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| Part One |
In every affair consider
what precedes and what follows
Epictetus
1 - A Tenor Calling
A new voice. It belonged to Bill Abernathy, the guy Mel Kanter had referred to her. “My wife is divorcing me. DSS, the Department of Social Services, says I sexually abused my daughter, who’s five now, and I understand I’m going to be charged with raping her.” He hesitated. “I have a lawyer for the divorce, who doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Can you help me?”
I make no promises, no guarantees,” Bea said. “These cases are rough.”
Bill took a deep breath, which resounded in the phone.
“They’re also expensive.” All she had to gauge him was his voice: tenor, mid-range. She longed for a future with videophones to see what a caller looked like, provided they couldn’t see her. She almost never had a good hair day.
Bill finally said, “I expected that.”
Bea put the receiver to her ear and switched off the speaker. “Do you know if there’s any physical evidence of abuse or rape?”
“Well, DSS says my daughter has chlamydia.”
“Then they’ve performed a medical exam.” Bea paused. “I don’t suppose you have the results of the examination?” She knew little about chlamydia other than how to spell it and that it was one of the more common sexually transmitted diseases.
“No.”
“Do you have it? The disease, I mean?”
“No.”
“Do you know if your lawyer got the results?” The tugboat tilted with a wave as a speedboat passed nearby and caused Bea to balance herself. She almost didn’t catch his answer.
“No. I’ll tell you this, though: if there’s any evidence, it wasn’t because of me.”
“Did anyone else have access to the child?”
“Yes, my father-in-law and my wife’s nephew.”
“We won’t go into that now. Look, can you pinpoint a date when all this began?”
“July last year.”
“First of all, we have to meet before I can tell you whether I’ll take the case. In the meantime, I want a copy of every piece of paper you’ve received from your lawyer, DSS, your wife, the police, the courts— And write a list about everything that led up to the events in July, everything that’s happened since then, and anything else I need to know. How long do you think that’ll take?”
“A week at least. I work two jobs. I’m a physician’s assistant at a VA hospital and an HMO.”
“Okay. Let’s meet in about ten days. Wait—do you have to appear in court or provide papers within the next ten days?”
“No.”
“Wonderful.”
They agreed on a date and she gave him directions to her office on Costaki II, docked in the marina at the old Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. “Bill, get the copies of your notes to me before we meet so I’ll have a chance to look them over. That’ll give us time to size each other up. If we hit it off, I’ll give you a fee agreement to sign after you tell your lawyer he’s history.” Bea chuckled. “It’s a he, right?”
“Yes.”
She’d made a good guess. Many male lawyers were intimidated by these cases.
2 - Nasty and Devious
Bea and a dozen or more lawyers and a few of their clients gathered in a courtroom much like the others in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, except that it had a different judge presiding every time she was there. Each courtroom was large, with blue or dirty orange wall-to-wall carpeting. Architecturally, the only interesting feature in each was the structure of the light-filled dome, which distorted the acoustics for anyone sitting in the gallery.
She was there representing Leslie Calhoun, a geologist and ethical resister who hadn’t wanted to participate in the fraud her employer, an environmental consulting company, was committing against the state and federal governments. For special engineers, the firm was ordering mail-order graduate degrees from California so it could charge almost triple the legal hourly rate. It was altering timesheets and padding hours, such as putting charges on projects for work done on others. Bea was gathering evidence in hopes she’d be able to bring against the company a qui tam suit, which informs the federal government there is a scheme to defraud it of gobs of money. Leslie alleged health and safety violations as well. So the executives had set out a carefully orchestrated plan to make her a pariah on the job. That meant her only way out of the unbearable, hostile working environment was to quit.
Opposing counsel had shown his colors from the moment he first made contact with Bea. He not only operated outside the rules of court, he was also nasty and devious. She nicknamed him Pitbull. Bea thought he was trying to overcompensate for his looks: he was a bespectacled skinny guy, like the Before of the Before-and-After Atlas strong-man advertisements and he had thinning, oil-slicked back hair.
The issue that day was whether the defendants would be found in default.
“Ms. Archibald,” the judge asked, “you are aware that removing a default is discretionary?”
