Fast Women

by Jennifer Crusie

  “This one’s on the house. Just be home.” He went back inside and closed the door, and Suze turned to Nell and swallowed.

  “He didn’t even ask me what I wanted.”

  “I noticed that. Are you okay?”

  “No,” Suze said and sank down on the couch, tears spilling from her eyes. “We had a big fight last night about me working at The Cup. I refused to quit and he walked out. And he didn’t come back at all last night.”

  “Hang on,” Nell said, and ran to Gabe’s office to get his Glenlivet. “Here,” she said to Suze, splashing some into a Susie Cooper cup. “Drink this.”

  Suze gulped some of the whiskey and then inhaled sharply.

  “Take it easy,” Nell said. “Gabe only drinks the good stuff.”

  “I really thought I’d be different. Not like Abby and Vicki.”

  “You are different.” Nell patted her shoulder and hated Jack. “Maybe he’s not cheating. You don’t know.”

  “I know,” Suze said. “I just want to know for sure.”

  When Suze had gone, Nell banged on the door of Riley’s office and went in. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Jack Dysart Is Cheating on His Wife, Part Three,” Riley said. “Sequels suck.”

  “Don’t get cute with me,” Nell leaned over his desk. “How long have you known?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “And Gabe?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Do we look stupid?”

  “Yes,” Nell said. “More than stupid. Why the hell—”

  “Because you would have told Suze. Remember the first rule?”

  “Don’t pull that junior high crap on me,” Nell said. “This is my best friend.”

  “Which is why we didn’t tell you.” Riley sat behind his desk, impassive and calm. “You couldn’t have done a damn thing for her, anyway.”

  “I could have let her know—”

  “She knew,” Riley said. “She just didn’t want to know. You knew before that Christmas that your husband was screwing around.”

  “I did not.”

  “You knew the whole time you were explaining to people that he hadn’t cheated. You just didn’t want to know.” Riley sighed. “It’s a coping device. I can show photos of a spouse cheating and if the client doesn’t want to believe it, she won’t. Or he. Denial goes both ways.” He stood up and came around the desk. “Except by the time they hire us, they’re usually ready to face the truth. That’s why Suze didn’t show up until now. So tonight I’ll show her the truth. On the house.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Trust me.”

  Nell stepped away from him. “Never again.” She turned to see Gabe standing in the doorway.

  “You know,” he said, “I’m not the jealous type, but—”

  “Go to hell,” she said and walked past him to get her purse.

  Riley said, “Jack Dysart.”

  “Oh, hell,” Gabe said and came after her. “Wait a minute.”

  “You knew and you didn’t tell me,” Nell said, purse in hand, trying to push past him to get the door.

  “Yeah,” Gabe said, blocking her. “Would you just listen, please?”

  “No,” Nell said, and Gabe grabbed her arm and dragged her into his office, slamming the door behind him.

  “Listen to me,” he said when she turned on him, ready to yell. “We found out doing the Quarterly Report for Trevor back in November.”

  “It wasn’t in the report I typed,” Nell said.

  “We gave you a dummy.”

  “I am a dummy,” Nell said. “I thought we—”

  Gabe pointed his finger at her and said, “Don’t even start on that. What we are has nothing to do with the agency.”

  “What are you talking about? We are the agency. The agency and sex. You lied to me and you betrayed Suze.”

  “No.” Gabe said. “We lied to you so you wouldn’t betray the agency.”

  Nell felt cold. “So you and Riley are the agency and I’m not?”

  Gabe closed his eyes. “Look, it’s simple. We didn’t tell you because you’d tell her. You know the rules.”

  “I know the rules, and I know you break them all the time,” Nell said. “This wasn’t about the rules. This was about you keeping me out, you not trusting me. Well, the hell with you.”

  “You would have told Suze,” Gabe said, but she’d already detoured around him and was heading out the door to Suze.

  * * *

  Riley called Suze that night at ten and picked her up fifteen minutes later. He took her up High Street to the campus and then parked in front of a bar off a side street.

