In Name Only (8 page)

She dressed hurriedly, packed the wedding dress and shoes and presented herself to Simon Todd and Jay Wilhelm in the parlor.

It was Simon's idea that Mrs. Hughes and Wilhelm accompany them to the airport since there was a short wait before the flight, enough time for a small celebration in the airport restaurant. Jill was happy for their company, and she was certain Simon felt the same way. She simply did not know how to act with this new husband of hers. There were a million questions she wanted to ask, questions that under ordinary circumstances would have been easily asked, and perhaps just as easily answered. Questions, that might have made the difference, though, the difference between their having gone through with the ceremony or not.

Jill sat quietly through lunch, touching nothing, certain that no one, not even Simon, would notice. Mrs. Hughes, gay and twittering from too much champagne, offered them toast after toast, as if theirs had been the culmination of a long, loving engagement, a marriage made in heaven. If Jill hadn't felt so odd and removed from it all, she might have thought the idea funny.

When at last it was time to board the plane, Jill hugged her landlady and made her promise to come to Manaus.

"Of course, dear," Mrs. Hughes said soothingly, as if it were indeed possible.

Then suddenly, she was seated next to the window in the jet and it began to move slowly out of the terminal onto the runway. Her heart began to beat rapidly as she realized she was trapped, with no way out.

"Would you like a pillow, Mrs. Todd?"

Jill, staring out of the window at the snowy landscape, paid no attention to the question.

"Jill, the flight attendant asked you a question."

She turned to Simon and then to the stewardess, who stood in the aisle with a pillow in her arms. Mrs. Todd. Of course. Just like in the movies. Suddenly Jill Carteret no more. Suddenly Mrs. Todd just like that. Mrs. Todd in name only. How soon we forget.

She smiled sweetly. "I'm sorry. I must have been daydreaming. Yes, a pillow would be fine." She took it and pushed it behind her head. When she looked back up in acknowledgement, she realized with a shock, that the stewardess had locked her eyes briefly with Simon's and then moved away. It was as clear to Jill as if their look had been flashed in technicolor on a giant screen. She had no need to turn to Simon for acknowledgement. In name only. He would continue to admire beautiful women, and women would continue to admire him.

The jet, its engines whining as if in agreement, began the ascent, and for a second Jill closed her eyes against a feeling of nausea. She shivered, and reaching up, adjusted the air vent.

"Cold?" Simon asked.

"No, I'm fine." Jill knew her answer sounded angry, and if she had been his wife for a week or a month or a year, he might even have been entitled to ask, "What the devil is wrong with you?"

She sighed. She was thinking too much and tired of it. Instead of luxuriating in the experience, she found herself feeling queerer than she had ever felt in her life.

She sat quietly, staring out of the window, trying to sort through her emotions, one by one. She wasn't sorry to see the city and the lake suddenly blotted out of her life for good and all, although perhaps somewhere deep inside, she was. Leaving the known for the unknown was a pretty courageous move.

Mixed into those emotions was another one which startled her with its potency. Impossible, she told herself, but she read it quite clearly. She was jealous. Jealous because a beautiful woman had locked eyes with her husband. Locked eyes. Looked at him with a blatant expression that said openly, "I want you. Never mind Mrs. Todd. I want you."

Jealous. Could it be? One can't be jealous about someone one doesn't know. Can one?

By now they were beyond the city and climbing ever higher, the white landscape below taking on the disconnected look of a topographical map. Jill stared downward without really seeing it. She had married an extraordinarily attractive man. It was all quite simple. She was going to have to share him with women of all sizes and shapes, women who would look at him openly or surreptitiously, any way they could, and she had better face it. And that he was going to reciprocate was quite clear, too.

How could she be in love and jealous, she wondered, when he was a complete stranger? She glanced down at the ring on his finger. He hadn't removed it. He hadn't, in fact, said one word about it, although she remembered how he had stiffened momentarily, when she slipped it on his finger.

Who was he? When would she get to know him? Should she begin now?

"Simon?" she asked softly, "Are you awake?" His eyes were closed.

"Mmm."

