“But...” Hugo hesitated as he groped for the right words, “...how is it I haven’t heard about you before? Who’s your mother?”
“Don’t you remember who you were making love to eighteen years ago?”
“Cassandra,” he replied at once, recalling his long lost love and a prophetic poem, which she had left behind, containing a cryptic, line about two becoming three. That line had haunted him since Laura had unearthed the scroll on the upper shelf of a closet in a room in his house occupied by Cassandra almost two decades before.
“Yes!”
For a moment they simply gazed at each other. Then he came out of his reverie, resisting the urge to embrace his newly sprung offspring as he remembered the event she had interrupted upon her arrival.
“Of all days you had to show up!” Hugo snapped, pacing with his hands in his pockets.
“Why? What’s the matter with today?” Amanda queried, observing that he seemed more peeved than upset.
“I was proposing marriage to Laura after six years of being crazy about her and she was thinking about saying yes. How unsexy is a suitor with a grown daughter!”
“I think you’re incredibly sexy,” said Amanda, unfazed.
Then Hugo began to process the scandalous realization that he’d just spanked his own daughter. “So, what was with the prank?” he demanded.
“The posing as a model? That was a sudden inspiration. I’ve always wondered what a spanking from my daddy would feel like!” said Amanda, spontaneously hugging Hugo. He hugged her back briefly then thrust her away, exclaiming, “This is absurd. It can’t be. It must be a practical joke. Why show up now? Why today? I’m confused. Let’s get coffee.”
They locked up the store and walked across the street to Marguerite Alexander’s bookshop, where Hope Spencer Lawrence was presiding over an empty coffee bar.
“Hi Hope,” said Hugo, leaving Amanda at one of the small tables by the hearth. “Bring us a couple of double caps, would you?”
“Who’s the babe?” asked the resident blonde beauty of Random Point in all innocence, used to Hugo stuffing his models with chocolate chip muffins during photo shoots. Hope Spencer Lawrence would have shot regularly for Hugo herself, had her husband not been an instructor at the local prep school attempting to maintain a low profile about his wife’s professional B&D past.
“My daughter, apparently,” Hugo confided, too struck by the uncanny resemblance between himself and the girl to attempt to deny it. Anyway, the word Cassandra had more or less explained it all. Anything was possible when that laser-focused female was involved.
“She’ll bring us coffee,” said Hugo, sitting opposite Amanda, who folded her French manicured hands calmly on the small, round wooden table between them but grinned back at him, mirthful at the trick she had pulled off.
“I just don’t understand your mother’s behavior,” Hugo said somewhat helplessly. “I was still completely enamored with her when she left me. She never said a word about a baby. Why? I would have married her.”
“Yes, we always felt you would have. But Mother knew you didn’t want children and didn’t feel it was fair to thrust me on you.”
“She might have let me know! Oh, am I going to thrash her for this!”
“She also said your aura was too powerful to expose an impressionable child to.”
Hugo groaned and exclaimed, “That’s the first thing you’ve said that doesn’t surprise me. No doubt she traced the moment of your conception to a period during which mercury was in retrograde, and it gave her a foreboding of evil.”
“She merely felt that a child should be reared by milder and less mercurial types than yourself.”
“Oh, is that so? And who’d she fix you up with instead?”
“A wise and industrious vegan who married Mother when I was three and has furnished me with gentle guidance ever since. He owns yoga studios and health food stores in San Francisco.”
“Well, what the hell did she think I would have done to you?” Hugo bristled.
“She just didn’t want me growing up to be a spoiled daddy’s girl.”
“So? How did you turn out?”
“I’m a daddy’s girl,” she grinned. “But not spoiled. I worked in the store and taught yoga classes all through high school.”
“So, when did you find out about me?” Hugo asked, thanking Hope for the large steaming cups of cappuccino she set down before them.
“Hello,” said Hope, smiling at Amanda.
“Hello,” Amanda replied.
“Later,” said Hugo, shooing Hope back to the coffee bar.
“Well, I was twelve going on thirteen when I began to explore Mother’s sizable collection of erotica, which included issues of your magazine going back many years. Enthralled, I worked my way backwards in time until I reached the issues that my mother actually had modeled for and worked on with you. Mother saw how much the New Rod Quarterly interested me and told me about the relationship she’d had with its editor, confiding that it had been the first great romance of her life. The magazines had publication dates so it was easy for me to figure out that she’d been sleeping with you when I was conceived. She didn’t deny it.
Naturally I wanted to meet you at once, but she convinced me to develop myself into an independent person of whom you might be proud before inserting myself into your life. When I asked her what she thought I should do to make you proud of me, she suggested I get myself into Harvard. I’m starting my freshman year next week.”
“You don’t say so! Congratulations, honey!”
“Thank you. By the way, here’s the bill for my first semester,” she said, handing him an eye opener of an invoice.
“Oh my god, is that what college costs these days?”
“Mother didn’t think you’d mind since she’s handled everything else.”
“Sure,” Hugo said, folding the bill and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Actually the least you could do would be to buy me this coffee. Paying for Harvard is handsome,” smiled Amanda, sipping creamy foam.
Hugo kept looking at her, unable to stop himself from smiling. “I can’t believe she kept this kind of secret from me. But she’s certainly done a good job with you. Probably much better than I could have done.”
“She’ll be happy to hear that. She always told me that you were the only man she actually tried to please.”
“What about your current dad?”
“He’s easy to please. You just have to be perfect at all times.”
“Is that why you’re so together?”
“Thank you for noticing,” she grinned.
“You seem like a happy girl. Are you happy?”
“I’m as happy today as I’ve ever been,” Amanda replied, clasping one of his hands between both of her own for just an instant.
“I wish I didn’t have the shoot scheduled, but Laura will be bringing back the real model any minute.”
“Can’t I continue to be in the shoot?” Amanda asked.
“You really WANT to be in a spanking magazine?” Hugo was astonished.
“I really WANT to be on the cover!”
Hugo laughed and shook his head.
“I’m