Perfect Lies (28 page)

Like most things in her life, Meg felt that she had her body under almost perfect control. She knew how to keep her appetite in check, how to force herself to exercise even if she felt lethargic. And when it came to sex, it was Meg who usually determined when—and how—she would be satisfied. Though she thoroughly enjoyed the shuddering bliss of making love—even at the moment of abandon—she was still in command.

With Abe, however, she almost immediately sensed that her authority was being challenged. No, more to the point, overruled. Initially, she tried to struggle against his taking the lead—the way he insisted on spending so much time just kissing her—she didn’t need that. It really wasn’t necessary. But he seemed so determined and … after a moment or two, she thought, well, why not? And then, a little while later she realized that she had somehow lost her train of thought and given herself over to pure feeling. She relaxed in his arms.

“Abe …” At one point she remembered there was something important she needed to ask him. Force him to clarify. It was about Becca and Ethan. But before the question could form itself into actual words, she found herself pulled down again by a strong, persistent undercurrent of desire. His touch was so gentle, so light, that at first she didn’t realize what he was doing to her. It seemed harmless enough, the way he caressed the small of her back, the feathery kisses he planted on her neck. Who could object to his hands moving down her hips, then up again, to the way her body fit so nicely into his? And then, without warning, the tug of longing turned into a tidal force of need. Then, without knowing how, she realized that she had drifted far beyond the safety of her own senses. She was with him and they were rushing toward something. She felt herself holding on for dear life.

They found their way to her bedroom. He had stopped being gentle. They didn’t speak. He guided her to the edge of the bed and tore back the spread and the sheets.

“No,” he said, as she started to pull off her sweater. He knelt in front of her and with maddening slowness pushed the clinging wool up as he kissed her stomach and then the white straining fabric of her bra. He stood, pulling the sweater off in one eager movement, helping her unhook the bra, and then pressing her onto the bed, his hands cupping her breasts.

She watched him fumble with his own clothes—the shirt that must have lost a button or two in his haste, the belt that seemed to take forever. She smiled when she saw him naked—more muscular than she would have guessed and sweetly vulnerable with a full, bobbing erection.

“Oh God, you’re laughing,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking down at himself. “Is it that bad?”

“No,” she said, as she watched him roll down a condom. “It’s absolutely adorable.”

They were hardly strangers to each other—and yet all of this was so new. His touch, the taste of him, the sweet outdoorsy smell of his skin. His body was such a pleasure to explore—leaner and harder than she would ever have guessed—with such lovely surprises: the salty terrain of his neck, the gentle pasture of his stomach, the taut arch of his back. She smiled in the dark as she heard the quick intake of his breath when her fingers found his erection. She circled her fingers around the shaft, making a tight circle, moving her hand gently up and down. He turned to her, kissing her breasts, and they lay side by side, exploring each other, learning about one another.

His lips moved from her breasts, down her stomach, and to her thighs. She could feel her legs spreading and she moaned when his tongue parted her, her hands gripping the sheets as his mouth closed over her. It didn’t matter who they were separately—it was what they had become now together: touch, taste, desire.

“No,” she cried, at one point, wanting everything, needing him inside her. She pulled him up, guiding him. And when he was fully within her, filling her, he began to slowly, very slowly, show her what this meant. It was not about one person taking pleasure. It was not about another being in control. It was about giving and wanting to give, about holding back, and giving more, and loving the sound of the other person crying out in joy, until, at last, there was nothing else in the world but the quickening, demanding, essential rhythm of two bodies moving together, moving as one.

A little after ten o’clock they finally got around to ordering their take-out, which they ate in a tremendous hurry, standing up in the kitchen. But they were both too hungry for something else to concentrate on the spring rolls and rice noodles, and they were soon back in the bedroom again.

“So?” She was curled up in his arms, her cheek resting against the curve of his shoulder. She felt wonderful and terrified at the same time. All her old worries had swept in again—not ten minutes after they’d made love for the second time. The questions she had about Becca and Ethan, about Abe not confiding in her about their affair had returned in full force. It was nearly midnight, but she felt jittery, jazzed with doubts.

