by Warren Adler
He certainly was forcing things. She took refuge in silence.
“It can’t go on forever, Fi. I’ve had it out with her. She’s agreed to give me a divorce. It couldn’t go on like this.”
“Is she giving up religion?” Fiona asked.
He sat up stiffly and looked at her.
“That all you can say? I thought you’d be elated. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“You seem to be taking a lot for granted,” she said, her anger beginning to rise. This was totally unexpected and she had no time to prepare a response.
“I can’t believe this,” Greg said. “We’re lovers. Look at us. We’re perfect together. I love you. My life is dominated by thoughts of you.” He was obviously confused by her attitude.
“It took me by surprise,” Fiona said, still trying to come to grips with her confusion. “I hadn’t thought of you in that context. You’re talking marriage. That’s a whole different kind of commitment. I had accepted that in my mind. The legalities of your marriage. The kids.”
“My kids will love you, Fi.”
She was immediately sorry that she had raised that issue. His devotion to his children was commendable and redeeming.
He stood up and began to pace the den. He had put on his pants, but was barefoot and his shirttails hung down over his waist.
“Look, Fi. I know what I bring to the table. I’m forty-one years old. And I do have baggage. I’ve lived. I’ve had a number of prior relationships.” He paused. “So have you, Fi.” Then he resumed his pacing. “It’s also true that I represent some of the biggest bastards in the business. I do that for money. People do things that they detest for money. I have children I adore and I have one first-class fourteen karat cruel bitch for a wife who has finally agreed to let me divorce her. Don’t ask me how I married her in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t perceptive enough. Anyway, it was wrong. People change. She became someone else. I changed. She is a miserable woman who hides behind her religion and her causes to absolve herself of responsibility. She has been a rat to me. And, as a consequence, I have had to fight back. But Fi . . .” He stopped again and turned toward her. “I am a good man, a good person. And I love you. I want to live with you. I don’t want this to be some casual temporary thing. I want to marry you.”
He stopped pacing, turned his back to her and looked into the crackling fire. Naturally, she was moved. His appeal had been passionate and heartfelt. She felt that the barrier had been breached, that there was a lot more to him than she had imagined. Still, the central issue that concerned her now was the fact of her hopefully impending pregnancy. She had deceived him and he would have to confront that fact. And there was more to it than that.
At the beginning of their relationship, he had averred time and time again that his fathering was complete, that he had quite enough offspring, thank you. There had been no mistaking his tone and the air of finality.
But that was before love had arrived. No longer did she detect the arrogance of manhood. Love changed things. Love, as they say, could move mountains. He turned suddenly and looked at her.
“Of course, if there’s no mutuality here then I’m shouting in the wilderness.”
“I’m not sure, Greg,” she said honestly. Of course, she would miss him, would long for his nearness and the comfort of his presence. Aloneness was not necessarily an ideal condition although she had managed to come to grips with it, even enjoy it at times.
Yet, her nature required the occasional intimate company of a man. Perhaps, she thought, she was judging him too critically. Years of disillusion with men and independence had created too tough a hide. Maybe, too, she was misinterpreting what love meant to a thirty-six-year old single woman. Maybe the bells changed their tone in the fourth decade of life.
“Don’t be a fool, Fiona,” her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, rebuking, guilt-inspiring. More than a fool, she told herself, berating herself for her deception. Immaculate deception. She heard the echo of her own laughter in her thoughts.
“The thing is, Fi,” Greg said. “We’re a perfect fit physically and intellectually.” He was being cerebral now, making lawyer’s points. “I have no hang-ups about your work. In fact, I think it’s great, exotic and satisfying.”
“Not too blue collar?” she asked, testing his level of snobbery. Most of her past serious men friends had, sooner or later, frowned on her work. Not for reasons of danger, which she could understand, but for the usual class reasons. Greg was an exception.
“If I have any real quarrel with you, Fi, its your hyperactive sense of political idealism,” he said.
