Chapter Twenty

THE DRINK IN HER HAND

Celeste Stuart stood in front of the mirror and brushed her long, brown hair for no particular reason except that it relaxed her. On the bureau below the mirror were jewelry boxes that contained settings her mother and grandmother passed down to her. She decided not to sell them in order to finance her departure from her husband, Arthur. Next to the jewelry boxes was a picture of Arthur and her when they first got married. It was taken at their getaway home in Cedar Key. The home belonged to her, but soon after their marriage, at Arthur's request, she had put it in trust.

She also deposited in the trust a substantial portfolio of stocks, valued in the millions, which she inherited. Arthur and one of his law partners convinced her that he should be named director of the trust because of his expertise. As a result she didn't have control of her inheritance without Arthur's permission. Soon after their marriage, she found out he mysteriously wouldn't give her access to her inheritance.

The money that Celeste garnished from the remodeling account was stashed inside a stationary box in her bottom bureau drawer. After she put the mother-of-pearl hairbrush down on the bureau, she retrieved the stationary box and counted the money. To her dismay it wasn't as much as she wanted.

She used the money for little excursions. On this day she was going to meet a friend, Stephanie Jacobs, for lunch at the country club and then they planned to go to a movie.

Despite her uncertainty, she grinned as she remembered Wilbur's last visit to her house.

xxx

Part of the remodeling was to convert their house to central heat and air conditioning. Therefore, the partially buried fuel oil tank was no longer needed. Wilbur agreed to dig it up.

"Finally putting my degree to work," Wilbur stated.

Celeste smiled at his remark.

"Here's a little bit of trivia for you," Wilbur began. "This guy, Archimedes, lived in Sicily over two thousand years ago. This fuel oil tank is a cylinder. Archimedes discovered that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of the cylinder that contains it. This is a world of change. That's one of the few things that doesn't change," Wilbur noted while leaning against the shovel and tapping the large cylindrical drum with his right sneaker. "We're all looking for something like that. It's amazing that something insignificant like this tank contains a truth like that."

Celeste was still intrigued by this later that day when she sat with Stephanie Jacobs at the country club. She debated with herself whether to entwine Stephanie with her arrangement with Wilbur Dobbs.

xxx

When Wilbur completed the digging at Celeste's house he had a delivery arranged by Dave Hamilton. Dave sold the bed the previous week. It had been in the showroom for several months.

"No one in their right mind would buy that clunker," Dave Hamilton often hypothesized about this particular waterbed with a purple, crushed-velvet frame.

He paused. Wilbur knew one of Dave's cadre of philosophical gems gleaned from twenty years in the furniture business was on its way.

"That means there's a lot of prospects out there I can unload it on. I can turn that trash into cash."

Dave then launched a chili bean fart from a reclined position on his Lazyboy desk chair.

"Did I ever tell you 'bout the one I landed on my son, Albert, on his birthday?"

Wilbur had heard several times how Dave had lured Albert into close quarters and had given him a surprise birthday present. Albert, who at one time had been a long-haired bird counter for the Audubon Society enroute to a Nobel Prize in biochemistry, or so Margo imagined, was now an F-16 fighter pilot.

"I've heard that one before," Wilbur said, but Dave was already gleefully submersed into his story.

xxx

Wilbur turned right into a subdivision to deliver the crushed velvet bed that had been dead space on the display floor. According to Dave, a blonde beauty bought the bed so Wilbur was curious what Dave meant by that. Perhaps, Wilbur fantasized, there might be the opportunity to help this blonde beauty break in her new crushed velvet clunker.

He wheeled the delivery van through the recently completed subdivision. A pine forest timidly lurked at the edge of the development. Palm trees stuck out conspicuously on the otherwise treeless lawns. Children rode bicycles in the streets. They stared at Wilbur who looked like a foreign creature in a spacecraft as the van with all the lights and reflectors on it passed.

