“Marilyn, my ex-wife, must be, in some ways, the unluckiest woman in the world. When we split, I was, as you put it, a humble architect. I made eighty thousand a year, a nice salary but not enough for her, so she went looking for greener pastures. Maybe there was a deeper reason. But money seemed to be all she thought about.”
“Don’t tell me you won the lottery or something.”
“Let me give you a little background.” He sipped his sauterne and watched the people wandering past them. In the far distance he could hear the sensual sound of a clarinet tuning up. “My father took off when I was seven. I think my mother was glad to see him go although it meant that she had to work. He was a heavy drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, and a general pain in the ass. He was never abusive, or anything like that. It was just that he was totally unpredictable. Rich and expansive one minute, poor and depressive the next. He wouldn’t come home for days, even weeks at a time. Then he’d arrive home like the prodigal son, frequently reeking of perfume. Of course, at the time, I idolized him, thought he was the greatest, especially when he arrived with his arms full of presents.”
“It must have been a tough life for you.”
“My mom was a very sane, down-to-earth woman and I was a very happy child in spite of my on-again, off-again father.”
Jessica smiled. “You were lucky.”
“I guess I was. One evening, my dad arrived home after almost two weeks, and told my mom that he was leaving for good. He packed his things in an old black-and-white suitcase and disappeared. My mom cried for about a week, then pulled herself together and made a good life for herself. She had worked in a local nursing home as an aide and discovered that she enjoyed helping older people. So she put herself through nursing school, then made enough to put me through college. She died the year after I graduated.”
“She sounds like a nice woman.”
Eric’s face softened. “She was the best. Anyway, about a year after Marilyn and I split, I received a visit from a lawyer. My father, it turns out, had done okay for himself. He’d ended up in Vegas and amassed a small fortune. Before he died, he had a will drawn up leaving everything to me. There was a letter from him for me, too. He tried to explain that although he didn’t consider himself a bad man, he had been a terrible husband and a worse father and that we had been better off without him. He said that he had spent a lot of years broke and then started a run of luck and had gotten some money together. He hired an investigator who learned that my mom had died and that I was doing very well on my own.” Eric ran his long slender fingers through his iron-gray hair.
“Personally, I think he didn’t contact me then because we had almost nothing in common except some genetic material. I don’t remember him as a bad father, but that’s the way he thought about things. I’m just sorry that my mother didn’t live to know that he still thought about us. Anyway, I inherited everything. Including Timmy.”
“Including Timmy?”
“He was my father’s bodyguard, and, I gather, he needed one. He was in some pretty ugly businesses with some pretty nasty people. My father won Timmy, who had spent a few years as a professional wrestler, in a poker game almost ten years before he died. His old manager put up his contract in lieu of five thousand dollars. Fortunately for both my father and Timmy, the manager’s full boat, aces over sixes, wasn’t as good as my father’s four deuces.
“Timmy’s a gem and a thoroughly nice man. He was unquestionably loyal and able to take care of himself and my father, particularly in my dad’s final months which, I gather, were lousy. Timmy won’t talk about those years and the things my father was into. He says it’s a closed book now that he’s dead. And I guess it is.”
“How could he leave Timmy to you?” Jessica asked. “It sounds like some kind of indentured servitude.”
“Not at all. My father got to know Timmy very well. Although he left him a generous amount of cash in his will, my father left Timmy something more important. One section of the will guarantees him a job with me for as long as he wants. And that’s all he wants. I guess he’s like my mom. He wants to take care of someone the way he took care of my father, and he stays because he wants to. He keeps the money my dad left him in the bank. ‘For his old age,’ he says.”
“Your dad sound like a very perceptive man.”
“He was.”
“And Timmy’s cooking?”
“That had been a hobby of his for many years. He used to cook for my father, who taught Timmy to enjoy fine food and good wine. After my father’s death, Timmy told me that he had always wanted to study seriously so I encouraged him to take a year to study at the Culinary Institute. Now, as you’ve gathered, it’s more than just a hobby—it’s a passion.”
“That’s quite a story.”
Distant strains of jazz filtered through the evening air. “The music’s starting,” Eric said, stretching out on the blanket. “They discourage listening from here rather than going to the terrace, but I bought six tickets and made a special plea to the staff so they’ll leave us alone.”
Jessica stretched out beside Eric, her head buzzing with the wine and the music and the feel of Eric’s fingers entwined with hers. Together they watched the sky darken and the stars appear while they listened to an erotic baritone saxophone. From time to time, Eric would lift Jessica’s hand to his lips and kiss her knuckles, or nip one fingertip. As the first half of the concert ended, he sucked her index finger into his hot mouth and swirled his tongue around the tip.
To calm her fluttering stomach, she said, “With this inheritance of yours, do you still design buildings?”
He chuckled. “Getting too hot for you?” He sucked her finger again, then answered, “Sure. I like to be productive and I don’t know what else I’d do. I do one or two projects each year, overall design, not the bathroom fixtures or landscaping. I keep my job within strict limits. I never take on a project that will occupy more time than I want to give, leaving the rest of my time for the parts of my life that give me joy.” He bit the tip of Jessica’s finger, then swirled his tongue around the palm. “How about you? What was your family life like as a kid?”
Jessica struggled to concentrate enough to answer his question. “Dull. I was born and brought up in Ottawa, Illinois, a small town near Chicago. Steph and I went to high school together and that’s where she met Brian and I met Rob, my ex-husband.”
Jessica tried to gently withdraw her hand from Eric’s but he held her fast. “Tell me about him. He must be some kind of idiot to let something as gorgeous and sexy as you get away.”
“I don’t mean to make him sound like a total jerk,” Jessica said, finally pulling her hand away from Eric. “We met in high school and he knew precisely what he wanted out of life, so it happened. Dental school and a very busy practice in Ottawa.”
When Eric took her hand again she sighed and didn’t try to pull away. “I gathered from your conversation Tuesday night that you and he weren’t setting the world on fire in the bedroom.”
Jessica laughed softly. “No, we weren’t. Most of our problems in bed were probably due to inexperience. We were both virgins or close enough for government work when we met and there never was anyone else for either of us. Not until bimbo.”
“He found a sweet young thing?”
Jessica told him about finding Rob in his office that afternoon so many months before. When he laughed at her version of the story, he apologized. “Don’t apologize,” she said. “Now, looking back on it, it was pretty funny. At the time, however, it seemed my life had ended.”
Eric propped himself up on one elbow and slid the tip of his tongue across Jessica’s lips. “And how does it seem now?”