He was positive that he was
right, but he began to regret having said the words. When she spun
around to face him, she seemed to have forgotten he had spoken at
all: the smile seemed more radiant. “This doesn’t get you
out of my party, by the way. When your wife comes home, I’m
still going to have a bunch of the local gentry over for dinner. That
pays you back officially for helping me last night.”
He waved his hand at the table.
“Isn’t this enough?”
She cocked her head at him.
“This isn’t the official thanks, which will be completely
insincere and self-serving, and which Jane and I will like more than
you do. This is something I thought of after I called you today.
You’re all alone and you don’t know when your wife is
coming back, and you sounded unhappy. Now is the time when a woman
can offer something that will actually do you some good. So I decided
to cook you a meal. Big deal.”
She pointedly set her champagne
glass beside the nearest plate and pulled out the chair at the head
of the table. “I’ve done enough explaining and I’m
hungry. So sit while I serve you.”
Carey sat in the chair and she
reached over his shoulder, then ceremoniously placed the linen napkin
on his lap. “This is really something,” he conceded. He
turned his head as he said it, and found her still leaning over him,
her face much closer than he had anticipated. He could smell the
subtle scent of her hair, see the big liquid green eyes glinting in
the candlelight.
“It’s meant to be,”
she said. “No empty promises.”
He was relieved when she brought
out the big pot and began to serve the food. She had made
bouillabaisse, and it had certainly not gotten worse during the hours
after she had expected him to arrive. He tasted it.
“A small, neatly inscribed
thank-you note would have been more than sufficient, but the food is
wonderful,” he said.
She tasted it too. “It
turned out okay. I gave myself a tour of the house while you were
out. When I got a good look at the kitchen, I figured I’d have
to take this seriously if I was going to give you what you were used
to.”
“Well, thank you. You
really know how to cook. You must like to.”
She shook her head. “I
hate it. I learned because men like to eat, and I like men.”
He hurried to change the subject
“I just remembered that I saw your car in the driveway. Did
everything go all right?”
She shrugged. “It was
pretty much what you said in the morning. They were there all the
time. The man I paid the ransom for my car said they don’t
always hear the phone ringing from outside.”
“How much was it?”
“Three hundred. Isn’t
that outrageous? A hundred for towing the car down there, and two
hundred for the fine. And they don’t take credit cards.”
Carey said, “I feel
terrible. It was partly my fault. I’d like to pay for it.”
He had a strong impulse to make all accounts even, so the
give-and-take would stop.
Her amused look returned.
“That’s very chivalrous. But it’s not the money,
it’s the effrontery.” She seemed to realize something
that hadn’t occurred to her before. “And anyway, the
whole point of the evening was to get out and meet people, and I
guess it served its purpose. I met a lot of people, and made one
friend.”
He gave a noncommittal smile and
a little nod. He tried to decide why the idea made him so
uncomfortable. Maybe living in a small city all his life had made him
conservative and timid about meeting new people, but he had known
Susan Haynes little more than twenty-four hours. The word “friend”
sounded premature, almost presumptuous.
There was also an element of
danger in it that he did not find appealing. She was enormously
attractive, and her conversation always had a sexual edge to it that
seemed uncalculated but that his common sense told him could not be.
It wasn’t entirely clear whether she was overtly tempting him
or treating him as though he were asexual. Maybe she was just
behaving with a kind of adult openness that he had become entitled to
as a married man, and he wasn’t used to it yet. Maybe when you
were happily married, women simply accepted you as safely ineligible
for sexual relationships and became less guarded. But it was
difficult to imagine a friendship with Susan Haynes extending into
the future. Conversations would be full of tension and ambiguity. He
suspected that Jane would take one look at her, listen to about three
sentences, and announce that she hated her.
Carey realized that the silence
had gone on for too long. “Did you make more progress in
getting settled today, or just slave over a hot stove?”
“Not much progress. I
spent most of the day thinking about you.”
“Oh?” Trouble.
“Oh?” she mocked.
“As if you weren’t thinking about me.”
