, and the dewy, beautiful vegetables had been boxed up until tomorrow. The stalls—normally filled with dried flowers, handmade crafts, and homemade food items—were empty.
She turned into the Athenian, the old-fashioned tavern made famous in Sleepless in Seattle. It was at this polished wooden bar that Rob Reiner had told Tom Hanks about dating in the nineties.
The smoke in here was so thick you could have played ticktacktoe in it with your finger. There was something comforting in the lack of political correctness in the Athenian. You could order a trendy drink, but their specialty was ice-cold beer.
Meghann had perfected the art of scoping out a bar without being obvious. She did that now.
There were five or six older men at the bar. Fishermen, she’d guess, getting ready to head up to Alaska for the season. A pair of younger Wall Street types were there, too, drinking martinis and no doubt talking shop. She saw enough of that kind in court.
“Hey, Meghann,” yelled Freddie, the bartender. “Your usual?”
“You bet.” Still smiling, she moved past the bar and turned left, where several varnished wooden tables hugged the two walls. Most were full of couples or foursomes; a few were empty.
Meghann found a place in the back. She sidled into the glossy wooden seat and sat down. A big window was to her left. The view was of Elliot Bay and the wharf.
“Here ye be,” Freddie said, setting a martini glass down in front of her. He shook the steel shaker, then poured her a cosmopolitan. “You want an order of oysters and fries?”
“You read my mind.”
Freddie grinned. “Ain’t hard to do, counselor.” He leaned down toward her. “The Eagles are coming in tonight. Should be here any minute.”
“The Eagles?”
“The minor league ball team outta Everett.” He winked at her. “Good luck.”
Meghann groaned. It was bad when bartenders started recommending whole ball teams.
I’m sorry.
Meghann began drinking. When the first cosmo was gone, she ordered a second. By the time she saw the bottom of the glass again, she’d almost forgotten her day.
“May I join you?”
Meghann looked up, startled, and found herself staring into a pair of dark eyes.
He stood in front of her, with one foot up on the seat opposite her. She could tell by the look of him—young, blond, sexy as hell—that he was used to getting what he wanted. And what he wanted tonight was her.
The thought was a tonic.
“Of course.” She didn’t offer a half smile or bat her eyes. Pretense had never appealed to her. Neither had games. “I’m Meghann Dontess. My friends call me Meg.”
He slid into the seat. His knees brushed hers, and at the contact, he smiled. “I’m Donny MacMillan. You like baseball?”
“I like a lot of things.” She flagged down Freddie, who nodded at her. A moment later, he brought her another cosmopolitan.
“I’ll have a Coors Light,” Donny said, leaning back and stretching his arms out along the top of the seat back.
They stared at each other in silence. The noise in the bar grew louder, then seemed to fade away, until all Meghann could hear was the even strains of his breathing and the beating of her heart.
Freddie served a beer and left again.
“I suppose you’re a baseball player.”
He grinned, and damn , it was sexy. She felt the first twinge of desire. Sex with him would be great; she knew it. And it would make her forget—
I’m sorry.
—about her bad day.
“You know it. I’m gonna make it to the show. You watch. Someday I’ll be famous.”
That was why Meghann gravitated toward younger men. They still believed in themselves and the world. They hadn’t yet learned how life really worked, how dreams were slowly strangled and right and wrong became abstract ideas instead of goalposts for all to see. Those truths usually hit around thirty-five, when you realized that your life was not what you’d wanted.
That, of course, and the fact that they never demanded more than she wanted to give. Men her age tended to think sex meant something. Younger men knew better.
For the next hour, Meghann nodded and smiled as Donny talked about himself. By the time she’d finished her fourth drink, she knew that he had graduated from WSU, was the youngest of three brothers, and that his parents still lived in the same Iowa farmhouse that his grandfather had homesteaded. It all went in one ear and out the other. What she really focused on was the way his knee brushed up against hers, the way his thumb stroked the wet beer glass in a steady, sensual rhythm.
He was telling her about a frat party in college when she said, “You want to come to my place?”
“For coffee?”
She smiled. “That, too, I guess.”
“You don’t screw around, do you?”
“I’d say it’s quite clear that I do. I simply like to be direct about it. I’m … thirty-four years old. My game-playing days are behind me.”
He looked at her then, smiling slowly, and the knowing sensuality in his gaze made her engine overheat. This is going to be good. “How far away do you live?”
“As luck would have it, not far.”
He stood up, reached his hand down to help her up.
She told herself he was being gallant. As opposed to helping the elderly. She placed her hand in his; at the contact a shivery thrill zipped through her.
They didn’t talk as they made their way through the now-dark and empty market. There was nothing to say. The niceties had been exchanged, the foreplay initiated. What mattered from this point on had more to do with bare skin than baring questions.
The doorman at Meghann’s building did his job wordlessly. If he noticed that this was the second young man she’d brought home in the last month, he showed no signs of it.
“Evening, Ms. Dontess,” he said, nodding.
“Hans,” she acknowledged, leading— Oh, God, what was his name?
Donny. As in Osmond.
She wished she hadn’t made that connection.
They stepped into the elevator. The minute the door closed, he turned to her. She heard the little catch in her breathing as he leaned toward her.
His lips were as soft and sweet as she’d thought they would be.
The elevator pinged at the penthouse floor. He started to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t let him. “I’m the only apartment on this floor,” she whispered against his mouth. Still kissing him, she reached into her bag and pulled at her keys.
Locked together, they centipeded toward the door and stumbled through it.
