Love by the Numbers

by Karin Kallmaker

  * * *

  Standing alone in her room, realizing it was still early, Nicole thought about getting out her work. But she had a feeling all she would do is stare at the pages and think about Lily. Tears were a biochemical reaction, but she had thought her own understanding of their effect on those who saw someone in tears would have reduced her instinct to respond. She was able to withstand the sight of her mother’s tears, after all. But Lily’s…That she’d managed only to touch her lightly—an appropriate, measured gesture of sympathy, she hoped—had been a victory over a compulsion to pull Lily into her arms and plead with her not to cry and to say how she could help.

  Could the impulse be maternal in some way? She had felt intensely protective yet helpless. The clash of emotions had temporarily trumped her logic—she’d been certain that kisses would make everything better, though she knew perfectly well that when kisses affected a hurt person’s perception of the level of their pain it was only when the kisses came from a trusted source, like a mother. Like a lover.

  Lovers they would never be, and the last thing she wanted was for Lily to see her as a mother figure. She was only six years older. Certainly she had more credentials in a field of study and more years spent in a career, but Lily had an expertise of her own, and the experience of tragedy. The precise nature of that tragedy was an unknown, and she disliked being without adequate data.

  The lack of data was something she could easily rectify, she thought.

  A search with the browser on her phone turned up so many Lily Smiths that it was hopeless. Trying a different tack, she searched for Lily Smith plus Damon Linden, publisher and uncle. When the picture of Lillian Linden-Smith showed up at the top of the results at first she thought she didn’t have the right person. The age was right, though, so she zoomed in and there were Lily’s eyes. Lily with luxuriant red hair in a photo from her Wellesley yearbook. Lily beautiful and smiling, voted most likely to negotiate world peace.

  She didn’t remember sitting down at the desk but when she had finished reading all she cared to, she realized she was leaning heavily on it and holding her phone so tight her hand ached. A measured, well-researched news summary at NPR of the events of Lily’s life for the last eighteen months or so had left Nicole stunned. She recalled the financial scandal and the headlines about the suicide-by-pills of the two principals of the fraud, but hadn’t followed the case after that. The latest update had covered the dismissal of the case against Lily for lack of grounds to go to trial.

  All that was enough to derail a person’s life, but Lily’s losses on all fronts had been magnified by the intense scrutiny of one particular journalist. Article after article after article at a cable television network reported every new development no matter how minor, recycled known information, and asked questions as if there were no trustworthy answers, creating a persistent and false sense of mystery.

  The articles were so full of syllogistic fallacies and cognitive biases that Nicole looked up the reporter’s credentials. Strike that, she thought. Merrill Boone was no journalist. She was a lawyer with a degree from a small Alabama college who had made a name for herself with her brand of accusatory fact-finding in high-profile cases. A few clicks down she learned that while a trial attorney Boone had been cited several times by appellate courts for overzealous tactics and a clear disregard for the rules of evidence.

  Those traits, Nicole supposed, made Boone perfect for television.

  So this television entertainer had decided that since the Linden-Smiths who were guilty of fraud were dead, she would devote her energy to the one who was alive: Lily, whom Nicole had first believed to be a preprogrammed robot. Nicole didn’t know when she’d stopped thinking of her as a Stepford Wife in the making nor when she’d realized that she was not traveling with a plastic and inauthentic Barbie clone.

  She put down her phone and paced the room, her brain furiously turning over new data. Her physical response was out of all proportion with the situation. Her respiration was elevated. She felt a little dizzy, even, and adrenaline made it impossible to work or sleep. Maybe there was a fitness room in the hotel. Even if it was a lone stationary cycle or treadmill she could work out her stress.

  She heard the shower start in the room next door. Had Lily cried herself out? Did she have a headache now? Was she taking off her clothes?

