By the time my taxi pulled up to my dad’s house, though, I’d lost most of my gusto. I knew the odds I’d actually ream him out over this or anything else were prettyslim.
I’d never given the man a tenth of the flack he’ddeserved.
Standing in his tacky home, surrounded by all his flashy, gaudy bullshit, and giving him hell? Unlikely. Looking my father and his ridiculous life in the face always disarmed me. Made me realize how futile anything I could say to him reallywas.
It had been a long time since I’d been inside my father’s home. Maybe… six years? Seven? He’d lived in this one for over a decade, in this gated community in Summerlin, and I’d never enjoyed coming here. I’d never really enjoyed being in any of my dad’s homes over the years, but this one was easily my least-favorite.
Maybe because when I walked into it, it seemed so grossly unlikely that a man who’d fathered me could actually livehere.
It looked like a Goodfella lived in it. All marble and glossy and too much gold. And my dad himself, in his paisley silk pajama pants and robe, was the picture ofLook at me, I’m rich andsleazy.
There was even a new young thing on hisarm.
Well, she wasn’t exactly on his arm. She was lounging on his couch, half-naked, when I followed him into the expansive, shiny living room. She was topless, to be precise, and had a tiny, fluffy white dog in herlap.
When she saw me, she looked me over slowly and speculatively, making no move whatsoever to cover her breasts. And my dad, the epitome of grace and manners, didn’t even introduce usproperly.
“This is Margery,” he told her. And that wasit.
“Maggie,” I said. My dad only ever called me Margery to be an ass, because he knew I preferredMaggie.
“Charmaine,” the girl said, still looking me over. And not in a friendlyway.
“I’m his daughter,” I informed her, before she could say anything I could never unhear, like asking him if I’d dropped by for a threesome. “Could you please give us a little time to talk,alone?”
She didn’t say anything, but she got up and made a point of walking over to my dad, boobs still out, and gave him a gratuitous kiss before handing him the dog. Then she threw me another look. Like Maxxi, she was young and slightly plump, but where Maxxi had brown hair with fuchsia at the tips, this one was a peroxide-blonde.
She also had a definite skank vibe abouther.
Sadly, I kinda missedMaxxi.
When she’d wandered out of the room, I asked my dad, “What happened toMaxxi?”
“Gone,” he said, with a lack of feeling that was pretty disturbing, though I really couldn’t be surprised. I watched him stroke the dog’s fur and deposit the tiny thing gently on the couch. Then I lookedaround.
Why would I even hope to find Maxxihere?
Just because he’d kept her around longer than a lot of the other ones didn’t mean she’d be stayingforever.
I sighed and set my purse on a table. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get the kinds of answers I was hoping for. This became abundantly clear when I took a good, long read of mydad.
It was barely four-thirty on a Wednesday and he was definitely not sober. And he was mixing himself a fresh drink on his gaudy drink cart, this mirror-and-rhinestone thing that looked like it belonged on the set of a 1970sporno.
Looked a hell of a lot like the one he’d sent me and Zane as a wedding gift,actually.
Needless to say, we didn’t keepit.
On the wall behind him, there was a giant painting of—I shit you not—himself, with the dog. He also had a new tattoo on his wrist of a naked chick. Which brought the total count of naked chick tattoos on my dad’s body to three, as far as Iknew.
“Maxxi was nice,” I offered. It was true enough; the one time I’d met Maxxi, the night I married Zane, she was nice. She was pretty wasted, but she was nice. Probably nicer than my dad deserved, honestly. “You were with her for a while. A couple of years,right?”
My dad made a disgusted sound. “Maxxi’s a uselesscunt.”
Okaaay.
I watched him take his drink and settle onto the couch, drawing the dog into his lap, completely unaffected by my presence. Well… he looked mildly annoyed,maybe.
Holy shit, this was gonna behard.
