by Joy Fielding
She pulled at her own slacks, unzipping them and twisting them down over her hips, kicking them free before guiding his hand between her legs. What was the matter with him? Why wasn’t he getting aroused? She was doing everything she was supposed to. Gary had always liked it when she was the aggressor. She moved down on Marc with her lips, trying to take him in her mouth.
“Lynn, you’re hurting me,” he whispered, his hand on her shoulder, pushing her mouth away.
“What’s the matter?” she asked angrily, trying to force him into an erection.
“I’m not a punching bag, Lynn,” he said, evading her grasp and pushing his body into a sitting position, covering—protecting?—himself with his hands.
“I thought you wanted to make love to me.”
“I do.”
“That’s not the message I’m getting.”
“You’re not giving me much of a chance.”
“How much of a chance do you need?” Lynn buried her face in her hands, fighting back the tears. “What’s going on, Marc?”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“I thought this was what you wanted. You said as much the first time we met. You said you wanted to go to a motel room, preferably the same motel room, preferably the same bed …”
“I know what I said.”
“Well, here we are. Or close enough.”
“What else did I say?”
Lynn looked helplessly through the darkness. What was the matter with him? Why this insistence on dialogue? She didn’t want to talk. She had already told him that.
“What else did I say?” he repeated stubbornly.
“Is this some sort of quiz? Do I get a prize if I get the right answer?”
“I also told you I think I’m falling in love with you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about love.”
“You want to make love but you don’t want to talk about it?”
“That’s right. That’s what I want.”
“You don’t want to waste time talking.” It was a statement, not a question.
Lynn nodded, aware of the growing anger in his voice.
“You want it angry and mean and over with fast?”
“Just do it. Stop talking about it.”
“Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
“Whatever you want. Just do it.”
“No. You’re calling the shots here. You tell me.”
Lynn realized they were yelling and wondered if their voices could be heard in the next room. “I want you to make love to me,” she whispered, her voice tight.
“No, that’s not what you want.” He took her hand and returned it to the front of his pants. “I’ll show you what you want,” he said angrily, “and it has nothing to do with making love.”
He pushed her back against the pillow, pulling her bikini panties roughly down over her hips, straddling her. “Is this what you want? Is it? Because if it is, I’ll be happy to oblige. I’m no saint, Lynn. If this is the only way to have you, then I’ll take it. You don’t want to talk about love? Fine. Then let’s get the terms straight. You don’t want to make love. You want to fuck! Isn’t that what you want? Well, answer me. Is that what you want? Because if that’s what you want, you’re going to have to tell me. You want me to fuck you? Is that what you really want? Tell me. Is that what you want?”
“Yes! No! God, I don’t know,” she cried, rolling away from him, bringing her knees to her chest, curling in on herself as if she were a baby in the womb. “Oh God, I don’t know. I don’t know.” She started to sob, and he took her in his arms, covering her shaking shoulders with the mass of his body.
“It’s all right, Lynn. It’s all right. I’m sorry. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know who I am. I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror.”
He was kissing the back of her neck. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”
After what felt like a long time, Lynn sat up, pulling the bedspread free of its pillows and trying to hide herself inside it. “I want to tell you about this afternoon.”
Marc reached over and yanked the bedspread off the second bed, wrapping it around her shoulders, watching her disappear inside it. Then he leaned his bare back against the wall. “I’m listening.”
Another long pause before she spoke again. “I did something that I’m not very proud of.” She twisted around to face him. Marc said nothing, sitting very still, his eyes never leaving hers, waiting for her to continue. “I told my lawyer what you told me about Suzette’s other affairs.” She waited, but Marc said nothing. “She used the information to get Gary to back down from his custody threat. The implication was that if he didn’t back down we might be tempted to use that information in court. Or that you might.” Again Lynn paused, expecting him to speak, but Marc remained silent, his face impassive, impossible to read.
“You should have seen Gary’s face. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, and I feel guilty not only because I hurt him but because I wanted to hurt him. I enjoyed hurting him. And I used the things you told me to do it.”
“You use what you can,” Marc told her, breaking his silence, staring straight ahead.
“Is that why you told me those things? So that I’d use them?”
Another silence. A long sigh. “I don’t know.”
“What about me? Are you using me?”
Marc smiled, his eyes shadowed in the darkness of their motel room. “Tonight was your idea,” he reminded her.
“Am I using you?”
“I don’t know. You’re angry. Confused. Scared. You’ve just signed away almost fifteen years of marriage. You’re in a motel room with the husband of the woman your husband is planning to marry. Is that why we’re here? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how much Gary and Suzette have to do with our being in this room together, and at this precise moment, I don’t know whether to curse them or thank them. I do know that I’m falling in love with you, that I’d like to spend as much time as I can getting to know you, getting to know your kids. I know that I’d like to do all the things grown-ups do together in a relationship, including making love to you. I know I’ll kick myself forever for blowing what might have been my only chance. Am I using you? In the beginning, maybe. Now, I don’t think so. But how do I know for sure? Are you using me? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I don’t care. Sometimes you just have to take a chance.”
