Private Lies (11 page)

Nor did she look anything like an expert at computers. In
those days there was a nerd quality to people who were into computers. There
wasn't a trace of nerd in either her delivery or her appearance. She was a tall
woman with high large breasts that seemed larger in relation to her flat
stomach and small waist. Yet, once she began her teaching chores, one forgot
about her appearance and listened with rapt attention to her explanation of the
mysteries of binary bytes and rams.

He had been a rotten student, the worst of the group, and,
although it embarrassed him, he was able to mask his inability to understand
the material by noisy sneering protestations about trying to make robots out of
creative people.

This attitude singled him out for Maggie's special
consideration.

"Think of it as a tool, like a fork or knife,"
she assured him in her midwestern twang. "It has no effect on the
substance of the object, not on its taste nor caloric content. It will affect
the product of your mind only by increasing the speed and ease by which it
transfers the creative material to market."

He had felt like a dumb kid forced to accept tutoring after
school and had obediently consented to "stay after class."

"You realize that I have no desire to learn
this," he told her. "I'm probably wasting my time."

"It's my time," she told him. "Besides, I
like a challenge."

The more she tried, the more stubborn became his
resistance. It didn't faze her. She pressed on. He had, of course, accepted the
idea of her as a teacher, which somehow inhibited his seeing her in another
dimension, as a woman.

"You're continuing to resist me," she told him
after a week of persistent after-hours' tutoring. It was Friday night and the
weekend stretched before them. She had suggested that they have dinner together
to discuss the problem.

"I guess it's a hang-up," he confessed.

"You mustn't let yourself be left out. Computers will
be everywhere. Not to know how the system works will hurt you."

She was sincerely concerned.

"Why all this attention? Why not write me off? Give me
up. I'm hopeless."

"No!"

She was emphatic. They drifted into a restaurant and
ordered a few drinks. There wasn't, he remembered, much conversation, but he
was conscious of her watching him, as if she were evaluating him, sizing him
up.

Up to then, his social life had been a disaster, as if his
experience with Carol had left him sexually paralyzed. His mind-set at that
moment in time was that he had given up everything for nothing. He knew by then
that his writing ambition was a pipe dream. Earlier, the advertising agency,
like his newspaper experience, had been a stopgap. It was now a career. He
thought of himself as injured.

"It's not the computer," she told him for the
first time that evening.

"What, then?" he had asked.

"I'll tell you when I know."

Odd, he thought later, how people took different paths to
the same destination. He hadn't remembered Maggie triggering his desire.
Certainly there was no emotional pull on his part.

It was she who was the aggressor and it startled him.

"Take me home with you," she had asked. It was a
straightforward request, more in the nature of a suggestion than a command.
They had just gotten up from their booth at the restaurant. She had insisted on
paying her half of the bill.

"Why?" he had asked stupidly.

"Because you need someone like me."

Later, cuddled together like spoons in his bed, his hands
cupping her lovely large breasts, he knew she was right. He hadn't realized the
extent of his injuries.

After that night, he had no trouble learning to use the
computer.

He and Maggie had lived together for a year before their
marriage, enough time for both of them to make a sensible decision. She was a
warm and giving woman, and with her gift for organization and detail, she would
protect him from the more mundane aspects of daily life, leaving him time for
the far more important struggle with the artistic muse.

The struggle, he allowed himself to believe, was merely
temporarily suspended. Babies had come. A steady stream of income was needed to
maintain a certain standard of living. He provided that or thought he had. At
times, his mind drifted back to the possibility of again trying his hand at
serious writing. Sometimes an idea would surface, but somehow he would reject
it as off the mark, out of fashion, unsalable.

Yet, never once had Maggie berated him for his failure or
offered any ego-dampening conclusions. One day "the book" would come,
she always assured him. In the meantime, he was putting his creativity to work
in the service of commerce. She offered solace for him in that as well. To her
his jingles were cantos; his headlines, sculpted bits of poetry; his copy,
masterpieces of minimalist art. Her encouragement was not without its rewards.
It bolstered his confidence, made him think he was good at the game. His
colleagues apparently agreed. He began to develop a reputation as a
"brilliant wordsmith." He liked the sobriquet, but wasn't thrilled
with the implication.

