"Cradle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C., Lee Gentry)

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YOU say, go slow, I fall behind… The second hand unwinds…” Brenda leaned over and turned the volume down on the cassette player. “It’s me, Mr. Stubbs, honest. Brenda Goldfine. Don’t you recognize me?” She was shouting at an old man in a blue uniform who was sitting on a stool in a small circular tower in the middle of the road. “And that’s Teresa Silver in the back. She’s not feeling too well. Come on, open the gate and let us through.”

The security guard climbed down from his stool and slowly walked out in front of Nick’s old Pontiac. He wrote the license number down on a note pad and then came around to Brenda’s window. “All right this time, Brenda, but this is not according to the rules. All visitors coming into Windsor Cove after ten o’clock at night must be cleared ahead of time.”

At length the guard raised the gate and Nick moved his car forward again. “The guy’s really a pain in the ass,” Brenda said to Nick, smacking her gum as she talked, “Christ, you’d think he owned one of the places or something.” Nick had heard about Windsor Cove. Or rather had read about it. Once when he was over at his uncle’s home in Potomac, Maryland, there had been a copy of Town and Country magazine on the table and he had read about the “gracious life of Windsor Cove.” Now, as he drove past the estates in the most prestigious section of Palm Beach, he was awed by the personal wealth displayed.

“Over there. That’s Teresa’s house.” Brenda pointed at a colonial house set back about a hundred yards from the road. Nick drove into the long semicircular driveway and eventually stopped in front of a walkway leading to the front of the house. It was an imposing place. Two full floors, six white columns over twenty feet high, an opulent door whose top half was an arched, stained glass window of a white heron in flight against a blue sky filled with fleecy clouds.

Brenda looked in the back of the car where her friend was passed out. “Look, I’d better handle this. I’ll go up and talk to Mrs. Silver and explain what happened and everything. Otherwise you could be in deep shit. Sometimes she jumps to conclusions.”

By the time Brenda reached the front door to ring the bell, it had already opened. An attractive woman in a red silk blouse and a pair of chic black slacks was waiting. Nick guessed that she had probably been called by the security guard. He couldn’t tell much about the conversation, but he could see that Teresa’s mother was asking questions. After a couple of minutes, Brenda and the woman came back to the car. “You didn’t tell me she was still passed out,” Nick heard a surprisingly husky voice say. There was also some kind of accent, European perhaps. “You know, Brenda, this is absolutely the last time she can go anywhere with you. You just can’t control her. I’m not even sure that you try.” The voice was angry but not strident.

Nick opened his door and climbed out of the car. “This is the guy I was telling you about, Mrs. Silver,” Brenda said. “Without him Teresa might still be lying on the beach.”

Mrs. Silver extended her hand. Nick took it, feeling a little awkward. He didn’t know how to shake hands with a woman. “I understand that I’m in your debt, young man,” Mrs. Silver said graciously. “Brenda tells me that you rescued Teresa from all sorts of horrors.” The light from the street lamps played about her sculptured face. Her hand was soft, sensual. Nick smelled just a trace of perfume, something exotic. Her eyes were fixed on his, unwavering, inquisitive.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Nick said clumsily. “I mean, well, she had had too much to drink and I thought the crowd of teenagers she was with were a little bit out of control.” He stopped. She was still watching him, measuring him. He was becoming agitated and didn’t understand why. “Somebody had to help her and I just happened to be there…” He trailed off weakly.

Mrs. Silver thanked him again and turned to Brenda. “Your mother’s expecting you, dear. We’ll stay out front until you get home. Flash your lights to let us know you’re there.” Brenda looked happy to be dismissed. She scampered off into the night in the direction of the nearest house about a hundred yards away.

There was a momentary pause as they watched the sixteen-year-old disappear into the night. Nick found himself stealing furtive looks at Mrs. Silver’s profile. An inchoate awareness of what he was feeling made him more nervous. Jesus, she’s beautiful. And young. How could she be the girl’s mother? He was wrestling with a jumble of thoughts as he saw the lights flicker in the distance.

“Good,” she said, turning to Nick with a smile, “Brenda’s home. Now we can worry about Teresa.” She stopped for a moment and laughed. “Oh, I almost forgot. We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Teresa’s mother, Monica Silver.”

