Champagne Rules (6 page)

“No dick at all,” Jenny broke in, and they all laughed.

“Enough,” Suzanne said. “I freely confess I’m looking for a dick and—oops!” She broke off as the waiter appeared, bearing a huge platter of food.

Everyone took a moment to admire the presentation of spanokopita, calamari, those yummy little meatballs, dolmathes, pita bread and hummus and tzatziki dips. They each took a favorite, as the waiter added a big bowl of Greek salad to the table.

Suzanne popped a bit of hummus-laden pita into her mouth, then glanced down at the first sheet on her own pile of replies. What she saw made her choke and swallow the wrong way. When she could talk again, she said, “This is freaky. ‘Young woman, your feet are on the wrong path. It’s time to return to fundamental values.’ ”

“A religious nut,” Ann commented.

“Listen to the rest. ‘But first you must atone and be punished. Submit yourself to me and I will oversee your salvation.’”

“A sadistic religious freak. He wants to tie you up and whip you,” Jenny said. “That sure wouldn’t turn my crank.” Then she smirked at Ann. “But maybe you should reply. You’re the one who likes being tied up.”

Ann stuck out her tongue. “Silk, tied very loosely. And he definitely wasn’t whipping me, at least not with anything more than his tongue—and his eight-inch dick.”

“Oooh!” Rina sighed, fanning herself with her stack of e-mails. “Eight inches. Imahottie just doesn’t measure up.” She stuck her fork into a stuffed grape leaf, lifted the neat, sausageshaped bundle close to her mouth and ran her tongue suggestively around her lips. Then she took a large chomp, and the other three burst into laughter.

It was the most food Suzanne had ever seen Rina put in her mouth at one time.

The four of them carried on, taking turns reading, until Suzanne said, “This is depressing. The world is full of some very strange people.”

“Don’t despair,” Rina said, holding up a sheet of paper.

“This one sounds interesting. ‘I remember the cave. It was above the bay, where people sunbathed nude.’ ”

“That was all in the ad,” Suzanne broke in. Rina held up her hand and read on. “‘The sand was so fine, the color of milk. Like the skin of your breasts, where the sun hadn’t touched them.’ ”

Suzanne sucked in a breath. “That’s true. Oh my God, this could be him.”

Rina continued. “‘You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and it killed me to know you were my best friend’s wife.’ Oh! Oh my!” She glanced up, her eyes wide, then went back to the letter. “ ‘ We agreed it would just be that once but I couldn’t get you out of my mind and that’s why, when we all got back from holidays, I left town. But if this is really you, Jaclyn, and you want to see me, tell me where and when and I’ll be there.’ ”

She put the piece of paper down. “Tacky.”

“Yeah. Messing with his friend’s wife,” Jenny grumbled. Suzanne, who realized her mouth was gaping, closed it.

“Yes, but . . .” Oh my God, what had she done? “You weren’t there. That place was special. It cast a spell on me. Maybe it did on them too. I don’t . . .” She took a quick gulp of wine. “I just realized I honestly don’t know if my guy was married, single, engaged. It never occurred to me.”

“That is definitely not like you,” Ann said.

“That’s what I’ve been telling you!”

“You hate adultery,” Rina said.

“Of course I do,” Suzanne snapped. And the thought that she might have committed it made her feel sick.

“Okay, okay, we all understand that our Suzie was temporarily insane, drunk and sunstroked,” Jenny said. “Let’s get back to the letters.”

A busboy came to clear away the now-empty platter. They ordered coffee and baklava, then went back to reading—skimming now—aloud. After another dozen losers, Ann held up the next. “This is from ‘caveman.’ What do you think, folks? Another cute and corny?”

Jenny turned to Suzanne. “How about it, did he whack you over the head with a ten-inch dick and drag you off to that cave?”

“No, Eros sprinkled us with magic dust and set our feet on the path.”

Ann began to read. “‘I was underneath you, hard inside you, as you stared out of the cave, describing the scene below.’ ”

Suzanne felt as if the cave had kissed her with its cool breath. Goose bumps pricked her arms.

“ ‘ Do you remember the gay lovers?’ ” Ann read.

“Yes,” Suzanne breathed. “One was reading to the other.”

“‘One was reading to the other,’” Ann read, her voice trembling. “ ‘ It was Lord Chatterley’s Lover.’ ” Ann glanced at Suzanne. “He must mean
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
.”

