Private affairs : a novel (45 page)

Matt let out a long breath. A few minutes ago, he reminded himself, he'd been amused and intrigued by her unpredictability. "I thought you already had. You chose jazz. And Birdwatcher's. And a black dress."

"And I want more," she said. "May I choose again?"

"Whatever you want."

She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her clasped hands. "I'd like to play a game of Ping-Pong. If I recall correctly, you once claimed to be an expert."

Momentarily silenced, he said after a moment, "You want to follow jazz and vodka and simple desires with Ping-Pong?"

She nodded, her smile challenging him.

Finally the absurdity caught him and he chuckled. "Why not? What else could I have wanted to do? Is it important that I haven't been an expert since the prehistoric era of my college years?"

"Not at all. It simply means I shall win."

"Possibly." He put his hand on the gossamer fabric molding her shoulder. "Shall we go?"

"If you like."

By the time they reached her house, none of the past week's corporate infighting remained in Matt's thoughts. There was only Nicole's beauty beneath the white light at her front door. "Of course I don't want to force anything on you," she was saying as she turned her key in the lock. "We can change our mind, if you'd rather not play."

"I said you could choose."

He caught her small, pleased smile as he followed her through the silent house to the playroom. She switched on a hanging light over the Ping-Pong table, leaving the rest of the room in shadows, and slipped off her shoes. "Ties are not allowed in the playroom," she said. "Shoes are optional."

Matt took off his jacket and tie and unbuttoned the neck of his shirt.

r~M

He left his shoes on. Hefting the paddle at his end of the table, he flexed his wrist. "Do you want to warm up first?"

"I thought we'd been doing that for the past three hours."

He laughed, feeling boyish, reckless, free. At the other end of the table, lit from above, Nicole's beauty was subtly changed, shadows making her cheekbones seem higher, the line of her neck longer, her breasts barely outlined beneath layers of black lace and chiffon. She picked up the small plastic ball and looked inquiringly at Matt. "Ready," he said, and she sent the ball smashing across the table.

She played the way she drove: fast, aggressive, daring. She played to win. It took Matt a few minutes to get accustomed to the small paddle and table after years of tennis, and a few minutes more to recall the tricks he'd known in college. They all came back, and he used them all, but Nicole had her own tricks, and an uncanny ability to anticipate him: time after time she stepped back and slammed the ball across the net in an impossible return.

"Volley for serve?" she asked after ten minutes. "I think we ought to be keeping score."

"I thought we'd been doing that for the past three hours," Matt said.

She burst out laughing. "I asked for that. And I didn't see it coming. Would you like something to drink before we begin a game?"

"I would. I seem to need all the help I can get."

Smiling, she went to the refrigerator built into a cabinet along one wall. "Napoleon?"

"Fine."

She poured the cognac into two snifters and brought him one. "Does the winner get to choose the prize?"

"Of course." He took a drink, then put the glass on a counter behind him as Nicole walked around the table. "Where did you learn to play like that?"

"From two older brothers who thought female meant inferior. They allowed me to watch them at everything." She picked up the paddle. "I memorized what they did, practiced in secret, then challenged them to a game. They lost. It went on for years. They never caught on that they were my teachers. Ready?"

They volleyed until Nicole missed a shot and Matt served. They were very fast, beginning to know each other's moves, whipping the ball between them. It was only a few minutes before Matt tossed Nicole the ball so she could take over the serve. "Three-two," he said. "You watched your brothers at everything?"

"Everything." She served a slicing shot that caught the corner of the

table. "Three-three." As Matt retrieved the ball from the shadows she said, "There was a maple tree outside their bedroom windows. I'd been climbing trees since I was five. And when I was ten they began sneaking girls into their rooms. Are you going to serve?"

He played for a few minutes in silence. When it was her serve again, Matt said, "So you learned from girls, too."

"I learned not to giggle and not to pout."

"That's all?"