“I’m Nick Williams,” he said in response. Her dark eyes were fixed on him again. In the reflected light the expression in her eyes seemed to vary. One moment she was a pixie, then a seductress, then a very proper Palm Beach society woman. Or was Nick imagining it? He couldn’t return her gaze anymore. He felt his cheeks flush as he averted his eyes.

“I had to carry her from the beach to the parking lot,” Nick said abruptly, as he went around to the back door of his car and opened it. The teenager had been leaning against the door and nearly fell out. She didn’t stir. He picked Teresa up and threw her over his shoulder. “So it’s no problem for me to carry her for you now. I’m used to it.”

They walked quietly down the path toward the house, Monica Silver leading by a few steps. Nick watched her walk in front of him. She moved effortlessly, like a dancer, with almost perfect posture. Her dark hair was wrapped up at the back in a chignon. It must be very long, he thought to himself with delight, imagining her hair flowing down her beautiful back.

It was a warm and humid Palm Beach evening. Nick was sweating by the time they reached the entrance. “Could you do me one more favor, Nick?” Mrs. Silver asked. “Could you carry her up to her room? My husband’s not here and the help has all gone to bed. And I doubt seriously if she’s going to get herself together well enough to climb the stairs, even with my help, in the near future.”

Nick followed Mrs. Silver’s instructions and carried Teresa through the atrium, into the living room, up the entry steps onto the platform, up the left flight to the second floor, and then into her bedroom. It was huge. In her room Teresa had a king-size bed with four posters, a giant television, an entire cabinet of movies for the VCR, and a sound system that would have been a credit to any rock and roll band. Bruce Springsteen posters and photos were all over the room. Nick laid Teresa gently on her bed. She murmured “Thank you,” indicating to him that at least she was semiconscious. Her mother bent over her and gave her a kiss.

Nick left the two of them alone and went back down the stairs into the living room. He could not believe that somebody really could live in a house like this. Why the living room alone was bigger than the house in Falls Church where he grew up. He wandered around the room after he came down the stairs. There were original paintings on the walls, crystal glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and art objects and bric-a-brac both on the tables and in every nook and cranny. It was all too much for him. He was overwhelmed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and involuntarily recoiled. Monica Silver chided him, “Goodness, you’re jumpy. It’s only me.” He turned around to look at her Was he imagining it or had she somehow combed her hair and put on fresh makeup in the few seconds they had been separated? For the first time he saw her in the full light. She was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. His breath was taken away and he felt giddy. Outside he had not been able to see her skin clearly. Now he found himself staring at her bare arms, following the elegant contours of her neck. Her skin had the smoothness of ivory. It called to him to touch it. Watch yourself, Williams, he heard a voice inside him say, Or you are going to be outrageous. He tried to calm himself.

But it was useless. He could not take his eyes off her. She was saying something. She had asked him a question. He had not even heard it, so dumbfounded was he by what was happening, by where he was. She was leading him somewhere in the house. His imagination was running wild. She took him into a small room with a table and told him to sit down.

“It’s the least I can do,” she was saying, “to repay you for what you did for Teresa. I know you must be hungry. And we still have some great food left over from the party tonight.”

Nick was in a breakfast nook just off the kitchen. To his left a door led to the patio and then outside, into the back yard. The lights around the huge swimming pool were still on. He could see manicured gardens with roses in bloom, chaise longues, colorful umbrellas, white iron tables with twisted, lacy legs—he could not believe that it was all real. He felt transported to another world, a world that existed only in books and movies.

Monica Silver laid out some food on the table. Smoked salmon, onions, capers, cream cheese, two different kinds of bread, plus a dish of some other kind of fish that Nick did not recognize. “That’s marinated herring,” she said with a smile, noticing Nick’s quizzical expression. She handed him a wine glass. He took it and unconsciously looked her straight in the eyes. He was transfixed. He felt weak and powerless, as if he were being drawn into her deep brown, bewitching eyes, into her world of richness and luxury and beauty. His knees were weak, his heart was racing, he could feel his fingers tingling.

She poured some white wine in his glass and then in her own. “This is a brilliant Burgundy, Clos des Mouches,” she said, touching her glass to his with a light tinkle. “Let’s make a toast.”