“This way.” Her voice was harsh, gruff, as she led him toward the bedroom. Once there, she started unbuttoning her blouse. He tried to reach for her but she pushed his hand away.
When she was naked, she looked at him. The room was dark, shadowy, just the way she liked it.
His face was a blur. She opened her nightstand drawer and found a condom.
“Come here,” he said, reaching out.
“Oh. I intend to come. Here.” She walked toward him slowly, holding her tummy as taut as possible.
He touched her left breast. Her nipple immediately responded. The ache between her legs graduated, deepened.
She reached down, took hold of him, and began stroking.
After that, everything happened fast. They fell on each other like animals, scratching, humping, groaning. Behind them, the headboard banged against the wall. Her orgasm, when it finally happened, was sharp and painful and faded much too quickly.
She was left feeling vaguely dissatisfied. That was happening more and more often. She lay back onto the pillows. He was beside her, so close she could feel the warmth of his bare flesh alongside her thigh.
He was right next to her, and yet she felt alone. Here they were, in bed together, with the scent of their sex still in the air, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.
She rolled over and moved closer to him. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she’d cuddled up alongside him. It was the first time she’d done something so intimate in years.
“Tell me something about you no one knows,” she said, sliding her naked leg across his.
He laughed softly. “I guess you live in Bizarro World, where they do everything backward, huh? First you screw my brains out, then you want to know me. In the bar, you were practically yawning when I told you about my family.”
She drew away from him, pulled back into herself. “I don’t like to be ordinary.” She was surprised by how okay she sounded.
“You’re not, believe me.”
He pushed her leg aside and kissed her shoulder. The brush-off. Frankly, she preferred it without the kiss.
“I gotta go.”
“So, go.”
He frowned. “Don’t sound pissed off. It’s not like we fell in love tonight.”
She reached down to the floor for her Seahawks nightshirt and put it on. She was less vulnerable dressed. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’m pissed off. And frankly, I can’t imagine falling in love with someone who used the term ‘ball handling’ as often as you did.”
“Jesus.” He got out of bed and started dressing. She sat in bed, very stiffly, watching him. She wished she had a book on her nightstand. It would have been nice to start reading now.
“If you keep bearing left, you’ll find the front door.”
His frown deepened. “Are you on medication?”
She laughed at that.
“Because you should be.” He started to leave—almost breaking into a run, she noticed—but at the door, he paused and turned around. “I liked you, you know.”
Then he was gone.
Meg heard the front door open and click shut. She finally released a heavy breath.
It used to take weeks, months even, before men began to ask if she was medicated. Now she’d managed to completely alienate Danny— Donny —in a single night.
She was losing her grip. Life seemed to be unraveling around her. Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed a man and felt something more than desire.
And what about loneliness ? Dr. Bloom had asked her. Do you like that, too?
She leaned sideways and flicked on the bedside lamp. Light fell on a framed photograph of Meghann and her sister, taken years ago.
Meghann wondered what her sister was doing right now. Wondered if she was awake at this late hour, feeling alone and vulnerable. But she knew the answer.
Claire had Alison. And Sam.
Sam.
Meghann wished she could forget the few memories she had of her sister’s father. But that kind of amnesia never overtook her. Instead, Meghann remembered everything, every detail. Mostly, she remembered how much she’d wanted Sam to be her father, too. When she’d been young and hopeful, she’d thought: Maybe we could be a family, the three of us .
The pipe dreams of a child. Still painful after all these years.
Sam was Claire’s father. He had stepped in and changed everything. Meg and Claire had nothing in common anymore.
Claire lived in a house filled with laughter and love. She probably only dated upstanding leaders of the community. No anonymous, dissatisfying sex for Claire.
Meghann closed her eyes, reminding herself that this was the life she wanted. She’d tried marriage. It had ended exactly as she’d feared—with his betrayal and her broken heart. She didn’t ever want to experience that again. If sometimes she spent an hour or so in the middle of the night with an ache of longing that wouldn’t quite go away, well, that was the price of independence.
She leaned across the bed and picked up the phone. There were five numbers on her speed dialer: the office, three take-out restaurants, and her best friend, Elizabeth Shore.
She punched in number three.
“What’s the matter?” said a groggy male voice. “Jamie?”
Meghann glanced at the bedside clock. Damn . It was almost midnight; that made it nearly three o’clock in New York. “Sorry, Jack. I didn’t notice the time.”
“For a smart woman, you make that mistake a lot. Just a sec.”
Meghann wished she could hang up. She felt exposed by her error. It showed how little a life she had.
“Are you okay?” Elizabeth said, sounding worried.
“I’m fine. I screwed up. Tell Jack I’m sorry. We can talk tomorrow. I’ll call before I leave for work.”
“Just hang on.”
Meghann heard Elizabeth whisper something to her husband. A moment later, she said, “Let me guess. You just got home from the Athenian.”
That made her feel even worse. “No. Not tonight.”
“Are you okay, Meg?”
“Fine, really. I just lost track of time. I was … working on a messy deposition. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Jack and I are leaving for Paris, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Have a great time.”
“I could postpone it—”
“And miss that huge party at the Ritz? No way. Have a wonderful time.”
There was a pause on the line, then softly Elizabeth said, “I love you, Meg.”
She felt the start of tears. Those were the words she’d needed, even if they came from far away; they made her feel less alone, less vulnerable. “I love you, too, Birdie. Good night.”
“’Night, Meg. Sleep well.”
She slowly hung up the phone. The room seemed quiet now; too dark. She pulled the covers up and closed her eyes, knowing it would be hours before she fell asleep.