by Randy Salem
After a while, Lee said, "You're married?"
She heard the woman catch her breath, then let it go on a long sigh.
"Yes," she said. "My husband travels a lot."
Lee smiled. "I hope he's traveling at the moment?"
Again the woman laughed. And hearing the sound, Lee felt herself relaxing. She knew that she would not think of Maggie tonight. Maybe she wouldn't think of Maggie for a long, long time.
"Yes, he is traveling," the woman said. "He will be gone for a week. Until Friday."
At the entrance of a proper-looking brownstone, the woman took Lee's hand and led her inside. Silently, Lee followed her up three flights of deep carpeted stairs to a back apartment.
Whatever the guy did while he traveled, he made money doing it. Plenty had gone into furnishing the six big rooms. Lee took a good look around her while the woman went off to hang up the wet trench coat. She nodded, checking off in her mind the prices of several items that she recognized from her own furniture-buying sprees. No woman who lived like this went out hustling for cash.
But if not for cash...
The woman had changed into a scarlet silk robe that lit pinpoints of flame in the dark eyes. As she came into the room, Lee stood up from the couch where she had been waiting.
She took a step toward the woman, then paused. "By the way," she said, "I'm Lee. If it makes any difference."
Now the laugh was like the tinkling of a bell. "And I am Cleo," she said. "I hope it will make much difference."
"Why?"
The woman tilted her head back and looked hard into Lee's eyes. "Because I am bored," she said quietly. "And I want you to make me not be bored any more."
"Well," Lee said, reaching to take her hand, "we'll see what we can do about that."
CHAPTER TWO
From somewhere in the apartment, a clock chimed ten. The odor of their perspiration came heavily from the rumpled sheets. She lay with her head against Cleo's thigh, watching the smoke from a cigarette spiral upward, counting the chimes.
Cleo's fingertips brushed the side of her neck. And Lee sighed, knowing that she must leave, yet wanting to linger. For women like Cleo had, after all, their advantages. Could make you forget that you hadn't eaten or slept; could take your tired, used-up body and make it feel young again and resilient. Cleo made love with the smooth perfection of a graceful, well-oiled machine... with guaranteed results, yet curiously devoid of personal involvement. For she was a greedy woman, this Cleo Amato. Greedy for pleasures, greedy for kicks. Ready to reach out eagerly with both hands, yet unable to give in return.
Which was just fine with Lee. There wasn't a damn thing she wanted from Cleo but the use of her body. Not a damn thing...
Cleo put her hand lightly on Lee's shoulder. "Why are you frowning so?"
"It's late," Lee said. "I'll have to leave soon."
She felt a muscle tighten in the woman's thigh and she knew she was in for a routine. It figured. Women like Cleo were compulsively possessive, as anyone who cannot feel must be. Anything that could, even for a moment, relieve the tedium of her existence must be clung to desperately, wrung dry, drained, until it too became a bore.
Lee closed her eyes and waited.
"Why must you leave?"
"I have an appointment."
"With another woman," Cleo said, her voice flatly accusing.
Lee smiled. "At this hour?" she said. "What do you think I am, a gigolo?"
Cleo took a deep breath. "Then with whom?"
"It's a business appointment," Lee said patiently.
"On Sunday?"
"On Sunday," Lee said, ignoring the disbelief in Cleo's tone. There had been a time when women like Cleo frightened her. When she was very young.
"But you will come back later," Cleo said. It was not a question.
Lee opened her eyes and peered up at the lovely face, tense now with little lines fanning out from the mouth.
"I might," she said evenly. "And then again, I might not."
"But you must!" Cleo blurted.
Slowly Lee turned onto her stomach and looked into Cleo's eyes. "Baby," she said quietly, "I don't must anything." She leaned to a side table and set the cigarette into a glass tray. "And the sooner you learn that, the happier you'll be."
Cleo's lower lip trembled, then fell into a pout.
Lee laughed. "You're pretty funny. You know that, don't you?"
"I don't think it is funny at all. I have so little time to be with you. And then Tony will be home."
