The Trophy Wife (3 page)

For the past ten years he had worked his way up the country club ladder, advancing from equipment manager at a tennis center to assistant professional at a decent club, and now to professional at a very prestigious club. He had enough photos of himself on the same court with John McEnroe and Mats Willander to satisfy the men and the athletic good looks that appealed to the women. He was ten years younger than most of the ladies in the Monday League, which was the right age gap for stirring memories that their successful husbands had no time to rekindle. With a few flattering words about a woman's tennis form, a flash of his outdoor smile, and an accidental erogenous touch as he positioned a student's hip for a better backhand, Bill Leary could pretty much name his game.

Emily had been an obvious target. She was a serious player who welcomed the advice and help of a professional. She had a long, sinewy, athletic body that, if too broad for a runway model, was attractively curved and moved sensually. Her mouth, while severe under stress, looked delicious whenever it spread into her spontaneous smile. Her shoulder-length dark hair seemed never to have been under a dryer, but fell naturally into place. She neither looked nor acted her age. It was a combination that Leary found irresistible and in her dark eyes he saw signals that she was probably available.

They were angry eyes. Clear, narrowed, precisely focused on a point of reality rather than open to vaporous dreams. In his years as a club professional he had seen them often, usually on women who had been given everything they wanted and then at middle age realized they had wanted the wrong things. There was no defeat in them, as in the eyes of a downtrodden house drudge. These were women of accomplishment. No sadness, as in the eyes that had suffered a great loss. The country club ladies were all winners. Just anger.
The anger of pride that has been wounded and which is determined to get even.

Leary could see it in Emily's eyes. She was a woman who had been given a room full of toys to keep her happy by a husband who found his own happiness elsewhere. In his career. With another woman. She knew she was being treated shabbily and was determined to have satisfaction. A tennis pro wasn't an original way to get even, but Leary had long appreciated that his services could be soothing.

At first, Emily showed no interest, pretending to be unaware of his advances even though she was hurting from displacement and neglect. She didn't like the big estate with the paddock. She particularly didn't like being left alone in it under the watchful eye of a security system. She wanted to hurt Walter for tearing her away from her friends just to satisfy his ego. But her need for revenge wasn't developed enough to stomach the thought of a stud like Billy Leary pulling down her panties.

Then she had found out that Walter was sleeping with one of the bank's rising starlets. It wasn't his first infidelity. She had known of a brief fling he had enjoyed with an aspiring model and a liaison in a posh hotel with a lovely representative of a California bank. She had been hurt but not wounded, disappointed but not completely disillusioned. The current affair, however, had been going on for quite some time. More significant, Walter wasn't rushing home to dote on her, make amends, and purge his conscience. He was staying away and leaving her behind. Her pain turned into anger and the anger roared into rage. If she had grown indifferent to Walter, she now felt active hatred. The next time Billy had raised the subject of private lessons, she had signed up for his first available opening.

He had arrived at her tennis court in the early afternoon, dressed in fresh whites with a bucket full of tennis balls. They had volleyed until the balls were scattered, Emily all the while worrying about what was going to come next rather than concentrating on his stream of helpful suggestions. Then he had detected the fatal flaw in her swing that required him to stand
close behind her, his arms around her to help her grasp her racquet properly. He had then led her through a series of maneuvers, turning from forehand to backhand, that could have passed for kinky sex, or at least a new Latin American dance step. His arms were caressing her breasts first from the left and then from the right and all the while his groin was grinding against her rump.

This was the point that separated the serious students from the serious lovers. Women who were worried about their tennis games ordered him back to the other side of the net. Women who were worried about their love lives collapsed panting into his arms. Emily had done neither. Instead, she had started to laugh. A smirk, then a giggle, and then gut-wrenching laughter that caused her to drop the racquet, double over, and stagger away from a bewildered Billy. When she had turned back, there were tears in her eyes.

“Is that your idea of foreplay?” Emily had howled.

