Perfect Lies

by Liza Bennett

  27

  “Would you like to come up for some dinner?” Meg asked Abe when they pulled up to the side entrance of her apartment house. It had been a strained, strange ride back to the city, with fits and starts of conversation that never went anywhere and long uncomfortable silences that neither of them seemed able to fill. Meg had spent most of the trip swept up by the insecurities that surfaced every time she started really caring about a man. Successful as she might be in business, she was a proven failure with romantic relationships. Not that Abe had that in mind when he kissed her the other night, she reminded herself. Not that he wanted anything more from her than an easygoing friendship—one she was in the midst of screwing up with her own ridiculous concerns.

  When she wasn’t dwelling on her limitations, she was brooding about Ethan and Becca’s affair—one so serious that it had devastated Abe’s marriage. And yet, despite everything she’d poured out to Abe about her problems with Ethan, he’d never bothered to mention this disastrous episode in his life. Was he too hurt by Becca’s betrayal? Wasn’t this just confirmation that he still was in love with his ex-wife?

  “You actually cook?” he asked, putting the car into park. “Last time I was at your place there was nothing but a jar of olives and a half-eaten yogurt in the refrigerator.”

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t say that I’d make it,” Meg replied, releasing her seat belt. “I live in the best neighborhood in the world for take-out. I was thinking of Thai.”

  “I’m there,” Abe said. “If I can find a parking space.”

  She was being utterly ridiculous, Meg told herself, as she hurried through the apartment, straightening up. She spent another five minutes in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and hair and in general behaving like a teenager. She was still rummaging through her drawer of take-out menus when he rang her front doorbell.

  “I stopped at the corner and brought some decent beer, which you never seem to have,” Abe said, walking down the hall as she locked up. He’d acted as her lawyer when she purchased the apartment and had helped her negotiate the mortgage. He’d been there many times for parties and dinner since, but for the first time Meg was sensitive to his opinion of it. She glanced around the living room, seeing it through his eyes, and decided that the little throw pillows had to go.

  Abe came back from the kitchen with the beer. “Is everything okay? You’ve been so preoccupied.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, reaching for her drink. But he put both bottles down on the side table instead and took her hands in his.

  “I’m not kidding anybody here, am I?” His face was no longer friendly. She felt the strength of his grip.

  “What do you mean?”

  But he answered by kissing her. She felt the automatic kick-start of desire. She realized how much she had been wanting this—needing this—how he could be so tender and yet feel so tense, holding back, as if she were some fragile thing. He slipped his arms around her, pressing her up against the back of the couch. He kissed her lips. Then the tip of her nose. Then both earlobes.

  “What’s your radar tell you?” he whispered in her ear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That sense you claim you don’t have about reading men,” he said, kissing her neck as he spoke. “Can you pick up any signal right now?”

  “There’s a scratchy kind of sound,” Meg replied, smiling at him. She’d never seen his face so alive and open. “But it could be just my sweater rubbing against the couch fabric.”

  “We could always just take it off,” he said, leaning away to get a better look at her.

  “Abe! I’m not sure I’m ready for any of this,” Meg said, more than a little nervous now that things had gotten this far. She couldn’t help comparing her perfectly fine body to Becca’s absolutely perfect one. But it wasn’t just Becca that made her pause. She knew Abe so well in so many ways. There was already a sense of intimacy between them that made their coming together that much more intense. And she always failed at this game, she reminded herself again. Only this time she had more than just a new romance to lose, she had a treasured friendship as well. She should really have him stop right now, she told herself, as she felt him brush against her, already aroused.

  “That’s okay,” he said, his lips finding hers again. “I’m not ready for it either.” He ran his hands through her hair, down her shoulders and arms, around her waist, pulling her gently toward him. His kisses were deep and slow. He kept touching her—hair, shoulders, cheeks—as though not quite believing that she was really there.

  Experience could be a dangerous thing when it came to sex, Meg knew. All too often, the shadows of former lovers would hover in the corners of her mind, reminding her of past pleasures or suppressed frustrations. No matter how much you liked someone, she realized, no one arrived in a relationship with a guarantee of satisfaction. Timing could be tricky. The one’s turn-ons could be the other person’s turn-offs. Often with Meg the whole thing seemed too much of a gamble. So it was her tendency to take over, as she did in business—guide the proceedings and carefully monitor the outcome.

  Like most things in her life, Meg felt that she had her body under almost perfect control. She knew how to keep her appetite in check, how to force herself to exercise even if she felt lethargic. And when it came to sex, it was Meg who usually determined when—and how—she would be satisfied. Though she thoroughly enjoyed the shuddering bliss of making love—even at the moment of abandon—she was still in command.

  With Abe, however, she almost immediately sensed that her authority was being challenged. No, more to the point, overruled. Initially, she tried to struggle against his taking the lead—the way he insisted on spending so much time just kissing her—she didn’t need that. It really wasn’t necessary. But he seemed so determined and … after a moment or two, she thought, well, why not? And then, a little while later she realized that she had somehow lost her train of thought and given herself over to pure feeling. She relaxed in his arms.

