Chapter 14: Unbuyable

Minutes after she got to the dining room, Mrs. Grant served hot cream-of-tomato soup. The rest of lunch was cold-roast beef sandwiches on either rye or whole-wheat bread. The condiments offered were catsup, mustard, and relish. You could build your sandwich with lettuce leaves and slices of onions, tomatoes, or pickles. The condiments and the pickle slices were served in their original containers -- a far cry from the formal servings of Barnes dinners. Eric, to her shudders, slathered a sandwich with mustard and piled on tomato and lettuce. That was desecration of the excellent roast beef.

She took one very thin slice of onion between two slices of roast beef with rye bread. When she put lettuce and tomato on her plate to eat separately, Mrs. Grant went to the kitchen for bottled salad dressing.

“Delicious,” she said after her second sandwich.

“Thank you, doctor. Do you want more soup?”

“No, but I would like more coffee.” She got it.

She asked for some privacy to make a phone call. Eric directed her to the computer room through the library. There were three padded rocking chairs not in front of any screen, odd furniture for a computer room. She sat in one of them. She punched in Karen’s number.

“Diane! And in daylight, too.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They give us two days off every two months. How’s the baby coming?”

“The usual way, but not -- knock wood -- for twelve weeks yet.” After that, though, Karen filled her in on the details of her pregnancy. She ended up with: “And your guy? Seen him recently?”

“Minutes before I made the phone call.”

“What’s he like?” Karen asked. Karen was always curious about people.

“Sweet. Tall enough to justify heels. Fit, though he’s a decade older than I am. With a good sense of humor, self-deprecating, generous, careful, successful. Norman’s picture of a gold-digger couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Good in bed?”

“Great in bed,” she told Karen. “Guy could have written the Kama Sutra. He is, though, awfully possessive.”

“Yeah, guys are. Fun, though, isn’t it?” No, it wasn’t. She was afraid of being swallowed up in Eric. And Norman? At least Eric was an expansive personality. There was room inside his personality. Well, Norman was one subject on which she and Karen would never agree.

“And tell Anne that he liked the nightie.”

“That’s why you’re calling now?” Karen asked. “He liked it so much that he kept you tied up since Christmas?”

“No, silly. Eric would never do that. He drives me to the hospital before dawn. The hospital, on the other hand, never hesitates about tying me up.”

“Eric, is it? Are we ever going to hear a last name?”

“Not when I’m afraid Norm and Greg will find out,” she said. “Give my regards to Anne. How’re the books coming?” Karen wrote a series of erotic mysteries. Dahlia Taggart was a professional Karate instructor and amateur detective in Minneapolis. Karen filled her in on the latest one. They were not selling well, and the publisher had cut back to only electronic format. Karen, however, enjoyed writing them, and Norm didn’t mind at all that her contribution to the family income was less than her clothes budget. Karen reveled in the sort of relationship that Diane feared.

Her sisters in law were both fine, intelligent women. If women such as that could marry such flawed men as Greg and, especially, Norm, she was afraid of the power of hormones, especially her hormones.

For the last hour, for example, she’d been thinking that Eric had shown that he could change. When she first saw him with Valerie, he’d been handling Valerie’s bedtimes as though she were an infant. He’d seen the bedtime tantrums as simply Valerie’s character. When she had shown him a better way, he had allowed it because it was best for Valerie. Now, if he could treat her the same way, allow her some freedom because it was best for her, would marriage to him be so bad?

Was that her reason talking? Or was it the hormones of a woman who had gone through more orgasms since she’d entered the house Saturday night than she had gone through in any month of her previous life? Almost a Dahlia Taggart count of orgasms. Well, she wasn’t going to make that sort of decision now. She would wait until she was in the relative safety of her room in the hospital. She went to find Eric.

“Made your calls?” he asked.

“Yeah. What’s next?”

“I’m going to pick up Sparky soon. Want to come along?”

