Valentine, page 15
She looked at the kitchen clock: quarter to six. Get a move on, she thought.
When the steak came out of the bag, Romeo leaped up onto the counter and rubbed against her arm. She laughed as she placed the meat in the fridge and turned to stroke him.
“Sorry, darling, not for you.”
With a low growl of indignation, he turned his back on her, jumped down, and went over to the comer. A moment later, Belinda heard the small crunching sounds as he attacked his Cat Chow in frustration. Romeo and Jake, she thought: my men are addicted to steak. Juliet, like Belinda, preferred fish.
The phone rang again. It was Toni, her best friend, whom she’d just left at the lodge an hour ago. Yes, she’d gotten everything for dinner. No, Jake wasn’t home yet. Yes, she’d see Toni tomorrow. Toni congratulated her again. Belinda thanked her friend and hung up.
She quickly made the salad and the dressing, putting them in the fridge with the meat and the cheesecake and the champagne. She wrapped two potatoes in foil and placed them in the oven. She had a little trouble uncorking the burgundy, as she’d never quite gotten the hang of corkscrews. She set the open bottle on the counter to breathe, patted Romeo on the head as he ate, and went down the hall to the bedroom.
After a brief, hot shower, she stood naked before the bathroom mirror, applying fresh makeup. She regarded herself critically as she worked, thinking, not bad for thirty-five. Her dark hair looked just as it had in college, thick and glossy, and not a speck of gray. Her figure was similarly intact: her breasts and thighs were as firm as ever, and her stomach as flat, thanks to all the skiing. She winked at her own reflection, and laughed again. Her large brown eyes had always been her best asset.
Yes, she thought as she sprayed herself with Jake’s favorite cologne. I’ll do.
The heat was on: good. She could wear Jake’s favorite dress, the midnight-blue silk with the short hemline and the low neckline. Where were the blue heels . . .? She found them, fastened a single gold strand around her neck, and went out to set the table in the dining room. They would eat there this evening, not on the veranda, which she would have preferred. It was cold outside now, but at least it probably wouldn’t snow. The darkening sky above Boulder was clear.
Back in the kitchen, she noticed that Juliet had awakened and joined her brother on the counter. A stem look from Belinda was all it took to send them both leaping to the floor. They knew better than that. She smiled as she thought this: she and Jake had decided at the outset not to have children, and Romeo and Juliet were obviously filling the void.
She was putting the salsa and chips in the functional but rather hideous Mexican ceramic bowls that had been a wedding gift from a distant cousin, when the phone rang again.
“Hello.”
“Hi, honey.”
“Jake! Darling, where are you? I was just getting—”
“Listen, I’m up to my eyeballs here, and I don’t know how late I’m going to be. We’re waiting to hear from New York about those Fremont contracts, you know, the new client I told you about? Then I have to draw up the new—”
“Whoa! Give me a bottom line here: are you coming home for dinner?”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sitting here with sandwiches. Ellie just went out for more coffee for everybody. I told you I might be late tonight. You weren’t holding dinner for me, were you?”
Belinda stared down at the salsa. “No. I—I’m just about to throw something together for myself. You do the contracts, or whatever, and I’ll see you when you get home.”
“Okay, honey. Don’t wait up. Love—”
And he was gone.
She replaced the receiver. She stood at the counter, looking down at the food. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there when she felt one of the cats rubbing against her leg. With a little shake of her head, she took the potatoes out of the oven, put them in the refrigerator with the salsa, recorked the burgundy, and went back to her bedroom to take off the dress.
In her bathrobe, she reheated a baked potato and ate it with a little of the salad. She took another shower, washing her hair and scrubbing the makeup from her face. She made a cup of tea, got into bed, and read for a while. At ten o’clock, she picked up the remote from the night table, clicked on the bedroom television, and watched the news. When it was over, she turned off the television, switched off the bedside lamp, and lay for a long time staring up at the ceiling.
