Perri O'Shaughnessy - Sinister Shorts

He nudged Laura with his hip. “Honey, move it!” When she didn't move, he tried going around her. She turned to face him, stretching her arms out to block him.

Up ahead, Mole exited, her pink shirt flapping behind her. “Christ!” he said. “Please, Laura!”

Behind them, other passengers began stealing across the middle aisle to the other side of the plane.

He considered bolting, but only for a second. The look in her eye riveted him.

“It's one of those women, isn't it?”

“What?” He wanted to laugh but he didn't have time. “No.”

“It's her,” she said. “The pretty one.”

In spite of his consternation, he had to ask, “What are you talking about?”

“The one with the bogus baby. Did you think I wouldn't notice?”

“Notice what?” He felt his heartbeat all the way down to his fingertips.

“What's she, an au pair? A babysitter?”

“Who?” he asked urgently. “Which one?”

But Laura was on her own jag. “You had me so thrown off, the way you eyeballed those other two mothers. But you're devious, I guess I know that because of your work. Maybe you imagined you could throw me off that way? And for a few minutes there, I tried to think they just reminded you of… of me, when I first had our children. I thought you were remembering what I was remembering. I imagined tenderness.” A tear hung in the corner of her eye.

Registering it, he felt forced to ignore it for the moment. “You said bogus baby. What are you talking about, Laura? It's important.”

“At first I thought she was just another mother. She had me fooled for at least five seconds.”

“My God, honey, help me here. Which one had you fooled? Who?”

“Don't lie to me. You bribed your mother. I wanted to think it was for us. Now I know it wasn't.”

The three moms would be in the terminal now, buying tickets to places where the palm trees could hide them forever, waving down taxis, catching rides, out of his reach unless he could find a way out of this mess right now.

“Which one?” he yelled, grabbing her arm.

She pulled it away, reached down, and unzipped her bag. She pulled out a big straw hat. “I'm going down that gangplank onto the tarmac. I'm going to feel that sun-soaked air, and I'm going to love it. And I'm going without you.”

“For God's sake, Laura! Which one? Which one is bogus?”

The line behind them emptied as their fellow travelers continued to skulk furtively over to the next aisle and out the front.

She gave him a hard look and saw something new. Her expression changed. “Oh, Daniel,” she said, worriedly. “I got it wrong, didn't I.”

“You sure did!”

“It's work, isn't it? My old familiar rival. Same old, same old.”

“Yes, yes. It's work! Now who the hell is she?”

“Tell me why you need to know.”

But he was not supposed to tell. He couldn't share such things with her. She stood in one place, he stood in another. They stood frustrated in the airplane aisle, immobilized by her recalcitrance and his stubborn maleness.

“Tell me.”

She knew little about his work, except that mostly he did things he couldn't talk about.

He had no choice, and for once, he had no doubt he was doing exactly the right thing. “It's a kidnapping, Laura. She stole the kid.”

Laura's reply came instantly. “The one in the yellow sundress.”

Fan.

“Go get her.” She stepped aside.

He ran.

The authorities in Puerto Rico arrested the woman in the yellow sundress just as she was trotting toward a plane for St. Kitts, ran her face and stats through their computers.

Fan was their bogus mom.

Baby was returned home to his, as it turned out, frantic family in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Daniel and Laura flew to Tortola and stayed for three weeks at a villa near Smuggler's Cove, Olga be damned. Laura loved the air, the humidity, the silver waves. Daniel loved Laura.

“Now,” he said that first night, the one where she wore the slinky black nightie until, four piña coladas past the yardarm, he tore it off her with his teeth. “How did you know it was her?”

“She got off the plane with a baby on her shoulder and a bottle in her hand. So where was her diaper bag?

“No insecure new mom goes anywhere without a pile of changes, activities, toys. She had one diaper, two bottles, no bag. I couldn't help wondering, where's the stuffy, the rattle, the plastic key set? Where's Shamu the stuffed whale?”

Daniel said, “I owe you, honey.”

“Then pay up,” Laura said, and he grabbed her.

Leaving the shop behind, Claude stepped outside onto the street and took a deep breath of car fumes. He wrinkled his nose and finding that insufficient defense, blew it on an immaculate handkerchief. He zipped his new leather jacket, walked toward the subway, then stopped, laughing a little at himself. Habit, old scripts. He had plenty of cards and cash nowadays. He scanned the street for taxis, but saw none. Hands in his pockets, he reflected on the circumstance that had led him into the perfume business. He loved the smell of women. He drank in their radiant skin the way other men guzzled fine wine. His father, trained at the Henri Jacques Parfum House in France, had left him the San Francisco shop when he died, probably worried about Claude. “A man needs an occupation,” he used to scold, “even a gentleman.” After the inheritance, crazy in love with Clea, with an excellent education in French literature but no calling, Claude discovered the latent talent hidden in his untrained but eager nose.

He waved a yellow cab down, got inside, and shut the cold wind out. Today had been unusually successful. Four Asian females, all beautiful, all petite and dark with hair that gleamed like dripping oil, had bought out the majority of his stock of his most precious French scents, the ones he had manufactured especially for his shop. He had a special connection to the factory outside of Eze. The town hovered pretty as a sprawling vacation villa above the Mediterranean, and was very near where his father's relatives all lived, and where he had spent the majority of his childhood until the divorce, when his mother had brought him to the States to live near her family. He thought perhaps something floral would suit them, heavy on the tuberose, beeswax, and rose de May, with a slight tickle of sweet honey.

Bantering, friendly, fun-loving, these Asian customers knew how to make a good day great, how to flirt with a man, how to make him feel-manly. On the way out, the prettiest of the group slipped her business card into his pocket, whispering, “I'll be back at the hotel by eight tonight. Call me.”

Unbidden images invaded his mind. Six years of happy marriage had inured him to such invitations, but recently, he felt pulled in an unfamiliar way. He felt a weakening, a lack of moral musculature where there once was brawn. Still, he did not want another woman. Another woman would not be Clea. He wanted Clea back, the way she was the day he met her.

The trip to their home in Noe Valley shouldn't take more than ten minutes from downtown San Francisco, but tonight, with rush hour in full roar… the halts and jerks of the cab irritated him, obliterating the last traces of his good mood. He began to picture Clea, at the window at home, waiting for him, her beady, unmascaraed eyes never wavering from the street.

Beautiful, she had been, with her flaming red hair, her perfect body and intense intelligence. Passionate, loving, the ideal model for his products, Clea was his vision of female perfection. She looked as she was, like a woman with a career of her own, thoughts, opinions, life, so much life. Everything a man could want, she had been.