The Friends We Keep (8 page)

20

 

About a week after the baseball game and the dinner with Sophie and John, I stepped off the elevator and into the lobby of the building that houses the office of Caldwell and Company—to find Sophie's son leaning against a marble wall, legs crossed at the ankle, hands in the front pockets of his slouchy jeans.

I'm rarely caught off guard—sometimes I wonder if I've lost the ability to be surprised—but the sudden appearance of my friend's sexy son disarmed me. I continued to walk toward the big glass doors but felt a slight hesitation in my step.

“Hi,” he said when I came within earshot. “Remember me?”

I stopped. “Oh,” I said, as if just recalling our first meeting, “that's right, you're Sophie's son.”

Of course, Jake didn't believe for a moment that he'd slipped my mind. “Uh-huh. Jake.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, innocently. “On your way to a job interview?”

Jake pushed off the wall and took his hands from his pockets. “In a way,” he said. “I'm here to see you.”

Oh, boy. This kid was good.

“You're cheeky,” I pointed out.

Jake grinned. “It's one of my best qualities. Want to go for a drink?”

“Yes,” I said, and then, “No.”

“Is that a maybe?”

I looked again at his clothes: jeans, a T-shirt, and a relaxed, cotton blazerlike jacket. On his feet he wore a pair of Vans. Other than the shoes, the entire outfit probably came from Old Navy. “Where?” I asked.

“Wherever you'd like.”

“You're a bit underdressed for the Oak Room,” I said.

“My money,” he said easily, “is as good as the stuff a guy in a suit carries.”

“Money is the great equalizer,” I agreed. Still, I thought, someone might see us at the Oak Room, someone I know, and then what? What would he, or she, think?

“How about J. P. Moran's?” I suggested.

Jake looked me up and down. Slowly. Damn. “I'd say you're a bit too well dressed for a pub,” he said finally.

“I'm always the best-dressed woman in the room. I'm used to the attention.”

“I'm sure you are.”

There was nothing else to say. Together we left the building and mostly in silence—with an occasional glance and enigmatic smile—we made our way to J. P. Moran's.

“The bar okay?” Jake asked when we stepped into the cozy dimness of the traditional-style Irish pub.

“Yes,” I said. “Down at the end.” I led us to stools at the farthest, darkest end of the bar. Better, I thought, to play it safe. As far as I knew this place wasn't a hangout for any of the Caldwell staff, but habits have been known to change.

The bartender was a burly guy with Victorian muttonchops. “Got some ID?” he rumbled to Jake, after taking my order of a martini.

“Sure.” Jake reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

I cringed. I'm sure the bartender assumed Jake was out with his mother or his aunt or maybe even his boss. Certainly not—what was I? Not a friend. Not a lover. Not yet.

“I'm thinking of growing a beard. I think it will make me look my age.”

When was the last time anyone had mistaken me for being underage? My parents and teachers used to say that I looked “mature” for my age. For a long time, I took that as a compliment.

“So, what do you think?”

“About what?” I asked.

“About my growing a beard.”

“Oh, that.” Had he mentioned growing a beard? “I'm not partial to facial hair. Of course,” I said, with a nervous, flapping gesture of my hand, “it's your face. You can do what you want with it. Why should I care?”

When the bartender had placed our drinks before us, Jake looked at me intently and asked: “Are you uncomfortable? Being here with me?”

I took a bracing sip of the martini before replying. “I hate to admit this,” I said, “in fact, I loathe myself for confessing—but, yes, I am a bit uncomfortable. Why are you here, Jake? Why are we here?”

“You chose to join me for a drink,” Jake said matter-of-factly.

“And you chose to show up uninvited in the lobby of my office building. That's the burning question. Why? Why did you hunt me down?”

Jake turned to face me more completely. His knee touched mine. My body quivered. “I'd prefer to say that I sought you out. Hunting isn't a sport I can get into.”

Oh, boy. “So,” I said carefully, “you sought me out like a prize. Is that it?”

Jake nodded. His knee was still touching mine. “Well put,” he said.

That's when I realized I was going to have to employ every ounce of my energy in order to resist getting involved with this sexy, impertinent, man/boy. I might not have been skilled at the game of friendship, but I wasn't ignorant of its general rules and regulations. My renewed friendship with Sophie was at risk should I get involved with Jake. Of course, if we kept our affair a deep, dark, secret, all might still be well. But if Sophie should ever find out what we'd been up to, I knew I could wave good-bye to the friendship.

The friendship I still wasn't sure I wanted.

“You're a man of considerable charms, Jake Holmes,” I said. I wondered if my voice betrayed the dizzying effect his touch was having on my body.

Jake ran a finger down the length of my thigh. “I know,” he said.

