Will stared at her, and for a moment something flashed in his eyes, then he looked away. His gaze found the horizon and rested there. Again, the question flashed through her mind: What have you seen, what have you done?
“Don’t…” Lisl’s voice faltered. “Don’t brush it off until you’ve had to do it.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
They ate in silence for a while. Lisl finished her cottage cheese and veggies and was still hungry—as usual. She nursed her diet Dr Pepper.
“Didn’t you tell me this was your first diet?” Will said.
“Yes. Rafe says it will be my last. I hope he’s right.”
“Is this Rafe fellow pushing you to lose weight?”
“Not in the least. As a matter of fact, he wishes I’d ease off because we don’t go out to eat anywhere near as often as we used to. He says he liked me just the way I was when he met me.”
She felt a little smile flicker across her lips as she remembered Rafe telling her how his taste in the female figure tended to run to the Reubenesque. But that hadn’t stopped her from starting her get-in-shape program.
Will grunted.
“What’s that for?” Lisl said.
“It means that, despite what he said, he doesn’t strike me as the type who leaves well enough alone.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know him.”
“Just an impression. Maybe because he’s too good-looking and appears to have had too much money for too long. Those kind tend to think the rest of the world exists for their exclusive use.”
“Well, you know the old saying about books and covers. Look at yourself. Who’d believe you’ve done the kind of reading you have?”
“Touché.”
“You’d like him if you got to know him.”
“I’m hardly in his league. He drives a brand-new Maserati; I drive an ancient Chevy. He doesn’t seem the sort who likes to hang out with groundskeepers.”
Lisl hid her growing annoyance with Will’s attitude.
“If you had something interesting or intelligent to say, as you usually do, he wouldn’t care what you did for a living.”
Will shrugged again. “If you say so.”
Lisl wondered at Will’s hostility toward Rafe, a man he’d never met, and then she realized: He feels threatened.
That had to be it. Lisl was probably the only person in Will’s small world with whom he could communicate on his own level. And now he saw Rafe as a rival for her attention, someone who might take her from him.
Poor Will. She searched for a way to reassure him that she’d always be his friend and be here for him, a way that wouldn’t let on that she knew what was eating him.
“I’m planning a Christmas party,” she said.
His eyebrows rose. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”
“Thanksgiving’s only days away. And besides, everybody starts planning Christmas around Thanksgiving time.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. And I also say that you’re invited.”
She sensed rather than saw Will stiffen.
“Sorry.”
“Come on, Will. I’m inviting people I consider my friends, and you’re at the top of the list. You’ll finally get to know Rafe. I really think you two will hit it off. He’s a lot like you. You’re both deeper than you seem.”
“Lisl…”
She played her ace: “I’ll be very hurt if you don’t deign to make an appearance.”
“Come on, Lisl—”
“I’m serious. I’ve never thrown a party before and I want you to be there.”
A long pause followed as Will stared into the distance.
“Okay,” he said with obvious reluctance. “I’ll try to make it.”
“‘Try’ isn’t good enough. Remember what Yoda said: ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”
“You’re quoting Star Wars?”
She had no idea why that had popped into her head, but—
“No changing the subject. You were going to ‘try’ to make it to Metropolis last month. I don’t need that kind of try. I need a promise.”
Lisl caught a trace of hurt in his eyes that contrasted sharply with his smile.
“I can’t promise. Please don’t ask me for something I can’t deliver on.”
“Okay,” Lisl said softly, hiding her own hurt. “I won’t.”
2
As they finished what was left of their lunches in uncharacteristic silence, Will thought about Losmara. A strange character. A loner. Didn’t seem to have any friends but Lisl.
Like me.
He’d seen him from a distance and hadn’t been impressed. His recurring nightmare was that the close-up Rafe would be a limp-wristed, foppish Latin-lover type, reed thin with a pencil-line mustache, draped with half a dozen gold chains, wearing a blousy, open-necked, lacy-cuffed white shirt.
Lisl deserved a Clint Eastwood; Will was afraid she’d wound up with Prince.
And if she had, so what? As long as he made her happy, as long as he wasn’t taking advantage of her vulnerability.
And she was so very vulnerable. He’d sensed that the first day he’d met her. Like a gentle forest creature who’d been cruelly treated, she’d drawn her defenses tight around her and tried to seal herself off from further hurt. But her defenses were thin. Behind her buzz of constant activity, Will saw a lonely woman, aching to love and be loved. An oblique approach, clothed in gentle words telling her what she wanted to hear, and Will knew she would respond. Treated with a modicum of warmth and tenderness, she would open like a flower to the morning sun.
Love was what she needed most. Romantic, sexual love. And that was the one thing Will could not offer. He could work at opening her mind, but not her heart. He could offer her anything but that kind of love.
Not that the idea hadn’t occurred to him more than once. Many times, in fact. Though he was considerably older—she was young enough to be his daughter—he’d passed through a phase during their relationship when he’d sensed that the time was ripe for a joining of more than minds. But that was not the way for him to go. He was gearing up for other things, slowly retooling himself to return to the life he had left behind. There was no place for a woman in that life.