She was radiant. He was enthralled. “To happiness,” she said.

They talked for over three hours. Nick learned that Monica Silver had grown up in France, that her father had been a small, struggling fur merchant in Paris, and that she had met her husband, Aaron (the biggest of the big Montreal furriers), while helping her father at the shop. She had been seventeen at the time of the whirlwind courtship. Mr: Silver had proposed just seven days after they had met and she had accepted immediately even though her husband-to-be was twenty years older. She moved to Montreal and married him before she was eighteen. Teresa was born nine months later.

Nick told her that he was in his junior year at Harvard, majoring in English and French to get a good liberal arts education and prepare himself for either law school or graduate school. As soon as she found out that he was in his third year of French, she switched and spoke to him in her native language. Her name became Monique. He missed some of what she said, but it didn’t matter. He understood the gist of it. And her dramatic voice plus the sound of the foreign language only increased the power of the spell already cast by the wine and her beauty.

Nick also tried to speak French from time to time. Whatever self-consciousness he might have ordinarily felt was swept away by the magic of the setting and their growing rapport. They laughed together easily at his mistakes. She was gracious and charming when she corrected him, always adding “mais vous parlez fran,cais tres bien” in the early part of the evening. Later, as their conversation became more personal (Nick talked about his problems with his father; Monique wondered aloud if there was anything a mother could do with a teenage daughter except hope that some basic values had been learned), Monique changed to the more personal “tu” form in talking to him. This established an additional intimacy between them that deepened in the wee hours of the morning.

Monique talked about Paris, about the romance of the streets, the bistros, the museums, the history. Nick visualized it all and felt transported with her to the city of lights. She told about her dreams when she was growing up, about walking in the sixteenth arrondissement among the wealthy and promising herself that someday… He listened closely, enraptured, an almost beatific smile upon his face. In the end, Monique had to tell him that it was time to go because she had an early tennis lesson in the morning. It was after three o’clock. He apologized as they walked together to the door. She laughed and said that it had been fun. At the door she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. His heart soared out of his body at the touch of her lips. “Call me sometime,” she said with a playful smile, as she closed the door behind him.

For over thirty hours Nick thought of nothing but Monique. He talked to her in his mind during the day; she was his lover in dreams at night. He called her once, twice, three times, each time talking to her answering machine. The third time he left her his phone number and address and suggested that she try to get in touch with him when her schedule would permit.

By noon on the second day after his evening at the Silvers’ Palm Beach mansion, he started to calm down, to realize that there was no sense in his continuing to worship the image of a woman he had met for a single evening. Especially a woman who was married to someone else. In the late afternoon he went out on the beach to play volleyball with some of the other college students he had met during his first days in Florida. He had just served an ace when he thought he heard his name being called by a husky, accented voice that was absolutely unmistakable.

He thought for a moment he was dreaming. Standing in the sand not ten yards away was Monique. She was wearing a bright red and white striped bikini and her long black hair hung down her back to just above her waist. The volleyball game stopped. His friends whistled. He walked over to her his heart pounding in his temples and his breath struggling to find its way out of his constricted chest. Monique smiled and slid her arm through his. She explained that she had brought Teresa into Lauderdale for a small high school party and since it was so hot…

They walked along, the beach and talked as the sun set behind the condominiums. They were oblivious to the young people all around them. The gentle waves washed their feet with warm water as they walked. Monique insisted that they eat in Nick’s condo, so they stopped for tuna fish, tomatoes, onions, and mayonnaise to put on their sandwiches. Cold beer, potato chips, and sandwiches on a bare formica table was the dinner. Lovemaking was the dessert. Nick almost had an orgasm on their first kiss and his passion made him klutzy and funny in trying to remove her bikini. Monique slowed him down, smiled softly, neatly folded her bikini and his bathing suit (while he of course was going wild), and then came to join him on the bed. After two kisses naked on the bed, Nick was seized by a paroxysm of lust. He rolled roughly on top of Monique and began gyrating with his hips. At first a bit alarmed, Monique slowed him just a bit and guided him gently into her.

