All at once I was jerked alert: “Well, I've been having the best sex of my life lately; I'll tell you thatmuch! I mean, the last few years with my husband were so boring—you know, the same position over and over again.”
Whuh—how could she? She was emasculating me in front of Debbie—a total stranger! Someone in my employ! How could the Duchess say I sucked in bed? I didn't! I used to rock her world! She used to call me her little prince
Against my better judgment, I snuck a peek at Bo, to gauge his reaction. Was he staring at me? Was he smiling? No. He wasn't. He was staring at the recorder, his face a mask of concentration. He was nodding his head slowly. And gritting his teeth, the way a person does when they're trying to make heads or tails of something. Suddenly he looked up. I opened my mouth, to defend myself against the Duchess's baseless accusations. No words came out. I couldn't think of anything to say. The Duchess had emasculated me in front of Bo too. To deny it would only make me seem guiltier.
Just then Bo smiled and shook his head. “It's all bullshit, Bo! Every wife says her husband sucks in bed. It's par for the fucking course.” He shrugged. “But if you happen to get another crack at nailing her, you should take some Viagratationbefore you stick it in; then you'll teach the girl a lesson!” With that he winked and looked back down at the recorder. I rested my brow back in my arms and prepared for more pain.
“Anyway,” said the voice on the tape, “I had a little thing going with my personal trainer for a while, and that was pretty good”— I knew it!—“but then I got sick of him, so I started dating Michael Bolton. You know him? The singer?”
Debbie's surprised voice: “Yeah, of course! What was helike?”
The Duchess's voice: “Oh, he was nice. Very romantic, actually. We spent a weekend together in the Plaza Hotel. We stayed in the Presidential Suite, and he filled the whole room up with fresh flowers.” The voice on the tape giggled. “Like I said, he was very romantic.”
I looked up at Bo. “That ungrateful bitch!” I snarled. “You know how many times I filled up the Presidential Suite with flowers for her? She forgets that!”
Bo nodded in understanding and then pointed back down at the recorder. “Listen to this, Bo; this is where it gets good.” I shook my head in disbelief and looked down at the evil little recorder. Bring on the pain, I thought.
The voice of the Duchess, twisting the knife: “Anyway, there's been some others too: I met a golf pro while I was up in Pennsylvania, learning about codependency, and then I was with one of my old boyfriends for a while, although that was only for old time's sake.” Then, much happier: “But now I'm involved with a guy who owns a big garment-center company! I kind of like him, actually, although he's a bit closed off emotionally. I'll have to wait and see.”
The voice of the actress: “So you think your husband's gonna buy you the house?”
A suddenly weary Duchess: “Well, I'm still working on him. He's very slick, so I have to handle him a certain way. See, I know he still wants to get back together with me, so I'm kind of using that to my advantage, you know, hinting that there's still a possibility.” A pause, then: “I know it's not the nicest thing to do, but I don't have much of a choice anymore. I won't lead him on any longer than I have to, though; once I get him to buy me the house, I'll file for divorce the next day. Then I can move on with my life. Maybe fall in love with one of the local contractors or an electrician. That would be—”
Bo hit the stop button. “You heard enough, Bo?”
I looked at Bo, speechless. The Duchess had buried me on tape. Yet, of everything she's said, it was the comment about doing it over and over again in the same position that had wounded me most. There had to be some words I could say to Bo to offset that poisonous comment. I racked my brain for them. They didn't exist. I had been officially emasculated. The most important thing was to make sure that Debbie was sworn to secrecy. What must she think of me!
“You all right, Bo?” asked Bo.
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I'm all right. I'm fine.” I took a deep breath and forced up a smile. “Anyway, it sounds like she still hasn't made up her mind yet, you know, Bo? Maybe there's still hope, right?” I started chuckling.
Bo smiled warmly. “That's the spirit, Bo. You just gotta laugh it off.”
I nodded and smiled sadly, and then I looked around my beautiful home, marveling at its very splendor… and how little it all meant. The happiest I had ever been was with Denise, when we had nothing.
Just then Bo reached across the table and rested his massive hand on my forearm, squeezing it gently. In a dead-serious tone, he said, “Listen to me, Bo, because I'm not gonna bullshit you. What's happened to you over the last six months should happen to no man. There's no sugarcoating it. It sucks. It all sucks.” He shook his head slowly. “But you gotta take a deep breath now and pick up the pieces. It's time to be a man. You understand, Bo? To be a man?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I do.”
He squeezed my arm tighter now. “No woman can get the best of you, Bo, no wife, no girlfriend, no mistress, no one. Except one. You know who that is, Bo?”
I nodded slowly, fighting back tears now. “Chandler,” I said softly.
“That's right, Bo: Chandler. She's the only one who counts now; the rest of them will come and go out of your life. And you owe it to her to stiffen your upper lip and hold your head high, and you owe it to that little son of yours too.” Bo smiled nostalgically. “I remember when he was first born and almost died of meningitis. I'll never forget how my heart dropped when Rocco called me that night from the hospital and told me what was going on. I went to church and said a prayer for him that night.”
I nodded, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “Well, it worked. He's a good kid. He's growing strong.”
Bo smiled. “Yes, he is, Bo, and he's gonna keep growing; then he's gonna look to you one day to show him what it means to be a man and to show him that no matter how much shit comes his way, in the end, he can always come out on top.” Bo shrugged his broad shoulders. “And that's it, Bo, that's the way it goes. Your kids are your constants; they're the only ones who can keep you going through shit like this.
“Anyway, you're about to find out who your true friends are and who was just along for the ride. Remember, friendships bought with money—”
“—don't last very long,” I said.
Bo nodded. “And loyalty bought with money—”
“—isn't loyalty at all,” I added.
“Exactly, Bo.” And with that he reached down to the tape recorder, hit the eject button, and removed the tape and held it up in the air. Then he said, “As far as I'm concerned, this whole thing never happened.” He slipped the tape into his inside suit-jacket pocket. “You don't owe me anything for this, Bo. All I want is your friendship, because, I, for one, am truly your friend. And I always will be.”
And I knew he was.
*Name has been changed
CHAPTER 16
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN
Broooo!—Broooo!—Broooo!… Broooo!—Broooo!—Broooo!
I opened my right eye and, without lifting my head even an inch off the white silk pillowcase, I rolled my neck to the right and made eye contact with the phone of the future—a chrome-plated technological marvel, with two dozen red blinking lights and the world's most annoying ring, the latter of which sounded like a tiny sparrow caught in an electrical wire. The phone was resting on a fabulously expensive end table—part of a matching set, of course.