  “Abe …” At one point she remembered there was something important she needed to ask him. Force him to clarify. It was about Becca and Ethan. But before the question could form itself into actual words, she found herself pulled down again by a strong, persistent undercurrent of desire. His touch was so gentle, so light, that at first she didn’t realize what he was doing to her. It seemed harmless enough, the way he caressed the small of her back, the feathery kisses he planted on her neck. Who could object to his hands moving down her hips, then up again, to the way her body fit so nicely into his? And then, without warning, the tug of longing turned into a tidal force of need. Then, without knowing how, she realized that she had drifted far beyond the safety of her own senses. She was with him and they were rushing toward something. She felt herself holding on for dear life.

  They found their way to her bedroom. He had stopped being gentle. They didn’t speak. He guided her to the edge of the bed and tore back the spread and the sheets.

  “No,” he said, as she started to pull off her sweater. He knelt in front of her and with maddening slowness pushed the clinging wool up as he kissed her stomach and then the white straining fabric of her bra. He stood, pulling the sweater off in one eager movement, helping her unhook the bra, and then pressing her onto the bed, his hands cupping her breasts.

  She watched him fumble with his own clothes—the shirt that must have lost a button or two in his haste, the belt that seemed to take forever. She smiled when she saw him naked—more muscular than she would have guessed and sweetly vulnerable with a full, bobbing erection.

  “Oh God, you’re laughing,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking down at himself. “Is it that bad?”

  “No,” she said, as she watched him roll down a condom. “It’s absolutely adorable.”

  They were hardly strangers to each other—and yet all of this was so new. His touch, the taste of him, the sweet outdoorsy smell of his skin. His body was such a pleasure to explore—leaner and harder tha
n she would ever have guessed—with such lovely surprises: the salty terrain of his neck, the gentle pasture of his stomach, the taut arch of his back. She smiled in the dark as she heard the quick intake of his breath when her fingers found his erection. She circled her fingers around the shaft, making a tight circle, moving her hand gently up and down. He turned to her, kissing her breasts, and they lay side by side, exploring each other, learning about one another.

  His lips moved from her breasts, down her stomach, and to her thighs. She could feel her legs spreading and she moaned when his tongue parted her, her hands gripping the sheets as his mouth closed over her. It didn’t matter who they were separately—it was what they had become now together: touch, taste, desire.

  “No,” she cried, at one point, wanting everything, needing him inside her. She pulled him up, guiding him. And when he was fully within her, filling her, he began to slowly, very slowly, show her what this meant. It was not about one person taking pleasure. It was not about another being in control. It was about giving and wanting to give, about holding back, and giving more, and loving the sound of the other person crying out in joy, until, at last, there was nothing else in the world but the quickening, demanding, essential rhythm of two bodies moving together, moving as one.

  A little after ten o’clock they finally got around to ordering their take-out, which they ate in a tremendous hurry, standing up in the kitchen. But they were both too hungry for something else to concentrate on the spring rolls and rice noodles, and they were soon back in the bedroom again.

  “So?” She was curled up in his arms, her cheek resting against the curve of his shoulder. She felt wonderful and terrified at the same time. All her old worries had swept in again—not ten minutes after they’d made love for the second time. The questions she had about Becca and Ethan, about Abe not confiding in her about their affair had returned in full force. It was nearly midnight, but she felt jittery, jazzed with doubts.

  “That’s a loaded question,” Abe said, yawning and stroking her hair. “If you’re asking was all this good for me, I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful it was. Okay?”

  “I guess I meant ‘so’ in the comparative sense,” kissing his chest. He tasted of salt. She breathed in his deep, masculine smell.

  “You mean Becca?” he asked and when she slowly nodded her head against his shoulder, he sighed. “You don’t really want to go there do you?”

  “I don’t want to,” Meg answered nervously. “But I think we’ll have to eventually.”

  “Can we not make it tonight?” he asked, kissing her hair. “I don’t want to spoil this.”

  “And talking about her would?”

  “Damn it, Meg.”

  “I’m sorry, I just have a lot of questions.”

  “It’s not one of your more attractive qualities,” Abe said. “Let’s get this over with—fire away.”

  But something about his tone, a bitterness that she hated to hear after so much affection, made her hesitate. He was right, she decided. Her questions about Becca and Ethan should wait. She hated seeing Abe’s face close with anger, his lips tighten into a hard line. She reached out and traced the curve of his jaw, drawing his face toward her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’re right. Let’s leave all those unfortunate people behind us up in Red River. We only want happy people here.”

  “I wish you were right,” Abe said, stretching. “But as it turns out, Becca’s back in the city. She’d taken up modeling again.”

  “She call and tell you?” Meg asked, despising the jealousy she felt and hoping it didn’t sound in her voice.

  “No, her lawyer did,” Abe said, settling back down beside Meg. “He said that Becca didn’t want me to be caught by surprise if I ran into her. Didn’t want any more trouble. She claims I verbally assaulted her in front of Lark’s house the afternoon we came back from seeing Lucinda. You know I really thought that when the divorce became final—that would be it.”

