“We are very glad to meet you, Mrs. Shea,” he said. “May I call you Janelle? Of course, you call us Lawrence and Helen.”
“Lawrence …” said Janelle. “And Helen.”
“Unfortunately, the nature of our business relationship will make it obligatory that we not be identified too closely with each other. I am afraid we will not be seeing you often. But I think we are going to make a nice profit on the deal Dave has brought to me.”
It was also true, as Janelle quickly concluded, that the Doublers were boring. “Oh, I hope it will work out so we can see each other often,” she said, but she didn’t mean it.
“We will work something out,” said Helen.
On the way back to Manhattan, Janelle did what she had done the night of the accident. She put her face down in Dave’s lap, pulled his cock out of his pants, and gave him head.
“Drive carefully, goddamnit,” she said.
Dave drifted as she worked vigorously on his penis. “Did you know Doubler when you were with Leeman.”
Janelle was busy; she didn’t answer.
VIII
OCTOBER, 1993
Janelle walked into the lobby of the Waldorf, wearing what she had been told to wear: the rose cashmere dress she had worn at the Doubler estate in Greenwich. She glanced around the lobby, and immediately she identified the courier: a woman in her fifties, elegantly dressed and looking as if she lived in the Waldorf.
Their eyes met, and the woman walked over to Janelle.
“Odd weather for this time of year,” she said.
“It happens,” said Janelle.
“I’m from Ohio, where weather is more seasonal.”
“I’m from Connecticut, where you can expect anything.”
The woman was carrying a suitcase, which she handed to Janelle.
At home in their apartment, before Dave came in from the bank, she opened the case and counted the money. She had never seen so many bills before. There were bundles of them.
“Dave … Here is six million dollars.”
“Three for us and three for Ben.”
IX
NOVEMBER, 1993
Axel Schnyder sat opposite Dave Shea in the dining room of a Zurich club. “I asked you to come here,” he said, “because your Internal Revenue Service has been nosing around.”
“Nosing around?”
“They aren’t asking for you by name. We’ve not been obliged to tell them anything. But they are interested in the Otis Mining business. I don’t have to tell you, Dave, that your friend in Greenwich, Connecticut, has lots of money in various funds here. Those funds bought heavily in OMM. I’m talking about very large money, Dave. That man controls very large money, in a hundred ways. It isn’t his, of course, any more than what you have is mine. But he controls it. His friends now control OMM. It’s not just your tax people who want to know how that happened. Your Securities and Exchange Commission wants to know. I have to take note of the fact that very shortly after the OMM deal was accomplished, you deposited three million dollars. Were you involved in that, Dave? If you were, you had better be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Do be. This can get very sticky.”
“I am always careful.”
“I don’t want to know more. I know, though, unhappily, that the beautiful and intelligent second Mrs. Shea is imprisoned.”
“She tried to kill me. I didn’t want her to go up for a long term. I’d have lied and said it was an accident or something. But she … blew a hole in the door of our apartment and one in the window. And she meant to blow a hole in me. Then she tried to run away. The neighbors went into hysterics. She is in prison for ten to fifteen years.”
“American sentences are harsh.”
“Well … she’ll have a parole hearing after about eight years. I’ll go to that hearing and testify that I forgive her entirely and would like to see her out.”
“And I understand you are remarried, to an exceptionally beautiful and talented woman.”
“Yes. Exceptionally beautiful and talented.”
Schnyder nodded. “You are a lucky man. If you were not so lucky, you might like to spend some time with an associate of mine, Hanna Hess. She has noticed you and … Well, I can promise you an interesting night.”
Dave smiled. “I can hardly refuse an interesting night.”
EIGHTEEN
I
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1993
Amy had a sense that maybe Dave would visit her and their children this Christmas. She really had no reason to think this would happen but she always fantasized that he would come back to her. When the presents arrived, she knew he wouldn’t. Delivered by UPS, they were generous, in the money sense, but impersonal.
Cole came by the house in the afternoon of the day before Christmas. The kids were out, at parties. Amy was alone.
“Well, his second wife is in prison, as I understand. She tried to kill him. Maybe that’s what I should have done. But … no. The kids—”
“Alexandra has been destroyed as a personality. She’s been in a year and has six or seven more years to go, at a minimum. She’s pitiful. Emily drives up to see her once a month.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Amy, but she was a brilliant woman … beautiful … smart.”
“Now he’s married a third time. He’ll never stop hurting people—using people.”
“You wouldn’t want to meet Janelle. She’s beautiful, too, in a very different way. And a genius.”
“I was never woman enough for him, was I, Cole?”
“No one is enough for Dave. Man or woman.”
Amy shrugged. She looked down at herself. She was heavy, the word used about her in Wyckoff. She was unstylish. There was nothing wrong with her clothes, but they were not daring; they were what a matronly woman, the mother of teenaged children, would wear.
“Cole …”
She unbuttoned her sweater and pulled it off, revealing her standardish white bra.
“Amy . . .”
