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  "We keep them secure, that's why."

  "And we've been awfully careful." He paused. "Almost."

  "It can't go on. Not now."

  "No." He shook his head. She could tell he was getting anxious.

  "You'd think they'd have gotten suspicious by now."

  "That would have been the worst thing that could happen. Not until we're ready to make the final break. Both of us at the same time. Flat-out honest. Cold turkey. We are dealing with two good people, people we once chose to spend our lives with, decent, sensitive people. We agreed that we would not draw out the pain—"

  "No matter what, it will hurt." She thought of Edward again and sighed.

  "We'd better go," Orson said, getting up, clutching her hand as they walked to the desk and then through the passageway into the plane. Most of the others had already settled into their seats. They chose two, midway in the aircraft. Although the row had three seats, she took the middle seat, leaving the aisle seat empty. She could not bear to be that far away from him.

  "The stewardess will think I'm foolish."

  "Who cares what she thinks?" he said. He was still edgy from their discussion, and she stroked his thigh while he looked out of the plane's window at the wall of falling snow. In her other hand she still clutched the stem of the little pink rose.

  "We met just like this," she said cheerfully. Always, when they discussed the others, it dredged up sadness and guilt. Recalling how they met always cheered them.

  The plane lurched slightly as it backed off from the passenger chute. Then the pilot made an announcement.

  "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen." The pilot's drawl had an air of sarcasm. "It's not like this in Miami, folks. This is no way to live. There'll be at least a thirty-minute delay as we go through de-icing procedures. I'm shutting off the No Smoking sign. I really feel sorry for you Yankees." A wave of laughter passed through the cabin.

  "Just get us the hell out of here," a man piped, causing another ripple of laughter.

  They could hear the jet's glow lumbering whine and see the backdraft scattering the snow as the plane taxied forward for a long time, finally stopping near one of the large hangars. Outside, men with hoses sprayed the wings with de-icing liquid.

  Unfastening her seat belt, Lily stood up, opened the overhead rack, and took out a blanket and two pillows.

  "Might as well get cozy," she said, placing the pillows behind them and covering them both with a blanket. "How do you get rid of this damned thing?" she said, referring to the armrest. He fiddled with it and slid it out, leaving no space between them. Turning slightly sideways, she ran her hand over his chest while his hand stroked her earlobe.

  "I don't need any de-icing," she giggled.

  "Me neither."

  "Four days of you. I warn you, I'll give you no rest."

  "Idle threats."

  "Not so idle." She slid her hand down and caressed his thigh.

  The stewardess came by, and Lily closed her eyes, feigning sleep.

  "She should see what I have," she whispered.

  "You're incorrigible."

  "I adore you."

  "Just adore?"

  "Beyond adore."

  "Like love?"

  "Beyond even that."

  "Beyond that?"

  "It's only a word," she said. She hugged him closer. "Will it be like this when we're together?" she asked.

  "We are together."

  "I mean permanently."

  "If not, we'll have gone through a lot of hell for nothing."

  He looked down at her. She raised her lips to his, parted them, and they kissed deeply.

  "Why you?" she asked.

  "Why you?"

  2

  It was now the central fact of Orson's life, a phenomenon that defied all the laws of logic that normally ruled his cool, analytical lawyer's mind. Lily had become a part of him, an overwhelming need greater than physical hunger, greater than himself. It was impossible to fathom, and endlessly fascinating to contemplate and discuss. How? Why?

  "Why you?"

  His eyes drifted again to the activity outside the aircraft. A man in a kind of plastic uniform held the nozzle of a large hose, looked upward, and raised his hand, vapor curling from his mouth.

  "Because you were there waiting for me," she said again, surely for the thousandth time.

  "I was minding my own business. I had just won my biggest case. I was content, happy, a good family man with a devoted wife, a beautiful little boy. I had security, self-worth, substance, self-containment."

  "Me, too," she said, "except for the little boy."

  "Then why?"

  "Because it wasn't true."

  Perhaps, just at that moment when she had asked the banal question, Is this seat taken? he had been making inquiries of himself. Is this it? Is this all there is or will ever be? Had he glimpsed the future at that precise point in time?

  "I lifted my eyes, and there you were. Everything that I was before self-destructed, and when the parts came together again, I was a different person. And from that mini-second of time all that mattered was you."

  "Yes. Yes. Exactly. Everything changed."

  "I love you more than life," he said, feeling the pressure of her intimate caress as he returned the gesture in kind.

  The plane began a bumping taxi as the pilot's voice told them they were heading for the runway, taking their place in line.

  "Won't be long, folks," he said. His tone revealed a faint hint of exasperation. Again, the stewardess passed their seats, and Lily closed her eyes.

  The cool and logical part of Orson's mind acknowledged the ridiculousness of the situation. He had always thought of himself as a self-discipline, civilized man, under control, not foolhardy in his actions. A pragmatic man. A clever man who anticipated events. Then came Lily.

  "What is it that you do to me?" he asked.

  "All I can."

  They could never get enough of each other. It was like peeling away the skin of an onion—there was always another layer underneath. They could never be satiated. It had not been that way with Vivien. Lovely, trusting, good, dependent Viv, the quintessential wife. Sweet Viv. She would have to suffer for his actions. She and Ben.