“I am aware, Your Honor; however, discretion may be granted only if there’s an excuse or a reason given for not doing something. Where there are no facts before you to consider, there is nothing for you to use your discretion on. That’s the situation here.
There’s nothing for the court to consider.”
“Well, I’m going to allow their motion.”
Bea was, of course, livid. Great. She gritted her teeth.
Now Leslie and I’ll have to go down the long road of discovery and trial. No shortcut here. Only if Leslie lost would Bea appeal that issue.
Bea met a friend in the elevator. “What is the sense of the damn rules if the courts are not going to follow them?”
“You’ll get used to it, Bea. They enforce them when they want to and don’t when they don’t.”
She pressed the button hard. “It’s a damn shame. All the work, time, and money for nothing. And the judges want raises. What the hell for? To take more money out of our pockets?”
Her friend laughed. “Hey, this is Taxachusetts.”
3 - Past and Future Possibilities
Melvin Kanter was about to leave the tug when Bill arrived.
“Welcome,” Bea said. “Bill, meet Melvin Kanter. In a roundabout way, he’s the lawyer responsible for you being here.”
“How do you do?” Bill said, extending his hand. “Your name sounds familiar. You’re Dr. Kupersmith’s lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. I’m an advisor to his board.” Mel smiled, as if he liked how prestigious the position sounded. “I’ve got to run. Nice to meet you. By the way, yours is not the first of these cases she’s handled. You’re in good hands.”
“Thanks for coming, Mel,” Bea said.
As Mel went down the ramp to the dock, Bea led Bill to one of two mauve-pillowed chaise lounges on the lower deck and gestured to him to sit down. “I’ve read the notes you faxed me. Let’s get to business, starting with your courtship.”
“Well, as I wrote, after I met Denise I went to graduate school for two years. I came back here every month or so to see her for about a year before we got married.”
“What made you decide to get married then?”
He chuckled. His hands opened and close. “She asked me to marry her.” He looked up. “She asked me! Can you believe that?” He laughed, again timorously, and his face reddened. “You know, she expected me to say yes. It was almost like a pre-arranged marriage.”
Pre-arranged? That’s weird. “How was married life at the beginning?”
“Good. I’m a runner. The first three years I stayed as physically active as I could, and Denise encouraged my races.” With a bit of pride, he said, “My personal best was a little over a 6-minute mile.”
“I thought she complained about the time you spent away from her.”
“Later.” He chuckled again and swallowed, trying to clear the nervousness from his throat. “At the beginning, Denise thought sex with me was fun... and I thought sex before the race helped me run faster. So she didn’t mind the races at the beginning.”
“And aside from sex, how was married life?”
“Good. I’d tell her all the funny things that happened on the shift. Of course, we had our disagreements, too. Normal ones, I think.”
“How did she spend her spare time?”
“Reading romance novels.”
“Was she interested in sex or were the romance novels enough for her?”
“Oh,” he said, looking surprised. “She was definitely interested in sex!”
Bea accepted his statement at face value. It was too early to know whether it was only male ego talking. She did wonder, though, what kind of woman would be attracted to him. What would she look like? In the old days, Bea measured men according to whether their hormones were oozing. Now, she didn’t voice her conclusions, but still gave every man she met the once-over. She had her own sexual lexicon.
“She didn’t want children though,” Bill said, not bothering to conceal his disappointment. “Whenever I brought up the subject, she’d say, ‘We’ll talk about it later.’ She thought children would interfere with her career. Matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons she was mad at me: she didn’t have a job after Chloe was born, and she was stuck in the house, while I got to go to work.”
Mad was a rather mild word for him to use in these circumstances. The guy is about to be charged with rape of his child. “Four years into the marriage, before Chloe was born, you suggested you both see a priest for pastoral counseling. What went wrong to bring you to that point?”
“My hours were horrendous—like an intern’s. I was assigned to Surgery, where my hours weren’t predictable. Sometimes I went from six in the morning ‘til nine at night. She knew that, but she still complained I didn’t spend enough time with her.”
He’s looking me in the eyes. Is he checking my sympathy level?
