The Insiders

by Rosemary Rogers

  "That sounds rather ominous!" Eve tried to make her voice sound light, but Marti's mood and solemn words had depressed her.

  Marti said sharply, "Eve, I'm not kidding! Listen, I don't usually tell my life story to anyone, but this part concerns Brant Newcomb, and I'm just drunk enough to want to tell you enough so you'll know he plays rough. You want to hear it or not?"

  "If you're sure it won't upset you," Eve began, but Marti interrupted her sharply.

  "Nothing can upset me more than I am right now— and this all happened a long time ago, anyhow. Funny how you try to forget things, put them firmly out of your mind, and then something happens and it all comes back like a goddam movie or something. God! I can almost see myself as I used to be in those days. Stupid ingenue trying to play it cool and sophisticated."

  Marti had begun to turn her glass around and around between her palms as she spoke, her voice curiously husky.

  "I guess it's an old story, really. My parents—they were so damned rich and such damned snobs! They had to send me to a private school. Public school wasn't good enough for their only daughter—I mean, little Martine might meet poor kids with lower-class morals, and that wouldn't do, would it? So I was sent to Miss Dietrich's Academy for Young Ladies. Boarding school—which meant I was safely out of their way. They enjoyed traveling a lot and they were always partying, and I suppose having a kid was inconvenient. I was quite young when they first sent me away. At least, that's how it seemed to me at first, until I learned how to fit in." Marti looked up at Eve and smiled mirthlessly. "Yep— you could say that that's where it all began. The way I am now, I mean. I started young, and I had really en-thuiastic teachers. And you know what? I enjoyed itl For the first time I knew what it felt like to be wanted and loved. I had my first crush on a girl when I was only eight. She was much older than I, but she loved me back, and she was mother and lover and teacher all in one. I took to the life like a duck takes to water. Craving for love, my analyst called it. Perhaps! But it felt good— it still does."

  Marti shrugged lightly, almost defensively.

  "To cut a long story short, I was one of the few kids who really enjoyed Miss Dietrich's. But after I graduated I tried the 'normal' kind of love the other girls had moved on to—the heterosexual route. I wasn't bright enough for college, you see, and my parents were eager to have me married off, I suppose. They "brought me out' in a hurry and shoved me on the marriage market. God, they must've wanted me out of their way real bad— we were like strangers! Anyhow, I tried to please them; they teach you respect and obedience at Miss Dietrich's. I guess I was curious, too; all the girls I'd been with seemed to enjoy boys just as much as they'd enjoyed each other during our cloistered years. I had a lot of freedom; I mean, what my parents didn't realize was that our set was really pretty wild, especially the younger crowd. Try anything for kicks was our motto. And some of the guys, for instance, had traveled all around the world with their folks and had picked up all kinds of sexual expertise. I'd go out on decorous dates and end up in some Greenwich Village pad, maybe; or in someone's beach house. Sometimes alone with one guy, and sometimes with the rest of the gang. And I'd lie there and let them do it to me because I felt it was the done thing to get laid. But inside I felt nothing. And I hadn't learned to pretend too well, so some of the guys I ended up with would get damn disgusted at me because of my lack of enthusiasm. Word got around that I was too aloof—cold."

  Ice clinked emptily in Marti's glass, and she blinked down at it as if she were surprised. She drew a deep breath, and Eve heard herself sigh, too.

  "Oh, well—I'm nearly through, in case you're starting to wonder. Well—then I just happened to meet Brant. He'd come up to town for a few days to inspect the current crop of debs—that was the way one reporter put it. We met at a party—by chance, I thought—and I was even flattered that he singled me out, but a girl friend told me afterward that some of the guys had been talking about me. Miss Iceberg, they called me, and they thought he'd be the best one to teach me a few things. They picked well, I suppose. Brant's a good teacher!"

  Something in Marti's voice made Eve want to reach out her hand to her, tell her she didn't have to go on talking, but at the same time she felt she wanted to hear what Marti had to say. Maybe it would help Marti to talk about it. Maybe, as Marti had intimated, it might help her to hear. After a slight pause, Marti continued speaking, her voice low and somehow harsh.