  "A man peaks at seventeen," he often told Lily, marveling at his own capacity. "I'm double that. I should be sliding." With Viv, he could barely find desire. Even at the beginning, that side of his life with Viv seemed tepid, passionless. Never having experienced it, he did not even know it was missing. Nor had he been, as he had come to learn, in love. What he had felt was more like affection—comfortable, bland, without surprises.

  They decided finally that what was happening to them could not be explained but simply experienced. Others had felt it—from the beginning of recorded time. Still, they both distrusted its durability. Perhaps it was an aberration that would pass, leaving them sated and sending them running back to their legal spouses, back to real life. But it had not happened, and here they were. Another complication had intruded. In his heart he welcomed it. Wasn't it time?

  "Tell me again, my love," she whispered.

  "That I love you?"

  "That, too. I mean about its being time."

  "It's time. No sense postponing the inevitable. Probably next week we'll have to do it."

  "It will be the worst moment of my life, up to now."

  "For me as well."

  "I hope I have the courage. Edward and I planned a whole life. There isn't the tiniest blip on his screen. Maybe it was wrong to do it this way. Maybe he should have been prepared. You know—if I had been nasty, moody, a bitch."

  "That's the problem. We're all nice people." Betrayal did not quite fit with his definition, but hadn't he covered that by telling himself that it was impossible to resist?

  "Are we really nice? Was it nice doing this? Getting involved?" That, too, needed to be said, if only to admonish. Surely they could not convince themselves absolutely that what they were doing was morally right.
/>   "We couldn't help it."

  "But we could have." She paused. "Couldn't we?"

  The first time was etched forever in his memory. How could it not be? They had agreed, after sharing only forty minutes of intimacy on the trip from New York to Washington, to meet the next day. Lunch, they both knew, was a euphemism. They were reacting to the power of magnetism, either animal or psychic.

  It was late fall, and they drove down George Washington Parkway almost to Mount Vernon. After parking the car, they walked the trail along the river. The day was cloudy, the air slightly chilled. A light fog drifted in from the river, making it seem that they were alone in the world.

  "I don't know why I'm here," he told her, knowing even then that he would rather not be anyplace else. "Things like this don't happen in my world. I've been married for seven years. I don't philander."

  "Nor do I," she said, lifting her nose, which curved in a slight arc from her high forehead. "I've never been with another man since I met Edward. Before that, briefly, there was one other." His heart pounded. He was certain it was an opening move, which frightened him.

  "So we're a couple of innocents," he said lightly.

  "I am. I'm sure of that."

  "And not so sure of me?"

  "Now that you ask..."

  "I swear to you," he said, hoping she would see his sincerity, "that I've never even contemplated—" He checked himself, not wanting to protest too strongly. Before Vivien there was little to confess. Two, maybe three others.

  "I want to believe you," she said.

  "Then do."

  "I'll try." Like him, she was trying to make their being together unique, an event of significance.

  It gave him the courage to open himself to her. He paused in their walk and faced her.

  "I don't know why I'm here"—he hesitated—"except that you move me greatly. I've thought of nothing else." A flush rose to her cheeks. There had been no subterfuge. Each knew the other was married.

  "Why are you telling me this?" she asked suddenly.

  "It's important that I explain myself."

  "You mean absolve yourself."

  "That, too."

  "So we can blame it on some cosmic force, something compelling outside of ourselves. Like a spell."

  "That's it," he said, exhilarated by her candor. They had thrown caution away.

  She averted her eyes, looking toward the river. "I'm embarrassing myself."

  "So am I."

  "It's wrong," she said. "This."

  "I know."

  "Will you always tell me the truth?" she asked suddenly, lifting her eyes to meet his. The "always" frightened him, yet filled him with exquisite joy.

  "Yes."

  "Then tell me the truth now, the absolute truth"—she cleared her throat—"about what you feel."

  "I think I yearn for you."

  "In a physical way only?"

  "In every way."

  "My God."

  "What's wrong?"

  "I yearn for you. I'm scared to death."

  "So am I. It's like I found the other half of my ... my soul."

  "Yes. Like that."

  When they touched, it was like being swallowed up by quicksand. His arms engulfed her. Their lips parted, their tongues explored. He was possessed of a physical urgency so compelling and overpowering that it seemed to break into another realm of consciousness. Arms around each other's waists, they went back to his car. Place was irrelevant. They did not make love, they invented the process, he remembered thinking.

  Afterward, still embracing him, her shoulders shook, and he felt warm tears against his cheek.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "I'm afraid to say it."

  "Say what?"

  "That I love you."

  "Why be afraid to say that?"

  "Because it doesn't fully describe what I feel, which is more than that." She hesitated. "And because I don't want my life to change."

  "Maybe it won't." He knew immediately that what he had said was not quite the truth, and he admitted it. "I don't want my life to change either. But it's going to, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it."

  The aircraft fell in line behind a number of others. Outside, the snow continued to fall and swirl about, sometimes completely obscuring visibility through the windows. Leaning over him, she looked out.

