She could still remember how special she felt, standing on the porch of her sorority house, surrounded by all her sisters, grinning from ear to ear, while the men from Peter’s fraternity serenaded her. And at the moment when he actually fastened his fraternity pin to her pink angora sweater, she was profoundly sorry for every other girl in the world.
Karen sighed in the chill Manhattan night, watching her breath frost in front of her, and wishing Peter were here beside her instead of in Bangor, Maine, spending Christmas with his family. Despite her mother’s importunings, Peter was everything Karen had ever wanted, ever hoped to find in a man, from his quick mind and generous nature to his short crop of sandy hair, warm brown eyes and soft lips that hardly needed an excuse to curl into a grin.
“At least we’ll spend New Year’s together,” he’d told her when they hugged good-bye at the Ithaca train station. “I’ll see you on the thirtieth.”
Nine days and counting, Karen thought with anticipation. Still, she couldn’t suppress a small stab of disappointment because she would have so enjoyed the chance to show him off at the party Jill and Andy Hartman were throwing tonight.
At Seventy-seventh Street, she turned west.
Although Great Neck, the upper-income suburb jutting out into Long Island Sound where Karen had been born and raised, was no more than half an hour’s train ride from Manhattan, the very last thing the Cornell coed had planned to do on the Friday before Christmas was come into the city. But here she was, dressed in her finest and on her way to her best friend’s party. Her best friend who had returned from her sophomore year at Northwestern ten pounds overweight and two months pregnant.
What a mess that had been—Jill disgraced, Andy dragged back from his summer abroad, Jill’s parents trying in vain to put a good face on everything. No one bothered to mention the option of a back-alley butcher. Instead, there was a hushed, rushed little civil ceremony that was promptly predated six months. Jill’s father, a prominent New York attorney, pulled some strings to get Andy transferred from Northwestern to the law school at Columbia. Of course, Jill had to quit college.
Karen could just imagine what her own parents would do were she to get herself into such a predicament. The very thought of her mother’s wails and screeches brought her stomach to the edge of revolt She said a silent prayer of thanks for Peter, who had made a few attempts to get her to go all the way with him, in the back seat of his green Pontiac after they had drunk too much sour-tasting beer, but had never pressed her past a certain point.
Perhaps it was going out of style nowadays, but Karen still believed in the value of virginity and the importance of saving herself for her wedding night. Besides, her mother had certainly warned her often enough about the perils of promiscuity.
“Men might date tramps, but they marry virgins,” Beverly Kern would state bluntly, hammering her message home at every opportunity. “Would you go into a store and pay top price for used merchandise?”
Karen had to admit she wouldn’t.
“And God forbid you got pregnant,” her mother always continued. “How could we ever hold up our heads in this town again? The tongues would never stop wagging.”
Just the notion of humiliating her family in such a way was enough to make Karen break into a cold sweat. So each time she found herself getting high on beer in the back seat of the Pontiac, a prudent little voice, which always sounded remarkably like her mother’s, would begin to echo very clearly in her ear. It was more than enough to keep her resolve firm and her legs crossed.
Karen felt awful for Jill having to quit college, for having to marry so inopportunely, and for having a baby when she was still practically a baby herself. She knew Jill had dreamed of going to Paris after college, of living in a quaint little garret on the Left Bank, painting surrealistic versions of the Eiffel Tower, and hobnobbing with expatriate artists for a year or so, until her graduation money ran out.
For herself, Karen had no such lofty ambitions. While she intended to earn a degree in English at Cornell, a career did not really figure into her future. In fact, there wasn’t any fantasy in her head that didn’t ultimately end in getting married and having children—a whole houseful of children. Especially since she had met Peter. And while such a goal might have seemed dull or old-fashioned to some, she could hardly wait for the day when, as she pictured it, she would walk down the aisle and begin her real life.
Karen knew a few girls at Cornell who planned to pursue careers after graduation, but her mother had always dismissed a vocation as something to fall back on only in the case of early widowhood, and dismissed Karen’s schoolmates as girls who, lacking enough marketable assets to make good marriages, were simply making the best of unfortunate circumstances.
Moreover, Beverly Kern was convinced that anyone with Andy Hartman’s good looks and other attributes, having been forced into marriage, would probably divorce Jill at the earliest possible moment, thus ruining her forever.
By the time Karen reached the corner of West End Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street, it was after eight o’clock. The brick building in front of her, which rose twelve stories and occupied almost half the block, was, like so many that lined the streets of Manhattan, a once-elegant structure that was past its prime. In the dreary December night, it appeared more gray than red.
A doorman in maroon livery ushered her in out of the cold and across a softly lit lobby so ornately appointed that Karen imagined it might have been lifted from a palace like Versailles.
“At last,” Jill Hartman exclaimed when the elevator deposited Karen on the eighth floor and she made her way to Apartment G. “I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind about coming.”
“And miss a good party?” Karen laughed. “You know me better than that.”
Jill was now eight months pregnant and she looked absolutely radiant. Her long, honey-colored hair glistened, her hazel eyes danced, and her face glowed. This party was her final fling, as she described it, before the baby burst onto the scene.