So Will was glad that someone had found the key to Lisl’s heart. He fervently hoped it was the right someone. Lisl was very special. She deserved the best. He did not believe in meddling in other people’s lives, but if it became evident that this Rafe Losmara was taking advantage of her vulnerability, of her trusting nature, he would have to step in.
He could not allow anyone to hurt Lisl.
The thought startled Will.
Me. Protector of the defenseless. I can hardly take care of myself!
Yet why shouldn’t he have strong protective feelings toward Lisl? She had grown to be an enormously important part of his life over the past couple of years, his only friend in the world—at least the only one he could talk to. In his own way he loved Lisl. What she possessed was rare and precious, and demanded protection. He’d do his best to provide that protection.
Will smiled again. Lisl had told him so many times how much she thought she owed him for opening the worlds of philosophy and literature to her. If she only knew. She had done more for him than he could ever do for her. Her unstudied combination of sweetness, innocence, intelligence, and vulnerability had gone a long way toward restoring his faith in humanity, in life itself. When all had seemed blackest, she had provided a ray of sunlight. And as a result, Will’s whole world was brighter now.
3
Lisl left the campus early that afternoon. The days were getting shorter and she reveled in the autumn coolness. When she reached Brookside Gardens, she realized she didn’t want to be in her apartment. She sat in her car in the lot and wondered what to do with the extra time she’d found this afternoon. She told herself she should invest it in her paper for Palo Alto, but that didn’t appeal to her. Too restless to sit in front of a
computer terminal.
Restless. Why?
Then she knew.
Lisl didn’t feel like being alone today.
This wasn’t like her. Since the divorce she’d been a loner, always with so much on her mind that she could keep busy enough not to miss human company. But not now. Today she felt the need to be with someone else.
And not just anyone.
A memory of what she had come to think of as “Metropolis night” wafted through her mind and she shuddered. She and Rafe had spent many other nights together since then, all of them wonderful, but that particular night remained special because it was the first, and because it had awakened an almost overwhelming appetite in her, one that could be only temporarily sated. She was a sexual being now, a whole person, and she reveled in it. And Rafe … Rafe was like a satyr—always ready.
Probably ready even now.
Instead of restarting her car, Lisl got out and began walking toward the park. She cut across its grassy southwest corner to Poplar Street. From there it was four short blocks to Rafe’s condo in Parkview, the town’s haven for yuppies who either didn’t want or couldn’t yet afford their own home.
But as she entered the development and walked among its contemporary two-story row-house condos, finished in blue-green stained cedar clapboard, a tiny knot of apprehension began to form in her stomach. He might not be there, of course, but that wasn’t it. This was going to be a surprise visit. What if she were the one who wound up surprised? What if she found him there with another woman? What would she do then?
Part of her said she’d die on the spot. And another part of her whispered that she wouldn’t die at all. Why should she? She’d been betrayed before—in spades. And being betrayed by someone like Rafe would be no more than she should have expected, no less than she deserved.
Stop it! she told herself. Negative thinking.
Rafe had warned her time and again against tearing herself down like that. And Lisl tried. But it was a habit. And lifelong habits were difficult to break.
Once a nerd, always a nerd.
And what was a nerdy broad like her doing, trysting with a man like Rafe Losmara? Handsome, brilliant—what could a man like that see in her?
Yet he did see something. Had to. They’d been a “thing” on campus for almost a month now. They did their best to keep it a discreet, off-campus affair, but it was impossible to hide a relationship like theirs in such a close-knit community.
Lisl was sure some of her fellow faculty members and their wives tsked and shook their heads when they saw them together downtown, but no one had told her to cool it and drop him. She was sure it would have been a different story if Rafe were doing graduate work in her department. Their relationship then would be perceived as a blatant conflict of interest and she had no doubt that Harold Masterson, as chairman of Math, would have come down on her like a ball of fire. But since Rafe’s work was overseen by the Psychology department, their relationship was tolerated, viewed not with disdain, but rather with wonder and astonishment.
Go ahead and stare, she’d think with a smile. I’ve got mine, you get yours.
But did she really have hers? Or was she only fooling herself?
She loved him. She didn’t want to. She hadn’t wanted to place herself in that vulnerable position again, but there was no helping it. And she couldn’t help but wonder how he felt about her. Was he stringing her along, playing with her?
Lisl paused as she stood before Rafe’s door, unannounced. He was so much more experienced in the world. Would he tire of her? Could he ever be truly satisfied with her? Was somebody else inside with him now?
Only one way to find out.
Taking a deep breath, Lisl knocked. And waited. No one came to the door. She tried again with no result. Maybe he wasn’t home. Or maybe he wasn’t answering the door because …
Better not to know.
But as Lisl was turning away, the door opened. Rafe stood there with dripping hair and a bath towel around his waist. He seemed genuinely surprised.
