Eve's Men (26 page)

“That’s just how I feel, Charley,” she said.

After making love in the hot tub—actually more
out
of the tub than in it, as passionate as they both were—the two of them went upstairs to Aunt Maureen’s bedroom and continued to make love off and on through much of the night. Charley was amazed that he still had it in him, this sudden surge of youthful virility, but he had no doubt as to its source: the lovely, wondrous creature beside him, and under him, and on him.

The California night played its part too, warm but dry, with a light breeze moving the gossamer curtains and a half-moon dimly lighting the room as well as the lovers’ bodies. Charley was not sure when he fell asleep, but he suspected that it was three o’clock or later, for he slept till almost eleven the next morning. Eve was already out of bed, showered and bathrobed, preparing just the sort of breakfast they both needed, or at least wanted: pancakes, bacon, eggs, the works.

Later she found a cache of champagne, a half-dozen bottles of Mumm’s her aunt must have been saving for a special occasion.

“One just like this,” Eve said. “She must have known you were coming.”

They laughed at the double entendre, unintentional though it had been. And they did tap into the champagne, but lightly, the two of them not needing much in the way of stimulation. They spent most of that day in bed or in the hot tub, with occasional forays into the kitchen for sustenance. And when they weren’t dozing or making love, they talked. They talked about their lives, but only partially, at Eve’s insistence omitting any mention of Brian.

“Just for now,” she said. “I know he’s your brother, and he’s been my life for three years, but I don’t want him intruding now, okay?”

Charley frowned. “Aw, gee, I was hoping we could just lie up here and talk about him full time.”

Eve gave him a push, as if she were trying to knock him out of bed. “Smartass,” she said.

“I know.”

“Charley, I’m serious about this.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course I agree. I don’t want to talk about or even think about anyone who ever touched you before.”

She smiled at that. “The possessive type, uh?”

“You bet. You’re mine now. I own you. I can do with you as I choose. And right now I choose this.” He lightly bit her below the navel and moved upwards, still biting and kissing, going from one breast to the other.

She laughed contentedly and pulled him higher, bringing his mouth to hers. And then they grew quiet, as it all began to build again, their own private phoenix rising from the ashes of its last immolation.

Late that afternoon they drove down to Carpenteria to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, along with other food items that Aunt Maureen kept in her huge freezer but which Eve wanted fresh. Afraid that someone might recognize her, she had put on dark glasses and covered her head with a scarf, and even then she didn’t go into the store herself but sent Charley, with a list. Inside, checking it as he filled the cart, he felt like a little boy. A very happy little boy.

The next day the two of them ventured down the coast to Santa Barbara and not unexpectedly found it heavily infested with tourists, its exotic tree-lined streets and handsome Spanish buildings overflowing with Northerners and Easterners, many standing in line just to get a table at a sidewalk cafe or to enter one of the city’s picturesque shopping courtyards. Eve again had covered her hair and put on the darkest glasses she could find. Still, she did go along with Charley into a couple of shops, where he bought some needed clothes: underwear, shirts, slacks, a jacket, and tennis shoes, deck shoes actually, since he wouldn’t have been found dead in a good modern sports shoe, the Nike and Reebok stuff, with all their stripes and whorls and glitz. Later, he and Eve went walking barefoot along one of the city’s splendid beaches, though it too was overrun with visiting humanity.

That night, after a steak dinner and more hot-tubbing and lovemaking, Charley lay awake while Eve slept beside him. It was a warm night again and the moon had finally made its appearance, a little lower and slimmer, but still bright enough to fill the room with a soft blue light. Eve was lying on her side, facing away from Charley, with a sheet covering her almost to her shoulders.

For a time, resting on his elbow, he lay there looking at her, at the dark hair carelessly spread across the white pillow and at the line running from her shoulder down to her slim waist before rising again, steeply, into the thrilling swell of her hip, which in turn flowed down into her plump, yet hard, buttocks. And it occurred to him that if he had handed God a work order for a mate, she would have been a twin of Eve, this new friend of his, this woman, this beautiful creature he now loved.

