“I’m not a celebrity, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Come on, Jonathan. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“My ‘sense of adventure.’ That’s funny, baby. Really funny. Now I know you’re putting me on.” I glanced at her. “Tell me you’re putting me on, Gretchen.”
“I’m not putting you on, I already told you that.”
I heard the wail of that siren again. Or maybe it was a new one.
“Because the way I see it, we couldn’t have it any better, you and me. I mean, what could we possibly gain by doing something like that?”
I didn’t even want to use a word like murder, it seemed entirely too incendiary to say out loud.
Silence again. For the first time the sweetness of Gretchen’s perfume, the sight of her exquisite flesh, the sexy tinkle of her voice wasn’t tweaking my lust. In fact, I began to think about how I could disengage myself before her insane brainstorm could go a single step further.
I was out of bed and wrestling myself into my clothes when I heard her tittering behind me.
One leg in my trousers, I hopped around to face her. I must have been a ridiculous sight, with my balls swinging and jaw hanging open like an idiot.
“Oh, Jonathan, I’m so sorry for laughing—but you looked so panic-stricken!”
“Jesus Christ. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to be . . . without them?”
It wasn’t a question I’d asked myself often—maybe once or twice, but not often. Because I didn’t think it was possible, for one thing.
For another, because I really didn’t want to let go of Monica. Sure, I’d much rather spend my time screwing the daylights out of Gretchen—but I already was. To boot, I was enjoying her without having to be responsible for her welfare, physical or emotional. The last thing I wanted was a high-maintenance model on my hands full-time, and judging from her wardrobe alone, she required the best of everything. Good old Leonard was doing a better job of seeing to Gretchen’s needs than I ever could.
She was gazing at me now, as if her question hadn’t been completely rhetorical—or a joke.
“Well, yeah, sure it would be, but—”
“Yes, I know,” she sighed, a little more wistfully this time.
Before I finished what I was about to say, Gretchen got out of bed and began to dress.
9.
We were at eight, waiting to tee off. The fairways and greens of the Roseland Country Club were surprisingly uncrowded. I was already two under par, with long birdies on six and seven.
It was a fine September morning, the perfect day for chasing a little white ball over the emerald hills of northern New Jersey. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk circled the sky in search of prey down below.
This was one of those moments when I thought about my father, the sickly miner, who’d never once set foot on a golf course in his life. If there was an afterlife, I hoped he was playing golf and enjoying it.
My pal George Addington was telling me all about the troubles he was having with his latest squeeze. I knew her; he’d brought Adele over to the house a couple of times for cocktails. She sold ad space for a north Jersey daily, was in her early thirties, and was easy on the eyes. Not bad at all for my friend, who in a matter of months was looking squarely at fifty. Until I found Gretchen I used to wonder what it would be like to get Adele into bed. But Adele couldn’t hold a candle to Gretchen—I knew it without having to have the experience.
George stepped up to the tee, shimmied his legs, and addressed the ball. Tall, with dark, classically handsome features, he was a self-made guy who’d made a damned good living as a manager in the telecommunications industry and had intelligently parlayed his earnings into the purchase of a series of properties that brought him nearly a half-million dollars a year in rent, about half of which, after repairs, property taxes, and all the other attendant expenses, was clear, pure profit. The guy was fixed. All he had to do was open up his mail once a month and deposit the checks. Nowadays, with electronic transfer on the Internet, he probably didn’t even have to do that.
I’d always admired George. He was a fellow who didn’t have to rely on someone else—unlike me—for his lifestyle. He didn’t owe anyone anything. So when his interest faded on a particular woman he was dating, he had no qualms whatsoever about getting rid of her and shopping for a new model. And he was good-looking and charming enough to do it, the kind of guy who even managed to coax his ex-wife of ten years into agreeing to an out-of-court divorce settlement rather than being wiped out in a drawn-out legal battle. According to him, he got to hold on to over three-quarters of his total assets, including his showy Tudor home in Roseland. Ever since shaking free of his wife, he’d been happily banging a succession of women of all ages, races, backgrounds, and creeds. I suspected, as interested in pussy as he was, that he’d even sampled the swingers’ scene, but he would never cop to it aside from dropping a juicy hint here and there.
Before meeting Gretchen, I was downright jealous of George. In fact, his carefree life was something of an inspiration to place my ad in the Personal Connections.
“No matter what, I’m not getting hitched again, and I told Adele that from the get-go,” sniffed George, after hooking his Titleist off a distant oak with a nasty thwack. That baby was going to be tough to find.
“So what are you going to do?”
“She’ll have to go, that’s all there is to it. Which is okay. There are plenty more where she came from.”
I was proud of George. He’d gotten tougher over the years where the females were concerned. He wasn’t heartless, exactly, but he knew where to draw the line and he stood by it.
He pulled another ball out of the pocket of his bag, deciding to take one of his mulligans right then and there. We allowed each other two per round. He took his cut, and this time didn’t connect with a tree.