“I don’t think I should,” she said. “How secret am I from Valerie, anyway?”

“Well, Laura’s sister stays here occasionally. Sparky is used to visitors like Sharon. The less we keep secret, the less she can discover. What we do in that room is, of course, off-limits to a first grader. In most first-graders’ homes, however, mommy and daddy share a bed, and they don’t usually inquire further.”

“I used to worry whether Valerie had been acquainted with your string of mistresses, and what she would think a decade later when she figured that out.”

“And now you know,” he said. “The string is remarkably short.”

Diane felt that the problem was merely delayed. And she had compounded the complications. She’d given Valerie a view of an adult woman’s fully naked body partly because she felt that Valerie needed that picture. In another decade, though, Valerie would remember that, would probably remember that she had put on her bathrobe after the shower. The longer she stayed around, the more clues she was leaving and the more Valerie would remember. If she continued the affair past June, would she start sharing breakfasts with Eric and Valerie?

Would she continue the affair past June? Well, June seemed so far away. She was only on her third disk of the Pill. On the other hand, she couldn’t picture ending it. She loved Eric, damn it. She loved Valerie in an entirely different way. She certainly liked Mrs. Grant. Still, living with the man would be like living under a ton of feather beds. And that thought was with his recent exploits still playing on her hormones.

Eric drove over to the school to pick up Sparky. As he went, he thought that Diane was borrowing trouble worrying about what Sparky saw. By the time Sparky was old enough to think about sex and connect the dots, Diane and he would be long married.

Then the real, six year old, Sparky was at the car instead of the adolescent one he’d been imagining. She was full of news, most of it about which girls had been nice and which mean.

“And lessons?” he asked. “What did you learn in class?”

“We read the storybook. They read so slowly.”

After dinner, they had a three-way game of Uno.

Diane had a proposition for Valerie, when her bedtime got near.

“I’m going to be gone for the next three days,” Diane said. “Are you going to miss me?”

“Yes. I like you, Doctor.”

“Well, I like you, too, Valerie. I would like to read you the story tonight, and kiss you good bye. I’ve promised, though, that I won’t do that when you misbehave. You wouldn’t want me to break my promise, would you?”

“Well...” Valerie clearly would want her to break that promise.

“That’s okay, Valerie. You might want me to break my promises, or, at least, you might want me to break some of them. But I don’t like to break promises. So, I’m not going to break that one. If you don’t act like a good girl, I won’t get to read you the story and kiss you good night. In about five minutes, it will be time for you to get ready for bed. Why don’t you put away the cards now and go up like a good girl? Then I’ll read the story and kiss you good night.” Sparky thought about it.

“Okay,” Sparky said. She gathered up the cards. They went upstairs together. By this time, Madeleine was with them. Diane took the nightclothes from Madeleine and handed them to Sparky.

“When you’ve done everything else,” Diane said, “and are ready to brush your teeth, open the door.” When Sparky did, Diane asked. “Have you washed your hands?”

“Yeah.” Sparky pushed her hands forward, but Diane ignored them. She got the brush and toothpaste down from Sparky’s medicine cabinet and handed them to Sparky. When the brushing was done, Diane rinsed off the brush and put it and the toothpaste away.

“Now, Valerie, your Daddy likes to carry you to bed. Will you let him?” Sparky reached up her arms and he carried her to her bed and tucked her in. He gave her a little kiss on the forehead. Diane read her a book.

“This is good night,” Diane said. She kissed Sparky, and Sparky was even more demonstrative than ever in returning it. “And this is good bye for four more days. Valerie, I’m going to miss you.”

“Me, too,” said Sparky. Then Diane bent down for another enthusiastic kiss. When Sparky let go, Diane turned and went out of the room.

Eric gave Sparky a kiss and then went to his dressing room. He shaved before going into the bedroom, but they both entered at the same time.

“You are so good with her,” he said.

“Well, the other guy’s problems are always easier.”

