The Last Chance (4 page)

The party was held on a Friday night, starting at eight. Rachel had decided that people should dress up. There was a buffet dinner, a lot to drink of course—mostly white wine, because people wanted that lately—and she had hired a pianist. Handsome young men sent from the caterer were running all over the place. Rachel preferred them to maids. It made the wives feel sexier, even though the waiters were homosexual.

Dressed, Lawrence presented himself to her for her approval. It was nice of him to do that, she thought, it made her feel important to him, and it was one of the few times she felt that he, not just his environment, needed her. She in turn presented herself to him for his approval. They shared a glass of champagne together in the library before the guests came. It would probably be the last time they would see each other until the party was over.

The Christmas decorations were long gone, and Rachel had managed to have spring flowers flown in. The large apartment looked fresh, blooming and cheerful. She supposed everything would go right, it always did. It was too bad she couldn’t get drunk and enjoy herself, but champagne was fattening. She would just be charming and bored.

Ellen was thrilled. She had wanted to be the first to arrive so she would have time to chat with the Fowlers, but then she decided Hank was a detriment and it would be better to arrive later so she could lose him in the crowd. When they got there Nikki and Robert were already there.

“I love your wife,” Nikki said to Hank. “I think she’s enchanting. She’s going to be so good at her new job. Everyone loves her.”

Hank looked pleased but uncomfortable. “Don’t be jealous, dear,” Ellen said to him.

“Oh, why would he be jealous?” Nikki said cheerfully. She was bubbling and bouncing all over the place like a blond cheerleader. In a minute there were three other men around her, all admiring her. Robert hovered over her for a while and then went to the bar.

Ellen lost Hank as soon as possible. In a few minutes she had her own group of men around her. One of them brought her a drink. They were a banker, an advertising executive, a doctor, and an actor. They were all married, except for the actor, who had a possessive date at least twenty years younger than he who kept clutching onto him. No wonder poor Margot never finds anybody, Ellen thought. All the men are divine but they’re all taken.

Margot, in the library where it was quieter, kept looking at her watch. She had to be back at the studio soon to prepare the news. There was a very attractive boy standing by the fireplace, maybe twenty, watching everything with that cool, self-possessed air young kids put on when they’re uncomfortable. She was immediately attracted to him in a way she hadn’t felt for a long time, and she thought how funny it would be if at last he turned out to be the one who could move her. He looked at her, right into her eyes, and smiled. “Hello,” he said without moving toward her.

She moved toward him.

“You keep looking at the time,” he said. He had a soft, sweet voice, sexy. But just a kid. Nothing for her—she’d have to be crazy.

“I have to go to work soon,” Margot said. “I do live news on TV.”

“I’ve seen you,” he said. “Margot King. Murder and mayhem at eleven.” He smiled. He had sensual lips and perfect teeth.

“You know who I am, but who are you?”

“I’m Kerry Fowler.”

“Related to …?”

“Lawrence Fowler’s son.”

Oh, God, someone’s son. She had graduated from someone’s husband to someone’s son. Her aging was complete. Lawrence and Rachel didn’t have any children, and Rachel was too young to be this boy’s mother anyway, so he must be from Lawrence’s long-ago first marriage. She found herself laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“Me,” Margot said.

“Are you having a good time?”

“I don’t like the noise and smoke, but I like parties. At least, I always think I’m going to like them. When I was a little girl my mother always used to get me something new when there was going to be a party, a dress or shoes or something, and she would put it in the closet and say, ‘Now, you can’t wear this until the party.’ So I’d wait and wait, thinking something wonderful was going to happen, and then the party was always a disappointment. I guess the fantasy of what would happen to me when I wore that dress was better than what ever did happen.” She smiled, looking carefully at this boy, Kerry, to make sure he wasn’t laughing at her. “I guess I’m still that way.”

“Me too,” he said. “I used to go to camp, and my parents would buy me all this stuff, and I’d fantasize about camping out in the woods and how great it would be, and then I’d always get in trouble with the counselors about breaking some rule, and they’d have to send for my parents and it would be a big hassle.”

“I loathed camp,” Margot said. “I’d sit in my bunk and read instead of being good at athletics, and all the other girls hated me.”

“We have the same memories.”

