American Sextet Page 5

"And girlfriend on the side," she pointed out.

  "I'd never done this before."

  "That's supposed to be my line."

  The morning trysts were his idea--it left him free of suspicion. At least he was honest, she assured herself, going along with the arrangement.

  They settled into an odd-hour affair, discreet, passionate and anguished, contrary to all rules she had set up to protect herself. She was now part of a peculiar Washington subculture, the other woman. It was a debilitating, painful, masochistic role. It doomed her to lonely nights, a flood of tears on an icy pillow, unbearable longings. Days were lived by rote on the edge of anger and despair, her concentration spoiled, her sense of individuality and achievement sullied.

  But nature's compensation was bountiful. Their moments together overflowed with joy, psychic and sexual, with an intense mutuality that, she was certain, came rarely in anyone's lifetime. This was the real thing, transcending words and reason.

  "Why you?" she asked aloud, or to herself a thousand times.

  "Why you?" was his inevitable response.

  During those moments of practicality and lucidity between their lovemaking, they would broach "the subject," their sword of Damocles. Ann Chase, Clint's wife, worked as an AA, administrative assistant, for a Colorado senator, Charles Hurley. When Clint spoke of her, it was always with regret. Whenever Fiona called that to his attention, he would look at her in disbelief.

  "Maybe," he finally agreed. Between frantic encounters they would lay in each other's arms, wallowing in self-analysis. "She was a devoted, loving housewife for fifteen years. Then she became a super-achiever and our marriage came second, or third." He stole a glance at her and winked. "I wouldn't be here if she hadn't changed."

  Why is he risking it all, Fiona wondered.

  "Have you ever discussed it?"

  "As an exercise. Not a final exam."

  "I don't understand," she pouted, just this side of pressuring him. She had her own risks to run.

  "Neither of us wants to torpedo the ship," he said. "The kids ... they still need the family concept." His hesitation when this came up was always pronounced. "Then there's this new job."

  He had explained earlier that his wife's employment by a powerful senator had gotten him the appointment.

  "I took it. We needed the money. It's nearly ten grand more than the newspaper job."

  "So you're a vassal," Fiona had said, cruelly. She was angry and wanted it to hurt.

  "Not a vassal. A hostage."

  "And if she finds out about us?"

  "Let's not think about it." Obviously, he thought about it all the time. Also, he admitted he liked the new job and all its perks. Where is love in all this, she wondered?

  Nowhere. He was frightened, stealing happiness.

  "And what about the future?" she would ask. It had become her most persistent theme.

  "Not now," he would beg off, just as persistently.

  "When then?"

  Was this Fiona, who could look convention in the eye and spit at it? It was appalling to her to be reduced to such a whimpering fool.

  The low point of their relationship was the weekends, which he always spent with his family. She dreaded those weekends when she was off-duty; they became a sentence of abject loneliness. Mooning around the apartment, she seemed to spend most of her time staring at the telephone, waiting for it to ring when he had found a safe moment.

  The last weekend had been the worst. The rainy gloom seemed to permeate her bones, prompting her resolution to end this servitude immediately, a resolve that, predictably, lost its energy on Monday morning when he came to her.

  The jumper lying there in the mud at the bottom of the bridge had a sobering effect on her paralyzed will. There but for the grace of God, she thought dramatically, remembering the sight of the broken remains. Was it possible that she, too, could find all other exits locked?

  Inexplicably the experience had motivated her, and although she had no set plan, she knew that the time had come for a change. She'd had it with being a closet mistress.

  He arrived unsuspecting, carrying flowers, and embraced her. He was surprised when she pried herself out of his arms, a massive act of will and self-denial on her part.

  "In a good meal, timing is everything," she whispered, hurrying to the kitchen, mostly to gather her strength.

  "What are we celebrating?" he called after her.

  Celebrating? From the urgency of her phone call, he must have known something was up.

  "I must talk to you," she had said on the phone. "Tonight come for dinner."

  "Tonight?"

