Fidelity (19 page)

He drove back out onto the highway. “How was work?”

“Boring as usual, and it’s not over. I’m still on until eleven, and then we have to clean up.”

“Why do you do it?”

“A lot of reasons. I like having money that’s mine and nobody gave me. If I want to waste it, then I don’t have to feel guilty or pretend I’m sorry.”

“I suppose not.”

“And besides, it gives me freedom to do what I want.”

“Really? What do you want?”

She looked at him slyly. “You. Would you come to my house to pick me up? You know-wait downstairs with my daddy while I put on my makeup?”

“You’re pretty smart.”

“I’m very smart,” she agreed. “Where are we going to do it?”

“What?”

“You didn’t sneak away in the middle of Caroline’s big party just so I wouldn’t have to wash the cappuccino machine. You want to get me out of my clothes, as usual.”

“Well, since you suggested it, maybe you have something in mind.”

“Me suggest it? Shut up. I just know how you are.” Her sly look returned. “My parents are out tonight. They probably won’t be back until midnight, at least.”

Forrest shook his head. “I’ve got a better idea. I think I’ll show you a place you’ve never been to.”

“You just don’t want to get caught. It’s because I’m jailbait.”

“Charming term,” said Forrest. “But yes, I think it’s fair to say I don’t want to get caught. Do you? Then we could have a trial. You could get dragged in to testify in public about everything we ever did together in great detail. Maybe we’d get to be on television. Your mother could cry for the jury, and your father, too, probably. I suppose it might prompt Caroline to finally get around to killing herself. God knows, nothing else has.”

“There’s a thought. Maybe I’ll turn you in myself.”

“I’d get twentyfive years.” He looked at her sadly. “That’s the risk I’m taking to be with you.”

“I know.” She gripped his right hand so he had to take it off the wheel. “I love you so much.”

“Me, too.” As soon as he had his hand back he grasped the wheel with his right hand and raised his left to look at his watch. He was on schedule. She had been waiting, so they had not wasted any time. He was pleased. He drove faster now, but he was careful never to go higher than the speed limit when Kylie was with him. He made full stops at stop signs, signaled for lane changes, and watched his mirrors. Even a simple fender-bender with the girl in the car could bring po lice to write down his name and the name of his passenger, and then there would be trouble.

He drove the ten miles out of town toward Espinoza Ranch. His family had always kept the original name, even though they’d had it for over a hundred years, and had bought it from a man named Parker. Family folklore said Espinoza Ranch was a spectacularly fertile piece of farmland because it was the floodplain of an ancient meandering creek that came from a spring in the foothills. A couple of days after any big winter rainstorm, and two weeks after the melting of the mountain snowpack each year, the water rushed down and inundated the loops and curves of the creek and choked the plain with fresh mud. At some point the creek had been diverted somewhere upstream, so the floods didn’t happen anymore, but nothing had been planted on the Espinoza Ranch for fifty years. Someday, Forrest was sure, it was probably going to be covered with houses. For the moment there was only the house his grandfather had built on the foundation of the old main house about two hundred yards from the highway at the end of a gravel road. It took vigilance to spot the unmarked road on the right, but he had been here many times. He turned at the entrance to the ranch and stopped in front of the big steel gate.

“What’s this?” Kylie asked.

“I own it. I thought I’d show it to you.” He got out, opened the combination lock on the gate and walked with it to swing it open, then came back and moved his car forward, got out again and locked the gate behind him.

He drove up the packed-gravel road to the house and stopped, the dust swirling ahead of him in the headlights. He inched forward and Kylie could see the two-story clapboard house with a covered porch that skirted around the three sides that were visible. There was no landscaping or gardens, but someone had recently driven a tractor mower around the house in circles to keep it clear of brush and cut down the tall grass, so it seemed to have a lush green lawn.

Kylie said, “It’s pretty. Does somebody live here?”

“No, not at the moment. I have a couple who live on another place come by and keep it nice.”

“What’s it for?”

