DUTCH AND GINA: AFTER THE FALL (13 page)

She looked at Gina again, a woman whom she always felt wasn’t half as beautiful or smart or savvy as she was, but who ended up with a man like Dutch anyway, a man who should have been hers, and her envy turned into a sudden surge of self-doubt.

Because in that awkward moment of defeat, the light switched on. And she realized, unlike she had ever even considered before, that it wasn’t about being beau full or savvy or smart. It was about being true to your inner core, and honest and worthy. She now realized, as starkly as the turning on of that light, that she did it wrong and Gina did it right. Gina didn’t pros tute her body all over America to gain the good graces of men. She didn’t alienate every woman she met to make sure she kept those men. Yet it was Gina who ended up with Dutch Harber, the grand prize of men. And it was Liz, now pushing forty and not nearly as desirable and irresis ble as she was in her youth, who ended up alone.

She le , tears staining her eyes as she hurried away. She felt broadsided by that harsh light of reality. She could hardly see in front of her.

Gina, however, turned her a en on to her husband.

Surely there was some crazy mistake at work here. It always was. Ever since she had been married to Dutch these wild allega ons always proved as false and phony as the people asserting them.

She walked over to the window where Dutch now stood, his eyes riveted on the morning fog that blanketed this unfamiliar Belgium city he found himself in. He was in a too-familiar emo onal place, however, and was tired of the lies too. Gina was certain of it.

“I know it’s not true,” she said to him. “It’s like, where do these people get off? Haven’t we caught this show before? I know you don’t know about any twenty-three year old daughter. I know you never heard of some woman being pregnant with your child, I know you had no idea about anything like that.” But his you had no idea about anything like that.” But his silence was beginning to scare her. “You didn’t know,” she said, less assuredly this me. And then she looked at him. “Did you?” she asked.

Dutch, his eyes filled with what Gina could only describe as despair, turned her way.

“Yes, I knew,” he replied, and he said it with so much regret, with so much anguish in his voice, that she felt as if the room, the very world as she knew it just moments before, was suddenly spinning out of her control. If Dutch hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her into his arms when he did, smothering her with his own strength, she was absolutely convinced that she would have not been able to stand.

EIGHT

On the balcony of the well-for fied hotel, Dutch was leaned back on the lounger, s ll dressed in his light-brown Armani suit and e, and Gina sat leaned back on his lap, s ll dressed in her Valen no pantsuit. They were going to be late for their respec ve func ons, and Crader had already informed them of just how late, but this, Dutch knew, couldn’t wait. The first meeting could go on without him. It would be hours of posturing anyway before any business would get done. But this, now, couldn’t wait.

His hand rested gently on Gina’s outer thigh as her body collapsed down on his lap, with her head leaned back against his shoulder. For the longest me he didn’t say a word, and for the longest me she allowed the silence. She knew there had to be a reasonable explanation. She at this point couldn’t fathom how there could be one, but she knew Dutch. And she knew that he would not have told her what he had just minutes ago told her without there being a seriously reasonable explanation. There just had to be.

Dutch closed his eyes and pulled Gina’s body closer to him, the shame of that bygone me s ll haun ng him.

And then finally he spoke.

“It was purely a sexual thing,” he began. “Not just for me, but for Sam too. That’s what we called her.

Never Samantha, but Sam. Back then we were young college seniors in our last semester and neither one of us were looking for any life me mate or anything remotely resembling that kind of rela onship. We just wanted to screw. At least that was what I wanted. At first she didn’t even want that. She was my tutor, for this Business Calculus class I had to take, and she didn’t feel we should mix business with pleasure. I went along with it, I had no choice, but every me I looked at her I wanted her.”

There was a pause, as if he was remembering just how badly he had once wanted her. “Was she beautiful?” Gina asked before he could continue.

Dutch, without realizing it, pulled his wife closer against him. “Yes,” he said. “Very beautiful.” Gina’s heart thumped, but she didn’t say anything.