He was so lost in the moment, so lost in her, that he suddenly found himself reaching over and gently peeling the sheet off her, so he could look at her without anything in between. He knew he should have been thinking of other things, such as Donna, his home, his life in Flossmoor. How on earth could he square all that with this? With Eve? And then there was Brian. Given all that, he had no illusions that what lay ahead for him and Eve would be anything like sweetness and light. For that matter, he had no way of knowing how deep Eve’s feelings for him were. Possibly all this was merely a matter of opportunity, of time and place, of lemon trees and the sea.

But none of that made any difference. In truth, he was happy and even grateful to be in the predicament he was in. For the first time in years, he felt
alive
.

In time, embarrassed by what he had done, he carefully pulled the sheet up over her again. But even then he compensated for his loss by moving in tightly against her, putting his arm around her waist and gently cupping her breast in his hand. And he whispered, too softly for her to hear.

“Sleep, my love.”

Late the next afternoon the telephone rang, signaling the end of their idyll together. At first, the two of them just stood there and looked at each other, Charley to see if she was going to pick up the phone and Eve evidently to see if he thought she should.

“It could be about my father,” she said. “He’s not in the best of health.”

“Then you better answer.”

She did so, softly saying “Hello,” then listening for a few moments, during which she mouthed the caller’s name to Charley: “Brian.” Then she went on.

“How’d you know I’d be here? … What’s wrong with her? … Brian, she’s eighteen. If she doesn’t want to go home, what could
we
do? … ‘We’ is Charley. He’s here with me.” She turned to Charley then. “He wants to talk with you.”

Charley took the phone. “It’s me,” he said.

“Taking care of my girl, huh?”

Charley ignored that. “Where are you?”

“Seattle. That’s all I can say on the phone. But I do need to see you and Eve A.S.A.P. I’ve got to figure out what to do—I mean, like how to turn myself in. Where and when. Stuff like that.”

“You’re a big boy now, Brian.”

“Not that big, Charley. I just don’t know all the ramifications, you know? It couldn’t hurt to talk it over with my big brother and my girl, could it? She still is my girl, isn’t she, Charley?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“I will, don’t worry. And listen, man, I’ve still got your money, haven’t I? I mean, it’s not like you would’ve given it to me if you’d known I was going to jump bail, right? So I figure it’s still yours. I want to give it back.”

That almost took Charley’s breath away. “I’m all for that,” he said.

“Then you guys will come up here?”

“I will, yes. As for Eve, you’ll have to ask her.”

“Don’t worry. And listen, Charley, fly up as soon as you can, okay? I mean, like today.”

“As soon as I can, right.”

Brian then asked him to put Eve back on, and Charley gave her the phone. She spoke a little more about the girl, evidently Stephanie’s Terry, then reluctantly agreed to fly up with Charley.

“Yes, as soon as we can,” she told him, digging a pencil and paper out of the phone-stand drawer. “All right, go ahead … But why not just give us the address?… All right, noon and six, yes.” She wrote down his directions and said good-bye.

After hanging up, she shook her head in disgust. “We have to meet him in some goddamn park. Noon or six. Isn’t that cute? He must figure we’ll arrive with the FBI.”

“Me, probably, not you.”

“I wonder.”

“So we’ll meet him in the park.”

Eve’s eyes were heavy with concern, even dread. “I really don’t like this,” she said. “It’s like I’ve finally reached shore, and now I’m being told to turn around and swim out into the deep again.”

“I know the feeling,” Charley said. “But Brian did tell me he’d give my money back. And he wants to discuss turning himself in.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I want to.” Charley took her in his arms, and she hugged him back, hard. “It’ll be all right,” he told her. “We love each other, and nothing’s going to change that.”