Then Billy had started to laugh. “Hey, sometimes it works. It's hard to be subtle on a tennis court.”

“Well, it's not working now. I don't feel hot. I feel ridiculous.” Her words had broken as she choked back laughter.

“How do you think I feel,” Billy had answered. He began picking up the scattered tennis balls. “I'm the one making a complete asshole out of myself just to get things moving. If one of us doesn't do
something
, we could be out on this damn tennis court all day.”

Emily had helped him deposit the balls back into the basket and then handed him the leather covers that he zipped over his racquets. “You look like you need a shower,” she had said. “I'll scrub your back.”

Emily had stopped him when he tried to drag her into her bed. They were both naked and dripping wet and she wanted to pull back the bedspread. Then she had delayed him again while she went to her desk and returned with Walter's picture. “You don't mind if I put it here on the night table, do you? I think I'll get more into it if I know he's watching.”

It was an hour later when Billy managed to pull out from under her. Involuntarily, his hand went to his heart to keep it
from exploding through his chest. He had looked up at Walter's picture. “You give him that kind of a good night kiss every night?”

“He doesn't always come home nights. He has pressing business in the city.”

Billy had struggled for breath. “He's crazy. Poor bastard doesn't know what he's missing.”

“No, but he seems to like what he's getting.”

He had looked at her with a touch of genuine caring. “Hey, I'm sorry. You're a nice lady and you don't deserve that kind of treatment.”

Somehow, she had known that this was a departure from his usual line. “No, dammit, I don't. So maybe you can explain why an otherwise considerate human being abandons a loving wife and chases after a younger woman.”

Billy had stumbled out of bed and headed toward his crumpled tennis outfit that was piled on the bathroom floor. “I guess it's a guy thing … like getting a new car. The old one is running fine, but all of a sudden you can't live without the latest model.”

“An old car,” Emily had snapped indignantly.

“Well, there are old cars and then there are classic cars. Like you. They just don't build them like you anymore.”

Emily stood for a moment in the tennis club parking lot, trying to remember where she had left the car. Then she pressed the button on her keys and a Lexus in the next row barked and blinked like a happy puppy dog. She threw her racquets in the backseat, climbed in, made all the adjustments, and finally fixed her seat belt. She didn't realize she had already started the engine until she turned the key again and heard the starter grinding. “Idiot,” she chided herself. It was typical of the mistakes she had been making lately. Stupid little oversights and absences that she attributed to the pressure she was under. Well, the pressure was going to get worse, and in the days ahead, little mistakes could be more than embarrassing. They could be dangerous. She had to get hold of herself.

Emily drove the car directly into the garage, parking it
between Walter's BMW and his Italian motorcycle. She used the side door into the kitchen, walking past another deactivated alarm panel. At the bar, she poured herself a glass of wine after glancing at her watch to make sure that it was past noon. If I start drinking in the morning, she had promised herself, it will make more sense to simply cut Walter's throat. She reasoned she would rather live in a jail than disappear into an alcoholic fog.

She carried the wine up the stairs, unbuttoning the warm-up jacket on the way, set the glass on her vanity, and threw the jacket across her bed. She kicked off her tennis shoes, balanced like a stork as she pulled off the sweat socks, and left her tennis skirt in an abstract shape on the floor. She tossed the socks and her sweat-soaked blouse at her laundry hamper as she walked into her bathroom, scoring a near miss. She pulled the athletic bra over her head and dropped it outside the shower tub along with her panties.

In her more reasonable moments, Emily could understand what had happened to her marriage. She and Walter had married young, fresh out of college, filled with romantic notions of family bliss. She had held down a job that kept the refrigerator stocked while Walter had gone through business school and joined InterBank. His starting salary had been more than enough for her to leave her job so they could start a family.

