One More Time (4 page)

Instead of seeing the truth. Funny how people could insist that they loved you when they had no idea who you really were.

Matt had a dream of his own now, one that would require a lot of him, and one that would accept no compromises. He had to protect it, and thus, he had had to leave. It was that simple.

It was also remarkably painful. At least he’d had the chance to talk to Annette, though he hadn’t been able to tell her all of the truth. Not yet.

He owed her the truth, but he owed it to her gently.

Matt had learned young that marriages only had room for one ambitious partner: it had been his father in his parents’ marriage who had been possessed of the drive to make his mark. Proof positive of the balance of one with ambition and one with none had come when his mother tired of his father’s rules and that marriage collapsed. It was as if there could be only one person with an agenda, which required one to be support staff. That was the only way that Matt knew marriage worked.

The problem was that his days as an admin were over. He didn’t expect Leslie to understand that: he expected, in fact, that she would try to persuade him to do it her way again. And he expected that he would weaken—for the sake of Annette, for the sake of stability, for the sake of the affection and admiration he still felt for his wife.

An abrupt parting was the only possible way to protect his newfound desire.

There had been no room for negotiation in his parents’ marriage, no chance of compromising his father’s demands. And Leslie had that visionary drive in common with Matt’s father. For eighteen years, Matt had followed her agenda, mostly because he didn’t have one of his own. He knew that the balance of their partnership couldn’t be renegotiated, because that would mean Leslie sacrificing some of her ambition.

Which just wasn’t possible.

He wouldn’t ask her to do it, because he couldn’t bear to compel her to deny him his dream. It had all made perfect sense, until he hadn’t been able to resist one last kiss—and she’d responded in spades. There had been a time when they had always kissed like that, though it hadn’t been lately.

Where had that come from? Why had she kissed him like that? Why now? He could taste her on his lips and the taste didn’t fade. He couldn’t remember when they’d last had sex, but he could swear she would have done it in the foyer this morning.

And that was a pretty distracting idea. How could she so easily undermine his conviction in what he knew to be true? Or was it all a game, to keep him doing what she wanted?

Matt didn’t know and that troubled him.

It turned out that he had to connect through Chicago to get to New Orleans, on account of booking late. It wasn’t that hard to believe that a lot of people wanted to leave Boston for sunnier climes in January, but a four-hour layover in O’Hare (also in January) wasn’t something to anticipate with enthusiasm. And at this particular moment, Matt was singularly devoid of enthusiasm.

“Couldn’t you just route me through Seattle instead?” he asked the ticketing agent, who hadn’t been very amiable, however friendly the skies might prove to be. “Or maybe Osaka?”

She clearly didn’t think he was funny. Matt could tell by the way she slapped his boarding pass onto the counter between them.

“Look at the bright side, sir,” she said sweetly. “You’ll accumulate more frequent flier miles this way.”

“And, if traffic is stacked up in Chicago the way it usually is, four hours might just allow me to make my connection.”

“Have a nice flight, sir,” she said with narrowed eyes and a tone that implied she wished his plane bounced through air pockets all the way to Chicago. “Next!”

He had a good two hours until his departure, so Matt could at least hope for a restorative Scotch before boarding. The haze induced by his binge was beginning to lift, and the danger in sobering up was that he might start to think.

That could only be bad news—there was one thing that he really didn’t want to remember and another he didn’t want to think about—so the best course of action was obviously to remain drunk for as long as possible.

Matt, however, had forgotten about the new security protocol. It had been years since he had flown anywhere, after all. His bag had to be X-rayed, his laptop started up to prove that it wasn’t full of plastic explosives, ditto his Blackberry and cell phone. His shoes had to be X-rayed, which left him standing on the cold tile floor in his stocking feet along with everyone else intending to get on a flight this morning.

A decade-plus of child care left Matt wondering how many of his fellow passengers had Planter’s warts or a toenail fungus or some other podalic virus that this security strategy would give them the opportunity to share.