  "Brant asked me out. My parents knew about him— they at least had heard all the wild stories about him, but he was richer even than they and a bachelor, so they nagged at me until I accepted his invitation.

  "I was supposed to be one of a party of six, including a chaperone, that would cruise to the Bahamas and back on Brant's yacht. Well, I was one of six, all right, but he'd lied about the chaperone, and the other five were all men." Marti shivered slightly.

  "We were away for a week—ten days—what does it matter? They brought some other girls aboard, in Jamaica, I think. They were black—high-breasted, with proud, outthrusting buttocks. They were really something, those girls. And that was the only time I was able to reach orgasm—to come, over and over, with those girls—I was past caring by then that all the guys watched. After that, they had me pegged for what I was —am—and they didn't bother me too often on the cruise back. Brant even took me to see a doctor before he escorted me back to my parents' house. He advised me, on the way, to stick to my own kind from now on, that I’d be happier and more contented that way, and I followed his advice. It's always better once you adjust to knowing yourself. Ever since then, I've accepted the fact that I am what I am."

  Eve, her eyes filled with shock and horror, could hardly contain her angry reaction. Dear God, poor Marti!

  "But—didn't you tell your parents? Surely there was something they could have done to have him punished? I mean, what he did to you—that was horrible, unforgivable! A man like that ought to be locked away somewhere. I'd have tried to kill him if I could!"

  Marti's eyebrows lifted.

  "Sweetie, I thought about it. But he was careful. And he had my parents figured out. They're the type who are more afraid of gossip than of God Himself; and dear, careful Brant took lots of pictures, especially of the scenes with the girls. It was actually Brant who suggested afterward that I ought to become a model. He said I didn't have the talent to learn to act, but I should do well at modeling, and he was right. So you see, Eve—"

  "I see. God, Marti, if I ever set eyes on him again, I think I'll run, not walk, to the nearest exit."

  "Don't get me wrong, though, Eve. Brant can be very, very charming when he wants to be. I've seen him that way, too. But underneath—if there's anything underneath, it's rotten. Maybe he's some kind of misogynist; maybe he's a closet queen trying to prove something. Whatever he is, he's all evil."

  Eve got up and walked over to the bar again.

  "I need a drink after that. I hate Peter! He was the one who introduced us. I guess he knew what would happen, the kind of proposition the man would make. Ugh!"

  Marti came over to join her and started to pour herself some vodka. Her eyes were unreadable.

  "By the way, David called. I didn't tell him where you were, just that you were out."

  Her casual, offhand statement caught Eve by surprise and acted like a jolt of electricity.

  "David? Oh, Marti! What did he say? What time was it? Did he want me to call back?"

  Marti shrugged. Obviously her talkative mood was over and she was withdrawing into herself—something Eve had noticed about Marti since the advent of Stella.

  "He didn't say much, just asked for you. But then you know he doesn't like me." Almost violently, she added, "Why in hell do we have to fall in love with the people who are worst for us? Look at you, getting starry-eyed because David calls out of the blue—and after the lousy way he's treated you. And me—not able to play it cool with Stella, waiting for a damned phone call that I know damned well isn't going to come!"

  Marti tu
rned away so abruptly, she spilled part of her drink. But she didn't bother to wipe it up.

  "I'm going to my room. I have a shooting at ten in the morning, and I'm going to feel like hell and look worse."

  After she left, weaving slightly, Eve finished her drink and thought about David as she stared at the phone. She was still in a state of shock. David had called. Out of the blue. What did it mean? Of course it had to mean that he still wanted her. That he loved her, even if he never had admitted it. Oh, damn, damn! Why hadn't she stayed home tonight? Now David would think— Well, she shouldn't care about what David might think. Forget David. Wasn't that the name of the game, the name of the project she'd been concentrating on all these months?

  She should forget about David. Not talk to him if he called again. But her hands were shaking and her knees felt weak. David, David, David. Please God, let him call again!

  CHAPTER TEN

  HE DID CALL AGAIN, after all—at six in the morning— and she felt, groping fuzzily for the telephone, as if she'd just barely fallen asleep. As usual, he sounded crisp, alive, and wideawake. And just as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them.