Jake arrived home just after eleven. She could tell from the way he dropped his clothes on his way to the bathroom that he was exhausted. He climbed in beside her, kissed her on the forehead, and immediately fell asleep. She lay there, watching him sleep for a while before returning her attention to the ceiling. Her husband’s even breathing was the only sound she heard as she silently wept.
January 27: their tenth anniversary.
He wasn’t able to follow his established pattern with Belinda Rosenberg Kessler, and this was frustrating for him. He would have preferred to approach her romantically, as he had approached Sharon Williams. He also had an idea, a fantasy that had first developed in prison, of sending cards and gifts in the days leading up to it, and signing them “Valentine.” And, when he finally decided on his means, he knew the idea of a candy box was out: there wouldn’t be any time. But at least he could use the music. . . .
The husband worked in a big law firm downtown, racking up an impressive number of billable hours six days a week. The law firm widow had turned to Colorado’s chief form of solace: skiing. She was a fanatic. Almost every day, she strapped her skis to the roof of her station wagon and took off for several hours of blissful schussing and slaloming. She was usually in the company of her best friend, another enthusiast named Toni Stanton, who happened to be a swinging single.
One look at Toni, and Victor knew he had his opportunity. She was tall and slender, athletic-looking, very pretty. She had blue-gray eyes and curly, dark blond hair. If he couldn’t romance Belinda, at least Toni would provide a roundabout way of achieving the same purpose. Whenever the two women were at the lodge, Toni spent as much time on the prowl as she did skiing.
Victor had never skied in his life, but he learned in record time. He laid down a considerable amount to engage the best pro on the premises. Three hours a day for a solid week, the former Olympic bronze medalist worked exclusively with Victor, and the result was impressive.
He called himself Leonard this time, and he gave himself an Italian last name, Vaneti, because it sounded good: many famous skiers, like racing-car drivers, were Italian, and he figured he might as well use his own nationality. When the pro asked him why he had to become an expert so fast, he grinned and pointed at his crotch, and the two men shared a lascivious laugh.
Getting the pro to introduce him to Toni was a breeze. Getting Toni to introduce him to Belinda was inevitable.
The first thing he noticed about the second Element when he saw her up close was that her pretty nose was slightly crooked. Remembering why, he grinned as he shook her hand.
“B’lin, this is Leonard Vaneti. Len, meet my best friend, Belinda Kessler.”
“How do you do?” the tall, handsome man said. Then he grinned and shook her hand. She had just come into the lobby of the ski lodge, and she was a few minutes late. She had expected to find Toni alone and restless, looking pointedly at her watch as she usually did under the circumstances. But no; Toni was sitting near the fireplace with the handsome stranger, and they were laughing together. When Belinda came in, Toni jumped up and grabbed the man’s hand, pulling him across the room. She was wearing her tightest sweater, Belinda noticed, and more makeup than she usually bothered with at the lodge. So, this was the mystery man Toni had been hinting about for the last three days.
“Hello, Mr. Vaneti,” Belinda said as they shook hands.
“Len,” he said.
She smiled. “Belinda.”
Toni pointed toward the dining room off the lobby. “I thought we’d have lunch before we hit the snow. How does that sound?”
“Fine,” Belinda murmured. The two women always had lunch here before skiing: Toni’s announcement was by way of including Len in today’s schedule. Well, why not? she thought as the three headed for the restaurant. He looks like a nice guy, and some of Toni’s recent dates had been downright unbearable. Good old Toni, always searching. She thanked Heaven for Jake, despite his preoccupation with the law firm and his tendency to forget things like birthdays and anniversaries. At least he loved her, and he came home every night. She couldn’t imagine being on her own, looking for Mr. Right—or, as Toni was so fond of saying, Mr. Right Now.
Len held their chairs for them as they were seated at the table by the window. Belinda smiled again: this room, with its large glass wall affording a panoramic view of the slopes and the Rockies rising majestically behind them, always reminded her of the cafeteria at Hartley. For that matter, Toni had always rather reminded her of Sharon Williams. I’m always following the leader, Belinda thought as she ordered salade Niçoise and coffee.
