Compromising Positions (5 page)

“Hi, Mary Alice,” I said, trying not to sound too encouraging.

“Judith, I’ve just got to talk to you.” She still had a midwestern accent and pronounced each word separately, as though each was a distinct idea in itself. “Please.”

“Sure.”

“Not on the phone. It’s very personal. Do you possibly have a free minute tomorrow?”

By Mary Alice’s standards, it was probably something momentous. Maybe her son’s gym teacher, with whom she had been exchanging meaningful glances for a year and a half, had told her she looked cute. Should she tell him he looked cute? And was the next move up to her? But don’t men wait for a signal from women?

“I’m really busy, Mary Alice.”

“I know you are. You’re so bright. But this is very urgent. It’s about the murder.”

“The murder?” I sounded incredulous because I couldn’t believe that Mary Alice could be even remotely connected with anything interesting.

“Please, Judith.”

“Oh, of course. Sure. What time do you want to come over?”

“Could you possibly come over here?” Tedious, limited, vacuous, but endowed with a great, manipulative genius.

“All right. I’ll be over about nine-fifteen.”

“Could you make it nine-thirty?” she asked. “I meditate till nine-twenty.”

I agreed. For a moment, I considered being cool and hanging up with a quick “See you tomorrow.” But the pressure of curiosity forced me to continue. “Did you know Fleckstein?”

“Yes, Judith, you might say I knew him.” She lowered her voice. “In the Biblical sense, if you know what I mean.”

Stunned, I looked around the dining room, trying to reestablish some sense of reality. Bob had gone downstairs to play in his darkroom. I stared at a very real-looking lamb chop bone. Mary Alice and Fleckstein? How could Mary Alice, for whom the postman’s visit is an opportunity for an intimate discussion, how could she have even met Bruce Fleckstein and withheld her knowledge from Nancy and me?

“And I’m going to ask you a personal favor, Judith. Please call Nancy and tell her to come with you. I’d call her myself, but I know she doesn’t like me.”

“Oh, come on, Mary Alice,” I said, embarrassed by being confronted with the truth.

“No, it’s true. But I think we have a great deal of respect for each other’s intelligence, and I would appreciate her comments on the situation.”

“What situation?”

“Judith, I can’t speak on the phone. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Probably she just wants to play the grief-stricken lover, to sob in silence—in front of me and Nancy—or to spend an hour or two ruminating on the plight of the other woman. I considered this as I scoured the pots, but couldn’t really accept it. Mary Alice had been unnaturally cogent, hadn’t digressed even once. Not a whimper, not a sniffle during the entire conversation.

“Bob,” I said later that evening, “I think Mary Alice was having an affair with Dr. Fleckstein.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He was lying on his side in bed pummeling his pillow into a perfect mound.

“Why is it ridiculous?”

“She’s sexless. You can see the bones on her chest.”

“Well, she may not be your type, but she wants to talk to me tomorrow about Fleckstein.”

“Judith,” he said patiently, “why waste your time? You know you can’t stand her.”

“I know. But I’m dying to hear how she got involved with Fleckstein.”

“Why? Who cares?”

“Aren’t you curious about other people?” I demanded. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on behind the facade?”

“Maybe,” he said, and yawned. “I mean, if they’re intrinsically interesting. But not Mary Alice or this Fleckstein character.”

I sat on the bed in a silky red nightgown, decorously draped in front and cut to a low “V” in the back. Bob seemed to be studying the stitching on the quilt. “Look,” I said, “doesn’t it surprise you how varied people are? I mean, everyone in Shorehaven seems to conform to the same blueprint. Okay, so there are variations in religion, higher education, number of kids. But when you meet anyone living in this community, you meet on common ground. You go to an office, all the other guys go to an office. I drive two car pools a week, someone else may drive three. There’s a sameness, right?”

“So?” he asked.

“So, beneath the sameness, all sorts of things are going on. Affairs. Crime.”

“Well, what do you expect? People are individuals.” He was right, of course. What intrigued me was that the vast substratum of activity that everyone seemed to be enmeshed in seemed much more exciting than anything going on beneath my surface. I was what I seemed to be. “Why waste your time?” he continued. “Stay home, relax, read the paper, read a book. Enjoy your leisure.”

“Speaking of books,” I said, getting under the quilt, “you never opened your Valentine’s Day gift.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. I didn’t reply. “Judith, come on. I said I was sorry. Don’t make me out to be some kind of insensitive stinker. I’ll open it first thing tomorrow morning, okay?” I nodded. “Where is it?” he asked.

