by Donna Huxley
And in her own responses to his lovemaking there were a thousand different answers to his unspoken messages. A moan of pleasure on her lips, she would clutch him tightly, and try to pull him closer yet, as though to banish the separation that haunted her. Each time his affection seemed to express a continuing hope for their relationship, she would respond mutely, begging him by her caresses and the little sounds she made to stay with her, not to give up on her.
The entire responsibility for preserving their marriage as a living entity fell on their lovemaking, and never had Anna dreamed that sensual excitement could be so multiple, so marvellous a thing. Yet the passion that bound her to Marsh was not powerful enough to break the silence that tormented her. Each night she knew him a little better, and had a new intuition of what motivated him, hurt him, pleased him. But each day he receded anew into a reserve that her love could not annul.
One morning she found a note on the kitchen table that informed her that Marsh had contacted the University and taken care of Sally's tuition payments for the balance of the year. 'I'll be late tonight,' he added. 'A case.'
His implication was all too clear. He had never relinquished the belief that she had married him for Sally's sake. Well, he would pay, all right, as long as Anna remained home to accept him in her bed at night. He required no real communication beyond that contact. And in order to pay, he must work. She had no right to complain if his case work kept him away until all hours. He was keeping his part of the bargain, wasn't he? Had she not forfeited her rights as a wife when she refused him his right to her confidence?
All too often he called during the day to tell her in blithe tones not to make him a dinner, not to wait up for him. As the weeks passed her loneliness grew more intense, and her own stubborn pride assumed an ever greater place in her thoughts. She could not go on indefinitely in this humiliating position, she told herself. A working woman by inclination, she had no intention of playing the submissive wife for a husband who refused her his respect and attention.
Eventually, she reflected resignedly, this frail skeleton of a marriage must end in separation and divorce. The thought was infinitely saddening, and yet unavoidable. What, then, must be done? Anna's pride told her she must find work. Not only would it obviously be necessary to earn her own living again, at some future date, but she was unwilling to accept this loveless bargain concerning Sally. Let Marsh pay the tuition, then, while there was no alternative. But Anna would somehow find work, without taking the bitter chance of citing N.T.E.L. as a reference, and would eventually pay him back. When it was all over, and she was alone once more, she would look back on this thwarted marriage in terms of expediency. Sally would have been provided for, at the cost of considerable pain and loneliness.
So be it, she decided darkly. Let Marsh's suspicion of her motives become a reality. No longer daring to hope that her relationship with him might be saved, Anna took to the want ads once more, and began looking for work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
'Anna, ma chérie, are you still on nine?' René Lyotard puffed urgently on his strong-smelling French cigarette as he peered between the swinging kitchen doors to the dining room. 'Why don't they leave, for heaven's sake? They got here at six-thirty, and it's almost ten. Oh, les bougres, finish your wine and go home!'
'Relax, Marc,' Anna laughed. 'They'll leave. They're enjoying their coffee.'
'You're too understanding, ma chérie,' René scowled. 'You were born a saint. But I know you must go home to your husband. And I myself have business tonight. I expect the French to sit up until all hours sipping their brandy, but this is Chicago, non mais!'
Anna smiled. René was perpetually excoriating the customers from the safe distance of the kitchen. But as soon as he passed through those swinging doors, he was transformed into the essence of decorous Gallic gallantry.
'Messieurs, dames,' he would greet the guests with an easy flourish, 'I welcome you to Ariel. Something to drink before dinner?' Only as he passed Anna on his way to the bar or kitchen would his professional smile fade into a shrug of exasperation.
'Les gueux!' he would fume. 'Ariel is the most expensive French restaurant in the city, and our clients are a bunch of peasants who wouldn't know a Camembert from a fireplug. I cannot imitate your natural sweetness, Anna. How you stand them I will never know. It is your superhuman forbearance that gets you such fabulous tips. Not that I begrudge you your success. You deserve it for all you put up with.'
At last the customers stood up to leave. Anna bade them a pleasant good evening and began helping the bus-boy clear the table.