"What does Ken think?" clients often asked the
account people. There was currency in that to get him through the day. Wasn't
there?

For his part, he barely tolerated her cerebral, mostly
computer-obsessed companions, both male and female, while she diligently sought
the perfect couple friends, admittedly a tough chore, even for an ordinary
couple. He knew that a disgruntled frustrated closet loner like himself was a
hard case to match up, but since he kept that part of himself mostly hidden, he
let her continue her search. As he had told Carol, his marriage was now based
on an avoidance of the minefields.

Meeting Carol again was forcing a reappraisal of his
marriage, of his life. It was a subject he had, up to then, preferred to avoid.

"And you?" Ken asked Maggie cautiously. "How
do you find Carol?"

She had come into bed and now lay stretched out beside him
reading a book. She stopped reading and grew thoughtful.

"Quite beautiful," she paused. "Mysterious,
too. Probably a lot more to her than is apparent."

"Yes, I think that's true," he agreed, knowing
how close to the mark her comment had come.

"It's an odd match," she said. "But no odder
than most."

Did she mean ours? Ken wondered, observing his wife through
slits in half-closed eyes as she continued her reading. He debated reaching out
his hand, caressing her thigh, starting the process. Maggie would, as always,
oblige. Never once had she rejected an advance. But, as always, he would sense
that her performance was in another place than her body. His, too.

He turned away from her instead, his thoughts racing back
to these new events in his life.

Above all, he wanted to continue to be in Carol's presence.
Perhaps that was the real reason that he was less than honest about what he
really felt about Eliot. It took all his restraint to keep from making contact
with Carol outside their couples evenings. Was it, as he hoped, a deliberate
postponement of their inevitable "reunion"? Or was it a conscious
effort to prevent a conflagration in their lives, an eruption with potentially
dangerous results?

It was sufficiently obvious to him that Carol was
protecting her security, certainly the financial as well as the emotional. What
was he protecting? The status quo? The responsible life? His children's
material and emotional future? What? At least in the past he had known that he
was rejecting blind passion for an ideal. Thinking about it in that way left
him annoyed and embarrassed. But it did not stop him from letting Maggie nudge
him further forward on the road to what she falsely perceived as an intimate
couples relationship.

By the beginning of August they were seeing Eliot and Carol
once a week on average. Sometimes it was dinner in a restaurant, sometimes a
show with supper afterward, or a Sunday art opening. Once in July they had
rented bicycles and gone to the New York Philharmonic park concerts. Maggie had
packed a picnic dinner.

There was a certain similarity to each event. Maggie and
Eliot would chirp away on a variety of topics with occasional comments by Carol
and Ken, benign comments designed mostly to simulate their camaraderie with the
others. Even when they were out of earshot of the others, they maintained the
agreed-upon distance.

"Above all I keep my word," he whispered to Carol
on one occasion.

"Now, that's a paradox," Carol said. "By
saying that, you're breaking it." Her eyes smiled to show him her
forgiveness. "Nevertheless, I'm very grateful."

"Are you really?"

"There is no other choice," she said firmly.

"Isn't there?"

He thought he had caught a flicker of hesitation in her
eyes. But she had left the question hanging in the air.

In early August, they had planned to meet at Eliot and
Carol's apartment, then have brunch at Tavern on the Green, followed by a
performance of
Anything Goes
at Lincoln Center. Mid-summer weekends,
despite the heat, were special times for New Yorkers who chose to stay in town
rather than brave the crowds that hovered like flocks of sandpipers along the
shore.

Eliot, apparently, had to beg off. It had never happened
before. An emergency meeting somewhere out of town, he explained to Maggie.

But there was no need to disappoint Carol, and Maggie had
assured Eliot that they would, under no circumstances, cancel the date. But on
Sunday morning, Maggie developed stomach cramps and couldn't get out of bed.

"Let's just cancel," Ken said for form's sake,
although he was having difficulty hiding his elation.

"Don't be silly," Maggie said, propped on pillows
and holding a hot-water bottle on her stomach.

"Shouldn't we call a doctor?" Ken asked.

