The Parnell Affair (30 page)

Sally had remembered their conversation, too, and saw it replaying behind his suddenly un-shuttered eyes.  She smiled reassuringly and said in a slow, sultry voice, “If he's stupid enough to meet me, just the three of us—me, him, and them—all alone on his little boat,” she ended her sentence by raising a clenched fist under Tobias's chin and brandishing it menacingly.

“Ha, ha, that poor bastard,” Tobias said, relief washing over him: he would believe her even if it killed him, though their long wait for this evening made it easier. 
“Though I'd say he already doesn't know what hit him.  Oh, man.  Well, that's good news.  And although those were some of the least sexy things ever whispered into my ears—”

“Oh!”

“—I, well,” he trailed off.  “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, indicating a small round table with a cloth and two settings that occupied the half of the dining area closer to the kitchen (a couple of enormous record-filled bookshelves and stereo gear inhabited the other half of what was meant to be a dining room).

“Hmm,
elegant,” she said, touching the silverware and noticing the two champagne flutes beside each setting.  She waved him away from holding her chair.

“Thank you,” he said.  “I just hope we don't taste the silver polish on them.
”

She laughed and he went into the kitchen.  The kitchen entrance lie not three feet behind Tobias's chair; Sally could see him reach for the
refrigerator door but stop to check a simmering pot first.

“Ah!
I'm going to need a minute or two,” he said, picking up a wooden spoon, intent upon the pot, “before I bring out the hors d'oeuvres.”

Sally rose and joined him in the kitchen.  Looking around his shoulder, she said, “What's cooking?”

“Lobster bisque,” he said, giving her a quick sidelong smile.

Leaning over the pot of rich limpets and lobster, she said, “Oh, that smells wonderful!  Is that our first course?”

“The soup,” he said.  “I thought we'd have oysters first.  I planned the whole meal so it could be accompanied by champagne.”

“Aww, that's fantastic,” she said.  “I love it.”  She wrapped both arms around his waist, standing behind him.

“I'm glad—and hope it all comes out well,” he said, returning his attention to the meal.

He drew out the two claws (all the lobster meat was out of its shell) and set them on a plate atop a bowl filled with ice.  He then took a plunging blender and emulsified the remaining lobster into the bisque.

Behind him, Sally unconsciously moved her face between his shoulder blades and inhaled deeply, her eyes closing.  Breathing him had become “being with him” more so than even her embrace.  His smell had become a knowable thing.

Tobias put aside the blender and dropped the flame on the bisque to a
smolder and then rotated within Sally's arms, returned her embrace, and they kissed.  Slow and lingering, they knew they had the entire night before them and wanted the enjoy every rising moment.

They returned to the table, Tobias bringing a dozen oysters on a plate of ice and a bottle of brut champagne in a silver bucket, which he set on a low bookshelf near the table that served as a sideboard.  After the oysters and the lobster bisque came a
risotto prepared with bay scallops and purée of celery; then a main course of Sole Normande, garnished with crab, a mix of shitake, chanterelle, blue, and oyster mushrooms, deglazed with champagne, and finished with butter rather than cream; a salad of endive—with what remained of the lobster, now cold—followed; and then for dessert, a peach Melba, which Tobias was forced to make with jarred peach and IQF raspberry because of the season, though it suffered little for them and the excellence of the demi-sec champagne made up for all.

It must be admitted, despite the skillful
preparation and careful arrangement of flavors, the two lovers often ignored what they ate or forgot it on their plates.  Yet the courses quickly passed, as did nearly two bottles of champagne, amid talk of having missed each other while he was away, sudden kisses across the table, and warm looks that seemed to imply that, despite the extravagance of their dinner, the time spent at table was depriving them of some greater sustenance.