"What time did you say we'd get to Manaus?" She knew perfectly well when, but she wanted to say something, anything.

"Four forty-five a.m." His eyes remained closed. He did not seem interested in talking.

"Oh." She leaned back against the pillow, trying to fight the odd feeling that he did not want to communicate with her at all, that he had written her off as a duty performed and to be forgotten. Since the ceremony, in fact, he had scarcely spoken more than a sentence to her. She concentrated on trying to remain calm. We don't know one another, she told herself. He thinks I'm an unsophisticated child, that's what. There's no way we can care for one another. Not two cents worth. I don't love him. Love at first sight doesn't happen.

The words, never far out of mind, haunted her.
As far as the world is concerned, you're madly in love with me and I'm madly in love with you
. Did the flight attendant know how madly in love they were?

She smiled to herself. Don't take it so seriously, she thought. It's simply a matter of convenience. We've done it to protect my uncle's fortune, to keep it out of the hands of all the gigolos in South America. To keep it intact for Simon and me, and for our children.

Our children.

She imagined herself in his arms. Their wedding night. They would have one, wouldn't they? The picture of the stewardess intruded. She couldn't predict the future, she decided, beyond the next ten minutes.

First class was half empty and except for the movement in the aisles as the flight attendants served drinks, Jill felt a luxurious stillness. They were above the clouds, and Simon might have gone to sleep. She settled against the pillow and stared out at the horizon. The engines droned on.

"Jill?" Simon's voice at her ear startled her. Jill realized she had been sleeping lightly, aware of everything that had gone on around her, yet sleeping nevertheless. Simon had his briefcase opened on his lap and was going through some papers.

"Are we almost there?" she asked, stretching.

"Almost."

Her mouth was dry. "I'd like something to drink."

"A coke?"

She shook her head. "Champagne," she said, sleepily. "We
are
celebrating, aren't we?"

He gave her an odd look, as if her mentioning that they had something to celebrate was in questionable taste.

"Champagne it is, then," he said, after a moment. "They should be serving something to eat soon."

She shook her head. "Not hungry."

"I don't recall your eating at the airport."

She felt a slight flush of pleasure rising to her face. He had noticed it then. It was a small success on the road to the Olympics. "Maybe later," she decided, perfectly willing to cooperate.

Simon signaled the flight attendant, who was at their side in a moment, smiling down at him.

"My wife will have a glass of champagne," Simon told her abruptly and coolly, turning back to his work. "Oh, and bring me a Scotch on the rocks."

Eye contact, Jill discovered. Her husband turned it on and off at will. He was in control every step of the way. She had a lot to look forward to. When the drinks arrived, Simon put his work aside. He lifted his glass and regarded her with an absorbed expression. He seemed about to say something, but then, after pausing a moment and waving his glass at her briefly, took a long drink.

Jill stared down at the bubbles in her glass. She wondered if he had not suddenly realized the irrevocability of what he had done. If only she knew something about him, she thought desperately, but it seemed to her that he was carefully drawing a line of demarcation between them. You keep to your side, and I'll keep to mine.

She lifted her glass. Well, two could play at that game. "
Salud
," she said, downing the drink at once. "More, please."

He gave her a quizzical look and then signaled the flight attendant. As Jill's glass was refilled, he stared at it as if trying to commit the bubbles to memory.

"Do you find it good?" he asked at last, in a stiff, formal manner.

"Why not?"

"Do you drink much?"

"Oh, I see," Jill said. "You're trying to find out whether you married an alcoholic."

"Are you?"

"You didn't," she answered in a frigid tone. She thought of the long, boring evenings with Derek, when a drink might have made things more interesting perhaps. She detested liquor but was not about to let Simon know. At least not yet.

"I like New York in June," she said sarcastically. "How about you?"

"Excuse me?" Simon watched her curiously.

"Oh nothing. Just the line of a popular song. I suppose," she added gaily, "you say potay-to, and I say potah-to."

Simon shrugged. "I'm not sure I like them either way."

"Ah," said Jill. "Now we're getting somewhere. I've learned that you don't like potatoes."

