Private Lies (12 page)

The idea injected a somber note into their mood. She grew
silent, her expression vague, as if she were looking inward.

"Later," she said. "Let's not spoil the
day."

She went into the bathroom and soon he heard the shower
going. Again he grew reflective. There were issues to confront. Maggie and the
children, the emotional baggage of his marriage. He was locked into responsibilities,
expenses, obligations. It was a dilemma that he would have to face. Above all,
he must resist any thought of relegating this new relationship with Carol into
a sleazy back-alley affair. No way. Never.

Of one thing he was certain. Nothing would ever be the same
again. How could it possibly be business as usual for either of them?

He rushed out of bed and into the bathroom, joining Carol
in the shower. She giggled, taking the soap. She smiled up at him and held out
her arms.

"We predate them. We were together first, before
Eliot, before Maggie. They have no rights to us. None. Besides, we have
twenty-odd years to make up."

They kissed again. He took her tongue in his mouth and
sucked it.

"Well, then," she said, impaling herself on him.
"Then we had better not waste any more time."

THEY CROSSED FIFTH Avenue into the park. A refreshing
breeze had rolled in, chasing the late-afternoon clouds, leaving the sun to
throw a golden glow over the sky. He had reached out for her hand, but she had
quickly withdrawn it.

"You're my girl. I want the world to know," he
told her.

"To the world, Ken," she replied, "I'm Mrs.
Eliot Butterfield."

"For the moment," Ken agreed. But it was a
worrisome notion. And there was, after all, a Mrs. Kenneth Kramer.

"We mustn't be reckless," she said. They walked
beside each other, not touching. It was a far cry from the intimacy of the
afternoon in her apartment. She seemed to be brooding and it troubled him.

"You're not sorry?" he asked when she was silent
for a long time. Her attitude puzzled him. For his part, he felt joyous,
fulfilled, brimming with happiness. They continued to walk, but when she didn't
answer the question after a long pause, he felt compelled to speak.

"I need to know what you're thinking, Carol. I need to
know where we stand. I'm too old to set out on uncertain journeys."

She nodded. He could remember her being intense, but not
moody, never despondent.

"So what happens now?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"But I thought..."

The Sunday crowd was thinning out. The golden light was
turning a bright orange. They meandered along a path, crossing the major park
arteries, dodging the few cyclists, roller skaters, and joggers still around.
He didn't press her, choosing to walk beside her in silence.

Suddenly she looked at her watch. It was after five. The
show would be breaking.

"You should call Maggie," she said suddenly.
There was a phone booth up ahead.

"Why?"

"To reassure her," she said. "Besides, you
said she wasn't feeling well. A devoted husband would call."

"Really, there's no need. But if you really think I
should, I will."

"Please, Ken. Where's the harm?"

"You okay?" he asked when Maggie answered the
ring.

"Better," she said, sounding as if she had just
gotten up from a long nap. "How was the show?"

"Corny."

"Carol like it?"

"About like me."

He felt himself falling into a role, mouthing words that
described someone else, telling lies. He was a man going into hiding to
survive.

"You're being nice to her, I hope."

"Very," he said, crawling deeper into the
emotional underbrush.

"Be sure to escort her home," Maggie said.
"Eliot would expect you to do that."

"I will," he told her.

"No problems?" Carol asked when he returned. It
seemed an odd question.

"Problems? How could there be? Isn't everything the
same as it was when I left our apartment this morning?"

"That's the point," she whispered as she took his
hand. "Everything must seem the same."

They came to the edge of one of the park meadows. There she
sat down cross-legged under one of the old elms that formed a boundary of the green
expanse. For a moment he stood over her, then she reached up and pulled him
down.

"First I want to say this," she began, her eyes
locking into his.

"Good news, bad news."

"In a way, yes. There is no question about the
chemistry between us. I can't explain it. I won't even try. I don't think we
should put a name to it, either. It's ... it's beyond reason. Most people, I'm
sure, don't have anything remotely like this in a lifetime. I've also lied to
you. I did have flashbacks. At times they have been ... well ... very vivid. I
knew what we had years ago. I know it now."

"Let's not throw it away again," Ken said.

"No. Let's not." She hesitated, as if she were
marshaling her inner resources. "But there is one thing I will never ever
give up." Again she hesitated, her body stiffening. "Security
and..." She seemed to struggle for the right phrase. "Peace of mind.
I don't want to struggle again, Ken. Not for ambition. Not for an idea. Not for
pleasure. Not for anything. And especially, not for love. That frightens me
more than anything. I've gotten used to ... a kind of freedom, Ken."

