Please (23 page)

Since the concert in Chicago, she had started replying to Sebastian
’s emails. Not long replies. And not every day, but she was replying, engaging, complicit. Sebastian didn’t post links to gossip sites anymore, but Elizabeth had them all set up in her bookmarks now, and she checked them daily, even though Sebastian had told her that
AWOL
was currently filming in the rainforests of Southern Mexico. He said he wrote to her on his lunch break from a divey internet cafe called La Morena Guapa.

His messages were shorter and more graphic, but his spelling was just as bad. He attached photos of the set, of his hotel room, of himself with his arms around two pretty chocolate-eyed girls, their bare arms honey-brown in their cheap tank tops,
“just friends” in the subject line.

She wrote back, describing in dripping, lurid detail what she had imagined them doing while she was straddling her husband. Her married sex life had never been better, though
she still insisted on keeping her top on and the lights off. She wasn’t ready for him to see the tattoo.

Sebastian kept asking her to send a picture of it, preferably including the rest of her naked body, but she had demurred, so far. Now she had something better to give him.

“I will be in London the last week of April for a book tour. Will extend it for two nights in London if you come.”

Her heart thumping, she clicked send.

*

Elizabeth had been avoiding her friends since the Justin Timberlake concert. And, she suspected, Emily, at least, was avoiding her too. Normally, the three families spent a lot of time together. But not long after they returned to Fairfield, Nina
’s maiden aunt had died. As the favorite niece, Nina had been called on to sort out the estate in France. With Nina out of the picture, Elizabeth couldn’t face Emily’s judgmental glares, so she had been using her impending deadline as an excuse to send Keenan to soccer practice with Steve or her mother. And both Emily and Elizabeth had been struck by strange urges to take their respective families on mini-road trips on the weekends.

“
Oh, it’s the annual Tulip Festival this weekend in Keosaqua,” Elizabeth said as the family sat around the breakfast table, sullenly spooning their oatmeal one clammy Wednesday morning.

“
Ugh,” Keenan said rolling his eyes. “Not another car trip. Why can’t we just stay here this weekend? Avery said he got a new scooter when they were in Des Moines and he’ll let me try it.”

“
Yeah,” Steve agreed. “I haven’t seen Chase or Mark in ages. Why don’t we have the Spitzers and the Dubois over for a game day, or something?”

“
But the Tulip Festival,” Elizabeth pleaded, lamely, looking at her mother and Gwen. “We could make it a girls’ day out,” she said brightly.

Gwen glowered at her and bubbled her oatmeal between her lips.

Connie shook her head. “I’ll pass. I want to get the lettuce into the ground before it gets too warm. Besides, I promised Helen at the church that I’d help her bake pies for their spring fund-raiser.”

“
Game day! Game day!” Keenan started chanting, pounding his fist on the table. Gwen and Steve laughingly joined him. “Game day! Game day!”

Elizabeth threw her hands up, smiling.
“Okay! You win,” she said, reaching over to ruffle Keenan’s hair. “I’ll give Emily a call tonight.”

That night, she held her breath listening to Emily
’s phone ring, willing her not to pick up. No such luck.

“
Hey,” Emily said, that one word enough to convey the fact that she was still holding Elizabeth in contempt.

“
Oh, hi,” Elizabeth answered, brightly. “Listen, the family’s been bugging me non-stop for a get together, and I was going to go to the Tulip Festival, but ...

Emily interrupted, her tone flat and sullen as a
teenaged boy. “That was last week. Strawberry Festival this week.”

“
Oh, really? Okay, well, we were going to go but ...”

Emily let out a long sigh.
“Yep, us too, but to tell you the truth, I’ve had it up to here with all these hokey parades and I’m going to need to break out the old maternity sweatpants if I eat another corn dog. Plus Chase and the boys have been on my back too.”

“
Okay, great then,” Elizabeth chirped, feeling anything but happy. “The only thing is, I’m on a deadline, so ...”

“
Oh, yeah,” Emily agreed, though her voice was heavily laced with sarcasm. “I’ve got a ton of research to do for this interview I’m doing next week, too, so I won’t be involved. It’ll have to be a dads and kids deal.”

“
Right,” Elizabeth said, half relieved, half disappointed. Emily hadn’t forgiven her yet. But even if she had, how could Elizabeth face those gimlet eyes knowing that she’d be seeing Sebastian again in a few days?

“
Our place or yours?” Emily sighed.

“
Um, well, we
could
have it here. I could just shut myself in my office, but ...”

Emily cut her off.
“Forget it. We’ll have it here.”

“
Great! I’ll send a cake,” Elizabeth said, trying to sound as if what was going on under the surface wasn’t.

“
Whatever,” Emily answered.

*

As the train pulled into London’s King’s Cross station, Elizabeth fluffed up her hair and checked to make sure that she had everything. On Abbie’s insistence, she was traveling light and had managed to pack a week’s worth of clothes into one small wheeled suitcase. She pulled it down from the overhead compartment, nearly taking her own head off in the process.

“
Are you alright?” the man across the aisle asked her, standing up to help her lower the case to the floor. He was in his early forties, slim, dressed in an obviously expensive dark suit, a plain gold band on his ring finger. The thought flashed through Elizabeth’s head that this was the type of man she should be having an affair with, if she had to have one. He understood about family, about responsibilities, about security.

She smiled at him.
“Thanks.” The truth was, she was not alright.

The past five days, each one an enervating blur of book signings and interviews and breakfasts with publishers and tea with bookstore executives and nights spent in cramped sterile hotel rooms where the closets were so shallow she could barely fit her
clothes in, had left her emotionally drained and fragile. Add to that the increasing nervous excitement she felt about her impending meeting with Sebastian, chronic jet lag and the worrying symptoms of PMS, and you got a frayed mess of exposed nerve endings that was likely to burst into tears if her toast was burnt.