Forrest turned off the engine and got out, then walked with Kylie toward the steps. “There’s a stream, a creek about a quarter mile back from here just before the land rises. See? Over there. I guess you can’t really make it out in the dark. My grandfather stocked it with trout, and this was supposed to be a fishing lodge. He, and later my father, used to bring friends from town here for a few days at a time. They’d fish and play cards and so on.”

As they stepped up onto the porch, she said, “What happened?”

“A lot of things. I got the impression that some of the friends weren’t men. I think that occurred to my mother sometime in the fifties.”

“I’ll bet she was pissed.”

“I never really knew. I heard that much from an old guy my father kept on here as a caretaker when I was a kid. My father stopped coming here, anyway. I think by now the trout have died off.” He took a key from a nail above one of the rafters of the roof over the porch, unlocked the door, and turned on the lights.

Kylie stepped in slowly and looked around her. “This was a fishing lodge?” She stared at the big stone fireplace, the stained-glass light fixtures on the walls, the mission-style antique furniture. She peered into the big doorway that led to the billiard room. “This is nicer than our house.”

“I guess he wanted to impress the girls,” he said. He put his arm around her waist. “So do I, of course.”

“Girls? Plural?”

“Girl.”

“That’s better.” She set her purse on the floor, put her arms around Forrest’s neck and kissed him. The kiss started gently and tentatively, then became more passionate. It was clear that she intended it not to be a single touch of the lips, but the beginning of a much longer, deeper experience.

Ted Forrest reciprocated, and the affection began to build into arousal, his hands moving over her clothes and then inside them.

She broke off the kiss. “I suppose the bedrooms upstairs are dirty and yucky?”

“No. I have them keep some rooms furnished in case I want to spend some time by myself.”

“Show me.” She took his hand and tugged him toward the staircase.

He climbed the stairs with her, then pushed open the door to the old master bedroom and switched on the light. The room was all heavy wood furniture that matched the woodwork and cabinets. Half of the room was a sitting area. There was a stone fireplace here, too, and a small bar. He took a step toward it, but Kylie tugged his arm again, and he went with her to the bed.

They said nothing about the time that was passing, but it was in the room like a third presence. They had no time, no leisure to be gradual or linger over anything. They undressed quickly, impatiently, dropping their clothes on the floor and resuming the interrupted kiss.

They made love feverishly, and then, when it was over, they rolled apart on the bed and lay still. Ted Forrest closed his eyes. He could feel his heart still beating hard as his breathing slowed gradually.

After only a few seconds Kylie rolled back to him, grasped his wrist in both hands and turned it.

“Hmm?” He opened one eye.

“You didn’t even take off your watch.”

“Sorry. I guess my mind was elsewhere.”

“I know what it was on.” She kissed the back of his hand and then dropped it. “It’s after ten. We’d better go.”

He raised himself on one elbow. “I suppose.” He was still winded, and he didn’t want her to notice that it was taking him longer to recover. He pushed himself up and took the long way around the bed.

She hopped off and began to dress quickly. By the time Forrest reached the pile of clothes, she was already fastening her bra. She stopped and hugged him. “That was so nice.”

“Yes, it was.” He edged away and began to dress, thinking about the time. It might still be possible to get her back to the coffee shop before it closed at eleven, but getting home before the music lovers left was going to be more difficult.

“Have you ever brought Caroline here?”

“You mean this way? To sleep here?” He wasn’t sure which answer was the one she wanted. She might like it if she was usurping some of Caroline’s territory.

“You know I do.”

He took a guess. “Never. She wouldn’t come to any of these places. To her, `rustic’ means the concierge doesn’t bow.”

“Then it can be our place. Our special place.”

“Our special place. What a nice idea.” He had been considering bringing her here for weeks, but he had been afraid it would scare her, maybe depress her. There was no way of predicting what women were going to think, even when they were young.

She was nearly dressed now, just tying the sneakers she wore because of the hours she spent on her feet working the coffee machines at Marlene’s. “Yep, our place. When Caroline catches us and throws you out, maybe we can even live here.”

