“Connie?”
She sat up, gave him a small pat as she refocused her attention. “How does she feel about it all?”
Scott shrugged. “She keeps saying she’s happy, like a weight’s gone, she says. Her fingers keep trembling.”
“Has she told her husband?”
“Not when I left.”
Connie shook her head. “Didn’t think she had the guts to tell him. Maybe she still doesn’t. Okay,” she said softly, “okay. She’s excited. The blushing bride. She’s nervous. We can keep her nervous. Keep her from telling her husband.”
“She was excited. She’s probably already told him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You haven’t seen her.”
Connie chewed her lower lip. “So we go ahead on the big score. We call her bluff.”
“What if she’s told him?” he said.
“Then we’ve got no hold.” She tousled his hair. He could see that she didn’t think for one second that Lucinda would tell her husband.
He raised his face to her. She smiled again, and kissed him.
Connie decided to let Lucinda go it alone for a couple of days. “It’s one thing,” she said, sitting in bed, sheet-covered, knees to chin, arms crossed around legs in the faded light of the full moon, “it’s one thing to say yes in the heat of the night. Let’s give her a couple of cold mornings.”
“But if she’s told...”
Connie gave him a patient smile. “And you have to make sure,” she said, “that you don’t encourage her to tell him. Not yet. You need to go iffy on the marriage. Give her a reason to back out gracefully herself.”
“What should I say?”
Connie shrugged and smiled, a gesture consciously showing faith — her way, he supposed, of apologizing. “You’ll know what to say,” she said.
Standing in front of the mirror on Friday afternoon, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen Lucinda since she’d said yes on Monday, and on the phone today she’d been in one of her moods, panting and insistent, nervous and hungry. She didn’t care what he had to tell his wife. He had to come tonight. He’d been away too long, and just when she really needed him. And anyway, she had a surprise. Lucinda’s voice was strange to him after four days with Connie. He remembered her breasts in his hands.
He leaned toward the mirror and inspected minutely the lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint blue shadow of freshly shaved cheeks and chin. He leaned back for a broader view, then unknotted the tie Lucinda had given him and tried again. Lucinda liked him neat, precise, elegant. Decorative, Connie had said. An adornment. Something she wears on her arm.
The idea buzzed around him like a swarm of gnats. It was more than that. How could Connie know what he meant to Lucinda? She hadn’t seen them together. Which was good, he thought suddenly, which was good, because if she had seen them together, then, well, then what hope would he have with Connie?
Maybe a lot, he thought. Maybe if she could see them together, could see Lucinda latch onto him like a vampire, gather him to her as if he held life itself, maybe Connie would have to look at him with new respect, jealous, seeing what she had in front of her for the first time. Maybe Connie needed some competition.
No. Whatever she needed, it wasn’t competition. He didn’t know what she needed.
He checked the tie and unknotted it again.
He found himself hoping that Lucinda had already told her husband, no matter how afraid of him she was. And the mood she was in, she might have, please God, might have decided to make a clean breast of it, she’d say, get it out in the open where it belonged. Her little surprise. It’d be just like her to spring it over one of her sweet dessert wines or a was-it-good-for-you-too cigarette. “Isn’t that wonderful, Scott darling,” she’d say. “We’re free, now. Really free.”
But what would he say to her then? That he hadn’t been able to tell his wife yet? He had tried, he’d say, but it wasn’t easy like he thought it would be? It wasn’t like he hated her?
Yes, that was good. He practiced it in front of the mirror. “It’s not like I hate her,” he said to his reflection. “It’s that I love you more, in ways I didn’t know I could love. But it’s so hard to tell them, isn’t it? They’ll think they’ve failed, but they haven’t.” Yes, that was very good. Then he could leave, he could say that he was going home to tell his wife right then, that minute, and then he could kiss Lucinda goodbye, and then he and Connie would just keep going. He’d have been right, and Connie would have been wrong, and she’d say, “Now what,” and he’d say Miami. Maybe Connie needed to be wrong.
He made a final adjustment to the tie and stared into his reflected face.
Unless Connie decided something else. Unless she decided that planning a marriage would be an even better scam, that as the future Mr. Lucinda he wouldn’t need to blackmail, he could just reach out and take, and they could keep taking right to the altar. He could milk her up to the wedding and then just not show.
Then Miami.
Maybe.
Because Connie might even decide that marriage itself was the best scam of all. Everything Lucinda had would be his, and he could share it all with Connie, and everything could chug along pretty much like it was now, except without the danger that always hovered around any scam. Married, there’d be no scam.
Scott was suddenly tired.
Connie was right after all. Lucinda hadn’t told her husband. Instead, Lucinda’s surprise was a deadline party, a celebration of freedom and burned bridges, a ritual to mark, she said, her new courage.
“You’ve got to tell him,” Scott heard himself saying, surprised that he was saying it. What would Connie say if she could hear him say that? But Lucinda was all around him and Connie seemed so distant at the moment. His head swam.
“I will,” said Lucinda. “After tonight, I’ll have courage.” She put her hand on his chest. “My new heart,” she said. “Courage means heart in French, having heart. You give me heart. You are my heart.” She kissed him gently then, tenderly, without passion but with great feeling. It startled him, frightened him. He pulled away. Her grip tightened. “Don’t, Scott,” she said.
“You’ve got to tell him,” he said, his voice again sounding far away, as if from someone else. “I’ve told her. You’ve got to tell him.”
He felt her fingernails digging into his arms.
“Help me tonight, just tonight. Help me past the deadline. I’m not good at defiance, Scott. I need you.”
She was trembling. He folded her to him, her head on his chest, and he stared beyond her into the lights of the night and the city and smiled. It wasn’t a party to celebrate the deadline, he realized; it was to get her past it. She was afraid of the blackmailer out there in the dark even while she held him in her arms.
He stroked her hair. “I’m here,” he said. “We’ll see this through together. They can’t hurt us now.”
She turned her face toward him and managed a smile. “At midnight,” she said, “we’ll be making love, and fuck them.” From her the word sounded ugly. And she started unbuttoning his shirt.
But as midnight neared she lay brittle and knotted. She asked Scott for a cigarette. He lit two, like in the movies, and passed one to her. She held it between her fingers and ignored it.
Scott’s watch gave two tiny beeps. The clock in the next room chimed twelve times. Her body stiffened.
He rolled onto his elbow, stroked her hair. “Will you relax?”
She twisted away and sat up, pulling the sheet to her neck and her knees to her chest. She jammed the cigarette to her lips and took a hard drag, illuminating nostrils and cheekbones in the brief orange flare. The long ash curled and fell on the sheet. “What will they do?”