That had actually happened at breakfast this morning. Fortunately, she had been the only customer in the hotel restaurant at six in the morning, but the poor waitress, broad cheekbones and accent betraying her Eastern European origins, had been frightened and bewildered, bringing Elizabeth fresh golden toast and a second cappuccino at no extra charge.

Slinging her laptop and purse over her shoulder, Elizabeth sneaked a surreptitious glance at her neighbor. He was attractive in that long-faced pale English way, his light brown hair neatly trimmed and just beginning to gray at the temples.

He caught her eye and smiled.
“In London on business?” he asked.

“
Um, actually, I’ve just been all around England on business. Now, I’m spending a couple of nights in London.”

“
For pleasure.” His eyes twinkled as he said it.

Elizabeth blushed.
“I hope.”

He laughed.
“Indeed.”

The train stopped and the passengers filed off, most of them luggage-free and looking bored, as if taking the train into London were as routine as brushing their teeth.

As she stepped onto the platform the man touched her lightly on the arm. “Enjoy your stay,” he said, winking.

Elizabeth smiled and nodded. She watched him walk down the tiled platform, briefcase in one hand, a well-worn leather overnight bag on his shoulder. Pushed along by the crowd, she walked in the same direction, losing sight of him, then spotting him again as she walked into the vaulted circular hall of the station. He was kissing a rosy-cheeked young blond. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her eyes closed in rapture. No wedding ring, Elizabeth noticed as she walked past. Of course.

She smiled wryly to herself as she followed the blue and white illuminated signs outside to the taxi stand. Of course men like that understood about family and responsibility and security, but the ones who were having affairs were looking to escape all that. They wanted to recapture the feeling of being wild and young and free again, if only for the odd stolen afternoon in the City. They thought that if they bathed in the blood of enough virgins, they could stay young forever.

Is that what I
’m doing, she asked herself as she stood in the queue, trying to avoid the inevitable? And what about Sebastian? What was in it for him? She heard Mel’s voice again, wine-soaked and hissing. “So you got to ask yourself, why would he want me when he could have that?”

Elizabeth shook her head to dispel the image, distracting herself by observing the people around her. Her eyes casually slid over the faces of the people waiting in line in front of her. There was
a woman about her mother’s age, her hair neatly curled and her cheeks rouged, maybe meeting a friend for a day of shopping in the big city, she speculated. There was a painfully thin teenaged boy, his eyes blank, tuning into the music seeping out of the earphones concealed under his shaggy hair. There were several men in dark suits and trench coats, some young and bright eyed, some middle-aged and pot-bellied, all looking like fun-house distortions of the man on the train. How many of them, too, were concealing secrets behind their blank stares?

She had sent Steve an email message
the previous night, connecting to the Wi-Fi in her hotel room. She asked about work, told him to give the kids extra cuddles from her, reminded him about Buddy’s vet appointment, and signed it Love, Elizabeth. After she sent it, she opened the message the Sebastian had sent her and reread it. The subject line read “Room 311, the Savoy.” The message was just a list of verbs. “Suck. Lick. Taste. Rub. Violate. Caress. Swallow. Probe. Bite. Fuck.” She read them, equal parts aroused and impressed that he hadn’t made any spelling mistakes.

Elizabeth pictured his face now, as she breathed in the damp diesel-dusted air of London. A shiver ran through her and she shifted from foot to foot, her eyes tuning out her surroundings as she imagined his full lips, his long, muscular tongue, sucking, licking, tasting her. Her body thrummed with desire.

The people in the taxi queue ahead of her rapidly disappeared into the black cabs that pulled up, one after another. Soon it was Elizabeth’s turn.

“
Where to?” the cabbie asked, as Elizabeth climbed into the back of the black cab.

“
The Savoy,” she said, careful to put the emphasis on the second syllable, the English way. “And hurry, please.”

*

Exiting the elevator on the third floor of the hotel, Elizabeth forced herself to stroll down the hallway, though the pulse that throbbed through her body was urging her to run.

Elizabeth tapped on the door of 311 and stepped back, gazing back down the hall as if every fiber of her being wasn
’t being pulled toward the door. Like the lobby, with its gleaming marble checkerboard floor and mahogany trim, the corridor oozed tasteful elegance. Pale striped wallpaper, a Persian carpet runner and subdued lighting made it feel more like an upscale apartment building than a hotel. It wasn’t cool or hip, like the Mercer, but it screamed money. She tried to compose her features into something resembling cool nonchalance, but when the door opened, her head whipped to face it, an eager smile springing to her mouth against her will.

“
Sebastian!” she exhaled. Then, “Sebastian?”

He had opened the door with the deadbolt on. She could just see a long, tall sliver of him. Short, dark cap of hair, thick eyebrow, gleaming tar-black eye, full lips wearing his trademark smirk, charcoal-gray cashmere sweater over sculpted
pecs and abs, fitted dark jeans with a noticeable bulge in the crotch, bare feet.

“
Elizabeth.” He said it like a dirty word. “Give me your hand. Your left.”

“
Um,” she said, uncertainly, looking down the empty hallway and then at the heavy, solid door and frame between which Sebastian wanted her to insert her hand.

As if reading her mind, Sebastian raised on
e arm over his head, wedging his fist between the door and frame.

Elizabeth slipped her hand through the narrow opening. Sebastian grabbed it, gently pulling her closer. He held her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm, flicking it lightly with his tongue. Then, looking into her eyes, he slid her ring finger into his mouth, slowly, his tongue pressing against it.