'Anna,' came a stentorian voice from the bar, 'leave that to Henri. May I speak to you for a moment?' Jacques Radier held out his arms lovingly.
'The end of another long day, is it not so, my dear?' he sighed. 'The restaurant business is a demanding one. Now I suppose you will be off to join your lonely husband.'
Anna smiled. 'Actually, I have to meet an old girl friend for a drink, monsieur.'
'Oh, ça alors!' he threw up his hands. 'Your poor husband must be desperate. Since you agreed to work the dinner hour, the poor man must feel like a' bachelor.'
'He's all right,' Anna smiled a trifle ruefully.
'I just wanted to tell you before you leave, Anna, how pleased I am with your work. It is not easy to be the only female garçon in a profession dominated by men. But you are doing wonderfully. Even Monsieur Foucault thinks so, and he and I have never agreed on anything in our lives.' He shrugged as he thought of the business partner he could not do without. 'Actually, it is at his suggestion that I wish to ask you something. Your presence has set a sort of tone here at Ariel which seems to be good for business. Roland and I have been thinking that in the role of hotesse you might be even more effective. Not that you are not brilliant at taking care of the tables. What do you think, my dear?'
Anna pursed her lips uncertainly.
'Ah, I know what you are thinking,' he interjected. 'No tips, eh? Well, I can assure you that Roland and I are thinking in terms of a most substantial salary, worthy of any well-schooled maitre d'hotel. And, of course, your days of lifting plates of food would be over.'
'You are very kind, monsieur,' Anna smiled. 'I'll be happy to work in any way you think best.'
'Good,' he beamed. 'Now, you run along, and we'll talk more of this tomorrow night. A demain, mon petit.'
As she said goodnight to her colleagues and prepared to walk out into the freezing November wind, Anna reflected that Monsieur Radier's proposal might be a good idea. Perhaps a job as hostess would be less exhausting.
Anna had grown to love her work at Ariel since the day Messrs. Foucault and Radier had decided, not without reservations, to hire her in spite of her inexperience. She had given no references, claiming that economic hard times were forcing her to go to work to supplement her husband's income. She had not held a job, she said, since before her college education.
Her new employers had shrugged indifferently at her explanation, for they were concerned only with restaurant experience, of which she had none, and preferred to train her themselves in any case. Despite their irascible treatment of each other, both were fond of Anna, and made every effort to make her first weeks of work as easy as possible.
To their surprise and delight, Anna seemed to have been born with the instinctive tact and delicacy required of a highly trained waiter. The aura of quiet friendliness she brought to Ariel seemed to make the customers happy, and she found herself greeted warmly by increasingly familiar faces as the weeks went by. Her slim good looks were not without their favourable effect as well, and more than once she caught a glimpse of a happy client pointing her out with words of praise to one or the other of her bosses.
The pleasure of doing a job well after the idleness enforced by the collapse of her first career was encouraging. And the banter she enjoyed with René and the other waiters made Anna feel she belonged to a hardworking, if somewhat excitable, team of professionals linked by common needs and ambitio
ns. Her busy nights at Ariel took her mind off the continuing estrangement that troubled her marriage to Marsh. She returned home each night with a welcome sense of accomplishment that took the edge off the feelings of failure which haunted her personal life.
Marsh, for his part, had initially said little in response to the news of her new job. Apparently indifferent to the use to which she put her time when she was not with him, he continued devoting long hours to his own work. Although Anna thought she sensed a touch of pride in her energy and initiative on his part, the intuition was soon eclipsed by the pained silence which hung over so many of her hours with him. And so she clung to the excitement of her work as the only bright light in what was sure to be her future life alone.
But marriage to Marsh Hamilton, she discovered, was never as predictable as it might seem, regardless of the mutual stubbornness which seemed to poison her relationship with him. For with studied casualness, during the moments of fleeting reconciliation or mere relaxation which overtook them both, he drew her out gently on her thoughts about the rigours of her new profession and the personalities of her surprisingly accommodating bosses.
