The Inner Circle (42 page)

When we turned in at the familiar winding path to Prok's house,
there were two figures waiting for us on the porch, their silhouettes visible against the glow from within. One of them was Corcoran, quickly withdrawing a cigarette from his mouth and grinding it under his heel; the other was a young woman I'd never seen before. Introductions were made on the porch—“This is Betty, Prok, the girl I was telling you about? Betty, Dr. Kinsey. John Milk. Oscar Rutledge”—and then we were in the vestibule, Prok singing out “Mac, we're here!”

I barely had time to steal a glance at the young woman—she was a tall brunette with girlish features, high cheekbones and dark darting eyes that all but vanished when she smiled, and she was smiling now, nervously, her teeth sharp-edged and vaguely predatory—before Mac was on us. Mac must have been waiting just behind the kitchen door, because there she was, in a plain shift, barefooted, with a tray of coffee accessories and a plate of oatmeal cookies she'd baked fresh for the occasion. She wasn't wearing any lipstick or makeup and though she'd brushed her hair the curl didn't seem to want to hold. She looked tired. Looked old. “But come in, come in,” she urged, ushering us into the living room even as Prok excused himself and disappeared through the door to the kitchen. I wondered about that for a moment—he seemed preternaturally excited, like a boy on the eve of his birthday, and what was he up to?—until he came hustling back into the room a moment later with the coffeepot and his tray of liqueurs.

We took seats around the coffee table and chatted about this and that while Mac poured coffee and Prok offered the liqueurs to each of us in turn. Aside from the hesitant murmurs of our conversation—
Care for cream? Yes, thank you
—it was very still. Moths threw themselves at the screens in soft, arthropodal explosions. From the yard, there was the sound of crickets, dense and sustaining. The girl, I noticed, selected one of the least palatable of the liqueurs and downed it in a single gulp as if she were standing at the rail in some back-alley bar, and Prok immediately poured her another. She was wearing a thin silver chain at her throat, and when she threw her head back to drain the second glass, I saw a flash of silver and the miniature cross with its miniature Jesus riding up her breastbone.

Prok took a seat in the armchair beside the girl, his elegant, tapered fingers gripping and releasing the bright black loops of the bentwood as he eased himself down. “Splendid,” he said. “Isn't this splendid?” But he was too excited to sit back and relax, and he leaned forward almost immediately, hands splayed across his knees. “Betty,” he said, dropping one shoulder and leaning in confidentially, “I can't begin to tell you how pleased we are—pleased and honored—that you've agreed to this.”

The girl looked to Corcoran as if she were lost, then bowed her head and offered a demurrer, sotto voce. “It's nothing, really.”

“But you
are
discreet—at least that's what Corcoran told me. You are, aren't you?”

She began to say yes in a voice that got lost in her throat, and then she repeated herself, in a firmer tone. “Yes,” she said. “I'm discreet.”

“We can rely on you, can't we?” Prok was giving her his sternest look. “What happens here in this house is strictly between those of us present, is that understood? And that no gossip, no mention of your assistance here with the research tonight is ever,
ever,
I repeat, to go any further than these rooms?”

“She's all right, Prok,” Corcoran put in.

Rutledge, all but forgotten—wasn't he the main attraction here?—sat over his urine-colored liqueur and tried for an anything-goes sort of smile that withered on his lips. He was nervous suddenly. And, frankly, so was I.

“But I want to hear it from Betty's lips. Betty?”

“I understand,” she said, and her eyes dodged away from Prok's to fix on Corcoran. “But are we going to sit here and gab all night? Because if we are—” She got to her feet then, a tall girl, anything but frail, the lineaments of her figure discernible in a sudden sweep and release of movement beneath her clothes. She never finished the thought, or threat or whatever it was, but just stood there glaring at us now, as if she'd thrown down a challenge we were loath to accept.

Prok rose now too. “You're quite right, Betty,” he said, “and while it's been pleasant to sit here and have a little chat, we do have business to get to, don't we?” And here a look to Corcoran, then to Rutledge (a significant
pause) and finally to me. “Well, shall we?” His voice faded into an echoing hollow, and I saw in that moment that he was anxious too. We all got to our feet. “Corcoran, why don't you show Miss—
Betty
—upstairs?”

