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Sun God Seeks ... Surrogate?
By Mimi Jean Pamfiloff Grand Central Publishing
Copyright © 2014 Mimi Jean Pamfiloff
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4555-4697-8
CHAPTER 1
Penelope. Approximately Three Weeks Earlier
"Sorry, but did you just say ...? You want me to what?" I stared at the flaming redhead who'd trotted into the crowded café off the snowy New York street, helped herself to the chair across from me, and swiped her finger through the creamy froth of my eagerly anticipated cappuccino.
Rude!
Didn't matter that the woman was disturbed, which she clearly was; the pink scuba mask on her head was a dead giveaway, as was the hot-pink mink coat.
"You heard me, Penelope," she said, rapping her glittery pink fingernails on the tabletop. "Five hundred thousand dollars—okay ... I'll make it one million. But not a penny more!"
How the hell did she know my name? And had she really offered me money for what I thought? Was today April Fools'? No. It was November 30.
Then it dawned on me. I was being punk'd. Wait. That show was canceled. Yes, Ashton had moved on to corny camera commercials, a sitcom, and a very unflattering Ringo Starr beard.
Well, double dammit, whatever was going on, I didn't have the patience for this today; I'd just received bad news. The worst kind of bad news.
I dog-eared my book, Spanish for Linguistic Tards—never too late to learn another language, you know—and slapped it down. "I don't know which of my friends orchestrated this crappy prank, but I've got work in twenty minutes, and it's going to be a long, long night—"
"Hold your jicama!" she interrupted, shoving her index finger in my face as her phone squawked. She quickly dug through her oversized pink fuzzy handbag and pulled out the device. "Wassup? Yeah. Yeah. Oooh my ..." The odd woman, who appeared to be in her thirties, continued her egregiously loud banter while stroking the lapel of her furry coat.
I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if anyone else inside the bustling café was witnessing this obnoxious display. Oddly enough, not one person was.
Whatever. Didn't matter. I'd already decided to go find my pre–night shift triple-skinny cappuccino (hold the weirdo finger) elsewhere.
I pushed away from the table, and she latched onto my wrist, instantly igniting a surge of numbing static throughout my entire body. Every muscle ground to a halt. Except my pounding heart. That worked fine.
She narrowed her eyes and then made a little no-no wave with her scrawny, pale finger.
"Yeah. Uh-huh. Oooh. Nice," she continued, chatting on her phone while I experienced the world's quietest panic attack. "I'm thinkin' we go with the chicken fingers." She shook her head a few times. "No, silly. Real ones. I love crunchy food." Pause. "How the hell should I know what to do with the chickens? Make them some special shoes." Pause. "Yup. Yup. Clothing is optional. Except for the clowns. They get too carried away with the ball jokes. Seriously. It's disturbing. Even for me." Another pause. "We can talk about it later, Fate. I gotta take care of this girl before she throws a hissy." Pause. "Yes. It's that girl. This is gonna be dramalicious!"
She ended her call and sighed happily in my general direction. "Gods, I rock. I should be a ride at Six Flags. They should name a country after me—Wait! No. The planet. They should name the entire planet after magnifique moi!" She suddenly snapped back her head and locked her eyes on the ceiling. "Oh yeah? You just try it!"
I couldn't move my head, but from the corner of my eye, I noticed a little black dot.
A fly? She's talking to the fly?
She then pointed right at the little bugger. "That's right! I'll take you down. I'll cut you, bitch!"
The fly buzzed away.
The woman shrugged and then leaned into the table. A wide, evil grin stretched across her elfin face. "Okillee-dokillee, Penelope. Let's not play games—for the next five minutes, anyway—Pin the Tail on the Donkey is my favorite, though. Just in case you were wondering." She snorted. "I like it when they squeal."
Her paralyzing grip didn't allow a response, but I was all ears; this woman scared the crappity crap out of me.
"I know everything about you," she continued. "You're Penelope Trudeau. You were raised right here in good ol' NYC. Your mother has been fighting a mysterious illness for the past year, which is why you've put off going to grad school even though you've been accepted to several excellent programs."
Who the hell was this woman? She recited every fact about my life, including how I was a size 8—or size 10 after the major holidays and sporting events—had a black belt in karate, was afraid of spiders, and had no intention of celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday tomorrow. Birthdays freaked me out.
"My brother and I mean business, Penelope. This isn't a joke. Though ..." She snorted twice. " ... Did you ever hear the one about the porcupine who married the sheep?"
She released my wrist.
Ever so slowly, my body sparked back to life. Terrified, I blinked several times before nodding no. She was insane. Truly. Unequivocally. Bonkers. And she apparently knew how to do that Vulcan grip thing. Not a good combo.
