by Joy Fielding
IT WAS ALREADY DARK when I pulled my car into my driveway. Lance’s white Lincoln Town Car was parked on the street, and I debated whether to knock on the cottage door and confront Alison and her brother with my latest discovery. Except that I was confused and exhausted and vulnerable, and Alison always had a plausible explanation for everything. Besides, what exactly was I so upset about? That I was being played for a fool? Or that I still hadn’t figured out what the game was?
One thing was clear: I wasn’t some random victim. I’d obviously been researched carefully, chosen for a specific purpose, although the reason I’d been selected continued to elude me. A lot of time and money—I thought of the expensive painting Alison had presented me with at midnight—had gone into whatever plan she and her brother had concocted. But why? What could they possibly want with me? What could they possibly expect from me? And what, if anything, did Erica Hollander have to do with any of it?
I got out of the car, fished in my purse for my keys, reconsidered calling the police. And saying what exactly? That I’d rented out the small cottage behind my house to a young woman I now suspected of being a con artist? Or worse.
And what has this young woman done to arouse your suspicions? I could hear them ask. Has she asked you for money? Is she behind in her rent?
Well, no. She pays her rent exactly on time, and she’s never asked me for a thing. In fact, she’s bought me expensive presents and gone out of her way to be nice to me.
Well, that’s certainly suspicious. No wonder you called us.
You don’t understand. I’m afraid.
Afraid of what exactly?
I don’t know.
Listen, lady, it’s your house. If you don’t like her, ask her to leave.
Exactly. So simple. Ask her to leave. That’s all I had to do. So, why didn’t I? What was stopping me? Was I trying to persuade myself that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, there was a simple and perfectly reasonable answer for each and every deception, that nothing had happened that couldn’t be neatly explained away? Was I still trying to convince myself that there were no ulterior motives, no grand conspiracy, no risk to my safety and well-being?
I can’t ask her to leave.
Why not?
Because I don’t want her to go, I acknowledged silently.
It was her brother I wanted gone, and in another week, he would be. Happy New Year indeed! Then we could go back to the way it had been in the beginning. We could go back to pretending that Alison wasn’t pretending, that she was everything she had initially represented herself to be.
At that moment, I tripped across the image of Sheena O’Connor, who appeared before me, stretched out on a blanket across my front lawn. I watched her reach behind her back to untie the top of her bikini, then turn her profile lazily toward the indifferent moon overhead. I heard the cool breeze rustling through the trees, listened to the subtle whispers warning her of danger, saw her wave them away with a careless toss of her hand, as if brushing off a pesky mosquito.
Could I really afford to be so cavalier?
The only solution was to talk to Alison. If she could provide me with a plausible explanation for what was going on, I would consider the matter settled. If not, I’d have to insist she leave.
Before I could change my mind, I marched around the side of the house and stepped up to the cottage door, knocking forcefully. Immediately, I thought better of it. I was being too hasty, too foolhardy, too naive. At the very least, I should tell someone of my concerns. If not the police, then maybe Josh or someone at work. Except that Josh was out of town and my coworkers had their own problems to deal with. Besides, it was Christmas. I thought of all the lovely gifts Alison had given me, the beautiful painting, the china head vase. Christmas Day was hardly the time to question her sincerity, to accuse her of sinister plans and nefarious motives.
Nefarious, I could hear her say. Good word.
There was plenty of time to confront her, I decided, turning to leave.
“Door’s open,” Lance called from inside the cottage.
Reluctantly, I pushed open the door. What other choice did I have? I stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind me, glancing past the empty living room toward the rumpled bed in the next room. You made your bed, I heard my mother say.
“What’s the matter? You forget your key?” Lance asked, emerging from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel around his slender waist. His hair was wet. Beads of water glistened from his sculpted chest. “Oh.”
“Oh yourself,” he said with a mischievous smile.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize …”
“Didn’t realize what? That I was naked?” He took two steps toward me.
I took two steps back. “I’ve obviously interrupted you.”
“Shower’s all finished.” Lance lifted muscular arms into the air. “See? Clean all over.” He turned, the towel lifting slightly as he spun around, exposing a flash of inner thigh.
I pretended not to notice. “Is Alison here?” Silly question, I thought, biting down on my tongue. Obviously, she wasn’t.
“She went for a walk.”
“A walk?”
“Said she needed some air.”
“Is she feeling all right?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“No migraine?”
He laughed. “She’s fine.” He took another step toward me. “Is there anything I can do for you? Keep you entertained until Alison gets back?”
I backed up until I felt the door handle press against the small of my back. “No. I just wanted to thank her again for the beautiful painting.”
“I can come over,” he offered, his right thumb hooking into the top of his towel. “Hang it for you right now.”
“It can wait till morning.”
“Some things are better hung at night.” His tongue darted between newly parted lips.
“Some things are better left to the imagination,” I countered.
“And I bet you have quite the imagination.”
“What makes you say that?”
