What Men Want

by Deborah Blumenthal

  “I confronted him, but of course he denied it.” She ran her hand back through her hair. “Things started to go downhill between us. I wanted him to leave his wife but he wouldn’t. Eventually, he said he thought it would be best if I left the company. He offered to give me half a year’s salary.”

  “I guess he has a habit of trying to buy what he wants.”

  “But he couldn’t buy me,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “And not only did I leave on my own, I called his wife and had lunch with her.”

  I nodded as if we were members of a secret sorority. We talked about cheating men and meting out punishment, and finally, I segued to the Caribbean trip.

  Marilyn nodded. “He does that all the time,” she said. I did my best to stay cool.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance have any documentation at this point, would you?”

  “I kept copies of everything,” Marilyn said, flashing a quick smile that then disappeared. “Jack taught me that. The paper trail. And when things started to go downhill between us, I wanted all the ammunition that I could get.”

  I swallowed involuntarily. She made Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction look tame.

  “Would you show me what you have?”

  She studied me for a minute. “Things are put away,” she said.

  “Can you get to them?”

  She was silent for a moment. “It really puts me in an awkward position.”

  I nodded as if I totally understood while at the same time knowing I had a matter of minutes to try to convince her. “I’ll leave your name out of it,” I said. “And—”

  “Jack will know that the information came from me.”

  “There were other people in the office, weren’t there?”

  She nodded. “But no one who had direct access, the way I did.”

  “But he can’t prove that you gave me anything. You stopped working for him.” She looked at me as though she was mulling it over.

  “Why should you protect him?”

  “I’ll make you copies of what you need.”

  I nodded slowly. “That would really help.”

  We headed out of the hotel together. She was going downtown, and I was headed home. I zeroed in on the heart of the story.

  “This past week he was in the Caribbean with people from the city’s office of film. While you worked for him did he ever take executives on junkets like that?”

  “He’s part owner of a hotel in St Croix,” she said. “He puts people up there all the time.”

  “So there’s no bill?”

  She gave me a coy smile. “Not unless you need one.” I looked at her questioningly.

  “We made up bogus bills to make it look like the people he was entertaining paid their own way,” she said, then raised her hand to flag down a cab. I nodded.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said, “and I appreciate all your help.” She climbed into a cab that pulled up, and slammed the door.

  As it was about to leave, she looked up at me. “Did you sleep with him?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Too bad,” she laughed. “He’s very good.”

  I walked uptown to go over my meeting with Marilyn. I relished the thought of putting together the story. If Marilyn came through, I had all I needed to write the story opening both Reilly and the city officials to indictments on federal charges of bribery and fraud. I walked along the streets with thoughts of Reilly and Marilyn swirling around my head.

  Someone, somewhere, must have done a study on how long the average extramarital affair lasts before one of the parties loses interest and the relationship ends, often with disastrous consequences. Then there was Reilly’s wife. She knew about his dalliances but stuck with him. Women like that always fascinated me. Didn’t it matter to them? Were the extracurricular activities of their husbands of no consequence to what went on between them? Or did they care but hang on at any cost to preserve the relationship?

  Chris and I have a favorite Japanese restaurant in the Village where you take your shoes off at the door and then sit on the floor in front of low tables. I called Chris at work and we agreed to meet at the restaurant after work. He was anxious to get away, he said. I took that as a good sign.

  In the meantime, I went back to the office and started to make more calls on the story. The phone rang at six-thirty. I assumed that it would be Chris, saying that he was packing up.

  “So what big splash are you going to make on Thursday?”

  “Hand in your resignation, Warren, you’re dead in the water.”

  The signature laugh. “And here I thought that I had to watch out for you,” he said.

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “It must be your innocent and vulnerable veneer. Now I know what a ruse it is.”

  “It’s done with smoke and mirrors,” I said. Then, don’t ask me why, I sighed and turned serious.

  “Do you ever stay up at night worrying about the consequences of ruining people’s reputations, not to mention their careers?” There was silence on the line for a minute. I wasn’t usually one to talk about issues like that with someone from a rival paper, but I suppose that the tension of the story was getting to me, and lately I felt as though Chris was around less and less and that we seemed to have so few intimate conversations.

  Slaid must have heard something in my voice, because he became serious too. “A couple of years ago, I wrote a column about a guy who was an egregious expense-account cheat.” He waited as though collecting himself. I heard him take a deep breath. “The day after the story came out, he took the elevator up to the thirty-first floor roof of his Sutton Place apartment building—and jumped.”

  I closed my eyes and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I remember,” I said finally. “That’s hard to live with.”

  “It threw me. I even thought of resigning. But even things like that can’t stop us from doing what we do.”

  “I know.” Neither of us said anything, but I heard him take in a labored breath.

  “Bye,” I said softly. “Thanks.” We both hung up, almost at the same moment. I think it was the first serious phone conversation that we ever had.

