Chapter 6
"I made a bitchin' salad," Sherry announced proudly while Nadine and Paul shed their coats. "And I took steaks out of the freezer. They're broiling in the what'sis. How does that grab you?"
It grabbed them fine. Except that Paul suggested "delicious" as a more appropriate adjective for the salad.
And while they had dinner, Sherry extolled the coeducational advantages of Riverdale High versus all-girl Pine Cove, ending up by telling them she had spent the latter part of the afternoon at Leila's.
"She's neat, you know it?"
Nadine counteracted. "I got you a bathing suit you're going to love, dear. Carson's delivers out here tomorrow ... watch for it."
Sherry seemed pleased. Then she inquired about Nadine's other purchases.
Informed, Sherry shook her head incredulously. "That took you all day?"
Paul chewed the rare-to-cremated steak determinedly. "Your mother shops carefully."
"Yeah, I guess! The way it poured all afternoon, I told Leila a person'd have to be out of their box to go downtown." Sherry chewed for a moment, learning the hard way that a broiler turned up to five-hundred-and-fifty degrees could char the outside and leave the heart of a frozen filet stone cold. "I told her you ... probably had your reasons."
"Oh? And what did Leila say to that?" Nadine asked, tensing.
"I dunno. Oh, yes, she said you get a kick out of having lunch with Daddy. She's really a doll ... I mean, the way she digs our whole family."
The phone rang, ending the sparring round. Sherry stumbled in a frenzied effort to reach it. "That's Frannie! She promised she'd call and let me know what her brother's boy friend said about me...."
Sherry returned to the table seconds afterward.
"Frannie's brother's boy friend must be a taciturn character," Paul said, smiling.
"No, it was a false alarm. That's been going on since I came home!" Sherry shrugged her shoulder. "The phone rings, I answer, nobody's there. What a drag!"
"Kids, probably," Paul said.
Poor Vince, Nadine thought. He really suffered, unable to communicate ... and so desperate for the sound of her voice ..!
Nearly eleven. Paul was in the den, his head buried in a leatherbound folio prepared by the media department, some sort of homework relative to the afternoon meeting with Oliver and Lindsay.
Under a warm shower, Nadine decided that Paul worked too hard. Took every damned thing so seriously. You'd think, considering that he and Warren Ryner were the closest of friends, he'd feel more assured about the Weidberger account instead of treating it like a sacred trust ... comparing the cost of one radio station against another until all hours of the night and pondering TV ratings as though people would switch to another brand or start a temperance movement if the agency was guilty of one teensy-weensy miscalculation.
Toweling herself dry later, she took a more charitable view. Paul knew what he was doing. It was his knowing that had paid for the little touch of luxury in this room that was her constant delight. Not even the Ryner house boasted a black-tiled Roman bathtub wide and deep enough to look like a sample swimming pool. Nadine had given the architect carte blanche on the rest of the house, but (she smiled now, remembering) had driven him out of his mind with every detail concerning the sunken tub. Two tiled steps down, seahorse-shaped faucets, the works. Of course, no one used it; Paul, like herself, was a shower addict. But it gave the bathroom character.
Thinking about Paul, and how he deserved to get more fun out of life, and surveying the gleaming four-by-six jet-colored pool, Nadine made one of those impetuous blends in which two separate ideas formed a single, irresistible impulse. She smiled once more, pleased with the splash ofingenuity.
There was no stereo speaker that reached this bathroom , ... certainly not with the door closed. She wrapped herself in a towel, crept down the hall to Sherry's room and found the old portable record player in Sherry's closet. Sherry was sound asleep. Good.
The door to the den was still closed. Paul still busy. Good. In the living room, Nadine quietly selected a seldom-played assortment of records, "Chant of the Weed" the most promising.
With the records under her arm, unable to make her choice from the wet-bar in the den, she rummaged in the kitchen and settled for an ornately decked-up bottle of Chianti. It was bound in raffia and decorated with a life-size, realistic-looking bunch of purple grapes.
Returning to the bathroom with her loot, Nadine turned on the tap, rushing into the bedroom to follow an added inspiration, Wonderful, the way new embellishments fell into place once you came up with a sound idea! From a wide selection, she chose an out-sized flacon of cologne (the label called the stuff "sensuous," but "licentious" would have come closer. Returning to the bathroom, she poured the contents into the rising water, checked the temperature, inhaled the perfume approvingly and shut off all but the small light inside the stall shower. Through the frosted glass it shone dimly, adding shadows of mystery to everything but the toilet. Damn! How could you create atmosphere with something as unro-mantic as a John visible?
There was another flash of inspired thinking. Nadine turned on the shower. Hot. In a few minutes the steam would billow through the room, the same, ethereal, other-world effect produced by the people who created those lavish ice extravaganzas!
