Lloyd's Angel: Heartbreak
April 2003
"Room service!" chirped the perky coed. She stood beside the bed, holding a loaded tray, and displaying her cleavage to good effect. That was easy, since her outfit would make an NFL cheerleader look prim. I didn't know how she avoided freezing.
I groaned and thought about going back to sleep, but the smell of Eggs Benedict had gotten my stomach growling. "He's your brother," I mumbled at the mop of silver-blonde hair on the pillow beside me.
"He's your partner," Alex tartly rejoined, rolling over. "Just leave it on the bed, Denise; we'll let your evil master know you did a good job."
"Thanks, Mrs. Parker! Have a great day!" She skipped out of the room, and we heard the front door open and close a minute later.
"Why did I go into business with Danny, again?" I groused, and sat up. I'd been asking the question for decades, so my wife just ignored me. When I'd found out my "wedding present" was an ownership interest in Home Run, I'd been appalled; I'd also felt personally responsible both for Danny's mindset and the welfare of some of the girls -- Susan among them -- he'd engaged. It felt comfortable now, but the oddity got to me every time I stopped and actually thought about it.
Beside me, Alex reached for her reading glasses. "Forty-one years. Can you believe it?"
"God, I'm a lucky bastard."
"Yes, you are," she laughed, and reached for her plate.
It wasn't our anniversary, but rather the anniversary of the day we'd decided to marry. We'd gone back to the old Madison hotel every year until it had closed in the early nineties, but now we just stayed home. Danny, bless his twisted little heart, felt we needed "hotel ambiance" and never failed to provide his take on room service. It was a mystery how he'd deduced the menu, but I wouldn't have been surprised to learn he'd hired the Madison's old chef to prepare it.
A man of surprising depths was my brother-in-law, as long as he could work in a scantily-clad girl and make a buck off it. Denise was a case in point.
We'd found her in a shelter for battered women, bruised from the working over her pimp had given her, and climbing the walls in need for her heroin fix. My artistry didn't extend to curing physical addiction, but it was child's play to blunt the psychological craving and adjust the emotional baggage that had gotten her to that point.
She wasn't one of the "service personnel;" Danny's unwritten agreement with the cops was that he didn't take outcall jobs, and he was scrupulous about sending somebody from the bar staff on these occasions. Frankly, I thought he was more scared of Alex than the vice squad.
Still, peculiar though it might seem, we sent a lot of our rescues his way. Danny was always in need of attractive support staff who weren't put off by the shenanigans at the club, and a word from Alex or me was all the background check he needed. Like the others before her, Denise had a steady job, a good support system, and when she got her GED later that year, she'd be poised to move on to even bigger and better opportunities. It was one of the things that let me live with myself.
Alex sighed and set the book review aside, still unread. Sometimes we made love in the morning, but this didn't look like one of those days. "Hold me," was all she said.
That was easy enough to do, and remarkably pleasant. Alex had just turned 65, but although she'd never had a facelift or Botox, she'd kept her figure; I thought the silver in her hair just made her more elegantly beautiful. I scooted closer, and then surprised her by hoisting her into my lap so she lay against my chest. My hand found her breast beneath the silk negligee, no longer as high and firm as in her youth, but still precious to me.
"I'm damn lucky you married me," I repeated, more somberly.
"So am I," Alex whispered, conforming her body to mine with the ease of long practice.
I knew she was thinking of Jonathan. After she'd broken off their engagement, he'd surprised nearly everyone by marrying Connie; she'd been showing at our wedding and their daughter had been born a scandalously short time afterwards. Their marriage had survived years of compulsive serial cheating on both sides -- Connie had even worked for Danny for a while -- but it hadn't survived the downturn in the '70s when Jonathan lost his job. The daughter had left for college and never looked back, and Connie had moved to Florida. She and Alex still exchanged cards and occasional phone calls, but their lives had moved in different directions.
It was a comfortable existence, and the work distracted both of us from the terrible loss of Lloyd Jr. and so many others on 9/11. We'd had him late, and with our hopes for a daughter-in-law and grandchildren dashed, we poured our energies into the surrogate children from the ruin of the real world in memory of the child of our bodies.
Alex stirred momentarily to life. "We should go in."
That meant it was bad. The work we did with the shelters was somewhere between outreach and a hobby; the job that paid the bills was the Edward and Patricia Sullivan Memorial Center for Clinical Psychology, of which Dr. Alexandra Parker, M.D., Ph.D. was the founding staff member. Yeah, when Danny thought they weren't rich, it really meant my in-laws hadn't intended to squander their wealth on themselves or their children. Public works, on the other hand...
I was on staff, too, but in a lower-key role. It was almost funny the way medical doctors treated the "fake" doctors like me, but I didn't take their disdain too seriously. Most people probably thought I was just there as a sop to humor Alex, which was fine with us since I could never have explained what exactly it was I did do. She could spout enough psycho-babble to snow anybody who got curious, and do it with a straight face.
Consequently, the most challenging work happened on Sundays, when fewer bystanders were around to worry about. It went without saying that none of the patients Alex asked me to consult on were there for a vacation retreat.
"Tell me about it?" I asked, curious.
"I'd rather not," Alex replied, surprising me. "I'd like to get your opinion without prejudicing it first."
I couldn't remember another time she'd said that. Part of me wondered what could be that bad, but another part of me looked forward to the chance to do something more interesting than reforming another crack whore. There were only so many seriously fucked-up head cases out there, after all.
"Shower first? I'd hate for people to think you kept me around just for the sex." I nuzzled her tousled hair and squeezed her breast suggestively.
Alex laughed, as I'd hoped, and rolled off of me. "You're pretty good, for an old man. Do you think you can catch me?"
I laughed too as I chased her fetching silk-clad ass into the bathroom.
I was still admiring it, now clad in seasonably-appropriate wool slacks and obligatory white monogrammed lab coat, as we made the short walk from Alex's reserved spot into the Center. We nodded politely to the guard and the few other staffers we saw, all of whom were appropriately awed to be in presence of Alexandra the Great. I'd never told her about the nickname, but that didn't mean she hadn't learned it.
We ended up in the secure ward, which wasn't a total surprise, but ruled out a few things. Alex checked us in at the control desk, and I ambled over to room 1. It had an attached viewing area, and I knew we'd need it for this case. I looked through the glass cutout in the door.
The occupant was a looker. She sat on the bed, naked, rocking back and forth, and stared at the wall in front of her. She had preposterously large breasts, capped by wide areolae and erect nipples, a wasp waist, and shoulder-length dirty blonde hair that might have looked attractive if it had been brushed. Jarringly, her face was made up like one of Danny's girls. I guessed her to be in her late twenties, more or less.
"Where did you find her?" I asked Alex, who was standing beside me.
"No cheating," she said, without a trace of humor in her voice. "Let's visit, first." She unlocked the door and we entered the room.
