Hot Streak

CHAPTER 10

S o are you going?”

“Of course I'm going. Would I miss the gossip session of the decade?”

“Ten years. I can't believe it. Everyone's going. I called Liz yesterday and she said acceptances are almost ninety percent.”

“We had a great party class,” Molly said, her smile reminiscent of glorious high school memories.

“No kidding. Remember Bucky and Tess at the beach the day after graduation? They were quite entertaining…”

“Or Rod… or Billy? Lordy, what a fun day, but I'm getting too old to drink forty-eight hours straight anymore.”

“We're only twenty-eight, Molly. Don't say old. Just in our prime. Just absolutely in our prime.” Georgia was a best friend who'd stayed a best friend through marriages, divorces, children, and grouchy moods.

“Speak for yourself. I have my moments when my energy levels are zip.”

“You're working too hard.” Georgia's concern was evident as she gazed across the luncheon table. Molly was almost too thin at times, her eyes large in her fine-boned face. In a way, Georgia had always envied the classic bones and willowy body, especially considering her own predisposition to put on weight just looking at a piece of chocolate cake.

“Gotta make a living,” Molly replied with a quiet ferocity, her dark blue eyes flashing.

“Especially after Bart stole your last business,” Georgia retorted, censure heavy in her tone.

“Especially after that,” Molly agreed, brushing a wave of her heavy, honey-colored hair from her forehead. “Ours was not an amiable divorce. Or an amiable marriage. It was a damned enormous mistake, to be perfectly frank.”

“Aren't they all?” Georgia casually remarked, a cynic about the joys of matrimony. “How is the utterly charming ass?” she asked. “Still using that fraudulent white smile so effectively?”

“I don't see much of him, but presumably that smile is still making secretaries' hearts flutter.”

“Every man's dream,” Georgia commented, “the office harem.”

“That didn't bother me so much as the selfishness, the pure arrogance that his behavior was acceptable because he was a man. It came as a great shock and irritation to Bart when I asked for the divorce. He said, ‘Why would you want a divorce? You can't support yourself. You need me.' He really felt he was doing me a favor, and I should be satisfied regardless of his lifestyle.” It was strange, Molly thought, because she'd always secretly felt she'd been the one doing the favor marrying him. She'd never told him that, of course, and he had his own conception of their marriage.

“Chauvinism is alive and well as we march into the twenty-first century,” Georgia remarked dryly. “Give it another thousand years or so, and maybe we can dilute it with careful breeding. And then again,” she sardonically added, “maybe we can't. In the meantime, save me, dear God, from ambitious men. They always feel they can tell you what to do.”

“Amen to that. Bart always felt his career success somehow offset all his liabilities, like never coming home, putting work first, second, and third above his family, which somehow ranked just below his weekly haircut. For Bart a wife was only supposed to be pretty and agreeable, children quiet and agreeable, the house clean, meals miraculously on time regardless of his arrival… Don't ask me why I put up with it. You know as well as I because Larry wasn't a scrap better.”

“Au contraire, sweetie, I do not know the answer. Self-analysis is not my forte. I do know, however, that life is infinitely more fun since I replaced thirty-eight-year-old Larry with two nineteen-year-olds.”

“Lecher,” Molly said with a grin.

“Come in, the water's fine,” Georgia drawled.

“Carrie's too nosy for me to bring two nineteen-year-olds home.” It wasn't the real reason Molly wouldn't bring them home, but she could be blasй, too.

“How is Carrie?” Georgia probed in a kindly way. “Still stable as Mount Olympus? Any sudden missing Dad?”

“You know Bart's idea of fatherhood-Christmas, birthdays, and ask me later, I'm busy right now. He actually prided himself on never having changed a diaper. And he couldn't even remember Carrie's age, for God's sake. What's to miss? Actually, I think she's adjusted better than I. I'm struggling with a fledgling business and edgy as hell at times.”

“She's a darling.”

“I know.”

“Modest mother.”

Molly smiled. “She's smart, too, and as of yesterday has pierced ears. I could kill her.”

“Get with it, modern woman.”

“I'm trying, but she's only eight.”

“And so,” Georgia teased, “what are your views on makeup for eight-year-olds?”

“Don't get me on the subject.” Molly stabbed at a chunk of her chicken salad.

“Kids grow up faster today.”

“So I'm told. Call me old-fashioned.” She chewed thoughtfully, wondering if she was the last mother in America who disapproved of eye liner for eight-year-olds.

“Speaking of old-fashioned. Been getting anything lately?”

Molly choked a little, not because she was prudish, but because Georgia's blunt delivery still threw her. She should have been familiar with it by now. Georgia had been eight when she asked Molly one warm summer day as they sat in her tent under the maple tree in the backyard, “Do you know what fucking is?” Twenty years later, Georgia was still capable of asking startling questions between “Pass the butter” and “Do you think the Democratic Party has lost its credibility as a working man's party?” Molly swallowed before she answered, “Don't start, Georgia.” She smiled in a winsome way that made her look much younger than twenty-eight. “Not after my fiasco with Grant last weekend.”

“Did you chicken out?”

“Didn't have to. I was saved by the bell.”

“Why the hell would anyone want to be saved from Grant Duncan?”

“Don't ask me. I haven't the money for analysis. I had actually gone out on his boat Saturday with the thought that a handsome, solicitous charming date was what I needed to blow the cobwebs out of my psyche.”

“And? I adore gory details…”

“We sat in the sun while we cruised on the St. Croix, and then early in the evening we pulled into his slip. Thought we'd have another drink or so… maybe go out for dinner, maybe eat there…”

“Maybe eat each other,” Georgia blandly proposed with a lift of her dark brows.