He decided he had better not
evade that one. “To be honest with you, over the years I’ve
gotten to be pretty good at keeping my mind focused on my work during
the day. I find I lose fewer patients that way.”
“I’m sorry,”
she said. She shook her head and stared down at her lap. “I’m
doing it again. It’s like a reflex. I guess that’s why I
couldn’t get you out of my mind – you’re the
witness to my gaffe. I made such a mess of things last night. It was
completely unfair.”
He noticed that Susan had
stopped eating some time ago, and he had eaten as much as he wanted.
“What was unfair?”
She smiled apologetically and
shrugged, then looked at him from behind a strand of blond hair.
“Sometimes when you meet somebody – even though you like
them, or maybe because you like them – you start off wrong, and
just keep going that way. You know it isn’t the way you want to
be with them, but somehow you can’t figure out how to stop and
start all over again. What I should have done last night was have a
pleasant dinner with you, then call a cab and go home.”
He silently agreed with her. He
fervently wished he had made some excuse and called her a cab. “I
really didn’t mind giving you a ride,” Carey lied. “None
of this was any trouble at all.”
“Of course you minded,”
said Susan. “I was being childish last night. Teasing you,
instead of being honest and direct. So now I’m trying to start
all over again.”
“I don’t even know
what you mean,” said Carey.
Her smile was beautiful, a
little embarrassed. “Let’s just say that I didn’t
really need your help undressing last night.”
Carey felt his collar tighten as
the blood rushed up to his head. He nodded. “I see.” He
had to find a way to end this. “Forget it,” he said. “I
admire your sensitivity very much. And I’m in awe of your
honesty. Now we’re more than even. And I really appreciate the
wonderful dinner. I had almost forgotten how hungry I was until I was
here. Thanks a lot.”
Susan stood up and stepped
toward the door of the dining room, carrying her glass. She stopped
and looked back at him. “Is it time for a new start?”
“Absolutely,” he
answered. Anything to get past this. He picked up his glass and
followed her into the living room.
She sat down on the couch by the
fireplace. He hesitated, then chose the easy chair on the opposite
side, ten feet from her. He took a sip of his drink and glanced back
at the dining room.
“Don’t worry about
the dishes,” she said. She stood up and slipped the sweatshirt
over her head and off. “I’ll do them in the morning.”
She was wearing a black lace bra that made her white skin look
somehow more bare than it should have.
He suddenly realized that he was
gaping. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That
isn’t what I meant.”
“We’re being honest
now, Carey,” she said. “You wanted me last night. If you
hadn’t, then nothing I did would have made the slightest
difference.”
“I think you
misunderstood,” he said. “Or maybe I did.”
She unbuttoned the jeans,
slipped them down, and stepped out of them. More black lace, more
smooth, milky skin. “I’m making up for teasing you last
night. I’m not teasing now.”
“Hold it,” he said.
“Could you please stop taking your clothes off for a minute and
let me talk?” He took a deep breath. “I’m married.”
“So am I.” The full
lips formed themselves into the reserved smile he had seen when he
met her. “You’re looking, though, aren’t you?”
“It’s hard not to.”
She seemed to take this as
permission to continue. She unhooked the black bra and slipped it
off. Her breasts were round and full, whiter even than the rest of
her, and the nipples were like rosebuds. She saw the alarm in his
eyes and her voice went lower, almost a whisper. “It’s
okay. It’s perfectly okay.”
“No,” said Carey.
“It isn’t okay.” He resolutely kept his eyes on
hers, but her eyes were teasing him now. “This isn’t what
I want. This could wreck my life.”
She smirked, confidently aware
that her nudity was power, and words were only a way of keeping him
faced in her direction. “No, it couldn’t. I’m
married too, and that’s what makes it perfect. You don’t
have to remember my birthday, and I don’t have to entertain
your poker buddies. My husband and your wife are thousands of miles
away. Tonight, we can do anything, and it’s free. There are no
possible consequences.”
“Your marriage may be
ending, but mine’s just beginning. I love my wife.”