"If it gets any worse I will," she promised.
"A day's rest ought to do it. Feels like a stomach virus to me."

"It's only brunch and a show," Ken said,
searching for the correct balance of protest.

"We mustn't disappoint Carol," Maggie said.
"Eliot would be very appreciative."

"Maybe we could skip the meal and just do the
show?" Ken suggested. For some reason, he felt that it would be important
to show reluctance, although he worried that too much reluctance might prompt
Maggie to call and leave the decision up to Carol, who would probably insist
upon canceling.

"Don't be silly. You two just have a great time. I'll
be fine and I have the Sunday papers. Besides, you know how I hate to be
hovered over when I'm ill."

"If you say so," Ken said, feeling he had been
sufficiently concerned for appearance's sake, yet knowing that his promise to
Carol was in serious jeopardy.

"THERE WAS NO way out," Ken said as he followed
Carol into the cool apartment filled with artworks and antiques. He watched her
glide forward in her dancer's walk in high heels, swan neck high, buttocks
swathed in form-fitting white slacks. Sunlight filtered into the large living
room through a line of plants hung artfully from the terrace roof.

From their twentieth-floor apartment on Fifth Avenue, one
could see across the green Central Park meadows and the lake to the line of
apartment houses on Central Park West and the tall narrow buildings that
anchored the park's southern end.

"Maggie insisted," he shrugged, taking a fluted
glass filled with champagne and orange juice, a mimosa, from the silver tray
that she had placed on the large antique cocktail table that formed a
conversational setting in front of the fireplace.

"Eliot was also insistent," Carol said, sitting
down opposite him.

"Why not?" Ken said. "We've given them no
cause for alarm."

"None at all," she said, sipping her mimosa and
gazing out the window. It struck him that she was deliberately avoiding his
eyes, which gave him a chance to admire her. There was no denying his yearning
for her. It was there. Strong as ever, fully resurrected now, smoldering-hot
embers ready to burst into flame.

"Nevertheless," he said cautiously, watching for
her reaction, "it does seem like a test of some sort." He finished
his mimosa. Then he reached across for the bottle in the ice bucket.

"May I?"

She nodded and he poured champagne into his glass.

"I expect we'll both pass with flying colors,"
she said, showing him a twinge of belligerence.

"You don't think this was a good idea?"

She shook her head.

"Why not?" he pressed. "We're perfectly
proper. We have the consent of our spouses. More than that. We have their
blessings."

"I just feel funny about it," she shrugged.

"Why?"

"Well ... because." She looked at him briefly and
turned away. "I can't explain it."

"Yes, you can," Ken said, surprised at his sudden
surge of aggression. He moved forward in his chair, studying her intently. She
sipped her mimosa, holding the glass near her lips, avoiding his gaze.

"Really, Ken. It was long, long ago," Carol said,
continuing to avoid his eyes, looking through the terrace windows. "I'm a
totally different person."

"Are you really?"

"I had different priorities then." She paused and
whispered: "Different priorities."

"Oh, yes, quite different. But what happened between
us? Can that be forgotten completely?"

"That was an aberration, Ken. We were young and
vulnerable." She paused, her eyes flashing a brief connection with his.
"My God. It was more than twenty years ago."

Again she lapsed into silence and looked toward the
terrace. He sipped his champagne, studying her.

"Then why didn't you acknowledge me that first
night?"

"I told you why, Ken."

"Do you really believe I would have given you
away?" He paused. "Or was it something more?" He sucked in a
deep breath. "What were you really frightened of, Carol?"

She shot him an angry glance. "Are you trying to put
an idea into my head?"

He hesitated for a moment, continuing to observe her.
Perhaps he was letting his desire rule his better judgment. She might, after
all, be totally indifferent to his advances, totally empty of any reciprocal
feeling. And yet, he did sense something more. Didn't he?

"Does it show?"

"Yes, it does. And I don't appreciate it."

"Maybe I'm reading things into this that aren't
there," he confessed. His eyes drifted around the room. "There is a
lot at risk here. I'll grant you that." The apartment was, indeed, a
cornucopia of valuable possessions.

"I'm glad you see the point," she said, sipping
again.