“She had a list.” He shrugged. “I spent too much time weightlifting, too much time at the Y. Too many 10K races.” He threw up his hands.
As he spoke, Bea was sizing him up. What impression will he make on a judge or jury? He looks like a runner. He has a Bill Rodgers type of build, 5’10”, lean, probably tight under his suit. A perpetually youthful face. Straight average-length nose, flat cheekbones, pasty skin tone, but twinkly blue-grey eyes, an unlined brow, a full head of light tawny hair. An easy smile was almost visible under a well-trimmed mustache, which was usually a companion to male-pattern baldness. Is it temporary or a permanent feature? “How long did you continue meeting with the priest?”
“Only a short time. Denise didn’t want to continue. She thought we were ganging up on her. Paranoia.”
“How did the marriage fare after that?”
“A few months later, she accused me of raping her.”
Bea frowned, more than a little curious about his frankness. “I want to be sure of something. The supposed rape occurred on the day Denise’s Mom was taken to the hospital?”
“Yes, it did.” She grabbed a cigarette.
“Marital rape is not unheard of, but it’s not a crime in all states.” She took a puff. “Even where it is, I doubt what you described would end up in court.” The smoke left a rising trail from her mouth. “Tell you what, run the story by me again.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “It was a Saturday afternoon in July of 1983. Her sister had phoned her at the lab and said their mother had been taken to the hospital. It was serious. It might’ve been cancer. Denise came home from work upset. She asked me to comfort her.”
“Did you?”
“Yes... well, I tried. She wouldn’t stop bustling from room to room, so I just followed her to keep her company. Every once in a while, I managed to get a hug in. At some point, I became aroused.”
“What happened then?”
“She said no.”
“What did you do next?”
“What she asked me to do: stay with her. I did and I hoped she’d be comforted just by my being there.”
“What happened then?”
“At some point, she seemed to change her mind and became more receptive. Then she led me upstairs, we got undressed and started making love. Then I lost my erection. She went to the bathroom. When she came out, I had gotten my erection back and I took her. Afterward I asked her, ‘Was it good for you?’
“She replied, ‘I ovulated just today. And some people would call this rape.’”
His voice quivered as he said, “We didn’t talk anymore about it because she was all nervous about getting pregnant. A week later she purchased a home pregnancy test. It was positive.”
“So she didn’t say directly that she thought you had raped her? She said only quote ‘some people would call this rape.’ Did I get that right?”
“Right. She didn’t mention anything again about rape for a few months. She just didn’t want to be pregnant, but those were her exact words. I’ll never forget them. Probably because I was so surprised.” He shrugged. “After that, things started going downhill. We were intimate less often, and I wasn’t sure why. Then she moved out of our bedroom into the spare room.”
“When was that?”
“When Chloe was around two. Yeah, so around three, four years ago.”
“Whoa!” Bea needed time to absorb the time frames. “She moved into her own bedroom two years later?”
“Yeah.”
Bea nodded. “Okay, let’s take what happened after the so-called rape. When would she bring it up?”
“As soon as I got in the door from work. Like she thought it was time to yell, ‘The rapist is home!’ or something. She’d begin making derogatory, humiliating remarks almost as soon as I opened the door. In retrospect, she used the ‘rape card’ as leverage to gain advantage in the marriage.”
“Give me some examples of what she said.”
“Well, she kept reminding me I failed to withdraw in time. She’d say, ‘It’s your fault I got pregnant’ or ‘You used your weapon.’” He stopped and sat up straighter, as if he had just understood what had happened. “That was her weapon during any squabble we had.”
“Any others?”
“Just more like that.”
“Were you devastated by Denise moving out of the marital bedroom?”
“No, frankly I was relieved. I had my privacy back. No pressure. Her moving out was more than a symbolic split. It was a logical result. The marriage had disintegrated.”
“How come you stayed? I mean, you were living in separate bedrooms, no sex, no communication, and nothing in common except the child. So how come you weren’t the first to file for a divorce? Religion?”
“Oh, no. Religion had nothing to do with it. At first, I was worried about Chloe. I couldn’t leave her with Denise, who’d become dysfunctional. She was severely depressed and drinking too much. Not that I didn’t drink too—I usually had a few beers at night—but she had really become incapacitated.