Monique’s body was nearly perfect. Nice, full, upright breasts (they had been reconstructed of course after she had nursed Teresa but how could Nick have known or cared?) slim waist, rounded, feminine ass (not one of those boyish asses that really skinny women have), taut muscled legs kept in shape with lots of exercise. But it was her skin, that magnificent ivory skin, that sent Nick into ecstasy. It was so soft and easy to the touch.

Her mouth seemed to fit his perfectly. Nick had been with two women before, a high-priced call girl given to him as a Christmas present after the Harvard swimming team had discovered he was still a virgin at the end of his freshman year and Jennifer Barnes from Radcliffe, his sometimes steady date during most of his sophomore year. Jennifer’s teeth always clanged against his when they kissed. But that had not been the only difficulty in his relationship with Jennifer. She was a physicist and her approach to sex had been almost clinical. She measured sizes and durations and frequencies and even quantities of ejaculant. After three “scheduled performances” with Jenny Nick had decided it wasn’t worth it.

Nick gasped as he slid into Monique. Both of them knew it would be over soon. Ten seconds later Nick finished his climax and started to withdraw. But Monique held his rear firmly in her hands, keeping him in place, and deftly (how did she do it?) rolled over so that she was on top. Nick was now out of his element. In his limited experience, withdrawal was the next step after orgasm. He didn’t know what Monique was doing. Ever so slowly, her eyes half closed as she hummed a piece of classical music to herself, Monique rocked back and forth on top of him, her vaginal walls holding tightly to his now flaccid penis. After a couple of minutes she began to grind her pelvis forward as she rocked and, much to Nick’s amazement, as her breath shortened he found himself becoming aroused again. Now her eyes closed altogether and her rhythm became stronger, the thrusts of her forward motion grinding with a little pain into his bones. Nick was now definitely erect and he started following her motion, lightly gyrating in pattern with her.

Monique leaned forward, concentrating but smiling with her eyes closed, preparing for her own orgasm. She was acutely aware and delighted that Nick was up again. Timing her own progress perfectly (and in complete control of the situation), she adroitly and softly reached down and began titillating Nick’s nipples in rhythm with her forward thrusts. Nick had never had his breasts touched in lovemaking before and was shocked. But the raw excitement was overwhelming. She increased her play, even pinching him when she saw (and felt) his response. As wave after wave of delightful release coursed through her body, Nick uttered a loud, wailing scream and had his second orgasm in fifteen minutes. At the end of the climax he was completely given over to pleasure and made animal sounds and shook involuntarily from exhausted satiety.

Nick was a little embarrassed by his noisy and uncontrolled response, but Monique’s playful and friendly afterplay assured him that everything was all right. She went to his closet, pulled out one of his three dress shirts, and put it on. The tails came almost down to her knees (Monique was only five feet five and Nick was a shade less than six two) and she looked positively gamine with her pixie smile, long hair, and man’s shirt. Nick began to declare his love but Monique came forward and put her finger to his lips. Then she kissed him lovingly, told him that she needed to pick up Teresa, jumped in the shower for what could not have been more than a minute, dressed, kissed him again, and walked out the door. Nick did not move during this entire time. After she left he fell asleep contentedly. He did not dream.

For the next eight days Nick was on top of the world. He saw Monique every day, most of the time at her Palm Beach mansion, but sometimes at his uncle’s condominium. They made love at every opportunity and it was always different. Monique was full of surprises. The second time Nick went to her house, for example, he found her in the back, swimming naked in the pool. She told him that she had given all the servants the day off. Within minutes they were frolicking and laughing on the grass between the garden and the pool.

Their affair was conducted in French. Monique taught him about food and wine. They shared their knowledge of French literature. One passionate night they argued about Andre Gide’s La Symphonie Pastorale both before and after lovemaking. Monique defended the pastor and laughed at Nick’s insistence that the blind Gertrude was “an innocent.” Another evening, when Monique demanded that Nick wear a black Halloween mask and a pair of white leotards throughout their long French dinner, they read Jean Genet’s Le Balcon together as a prelude to sex.

