Get Off the Unicorn (15 page)

The look on Ellyot's face was mirrored in Claire's for both caught the nuance, the unspoken assumption in Roy's bland directive. Ellyot smiled, raised his eyebrows in a question.

“Yes, it is indeed an occasion,” Claire said. “You might like our northern scallops, Ellyot—tender, sweet, delicious.”

“The North has much to recommend it,” Ellyot replied, leading Claire to the deep wall lounger. His manner was both triumphant and entreating.

Ellyot did not return to the Transient Accommodations or to the southern City which had sent him to the Conference. Claire's supervisor hired him immediately he made known his willingness to transfer. By the time City Management reviewed accreditation in the fall, the three had enough status to move to a larger single dwelling on the outskirts of the City. In fact, Claire was surprised at the outsized dwelling Roy chose for them.

“It's marvelous to have such space to spread out in, Roy, but it'll take every accommodation credit we own to manage this place,” she had said.

“Not for long,” was all Roy said, imperturbably.

He looked insufferably pleased with himself during the few weeks it took them to arrange and settle into the new house. Claire noticed that Ellyot was unusually irritable and put that down to Roy's insistence on each of them having a separate sleeping room. In fact, relations, up until then extremely harmonious, became strained.

“What is he up to?” Ellyot demanded of Claire one evening when Roy was at a meeting. “I know he's being coy about something.”

“So do I, but I thought you'd know.”

“Well, I don't. You've known him longer, Claire, can't you hazard what's on his mind?”

“Did you think I've some magic talisman to see into Roy's mind? I don't even sleep with him.”

“That's the first catty thing I've heard you say.”

“It wasn't catty, Ellyot, truly,” she said in gentle apology even as he blurted out a request for pardon.

“You're a remarkable woman, Claire. Why have you never cut out? Why aren't you—well, jealous or . . .” He hesitated and, to her surprise, blushed. “I mean, you're so obviously hetero, and yet . . .” He gestured vaguely around the high-ceilinged living room.

“It's as much Roy for me as for you, Ellyot,” she heard herself say, and then stopped, having finally voiced that admission. “Yes, it is Roy. We have never been lovers—never—but there's nothing of misplaced maternity in my relationship with Roy, or sisterly affection for that matter. It's a relationship . . . of the spirit. No platonic nonsense, either. I honestly, truly, deeply admire, respect, and . . . and love Roy. I cannot live fully without him and I cannot—”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Ellyot said softly, with a ghost of a smile on his lips, but none in his eyes. He leaned back against the couch. “You remember the day we met? I'd a hetero marriage contract set up in my old City, you know, but half an hour in Roy's company and that was all over.” He grinned. “I wanted children, you see, but Roy was too much.”

Now Ellyot turned his head toward her, his eyes reflecting her image. She felt his hand touch hers, spread her fingers against his palm.

“She was no match for Roy . . . or you.” He dropped her hand and abruptly stood up, almost glaring at her. “And this is not fair to you, either. You've enough status to have a child of your own from a lover. Get out of here, have a child, marry, don't waste your life on us . . . on Roy. He doesn't
mean
to be exclusive. He just is.”

His outburst surprised him as much as did her, for he dropped down on the sofa, one arm behind her, and scowled earnestly as he covered both her hands in a tight grasp.

“Yes, he just is,” Claire said softly. “I cannot leave him, Ellyot, any more than I can leave you. There's no other company I'd rather keep, you know.” She gently returned the pressure of his hand.

“But I
know
you want children. I've seen you pausing by the playyards. I've seen the longing in your face.”

“I'm in no hurry. I'll find someone . . .”

Ellyot snorted his opinion of that naïveté. “You haven't even had a lover in the past year. All you've done is work . . . work.”

“You've been keeping tabs on me?” Claire was touched by his sudden protectiveness. That was more Roy's role than Ellyot's.

“Neither of us wants you wasting your womanhood on just anybody . . . or no one.”