“Well, come on in,” she cried. “There are scads of great-looking guys here that ought to keep you from pining for Peter for at least one evening. I’d take you around and intro- duce you, but the truth is, they’re mostly friends of Andy’s. I hardly know any of them.” She took her guest’s coat and purse and waddled off down the hallway. “Don’t be shy,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Just jump right in.”
Karen chuckled. Always bright and bubbly, she was anything but shy. So she fluffed out her hair and smoothed down her skirt and looked around. The apartment was truly fabulous, boasting large, airy, cream-colored rooms with high ceilings and intricately carved moldings. Crystal sconces graced the walls, velvet curtains framed windows that overlooked the Hudson River, and those floors that weren’t buried beneath thick carpeting were highly polished parquet.
With insolent indifference, the Hartmans had taken this glorious setting and filled it with Danish modern furniture. A makeshift bar sat at one end of the living room, while an assortment of spindly teak sofas and chairs upholstered in ugly brown tweed occupied the other. Across the foyer, a stick-legged dining table sagged under an extravagant buffet supper. The throaty voice of Nat King Cole drifted out of an elaborate hi-fi system that Andy had installed, completing the incongruity.
The crush of guests who filled the apartment were split pretty evenly between the bar and the buffet. Karen wasn’t much of a drinker, so she turned toward the dining room. She was in the process of filling a plate with creamed chicken, shrimp curry, and a variety of salads that must have taken Jill a month to prepare, when someone brushed up against her, jostling her elbow, and she felt warm breath tickle her ear.
“You must’ve just arrived,” a husky voice whispered, “or I would certainly have noticed you were missing.”
It was so unexpected that Karen promptly spilled macaroni and mayonnaise down the front of her favorite black party dress.
“You’re right, I did just get here,” she managed to say
, although at the moment she felt more like grinding her high heel into the stranger’s foot. “But now you’ll have to excuse me.”
She set her plate back on the table, and, without so much as a glance in his direction, fled down the hall to the bathroom where she stood in front of the mirror and stared in dismay at the oily stain that had quickly spread across the expensive satin.
“Damn,” she muttered, snatching a towel off the bar and beginning to dab at the mess.
“What’s the matter?” Jill asked from the doorway.
With a sigh, Karen turned around.
“Good heavens,” her friend cried. “What happened?”
“Some would-be Don Juan tried to whisper a sweet nothing in my ear as I was helping myself to the macaroni salad.”
“Cornstarch,” Jill said, vanishing and returning faster than Karen would have believed possible, given her friend’s present condition, with a box of powdery white stuff, which she proceeded to sprinkle liberally over the black satin. “Who whispered in your ear?” she asked as the two of them waited for the cornstarch to soak up the oil.
“I don’t know,” Karen replied. “I didn’t stop for the formalities.”
“Well, go find out,” Jill suggested when the home remedy had worked its miracle. “And spill some cocktail sauce down his shirt.”
“Now that’s an idea,” Karen chuckled. But she skipped the buffet this time and went to the bar instead, busying herself with a bottle of root beer.
“I’m sorry about your dress,” the voice said from behind her. “I’d be happy to buy you a new one.”
“That’s all right,” Karen told him, wondering whether root beer would do as much damage as cocktail sauce. “Most of the stain actually came right out, and I think a good cleaning will take care of the rest. But I appreciate the offer.”
She turned around then and looked up into a pair of aquamarine eyes so arresting that she was left with only a fleeting impression of what the rest of him was like.
“It’s a beautiful dress,” he said, and Karen actually felt his blue-green glance travel from the rise of her bosom to the turn of her ankle.
“Why thank you, kind sir,” she responded lightly. In fact, it was a beautiful dress, a graceful, scoop-necked concoction with a tight bodice and a flattering tulip skirt.
“I’m Bob,” he said with a seductive smile that lit up his face, a very handsome face she now saw, with straight brows, a thick fringe of eyelashes, a thin nose, sculpted mouth, and a small black mole on his right cheek that may have marred perfection but suited him absolutely. The whole was set off by a lot of dark hair that apparently curled too much for his liking, judging by the amount of Brylcreem he had used.
“I’m Karen,” she replied.
“Well, Karen,” he said as though he were actually caressing the name, “there’s no doubt that you’re the most attractive woman here tonight.”
She knew it was a line, but he delivered it so well that she couldn’t stop a little shiver from skidding down her spine. Bob was taller than Peter, who was far from short, and, where Peter was lean and trim from hours on the tennis courts, Bob was broad and muscular like a football player. She noted that his slacks were sharply creased, his cuffs, peeking from beneath a navy blazer, were fastened with expensive gold links, his tie was modestly striped, and his loafers were polished to a high gloss.
He was obviously quite stuck on himself, but Karen had handled this type before, and she didn’t feel she would be betraying Peter any if she let a handsome stranger pay her a compliment or two.
“I think you have exceptionally good taste,” she said, smiling back.
He touched his Scotch highball to her bottle of root beer. “Well then, here’s to getting to know you better,” he said softly.