“Runs in the family,” she responded, although her father had played the game at the beginning with great helpings of bullshit and blarney.
“I know you detest my clients. But I’m only a hired gun and you know it. Besides, it shouldn’t be grounds for turning me down. All I’m asking is a try.” He moved toward her and lifted her from the couch. “Experiment. Gamble. Take a chance on a guy that loves you.” He embraced her and whispered in her ear. “Fi. I’ll do anything you ask. If my clients’ causes bug you I’ll trade up. I want your respect as much as your love.”
She could feel the persuasive pressure of his words. Her resolve was weakening. Why not? If he loved her that much surely he would respect her desire for motherhood, her need. All right, he would have to reevaluate his feelings about fathering any more children.
Naturally, a two-parent family would be a plus for her child, she decided. He would have to make a commitment irrevocably to the idea of fatherhood on an equal basis with his two other children. That would be far more important than marriage. No. She would not pressure him on that point. That would be her commitment to him.
“I’m not half bad as husband material, Fi. I’m easy to get along with. I’m not overly argumentative, although I do have a tendency to be a bit sensitive. Maybe that’s because the little boy in me just won’t grow up. I make plenty of dough, enough to go around. I guarantee no economic problems. I’m also an exceptionally neat guy as you’ve seen. I fold up my clothes, keep my closets perfect. Comes of being the son of a Craig’s wife type. I never leave a room without picking up after me.”
“Has something to do with toilet training,” she laughed and knew he was winning her, breaking down all resistance. Still he continued. His suit was relentless.
“And believe it or not, I was a true blue faithful husband until . . . well that’s all beside the point. I would always be faithful to you. Always. You’re more than enough for me, Fi.”
As if to emphasize the point, he grabbed her buttocks with two hands and pushed his hardening penis against her and kissed her neck and ears. No question about it, Fiona thought, we are totally compatible in that department, which was no small thing.
“I have a healthy lust for you. I love you. I cherish you. I promise to bring you nothing but joy. Live with me, Fi. Please.”
“You must be one helluva lobbyist,” she said, feeling all resistance crumble. She ground her pelvis into his.
“That has a bad connotation. I am a soft and loving man. And, as you can tell, wildly romantic. If you won’t move in with me now, we’ll wait until we marry. How about that? Real old-fashioned. Any which way you want.”
She kissed him long and hard on his lips, her tongue caressing his.
“I couldn’t leave here, Greg,” she said.
“Whatever you want. It’s your call. I’ll even pay the mortgage,” he joked.
“There’s no mortgage,” she said. “My father saw to that.”
“I’ll give you anything you want, my darling.
Anything.”
It was, she knew, the moment.
“I want a child,” she said.
She felt him stiffen. His erection subsided. She had obviously hit a raw nerve. Slowly he released her and walked across the room, peering into the fire, which was ebbing.
“That’s what I want, Greg. I’m sorry it offends you. That’s the place I’m in now. I’v
e given it a great deal of thought.”
She could not now tell him what she had done. A great stone weight seemed to be growing in the pit of her stomach. Suddenly, he turned to face her.
“I wish I could,” he said, sucking in a deep breath. She could tell he had fought back tears.
“You did ask,” Fiona said.
“I can’t,” he said.
“I suspected as much,” she said. “I know how you feel about your kids. And I do respect your decision on this. But it’s what I want.” She dared not tell him the truth. “It would always be between us.”
“It’s not what you think, Fi.”
She was confused. He came toward her and held her by the shoulders.
“I did it out of self-protection. My wife wanted to live as a true Catholic, have a giant family. As many kids as God provided, she would say. Then she became this fanatic. I no longer knew her. I hated the idea of a huge unplanned family. Worse, I began to hate her and her ideas.” He paused and looked into her eyes, pleading. “I tried to keep us together as a family. It was the only weapon I could muster. I needed to fight back. I had a vasectomy.”