  With a wry shrug at her reflection in the tiny mirror over the dresser, she noted that the distance between concern and lust appeared to be a very short one. Staying in her room to fantasize about water cascading over Lily’s body would waste what was left of the evening. She needed to rid herself of her misplaced feelings. She’d been a fool to turn down the woman in Edinburgh. It would have been a fair and equitable exchange without all of…whatever this was.

  If the tropes of movies that Kate so loved were to be believed, she should buy a quart of ice cream and eat it from the container with an oversized spoon. Or go to a bar and drink too much, then wake Lily up just in time to vomit on her. Or pick out a wildly inappropriate sexual partner—perhaps even one for whom she had to pay—only to be caught in flagrante delicto by Lily.

  Dijon had not struck her as having a wild night life, certainly not on a Sunday night, so a search for a sexual companion wasn’t going to be successful. She didn’t feel like a point-and-mime conversation with the desk clerk about a possibly nonexistent fitness room, but she could go for a walk. When she got back she’d call home and top that off with a literal cold shower.

  She would sleep. She would find perspective.

  Given the heat, she slipped into the gym shorts and the thin T-shirt she’d brought along for exercise. The street in front of their hotel was foot traffic only and the narrow passages leading into the grand entrance of the palace were brightly lit. Following one of them she emerged onto a large plaza that could have easily mustered five hundred men and horses. There were a few people around, mostly seeming to be in charge of children running through two bubbling fountains.

  She decided a walk all the way around would be safe and told herself not to wish Lily were with her to exclaim over the classical sculptures and pediments and the remaining gothic tower of the palace’s keep. It didn’t matter what sights they chose to see, Lily was fascinated by all of them. You didn’t come out here to think about Lily, she reminded herself.

  She made the complete circuit around the palace grounds at a brisk clip and debated which anecdotes of the trip she would tell her mother. She decided not to mention that Lily had had a touch of food poisoning. It would only make her mother worry. She could talk about the lecture host in Brussels who had been determined to use the first thirty minutes of the time slot for his own presentation, but if she did, she’d have to explain that Lily had intervened, taken him aside and after their conversation he’d been covered in smiles.

  She had watched it all from the podium. Was that when she’d realized that Lily was handling situations in ways that she could not?

  Stop thinking about Lily, she told herself. You brought work with you—think about that. The study she was reviewing had inconsistencies in its data the authors hadn’t highlighted. There were so many that the pages were crowded with her notes. Between signing books and writing notes her left hand was sore. She’d mentioned it yesterday and Lily had returned with a small hot/cold pack.

  Well. So much for not thinking about Lily. She had to get the woman back in the proper place in her thoughts.

  Leaving the plaza where she was fairly certain she had entered she was relieved to see the sign for the restaurant they’d dined in earlier, with their hotel just beyond. As she passed the street door it suddenly opened and she jumped aside.

  The woman who had opened the door exclaimed, “Pardon!”

  “It’s all right,” Nicole answered the woman. She wished she’d asked Lily to teach her the French for “I don’t speak French.”

  “Oh, bon soir. You are out for a walk?”

  She recognized the young woman who had served them. “Yes
. It’s very warm.”

  “It’s never like this in Septembre. The global warming perhaps? Where is your pretty girlfriend?”

  “She’s not my…” Nicole hesitated. Perhaps the woman only meant friend who was a female, not a paramour.

  “Non? I could have sworn you were, ah…Couple.” The young woman stepped just a little closer, her shoulder-length black hair gleaming under the streetlight.

  Nicole laughed. “No, she’s not…” She gave what she hoped was an explanatory shrug of exactly what Lily wasn’t.

  “Non? Zut, it is so hot tonight.” She undid two buttons on her blouse and fanned the fabric against her breasts. “What a pity. Her French was very good for an Américain and she flirts like a femme Française. So she is not—” She gave a meaningful shrug. “But you are?”

  A frank physical evaluation caught Nicole off guard. She wasn’t wearing the jacket. She felt naked. Then her lately sex-obsessed brain provided her with a graphic image of ripping the blouse the rest of the way open.

