What Happens in Paradise(66)

No matter how tempting, she’d added. And, oh yes, it will be tempting.

It is tempting—the journal with the red floral cover, demure and innocent with the look of a colonial-era recipe book.

But Baker leaves it be.

In the end, Trinity taught him a lot. He must remember to hit her up on Facebook and thank her.

Back in the bedroom, he runs a finger down the length of Ayers’s spine and she shivers awake and opens one eye. “You leaving?”

“I have to,” he whispers. “Floyd.”

“Okay,” she says.

Baker clears his throat. “And, uh, you remember that I’m leaving tomorrow for Houston? I have that thing on Saturday? But I’m coming right back. So you don’t have to worry.”

“What day?” Ayers asks. “What day are you coming back?”

Baker does a quick calculation. The benefit auction is Saturday night. Sunday he’s on cleanup duty. He needs at least two additional days to get the move organized, maybe three; honestly, he could use a week, but now that this has happened, all he can think about is how to get back here as quickly as possible. But then again, he has a life to dismantle—Floyd’s medical records need to be transferred (to where?); Baker needs to forward his mail (to where?) and figure out what to do about his income taxes. There’s stuff. “Wednesday,” he says. “Thursday.”

“Wednesday or Thursday?” she asks.

“Thursday,” he says. “Week from today.”

“I’m working at La Tapa Thursday night,” she says. “Come by after work. We can celebrate your move.”

He kisses her temple. “You got it,” he says. He puts his clothes on and runs both hands through his hair. “Oh, by the way, the chick who got drunk on your boat was a friend of Tilda’s.”

Ayers rolls over and squints at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, that’s what my mother told me Cash said. I guess Cash and Tilda went out last night.”

“They did?” Ayers says, sitting up.

“Yeah,” Baker says. “I think so.” He wonders if hearing this bothers Ayers for some reason.

She smiles. “They’re perfect for each other.” She falls back into her pillows. “When you get back, we can double-date.”

“Great,” Baker says sardonically—although, actually, it sounds like fun.



The theme for the Children’s Cottage benefit auction is Monopoly. This was Debbie’s idea. She was in charge of dreaming up something to top Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, which was last year’s theme. Although Baker was skeptical about the appeal of Monopoly—it evoked nothing so much as the rainy afternoons of childhood, trapped in a never-ending game of being sent to jail, paying other people rent, and eventually going bankrupt due to real estate failures—the execution is brilliantly done. Baker has dressed up as Rich Uncle Pennybags, in a vest with a pocket watch, and people are chattering with anticipation as they leave the school parking lot. (FREE PARKING signs abound, which is cute, even though parking is always free at the Children’s Cottage.)

The event is being held in the school gymnasium (built back in 2000 by one of the owners of the Houston Rockets), but the board of directors, naturally, have created a path that takes attendees through the school so that they can see where their donations will be going. Baker, with Ellen at his side, walks through the reading nook filled with picture books, the numbers room with boxes of manipulatives, the science room where kids study birds’ nests and leaves and different kinds of rocks, the social studies room, festooned with flags of the world, and last, and most popular, the water-table room. They then pass through the courtyard with the outdoor playground into the gym, which has been transformed into a Monopoly board for the evening.

At the front table, everyone picks up a plastic top hat and mustache on a stick (each stick has a number printed on the back; it doubles as an auction paddle) and proceeds to one of the tables, all of which are named for Monopoly properties and sheathed in tablecloths of the corresponding colors. Baker and his school wives are, naturally, at Boardwalk, with a tablecloth of Columbia blue. The centerpiece is a flour-sack money bag filled with pebbles and holding a bouquet of gold dahlias. The photo booth is decorated to look like the Jail square, so once Baker’s friends choose seats, he suggests they get their pictures taken, then go find glasses of the event’s signature cocktail, the Chance Card, which is a lurid orange. They’re being served by Vicki Styles, who likes to expose her cleavage whenever she can.

“That was a good choice,” Becky says. “The Chance Cards are being served by the Community Chest.”

Baker loves his school wives. How will he ever leave them?

The event swims along. People drink, eat hors d’oeuvres, bid on silent-auction items. Baker really wants to get Floyd tickets to the first Texans game, but then he remembers that he’s not going to be around for it. Wendy wants them all to chip in on a house in Galveston in May—but Baker won’t be here for that either. He needs to tell his friends about his plans, and soon; the only person who knows is Ellen.

Standing in the strobe-lit school gym surrounded by people he has known for years—and even psycho Mandy in her little black dress with her satin Justin Verlander team jacket on top seems endearing tonight—Baker has a hard time believing that he was in Ayers’s apartment only two days earlier. He has switched worlds. Which one of them is real?