The Immaculate Deception Read online

  I finally made it upstairs. I’d been looking forward to a big hot bubble bath with some music and candles. Somehow I lost my oomph. I got undressed and brushed my teeth. I popped two Benadryls because I knew sleep would come difficultly now. I crawled in between the royal blue silk sheets, trying not to cry. Too bad my eyes leaked anyhow.

  I didn’t wanna go back to the file room. There must be more for me than working as a peon until I was sixty-seven. That was how old I’d have to be before I could collect full Social Security benefits. What then? Should I sell the house and move into a tiny retirement apartment and get a lap dog? Sit in a rocking chair and pet the poodle until I died? And eventually the smell would cause somebody to dig a hole and throw me in?

  As Momma would scold, “Get hold of yourself, Oh-Donna. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody likes a pity party.” She was so right. I was beginning to sound like woe-is-me Daddy, always glum, telling us the world did him wrong. God, that scared me. I didn’t want to turn into him. Was it inevitable? Nature or nurture?

  I felt the Benadryl kicking in. A little high and hazy in the head. Pools of blue water in the sheets swirled around. I closed my eyes. Conga drums this time. Conga drums leading off the song. Sounded like something that the Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz might have done with his orchestra in the forties. I felt the wind in my hair. Oh good. Here was that familiar irresistible force propelling me into the land of dreams…

  ~♥~

  I opened my eyes. I still felt the momentum. And his arms. I stumbled into him and brushed his face with my hand. Soft whiskers. “Hi ya, Mister Jones,” I cooed. “Step right back into my dream.”

  He locked the door. I looked around. We were in a tiny gray compartment. I glanced out the long window. The world drifted by. There was a bunk attached to the wall. I asked him, “Are we on the train again?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “I’m taking you to paradise, sweetheart.” He caressed my shoulders.

  I trembled. I glanced down at my naked body. And then at him. Shoot, he was still dressed. I gazed up into his smoldering brown eyes. I said, “So we’re going to Tahiti then?”

  “No, Cinderella…Miami.” Then he kissed me. Oh my, did he kiss me. He eased his hand behind my neck, tangling his long fingers between my curls. His lips were demanding and the whiskers wickedly prickled, in an enjoyable way. I went weak in the knees. I didn’t fall though, because he was holding me up with his kiss.

  We swayed side to side with the cadence of the clickety-clack of the train. I could hear it. I could hear our kiss too. In one swift move, he positioned one arm on my back, the other under my thighs and lifted me onto the bunk. I watched him, watching me, as he removed his coat. He tugged at his black necktie. Mesmerized, I beheld him unbuttoning his shirt. It fell to the floor. I heard his belt unbuckle and the zipper zip down. His trousers fell to the floor. He leaned down, removing his brogan shoes, then he shed his socks and trousers off in the same move. Watching him in his white drawstring boxers, I thought I’d explode in anticipation.

  He lay next to me. The kissing resumed. I slid my hand on his back. Warm. With my fingernails, I gently traced up and down and all around his taut skin. He moaned and rolled on top of me. The continuous forward thrusting of the locomotive drove me wild with expectation of the main event.

  The locomotive halted. He reluctantly removed his lips from mine and jumped up.

  “Hey!” I whimpered.

  Smiling at me, my mate got dressed. “Sorry, sweetheart. End of the line. Your clothes are in the bathroom.”

  I huffed and sprang up. Once inside the toilet compartment, the sight of the red and white pinstriped shirtdress, with matching hat, white leather pumps and purse cheered me up. I wasn’t so crazy about the uncomfortable bra and the bucket-shaped panties. Nor the miserable rayon stockings. Tight at the ankles, baggy at the knees.

  Hey, there was a makeup kit on the counter. I unzipped the big round lid. It was stocked with old-fashioned rouge, mascara, a powder puff and powder and ruby red lipstick. Even a boar’s hairbrush, a can of lacquer and some pins for my hair.

  I enjoyed getting all dolled up for him. For me too. Longing to keep looking in the mirror over the sink, I turned the light off and stepped back into the bedroom.

  He whistled. I grinned so big. I caught our joint reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. What a beautiful couple we made. I said, “Well, where are we off to today?”

