“—Ate her children until the Blessed Buddha delivered her from her ignorance,” Cari finished. “Lovely story.” She moved closer to the group of statues, gazed up into their smooth stone faces. “How serene. How utopic. The Husband/Master, his wife and kiddies. Domestic bliss, huh?” When Meli said nothing she asked, “Meli, why is this your favorite temple?”
“I don’t know,” Meli lied, then shrugged. Lid was already off the box. “I think it’s the Happy Couples. After all, I’m half a Happy Couple myself.”
“Huh. With an important difference. You don’t have to bear children and you don’t have to suffer a relationship crippled by sexual politics.” Cari lifted her eyes to the vivid medallion above them. “Ah, I see. More happy couples.” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not love, you know, Mel. It looks like love, but it’s not. For thousands of years man and womankind have fought tooth and nail, hurting each other in every imaginable way through sexual politics. He demands it; she withholds it. She loves him; he’d rather have good sex. Thousands of years of battle, Mel. Just because we couldn’t or wouldn’t separate love and sex. We kept trying that impossible combination for centuries because some of us maintained the two were identical, or over-lapping, or compatible, and that we’d someday find a Mystical Balance. Men would be more caring and responsible; women would be more independent, more honest about their desires. You were no slouch in history, Mel, you know all this stuff. And you know the Mystical Balance was a chimera. Love in combination with sex is corrupt and self-destructive; sex in combination with love is manipulative. There is no utopia.”
“Isn’t that what we have now?” Meli asked the rhetorical question in hope of forestalling further dissertation.
“Well, some of us think so. I think so.”
Meli conjured up a false smile. “Then, I guess you’re half a Happy Couple, too.” She almost added, “Or a third of a Happy Triplet,” but didn’t. She did something almost as foolish; she asked, “Cari, what would you do if Clay fell in love with Sonia?”
Cari threw back her head and laughed, the sound rolling back in delighted echoes from the stone walls. “Oh, I wish Clay could’ve heard that! That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard! My God, Meli, where were you during Sexual Psych 101? He can’t love Sonia, he has sex with her. They’ve got absolutely nothing in common, except that they can make each other come. Clay loves me.”
Meli knew she was right. Clay did love her, completely and devotedly. And regardless of what he felt for Sonia (could he feel nothing for Sonia?), he could never love her the way he loved Cari. She glanced at one of the Couples, frozen in a touch. “But haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like if Clay—”
“Wanted me? Judas Priest, Meli!” Cari’s face flushed an angry pink. “He wouldn’t. Clay loves me. I’m his wife, for God’s sake. You don’t saddle a loving relationship with that. That’s why we hired Sonia. Honestly, Mel, I think you’ve spent too much time in these ruins. They’re beginning to influence your thinking. ”
Meli smiled. “Nonsense. I just have an archaeologist’s curious soul. Besides, I love to hear you hold forth on love, truth, and the American way. Why don’t we move on to Cave Three?”
“She said Cave Two was her favorite,” Cari mused later, relaxing with Clay before the fire in the parlor of their cottage.
“The one with the Hariti group and the Lovers’ Medallion?” Clay shook his head. “Birch said the same thing. Worried me a little.”
“You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He told me to butt out. I gave him the ‘I’m-a-caring-friend’ speech.”
“Is that anything like ‘I’m a little teapot’?”
“Be serious. These are our best friends.”
“Sorry. I gave a speech too, I’m afraid, on behalf of political correctness and family values.” Cari shrugged. “That’s archaeologists for you. I guess some of us have a morbid fascination with the dark ages.”
Clay smiled, a half-hearted expression that sat, twitching, at the comers of his mouth. “I hope that’s all it is.”
“Clay?”
The couple looked up in unison from the comfort of the small fireside divan. Sonia stood in the door of Clay’s bedroom, her new silk sari wound like a bright cocoon around her perfect body. She’d dyed her hair, bronzed her skin, and applied kohl to her eyes. A long string of faux-pearls dangled from her fingers.
“Bravo!” Cari complimented her. “You look just like Princess Cave One.”
“Only one thing missing.” Sonia giggled and wagged the pearls at Clay. “I need a little help, Clay. Come unwrap me?”
Cari laughed and Clay wriggled his eyebrows in that ridiculous Groucho Marx way that she adored and said, “Sorry, my sweet, but nature calls.”
He slipped gracefully over the back of the couch, his groin already blossoming, and leaned back to give Cari a peck on the forehead.
“Have fun,” she said. She almost patted his rump when he turned away, but stopped herself. No sense in sending the wrong signals. Men were peculiarly single-minded in that hormone-flushed state; there was no telling how he might interpret it. She cuddled down comfortably among the tossed pillows and went back to her magazine, thinking only peripherally about the problems between Birch and Meli.
“I wondered where you’d gone.” Birch came out of the shadows at the mouth of Cave Two to where Meli stood in the warm glow of the Hariti Shrine. She turned to look at him and he was struck once again by how lovely she was. She called herself plain, but he thought she was beautiful. God, but he loved her. He moved to put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s late.”
“I love this temple,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“I don’t think so. I love it, too. Why do you ask?”
“I mentioned to Cari that this was my favorite because of The Happy Couples, and she all but read me the Equilibrium manifesto.”
“Funny, I had a similar experience with Clay.”
Meli turned beneath his arm, fixing him with those clear hazel eyes. She thought they were nondescript; he believed they were magic. He felt his groin tighten.
“Birch, do you like Sonia?”
“She’s a nice girl, I suppose. A little… vague.”
“Cari says she’s agreed to carry children for them. She’s going into fertility in two months.”
“Oh?”
Meli’s brow furrowed. “I suppose I don’t really mean do you like Sonia. I suppose I mean, do you… need Sonia?”
“Do I need—? No. No, I don’t need Sonia. I don’t want Sonia.” I want you, added a blasphemous and fortunately silent voice in his head. “Why do you ask?”
“Cari said Clay brought her along partly for your benefit. Since you… don’t have anybody. You don’t, do you? Have anybody, I mean? A relief… person?”
It was cool in the cave; Birch sweated, regardless. “No, Mel. I don’t.”
“Neither do I.” She seemed desperately perplexed. “Birch, you know I love you.”
“Yes, of course. And I love you. Desperately,” he added.
Meli’s full lips compressed. (She said they were fat; he thought they were sensuous.) “When we have children,” she said, “I don’t want another woman to carry them.”
Birch blinked at the bald admission. “That’s incredibly sacrificial of you, Meli. I don’t know what to say.”
“Is that crazy of me?” She pressed against him. “To want to carry my own babies?”
He thought he was going to burst. “I—I don’t know. I don’t think so… No. No, it’s not crazy, at all.” Suddenly he wanted to tell her who the princess in Cave One reminded him of. Whose face his mind pasted to that abundant body. He wanted to reveal his Cave Two fantasies about what happy, adoring couples did in their shared (yes, shared) beds. Did he dare?