“But you deal with her. Sure, it would be easier to tell me how to solve my problem. Any idiot can suggest what you should have done. But, instead, you do something to deal with the problem. I think she worships you.” He took off his robe and hung it up.

“I’m new in her experience,” Diane said. “She enjoys telling me things that are new to me. If I keep coming here, she’ll get bored with me.” She took off her robe to reveal the sexy nightgown.

“I’d love to put that to an experiment,” he said. What with the recent workout, his erection was just beginning.

“Would you take off your glasses if I asked you to?” He took them off. “You’re sweet.” She took off her nightie and got into bed. He joined her. “You know, you’re good at obeying short-term limits.”

“No.” he said. “I’m good at obeying you. Obedience wasn’t one of my virtues back in the day when I was an employee.”

“Did you obey Laura?”

“Obedience didn’t really enter into it. We reached agreements. We didn’t enter each other’s dressing rooms, for example. That was an agreement. If she had forbidden me her dressing room, that would have been an order. Every once in a while, she had to enter mine to select my outfit. Each time was a specific exception. I don’t think that there was one agreement that she proposed and wanted very seriously that I refused. She was like you on nudity.”

“How?” Diane asked.

“It was something a modest woman didn’t allow her husband to see, but it was all right that her husband wanted to ogle her and no great shame if he succeeded.”

“Well, we’re not married.”

“You keep reminding me,” he said. “My words don’t apply. I think the situations are similar. If some stranger or some casual acquaintance tried to get the glimpses of you that I do, would it offend you?”

“Of course.”

“So, I have some kind of license if not a marriage license.”

Diane threw back the sheet. “Look your fill,” she said. He leaned forward instead of putting on his glasses.

“You’re beautiful, but I couldn’t get my fill before you have to be at the hospital.” At his words, she drew the sheet over her.

“Is this what marriage is like? Lying together in bed and talking about things.”

“A little,” Eric said. “Of course, when there are just two of you, you don’t restrict it so much to the bedroom. We trusted Madeleine, but some things you don’t discuss in front of others. Would you have talked about nudity that way in front of her? Then, too, children put a real squelch on conversation. Val was not yet three when Laura died, so we had barely experienced that power. She did, however, have the embarrassing habit of repeating individual words. Then, too, we’re not only in the only room in the house where we can’t be overheard.” She looked at him inquiringly.

“I expect to have sex soon,” Eric continued. “Don’t you? So lying in bed before having sex and lying in bed after having sex lead to certain subjects of conversation. We really haven’t had the latter. It’s one of the luxuries I expect for July.” He really thought that they would last that long. Well, maybe they would. She couldn’t picture leaving him. She couldn’t picture living with him, either.

“But for now,” she said. She leaned over to kiss him. She explored his mouth, for once, before she fell back. As though she were pulling him on a string, he went up on his elbow and kissed her thoroughly.

The kiss on the mouth led to his kisses on her breasts. Those led, slowly, with many steps in between, to his kisses on her vulva. Her clitoris was still extra-sensitive, but this only seemed to increase the speed at which the heat gathered. The flame consumed her, but it left her wanting more.

“More,” she said. “You.”

“Yes.” And he was yes over her, and he was yes entering her, and he was yes filling her. He kissed her mouth briefly; then he watched from inches away as he filled her, emptied her, filled her again. He watched the heat spread from her groin to her face. The sparks flew from his eyes that ignited her.

She flared, she writhed, and she groaned. Through it all, he kept filling her and emptying her at a metronomic pace.

“Oh, Diane,” he said, “I can’t.” He could, though. He could drive into her. He could slide out of her. He could bring the heat again, more fierce heat than ever. He could, finally, driving into her more rapidly than before, inflame her again.

“Diane,” he cried as she writhed. He thrust her into the mattress so hard she slid towards the head of the bed. She could feel his pulses within hers. Then she didn’t feel anything at all.