“I’ve never been very good at taking chances.”
“You don’t always have to be in total control, Lynn. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to just let yourself go.”
“And sometimes it does.”
“I guess the trick is finding the balance.” He stood up, zipping up his pants and scooping his shirt off the floor.
“You’re a nice man,” Lynn said, as she had said once before, realizing only now how true it was.
“Yeah, well, we better get out of here before I get tired of being such a nice guy. You look awfully cute sitting there shivering under that tatty bedspread, and I’ve just about used up my quota of good intentions for one night.”
“What now?” she asked.
His answer was slow in coming, obviously difficult for him to say. “I think you need more time to sort things out, to catch your breath, decide what it is you really want.” He smiled, his voice wavering. “I’m not going anywhere. You know where to find me. I have faith in your instincts, even if you don’t.”
“And if my instincts lead me in another direction?”
He shrugged, and though his words were casual, the tone of his voice was not. “Sometimes you just have to take a chance,” he repeated.
There was a white Mercedes parked outside Lynn’s house when she pulled into her driveway at just after ten o’clock that evening. Lynn sat for a moment, recalling the image of Marc as he climbed out of her car and headed toward his apartment. So she needed time to sort things
out, she thought, barely glancing in the other car’s direction as she walked toward her front door. The babysitter would be surprised. She had told her not to expect her until late.
“Lynn …”
Lynn spun around in the darkness, frightened by the sound of her own name.
“It’s Renee,” the woman emerging from behind the wheel of the white car said, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t know where to go. I have no one to turn to. I have no friends …” She broke off. Lynn could hear the amazement in Renee’s voice as she spoke. She walked quickly toward her.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“Kathryn’s gone.”
It took a minute for Lynn to digest that Kathryn was Renee’s sister and that she had not merely returned to New York. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“We had a fight. A terrible fight. About Philip,” she whispered, then returned to her normal voice. “I ran out of the apartment. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just needed to get away. I drove around for hours. I don’t even know where I went. I just drove. I forgot all about the gun.”
“The gun? What gun?”
“Philip keeps a gun. I was afraid to get rid of it because he might get angry. I kept telling myself to find a better place to hide it but I didn’t know where. It doesn’t matter. She would have found it anyway.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“I raced back to the apartment as soon as I remembered about the gun, but Kathryn had already gone. Nobody was home. Philip was taking Debbie to dinner and to a rock concert in West Palm. He wasn’t home when we had our fight. I’m sure that Debbie didn’t say anything to him about it, or he never would have gone.”
Lynn could tell by the look on Renee’s face that she wasn’t sure of any such thing. “When you got back to the apartment, Kathryn wasn’t there,” she repeated, guiding Renee back on track, trying to make sense out of what she was saying.
“I knew the gun was gone even before I started looking for it.” Renee was shaking as Lynn took the trembling woman in her arms. It didn’t seem possible that this could be the same woman she had seen in action this afternoon.
“Did you look everywhere? Maybe Philip moved it …”
“I tore the place apart. It’s gone.”
“Did you call the police?”
Renee shook her head. “I know I should have called them. I’m a lawyer, for heaven’s sake. I know I’m supposed to call the police. But I didn’t know what to tell them. I don’t know where to tell them to look, and I didn’t want to get Kathryn in trouble. Oh God, Lynn, listen to me. I’m not making any sense. I’m worrying about not getting her in trouble and she’s probably dead. Oh God, oh God, it’s all my fault.”
“Okay, hold on. Come on, Renee. We don’t have time for this. Feel sorry for yourself later, after we’ve found her.”
“I said terrible things to her. I practically told her to kill herself. I almost dared her to do it.”
“Okay, listen, get in the car.” Lynn directed Renee to the passenger side of the white Mercedes, then got behind the wheel. “Now think,” she said, pulling the car away from the curb. “Where would she go?”
Renee burst into tears. “I don’t know.”
“What about your parents’?”
“No. That’s the last place she’d go.”
“Does she have any friends?”
Renee shook her head. “There was only me. Oh God, what have I done?”
“Take it easy, Renee. We’ll find her.”
“Where are we going?”
“Back to your apartment. Maybe she said something to the doorman.”
“I already asked him. But he’d just come on duty. He wasn’t there when she left.”
“Who was on duty before him?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I’ve done everything wrong.”
“Renee, calm down. This isn’t helping you or Kathryn. Now tell me how to get to your place.”
A few minutes later, they pulled into the circular driveway that led to the entrance of Renee’s condominium and stopped directly in front of the door.
“You know you can’t park there, Mrs. Bower.” The gray-haired doorman, whose uniform identified him as Stan, scolded before either woman could get out of the car.
“We need the phone number of the guard who was on duty before you,” Lynn instructed him sharply. “It’s urgent.” The startled doorman, whose officiousness collapsed with the sound of Lynn’s voice, glanced warily at Renee, no doubt wondering how his fine tenant came to be associated with so rude an acquaintance, and returned to his desk, immediately riffling through his records. The two women followed him. He wrote out George Fine’s name and home phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Lynn.