Chapter Eleven

Eve had been in Seattle five other times: twice with her parents, once with her ex-husband, and twice with Brian, the last time staying overnight with him on an old friend’s yacht moored in Lake Union, which lay virtually at the city’s center, probably no more than a mile from where Eve was now, standing at a window in her and and Charley’s tenth-floor suite in the Olympic Four Seasons Hotel. It was after four in the morning, and she had been awake for over an hour, having no dearth of things to worry about, things she was trying hard to put out of her mind.

Instead she concentrated on the street below, which looked scrubbed and fresh, like everything else in the city, especially the Olympic. She had stayed at the hotel once before, on the trip with her ex-husband, so she was not surprised at how tastefully elegant the old place was. That time, however—old Bernie not being quite as free with his money as Charley was—they had stayed in a simple, average-size room with a double bed, no sitting room or whirlpool bath or banks of windows running along two walls, no thirty feet of wool carpet separating her from the king-size bed where her new lover softly snored.

Turning, she looked over at him now, barely able to make him out in the night light, just his tousled head showing above the covers. And again she entertained the thought that their love affair would be a short-lived thing, entertained it like a long, sharp icicle impaling her skull. For she had fallen so hard for him that she actually hated his wife, just for living. And hated his life back in Illinois, and of course now hated Brian too—all the things that she knew would inevitably pull her and Charley apart.

With Brian, though, the problem was that she also still loved him, or at least still felt bound by the
habit
of loving him, of living and sleeping with him. Because of this ambivalence, she had no idea how she was going to handle things when they were all three together again. What was she to do, stand midway between them or cling to Charley and stick her tongue out at Brian? At least she knew she wouldn’t do the reverse of that, not in this lifetime.

She was still amazed at the difference Charley had made in her life, not just the fact of being in love with him, but being actually, consciously,
happy
. Until now—until Charley—she hadn’t realized how easy life could be, how much more fun, if you weren’t in a constant state of anxiety, always wondering what your lover was brooding about, wondering just when he would blow. Even though Charley and Brian were alike in many ways, for instance having the same warm, easy smile, the same good looks and hard bodies, they were at bottom totally different. When Charley made love to her, there was no button pressing, no feeling of being manipulated. Rather, he was simply so straightforward passionate, so ardent, that the buttons seemed to press of their own accord, and all at the same time, with the result that her only problem was in trying to make the experience last as long as she could, a “problem” she had never had before, not with any man.

Mainly, though, it was the other things, the daily little things, out of bed, that had won her heart. Charley was unfailingly considerate and made no attempt to hide how he felt about her, least of all in the way he looked at her. Yet there was never anything cloying in his attentions, probably because of his wry sense of humor, his ability to laugh at himself—and at both of them—in ways that never hurt or denigrated. Above all, she loved how comfortable he was, both in his skin and in his world. And it was a contagious comfort, making her feel more relaxed and confident than she had in years.

Still, the icicle remained where it was, stuck in her head. This was not the real world, she kept telling herself. Not her world anyway. It was a vacation. It was a honeymoon. And honeymoons always ended.

Late the next morning Charley and Eve were sitting over lattes in the bright sunshine of a sidewalk cafe in Pioneer Square Park. The scene they looked out on was almost as charmingly picturesque as it was depressing, for though the park was a lovely little place, it was crowded at the moment with some markedly unlovely people. Except for them and the cars driving past, it could have been a scene from a century earlier: the worn brick walkways and the old park benches and cluster-globe streetlights, as well as an ornate iron-and-glass pergola, a streetcar stop of long ago. There was also a kiosk and a totem pole and a curious little fountain-cum-statue of the Indian chief for whom the city was named, all lying in the shade of handsome trees. So it didn’t surprise Charley that street people had taken over the park, run aways and drunks and petty hoodlums, one of whom was amusing himself and his buddies by dribbling spittle onto the face of an old man sleeping on a bench.