The days raced by relentlessly, clothed in the magic of love and intimacy. Once Nick showed up at the mansion and Monique greeted him dressed in an incredible coat, a full-length Alaskan seal fur with indigo fox trim around the collars as well as down the lapels and framing the sleeves from the shoulders to the wrists. The coat was the softest thing Nick had ever touched, even softer than her tantalizing skin. His playful paramour had turned the air conditioning up as high as it would go so that she could wear her favorite coat. She was wearing nothing underneath it. After lovemaking that evening she dressed Nick’s naked body in one of her husband’s beaver coats, explaining the presence of half a dozen fur coats in Palm Beach with a simple “it’s our business and we like to have some things to show our friends and acquaintances in case they are interested.”

Nick professed his love with increasing zeal each time they met anew. Monique responded with her usual “je t’aime,” but would not reply to Nick’s insistent questions about the future. She avoided all questions about her relationship with Mr. Silver, except to say that he was a workaholic and that he stayed in Montreal most of the year. He had bought the place in Palm Beach primarily because Monique did not like the cold and wanted a more active social life than the one they had in Montreal. Monique usually spent the period from Christmas to Easter in Palm Beach; Teresa, who had just finished her spring break from her exclusive private school and had returned to Canada, came down as often as possible so that she could be with her mother.

Monique gave short, terse answers about her present life. But she waxed rhapsodic about her childhood in Paris. She never criticized her husband or complained about her married life. Yet she did tell Nick that her days with him had been the happiest time of her life. She also talked about some of her friends, but Nick never met any of them. They were always alone.

One day she picked him up in her Cadillac and they headed toward Key Largo so that he could do some diving at the Pennekamp Recreation Area. As always, she was wearing her wedding ring. On this particular day Nick had vowed to himself that he would get some answers about the future, and the constant presence of her wedding ring pissed him off. He asked her to remove it. She politely refused, then grew angry when he pressed her. She pulled the car off the highway in the marshland north of the Keys and stopped the engine.

“It is a fact that I am married,” she said resolutely, “and taking the ring off is not going to change anything. I am in love with you, without doubt, but you have understood my situation from the beginning. If you cannot deal with it anymore, then perhaps we should just call it quits.”

Nick was shocked by her response. The thought of being without her terrified him. He apologized and professed his love. He began kissing her passionately and then jumped in the back seat. He told her that he needed her right then, that moment. She somewhat reluctantly joined him and they had intercourse on the back seat of her Cadillac. Monique was quiet and pensive most of the rest of the day.

On Friday, exactly a week after they had met, Monique took Nick to a tuxedo shop to have him fitted for a black tie dinner with some friends that she was having on Saturday night in her home. So finally he was going to be seen with her. “And,” Nick thought, “now she will talk about our future.” Nick was supposed to be in Boston on Monday morning and his parents were expecting him Saturday night in Falls Church, but he assured himself that he could drive all day (and all night if necessary, so pumped up was he in his love for Monique) to get to classes on Monday morning.

Nick was full of hope and dreams when he showed up at the Silver mansion on Saturday night. He looked elegant in his summer tux, and the smile with which he greeted Monique at the door could have won a prize. Even with the doorman standing by, he handed her a dozen red roses, gave her a kiss, and told her that he loved her. “Of course you do,” she said lightly, “doesn’t everybody?” She took him inside and introduced him to the four other people who had also come early as the “young man who saved our Teresa one day in Lauderdale.” Then Monique excused herself. It was her fashion, Nick later learned, to ask a few select friends to come early to a party, to greet them in casual attire, and then to return an hour or so later, when everyone had arrived, with a grand entrance. As Monique gracefully walked up the stairs of the mansion, Nick’s eyes followed her with an unmistakable look of adoration.

“Isn’t she magnificent?” Nick was asked by a relaxed, tanned man of about fifty who offered him a martini. His name was Clayton. “Once I was with her all weekend on their yacht, while Aaron was in Montreal. I thought she had invited me for a little diversion.” He laughed. “But I was wrong. She just wanted some company and I could talk about France and Europe. Come with me (he slipped his arm through Nick’s) and I’ll introduce you to the select group that was invited early today.”

Nick was treated with extreme courtesy by the other favored guests, but he was wary of their questions about Monique. He was, after all, a Southern boy, and if there was something to say about their relationship, it was her place to say it. So he answered politely but modestly and didn’t elaborate at all.