“Fortunately the hospital was close enough for me to get home at lunchtime to make sure the baby was fed and okay.” He shook his head. “The blinds would be down. She wouldn’t take the baby outside. I got Chloe outside by taking her with me while I did the shopping.
“Then when Denise began seeing the therapist—Ruth Stanton—and going to AA, I was pleased. She had someone to talk to, and she stopped drinking after one AA meeting.” Bill’s eyebrows raised. “So I hung in there. After all, we had a beautiful child who needed a real family. And I wanted to be part of her growing up. I was her father. You know, I really did feel things would be better. Give it a little time, that’s what I thought.”
“Where did you find the optimism and patience?”
He shrugged. “Probably from my dad. Ever since I can remember, my mother’s been ill... out of control. She’d do crazy things. We kids had to get out of her way. My father was the stabilizing force of the family. He was my mother’s rock. In good times, she was his entertainment. In bad times, when the sickness came on, he did everything he could to protect us. Sometimes he couldn’t, though. My mother would become very strong physically. Hard to believe. She was such little thing.”
“What did you do when one of her bouts occurred?” The birds, attracted by Bea’s garden on the upper level, sounded as if they were acting out too.
“I’d just walk out the door and head to the Y. The YMCA was my refuge... has been ever since. I’ve never felt better than when I’m physically active. It blocks out the quiet. So long as I’m active, I can avoid thinking about what’s bothering me.
“I’ve never forgotten how furious Katharine Rose, my sister, was with me for ducking out to the Y during one of Mom’s episodes. She said I didn’t have to leave first thing for the Y, that I might as well rent a room there. Then she slugged me on the side of the face and asked what I’d do if I’d had to feel that. I guessed that was how my mother had hit her. Then she began to cry. She said I was the oldest... that I should help. She was right.
“I guess that’s why I felt I had to stick it out and help Denise. Particularly last summer, when she started going to a rape group. Then three weeks later, she went to court for a restraining order. When I learned she’d told a judge I’d sexually abused Chloe, I was shocked.” He reached into his pocket, took out a folded piece of paper, leaned over, and handed it to Bea.
She read it.
Affidavit
Plaintiff: Denise Abernathy
Date of Abuse: 7-26-1989
On Wednesday, July 26, my 5 yr old daughter related a secret to me involving suspected sexual abuse by her father. Both my daughter and I are in fear of our lives at this time. I am afraid of him as I have been under regular counseling for his forcibly raping me a few years ago. I am in constant fear of him raping me again.
Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury,
Denise Willow Abernathy
Bill said, “I never dreamed it would come to this.”
4 - Old Ironsides
“It feels good to stretch,” Bea said, as she and Bill walked around the corner from the tugboat to Old Ironsides, the famous U.S. naval vessel. She hoped the change of atmosphere would lessen his tension. “Have you ever visited the USS Constitution, Bill?”
“Can’t say I have.” He was still preoccupied with his problems. Finally, he said, “The affidavit I gave you... it came with an order to stay out of the house and report to the court. When I got there, I was accused of fondling Chloe.” He sighed. “I was devastated. Being accused of it was even worse than having to deny it. Then the judge ordered a 90-day ‘cooling-off’ period and said any visits I had with Chloe had to be supervised.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. Then he read off a list of things I had to stay away from: Chloe, Denise, and of course, the house. I was to move out immediately and report back to court in three months.”
Bea said, “All that is standard operating procedure. Courts know the affidavits are quite often untrue, even though they’re signed under the pains and penalties of perjury. Until the accused appears in court, a judge has no way of knowing whether it’s true or not. In case it’s true, the court takes the precaution of issuing the order to separate the people for a few days.”
Bill coughed. “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe she actually wrote it.”
“Maybe she did, and maybe she had help. We’ll probably never know.”
“Who would have helped?” he asked
“Probably a Victim Witness Advocate.”
“Huh?”
“One of a group set up to help women in domestic cases.”
“Now I wonder whether Denise or the advocate wrote the bit about Chloe fearing for her life.” The volume of his voice rose excitedly.
“That was compelling, all right.”