“Lisl! I thought I heard the door but I never dreamed—”
“If—if this is a bad time—”
“No! Not at all! Come in! Is anything wrong?”
The whiteness of his condo never failed to strike her—the walls, the furniture, the rugs, the picture frames and most of the canvases within them—white.
“No,” she said, stepping in. “Why should there be?”
“Well, it’s just that this is so unlike you.”
She felt her confidence draining off. “I’m sorry. I should have called.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is great!”
“Are you really glad to see me?”
“Can’t you tell?”
She glanced down at his towel and saw how it was tented up in front of him. She smiled, her spirits lifting. That was for her. All for her. Hesitantly, she reached out and loosened the knotted portion of the towel at his hip. It fell away.
Yes. For her. Just for her.
She stroked him ever so gently with her fingernails, then knelt before him.
4
“I don’t deserve this,” Lisl murmured.
“Don’t deserve what?” Rafe whispered in her ear.
She sighed. She was so happy and at peace now she could almost cry. The exhausted afterglow of their lovemaking was almost as delicious as the lovemaking itself.
“Feeling this good.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that you don’t deserve to feel good.”
They lay side by side, skin to skin, on his white king-size bed. The waning sun was beaming through the window, suffusing the pallor of the room with red-gold light.
“Want me to pull the shade?”
Lisl laughed. “A little late for that now, don’t you think? Whoever’s out there looking has already gotten quite an eyeful.”
“No worry about that.”
Right. Rafe’s bedroom was on the second floor. No other windows were visible from the bed.
Making love in the day or with a light on had bothered Lisl at first, back when she had been a pudgette. She’d preferred then to cloak the excess fatty baggage on her body in darkness. But now that she’d slimmed down some, she didn’t mind. In fact, she found it exciting to exhibit her new, trimmer proportions.
“You’ve lost more weight,” he said, running a hand along her flank.
“You like?”
“I like you anyway you want to look. What’s more important is how you like the thinner you.”
“I love it!”
“Then that’s all that matters. I’m for anything that gets you thinking better of yourself.”
“And I’m for anything that makes you enjoy looking at me as much as I enjoy looking at you.”
Lisl loved looking at Rafe. He’d told her that his mother had been French, his father Spanish. His features favored the Spanish side—his almost black hair, the thick lashes around his eyes, and the irises of a brown so very dark they too seemed almost black. His smooth café-au-lait skin was flawless. She could have resented that skin. Its perfection was almost feminine. She could have wanted it for herself.
But there was nothing feminine about the way he approached sex. Lisl had made love to only one other man in her life, Brian, who she’d considered in her limited experience to be a good lover. After her first night with Rafe, she had learned just how limited her experience had been. Maybe that old cliché about Latin lovers was true after all.
He put his face between her breasts.
“You’re a Prime. You deserve to feel good about yourself. You’ve allowed the host of lesser creatures around you to determine what you think of yourself.”
Primes—Rafe had called them Creators when he’d broached the subject after Metropolis in the Hidey-hole Tavern, but that had been for simplicity’s sake. In private he divided the world into Primes and everyone else. Primes, he’d told her, were unique people, like prime numbers, divisible only by one or by themselves
. It was his favorite topic. He never tired of it. Always pointing out examples. After weeks of listening, Lisl was beginning to think it might have some validity.
“I’m not a Prime. What have I created?”
Rafe was a Prime, no doubt about that—Homo superior in every way. But Lisl? Not a chance.
“Nothing yet, but you will. I sense it in you. But let’s get back to what you think you don’t deserve. What don’t you deserve? And why not?”
“Don’t you think…” she began, then paused as Rafe nuzzled one of her nipples and sent new chills up and down that side of her body … “a person should have to do something special to merit feeling so happy and content? It’s only fair.”
Rafe lifted his head and looked into her eyes.
“You deserve the best of everything. As I said, you’re a Prime. And after the kind of life you’ve had until now, after what you’ve put up with, you’re long overdue for some good feelings.”
“My life hasn’t been so bad.”
Rafe flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
“Right. Sure. A lifetime of being knocked down and kicked around by the people who should have been supporting you and encouraging you to keep going. That’s a long way from ‘not so bad.’”
“Since when do you know so much about my life?”
“I know what you’ve told me. I can guess the rest.”
Lisl rose up on one elbow and looked down at him.
“Okay, wise guy. Tell me all about me.”
“All right. How’s this? Nothing you ever did really pleased your parents.”
“Wrong. They—”
Rafe overrode her. “They were always on your case, weren’t they? Even though all through grammar school and high school you got straight A’s. Right?”
“Right, but—”
“And I’ll bet your project took first place at the science fair, didn’t it? Even though you did it all on your own. With no help from your folks—who always seemed to have better things to do—you beat out all those other kids whose fathers and brothers and uncles—who also had better things to do, by the way, but who gave a damn—did most of the work for them. And how did your folks respond when you came home and showed them your blue ribbon? I’ll bet it was, ‘That’s nice, dear, but do you have a date for the prom yet?’ Am I far off?”
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