  I packed up my bag and left to meet Chris, making a stop in the ladies’ room to wash and put on lipstick and eyeliner. I felt a flutter of nervousness, as though I were going out on a date with someone for the first time. I thought about those dating services where you spent something like fifteen minutes with each new man or woman, and I wondered what Chris would think of me if we were meeting for the first time. There was no doubt what he or any other guy would think of Bridget. First impressions die hard.

  But now, we would be sitting face-to-face. We’d have time to talk about his work, the campaign, even the model at the center of it. I’d give him a chance to open up, and by the time we were having green-tea ice cream, I hoped that I’d know whether or not on Sunday I needed to reach for the New York Times real estate section before any other to search for a new place to live.

  Chapter Thirteen

  One reason to go up to the Adirondacks in the dead of winter is to ski. Another is to go to the winter carnival, which takes place every year and lasts for about ten days, starting in early February in Saranac Lake, New York.

  As I was heading out for dinner, Ellen phoned to say she had gone up to Saranac Lake to join Moose, who was working with local townspeople to plan the carnival. He told her about the barbecue in the snow, and they decided to have their own outdoor barbecue after they went snowshoeing. I told her that I couldn’t think of anything more romantic.

  “It is,” Ellen said, “especially after you’ve gone snowshoeing and burned a thousand calories a minute, and you’re starving and tired and just want to cuddle up after you’ve had the most scrumptious dinner you can imagine.”

  Then she told me about his house.

  “I expected a rustic cave, but it was just the opposite.” She described a large open living room with dark, heavy furnit
ure that he made himself. “And remember those red-and-black jackets that lumbermen wear that we had in college?”

  I did.

  “He used blankets like that for upholstery fabric. The couch is covered with red-and-black plaid, and the chairs are solid red. The bedroom, which is in the back of the house, has a picture window that opens to the woods.” I imagined that it was like sleeping in a Ralph Lauren diorama.

  “He should clone the house and go into business,” I said, reminded of a man I had once met who gave up a successful career in advertising in Chicago to move down to Virgin Gorda, another gemlike Caribbean island. But instead of finding an existing house, or even building one of his own, he opted for a more unusual, alfresco habitat, and moved his furniture into a hollowed rock formation, like a large open crater facing out to sea. Everyone who came to his cave home was so enchanted that they wanted places like that for themselves, and eventually, he created open rock-homes for them. Little did he know that when he left Chicago to more or less retire, he would start a new career as a real estate developer.

  “Moose is amazingly innovative,” Ellen said. “He fascinates me.”

  “So you’re getting along well?”

  “It’s good,” she said. “Very good.”

  I wondered whether he was in touch with Chris at all. I doubted it though. They seemed to talk pretty infrequently, except when Moose took a rare trip into the city.

  “How long are you staying?” I asked. She was up in the mountains in a winter paradise, and I was riding the M15 bus on a congested avenue with cars honking, sirens screaming in the background and the woman next to me coughing with bronchitis or pneumonia. I turned my head the other way, reminding myself to wash my hands the moment I got in the door.

  “Just until Monday,” Ellen said. “I have to get back. How are things with you and Chris?”

  I didn’t want to broadcast the “relationship report” to riders on the bus. “Call me when you’re back,” I said. “I’ll tell you whether to make up the guest room.”

  He got there before I did, and was talking on the cell with one hand while sipping saki from a small square wooden cup with the other. He held up the cup as a wave, and I slipped out of my shoes at the front of the restaurant and then padded over to the table and sat down on the floor. He looked cute in a worn red T-shirt and jeans.

  “Next week’s not good,” he said into the phone. “We’re going down to the Keys to shoot.”

  I shook my head. I had just gotten back from the Caribbean, and now he was heading off?

  “I do want to see your portfolio,” he said. “But I’m just jammed up right now.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, and then hung up.

  “Hi, sorry. It’s all hitting the fan.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek.

  “You left so early,” I said. “I missed you.”

  “They’re really cracking the whip on us with this campaign,” he said. “They want it on the air ASAP so that by summer Model Thin will be a household word.”

  I let that sink in for a minute. The real question was whether Bridget was becoming a household word—in my household.

  “I’m glad it’s working out,” I said, feigning earnestness. “I didn’t realize what I helped you give birth to.” He stared at me for a minute and then burst out laughing. I started laughing too and felt this enormous sense of release. The old Chris was back and I leaned over and hugged him.

  “I’m starving,” I said. “Should we get the humongo bento box?” For some reason, that struck us as funny too, and I felt all my uncertainties disappear as we spent the rest of the dinner talking about the agency, my trip, Reilly, and then Marilyn.

  “You think she’ll come through?”

  “Yes, why, don’t you?”

  “Sounds like she likes to play games.”

  “I guess that’s why she and Reilly got along, but now I think she wants revenge and enjoys the thought of destroying him.”

  He shook his head. “Scary broad,” he said. He looked off into the distance and then back at me.

  “Did he come on to you?” he asked.

  I looked at him, surprised. “Sort of.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” I said.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “No,” I said indignantly.