Before coffee, they took another glass of the sweet demi-sec and sat together on the couch.  Tobias had also arranged the music, and so Bill Withers sang softly behind them as conversation became a pretense and the entwining of legs gave way to a slow searching embrace.  Hands wandered into regions as yet unexplored—and if they hesitated upon the path, other hands would appear to guide them firmly to their
destinations.  The mingling of lips and tips of tongues gave way to mingled breath, breath panted and breath felt, as Tobias's hand descended; and if he lingered about curves through the silken dress, he was compelled into motion by the hand that accompanied his.  Now, cleaving to one another thus, held but not still, vigor unnecessary after so long an absence where the slow caress of a lover's touch can overwhelm, Sally's mind withdrew from her extremities, consumed by the growing waves within her that responded to the rhythm without.  Her back arched as her breath quickened but then she suddenly pushed his hand down her thigh, sat forward, and said, “Wait.”

Tobias thought she didn't want her first climax to come while still dressed and on his couch and so—with a look between bliss and urgency—made to lift her in his arms and carry her to his bedroom.  Her look of apology, wreathed in nearly agonized disappointment, stayed him.  He turned,
collapsing at the shoulders and closing his eyes, and dropped back against the couch.  He smiled as a crowd of words contended in his mind but said nothing.  The only lucid thought he had was to wonder if this night were possible at all, while she was married.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she said, both hands on his leg, leaning toward him.

He shook his head; he wouldn't say it's alright, not while he could feel his pulse beating.  “So when does Lucy go off to college?” he asked casually, trying to make a joke.  It was the only thing to do.

Sally looked away for a moment and then flopped into the couch next to him, their shoulders touching.  “Not soon enough,” she said for him, though a part of her mind said: too soon—too soon for my Lucy to leave me.  Her thoughts were elsewhere, however.  “It's not that,” she said.  She turned to look him in the face, a little pain evident in her eyes.  “I have to tell Joe.  He told me before anything serious happened between him and Ms Fromsett.  (Why don't I know that woman's first name?)  He even gave me a veto.  And he meant it, he would have lived by it.  He's like you that way: his word means something.  I have a lot of respect for that.  I may not love him, in that way, the way I'm falling in love with you,” she said and felt as if her body was rising off the couch in response to her words.  She'd not planned to say any such thing, it was simply the right place in the conversation.  But when her active mind heard her
subconscious say she was falling in love, she knew the truth of it and agreed.  “But I have to tell him first.  To tell him that I'm leaving the way he's left.  It's the right thing to do.”

“You're right,” he said at the end of a long exhale.  He then grinned and added: “Damn it all.  I suppose I don't really want Joe's aggrieved phantom standing at the foot of the bed—pointing!”

“Gah!” Sally cried.  She tried to think of a way to play along with his joke and after a moment of looking at Tobias and reliving the past few minutes over again, she threw herself to her feet.  “God!  I was an inch away,” she said, holding a hand to her forehead.  “And god knows I've waited so long.  I’ve got to get out of here.”

“What?  Now?” Tobias said.  Even frustrated and without recourse, he still didn't want her to leave.

“I feel like I want to cry,” she said.  “Being this close and not.  And that's just too pathetic.  I've got to leave now or I won't have the strength to in a few minutes.”

“Certain evil thoughts coming to mind,” he said, raising an eyebrow.  She laughed, trying to push the tension away but it sounded hopeless and forced.  “Lock door, lose keys.”

“I'm sorry,” she repeated, smiling disappointedly and putting on her coat.  “But I'm going to go and tell him right now.”

“And then come back?” he said sounding hopeful but knowing better.

“No.  Lucy would know,” she said.  “Tomorrow?  I'll take off work!”

“Can you take off from the CIA?” he asked walking her to the door, since she plainly meant to leave.

“It's a desk job,” she said.  “Forget it.”

She stared intently at his face, her hand on the door but not opening it.  He took her in his arms and kissed her; one last knockout kiss before sending her on her way.  Her hands went to him but not around his neck as usual when they kissed.

“Isn't there some sort of middle ground here we're not considering?” he asked, grinning, knowing there wasn't but using any excuse to keep her there another moment.

“No, I've—I've got to go,” she said, staring now at his shoulders, groping behind her for the doorknob.  “I've got to tell Joe.”

“Hey, you could call him,” Tobias offered and laughed.