Walter became a captive of the bank, bringing home larger and larger monthly checks with each passing year. Emily didn't care much about the house, so she avoided much of the normal domestic involvement. But she did care about their son and daughter, so she joined Cub Scouts and Clover Buds, church groups and PTAs, and dozens of other organizations that existed to benefit her children. As they got older, she worked in Safe Rides, MADD, Sex Education, and the Alliance for a Drug Free Society, all in an effort to keep Amanda and Alex sober, straight, and free from venereal disease. When they finished high school they weren't particularly interesting people, but at least neither had a prison record. And with Walter's ability to pay full tuition, they were both recruited by prestigious Eastern colleges.

It was at that point that Emily had been able to take a deep breath and look around. What she found made her angry. Walter had used the years to make himself a Very Important Person, surrounded by other overachievers who also thought of themselves as Very Important. She hadn't used the years to become anything. Aside from her appendage to Walter, she had no identity at all. So, in her reasonable moments, she could understand why he was no longer kneeling at her feet offering a diamond or panting at the prospect of bedding her down.

But Emily wasn't having too many reasonable moments of late. Past all the rationalism was a simple, glaring fact. He was leaving her. She had carried him this far, but now he was stepping onto a faster train. How did Billy put it? He was trading her in for the new model. And if he had the right to put his own interests first, then so did she. At least that's what she had kept telling herself during her tennis lessons.

Bill Leary had proven to be very good for her. Not the solution to all her problems and certainly not a permanent solution to any of her problems. She never forgot that he was a young stud on the make and always paid the bills for tennis lessons she had never taken the day that they arrived in the mail. But he flattered her when she felt tattered, never failed to notice and compliment a new outfit, or hairdo, or even a different shade of lipstick. And when he made love to her, he never failed to convince her that she was the only woman on earth.

Most important, he had praised her ability and her intelligence. He made her feel that losing Walter was incidental and that it was he who was holding her back rather than the other way around. “He lends money, for Christ's sake,” Billy had reminded her. “He's just a pawnbroker with an Italian suit. But you can be anything you want to be. You've got all kinds of talent.” He even agreed with her about the security alarm. “Damn things go off at the worst possible time,” he had said. “Believe me, I know. Turn if off and leave it off. If it makes you apprehensive, I'll buy you a gun.”

She didn't mind that it wasn't always true. She suspected
that Billy might be as much interested in the size of her divorce settlement as in her less fungible assets. But still, she loved the flattery and needed the support. Particularly now, when she would have to stand up to Walter.

She turned the water up to as hot a temperature as she could stand and then leaned back against the sweating tiles. “Relax, Emily,” she told herself. “Keep calm. You're going to need all your nerve … all your wits.”

She heard the click. Even through the echo of the water, the sound was unmistakable. Someone had opened the door to the bedroom.

She focused her attention toward the sound, but now she heard nothing. She eased her hand toward the pressure faucet and shut the water off. The silence was sudden and complete. No one was there. And yet, the latch had clicked open.

“Billy,” she called. “Is that you … ?”

Emily stood perfectly still, listening to the tap of the water that dripped from her body. There was no answer. No sound of anyone moving about in her bedroom. Slowly, she convinced herself that she must have been mistaken. It must have been some other mechanical sound. A thermostat relay closing to signal for more heat. The alarm system recycling. She turned the water back on, cooled its temperature a bit, and reached for the bar of soap.

She was shocked by the sudden sound of the shower curtain ripping and the rattle of the plastic rings as they bounced against the bar. She turned just it time to catch a glimpse of the curtain falling on top of her and then felt powerful arms wrapped around her like a rope, tying her into the curtain. She screamed into the darkness that suddenly enveloped her, until a hand pressed the curtain over her face. She snapped her head angrily from side to side, trying to free her mouth, but the hand pressed tighter. In terror, she tried to gulp in air, but the curtain sealed her face like a plastic bag. Jesus, she thought, they're going to suffocate me. She forced her hand up inside the plastic, pushing her attacker's hand upward so that she could gulp a mouthful of air. Then she bit through the curtain.