"That's all. The rest I learned from my brothers. To know what I want, to go after it, to make sure I'm satisfied. Don't you see? They had it all. I sat outside, looking through a pane of glass at their power, their smug confidence, their maleness. Do you remember those picture books that showed Atlas holding up the world? I thought of my father and brothers that way: chests out, muscles bulging, holding up the world. They had it all."

"They didn't have your beauty."

"Beauty is a weakness. May I have the ball? I believe it's my serve." He tossed it to her and she served again, giving the ball a treacherous spin. But Matt had seen it coming and he returned it with an opposite spin, making it bounce sideways, past her. "Ten-eleven," she said. "I didn't know you could do that."

"Neither did I. I've never done it before. Why is beauty a weakness?"

"Because people believe it's all a woman needs. If she has beauty, no one wants to waste time teaching her anything; what could she need, since she already has the greatest treasure of all? Everyone wants beauty; everyone thinks it will bring fame, fortune, happiness, whatever anyone could want. A lie, of course, but try making people believe that. Tell them beauty is an obstacle to power and they'll tell you you're just being coy."

She served again and they played in silence: fast, furious, concentrating. "Twenty-all," Matt said at last, taking over the serve. "You're a formidable opponent."

She smiled. "When I choose to be."

He studied her. "You could have minimized your beauty."

"I was afraid to. I didn't know how good my other weapons would be."

Struck by her honesty, he paused, still studying her. The amber of her eyes darkened; the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip. He took a step toward her.

"Matt," she said softly. "The game isn't over."

"It's barely begun," he said, but he stepped back and served the ball, and in another few moments Nicole won on a lazy return that sent the ball just over the net and off the edge of the table.

"Yours," Matt said with a laugh. "I should have guessed you'd pull something I hadn't seen before."

"I practice doing that." She picked up the bottle of cognac. "You're wonderful, Matt. Your eyebrows get fierce and your mouth determined. ..."

"I'm pretending to be a ship's captain getting you safely through a storm."

She gave a small laugh. "I'd trust you to do that."

Matt went to her as she filled their glasses and took the bottle from her hand. His arm circled her shoulders and his other hand covered her breast. Nicole leaned against him and raised her face. "Of course," she said, the words barely audible as her arms came up and circled his neck. "You did say the winner gets to pick the prize." Her mouth was full and soft beneath his, opening to let their tongues twist together; then, turning within his arm, she pressed the length of her body against his.

She held the kiss before slowly pulling away. Holding his hand on her breast she led him past the swing set and dart board, past stuffed animals and a hopscotch diagram on the floor, past jump ropes and pick-up-sticks and Lego sets, past the corner where he had once watched her shoot marbles, to a deep couch at the far end of the room. She drew him with her into the depths of its cushions. "If you knew how I've wanted you," she murmured. "Since that first night, at my party, when you looked wide-eyed at every room. ..."

"But tonight you chose Ping-Pong," he said, his lips against hers. He was above her as she half-lay against the arm of the couch; his hands moved from her breasts to her smooth skin and the long line of her throat. "All those damned games. ..."

Her eyes were closed, but her lips curved. "Everything is a game, Matt. Different names, different ways of playing, but it's always a game."

"And this?" His mouth came down on hers with a kind of fury at the passion pounding inside him while she talked of games. He raised his head. "Was that another one?"

"The best of all. Dear Matt, you play so beautifully, we're so well-matched, we'll be wonderful together. I promise. Whatever you want, however you want to play it. . . ."

Roughly he turned her and pulled down the thin zipper that reached her waist. The dress seemed to float off her shoulders, and he ran his hands over her bare skin, sliding them around her to cup her breasts, the nipples hard and pointed beneath his fingers. She made a low sound, like a long purr, and raised herself against him so he could pull off her dress and pantyhose, and his hands moved over her, discovering the taut lines

of her body, as lean as his, before they reached the silkiness of her thighs and the soft darkness between them.

He felt a slow shudder through her body, then she curved above him like a reed floating free in the water. "Your turn, dear Matt," she murmured, and bent her head to run her tongue along his neck, taking small bites while her quick fingers opened his shirt.