His eyes traveled down my white sweater and black pants, lingering on my breasts, stopping on my crotch. “I’ve been watching you.”
“You’ve been watching me,” I repeated, afraid to say more. I felt an unwanted tingle between my legs.
“Just trying to figure you out.”
I lifted my hands into the air. Two can play this game, I thought, curiously emboldened. “What you see is what you get.”
“Is that so?”
I nodded as he edged closer, so close now I felt the dampness of his recent shower on my skin.
“No secrets?” he asked provocatively.
I shook my head, his breath brushing against the side of my cheek like a furtive kiss. “I’m very boring, I’m afraid.”
“What exactly is it you’re afraid of?”
I almost laughed, would have had he not been standing so close. “What exactly,” I repeated in a voice not quite my own, “do you want from me?”
“What do you want from me?”
This time I did laugh, immediately tasting his breath on mine. “I’ve never been very good at games.”
“I love games,” Lance countered. “You ever see a cat playing with a mouse? Cat gets the poor mouse cornered, no question the mouse is gonna bite the dust, but the cat isn’t satisfied with just the kill. The kill’s the least interesting part, as far as the cat’s concerned. No, the cat likes to play a while first.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Playing with me?”
“Is that what you’re doing?” he repeated slowly. “Playing with me?”
I heard footsteps behind me, felt the doorknob turn against the small of my back, and suddenly the door opened, and I was propelled into Lance’s waiting arms. Immediately, he grabbed my hand, slid it beneath the towel at his waist. I felt the wet curls of his pubic hair as his organ stiffened against my unwilling fingers. Without pausing to consider my actio
ns, I reached up with my free hand and slapped him hard across the face. “Okay, that’s it. I want you out of here right now.”
“Terry!” Alison exclaimed, stepping inside as I struggled to compose myself. “What’s the matter?” She looked at her brother. “What’s going on here? What did you say to Terry? What have you done?”
“Just a slight misunderstanding,” Lance said, flopping down on the large chair and extending one leg across its overstuffed arm, so that his entire expanse of inner thigh was clearly visible. His cheek was red where I’d slapped him. “Isn’t that right, Terry?”
“I was just telling your brother that I think it’s time he found another place to stay.”
Alison’s expression vacillated between confusion and anger as her eyes traveled back and forth between us. “Whatever he’s done, please let me apologize—”
“Hey,” Lance interrupted, bringing both legs to the floor. “You don’t have to apologize for me. I was walking out of the shower when she came waltzing in.”
“I knocked,” I offered quickly. “Lance said to come in, the door was open.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Alison said, staring at her brother. “Whatever you said or did, I want you to apologize right now.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Apologize anyway.”
Lance glared at his sister, although by the time he turned to me, his face had softened, and he managed to look suitably contrite. “I’m sorry, Terry,” he said quietly and with conviction. “I thought we were just having some fun. I guess sometimes I get carried away. I really am sorry.”
I nodded, silently accepting his apology. “I should go.”
“I’ll be out of your hair in a few days. How’s that?” Lance asked as I opened the cottage door.
Again I nodded, stepping outside and closing the door behind me, hoping to overhear snatches of their conversation, but there was nothing. In the ensuing silence, I stumbled toward my back door, the night air cool against my skin, still damp from contact with Lance’s body, my fingers tingling with unwanted echoes of the feel of his flesh. You ever see a cat playing with a mouse? I heard him whisper in my ear.
“The cat isn’t satisfied with just the kill,” I acknowledged out loud as, moments later, I stepped into my own shower, tried washing the smell of him from my fingertips.
The cat likes to play a while first.
EIGHTEEN
“The last time I made love was on New Year’s Eve,” Myra Wylie said, her voice heavy with age and infirmity, although a youthful glint was in her eyes. I pulled my chair closer to her bedside and leaned forward, eager to catch each word. “It was ten years ago. Steve and I—Steve was my husband—had been invited to this ghastly party, you know, one of those overblown affairs where there are too many people, most of them strangers, and everybody drinks too much, and laughs too loud, and makes a great show of having a good time, but they’re really pretty miserable. You know the kind of party I mean.”
I nodded, although I had no real idea what she was talking about. I’d never been to one of those parties. I’d never had a date for New Year’s Eve.
“Well, I wasn’t in a great mood because I didn’t want to go to the damn party, and Steve knew that, but it was at the home of one of his former business partners, and he didn’t think we could say no. You know how it is.”
I didn’t, but I agreed anyway.
“So, I got all dolled up in my fancy new dress, and Steve put on his tuxedo. He always looked so handsome in his tuxedo. Not that I told him how handsome he looked.” Myra’s eyes grew wistful, filled with tears. “I should have told him.”
I grabbed a tissue from the night table beside Myra’s bed and dabbed gently at the rolling waves of flesh beneath her eyes. “I’m sure he knew how you felt about him.”
“Oh, he knew. But I should have told him anyway. It never hurts to tell someone he’s loved.”