Lee nodded. "That's what I mean," she said. "You're in no position to make demands on anybody. I'm sure you'd rather die than have your husband find out about me. And frankly, I don't intend to go out of my way for you either. So why don't you just relax, take what you can get, and be grateful."
She watched Cleo's face closely, waiting for the burst of anger and frustration that had to come. Cleo, with her hot Latin blood, was not a woman to dissolve in tears.
But Cleo's reaction surprised her. And pleased her, too. The woman tilted her head back and laughed with the laugh that was like the tinkling of bells.
When she had stopped, she leaned forward and touched her palm to Lee's cheek. "No one before has spoken to me like that," she said softly.
Lee propped herself on one elbow and took a long, long look at the tight, firm breasts, the satiny dark flesh of hips and thighs. "No," she said after a moment, "I don't suppose they have."
"Most have said they would die for me," Cleo murmured.
Lee reached out and trailed a fingertip across the smooth thigh. "I think I'd be more use to you alive."
"Oh!" Cleo moaned, shoving Lee's shoulder playfully. "Don't you ever say anything nice to a girl?"
"What for?" Lee grinned. "You want me to start lying to you?"
Cleo shook her head slowly and took Lee's face between her hands. "No," she murmured. "Just kiss me. Like before."
Instead of moving to take the girl in her arms, Lee laid her cheek against the soft, warm mound of belly. Gently, lightly, her fingertips trailed down the long line of hip and thigh. She heard Cleo sigh and felt her body tense expectantly. And she smiled to herself with her lips against the sweet-smelling flesh. With Cleo, preliminaries were a waste of time.
She put her palm against the girl and massaged her gently, teasing her, wanting her to want what was to come, wanting to make her feel something—if only the agony of waiting and needing. Not wanting Cleo to love her, but at least to know that she had been there, to remember some time in another bed.
Cleo's fingers gripped Lee's skull as though she wanted to crack it wide open.
Lee kissed her then with her mouth open. Held her and used her slowly Making Cleo feel. Making Cleo give...
Lee sat up on the edge of the bed and grinned down at Cleo's glowing face. "Are you still bored?"
Cleo pulled up her shoulders and stretched luxuriantly. "You make love like an angel."
Lee shrugged. "Why not? I've had lots of practice."
Cleo's eyes narrowed as she looked at Lee. "I think I could hate you."
"But you don't," Lee said. She reached under the edge of the bed with her toes and slid into her shoes. "Women never do."
"Just for that," Cleo said, grabbing for a sheet and wriggling down under it, "I will. You can get out of here and stay out."
Lee ignored the smoldering fire behind her and hurried getting dressed. It would be after eleven by the time she got home and Maggie would be waiting, ready to lay her low. Already her body had begun to forget the feel of Cleo's hands, Cleo's lips. Already she was sinking into the tired slump of going home, of facing Maggie, of listening politely while Uncle Andrew bored her out of her mind. It was always like that lately. No matter where she went, no matter what she did, something remained strangely unquiet, restive. The weight of her discontent dragged at her shoulders and slowed her steps—put vile words in her mouth and vile feelings in her heart.
"Don't you care at all?" Cleo said timidly.
/> "Care about what?" Lee snapped.
If only she could find the thing that niggled. If only she could reach out and come to grips with it, grab it by the throat and choke the life out of it. Get back to the way she used to feel, the way she used to bounce, before Maggie...
Cleo clucked her tongue and turned away disgustedly. "Doesn't anyone mean anything to you, Lee?" she said to the wall.
And Lee thought—the love of Maggie is the root of all evil...
The thought clanged loudly inside her head. So loudly she almost forgot Cleo was there. But after a moment, she turned and peered at the girl intensely. She would be needing Cleo. And Helga. And anything else that wasn't Maggie.
She didn't bother to apologize. She said simply, "I'll see you later," and made a beeline through the apartment and out the hall door.
It had stopped raining some time during the morning, but cabs were still scarce. By the time she caught one, she could have walked halfway home. She sank back in the seat and glowered at the top of the driver's head. She felt empty and full, sweaty under her arms and dry around the lips. And if she'd had Maggie beside her, she would have turned around and slugged her.