"You call what you have freedom?" he said.
"What I hear is about money." As crass and unromantic as it sounded,
it had the hard ring of truth. He waited for a tough reaction, perhaps a
confrontation. None came.

"Not money as such," she said calmly, lowering
her eyes as if there were a touch of shame in the idea. "It's what's
called reality. I've thought about it ever since I saw you in that restaurant,
Ken. Romeo and Juliet were teenagers, dumb kids playing with fire. You and I
both know what they felt."

"Christ, Carol. What are you talking about? I'm not
advocating a joint suicide."

"There's a modern form of slow suicide. It's called
short of funds. I've been there and I don't like it one bit."

"How about greed?"

He was baiting her and he knew it. But she wasn't biting.

"Tell me, Ken. How free are you?"

He knew what she meant.

"Well I'm not poverty stricken," he said.

"I'll bet you're overloaded. Pressured. In today's
world that's like a new kind of poverty. I'm finished with all that, Ken.
Forever. And I'll never ever go back. Sounds awful, doesn't it? But you see,
Eliot and I have this prenuptial agreement."

He started to speak, but she put her fingers on his lips.

"It's very simple, but legally binding, worked out by
the best lawyers money can buy. Put simply it stipulates that everything I
acquire in my name during the course of our marriage comes to me on Eliot's
death, providing I am not unfaithful to him."

"And if you divorce, say, on other grounds?"

"It's quite foolproof, Ken. Hardly enough to live on.
If I don't remarry, I might claim my possessions as an inheritance on Eliot's
death." She shook her head and waved her hand as a gesture to put the
subject aside.

"You agreed to this? What about the shoe being on the
other foot. His..." He thought carefully about the word. "His
behavior?"

"If he is the guilty party, the adulterer, an unlikely
premise I might add, he forfeits his rights to anything I've acquired during
our marriage."

"I agree," Ken said. "The odds on that
happening seem impossible."

"So, you see," Carol said, "I've already put
myself at risk."

"That's about the most awful agreement I ever heard
of."

"At the time I would have agreed to almost
anything," Carol said.

"And you did. Is that your idea of freedom?" he
scowled. She ignored the remark and continued.

"To give Eliot his due, it was understandable for him.
He had just come through an expensive divorce. The family money was hit pretty
hard. He has children that must be protected as well."

"Doesn't seem fair somehow," Ken sighed.

"And not entirely unfair. You've seen our apartment.
As you must have gathered, there's been enough acquired during our marriage to
leave me very well provided for. The price of art and antiques has gone through
the roof. I've got millions tied up in those possessions. Millions."

"Sounds like a business transaction, not a marriage.
Whatever happened to love?"

"Love?" She chuckled wryly. "The energy of
Eliot's passions is elsewhere, I'm afraid. Unfortunately for me, Eliot is the
kind of man that works things out carefully before he acts." She paused
and shrugged. "I suppose he loves me in his way."

"I wasn't talking about Eliot's love," Ken said
angrily.

"What I feel for him is not a priority," Carol
said.

"That's for sure," Ken muttered. "You've
raised pragmatism to an art form. I was referring to us."

He wanted to argue the point openly, but he held back,
mulling it instead. Love required proximity, access. Love was a basic need,
like thirst and hunger. Life without love was barren, empty, ugly. Love was the
essence of the life force. It was everything. The idea pushed back chronology
and he was twenty-one again. Perhaps one day soon he would validate that truth
in his own way, in his words, his own stories.

"The hell with the money. I earn enough." He
paused and looked at his hands. "Shit." He was being a hypocrite now
and his present circumstances came rolling back on the tide of inescapable
reality.

"Ken, you have kids, too. You'll be plagued by
tuition, child support, alimony. I'm talking serious wealth. I know this has to
fly in the face of all those pretty stories of eternal love, all the romantic
fantasies."

"I don't like people reading my mind," he said,
deliberately trying to lighten the mood, fearful of frightening her with this
sudden emotional pressure.

"Rational people have to compromise, Ken. There's also
another consideration."

"The bad news goes on and on."

"If we were ever to have a life together, I think I
would press you to go back to writing. At least to try. That would mean you'd
have to give up everything to write. No more Slender Benders. Yes, I would
insist on it. Think about it. Let your mind grasp what I'm saying. Carry the
fantasy all the way. Maybe we'd go to Europe, places where you'd be inspired.
Like Hemingway." She paused. "Consider all the ramifications and
you'll see what I mean about freedom."