'Who runs the cash register at Ariel?' he enquired one evening.
'Madame Foucault,' Anna replied. 'Why do you ask?'
'I wondered whether it was a woman,' he said. 'In France, no matter how fancy the establishment, the caissiere will always be a woman. The men are trusted to handle the tables, charm the clients and cook the food, but when it comes to the francs the woman is boss.'
'Come to think of it,' Anna laughed, 'Madame Foucault does act the part. Her husband is quite the tyrant when she's not around, but he turns into a puppydog when she comes into view.'
'Perhaps the French have a point,' said Marsh. 'A lot of the businessmen I come into contact with have mucked up their books so badly that they have to pay their accountants more than their creditors.'
'If that's the way you feel about it,' Anna smiled with a touch of complacency, 'you'll be happy to know that when Madame Foucault is indisposed, her job falls to yours truly.'
'You're kidding,' he said, quirking an eyebrow in surprise.
'And not only that,' she added, 'I'm the one who takes Ariel's receipts to the bank in the afternoon.'
'Well, aren't you the unpredictable one,' he smiled. 'So much responsibility already. Aren't you afraid a mugger will assault you for the money, even in that fancy neighbourhood?'
'If that happened,' Anna bristled, 'I'd simply hit him with the bank's money sack—it weighs a ton.'
'I believe you would,' he nodded. 'With that stubborn streak of yours, you'd be a dangerous enemy when roused.'
And he fell silent, his evocation of the independence he had admired in Anna before their marriage no doubt warring with his continuing distrust. For her part Anna could not help feeling satisfied to report her employers' implicit confidence in her to the man who so rigidly withheld his own. At the same time she was aware that through his casual questions, so bland in appearance, he was subtly learning more about her in spite of the silent gulf that persisted between them. Uncomfortably she asked herself whether his inquisitiveness bespoke a remnant of commitment to her. Perhaps, in his grudging way, he still considered himself her husband, and wished to express his support through friendly conversation.
On the other hand, she wondered bitterly, perhaps his occasional interest was born of morbid curiosity about the private life he thought she wished to conceal from him. Perhaps he was interrogating her with an eye to preventing further unbidden revelations about her activities from strangers. The inscrutable silence which so often reigned in his demeanour hardly betokened trust or affection.
Let him think what he liked, Anna decided with a shrug. She herself knew how trustworthy she was, and the steady progress of her new career came as no surprise to her. When the time came her initiative would see her through, notwithstanding Marsh's feelings about her.
The cocktail lounge where Debby Johnson awaited was only two and a half blocks away, but Anna could not suppress a sigh of fatigue as she hurried through Ariel's front door. She felt unusually tired today. Last night was her night off from work, and she had had to accompany Marsh to a party at the District Attorney's house, and had not slept until after one o'clock in the morning. Apparently embarrassed at Anna's invisibility to his colleagues since their marriage, Marsh had wanted her to put in an appearance, since his partners and friends were bringing their spouses.
Perhaps, Anna wondered, there might be talk about the wife Marsh left alone during the late hours he worked. She had agreed to go along, in spite of the alienation she felt from her husband and his world. Her job had gone a long way towards assuaging her loneliness and restoring her sense of independence, and she was beginning to face the eventuality of a separation from Marsh with some courage.
'Why don't you wear my favourite dress?' he had asked as she stood in her bathrobe before the limited array of garments in her closet.
'Marsh, no!' she had protested, her eyes darting to the silken contours of the dress on its hanger. Sinuously low-cut in pearl white with slender shoulder straps, it was the most daringly feminine of her evening dresses. 'It's too…'
'Sexy?' he asked with a grin.
'Well, yes,' she admitted. 'I don't think the occasion is right for it.'
'I do,' he said. 'I want to show you off.'
'You're kidding,' she said ruefully. 'That sounds funny coming from you.'
'I don't see why you say that,' he commented.
