Marrying Up Read online

chapter 8

  Turbulence and Toothlessness

  It’s the day after Christmas, which was uncharacteristically ugly, and we’re on our way.

  “Louise and Larry sure seemed a little, um, tense, didn’t you find?” George asks as she leans her seat back as far as it will go. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him snap at her like that.”

  But I’m still in the middle of practicing my deep breathing. “Just because the pilot turns off that damn light doesn’t mean you should undo your seat belt, George! What about air pockets? We’ve all heard the story about the flight attendant who broke her neck when the plane dropped, like, one thousand feet in half a second!”

  “Jeez! I’m sorry, okay? You don’t have to get all up in my face like that….”

  The only thing that makes me more uncomfortable than the thought of my parents fighting is flying, and now I have to contend with both at the same time.

  “I’m sorry, G. Don’t be mad at me. I need your support right now.”

  She grabs my hand. “If you get scared, just squeeze.”

  “Thanks,” I say, grateful for the offer. “I just don’t like being in the last row. It’s so damn loud back here. All the engines and weird noises and as soon as you get used to a sound it cuts out all of a sudden, which is worse than it being noisy in the first place because you’re sure an engine has died and the next thing you know—”

  “Stop it! You’re making yourself crazy. And we’re not in the last row. There’s one behind us.”

  Bravely, I turn around. Three flight attendants with decidedly unbroken necks glare back at me with icy grins.

  After two fear-of-flying courses, you’d think I’d know better than to be afraid, but I can’t help it—it just isn’t right, us being up here, thumbing our noses at the natural order of things. I know all about the physics of lift, about the odds of double-engine failure, the negligible risks of lightning strikes, of terrorist attacks, of electrical problems, of pilot error, but still, the only image that ever comes to mind during my in-flight attempts at positive visualization are of jets plunging into stormy oceans or, variously, turning fiery cartwheels off the ends of slick runways. Sure I’ve flown before and obviously everything worked out fine. But I can never shake the feeling that every time I tempt fate by flying without dying, I’m just one step closer to hitting all the numbers in a lottery I don’t want to win.

  George is yammering on and on, presumably trying to distract me from the turbulence. To make matters worse, I haven’t flown in almost two years, when I went to meet Zoe and Asher for a weekend in Atlantic City, and so the anticipated horror of the whole experience has been compounding, with interest, since then. That, and the fact that two planes have recently crashed (plane crashes always happen in threes, in case you didn’t know). And there was also that funny feeling in my gut as we boarded the flight….

  “I always wait for that feeling,” I tell George, interrupting her play-by-play of every single thing that had happened at the Book Cauldron that week. “That feeling that says, ‘Don’t get on the plane!’ You know the one…”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “It’s that little voice that tells some people who have seats booked on doomed flights not to get on the plane.”

  “What?”

  “Something just stops them from boarding the plane, and so they live and then tell the story for the rest of their lives about the miraculous sixth sense that saved them from certain death. Well, I think I might have felt something this time.”

  “You really are crazy. What you felt was all that Christmas pudding you ate last night.”

  “The reason I ate so much was because I couldn’t take listening to them argue,” I explain, ready to get my mind off the flight for a while.

  “Did you see Mike almost choke on his eggnog when your dad said the roast was too dry?”

  “Yeah. I think all my brothers were pretty surprised. My dad usually doesn’t say much of anything. Especially not anything nasty.” Aside from birthdays and holidays, my brothers rarely interact with our parents. I, on the other hand, have been fielding increasingly more frequent Just-Wanted-to-See-How-You-Were-Doing calls from my mom of late, and often heard them bitching at each other on the other end. “It’s probably because he’s been around a lot more lately. It’s an adjustment.”

  “It might be more than that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You know, I think you idealize your parents’ marriage. Every couple goes through rough patches. Especially when they’ve been married nearly forty years.”

  “Not my parents. They don’t have any rough patches. All they have is the same exact day, which they live over and over again. It’s like Groundhog Day. It doesn’t change. If they’re fighting, then they probably always have. Maybe we just never knew about it. That’s all.”

  George stares out at the clouds for a bit. “Didn’t you walk in on them doing it once?”

  “Okay, now you’re pushing it… And could you close the window shade? It’s making me nervous.”

  “I bet they don’t do it anymore,” she muses.

  “It’s taken me fifteen years to get over that,” I snarl, “as well as thousands of dollars in therapy. So I’m telling you to drop it. Now.”

  “All I’m saying is, I’m not feeling the love anymore.”

  “Drop it. Please just drop it.”

  “Why? It’s okay to talk about it, Holly. You have to start seeing your parents as real people, with wants and needs of their own. You’re not a kid anymore.”

  “I have an idea. Let’s talk about your mothers and their sex life for a while.” I’m starting to hope the plane will crash, just to get her to shut up.

  “Oh, come on. Don’t be such a prude.”

  “Don’t push me, George….”

  After an hour-long layover in Atlanta, a particularly bumpy landing in Fort Myers and a forty-five-minute drive to Naples in a tin-can rental car, we are still squabbling. Once we finally turn onto the palm-lined drive leading to our hotel, though, we are stunned into silence.