He bobbed from side to side trying to catch the street names that weren't on a map because this area had been recently carved out of a Florida woodscape. It was quite different from Celeste Stuart's neighborhood which had been on the map since the hurricane of 1921.

"Where is that street?" he muttered.

The Florida sun pierced like a laser in the sky while a continual percussion vibrated from a nearby jet-landing pattern. Chocolate-colored beef cattle grazed in a nearby open field.

"Why can't these people give better directions?" he asked out loud.

It took several minutes, but soon he found the street. A new, light blue Cadillac was parked in the driveway. The house windows were ornamented with soft, pink burglar bars.

It looked strange so Wilbur wasn't surprised when it wasn't a gorgeous blonde sweetheart who answered the door. It was a skinny, dark-haired, olive-skinned girl with a snarl on her lips. It was Lourdes from Caracas, Venezuela. An older woman was right behind her peering at Wilbur.

"My roommate. She working. I show you where the bed go. My mother. She leaving now," she said, indicating the woman with her.

"Damn. Where's the beautiful blonde?" Wilbur lamented inwardly. "Here's another one of Dave's bullshit deals."

xxx

The living room had shiny chrome and glass furniture with bird feathers in a vase on a coffee table. Mirrors covered two entire walls. Wilbur's and Lourdes' images reflected off both walls. It made him dizzy seeing the multiple images of himself and Lourdes ricocheting off the contrasting walls.

"Chrome furniture...mirrors on the living room walls...blue Cadillac...pink burglar bars...crushed velvet...they must be hookers," Wilbur concluded.

Lourdes walked ahead of Wilbur into the newly painted, orange bedroom with one window.

"What color the bed? I don't know why she paint the room orange."

"Purple," Wilbur said quietly.

Lourdes was aggravated at the colors even though it wasn't her room. She was even more aggravated when he set up the huge, lavish, king-sized frame of purple with less than a foot of free space remaining on both sides of the bed.

"This must be mistake. This the bed she look at?"

"Yes mam. Sometimes they look a lot different in the store than in a room. They look smaller in the store 'cause it's so wide open. Let me know if you want it before I fill it with over one-half ton of water."

Ten seconds later she was on the phone to her roommate.

"I don't thin you should get this one," she said soothingly. "Maybe a smaller one."

Wilbur could tell she wanted the bed out of there, and she was trying to sweet talk her roommate into the same decision.

"We can look for another bed," she implored. "You know that one you see at the other store. With stereo and speakers, book shelves, very nice. Why not we look at that one?"

Wilbur listened as she went on for several minutes.

"What a pain Lourdes was," he thought. "Let the blonde beauty on the other end of the line make her own decision."

Lourdes was insistent though.

"I thin you make mistake. Let's we go look at other bed? I not like that bed in my room."

Wilbur sat on the chrome furniture and saw her reflection on the mirrors as she talked in the kitchen. Finally, she hung up in frustration.

"She not have room for a table by her bed. Nothing," she said with disgust.

Wilbur couldn't believe he was caught in between these two women. He didn't even know them.

Lourdes came out of the kitchen and walked by a dining room table that had ornate but gaudy legs.

"I only buy the best," she said, pointing at the dining room table. "Why get something you no like and is of no quality?"

"I'm of the same opinion," Wilbur said, trying to placate her rising anger.

"She no listen to me. She have no room for table, no light," she said, shaking her head.

She and Wilbur walked back into the bedroom. The bed was huge with sides that were thickly padded and had a purple, winged effect. Wilbur was filled with admiration and disgust at Dave Hamilton's ability to pull off sales like this.

"Well, I have enough room to leave ten inches on one side and twelve inches on the other or fourteen inches and eight inches. What side of the bed does she get in?"

"Twenty-two inches? I want the bed centered on wall."

"Eleven inches from each side? That's where it is now," Wilbur said as she looked incredulously.

"What?! That no can be. It's not under the window good."

Through the window Wilbur could see a small fenced-in back yard and stucco walls from the two, adjoining properties.