They reached the snack shop before they reached the USS Constitution. Bea said, “Let’s get a cold soda and sit awhile outside... watch the gulls.” When they were seated, she said, “Bill, you mentioned chlamydia when you first called me. I know practically nothing about it. How is it diagnosed?”
“By testing cultures. It’s time-consuming... laborious, you know. But there are commercial tests now. Rapid detection tests. They’re cheaper, but less reliable, less sensitive for diagnosing than the culture tests... particularly for detecting chlamydia in children.”
“Do you know which test was done here?”
He shook his head. “No idea.”
“Have you seen the results of the test or tests?”
“No, haven’t seen a thing. No one’s told me anything other than Chloe had it. And no one’s asked me anything. Not even whether I had it.”
“So did Denise have chlamydia?”
“I don’t know. Right after the baby was born, she ran a very high fever.”
“Could Denise’s condition have had anything to do with Chloe being diagnosed with chlamydia?”
“Oh, okay. A baby can get it going through the birth canal if the mother has an infection. That’s why they put the drops into a baby’s eyes at birth.”
“I never knew that,” she said. “I have more homework for you. I want some definitive articles on chlamydia. You have access to a medical library?”
“Sure, I can get whatever you need.”
“Do you know whether Denise had been intimate with another man before marriage?”
“Yeah, she was... for about a year.”
“Okay, that’s enough for now. Do you want to take in Old Ironsides?”
“Another day, Bea. I’ve got to make it through traffic.”
As they strolled back to the tug’s slip, Bill said, “When all of this is over, I want custody of Chloe. Denise resents her. She never wanted her. She always said her career was more important. And most of all she’s depriving her of her childhood. She’s not taking Chloe anywhere except to the AA meetings with her.”
“Does Denise have any close friends?”
“No, not really. Her only friends were from AA.” He grimaced. “You know, I’m also concerned about Chloe being treated for something that may never have happened.”
“On the phone, you said Denise’s dad or her nephew had access to Chloe.”
“Yeah, but I never saw any evidence of their doing anything to her... and I certainly didn’t.”
“Well, if the abuse didn’t occur and they’re treating her as if it did, she’ll probably need therapy.”
He nodded. “For years. I’ll see to it that she gets whatever she needs.” He paused. “You know what really concerns me? I hope all this talk about sex abuse doesn’t turn Chloe against men.”
Bea nodded. It’s a possibility.
Back at the boat she handed Bill Abernathy a Client Fee Agreement. “Read it thoroughly and call me if you have questions. Then make out a check and send it to me along with the signed agreement if you want to retain me as counsel.” She watched as he walked down the pier. He seemed more upbeat than he’d been when he arrived. But should I take the case?
5 - Roll Me Over
Persuade the court that Denise’s belief she’d been raped by him had somehow affected the child. Boy, if I could get my hands on her therapist’s notes! Then it occurred to her she didn’t even know what kind of therapist Stanton was. A social worker? A psychologist? Someone who just decided to hang out a shingle? Bea would call the licensing boards and inquire.
She had to know more about Denise’s past. She picked up the phone and left a message on Bill’s machine to call her when he got in.
Call it a day, Bea thought. Turn on the jets in the tub and relax. She went into the galley, removed a bottle of chilled chardonnay from the fridge, took a glass from the rack, and headed for her stateroom.
As she opened the stateroom door, Supreme Judicial Court Judge Hugh Engle said, “Oh, the Mad Woman of Chaillot has returned.”
“What are you doing here?” Bea asked the amalgamation of young Albert Finney’s pale hairless body and Donald Sutherland’s face and twinkle who was stretched out on her bed. “I didn’t expect you back until the end of the week.”
“I thought we’d get a head start.”
“Your head, my head, or the trip?”
“All of them.” He grinned, grabbed her and pulled her to the bed.
She put the cooled bottle on his stomach.
“Oh! What did you do that for?”
“So I’ll have time for my jets, Love. To clear my head before you get a chance to play with it.”
“‘There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law,” Hugh said, “for ‘no poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.’ Giraudoux.”
“They’ll hang you for treason.” She poured wine into her glass and then some on his tummy.