  “To find out about your parents’ past of course. To find out where you come from.”

  Enigmatic as usual. I offered my elbow. “Hook a wing.”

  He did. My dream man opened the door and we sashayed down the corridor. Well, there wasn’t actually enough room for us to walk side by side but we improvised all the way to the steps. The conductor helped me down first. Dream boy followed.

  “How come it’s always dark?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, love. Can’t be helped. But paradise is beautiful, no matter what the hour. Remember, I’m taking you from Mercury to Mars. And that, my dear, is deep space.”

  I furrowed my brows. “I don’t understand what you mean. Aren’t we back in Miami?”

  He smiled knowingly and took hold of my hand. We stumbled into the sounds of the night. Laughter, bickering and buses. We hopped on a bus. It was a short ride, across the causeway, into the City of Miami Beach. Palm trees lit by neon hotel signs welcomed us. As we stepped off the bus, I noticed a large convoy of jeeps. I asked dream boy, “What’s with all the military? Are they on rest and relaxation already? Aren’t they needed in the Philippines or France or somewhere?”

  He explained, “The Army Air Corps is staging its boot camp here. They’ve taken over the hotels.”

  “Oh.”

  We strolled into one of the Art Deco extravagances. It seemed to have been retrofitted into a M*A*S*H unit. An Army hospital, just like in the TV series. “Hey, there’s my mother! Momma! Momma!”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She was with that handsome bearded man, the guy I noticed in the sepia picture. The one I observed the other night from my window at the YWCA. “Momma! It’s me, Donna.”

  She couldn’t hear me. Oh my God, look at her stomach! Daddy trotted past us. “Daddy! Daddy!” He couldn’t hear me either. Or else he was ignoring me. The three all went into the same room.

  My dream man said, “Come on, we need to move along.”

  I protested. “But they’re my parents. In there. We’ve found them. You’re fantastic, thank you. I wanna talk to Momma. Why didn’t she hear me?”

  “Because this is your mother’s secret. She never wanted you to know about this pregnancy.”

  “But I already know about it. I read it on my birth certificate.”

  “I will not upset her.”

  “Upset her?”

  “When she signed on with the Secret Service, the President himself, Roosevelt, gave me the order to keep an eye on her and make sure no danger came to her.”

  “Why? How would he even know her if she was in the counterfeiting division?”

  “She was dear to the family. As a teenager, she pulled FDR out of a riptide, saving him from drowning.”

  “Wow. Momma sure did a lot of good deeds in her time. Just think, had she not been at the right place at the right time, FDR might not have lived to be President, at least not for so many terms.” I was flush with pride for my mother.

  “I didn’t do a very good job at keeping her safe at the time. I misinterpreted intelligence data and thought she was up to no good and… I created a lot of trouble for poor Chloe.” My mate glanced down, avoiding my eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t keep her safe then. I’d rather not talk about it now. But I will not ever do anything that might upset her. She is a lovely lady. I am so lucky to have a second chance of sorts, to make it up to her through…loving you. You are even more lovely and deserving of good things than you
r mother. I’m always going to be there for you when you need me. I’ll always keep you safe.” His eyes shot down to meet mine, full of emotion and silent pleading. I felt my knees go soft. He gently escorted me out the back door and down onto the boardwalk.

  He really loves me. I sighed.

  He stopped at a bench and sat me down. He slipped my shoes off and teased my nervous system as he removed my stockings. He dropped them into my purse.

  I knelt and removed his shoes and socks. “You have really great feet, you know.” If it weren’t so dark, I’d say he blushed. I rolled up his pants to his knees. We strolled down to the Atlantic Ocean and stepped into a rowboat.

  “A rowboat?” I asked, skeptical and scared.

  Chapter Eight

  “Relax, sweetheart. I am your mate and I’m escorting you safely, from Mercury to Mars.”

  “But…I can’t swim.”

  He procured a life vest from under the seat and strapped it on me. He said, “Tell me what you just learned.” He hopped out of the boat and thrust it out past the sand bar. Then he hopped back in.

