Halfway up they met Jill Sinclair. She was carrying the last of the wooden chairs for the bonfire.
Rachel had purchased the oak kitchen table and chairs at a fleamarket for a song and wasn’t all that upset about their loss. However, what the fire represented had her on the verge of bawling—something she’d done a lot of the past two days.
Jill gave them the a-okay sign. Thanks to Jill, the fire department hadn’t arrived yet, and probably wouldn’t, in no small part because Jill was married to Hank Sinclair, the chief. Besides, there were several gardening hoses at the ready. “I just got off the phone with Hank. You owe me big-time for this favor,” she said with a laugh. “I had to promise lots of stuff to get Hank to wait an hour or two to check this out.” Jill, the mother of three adolescent boys, loved her husband passionately. She was always regaling them with stories of her colorful sex life. Who knew a couple could do that with a fireman’s pole?
“ What kind of stuff?” Laura wanted to know.
“ Never mind,” Jill said with an impish grin. “It would probably end up on the six o’clock news. ’Firemen Have Big Hoses,’ or ’Firemen Can Light Your Fire, As Well As Put It Out,’ or some such thing.”
They all laughed.
“ Do you think the bonfire’s hot enough yet?” Laura asked.
“ The fire is perfect,” Rachel said, swiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. “Now for the good stuff!”
Over the next fifteen minutes, working together, they carried out all the exercise equipment in the apartment, and there was a lot of it.
“ You know, I’m five-feet-ten and weigh a hundred and thirty-five pounds . . . okay, a hundred and forty,” Rachel declared. “I’m in good shape for my height. Really, I am. I could be the poster girl for body tone. Why should I be made to feel like a blimp?” She threw her hands out in question to her friends.
“ Men! They claim to want Miss Bountiful, but what they really want is Miss Anorexia.” It was Jill speaking, and she really had no reason for concern in that regard. She was a perfect size eight, and always had been.
Shoving a Stairmaster into the blazing fire, Rachel recalled, “This was my Christmas present two years ago. God, how I hate this thing!”
“ I sold mine in a yard sale last summer,” Laura said. “They claim you can read or watch TV while exercising on it, but it gave me motion sickness.”
“ I gained five pounds after using mine for a month,” Jill added. “Do you think they’re designed by women-hating men?”
“ For sure,” Rachel agreed.
“ Stairmasters make a great clothes rack,” Jill offered.
They agreed about that, too.
“ Valentine’s Day, last year,” Rachel said and pushed forward her infamous Butt Buster machine. She gave it a particularly hard shove into the inferno. “Is there anything more romantic than a guy inferring that his lover’s butt is too big?”
“ Yeah, it would be comparable to a woman giving a man a Weinie Widener . . . you know, something to build up the little hot dog.” Laura waggled her perfectly arched eyebrows as she imparted that particular observation.
“ I had a friend once whose husband wanted her to get a boob job. When she countered by buying him one of those penis enlarger thingees you see advertised on the Internet, he divorced her. No second chances.” Jill looked as if she was still affronted on her friend’s behalf.
“You guys are sooo bad,” Rachel said. But what she thought was, Thank God you are here, good friends. I need your support for this final ending.
Next came the Body by Jake machine, engagement gift, a year ago; Bow-Flex, another Valentine’s day gift; treadmill, a thirty-second birthday gift last year; and two exercise cycles—his and hers—from the previous Christmas.
They all stood staring at the fire for a long moment, almost as if it were a funeral pyre—which it was in a way. Rachel didn’t expect all the metal parts to melt or anything, but they would be scorched beyond use.
“ Is that everything?” Jill asked.
Rachel tapped her chin pensively with a forefinger, then smiled. “Not quite.” Within seconds, she had gone into the apartment, then returned with a few more items for the fire. An unbelievable twenty-seven different kinds of vitamins, plus various sets of running shoes (male and female), three jock straps (male only), and two bottles of Rogaine.