  She brought in the chilled pâté and put it on the plates, sitting opposite him.

  "Pour the wine, please," she said.

  "What is it?" he asked, bottle poised.

  "Just pour it, please."

  He obeyed, watching her eyes. A few scarlet drops fell on the lace cloth.

  "Sorry."

  Just before he'd arrived, she was at the peak of her resolve, a condition that was quickly receding. I'm sorry, darling, she said silently. Sipping her wine, she picked at her pâté, put some in her mouth, but couldn't swallow. He saw it and started to push himself from his chair.

  "Don't..."

  He sat back, throwing his napkin on the table.

  "What have you done to me?" she whispered. "I'm not even in control of myself anymore."

  "Hey," he said. "You're not exactly an innocent. I'm as hooked as you are."

  "That doesn't change anything."

  She watched as a confused frown etched itself on his forehead.

  "What set it off? Things were wonderful this morning."

  The memory of the broken, doll-like figure at the bottom of the ravine popped into her mind like a photographic slide. Lowering her eyes, she looked at her pâté, her stomach lurching.

  "I just can't go on, Clint. Not this way."

  "Inevitable, I guess. It all boils down to a tacky little scene."

  It was not that he was being deliberately cruel. She had noted it before, the journalist's objectively trained mind, looking from the outside in. She knew his pain was as acute as her own. "Forget it, Fi," he added quickly as if editing his copy. "I don't know how to react. I've never been through this before."

  "Marry me. Divorce her," she blurted. The words had come out in a whoosh, almost taking her breath away. Marriage? In the end that's what they all wanted.

  "Haven't we been through that?" he said, standing up, pacing now.

  "No," she said, her eyes brimming. "You've been through it. Not me."

  "I'm just not ready." In the candlelight, his eyes had misted as well. "Not yet."

  "Well, I am. Overdone."

  "Breaking up a family is a tough step," he said. His pacing had brought him closer to her.

  "I know," she nodded, thinking suddenly of her own family. In that cabbage-smelling Irish Catholic nest, such things were unthinkable.

  "I need time," he said softly. She had expected the retort, searching her mind for an apt response. Take all the time you need, she wanted to say. It was the way she dealt with suspected murderers when she had whipped them down to the edge of confession. To deliver what had to be said next would take all the courage she could muster.

  "You've had time."

  He paced away again, shoulders drooping. She fought her compassion, bludgeoned herself to reason.

  "I just can't live this way, Clint. It hurts too much." How could this have happened to her? Fiona FitzGerald, self-reliant, controlled, wary, street-smart Fiona. She had learned to deal with almost anything.

  Suddenly the steak was burning, sending waves of smoke from the broiler. She ran to the kitchen, and without thinking grabbed the glowing metal, screaming in pain. Clint rushed in, grabbed a dishcloth and threw the charred meat, pan and all, into the sink. A douse of cold water made it sizzle and smoke. Reaching for her burnt hand, he put it under the tap.

  When it cooled, he brought her fingers to his lips and
kissed them. She made a half-hearted effort to remove them from his grasp, but her resolution had dissolved and she fell against him, embracing him tightly.

  "Give me more time," he pleaded, leading her out of the kitchen. She went, docile, and expectant. Defeated. Trapped. Like the jumper? Like Dorothy?

  Later, in the calm of his arms, wedged against his cool flesh, she tried vainly to put the scene in perspective. The room was pitch black, but she refused to look at the radial dial of her bedside clock. That was his problem, she told herself defiantly, dreading the moment when he would rise and squint toward it. His stomach growled and she fingered the line of hair on his belly.

  "You're hungry," she whispered.

  "Not any more."

  The memory of their encounter made her smile and she dug her knuckles into his belly.

  "It must have been the jumper that set me off," she said.

  "Blue Monday," he said. She felt for his eyes which were open. "Jumper?"

  "A suicide. At least, that's what it looks like. A beautiful young woman. Good for maybe a half century more of living." Saying it aloud sparked her caution. She wondered if she was deliberately inserting the equation, injecting fear like a threat. She could only hear his soft breathing in the long silence that followed.

