Desert Dunes when Big Julie was and happened to come down the same elevator he used and it didn’t mean a thing, even if she looked more or less exactly like the grainy photo of the blonde at the golf course.
The blonde turned into a dress shop and, with no hesitation whatsoever, Marilyn followed her in. The blonde tart at the golf course had never seen Marilyn, would have no idea what she looked like. Marilyn wasn’t worried.
Marilyn browsed jewelry while the blonde browsed clothes in sizes Marilyn hadn’t seen in twenty years, finally taking a few outfits into a fitting room and trying them on. Just as Marilyn thought she couldn’t pretend for one more second to be deciding between pairs of rhinestone bangles, the blonde decided on an outfit and took it to the register.
“Charge it to room sixteen-oh-one,” she said.
Sixteen-oh-one, Marilyn realized, was the penthouse directly above hers. Hers and Big Julie’s.
The blonde signed, the clerk smiled, stapled the receipt, closed the bag, and handed it to the woman, who sashayed past Marilyn and went back the way she’d come. Smiling at the clerk, Marilyn followed her out of the store and watched her head back to the elevator banks.
But instead of following her, Marilyn turned to the right and went to the line of house phones across from the concierge desk. She picked up a phone and an operator came on.
“Can you tell me which room Julie Saladino is in?” she asked the operator.
“I yam sorree,” said the operator. “I yam not allowed to give out that informayshun.”
“Please connect me to sixteen-oh-one,” Marilyn said, expecting the worst.
The phone rang.
“Yeah,” Drake answered.
Marilyn thought that at ten-thirty in the morning, Big Julie would still be lying snoring on the big king bed in fifteen-oh-one where she’d left him. But she could still find out if he was registered with the blonde in sixteen-oh-one and with herself one floor below.
Marilyn clenched her teeth and spoke through them, hoping to disguise her voice. “Can I pleazhe zhpeak to Big Chulie?”
“He’s not here,” Drake said. “Who’s this?”
“I’ll call back.” Marilyn hung up.
So. Her lousy, two-timing creep of a husband had not only lied to her about dumping that tramp, she was here in Vegas! Staying with her husband! In the suite directly above hers!
All thoughts of bacon and eggs, not to mention wheatgrass and probiotics, fled her mind as Marilyn stormed back to the elevators and viciously stabbed the call button. When the elevator doors opened, Marilyn leaped in, jabbing the button for the fifteenth floor. As Marilyn gnashed her teeth, the doors closed majestically, in their own time, and the car rose. By the time the doors finally opened on the fifteenth floor, Marilyn was in a frenzy. She slashed her access card through the key slot and flung herself into the suite, barreling through the rooms until she got to the bedroom, where Big Julie lay in semi-naked sonambulance.
“You big—big—jerk!” Marilyn yelled, not finding a word bad enough to call her life’s mate.
“Wha—?” big Julie said, struggling to sit up. “What’s the matter, Baby?” And then realizing who he was talking to, added, too late, “Marilyn. Sweetheart.”
Marilyn picked up the lamp from the side table. “You lying—” she heaved the lamp at him, “cheating—” she picked up the clock radio, “two-timing—” threw it at him, “scum!” She picked up a small vase holding an artificial flower arrangement and held it before her, vibrating in fury.
“You brought that tramp out here! You’ve been staying with her upstairs! Don’t deny it! I saw her!” She pitched the flower vase at him, looking for something else to throw.
Big Julie had dodged the lamp purely by instinct and had fully awakened by the time the clock radio whizzed by his head. Training and experience kicked in, and he watched his spouse warily, ducking flying objects as they smashed on the wall behind him. Marilyn had lousy aim, but if she hit him she could do some damage. He didn’t want to get hurt—especially not if injuries to sensitive parts of his anatomy cut into his time with Baby.
But what a throw! Marilyn was putting a lot of force behind her delivery, and if she wasn’t getting results, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Her skin was flushed from the effort. A deep V of sweat stained the front of her leotard. Her pink athletic socks sagged around her ankles, her carefully tinted red hair escaped its pony tail and flew around her head.