He winced from the chill, but didn’t lose a beat of the repartee. “No, I’ll lie.”
“What else is old?” She bent to taste the liquid contaminated by the heat of his body.
Stiffening, he winced again. He hated to be touched. She wondered why he flittered around her like a moth to a flame these many years, particularly when he’d been buggered as a boy and had never recovered.
“Don’t,” he said softly while gently yanking her hair.
“My sick, sick, forever sick puppy.”
“You shouldn’t have left me. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years you were missing.”
“I wasn’t missing. I just went away.”
“But you didn’t let me know where you went.”
She sipped from her glass and then offered him a sip. He accepted.
“Love, we wouldn’t have lasted twenty-five years. We wouldn’t be here on this bed had I not left.”
“I suffered. I loved you and you abandoned me.” She burst out laughing. “You promised you’d not bring those twenty-five years up again.”
“I can’t help it. You ruined my life. You were always in the back of my mind. Memories of you ruined every relationship I had with every woman.”
“Love, love, love,” she sang with much guilt, knowing she didn’t mean it but couldn’t help calling him that. She always had. He reveled in being called “love,” even though he knew she didn’t mean it. It didn’t bother him. It was part of their game. “Love, you must stop the melodrama. You’re nothing but a manipulative faussaire.”
“You know I don’t like you saying that.”
“Okay, then you’re an incurable romantic.” She guffawed and had to put her glass down before she spilled it.
He turned onto his side, facing away from her. She admired the roundness of his butt, but didn’t touch it. “My puppy,” she said, kissing the back of his head and then his neck and shoulders and ran her hands down his back and around his sides. Tormented, he lay marble still. “This is a good time to go to my jets. Stay here and pout as much as you need to.”
He embraced the pillow as she undressed, put on a gauzy summer wrap-around lounger, refilled her glass, and made her way to the spa.
As the hot water pleasantly pounded her, she closed her eyes and envisioned the flat cheekbones she associated with the English, the pronounced but narrow jaw, the little mouth. Ironic Hugh had that look. He was not really an Englishman. His father had been of Germanic extraction, serving in some capacity for the Brits in India and only returning to England at the end of his service. His mother evidently had been quite beautiful. Wearing long black formal dinner gloves—Sam Spade film noir type of gloves—and a black strapless dress, she’d been featured in DuMaurier cigarette posters sometime during the late ‘40s or early ‘50s.
During WWII, Hugh, the youngest of the many Engle children, had been sent to the States for safety. He returned to England to go to boarding school, where his own personal trauma took place. With the estrangement from his siblings during his formative years, his mother’s untimely death when he was 12, and his father’s foreign travels, Hugh’s pain was never addressed.
He’d spent a lifetime thinking he’d be happier wherever he didn’t happen to be. For his postgraduate education, he came back to the States and stayed, met Bea (who was a few years older than he) while she was married, and believed she loved him because he’d provided her with her first orgasm since she married. When she disappeared, he sired sons whose mother he had eventually married, was appointed a judge, lived a secret life of multiple adulteries, and wrote a letter to Bea via the alumni office of her alma mater.
After some while, Bea responded. Almost immediately after their reunion, she had learned her prolonged absence from him was his excuse for his lifetime of unhappiness.
Their arrangement was convenient. With his high-profile judicial life, he enjoyed the mobility and privacy the tug provided. His presence provided her a modicum of sexual satisfaction and privacy too, and she was able to avoid the inevitable obloquy about an older woman who had long since lost all outward fashionable indices of sexual allure.
Bea had a vigorous past, but hadn’t aged well. Gone were the days when she was called “Gina” in Paris and “Gorgona mou” in Greece, or even felt like Rita Tushingham. She was half-past fifty, fat, and feisty. More like Kathy Bates.
Her change came about when, being bored to death by her last “significant other,” she stopped sexing and remained abstinate for a number of years until Hugh had come back into her life. Today, Bea laughed at the new term: In her day, an “other” certainly didn’t need to be “significant.” He just had to be impressive. Hugh didn’t count. He was unclassifiable in everyday terms.
