My Lost Daughter (4 page)

“Lawrence Bodenham,” he said. “You're Lily Forrester, right?”

“Right,” she said, really feeling the tequila now, wishing the man would leave and she could think of something brilliant and seductive to say to Fowler, particularly now that she'd had a few drinks and was feeling the false courage of alcohol. She made no move to shake Bodenham's hand and he withdrew it.

“I'm representing Daniel Duthoy on that 288 matter, and I've been having some problems with Carol Abrams regarding discovery.”

The case was only vaguely familiar to Lily. Richard evidently knew it well and turned to face the attorney with a look of disgust. The crime he had mentioned was sodomy and the victim was a ten-year-old boy, the defendant a pillar of the community—a Big Brother.

“Remember me?” Richard snapped. “If you have any problems, Bodenham, just tell it to the judge. Or why don't you call Butler up at home from the phone in your Porsche? He loves guys like you who pull down over a million a year defending these good folks who like to butt-fuck little boys.”

Bodenham stepped back a safe distance before responding. “I hear you're back assigning drunk driving and petty thefts to new DAs who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Good career move, Fowler.” As soon as the words left his mouth, the attorney disappeared into the crowd.

Richard pushed back from the table, slapping it with his palm. “That about makes an evening for me. See you around, kiddo.”

Lily caught his coattail, stopping him. “You've had too much to drink, Richard. Let me drive you.” She was standing with her purse and briefcase, ready.

For the first time that evening, he smiled broadly, flashing perfect white teeth. “Come on, then. If you want to save me, now's the time. But if you think I'm going to let a drunk like you drive me, you're crazy. You never bought me that drink, so now you can buy me a cup of coffee.”

A short time later, they were sitting in a booth at Denny's, two blocks from the
Elephant Bar, sipping black coffee and eating cheeseburgers. They were laughing and getting sober. Lily finished her burger and turned to Richard. “So tell me exactly what happened with Judge Fisher.”

“I found the little bastard snorting cocaine. Not much more to tell than that.”

“But how did he have the gall to call Butler and complain? Wasn't he the least bit concerned?”

“Hell no, he just told Butler that he didn't want to see my face anywhere near his court again.” Richard dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “I did happen to go up and down the hall and tell a few people that Fisher was having a little party and that they better hurry if they wanted to do some rails of the cleanest-cut coke around.”

“What's wrong with you?” Lily said, laughing. “Do you have a death wish or something? I thought you and Butler were on great terms, that he thought you could do no wrong. Why didn't he back you up?”

“Oh, Butler's a good man. He believed me. He's just a pussy. His theory is when the dirt flies, all of us end up buried in it. I actually think he felt bad about the whole thing. When all is said and done, I'll probably end up taking his job.”

Lily brushed her hair off her face. The waitress came with the check, and Lily grabbed it and threw a twenty down on the table. “I don't know how I'm going to handle this new job. Isn't it hard to become involved in the cases and then have to rely on someone else to try them?”

“That's what supervision is all about. If you can't trust people or feel you have to track every single proceeding in that unit, you'll lose your mind. Don't nag and don't be a babysitter, Lily, or you'll fall into the age-old stereotype of the woman manager.”

Lily stared into space, digesting his advice.

Outside in the cool air, he stood beside her. “I'll walk you to your car. Where did you park?”

In her mind she saw herself already walking through the door of her ranch house. The first thing she saw every day was the backyard. “I parked at the courthouse,” she said, looking straight in front of her. John had decided to adjust the sprinkler system about six months ago and had dug up the entire backyard. He'd planted one side with sod, leaving the other side dirt after he couldn't figure out how to get the sprinklers working.

“My car is at the bar. I'll drive you,” Richard told her. “You shouldn't be walking around alone at night.”

“Thanks.” On weekends, John would sit in a lawn chair and sun himself on the grass
side as if the dirt side didn't exist. No matter how many times she told him it irritated her and how ridiculous it looked, he made no attempt to change it. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to be the primary decision maker, the disciplinarian, the strong one. She wanted to laugh and feel pleasure, feel attractive and physically desirable. She wanted to believe a birthday was a cause for celebration.

They walked in silence. She'd have to settle for the moment. Soon it would be gone and she'd be at home in bed with John. After all these years of abstinence and John's accusations that she was fooling around on the side—for the first time she wished it was true. And it could only be with the man walking beside her, the same man she called forth in her fantasies. But he was married and there was no reason to believe he was physically attracted to her. If John was no longer interested in her sexually, why would another man want her? She was no longer desirable. She might as well accept it. She'd accepted everything else about her life.

He unlocked the passenger side door of his white BMW and tossed what looked like his gym clothes into the backseat. In the driver's seat, he put the key in the ignition, then dropped his hands in his lap and turned to her. He reached across and kissed her fully on the mouth, his hands buried in her thick hair. His face with day-old stubble scratched her sensitive skin but she didn't notice.

“Come home with me,” he whispered. “Please, I want you.”

“But . . .” Lily thought of his wife and teenage son, the fact that she should go home; that she might want it now and regret it later. His lips were there again as he worked his way to her neck and gently bit on her ear. His hands on her back pressed her against him.

She was flooded with warmth, pushing herself closer into his body, her flesh alive with nerve endings. Everything washed away: the job, John, Shana, her birthday, her upbringing, her caution.

“Please,” he said, lifting her chin and forcing her to look into his eyes. “No one is there if that's what you're thinking. And no one is coming home tonight.” He took her hand and placed it on the crotch of his pants, on his erection. She let it stay there as he kissed her again.