21

 

He called the next morning. I'd given him my business card but he could have gotten the number from information. I was pretty sure that Jake didn't let little things stand in the way of getting what he wanted. He was, after all, an only child and I'd witnessed his mother's near-worship of her offspring.

He asked me to meet him for lunch. I told him that I had a meeting. He suggested I cancel the meeting.

“You don't know me very well,” I replied. “Nothing comes before work.”

“All work and no play dulls a woman's senses.”

“Who said anything about no play? Really, Jake, you shouldn't make assumptions.”

“You're right,” he said. “I shouldn't. But I'm human so I'll probably continue to assume and make an ass out of you and me.”

“Cute. Anything else? Because I'm very busy.”

“Not too busy to take my call,” he pointed out. “I'm going to assume that's a good sign. I'm going to assume that you want to see me again.”

I let him wait for my reply. I counted out a full sixty seconds, an eternity.

“Meet me at Hantman's at six-thirty,” I said into the silence. “And don't be late.”

“I won't be late,” he said.

But he was, ten minutes late. I was just about to pay the bill and leave when I caught sight of him in the mirror over the bar. God, did he look good.

We had a drink and said little. When the bartender asked if we wanted another, Jake said, “No.”

We went back to his apartment and had sex, immediately, without awkward preliminaries. It was fantastic.

Afterward, stretched out in Jake's rather comfortable bed (I later learned that Sophie had bought the expensive mattress for him “just because.”), I felt a twinge of guilt about what I'd done; I did. But I defy anyone to resist the kind of sexual attraction that clamors to be fulfilled. Besides, Jake was of legal age, even if certain bartenders in this city didn't believe it without proof.

“Mom doesn't need to know,” Jake said abruptly. “It's really none of her business, is it? What's happening here will be our little secret.”

“There's one condition,” I said. “Besides the secrecy thing.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe we can not talk about your—about Sophie, okay? At least, if you have to mention her, try to call her Sophie and not Mom.”

Jake leaned on one arm and looked at me, his expression serious. “I can do that. I think.”

“And no one else knows. No one.”

Jake grinned. “I can't tell my friends I'm having sex with the hottest woman in town?”

I considered. A little free publicity never hurt anyone. “Okay,” I said. “As long as your friends understand that your—that Sophie can never know.”

“What about your friends?” Jake asked. “Besides my—besides Sophie, I mean. Are you going to keep me a secret from them?”

I didn't need to consider that question at all. Aside from Sophie, and possibly John, I didn't have any friends. And, really, I didn't even know Sophie and John all that well, did I? No one else would care that I was having an affair with a twenty-one-year-old graduate student with a fabulous butt.

No one would care.

That meant I was free.

“No,” I said. “I'm going to enjoy you all to myself.”

22

 

“You see those two at the table in the corner?” I whispered.

Sophie glanced ever so naturally at the painting on the corner wall. “The man with the silver hair and the woman in the red blouse?” she whispered back.

“They're having an affair. He's been married for over thirty years to the same woman. This one is his mistress. His latest mistress. He recycles about once a year.”

Sophie's eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

“I did some work for his company once, about five years ago,” I explained. “He attempted to recruit me for the job of prancing around town with him but I declined the offer. Though I must say he's known as a generous guy. I'm sure I could have scored some good jewelry.”

“That's horrible!” Sophie leaned in. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk so loudly,” she stage-whispered. “What a creep!”

I shrugged. “He's actually a pretty nice guy. He gives a bundle to one of the city's most needy homeless shelters each year. And he set up a scholarship at his wife's alma mater.”

“But still . . . He cheats on her!”

Poor Sophie, I thought. She sees life as black and white while I see it as entirely gray. “Practically every married person I know cheats,” I told her. “Not all the time, necessarily, but when the opportunity presents itself. There's no harm in it, really. As long as the spouse at home doesn't find out. It can be very simple.”

Sophie shook her head vehemently. “Cheating,” she said, “is never simple. And it's wrong. It's insulting to the person being cheated on. Anyone can see that.”

“I suppose that's one argument,” I conceded. “It's just that I've seen so many functioning marriages that include affairs or the occasional fling it's hard to imagine a marriage that doesn't include some degree of illicit sex.”

“Who are these people, anyway? Where do you meet these people?”

“Everywhere,” I said. “At work, mostly.”

“And they just admit to cheating on their spouses?”

I couldn't mistake the look of distaste on Sophie's face.

“Some talk pretty openly about their extracurricular activities, yes,” I said. I thought about one of the senior art directors who regularly brought his latest mistress up to the office for a tour. “And sometimes, it's just rumor, but in most cases, the rumors turn out to be true. People leave a trail of clues, no matter how careful they think they're being.”