“So, Len,” she said after they’d ordered, “do you live here in Boulder?”
“No, I’m from L.A. I’m a freelance photographer. Magazine stuff, mostly. I’m getting together some shots for a piece on winter sports. Well, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. . . .” He smiled, glancing over at Toni.
Toni beamed. “Can I help it if I’m a femme fatale? You should have seen him the other day, B’lin. Franz was giving him pointers on skiing, and he was wobbling all over the place with this camera around his neck. Finally, Franz suggested that maybe he’d do better to lose the camera. I, being a good neighbor, went over and offered to hold it. And you won’t believe what he said when he saw me!”
Belinda, who’d heard similar stories before, smiled. “Try me.”
“He said, ‘Franz, who is this gorgeous creature?’ And Franz said, ‘This is Toni Stanton, the woman you’ve been staring at for the last week!’ I mean, how’s that for meeting cute?”
“‘Meeting cute’?” Len asked.
“Sure,” Toni explained. “That’s what they call it in the movies. Like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade—who met at a ski lodge, incidentally. With that awful little boy who kept shooting them with his water pistol. They admitted that they both wanted to murder him, and that’s what they had in common. Meeting cute.”
Everyone laughed as lunch arrived before them. Belinda decided that she liked Len. He was obviously intelligent, and he seemed to be very interested in Toni. Something in their shyness with each other told Belinda that the two of them hadn’t yet become intimate. But, knowing Toni, she knew it was simply a matter of time.
When they told her about their tentative plan to ski together next Thursday, and invited her to join them, she almost said no. It was Valentine’s Day, and she figured they would probably want to be alone together. Besides, she really should think of something to do with Jake. . . .
Later that afternoon, in the ladies’ room, Toni talked her into it.
“Oh, please come with us, B’lin. He’s very nice, and all that, but he’s kind of quiet with me. Lunch today was the most relaxed I’ve seen him: I think a third party is just what the doctor ordered, at least until—well, you know. . . .”
Belinda knew. She also knew that her husband would be working on Valentine’s Day. So she’d be the “third party” for Toni and her new man, then go home and try the steak dinner again.
“Okay,” she said.
At home that night, after dinner, she told her husband about Toni’s new boyfriend and the plans for Thursday. Jake was slouched in his favorite armchair, reading—another contract or agreement, from the look of it. He uttered a small sound of acknowledgment, but she wasn’t sure that he’d heard her.
The slope was known by the regulars at the lodge as Dead Man’s Folly. It was the highest and the longest, and there were a couple of difficult passages, especially halfway down. At the end of his week’s instruction, Franz had declared him ready for it. The two men skied down the slope twice, and Franz congratulated “Len” on his expert work. He’d never had a better student, he claimed, or a faster learner.
Victor booked a room at the lodge for the evening of Valentine’s Day and made a reservation for dinner in the restaurant. He knew that he and Toni would not be having dinner there or spending the night, but the reservations were important. They would be joined by Belinda for lunch and skiing that day, and then Belinda was to discreetly disappear while he and Toni consummated their new relationship. That’s what the women thought, anyway. . . .
When “Len” suggested Dead Man’s Folly, Toni and Belinda readily agreed. And that is how he got them there after lunch on February 14. He waited while a group went up on the lift and skied down, then he led the women outside. He carefully inspected the other people around: nobody else was currently headed for their destination. No witnesses. Good.
It was a beautiful day, he noted with pleasure as the lift carried them up the hill. The air was cold and crisp, and the sun bore down on the snow, making the lodge and the slopes stand out in sharp definition—a heightened realism, the phrase he’d learned in photography class in prison. A beautiful day to die.
The two women had done the trail many times before, so “Len” suggested that he should go between them. Toni first, wait two minutes, then “Len” would follow her tracks. Belinda, the best skier of the three, would follow two minutes behind him. The two-minute thing had been explained by the pro: a safeguard against faster followers crashing into slower preceders on this particular narrow, often treacherous slope.