She was a normal woman with normal desires. Richard wasn't going to use her as a receptacle, as John would say. He was the repairman, the doctor, the magician. He was going to plug her back into the wall outlet and turn on the lights. She wasn't broken. She'd just been placed on the shelf.

“Drive,” she said, “and fast. Drive fast.”

An hour later, they were standing at the plate-glass window in his living room, looking out over the city lights of Ventura. He was nude; she was wrapped in a large bath sheet. The house was in the foothills, contemporary, with high ceilings and an open, airy feeling. Her jacket, her shoes, her bra and hose were scattered across the room. They had never made it to the bedroom.

Once in the house, she had stripped her clothes off almost ahead of him, and they had stood there facing each other a foot apart, both their arms at their sides.

“I always knew your body would look like this,” he told her.

“What does it look like?”

“Lush. It looks like mounds of strawberry yogurt. I want to taste it.”

They made love on the sofa, their feet sticking off one end, arms and legs everywhere. It was the only piece of furniture in the room. With his long, sinewy arms he held her upper body down and buried his head between her legs. He lingered there even when she protested and sighed and cried out, “No. No. No.”

She finally could take it no longer and dragged him up by his hair and forced him to switch places with her, and with her hair spread over the hard muscles of his stomach, she took him in her mouth, hungry for the taste and smell of him, the feel of him. “Oh, God,” he cried, “God.”

She crawled on top of him and straddled him, riding him like a horse, pushed up on her arms, tossing her hair, leaning down to kiss him and then throwing her head back again. This was her fantasy. She was living her dream. She imagined she was on a great white horse, galloping over huge hurdles and streams, heading for the white light of pleasure. Finding it, she collapsed on his chest, sweating, satiated. He rolled her off onto the floor and turned her around, taking her from behind, holding her buttocks in his hands and slamming against her until he exploded and fell on top of her, his warm, heavy breath in her ear.

“Jesus,” he said, “did I hurt you?”

“Hardly,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

He lifted her wet hair and kissed the back of her neck tenderly. “I don't think you can call that pain.”

Suddenly embarrassed, she broke free, sat up with her knees drawn and her arms wrapped around them. Already feelings of guilt were fluttering in the pit of her stomach, but a quick look at Richard made them disappear. She had finally met John's accusations and suspicions. And it had been easy, too easy. And it had been good enough to want much more. Her body was screaming at her, begging her, demanding more. Perhaps she
could actually feed this desire, this need. She could go on wanting Richard until he ignored her and disappointed her and no longer cared if she walked alone at night. This is what it must feel like when two people met each other on an even level, shared similar points of view. She let her eyes drift down in mock coyness; a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Her behavior had been shocking, wanton, thrilling. Throughout the world, people felt this good all the time, at every second in every day. Getting a divorce was not a crime punishable by death. She could feel this way again.

They showered together in the master bathroom. Passing the bed, she saw it was unmade and the room was strewn with clothes and newspapers and glasses sitting on tables without coasters. In the shower, they rubbed soap all over each other's bodies. He dumped half a bottle of shampoo on her head and it dripped down into her eyes. “Get me a towel,” she said, laughing and listening to the delightful sound bounce off the tiled walls, amazed that it had been manufactured inside her. “You've blinded me.” She took the little soap, greatly used, and made him turn around and rubbed it between the two muscular cheeks of his ass, like she'd done to her daughter when she was a baby. He jumped and told her to stop, but she knew he loved it. Outside the shower, he wanted to comb her pubic hair so some of the hairs would be there in the morning. She couldn't believe it, but she let him. It tickled. He commented on the fact that she was a real redhead, causing her to take one of his nipples and twist it hard. “Because you doubted me,” and because she just wanted to, had always wanted to do something like that. Afterward, he gave her the only clean towel and walked naked, dripping water onto the carpet, to the living room, where they now stood and talked.

He moved behind her and put his arms around her. “Do you want something to drink? I don't have any tequila, but I can find something else.”

Her head ached at the mere mention of tequila. “No, thanks, I have to go, you know, and soon.” She had already decided that his wife no longer lived there. She wanted it to be true so badly that she couldn't ask. “I hate to do this to you, but you realize you're going to have to drive me back to my car.”

“I don't mind, Lily,” he said, his voice reflecting the beginning of a letdown. “But do we have to end it so soon? Can't we just stay here a minute and relish it?” He held her face in both of his hands. “This was much more than just an office fuck and you know it.”

She sighed deeply. “I know.”

Lily picked her clothes up off the floor and put them back on. She turned away from him when she hooked her bra in the front and turned it around, shaking her
breasts into the cups. She put on her blouse first and then her panties. They were plain white comfortable panties, and she was ashamed they were not French-cut lace.

He was still looking out at the city as he spoke. “My wife left me for someone else, Lily. While I was at work, she came with a moving van and moved most of the furniture out.”

“I'm sorry, Richard. Did you love her?”

“Sure, I loved her. I lived with her for seventeen years. I don't even know where she is now. She's here in the city somewhere, but she doesn't want me to know where. Our son is with her.”

“Do you know the man?” Lily asked, curious about the whole thing, wondering how she could want him so badly while someone who had lived with him for seventeen years no longer wanted him at all.

“It's not a man, Lily. My wife left me for a woman.”

“How is your son handling this?”

“Greg doesn't know and I would never tell him. He just thinks the woman is her roommate.” His face was bathed in shadows. He was facing Lily now, but he quickly turned back to the window. “I mean, I don't believe he knows.”

“You might be surprised, Rich. Kids know a lot more than we think. He may know and have already accepted it. He is living with his mother, right?”