"Well, their children were able to knit their own sweaters!" She chuckled loudly and slapped her knee.
Then, for no apparent reason, her expression transformed into a void of human warmth. It sent shivers deep down into the pit of my stomach, which was now telling me to run. Run far, far away. I didn't know if her offer to pay me one million dollars was genuine or the ramblings of a madwoman, but God save me, I didn't want anything to do with her.
"So, you in or out?" she asked, crossing her arms. "One million dollars, honey. It will solve all your problems: help your mother, pay for school ... What's one little egg and nine months of your life?"
The insane woman continued staring as I realized I had full control of my body again.
The words "My womb is not for rent!" exploded from my mouth, and the entire café fell silent. Everyone stared with gaping mouths.
"Oh, sure. Now you're all paying attention," I mumbled.
I turned my attention back to Ms. Nut Job and slowly stepped away, preparing to make a mad dash for my life. "I'm not interested."
"Great!" She popped up from her chair and flicked her hand in the air. "You'll get half the money now—just for showing up to the party. I mean that figuratively, by the way—'cause you're not invited to my actual party. Friends and family only. Plus a few people who won the raffle. And some clowns. And my unicorn—don't ask."
I felt my face involuntarily contort. She wasn't just disturbed, she was batshit crazy.
"Come to my house tomorrow morning, nine a.m. sharp." She began digging in her purse again. "My lawyer slash Twister coach, Rochell, will have the papers ready along with a Welcome Handbook. I suggest you read it. There will be a pop quiz, and Rochell doesn't mess around."
I stepped away from the table toward the door. "I don't know who you are, but I said no, and I meant it. Stay the hell away from me!"
That something in my gut, which had told me to run, now screamed at the top of its lungs.
I listened.
I bolted onto the bustling street filled with evening holiday shoppers making their way down the snow-covered sidewalks. But when I glanced over my shoulder, back toward the corner café with its floor-to-ceiling windows, the madwoman wasn't inside or on the street.
I stopped in my tracks and shook my head.
Had I dreamed the entire thing? Had some deranged woman dressed like pink cotton candy, using a scuba mask as a headband, just propositioned me to be the surrogate mother of her brother's baby for one million dollars?
Nooo.
I seriously needed some sleep. Or therapy.
CHAPTER 2
For the record, I've never been one to look down on a hard day's work. I come from a long line of hard workers despite my hoity-toity French last name. But truth be told, I couldn't wait for the day I'd leave behind waiting tables in exchange for a real career. My dream was going to grad school to get my master's in political science. Eventually, I wanted a PhD and to teach. Unfortunately, that dream was far off, some untouchable horizon beyond the daily grind of my current life that consisted of taking care of my sick mother during the day and working two back-to-back night shifts at Carmine's Trattoria seven days a week.
What about my dad? We didn't talk about him much, but I knew he'd studied at the same university as my mother and hadn't been ready for fatherhood. So that left us two girls and a few random cousins out West.
Mind you, I didn't complain about taking care of my mom because she was the sort of person worthy of any sacrifice—kind, generous, always finding the silver lining in everything. Still, that didn't mean our situation wasn't hard. Her condition was a medical mystery with only one real symptom: She suffered from a crippling exhaustion. She barely stayed awake long enough to get in one meal a day. And not one of the dozen or so specialists I made her see knew what caused it.
Regardless, I wasn't giving up. Even if the cards seemed stacked against us.
Case in point, this morning I'd received a call from her doctor. I wanted to get her on a new European immune-boosting drug, but found out her insurance wouldn't cover the eighty-thousand-dollar-per-year prescription. Now she'd been turned down as a candidate for FDA trials.
"Miss? May I have some more water, please?"
I glanced up from the polished cement floor I'd been staring at while deep in contemplation. Table nine.
"Right away," I replied with an apologetic smile. I trotted back to the drink station and promptly returned to fill glasses and clear away empty plates. All the while, my mind wasn't far from that one nagging question: What the hell was I going to do?
You'll figure this out, Penelope. You always do. You just need some sleep so you can think clearly.
I squared my shoulders and made my rounds, remaining cheerful for my customers. After all, they weren't at the famous Carmine's spending their hard-earned money to watch me sulk. No, they deserved all the joy they could have. Life is short.
I displayed a bottle of Chianti for uncorking to my regular at table five, and my mind drifted back to the bizarre incident at that café before my shift. Had it been real? Sure felt that way. Or maybe the sleep deprivation finally had me by the big toe.
But what if it was real? You wouldn't be the first woman on the planet to be a surrogate mother.
Then an image of the crazy redhead popped into my mind. "My womb is not for rent! Okay?" I slapped my hand over my mouth. "Sorry, Mr. Z, I have a little brain baggage today."
