The Insiders (31 page)

Everyone seemed quiet and subdued, even the kids. They had breakfast and, soon after, her uncle drove them to the airport:

"Mrs. Newcomb," they called her. Even the pert young flight attendant looking with envy at the rings on her hand—looking with unconcealed desire at her husband. She could almost feel everyone think: Lucky, lucky woman. But was she? Would she think so a year from now? The marvelous job, the career she might have had—would she regret them?

Eve pulled her thoughts back to the present. They had been offered the morning newspaper—there were pictures of their wedding on the front page. As a model she had played the bride so often that she had done well—she was smiling, happy-looking. David would see the papers; would he believe that she was happy? Secretly she wondered, Does he regret me now? Too late—they were leaving the country and wouldn't be back to California for at least six months, Brant had said. They were flying to an island in the Indian Ocean, more than halfway across the world. Not too many tourists, beautiful beaches, friendly people, and warm sun. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, had sounded almost too beautiful and unspoiled to be true when Brant had described it. If she liked it, they would build a house there, make a parmanent home there. And, please God, the thought of David would fade away and she wouldn't have stupid, dangerous thoughts about seeing him again, taking him back on her own terms t
h
is time....

David heard about the wedding from Marti, before he caught the news flash on television or read the newspapers with their smiling, captioned pictures. Marti, he thought resentfully, seemed to take malicious pleasure in being the first to inform him.

It was a hell of a jolt to call again, asking about Eve, because, dammit, he had actually been
worried
about her. He hadn't been taken in by her attempt at smiling nonchalance when he'd turned up at the airport with Wanda because he
knew
Eve too well. And then to be told by that snotty lesbian bitch that Eve was getting
married
—to Brant Newcomb? He shouldn't have wasted his concern, his feelings of guilt that perhaps he'd been too hard on her that night when she'd got herself into a situation she hadn't been able to control.

David was stunned at first—disbelieving—and then filled with blind rage. At her, and at himself for not having seen what a lying fake she was.

He couldn't resist telling Gloria exactly what he thought about Eve. Gloria had started coming up to his apartment occasionally, whenever he was home and she happened to be in the mood. At least Gloria was honest enough in her way. She didn't keep telling him she loved him—both of them understood very clearly what it was they wanted from each other, and that was the sum total of their relationship.

"She was nothing but a lying cunt from the beginning," he raged to Gloria. "I recognized it, of course, but she kept trying to get her claws in me, trying to pin me down. Christ, she kept telling me that she'd changed since she met me from the cheap, easy lay she was when I first knew her. She even pretended she cared about my younger sisters and brother. And then, after all she told me that bastard Newcomb had made her do at his party, all the other guys he had screw her after
him,
she goes and marries him! I don't get his motives, but where Eve's concerned—I suppose she thought it was the one way of getting all the fucking she needs to keep her happy."

"But David darling, why the fuss? You weren't planning on marrying her yourself, were you? I know you two had this
thing
going for a while, but it didn't really mean that much, did it? I mean, you couldn't stay away from
me
even when you still had
her
, now, could you? Do come back to bed and don't start becoming a
bore.
I hate men who start talking about other women when they're with me. And darling, I
do
li
ke the way you do it to me, as if you hated me. That's what makes it so exciting!"

Gloria was lying nude on his bed. She moved her body suggestively at him and then turned onto her stomach. Over her shoulder, ignoring his glowering look, she said, "Oh, and while you're up, be a pet and fix me a drink, won't you? Something long and strong, with lots of ice "

Hating Gloria almost as much as he hated Eve at this moment, and despising himself also for not being able to resist the temptation of Gloria's body, David flung himself over her, pinning her down.

"You bitch—it's not a drink that you need right now, is it? Tell me what you need."

"God, I love it when you get
fierce!
This way, David, fuck me this way. Take out all of your frustrations on me, baby. Your lit
tl
e Eve is going to come crawling back to you for more of
this,
with all the lovely loot she's going to collect from her rich husband, and—ooh!"

He rammed himself up her squirming ass, ignoring the way she moaned and cried out under his relentless battering—her protests that he was hurting her, he was a savage
brute.
He knew damned well she was enjoying every minute of it, her struggles meant to egg him on. But then, most women were goddam masochists, anyway. They enjoyed being hurt; they begged for it. Like Eve, crying to him, trying to hold onto him, and smothering him with her so-called
love.
He thrust his hand in Gloria's wet cunt and heard her scream against the pillows as she came.

Well, at least he was sure that Gloria would keep coming back, just as long as he treated her this way, like a bitch. Spitefully and deliberately, he started to think about Eve, about having her in bed with him again, treating her the same way, making her beg for more, and the thought made him start the tightening spiral of his own climax. She'd come back to him, all right! And what a pleasure it would be to cuckold Brant Newcomb. He'd be having his revenge on Eve, too, at the same time. He'd make her crawl for it, by God. And in the meantime the world was full of women waiting to be taken and used.

Eve could wait her turn, labeled "unfinished business."

Eve and Brant
threw their first big party when their house was finished at last. She had had a gold-and- silver sari made into a dress, and on this occasion, at least, she let Brant buy her jewels—emeralds set in antique gold. She sparkled with them, hardly able to recognize herself in the mirror.