It also made him remember 9/11, not just the devastation of that day but his own dawning sense that if he had been among those lost that day, he would have wasted his life. 9/11 had made Matt realize that he didn’t even know what his dream was. It had started him on a furtive quest, a quest that had brought him to this time and this place, a man with ambition and a goal and a clearer sense of his own direction than he’d ever had in his life.

It had also left him with his guts ripped out and strewn all around him, but on some level, he knew he was heading in the right direction.

At least if his number came up on this day, he’d know that he hadn’t wasted his life so far.

And that had to count for something.

* * *

Who says no one wears armor anymore? Not Leslie Coxwell. Lingerie—silk and wires and elastic—gave her the stamina to face even an auditorium of bored undergraduates. It was armor, hidden armor, that bolstered her confidence, lifting and separating all the while.

And let’s face it: there’s nothing like an under wire bra with a frothy lace edging and matching panties to put a bounce in any woman’s step. Leslie had always loved lingerie, the furthest from white cotton and sensible the better, and long ago had made a bargain with herself.

If she could tame the dragon known as Slow Metabolism and keep herself from looking like a zeppelin in jeans, then she would buy herself all the lingerie she desired.

And that had proven to be a lot.

She’d worked all through university to support her habit, probably the only time that she had sacrificed anything to the pursuit of better grades. Her dresser drawers—pun intended—overflowed with bras and panties, garter belts and camisoles, slips and teddies, tap pants, tanks and corsets. She had matched sets in red and pink and orange and yellow and jade and blue, and lots in black.

Matt had always preferred the black.

There were flower prints and stripes, polka dots and swirls, paisleys and jacquards. Leslie had a veritable cornucopia of satin and velvet and lace and silk jammed into every corner of the closet, and it wasn’t enough.

It could never be enough.

On better days, she could admit that she had a bona fide addiction.

But it was a pretty harmless one.

French lingerie, American lingerie, Italian and Brazilian—you could tour the world and make a lot of conclusions about a whole lot of people just by doing a label tour of Leslie’s collection. Some had eyelet trim, some had beading, some had ribbon roses or just plain ribbons. She had carefully cultivated a cross-selection of every kind of lace known to womankind, in more delicious colors than you’ll find in an ice cream shop.

There was always one more that she needed, one more that captured her heart, and no trip to a lingerie store (or a department store, for that matter) left Leslie empty-handed.

If this was a disease, she’d decided long ago that she’d happily die of it.

The best part about it, in Leslie’s opinion, was that no one in the big wide world had a clue. She might have a passing resemblance to a lingerie model in her underwear, but once she was dressed, she was Marian the Librarian all the way.

She wore her long dark hair wound up in a demure knot, her twin sets were as modest and sensible as her shoes and plain straight skirts. Leslie’s wire-framed glasses made her look as wildly passionate as a loaf of Wonder Bread. Dressed for work, she was ageless and virtually genderless—which was a feat, given the drop-dead glamour of her hidden balcony bra.

There had been a time when she had worried about what would ensue if she ever had a car accident, but that terror had passed. Leslie was too good of a driver to worry much about that—if she had an accident, it would be horrific and she would die. A tanker trailer would have to explode in front of her or something similar.

Which meant that explaining her addiction would be somebody else’s problem, if indeed, the underwear survived the inferno.

On this morning, faced with challenges above and beyond expectation, it was clear to Leslie that the new La Perla set had come into her life for a reason. She’d been saving it for something special, and this day was going to be it. The fact that she had found it, discounted, in her size, was as clear a mark of divine intervention as any woman could need.

On this day, she was going to need all the support she could get.

La Perla, for those unaware of the splendors of intimate apparel, is the Everest of lingerie. Italian-designed, Italian-made, hand-finished, made of exquisite materials, priced as if the goddesses themselves are the company’s best clients, it is the best of the best.

Which is saying something.