“We can’t possibly have the same memories,” Margot said, “you’re too young.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

Sixteen years older than he is. But if I were a man and he was a young girl, nobody would think it was so terrible. “I’m thirtynine.”

He absolutely beamed. “That’s great! You don’t look it. I thought you were about twenty-eight.”

“Only because at your age thirty-nine is unimaginable,” Margot said. “What do you do anyway?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Published?”

“I have a contract for my first novel, which is about halfway finished. It’s not autobiographical.”

“Okay.”

“It’s sort of a fantasy.”

“They’re the best,” Margot said. “My entire life is fantasy.”

“The news?”

“No, my private life. In self-defense against the news.”

“Can I come with you when you go to work tonight?” He sounded so earnest, like a kid.

She shrugged. “I guess so. You can watch me type.”

“I’m not much good at parties anyway,” he said. “And besides, I thought then maybe you and I could go have a drink somewhere.”

I wonder if he thinks I’m a celebrity. No, he wouldn’t; he’s been around celebrities all his life. Maybe he just thinks I’m interesting. “Okay.”

His eyes were big and green, like a cat’s, curious and knowing. “You’re wondering why I want to be with you,” he said. “But I’m wondering why you want to be with me. I think you’re beautiful.”

“Let’s just say I think you’re beautiful too,” Margot said lightly, but she felt her heart turn over. I think I’m not so dead after all, she thought.

Rachel saw Margot King leave with Kerry and she smiled. Women just loved that boy and he loved them too. If she’d been a different type of woman she might have wanted to have a go at him herself. But she had never cheated on Lawrence in the ten years they’d been married. Even with the little sex he gave her, she had no inclination to cheat. She liked to flirt a little, she touched people a lot, lightly, innocently, but without desire. It was a part of communication to put your hand on someone’s arm, to give a brief hug, a butterfly kiss. It was the language of the group they traveled with and meant no more than “How are you today?”

She sighed. They all knew so much more than she, those other women. She did everything flawlessly, but that was all she did. Margot had a job, a life, and could whisk off a young man from a party with not a backward glance, nor a forward one either. Nikki had a good job and a married life, even Ellen Rennie, who’d never done anything outstanding, was launched on a job Rachel would have been perfect for. But that was their world, and she was in hers. She wondered whether her guests envied her or whether they thought she was foolish and laughed at her behind her back, or whether she was almost invisible to them, like the caterers who made the party work so well. She wondered if any of the husbands thought of her as a woman in her own right, or just as something lovely that belonged to Lawrence and came with the house, like the Ming vase and the Coromandel screen and the Matisse.

He thought of it as Rachel’s house, never Lawrence-and-Rachel’s, always had, although to them he was just another guest. Just entering the place where she lived, where she had a private life, took his breath away. The specialness of her had become his obsession. His fantasies concerned only her. In one of them she was in a trance, but not dead, and in his power; he could do what he wanted with her, and when she woke she would love him. Ludicrous, of course, that he had to imagine her immobile in order to possess her, when the fact that she was in his fantasy alone wasn’t enough. He was always amazed that he could carry on a normal conversation with her and keep everyone from suspecting what he was thinking. It was almost as if he himself hadn’t known what he was thinking until that evening, so many months ago, when he pocketed her Fabergé egg.

When he realized what he’d done he was horrified. Stealing something of that value was grand larceny. He was a respectable man. But once her egg was in his pocket, surrounded by his damp fingers, he felt it emitting vibrations of Rachel’s own hand and he couldn’t put it back on the table from which he’d whisked it away. He knew it was something she cared about a great deal. She had stroked it, and now it belonged to him. He had taken it home and hidden it where his wife could never find it. And after a while he realized it wasn’t what he wanted at all, never had been. He wanted something closer to Rachel, something that had touched not her hand but her body.

Outside the master bedroom there was a bathroom with two doors, one leading to the bedroom, the other to a large dressing room, which in turn led to another bathroom. It was a veritable maze of luxury. He entered quickly through the bedroom, locked the door behind himself, walked through the suite, and locked the door that opened from the last bathroom to the hall. Now no one could interrupt him. Everything of her most private life was here.