Suzanne shook her head. “I said that the man who was reading was switching it, making it Lord Chatterley with the gamekeeper. Because they were gay, you know?” She put her hands to her cheeks. They were burning, though cold shivers made her whole body tremble. “It’s him. My God, it’s really him.”

Ann thrust the piece of paper toward her. “There’s more. You read it.”

For a moment Suzanne couldn’t force herself to reach out and take the paper. When she did, it rustled in her shaking hand. She glanced first at the top part. “It came in on Saturday night.” Had he been thinking of her when she was dreaming of him?

The waiter began to set coffee cups on their table, and Suzanne was glad of the excuse to scan the message before she read it aloud. It was so incredible, knowing her lover really existed, and had typed these words to her. When the waiter left, she took a quick sip of coffee, almost scalding her mouth, yet needing the moisture before she could speak. Then she took up from where Ann had left off. “ ‘ I’ve thought of you so many times. Yes, my outrageous lover, if you do want to meet again, tell me where and when. I’ll walk toward you and you’ll walk toward me, and we’ll see what fate has in store for us this time.’ ”

Suzanne put the paper down, realizing she’d gripped it so tightly she’d crumpled the edge. She tried to smooth it out, pressing repeatedly against the paper until Ann said, “You can print another, Suze.”

She gave a little laugh. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” Then she laughed again, louder, hearing a note of hysteria. “He’s real. What am I going to do?”

“See him!” Jenny yelped, thumping her fist on the table. Their waiter, approaching with plates of baklava, leaped backward and nearly dropped their dessert on the floor. Jenny rolled her eyes. “Be careful with that.”

He came forward in a timid rush, almost threw the plates on the table and took off again.

Rina leaned across the table and touched Suzanne’s hand.

“You wanted to know if you were dreaming. Now you do. So think, Suzie, will you be happier if you see him, or if you leave it like this?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to be the party pooper here,” Ann said, “but you took a serious risk that afternoon, Suze, and you’ve got a hole in your memory. You say it was sunstroke, but what if this

‘caveman’ drugged you?”

Suzanne shook her head. “We didn’t eat or drink anything.”

“The next thing you remember is being in your room the next day, feeling awful. Could you have fallen, hit your head?”

“Or maybe he bashed me over the head with that ten-inch dick? No, Ann, I don’t think so.”

“Then why don’t you remember? You must have repressed it. But why, if it was this idyllic, erotic afternoon, and the two of you made a sensible decision to leave it at that?”

“She got sunstroke and fried some brain cells,” Jenny said.

“Don’t make such a big deal of it.”

Suzanne realized her head was throbbing, full of her friends’

words, and her own worries and fears. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, to remember. After a moment, she said slowly,

“You know what I think? Now that I know he’s real, that I really did it—did all those things that were utterly out of character—

I think my brain, my conscience, tried to forget. Sex with a stranger, not knowing if he was single, not using a condom.”

She shivered. “I couldn’t come to terms with what I’d done, yet I couldn’t manage to forget.”

“You remembered the sex but not the conversation?” Ann said.

Suzanne shrugged helplessly.

“If you got so angsty about it the first time, then maybe you shouldn’t repeat it,” Rina commented, and Ann nodded her head firmly.

Jenny clapped her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t believe this!

You can’t let this guy slip away again. God knows where he lives, and he’s offering to come here and meet you. That’s absolutely awesome. Come on, Suze, what’s there to get angsty about? Just make sure he’s not married, and then go for it. With a
condom
. Sex is a perfectly natural bodily function, so why not have great sex and just enjoy it? Without agonizing over it, for Christ’s sake!”

“Ssh,” Ann warned Jen, as Suzanne pressed both hands to her aching head.

Jenny took a long, noisy breath and continued in a quieter voice. “We all agreed to write the ad, and now everyone wants to bail out? No way. Look, here’s what we’re going to do.”

“We?” Suzanne said.

“Yeah, we’re in this together.” Jenny giggled. “I mean, not the actual sex, but getting you together with this guy. So, Suze, you reply to caveman, ask him if he’s single, and set up a meeting in some nice safe public place. And the rest of us’ll be there when you meet, to blow the whistle if something goes wrong.” She thrust her face toward Suzanne’s. “What do you say, Suzie Q?”

Suzanne sucked in a long breath. Across the table, Rina’s eyes were wide with concern. To her left, Jenny’s impatient scowl challenged her to action. To her right, Ann’s crinkled brow counseled caution.