“Look, I'm trying to do the right thing,” she said, wide half-frightened eyes finding his.  “And I really am seconds away from losing it and—”

“I won't let you,” he said calmly.  He reached behind her and twisted the doorknob, sliding her aside so the door could open.  “I love you too much for that.”

He kissed her again but pushed her through the doorway.  Or
I'm
going to lose it, he thought.

“She leaves for school at seven,” Sally mumbled.

She didn't say goodbye or hear him close the door as she flew down the stairs.  At the foyer doors, she turned and, as if part of her controlled her legs and another part her arms, she walked back to the stairs but kept herself at arm's length of them for a moment before rushing out and to her car.

She raced through the streets on her way home, at first, but calmed quickly and regained her composure as the task ahead—telling her husband—presented itself to her mind.  There were so many things she'd never said to him—about herself, what she'd gone through at the end of their marriage, doubts about its beginning—that she had to organize them and discard for another time the extraneous.  Simplicity, she told herself: ask him about Ms Fromsett and then—since he always leaves an opening in the conversation to introduce the subject of my taking a lover—tell him about Tobias.  She surprised herself with feeling a desire for these two men in her life to like one another.

Sally stopped along the way to change back into her office attire, simply slipping her skirt and blouse over her dress (which was so thin it went unnoticed or appeared to be a chemise if seen at her blouse button).  She threw her Sable coat into her trunk—to retrieve after everyone left the next day—and took out her puffy down coat, though she was too hot to wear it.  In a few more minutes, she was home.  She had planned—if Lucy were in the living room—to call Joe upstairs with her.  Upon opening the front door, however, she found Joe sitting in an armchair facing her with a look of smoldering fury on his face.  Immediately she guessed he had somehow learned of where she had been and what she had done, and the hypocrisy of his anger ignited anger in her.  She took a few steps into the living room and felt the urge to tear off her work clothes and again reveal her provocative dress, declaring in a motion what she'd done.  He did not seem to notice her defiance.

“Our daughter was kidnapped today,” he said.

“What!” Sally cried, her eyes starting out of her head, terror seizing her features.

“She's upstairs now,” Joe said after brutally letting a moment pass.  “She's packing; she's unhurt.  Unhurt,” he repeated scornfully to himself, knowing that the experience must have left marks upon his seventeen-year old daughter, other than physical.

Sally stifled another cry and impatiently brushed the tears from her eyes.  She tried to fathom why Joe would tell her in this vicious manner but moved toward the stairs, needing to see Lucy first.

“Wait a moment!” Joe shouted, coming to his feet.

“How did this happen?” she demanded.  “And why are you speaking to me this way?”

“Those questions are one in the same,” he said, comporting himself.  “And are answered very easily—as far as I have the answers,” he said with a significance Sally did not understand.  “When Lucy left school this afternoon, six men,” Joe said, “openly carrying weapons, and with a badge of some sort, approached her as she walked to her car.  They told her that she was in danger and must come with them.  Their manner disturbed her but she could not resist—they laid hands on her!  They forced her into a van and, to her surprise, brought her here.  Here they waited.  She was frightened, she said, although she could not say why: a menace existed in the room, though it could not be attributed to any action.  The only answer they gave when she questioned them—when she dared—was that some unofficial operation of yours had made enemies of those who would resort to violence.

“After six, I got home—and during those three hours she was kept seated in that chair, prevented from using the toilet, given no water, not allowed to user her phone!—and as I turned my key in the door, it opened and a man with a submachine gun motioned me inside.  Only one of them spoke.  He told me much the same that he told Lucy.  He said, 'We were very worried about your daughter.  Thanks to your wife's ongoing and unofficial operation, we believed your daughter was in danger of being kidnapped so we escorted her home.  Your wife's conduct is so dangerous after all, every precaution must be taken.'  His tone and vulgar insinuation left no doubt who sent him and why.  He and his men walked out, all of them leering, all of them saying excuse me as the knocked into me.  The last thing was said to me at my back, before the door closed: ‘So dangerous, provoking brutal people—who knows what they would do to such a young, attractive girl.’”