  “Here?” she said when they were inside. The place was a typical undergrad hangout, dirty, noisy, and cramped.

  “Here,” Riley said and went to the bar while Suze looked around and thought, So this is what I missed by not being single as an undergraduate. It didn’t cause much of a pang, but then her stomach was already tied in knots so pangs were probably not physically possible. She found a booth and slid into it, taking care not to snag her sweater sleeve on the splintered tabletop.

  My husband is cheating on me.

  Riley came back with two mugs of beer in one hand and a bowl of unshelled peanuts in the other. He slid one of the mugs across to her and sat down.

  “I don’t see why we’re here,” Suze said, and Riley said, “Wait,” so she shut up and sipped her beer. After a long silence broken only by the crack of peanut shells, she said, “Do you have to be this quiet?”

  “Yes,” Riley said, his jaw tight.

  “Are you mad at me? Is it because I made a pass at you on New Year’s Eve?”

  “No.”

  She looked around the bar and thought, I will not cry. “You’re not quiet with Nell.”

  “Nell is different.”

  “Because you slept with her.”

  “No,” Riley said, pretty much ignoring her to look at the crowd, and Suze felt her temper rise.

  “I can’t believe you took advantage of her,” she said, watching him to see if he’d flinch. By God, he was going to pay attention to her tonight or she’d know the reason why.

  “I didn’t take advantage of her.”

  “You seduced her,” Suze said, and Riley turned to her with great and obvious patience and said, “Shut up.”

  “She said you were a really gentle lover,” Suze said, trying to get some kind of reaction, any kind of reaction. “I find that hard to believe, considering the way you treat me.”

  “Nell was fragile. You’re not.” Riley cracked another peanut.

  “I’m fragile. You wouldn’t believe how fragile I am right now.” She watched him crack another peanut, and added, “But since it’s me, you’re not inspired like you were with Nell. I’m not the type you’d be gentle with.”

  “No, you’re the type I’d fuck against a wall,” Riley said, and she slung her beer in his face.

  He turned to her, the beer dripping onto his shirt. “Feel better now?”

  “That was a lousy thing to say,” Suze said, her heart racing.

  He picked up a napkin and wiped some of the beer from his face. “You wanted a fight.”

  “Not like that.” Suze handed him another napkin. “Is my husband cheating on me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old is she?”

  Riley looked at her with sympathy, and that was worse than anything.

  Suze closed her eyes in pain. “Oh, God, call me a whore again, just don’t look at me like that.”

  “I didn’t call you a whore. She’s twenty-two.”

  Twenty-two. “Well, that explains it, I guess.” She looked down at herself, remembering the photos Riley had taken fifteen years before. “Nothing on me looks twenty-two.” She reached for her beer and realized she’d thrown it all at Riley, but before she could sit back, he’d shoved his mug in front of her. “Thank you.”

  She stole a look at him while she drank
and found him still watching the room. Even in a beer-splashed shirt, he looked dependable. Big and dependable. Great hands, Nell had said. Maybe she could get him to beat up Jack. Of course, what she really wanted was to beat up a twenty-two-year-old. “Could I take her?”

  Riley turned back to her. “What? In a fight?” He surveyed her. “Probably. You’d have rage on your side.”

  “How long?”

  “For you to take her?”

  Suze shook her head. “How long has he been seeing her?”

  “End of November is the first we knew.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  “And Nell didn’t tell me.”

  “Nell didn’t know until today.”

  “Why not? If—”

  “Because we knew she’d tell you.” Riley took the mug back. “We found out about it working another job. We do not go causing trouble, so we did not tell either of you.” He drank, and Suze felt betrayed.

  “I worked for you,” she said finally.

  “You quit because your husband threw a temper tantrum,” Riley said. “Not that we’re not grateful. He called the night before you quit and threatened to pull business from us if we didn’t fire you, so you saved us having to compromise our ethics.”

