Читать книгу The Idea of Him - Holly Peterson, Holly Peterson - Страница 12

I was left drumming the wall behind me with my fingers while waiting for Ms. Reptile Shoes to exit my laundry room. Bile inched up in my throat as I tried to decide how to handle this. What was I supposed to do, march into our living room and ask Wade right then and there what it all meant? Was his telling me I was so hot all the time when we barely had sex anymore a clear sign that he loved someone else?

I got up the guts to walk back down to the laundry room door, but she opened it herself just as I arrived. There stood the Tudor Room woman with her hair perfectly coiffed, and her full lips smothered with gloss, lavishly but accurately, without the remotest hint that she’d been performing sexual tongue gymnastics minutes before. She returned my stare with simple, elegant composure.

Though fuming, I was also heartbroken by her beauty and what it must mean to my husband. “What the hell was going on in here?!”

She then did the unthinkable—she held out her hand. “Jackie Malone.”

“What the …” My eyes darted to the vacant scene behind her.

“Look, he’s all yours.” She stared straight at me. “It’s not what you think. You may not believe me now, but I was in there on your behalf. I was looking for something and he caught me.”

I studied her clothes for signs they’d just had mad groping sex. I had to admit that she did look completely unruffled. All I could see behind her was laundry neatly folded, and all I could smell was powder detergent—no scent of lust, no mess. “You’re telling me you were alone, locked in a room with my husband, and I’m supposed to believe nothing was going on in here?!!”

“Yes. Nothing. And more important …” She paused and held my arm. Then she said, “This is going to sound extremely improbable, but you are actually going to need to trust me.”

I yanked out of her grasp and whispered through clenched teeth. “Trust you? You just spent the last ten minutes locked in the laundry room with my husband who just walked out of here.”

“I told you. I was looking for something having to do with the men in your living room that you know nothing about. What they are doing is going to sap your finances, any stability you have, probably deplete everything you have saved. It’s not safe in any way. Nothing sexual was going on here. He came in and caught me looking for something in his jacket.” She pulled me into the laundry room.

“What were you looking for? And tell me about the casino chips you both seem to have,” I demanded, keeping one eye on the hall in case Wade returned.

“The casino chips mean nothing.” Jackie looked vulnerable for a moment and I took it as a sign that those chips were not an innocent prop in whatever game she was playing. “We’ve been to Atlantic City is all. Earlier, from the hall, I saw him take off his jacket back here, so I came back and I thought I might be able to find—”

“Allie?” I heard Caitlin before I saw her walking furiously in our direction, her miniskirt stretched to the gills over her tight little gymnast form, and her thick platforms loudly stomping on my floors. She was my close friend, but far too nosy to be invited into this scene. I walked farther into the kitchen and slammed the laundry room door behind Jackie so fast I wondered if I’d clipped her nose.

“Not now, Caitlin.”

She was inches from me. “All okay? Wade’s in the living room with all the men drooling over the hot fashionistas, and he looks pissed. Did you fight?”

“Can you go back to the party, please?”

Caitlin crossed her arms and planted her feet Mexican-standoff style. “I know you, and I know you’re not telling me something.” She looked at the closed door. “Did you find her?”

“I was mistaken,” I said, turning her around and pushing her in the direction of the party. “Go make sure Wade doesn’t have his palm on anyone’s ass, please.”

“Happy to,” Caitlin said, relishing the chance to catch my husband in another sticky situation.

With Caitlin gone, I opened the door and snuck inside to continue my line of questioning.

“Look, I need to know a few things besides the obvious question of why you were back here with Wade: Who are you? Why did you help me with Delsie? What was it you were looking for? What is Wade doing with which men that is going to take away our savings, as you supposedly contend?” Despite all my suspicions, in the far reaches of my anterior lobe, I did allow for the possibility that she was telling the truth.

“Not who. What. Documents and photos,” she answered tersely, still trying to size me up even as she scanned the floor. “Or a flash drive, that little stick that goes into the side of a computer.”

“I know what a flash drive is. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I told you. I’m Jackie.”

I leaned against the dryer, holding my throbbing head with one hand. “Stop being cute. I catch you red-handed with my husband. All this ‘I’m trying to help you’ shit looks like your way of getting out of the room. But I admit, it’s creative.” I was amazed I said that without my voice cracking. Once I feel like I might cry, my toughness evaporates instantly.

Jackie began folding the clothes that had scattered on the floor. “I’m sorry, I know this is confusing and really hard to believe, but I swear on my life that I’m not lying to you one bit.” She suddenly looked five years younger.

I stopped her manic folding with a pat on her hand and looked her in the eye. “What kind of documents and photos?” I considered the very remote possibility that she and Wade weren’t doing anything “wrong”; her hair was too perfect, her blouse too unwrinkled, her lip gloss too polished.

“Meet me at the Tudor Room bar tomorrow around five,” she said calmly, but with a hard glint in her eye. “You’ve got to keep this quiet, but if you find anything at all new in his papers and folders that seems like it wouldn’t be …” She started scribbling down her cell-phone number and passed it to me on a gum wrapper from her purse.

I stuffed it into my pocket, glad to have some kind of way to reach her should I find proof she and Wade were together; I could use it to confront him somehow. “Wouldn’t be what?” I asked in a tough and angry tone. “He’s a journalist, an editor of a general interest magazine. He could have any kind of documents dealing with every story under the sun on his desk. Movie stars, legal wars, political corruption, how the hell am I supposed to know … what isn’t safe? I pay the bills; it’s all there …” I whispered. “What the hell do you mean? And if I found something, you wouldn’t be getting it, just so you know. He’s my husband. You’re a total stranger.”

She laid it on the line in a way I could not avoid any longer, no matter how hard I tried. “Listen carefully. This whole deal has been going on a lot longer than you know. And you’re never going to understand how without my help.”

Really?

And then the beauty added this:

“And just so you know, I didn’t just get screwed in there, you did.”