Simon reached over and put her empty champagne glass down. "You want to know something about me, who I am, how I live, but you're afraid to come right out and ask me."

"I suppose you're right," Jill said. "Are you—?" She stopped. She had almost asked it. Are you sorry you married me? It was the one question she wanted answered more than any other. She took a deep breath. Begin at the beginning. "I know you're a sort of adventurer. I know you come from Texas and you were my uncle's partner. That's all I know. You pop into my life like a jack-in-the-box and sort of bounce around without letting me get a hook into the real you."

"Oh, you've hooked me all right," he said tauntingly.

"Hooked you?" She was angry now. "Perhaps it's the other way around. I don't care what Jay Wilhelm said."

He turned to her sharply. "What did Jay tell you?"

She was taken aback at the menacing look in his eyes. What was he trying to withhold? "Nothing," she said, frightened. "What could he have told me? He just said you had never been serious about anyone before. Is that anything to get upset about?"

He relaxed for a moment, and then, reaching for his briefcase, removed some papers and spread them out on the tray.

"All I know about you," Jill said, "is that you carry that case with you wherever you go."

"I'm a very busy man."

"Even on your honeymoon?" she asked, trying to keep the sarcasm in her voice to a minimum.

He laughed briefly and reached over and kissed her lips lightly. "Even on my honeymoon." He turned back to his work. "Oh, but keep talking. I'm really interested in everything you have to say."

"Sure," Jill said. "Then order me some more champagne."

"You've had quite enough."

"I'm not a child," she told him impatiently. "I'm a married woman."

He turned to her. "A married woman." His glance was so penetrating she felt the back hairs on her neck stiffen. "I do remember vows a little while back," she informed him coldly.

He continued to watch her. "What else did Jay tell you?" His voice still carried that peculiar, menacing tone.

Jill managed a laugh. "Good heavens, he was only trying to tell me how terrific you are. And how terrific he thought I was because I managed to snare you. It seems," she added, her voice carrying as much sarcasm as she could muster, "that the man I married has been pursued by every woman in the world from the Suez Canal to Tierra del Fuego. Only, of course, he managed to resist them until he met me."

Simon returned to his work. "Jay talks too much."

"It's true then," Jill persisted. "It's true that I, and my fortune, have captured the man every woman in the world has wanted. Sounds like the title of a book, doesn't it?
The Man Every Woman Wanted
. I must write it some time." She giggled, and wondered how two small glasses of champagne could have made her suddenly feel so giddy.

"That's enough," Simon said in a peremptory tone. Jill glanced curiously at the work spread out before him, long reports as far as she could tell, typed on legal length stationery.

"I suppose all that concerns me," she said for no reason at all.

"Nothing should concern your pretty head."

The compliment was chilling, meant in fact, for a teenager. "You know nothing about me," she said doggedly, aware that Simon was only half-listening. "How do you know whether I'm smart or stupid?"

"I know nothing about you," he said. "Tell me everything. I want to know everything." He did not look up from his work.

"I was born. I grew up. I got married. That's about it."

"Interesting," he murmured. "Go on." He took a pencil from his jacket and began making notations on the page before him.

"I also think the stewardess is in love with you, and if she smiles at you one more time, I'm going to throw the champagne in her face." There was only one problem. She had no more champagne.

"Interesting," Simon said, deep into his notes.

"And furthermore," she went on, "I don't think our marriage is going to work one little bit."

"Go on," her husband said. "I'm really interested in everything you're telling me."

The jet touched down in the rain at the airport in Miami. They would have a stopover of a couple of hours before boarding the Bolivian jet that would take them to Caracas.

Simon was met at the airport by a heavyset man wearing a raincoat that was soaked all the way through. They repaired to the bar to discuss some business, and Jill excused herself to go wandering about the airport lounge, peering in at the shops, stopping for coffee, putting on fresh makeup in the ladies' lounge, wasting time sleepily. She had been up since six that morning. She spent a long time at a book stand selecting some paperbacks for the flight. She had, in all her innocence, actually believed that the trip itself might have constituted some sort of honeymoon, or at least a time when she could have learned something about Simon Todd.