"That window isn't centered on the wall," he pointed out to her.

Her image of perfection was shattered by this revelation. She was thunderstruck.

"What?!"

Wilbur took out his measuring tape and showed her that the window was about ten inches off center.

"It look terrible. How 'bout we center it on this wall?" she suggested hurriedly, trying to salvage some measure of dignity.

She pointed in the opposite direction from where the bed was at that moment.

"If we moved it that way, you and your roommate would have to pole vault to get to the other side. The room isn't wide enough. I think we better leave it this way."

"Oh, it look terrible."

Wilbur was impatient.

"My boss said, if a customer isn't satisfied with a bed they can return it within thirty days. He does that because waterbeds are new, and people aren't sure about them. Tell your roommate to sleep on it. If she doesn't like it, she can return it."

Dave often said this, but he had never taken a bed back. Wilbur finally hit a chord of harmony with Lourdes, and her mood changed significantly.

"Oh yes? Really? Okay, I tell her. Okay, we leave it there. I not know that."

xxx

Later the bed was filling, and Wilbur was on speaking terms with Lourdes again.

"What kind of work do you do?"

"Me, my roommate, we do, uh," she hesitated, "electronics. That where she now."

"Oh. Must pay good," Wilbur replied, not believing her for one second.

"Yes."

"Did you go to college or something in Venezuela?"

"No. I go to electronic school, uh, in New Jersey," she stated.

"New Jersey? Oh."

"Would you like a drink?" she asked, changing the subject as quickly as she dared.

"Sure. You got some water?" Wilbur asked.

"How 'bout, eh, Scotch?"

"Scotch, yeah sure, with a little water."

She returned in a few minutes with a Scotch and water.

"Tastes good," Wilbur complimented her.

"Do you want watch TV in here with me before I go to the disco. I go to the disco every night. You not want to watch bed fill, do you?"

"Nah. I can keep an eye on it from in here with you," Wilbur stated then took a sip from his drink.

"Eh, you know how to fix doors?" she asked coyly.

She pointed at the sliding closet doors in the television room.

"They never work good," Lourdes complained.

"Yeah sure. Let me see," he said, then placed the drink on a chrome end table.

Wilbur played around with the door until it was back on its track. Lourdes was enthralled. Wilbur immediately thought he was going to get a tip for accomplishing that small feat.

"Lemmee go check the bed. I don't want it to overflow."

She followed him into the hallway and waited for him to return.

"You do house painting?"

"House painting? Yes, I can paint," Wilbur admitted.

"I like stripes on wall there," she stated, pointing to the hallway leading to the other bedroom. "I want blue stripes like blue in my bedroom. I want stripes like this," she said, indicating a zig-zag pattern.

Wilbur remembered Dave and Margo's striped bedroom, and his eyes widened like coffee saucers. She turned on the light in her bedroom. There was a double bed with an elaborate, frilled canopy. There was a night table next to it. She had two bureaus on the facing walls, and a door leading to another bathroom.

Wilbur glanced inside the room.

"You sure you want stripes? Actually, I'm working for this other lady so I don't think I have time right now to fit this into my schedule," he said.

"Maybe, maybe no. I don't know."

"The waterbed should be just about filled," Wilbur added.

He took a sip of Scotch and water then returned to the other room.

"I'm not very pretty," Lourdes lamented, standing in the bedroom doorway while Wilbur rolled across the waterbed trying to force the excess air bubbles out of the mattress.

Wilbur was surprised by her admission.

"Why do you say that? You're pretty."

"You thin so? You want another Scotch?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah sure."

Wilbur continued to force the air out of the mattress while Lourdes went for another drink. When she returned a few minutes later, the only thing she was wearing was the drink in her hand.

xxx

At the country club, a black waiter in a white suit poured another glass of iced tea for Celeste and Stephanie Jacobs.

"Have you ever heard of Archimedes?" Celeste quizzed her friend.