Hired Wife

She’d spent the morning housecleaning, shopping for food and getting ready for Sam’s visit. Her plan was to cook something simple yet delicious, not wanting to overdo things by offering him something extravagantly expensive and ostentatious. Simple, yet elegant was the key. She’d made a cold sauce of olive oil, Gorgonzola, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, to be tossed with hot pasta and lots of parsley and chopped walnuts. It was ready apart from cooking the fettuccini and assembling the salad. The washed greens were in the crisper, the lemon-ginger dressing was made.

She opened the door to the loft, looking forward to a nice evening, and stopped dead in her tracks. A man lay sprawled on her sofa, asleep—or dead, or in a coma, you couldn’t tell by the way he lay there—lifeless, motionless, his mouth slack, one arm dangling off the side.

CHAPTER THREE

IN STUNNED silence, Kim took in the man’s appearance, all thoughts of a nice dinner with Sam fading into the distance. He looked like something that had crawled out of a swamp with his long, unkempt hair, his wild, woolly black beard, his old, ragged jeans. His shoes were off, muddy hiking boots the size of ocean liners. A bulky backpack, worn and faded, lay on the floor with half of its filthy contents spilling out onto her lovely Navajo rug.

She did not know this man.

Sam stood beside her in the door, calmly surveying the scene. For some reason she couldn’t make herself speak. This was the moment for comic relief, to say something witty, something clever, something…anything.

“And who is this one?” asked Sam casually, as if he were already resigned to the fact that her life was littered with weird men, and that here was yet another specimen.

She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she answered, tonelessly.

A short, significant silence. “You don’t know?” he inquired, as if he found it hard to believe.

“No.” She didn’t dare meet his eyes. She kept staring at the huge man on her sofa. His chest was moving up and down, so he wasn’t dead. She supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.

So, what do I do now? she asked herself. What do you normally do when you come home and find a derelict passed out on your sofa? Call the police?

“How did he get in?” Sam asked practically.

She ventured a look at him. He looked very clean, very respectable, very…sexually appealing. Everything the comatose stranger was not. “I don’t know,” she said again.

“I think there’s someone else here, too.” Sam gestured casually toward the bathroom, where she now heard the noise of running water. A moment later the door opened and Jason emerged, naked apart from a blue towel wrapped around his hips. Water drops glistened on his manly shoulders. Apparently he’d just had one of his many showers to set him up for a night of serious brain work.

Jason was the only person she couldn’t blame for making an appearance while Sam was around—after all, he lived here. However, did he have to show up in all his half-naked glory?

Her hopes of making a dignified impression on Sam had been duly crushed. Why had she even thought she could pull it off, she who had such undignified friends, led such an undignified life? How could she possibly expect him to take her seriously now? She’d asked him to her apartment for a civilized visit and instead he’d found an idiot clown on her doorstep, a swamp creature passed out on her sofa and a naked Adonis in her bathroom. All she really wanted was the chance to go back to the Far East for a while. Was that too much to ask? Why were the gods playing games with her, first dangling the opportunity in front of her, then yanking it out of reach? It just wasn’t fair.

She didn’t normally indulge in self-pity, but now she was truly being tested. She had the momentary impulse to just crumple to the floor, curl up in a ball and cry her heart out like a little girl. But that would not improve matters. Nothing could.

And she was right. The situation did not improve; it got worse.

“I hope it was okay for me to let him in,” said Jason, indicating the inert body on the sofa. “He said he was your cousin.”

“My cousin?” She only had two male cousins. One was a balding accountant in New Jersey, the other a red-haired student in dental school. “This is not my cousin. I don’t know who he is.” There was a desperate little shrill in her voice that embarrassed her.

The stranger stirred and opened his eyes. He gazed around dazedly.

Kim took a step forward on wooden legs, fury rushing through her, hot and fast. She glared down at him. “Who are you?” she demanded sharply. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

He focused his eyes and a slow smile crept over his hairy face. “You know who I am, Kimmy, you know.”

She froze. There was something nightmarishly familiar about those words. And then it came to her.

The dream.

Her secret lover.

The stranger on the sofa reached out to her with his big hand, and she stepped back instinctively, nearly tripping over his boots. Boots like boats.

And then she knew.

Oh, God, she thought, it’s Jack! Jack with the big feet. A horrifying thought occurred to her. Had she been dreaming of Jack? Of this repulsive man on her sofa? Of course he hadn’t always been repulsive. He’d been clean and shaven once—seven, eight years ago when she’d been barely out of high school and hopelessly naive. She’d loved him for his charm and generosity, hoping marriage would change his excessive drinking and irresponsible behavior.

She closed her eyes. I can’t bear this, she thought. I want him out of here. Now.

He kept smiling his dim-witted smile at her. It was like some awful slow-motion film sequence. She saw Jason standing by the bathroom door in his towel, Sam in front of the bookcase, hands in his pockets of his trousers, silently observing the sorry scene, not interfering. And then the door flung open and the clown barreled in.

“Kim! I—” He glanced around the room, at the other men, then back at her, apparently stumped for words. Now all four were staring at her.

Jack shifted his big body on the sofa in an effort to sit up. He did not succeed and slumped back down. “Remember, Kim?” he muttered.

“No,” she said hotly. I’ll kill him if he says anymore, she thought wildly.

“We eloped, Kim. We eloped.”

Her heart could not sink any lower—there was no lower place to go. But then, it didn’t matter anymore. She’d had enough.

Kim gritted her teeth, took a deep breath and glared at Jack with all the ferocity she could muster.

“You’re drunk,” she said with disgust. “I want you out of here now, this minute!”

“Don’t you remember, Kim?” he went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “We eloped. Remember the island? It was so…the sea was so blue and the palm trees—” He stopped, as if talking was too much effort.

She didn’t want to hear anymore. Not about the sea or the palm trees, not anything to do with her lovely dream.

“I want you out of here,” she repeated. “Go home.”

“Home?” His face was all dull confusion. “I want you back, Kim,” he said plaintively. “I wanna be with you.”

She decided not to react to this. “I’m going to call you a cab and you can go to your mother’s house.” She’d run into his mother quite by coincidence a couple of weeks ago, in Macy’s, had chatted politely for a few minutes, gathering the news that Jack was on a trip around the world and was coming home soon. She’d never thought of it again. Thank you, thank you, she said to the gods, at least I know his mother is still around.

She made for the phone, only to find Sam was already doing the honors. He gazed at her as he was talking into the phone, ordering a taxi in a businesslike tone. His face was impassive, giving nothing away. She could only imagine what went on behind that inscrutable exterior, and it wasn’t good, she was sure. She clenched her hands and turned away, gathering strength.

One down, one more to go. She turned to Tony, who had taken off his orange wig. “And you!” she exploded. “I’ve had enough of you! If you don’t stop bothering me I’m calling the police, and I’ll call my uncle, who’s a pit bull lawyer, and you’ll wish you’d never met me! Go get yourself a job! Get yourself a life! Out!” She marched right up to him, as if to push him out through the open door. He didn’t budge, but gazed sadly down at her with his painted clown face.

“But you’re my life, Kim,” he pleaded.

“Get yourself a psychiatrist!”

He sighed. “I think I’ll go to Hollywood.”

“Now there’s a good idea!” She pointed past him out the door. “It’s that way.”

He turned and shuffled out and she slammed the door behind him. She drew in a deep breath. She felt energized. Ah, a little fury did a person good!