She took another deep breath and her headache began to lift. How wonderful that these women all cared. They’d never let anything bad happen to her.

“I’m torn,” she admitted. “I’m busy, I enjoy my life, I have my long-term plan to eventually find and marry—yeah, Jenny, Mr. Cleaver. This . . . caveman is definitely not Mr. Cleaver.”

“But you’re torn?” Rina prompted.

She sighed. “I sound so middle-aged and boring. Like Jen says, what’s wrong with one more afternoon or evening of fabulous sex? This time I wouldn’t drink too much. I’d know the memories I was creating were real.”

Jenny, who was systematically demolishing her baklava, nodded vigorously.

“I’d go into it with my eyes open, and take a bunch of precautions,” Suzanne went on. “Besides, we might meet and not even be attracted to each other this time.”

Or she might be attracted to him, but he’d see plain old boring Suze. Now there was a dismal thought. She gripped her head with her hands, realizing her headache wasn’t gone after all. “Oh, I don’t know. I have to sleep on it.”

“Of course you do,” Ann said, her eyes still troubled. “But I’m against setting up a meeting. At least right now. E-mail him back—and be sure to do it from outrageous69 not your regular e-mail account—and ask him about himself. I’d consider even asking for references.”

Jenny raised a brow. “To say he’s still a great lover?”

“No!” Ann glared at her. “To say he’s a trustworthy person.”

“I agree you should play it cautious,” Rina said, “and sleep on it, Suzie.” She stood up. “I have to go, I’ve got an early morning.” Her expression suddenly went dreamy. “But here’s something to think about. Should I try to find Giancarlo, using the internet?”

Jenny grabbed her hand and yanked her back down. “What?

You mean we’re going to write another ad, for the magic fingers piano-man who made you come three times on top of a piano?”

Rina freed her hand and stood up again. “Or I could use the normal internet search tools. After all, I do know the guy’s name.” She shot a pointed look at Suzanne.

“Oh!” Suzanne picked up the e-mail printout and read it again. No, he hadn’t mentioned his name. He hadn’t said where he lived, or what he did for a living. Or if he was single. She toyed with her baklava, then put her fork down.

“You eating that?” Jenny demanded.

Suzanne pushed her plate over, and Jenny, whose hundredpound frame never gained an ounce despite the huge amount of food she consumed, dug in.

* * *

Later that night, Suzanne’s caveman came to her again in a dream. Afterwards, her body damp with sweat, the throbbing still pulsing through her, she smiled at knowing the memory was true. And what the hell was wrong with great sex?

Suzanne left the bed to Melody and Zorro—a tangled heap of gold and black atop the pale green duvet—and went over to turn on her computer. She hoisted Mouse from his sleeping spot, opened caveman’s e-mail and clicked REPLY. I remember Lord Chatterley, she typed. And I remember wishing we’d picked some of those tiny flowers that bloomed on the hillside. But you said fingers would do, and it was true. Your fingers were so amazing. You touched me with strength, yet never hurt me. You made my body sing.

Suzanne stopped. What was she doing? She should be asking for information so she could decide if she wanted to see him again.

She wished she could remember their final conversation. Had he told her his name, where he lived, what he did? Had he said he was married, and she’d gone into shock?

Whatever he might have said then, that was four years ago and the facts might be quite different now. Mouse was insinuating himself across the keyboard. She nudged him away before he could click any keys, and typed: You could be anywhere in the world, yet you say you’ll come to me.

She thought about the two of them walking toward each other. What if the magic really did belong to—depend on—that beach in Crete? Meeting again could be a disaster.

“Nothing can ruin a memory, Mouse,” she murmured, stroking the sleepy cat. “If I decide to see him and it doesn’t work out, I’ll still have that first memory.

“And if I meet him in a public place, and don’t give him my last name, address or phone number, I can’t come to any harm.”

Mouse butted his head against her hand.

Why would she want to see the man, if she had to take so many precautions? And yet, excitement fizzed through her. The element of mystery was in itself arousing. If caveman was just a perfectly nice guy, like the vets at the clinic, she wouldn’t feel this same sense of adventure. She might, in the future, contemplate a loving marriage. But with caveman, what she had in mind was, as Jenny called it, a walk on the wild side. Wild, but she honestly didn’t believe it would be dangerous. If he hadn’t hurt her in that cave, when she’d been so vulnerable, he wouldn’t hurt her now. The only thing she really needed to know was whether he was involved with another woman. For her, adultery was taboo.