Her tongue followed her hands, the pointed tip licking small circles down his chest. He felt her warm breath as she reached his belt buckle and zipper and then her tongue moved down in long strokes as her hands slid off his clothes. Four months, he thought; no one for four months . . . But the words dissolved beneath Nicole's tongue; his hands held her breasts as her fingers curved around him, and then she took him deep into her throat, sending desire surging through his veins like a flood of molten silver.

He had to take her; the rest, the slow playing, would have to wait. He pulled himself out of her mouth and began to turn her so he could lie on her. But with a smile, as if it were still her serve, she stayed above him, moving smoothly, sinuously, upward, along his body. He saw the faint light reflected in her amber eyes; he saw the luster of her long pearls against her breasts; he watched her firm white body cover his darker one. His burning skin felt the marble coolness of hers, and fleetingly he thought of the strangeness of that, but then she was astride him, lowering herself onto him. Her breasts were above his face; he brought one and then the other into his mouth. He heard her say his name in a long whisper, like a breeze lifting their locked bodies, and then the playroom, like the past, disappeared.

66

I

'm inviting you to dinner," Tony said on the telephone. "I'll be there by four o'clock; five at the latest—"

"I'm sorry, Tony; we won't be here. In fact, we'll be in Los Angeles."

"You told me you weren't coming in this weekend."

"I wasn't. We decided at the last minute—"

"We?"

"My children and I. Peter is driving to college and we're going with him as far as Los Angeles for a couple of days. I've been promising them a trip for a long time, but Holly had to wait until the opera season ended."

"Wonderful. I'm a superb tour guide; we'll give them a visit they won't forget."

"That's sweet of you, Tony, but I know my way around by now. We won't bother you."

"I want you to bother me. I want to see you. I was coming to Santa Fe this weekend, remember? Call me when you get in. You're staying in the cottage at the Beverly Hills? Elizabeth? Will you call me or shall I call you?"

'Til call you if we have time, Tony. This really is a weekend for the three of us."

"I'd like to make it four. Think about it. Please."

She thought about it while taking turns at the wheel with Peter and Holly on the drive from Santa Fe to Los Angeles. The desert shimmered with heat waves rising from metallic brown sand to a pale sky, and when she was not driving she put her head back, eyes closed, playing word games with Peter and Holly or listening to Holly sing snatches of folk songs or operatic arias, or thinking of Tony.

"Are we going to see Tony?" Holly asked as they drove past the outskirts of Palm Springs, a sudden oasis, sharply defined, like a picture neatly cut out and pasted on the sand.

"I don't think we'll have time," Elizabeth replied.

"But won't he be at the television studios when you take us there?"

"Probably not. He doesn't come in on Friday."

"We could call him."

"I don't think so," Elizabeth said sharply. Then, more gently, she added, "We'll see how the weekend goes, Holly."

They did not mention Tony again, though later, as she led them through the different buildings of the television center, past dressing rooms and makeup rooms and along a corridor lined with studios, Elizabeth knew Holly was looking for him, and Peter was alert for anyone who looked at all familiar. "This is where we tape 'Anthony,' " she told them, and pulled open a high door, standing back to let Holly and Peter walk in ahead of her. "Tony's set," she said, gesturing toward the cut-away library where she had done her first on-camera interview, with Greg Ros-cov, in June. Almost three months ago, she thought. It was so fresh it seemed like yesterday, but at the same time it felt like years ago: so much had happened since then.

"You'd never know it's the same room you see on television," Peter said. "It feels fake when you stand in it and half of it isn't here."

Elizabeth smiled. "Television would collapse if it weren't for people's imaginations. Everyone would see it for the mirage it is. That's my set, in the other corner."

Holly was already walking toward it. The feel of the studio, dim, mysterious, romantic, sent shivers of excitement through her. Applause was best—an audience on its feet, cheering and clapping and calling for encores—but that was only a few thousand people. Television! Holly thought, stepping up to the platform where Elizabeth interviewed her guests. Millions of people!