“That’s a loaded question,” Abe said, yawning and stroking her hair. “If you’re asking was all this good for me, I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful it was. Okay?”

“I guess I meant ‘so’ in the comparative sense,” kissing his chest. He tasted of salt. She breathed in his deep, masculine smell.

“You mean Becca?” he asked and when she slowly nodded her head against his shoulder, he sighed. “You don’t really want to go there do you?”

“I don’t want to,” Meg answered nervously. “But I think we’ll have to eventually.”

“Can we not make it tonight?” he asked, kissing her hair. “I don’t want to spoil this.”

“And talking about her would?”

“Damn it, Meg.”

“I’m sorry, I just have a lot of questions.”

“It’s not one of your more attractive qualities,” Abe said. “Let’s get this over with—fire away.”

But something about his tone, a bitterness that she hated to hear after so much affection, made her hesitate. He was right, she decided. Her questions about Becca and Ethan should wait. She hated seeing Abe’s face close with anger, his lips tighten into a hard line. She reached out and traced the curve of his jaw, drawing his face toward her.

“Sorry,” she said. “You’re right. Let’s leave all those unfortunate people behind us up in Red River. We only want happy people here.”

“I wish you were right,” Abe said, stretching. “But as it turns out, Becca’s back in the city. She’d taken up modeling again.”

“She call and tell you?” Meg asked, despising the jealousy she felt and hoping it didn’t sound in her voice.

“No, her lawyer did,” Abe said, settling back down beside Meg. “He said that Becca didn’t want me to be caught by surprise if I ran into her. Didn’t want any more trouble. She claims I verbally assaulted her in front of Lark’s house the afternoon we came back from seeing Lucinda. You know I really thought that when the divorce became final—that would be it.”

“But it isn’t?” Meg asked, pulling the sheets up around them, taking comfort in the tone of his voice. His distaste for the subject of Becca was obvious.

“No, now I’m afraid it’s just going to go on forever.”

T
here were problems everywhere Meg looked now. Peter Boardman, the lawyer representing Lucinda, had called her the Monday night after the Thanksgiving weekend and asked if she would appear at the hearing the following week on Lucinda’s behalf.

“What does that mean exactly?” Meg had asked.

“Lucinda told me that you believed her side of the story,” Boardman told her. “And that the two of you are close. I need people I can call on—friends, family—who’ll publicly support her.”

Since then, she’d been trying to convince herself that standing up for Lucinda did not necessarily mean turning her back on anybody else. Surely, Lark and the girls would understand that Meg was just trying to be fair. Her desire simply was to help Lucinda, not hurt them. She had long conversations in her head with Lark on the question, but when they actually talked on the phone, Meg found that she was unable to raise the difficult subject with her sister.

Various crises loomed at the agency, as well. Besides all its regular work—and the fourth quarter was Hardwick’s busiest season—the company was frantically preparing creative for a project SportsTech had dangled in front of Meg.

“The big guy likes to make people jump through hoops,” Vince Goldman told Meg when he called to say that SportsTech had narrowed its search to three advertising agencies and that Hardwick was one of them. “So each of the contenders is going to be given a project to handle—start to finish. I’m giving you the plum assignment: the launch campaign for our new User Friendly line for teenage girls. I’m sending you over all the promo stuff and a half dozen samples. It’s advancing well in the stores and retail says that with the right advertising campaign this could be our next big label breakout.”

What Vince didn’t realize, of course, was that everything Meg knew about teenage fashion could be written on a Post-it note. Hardwick specialized in upscale women’s retail—the type of clothes that sold through Bloomies, Bendels, and Saks. Now the future of her business could very well depend on motivating a portion of the population that, as far as Meg was concerned, could just as well be living on another planet.

But the worst news came by way of Abe on Wednesday morning: Frieda Jarvis was filing for bankruptcy. This had forced Meg, already cash-hungry because of the Jarvis situation, to do something she absolutely hated: take out a loan. Meg’s financially unstable childhood had turned her into a fiscal ultraconservative—and debt, until now, had simply not been in her vocabulary. It was her spotless credit history that had helped her secure a line of credit from the bank. It was Abe’s friendship with the loan officer that had allowed it to go through so quickly. Within twenty-four hours of the news, Meg had a letter of agreement from the bank. But during the meeting with the bank officer and Abe on Thursday, Meg had been forced to sign over her co-op and her growing stockpile of investments as collateral.