“She wasn’t the typical type of lady that I found

“She wasn’t the typical type of lady that I found a rac ve,” Dutch went on. He had held back this informa on from Gina too long. He wasn’t holding any of it back any longer. “She was very short and pe te, very small, but she had those big almond eyes and that dark, velvety smooth skin that always got my attention.” He paused. “So she taught me how to pass Calculus and I daydreamed about fucking her and that was the full extent of our rela onship during those first few tutorials.”

Again he paused. Again Gina’s impa ent need to know got the best of her. “What changed?” she asked him.

“She at least allowed me to broach the subject.

Before that she didn’t allow me to so much as discuss anything but Math. Period, the end. But on this one night, as we sat at the li le kitchen table in her li le apartment, I asked her what she planned to do a er graduation. I knew she was a pre-med student and her path was set, but I still asked the question.”

“And a er answering you that was the night she allowed you to screw her brains out.”

Dutch shook his head. Gina was so off the mark.

“She just leaned back, put her feet underneath her bu , folded her li le arms, and stared at me. And my ques on sat on that table as if it was a loaf of stale bread. But I kept going, kept on asking her ques ons.

Finally she asked me one.”

“She asked you to stop asking her so many questions?”

Dutch smiled lightly. “No, she didn’t ask me that.” And Dutch remembered, and relayed to Gina, exactly what she did ask him.

“‘What’s your problem, Rookie?’ she asked me.

She was always calling me Rookie even though we were both the same age and were both seniors. But she was one of those serious students who thought all frat brother jocks like me were a general waste of space and a specific waste of me. She wasn’t wrong, by the way.”

Gina smiled, although her heart was in a knot of anxiousness.

“So I told her I didn’t have a problem and she told me that I did have a severe problem if I thought for a second that I was going there with her.” Gina thought about that me when she first met Dutch and how easily she gave into him. Was in bed with him that very same night. Unlike this girl, who kept him in his place for weeks. And Gina felt a twinge of shame.

“When she told me that,” Dutch went on, “I snorted, was embarrassed, naturally, and got back to work. But it opened the door for us to banter more, to discuss ma ers other than Calculus more, and to be more honest with each other.”

Dutch remembered, and relayed to Gina, just how honest they became.

“It was a couple weeks later. We were once again at her kitchen table and she was once again completely in the throes of some equa on. As usual I was more interested in perusing her body than any theorem, un ll I’d had enough of even pretending to encapsulate anything beyond a third of what she was spou ng.

That’s when I explained to her why I felt it was absolutely necessary for her to sleep with me.”

“And what was your explanation?”

“Because I was horny as hell.”

Gina smiled.

Dutch con nued. “So I kept going on and on and finally she took off her reading glasses and looked at me. ‘Are you finished?’ she asked me. ‘Are you ready to continue the lesson?’

to continue the lesson?’

I remembered smiling, attempting to play it off. ‘You are such a killjoy, you know that?’ that’s what I told her. ‘Come on, Sam,’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever let loose and have some fun?’

‘Fun?’ she asked me. Then she said something like:

‘You mean like you and your frat boys ge ng drunk and passing out in ditches and hugging the rim of a toilet the next morning as you nearly puke out your innards in a violent revolt against your own disgusting body? That kind of fun?’

I grinned and said, ‘well yeah,’ knowing that it would rile her up more. She was even sexier when she was riled.”

Gina didn’t feel that comment was necessary, but she knew it was just Dutch. He had commi ed to tell her the story, he was telling her the whole story.

“Did she find your humor humorous?” Gina asked him.

“In a word, no,” he replied. “She merely shook her head and lashed into me. ‘Will you ever be a serious person, Rookie,’ she asked, ‘or does your daddy’s riches give you the safety net you need to play the fool?’

Gina looked at her husband. “She went there?”

“She went there. Oh, Sam could be vicious when she wanted to be. And although my smile didn’t leave my face, it certainly le my heart. Because it wasn’t true. I was never the kind of kid who would leech off of his old man. Never. Truth was, I didn’t want to have anything to do with my father or his business when I graduated, and would have preferred to go my own way. But my old man had a bad heart condi on that kept him in and out of hospitals. I was his only child, I had to step up. But not in the way that Sam was insinuating. And I told her so. I told her running my father’s considerable business interests wasn’t going to be any cakewalk.”