Of course, as the words were leaving my mouth I was desperately aware of how they applied to my own situation with Jake. Was it only a matter of time before Sophie, before John, discovered our little secret? I felt uneasy and wished I hadn't steered the conversation onto the topic of behind-the-scenes sex.

Sophie snuck another look at the illicit couple in the corner. “How do these people reconcile being a good spouse with being an adulterer?”

“You're assuming,” I said, “that they even try to reconcile the two. Plenty of people live two distinct lives and never, or rarely, feel the need to excuse or explain it to themselves or to anyone else.”

“I could never live a lie,” Sophie said.

I'm not exactly living a lie, I thought in my own defense. I'm not the same as an adulterer. But why should all these fine moral distinctions matter to me? Conversations with Sophie could rattle my usual complacency.

“No, you probably couldn't.” My tone was distinctly mean-spirited.

Sophie, in turn, looked disappointed in me. “You make it sound like living an honest life is a bad thing.”

“People have to live their lives in the way they have to live them,” I said. “Who am I to judge someone else's behavior? I don't know what goes on inside the head of my colleague who loves his wife and kids but who's been having sex with someone on the side for years. As far as I can see, in terms of how he relates to my life, he's a nice guy. He's hardworking, goes to church, has a friendly smile. That's all that matters.”

Yes, it sounded a little lame even to my own ears.

“Plenty more would matter to his wife,” Sophie said indignantly. “And to his kids if they found out their father was a cheat!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it probably would matter to his family if they found out. But that's not my concern.”

Sophie seemed to be thinking aloud when she said: “How can he go to church and stand before God and know he's living a lie?”

Didn't the Catholic Church preach that God forgives sinners? Maybe, I thought, the sinner has to repent of his bad behavior and promise never to do it again before he gets the good-to-go from God. I wasn't sure how it all worked but didn't want to drag religion any further into the conversation than I'd already inadvertently done.

“Sophie,” I said, “I can't answer that for you.”

“I'm not saying that I'm perfect, I'm not, but . . . It's just so hard to wrap my head around things like affairs and one-night stands. It makes me feel very confused.”

“So,” I suggested, “don't think about them. Focus on the stuff you can get your head around. Like . . . Well . . .”

“Real estate,” Sophie replied promptly. “My job, I mean. My son. Taking care of my home. My parents. The fact that my ex-husband is dating someone half his age.”

“How clichéd of him,” I commented, annoyingly aware of my own clichéd situation with Jake. At least, I argued silently, I'm not cheating on anyone. Even so, on some very murky level my life was beginning to feel just a bit—well, murky.

Sophie laughed. “Well, Brad isn't always the classiest guy. He cheated on me, you know. Twice, maybe more. I know I denied it before, but now I want you to know the truth.”

“Oh,” I said. Wasn't that how friendships were supposed to be, ever more intimate? I shifted a bit in my seat. This friendship thing was a dangerously slippery slope.

“I never knew about his affairs until he asked for a divorce,” she went on. “He didn't have to tell me at all. I'd already agreed to a divorce. But I think he needed my forgiveness.”

“Or,” I surmised, “he needed to hurt you for not begging him to stay.”

“No,” she said. “Do you think?”

“I don't know. But the male ego is fragile. It was stupid of him to tell you, really. You could have gotten furious and demanded a lot more in the divorce than I'm guessing you demanded.”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “I was angry at first. But the more I thought about it the more I realized I didn't care so much. Back when I was happy—at least, back when I thought I was happy—I would have died if I found out Brad was sleeping around. But hearing about his affairs when I did just confirmed that the marriage was really over.”

“Lucky Brad,” I commented dryly. “He got off easy. Anyway, is that why you're so against adultery?”

“Really, Eva,” Sophie said, as if scolding me. “Even if Brad hadn't cheated on me I'd still think adultery is wrong. Maybe it's understandable in some cases, I don't know, but in the end, it's wrong.”

Just to play the role of devil's advocate I said: “Not if it's done with consent of the spouse.”

“Of course. I guess.” Sophie shook her head. “But that sort of thing puzzles me. I'm very straightforward when it comes to relationships. I believe they should consist of two people who are committed only to each other.”

“No further restrictions?”

“No. What sort of restrictions would there be? Except of course that both people be consenting adults.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I know you think I'm a prude or hopelessly narrow-minded,” Sophie said suddenly. “But I'm not either of those things, Eva. I like sex as much as the next person.”

Sophie made this statement as if to convince herself, not me.

“I'm sure you do,” I said.

Just then the illicit couple from the corner table walked past us. The man nodded at me, and winked. The woman raised a hand, ostensibly to pat her perfect blowout, but really to showcase the diamond ring she'd no doubt earned the hard way.

When they were gone, Sophie shuddered; I think it was for real.