Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss Read online

  But then Kane stepped back, just out of her reach. They continued to stare at one another, not speaking. From the dining room I could hear Amelia’s cheerful chatter, and then she rushed into the room, her eyes dancing with a vivacious energy that seemed incongruous with the mood of the other guests. “Hello!” Her salutation echoed in the silent room. Then she went around to each of the three new arrivals and gave Kane and Scott the same hug and kiss she had given me. Kane tolerated this with what appeared to be strained patience, but Scott clearly enjoyed the close female contact and their hug lasted a half a minute too long. It was Amelia who broke away first. She then smiled nervously at Venus. “Did you get a load of that séance table?” she asked, her joviality suddenly seeming a little forced. “Those candles are beeswax, Venus. I haven’t seen anything this fancy since the last time you hosted an event.”

  “You weren’t at the last event I hosted,” Venus said.

  “No, but I was at the one before that.” She then turned toward the male guests. “Come to the dining room. Enrico outdid himself this time.” She paused right before disappearing back into the dining room and tilted her head in my direction. “Where is Enrico anyway? Did he go out for the perfect wine or something?”

  I winced. I hadn’t yet told them that while the food was from Enrico’s restaurant it wasn’t actually made by Enrico. I wasn’t entirely clear on where I stood with Kane, but I was pretty sure that I was on Venus’s shit list. If she found out that Enrico and I had exchanged words she would blame me for his absence, even if I was the one in the right.

  But before I could figure out how to address the situation the doorbell rang again. I sent up a quick silent prayer that it was Enrico, but to my disappointment it was a family of three. The man introduced himself as Al and the woman and Goth teenage boy as his wife, Lorna, and son, Zach. Three more names from my place cards.

  They were a family, but as far as I could tell the only thing that unified them was proximity. The man was a clean-cut blonde with thinning hair. He wore a polo shirt and chinos and he appeared more resigned than happy to be there. His son was a whole other story. His hair, his clothes, his nails, all colored black. Even his eyes were outlined with a harsh black eyeliner, made all the more dramatic by his white powdered face. Around his neck he wore a velvet ribbon choker, and I was tempted to reach out and see if its unraveling would result in decapitation.

  But it was the woman who interested me. Like her husband, she wore chinos and her cotton shirt was a pale pink. Her hair was a graying brown and cut neatly in a style that you would expect to see on the stereotypical suburban homemaker. Totally normal, yet, on her, the outfit, the haircut, even the mild-mannered smile, it all seemed like a costume: her hair too thick for such a neat cut where it should have been long and unruly, her skin too olive for the light-colored clothing, the determination in her eyes too strong to gel with the timid pink of her lip gloss.

  But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I just ushered them in and closed the door behind them. Jason reentered the living room, a glass of red wine in his hand. “Looks like almost everybody’s here,” he said. “As soon as Enrico shows up we’ll have ten.”

  This was the time to tell them. Venus already suspected something was amiss. I could tell by the way she was looking at me, her stare hinting at an underlying hostility.

  I cleared my throat and went to the place card that bore Enrico’s name, fondling it like it had some kind of voodoo power that could call him forth. But of course that didn’t work. “I don’t think Enrico is coming,” I finally said.

  “Not coming?” Scott asked. “But hasn’t he already been here? Isn’t he the one who brought the food?”

  “Um, no. I ordered the food from his restaurant. See, I talked to him earlier today and he seemed a little…out of sorts.”

  “How so?” Venus lowered herself onto my armchair with practiced casualness.

  “He said he was, um, haunted.”

  “Haunted!” Kane was immediately by my side, encasing both my hands in his. “Did he see something? Was he visited?”

  “I…I don’t know. He just said he was haunted and that things were not so good.”

  “Whoa, okay, this is really heavy,” Amelia said, taking a moment to examine each of our faces to make sure we all shared her sentiment. “Maybe he summoned something and he can’t make it go away. Maybe we should take this party to him and see if we can be of help.”