Her explanation, so clinical, so practical, both elated and
depressed him, and he was certain it was at the root of her earlier moodiness.
He had been stretched beside her, his head supported by his elbow, which now
felt stiff and tingling. He sat up and looked out on the meadow, slowly
emptying of people.

For the first time that day, he felt the weight of years,
of experience, of the ineluctable ravages of fate. Once he had been a threat to
her artistic endeavors. Now he was a threat to her financial security. It was a
troubling irony.

And yet the nature of love hadn't changed, certainly not
the mystery of attraction. And passion. Their desires, their hearts, perhaps
their souls, had resisted time's decay. Love could endure, he had discovered.
But nothing could untangle the complicated wiring of the past.

"So where does that leave us, Carol?" he asked.

"On the horns of a dilemma," she sighed.

He watched her, sitting, legs crossed, Indian style. She
had barely moved. Taking her hand, he pulled her up, then guided her into the
carefully landscaped stand of shade trees. It was getting darker, and where
they stood was now in deep shadow.

Pressing her against a tree, his lips found hers.

"No matter what, I will never let you go again,"
he whispered after a long kiss.

"Then we must be very clever, very discreet. No risks.
Absolutely no risks. You must promise me."

"Why am I always doing the promising?" he said.

He felt her warm tears on her cheeks.

"Because I believe your promises, Ken. I've put my
life in your hands. There, you see. I've proved the way I feel. I've taken the
ultimate risk. Made myself vulnerable."

"I'll keep all my promises. I promise."

She started to laugh and his embrace tightened and he
kissed her wet cheeks, licking the salt tears.

"One promise especially, my love. I'm not going to
throw away any more years. I'm going to find a way."

CAROL WAS SURPRISED when Eliot asked her to go with him to
the Wildlife Federation Convention in Washington, D.C.

It was late September. They were lying in bed. Eliot was
reading a book and she was pretending to read. Instead, she was thinking of
Ken, of this miracle that had occurred between them. Images of them together
floated through her mind, like a continuous-reel motion picture that she never
tired of watching. When Eliot spoke it was like shutting down the projector and
turning on the houselights.

"Convention? I thought you were going yourself,"
she said, instantly alert. Normally, he would attend conventions only if he was
giving a paper, which, she assumed, was the case. Also, he rarely invited her
to go with him, since he was usually back the same day.

"We'll be there three days, Friday through
Sunday," he told her.

Friday, she thought, her heart pounding. Not Friday.

"I thought you were just giving a paper," she
said, determined to keep calm.

"I am. But I decided to stay on and attend some of the
sessions."

"I thought they always bored you."

"They do." She had turned toward him. His head
was still in his book, and his half-glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose.
"But this time some of them sound quite interesting." He turned a
page and continued to read.

"But my students," she said, hearing the waver in
her voice. Mustn't, she warned herself.

"That's Mondays and Wednesdays," he said,
unconcerned. "We'll leave Friday morning, be back Sunday night."

"This Friday?"

It was Tuesday. He nodded.

"Friday? Oh, no, Eliot, that's my workout day. You
know how important that is to me."

"I'd like you to be there. I really would,
Carol."

"It's not very fair of you, Eliot."

This appeal to fairness had proven currency with Eliot, who
prided himself on making intellectually balanced decisions based upon, as he
called it, candor, and fairness. Unfortunately, such decisions were always
skewered in his direction. Fairness was what Eliot wanted.

"You could work out in Washington," he said.
"It is, after all, despite its arcane political practices, a very modern
city." He had turned toward her and inspected her face over his
half-glasses. The injection of sarcasm was a sure sign that he meant business.

"What is so important about me coming?"

He appeared mildly surprised. "There are going to be
social events." He had assumed a stern tone, as if he were talking to an
adolescent. "Contacts to be made. It's awkward to be a single at these
events."

"I hate those things, Eliot."

She felt as if she were testing parameters, stretching
boundaries. This was definitely a new attitude for her.

"Carol, I'm insisting on this," he said, still
watching her.

She knew this was unusual conduct for her. She had always
acquiesced. It was, after all, a perfectly reasonable request on his part.
Under normal conditions, a mere suggestion would suffice, or he would simply
say, "We're going," and she would immediately begin to make a mental
checklist of preparations.

"It's such short notice," she persisted, but her
protest was running out of steam.