Afterward, as Abe and Meg left the bank and headed back across town together, he said, “You understand, don’t you, that if you can’t get the business back on track the bank could take away everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

“I know, but I’m going to be fine,” Meg told him with as much assurance as she could manage. They’d spoken every day on the phone, but this was the first time she’d seen him since Sunday night. She was trying very hard to behave professionally, though she now felt a ridiculously childish wish simply to walk into his arms and ask that he hold her—tight.

“Not if you go on as you are.”

“And just what does that mean?” Meg demanded, stung by his tone of voice. She needed comfort from him, not criticism.

They were standing at the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, the late lunch hour crowd surging around them. One woman with a portable computer case slung over her shoulder, pushed past Meg and snapped, “For heavens’ sake, people, move your lovers’ quarrel off the middle of the sidewalk!”

“Come on,” Abe said as he steered Meg down the street to one of the side entrances to Bryant Park. The huge public space lay beneath a blanket of well-trodden snow. Except for a few homeless people slumped with their belongings on the benches and a gardener pruning ivy around the base of a sycamore, the park was empty. Meg and Abe cut across the lawn.

“I’m telling you this because I care about you, okay?” Abe began, the crusted snow crunching beneath their heels. “You’ve got to begin to take a good hard look at the people around you. Decide who you can really trust. Who you can count on.”

“I know I should have been more on top of the Jarvis thing,” Meg said, fully aware that Abe was right; she’d been far too lax. “I realized way too late what was going on. I consider it an important lesson—one I’ve learned from. I’ll know how to handle it next time.”

“Listen to yourself! Do you intend to handle everything on your own? Are you the only person you can really trust to do things right—and to do the right thing?”

“We’re not talking about Jarvis now, are we.”

“Boardman called me Monday night right after he spoke to you. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by taking this on?”

“This isn’t about me,” Meg said, caught off guard by Abe’s apparent anger. “It’s about Luce. She’s a scared kid who’s going to lose any chance she might have to turn her life around just because she’s so convenient to dislike—and blame.”

“Convenient?” Abe stopped and turned toward her. They’d reached the far south side of the park, twenty yards or so from the bench where she’d sat with Ethan. “She was stone drunk. She had the pontil in her hands. I’d hardly say that the world was being unfair suggesting she had something to do with Ethan’s murder. Sometimes you’re so damned sure of yourself, so controlling, you can’t see the enemy when he’s staring you right in the face.”

“Lucinda begged me to help….” Meg began, but Abe stopped her by bringing his gloved hand to her lips.

“I’m not talking about Lucinda. I’m talking about Ethan. I think you want to get back at him for everything he did to Lark—I think you’re feeling guilty about Lucinda. That’s what driving you, Meg. Can’t you see that?”

“Yes, that’s part of it,” Meg said. She looked over his shoulder. On one of those benches running along the length of the lawn Ethan had told her that he’d been in love with her for fourteen years. She remembered the tears in his eyes. How thoroughly he’d convinced her that he was being sincere—and that she was putting him through hell because of it. When, for years, that was what he’d been doing to countless women: Francine, Hannah, Becca—manipulating them, using them, and then discarding each one in turn. Throwing them onto the annealing table of his outsize passions like pieces of his sculptures that didn’t work—to be melted down and reformed for his next work of seduction. “I feel angry. I feel ashamed. And guilty. I can’t begin to explain it to you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“What are you asking?” But she felt it before he said anything. She saw it in his eyes.

“Let this thing with Lucinda go,” he said. He stepped toward her. She’d been missing him from the moment she woke up Monday morning and realized that he had slipped out of her bed earlier and left, letting her go on sleeping. In the chill air, his body felt so warm and comforting. His arms around her made her feel secure and strong. His kisses held the answer to all her worries.