'I haven't had the impression that you were exactly bursting with pride in me,' she returned.
'Ah-hah,' he drawled, his long arms encircling her from behind. 'You're breaking the lawyer's first law: never assume. Never try to read someone's mind without knowing the facts beforehand. Remember?'
Anna made no response, for the warm touch of his hard body against her back, so intoxicating in its sheer virility, made it difficult for her to concentrate on his teasing words.
'I have many reasons for pride in you,' Marsh murmured against her earlobe. 'Not the least of which is the sight of those long legs in a clinging dress. Why shouldn't I share the pleasure with my overworked colleagues? I won't be jealous.'
'Mmm,' she sighed, too bewitched by his exploring lips and by the hands that had slipped to the curve of her thighs to regret that his compliment was so insubstantial. If he was sincere about having pride in her, he would surely have better reasons than the mere shape of her body.
'I wonder if the D.A. would notice our arriving late,' he whispered seductively into her ear. 'I'm no longer thinking of the dress, but of what goes into it. We don't have to leave yet.'
'Yes, we do,' she sighed. 'We're expected. You owe him the courtesy after all your years with him.'
'When he gets a look at you, he'll understand why I was late.'
'Thanks,' she said, extricating herself from his embrace with a difficulty made greater by her own reluctance. 'But no, thanks. I don't want to cause you embarrassment in front of your friends.'
'No danger of that,' said Marsh, his appraising eyes taking in the contours of her slender limbs under the bathrobe.
And yet embarrassed indifference seemed exactly his attitude after their arrival at the party, for he seemed eager to shun Anna from the moment his onetime boss ushered them into his enormous living room. The faces of the lawyers and judges were unfamiliar, and Anna found it difficult to make conversation with them. They all seemed so tall, so confident, so successful… And they talked endlessly about subjects Anna was virtually ignorant of.
Marsh was anything but helpful in the circumstances. After hurriedly introducing her to a host of strangers whose names she forgot in spite of herself, he disappeared into a den where some close friends from his days as a prosecutor were engaged in jocular conversation about the city's current political struggles. It soon became clear to Anna that he had no intention of emerging, so she did her best to keep up her end of one casual exchange after another as the
evening dragged by.
More than a few guests had already left, their overcoats securely buttoned in anticipation of the frigid wind outside, when Anna at last decided to seek Marsh out.
Already tired, she gently suggested that it was time to go home. But Marsh would not hear of it. His levity among his friends seemed to underscore his alienation from Anna, for she had not heard him laugh so heartily since her honeymoon with him.
He was seated on a couch surrounded by young lawyers. Among them was a stunningly beautiful blonde woman whom Anna heard addressed as May. Dressed in a clinging skirt and blouse which accentuated her healthy, sleek curves, May was astonishingly attractive. Her long hair bore the traces of the summer sun's bleaching, and her limpid blue eyes darted intelligently from one young lawyer to another. She seemed quite at home among her male colleagues, and laughed easily at their jokes. At the same time, Anna had the impression that May was quite aware her beauty made her the centre of attraction wherever she went, and frankly enjoyed the attention.
For a long moment Marsh did not look up to see that his wife had come into the room. Someone was making a joke, and Marsh added a clever rejoinder which made everyone laugh. With a touch of discomfort Anna saw May place her slender hand on Marsh's arm in a gesture of camaraderie which seemed to conceal a grain of possessiveness.
Marsh introduced her as May Reynolds.
'She's beautiful,' Anna observed later, as they drove home.
'May? Yes, I guess so,' he agreed absently. 'She's a damned good lawyer, very aggressive. She'll be a D.A. herself one day, I'll bet.'
Aggressive in more ways than one, Anna thought, but resisted the temptation to mention that May had been flirting with Marsh. Seeing his preoccupied face behind the wheel of the car, she realised he had withdrawn from her once more. With an inner sigh, she reflected that it made little difference to her marriage if other women courted Marsh's attentions. There was not much affection left in him to be alienated, and the marriage itself would not last long.