Nadine opened the wine bottle, filled a single glass and set it beside the rapidly filling pool. She plugged in the record player, turning the weird music low. Steam was beginning to swirl from the shower; the perfume was barely perceptible to the nostrils, but subtly present nevertheless. There was only the matter of wardrobe....
From a closet in the narrow dressing room between bedroom and bath, Nadine plucked a short brocade jacket. It had been part of a dinner dress, long since discarded. But the jacket, open at the front in a deeply plunging V, buttoned just above the waist, flared out and ended at mid-hip, where its usefulness for purposes of modesty abruptly ended. In keeping with her mood, the brocade was a gold-shot purple. Nadine inspected the effect in a door-mirror. Interesting, but a little austere.
Not until she had daubed on a hint of makeup and returned to the perfume-clouded white hell of the bathroom, did she solve the inadequate-costume problem. Sometimes you could think and think and you couldn't come up with anything approaching those marvelously coincidental things that stared you straight in the face! That lovely wine bottle ..!
It took a razor blade and a few minutes of frantic, determined sawing of wire before the ornament came free from the rounded fifth. Nadine fitted the grapes where they'd be most effective. But how...? And then, to prove that the right muse was cooperating with this all-consuming project, Nadine considered that the wide grape leaf would cover up the modus operandi. Humming along with the opium-strained music, immeasurably thrilled by her imagination, Nadine opened the medicine cabinet and took out the adhesive tape.
A few minutes later, she called out, asking Paul to join her.
Their bedroom was dark and Paul held her close, their nakedness made innocent by virtue of a pre-bedtime satisfaction.
"Just when I think I know what to expect from you," Paul said drowsily. "Surprise!"
"Was that fun?"
"Fantastic."
"I'm only trying to prove I have many, many facets," Nadine said carelessly. "A woman isn't really interesting in bed, is she, unless she's out to prove that? For instance, you wouldn't expect all that vulgar showmanship from the same gal who counts your socks when they get back from the laundry and mashes your potatoes. From a stripper at the Zam-Zam Club, yes, from your lawfully wedded, no. But I'll bet the stripper would be a let-down ... trying to convince you she's a lady. Me ... I'm a suburban lady trying to win recognition as a good lover."
Paul's body, until then relaxed pliably against hers, seemed to tense. "Where did you hear that?"
"Hear what? Oh, about the...."
"All of it," Paul said tersely. He drew away from her, half sitting up in bed.
"I don't know. What makes you think I ... Paul, what a question!"
"I heard the whole theory at a production meeting once. When Pritchard suggested that one of Carrell's illustrations looked ... what did he say? Like a cross between a debutante and a two-bit whore." Paul's voice shook with unbelievable tension. "Carrell makes a speech on the slightest provocation. But it was all there. Including his peculiar, original Zam-Zam Club."
Nadine released her breath slowly. Stupid. She was either sleepy or stupid. She mustered all her talent before saying lightly, "Then I must have heard it from him. At the Ryners'. We talked a long time."
"About this sort of thing?"
"Honey, you aren't annoyed?"
"Annoyed isn't the word for it!"
"You know it was only a conversation...."
"It's not the kind of conversation your wife makes with another man. It's what I tried to tell you the other night. That ... sonnovabitch has enough ideas without being encouraged."
"You think I encouraged him?" The talent had not failed her. Nadine believed herself to be cruelly hurt.
Paul relaxed only slightly and pulled her into his arms, kissing her cheeks and brushing the hair from her forehead. "Mommy, you just don't understand. You don't know how men think. You don't know what a cockeyed impression you give to a rounder like Carrell."
Sounding superbly naive, Nadine asked, "Don't you like him, Paul? He seemed like a fairly pleasant person."
"Not around anybody's wife, or sister. Or daughter. And the more I see of him, the more I'm convinced my opinion isn't exclusive. I can't think of one decent guy who could listen to him for as long as I have without wanting to break his jaw."
"But you seemed to like him. You said Warren was ... impressed."
"We like his work. For our purpose. Apart from that ... you know the way some people grow on you? With this guy, the process is reversed."
Nadine's arms moved upward to encircle her husband's neck. She was Gretel now, protected by Hansel from a dark, evil world beyond her virginal comprehension. "I'm sorry, darling. You know it was just ... talk."
"Be Cleopatra with me, Mommy," Paul said. He embraced her with a surprising kind of desperation and Nadine struggled for breath. "The wilder and crazier, the better. But I want everyone else to know you're ... what you are. Sherry's mother. My wife. My wonderful, wonderful...."
He held her for a long time, words failing him, sleep coming hard considering the exhausting effects of the Roman epic.
You can't be too careful, Nadine reminded herself. A homily as time-worn as language itself, but indisputably sage nevertheless. She yawned. If you want to keep everybody happy, you can't be too careful.
And wasn't that the whole reason for existence, keeping everybody happy? On that selfless, noble thought, Nadine fell blissfully asleep.