  I hadn’t told George all the details of our trip; I guess I sort of wanted to surprise her. But even though I was the one who’d made all the reservations, I had to admit I wasn’t exactly expecting this—an oceanfront ivory palace, fifteen stories high, dressed in climbing bougainvillea, flowering fuchsia and orange and flanked by acres and acres of land-scaped greenery, complete with stone fountains, ivy-covered gazebos and free-roaming flamingos.

  “My God, Holly. How much is this costing us?” George whispers nervously as we pull up to the main entrance.

  “One hundred and twelve dollars a night.”

  “Each?”

  “Uh… No. What are we, made of money? So it’s, like, fifty-six dollars each, I guess. It was a little more than I figured we wanted to spend, but it was all I could get last-minute.”

  Two valets in Bermuda shorts pop out from behind the fronds of a potted bird of paradise to open our doors.

  “I don’t know, Holly…this seems a little too good to be true,” she insists suspiciously as we get out of the car.

  “You think maybe there’s another Naples Ritz-Carlton?” I double-check the receipt I’d printed of our reservation confirmation. “I’m pretty sure this is the right place….”

  “Be careful with this, hun.” She winks to the bellhop, passing him her beat-up old backpack. He smiles back broadly, his head cocked to one side in an expression of what could only be described as bemused lust.

  “It’s José, ma’am.”

  “It’s miss, José.”

  George mouths “he’s so hot!” as we stagger into the grandest lobby either of us has ever seen.

  “We’re not here to fraternize with the help,” I remind her, half-joking. That bellhop is hot.

  “Would you look at that!”

  We crane our necks to take it all in—shiny marble floors and columns in the palest shade of pink; antiques and oil paintings everywhere
; a tiered chandelier dripping with crystals; towering palms decorated in thousands of tiny white Christmas lights. Palm trees. Inside.

  “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

  “I don’t think anyone from Kansas has ever even been here,” George whispers as a lady with a tanned, stretched face and a poodle under her arm clicks past us over the polished floor and into a waiting limo. I try not to giggle, but George pushes me over the top when she points out our reflection in a large gilt-framed mirror. Bedraggled and travel-weary, we are nearly as pale as the ivory wallpaper behind us. The humidity has made my hair even limper, while George’s frizzy curls are practically standing on end.

  “I look like a young Albert Einstein with tits.”

  “Hello! Hello!” something squawks.

  Not five feet from us, on a golden stand, a huge white parrot shifts rapidly from foot to foot. George shrieks as quietly as she can and jumps back.

  “Next, please!”

  A clerk taps her nails impatiently at her post behind the front desk, barely able to contain her contempt. We can already tell she’s far less friendly than José the hunky luggage lugger.

  “Uh, we’re here to check in.”

  “Name.”

  “Hastings, Holly.”

  “Perlman-MacNeill, George,” George adds.

  “You’re George Perlman-MacNeill?”

  “The one and only.”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were,” she says with a fuck-you smile. “But I’ll need to see a passport or driver’s license from each of you, please. I assume George is short for something else. Let me guess—Georgette? Georgina?”

  “No,” says George, a little miffed. “I’m just George.”

  “Is there some sort of problem?” I ask as we slide our IDs across the marble.

  “No. But we take security here at the Naples Ritz-Carlton very seriously, especially as we have a number of high-profile guests staying with us this week and—”

  George isn’t about to let that go. “Who? Who? Oh my God—imagine we saw someone famous! Would that not be the coolest thing ever?!”

  “—and we have a responsibility to make sure everyone is…who they say they are. It’s for your own protection as well. I’m sure you understand.”

  “We completely understand. Ms. Perlman-MacNeill and I will try and refrain from stalking anyone while we’re here.” Buoyed by my successful negotiations with Violet Chase, my new life attitude is going to be all kick-ass and take-no-crap. “And thank you very much for your concern.”

  I’m sure it physically pains the smarmy wench to pass over our keys, especially when she prints up the bill and sees what we paid.

  “Tell me again how it is that we’re here?” George asks once we get up to our room, which more than makes up for what it lacks in largeness with over-the-top luxe.

  “Priceline. I bid one hundred and twelve dollars for a five-star resort, just to see what would happen, and it was accepted right away!”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a Web site. Never mind. Let’s just call it a computer glitch.”

  George nods and picks up a small white card on the bedside table. “What are Frette linens?”

  “You’ll find out tonight when you get into bed,” I tell her as I throw back the curtains dramatically. The sun is setting over the Gulf of Mexico, and the water glows like gold as it melts into the blazing horizon.

  We take one look at each other and burst out laughing.

  After a seriously caloric breakfast in bed that costs almost as much as our room, we venture out for our first day. According to the brochures we found in the lobby, Fifth Avenue South is the place to see and be seen, so we jump into our car and head over there ASAP.

  To get a feel for the place, we cruise the strip before looking for a place to park. “Wow…this really is upscale,” I muse aloud as George deftly maneuvers our little subcompact between luxury cars as big as buses. “Kind of old-ladyish, though…resort wear, that kind of stuff.”

