Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (18 page)

     "A scotch, please, sweetheart," he said as he settled into a padded club chair.

     The phone rang and Francesca picked it up. "It's for you," she said, handing him the phone. "Uncle Uri."

     "Fallon here." As he listened to Edelstein's report, his smile stretched into a grin. "Good work. Keep me informed."

     Good work indeed. Uri had found a way to get a man into The Grove. The same reliable hit man who had discreetly taken care of the other "loose ends." On a signal from Fallon, Abby Tyler would no longer be a threat.

S
ISSY FELT AS IF SHE WERE WEARING A NEW SKIN
. I
T HAD MORE
nerve endings, danced with electricity, and felt hungry all over. Alistair, the night before.

     It was the first time she had had an orgasm during sex. Sissy always had to do it on her own, usually in the shower, the one place she knew she wouldn't be interrupted. Which was where she was now on this Tuesday morning that hummed with life and surprise. As she lathered the soap over her skin, she closed her eyes and relished the sensation, imagining that it was Alistair. She soaped her breasts and nipples, then moved over her abdomen and lower. She had been taught it was a sin but she couldn't help herself. Alistair so crisp in her mind, the imprint of his lips still on her mouth. She brought herself to a climax within seconds and had to grab onto the towel bar to keep from falling.

     What was it about this place? Did they put something in the coffee? Did they spray pheromones into the air?

     Had Alistair even really existed? She had left him there, in that little
glade, and run back to her cottage. Ashamed, filled with guilt, but confused as well. And her sleep had been far from restful, visited with erotic dreams.

     As she stepped out of the shower and toweled off, she thought about her previous night's encounter. How surprising, the feel of another man. Alistair's body had been so different from Ed's, his penis slightly longer, narrower. He kissed differently, lingered over her nipples the way Ed never did, and when she clasped his bare butt with her hands, they had felt fuller, firmer. Sissy had assumed all men were the same in the dark. But they weren't.

     Was that what happened to Ed? Did he get bored with their routine, wonder what another woman's body felt like, and decided to experiment?

     Wrapped in one of The Grove's luxurious bathrobes, she went into the living room and saw the phone message light blinking.

     It was Ed: "Hi, hon. My secretary said you called yesterday. She only just now gave me the message. Sorry. A big storm moved in last night so Hank and I stayed at the club. I'll be with buyers all day today. Will call tonight. Hope you're enjoying yourself. Love you."

     She frowned. He didn't
sound
like he was cheating. Had she made some sort of horrendous error? Just because his secretary didn't know Hank Curly, or that Hank wasn't listed in a phone book didn't mean he didn't exist. And maybe Sissy
had
gotten the name of the sports club wrong.

     She got a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had cheated on Ed.

     If only she hadn't missed his call, she could have cleared everything up. As it was, she would have to wait for his call tonight.

     How was she going to get through the day?

     Thinking of her best friend, she tried Linda's number but got the machine instead. Sissy wished she could talk to someone. But it would be too humiliating to tell any of her friends what she suspected was going on. And although Ed's mother was a nice, understanding woman, she would draw the line at hearing accusations of her son cheating. That left Sissy's mother. And in all her life, not once had Sissy been able to go to
her
with a problem.

     Going out onto the patio where desert sunlight glowed like gold, Sissy heard moans and giggles on the other side of the wall.

     She felt a pang of envy.

     It surprised her. Sissy had never envied anyone. Ed had been captain of the high school football team, a young man destined to succeed. Girls had fallen all over him, and he had chosen Sissy. He never forgot a birthday or anniversary, and always, regular as clockwork, made love to her on Saturday nights (even if it
was
with the lights out and in a somewhat predictable pattern). Sissy had always thought herself the luckiest of women, with a beautiful home and wonderful kids, and anything she asked for Ed gave to her. But lately there
had
been that strange, nagging feeling creeping into her life... that something was missing.

     And now she was experiencing envy.

     "Where did you find such a big vibrator?" the woman in the next garden squealed, and Sissy hastily retreated into her living room. It was disgusting, she told herself, to be so obvious about it, so vulgar.

     They're in their own garden, she scolded herself. It's not as though they're doing it in the middle of Safeway.

     But her curiosity was piqued. Linda had once shown her the vibrator she never traveled without and Sissy was shocked. A sexually active woman and she still needed a vibrator? Linda had suggested she get one and try it but Sissy with her regular Saturday nights with Ed didn't need such things.

     She turned to the sliding glass door and squinted at the golden patio beyond. What
would
it be like to do it outside in the daytime?

     
Where was Alistair at that moment?

     Her thoughts shocking her, and then frightening her—would she dare go in search of him?—she turned her back on the inviting sunshine and spread her scrapbook supplies out on the large coffee table. Her eye caught on something that belonged in the brown accordion file: a claim ticket to a jewelry store.

     She stared at it.

     The date was a week ago, the ticket was for an expensive ladies' watch.

     Sissy's birthday was coming up, obviously Ed was going to surprise her with a fancy gift. Or maybe he
had
had some sort of midlife fling and now it was over and he was going to make it up to her. A diamond watch was certainly a nice first step toward apologizing. Sissy would just put the claim
ticket back in the file and pretend she never saw it, never saw any of this stuff. But her hand wouldn't obey.

