Her smile faded and she touched her cheek where Sam had kissed her. And she knew she wasn’t going to tell Frank.
The package came shortly after noon the next day, and after she had tipped the messenger who brought it Helen carried it into the house and, her curiosity more than a little piqued, opened it. Inside was a paperback book, Karate Self-Taught, and a note: “Just in case there’s, no ‘husband’ around the next time you get in trouble.”
She laughed. The note wasn’t signed but it had been written on the back of a business card: “Samuel Fraser, Investment Counselor.” A phone number was printed in one lower corner and on impulse again, and quickly before she could change her mind, Helen dialed it. Sam answered on the third ring.
“I just got your present,” Helen said. “Thank you, though I hope I never need it.”
“I hope you didn’t mind,” he said.
“Mind? No, I think it’s funny. Only how did you know where to send it?”
“How did you know where to call?”
“Your phone number was on your card.”
“And your number was on your car last night. Your license number.
I simply memorized it and called a friend of mine in the police department, who in turn called a friend of his with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Voila, mystery solved. Now, will you have dinner with me again tonight so I can continue to dazzle you?”
Helen was silent for a long moment. “I’m married, Sam,” she said at last.
“I know,” Sam said quietly. “I didn’t miss the ring. But this isn’t 1900 and I’m only asking you out to dinner — not to run away with me to Pawtucket or some equally exotic place. So how about it? That good old napkin wall is still as strong and as high as it ever was.”
Helen smiled and in the end said yes, as she had known she would all along.
Sam had arranged for them to have the same table as before. This time, though, they spoke less during the meal. And afterwards, when the boy brought her car, Sam put Helen in the passenger seat and walked around and got into the driver’s seat himself.
He drove quietly and swiftly back through the city, finally turning into a deserted parking garage below what appeared to be a small office building. Helen looked around apprehensively.
Sam cut the motor. “It’s not sumptuous,” he said, “but all mine just the same. I came into a little money some time back, so I bought this building, rented the bottom two floors to a couple of doctors and an optometrist, and converted the third into a mini-penthouse for myself. That way I get the income but never have to worry about seeing my tenants. Or vice versa.” He got out and came around the car to open the door for her. “It’s better upstairs,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
Helen sat without moving. “This isn’t what I want, Sam,” she said.
“What isn’t?”
“A one-night stand in a bachelor’s pad.”
Sam shook his head. “It wouldn’t be that,” he said. “Even if it never happened again, it wouldn’t be that.”
He held out his hand. After a long moment, Helen took it.
Much later she sat on the edge of his bed looking out at the darkened city through the huge panes that took up most of one wall. There had been a heart-pounding excitement to their love-making that she hadn’t known in years and it had almost overwhelmed her in its intensity, but now in the aftermath her face was pensive. Sam lounged behind her in his dressing gown.
“A penny for your thoughts,” he said.
“Frank,” Helen said. This time she didn’t rise to his teasing tone. “My husband. He’s due home tomorrow.”
Sam shrugged. “Then we won’t see each other for a while,” he said. “It won’t be forever.”
“That’s not the point,” Helen said. “How do I face him? What do I say?”
Sam sat up. “I’ll tell you what you don’t say,” he said. “You don’t say I’m sorry, I’ve sinned, please forgive me. All that would do is louse everything up. For everybody — you, me, him.”
“Would you marry me, Sam, if it did?”
He looked away. “Is that what you want?” he said. “For us to get married?”
Helen looked at him soberly for a long time, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re wonderful and exciting and fun and I love you. But, no, I don’t want to marry you.”
“Then why not keep it like it is?” he said. “Wonderful and exciting with me, and solid and safe with Frank. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Then there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it,” he said, grinning. “Like I said, this isn’t 1900. Women are liberated now. Or aren’t they?”
Helen didn’t smile back. “I don’t want to hurt Frank,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“So then don’t,” Sam said. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close. “There are many kinds of love,” he said, “and what we have between us isn’t taking anything from anybody, because it was never theirs. It’s ours — for as long as we want it.”
Time seemed to prove him right too. There was a brief moment of dread when Frank came home. He would, she was sure, see something different in her. He would know. But if she did betray any of her apprehension, he was too tired and preoccupied — or too trusting — to notice. That last part bothered her, but not for long, and she found herself slipping easily back into the old patterns as if Sam didn’t exist, or existed on some other plane away from their comfortable world. So when the trouble came, she really wasn’t prepared for it.
It was two months later. She and Sam had driven up the previous week to a little place he said he knew in Wisconsin where they could bask in the sun all day and make love all night, just the two of them together. It meant deceiving Frank, which she didn’t like, because it brought her two worlds into uneasy collision. But as Sam kept reminding her, the opportunity was too good to pass up.
In the days that led up to their leaving she built up in her mind an image of a small cottage on a tree-lined slope and the two of them running on a white crescent beach at the foot of the slope. But as it turned out, Sam’s “little place” was a motel — a nice one, with a big pool that was never crowded and a quiet lounge and restaurant where they had their own special table — and she told herself it didn’t matter. But it did.
It mattered even more when she got home and received a brochure describing the motel in Monday’s mail. At first she thought it was from Sam, a souvenir and reminder of their days together. But then she turned the envelope over and saw it was addressed to Frank.
The man called that afternoon. At least she assumed it was a man. The voice was garbled beyond any normal telephonic distortion.
“Mrs. Leonard? Tell me, Mrs. Leonard, do you open your husband’s mail?”
Helen drew in her breath sharply. The voice chuckled. “I see you do. Not that it really matters. The message this morning would have puzzled him at best. On the other hand, there are photographs I could have sent, quite explicit photographs. They wouldn’t puzzle him at all.”
“Who are you?” Helen managed to say. “What do you want?”
The voice hardened. “Who I am doesn’t matter, now does it, Mrs. Leonard? What counts is the pictures I have and whether you want your husband to see them. I’m not bluffing about the photos, Mrs. Leonard. I have them, and if you don’t want them sent to your husband — at his office, say, where he’ll be sure to receive them — you’ll put five thousand dollars in small bills in a plain envelope and drop it off at the phone booth on the corner of Kennilworth and Ames at midnight tonight. You understand what I’m saying?”