“ Here’s to new beginnings!” Rachel said. She and her friends sat on three of the five pieces of matched Louis Vuitton luggage stacked outside her front door. They sipped at fluted glasses of champagne which Jill had had the foresight to bring with her.
Tenants of the posh development still stood on their postage stamp-sized lawns and peeked out designer window shades. Most of them were grinning. A few gave her a tight-fisted punch in the air for encouragement.
“ I’m going to miss you,” Laura blurted out.
Tears rose collectively in all their eyes.
“ Me, too,” Rachel said on a sob.
“ You will come back, won’t you, Rach?” Jill took one of Rachel’s hands in hers and squeezed hard.
“Definitely.” Rachel’s employer at Serenity Designs, Daphne Fields, had graciously given her a three-month leave of absence, but Rachel expected to be back in the city in a month, or six weeks at the most.
“ You need this time away from here,” Jill concluded, as if they hadn’t discussed the subject to death in the last few days. “And, personally, I think it was synchronicity that you got that letter from your grandmother inviting you to come for a visit right when everything started to hit the fan here.”
Gizelle Fortier’s letter had, indeed, come at the perfect time; a lifeline, in a way. Rachel had never met the woman, or even heard of her, until she’d received the terse invitation following her birth mother’s death last month. Apparently, Gizelle was the mother of Rachel’s father, who had died before Rachel’s birth.
Her grandmother lived in a quaint place called Bayou Black in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Rachel pictured a kindly, white-haired lady in a modest plantation house with a sweeping lawn leading down to the meandering stream. A miniature Tara. Rachel needed this kind of quiet setting to make some life-changing decisions. Out with the old, in with the new.
The noise of squealing tires jarred her out of her reverie, causing her half-filled glass to slosh over onto her jeans. She rubbed her palm over the spot, then shrugged with unconcern. Even before she glanced up, she knew what she would see. A silver gray BMW sedan entered the parking lot at a fast rate of speed, barely making the corner. It came to an abrupt stop in its designated parking space out front, its occupant practically flying out the door before the engine had barely turned off.
Rachel stood, bracing herself.
It was David Lloyd, her fiancé. Well, former fiancé, she reminded herself as she pictured the two-carat solitaire diamond ring sitting on the dining room table beside her goodbye note.
“ Okay, kiddo, time to go,” Laura advised Jill. Then she addressed Rachel. “Jill and I will go pick up your rental car, Rach.” Rachel had sold the VW convertible she’d had since college two years ago when she got the use of a company vehicle.
“ Are you sure you don’t want us to stick around?” Jill asked, standing, too. They gazed at her with concern.
Rachel shook her head.
“ We’ll be nearby, at Laura’s. Just call if you need us,” Jill said as they left.
Time for Rachel to face the music. Actually, it was time for the man of the hour to face the music. The man to whom the bonfire was dedicated.
David must have gotten her message on his answering machine. As one of D.C.’s most renowned plastic surgeons, he’d been out of the country the past five days at a medical conference in Switzerland. He must have come straight from Dulles, if his business suit and loosened tie were any indication. David had specific suits for specific purposes; travel, office, social, conferences—all of them Armani or Boss. Ditto for overly expensive designer shoes.
&nbs
p; David stopped in the middle of the parking lot and was staring, practically bug-eyed, at her bonfire. His face began to redden and his fists were clenched at his sides. Then he turned to look at her across the lawn. A twitch at the side of his mouth was the only sign of just how angry he was.
Coming up the sidewalk, he waited until he stood in front of her. David had long ago mastered the art of coolness and civility and masking true feelings. So it wasn’t surprising that he addressed her in an even tone of voice, “Are you nuts, Rachel? Have you lost your freakin’ mind?”
Does he realize how weird it sounds for him to ask those questions in such a calm manner? “No,” she answered with equal composure. “I haven’t lost my mind. I’ve finally found it.”