He joined her laugh, but his voice was hollow and weak. “It had better not happen for a few years. The police around here probably wouldn’t let me reach the station alive.”

“Don’t,” she said. “That’s not funny to me.”

“Me either.”

She went to the bed and started to make it, but he held her arm. “You don’t want to make any beds.”

“Won’t somebody know?”

“No. The caretakers will come tomorrow. It’s their job to put fresh sheets on if the bed has been used, not to figure out what happened in them.”

He tucked in his shirt and buttoned the last two buttons on the way to the door, turned off the light, and ushered Kylie downstairs. Her purse was lying in the middle of the floor where she had left it. She scooped it up and they went outside. He locked the door and placed the key up on the rafter where he had found it.

The efficiency of their movements was exhilarating to him. They got into the car and he drove to the highway. This time Kylie said, “What’s the combination?”

“It’s 8-14-32.”

She got out, ran and opened the gate, watched him drive through, and then closed and locked it to the ringbolt on the steel stanchion and got back into the car. The car began to move while she was fastening her seat belt.

On the way back to town, he looked at Kylie’s expression. She seemed happy, relaxed, and confident. She rested her hand on his thigh in a proprietary way and looked out the window as though she were memorizing every sight.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I love you. That I never met anyone who was like you in any way. That I wish I were older, or that you were younger.”

“I’ll vote for the second one,” he said.

“I won’t. If you were younger, you wouldn’t love just me. You would have, like, forty or fifty girlfriends.”

“I would not.”

“Yes, you would,” Kylie insisted. “You forget that I know all about you.”

“Well, the vote is one to one then. I guess it doesn’t matter. We have to live with the ages we are, and do our best.” He was feeling uneasy, and at first he wasn’t sure why, but then he realized that there was something about Kylie that was bothering him. She seemed too relaxed, too confident. He added, “And please, don’t forget what I said earlier tonight. You’re an underage girl, and I’m somebody who is more vulnerable than other men would be.”

“What do you mean?”

“My family name is known all over this part of the state, and I have a social position in the Valley. When everything is going fine, it’s an advantage. It gets me a good table in a restaurant. But if I get caught with you, the whole world will get turned upside down. If that happens, you will be a big news story, and I’ll probably be as good as dead.”

“Come on. They give you the death penalty for sleeping with somebody?”

“A man like me is in the same position as a girl like you. Other girls hear about your good grades, see your beautiful eyes and hair and figure, and they get jealous. They’re going to be compared to you, and they’re going to be second best. They’ll be nice to you to be associated with you. But they all secretly envy you, and some of them hate you.”

“You’re flattering me. I don’t understand.”

“It’s the same for me. Cops and people like that look at me and think my life has been easy compared to theirs. I have more, I do more, I don’t have to punch a time clock or defer to anyone. A cop who hears about me might secretly wish I would get knocked down a bit, but he would never harm me. But the second I get in trouble with the law, it will be different. You know what he’ll do then?”

“What?”

“Try to make sure I don’t get off-use my name or my money or my friendships to save myself. He’ll cook up whatever he can to make me look as bad as possible. And he’ll try to be sure I don’t get special treatment. He’ll put me in a cell with a bunch of career criminals who hate people like me. If they kill me, the cop will get praised because he didn’t give me special privileges.”

Kylie moved closer to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ted. I’ll never let them put you in danger.”

He drove on, trying to keep his speed just under the limit. He began to feel safer now that he had reminded her of the stakes. He couldn’t have her getting into a gossipy mood and confiding to some little friend of hers that she’s having an affair with a married man. He couldn’t let her get sloppy and careless about hiding their meetings. He had noticed many times that the generation of women now in their thirties had no reluctance to chatter about their sex lives to anyone who would listen. How much worse Kylie’s generation was going to be nobody knew, but a return to tasteful silence was too much to hope for. He had to keep her scared.

He drove into town and made his way along dimly lighted back streets to the block behind Marlene’s where she had been waiting for him. He stopped by the curb under the same old sycamore tree.