  “But it isn’t?” Meg asked, pulling the sheets up around them, taking comfort in the tone of his voice. His distaste for the subject of Becca was obvious.

  “No, now I’m afraid it’s just going to go on forever.”

  28

  There were problems everywhere Meg looked now. Peter Boardman, the lawyer representing Lucinda, had called her the Monday night after the Thanksgiving weekend and asked if she would appear at the hearing the following week on Lucinda’s behalf.

  “What does that mean exactly?” Meg had asked.

  “Lucinda told me that you believed her side of the story,” Boardman told her. “And that the two of you are close. I need people I can call on—friends, family—who’ll publicly support her.”

  Since then, she’d been trying to convince herself that standing up for Lucinda did not necessarily mean turning her back on anybody else. Surely, Lark and the girls would understand that Meg was just trying to be fair. Her desire simply was to help Lucinda, not hurt them. She had long conversations in her head with Lark on the question, but when they actually talked on the phone, Meg found that she was unable to raise the difficult subject with her sister.

  Various crises loomed at the agency, as well. Besides all its regular work—and the fourth quarter was Hardwick’s busiest season—the company was frantically preparing creative for a project SportsTech had dangled in front of Meg.

  “The big guy likes to make people jump through hoops,” Vince Goldman told Meg when he called to say that SportsTech had narrowed its search to three advertising agencies and that Hardwick was one of them. “So each of the contenders is going to be given a project to handle—start to finish. I’m giving you the plum assignment: the launch campaign for our new User Friendly line for teenage girls. I’m sending you over all the promo stuff and a half dozen samples. It’s advancing well in the stores and retail says that with the right advertising campaign this could be our next big label breakout.”

  What Vince didn’t realize, of course, was that everything Meg knew about teenage fashion could be written on a Post-it note. Hardwick specialized in upscale women’s retail—the type of clothes that sold through Bloomies, Bendels, and Saks. Now the future of her business could very well depend on motivating a portion of the population that, as far as Meg was concerned, could just as well be living on another planet.

  But the worst news came by way of Abe on Wednesday morning: Frieda Jarvis was filing for bankruptcy. This had forced Meg, already cash-hungry because of the Jarvis situation, to do something she absolutely hated: take out a loan. Meg’s financially unstable childhood had turned her into a fiscal ultraconservative—and debt, until now, had simply not been in her vocabulary. It was her spotless credit history that had helped her secure a line of credit from the bank. It was Abe’s friendship with the loan officer that had allowed it to go through so quickly. Within twenty-four hours of the news, Meg had a letter of agreement from the bank. But during the meeting with the bank officer and Abe on Thursday, Meg had been forced to sign over her co-op and her growing stockpile of investments as collateral.

  Afterward, as Abe and Meg left the bank and headed back across town together, he said, “You understand, don’t you, that if you can’t get the business back on track the bank could take away everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

  “I know, but I’m going to be fine,” Meg told him with as much assurance as she could manage. They’d spoken every day on the phone, but this was the first time she’d seen him since Sunday night. She was trying very hard to behave professionally, though she now felt a ridiculously childish wish simply to walk into his arms and ask that he hold her—tight.

  “Not if you go on as you are.”

  “And just what does that mean?” Meg demanded, stung by his tone of voice. She needed comfort from him, not criticism.

  They were standing at the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, the late lunch hour crowd surging around them. One woman with a portable computer case slung over her shoulder, pushed past Meg and sna
pped, “For heavens’ sake, people, move your lovers’ quarrel off the middle of the sidewalk!”

  “Come on,” Abe said as he steered Meg down the street to one of the side entrances to Bryant Park. The huge public space lay beneath a blanket of well-trodden snow. Except for a few homeless people slumped with their belongings on the benches and a gardener pruning ivy around the base of a sycamore, the park was empty. Meg and Abe cut across the lawn.

  “I’m telling you this because I care about you, okay?” Abe began, the crusted snow crunching beneath their heels. “You’ve got to begin to take a good hard look at the people around you. Decide who you can really trust. Who you can count on.”

  “I know I should have been more on top of the Jarvis thing,” Meg said, fully aware that Abe was right; she’d been far too lax. “I realized way too late what was going on. I consider it an important lesson—one I’ve learned from. I’ll know how to handle it next time.”

  “Listen to yourself! Do you intend to handle everything on your own? Are you the only person you can really trust to do things right—and to do the right thing?”

  “We’re not talking about Jarvis now, are we.”

  “Boardman called me Monday night right after he spoke to you. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by taking this on?”

  “This isn’t about me,” Meg said, caught off guard by Abe’s apparent anger. “It’s about Luce. She’s a scared kid who’s going to lose any chance she might have to turn her life around just because she’s so convenient to dislike—and blame.”

  “Convenient?” Abe stopped and turned toward her. They’d reached the far south side of the park, twenty yards or so from the bench where she’d sat with Ethan. “She was stone drunk. She had the pontil in her hands. I’d hardly say that the world was being unfair suggesting she had something to do with Ethan’s murder. Sometimes you’re so damned sure of yourself, so controlling, you can’t see the enemy when he’s staring you right in the face.”