At First Sight

Chapter 5

Duringour golf game, I learned that Chandler Ellis had been the walk-on quarterback for the Georgetown University football team in the late nineties. He'd set a passing record for Division I-AA colleges, which was still standing. Just one more on a growing list of things I despised about him.

Naturally, he creamed me at golf.

But one good thing came of it. He suggested we get the girls together and all go out to dinner. By "the girls," he meant Evelyn, Melissa, and Paige.

No fucking way Melissa was gonna get included. The last thing I needed was my angry sixteen-year-old sitting there, reflecting light from studs punched through every corner of her face. Melissa would go out of her way to humiliate us. She would use abusive language, or talk about Big Mac, tell everybody what a great lay he is. Believe me, I've been sucked into these things before. She's impossible.

She wouldn't want to go anyway. She was much happier sitting in the room, talking to McKenna on the hotel phone, eating up my shriveling bank reserves at four dollars a minute on a trans-Pac line.

Besides, it was going to be hard enough just to get Evelyn to agree. Evelyn had a very select group of friends, and they all came with rich older husbands and Gold's Gym memberships.

But I had a plan to make it happen. We had just come up from the pool when I told her about my golf game with Chandler and his invitation for us to all go to dinner.

"Why the fuck would I want to go out with them?" she said, starting this discussion with enough attitude to open at the Apollo Theater.

"It's okay with me," I said. "I didn't want to go, either."

That slowed her down. If I didn't want to go, then maybe she ought to. That was the dynamic our marriage had taken.

"Who are these people again?" she asked.

We were in our suite on the eighth floor of the hotel. The eighth floor is the Club Floor. You need a special key to get up there in the elevator. Evelyn loved that, loved having that special key. It validated her.

The Club Floor cost a few hundred extra a day. Did I mention I was on the verge of a fucking bankruptcy? Naturally, with bankers circling me like hungry coyotes, money should be of no consequence.

Our top-floor room was one of the best at the Four Seasons, up front, overlooking the ocean. Great views, great size, great sitting room where Melissa bitched and moaned because she had to sleep on the pull-out sofa. I'd been told by my wife that the room was a bargain at twenty-seven hundred a night. Can you believe this?

Anyway, after I mentioned the dinner invitation, Evelyn started pacing and thinking. She was naked, just out of the shower. Her slick, still damp, sun-reddened body the picture of glowing health. My body still felt like it had gone through a meat tenderizer.

"Chandler and Paige Ellis… " she said reflectively. "They're not part of the Ellis family, are they? The Chandlers and Ellises? That bunch?"

I should pause here to tell you that Evelyn studied the society pages like a cloistered monk reading scripture.

I knew that the Ellis name probably wouldn't fly past unnoticed. "Ellises? Who are the Ellises?" Me, acting dumb.

"Who are the Ellises? Well, if they're the same Ellises, they're the other half of the Otis Chandler family, the cousins. If this guy's first name is Chandler, it's probably the same family." She was pacing around, then spun suddenly, walked out onto the balcony, and looked down at the grounds, chewing on her cuticle, thinking.

I probably don't need to remind you that she was absolutely buck-ass naked and was now in full view of everyone down by the pool. Seconds later, I heard somebody whistle and some guy started shouting at her.

Finally, after giving them a good show, she turned and walked slowly back into the room.

"I'm going to check with Lea in the Club Lounge and see if she knows who they are."

Well, of course they were the Ellises and so Evelyn went from hating the idea of going out to dinner with them to hating her entire hernia-busting closet full of clothes, which I'd lugged in and out of two airports all the way from L. A. She said she needed new gear for the dinner, so, armed with the Amex Black Card, she was off to the Wailea Center, where I probably don't have to tell you, the designer shops are a tad pricey.

That night, the four of us, sans Melissa, had dinner at Correlli's, an Italian restaurant up the coast from the hotel. The restaurant opened onto a beautiful beach. A light wind flickered candles in hurricane lamps. There were pictures of thirties-style gangsters on the walls, along with shots of every cheese-ball celebrity who had ever wandered in there by mistake.

Of course, because of their social clout, there was a picture of Chandler and Paige from last year-the honeymoon shot. The maitre d, a guy who looked like his name should have been Guido but turned out to be Max, asked them both to sign it. They did, and he re-hung it in a place of prominence, up front.

Then a strange thing happened. My wife and the Ellises seemed to hit it off. I'm always surprised when this occurs because, in my mind, Evelyn's flaws so outweigh her good points that I tend to focus exclusively on them.

But on a good day, when she's trying to be nice, Evelyn can be quite charming, and like I said, from the neck down, you can't find a more toney-looking woman. This evening, in preparation for our dinner with the Ellises, she had dressed way down. Gone was the push-up water bra, the Lycra pantsuit, and crop-top, navel-baring ensemble. Her show-stopping cleavage was modestly out of view. In its place, new duds: a tasteful, silk Perry Ellis blouse; tailored Dior slacks; jeweled Manolo Blahnik sandals. Grand total: $1,793, plus tax. But at least the outfit wasn't one of her tit-baring, all-hanging-out-and-inyour-face specials like the ones she usually wears.

Evelyn and Paige chatted about Paige's art and the children she and Chandler were planning to eventually have. It came out that Paige's wedding and engagement rings were being resized because they had almost come off in the water two days ago, clearing up that mystery.

"It's amazing. She takes off her rings and all of a sudden, every unattached Romeo on the beach thinks it's his cue to turn into a complete ass," Chandler said, shaking his head.