  "I'm going to tell her, Fi. Tell Ann."

  The thump in her chest prevented a response.

  "It's against the grain. I'm a lousy liar."

  She had tried not to imagine his life at home, the ordinary pursuit of family business, other concerns, other worries. That took place on another planet. Except that she knew that he and Ann shared a bed, touched. It was an image getting exceedingly difficult to block out of her mind.

  "You're not the only one living alone," he said.

  "Does she notice?" Fi asked. There she was, empathizing again. The portrait he had painted was of a woman obsessed with achievement, someone who had grudgingly taken time out for the sake of her children, then thrown herself back into the fray with an awesome resolve.

  "She's too involved with her job. And I don't give her reason not to be. Hell, she thinks I go to work early, a real eager beaver. And I'm home every night, almost." The thought triggered his anxiety and he looked at the radial clock.

  "My God. It's nearly three." Rolling over her, he got out of bed and started to dress. Reaching out, she touched his thigh, as if it were necessary to leave a last mark on his body.

  "I don't believe you," she said calmly. "I believe you want to, but you won't. It's too comfortable this way."

  He stopped dressing and looked down at her, bending to brush his hand over her forehead.

  "See, you're scared. Then you'd be stuck with me."

  Love, however complex, seemed a charted course compared to reading the future. At thirty-two, she was still young enough for kids. There were moments when that seemed almost idyllic. Moments, too, when it seemed like penal servitude. Tell him to get lost, she begged herself.

  Always, when he prepared to leave--perhaps the act of dressing was erotic for her--she felt the pull of sexual longing. It was when she needed him most. Needed! When had it become need, she cried silently, knowing that for him anxiety had already taken hold and the extra time spent would only make it worse.

  There was nothing to do but close her eyes, shut him out until he bent over her for that last sweet kiss. It was an act she let happen, although it hurt rather than consoled her. The thing, this monster inside, had reduced her to a simpering slave.

  "Wednesday?"

  "Like always," she sighed.

  She listened for the click of his key rolling the chamber of the double lock, caging her once again. Again, she thought of the girl, the jumper, the broken body, the half smile. The image stuck to her like paste.

  Trained as she was for odd hours and catnaps, she was always too energized for sleep after Clint had gone. Getting out of bed, she gobbled up the remainders of both portions of pâté and washed it down with red wine, directly from the bottle. To fight the first surge of loss, she called Benton in his office. He seemed always to be there at these odd hours.

  A relationship, personal and professional, had grown up between them ever since the Remington case. It leaped over whatever barriers of race, age and gender that existed between them. Reluctantly, even with some embarrassment, he accepted her confidences, offering only the wisdom of his years. Essentially a moral man, he was by experience, if not by instinct, conservative and cautious. A darker skin--two grandparents were quadroons--had taught him that survival was still the first priority. Because of that, he had chosen a role in the bureaucracy where he had risen more by skill than ambition. His dead wife had been his only love, but he seemed to know a great deal about women. Many of them gave away their secrets on his autopsy table.

  His voice on the telephone, deep and resonant with its cajun cadence, soothed and comforted her.

  "The young woman," she said, after the amenities. "The jumper. Caucasian."

  "A skeletal grab-bag."

  "Death instantaneous?"

  He hesitated. "She dropped from 300 feet. I could give you the technical data."

  "Was she dead before the fall?"

  "You suspect that, Fiona?"

  She ignored the question.

  "Did you take a vaginal swab?" she asked.

  "It wasn't requested," Dr. Benton said, the bureaucrat's caution showing. It was, they both knew, a detective's option in a suicide.

  "I forgot."

  "All orifices?"

  "Might as well," she said. "I know it's extra work, Dr. Benton."

  "Nothing lost in going with your instincts, Fiona."

  "At least we'll have the information, just in case." Not wanting to ring off just yet, she volunteered information. "Next of kin probably won't claim the body. It looks like she's a candidate for burning."