The party circled around them. Karen was at her best in crowds, moving in and out of various groups with such grace and ease that a professor once observed that she would be a real asset to an ambitious politician. She was included in a conversation about the truth behind the Cuban missile crisis, took part in a discussion of James Meredith and the future of integration, and joined a circle speculating about the future of a shaggy-haired quartet from Liverpool who went by the name of some insect.
The comfortable cloak of Camelot—that invisible sense of security and innocence and well-being—rested gently over everyone.
Karen would have enjoyed spending more time with several of the people she met, but Bob seemed always at her elbow, distracting her. At some point, he took charge of the drinks, pouring her root beer into a tall glass and adding a little something extra when he thought she wasn’t looking. Karen grimaced a bit at the unpleasant combination of Hire’s and Scotch, but didn’t object. Bob was so attractive and he was being so considerate and, although she knew it was all just harmless flirtation, it made her feel terrific when, several times, she caught the envious glances of some of the other young women.
It’s only for tonight, girls, she thought with a self-satisfied smile. Tomorrow, he’s all yours.
Bob, as it turned out, was a friend of a friend of one of Andy’s former roommates from Northwestern. He told her he was a born-and-bred California boy and had graduated from Stanford.
“Palm trees, sunshine and tequila,” he summed up for her with a nostalgic sigh. “It was a glorious four-year-long party.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Karen said, laughing.
“But now that I’m at Harvard Law,” he added with a grimace, “all I get to do is study, study and study. Have to keep the old nose to the grindstone, you know, fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. Would you believe that this is the first real party I’ve been to in almost a year and a half?”
“Poor baby,” Karen consoled. Another lawyer, she thought with an inner chuckle. He was going to make some girl’s parents very happy one day.
“No joke,” he assured her. “I came down from Cambridge the day before yesterday and I have no intention of going back until I’m partied out.”
“Good luck,” Karen told him.
“You know, Cornell’s not all that far from Harvard,” he commented at one point during the evening, although Ithaca was in fact hundreds of miles from Cambridge. “Maybe I’ll look you up sometime.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about Peter, but she reasoned his remark was merely party talk and not to be taken seriously, and anyway, she was enjoying the attention too much to relinquish it so soon.
“Let’s see, that should be in another year and a half, right?” she quipped.
“Oh, I just might make an exception in your case,” he countered, flashing a dazzling smile.
It was two o’clock before she realized it, and the party was winding down. About a dozen guests remained, wandering around, looking as though they couldn’t remember where they were supposed to go. Andy had gotten drunk and passed out on one of the spindly brown tweed sofas. Jill was clearing away the debris.
“Let me help,” Karen offered.
“I’m not doing any heavy cleaning up now,” her friend replied. “I’m just stashing the leftovers in the fridge. Everything else can wait until tomorrow. Look, it’s really late. Do you want to stay over? I’m sure we can find an extra sofa.”
“Thanks, but I’m all set up with my aunt and uncle.”
Edna and Harry Kern lived on East Seventy-sixth Street, across Central Park. Over the years, Karen had occupied their flowery guest room whenever she stayed late in the city. The arrangement was quite convenient. She kept a change of clothes, a pair of pajamas, and a toothbrush in a dresser drawer, and Uncle Harry would leave an extra key with the night doorman so that Karen could let herself in without disturbing them.
“Then you’d better get going or you won’t be able to find a cab,” Jill told her.
“It was very nice meeting you,” Karen said to Bob as he helped her on with her coat. “I had fun.”
“The evening doesn’t have to end, does it?” he asked. “It’s still early.
There’s bound to be a club or two that’s open.” Thank you very much,” she replied, “but it’s pretty late by my clock and I have to get crosstown.”
“Are you sure I can’t change your mind?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m staying with relatives. They’re kind of old-fashioned and if I don’t show up pretty soon they’re apt to send the police out looking for me.”
She knew that Aunt Edna and Uncle Harry had been sound asleep for hours by now, but he didn’t. Had circumstances been different, she might have said yes to his invitation. But the party was over and Peter would be coming down in a few days, and that was the way it was.
“Then let me help you find a cab,” he offered. “I don’t like the idea of you wandering the streets alone at this hour.”
She smiled because he really was very nice. “Thanks,” she said, “but the doorman will take care of that.”
“Well then, the least you can do is let me accompany you down in the elevator,” he persisted.
“Why not?” she agreed carelessly.
They said their good-byes and departed. When they reached the lobby, however, the doorman was nowhere in sight.
“Maybe he had to go to the john,” Bob suggested.
“Perhaps he’s on a coffee break.”
They stood around for ten minutes or so, but the doorman did not reappear.
“Look, let me get you a cab,” Bob said. “I have to find one for myself, anyway.”
Karen shrugged. “Okay.”
The temperature had dipped down into the teens by the time they emerged from the apartment building and began their hunt for a taxi, walking east, past the Museum of Natural History complex, on their way to Central Park West. The streets were almost deserted at this hour and the sound of their shoes on the pavement echoed off the rows of dark, frowning buildings.
Guilt by Association Page 2