Her footsteps receded down the hallway and echoed in the stairwell. I shut the door and turned on the lights.
The Long Island Expressway had been ugly but empty that morning, and my head had been full of Holly Cade and David as I drove. Of Holly I knew only bits and pieces, not enough yet to understand- or even expect to understand- her actions. But David was a different story; he was my brother and I was supposed to know him. Or something like that.
I’d wondered about his serial infidelity, and wondered why. I thought about other cheating-husband cases I’d worked, and about the rationalizations I’d heard before: “I have needs”; “She doesn’t understand me”; “It’s just sex”; “It has nothing to do with her”; “Out of town doesn’t count”- all the usual suspects, and all so ordinary. It was hard to imagine David subscribing to any of them. Of course, it was hard to imagine him doing anything so dangerous- so potentially self-destructive- as these anonymous trysts either.
Clare had been mostly silent beside me, sometimes reading from her big book, sometimes fiddling with the radio, sometimes just watching through her dark glasses as the asphalt unfolded before us. But the farther behind the city fell, the more she seemed to lighten and uncoil, the more some tension I hadn’t known was there seemed to dissipate. By Glen Cove, she’d put her feet up on the dash; by Melville, she was singing softly with the radio.
We’d taken the LIE until it gave out in Riverhead, and then made our way onto Route 25. The landscape flattened around us and the pale, immaculate sky grew larger and brighter with light off the water. We’d passed wineries, and acre after acre of bare vines. They were gnarled and tough looking, and mustered in strict rows behind wire fencing. Clare took off her glasses and ran the window down, and a cold, marine wind rushed in.
We’d stopped for breakfast in Southold, at a tiny diner with a view of a harbor. It was filled with locals and the men had eyed Clare surreptitiously over their eggs and waffles. She’d eaten an omelet and stared at the buttoned-up boats rocking at anchor. I’d had pancakes and thought more about David.
A few of the errant husbands I’d tracked had offered a kind of diminished-capacity defense when they were caught in the act- a story about judgment impaired by the sudden rush of blood to points south of the belt buckle. As an excuse it had done them no good with wives or divorce court judges, but as an explanation it had a certain honesty. I wondered if that was David’s story. But he’d always been such a directed and self-disciplined bastard, and always so smug about it too. It was hard to picture him surrendering to impulse, or besotted with anyone.
I’d wondered if these encounters were an outlet for all that restraint, but ultimately didn’t believe it. There was something else going on. I remembered David telling me about his screening procedures, and how satisfied he’d been with his cleverness. “If she won’t play by my rules, I move on.” He liked pulling the strings.
We’d strolled around the harbor after breakfast, Clare wrapped in her black coat and dark glasses, and with a black Mets cap on her pale blond head. We’d walked to the end of a street, at the end of a hook of land, to a bench with a view of Shelter Island. We sat and watched a small ferry crawl across the water, and Clare leaned into me and put her hand into my pocket. After a while the wind picked up and chased us to the car and we drove farther east, to Greenport.
Route 25 became Front Street in Greenport, and met Main Street at the harbor. Both streets were lined with low clapboard buildings and they were more crowded than I’d expected on a midwinter day. People shopping, running errands, just walking, and they all seemed to know each other. We parked the car and got out. Clare took her hat off and ran a hand through her hair.
“It’s like frigging Bedford Falls or something,” she’d said, but she’d been laughing.
An antique store was just opening up, and she’d led me inside, and up and down the single crowded aisle. She smiled at the guy behind the counter and left without buying. Out on the sidewalk, she’d taken my arm again and we’d wandered up the street. My thoughts wandered back to my brother.
Power and control, ego and anger: beyond the rationalizations and lame excuses, most of the cheating husbands I’d tracked were driven, down deep, by one or more of these. But David had become a mystery to me since Monday, and harder to read than any of those guys had been. Constructing a secret world, laying down its rules and regulations, and watching people jump through his hoops- that was all about power and control; but what about the rest? Was David’s ego so fragile that he needed the attentions of strangers to shore it up? Or was it anger driving him, and if so, anger at what, or whom? Stephanie was one answer, but maybe not the only one. His marriage, his career, his reputation, even the reputation of Klein amp; Sons- David had put them all at risk.
We’d walked the shop streets until the shops had run out and Clare had gotten hungry. There was a hamburger stand at the bottom of Main Street that was open for lunch and she’d led me there and ordered something messy, with onions. I’d ordered the same and we found another bench by the water. Our burgers steamed in the cold air and a couple of gulls had stared at us hopefully.
We’d driven the last ten miles to Orient Point after lunch. We crossed the causeway and Route 25 became Main Road and ended at the ferry terminal and the state park. The park was open and we walked in. There was scrub oak and red cedar along the sandy path, patches of snow in their shadows and a white rime at the edge of the pond. Beyond the trees and the pond and the long brown grass were rough beach, gray water, and sky, and they were bare, bleak, and gorgeous. Clare took off her glasses and opened her coat and walked at the water’s edge. I thought about Holly and David and Stephanie as I watched her.
After a while Clare came back. Her face was pink and her hair was a tangle of gold. She leaned against me and put her mouth on mine. Her body was warm and firm and I could smell the ocean in her hair. “My hands are cold,” she said, and she put them inside my coat and under my shirt. We stayed that way until I spoke.
“Why do you do it?” I’d asked.
“Do what?” Clare whispered into my neck.
“Why do you see me, when you’re married?”
Clare stiffened in my arms and let out a long sigh and otherwise didn’t move for over a minute. Then she took her hands off me and stepped away.
“Why do I cheat on him, you mean?” Her voice was flat and empty. I nodded and a grim little smile crossed her face. “All of a sudden you’re curious?”
“I’m just looking for some insight.”
Clare snorted. “Into what, for chrissakes?” She put on her sunglasses and buttoned her coat and said something else that the wind snatched away. Her face was rigid and the sun flared on her black lenses.
“You want to hear all the desperate details? Fine. He’s twelve years older than I am; his first priority is his business; I’m wife number three; and my best guess is he’s been fucking other women since before we were engaged. No one in particular, but a rotating cast of characters.
“There’s a certain type he goes for, a kind of well-bred shopgirl type, young, nicely schooled, a little arty maybe, but impressionable and deferential, used to keeping the customers happy. The girl who manages the art gallery he buys from sometimes, the fund-raising girl on the hospital committee, the one handling PR for the museum benefitthat kind. I was surprised when I found out- hurt, even- but it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was working at Christie’s when I met him, appraising some prints he wanted to sell. He was married at the time and never made a secret of it.
“We don’t discuss it, but he’s discreet and I try to be too, and it is what it is- an arrangement that works well enough for both of us, at least for now. Not what I had in mind in high school maybe, but better benefits than at Christie’s.”
She’d stood with her hands in her pockets and said it matter-of-factly, like a slightly boring school recitation, and when she was through she’d turned up her collar and walked past me.
“I’ll be in the car,” she’d said.
“Shit,” I said to myself. My notes were stacked on the table from the night before and my laptop was still on, and for no other reason than that I didn’t know what else to do with myself, I took off my coat and started looking again for Holly Cade.