  There was a chorus of protests although Kane and Scott both remained silent.

  “I know Enrico better than the rest of you,” Venus said, her eyes still on me. “If he wanted us in his home he would have told us to come.”

  “But maybe he didn’t think we’d accept the invitation,” Kane offered. “After all, he must know that some of us blame him for Maria’s departure from the group.”

  “I didn’t say he would have invited us,” Venus said evenly. “I said he would have told us to come. There is a very big difference. Enrico may or may not have been aware of your feelings, Kane, and they are your feelings, but whether he was aware of them or not he would have still expected us to yield to his celebrity.”

  “He’s a chef!” Amelia said with a laugh. “Not a movie star.”

  “I think people in San Francisco like chefs more than movie stars. They’re more real,” Zach said. It was the first thing I’d heard him say and his voice sounded too young and innocent for his somber attire. I tried to get a sense of his age. It was hard to gauge considering all the white powder covering his face, but my guess was that he was around fifteen.

  “Maybe we should just give him some space,” Lorna said softly. “Of course, there’s still the problem of our number. Someone will have to leave.”

  Lorna leaned over and put a hand on Al’s knee. “I know you don’t really want to be here, darling. Why don’t you go get a beer at that pub you used to go to? The one around the corner. What’s its name again?”

  “Jax, but I’m not going anywhere,” Al said shortly.

  “But I just thought…”

  “I know what you thought, but you were wrong,” he snapped. “Now is someone else going to leave or are we going to call this damn thing off?”

  Lorna seemed to shrink into herself and Zach scowled at his father.

  “I guess I could—” Amelia began, but she was interrupted by the doorbell. “Maybe it’s Enrico!” she exclaimed and rushed to see.

  When she opened the door she revealed a woman dressed head to toe in Calvin Klein with her hair cut in a severe, short style. She peeled off her overcoat and threw it into Amelia’s unexpecting arms. “Tell Enrico I’m here.”

  “Maria,” Kane said in a soft voice.

  She blinked at the sound of her name and grabbed onto the door frame as if she expected someone to try to push her out. “Whatever you’re going to say about numerology or whatnot just…just save it,” she said. “I’m giving him our condo, our house in Tuscany, I’m even giving him the damned parrot, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him my friends.” She glared at the occupants of the room. “You’re supposed to be my friends! I’m the true believer, not that fat, self-important, fettuccini-eating snob! How could you not invite me to this?”

  “Some of us wanted to,” Kane whispered, then sent a scathing look at Venus who stared blankly back.

  “Enrico’s a no-show, Maria,” Amelia said, struggling to give her a welcoming hug while holding her coat. “He’s being haunted.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Maria said with a bitter laugh. “The only thing haunting that man is the last review he got from Michael Bauer. Did you read it? Three and a half stars. Not four, three and a half. That’s why he’s not here. The bastard is sulking, probably teaching that bird how to destroy a newspaper clipping.”

  “That shouldn’t take a lot of training,” Scott said, somewhat bemused.

  “I see that the table is all set up,” Maria noted. “Can we start this then? Or are you afraid I’ll taint the proceed
ings with my bitterness?”

  “Nothing wrong with bitterness,” Scott said. “Just look what it does for chocolate, right, Soapy?” As soon as he said it you could see the regret spread across his features. It was as blatant as Venus’s scowl.

  “Soapy,” she said slowly. “How adorable. Don’t you think it’s adorable, Kane?”

  “We’d love it if you’d join us,” Kane said, directing his comments to Maria and ignoring Venus. “All that matters is belief.”

  “And numbers,” Jason added, perhaps a bit sarcastically. “And candles and colors and fucking feng shui.”

  “Feng shui has nothing to do with any of this!” Kane snapped.

  “Hey, guys, remember Sophie got white candles so if this is going to work we’re all going to have to get in a peaceful state of mind!” Amelia chimed in. “At this rate we’re going to have to go out and buy some pink candles just so we can manage that, right, Sophie?”

