An Indecent Proposal, Barry Rachin [any book recommendations .txt] 📗

"How long have you known that man?"

"Paddy's been playing with the house band five years now. He's an alcoholic in denial."
"Can he make it through the night?"

Freddy shook his head. "Not hardly. I'm afraid that demonstration of fancy brushwork earlier this evening may have been his high water mark." The bartender threw the towel he had been polishing the countertop with down on the brass rail and lurched out from behind the bar. "Come with me." Freddy led the way two doors down to the Emerald Room function hall, where the band was play a waltz, Sunrise, Sunset. Paddy Macgregor was seated behind the drums laying down a raggedy beat with only his right drumstick and left foot. The other hand hung limply at his side and his head slouched at a precipitous angle, the chin resting on his chest.

As they were heading back to the lounge, Ralph asked, "The jokes taken aside, if you found yourself in my predicament, what would you do?"

"Aw, shit, I dunno! Life's a crapshoot." Freddie spoke in a raggedy drawl like someone who had been screwed over more often than he cared to remember. "The dame probably got a drawer full of genuine crocodile belts in her dresser drawer so why lose any sleep over the selfish twit." Freddy raised a hand in the air, indicating that he had something further to add but was struggling with his thoughts. "They got a term for women like her... hedonist. Yeah, that's it! Someone who puts their personal pleasure ahead of everyone else's." Freddy seemed particularly pleased with his appraisal. "She got what she wanted and don't deserve your sympathy anymore than that swindler-of-a-husband."

"Hedonist," Ralph repeated. "Yes, that's true enough. She sure as hell indulged herself."
"Hedonists… they're worse than atheists," Freddy confirmed, "because they ain't got no scruples,… no morals." His droopy face convulsed with a bewildering mix of conflicted emotions. "What if you went back with this woman and she treated you same as before?"

"Wouldn't make a bit of difference."

"Squandered your money and was unfaithful as a Babylonian whore?"

"I'd forgive her on a daily basis and thank God for the privilege of a second chance at happiness."

The bartender gawked at him in disbelief. "In my capacity here at the hotel, I meet a lot of unusual people - eccentrics, psychopaths, weirdoes, homicidal maniacs, perverts and assorted whack jobs," Freddy ventured. "I ain't never met anyone like you."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Ralph paid his tab and wandered out into the lobby where he dialed a number on his cell phone. After a brief conversation, he left the hotel and drove across town.

* * * * *

Rebecca Steinberg led Ralph into the living room, where the forty-watt bulb in a Tiffany lamp bathed the room in murky gloom. She pulled a white bed sheet off the leather sofa so the middle-aged man could sit down. Everything was in boxes, under cover or in profound disarray. "I didn't come to gloat," Ralph confessed.

"I appreciate your candor. What's it been… twenty years?"

"Closer to twenty-five," he confirmed.

"Most of my former, A-list friends," Becky noted with a papery-thin smile, "have deleted my number from their cell phones."

Ralph glanced around the dreary, airless room. The furnishings were all high end - high end and high maintenance. A forty-inch, plasma TV hung on the wall over the fire place with a wireless hookup to an array of quadraphonic Bose speakers. The custom-built bar was trimmed with ebony and claret-colored rosewood. The exotic woods alone must have set the deceased back a small fortune. Not that household expenditures concerned the former Mr. Steinberg any more. "Have you eaten?"

"I haven’t much of an appetite lately."

Ralph rose to his feet and rearranged the eggshell white, silk bed sheet back over the couch. He wanted to flee the place, which felt more like a mausoleum than a home. "Maybe we could go somewhere and grab a coffee. I know your busy, what with the foreclosure proceedings and won't keep you long."

He shouldn't have said that. Becky never mentioned anything about the bank. He learned that unsavory tidbit from the mutual friend. At some point in the near future, a marshal would be showing up at the front door to put Rebecca Steinberg out on the street. The woman had exhausted every legal loophole. The savings and checking accounts were drained dry. Having pawned all her jewelry and disposable belongings, nothing remained.

"I'm going to live with my daughter in San Diego, while I get my affairs in order."
"That's nice."

Becky shrugged. "At this late hour, my choices are fairly limited. The bank intends to change the locks and board up the windows by the middle of the month."

"What arrangements did you make regarding the property?" It wasn't so much a house as a mini-mansion with kidney-shaped swimming pool, wraparound deck and two-car garage.

"Nothing really. A week from Tuesday, I'll set the keys on the kitchen table, close the door behind me and never look back."

The sun was setting casting an even gloomier pall on the soon-to-be-abandoned house. Pulling into the driveway ten minutes earlier, Ralph noticed the lawn overgrown with crabgrass and dandelions - this in a community where anyone who didn't schedule monthly visits from ChemLawn, was considered pariah! The swanky pool had been drained, the bottom coated with a greenish scum of dead algae and rotting maple leaves. "What did you do after college?" she asked.

"I opened a medical supply business. We sell motorized wheelchairs, hospital beds, inhalation therapy supplies…"

"And you've done well?"

"We staffed a third location this past August."

Becky seemed genuinely pleased by his success. "I chose poorly. My husband, may he rest in peace, was a first class schmuck. Twenty-plus years down the toilet of life, and here we are commiserating like it was yesterday." Her resignation was palpable. Becky, who was wearing a loose-fitting shift, went into the bedroom and changed into a stylish blouse and skirt. She powdered her face and even threw on some blush. A mild case of acne back to high school had left some residual scarring. "Do you remember these beauties?" she quipped, placing a hand over her sagging breasts. The tone was humorous, not the least bit salacious."

"I remember," Ralph replied soberly.

"After breastfeeding three daughters, there's been considerable wear and tear."
The bluntness caught him off guard. Becky Steinberg was already slightly pudgy when they first met, but her breasts were… Well, there were no proper words to describe God's penultimate creations. Covered by a moss green comforter or drape, a Steinway, baby grand piano rested near the bay window. "Do you still play?"

"Not in years."

Ralph recalled a rather eccentric interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the melody in the right hand overpowered by booming arpeggios that transformed the lilting tune into a bombastic riot that had more in common with ragtime than classical music. "Come spend a week with me for old time sake. We can pick up where we left off. If nothing comes of it, go live with your daughter in California. No one needs to know."

Becky said nothing for the better part of a minute. Finally, she took a deep breath letting all the air out through her thin lips. "I treated you badly, always putting myself first, and now all you stand to get are the dribs and drabs of a squandered life."

"You were honest to a fault. And anyway, that's all in the past."

A Kieninger grandfather clock in the hallway stroked the hour. When the throbbing brass finally died away, she said, "Okay, this is what I think…"


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Publication Date: 03-03-2011

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