Claire shook her head slowly, conscious of a deep and tender affection for Ellyot. “Did neither of you think to ask my opinion?”

Ellyot glanced sharply down at her. His eyes darkened and he pulled in a deep startled breath just as he bent to kiss her fully and passionately on the mouth.

When she and Ellyot emerged from her room the next morning, Roy merely nodded pleasantly and invited them to join him at the table. Breakfast for three had already been dialed.

Nor was there any embarrassment. Almost, Claire once mused, as if Roy had expected something of this sort and was relieved that it had finally taken place. After the first occasion, Claire had to be the aggressor with Ellyot, though he was never reluctant.

However, in the course of the next few months, Claire realized that the lovemaking she shared with Ellyot could become invidious. It was impossible to make love with Ellyot and not sense Roy, not make love with Roy through Ellyot, not hunger for Roy's magnificent body when Ellyot's covered hers.

Roy had brought Ellyot into their circle for his own ease and solace. Triangularity could deteriorate the relationship. Claire must find a fourth member. She wasn't getting any younger, and Ellyot was correct about how much she longed for a child.

Claire was convinced that Roy had perceived her turn of thought. Of course, they had been talking about building a real kitchen into the house the next time City Management raised their total income. Roy was intensely interested in raw food preparation and increasingly annoyed with the mass-produced combinations available from the public kitchens, despite the interesting variations he achieved with what came out of the dispensers. But it was Claire, restless, increasingly dissatisfied, who undertook to find an architect who would design a kitchen room for them.

The first firm she consulted laughed at the notion of an entire room devoted to the preparation of food for consumption. The second thought she wanted a rough arrangement such as could be installed in a retreat too far from a City or Center for regular facilities. They recommended another firm that did reconstruction work for museums. That was how she met Chess Baurio.

“He's very busy, you know,” she was told over the telephone by the receptionist. “But the notion is bizarre enough that he might just like to try it.” An appoinment was made and she went directly to his office, not far from their home.

It could never be called love at first sight, for he was extremely antagonistic from the moment she introduced herself. Only because he'd never attempted to solve such a design problem did he reluctantly agree. And then, under the stipulation that it was done his way. He knocked down one after another of her plans, sarcastically deriding her painstaking research. In fact, when she had finally got him to agree to come to the house and examine the proposed site, Claire wondered why she had put up with his manner and attitude for one session, much less contemplate a further association.

Still, when he arrived the next morning, he was unexpectedly pleasant, even charming—until Roy walked in. If Roy Beach was the personification of the classic concept of the male manner, Chess Baurio was the twenty-first century's. Compact, lean, healthily attractive, alert, he was the antithesis of Roy's studied indolence. Roy was the aloof, detached, arrogant observer; Chess was the involved, enthusiastic, vital participator.

As Roy strode up to the terrace where she and Chess were discussing the location of the kitchen room, the air became charged with electric hostility.

Claire looked at Chess, saw that his eyes were snapping with anger, that the smile on his face was set, that his movements as he leaned forward slightly to shake Roy's hand were jerky. His manner became stilted, false. She glanced at Roy, who was his usual urbane self.

“Chess Baurio? You designed the new theater complex at Northwest 4,” Roy said by way of greeting. “Now, why did you use polyfoam instead of Mutual's acoustical shielding?”

“Ever heard the wows in the Fine Arts Theater at Washington South?”

“Can't say that I've been in that theater, but wasn't it John Bracker, Claire, who was so vehement in his objections to playing in that hall?”

“He did mention he'd rather play under Niagara Falls,” she said lightly, hoping to ease the tension.

“And polyfoam corrects wow?” Roy demanded of Chess.

“In that size building, or in amphitheater form.” Baurio's voice had a bitten quality.

“I've been advised to use it in our music room,” Roy went on, blandly, dialing out three coffees and passing them round as if Chess would naturally take his black as they did. “What's your opinion on its use in a small room?”

“As a consultant?”