One bathroom, with brown tiles and houndstooth-printed towels, was her husband’s. The other, pink and white, with mirrored walls, was hers. He imagined Rachel, naked from her tub, standing reflected in all those mirrors like a kind of symbol. She was too perfect to be a woman. There should be an infinity of her, reflected and rereflected, and belonging only to him. The scent of her perfume still hovered in the damp room, and he felt dizzy from the feelings and confusion it evoked. The bath towel she had used was gone, some maid of superefficiency had removed it and replaced it with dozens of little linen hand towels. No ring in her tub, of course not. He looked around, and his breath came in rasps like an asthmatic’s because he knew what he wanted now. He opened her hamper.

There, coiled on the bottom waiting for his hand, were the underpants, pantyhose, and transparent wisp of bra she had tossed in before her bath. His hand went for the bikini pants. He touched them and felt the blood rush to his groin. They were so clean it was as if she had never worn them at all. He had known that in his heart, for Rachel was no ordinary woman. Nothing about her would ever be soiled or would soil anything. He crumpled the silky pants in his fist and held them to the pain between his legs. He didn’t know what to do; he couldn’t walk out of here and face all those people with a hard-on, but he couldn’t disgrace himself in here either. If he did it on a towel the maid would see later, and even though no one would know who had done it he would know. He didn’t want to do it on her pants, not yet, not here. But why not now, here? Knowing she was somewhere in the apartment made it better.

He felt terrible afterward. It was as if he’d been crazy and had come to his senses. Why did he have these lapses? He folded the bit of sodden nylon into as small a lump as possible and put it into his trousers pocket inside his handkerchief. He was so normal, why did he sometimes get out of control like this, for her, only for her? A sharp rapping on the bathroom door brought him back completely. This bathroom was obviously the women’s toilet and the other was for the men. He knew that rapping sound well enough. Some bitch in a hurry. He walked quietly out of Rachel’s bathroom, through the dressing room and Lawrence’s bathroom, and unlocked the door to the bedroom, letting himself out. Let the bitch suffer. He hoped it was his wife.

At three in the morning Margot King and Kerry Fowler were lying in her bed. The record player had clicked off, the wine bottle was empty, they had made love, and she didn’t have to get up early the next morning. She would fix him English muffins with lavender honey. Real coffee, not instant. He was everything she had suspected he would be—loving, so loving, with the perfect, beautiful body only the young had. He still had his arms around her.

“Would you like to move in with me for a while?” she asked. She waited.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I have to write my book.”

“You’d keep your own apartment of course. You could write your book there. There are times I have to be alone too.”

He looked at her and grinned. “For what?”

“Just for me.”

“You’re so beautiful.” He kissed her on top of the head.

“There would be no house rules. Just honesty.”

“That’s a rule,” he said, but she knew he was teasing her.

“I’ll give you a key. I mean … lend you one.”

“Give, lend—why are you so hung up on words? If I move in, you’re my old lady.”

“Old lady!”

They both laughed.

“Would you?” she asked timidly.

“Okay,” he said. “As long as we both understand the real nature of this relationship.”

“And what is that?”

“That I’m the grown-up and you’re the kid,” Kerry said.

“How did you know that so soon?” Margot cried in delight. They bit at each other like puppies, giggling. Margot felt so alive and full of joy that she thought she might die of it.

February 1975

Jill Rennie, the older daughter of Ellen and Hank, was fifteen going on sixteen, five feet six, and weighed ninety-one pounds. At first you didn’t notice it because her face still had a childish roundness, huge dark-lashed eyes, soft mouth. In a previous time she might have looked like Twiggy. But while Twiggy’s little-boy look had been an accident of musculature, Jill’s was the deliberate product of starvation. She had been meant to look like her mother —athletic, rangy, filled out. Instead she still looked prepubescent. Her summer uniform was a boy’s undershirt and tight jeans, her winter uniform the jeans with a tight wool body sweater. She had no breasts, and she had not yet started her periods, although she lied about it to her mother. Jill wasn’t really aware of what she looked like; she thought she was too fat. She wanted to lose just a little more. She knew the adults disapproved of the way she looked, however, so she never let them know she was dieting. It was easy to fool them, they thought all teen-agers were crazy anyway. She pretended to be a health-food faddist.