“Women trouble,” George said with a chuckle. “Not the kind of thing you have to worry about, Rich.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said, stepping up to the tee.
I heard the twitter of the birds as I took my cut. For the eighth time that day, the ball ended up in the middle of the fairway about 250 yards away.
“Goddamn you, Marzten—that might be the best shot you hit all day . . . So—you’re telling me you’re having problems with Monica?”
“Let’s go, George. There’s a foursome breathing up our asses.”
We grabbed the handles of our carts and started up the fairway.
“I’m shocked, man. I always figured you and Monica for the perfect ‘forever’ couple,” said George, looking at me with consternation.
“It’s not Monica I’m talking about.”
George stopped in his tracks.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.” I glanced over at him. “But this conversation never happened, did it, George?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you telling me here?”
That bizarre talk I’d had with Gretchen about offing people was still on my mind, even though I’d seen her a couple of times since and everything seemed pretty much back to normal—no talk of snuffing anybody. Maybe I was making a blunder by opening up to George, since we always talked only about his romantic quagmires—including when he was getting it off with the wife of his attorney behind the guy’s back—but I figured my secrets would be safe with him. We’d known each other from all the way back to when I was doing a freelance gig for United Telecom, before he escaped with his bundle. And he’d always been much better friends with me than with my wife. What’s more, he had his own crap hidden in the closet, which gave me leverage if it ever came to that.
“Just what I said. It’s not Monica I’m talking about.”
“Wow, Rich. I would never have suspected.”
I’d located my ball, but George couldn’t find his.
“Better try and locate your rock, man. Those Neanderthals behind us are already running laps around the tee.”
He foraged through the copse beyond the rough and came up empty.
“I’m taking a drop,” he called to me from under a huge elm tree.
“Be my guest.” I watched him to make sure he didn’t toss his freebie in the direction of the flag.
“So who are you fooling around with, Rich—if you don’t mind me prying?” George said as we lined up our putts a few moments later.
“It doesn’t matter who it is. That’s not the point. I’m a little worried that maybe she’s getting too caught up in the whole thing, know what I mean?”
George was away, and he clocked a putt that missed the hole by six inches and ran several feet past.
“Fuck!”
I gave him a quick rundown on my situation with Gretchen, leaving out most of the fine details, including anything concrete about her. I was already beginning to regret that I’d brought it up in the first place. George was showing a little too much interest in the whole thing for my comfort.
He missed his comeback shot, too, and I sank a tricky five-footer.
What the hell was I thinking? Was I out of my mind? Sure, George and I had been friends before he got to know my wife, but still. The first commandment of my arrangement with Gretchen was that no one aside from the two of us was ever supposed to know anything about what was going on. Now my grip on the situation was beginning to loosen for the first time. I didn’t like it, but the damage was already done—I’d opened my yap.
By this time we were on eleven, George in a bunker, me on the fringe of the green, and I’d lost interest in the round, even though per usual the loser was supposed to spring for lunch at the Fiddler’s Head.
“You’re sure Monica doesn’t know anything about this?” George said as he took a practice swing with his sand wedge.
“Sure as I can be.”
Then I went on to tell him about how I’d forced her hand into investigating me when I was as innocent as a nun.
He whistled.
“Slick, Rich. Very slick. So why the hell are you shitting your pants now?”
I shrugged. “I’m not, really. It’s just that the other one”—that’s how I was referring to Gretchen—“may be getting a little too involved, like I said.” I proceeded to fill him in on a little of what was said that afternoon a few weeks before at the Helmsley Park Lane.
He nodded. “Ooh. I see what you mean.”
“She hasn’t brought up any of that garbage since, but you never know, right?”
“Hey, she’s a woman . . . I know you’re not asking for advice—or maybe you are—but if it were me and I were you, I’d put an end to it pronto. Go find something else if you have to. The world’s crawling with mogambo, right? Chances are this babe was just joking, like you said, but you never know. Because the more sucked into this thing you get, the uglier it could be in the end. And there’s going to be an end to it, right? I mean, you’re not going to dump your wife and daughter and run off with this chippie, are you?”
The question came as a shock. I’d never considered it in those terms before.
“Hell, no.”
“All right, then. And I’d kill you personally if you did . . . Hey—there are ways to slip out of entanglements without having to shed blood. Take it from me—I know from firsthand experience.”
George’s pep talk gave me a surge of optimism. If anyone knew about predicaments, George Addington did. In fact, I recalled some of them now, and they’d been more than a little sticky, especially the one with the lawyer’s wife. And George was still standing, wasn’t he?
Twelve was a wicked dogleg up a steep hill. The flag was so far around the bend, the hole formed an almost perfect horseshoe. It was the nemesis of every duffer who tried to tame the course. Even Tiger Woods would have trouble with it.
“But I’m really surprised by all this, Rich,” George said after we’d hit our drives toward the hazy ridge of woods on the elbow of the hole. “I just didn’t see it coming from you. Though I guess I should have known. At the end of the day we’re all dogs, aren’t we?”