“The thought,” Molly mildly replied, “had occurred to me. Anyway, he brought out a bottle of wine he'd gotten at auction last month because he knew it would enchant me, and the wine was absolutely heaven in a bottle. I was planning on staying the night, Carrie was set at Mom and Dad's. Everything was perfectly orchestrated as a be-good-to-Molly weekend, because frankly, I was beginning to fear for the soundness of my mind apropos men turning me on. Now anyone should be thrilled to go to bed with Grant, right?”

“He's definitely a thrill,” Georgia bluntly agreed.

“And you should know,” Molly teased. “When will you be moving into the ranks of the Guinness Book of Records?”

“I'm thinking,” Georgia replied with a lazy insouciance, “of writing a book called A Woman's Trip Through Paradise. Volume One-America, sequels to follow. The way you've been going lately, you could do one on celibacy as an alternate lifestyle. So you didn't get it on with Grant even with the wine and the river and the seclusion of his cruiser-all the props.”

“Call me stupid, but I don't want the props. I want this feeling to hit me… Wham! And if it's an oatmeal feeling, I don't want it.”

Georgia groaned theatrically. “Oh, Lord, don't tell me you said that to him.”

“No, his daughter called just when I was telling myself it was silly for a grown woman to feel she had to have the earth move in order to go to bed with a man.”

“You should have thought of your marriage and known better.”

“Or yours.”

“Or any marriage more than two-and-a-half months old. But Grant hardly fits into that boring category,” Georgia pleasantly noted. “That man is hung.”

“Now you tell me,” Molly smartly replied.

“If I'd known you were going down to the river with him, I would have sent you a registered letter, saying, ‘This man is hung. Get a baby-sitter.' And after his daughter called?” Georgia prompted, pouring some more wine in her glass.

“He apologized when he got off the phone. She wanted a good-night kiss from New York.”

“Long distance parenting. We're raising a new breed of children. Four or six parents; eight or twelve grandparents; aunts, uncles, and cousins by the score. At least they'll know how to mingle. On with the story… Now, you wanted to tell him your heart didn't pit-a-pat and a handshake would be your preferred way to end the evening.”

“How did you know?”

“We've been friends since kindergarten. What do you mean, how did I know?”

“Okay, so that's what I wanted to say, but I didn't. I was feeling guilty because I didn't want to hop in bed with him. How do I get myself into these pickles?”

“You're too damned selective. You want the right chemistry up front. My philosophy has always been, make your own bloody chemistry.”

“No one looks good anymore,” Molly bemoaned, then her eyes sparkled with a buoyant levity, “and I wish someone did, dammit. Am I crazy? Why doesn't anyone look good anymore?”

“Look, Scott has a friend who's gorgeous and available,” Georgia ventured. “Want me to talk to him?”

“God, no,” Molly quickly retorted. “I know you adore young flesh, and I'm not knocking it, but it's just not for me.” She smiled. “I'd feel like his mother-or aunt, at least.”

“Scott's nineteen, he's of age,” Georgia replied with a negligent shrug. “And he's wonderful. Face it, they're not so damned opinionated at that age.”

“Only you would find your newest boyfriend defending him in traffic court,” Molly bantered. Although her style differed, she'd always marveled at Georgia's carefree attitude.

“Scott's mature for his age,” Georgia said with a Cheshire-cat smile, giving the wine in her glass a soft twirl.

“His body is definitely mature, I'll give you that,” Molly answered with a smile. She had seen him at Georgia's a few weeks ago dressed in a tank T-shirt and surfer shorts, and he was as near perfection as nature could devise.

“He's sweet, too, and he pampers me. He runs errands for me and insists on cooking, which is wonderful because no one else knows how to when Magda's off on weekends. He's really quite charming to have around.”

“Plus great in bed. Don't forget that,” Molly pleasantly reminded her.

“Never, sweetie. That comes first.” Her expression one of complacent well-being, her eyes half-lidded with luxurious memory, Georgia looked across the linen-covered table and, in a low, throaty voice, demanded, “Haven't you ever been hot… I mean really hot for a man?”

Even now it hurt to think about him, Molly reflected, even after all those years. Yes, she'd been flame-hot for Carey Fersten. Devouringly. Ceaselessly. So hot, she'd tremble for half a day before she'd see him. So hot that when he smiled, she shivered. But not since then. Never since then. Including her married life with Bart. “I'm not the hot type, Georgia,” she dissembled. “You're hot over anything that flexes good pectorals. I should learn the technique.”

“It makes for some really great recreation,” Georgia assured her, lifting one arched brow and tossing a silky fall of long black hair over her shoulder.

“Maybe if I get this last bank note paid off and I'm finally operating the business in the black, I'll get into your style of recreation. Right now my mind's on surviving financially the next few months.”

“If you need some money, hon, just ask.”

Georgia was doing well in her law practice, in addition to taking in a princely sum in child support from her ex-husband. But the kind of money Molly had needed to begin anew when Bart had taken her (his, he'd said during the divorce proceedings, and the papers were all in his name) small design studio was not something Georgia could write a check for. Now after two hard years, her mini-merchandise mart developed from an abandoned eight-story factory was open, completely renovated and beginning to get critical reviews as the smartest, trendiest, most complete, centralized array of wholesale manufacturers in the midwest. “Thanks, Georgia, I appreciate the offer, but I'm keeping my head above water.”

“Well, don't forget to take a break from your all-consuming obsession with work and save the weekend of the class reunion for fun.”

“You can count on it. Would I miss seeing Liz and Adele claw at each other?”