The rudeness in Chess' tone surprised Claire. People were rarely rude to Roy. He simply didn't elicit that kind of response. She held her breath. Roy did not appear to notice.

“The kitchen room comes before the music room, but we always combine efforts. I believe that Ellyot . . . Ellyot Harding,” and that was the first time Claire ever heard Roy qualify any acquaintance so pointedly, “is the third member of the house . . . has a preference for natural woods as acoustical materials, rather than manmade products.”

Hostility fairly bristled from Baurio now.

“We have not really discussed the music room. I imagine, however, Designer Baurio, that if the kitchen room is successful, we'll get busy on the other,” Claire said, trying to sound relaxed and gracious. Why was anything Roy said so offensive to this Baurio?

“I'm not at all sure,” Baurio said icily, putting down his untouched cup of coffee, “if anything I designed would be successful in this . . . this kind of
ménage
.”

Not even Roy could ignore that, and he slowly turned toward Baurio, his eyes glittering.

“You object to polyandry?”

“I object . . . I object to such a monopoly, to the sheer waste of . . .” He broke off, glaring savagely from Claire to Roy before he spun around and strode out of the house.

“What on earth possessed you to come out with statements like that, Roy?” Claire asked. “He was . . . to design a kitchen room . . . What happened?”

Roy smiled down at her. “He'll be back. And
you
must make him stay.”

After the most tempestuous three months in her entire life, she did, but only when their marriage contract had been registered in the City. And that came about only because Roy and Ellyot cornered Chess privately at the end of a particularly bitter quarrel.

 

The end of the mad abduction and the cessation of a particularly painful contraction—her muscles were beginning to hurt despite training and control—were simultaneous. Claire opened her eyes to a leafy vista, the tops of trees below the heli's landing gear. Startled, she peered down. The heli was perched on the edge of a sudden, sharp drop, the bottom of which was hidden by foliage. Wildly she turned to Roy. His eyes wouldn't focus on her, his breath was uneven.

“Can you move?” he asked.

“Where?” She couldn't control the quaver in her voice.

He threw up the hatch and jumped out, ignoring the gasp she made as she had a flash of him disappearing over the precipice, leaving her alone and at the mercy of her body's birth-drive in the cramped nose of the heli.

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he ordered, and she found herself obeying.

She moved as quickly as she could, knowing that a spasm was seconds away. It seized her as she reached out to him and sent her reeling into his arms. He had seen the look of pain on her face, and deftly caught her to him, holding her firmly despite the awkward position for them both.

It seemed an age until the contraction passed. She submitted weakly as he swung her up and strode off. She buried her face against his shoulder.

Does he intend for me to have the child in the woods, like an animal? she wondered.

“You'll have to open the door,” he said in her ear.

She looked down and fumbled for the crude latch, surprised that there should be a door, for she had only the fleeting impression of the façade of the retreat, its rustic logs, the heli's floatons apparently resting on the surface which camouflaged the retreat. Vaguely, she hoped the roof was firmly supported against the heli's weight.

As Roy angled her through the doorway, she caught a glimpse of the superb view of the valley below them, the mountains beyond. When had he acquired such a retreat? Or who had lent it to him? Stupefied, Claire wondered if Ellyot had suspected this and kept silent.

A contraction. She couldn't suppress the groan, which deafened her to a statement Roy muttered under his breath. But, seemingly a century later, he laid her on a bed and was arranging her body in the best position to ease the strain.

“A hard one, huh?” he said as she lay, panting. She didn't resist as his hands turned her gently and stripped off her maternity sack, or as they felt her writhing abdomen.

How can he bear to touch me? He has scarcely looked at me for five months.

The next moment she became aware of other preparations for the coming birth and she began to struggle fastidiously.

“Don't resist. This has to be done. For the child's sake.”

Hearing the anger and distaste in his voice for what he had to do, she forced herself to relax and endure his ministrations.

Her waters broke while she was on the toilet and she began to whimper, more from embarrassment and tension than pain.