  "Eve? I'm sorry if I woke you up, but you're very difficult to get hold of these days. Listen, I'd like to see you. To talk to you."

  "Who... David?" Eve sat up in bed, the sheets falling away from her body, her head starting to spin. "David, it's only six o'clock!"

  "I know." His voice had a chuckle in it. "Time you were awake—the sun's up already. You shouldn't party so late."

  "I didn't— You have some nerve, David Zimmer! Calling me up at this ungodly hour, telling me I shouldn't party so late. Is that what you—"

  He interrupted her smoothly, his voice changing, becoming warm and intimate, making her cheeks flush.

  "Eve—baby—I'm asking to see you again. I've missed you. I tried like hell, but I haven't been able to get you out of my mind. So I'm a coward, asking you on the telephone, but I want you to be my girl again. Eve?"

  She held the phone to her ear and felt her eyes close. Her hands were shaking. He was asking her to see him again, to be his girl. Oh, God, you must be real, you heard me!

  "David—" Her voice came out as a whisper, and she had to swallow hard before she could say any more. "Oh, damn you, David! Why'd you have to catch me by surprise this way? Just when I was starting to get over you, too. After everything you said, the things you thought about me—oh, David, I just don't know what to say!"

  "Say you'll have dinner with me this evening. That'll do for starters. You don't know how much I need to see you again, baby, or just how much I've missed you. Lisa keeps sending her love, too. Every time I go down to see the kids, she keeps asking for you."

  "You rat! You knew how that would get to me. I shouldn't even be talking to you…"

  In the end, though, as they both knew she would, she agreed to meet him right after the location shots she was doing that afternoon.

  "Just give me enough time to take my makeup off and change," she warned him. She remembered he didn't like her to wear makeup when she was with him and they weren't going out anywhere in particular.

  After he'd hung up, David wondered again why he had called her. Sheer instinct, sheer—what? Was it weakness? He had sworn, both to her and to himself, that he was through with her. But he wasn't—that was the hell of it. He still needed her—that much was true. Contrasted with Gloria or any of the other women he'd been seeing recently, Eve was all woman. Loving and giving, soft and yielding. And not asking for his soul in return for a fuck. Gloria was a ballbreaker and too damned possessive. Let her see that he could still have Eve. It was something that he needed to find out, too.

  Thinking about Eve and seeing her again tonight gave him an erection. Gloria was a tease, and Eve wasn't. In bed, Eve gave all of herself—she was warm and wild and wonderful, and she'd made him think it was all for him, that she'd never been this way with anyone else. That was why seeing her in bed with that grinning, fatuous-faced playboy had been such a shock.

  He'd been thinking about that, too, having second thoughts. Frowning, David walked over to the small stove his kitchenette boasted and poured himself his fourth cup of coffee for the morning. Now that he knew Gloria better, he wouldn't put it past her to have engineered the whole thing, just to get him in the sack with her. And perhaps Eve's stammering, almost incoherent attempts to explain and excuse had been genuine, and it had been a misunderstanding after all.

  "I love you, David," she had wept. "Doesn't that mean anything to you, anything at all? Do you think I'd be crawling to you now, without pride, if I were really as cheap and as easy to make as you think?"

  He hadn't listened. At that point he hadn't wanted to listen, much less have to look at her again. Later, through the window of Gloria's room, he had watched Eve drive away with the man she'd been in bed with, and had been certain then that she'd been lying to him. She was hke any other predatory, lying cunt, he'd thought then. Pretending to be something special so she could trap him into marriage; playing around on the side.

  And now—he wasn't certain at all. Except of the fact that he wanted her. God, how he still wanted her! Eve, naked, in bed with him. Beads of perspiration standing out on her skin like the drops of water in that damned photograph. Crying out to him as she made it, calling his name, telling him she loved him. She made him feel good, and their loving never left a bad taste in his mouth —the kind of feeling he had after screwing Gloria. Well, the hell with Gloria. Tonight he'd have Eve. Again. And again, and again.