One of the two women at the bar, who introduced herself as Jane Somebody, said that she was Monica’s oldest friend in Palm Beach. (They all called her Monica. It was impossible for Nick to call her anything but Monique. Nick wondered if they could guess what was going on or if Monique had told them.) Jane was in her late thirties, plump and raucous, a heavy drinker and a chain smoker. She had once been fairly attractive but had lived too hard too soon. She was one of those people who touch everybody during a conversation. She made Nick nervous.

The other guests began to arrive. Jane and Clayton (as in Clayton Poindexter III of Newport and Palm Beach. Clayton, when asked by Nick what he did, answered, “NVMS.” Nick of course had absolutely no idea what that meant. Clayton laughed. “NVMS—No visible means of support—a term used to cover all bums.”) seemed to be acting as hostess and host in Monique’s absence. They introduced him to everybody. Nick had three or four martinis and told the Teresa story at least seven times during the first hour that he was in the Silver mansion.

Nick was becoming fairly spiffed by this time. He sang to himself as he took another martini off the cocktail tray being proffered by one of the servants. The alcohol had buoyed his spirits and made him feel somehow temporarily suave and debonair. Nick was on the patio talking to Monique’s “riding partner,” a lovely woman in her mid-twenties named Anne, when he heard scattered applause from the living room. “It’s Monica,” Anne said. “Let’s go see.”

The grand stairway in the Silvers’ colonial mansion rose to a platform maybe six feet above the living room floor and then split, with two different sets of stairs then continuing up to the second floor. Monique was standing on the platform, acknowledging the applause. dressed in a simple navy blue knit dress that seemed form-fitted to her perfect body. The back was cut way down, almost to the bottom of her spectacular hair (she turned around to please the forty or so guests), and, in the front, two thin pieces of cloth ran from her shoulders to her waist, covering each breast adequately but leaving plenty of cleavage to be admired. Entranced by the vision of his queen, Nick cheered lustily, a little too loud, “Bravo. Bravo.” Monique seemed not to hear his cheer. She had turned and was looking up the stairs.

It probably took an entire minute for Nick to comprehend the sight he was seeing. A man, a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, wearing a custom-made tan tuxedo and sporting an amazing sapphire ring on his little finger, came down the staircase and put his arms around Monique’s waist. She reached up and kissed him. He smiled and waved at the crowd as they politely applauded. They walked down the stairs together to the living room.

Who is that? Nick thought to himself and even through the gin and the vermouth and all the incredible feelings the answer came back, That is her husband, Aaron. What is he doing here? Why didn’t she tell me? And then, following very swiftly, How could she do this to me? I love her and she loves me and there is something very very wrong. This cannot be happening.

Nick tried to breathe but felt as if a large piece of earth-moving machinery were pressed against his chest. Instinctively he turned away from the sight of Monique and Aaron walking down the stairs arm in arm. As he did he spilled part of a martini on Anne’s shoulder. His apology was very clumsy. Now completely discombobulated, he stumbled over to the bar, trying desperately to breathe and to stop the pounding in his chest. No. No. She can’t be doing this. There must be some mistake. His mind could not read the message that his eyes were transmitting. He drank another martini swiftly, barely aware of his surroundings or the jumbled feelings torturing his soul.

“There he is.” He heard her voice behind him, the voice that had come to signify everything that was valuable and important in life, the voice of love. But this time he was terrified. Nick turned and Monique and Aaron were standing right in front of him.

“So finally I get to meet this young man I’ve heard so much about,” he said. Aaron was pleasant, friendly, without a trace of anything but gratitude in his voice. Aaron Silver was holding out his hand. Monique was smiling. God, she’s so beautiful. Even now, when I should hate her. Nick mechanically shook Aaron’s hand and quietly accepted his thanks for “helping Teresa at a difficult time.” Nick said nothing. He turned to look at Monique. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Oh those lips. How I long still for those lips. Why? Why? What happens to us now?

Nick suddenly realized that there were tears in his eyes. Ohmygod. I’m going to cry. Embarrassed beyond measure, Nick abruptly excused himself and walked out onto the patio. Now the tears were running down his cheeks. He was afraid he was going to sit down on the grass and start bawling like a baby Confused, puzzled, he walked around the garden with his head down and tried, without success, to draw a regular breath.