Perfect.
Toni took off, and he waited two minutes. Then he flew smoothly down to the place that he’d chosen after his first two trips, halfway down the mountain and approximately thirty feet from a cliff edge. Over that edge was a nearly vertical, three-hundred-foot drop into a ravine, a small canyon around the side of the mountain from the resort.
When he arrived at his chosen place, he braked, moved off the trail toward the cliff, removed his skis, lay down in the snow, and waited.
She stood at the top of the hill, counting off two minutes on her watch. As she waited, she thought about Jake.
He hadn’t forgotten their anniversary, after all. The morning after the missed dinner, he’d announced over breakfast that as soon as he could get away from the office, maybe as early as March, they were going on a two-week vacation. His plan had been to spend a week with her family in Buffalo, then a week with his folks in New York City. But Belinda had now come up with a better idea: three days in Buffalo, three days in New York—and a week in Puerto Rico, just the two of them. Neither of them had ever been there, and Jake had often mentioned a long-held desire to see the Caribbean.
She gazed down at the endless fields of snow, thinking, Puerto Rico. Yes. Swimming and scuba diving and getting tans. Dancing to salsa bands every evening on tropical verandas. Rich Hispanic food and exotic, fruity drinks. They could even try wind-surfing. Best of all, they would be together, blissfully alone. No families, no friends, and no law firm. Heaven!
Her two minutes had passed, she noticed. Shaking away thoughts of palm trees and lying naked with her husband under a slow ceiling fan, she lowered her goggles over her face, planted her poles and shoved off. As she glided down the first part of the slope, the familiar thrill suffused her. This was the reason she so enjoyed skiing, this rush as she gained momentum on her way down. She giggled as the wind flew by her, thinking, We can water ski in Puerto Rico. . . .
Then, as she came around the steep curve nearly halfway down the slope, she saw something dark off to the side, at the edge of her field of vision.
Someone—Len!—was lying in the snow several yards from the trail.
When Belinda came along, he cried out in pain to get her attention. She immediately braked and came over to him. He lay still, listening to the approaching crunching sounds as she moved awkwardly, crablike, toward him on her skis. He breathed deeply, evenly, enjoying the thrill of anticipation that filled him as he waited. She arrived beside him, leaned over, and asked him if he was hurt.
He looked up into her face, now a mask of concern. Then, to her obvious surprise, he smiled. He reached slowly into the pocket of his down jacket, pulled out the tiny cassette player, and pressed the play button.
Sarah Vaughan.
“My Funny Valentine.”
She stared down, confused, not getting it at all. In a flash, he was on his feet beside her. Even as he did so, he regretted the need for haste. He would have preferred to draw this out, to savor it, but there was no time.
“I’m Victor Dimorta,” he said. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
If there had ever been a moment—and there hadn’t—when he had considered sparing Belinda Rosenberg, now Kessler, her next action would have changed his mind in any case. She slowly raised her gaze to stare at his face, and her voice when she spoke rang with genuine puzzlement.
“Who?”
He returned her stare, feeling his exhilaration transform into dangerous rage. It filled him, surging through his chest, hot against his cold face. He flushed with indignation.
She didn’t remember him.
He knew the importance of speed in this enterprise, but his next action was so swift and sudden that it even surprised him. He raised his fist and sent it crashing into her nose, breaking it for a second time. With a small sound more like a sigh than a cry, she fell flat on her back. Her dark hair tumbled out the sides of her parka and the blood began to trickle from her nostrils as she continued to stare up at him, her confusion turning slowly to pain.
Victor Dimorta stared down at her, laughing. “Yeah, you remember that, don’t you, bitch!” Then he leaned down and shouted into her startled face. “Victor Dimorta, you miserable little turd! Hartley College! Valentine’s Day! You and the others, the Elements. You got me expelled, asshole!”