When she awoke, he was moving her into his embrace. She tried to help, but he seemed to do all the work. Then he slapped the headboard, and the light went out.

When next she awoke, the radio was playing. She got through her shower, took her pill and put her contacts in. She dressed and tossed her robe and nightie in the hamper. Before she came back here again, all the clothes would be clean. Downstairs, Eric seemed in a somber mood at breakfast. Well, she wasn’t so chipper, herself.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said when they were on their way. “I really couldn’t control myself then.” She thought back.

“Eric, when you’re in the middle of intercourse, I don’t really expect you to control yourself. I didn’t exactly say stop, either.”

“Well, I had promised to stop at your second orgasm. That really isn’t a problem you can expect very often. It’s just that I had come so recently. Clearly, that isn’t going to happen when you spend days in the hospital. Actually, we might have other problems come July.”

“Okay. You didn’t keep that promise, and I expected you to keep that promise,” she said. “On the other hand, you didn’t sneakily try to extend our sex time. Look, that’s what I worry about. This is something which can happen.”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m a realist. Your level of control is what scares me. When you lose control I’m not so scared. Besides, I’ll probably have an easy day with all the sleep I had night-before-last if not last night.”

“Still saying four days?” Eric asked.

“Well, three and a half days. Think of it as three days, if it makes you feel better.” Eric was silent after that, and he kept his hands on the wheel while she kissed him good bye. For the next twelve hours, she was an infectious-disease resident. She started thinking of Eric again when she was eating supper.

The guy could change. Sometimes, her picture of his relationship with Valerie was that he was gripping her with both hands like talons. Then someone pulled the fingers off one at a time until Valerie could move. Really, though, it was Eric who removed those fingers. It was just a struggle for him to do so.

With her, she was the one to remove the fingers. Not literally; she liked his hands on her. She was less happy with his hands on her life. Could he learn to let go? How long could he keep his hands down before she had to rap his knuckles again? Did she have the energy to rap his knuckles again and again?

Going upstairs and preparing for bed, she wondered whether that would be a marriage. Was her problem not that she didn’t like Eric’s incursions but that she didn’t want the closeness that was marriage? She didn’t think that her parents made any significant purchases without consulting each other. Could she live like that? Of course, Mom, sweet as she had been and smart as she had been, had lived in Dad’s shadow. He ran Thibault Mills; Mom ran a household. He hadn’t seemed to consult her on business decisions.

Well, Eric, possessive as he was, hadn’t questioned a medical decision, hadn’t even mentioned a medical decision beyond listening politely to her reports on her activities, since Valerie’s hospitalization. The treatment of Valerie had hardly been intrusion into her life. There was a reason he had to sign those permission papers.

And there was parenthood, too. If she were afraid not only of marriage to Eric but of marriage per se, then she was not going to be a mother. She had never made that decision, though every step she made in her profession closed one more door. She certainly wouldn’t marry anyone, let alone Eric, simply because she wanted to have children.

But she wasn’t considering marriage with Eric because she wanted children. She wanted marriage with Eric -- she wanted Eric, to put it simply. The problem was that she wanted other things that would be incompatible with marriage to Eric. Did ‘a life’ qualify as ‘other things’? On the other hand, what kind of life would it be without Eric?

What it came down to was that marriage to somebody else might have advantages over marriage to Eric, in the sense of having more elbow room. But she didn’t want to marry somebody else. Then, too, she pictured marrying somebody like Ted. Could she tell that person the sequence that an earlier lover had followed to bring her to multiple orgasms? She shouldn’t marry for sex. On the other hand, why give your spouse a monopoly on sex if you didn’t consider sex an important part of marriage?

Most fights between married couples were over sex and money. Well, she’d fight Eric over money, but the arguments -- she would take any odds -- would be a far cry from most other couple’s fights. “No, dear, you may not pay for repairing my car.” For that matter, her boundary efforts about sex -- they hadn’t really been fights or even arguments; when she articulated rules, he followed those rules -- had been about limiting how much he could give her.