  “I think my momma was just about to give birth to her first baby. And my daddy was about to deliver it. The bearded guy must be her husband. That’s too weird…”

  “Truth can be stranger than fiction, sweetheart. The bearded man was another Secret Service agent, Mike Taurus. They were deeply in love. Too bad about the nepotism rules.”

  “We have those as well at Heavenly HMO. They won’t hire relatives. So you mean the Secret Service wouldn’t let them get married?”

  “They got married all right. And when the brass found out, they had it annulled.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  He rowed us out into the open water.

  I gathered my red and white pinstriped dress around me. “Hey, this is a candy striper outfit. So I’d blend in at the hospital, eh?”

  He smiled.

  I blurted out, “Daddy had black hair!”

  Dream man said, “And what is so exclamatory about that?”

  I laughed. “He’s had gray hair all of my life. I never even thought to ask what color his natural hair color was. It was rough growing up with older parents. Daddy’s been an old man since I was born. Momma, she kept active and up until two years ago, she didn’t have any wrinkles.”

  I spotted red lights, from a freighter…or maybe a German U-Boat? I asked him, “Where are we headed?”

  “Palm Springs.”

  I moved next to him and snuggled up between his legs, my back to him. I loved feeling his muscles expand and contract as he rowed. And the gentle sound of his breath with the ocean lapping the boat.

  I said, “You mean Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, golf and swimming pools in the desert Palm Springs?”

  “Yes.”

  “California?”

  “Sure is. Get some rest, sweetheart. Go on, close your eyes.”

  “But we’re headed east. Are you gonna row around the world, or double back through the Panama Canal?”

  He tugged my hat down over my face. “Shh…no worries for you, Cinderella. I’ll sail you over still waters.”

  The ocean breeze whispered the “Donna” song.

  ~*~

  An obnoxious who-who-who-who hoot forced my eyes open. I watched shadows dancing on the lace canopy of my bed. Shoot. Why did I always have to wake up at the good parts? I was just getting ready to roll over and investigate what kind of snack dream boy kept in his left pocket. Bet he had a well-packed lunchbox. Meat and two veggies as the UK girls would say. I squinted up through the crocheted flowers and made out the figure of a barn owl. She tended to roost on top of one of the skylights over my bed.

  Why I ever thought having two skylights in my bedroom would be romantic, I’d never know. I couldn’t take naps during the day, it was like sleeping in a microwave oven. And the radiant heat was oppressive. The skylight in the bathroom was nice, I didn’t have to worry about a night light.

  “Hush up, lady owl.” I decided earlier in the season that it must be a female. Who else could make that much noise? I should call her Tammy. I giggled evilly.

  Tammy, Tammy, Tammy with the beautiful mocha face. Momma used to whisper to me that Tammy was a mulatto. When they adopted her in the sixties, mixed marriages were still mainly taboo in most of the country. I wondered whether she was a love child and her momma had to give her up. Perhaps she was the baby of one of Daddy’s patients? He was so protective over her. It took a special couple to raise someone else’s child. Spoil someone else’s child. Diva-tize someone else’s child.

  The nature/nurture thing again. Would Tammy still be a beautiful high-maintenance woman if she were raised in her birth family? For some bizarre reason, I did love Tammy. She was my only sister—well, except for the two children born to my mother before me as noted on my top-secret birth certificate. Were they my sisters or brothers? Perhaps one more of each? My last dream had ended before I could find out.

  Tammy couldn’t help it if she was selfish and thought the world revolved around her. It did. I rolled over on my stomach, lifting up slightly to adjust my breasts. I shoved my hands under the pillow. The midnight blue sheets were cool and almost invisible in the dark night. Oh great. A new sound. What was it? A cat in heat, protesting the violation by old Tom? No, no, that wasn’t exactly it. A deer perhaps? What kind of sound did a deer make?

  I yanked the pillow over my head as my pulse reacted to memories of the accident. I really felt guilty. I had killed a deer. Yeah, it could’ve very well killed me back then but it didn’t. I survived. The buck died. Well, I guess it did anyhow. Gee, I wondered if I should ask. Who would I ask?

  Shoot. I still hadn’t called about my Chevy. And just who should I call about that? I wished they’d told me more at the hospital. I didn’t even know where they towed it to. Oh shit. I could just imagine the impound fees adding up daily.