My heart was hammering. I'd already guessed at what was coming, but then I couldn't be sure because we'd never done anything like this before, or to this degree, that is, not as a demonstration certainly, not live, not in public, and I couldn't believe Prok was prepared to go this far. Watching a prostitute from a closet was one thing, but—but my gaze was fixed on Betty's hips and rump as she ascended the stairs, her calves flexing and releasing as the hem of her dress rose and fell above them. I could smell her perfume, something I didn't recognize, rose water, lilac, and it went right to my groin. “Yes,” Prok was saying, “just up at the top there, that door to the left, Corcoran, that's right—we really haven't done much to the attic, a bit warm up there, I'm afraid, but it's cozy. And private. You'll have to admit that.”

And then we were all milling round the attic room, all but Mac, that is—she'd elected to stay downstairs, to “tidy up,” as she put it. The room was stuffy and there was a smell of sawdust and varnish, as if the carpenters hadn't got round to completing what they'd begun, the ceiling low and unfinished, the walls constructed of pine boards indifferently nailed to the studs. It hadn't changed much from the first time I'd been there, just after Prok took me on—there was the single bed up against the wall under the slant of the roofline, the fishing rod in the corner and the children's outgrown toys and athletic equipment. The only difference, as far as I could see, was that the Ping-Pong table had been removed and replaced by half a dozen wooden chairs arranged in a semicircle facing the bed.

There was an awkward moment, the girl's presence overwhelming us all, even Prok, till Corcoran took charge. He was in a light summer suit, sportily cut, and he'd loosened his tie against the heat. His hair had been bleached by the summer sun—he was a great one for tennis, and, when he could find the time, for golf too—and his face was deeply tanned. He looked good. Very good. Almost as if he'd stepped out of a Hollywood
picture about polo-playing swells or playboys cruising the Riviera. “Why don't you all just have a seat and make yourselves comfortable,” he said, taking the girl by the hand, “while Betty and I get down to business.” And to the girl: “Are you ready?”

Rutledge gave me a look that was meant to convey perplexity, but I could see what his surmise had led him to and that he was excited. There was a scraping of chair legs as we sat—Prok, Rutledge and I—and adjusted the position of our seats and crossed our legs, trying to act casually and failing, all three of us. Corcoran, in the meanwhile, had begun kissing the girl, deep kissing, tongue to tongue, and he let his hands roam over her body, descending to her buttocks and rising again to massage her breasts, and she gave back in kind. Her hands moved like quick white animals over the terrain of his jacket and trousers.

Then they were on the bed, kissing even more passionately now, and Corcoran was unfastening the buttons that ran up the back of her dress, and as soon as her back was exposed he unclipped her brassiere and in a single movement jerked her arms away from the clothes so that she was peeled to the waist and her breasts fell free. Her hands became more animated, tugging at his shirt, tearing loose the buttons, a kind of frenzy building till they were both naked and Corcoran was on his knees, spreading her legs and performing cunnilingus on her while she snatched at his hair and ears and tugged as if she would pull him into her. After a moment they switched positions and she returned the favor, making a Popsicle of him, and then Corcoran lifted her back onto the bed and climbed atop her.

Prok was wearing his mask of impassivity, but Rutledge looked as if he were about to explode. He was aroused—his trousers were tented in the crotch—and though he tried to be surreptitious about it, tried to remain focused and detached, he began to move his hands in his lap. For my part, I fought to act neutral, for Prok's sake and Rutledge's too—no one there, but for Corcoran, seemed to know what was expected, and Prok, Prok, of course—but I don't think it will come as any surprise if I tell you that I'd never yet been so aroused in my life and that the psychological factors and the setting and company certainly played into it.
This was Corcoran—my colleague and friend, Corcoran who'd done just this with Iris, with my wife, this movement of the head and tongue, this sliding in and out of the female orifice with the slick rhythm and balance of a seal riding a wave ashore—and it was a spur to me, I won't deny it, and I won't deny that spurs draw blood either. I felt choked. I could barely breathe.