  “Did you want to?”

  “What is this, Twenty Questions? I was there to do a story and that was it. I’m living with you, remember?” He nodded and didn’t say anything else. We finished the last two pieces of sushi—“you have it, no you have it”—and then walked out and headed uptown. He held my hand, and we didn’t talk much. Bridget didn’t come up, and I got the feeling that he wasn’t thinking about her. I was out with the old Chris, and for the first time in a week, I felt relaxed and confident, picking things up where I had left them before I was away.

  When we got back to the house, Chris filled the bathtub for me. We had some lavender oil that we picked up one day when we wandered into an aromatherapy store and wanted to buy some scented massage cream. He sprinkled a few drops of it under the running water and soon the aroma wafted through the house. I soaked in the hot bath and felt my tight muscles uncoiling. Chris came into the bathroom, sitting on the side of the tub, and we talked intimately the way we used to about friends, jobs, the news and even future vacations. I got out and he wrapped me in a large bath towel, giving me a massage as he rubbed me dry, then he picked me up and carried me to bed.

  We took our time making love and I tried to fight off images that flashed through my brain of him with Bridget. “Did you sleep with her,” I wanted to ask him, just to be reassured. But I didn’t dare.

  “I missed you,” I said. “So much.”

  “Mmm,” he whispered back. “Me too.”

  We seemed to connect on a deeper level, as if our bodies were rejoined after a long separation. Or maybe it had just been so long that my body was hurting from denial and wanted to melt into his. Finally, we fell asleep, cocooned in the lavender-scented air. When the jarring alarm went off at seven, I stayed in bed, dozing, while he got up and showered. He woke me up with a kiss at eight.

  “I’m pushing off to the office,” he said. “I’ve got a day.”

  “What time’s the party?” I said, remembering that tonight was New Year’s Eve.

  “Not sure, about nine, I guess.” He kissed me and walked out.

  Eventually, I got up and headed for the shower. I turned on the water and let it run over me for a few minutes to wake me up. I reached for the soap and then noticed something that I had failed to see the night before. His bottle of Calvin Klein body wash that had sat on the edge of the bathtub unopened for as long as I could remember was now open. About a third of it was gone. The strange thing was, I never remembered smelling it on him.

  It was a small thing, maybe something completely meaningless, still I was obsessed with it. Chris didn’t use scented body wash, never had, so why would he start now? I couldn’t help thinking of those articles entitled “Signs That He’s Having an Affair” that asked questions like:

  • Is he suddenly taking a greater interest in his looks?

  • Is he showing unusual interest in buying new clothes?

  • Has he recently joined a gym?

  All morning long, the damn bottle of Obsession permeated my consciousness like a gnat that is flying in your space, refusing to leave you alone. What was I supposed to do, call him up at work in the middle of everything going on with his campaign and ask him why the bottle of body wash was suddenly open? And not only why it was open, but what it signified. Who are you scenting yourself for, and why in hell did you suddenly change your tastes and opt for body wash? It became a subject of cosmic importance to me and it overrode every other concern that I had.

  Then a darker, more upsetting thought eclipsed that one. What if it wasn’t Chris who’d opened the bottle? What if Bridget had stayed over, slept in our bed and used it in the shower? Or what if they’d showered together
and washed each other with it? Clearly, he didn’t feel as though he had to cover his tracks. He could have thrown the thing out—destroying the evidence, if he’d even thought of that. But no, it was there on the edge of the bathtub where it had sat for six months, maybe eight. It had come in a gift box that he got from a photographer’s rep, I think, after he recommended that his agency start using the photographer.

  Clearly, I knew that he never used cologne and that was fine with me. While I liked just the barest hint of scent on the side of his neck, there was nothing worse than a choking veil of it, especially if it was early morning. I spent far too much time thinking about the body wash, to the point of almost crossing the street against the light, forcing a car to come to a screeching halt. The driver gave me a murderous look. I imagined the headline:

  Newspaper Columnist Maimed Obsessing on Obsession.

  I had to stop obsessing. In the world of newspapers, you never get a break and I had work to do. Things don’t close down for holidays. There’s no midwinter break for Christmas or New Year’s. And not only don’t they slow down, when everyone else is home with their families, or off skiing in Colorado, news is scarce, the paper is short staffed and short of copy, putting the pressure on reporters who aren’t away to come up with stories.

  I was determined to focus on filing the story on Reilly and the mayor’s film office as soon as I could. I called Marilyn, and we agreed to meet at her apartment. She had the documentation, she said, and she had already made copies for me. She lived in a high-rise on the Upper East Side that featured a gargantuan marble lobby with a fountain in the middle. The only thing missing was violin music and perhaps a gondola. I took the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor and she stood waiting with the door open, greeting me as though we were old friends. I started to take off my shoes when I saw the white carpet, but she waved and said it wasn’t necessary. From the wall of windows, I could see all the way east to the river and the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, across to Queens, and up north to the Bronx. It was like being in a plane.