  I let out a big long breath and flopped onto my back.

  Lying in irritated silence. At least, no more who-who hooty owl. No more wild deer/alley cat. I strained my ears, hoping to hear a melody. No such luck. I couldn’t conjure up my dream man again. If only he’d just step out for a moment and I would have him as my regular bed guest. That would be superb. The perfect lover. No strings attached. Wasn’t that a cliché? I could do better. I was a writer. He takes me for what I am and loves me anyway. An undercover, under-the-covers lover. Oh yeah, I liked that. Should work it into my work-in-progress.

  My work-in-progress. My second novel. What would it be? I really needed to toil on character building, goal, motivation and conflict and then a nice feasible multi-twisted plot. I sighed loudly and rolled onto my side and stared at the turned-off TV.

  All right, Donna dear, sleep is not coming back tonight. I got up, went into the bathroom and washed my face in the moonlight. I stepped on the scale and moved the little black weight. I edged it slowly, watching the end to see when it balanced. Okay, it did. I squinted at the number. One thirty-two and a quarter. I was getting there. I slipped into floral-print cotton panties and my pink silk robe and then plodded down the dark staircase.

  In the kitchen I flipped the light on over the stove, under the vent hood. Daddy always did that when I was little. I couldn’t stand light first thing in the morning. So he kindly accommodated me. Perry wouldn’t talk at breakfast. Couldn’t talk. He just needed a big plate of food and something sweet to drink. Orange juice. He loved orange juice. Tammy, she’d luxuriate in bed, listening to classical music on WGMS and not even join us for breakfast. She never did eat much. Didn’t care for meat. Oh she’d eat it if Momma made her but she’d rather not. And she was one of those fussy people that ate only one food at a time. All of her peas and then all of her mashed potatoes and then all of her salad and then all of her cornbread.

  The digital clock on the stove and the one on the microwave both said five–oh–three. Happy Friday morning, Donna. I decided I might as well boil the jug as my former Scott
ish roommate-from-Hell used to say. I filled the cow teakettle and lit the burner.

  I chose a large palm tree plate and layered white paper towels across it. I positioned the last three slices of bacon on top, covered it and popped it into the microwave. I zapped it for four minutes.

  I trotted down the hallway to the front door and peeked out through the etched glass. Didn’t see anything, so I unlocked it and stepped out, searching for the newspaper. I found it, on the bottom step of the stoop. I paused to look across Spyglass Street at Officer Dick’s house. All the detectives had departed. It looked like it normally did. Police cruiser in the driveway. I wondered if it had been there last night. His police cruiser. At the time, with all the cops combing, I didn’t think of it. Couldn’t tell them apart anyhow. One dark blue Fairfax County police car would look the same as another to me.

  The wind chilled me. As my mind delved into the disappearance of Dick, I pulled my robe tighter. I hurried up my stairs. It must be horrible to vanish without a trace. What if there was foul play, or an accident, or blackmail, or werewolves, or—

  I flung open my door and slammed it shut behind me. I bumped it with my hip and I heard the loud click, just as Officer Dick taught me to listen for. I hurried to the stove as the cow kettle whistled an ominous shriek. Upon spinning the dial to the off notch, the flame snuffed and the cow immediately retreated with a declining sigh.

  The microwave beeped. The LED message spelled out Enjoy your meal. I tucked the newspaper under my arm, opened the door and carefully removed the hot plate. I set it on the octagonal glass tabletop along with The Washington Post and then made my strong sweet tea. I set the tea on the table and then carried the newspaper over to the chrome trashcan. I stepped on the foot pedal and the lid opened. I ripped the plastic bag off and let it drop as I removed today’s news.

  I heard the metallic lid clunk as I walked back and sat down, flipping the chandelier switch on the way. Scanning the front page, I munched the crispy bacon. I skimmed through the entire section, not finding anything of interest, except that Mercury was in retrograde. Hmm…I folded the front page up and slurped a hot sip of tea. Perhaps my soul mate across history might be able to transport me to Mars soon. I smiled. He loved me. I lingered on that notion as I sipped.