“He’s probably asleep,” the elderly doorman grumbled, not used to changes in his routine.
Lynn usurped his position behind the front desk and dialed the number he had given her. “Mr. Fine?” she asked as soon as the phone was picked up on the other end by a man who, as his successor had predicted, had been asleep. Lynn quickly explained who she was and what she wanted. “He says Kathryn took a taxi,” she said, handing the phone back to the doorman. “Diamond Cab Company.”
“I know the number for Diamond Cab,” the doorman said, suddenly warming to the urgency of the situation, reclaiming his place behind the desk and dialing the number for them.
Lynn repeated the information to the dispatcher, and listened as the youngish-sounding woman told her she’d phone her back as soon as she managed to locate the driver who had picked Kathryn up. “In the meantime, we have to call the police.” Lynn got on the second line and spoke to first one officer, and then another, stressing that Kathryn was a danger to no one but herself. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.” She patted Renee’s hand and led her to the burgundy-and-white sofa in the center of the front lobby.
“Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She laughed, the tears falling down her cheeks. “When you told me to call if I ever needed you, I don’t think you expected to hear from me so soon.”
“I’m glad I could be here for you,” Lynn told her, wondering how long Renee had been parked outside her house, what Renee might have done had she not come home. She refused to let herself think of where she had been, of what she might have been doing right at this moment had she not come home. In truth, she had been glad for Renee’s sudden appearance at her doorstep. Concentrating on someone else’s problems had always been easier than thinking about her own.
The phone rang. “Lynn Schuster?” the doorman asked, holding the phone in her direction. “Diamond Cab,” he whispered loudly, almost eagerly, his dormant sense of adventure having been fully roused.
Lynn took the receiver from his outstretched hand. “This is Lynn Schuster,” she said, surprised to discover she was talking to the driver of the taxi, not the dispatcher. “I understand you picked up a woman from the lobby of the Oasis on South Ocean Boulevard sometime between five and nine o’clock tonight…. Yes, blonde hair, very slim.” She looked to Renee for confirmation. “Yes, kind of sad-looking. That would be her. Can you tell me where you took her?” Lynn felt her hand start to shake as he gave her his answer. Slowly, she returned the receiver to the doorman’s waiting hand. She watched Renee rise cautiously to her feet. “He says he drove her to the cemetery,” Lynn said.
TWENTY-FOUR
Renee could barely sit still as Lynn sped down South Swinton Avenue. Unconsciously she mimicked Lynn’s every move, braking when Lynn did, pressing her foot to the floor whenever Lynn pressed down on the gas, propelling the car forward with her shoulders, growing increasingly impatient with each stoplight.
South Swinton Avenue had once been the street of Delray Beach, but time and a changing population had transformed it—reduced it—to one of the town’s main arteries, although it was re
latively quiet now. Renee looked out of the side window, absently absorbing the large ficus trees that lined the once fashionable street. “Why on earth would she go to the cemetery?” Renee rubbed her forehead as if she were trying to reach inside her brain for an answer. Her body rocked back and forth. “For inspiration?”
Lynn laughed softly and again Renee felt grateful for her presence. “Relax, Renee,” Lynn told her, sounding very much in control of the situation. “We know where she is and the police are on their way.”
“What if she’s already …?”
“She isn’t.” They stopped at another stoplight and Lynn turned in her seat, taking Renee’s hands in her own. “Renee, if Kathryn really wanted to kill herself, you would have found her dead when you first returned to your apartment. People with access to a weapon and an empty apartment don’t go searching for exotic locales if they really want to die. They don’t have the doorman call them a taxi and leave a trail even Hansel and Gretel could follow. She doesn’t want to kill herself, although she probably thinks she does. What she really wants is for you to find her.” The light changed. “And you will.”
They continued west to SW 8th Avenue. Lynn hadn’t quite pulled to a halt in front of the Delray Municipal Cemetery before Renee was out of the car. Standing alone at the side of the road, Renee peered through the moonlit darkness across the rows of graves, marked by plants or flowers only, that made up the newer section of the cemetery. This section was clearly differentiated from the old section, whose tombstones, long since rusted a deep orangy brown, spoke more of decay than tribute. “I don’t see her,” Renee whispered as Lynn came up behind her.
“She’s probably over that way.” Lynn pointed to a group of heavy cement vaults, also completely rusted over, which resembled large caskets and which sat above-ground, as if still awaiting burial.
“This is not my idea of a good time,” Renee muttered, using humor to mask her fear, proceeding slowly forward. “Kathryn,” she called out, hesitantly at first, and then louder. “Kathryn, where are you? You know I’ve never liked cemeteries.” She laughed at her choice of words, feeling foolish and useless and inadequate, hearing Kathryn, as a child, tell her that cemeteries were very popular places: people were just dying to get in! “Come on, Kathryn. I’m allergic to all these plastic flowers.” She turned to Lynn, her casual façade cracking. “Oh God, what if she can’t hear me? What if she’s already dead?”