She smiled at him again. Her
hands had moved to the waistband of the panties, and as she spoke,
her thumbs hooked over it and began to slide slowly along the inner
side of the elastic, toward her hips. “Good for you,” she
said. “I’m sure she’ll be panting for you when
she’s here – just as I am – but tonight she’s
not. So this doesn’t take away anything of hers. This is just
for fun. To be alone together in this house and not do it would be
unnatural.” Her smile disappeared. Her eyes lowered, she bent
toward him slightly to slip the panties down past her hips, then
stepped out of them, naked.
Carey was gripped with
self-loathing. He did not belong here, listening to this nonsense and
watching this woman strip. He stood up abruptly, then moved to the
couch. He saw her smile return and the lids of her eyes go down like
the eyes of a purring cat. “You’re one of the most
beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.
“You’re funny, clever, and very persuasive. If I were
ever going to cheat on my wife, this would have been the time.”
He snatched the pile of clothes off the cushion of the couch and
tossed them to her. “Now get dressed and go home.”
He walked to the dining room and
began to carry dishes out to the kitchen and set them on the counter.
On his third trip into the dining room, he heard some rustling
sounds, then the front door closing. He closed his eyes, took five
deep breaths, poured another glass of champagne, and drank it down.
Then he went to the living room and looked: yes, she had left his key
on the end table.
Jane
found a shelf above the trail that was sheltered by big rocks on the
north and west, where the cold mountain wind was coming from. “This
is a good place,” she said. “Does it look homey to you?”
Pete stopped and looked up at it
doubtfully. “I could keep going for a while,” he offered.
“We’ve come at least
eight or nine miles in the dark,” she said. “We might run
out of steam in the middle of an ice field or on a mountaintop, and
then be worth nothing by the time we find another safe spot. That’s
how you get hurt.”
“Sold,” he said.
“Should I build a fire?”
“The rocks will protect us
well enough from the wind.” She reached into his pack and
handed him his knife. “Go collect boughs from the fir trees
down there. Not branches, just the soft parts near the tips. I’ll
get us unpacked.”
Pete carefully made his way down
onto the trail, then disappeared into the trees. In a moment she
heard the whispery sound of pine boughs tossed onto a pile.
She had wanted Pete to be gone
while she used her flashlight and a forked stick to search the cracks
and crannies along the rock shelf. It was the sort of place where a
rattlesnake would curl up to get out of the cold, then sun itself in
the daytime. When she was satisfied that they would be alone, she
searched the packs for the items they would need and laid them out.
Pete labored up the little path
carrying a pile of boughs the size of a hay bale, dropped them on the
rock, and saw her sitting cross-legged in front of a group of small
packages. “What’s that?”
“Canned beef, biscuits,
dried fruit, and nuts,” she said. “The bad news is that
it’s dinner. The good news is that if we eat it, we don’t
have to carry it.”
“You should have been in
marketing.” He sat down across from her and imitated her as she
opened cans with her Swiss Army knife. He took a bite of meat and a
bite of biscuit. “It’s kind of frightening. That stuff
they’ve been saying about fresh air and exercise all these
years could be true. This actually tastes good.”
When they had finished, Jane
stood up, sealed the empty cans and packages into a plastic bag, and
put it in her knapsack. “More bad news: the garbage truck isn’t
due until a road is built – figure a thousand years or so. We
have to pack the trash out with us.” She looked at the pile of
pine boughs. “Time to go to bed. Watch carefully.”
She spread the boughs like a mat
on the rocky shelf, then laid one of the waterproof ponchos on top of
it and set the other one aside. “Unless it rains, most of the
cold and damp comes from below.”
Jane took off her jacket and
boots and propped the boots under the rock shelf. “Your boots
need to dry out while you sleep or you’ll get blisters. You put
them in a place where you can reach them and rain can’t. You
wear as little as possible while you’re in your sleeping bag,
and an insulated jacket makes a great pillow.” She pulled her
watch cap on. “This helps. You lose most of your heat through
your head, so it’ll keep you warm.”