"Well, just rearrange your schedule," he
muttered, turning back to his book.

"I don't know if I can," she said.

"Dammit, Carol," Eliot said, his face flushing.
"Just do it."

She feared saying more, turning her back to him. Giving up
her Friday afternoon was like withholding water from someone stumbling through
a desert.

Friday afternoon was reserved for them, for her and Ken.
Real-life time, they called it. This had been going on for the past two months.
All energy, all passion, all joy, sexual and psychic, was focused on Friday.
Their moment.

As she lay there, the projector in her mind started up
again and she watched the flickering pictures.

Last Friday.

Ken was the creative one, creative and resourceful. He had
found a little tourist hotel on the West Side. There was a charming room on the
fifth floor with a bay window, a queen-sized bed, and Art Deco pictures on the
walls, slim ladies with question-mark figures. The old-fashioned bathroom
boasted a bathtub on porcelain lion's paws and a shower with a flat head as big
as a sunhat. There was a toilet with a high flush box, pull chain, and
oversized faucets.

Somehow the room had been remarkably preserved and had
resisted modernization. Ken had told her that it was symbolic of them, their
love, which had also resisted time.

"How did you find it?"

"Research," he said, and he had reserved it for
three months of Fridays, subject to renewal, of course, giving the desk clerk a
"sweetener" of a hundred-dollar bill.

By then they had established the ground rules: public
caution, safety, discretion. In their room, however, their private sanctum, all
rules were suspended, all inhibitions scuttled, and they indulged themselves in
furious, frenzied lovemaking intense enough to carry them through the week.

The Butterfields and the Kramers also met as couples now on
a regular basis, Saturday evenings for dinner and a show and during the week
for dinner and conversation. On occasion they exchanged visits to their
respective homes.

Throughout these events, Carol and Ken maintained an air of
scrupulous indifference between them, an aloofness that would often prompt
their spouses to remark on it.

"He's really a very pleasant fellow, Carol,"
Eliot would tell her. "But sometimes you treat him as if he wasn't
there."

"Really, Eliot," she had told him, especially
after their first "reunion" together. "I did spend an entire
afternoon with him, remember."

"But you were watching a show," he had pointed
out.

"We did talk," she had protested, injecting the
kind of inflection that indicated that she had been less than enthusiastic.

"Give it a chance. I really think he's worth knowing
... for both of us."

It seemed an oddly tolerant comment for Eliot.

"Oh, Ken's all right," she had concluded, not
wishing to belabor the issue. "Really, it's great being with both of
them."

Ken was reporting a similar response.

"Better this way," Carol had commented, "as
long as we don't take unnecessary risks."

The projector hummed in her brain, throwing glorious images
on the screen of her mind. Oh, God, she sighed, like a booming voice-over, as
she tried to slow down the images of last Friday. They needed to make up in
intensity what they lacked in time. Remembering, she pressed her legs together,
feeling the wetness between them.

They were lying on opposite parts of the bed, she at the
head and he at the foot, legs spread, observing each other in a similar pose.

"Make love to me with your mind and your eyes,"
he told her. "Let your brain snap photos to carry us through the
week."

She giggled consent, delighted with the sense of
abandonment, observing him, concentrating on the intimate details of his body,
watching his penis harden as his eyes and mind reached across the bed.

"Imagine it," he told her.

"I am," she assured him, gyrating her hips,
forming a picture of him inserting his hard penis, pumping. She could not
resist moving her hand downward to her pubic hairs.

"No touching," he said.

"Not for you either?"

"Just picture it," he said. "Put out your
tongue."

She did as he asked, rolling it around between her lips. He
did the same.

"I'm kissing you everywhere now," he said. She
began to accelerate the movement of her hips, lifting her pelvis, making
humping motions. She watched his penis throb, moving like a jumping bean.

"Please, Ken. I want to take you in me."

"It is in you," he said. "Feel it. See how
it goes in and out. I'm stroking your breasts now."

"Can I touch them?"

"No," he said as he watched his penis jump and
his pelvis move up and down in time with hers. Then she saw the shiny moisture
on its tip and his tongue licking his lips, and then she felt the first faraway
waves begin, coming closer, closer.

"I love you, my sweet love, my sweet love," she
heard him say as he came and she felt her own climactic contractions begin at
the same time.

"And I love you. My man. My beautiful man."

When her body settled, he reached across the bed and
enfolded her in his arms.

"You see," he whispered, "now we have
pictures. We can be away from each other and still make love."

