The Serpent's Bite Page 8

“Is she, you know, independent? Comfortable?”

  “She’s a working woman. I told you an accountant with the firm I use.”

  “So she knows your situation?”

  “Of course, she does. She handles my books.”

  “And you’ve talked about marriage?”

  “I just told you. We’ve talked about it.” He grew pensive for a moment. “Does it disturb you?”

  Courtney turned to Scott. She seemed suddenly confused about how to reply.

  “No…not really…I was just curious,” Courtney said, faltering.

  “We’re happy for you, Dad,” Scott said, determining that he had better intervene. “Your happiness is very important to both of us. Isn’t that so, Courtney?”

  “Of course.”

  Their father nodded, turned away, and forced a smile.

  “It’s your life, Dad. Anything that lightens the load. Not fun being lonely.”

  Scott’s thoughts drifted away. It was one subject he could never confront honestly.

  “I loved your mother with all my heart. She is not replaceable by anyone. Muriel understands that.”

  “Muriel. Is that her name?”

  “Yes. And she’s a lovely woman. And very smart, very intelligent.”

  “I’m sure,” Courtney said. There was no mistaking the sarcasm.

  “Nice to have someone that cares about you,” Scott said, hoping his father hadn’t caught his sister’s intent.

  “That’s what I meant, Dad,” Courtney said, shooting a rebuking glance at her brother.

  At that moment, their father stood up.

  “Got to see a man about a dog,” he said, moving beyond the light of the fire into the darkness. They could hear the sound of his stream.

  “We got trouble, brother mine,” Courtney whispered, showing her anxiety. “Younger wife. Working woman. Grown children.”

  They heard Tomas returning from his dishwashing chores.

  “That was a good meal, Tomas,” their father said, returning, zipping up his fly.

  “Gracias,” Tomas mumbled without emotion.

  Temple stretched and yawned.

  “Off to dreamland,” he said, starting to go then stopping.

  “I have a question, Tomas.”

  “Si.”

  “Harry’s drinking,” he asked. “Could it, you know, be a problem?”

  “He be fine, Señor,” Tomas muttered, puttering with his equipment.

  Their father nodded, then blew kisses, and said goodnight. They blew kisses back, and when he crawled into his tent, they moved into the darkness out of earshot of Tomas, who had begun hauling leftover food up the meat pole.

  “We got problems, kiddo,” Courtney whispered showing her anger.

  “Be happy for him, Courtney. He’s entitled to a life.”

  “At our expense?”

  “Above all, he’s not stupid. I’m sure he’s worked out a prenup.”

  “Don’t be naive. An accountant, yet! You watch. He’s vulnerable as shit. And she’s got her own kids!”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “Am I? Think of the pillow talk. Imagine the conversation. ‘My kids are a couple of losers, always pushing for money. Pushing, pushing. That’s all they think about.’ And her reply:…‘They don’t give a shit about you. Zip up the moneybag and cut them down.’ Meaning save some for me and my kids.”

  “You sound like you’re reading a script from a lousy movie. You don’t know the woman, and you don’t know the facts.”

  “True. But that doesn’t mean my speculation is wrongheaded.”

  “You are one mercenary bitch, Courtney,” Scott said.

  “And you, little bro,…what are you?”

  “I know what I am,” Scott said, with a sense of sad resignation. His eyes met his sister’s. “And I know why.”

  “Shit. Not that again.”

  She turned away in disgust.

  They remained silent for a long time, listening to the night sounds, the rustle of the nearby quaking aspens, the distant whine of the coyotes, the grunts of the grazing horses and mules.

  Above was an incredible canopy of stars, an otherworldly display in the moonless night. He could see the reflection of the stars, like pinpoints of light in his sister’s eyes.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Courtney said.

  He felt a sudden chill run through him as he caught the subtext of her remark. Despite the chill, he began to sweat. Rivulets streamed down his back.

  “Whatever is going through your mind,” he said, his lips quivering, “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s your fucking future, Scott.”

  She moved away into the darkness. He could hear the patter of her stream. It reminded him of his own need. He did it where he stood.

  Then they moved back in the direction of their tents. Suddenly in the near distance, he heard movement, horse sounds. By the light of the moon, they turned toward the path to the meadow where the horses were hobbled. They saw Tomas mounted, moving into the wilderness, a mule in tow.

  “I guess he’s off to pick up the load left behind in the tree,” Scott said.

  “Dumb bastard,” Courtney said. “Working his ass off for that drunken son of a bitch.”

  Before she slipped into her tent, she stopped and moved closer to Scott.

  “Think about it, Scott.”

  “Think about what?” It was a knee-jerk reaction.

  “Dilution, Scottie baby. Dilution.”

  Chapter 6

  George Temple lay in fetal comfort in the warmth of his sleeping bag, his nostrils tickled by the cool night air. He felt satisfied and proud by the way he had weathered the day. The altitude had not made him dizzy, and he was certain that it indicated his blood pressure remained under control, and he had his trusty pills secure in his toilet kit.