Uncle Andrew had shoehorned his little Daf in between a Cadillac and an Olds. It looked, somehow, as though it had been sitting there for a long time, waiting patiently for Rover Boy to come home. Even before she paid off the cabbie and turned around, she felt Maggie standing behind her with the door open and a frank appraisal in her eyes.
She didn't give Maggie a chance to say a word. She threw her the trench coat and pushed past her into the house.
Maggie followed out to the kitchen and brought her a cup for coffee. "I don't suppose you've had any breakfast."
"That's right," Lee said. "But I'm not hungry." She filled the cup and carried it to the table.
"I don't know what your women have against food," Maggie said seriously. "It's just as important… as other things."
Lee grinned as she pulled out a chair. "Oh, is it now, Miss Pris? And how would you know about that?"
Maggie blushed a pink that almost matched her dress and Lee was instantly sorry for the dirty crack. She had never discussed Maggie's love life with her, though she suspected that the girl clung to her virginity with a zealot's fervor. Not that she was a prude. Just old-fashioned. Saving it like a perfumed goodie in a hope chest.
"I'm sorry," Lee said. "I didn't mean to be crude."
"You weren't," Maggie said. "But I don't know how you could help but be, with the kind of women you run around with."
"How do you know what kind of women I run around with?"
"I can imagine," Maggie said innocently. "They keep you up all night and send you home without breakfast. You know very well you're supposed to take care of your stomach or you'll be flat on your back again and what good will you do any of them?"
"Sometimes they like me flat on my back," Lee said, grinning again. "I can't play strong arm all the time."
"Oh, you make me sick!" Maggie wailed.
Lee sighed. "You know something?" she said. "Sometimes you make me sick, too. Do you think I intend to spend the rest of my life taking stomach pills and sitting around letting my rear get fat? I'd be bored to death in two weeks if I lived the way you want me to. Wear your boots and eat your mush and wash behind your ears... What the hell do you think I am anyway?"
"A damned fool," Maggie said without hesitation. "You run around like a rat on a treadmill and pretend you're having a high old time. But you know something? I don't believe a word of it. And I don't think you do either." She stopped to catch her breath. "How do you like that?"
Lee didn't like it a bit. It hit a little closer to home than she cared to admit. She emptied the coffee cup and banged it down on the plank table. "Where's Andrew?"
"Upstairs," Maggie said calmly. "Reading the funnies for the tenth time."
Maggie had a triumphant gleam in her eyes that galled Lee's soul. "I wonder what would happen to him if he ever tried reading a book?" she said off-handedly.
"Now, just a minute," Maggie said defensively. "You don't have to pick on him just because I get on your nerves. He...
"Okay, okay," Lee said. "I know he is the essence of all good things and I am an old bastard with a sore head. What does he want this time, anyhow?"
Maggie's face grew serious and paler around the lips.
"Kate's had another heart attack," she said quietly. "Daddy says this one almost finished her."
Lee stood up and walked away to the window overlooking the back garden. A little purple thing with white stripes on the petals had poked its way between two stones. "When was this?" she said studying the flower, hating its vigor. Hating anything that was young and strong and healthy, while Kate was dying.
"Over a week ago," Maggie said. "She wouldn't let Daddy tell us until she was feeling better. You know how she is."
"Yeah, I know," Lee said tiredly.
"We have to be at Ravensway at three," Maggie said. "She is expecting us."
Lee remembered the last time and she and Maggie had received the summons. Two months ago—maybe three. The old lady had just sort of fallen apart, caved in—like an ancient castle crumbling in on itself.. It had sickened her to see Kate like that. Today it would be even worse.
Maggie came up behind her and put her hand on Lee's sleeve. "She's ninety, Lee. You can't expect..."
"Somehow I always did," Lee interrupted. "Somehow I thought Kate would live to bury us all." She paused, then murmured, "I think Kate thought so, too."
The thump of Uncle Andrew's stumpy legs pounding down the stairs snapped them both back from melancholy. Lee turned toward the doorway to watch the old battleship sail in.