"I never believed it was possible," she said,
kissing his chest.

"The human brain," he said, tapping his temple.
"It has limitless powers."

The days were getting shorter and the afternoon sun quickly
disappeared behind the taller buildings, darkening the room.

"Anything's possible," Ken said.

"Yes," she agreed. "Anything."

These cloistered moments together, when the fury of their
passion had subsided, seemed to kindle a sense of renewal. Past regrets faded
and their thoughts seemed to reflect a resurgence of optimism. Even the old
ambitions, once so obsessive, seemed to reemerge in a mellowed, more mature
state.

Last Friday she had told him about the way she had
conducted her ballet classes. She had never before thought about it in these
terms.

"I used to look at these kids with a cynical eye,
especially the ones with the bit in their teeth, the obsessed ones, whose
ambitions exceed their talent. I used to push them, too. As hard as I could,
take them to the edge. There was something mean-spirited about it, as if my own
failure was forcing a kind of revenge."

"Bitterness does strange things to people," he
had responded, as if he, too, were discovering insights into his own past.

"But in the classes I conduct now." she
confessed, "I don't feel that. Oh, I can sense the obsessed ones. Many
times I can see it in their mothers. But my view and my methods seem more
balanced, more understanding, more compassionate. I actually enjoy teaching
now."

"That may have more to do with economics than
understanding," he had commented wryly. "You don't have to teach to
eat."

One of the joys of their relationship was the dissolution
of boundaries. They had no secrets between them and could speak their minds and
hearts.

"Maybe our sights were too high," he told her.

"Like Hemingway's leopard," she said.

Her reference startled him.

"You remembered," he said.

"Yes, Ken. Everything."

"Maybe, like that damned leopard, we sought to reach
too damned high. Perhaps we could have been happier, stayed together, if we
hadn't wanted so much so fast, if we hadn't been so focused and
sweaty-palmed."

"How profound when you have twenty-twenty
hindsight."

"Why the great American novel? Why a prima ballerina?
Sometimes I have the urge to write just one good well-executed short
story." He chuckled. "There it is. The urge returning, but on a more
realistic note. I think maybe you had it right. I would like to go back to
it."

He had paused, his expression growing darker, the optimism
fading.

"But not without you," he said.

"Please, Ken."

"I mean it."

His determination showed in his expression.

"Remember Hemingway's leopard on Kilimanjaro. He
aspired to reach the summit and froze to death for his trouble."

"Screw the leopard. It doesn't have to be
impossible," he said firmly.

"What are you trying to say to me, Ken?"

"Well, it can't be just playtime on Friday afternoons
and mind-fucking memories." She caught his flash of anger, sensed his
frustration and, of course, her own.

"This is better than never at all," she told him,
guiding his head toward her lips, kissing him deeply. At least they could
express themselves through this sexual intimacy.

"It's ecstasy, my darling," he told her.
"It's like feasting. The euphoria is fabulous, but I can't take the
famine."

"Then settle for the euphoria."

He moved her body across the bed sideways so that her head
rolled over the edge. He stood over her and put his penis on her face and she
took it and kissed it. Then she put it in her mouth and reached over and
grasped his buttocks as he pumped his penis in her mouth until he came, and
then he bent over and kissed her lips.

The splays of late-afternoon sun playing across the room
reminded them that she would soon have to go. To avoid suspicion she would be
home at six, which was the normal time she would return from her workout.

As Carol dressed, Ken lay in bed, hands behind his head,
looking up at the ceiling.

"I can feel there's something throttling through that
mind of yours," she had chuckled, watching him in the mirror as she combed
her hair. He didn't comment at first. Then, without looking at her, he spoke:

"Maggie and Eliot. What do you think they do up there
in his office for hours on end?"

She turned to observe him, struck by the curiosity of his
comment.

"Work, of course. They're creating this data bank,
Ken. You know that." He had not alluded to it before.

"Alone?"

"I'm not sure. He has a part-time secretary."

"So, they do spend a great deal of time alone."

"Well, yes, I suppose," she said.

"You don't think..." He let the words hang in the
air.

"You have to be kidding. Eliot and Maggie? No way.
That's strictly business. All platonic."

"But look how they delight in each other's
company."

"That's true. But you have to understand Eliot. His
real passions are cerebral, not physical. Actually, he can go for weeks
without..." It embarrassed her to talk about this. It was necessary to
keep things in separate compartments. That was duty, she told herself. This was
love.