Even though that wasn’t the way I wanted to see it, I had to admit that he wasn’t far off the mark.
“Don’t worry, pal. I’ll never breathe a word to anybody. But like I say, I’d put this thing to sleep ASAP if I were you. Before something happens. It’s not likely, but hell, why take the chance?”
When we holed out an hour and a half later, I was feeling pretty good again—and not just because I was eating lunch on George Addington.
10.
Instead of stopping it with Gretchen, I did nothing. She never brought up killing anybody again, even in jest. At home it was status quo and holding. Everything was cool.
But something else was involved now. I realized that I was hooked. That I needed Gretchen as much as she needed me, if she needed me at all. Maybe I wasn’t in love with her—whatever that meant—but I was addicted, like a two-bit Alphabet City junkie. But if nothing bad happened—meaning if my cover was still intact—and if the sex was still awesome, what would be the point of deep-sixing her? No point that I could see. We could just keep going on until one of us got bored or really uncomfortable—or whatever. There was no reason to do anything.
But when she grew teary one Thursday afternoon near the middle of October after I explained that I couldn’t possibly break away to meet her on the coming weekend, I knew it wasn’t going to be so easy.
“No can do,” I said firmly.
I stopped short of saying What the fuck is this shit?, but that’s what I was thinking. We never met on weekends—too risky. Weekends, at least on my end, were pretty much reserved for Monica and Diane. And Gretchen had to pay a little attention to Leonard sometimes, didn’t she?
“I’d love to, baby, believe me, but I promised Monica I’d take her to a dog show out in Pennsylvania on Saturday, and I agreed to a meeting with a client on Sunday that I couldn’t possibly postpone.”
“A Sunday business meeting?”
Whoa. What the hell was this shit? Her question sounded perilously close to the bitchy whine of a nagging wife.
“It’s unusual. The client happens to fly back to San Francisco on Monday and it’s the only day we can get together.”
I was fibbing. Gretchen looked at me as if she didn’t quite buy what I was telling her.
“Hey—baby . . .”
She was still pouting.
That’s when I saw the waterworks.
“Come on, hon. You can’t give me a hard time here. I mean, really. We promised to stay out of each other’s lives, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”
When I delivered this plea for understanding I happened to be standing naked in room 413 of the Embassy Suites downtown on North End Avenue. It was my absolute favorite of all our sex nests because it was new and exceptionally clean, and aside from the horrible reminder of 9/11 a few hundred yards away, it was located in the most civilized neighborhood of Manhattan.
Gretchen was sitting on the edge of the bed in black brassiere and panties, a shade which against her perpetually tan skin drove me crazy with desire. She’d worked on that tan everywhere from Barbados to Cancun, courtesy of her frequent holidays with Leonard.
That’s exactly what I threw in her face now.
“I don’t bitch and moan when you globe-trot with your husband, do I?”
“But I don’t really want to go, don’t you understand that? I thought you—”
I cut her off with a laugh. “Jesus Christ, baby—you’re making this hard.”
“But couldn’t you just try, Jonathan?”
I shook my head, then sat next to her and draped my arm across her finely muscled shoulders. Even though I’d alway
s admired them, they seemed very frail to me now. I didn’t know what to say. Gretchen had never asked me for anything before. If I wasn’t so addicted to climbing on top of her, I would have been completely beside myself.
Hell, I was beside myself.
“Well, there’s the very remote possibility that something might open up, but it’s a long shot. I’ll shoot you an e-mail if it does. What the hell is this all about?”
Her demand was so completely out of character that I didn’t know what to make of it, what the hell I was dealing with. It’s hard enough to understand where a woman is coming from when you’re living with her. When you see her once a week and spend all your time in bed, it’s damned near impossible.
“I just wanted to be with you, is all. More than just once a week. I guess I’m starting to miss you when I don’t see you. Is something wrong with that?”
Through my bewilderment I noticed that she was nervous. What the hell was she so on edge about? Us, sure, but . . . I had the impression she was anxious about something more, something bigger, something beyond the two of us alone together in a hotel room.
I didn’t want to come off as insensitive as a stone, so I said, as gently as I could, “Of course there’s nothing wrong with it . . . but you remember what we agreed on at the beginning, right? I mean, we just talked about it again not so long ago—didn’t we?”
No answer. Jesus Christ—what the hell?
“Right? Gretchen?” Now things were in danger of exploding. “Think about what you’re saying here.”
She nodded. What the fuck was going on in that brain of hers?
“Gretch—”
“No. You’re right. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
But I needed for her to get it straight and keep it straight. “Just remember what’s at stake here. Leonard finds out what you’re up to—that you’re doing some guy twenty years his junior in a hotel room once a week—and your entire life, your future, is . . . poof—up in smoke. The only way we’d ever get really free would be if he and Monica both died, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Unless we have them killed.” I scoffed, remembering our earlier ugly conversation. “And that sort of thing only happens in cheesy books and movies. And neither one of us is about to kill anybody. Well, I know I’m not, I can tell you that much.”
No Strings Page 5