  He had been concerned that his aging body might not hold up. He was eleven years beyond the outfitter’s age requirements, but he had rigorously prepared himself for the journey with treadmill workouts, and weight lifting and stretching exercises under the tutelage of a trainer. Sure, he needed help to get into the saddle, but others a lot younger probably needed similar assistance. Scott, too, although he had eschewed help, was certainly unsteady mounting. He complained of his knees aching when he rode, and when he dismounted he limped for a while.

  Nevertheless, Temple was exhausted from the long trip but oddly content. His mind filled with reminiscences of his early life with Bea and the kids. What they did not realize was that he saw them more in retrospect, as children growing up in their home, than in the present reality.

  He could remember each of their tiny faces behind the nursery glass: Courtney bound in her pink blanket, then a couple of years later Scott in his blue one. Beside him was Bea in this mental image, his arm embracing her as they viewed what they had created: miraculous combinations of themselves, representing their mutual hopes and aspirations, their future.

  Few events in their lives were more compelling and poignant. Their hearts swelled with love, joy, and wonder. Was it possible to convey to these grown children now what they had felt? Inducing the tiniest smile in their little faces was the greatest reward one could imagine for young parents. No sense of joy was ever comparable.

  Wasn’t parenthood a gift, the ultimate fulfillment of the married state? Nothing on earth, despite anger, disappointment, and broken dreams could break that natural bond. He had learned that lesson the hard way. His children had not turned out the way he would have liked, the way he and Bea had envisioned their futures.

  What had they done wrong? It was sad and heartbreaking. They were—he had to admit the truth to himself—failures. Not only in a monetary sense but also as people. He could not find in them any sense of empathy. Scott had turned out to be weak and fragile. Courtney had become hard, self-centered, and mean-minded. How awful to conclude these things about your own children!

  Worse, they had hardened his heart toward them. He ha
d tried valiantly to excise the bond, stamp it out in himself, and this had brought him only debilitating guilt and unhappiness. The hard lesson was that it was utterly impossible for him to break the parent-child bond. He would love them until he died, no matter the circumstances, the betrayals, the disappointments, the disillusions.

  His purpose now was to correct an action that had caused him deep personal pain. He had deliberately—perhaps, maliciously—cut them off from his financially supporting their ambitions. He had done this for their own good, he had assured himself, but the aftermath of that decision had tortured his conscience, and he needed to absolve himself from that guilt by restoring his support of Courtney and by providing Scott with the money needed to fund his restaurant deal.

  He had maintained his promise to Bea to split his inheritance between both his children. Of course, now that Muriel was going to be a part of his life, he needed to tweak his estate plan. He would, true to his promise, split the estate for his two children up to the time he would marry Muriel. Any wealth acquired during his time with Muriel would be apportioned accordingly with Muriel’s entitlement, expanded to include her. He had consulted estate lawyers on this issue, and one of the reasons for this bonding expedition was to explain that to his children.

  It wasn’t a betrayal of his late wife. By his accountant’s and his lawyer’s calculation, his children would receive no less than ten million apiece after taxes, a tidy sum by any measure. He wanted them to know this to prevent any undue litigation after his death. He had debated long and hard how he would handle this, soliciting advice from a number of lawyers. Some had objected to his revealing his intentions, but in the end he had made the decision to do so and had picked the moment: this new trek, a kind of repeat performance—although somewhat shortened—of one of the most indelible adventures of their family life.

  It was, he knew, in his nature to be fair, ethical, and methodical. By cutting off his children, he had considered it a practical move hopefully to jolt them into reassessing their careers. Between them, they had already cost him in the neighborhood of eight million dollars, and neither had come close to attaining their goals. Okay, he conceded, this was tough love, but it hadn’t achieved any result except to make both him and his children unhappy. Courtney had become totally alienated, and Scott had admitted suffering from some mental health issues. It was time to correct the situation and remove this heavy stone from his heart and hopefully from theirs.

  Courtney’s long silence was especially wounding, since he could have used her daughterly sympathy and attention during Bea’s long illness and after her death. Scott, too, was less than solicitous. Neither filled the void of Bea’s absence nor made any gesture that might help during his terrible bout of grieving.

  As time went on, despite the occasional guilty feelings that visited him at times, his children’s increasing alienation tended to add heft to his decision to repair it. He tried not to dwell on it, and he began to slowly come out of his mourner’s shell. It was not an easy adjustment.

  Friends tried to fix him up with single ladies, but he could not relate to them in any way. Some aggressive females managed to induce a half-hearted sexual response. At times he managed to fulfill their aspirations and on rare occasions his own.

  His serious relationship with Muriel was accidental only in the sense that he had known her as one of his accounting firm’s fellow associates who had often sat in on meetings in connection with his periodic audits and tax consultations.

  Like all mysteries, she crossed that elusive emotional Rubicon purely by chance, her persona entering his consciousness by degrees. She was still in her forties, had experienced widowhood in her thirties, and after devoting herself to raising her two children, had settled in to a life of work and a pursuit of cultural interests in a circle of widows and other single women.