  There was a roaring in her ears. She tried to speak in Cole’s direct, confident way, but she sounded too breathless—too needy. “I am.”

  “Mon nom est Estelle.”

  Though she didn’t feel at all like the persona, she said, “I’m Cole.”

  “You are staying in the hotel, Cole?”

  Nicole nearly said yes, but Lily was right next door and though probably asleep, there was no guarantee.

  “Oh, but we would not want to wake your companion, would we? Perhaps you would like a drive? The countryside is beautiful.”

  * * *

  This is a bad idea. And yet she was doing it anyway.

  They hadn’t gone more than a kilometer before Estelle turned onto an unpaved road, then glided to a halt under a canopy of trees. She got out when Estelle did, desperately telling herself that thought was so difficult because of the loss of blood to her brain due to swollen genitalia. But that fact did nothing to change her feeling of being out of control. The situation put the lie to the idea that knowledge was power.

  Estelle had taken a blanket from the backseat and was walking a little distance under the trees to spread it out. “We can, ah…moon bathe?”

  Before Nicole could protest—even if she wanted to—Estelle was naked and seated, legs tucked under her, on the blanket. A pale figure in the moonlight, she was very desirable.

  With a beguiling smile, she held up her hands. “Your turn.”

  She let Estelle pull her down to her knees. “I prefer to keep my clothes on at first.”

  Jacket or not, the heady mix of lust and confidence sent a flame of pure desire down her spine. She held Estelle tight in her arms and kissed her hard. Estelle let out a welcoming purr as they stretched out on the blanket.

  Somewhere in the heated exchange of kisses and caresses, Nicole ended up on top with Estelle arching underneath her.

  “Oui. Ici.” With a throaty laugh Estelle guided Nicole’s hand down her stomach. “Here is where I want you.”

  Estelle’s hair smelled of coffee and lavender and her inner thighs felt like silk. Cole knew what to do. Her fingers toyed and teased, and she liked the way Estelle’s voice caught in the back of her throat. “Do you want me to do more than this?”

  “No more teasing!” Estelle ground down on Nicole’s hand.

  “But you like it, I think.”

  Estelle’s nails dug into Nicole’s back. She nipped at Estelle’s ear in answer. Their mutual arching toward one another moved Nicole’s knees between Estelle’s legs and she dipped her fingers deeper and deeper. Estelle’s tight breathing and rising frenzy were exactly the response she wanted. There, yes right there, hummed through her mind.

  Regardless of their native language, anyone would have understood the meaning of Estelle’s throaty cry just as clearly as Nicole did. Feeling her relax, Nicole let out a pleased laugh and began to raise her head. But Estelle wasn’t ready to relax. She yanked Nicole’s shorts down with a firm, “Your turn, cherie.”

  Her face buried in the crook of Estelle’s neck, Nicole was stunned by how eagerly she opened herself to Estelle’s touch. Her wrist was caught in an awkward bend under her, but she ignored it. Places that hadn’t been touched in far too long seemed to melt from a wave of heat.

  Cole usually didn’t…

  Cole isn’t here, she thought.

  Her mind blurred as nerves she had too long ignored woke and sent tingles along her back and shoulders and set alight sparkles behind her closed lids. It felt so good to be touched and was so much what she needed. The encouraging whispers of “Oui, oui,” didn’t keep her from imagining a different woman underneath her. Lily spoke French. It could be Lily touching her. She wanted it to be Lily.

  When she collapsed on her back, shorts akimbo and T-shirt pulled up above her breasts, the first thing she saw was a bright sliver of moon overhead and a horizon dappled with stars.

  People had probably been doing this in these fields for thousands and thousands of years to celebrate the moon, the crops, or simply their bodies. With the exception of her aching wrist, it was supposed to feel this good. Every evolutionary development preserved this system of neural action and response.

  Stop that, a voice suspiciously like Lily’s whispered in her head. Enjoy…Can’t some things just be simple?

