Husband Number Three

Walter telephoned the Friday after Thanksgiving, thanking Amanda. Almost immediately, they argued inside the same old spirals formed of opposing, impossible hopes. Finally, Walter asked Amanda a favor. Michelle had left a valuable pink pearl earring in the hotel room, probably on the night-table. 

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“Well then. Why don’t I drive over there and ask the hotel manager?” Amanda dug her fingernails into her forearm. She didn’t care one whit about Michelle and rejected any notion that Walter did either.

“I appreciate it, honey.”

“Just promise me that if it’s not at the hotel, you won’t buy her replacement earrings.”

Freddie Berger, the hotel manager, affected suave mannerisms possibly, Amanda thought, to match establishment’s 1920s period style. He greeted her with a slight bow, his dark curls falling over a narrow forehead. He pressed her hand within his warm, strong, well-manicured grasp. She pulled back, but his blue eyes assured her: his act was just for fun. His bespoke suit and expensive shoes and tie worked like props. His sly, ebullient grin, so mischievous, telegraphed that he delighted in nothing so much as relieving her—or anyone’s—distress. “Give me five, maybe ten minutes, to find the earring. Do you know the room number?”

Amanda didn’t, but Walter’s name answered that. Freddie tapped at a keyboard and adjusted an earpiece before requesting Nancy meet him in the back office.

Amanda was studying the lobby’s main sculpture when Freddie tapped her shoulder. She turned, somewhat surprised as he emptied a small satin pouch into her hand. “Is this it?” 

Amanda nodded; it matched Walter’s description, anyway.

With a wider, more sincere grin that he clearly intended to come across as irresistible, Freddie insisted on buying Amanda a drink. “To make up for the anxiety.” He lowered his arms and shrugged. A paltry excuse, but hey, they were riding the tail of a holiday weekend, and it was almost dark outside. “Why the hell not?”

She hesitated for real, not bluffing, but he firmly issued her inside the hotel’s soft-lit restaurant. “We just stocked an excellent Pinot Grigio.”

After pulling out her chair and moving quite close to her, he laid his smooth hands and immaculate shirt cuffs on the edge of their small, gleaming little table. “Unless you prefer Champagne.”

She laughed. “Champagne? You always treat relatives retrieving lost stuff like this?”

“No one remotely like you has ever inquired about a pink pearl earring.”

She sipped white wine and Freddie, who when it came down to it changed his mind and ordered a double Boodles martini, assured her he wasn’t married, and didn’t have a girlfriend. “What about you?”

Amanda admitted she was filing for a second divorce. “The first marriage, though, wasn’t really a mistake. It lasted ten years and gave me two amazing little girls. So what if Mike changed from this cool, happy guy, into a big, dumb slob, and now into a self-righteous Episcopalian? He’s a decent father.” 

“You were married for ten years?” Freddie asked. “What, were you in high school?”

“Just starting college.”

“And now?”

“I work for the school district and turn thirty-one in April.”

Freddie was twenty-eight and asked her to dinner next Friday. Amanda said, “Okay. If I can schedule it.”

A few minutes later, outside her house, she phoned Walter from her car.

“You’re kidding. I wasn’t totally convinced Michelle had even lost an earring,” he said.

Amanda let that go; that’s how anxious she was about Freddie. “Um, Walter. The hotel manager asked me out to dinner. Next Friday.”

“And you’re asking for parental permission?”

Shit. She bit her lip. “I’m just mentioning it.”

“Amanda,” he couldn’t help pleading, “please, don’t marry this guy on a whim. Don’t marry him until I can meet him.”

“It’s one date, Walter. I’ve made two mistakes; I’m not going to make another. Besides, David’s stalling out of spite. I couldn’t get married again if I tried.”

“Amanda, honey.” he said her name in a way that declared no one else should say her name. “Amanda.” No one else, ever. Walter alone knew who she was.

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