  Her face was soft and round, with large brown eyes and a slightly upturned nose, full lips, and she had a large bust, which was her most obvious and sensual feature. She dressed primly in modest business suits that flattened her ample curves and gave no hint of what he later discovered was her erotic nature and of his own reaction to her sexual charms. To make her even more desirable from his point of view, she was standoffish and neutral, meaning she showed little or no interest in him as anything more than a client of the firm.

  Since he was the product of a long marriage of over forty years with one woman and had, by then, long ago drained the cup of fervent sexual interest, he found himself surprised by the physical attraction that Muriel triggered in him.

  At first, he dismissed any possibility of a mutual attraction. She was more than twenty-five years younger than him, an inhibiting fact of life. He was certain she would think of him as too old, although he was in good physical shape. He was also, by dint of his long marriage, awkward in the ways of dating and mating talk and too shy to make other than a business approach. He approached her as if he might need professional advice and finally managed to offer her a night out as an additional reward for her expertise.

  It was quickly clear to both of them that this was more than a professional engagement. He chose dinner at Danielle, a pricey East Side restaurant, where he ordered an expensive wine, a purchase that Bea, with her overwrought prudence, would have rejected.

  Muriel seemed to encourage this purchase, perhaps because she had knowledge of his net worth and knew that ordering it would not impact on his pocketbook. She viewed it as a special treat and signaled to him her interest in the so-called better things in life.

  “I’ve always felt sort of deprived,” she admitted candidly, explaining that she had been a working woman all her life and that her husband’s health had broken early, and as a consequence, she had been forced to be the sole breadwinner. Clever with money, she had amassed a comfortable financial cushion. She lived in a spacious townhouse in Brooklyn Heights that she had purchased at a good price years ago, which in time added much to her net worth. It was clear to him early on that she did not covet Temple’s money.

  From the beginning, they enjoyed each other’s company. His life with Bea was focused more on business than the cultural cornucopia that New York had to offer, although they did have season tickets to the symphony. Muriel broadened his interests, and they regularly attended the opera, Broadway shows, the ballet, and ate in the better restaurants. She liked travel but had not had the time for any long trips overseas or cruises, but she did admit her aspirations to one day fulfill this inclination.

  But in a surprise to beat all surprises, she revealed a passion for sex in all its exciting variations, during most of which she was the ringmaster. It was a revelation especially since Bea had submitted more out of duty than pleasure, and he had never experienced any but the most conventional aspects of the act. At first, he thought it was playacting. She assured him that it wasn’t.

  She turned out to be imaginative and orgasmic, encouraging him to use Viagra on a regular basis, and kept him interested by invention and surprise. She admitted that the sexual flame flickered only briefly in her own marriage, and that she had a vivid fantasy life and various sexual toys that helped satisfy her needs. She had not been sexually active in her widowhood, fearing AIDS, although she had revealed a one-year affair with a married man.

  As their own relationship progressed, she became unusually and refreshingly frank, not only on the subject of sex but also on every other issue that concerned her. She was totally open, emptying herself of the personal experiences that made the profoundest impact on her life.

  Her openness encouraged him to a transparency that he had never experienced even with Bea. It was a revelation to discover how comforting it was to be open and honest about his feelings, the intimate history of his marriage with Bea, his souring relationship with his children, his concerns, worries, and fears.

  For hours on end, they would exchange biographical information and deeply personal matters, conversations that bonded them psychologically and emotionally. The trust between them blossome
d and grew. He became convinced that this was a manifestation of mature love and began to explore the idea with her of a more permanent arrangement.

  It was not as simple as it sounded. Each brought with them the baggage of a previous life. Muriel’s two children, although grown, were still building a future. The boy had followed in his mother’s footsteps and had become an accountant. He made a decent living and was recently engaged. The girl was a newlywed who lived in Florida, where she sold time for a radio station, and her husband was a physical trainer.

  He was, by far, the wealthier of the two. Muriel knew his multimillion-dollar net worth down to the penny. Each knew that in the event of a marriage—which had been discussed—financial arrangements had to be made, a prenuptial agreement fashioned, and other considerations attended to in terms of property that might be acquired during a marriage.

  There was also the problem of age. It was a matter of statistical fact. The odds were that she would certainly outlive him, and he was duty bound to consider her future in the event of his death.

  They discussed these issues frankly and specifically. He wanted her to eventually learn the intricacies of his business; take a course in gemology and—as Bea had done—work with him; and, perhaps, after changes in his behests, carry on the business upon his death.

  She was reluctant to jump into such a situation, preferring to “test the waters” before full emersion. Even on that score, there was a complication. Despite their constant rejection, he still secretly harbored the possibility that one or another of his children would one day see the light and join him in the business.

  More and more such a possibility was fading, although he continued to hold the option open. Would Muriel joining the firm foreclose on such an option? Both he and Muriel hoped not, but it did introduce a further complication.

  He remembered his own initial reluctance to join the business and to pursue a vocation in music. But reality had intervened, and he had given in to practicality. Looking back, he had no regrets. He continued to enjoy not only the money the business generated but also the esthetic beauty of the product he sold and did not question at all the desire to display such beautiful adornments, regardless of the motive of the purchaser.