  “The pink candles are lame,” Zach sighed. “They never work.”

  I raised my fingers to my temples. I had no idea what any of these people were talking about. Maria was Enrico’s ex, that much I understood. I also understood that Enrico had a parrot and Venus didn’t like me, but I was beginning to suspect that Venus disliked pretty much everybody. Other than that, I had no idea what was going on.

  “I suggest we skip the meal and get right to the séance,” Venus said, staring at Scott. “Unless you would like some more time to chitchat with your Soapy.”

  “I’m cool with skipping the meal,” he replied meekly. “It’s hard for me to think about food when I’m with you anyway, sweetie. All I can focus on is how flat-out gorgeous you are.”

  Jason started to laugh, but managed to silence himself before Venus had a chance to whack him over the head with one of my candlesticks.

  “Sophie,” Kane said, “you are the official host of this event and it sounds as if you bought the food yourself. Are you all right with our skipping the meal?”

  “Absolutely, no problem at all.” I would have paid double the amount of the meal’s cost if it meant that I could have these people out of my house any more quickly.

  “Well, I’m for it,” Zach said. “I think we’d all be better off talking to the dead than to each other.”

  “Wise man,” Jason muttered, taking a seat next to the boy.

  “I’m taking Enrico’s chair,” Maria declared.

  We all took a seat and Venus announced that she was the medium. She looked at me, daring me to argue, but I didn’t. Let Venus call up her demons, I just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

  Venus picked up one of the candles and held it up for everyone’s inspection. “As noted, all of the candles are white,” she said. “White symbolizes peace. Before I light them I will pass each candle around the table and when you hold it in your hands you must charge that candle. Visualize its power; visualize peaceful smoke curling from its wick, a warm peaceful glow emanating from it.”

  She passed the first two candles to the left and one to the right. I shot Scott a look, but for once he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I had a feeling that he was suppressing a laugh.

  Jason and Al looked equally skeptical. It was only Amelia, Lorna, Kane and Venus who appeared to be clearly enrapt. Zach’s expression remained unreadable under the white powder and Maria was still too angry to convey a different emotion. I let the first two candles pass from my hands without a second thought. But when my palms pressed against the third candle, thicker and heavier than its companions, I found myself wanting to follow Venus’s instructions. Not because I believed it would do any good, but because it was fun. I was hosting this damn thing so I might as well do it right. But the candle didn’t look like an instrument of peace. It was made of beeswax, for God’s sake. Bees are not peaceful. I passed the candle to Maria. Perhaps she would be able to charge it for both of us. Then again, when you consider her state of mind, I might have more luck finding peace in the Middle East.

  When all the candles had been “charged” Venus lit each of them. She left the table long enough to turn off the other lights in the living room then returned to her seat.

  “Join hands,” she instructed. “Now, breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Clear your mind of everything. Absorb the peace of the candles.”

  I did as Venus asked and watched the shadows cast by the flames alter the appearance of my guests. Zach’s powdered white face, which only moments ago had seemed humorously overdone, now looked preternatural and shocking. Lorna’s dark circles disappeared and the light reflected in her eyes seemed to illuminate an emotion that I hadn’t noted before. Determination? Desperation? It was impossible to say. Kane, on the other hand, was easy to read. His breaths were deep and resonating, but he was not calm. No, Kane’s excitement was mounting with each second.

  “Our beloved Andrea,” Venus began after several minutes had passed, “we ask that you commune with us and move among us.”

  None of us said a word as we waited for some kind of response. I didn’t know who Andrea was. I had thought that we were going to try to call Oscar back, but the surprise didn’t bother me. She could have tried to call Elvis back for all the good it was going to do us.