He felt a hand on his elbow. It was Jane, the last person on Earth that Nick wanted to see at this moment. “She’ll be out to see you in a few minutes. First she and Aaron have to make the rounds, you know how it is at parties when you’re the hostess.” Jane lit a cigarette. Nick was certain he was going to puke. He turned quickly to ask her to put out the cigarette and he lost his equilibrium.

Maybe it was the drink, maybe the adrenaline, maybe it was just too much. Nick’s head was spinning around and around. He inadvertently leaned against Jane for support. She misunderstood, and then pulled his head to her shoulder. “There, there,” she said. “Don’t take it so hard. You and Monique will still be able to have some time together. Aaron will only be here for a couple of days and then he’ll go back to Montreal to work. Besides,” she said with gusto, “if you’re anywhere near as good as Monica says you are, I’d be delighted to take care of you when she’s with Aaron.”

Nick pushed her away and staggered back. He felt as if he had just been hit in the face with a sledgehammer. The full impact of Jane’s comment sunk in slowly and an uncontrollable mixture of anger and hurt surged to the surface. What? What? She knows. This cloying bitch knows. Maybe they all know. What? Fuck. Fuck this altogether. And then, almost immediately, as his mind began to take the measure of the evening’s events, How do I get out of here? Where is the exit? As he walked around the house to the front (he was not about to go inside again), from deep inside Nick there now came a sound, a sound that welled up to the surface and could not be contained. This was the wail of pain, the unmitigated and ineluctable cry of the animal in total despair. Millennia of acculturation have made it rare to hear such cries from human beings. But this loud and untoward scream, which rose into the Palm Beach night like a siren from a police car, gave Nick his first comfort. While the partygoers were trying to decide what they had heard, Nick climbed into his 1977 Pontiac and drove away.

He drove south toward Fort Lauderdale, his heart still pumping like crazy and his body trembling from adrenaline. He didn’t think about anything coherently. The pictures in his mind seemed to come at random, without any clear connection between them. Monique was the focus of all the pictures in the montage. Monique in her Alaskan seal coat, Monique in her red and white bathing suit, Monique in her dress tonight (Nick winced, for just off-screen left in his mind’s eye, he could see Aaron coming down the stairs). Had it all been meaningless? Was it just a game? Nick was too young to know about the grays of life. For him it was a simple question of black or white. It was either wonderful or it was shit. Monique either loved him passionately and wanted to give up her luxurious life to marry him, or she was just using him to satisfy her sexual needs and her ego. So, he concluded, as he arrived at his uncle’s condominium in Fort Lauderdale, I was another of her toys. I was like her furs and horses and yachts and clothes. I made her feel good.

Disgusted with himself, depressed beyond belief, a headache starting to tear his brain apart from the martinis, Nick rapidly packed his clothes. He didn’t bathe or eat. He took his two suitcases down to the car, left the rented tuxedo with the managers of the complex, and drove out toward Interstate 95. A couple of miles before he reached the freeway, Nick pulled the car off on the shoulder and allowed himself a few tears. That was all. The external hardness that would characterize the next ten years of his life began at that moment. Never again, he said to himself. I will never again let some bitch make a fool of me. No way, Jose`.

Ten years later, early on a March morning in his condominium in Key West, Nick Williams would idly play with a metallic golden object sitting on his coffee table and experience again the terrible pain of seeing Monique with her husband at that party. Wistfully, with some mature chagrin, he would remember also how, when he reached 1-95, he turned left and south toward Miami and the Keys instead of right and north toward Boston. He couldn’t have explained why at the time. He might have said that Harvard was trivial after Monique or that he wanted to study life and not books. He didn’t understand that his need to start absolutely fresh came from the fact that he could not face himself.

He had not played the memory of Monique through from start to finish for five years. This morning, for the first time, Nick had been able to distance himself from the recalled emotions, ever so slightly, and to see the entire affair with a tiny bit of perspective. He recognized that his blind youthful passion had set him up for the anguish, but he was still reluctant to find Monique faultless. At least the memory no longer destroyed him. He picked up the trident and walked to the window. Maybe it’s all coming together now, he said to himself. A new treasure. A final molting of the last adolescent angst. He thought about Carol Dawson. She was vexing but her intensity fascinated him. Always the dreamer, Nick visualized Carol in his arms and imagined the warmth and softness of her kiss.