“I want a Christmas present from you, Cole. I didn’t get much of one from Dave. I want one from you”
She unhooked the bra and dropped it. Her breasts were big and white, with dramatically pink areolae and prominent nipples.
“Amy!”
“I want a Christmas present, Cole. I want you to fuck me. I want to be fucked, more than anything else in this world.”
“Me?”
“Who else can I trust?”
She took off the rest of her clothes. She walked around the room, showing herself to him. Cole could understand why Dave had moved from her to women like Alexandra and Janelle. Amy was a woman, true, a little loose and heavy, but she did not have the elegance of Dave’s two subsequent wives.
“Amy … ?”
“I’m not so bad, am I? Am I so ugly you couldn’t think of fucking me?”
“What if I got you pregnant, Amy?” He was trying to think of anything.
“I’m not dumb. I know how to take care of that. If it happens, I’ll take care of it. I won’t embarrass you. Emily will never know. I mean … from time to time, Cole. From time to time. I don’t know another man I can trust the way I trust you.”
“Are you saying you have never … ?”
“No. But they’ve been bastards. All they wanted was a hole to stick themselves in. I want to be fucked by a man who respects me. I want you, Cole. I want you in—me. I want a man who thinks of me as a human being and not as a cunt hole. And I don’t know anybody else.”
“Amy, it’s not going to make you feel any better.”
She looked at him desperately. “Please …” she said in a small voice.
Reluctantly he followed her into the bedroom.
“Oh, God, Cole! Oh, GOD!”
He had to go home eventually. But not before he’d had her twice more. Sometimes he really hated Dave. Sometimes he hated himself.
II
The Jennings family gathered around their Christmas tree. Cole was uneasy, trusting that
Emily would not guess what he had done with Amy two hours before. He trusted that his batteries would be recharged before she would expect anything from him.
Emily, in any event, was less demanding than she had been. She seemed to be weakening. She had seen a doctor, who had found no reason why she should feel her energy diminishing. And that night they dismissed that concern and celebrated the evening.
Little Jenna was thirteen, almost fourteen. She was not a child anymore, really. When Cole poured champagne, she drank hers and was ready for more. Her brother took a sip, swallowed it, and pronounced it “strong.” Jenna laughed.
They had their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow they would open their presents. The dinner was a turkey with all the trimmings, the same as they’d had on Thanksgiving.
“God must love us,” Emily said as they began to eat. They had not said grace and never did, but she said this just the same.
Both parents were a little concerned about Jenna. She wore a bra now. She was proud of her maturing body. She had grown up fast, too fast maybe.
She asked her mother sometimes to let her look at the rings in her nipples, and she insisted that she wanted her own to be installed as soon as possible. Emily was becoming sorry she had ever let Jenna see them.
After dinner, sitting around the tree, they sang Christmas carols. It was a tradition with them.
They went to bed early. They knew they would rise early to open the presents. Emily, who had not worn a nightgown to bed in years, as Cole had not worn pajamas, snuggled close to him in bed but did not ask for sex. She fell asleep quietly.
III
On Christmas Eve, Janelle dressed as she knew Dave liked: in a black garter belt holding up beige stockings. She had arranged delivery of an extraordinary dinner—the Chinese food that both of them enjoyed. They had champagne.
They looked at their Christmas presents. Janelle’s mother had sent a large poinsettia. Dave’s parents and brother had sent a different floral setting, of flowers out of season. Cole and Emily had sent a huge assortment of cheeses and wines. Bob Leeman had sent a nightgown: sheer and lacy. Ben Haye had sent a selection of Belgian Chocolates. The surprise was that Lawrence and Helen Doubler had sent a mink coat.
Touching to both of them was a Christmas card from Bedford Hills. Alexandra had been allowed to go beyond her usual mailing list and send cards to other people.
Greetings. Hope you are having a happy Xmas.
IV
Alexandra spent Christmas Eve locked down at Bedford Hills. Worse than that. She was locked down in disciplinary confinement. Try as she might, she could not make herself a good, quiet, obedient prisoner. It was simply not in her nature to be a prisoner. She had, as they put it, “smarted off” at a matron, for which they had sentenced her to spend three days in disciplinary lockup, which would include Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and one day more. They had ordered her to strip, given her a white cotton smock stenciled in black ink with the letters NYDC, meaning New York Department of Corrections, handcuffed her, and led her to the disciplinary wing.
The discipline was being confined in a barred cell with nothing to read, nothing to do. As the officers put it, “ladies” in disciplinary confinement were given time to reflect and repent.
Worse, it would go on her record and might make her be “flopped” at her first parole hearing. She gripped the bars and stared out into the corridor, as if there were something more to be seen there than inside. She sobbed.
“Take it easy, Shea,” said the woman in the cell to her right. “You got three days in here. Well, I got seven, by God. You’ve got to do ten years or so. I’m in for life. You don’t get used to it. You never will. But you’re gonna get out. Think about some of us who aren’t.”
“I’m sorry, Emma.”
“Don’t think you can beat the system. Just keep your mouth shut and do what they tell you. That way you’ll get out. Someday.”