     Clutching the ticket, she paced the rich royal blue carpet, then went to stand at the scarlet and gold drapes, to looked out at her private garden. Even with the sliding glass door closed, she could hear the giggles and the woman squealing, "Get away from me with that thing! Are you trying to
kill
me?"

     Sissy went to the phone and looked at it as if it were an animal that had crawled in from the desert. Would calling the jeweler be an admission that she did not trust her husband?

     As she reached for it, there was a knock at her door. Sissy jumped. The neighbors, inviting her for a threesome!

     But it was Vanessa Nichols, with a big friendly smile and apologies for disturbing her. "I just wanted to invite you to dine with Ms. Tyler tomorrow night."

     Sissy thought of her neighbors and realized with a shock that she was disappointed it wasn't them at the door, inviting her to join them. "Yes, that would be fine. I look forward to meeting her."

     But once she closed her door, everything was forgotten except for one thing. She picked up the phone and dialed the number on the claim ticket.

     "Ah yes, madam," a nasal voice on the other end said. "The watch is ready. Inscribed as requested."

     Inscribed! "Would you read the inscription to me, please?"

     "Certainly," the nasal voice said. "The inscription reads: 'To Linda, You Have Made Me A New Man, Ed.'"

O
PHELIA HADN'T PLANNED TO FALL IN LOVE.

     She had been having trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, her temper was short. It was because of her busy class schedule, and her book had just been published and she was in demand for signings and appearances. As a social and political activist, there were demonstrations at abortion clinics that needed to be organized, tracts to be written and distributed. Her colleagues in anthropology were attacking her controversial theory that, prior to ten thousand years ago, sex was random, promiscuous, and outside of the laws of men. Ophelia's critics accused her of making a claim for promiscuity, that lifelong marriage was "unnatural," and demanded she explain how she reconciled this with the laws of God which she purported to follow. Finally, a male student had filed a complaint with the university that Dr. Kaplan had given him a failing grade because he was male.

     And the unexpected controversy her book,
Bread Kills
, had triggered! What had shocked her most was her own family's reaction. Bread was the most elemental of foods, her mother had strongly reminded her, it was always
served at meals, even the unleavened kind. Bread was holy, a gift from God. And then her brother the rabbi quoted Solzhenitsyn: "Bread is hope, bread is encouragement, bread is strength. Bread never speaks of the grave, is not sentimental about despair. Even a stale ration of this mystery can, crust by crust, wage a valiant campaign against starvation."

     It was as if Ophelia had attacked God and Judaism and their ancestors.

     She had thought she was going to lose her mind.

     At the urging of her mother and sister (and her dean and her publisher and fellow professors) Ophelia had acquiesced and agreed to seek help. She didn't believe in counselors and therapists, thought they were crutches for weak people, Ophelia Kaplan having always worked through her own troubles. But her work was starting to suffer—she was making herself less available to her students, she tossed and turned at night, and she was pushing herself twice as hard at her fitness clubs, to the brink of exhaustion. A friend had recommended a "good man."

     Ophelia had spent the next weeks pouring out her hurts and fears to him, baring her flaws and weaknesses, making herself totally vulnerable, which was not Ophelia Kaplan's style, and he had just been so understanding as she had laid her soul at his feet, that she arrived at a startling realization: he had changed in her eyes, from therapist to desired lover.

     It wasn't a true seduction, she told herself now as she completed her fiftieth lap in the resort's largest swimming pool. She had executed it unconsciously. Hadn't she? What sort of woman sets out to seduce her analyst?

     She had begun to dress for it: button-front blouses instead of pullover sweaters, skirts instead of slacks. Even her shoes, strap-heels replaced no-nonsense pumps. Sending him signals until one day he caught them. It was the end of a visit, she remembered it was raining, making his office even cozier, more insulated against the big, scary, demanding world. He rose from his chair to offer her a hand up from the sofa, but this time he drew her to him, and took her into his arms. He caressed and stroked while she sighed and moaned. His cool fingers explored the smooth crevice between her breasts, and then the hardened nipples, placing his lips on them and suckling gently. Her own hands reached down and caressed him until he hardened.

     He broke away, that rainy day, flustered, mumbling he was sorry, that it was wrong, unethical, but Ophelia was determined. She had never really fallen in love before because she always kept up a tough, impenetrable front to men, fighting for a woman's place in a man's jealously guarded world, earning for herself a reputation around campus of being an emasculating bitch. But with
him
she could be frail and powerless, give her feminine self over to his strong masculinity, a feeling charged with such eroticism that it became an obsession.

     It was another rainy day and this time he had a fire going in the fireplace. Cold outside yet she wore a diaphanous blouse so that pale blue lingerie was visible underneath. When he saw that she wore no stockings, that her legs were bare and exposed, he pulled her to him and kissed her. It happened quickly. Later he would describe it as like "a hot knife sliding into soft butter," she was that ready. They lay on the soft carpet and when he entered her again, to make love more slowly, Ophelia cried out with a joy she had never felt before. David was hers at last.