“On the shelf in the hall.”

“Good. Let me thank you in advance.” He leaned over, kissed my cheek, turned out his light, and went to sleep.

“It’s painful enough that I have to listen to that subanthropoidal horse’s ass whenever she manages to stick her skinny foot in my door before I can slam it shut.” Nancy’s perfectly shaped mouth, shimmering slightly with lip gloss, closed in a pout. Concentrating on the road, she drove expertly through the back streets of Shorehaven toward Mary Alice’s, neatly guiding her gray Jaguar around tight turns with a light hand on the wheel. “Really, Judith, why do you insist on subjecting me to that fool’s inane babbling?”

“She specifically asked to see you.”

“The only reason she asked to see me is that she cannot bear to play to an audience of one.”

“Look, just put it down as a personal favor to me,” I said.

“Oh, I will indeed.” She raised her finely plucked eyebrows and glanced at me for a moment. “You know I’m missing a morning’s work for this circus.”

“Well, you could have said no, Nancy.” She seemed only mildly annoyed; her face, with its even, classical features, relaxed. She brushed a long strand of auburn hair behind her ear, then sighed. “Are you working on anything now?” I asked.

“Nothing special,” she admitted. “But I damn well could have come up with ideas for at least ten marvelous articles this morning instead of listening to that white trash moaning and groaning.”

“Actually, she was pretty much to the point when she called. Maybe it won’t be that bad.”

“Fat chance,” Nancy grumbled.

We spent the next few minutes in silence, passing increasingly larger houses on increasingly larger acreage. Nancy pulled the car into Mary Alice’s driveway, slammed on the brakes, and switched off the ignition, all while resuming her pout. The house was a three-story monstrosity of stucco, red tile, and wrought iron, which might have made sense in California, but was simply silly in New York.

“Isn’t this just lovely?” Nancy demanded. “Casa Mahoney.” Mary Alice’s husband, Keith, was reputed to be “big in construction.” He and Mary Alice had spared nothing in building their dream house. We stood in front of a massive carved wood door and rang the bell. “So understated,” Nancy whispered, looking at the large brass doorknob. The housekeeper, a tall, heavy West Indian woman, let us in and told us that Mrs. Mahoney would meet us in the sunroom.

“Just charming,” cooed Nancy. “Sala del sol. So adorably Andalusian. She even has a Moor.”

“Shh,” I hissed as we walked across the dark tiled floor of the living room. “Just behave yourself for the next half hour.”

Mary Alice stood on the threshold of the sunroom to greet us. “Hello, hello,” she said, pecking each of us on the cheek. “I can’t thank you both enough for coming today. Truly, you are sisters in every sense of the word.” She was dressed in a pale yellow wool jumpsuit with the zipper opened to mid-torso. Although she had the body of a malnourished ten-year-old boy, Mary Alice often dressed as if she were so magnificently endowed with breasts and hips that she had to share her bounty with the world.

We declined her offer of rose hip tea, sat down on her elaborate wicker chairs, and watched as she tiptoed to the door to close it, first peering out to make sure her housekeeper wasn’t lurking about, steno pad in hand, to report to Keith.

“All right,” she said, rubbing her tiny, childlike hands together, “this isn’t going to be easy, ladies.”

“Try,” suggested Nancy in her deep voice.

“Yes, yes. But where shall I begin? There’s so much to say.”

“I’d begin at the beginning,” I said firmly. “It’s the best place, isn’t it?”

“Good choice,” murmured Nancy.

Mary Alice took a flowered cushion from one of the chairs and placed it on the floor, equidistant between Nancy and me. “Well,” she said, sitting down Indian fashion, “I first met Bruce, Dr. Fleckstein, at a party at the Wagners’ house. You know him, Nancy, Rick Wagner, he belongs to your club. He’s in real estate.”

“I’m so pleased for him,” Nancy said.

“Anyway,” continued Mary Alice, “I knew instantly that there was something between us, something very strong and very powerful. He was standing in front of the fireplace talking to Christy Wagner and Nicki Rubin, but for some reason he happened to glance in my direction and our eyes met. I was wearing my black Halston. Did you ever have that? That electricity with a man where you’re the only two people in the world, even though you’re in a crowd? Anyhow, it took him about a half hour to get himself away from the two of them, and he came over to where I was standing and said hi. So I said hi back and we introduced ourselves. He said ‘I’m Bruce Fleckstein’ and I said...”