  Of course, Andrea didn’t make an appearance, so Venus repeated her request again and again. Eventually she rephrased the question, asking the spirit to rap once if she was among us. She was answered with silence. The wax from the candles dripped down in little molded teardrops, reminding all of us of the painfully slow movement of time. Kane’s mouth turned down with frustration. His eyes met mine and I realized that without speaking he was talking to me, trying to convey some kind of message that I could not decipher. An inexplicable chill ran up my spine and I felt an ache in my chest, dull and fleeting as it was. And then there was warmth, comfort and for a second I felt the peace that Venus had tried to get me to visualize.

  “Say goodbye.”

  My breath caught and I looked to Maria and then to Zach to see which of them had just spoken. But both of them were looking at the candles, distracted and oblivious to my change in mood.

  “This isn’t working,” Venus said with a sigh. “Someone blow out the candles.”

  “We’re giving up?” Lorna asked. “But we’ve only just begun! We could at least try to call Deb!”

  “If this was going to work there would have been some kind of sign by now. Time is not the problem.” Venus looked pointedly at me as if to silently say that the problem lay with me, but I was too discombobulated to care about Venus’s deference of blame. I was still trying to figure out who had spoken before. Kane? Scott? Amelia? And then another disturbing realization hit me. I didn’t know if it had been a woman or a man who had spoken. The words had been completely clear, but the voice that said them had been completely abstract. What was that about? Fifty million questions were swirling around in my head and yet those questions didn’t make any sense even to me—and I was the one forming them! I gently touched my hand to my heart where I had felt that dull ache only moments before. The ache was gone, replaced with a rapid beating.

  “Sophie, what is it?” Kane was leaning across the table, agitation gleaming in his eyes. “Did you feel something?”

  The entire room fell silent as everyone focused on me, waiting for me to give them some kind of hope that their séance hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

  “I didn’t feel anything,” I lied. “Just a little heartburn. I ate a lot of spicy food for lunch.”

  A cloud of disappointment descended on the group, but I didn’t care. I had much bigger problems. After all, I was beginning to suspect that I might actually be losing my mind.

  5

  Life is like a box of chocolate, and I’m allergic.

  —The Lighter Side of Death

  I COULDN’T WAIT FOR EVERYONE TO LEAVE. FORTUNATELY I DIDN’T REALLY have to. Once it was decided that the séance was a failure everyone left with the speed and enthusiasm of an audience who had just sat throu
gh a bad three-hour movie. Jason took the time to give me his number so we could “get together for coffee sometime.” Kane was the only one who lingered. He kept pestering me with questions about why I thought the séance didn’t work and if I knew who the disbeliever in the group was. He even asked me if I thought it would have helped to have red candles since it was Andrea’s favorite color. Like I was some kind of expert on all this. I didn’t say so, but I was pretty sure that the séance failed because séances don’t work and ghosts don’t exist.

  But what about those words:

  Say goodbye.

  But I didn’t tell Kane about that and eventually he left, too, leaving me alone in my new house. It was just as well, Anatoly was supposed to come over later. I hadn’t asked him to move in yet—I had decided to wait until after escrow closed, but still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t help me keep the bed warm. And he could also distract me from what had turned into a rather disturbing evening.

  Now alone, I turned on all the lights in every room and tried to focus on the more mundane aspects of life. I desperately needed to do laundry, but in order to physically reach my washer I’d have to relocate several heavy boxes. Then there were the boxes in the garage. Normally I would just leave those there and park my car on the street until I had a little more energy, but now I had Venus to consider. I knew from experience that it was impossible to be with Scott and not see other women as threats, fidelity not being his strong suit. Now Venus knew that Scott had been with me, after dark, in a house that he had expected to be empty, and to make matters worse he had called me Soapy right in front of her. Add that to the fact that she was obviously completely out of her mind, and I had to conclude that parking my car on the street might lead to a few slashed tires.

  So when Anatoly finally showed up at 10:30 p.m. with his sexy half smile and a bottle of Merlot I was sweaty, exhausted and doggedly filling my living room with all my packed-up odds and ends.