“So you went to the party,” I encouraged when she failed to continue.
“We went to the party,” Myra repeated, picking up the thread of her earlier musings, “and it was every bit as awful as I knew it was going to be, so I guess there was a certain satisfaction in that. And we drank too much champagne, and laughed too loud at jokes that were only mildly funny, and pretended to be having the best time of our lives, just like everybody else, and at midnight, we yelled, ‘Happy New Year,’ like a bunch of drunken old idiots, and kissed everyone in sight. Pretty soon after that, we left for home. I was very nervous. I was always on the lookout for drunk drivers—I had an uncle who’d been killed by one when I was a little girl—and this being New Year’s Eve, well …” She coughed, gasped for air. I lifted the nearby glass of water to her lips.
“All out of champagne, I’m afraid,” I said, watching her gulp it down.
“Tastes even better.” She finished the last of the water, lay back against her pillows. “Shouldn’t get so excited. It’s all this talk about sex, I guess.”
“I must have missed something,” I said, and she laughed.
“I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.” She cleared her throat. “Not that there was much of a good part.”
“No?”
“Not that it was bad,” she qualified. “What is it they say about sex? When it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s bad, it’s still good? It was that kind of bad. Do you follow?”
Again I nodded, although my own experiences with sex had been decidedly more bad than good.
“Well, we got home around twelve-thirty, maybe later. I guess it doesn’t matter. The point is that it was later than we were used to staying up, and we were exhausted. I don’t know why we felt we had to have sex that night just because it was New Year’s Eve. I mean, we weren’t kids anymore. We were in our late seventies, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like we weren’t going to see each other the next morning. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been having sex for almost half a century.” She stopped. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I shook my head.
“I’m glad. Because I’m rather enjoying talking about this. I never have before, you know. Out loud, that is. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s been my experience that young people don’t like to hear about old people having sex. They think it’s, I don’t know … yicky,” she settled on finally.
I laughed. “Yicky?”
Good word, I heard Alison say.
I quickly pushed thoughts of Alison from my mind. I’d seen almost nothing of either her or her brother since the episode in the cottage. Alison had come over early the next morning to apologize again for her brother’s inappropriate behavior, and to assure me he’d be leaving in a matter of days. But Lance’s rented white Lincoln was still parked in my driveway when I’d left for work this evening, and the painting Alison had bought me for Christmas remained on my living room floor, waiting to be hung.
“Children, especially, don’t like to think of their parents having sex, even when they’re older and should know better. They prefer to think of their conception as some sort of miracle birth, or that their parents only did it that once or maybe twice and stopped altogether once they’d completed their families. But, God, Steve and I did it all the time. Sorry, I can see by the look on your face that was rather indelicate.”
“No, of course not,” I stammered, pushing some nonexistent hairs away from my forehead, trying to arrange my features into a placid mask. I was thinking of my own parents, how certain I’d always been that my birth had been a freak of nature, or that sex had been something they’d tried once, disliked intensely, and had never attempted again, that that was the reason I was an only child. Now Myra was telling me this wasn’t necessarily the case.
“Too much information,” Myra joked. “That’s what Josh always says.”
“He’ll be home soon.”
“Yes.” She looked toward the window. “Where was I?”
“You were having sex all the
time.”
Myra all but hooted with glee. It was the most animated I’d ever seen her. “Oh, I was such a bad girl.” She laughed even harder. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?”
“Of course.” I held my breath, almost afraid of what she was about to say.
“Steve wasn’t the only man I ever had sex with.”
I said nothing, although truthfully, I was almost relieved. Myra Wylie was so full of surprises tonight, I hadn’t been sure what she was about to confide.
“No, there were several others before him. And this was in the days before birth control, when girls who had sex before marriage were considered loose women, although, of course, that never stopped anyone from doing it. Well, you know …”
I nodded. This time I did know.
“Anyway, there were several young men before I met Steve, although I told him he was the first, and he believed me.”
“Were you his first?”
She leaned forward, cupped withered hands around her mouth, lowered her voice, as if afraid her late husband might be eavesdropping at the door. “I think I was.” A smile pulled at her powdery skin. “Steve was such a natural lover. Much better than the other boys I’d been with.”
“And were there others after you got married?” I ventured.
“Heavens, no! Once I’d made that commitment, that was it. Not that there weren’t opportunities. But after I got married, I never really looked at other men in that way. I had my Stevie, and he kept me plenty busy.” Her voice trailed off. She stared at the ceiling. For a minute, I thought she might have fallen asleep. “So on New Year’s Eve,” she started up again, her eyes flickering across the ceiling as if her past were being projected on it, “we got home and went to bed, and we kissed each other and wished each other a happy New Year, and Steve said, ‘What do you think? Are you too tired?’ And I was, but I didn’t want to say so, so instead I said, ‘No. I’m okay. How about you?’ So, of course, he said he was okay too, and we made love, although neither of us really felt like it, and it was a bit of an effort, if you know what I mean.”