"Unbelievable," I agreed, sheepishly.

Evelyn and I both told lies about Melissa… said she was planning on college in two years. But after looking at her last two report cards, the only way I could see her getting into a university was if the Devil's Disciples opened a pharmaceutical college to teach better chemistry to that bunch of stringy-haired crystal cookers who kept blowing up their mobile homes in the Angeles Crest mountains.

Chandler and I talked about L. D. kids, something I had to struggle to stay focused on. I was still trying to keep from gawking at Paige.

Of course she recounted the story of my heroic shark rescue. "You never told me about that," Evelyn smiled, acting amused and pleased, when I knew she was pissed to the core that I'd kept it from her.

"It was nothing, really." As this ridiculous cliche popped out of my mouth, Evelyn rolled her eyes, a look that said I was gonna catch hell over this later.

A little further into the evening, I hit them with my next clever plan. I'd been working on it all afternoon.

"You know what might be kinda fun?" I said, softly, dangling it like fresh bait over a still pond.

"What?" they all asked, thinking I had a great idea for where to go for a nightcap. But my idea was far more complex than that, more devious and infinitely subtler. "I was thinking it might be fun to get a few of Paige's paintings and see if we could sell them on bestmarket. Com, maybe raise her artistic visibility with an Internet marketing campaign."

"Really?" Paige said, leaning forward. "I'm not sure I'm ready."

"Honey, I've been saying for years you should have your own art show," Chandler chimed in. "If we could afford it, I'd pay for it myself."

At first I was thinking, Who the fuck is he kidding? This guy's family builds music centers, owns media companies, and he can't rent a one-room studio for an art show? But it came out a few minutes later that he'd turned his entire trust fund over to an L. D. Foundation he had formed and now managed, for almost no salary, drawing off most of the funds for brain research. I'm telling you, there were times with this guy Chandler where my gag reflex was on overload.

"We could sell Paige's art on the Internet," I continued. "I get millions of hits a day. We could build a website, call it the Art Paige, spelled like your name, scan a few of your paintings on there, and set up an online auction."

"We could even say the money was going to go for Chandler's L. D. Foundation," Paige suggested, sparking immediately to my idea.

"Right. Maybe bestmarket. Com could match anything we raised," I enthused. Of course, if it was over a few thousand, we'd have to take out an IOU on my car to cover it.

I glanced over and caught a dark look passing across Evelyn's face. She doesn't like giving away any of my money. She'd rather spend it herself. I was going to have to be more careful, lest my clandestine motives unexpectedly porpoise into full view.

"Anyway, it might be kind of fun to see what happens," I concluded.

"I could help Paige design the web page," my wife unexpectedly offered, leaning forward and smiling. "I have my master's degree in marketing from Stanford."

She did, too, but it had never been worth much to us, because even though Evelyn had a master's in marketing, she had a doctorate in shopping, so we were destined to lose fiscal ground annually.

"It's worth a try," I said.

"We don't want to take advantage," Chandler cautioned.

"He's right. I mean, you're so busy," Paige added. "We don't want to be a burden."

"Nonsense," I thundered extravagantly.

"It'll be fun," Evelyn shrieked and clapped.

"Well, okay… why not?" Paige said, and she reached out and took Evelyn's hand.

Chandler took mine and I took Evelyn's. Of course, Chandler and Paige were already holding hands. They always held hands, so now we had a ring of clasped hands, all of us smiling.

"To new friendships:' I said, and we all reached for our wineglasses. "New friendships," they caroled.

Okay, okay, not exactly the Peace Conference at Malta, I admit, but not bad, all things considered. I had managed to go from a leering pool-cabana stalker to a "new friend," and it had taken me all of two and a half days. Better still, I had involved Evelyn in the plan so she wouldn't be a liability, and we could all interact as couples, which I have come to learn is the best way to do it. I've sold half a dozen accounts this way. When you include wives, it gets everybody's guard down.

We left Correlli's and all walked along the beach back to the hotel. The moon was full and the water lapped over our toes. We carried our shoes, with Paige and Chandler walking ahead of us, arm in arm. Evelyn and I held hands in a decent imitation of marital bliss, although, to be honest, her hand was no delicate bird's wing. It was hard as a blacksmith's anvil, cold and damp. She applied no pressure. I've held dead trout that communicated more emotion.

When we arrived at the Four Seasons, Evelyn and I said good night and left Chandler and Paige on the beach.

I was feeling pretty good about all of this until I looked back and saw them standing in the sand, lit by a three-quarter moon, kissing each other, locked in a passionate embrace.

That night in our bedroom, I did something I hadn't done in months. I made love to Evelyn, all the time pretending I was having sex with Paige. My fevered imagination transformed Evelyn's muscled body into Paige's soft goddess proportions. I got so sexed up I had a diamond-cutter erection. You could have bludgeoned a baby seal to death with that hard-on. When she was close to climax, I thought I heard Evelyn grunt, "More, Mickey, more!" which sort of ruined it.

When it was over, we lay in an exhausted embrace.

"What got into you?" Evelyn asked. "Man, you were pneumatic." "Did you just call me Mickey?" I asked, my voice flat with suspicion.

"Honestly, Chick, where do you come up with this shit?" Then she got out of bed to go to the bathroom and left me there. It pissed me off, but I didn't dwell on it, because I was more resolved than ever to get out of the marriage. One way or the other, I was determined to move on, to become Paige Ellis's lover.

How I was going to accomplish this still hadn't become clear. When it finally did, it took on a shape more devastating than I could have ever imagined.