This particular combination was smoky purple, though it might look silvery in some light. It was made of pure silk, woven in satin—Leslie’s favorite—and trimmed with a substantial border of lace that had been dyed to match the silk.

The lace trim was about three inches deep and shaped like overlapping leaves: it followed the curve of Leslie’s breasts, the lavish V lushly framing her modest décolletage. That lace would have looked divine peeking out the neck of a sweater cut low, if Leslie had possessed such a garment or been inclined to wear one. The lace also accentuated the leg line of the panties, which were cut high to make her legs look longer and slimmer.

It was a shame that no one would see her like this, at least not in the foreseeable future. The plunging line of the bra reminded her of the night she had revealed her secret to Matt—that had been a black satin under wire bra, if memory served—and she blushed in mingled recollection and desire.

(Desire for Matt, in case you aren’t sure. She still had the bra in the bottom right drawer and it still fit.)

Leslie pulled on a dove grey turtleneck with short sleeves with curt gestures, concealing that Italian silken marvel from those unworthy of seeing it. She checked, but there was nary a lump or a ripple to reveal her hidden glory. The black straight wool skirt, the sensible Hush Puppy loafers, the cardigan that matched the turtleneck, all combined to give her a serious and reliable air. No one would be surprised to learn that she was an academic, not when she was dressed like this. Pearl stud earrings were her only jewelry, along with her watch and wedding rings.

Leslie considered her reflection critically. She was as ready to face the day as she would ever be. To her surprise, she didn’t look any different than she did any other day. No one would guess that she’d been emotionally drawn, quartered and disemboweled before breakfast.

She checked twice to be sure, but her reflection told her what she already knew: good lingerie is worth its weight in gold.

* * *

By the time Matt got through the line, his flight was already boarding. Just as well: the bar in the departure lounge was still closed. The stewardess sold him a small bottle of Scotch for a large price, but wouldn’t sell him another.

He began to sober fast as they flew west, seeing blood and his own failure with relentless clarity, etched in the clouds that stretched across the sky in every direction. He saw Leslie in more than a few clouds, too.

He’d been so sure he was right, that this was the only course forward.

Could he have been that wrong?

It was 1988 and Matt Coxwell stood in an ivy-clad courtyard at his college. He and Sharan Loomis were sleeping together, no, they were virtually inseparable. He had skipped a class on the history of jurisprudence to do this favor for her though on some level, it irked him that she had asked—if not expected—him to cut his favorite class to do this.

But he would have done anything for Sharan, a woman so different from all the women he’d ever known that he figured he could just stand back in awe for the rest of his life, entranced by her beauty and her passion for life. Matt had understood from his first encounter with Sharan that Art was the serious competition for her affections. Art was the one thing that could oust him from this relationship, the relationship he had thought he needed more than air to breathe. He had known this intuitively and with terrifying certainty.

In the service of Art, he had moved massive canvases for shows, had hung art and picked up flyers at the printers. He had gone to meetings, too, of new artists’ collectives, and attended performance art, and listened to speeches by earnest young artists who had no idea what they were protesting except that they had to protest something, and he had tried to persuade himself that he shared Sharan’s enthusiasm for such things.

It was late October. The sky was clear blue, the wind had a bite that promised of winter around the corner, and there were golden leaves scuttling around his feet. Matt could feel the wind ruffling his hair, slipping its chilly fingers through his sweater. Any joy he felt at being asked to participate was tempered by the very real sense that he was being used.

The group of artists mounting the show—along with their supporters and various hangers-on—had decided that they needed incredible attendance at this show, that they needed the hall filled to bursting. They needed public approval of this first modern art show at the conservative college, in order to set the stage for more such spectacles in the future.

So, there was Matt, apparently upstanding, a law student himself and thus token and testament that anyone could like this art, that everyone should like it, that anyone remotely enlightened would come in and see it. He handed out flyers, he cajoled people to go inside and take a look, he reminded complete strangers that the show was free. It was unlike him to be so garrulous, but Matt knew that he didn’t have that much choice.