  Estelle rested her head on Nicole’s stomach. A warm breeze stirred the trees. “You are thinking of her?”

  “Yes.” The night was too sultry and beautiful to lie to herself.

  “She is for men?”

  “Yes. And she thinks I am too.”

  Estelle’s laugh was low and knowing. “She is confused, certainly.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Nicole said quietly.

  There was no hiding, snuggled on a blanket with a desirable woman, both of them languid in their own afterglow. Were good decisions ever made under the influence of moonlight?

  She cradled her slightly swollen wrist and told herself it would heal. Lily was resilient and strong and didn’t need her help to get on with her life. Lily didn’t need her for anything and, likewise, she wouldn’t need Lily once this trip was over. She’d just proven that.

  Of course she had.

  Chapter Ten

  Lily leaned sleepily against a file cabinet outside the sound booth and hoped nobody thought she was yawning because Nicole’s interview at the English audience radio station was dull. She had heard these questions and answers quite a lot, but her fatigue was about a lumpy mattress and noisy neighbors, not Nicole’s talking points. It wasn’t much past breakfast and the Global Radio Switzerland offices were stuffy and warm. But for the bright posters of pop stars, it would be as drab as a police station holding room. Aside from Nicole and the interviewer on the other side of the soundproof glass, the only other person in Lily’s sight was a nervous-looking woman peering at a computer.

  “Pardon me? Could you say that again?” Nicole’s tone grew noticeably sharper and Lily shook herself awake.

  The unctuous radio host, who’d eagerly asked for Lily’s business card and had wanted to write down her name and e-mail “in case he had follow-up questions for the doctor,” looked exceedingly smug. “I was asking if your work is of interest to the scientific community and not just women.”

  Lily frowned. She didn’t care for his dismissive tone. She’d written him off as a narcissist and not terribly perceptive. He’d accepted her sly introduction of herself as “Passepartout” without comment. Nicole had had to smother a laugh.

  “My book is a scholarly work that women outside the sciences have become interested in.”

  “It seems to preach the idea that women put forth, that life is about marriage, about going two-by-two into the ark. This makes women happy and sells candy and greeting cards.”

  “Science is not a religion.” Nicole’s voice held a waspish undercurrent. “It is a fact that people with successful relationships live longer, men benefitting even more than women.”

  �
�The great thing about facts is that there’s no one answer.”

  Lily wanted to smack that superior look off his narrow little face. Nicole looked momentarily speechless, then her jaw set and she reminded Lily of both Indira and Kate.

  “Saying a fact is not true does not stop science from working. Saying the sun’s rays do not cause skin cancer will not stop melanoma.” Lily could hear the drumming of Nicole’s fingers over the speakers. “Perhaps you need to experience facts in order to believe them. In this case, however, you would need to enter into a significant relationship again. You’ve been married three—or is it four times already?”

  The little man’s sneer increased. Who had booked them on a program with a misogynist? Was this what passed for early morning drive time entertainment in Geneva?

  “I’m flattered you looked up my bio—”

  “I didn’t. Just an educated guess based on biopsychological observation. You would need to have one successful relationship, I think, before you could speak anecdotally to the value of relationships. Until then, your resistance to the data could be too easily dismissed as sour grapes.”

  The woman at the computer spluttered with laughter and quickly dampened it.

  “By your argument, Dr. Hathaway, I would need to try murder to disapprove of it.”

  “Not at all. That’s a populist reductio ad absurdum. But it’s not unexpected that you would equate your experience of marriage with murder.”

  This time the woman at the desk laughed outright. Lily caught her eye and shrugged.

  “If women had their way, they would run men’s lives like Nazis.”

  “I suggest,” Nicole said in low, slow voice, “that Godwin’s Law can be applied to a radio interview. You’ve conceded my point and our time together is over.”

  Lily wasn’t sure what had happened. She replayed that last bit in her head and still didn’t know.

  Nicole was smiling, though, as she left the booth. “Ready, Passepartout?”