Mr. Z, who thankfully dined alone, smiled graciously and nodded at the bottle. I reached into the pocket of my black slacks for my corkscrew, but instead of finding the slim, plastic-covered tube, I felt paper.
"Oh. Jeez. So sorry. I must've left my corkscrew in the kitchen." I held up one finger. "Be right back." I scurried toward the kitchen, distinctly remembering having put the corkscrew in my pocket.
I smiled at the line of three chefs working their steaming skillets as I headed to my locker toward the back of the cramped kitchen. I popped open the lock and then dug through my purse. Sure enough, there it was. This particular corkscrew with a large gripper was the only professional model that didn't require me to place the bottle between my thighs. Funny to watch, yes. Professional, no. Not many diners wanted to see their wine wedged in my crotch.
Picky, picky.
I pulled the paper from my pocket to deposit it in my bag, but the moment my eyes registered what it was, my heart stopped.
Paper-clipped to a small business card was a cashier's check for five hundred thousand dollars drawn on the Bank of New York.
"Holy crap," I whispered, my hand trembling. The check seemed official enough—watermark, signature from the bank president.
But ... but ... it was just a dream, wasn't it? I stared at the card. It had the name Cimil and an address near Central Park written on the front. On the back, a handwritten note said:
9:00 a.m. sharp. Don't be late. Have garage sales to hit.
No. It most certainly hadn't been a dream.
Okay. So I get how in this situation, especially for someone with my particular set of challenges, the proper reaction might be to ignore how the check ended up in my pocket and then jump up and down in gleeful hysterics. One might even fall to his or her knees and thank the angels above for such a gift. Five hundred thousand frigging dollars. It would solve all my problems. I could go to the bank in the morning, cash the check, pay for my mother's treatment, and go to school.
But the fact was, an ugly cloud of bizarre hovered overhead along with an equally bizarre string attached to the money. And on the other end of that string was some crazy woman with a fetish for hot pink.
A baby? She really wants me to have a baby with her brother? What I couldn't figure out was why. Why would anyone believe I'd go for such an insane idea? And why would anyone think I'd make an ideal surrogate? Was it the four Big Gulp–sized cappuccinos every day? How about my addiction to mochi ice cream and sourdough bread with extra butter? Oh, I know. It must've been the four hours of sleep I got each night. Yes, I could see how anyone would want to rent my womb.
My mind raced. I felt so damned cornered. Yes, I needed the money, but I didn't want to have kids yet. Someday, yes. When I found the right man. Not now. Not like this.
That's when it hit me. Anger. How dare this strange woman ...
I glimpsed at the card. Cimil.
How dare this ... Cimil pop into my life and throw money at me. She obviously knew about my horrible situation and was taking advantage. How did she know? Good frigging question! I wasn't going to stand for it! My eggs and body weren't for sale! No way would I have a baby with some stranger and then give it away to a bunch of crazy, rich people. What sort of person would I be?
"You'd be a bad bumper sticker waiting to happen." I huffed loudly and shoved the check in my purse. After work, I would give Cimil a piece of my mind. I'd find some other way to get my mom her medicine. I could go to private organizations for funding. I'd also petition the Swedish company directly. I bet they gave away dozens of grants each year. It would take time, but with a little luck and lots of persistence, I'd find a way.
You'll figure this out, Penelope. You always do.
Chock-full o' determination and hell-bent on defending my honor, I stomped up the steps of the insanely gorgeous brownstone located in the exclusive Carnegie Hill neighborhood. Despite the late hour, salsa music and laughter poured outside through several cracked windows.
What kind of people would want to party with a depraved woman like her? I wondered.
I leaned over the side of the porch and tried to catch a peek inside through a tiny gap in the noxious pink curtains, but could only make out the shapes of a few bodies.
"Some seriously messed-up people, that's who," I mumbled to no one.
The door flew open. A very large, fierce-looking man with spiky, dark brown hair, wearing leather pants and biker boots, filled the doorway. He looked me over with a glare that could melt the half inch of snow right off my parka. Despite the death sneer, the fact that he held a baby—dressed in a girly Santa-style outfit, chewing a cracker, and slung over his hip—sort of ruined the tough guy image he was going for.
He frowned and waited for me to say something.
"Oh. Um. Is Cimil here?" I asked.
"Name?" He sounded like a soldier working a checkpoint.
"Penelope. Penelope Trudeau." I don't know why I suddenly felt guilty, like I was trying to crash the party, so I offered, "I have an appointment with her in the morning, but it can't wait."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sun God Seeks ... Surrogate? by Mimi Jean Pamfiloff. Copyright © 2014 Mimi Jean Pamfiloff. Excerpted by permission of Grand Central Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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