Lie Down with Lions (1985)

He rolled onto his side, facing her, and the movement woke her, as he had known it would. Her large blue eyes stared at the ceiling for a fraction of a second; then she looked at him, smiled, and rolled over into his arms. “Hello,” she whispered, and he kissed her.

He got hard immediately. They lay together for a while, half asleep, kissing now and again; then she draped one leg across his hips and they began to make love languorously, without speaking.

When they had first become lovers, and they had started to make love morning and night and often midafternoon too, Ellis had assumed that such horniness would not last, and that after a few days, or maybe a couple of weeks, the novelty would wear off and they would revert to the statistical average of two-and-a-half times a week, or whatever it was. He had been wrong. A year later they were still screwing like honeymooners.

She rolled on top of him, letting her full weight rest on his body. Her damp skin clung to his. He wrapped his arms around her small body and hugged her as he thrust deep inside her. She sensed that his climax was coming, and she lifted her head and looked down at him, then kissed him with her mouth open while he was coming inside her. Immediately afterward she gave a soft, low-pitched moan, and he felt her come with a long, gentle, wavy Sunday-morning orgasm. She stayed on top of him, half asleep still. He stroked her hair.

After a while she stirred. “Do you know what day it is?” she mumbled.

“Sunday.”

“It’s your Sunday to make lunch.”

“I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Good.” There was a pause. “What are you going to give me?”

“Steak, potatoes, snow peas, goat’s cheese, strawberries and Chantilly cream.”

She lifted her head, laughing. “That’s what you always make!”

“It is not. Last time we had French beans.”

“And the time before that you had forgotten, so we ate out. How about some variety in your cooking?”

“Hey, wait a minute. The deal was, each of us would make lunch on alternate Sundays. Nobody said anything about making a different lunch each time.”

She slumped on him again, feigning defeat.

His day’s work had been at the back of his mind all along. He was going to need her unconscious help, and this was the moment to ask her. “I have to see Rahmi this morning,” he began.

“All right. I’ll meet you at your place later.”

“There’s something you could do for me, if you wouldn’t mind getting there a little early.”

“What?”

“Cook the lunch. No! No! Just kidding. I want you to help me with a little conspiracy.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Today is Rahmi’s birthday, and his brother, Mustafa, is in town, but Rahmi doesn’t know.” If this works out, Ellis thought, I’ll never lie to you again. “I want Mustafa to turn up at Rahmi’s lunch party as a surprise. But I need an accomplice.”

“I’m game,” she said. She rolled off him and sat upright, crossing her legs. Her breasts were like apples, smooth and round and hard. The ends of her hair teased her nipples. “What do I have to do?”

“The problem is simple. I have to tell Mustafa where to go, but Rahmi hasn’t yet made up his mind where he wants to eat. So I have to get the message to Mustafa at the last minute. And Rahmi will probably be beside me when I make the call.”

“And the solution?”

“I’ll call you. I’ll talk nonsense. Ignore everything except the address. Call Mustafa, give him the address and tell him how to get there.” All this had sounded okay when Ellis dreamed it up, but now it seemed wildly implausible.

However, Jane did not seem suspicious. “It sounds simple enough,” she said.

“Good,” Ellis said briskly, concealing his relief.

“And after you call, how soon will you be home?”

“Less than an hour. I want to wait and see the surprise, but I’ll get out of having lunch there.”

Jane looked thoughtful. “They invited you but not me.”

Ellis shrugged. “I presume it’s a masculine celebration.” He reached for the notepad on the bedside table and wrote Mustafa and the phone number.

Jane got off the bed and crossed the room to the shower closet. She opened the door and turned on the tap. Her mood had changed. She was not smiling. Ellis said: “What are you mad about?”

“I’m not mad,” she said. “Sometimes I dislike the way your friends treat me.”

“But you know how the Turks are about girls.”

“Exactly—girls. They don’t mind respectable women, but I’m a girl.”

Ellis sighed. “It’s not like you to get needled by the prehistoric attitudes of a few chauvinists. What are you really trying to tell me?”

She considered for a moment, standing naked beside the shower, and she was so lovely that Ellis wanted to make love again. She said: “I suppose I’m saying that I don’t like my status. I’m committed to you. Everyone knows that—I don’t sleep with anyone else, don’t even go out with other men—but you’re not committed to me. We don’t live together, I don’t know where you go or what you do a lot of the time, we’ve never met one another’s parents . . . and people know all this, so they treat me like a tart.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“You always say that.” She stepped into the shower and banged the door. Ellis took his razor from the drawer where he kept his overnight kit and began to shave at the kitchen sink. They had had this argument before, at much greater length, and he knew what was at the bottom of it: Jane wanted them to live together.

He wanted it too, of course; he wanted to marry her and live with her for the rest of his life. But he had to wait until this assignment was over; and he could not tell her that, so he said such things as I’m not ready and All I need is time, and these vague evasions infuriated her. It seemed to her that a year was a long time to love a man without getting any kind of commitment from him. She was right, of course. But if all went well today he could make everything right.

He finished shaving, wrapped his razor in a towel and put it in his drawer. Jane got out of the shower and he took her place. We’re not talking, he thought; this is silly.

While he was in the shower she made coffee. He dressed quickly in faded denim jeans and a black T-shirt and sat opposite her at the little mahogany table. She poured his coffee and said: “I want to have a serious talk with you.”

“Okay,” he said quickly, “let’s do it at lunchtime.”

“Why not now?”

“I don’t have time.”

“Is Rahmi’s birthday more important than our relationship?”

“Of course not.” Ellis heard irritation in his tone, and a warning voice told him. Be gentle—you could lose her. “But I promised, and it’s important that I keep my promises; whereas it doesn’t seem very important whether we have this conversation now or later.”

Jane’s face took on a set, stubborn look that he knew: she wore it when she had made a decision and someone tried to deflect her from her path. “It’s important to me that we talk now.”

For a moment he was tempted to tell her the whole truth right away. But this was not the way he had planned it. He was short of time, his mind was on something else, and he was not prepared. It would be much better later, when they were both relaxed, and he would be able to tell her that his job in Paris was done. So he said: “I think you’re being silly, and I won’t be bullied. Please let’s talk later. I have to go now.” He stood up.

As he walked to the door she said: “Jean-Pierre has asked me to go to Afghanistan with him.”

This was so completely unexpected that Ellis had to think for a moment before he could take it in. “Are you serious?” he said incredulously.

“I’m serious.”

Ellis knew Jean-Pierre was in love with Jane. So were half a dozen other men: that kind of thing was inevitable with such a woman. None of the men were serious rivals, though; at least, he had thought not, until this