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Alexandra whispered tearfully.
“You were in last year, too.”
“Not in here.”
Alexandra sighed hard. She guessed that Emma had left the bars and had sat down on her cot.
They brought Christmas dinner: turkey and dressing, all cold. She had to get down on her hands and knees to pull the tray through the slot at the bottom of the door. She wept silently as she ate. She had to eat. There would be nothing more until tomorrow.
A hell of a way to spend Christmas.
She’d had a letter from Emily. Dave had made a big deal of some kind. He’d get a percentage, and then she’d get a percentage. Emily wrote in code, knowing Alexandra’s mail was read, but she knew Alexandra would understand.
Alexandra would have gladly given up her percentage, or anything else, not to be in prison.
V
Alicia Griffith, Janelle’s mother, earned two hundred fifty dollars on Christmas Eve. She spent it in a hotel room with the newly divorced father of one of her third-grade pupils. She had met him at the school when he came for parents’ night, and how he had learned she would be amenable to sex for money she did not know.
Like most men, he wanted her to take him in her mouth. That was all right. She was used to it. In fact, she took a certain pride in being good at it. She ran her tongue over his parts and slipped him back and forth between her lips. She had spent a lot of Christmas Eves like this.
VI
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1993
Alicia had to leave the hotel early in the morning, in time to bathe and dress herself for the drive to New Jersey, where she was to meet her son-in-law’s family. She dressed modestly, in a white pantsuit, as befitted a mother-in-law.
“I bet I know what you did last night,” Janelle whispered to her as they entered the rented Mercedes Dave would drive to Wyckoff.
“I made two hundred fifty bucks,” Alicia murmured.
Dave had in the trunk of the car the Christmas presents he had bought for his family. The chief one was a microwave oven. He had bought a black cashmere dress for his mother and a Rolex wristwatch for his father.
Alicia went to the kitchen with Dave’s mother, to offer help. She could cook. She had done it all her life.
Dave’s mother shook her head at the microwave oven, which now sat on the counter. “I’ll have to learn to use it. I guess most people have them. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s good for.”
“Read the instructions,” said Alicia. “Pick up a microwave cookbook. Pretty soon you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”
Mrs. Shea smiled and nodded. “I am very pleased … We are all very pleased, at Dave’s marrying your daughter. She’s the kind of woman he always should have had. The one who’s … locked up … I never could understand that. His first wife was just a small-town girl, and Dave’s not a small-town guy. Amy is nice, but he needs a woman who’s more than nice.”
“I’m happy with the marriage, too,” said Alicia.
In the living room, Dave sat apart with his father, who engaged him in earnest conversation, quietly so that others in the room would not hear.
“I know nothing about your business, which is obvious. I can’t understand it. I wouldn’t begin to know how to do it. But … Dave, you do file complete returns and pay your taxes, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“So many people have gotten in trouble. I read the newspapers. People in your line of business are in penitentiaries.”
“Don’t worry about it. Don’t even think about it. I’ve got accountants who make sure that everything is done right.”
His father nodded, apparently satisfied. “I like your new wife,” he said. “How old is she?”
“She’s twenty-five.”
“And you’re thirty … seven. You devil! And she’s not pregnant?”
“No.”
“Let’s hope she will be, soon. You’re a little old to be starting another family.”
VII
On Christmas afternoon
, after the presents had been opened, another heavy meal eaten, some wine drunk, the Jennings family settled into a torpor. Except for Jenna. She walked to the home of a junior high classmate named Bill Morris, the son of the Bill Morris who had been with Dave Shea the night when Jim Amos was killed. They went to the recreation room in the basement to play pool. The Morrises were away, visiting grandparents.
Also there was Bob Hupp, a sixteen-year-old who had a reputation for playing pool very well. He liked coming to the Morris rec room and playing on the table.
Jenna played pool well, too. Hupp had taught her. They did not play eight-ball, which they regarded as a children’s game, or nine-ball, which they thought was a gambler’s game and beneath their skills. They played fifty-ball straight pool. Players had to call their shots, and the first one to pocket fifty balls won. Hupp would win usually, but Jenna did occasionally, and Bill Morris did rarely.
This game was the first they had ever played that was marked by a new and different condition.
Jenna was naked.
“Hey, Jennings,” Hupp had challenged her. “Why don’t you take it off and let us see? I mean, we’ve seen your painting.”
She was not supposed to let anyone see her nude painting, but she had let these two boys see, because they were very good friends.
“Oh, you guys, c‘mon!” she teased. “You don’ really want me to take off my c’othes. C’mon!”
“C’mon is right. Couldn’t hurt you, and it’d be a great Christmas present.”
Jenna stiffened her shoulders and blew a loud sigh. “Well … Maybe … Look but do not touch.”
“Absolutely,” Hupp assured her, eyes wide.
“You guys are gonna get hard-ons.” She smiled seductively.
Morris grinned. “We’ve got ’em now, just thinking about it. But we haven’t attacked you.”
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