So, all couples had fights. If she married Eric, they would just have other fights. She couldn’t believe it; she was actually considering marrying this guy! Well, she kept hearing about women worrying that their husbands might lose interest. She might end up praying for that. What would be ideal is for him to lose all interest but sexual interest. Somebody who remained sexually faithful to a dead spouse for four years can hardly be said to have a roving eye. That, however, was a faint hope. Eric wanted to protect her. He had confessed to “hovering” while Laura nursed. Whatever Laura went through, up to the accident, she could expect to go through, and worse. Every time he backed off, remembering that he had backed off for Laura, he would then remember that he had lost Laura.

On the other hand, she could tell Eric to back off. He might not back off for long enough, but he wouldn’t get all huffy about it like Greg or Norm would.

Okay, if Eric would agree to give her space, she would agree to marry him. She couldn’t count on that agreement being self-enforcing, but she would have a reference point for shoving him back. The problem was that she had told him that he shouldn’t propose again. Not that this would stop him for long, but his proposing against her orders and her accepting would establish a bad precedent. She thought for a moment and checked the time. She winced; she was already cutting into necessary sleep time. She called anyway.

“Love you,” he answered. That presumably meant that he was alone.

“Look, we’re not an ordinary couple. You, at least, are quite extraordinary.”

“And you are both extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily intelligent.”

“Well, anyway,” she said, “when you proposed it was in bed, which is a good sort of place for ordinary couples. For us, however, it would be wrong. If you ever want to ask that question again, ask it on one of our phone calls, a call which I have made.” He wasn’t supposed to make any calls, and this was as good a time to remind him as any.

“But...”

“Good night, Eric. I love you.” And she shut the phone. Now let him work that out.

Eric wasn’t long in working it out. She was permitting him to propose again, if only in limited circumstances. Well, that hardly sounded like she was expecting to refuse him again. It wasn’t the sort of proposal which should come with a ring -- a ring tone, maybe -- and Laura had wanted to select her own ring. Well, just in case, he should have enough cash on hand to buy a ring. He e-mailed his mutual fund in New York to cash out half a million in the bond fund and half a million in the stock fund. He wanted them to send the money to his bank via ETF. They would honor an e-mail request if the money was to be sent to his bank.

They wouldn’t send the money until the end of business the next day, but that was the end of business in New York. That was about two in San Francisco. He left a note for Madeleine to have the materials together for a celebratory meal on Friday, just in case. Then he went to bed to dream of a wedding night with Diane.

The next day, he asked Murphy what the highest quality jewelry store in San Francisco was -- “You know, the local version of Cartier’s.”

“Boss, there is a Cartier’s in San Francisco,” she responded. That’s what made Murphy so useful. She could find out anything.

That night, though, Diane didn’t call. He went to bed grumpy and woke up worse. Sparky’s mood at breakfast matched his. Work not only went slowly, it went badly. Not even Murphy was cheerful around him. Supper was a remarkably gloomy meal, and Sparky absolutely refused to eat her vegetables. She, who had showered all by herself Tuesday night, wouldn’t even walk up the stairs at bedtime. He held her while Madeleine stripped her and drew the bath. Then they both put her in the tub.

Diane’s news had been so startling Tuesday, that he hadn’t had time to report Sparky’s good behavior. Well, it hadn’t lasted long enough to report. Was Diane going to tease him this way? He could propose, but only when she called, and she wasn’t going to call. Then, when he was deepest in the slough of despond, he heard her ring tone.

“I love you,” he answered.

“I love you too.”

“You do? Do you love me enough to marry me?” Damn! That wasn’t the proposal he’d planned out.

“There are conditions,” Diane said.

“I’ll grant them.”

“Not without hearing them. I know you mean well. I don’t know whether you can perform over the long run.”