  "Are we really going to take off?"

  "They know what they're doing," Orson said. A plane's roar split the air. "Listen to that. We'll be in the sunshine two minutes after takeoff."

  "When I'm with you, there's always sunshine," she said, caressing him.

  The plane's speaker crackled. "The flight tower has given us the go-ahead, folks. Sunny Florida, here we come."

  The pilot's voice was followed by that of the stewardess reminding them to fasten their safety belts and put the seats in an upright position. They obeyed the instructions, although they kept the blanket over them.

  "I wouldn't care if we just kept on flying to the end of the world, forever," Lily said, entwining her fingers in his.

  "That won't solve anything. We'd have to land someday," he said, lifting her fingers to his lips and kissing them.

  The aircraft lumbered forward and began to accelerate. Some loose baggage bumped in the overhead racks. The great jets roared, and the plane's body quivered as it charged ahead, flattening them against the seat backs. For an inordinately long time, the plane did not lift.

  "Hard getting this baby off the ground," someone said behind them.

  Orson felt Lily's fingers squeeze harder as their bodies waited to sense the lift-off. When it happened, her fingers unclasped, and Orson looked out the window into the mass of white. Lily leaned over him.

  "Soon," he whispered.

  She lifted the rose to her nostrils and breathed in its delicate scent.

  Then the plane began to buck and lose altitude. It became deadly quiet; the sudden terror had paralyzed everyone into silence. Even when the big plane sheared a railing off the Fourteenth Street Bridge along with the tops of five cars, there were no screams. Then the plane crashed through the ice with an enormous impact.

  3

  Sometime in mid-afternoon the falling snow finally made an impression on Edward Davis. He was sitting at his desk, his back to the window, gobbling a chopped egg sandwich and sloshing it down half-chewed with gulps of skim milk, when he swiveled a full 180 degrees in his chair.

  "Damn!" he exclaimed, observing the thick white blanket covering the streets and the rooftops. Even the Capitol dome was covered. His reaction was motivated neither by esthetic appreciation nor by the marvels of nature. His principal concern was that the staff would have to be dismissed early, leaving him to bear the brunt of the opening session work load. Such was the bleak fate of a congressional A.A.

  He turned, shrugged, and finished his sandwich. With Lily out of town it really didn't matter. Remembering her playful accusations about his being a workaholic, he smiled, then sucked some egg salad from his fingers. It was an accusation that had mellowed with time and circumstances. As a buyer for Woodies, her career took almost as much time away from their marriage as his job and the issue had long ceased to be a bone of contention between them. Besides, he was damned proud of her success.

  The telephone rang. It was the Congressman, who was still in Iowa. They went over legislative details and discussed committee, assignments, staff matters, a speech that was in the works, the thrust of a press release, and other business.

  "Still snowing out there?" the Congressman asked.

  "A bitch."

  "Will the speech be ready tomorrow?"

  "Of course."

  After Edward hung up, he felt a flash of irritation, not at the Congressman but at the snow. Jan Peters, a staff assistant, came into his office. She wore a body-hugging turtleneck sweater which set off her full bosom. A tight skirt emphasizing a well-turned bottom added to her blatant sensuality, which she frequently flaunted in his direction. At times she w
ould huddle close enough for him to taste her minty breath, close enough for him to feel a firm breast against his upper arm.

  "Why me?" he asked her once. They had been working late, and she seemed to be more tempting than usual. He had expected a denial, if only for propriety's sake.

  "You really want to know?" she responded coolly, crossing her shapely legs, the hem of her skirt settling at mid-thigh.

  "Not really."

  "Then why did you ask?" she inquired, smiling.

  "I'm not sure," he said with some embarrassment. Above all he had no desire to stray from Lily.

  "You have the look of vulnerability, Edward," Jan explained. "An appeal to the mother instinct. Mine at least. And you're cute and so high-minded about your marriage."

  "Is that so rare?"

  "From my perch, it is. I welcome a challenge." She got up from the couch and came closer, putting her arms around his neck. "Yes, it definitely is the mother instinct. It turns me on."

  Grasping her shoulders, he moved her gently to arm's length.

  "I'm committed," he said, holding up his hand to show her his marriage ring.

  "You're giving me the finger?"

  "You might call it that."

  "I'm talking recreation, not a marital earthquake."

  "Your kind of recreation creates earthquakes."

  "Maybe a bit of noise, but nothing ever breaks," she said, playfully backing away.

  "Someday, Jan, I'll explain to you all about honor and loyalty."

  "In this place? You're kidding." Jan looked at him and sighed. "Remember, it's a perishable item," she said gaily. "Like a hotel room. If you don't use it, the time is lost forever."

  It seemed a clever way to put it. Although secretly flattered, he was glad he had cleared the air.

  "Fabulous," Jan said, looking over his shoulder through the window. "I love it."

  "Good for kids and ski resorts," he cracked. "That's all everyone is thinking about." She looked at him, offered a mild glance of rebuke, shrugged, and left the office with exaggerated bounciness. Pressing the intercom button, he waited for a voice at the other end.

  "How's the speech?"

  "Coming," Harvey Miles grunted.