“ Bullshit!” He waved a hand toward the pile and pointed out, “There must be ten thousand dollars’ worth of exercise equipment out there going up in flames.” He glanced briefly with disgust at the fire, then did a double take. “And another thousand dollars’ worth of vitamins and health supplements.”
“ How like you to equate everything to the almighty dollar! Why do men always measure everything in terms of money?”
“ Men? Men?” The fact that he sputtered was an indication of just how much fury he held in check. “Is that some kind of femi-Nazi, Sex-and-the-City, I-hate-men statement?”
“ Yeah.”
“ Why? This all started with those loony-bird friends of yours, didn’t it? All of a sudden you’re on this female equality kick.” He passed a hand back and forth in front of his face in an erasure board fashion, as if none of that was important now, which it wasn’t. He stared at her for a long moment, the kind of telling silence he often used to manipulate his staff and patients—and, yes, her—into complying with his wishes.
But she didn’t bend now.
“ All right, I get it now. You’re going off the deep end just because I wouldn’t set a date for the wedding, right? I told you before I left that we’d discuss this when I got back.”
“ That’s what you always say.”
“ Don’t pressure me, sweetheart. It is not attractive, and I will not allow it.”
She laughed. The man was clueless. “David, we’ve been together for five years, three of those years living together, and one year of that engaged. If I were going to go off the deep end over your marriage phobia, or your electronic organizer timetable for life, I would have done so long ago.”
Just then, he seemed to notice, with horror, that they had an audience, watching and listening. “Holy hell!” he muttered and steered her forcibly inside the open front door. Then he repeated, much louder, “Holy hell!” as he got his first look at the half-empty townhouse.
Rachel was a Feng Shui interior decorator. She had loved this townhouse and had decorated it with extra care, creating a home with harmony and balance of space, utilizing color, mirrors, crystals and plants to their optimum effect. She had made sure that the dwelling’s life force or chi flowed freely, unobstructed by clutter. It had been her best work. Even David—never a Feng Shui advocate—had admitted her expertise when it came to their distinctive abode. Many of his friends and colleagues, after visiting, had sought out her decorating services.
“ Where’s my furniture?” he demanded to know.
“Your furniture is still here. My furniture is in storage where it will remain until I decide where I want to live. I left the drapes and all the plants.”
Because of the missing objects, a negative aura was seeping into the townhouse already. The rooms felt out of balance, which they were, of course. She felt out of balance. Hearing some wind chimes outside, she remembered that she’d left them to dispel negative forces. Still, she shivered.
Meanwhile, David’s eyes scanned the rooms as he walked briskly through the living room with its Persian carpets, gas-fired log fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling arched windows filling one wall, then into the step-down den with its U-shaped, soft Moroccan leather sofa of a buttery yellow color. The whole time he seemed more concerned about taking inventory of his precious antique Roseville pottery collection that filled built-in bookcases lining most of the walls in every room. One hundred and fifty-three of the vivid colored pieces at last count. . . or, rather, one hundred and fifty-two. David was obsessive about his collection.
Roseville pottery was first produced in the 1890s in Zanesville, Ohio, where David’s parents grew up and introduced him to the art of collecting. The finely crafted pottery included everything from umbrella stands to spittoons to vases and was known for its vivid colors. At one point, the pieces could be purchased in a five-and-dime store for almost nothing. Today, even the cheapest pieces cost more than a hundred dollars and the rare ones, ten thousand dollars and more, especially since the company stopped production more than fifty years ago.
When he got to the dining room with its ornate French doors leading out onto a tiny, but colorful patio—the biggest selling point for Rachel when David had bought the place—his attention snagged on the ring sitting on the table next to her note. He cocked his head in question. And, to give him credit, there was hurt in his eyes and in the shrug of his shoulders. He picked up the paper and read her note quickly, then tossed it onto the table as if repulsed. “You really are serious about leaving, aren’t you?”
