The first basketball game she attended was a kick. January something, 1988. For a while Desie saved the ticket stub in her antique sewing box. The Hawks beat the Chicago Bulls 107-103. Dido played most of the third quarter and blocked four shots. Desie got to sit close to courtside, in a section with the other wives and girlfriends. Most of them, like her, were young and exceptionally attractive. At halftime the women laughed and gossiped. Desie didn't follow professional basketball, and so was unaware how huge the sport was becoming. One of the Hawks wives pointed out a prematurely bald Chicago player, practicing jump shots, and said he was paid more than $5 million a year, not including endorsement fees. Desie was astounded. She wondered aloud how much Dido was making, and one of the Hawks wives (who memorized all the team stats) was pleased to inform her. It was a truly boggling sum of money for a twenty-two-year-old man, or for anybody. Desie did the arithmetic in her head: Dido's salary worked out to $10,500 per game.
"See that ring on your finger?" the Hawks wife said, lifting Desie's left hand. "One night's work. And that's if he got it retail."
Desie didn't return to college. Dido set her up in a bigger apartment in the Buckhead area, bought her a Firebird convertible (two night's work, at least) and arranged for private tennis lessons at a nearby country club. Reebok supplied free shoes.
The engagement lasted a day shy of three months. It ended when Desie decided on a whim to fly to Detroit, of all places, to surprise Dido on the road for his birthday. When she knocked on his door at the Ritz-Carlton, she was met by a raven-haired woman wearing chrome hoop earrings and latex bicycle pants, and no top. Tattooed on the woman's left breast was a grinning skull with a cowboy hat.
The topless visitor turned out to be a local exotic dancer who spoke fluent Serbo-Croatian, in addition to English. One of the Pistons players had introduced her to Dido at a bachelor party. Desie chatted politely with the woman until Dido returned from the basketball game. Unfortunately, he had sent his interpreter home early – reasoning there'd be no need, with a bilingual stripper – so Dido found himself mostly lost during Desie's agitated discourse. Certainly her mood needed no translation; Dido had picked up on the anger even before she'd flushed her diamond engagement ring down the toilet.
He tried to make up after the team returned to Atlanta, but Desie refused to see him. She moved out of the Buckhead apartment and went to stay with her parents. One day, when Dido showed up at the house, Desie turned the garden hose on him. Being rejected sent him into a glum frame of mind that deleteriously affected his already marginal performance on the basketball court. One wretched night, filling in for a flu-bound Moses Malone, Dido scored only three points, snagged precisely one rebound, turned the ball over five times and fouled out by the middle of the third quarter. The following morning he was traded to the Golden State Warriors, and Desie never saw him again, not even on television.
Oh, you'll find somebody new, her mother assured her. You just got off on the wrong foot.
But Desie couldn't seem to find the right one. In her twenties she was engaged three other times but never married. Twice she returned the rings without rancor, but one she kept. It had been given to her by a fiance named Andrew Beck, with whom Desie was nearly in love. Andrew Beck produced and directed campaign commercials for political candidates, but his background was as an artist. For years he had seriously painted and sculpted and nearly starved. Then he got into television and became wealthy, as were all of Desie's fiances. She told herself this was coincidence but knew better. In any case, she felt strongly about Andrew, who had a dreamily creative and distant side. Desie was captivated, as she'd never before been with a man who was even slightly enigmatic. Andrew couldn't stand politics and generally detested the senators and congressmen who paid so exorbitantly for his image-shaping skills. Desie came to admire Andrew for hating his own work – only a highly principled man would stand up and admit to wasting his God-given talent on something so shallow, manipulative and deceptive as a thirty-second campaign commercial.
The downside of Andrew Beck's commendable candor was that he often went around brooding and depressed. Desie blamed herself for what happened next. She had persuaded Andrew to see a psychologist, who urged him to seek an outlet for releasing his inner fountain of angst. Andrew chose body piercing and embarked on a zealous program of self-mutilation. He began with three small holes in each earlobe and advanced quickly to the eyebrows, one cheek and both nostrils. And he didn't stop there. He wore studs and pegs made only of the finest silver, and before long he bristled from so many man-made orifices that commercial air travel became impractical, due to delays caused by the metal detectors. With each new attachment Andrew's visage became more grotesque, although it didn't seem to bother his politician clients; Andrew's professional services were in greater demand than ever. Desie, on the other hand, could hardly bear to look at him. She held out hope that it was just a phase, even after Andrew got his tongue pierced to accommodate a size 4/0. Desie appreciated the symbolism but not the tactile effect. In fact, sex with Andrew had already become too much of an obstacle course, body ornaments snagging and jabbing her at the most inopportune moments.
But she cared for him so she kept trying, until the evening he showed up with a tiny fourteen-karat Cupid's arrow pinned through the folds of his scrotum. It was then Desie realized there was no saving the relationship, and she moved home with her folks. She hung on to the engagement ring not for sentimental reasons, but because she feared Andrew Beck might otherwise put it to some perversely self-decorative use.
Less than a week later, Desie got a phone call from Palmer Stoat. She had met him only once, during an editing session at Andrew's studio. Andrew had been videotaping trial campaign spots for a man named Dick Artemus, who was planning to run for the governorship of Florida. Palmer Stoat had accompanied Artemus to Atlanta, and sat beside him while the "Vote for Dick" commercials were screened. Desie was there to prevent Andrew from offending Artemus (whom he abhorred) and thereby pissing away a $175,000 production contract.
In the studio Stoat began flirting with Desie, until she made it plain she was spoken for. Stoat apologized convincingly and didn't say another word, although he hardly took his eyes off her all afternoon. Desie never did figure out how he learned so quickly of her breakup with Andrew Beck, but Palmer wasted no time with phone calls, flowers and first-class plane tickets. Initially Desie put him off but in the end he wore her down with his slick enthusiasm – she had always been a sucker for pampering and flattery, and Palmer was a virtuoso. Desie's parents seemed to adore him (which should have been a warning signal) and urged her to give the nice young gentleman a fair chance. Only later, when she'd married Palmer and moved away to Fort Lauderdale, did it occur to Desie that her folks had been trying to nudge her out of the house. (Two days after the wedding, her father brought in a team of carpenters to convert her bedroom into a gym.)
She couldn't deny that Stoat treated her well: the Beemer, the canal-front house off Las Olas, all the shopping she could stand. And while the physical relationship between Desie and her husband wasn't acrobatic or fiery, it was mostly pleasurable. Morphologically, Palmer was a bit doughy for Desie's taste, but at least he didn't look like a damn Christmas tree when he took off his clothes. Not one of Palmer's pallid body parts was pierced, pinned or spangled, which was a treat for his new bride. It was nice, if not exactly rapturous, to make love without fear of puncture or abrasion.