The phone rang as he was about to hit the shower. He couldn’t deny his thin smile as she breathed how she had managed to get free for the evening. “All for you, Jag.” Did she think he fell for her obvious manipulations, he wondered, but it didn’t matter. The party downstairs did matter. He was a politician and seeing and being seen by the right people was life blood. But as he showered, his thoughts were on Karly — her scent, her smoothness, the silky hair, her voice rasping her where-the-hell’ve-you-been- I’ve-needed-you fodder, her sculpted calves and thighs that would wrap him in a prison of soft yarn…and those green eyes. He knew the thinness of her adoration and figured she knew that he knew. Just part of the charade they would continue this weekend.
He checked the time again. Less than two hours until he was downstairs among the Who’s Who of Washington, and here he was thinking of Karly. He had sworn off of her once but didn’t remember why just now. It sure wasn’t because of the marriage vows he’d taken. He doubted now if he loved his wife even years ago when maybe he thought he had. Now their marriage, beyond hostile, worn-out, wasted away like property values in a D.C. ghetto.
But there was no way out of the marital union. His father-in-law was a retired United States Senator from Jag’s own state who liked Jag from the beginning and catapulted him into politics. Now, more than twenty years later, the old man, a national icon, still wielded enormous power: An advisor to presidents and a favorite of television news types who went to him and others like Henry Kissinger for a weighty utterance on the international crisis du jour. If Jag feared any man, it was his father-in-law. He could doom his son-in-law’s political future, including his fertile hopes for the White House that lived in the back of Jag’s mind, with no more effort than required to pick up the phone. And it looked like the old Washington warrior was going to live forever.
But Jag didn’t worry much about his wife stirring things up for him. She had her own reasons for hanging onto their marriage. She never seemed to mind being seen with him at high-profile Washington balls or finding her picture on the society pages. He wondered for a moment whether she was involved with someone, but rolled his eyes at the thought: That would involve sex.
He’d fantasized about a future without his wife but knew Karly Amarson would have no place in it. There’d be no need for the secrecy she offered. And even if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the most uninhibited lover, she was still who she was, simply a high-priced whore. But she was convenient now. He could fly her to meet him in New York for plays and museums and shopping at Saks and Tiffany’s and dinner at Fiorio’s on West Fifty-Second where he wouldn’t be recognized and the music was seductive and they could dance and then go to their hotel suite and make love and sleep it all off, and he’d go back to Washington and she’d return to the Golden Touch Casino & Hotel and a life he never allowed himself to think about.
But today he was in Atlantic City and he’d see Karly for the first time in two weeks, or was it three, and distancing himself from her was not in his immediate plans. She was an elevator ride away, his ambivalence was banished, and for the weekend Karly Amarson was everything he wanted.
Karly finished dressing, poured herself another drink and leaned back in a leather chair in the living room, taking a minute to survey her place. It hadn’t been that hard to swing, actually. She had proposed the deal to a reluctant Frank Gallardi one morning after he’d had a blockbuster month in the casino. “Frank, I can bring my clients to the Golden Touch or I can take ’em somewhere else. They don’t give a damn where my bed is. Before and after they’re through with me they’re gonna play the tables downstairs or in the Trophy Club. Give you their money. You know it’s true, and all you have to do is give me a furnished suite. One I can live in. Like an apartment. No checking in and out at the front desk. And I want maids when I call them. No knocking on the door, ‘…Sorry, just checking your room, Ma’am….’ That’s a fatal interruption if my customer’s about ready to buy me a new ring — one, I might add, I can help him pick out in one of your nifty jewelry shops downstairs.”
Frank had suppressed a smile when she playfully ended her proposal with a modified curtsey that day and lifted her skirt to reveal much of her legs. He walked to the window of his office and looked out at the ocean for a couple of minutes before returning to her.
“Okay, I’ll do it, Karly, but it’s strictly business. I’m not into sport sex and I run a business here. I ever get the idea it’s not paying off for me in dollars, that’ll end it. There won’t be any discussion. Understood?” Then he walked over to where she was standing and enveloped her with his arms. Secretly, Frank loved her like the daughter he never had.
That was three years ago, and Frank put everything into her suite she had asked for. He threw in an allowance for room-service meals and gave her access to old Doc Ricardo, the house physician who’d been with Frank since Day One. Gallardi didn’t go out of his way to promote sex, but he wasn’t naïve either. It was going to happen with or without Karly Amarson, with or without the Golden Touch, and with or without Frank Gallardi.
Karly and Doc Ricardo had become close friends. He never judged her and he frequently examined her in his small office on the third floor to be sure she was still healthy. He never hit on her but they would often have dinner together at a good restaurant at one of the other casinos. They were possibly Frank Gallardi’s most loyal business associates within the hotel and casino. Karly knew that Doc, who had no specific duties other than an occasional guest or patron emergency, kept his eyes and ears alert for anything business or personal that might be harmful to Frank or the casino or hotel. Like Karly, he lived in the hotel and she felt like she could call on him for anything at any time.
She had selected the furniture and artwork for her suite, the kitchen appliances, designer cookware (as if I’m going to cook!) and the finishes for the walls and floors. She insisted on the precise shades of rust and cream in the rugs to complement the Italian marble and now she thought how well they looked together.
Karly walked over to the bookcases that framed the fireplace, where a blown-glass vase in a swirl of sunrise reds pointed to the sky and occupied its own shelf. Leather-bound books lined other shelves and Karly pulled down The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. The book fell open, allowing a bookmark to flutter to the floor. She sat on the sofa and read a couple of passages to remind herself what was happening when she last put it down. There’ll be plenty of time for reading after tonight. She took in her place once again and thought how different her life was now compared to the two years she spent in New Orleans a decade ago. Yet another phase would begin tonight!
As she was finishing her drink Jag’s signature rat-a-tat-tat on her apartment door broke the silence. She made a final mirror check. Everything she had on, he’d given her. Like the diamond necklace and earrings, which she figured were fake. They might be CZs but she didn’t mind: The rocks were big and no one could tell cubic zirconium from diamonds anyway. But the diamond ring was real for sure. She was with Jag at Tiffany’s in Manhattan when he bought it for her. She had asked for their initials to be engraved inside the ring’s gold band and he had agreed to “KA & JAG”. She touched the rim of the blue bottle of perfume he’d bought for her in New York. It was called “Angel” and he’d said it was named just for her.