All at once Prok was out of the chair and he had Rutledge by the arm, dragging him forward till they were hovering over the scene. “You see, Rutledge, how invaluable this is?” he was saying, bending close now as Corcoran pumped and the girl heaved and snatched at his shoulders and sang out. “You see that?” Prok demanded. “Right there, see?” He was pointing an empirical finger to the girl's left breast. “Do you see how the aureole has swollen and enlarged in arousal—and the tumescence of the erectile tissue of the nipples in both female and male? And see here—even the alae, the soft parts of the nose, have become engorged in the female …”

Prok was inches away, bent close, using his index finger as a pointer, and in a soft voice he asked Corcoran if he might turn the girl over in order better to study the physiologic metamorphoses in her rectal and genital areas. Corcoran complied. There was a confusion of limbs, a certain awkwardness, and then the girl was on top, the silver cross swaying rhythmically with the drive of her hips, and Prok lecturing and Rutledge hovering and the whole performance coming to its ineluctable climax.

Later—it must have been past one in the morning—I slipped the key in the lock, pushed open the front door, and found Iris sitting up over a book, waiting for me. She was sunk into the couch, her bare legs tucked neatly beneath the folds of her nightgown, and she set the book down as I came through the door. “You're late,” she said.

I came to her and bent for a kiss, then straightened up and gave her a theatrical stretch and a thespian's yawn. And a shrug to show how pedestrian it all was. “Yes,” I sighed.

She hadn't moved. “Poor John,” she said, “I don't envy you. It's all work, work, work, isn't it?”

I was treading delicate ground here. Was that a sardonic edge to her voice? How much to tell her? “The usual,” I said. “The endless dinner, then over to Prok's to sit around and jaw—he really put Rutledge through his paces.” I was standing over her still, gazing down into the deep draught of her eyes, studying the weave of her hair, the shadow between her breasts where the collar of her nightgown fell open. “He got the job, by the way. Rutledge, that is.”

She didn't say anything for a moment, but her eyes seemed to reach out to me, opening wider and wider, round as globes, worlds unto themselves, that color of the sea and all the mystery and strangeness invested there. Iris. My wife. Something was up, but what was it? “That's good,” she said finally. “Good that it's settled, I mean. He seems fine. I'm sure he'll be fine, and you'll have less pressure on you now, don't you think?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I guess so.”

She was silent again, but she never took her eyes off me. I heard the distant sound of a phonograph, a single faint violin rising up out of the declension of the hour and then fading away again, and I remember being transported in that moment to another place, an apartment down the block, people gathered there, the last cocktail of the night, the low incestuous buzz of voices. “I have news too,” she said.

My mouth tried to close round the words, but my mind was already leaping ahead. “You, that's right, you went to the, the—”

“The doctor,” she murmured, and she was smiling like all the angels in heaven.

Prok was already at his desk when I got to work the following morning, and he lifted his eyebrows as I came in, ten minutes late. To Prok, every second lost was a second the project was delayed, and if he'd kept us all out till one in the morning, it was hardly an excuse to get lax about our responsibilities. Mrs. Matthews was there in the anteroom, punctual as a banker, her back arched and chin up, typing. Corcoran was at his desk too, and Rutledge, who'd be going back to Princeton that afternoon to begin making his personal arrangements, was in the corner, head down, perusing one of the volumes Prok had given him so that he could keep abreast of the literature in the field. Ten past eight in the morning and the office was humming along as usual. With the exception of me, that is. I wasn't at my best—hungover, depleted, and late on top of it—but I was ringing like a bell with the news.

Iris and I had stayed up to celebrate—I broke out a bottle of I.W. Harper I'd been saving for the occasion and touched glasses with her, though she was confining herself to ginger ale, already concerned for the baby's welfare—and then we went to bed and I let my excitement spill into her, closing my eyes against the shadows playing across the wall and fighting down the image of the brunette and Corcoran, my wife in my arms and nobody but. My fertile wife. My pregnant wife. Two years of trying and I have to admit I was beginning to think it would never happen, that we were cursed somehow, and as I saw the child denied me I wanted it all the more, no matter the cost or the inconvenience or anything else. Prok wanted it too. And Iris's mother—she wanted it—and Tommy wanted it and my own mother and just about everybody else we knew or came into contact with, from the butcher to the greengrocer.
When are you two going to settle down and
start a family?
—that was what they wanted to know, what with every woman in America pregnant or pushing an infant in a stroller while an ex-serviceman strutted at her side.