It was odd, a discordant note in his memory. Economics,
money, possessions. They would have been the furthest things from her mind in
those days. His, too. Did it come down to that?

Don't feel so superior, he told himself. He, too, was tied
into an economic yoke, an ordinary ox walking around in circles, pumping the
water to high ground.

"So now you have everything you want," he said.
"Too much at risk."

"As I've tried to tell you, Ken, I've made my
peace," she murmured. She turned to glance at him. "And my choice.
It's over."

"Certainly the dancing part."

"Mediocrity took care of that, I'm afraid," she
sighed. "And time."

Ken emptied his champagne, felt his face flush.

"Forgive the flashbacks, then," he said.

"Flashbacks?"

"Like I'm in the same place that I was twenty-odd
years ago. In my head. In my heart. I apologize for feeling the way I once
felt, Carol." He was throwing caution to the winds, revealing himself,
something he hadn't done in years. "It's still there. I guess it's always
been."

"It's your imagination. You're fantasizing."

"Look who's talking. I didn't invent a past. French
royalty, a father killed in Vietnam? A prima ballerina in Australia. Ten years off your age. Come on, Carol."

"That's different," she protested. "That's
survival."

She fell into a brooding silence as she quietly sipped a
swallow of her drink. The way she nursed it, it seemed to last forever.

"Just tell me the truth," he said.

"I've told you the truth," she said with some
indignance. She got up and moved toward the terrace window, not facing him.

"Some things can't be erased."

"Others can," she said. "They have to
be."

"No flashbacks?"

"None," she said, but it sounded tentative, less
certain. And she had not turned to face him. A sign, he wondered, pressing her.

"Really? You never thought about it, what we had? The
passion of it? The intensity?" It was an interrogation, but he couldn't
stop himself. She did not turn.

"I have to know," he cried, then in a whisper:
"I need to know."

She turned toward him.

"I remember that it was destructive." There was a
slight tremor in her voice. "And we chose to give it up."

"We chose wrong, Carol."

"Why am I listening to this?" she said, turning
away again.

"Because you're still part of it, still in it."

"This is crazy."

She walked across the full length of the room, put her
half-finished drink on a table, and looked at her image in a smoky mirror on
the wall. Again she turned to face him.

"I don't want this, Ken." She shook her head.
"I don't need this. And I would prefer that you leave."

He finished his drink and stood up.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. But I
won't lie. I've thought about this moment, wished for it. I know I'm disturbing
you. I know it's wrong and I apologize. You see, I haven't felt this way for
twenty-three years. Not this alive."

"You have no right to do this. No right to say those
things."

"I'm speaking from my heart, Carol. And I'm sorry. I
really am."

"No, you're not. You're ... you're trying to bring
back something that's gone, that died years ago."

"It didn't die for me," he murmured.

She continued to stare at him and he did not avert his
eyes.

"I've made a damned fool of myself," Ken said.
"I'd better go."

He started across the room. As he began to move past her,
she stepped forward, blocking his way.

"I'm afraid, Ken," she said.

"So am I."

He came toward her, stopping directly in front of her, not
touching her, looking deep into her eyes, fearing to go further, his heart
pounding, the entire center of him on fire. He was close enough to see the tiny
yellow flecks in her green eyes.

"It's now," he whispered. "Not a
flashback."

"No. Not a flashback."

He sensed that she was trying to say more, but he had
already reached out and folded her into his arms.

Crushed against her he felt the pounding of their blood.
His lips mashed against hers. It was as if they were in the grip of a powerful
magnetic force drawing them together. They dropped to their knees, continuing
their embrace. His hands caressed her hair as his lips traveled over her face,
her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks.

Her response was equally as fervent, the attraction between
them overwhelming. Her hips pressed against the middle of him, her hand
caressing, reaching downward.

He unzipped her slacks and pulled them down below her knees
and she kicked off her shoes and stepped out of them. And while he unbuttoned
her blouse and unhooked her bra, she undid his pants, rolling down his jockey
shorts, reaching for his hard, throbbing penis. She touched him, her hand
exploring, gently squeezing his testicles as they kissed, their tongues
caressing.

