The Idea of Him. Holly Peterson

I heard Caitlin before I saw her walking furiously in our direction, her miniskirt stretched to the gills over her tight little gymnast form, and her thick platforms loudly stomping on my floors. She was my close friend, but far too nosy to be invited into this scene. I walked farther into the kitchen and slammed the laundry room door behind Jackie so fast I wondered if I’d clipped her nose.

      “Not now, Caitlin.”

      She was inches from me. “All okay? Wade’s in the living room with all the men drooling over the hot fashionistas, and he looks pissed. Did you fight?”

      “Can you go back to the party, please?”

      Caitlin crossed her arms and planted her feet Mexican-standoff style. “I know you, and I know you’re not telling me something.” She looked at the closed door. “Did you find her?”

      “I was mistaken,” I said, turning her around and pushing her in the direction of the party. “Go make sure Wade doesn’t have his palm on anyone’s ass, please.”

      “Happy to,” Caitlin said, relishing the chance to catch my husband in another sticky situation.

      With Caitlin gone, I opened the door and snuck inside to continue my line of questioning.

      “Look, I need to know a few things besides the obvious question of why you were back here with Wade: Who are you? Why did you help me with Delsie? What was it you were looking for? What is Wade doing with which men that is going to take away our savings, as you supposedly contend?” Despite all my suspicions, in the far reaches of my anterior lobe, I did allow for the possibility that she was telling the truth.

      “Not who. What. Documents and photos,” she answered tersely, still trying to size me up even as she scanned the floor. “Or a flash drive, that little stick that goes into the side of a computer.”

      “I know what a flash drive is. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

      “I told you. I’m Jackie.”

      I leaned against the dryer, holding my throbbing head with one hand. “Stop being cute. I catch you red-handed with my husband. All this ‘I’m trying to help you’ shit looks like your way of getting out of the room. But I admit, it’s creative.” I was amazed I said that without my voice cracking. Once I feel like I might cry, my toughness evaporates instantly.

      Jackie began folding the clothes that had scattered on the floor. “I’m sorry, I know this is confusing and really hard to believe, but I swear on my life that I’m not lying to you one bit.” She suddenly looked five years younger.

      I stopped her manic folding with a pat on her hand and looked her in the eye. “What kind of documents and photos?” I considered the very remote possibility that she and Wade weren’t doing anything “wrong”; her hair was too perfect, her blouse too unwrinkled, her lip gloss too polished.

      “Meet me at the Tudor Room bar tomorrow around five,” she said calmly, but with a hard glint in her eye. “You’ve got to keep this quiet, but if you find anything at all new in his papers and folders that seems like it wouldn’t be …” She started scribbling down her cell-phone number and passed it to me on a gum wrapper from her purse.

      I stuffed it into my pocket, glad to have some kind of way to reach her should I find proof she and Wade were together; I could use it to confront him somehow. “Wouldn’t be what?” I asked in a tough and angry tone. “He’s a journalist, an editor of a general interest magazine. He could have any kind of documents dealing with every story under the sun on his desk. Movie stars, legal wars, political corruption, how the hell am I supposed to know … what isn’t safe? I pay the bills; it’s all there …” I whispered. “What the hell do you mean? And if I found something, you wouldn’t be getting it, just so you know. He’s my husband. You’re a total stranger.”

      She laid it on the line in a way I could not avoid any longer, no matter how hard I tried. “Listen carefully. This whole deal has been going on a lot longer than you know. And you’re never going to understand how without my help.”

      Really?

      And then the beauty added this:

      “And just so you know, I didn’t just get screwed in there, you did.”

       8

       Pulled Toward the Edge

      Jackie Malone knew way too much about Wade. My mind was racing. This, their relationship—whatever that may be—must have been going on awhile now. As she teetered back into the party showing her lean, racehorse calves and the flash of lacquered red on her high-heeled soles, I couldn’t help but stare, vanquished, at the most amazing piece of ass I’d ever seen.

       She didn’t just get screwed in there, but somehow I did?

      Wishing there was a pill to make my legs grow longer, I went to my bedroom to take a little break and figure out my next moves. After I poured enough Visine in my eyes and cold water on my flushed cheeks to return to the living room, half the guests were gone. Jackie was nowhere to be seen. Other revelers were collecting their jackets and starting to head out. Caitlin was in deep conversation with a tall stylist who was so thin she looked like a praying mantis.

      When Wade finally noticed the look on my face, he excused himself from a Russian supermodel stunner named Svetlana and hurried over. “Hey, don’t think I don’t know how exasperating these parties are for the wife.”

      I squinted at him. He actually believed I was upset over the quiche temperature. “Murray and Max Rowland want me to go to Atlantic City. I really don’t want to go, but”—he shrugged his handsome shoulders, a willing pawn—“I should.”

      “Wade, I need to ask you something,” I said, voice just unsteady enough that he’d notice if he wanted to, which he didn’t.

      “Wade! Get your butt in here!” Murray yelled impatiently, banging on the opening from inside the elevator.

      Wade gestured to Murray that he was right there in a sec. He turned to me and said, “Hey, can we talk tomorrow? I gotta go. Murray has fifteen clients out in Atlantic City who are going to buy ad space, big buys, and I need …” He wasn’t even looking at me.

      “Who was the woman? You tell me and then you go.”

      “What woman?” Wade said like I’d asked about a purple giraffe in our home.

      “Wade. THERE … WAS … A … WOMAN … IN … THE … LAUNDRY … ROOM. I saw her leave after you left.”

      “Oh God. She’s just some woman who hangs around the Tudor Room. She had papers from some event she’s trying to deal with and I had them in my jacket and I don’t know, she wanted …”

      “You were in there with the door closed.”

      “Wade!” Murray bellowed, now angry.

      “Honey, it looks weird, I know. I just thought it best to talk to her privately not to raise suspicions because I know you get upset about beautiful women sometimes around me, and I’m just so sorry, my tactic did the opposite. She just wanted advice on how to handle one of the clients out there and I … I gotta go. I love you.” He rushed to the door. I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of him this way.

      Caitlin glanced back at me and then sprinted to my side as I gathered unused little fuchsia napkins into a neat pile around the bar, anything to busy myself. “You don’t mind if I go home, do you?” she asked, her eyes searching mine for yet one more clue to what had happened. “You okay?”

      “I’m fine,” I said, even as I pictured Jackie Malone with her legs entwined around my husband in Max Rowland’s Borgata-bound