‘But it will be a walk,’ I remember her saying. ‘For me, and people like me, it’s never easy like that. It’s always a run. And I’m talking marathon. Because we have no safety net waiting to catch us. We fall, we fall.

You fall, there’s rich old daddy’s loving arms to catch you.’

That did it. My old man was always a sore spot with me. I loved him, but he was overbearing enough. The last thing I wanted was to be under his command.

‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ I found myself saying with such a flash of anger that it seemed to catch her off guard. Later she told me that I was the most even-tempered person she’d ever known and for me to fly off the handle like that stunned her.”

“I don’t see why,” Gina said. “She all but called you a leech. What did she expect you to do?”

“I don’t know, but she didn’t expect me to lose my cool. I lost my cool, told her to kiss my rich ass or something on that order, and le . Didn’t go back again, either. At least not un ll a er I took that final exam and passed that blasted Calculus class with a C

average. I felt I owed her at least a thank-you, so I went over to her apartment to thank her.”

“ Thank her for what?” Gina wanted to know. “She tutored you but you still barely passed the class.”

“I would have flunked it without her tutelage, believe me. She had even warned me that a C was about the best I could hope for given my, as she put it, lack of seriousness. So I was grateful and wanted to thank her. But she responded like you.”

‘Thank me?’ I remember her asking. She stood in the middle of that li le apartment of hers, a book in one hand, reading glasses in the other one. And there I was, all smiles, looking probably like the obnoxious brat she took me for. ‘Thank me for what?’ she wanted brat she took me for. ‘Thank me for what?’ she wanted to know.

‘Your tutelage. I passed that ridiculous class, which was a miracle I assure you.’ Remarkably, she seemed touched, but puzzled too. She finally said I was welcome, but she still looked puzzled. Then she shi ed her weight.

‘What’s the ma er?’ I asked her, confused by her puzzlement.

‘It’s just that it’s never happened before.’

‘What’s never happened before?’

‘Somebody coming back to thank me,’ she said.

‘They usually pass their test and keep going. They don’t even think about me.’ And she was serious, too.

She was really grateful that I bothered to thank her.”

“And of course you took her gra tude for weakness and pounced,” Gina surmised.

Dutch smiled, although his heart wasn’t in it. “No,” he said. “I mean, I threw out one of my little lines, but I didn’t expect it to mean anything.”

“What did you say?”

“Something like, ‘I also came back to see your pre y face again.’”

“Oh, gosh,” Gina said, shaking her head.

“Her sen ments, exactly,” Dutch said. “She even shook her head too. ‘That’s lame, Rookie. That is so lame,’ she said, or words to that effect. I remember grinning and saying how you can’t fault a boy for trying. And I remembered how she smiled, which was a rare treat. And just like that I found my eyes trailing down the length of her body again. I really wanted to fuck her, I just did.”

‘You s ll want some, don’t you, Rookie?’ she said to me.

‘Badly,’ I remember saying, and meaning it.

And she stood there, stared at me longer, even looked me over to make sure, I guess, that I was even worth the bother. And then she started heading for the bedroom.

‘You’d be er not be one of those two minute brothers,’ she said as she went.”

Gina’s heart began to pound. “So she caved?”

“Ultimately, yes.”

It was too long ago for Dutch to remember any specific sexual maneuvers, or even any specific feelings, but he did remember how crazy it became.

“We used the one condom I always made sure I had with me,” he said, “in case of the unexpected. And it was apparently a good hit because I was hi ng it again that same night. And I mean like right away. We were so enthralled apparently that we reused that same condom. I know, but we did. And it was apparently even better the second time around because eventually, that same night, although later that night, we were at it a third time.”

Gina could only imagine how that woman had to have felt. Dutch was virile now, had her craving his dick every single day even though she was married to him and could get it at will. She could only imagine how that woman felt the first me she got a taste of Dutch.

“For some reason,” he went on, “that third me seemed to be our most desperate me. I remember having her ass in the air and ramming my penis in her unsheathe. She pulled it back out, said I simply had to put on a condom, who did I think she was.