When she returned to the bed, she snuggled on her side, feigning disinterest. Hugh wanted to be the aggressor. Damn fool. He didn’t know what he’d been missing, and didn’t realize she knew what she was missing. Sick control freak. She put up with it because she also needed to feel loved. Whether she was loved was another matter.
She turned over on her ample stomach, shoved one pillow under her rib cage, hugged the other, and closed her eyes. Hugh stirred and moved below her knees. He spread her legs and entered her. He was full. Squeezing tight, she helped him stay that way, for deprived of being touched, she needed him able for a long while. She’d long since stopped telling him not to stop. He didn’t like orders, but no longer needed them. He knew what she wanted: sheer staying power. And but for his power, there would be no reason for their charade.
Hugh knew that, so he took great pride in his power. Wish fulfillment made him strong... and stubborn. He was happy, he said, with himself the way he was, but she always felt he did not understand how to be John Donne happy.
Sometimes she felt cruel when she touched him after they had joined. But she never felt guilty: he deserved it. He’d come back under false pretenses, romantically false pretenses. She was vulnerable, but not the way she used to be vulnerable.
He was demonstrating his power over her during that moment. She couldn’t keep herself from moaning with pleasure as Hugh made his presence welcome, but knowing he abhorred her being “noisy,” she bit her pillow to stop. Silently, she emboldened Costaki, who adored hearing her. Costaki, gami-se mou. Gami-se mou, agapi mou. Etsi. Nai, nai. Nai. S’agapo, Costaki, Cos -taa-ki. Cos-taaa-kiii! Her body crescendoed.
Hugh withdrew, wordless, soundless, and rolled over onto his back. She let her tears flow into her pillow. Hugh would never know. Nor, she suspected, would he ever understand why.
They slept.
Upon waking, she sipped some more wine. “Want some?” she asked.
“Nah, I’ll get my own.” He went out to the galley.
She felt her breasts. They were full and longed for tenderness. Had Hugh walked in just then, he could have noticed their resemblance to the perfect globes of Die Schlangen Gottin, the Minoan snake goddess who, grasping a phallic snake in each hand, hung over the bed. She was an equal opportunity turn-on.
But Hugh didn’t walk in, and Bea sipped again and again.
When Hugh came bouncing back, she thought, He must have had a few belts of gin out there. He’s smiling.
“So, what was your day like?” Hugh asked.
“Two in one. I had Abernathy here almost all day.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“That’s a cop out.”
“No, it may just be he doesn’t feel comfortable enough with me to fill in a few missing links yet. After all, we just met.”
“Which ones?”
“Well, his attitude toward his wife. The guy is about to be charged with rape of his child—a charge his wife may have brought about—and he said he’s only ‘mad at her.’ That’s a rather mild word to use given the circumstances. I should think he’d be furious. And his tone was just too matter-of-fact.” Her face puckered and she clenched her fists as she groped for her own interpretation of what bothered her about Bill’s manner. Finally she said, “He’s wishy-washy on the important stuff. He... lacks passion. He’s noncommittal.”
Hugh was looking at her with a huge grin, getting a charge out of her working herself into a mini-frenzy to find her thought. His amusement, though, did not mean he agreed.
“Evasive, you mean.”
“No, I don’t. It’s too soon to conclude that. The comfort zone. He may not have reached the comfort zone with me yet. That’s why I took him for a walk, to reach for communication on a different level.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, he told me his wife repeatedly said derogatory and humiliating things to him to remind him of his raping her. But when I asked him what she said, the only thing he came up with was that she accused him of using ‘his weapon’ to rape her.”
Hugh laughed the deep laugh.
“Okay, agreed. The expression is an anachronism, something out of yesteryear. But Pollyanna, it seems, moved out of the marital bedroom a few years ago because of the alleged rape.”
“Did you ask him the one next important question?” Hugh asked.
“What was that?”
“What he did for sex after his wife cut him off and moved out of the bedroom?”
“The implication being that he molested the child to get relief?”
“That’s the obvious, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts about it, the guy did it!”
“You only think that because you know you can’t judge a judge by his robes.”
“But a jury will want the answer.”
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The remainder of the book will be posted here on line with three episodes per week. The hard cover and Kindle editions are available online at Amazon.