“It’s a quarter to ten, Mary Alice, and I have to leave at ten-thirty, even if you’re in the middle of your first soul kiss,” said Nancy.

“All right. But I want to give you a feeling of exactly what the relationship was like, so you can comprehend everything.”

“Tell us,” I suggested. “Nancy,” I added, “please relax.” She complied, after peering contemptuously at Mary Alice and flaring her nostrils at me.

Mary Alice cleared her throat. “Thank you, Judith. Well, to make a long story short, he called me on Monday. The party had been on Saturday night. Anyway, he said he’d really enjoyed talking with me, that I had a lot of personality and substance, and asked if I could meet him for lunch. Well, I wasn’t sure at that point whether or not to go, but I said to myself, well, it’s just lunch and I don’t have to commit myself to anything if I don’t want to. So I met him at one o’clock at Wong Foo’s.”

“Right next door to the Tudor Rose Motor Inn,” interrupted Nancy, a cold, stiff smile on her face.

“Yes. But it never occurred to me that anything would happen that day. Anyhow, he looked so handsome. Very tight jeans with a Gucci belt and a yellow body shirt. And that dark Jewish complexion. Oh, I’m sorry, Judith.”

“It happens. You know, I once was second runner-up in the Susie Semite Pageant for dark-skinned beauties.”

“Really? Are you teasing me, Judith?”

“Yes. Go on, Mary Alice.”

“All right. Where was I? I can’t believe he’s dead. Anyway, we just talked for a while, and then after we finished our soup, he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You turn me on.’ So I said ‘Oh, come on,’ and he said that no, really, it was true and he put his hand on my thigh. He said I was adorable.

“Well, one thing led to another, and I felt very attracted to him. So before we’d even had dessert, he said, ‘Let’s go,’ and put twelve dollars down on the table. He didn’t even wait for the waiter to bring him change. We just walked out.”

“And nipped right next door to the motel?” asked Nancy.

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?” I inquired.

“Nothing. We did it. That’s all.”

“Just that one time?” I demanded.

“No. We met every Tuesday.”

Nancy gazed at her. “At Wong Foo’s?”

“No. At the motel. Bruce said if we skipped lunch we’d have more time together.”

It made sense to me. If I were having an affair, I’d rather be rolling about on a rough motel sheet, sweaty body to sweaty body, than lunching in a second-rate Chinese restaurant. But it didn’t make sense for Mary Alice. She never struck me as a highly sexed person, one who could feel her underpants getting damp over Moo Shoo pork. She was generally vague about her sex life, although she had confided in me that she wished her husband’s “thing” were bigger; but I never thought she’d go out of her way to search for one that was. She was so wrapped up in herself that it was difficult to imagine her focusing on someone long enough to become interested, much less aroused. Most of all, I couldn’t understand why she had never alluded to the affair before.

“How come you never mentioned this before, Mary Alice?” Nancy asked.

“I was going to, but then I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

My turn. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. It was a very complex relationship, and I guess I felt I couldn’t really give an outsider the realities of it.”

Nancy crossed her long legs and glanced at her watch. I looked at mine. It was after ten and I knew I didn’t have time to listen to Mary Alice meandering down her usual path of self-actualization through interpersonal give-and-take meaningful relationships.

“Why are you telling us now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, somewhat uncomfortably. She picked at the dark brownish red nail polish on her left hand.

“Come on, Mary Alice. Something’s bothering you,” I insisted. I hoped something was, or I’d never hear the end of it from Nancy. “I mean,” I continued, “you don’t seem horribly broken up about the fact that he’s dead. And you told me it was important. Come on.”

“He took some pictures,” she mumbled to the tiled floor.

“Holy shit!” Nancy exclaimed.

“What kind of pictures?” An unnecessary question, I suppose, but Mary Alice seemed to want to cut off the entire conversation.

“Pictures of me,” she said, and began to cry.

“Naked?” I asked.

She nodded and took a tissue out of her sleeve. She had obviously been anticipating a scene. “Yes, naked.” She wiped her eyes and dropped the tissue into an ashtray. Then, without thinking, she drew the back of her hand across her nose, and a pearly trail of pale green mucous spread from her upper lip to her cheek. “Naked,” she sniffled. “And more.”