A sinking feeling engulfed her and she felt on the verge of fainting. She turned away, hiding her face. Her sense of defeat and humiliation was acute.
“In some cases it is reversible,” he said. “But there are no guarantees and the percentage is minuscule.”
She could find neither the will nor the courage to answer him. Her sense of self-delusion was intense. She had brought this down on herself. She had victimized herself with false optimism, wild assumptions and mad fantasies. She assailed herself for her naïveté, her vulnerability.
“Oh Mother, Mother,” her inner voice whined. “I am such a fool.”
“You can’t always get your own way,” she heard her mother respond, her voice larded with that unmistakable tone of self-righteous surety.
“I never told you. I never even thought it might be a factor between us,” Greg said. He could not hide his disappointment. “All I can promise, Fi, is my love. Surely that’s a valuable thing.”
She felt herself approaching the outer cusp of hysteria and was fearful that she might erupt, lose control. Then she heard herself laughing, a hollow false note.
“I’m sorry, Greg. No. You’re right. It shouldn’t have been a factor. I’m not so sure I’d make a good mother anyway.” She paused, letting the words linger in the air. “I don’t think I’m good marriage material either.”
“Only one way to find out,” he persisted. He was amazingly, infuriatingly tenacious. But hadn’t he been devious as well?
She shook her head, walked toward him, and came within range of a potential embrace. He held off, watching her face. She most certainly must have been a puzzle to him.
“I say . . .” she began, hoping her voice reflected an airiness that she did not feel inside. “I say we leave well enough alone, Greg.”
“But really, Fi . . .” he began.
Moving closer to him, she put a finger on his lips.
“You know what too much familiarity breeds.”
“I’m not going to give up, Fi,” Greg said.
But she had already written it off. His cause was hopeless now.
23
She watched him stand for a moment in the entrance of the Marriott Restaurant. For a brief moment as he stood there, she saw him without his political mask of surety and reserve. Then he caught her eye and the mask quickly reappeared and he walked toward her with a broader smile than he usually wore, compensating surely for his inner anxieties.
She had deliberately chosen the Key Bridge Marriott on the Virginia side of the Potomac, counting on the symbolic separation to suggest confidentiality and secrecy. The view, one of the best in town, was also symbolic. Through large picture windows one could see the whole panorama of official Washington with its monuments and wedding cake buildings, the seat of power in all its physical glory.
Her call to Rome had been a compulsive idea. Last night’s episode with Greg had shaken her equilibrium. Her fantasy had exploded leaving her angry and humiliated with most of her enmity directed against herself. All that angst and rationalization. All that convoluted logic. It hadn’t mattered. None of it.
To get her mind off her appalling miscalculation, her childish foray into mindless wish fulfillment, she had forced her thoughts to near total concentration on the McGuire case. Perhaps her call to Rome was motivated by some subconscious effort to balance the scales, to pursue a moral imperative. Enough, she berated herself. Enough of this psycho-babble.
She had, indeed, talked from both sides of her mouth and her disappointment was not only in her lack of conception but in her own lack of insight and scruples. Served her right. In the end she found a tiny shaft of humor in the predicament. She had misappropriated some dead semen. How was she to know the son of a bitch was shooting blanks?
Poor Charlie Rome, she snickered without pity. She had appointed him surrogate whipping boy.
The fact of meeting him was an act of defiance. She hadn’t asked permission. She had “apprahzed” no one. This was her own call. She knew she was flirting with danger. If nothing came of it the Eggplant would be apoplectic. Cates would be appalled. The mayor would be vindictive. If it backfired she would be out or, at the least, relegated to the Siberia of traffic control. There was absolutely no upside for her in this, even if she cracked the case wide open. They’d put it down to just another pushy broad going off half-cocked during her monthlies. Never mind that she was doing the right thing.