  “But you would have.”

  “Suze, you’d worked for us for a couple of months. Ogilvie and Dysart have been giving us work for years. It wasn’t much of a choice.”

  “You dumped me just like he’s dumping me.”

  Riley shoved the mug back to her. “Drink up.”

  She reached for the mug and then froze as Jack came through a door in the back marked “Game Room.” There was another woman with him, and she was young and she had dark hair, but it wasn’t until they were farther into the room that Suze recognized her. “That’s Olivia. That’s his partner’s daughter.”

  “Yeah, Jack goes for what’s close and easy,” Riley said, and Suze glared at him. “Not you, dummy. Olivia Ogilvie.”

  Jack pulled out a chair for Olivia, and she laughed up at him as she sat. He bent and kissed her on the top of her head, and Suze was torn between pain and rage.

  “I’ll kill him.”

  “I’d work out a plan on that one,” Riley said. “Unless, of course, you want to go to jail.”

  Jack went to the bar, and Suze watched Olivia. She wasn’t strictly beautiful, but she was young and slender, and Suze felt like a lump. “No wonder.”

  Riley glanced at her. “What? Olivia? Stop beating yourself up. You’re a class act. She’s a promiscuous moron.”

  “Sort of like Jack,” Suze said savagely, and Riley laughed.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  Suze felt a little cheered, even as she watched Olivia. “I thought you wanted to fuck me against a wall. That doesn’t say class act to me.”

  He didn’t say anything and she turned to see what was wrong. “You make too many assumptions,” he told her.

  “Is he sleeping with her?”

  “That assumption you can make.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice was sure, and Suze felt sick. He’d seen them, and now she could see them, coupling in her mind’s eye, and it was horrible, gross, disgusting, shameful … excruciating.

  Riley nodded toward the bar where Jack was standing. “You want to confront him?”

  The thought made Suze sicker. “No.”

  “Then my work is done. I’ll take you home.”

  Jack sat down across from Olivia and raised his glass. What would he do if he glanced over and saw her? He’d told her once that he always knew when she walked into a room, even if his back was to her, he always knew.

  The bastard.

  “Yes,” Suze said. “Take me home.”

  They were halfway across the bar when she looked back at Jack one more time and caught his eye. He froze for a moment and then put his beer down and headed for them, his face flushed.

  “Hold it,” she said to Riley, and he looked back and said, “Oh, hell.”

  “I knew it,” Jack said when he was in front of them. “I knew—”

  “I hired him,” Suze said flatly, cutting him off. “Just like Abby and Vicki. This guy is going to retire on your lack of morals.”

  Jack looked past her to Riley, lowering his head a little, so mad he must have forgotten he was there with somebody else, too. Who the hell does he think he is? Suze thought, and then he took a step toward her, and Riley pushed her out from between them, blocking her from Jack with his shoulder.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said to Jack, his voice loaded with contempt. “I’ll take you apart while they both watch.”

  “You’ve been waiting for this,” Jack said, sounding as cocky as ever. “Fifteen years I’ve had her and you’ve wanted her. You think you’re going to get her now?”

  “I think now she gets what she wants,” Riley said. “I think that’s not you anymore. And I think it’s about time.”

  “I want to go home,” Suze said to Riley, and Riley turned his back on Jack, putting his hand on the small of her back to push her gently toward the door.

  “It’s my home, too,” Jack said from behind her. “I’ll—”

  “Not anymore,” Suze said. “The dead bolts will be on.” She looked past him to Olivia, watching them with her tongue touching her top lip like a little cat, and then she turned toward the door, Riley behind her like a wall, blocking out disaster, steadying her when she stumbled.

  When they were outside in the cold, he said, “Are you okay?”

  “No,” she said. “Take me home.”

  When he pulled up in front of her house, she got out and was surprised when he did, too. “Go on,” he said, giving her a gentle push toward the house. “Not a good time for you to be alone. Call Nell and I’ll stay with you until she gets here.”