  "Sad," he said.

  "Cheaper, too," she said coldly.

  He seemed to detect her depression, despite her efforts to remain professional. The conversation was quickly ended when she couldn't think of anything more to say.

  Feeling alone again, she threw herself on the bed. The sheets were cold, even where his indentation had been made.

  "Fool," she cried. "Dying for a man..."

  At least Dorothy was safe from them forever.

  IV

  Jason Martin sat in his parked car on Cathedral Avenue across the street from the townhouse in which he had rented the ground floor apartment. The upper floors were deserted. The house was owned by a foreign service officer on temporary duty in Malaysia, a stroke of luck.

  He had looked very carefully for the apartment, which had to satisfy a variety of conditions: total privacy, centrally located on a quiet off street, roomy and attractive. Above all, it had to appear "safe."

  "But why do we need another place?" Dorothy asked. He still had his old apartment on Capitol Hill.

  "You'll see."

  "Gosh. It's pretty. Like a hideaway."

  "You got it. A place to hide. Just trust me, baby. You've got to trust me. It's all for us. You'll see."

  "I love it," she said. "And we'll fix it up all in white. Real pretty."

  "Do whatever you want. It's your place," he said, looking out the rear window. The narrow yard stretched out to a chain-link fence, beyond which was a deep ravine which fell sharply to Rock Creek Parkway. They were a stone's throw from Calvert Street and the high stone bridge.

  "Look how high," she said, crouching beside him at the kitchen window. She pressed her cheek against the pane.

  "They call it suicide bridge. Lots have gone over. I did a story on it once."

  "Gosh." She shivered and he put an arm around her shoulders.

  Perfect, he'd decided. He had Dorothy call the agent and pay three months rent in advance.

  Glancing at his watch, he sipped beer from a can. Anxiety had dried his throat. It had begun to happen.

  Had the idea come to him like a light going on in one of those balloons of c
omic character expressions, or had it seethed and festered like garbage creating methane gas? He would never be certain.

  He was not even sure whether or not he had asked her to come with him to Washington. Had it simply occurred, a natural event like sunrise or rain? There she was, crunched close beside him in his car heading east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, her hand on his inner thigh.

  "We'll have one hell of a time, Dot," he had said.

  "Great."

  Nor did he have any clear idea how she would fit into his life, barren now, shorn of family and self-respect. Half-woman, half-child, she might be a surrogate family for him, a comfort without the pressure of Jane's probing and intellectualizing, a mere child to be stroked and petted.

  He was ashamed at showing her the untidiness of his apartment, such an obvious reflection of his inner life, but she went to work without a word and by the time they were ready for bed, she had made it cleaner and more orderly than Jane had ever done.

  "Do you like it here?" he asked after they made love that first night in the apartment together. Where Jane had been indifferent and sometimes hostile to their sex life, Dorothy was eager, deliciously wanton.

  "I love this," she told him.

  "And me?"

  "I think you're the greatest, Jason."

  The greatest? It was certainly coincidental that she had dropped into his life at the moment of his most profound anguish. A heavenly gift, he decided, toying with thoughts of fate and the cosmos.

  His altercation with Barrows, so utterly unnecessary in retrospect, had further eroded his position with Webster. He had considered an apology, but it was too late. A hotshot's fall from grace was something to be cheered in this nest of bloated egos fighting for space and by-lines. Webster enjoyed watching his stars collide, disintegrate and reform into new stars in his whirling solar system.

  When Webster called him into his office on his first day back, he'd expected to get worse news. To be fired for "insubordination" was a favorite management ploy, but it did require a Newspaper Guild hearing, a process that had a flavor of humiliation about it. Having a committee rule on the issue of holding one's job didn't do much for one's pride. Besides, hadn't he already earned his journalist's stripes?

  "How could you do this to me?" he asked Webster after he'd announced that henceforth Jason would be covering the Fairfax County Council, a kind of Siberia for someone of his experience. Worse, he would have to take orders from another young hotshot working his way up the ladder.