Rome offered his hand as he sat down, a pol’s natural reflex and she took it, felt the flesh’s pressure and heat. At this proximity in the bright morning sunlight, he showed his age. His skin, which looked pink and healthy from a distance, revealed a sprinkling of brown sun damage spots. There were nests of wrinkles beside the eyes and the rings of his contacts were clearly outlined over moist brown eyes.
But his grooming was impeccable. His navy suit with white pinstripes was obviously custom made. Presidential cufflinks peeked out of crisply folded shirt cuffs. The fellow knew how to put himself together. She’d give him that, although somehow it suggested his wife Barbara’s passion for a style based on crisp orderliness.
“I couldn’t resist an air of mystery,” he said. The waitress came with coffee. As he thanked her with his pol’s smile, he looked surreptitiously around the room with what she thought were furtive eyes. No one here to misinterpret things, he seemed to conclude, with obvious relief.
“I’m really sorry about the sense of urgency, but I did feel it was necessary that we meet.”
He looked at his watch.
“I was due at a prayer breakfast,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope the Lord will forgive me.” He took a sip of his coffee and looked cursorily over the menu, then moved it aside with an air of indifference.
She sipped her coffee. It tasted bitter and turned sour in her stomach. Swallowing hard she began.
“This is strictly between us, congressman.”
“I thought as much from our conversation.”
“No one knows. This is my own idea.”
“You have my complete confidence.”
Her voice was shaky and it surprised her. The weakness seemed to relieve him somewhat, which she took as a good sign. She wanted him to be relaxed, less on his guard.
“I believe I know who Frankie McGuire’s lover was.”
She looked for signs, involuntary cracks behind the wall of outward serenity. None were visible.
“You make it sound earth-shattering.”
“In a way it is.”
“I want you to know up front, that I doubt she had one. Certainly not Foy. If I were a betting man, I’d say that she and Jack got together. Despite their differences, they were still husband and wife.”
The waitress came back and took their order. Rome ordered scrambled eggs and she whole wheat toast. There was no way she could eat it and she suspected that what she was a
bout to say would take away any appetite that Rome had mustered.
“We have evidence . . .” She cut herself short, a tactic to deepen the sense of ominous mystery, and studied his face intently. No sign of fear or anxiety. No reaction either way. It began to worry her. If she was wrong, she could kiss her career goodbye. Rome would never forgive her, go for the jugular.
“Evidence of what?” he asked blandly.
“We know how she and her lover managed their trysts without apparent detection.” The word “apparent” was the tease, implying witnesses. It crossed her mind that perhaps the man was wired, making a case for police entrapment. Nevertheless, she pressed ahead.
“Why tell me this?” he asked, smiling pleasantly. Not a nerve seemed awry. There wasn’t the slightest sign of tremor or palpitation.
“Because,” she said drawing it out. “I think I can trust you to know.”
“That’s a tall order,” he said, his smile collapsing. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me either.”
He wasn’t fooling her one bit, she decided. He knew the parameters. She had told him on the phone that she had something “new” to impart on the McGuire case. For his ears only. She had made that perfectly clear. The very fact that he had accepted her invitation proved his special concern.
“On the contrary,” she said. “Because of your extreme interest in the case, I think you should be the first to know.”
She was deliberately crawling up to the revelation, dancing around it. To spark his curiosity, a buildup was essential. Her object was to get him all shook up to the point where he couldn’t keep the mask intact.
“Not Foy, I hope.” It was intended as a stab of levity but it fell flat.
“Not Foy,” she said.
“Am I supposed to ask?” he said with just the slightest flareup of annoyance.
She shrugged, then looked directly and deeply into his eyes. For the very first time she saw the fear. Now, she decided.
“You were Frankie’s lover, Mr. Rome.”
She said it softly, watching its impact. She saw his expression change, the wavering of surety, the first faint signs of a terrible vulnerability. He stood up and flung his napkin on the table. But he made no move to leave.