They made a trail of discarded clothes as they moved toward
the couch. For a long moment, their eyes drank in the sight of their nudity.

"How lovely you are," Ken whispered, his hand
reaching out to caress her shapely breasts, moving downward, tracing the length
of her still youthful body. "I can't believe it," he said.

Her hand gripped his penis, bringing it into the furrow of
her vagina, moist with excitement and need. She trembled in his arms,
abandoning herself to their lovemaking. Then she moved over him with the
strength and grace of years of ballet training, looking into his eyes as she
rubbed the tip of his penis along the moist lips, guiding it deeply inside her,
their eyes probing each other as her body gyrated in a circular motion, her
thighs clamped against his hips as he cupped her buttocks.

Then he felt the pleasure begin as her motions became more
concentrated, and he knew what was happening as her body seemed to merge
further into his. Then the miracle began as they crested at the same time,
exploding together with a shuddering force.

"It's more than memory now," he whispered as they
lay cooling. She had put her head on his chest and he was caressing her hair.
"Like we leapfrogged time. Were there years between?"

"Not for me," she replied.

"It was wonderful, as good as ever."

"Maybe better." She kissed his chest, traveling
downward with her lips.

"I'm sorry," he said abruptly.

"For what?" She looked up at him.

"For complicating your life."

He hadn't yet confronted the consequences. It was not time.
Not now. He started to speak again, but she put a finger over his lips.

"Not now," she said.

Carol moved from the couch, gathered up their clothes, and
went into the bedroom. Ken followed her. It was a large room, dominated by a
huge four-poster bed complete with elaborate canopy. He lay down and she went
into the bathroom, giving him time for reflection.

What they gave each other could not, not then or now, be
explained in simple biological terms. It went beyond that, beyond sex in the
clinical sense. Their orgasms had always been deep, erupting, multiple, mutual,
rapturous.

She came out of the bathroom and lay down beside him.

"Some things are meant to be," Ken whispered.

"I suppose I can't deny that," she said.
"Only..."

"Only what?"

"We mustn't be slaves to it. We're mature adults now,
Ken. We have to find a way to handle this, a way that's right for all of
us."

She grew silent, reflective.

"We'll think of something. I promise."

He got up, leaned on his elbow, and with his fingers traced
her body, starting with her forehead, down to her face, to the beauty mark on
her swan's neck, to her high upturned breasts, circling the areola with the
crown of freckles on her right breast, then down over her flat stomach to her
curling pubic bush, then to the lips of her vagina, exploring its tightness
with his finger. Then he moved over her and kissed her lips there, his tongue
circling her clitoris. He did this for a while, then looked up at her.

"Touching you, I have no sense of time having passed.
Your body is like that of a young girl."

"And you, a young boy. A big beautiful young
boy." She reversed herself and kissed his penis.

He pinched the flesh of his belly, softer now than then.
"Some things have changed," he said.

"It's an illusion."

She continued to kiss him there and his erection surged.

Then she sat up suddenly and smiled, inspecting his face,
his body.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I just want to be sure it's you. Ken Kramer."

After watching him for a while, she closed her eyes and her
hands moved over his face, across his chest, then downward.

"And?"

"Ken Kramer, all right. But different."

"Older and wiser?" he asked.

"In some departments," she sighed.
"Fortunately not in others."

"First things first," he said, reaching out to
her, bringing her closer. She lay beside him, arranging her body so that they
could still see each other's faces. Then they moved together languorously.

"If only we could stay like we are, just like
this," she said.

"A perfect fit. You and I."

"Perfect," she said. Then she was silent for a
while. She had closed her eyes. "I can feel the pounding of your blood,
the pulse of your body."

"And I feel your heat, the wonderful warmth of
you."

They continued a slow movement together and then it started
again and she began to tremble, triggering his own pleasure. They climaxed
again, then held each other gently in a cocoon of themselves. Suddenly, Ken
became conscious of time and looked at the digital clock beside the bed.

"We're missing the show," he said.

"No, we aren't," she laughed. "We're the
show."

"
Anything Goes
."

"Starring us."

"They'll ask what we thought, whether or not we
enjoyed it."