Andrew De Groot had seen more of trouble in his lifetime than most men might see in three. One of Kate's poor relations, he had been tucked in securely under her thumb since the day he was born. In the family firm, she had saddled him with all the dirty work she could find for him to do. He had come to her poor and wisely, she had kept him that way, putting him in his place and stifling any plan of rebellion he might have had. He had married six times, each time to a woman of Kate's selection, playing his role in the dwindling family's desperate struggle to produce sons. He had buried six wives. The last one, Maggie's mother, had given him his only child and nearly cost him his sanity. For it was his own drunken effort to deliver the child that had resulted in hemorrhage and death. He had started to go to paunch after that, his tiny frame burdened with trouble and beer.
But no one, looking at Andrew, would know these things. One would see only a little red-faced man with twinkling eyes who looked more like Santa Claus than any human had a right to. Lee had always had a weakness for Uncle Andrew. He had told the funniest stories when she and Maggie were kids and always he had had something special for her in the side pocket of his coat. But he had not aged well. He forgot things, he bumbled, he repeated himself. And he made blunders that she often had to smooth over with Kate.
She was remembering the blunders now, as he strode toward her. If Kate died, Andrew should by rights become head of the firm. And if Andrew became head of the firm, the Van Tassel Corporation would run smoothly down the drain.
"You grew an inch!" Andrew roared in his quietest tone. He grabbed her by the hand and the elbow and shook.
Lee, who had exercised for two years to reach five-four, grinned at the familiar greeting and shook back. Then she poked him in the belly and said, "You grew an inch yourself."
The old man laughed happily. The exchange had palled on Lee more years ago than she could count. But she knew that Andrew found security in the routine. When he had settled back to his usual wheezing quiet, she said, "What's this Maggie was telling me about Kate?"
"Ah Kate," he said, his gruff voice suddenly soft. "Kate." He closed his eyes for a moment, as though staring at something private, something sacred. "There's a woman, Lee. There is a real woman."
Lee sighed. Getting a straight answer from Andrew was like
pulling a splinter from under a fingernail. "I know, Andrew," she said gently. "We all know."
Maggie stepped to the old man's side and took his hand. She got a funny, mushy look around her eyes when Andrew started wandering. Lee remembered seeing that look even when they were kids.
"I told Lee that Kate was ill," Maggie said gently.
"Yes," Andrew said. He looked up at Lee now and his eyes were red like his cheeks. "She doesn't want to die here, Lee. She wants me to take her home."
"What?" Lee said. "Are you crazy?"
"No," the old man said. "Not yet. Neither is Kate. She is simply very old. And she is homesick. She wants me to take her home."
"To Holland?" Lee said wearily.
"Of course, Lee," Andrew said. "We were children there."
"She wants to be buried under some smelly old windmill in a pair of wooden shoes. Is that what you're telling me?" Lee heard herself almost shouting at the old man and she stopped for a moment to calm down. Then she said, "Andrew, she hasn't been there in seventy years. There's been a war or two since then. Bombs. Flush toilets and imported tulips. If she goes back there now, she'll die of plain disappointment."
"I agree with Lee," Maggie said. "Kate's used to luxury, to..."
Andrew sighed like a wind through spruce. Both of them stopped agreeing with each other and turned to look at him.
"You forget something," Andrew said and he shook his finger scoldingly at Lee. "It's Kate we're talking about. And Kate wants to go home."
Lee shut her mouth and kept it that way.
CHAPTER THREE
Ravensway, a hundred green and wooded acres on the Hudson, seemed more like an elaborate memorial park than a place to call home. Lee remembered it best as a place where a kid was not allowed to run on the grass or have a pony or keep a dog. Dirt was an anathema to Kate, and kids and ponies and dogs made dirt. As much as she could, Lee had given the place a wide berth.
And yet, steering her black Lincoln slowly up the winding drive to the house, she realized suddenly that she had missed it. And missed Kate. The house itself was a gloomy stone mass of twenty rooms, damp and cold in summer and stuffy with fireplace smoke in the winter. Every main room had at least a two-way exposure and plenty of windows. But somehow, there was never sunlight inside, nor a feeling of coziness. In the hundred and fifty years that the house had stood, only Kate had managed to thrive in it.