  She unlocked the door and let him into the house, trying not to cry, trying to concentrate on her anger. “You probably think I deserve this.”

  “Did I say that?” Riley said, annoyed.

  “I did it, too, I did this to Vicki.”

  “Aren’t you in enough pain without beating yourself up?” Riley said, following her into the dining room. “Jack’s a lowlife asshole, he’s always been a lowlife asshole, and he always will be a lowlife asshole. Blame him.”

  “How about you?” Suze said, wanting to fight with somebody. “You spied on me in a motel room. You’re not exactly on high moral ground yourself.”

  “I was working. You were the one stripping for somebody else’s husband in a rented cheerleader uniform.” Riley stared at her china cabinet. “What the hell are those things with feet?”

  “I didn’t rent it,” Suze said. “It was my uniform. I was a senior cheerleader.”

  Riley exhaled on a sort of sigh. “I don’t believe you. Here’s a guy in his forties—”

  “He was thirty-nine.”

  “—chasing a high school senior. That didn’t strike you as wrong?”

  Suze sat down, miserable. “Nothing about him struck me as wrong. He was the most amazing man I’d ever met.” Oh, Jack.

  Riley snorted. “Pederast.”

  Suze frowned at him, distracted for a moment. “I was eighteen. And weren’t you just dating a college junior?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “And you’re what? Thirty-five?”

  “Four,” Riley said. “It didn’t work out. She was too sophisticated for me.”

  “Hard to believe.” Suze slumped back into her chair. “Give Jack her number. Maybe he’ll leave Olivia for her.” She felt her throat tighten and swallowed. “You know, I really believed him when he said I was different. When I turned thirty and he didn’t leave the way he’d left Abby and Vicki, everybody was amazed, but I wasn’t because I knew he loved me.” Her eyes got hot and she could hear her voice thicken. “And then he left me anyway.” She bit her lip to keep from crying—crying in front of
Riley would be just too damn vulnerable, the hell with him—and then she heard him say, “Oh, hell.”

  “I’m not crying,” she said.

  “I know I’m going to regret this,” Riley said, “but he didn’t leave you.”

  Suze glared up at him through her tears. “He didn’t? Well, that’s great news. What the hell is he doing with Olivia then?”

  “He’s making a preemptive strike. He’s been faithful for the whole fourteen years he’s been married to you. I know because I tried my damnedest to find another woman. There wasn’t one. There really isn’t one now. He knows you’re going to leave him, so he’s booking first. It makes him look like a scum, but it doesn’t make him look like a middle-aged loser.”

  Suze surged up from her chair, enraged. “I wasn’t going to leave him. I loved him. You don’t know—”

  “Did he want you to get a job?” Riley said.

  “Oh, come on. Sitting on a barstool while you eavesdrop is not a job. It’s not even an adventure.”

  “Did he object?”

  “Yes,” Suze said, getting madder as Riley got calmer. “So you’re saying I should have stayed unemployed—”

  “What did you do with your paycheck?” Riley said.

  “What difference—”

  “You opened a checking account, didn’t you? Not a joint account. One just for you.”

  “I was making a hundred bucks a night,” Suze snarled. “I don’t think he missed it.”

  “You got a job without telling him, you opened a checking account without telling him—”

  “Women do that every day. It does not constitute desertion.”

  “Who bought the cups with the feet?” Riley said, pointing toward the china cabinet and Suze saw her twenty-seven little pottery cups running in front of the china, running over the china, the whole cabinet in flight.

  “If I was afraid somebody was going to dump me,” Riley said, “and she started to collect those things, I think I’d start dropping them.”

  “He did.” Suze swallowed. “He dropped one, but I glued it back together.”

  “When did you start buying them?” Riley said.

  “September.” Suze let her shoulders slump, rocking a little on her feet, and then she felt Riley’s hand on her back, warm and solid.

  “He didn’t start seeing Olivia until the end of November,” Riley said.