  There was nothing David derived more enjoyment from than making love—except, perhaps, preparing a brief that he knew was perfect and without any flaws or loopholes. He often considered that in many ways it was a good thing his parents had brought him up to believe that the mind should control the emotions, not the other way around. The emotions were there, yes, but to be practical was much more important.

  He had been taught from his youth, during all those early years of being his parents' only child, their son, to be strong and in control of himself; that emotions were there, yes, but to control them and to be practical was much more important. A man is rational; he can control the physical side of himself and those dangerous emotions that could carry him away. He was taught to be dispassionate rather than passionate, to think rather than react blindly and unreasoningly.

  Ambition, too, was one of the legacies that his parents had left him. That, and a sense of responsibility toward the younger children who had come along so suddenly and surprisingly in his parents' middle age. He often thought that it was as if they had somehow known, had expected what might happen. Dying together—just as they had done everything else together. Somehow, David was never able to picture his parents singly; his memory captured them always as a unit, standing or sitting close together.

  David had been in Iris teens when he discovered the deep and passionate sexuality of his own nature. Even then, he had had the appealing good looks that always had and always would attract women to him. David was only a sophomore in high school when he let Dee, a waitress at the hamburger stand the crowd frequented, seduce him. The other guys were constantly ribbing

  Dee, trying to make out with her, even taking bets on who would get in her pants first. She'd kid back and forth with the others, but David started to find that her eyes strayed to him, watching him, wondering about him.

  Dee was the first woman to discover and to encourage the deep and passionate sensuality that lay beneath his quiet and unemotional exterior and polite manners. Dee was not too much older than he was; she had dropped out of high school early and had a child to support. But she knew what she was doing in bed, all right, even if she'd made mistakes with her life all the way around.

  David never talked about Dee to any of the other guys, and she knew this and was grateful. Grateful enough to let their relationship continue even when she discovered he was dating other girls. David filled all her needs, and she in turn provided him with the abandoned, un
inhibited kind of lovemaking he was beginning to crave—the kind the other girls couldn't or wouldn't give him. He kept seeing Dee steadily until he went away to college, and in the meantime, without any fuss or locker-room talk, he had also seduced most of the prettier and sexier girls in school.

  By the time he'd finished collecting his degrees and started working at the profession he'd chosen, he'd discovered how easy it was to control women while avoiding all commitment. He could not settle down with one woman because he felt he needed them all. He enjoyed women—needed their bodies and their dependence with an insatiable kind of lust that he sometimes despised in himself. One side of him was sober, conservative, and responsible—he was the kind of young and ambitious man that people instinctively expected to make good. But the darker, hidden side of him was a passionate rakehell of a fellow who could not live without women—symbols, to him, of the satisfaction of his desire for their bodies.

  Someday, David knew, he would marry. Because it was expected of him and because it would help him form and mold the facade he expected to present to the world. But the woman he would marry would be carefully picked with his head and not with his loins. A suitable wife—suitable was the key word. Well-bred and intelligent, but not too intelligent. Not too astute or worldly-wise. Because there would always be other women—this he'd already realized and accepted.

  Fighting the usual city traffic on his way to the office, David found himself thinking again about Eve. In a way, he was almost glad that something had happened to make him furious at her. He had been infatuated with Eve soon after he'd met her and gone to bed with her, and suddenly, his carefully thought out plans hadn't seemed to be important any longer.

  He remembered how they had come together with a kind of joyful abandon that was completely uncalculated and had taken them both by surprise. Eve was an unexpected person, and she had made him feel that he was the only man who had ever penetrated the brittle shell of knowledgeable sophistication she presented to the rest of the world. She was as sensual and as uninhibited in bed as he was, yet there was a kind of tenderness in her, a sort of small-town friendliness and openness that he was unused to in women. In spite of the fact that she was obviously not inexperienced, and had been a model, there was even a kind of purity about her—or so he had thought. Without her "face" on, with her hair pulled back, and wearing jeans and an old shirt, she was like the girl next door he hadn't had time for—a happy, understanding companion who sensed his moods and feelings with some uncanny sixth sense. But at the smart cocktail parties to which he'd sometimes taken her, Eve could transform herself into a regal beauty he was proud to be with. Of all the women he had known, she could best change herself to fit his moods, his needs.