A photographer from
Town And Country,
here to do a story on them, was delighted with her. Here, at last, was a rich man's wife who knew how to pose for the camera, and whose earlier training kept her from complaining.

Eve was very beautiful tonight. The photographer had arrived two days ago and was used to seeing her in cotton sundresses and the shorts she wore to go sailing. He expressed his admiration quite spontaneously when he told her she looked exceptionally lovely. Even Brant said so.

"Have you missed all this, Eve?" he'd asked her abrup
tl
y. "The parties, the people, getting all dressed up..."

"Not really. And you?"

Sometimes they still talked like polite strangers, even in bed. Polite, restrained. No quarrels, few arguments. He was always so reasonable, damn him, and always
polite. Was he holding back anything? Did
he
miss the parties he used to give and go to?

Eve looked into Brant's face, and it told her nothing, except that he desired her.
He
told her that.

"You make me want to make love to you."

He made love to her well. His words sent a tickle of lust down her spine.

"Why don't you, then?"

The ocean waves washed and thundered on the beach outside and withdrew with sighing whispers of regret. Except for the photographer, who was busy taking pictures of the house from outside, and the servants, who were busy in the kitchen, the house itself was empty of the guests who were expected to arrive at any moment now.

He began to laugh, softly;

"You're a woman after my heart. Always ready. No fuss."

"Why should I fuss? Do you want me to play coy?"

"Hell, no!"

He held her long skirt up and slipped off her panties, kissing her perfumed crotch.

Then he took her standing up, one hand on the small of her back. In the full-length mirror on the opposite wall, she watched him go inside her.

There was a slight roundness to her belly and he caressed it.

"Do you mind?"

"You mean, being pregnant? No. It feels strange, but good, too. To know there's a child in there, growing, waiting."

They were close then, for a few moments of shared passion.

But during the party, Eve felt a difference in Brant. She remembered him, suddenly, as she had first known him. The Brant of the party circuit—aloof, bored, looking for kicks. She felt afraid, but wouldn't let it show.

She watched him across the room with the tall, black-haired girl who acted as if she didn't want to let him go. She was the prime minister's daughter, educated in England, and she was beautiful and very graceful in her red-and-gold sari with rubies in her ears and around her neck. They made a striking pair as they stood together under the lights, Brant's gold head bent down to her dark one.

The man from
Town and Country
took a picture, shrugging apologetically at Eve. She smiled at him, her smile brilliant and forced. Then the baby stirred in her womb, and her fear went away. When Brant came to her, she smiled at him quite naturally.

"That should have made a good picture."

"Sure. They'll all wonder, won't they? Do you, Eve?"

"About her?" Her face became thoughtful. "Not unless I should. Should I?"

"No, baby. I think I'm going to hang onto you."

He did something that surprised her then—bent to kiss her lips, tilting her face up with his fingers under her chin. The photographer got that picture, too, and they put it on the cover the following month, which was when David saw it.

Already there seemed to be a fain
tl
y curved, tawny-tinted roundness to her, where before she had been all defiant hollows and pallor. It was as if, without him to crave for and worry over, she ate more and slept better. And the story mentioned that she was "expecting."

Not able to stop himself from looking through all the pictures, reading every word of the article that accompanied them, David felt the familiar yearning tauten his loins to bursting pitch. He reviled her silently— tramp, bitch, whore! Selling herself to a depraved, decadent rake like Brant Newcomb for his money. God knew what excesses she'd been pushed to already— pushed, hell! She probably enjoyed the life. He'd always found her uninhibited in bed—she'd probably done everything there was by now. Did Newcomb, or even Eve herself, know whose child she was carrying? Damn her, considering the land of life she must be leading, she had no right to look so happy and contented—at least she appeared to be in the pictures.

His affair with Gloria had began to taper off, and he was relieved. She was too much of a bitch for any man to take in large doses, and she was selfish and demanding as well. He was beginning to avoid Gloria now— seeing much more of Wanda, Saul Bernstein's niece. Wanda had come to work as his secretary since Stella had left to marry that old fart, George Coxe. And since Bernstein was a partner in the firm, Gloria couldn't get Wanda fired. Wanda was pretty, young, and a genuine innocent in spite of the years at college. David was glad he'd discovered her before the wolves-about-town had had a chance. And he happened to know she was a virgin—real, gold-plated cherry.

Who needed Eve? Had she still been around, it would have been all over between them by now. He couldn't take her constant jealousy or the way other men looked her over appraisingly. Not to mention the guys he had to meet socially on occasion who had screwed her, like Peter Petrie. Wanda was different. He wouldn't have to wonder about other men with Wanda, nor other women, either. Maybe with Wanda, marriage might not be an impossibility. After, of course, she'd let him make love to her. And she would—he had been very careful, very restrained, but he could tell that she was close to giving in.

Just as David flung the magazine away from him with an exclamation of disgust, the telephone rang.

"David? It's me, Wanda. Darling, I wanted to tell you I'm still at the hairdresser's. Will you be very mad at me if I'm a little late?"

He had to swallow before he answered her. A good thing she wasn't here right now, in his apartment, or he would have been tempted to rape her, just to get rid of his hard-on.

"Of course it's okay, honey. Just don't be too late. You know your uncle hates late arrivals at his dinner parties."

"I
know!"
He heard Wanda giggle. "Uncle Solly can be such a bear sometimes, but he's really very sweet. David?" There was a pause.