  “Ugh. There’s one of those stores that only sells white clothes….”

  “Well, I think you’d look lovely in white, dahling!”

  “You don’t say! Well, let me just find a place to valet this and we’ll pop in. Heavens to Betsy! I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without a white linen suit!”

  “I need something too,” I say, playing along. “The gala’s only a week away and I haven’t a thing to wear!”

  “You could borrow my pink Versace, if you like, or my silver Roberto Cavalli!”

  “Why, George—I didn’t know you knew about Roberto Cavalli,” I say, breaking character.

  “Give me some credit, Holly. I may shop at Urban Outfitters, but I haven’t been living under a rock my whole life. And I’ve been doing a little research of my own. Ever since you came up with this whole crazy idea.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. I got a subscription to In Style and The Robb Report. By the way, did you know you can lease a luxury yacht for only $17,000 a month? That’s downright affordable, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re kidding, right?!”

  “Why would I kid about a thing like that, dahling? How else do you expect me to get from Palm Beach to the Bahamas when the jet’s in the shop? Carnival Cruise Lines? I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, Zsa Zsa. Just promise me you won’t forget about the little people.”

  “Oh, I plan to forget about nearly everybody back home. I’m looking forward to it,” she says as she checks her gloss in the rearview. “Now let’s get out there and find us some sugar daddies!”

  The sea air is apparently getting to her brain, but I like it.

  We window-shop till we nearly drop, pop into a gallery or two, then stop for dinner (gazpacho and lobster rolls!) at the cutest little bistro in the heart of all the action. We ask for a table outside on the terrace, just in case any eligible young hotties walking by are tempted to chat us up.

  “My feet are killing,” I complain as the waiter brings us our soup. I’m sporting a sexy new pair of strappy sandals I bought on sale at the end of the summer. “Shit. I already have two blisters.”

  “What about those guys over there?” George points at two shirtless teenagers getting into a beat-up pickup truck filled with gardening equipment parked across the street.

  “Um, they’re like eighteen years old. We’re not here to get our groove back, Stella. We’re here to…”

  “To what?”

  “To scope things out.”

  “Oh. I thought we were here to meet the men of our dreams.”

  “We are. But that might not happen in six days and seven nights.”

  George tugs at her halter top for the umpteenth time.

  “Don’t do that,” I tell her. “Just leave them be.”

  “So what happens if we don’t meet anyone?”

  Good question.

  “What happened to all that sugar-daddy talk from this morning? Have you lost your optimism already? Let’s just wait and see, okay?”

  “Seriously. What’ll we do?”

  “We’ve barely been here for twenty-four hours!” I polish off the rest of my frozen lychee daiquiri and prepare to rally the troops. “Look. If we don’t meet anyone this trip, then at least we had some fun in the sun. And if we like the town, then we might consider a…how should I put this…a longer visit.”

  “Like move here?”

  “Sure. Why not? Look at us. Look at this,” I say, gesturing grandly to include everything within a three-hundred-mile radius. “A day ago, we were tripping over our winter boots and fighting traffic in two feet of snow, and now we’re in a tropical paradise scoping out real moneyed mates.”

  “Those teenagers were the first guys I’ve seen under the age of sixty-five,” she says.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s…José. And our waiter right here, for example,” I say and smile at him. Though obviously gay, he was quite adorable.

&nbs
p; “Would you like another daiquiri, miss?”

  “Do you mind?” I ask George.

  “Go ahead. I’ll drive.”

  “I think I will, then. And could you please make it a double?”

  “And I’ll have a piece of Key lime pie.”

  “And two forks,” I call out after him.

  “With the exception of guys in the hospitality or food-service industries—who are therefore P-O-O-R—I haven’t seen any prospects at all,” she says sullenly. “Not a single one.”

  “Well, technically that’s not true. There were those kids across the street.”

  She pouts and shakes her head.

  “What the matter, G?”

  “I guess I’m just tired. We’ve been out in the sun all day.”

  “You should have bought that cute straw hat. It looked amazing on you.”

  “Yeah, but it was sixty-five dollars, and I don’t think the cost-per-wear ratio would be respectable, considering we live in a city with only two seasons—winter and July.”

  “Well, tomorrow we’ll just go to the beach and sit under an umbrella all day.”

  “That sounds good. I brought three books.”

  “And the beach is probably the best place to meet guys around here, anyway.”

  “Since it’s the weekend, maybe they’ll be out in droves?” she suggests.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  On our way up to our room, the cute bellhop from the day before is in the elevator with a cart full of Louis Vuitton luggage.

  “Hi,” George says. “José, right?”

  He nods at her bosom.

  “Remember us?” she asks.

  “Of course. How could I forget?”

  She smiles. “Well, I was wondering…maybe you could help us out with something. You seem to know your way around, and, well, like I said, we were wondering, exactly what is there to do around here?”

  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if George even knows she’s being a flirt, since she comes by it so naturally. Most of the time I think no, but since she’d been dumped by her professor, I’ve noticed she’s a little more outgoing. Which is no doubt a good thing, since I on my own rarely attract much attention from the opposite sex.