Well, golly, I guess so. Wouldn’t you think the bonfire, the missing furniture and the ring would be message enough? She just nodded.
“ I thought you loved me.” From David, that was as close to pleading as he would ever get.
“ I did.”
The word did stood out in the glaring silence like a foghorn.
“ And you don’t anymore?”
Surely ... surely that wasn’t a crack in David’s hard-as-nails exterior? She felt her determination falter, but only for a second. “I don’t think so.”
“ Five years, Rachel! We’ve been together five years, and you’re just going to throw it away?” He was back to being angry; it showed in the way he carefully folded his suit jacket over the back of a chair, then walked slowly back into the living room, with her following. He opened the armoire with the built-in bar and poured himself a cut-glass tumbler of Chivas over ice, tossing it back neatly. She would have been more impressed if he’d drunk it straight from the bottle.
“ I’m not throwing it away, David. You are.”
“ Huh?”
“ You said that it’s been five years and asked if I was just going to toss it all away. Well, you’re the one that did that.”
“ By failing to set a wedding date fast enough to suit you?” There was venom in his voice now, and not an ounce of the emotion she’d seen moments ago.
“ Not entirely. Something more important than that.”
“ And that would be?”
“Your vasectomy.” How’s that for blunt, baby?
David looked as if he’d had the air knocked out of him. In truth, Rachel felt the same way—and she’d known about it for two days now. “How .. . how did you find out?” he asked finally.
“ Dr. Sylvester’s office called to reschedule your follow-up appointment. He’s got a golf date the same afternoon.”
Raking his fingers through his hair—something he rarely did because of his fear of a receding hairline—he muttered something under his breath that sounded liked, “ Sonofafuckingbitch!”
“ How could you, David? How could you make such an important decision that affects us both without discussing it first?”
“ I intended to tell you—”
“ When?”
“ It’s my body. Isn’t that what you women always say?” He was trying to joke, but he saw immediately that the humor was lost on her. “What’s the big deal? You never indicated any particular desire to breed. Have you developed some sudden maternal instinct? The ol’ baby time clock starting to tick?”
“ You bastard!” She punched him in the stomach. Hard. Rubbing a hand over the sore knuckles, she turned away from him, not even trying to stem the tears which welled over i
n her eyes. “I don’t know if I want to have kids. That’s not the issue. I should have been given a choice.”
The punch didn’t seem to have done him any harm, but David stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “What the hell is wrong with you? Yeah, I had a vasectomy. Yeah, I should have discussed it with you first. But I did it for you, for chrissake! Some women would be grateful.”
“For . . . for me?”
“ Honey, you know how long it’s taken us to get your body in shape. Two years.”
Yeah, two years of agony. Do you have any idea how much I hate exercise, thanks to you? And what’s this “us” business? I was the one huffing and puffing.
“ Finally, we’ve got you almost perfect.”
“We” again. I do not want to hear about “almost” perfect.
“ A few more pounds, a little body sculpting with the weights, perhaps some plastic surgery on your butt.”
Mention plastic surgery and my behind in the same breath one more time, and I might just sock you again, buster.
“ Six more months, a year at most, and you’ll be thanking me, sweetheart.”
I—don’t—think—so. She glared at him, but did he notice? No! He was on a roll, or thought he was.
“ But if you got pregnant. . . man, your hips would balloon and your ass cheeks would probably swell like giant marshmallows. And I know better than anyone else that once females pack on the cellulite, it’s impossible to get rid of it.”
The dimwit jerk just likened my butt to marshmallows. I think I am going to kill him. She folded her arms over her chest to restrain herself.
“ So, see, I was just being considerate of you. We can always get a dog—a small dog—if the maternal hormones start humming again. That is, if you really want one.” David was not fond of animals; this was a big concession for him. Smiling broadly at her, he opened his arms and extended them to her as if he actually expected her to step into his embrace.