The Last Chance (7 page)

“Why do we have to get along without them?” Rachel blurted out.

They all turned and looked at her. “You have to be able to get along
without
them in order to get along
with
them,” the busty psychologist said.

“Hear, hear!” someone said.

Rachel cringed down on the sofa and lit another cigarette. She gazed out the window at Central Park and wondered if it was going to snow. The sky was awfully gray. If it snowed, she’d never get a cab home. These women were so dreadfully earnest. Life was funny, wasn’t it? You had to have a sense of humor to survive. If she didn’t make fun of some people in her mind while she was lying to them and flattering them she wouldn’t be able to stand it.

“My husband has never cared about what I wanted in bed,” one of the women was saying. “After I told him, he tried, but he was so obviously trying to be
nice
that it made us both angry.”

“As far as I’m concerned I can do it better to myself,” Pat said. The other women smiled and some of them nodded agreement.

“Women are much more sexual than men,” Millie said. “All the books say that.”

“All my women friends say that,” someone said, and they all laughed.

“You know,” Anne, the dance teacher, said, “I’m so sick and tired of people putting down women who don’t have a man around. I don’t need a man to be somebody. I like women better anyway. You can talk to a woman, we’re more loving, more understanding, and if I fell in love with a woman and she fell in love with me we’d probably have a much better love relationship
and sexual relationship
than I would with any of the men I’ve been involved with.”

Oh, just wait till I get home and tell Lawrence, Rachel thought in delight. “Did you ever?” she heard herself saying. “Have a …?”

“A love affair with a woman? I’m thinking about it.”

“I think we must be free to do whatever we want to, but we mustn’t do anything out of anger,” the psychologist said. “The purpose of our meeting here is to express our anger and get rid of it.”

“What’s wrong with anger?” Pat asked. “I’m mad as hell.”

Some of the women applauded. Rachel looked idly at the dance teacher’s body. She had probably been a dancer once, and her body was still lovely, lithe and slim. Rachel couldn’t imagine wanting to go to bed with her, but it did make her think that she ought to go to the gym more often. Two afternoons a week wasn’t enough. From now on she would get up early every morning and go every day.

The meeting broke at two. The sky outside the window looked dark and threatening. The women with jobs scurried out the door to get back before the weather delayed them. Rachel was about to take her coat when she felt Millie’s hand on her arm.

“Let’s help Barbara with the dishes,” she whispered. “She doesn’t have a maid. It would be the nice thing to do.”

“Of course,” Rachel said.

“How did you like the meeting?” Barbara asked her as they carried the plates and cups to the kitchen.

Rachel was going to lie as she usually did and say she enjoyed it, and then she decided not to. “I think if they knew what they were talking about here for the past two hours,” she said, “then each one would have carried her own plate and cup to the kitchen and washed it, or at least put it in the sink.”

“But I have a dishwasher,” Barbara said.

They’re all so damn trivial, Rachel thought when she finally was alone in the elevator. Millie had remained with her friend Barbara to continue the discussion on their own. Rachel turned up her coat collar and decided to walk along Central Park West to get some air. It was safe here, and she could continue along Central Park South and then up Fifth Avenue until she got home, thus avoiding the park. It was dreary but not snowing and she needed the exercise to work off the feelings she couldn’t quite sort out.

She hadn’t expected anything and yet she felt cheated. She had been looking for friends, not a place to make accusations. Was this friendship? Maybe, but not the kind she wanted. She wanted a woman friend to laugh with, to feel cozy with. When she’d been a little girl back home in Kansas City she’d had a best friend, and now, after all these years, Rachel suddenly missed her, even though she knew they both had changed and wouldn’t have anything in common any more. I have to find a new best friend, she thought.

Who could it be? She admired Margot King, but Margot was so busy with her TV shows, and now with Kerry, so she didn’t need a new best friend. Besides, Margot had Ellen Rennie. Rachel noticed she was just passing Ellen’s apartment building. Ellen and Margot even lived near each other. It was nice to have an old school friend, but she didn’t have any in New York. What about Nikki Gellhorn? Rachel had always admired Nikki too. Now that Nikki had just moved into her own apartment in the city she would have more free time. Maybe they could go to the gym together! That would be a great incentive for me, Rachel thought. I’ll get Nikki to come to my gym. We can go in the mornings before she goes to her office, and then we’ll get to know each other better, and we can have drinks together sometimes when Lawrence is having drinks with all his men, and we can talk. Her heart leaped at the thought of having a best friend. Nikki always
enjoyed
everything so much, she would be so much fun.

It wasn’t until she stopped to wait for the light to change that Rachel realized the entire street was deserted except for a man who was following her. When she stopped, he stopped at the other end of the long street and looked at her. She couldn’t see who it was. If he was following her, why did he stop? If he wanted to snatch her handbag, why didn’t he just come at her? She started across the street, and when she reached the other side she looked back fast and saw that he was following her again. Oh, this is silly, she thought. He’s just going in the same direction. But to test him she darted around the corner and into a Spanish grocery store she saw there. Poking around among the cans of exotic foods on the shelves she glanced out the window and saw that he had stopped on the corner. He was looking down the street she had just turned into. Then he disappeared.

Rachel left the grocery and walked back to Central Park West. She felt confused. It was too easy to get paranoid about things in New York. He’d seemed well dressed, what she could see of him at such a distance. He didn’t look like a mugger. Maybe he’d just thought she was a celebrity in that funny outfit. Garbo, or Jackie Kennedy or somebody. Nevertheless she waved down the first empty taxi she saw.

For one moment he thought she had recognized him. He felt the adrenaline singing through his body—panic, guilt, and then lust again. He didn’t know what had finally made him follow her this morning. He had been toying with the idea for a long time, but it was too risky, and besides it was juvenile. He just wanted to know what she did all day. He could have asked her, of course, but she might have thought it was peculiar. You didn’t ask a woman what she did all day; she would either take it as a put-down of her idleness or as a pass. So today he had decided to take the morning off and see for himself. He liked the bad weather because it kept people off the streets unless they were hurrying somewhere, and he could be alone with her. When he saw Rachel come out of her building in that sort of disguise he took a taxi and followed the one she had taken, and when she went into the building on Central Park West he waited for her. There were a lot of doctors in that building, and he hoped she wasn’t sick. She looked so pale this morning that he wanted to take her in his arms and make her happy. He would just tell her … what? That he wanted to take her away from her husband? But he didn’t. If Rachel were the sort of woman who would ever cheat on her husband then she wouldn’t be the woman he worshiped. He was convinced she was faithful. She could never turn out to be like the rest of those bitches. They were all fakes and bloodsuckers, every one of them, his own wife included. His scruples had put him into a trap. There was no way he could ever have Rachel. If he tried to have an affair with her and she gave in to him, then he wouldn’t want her any more.

He’d had a new fantasy lately about her. In this fantasy he was wearing a ski mask, so she didn’t know who he was, and he followed her into her apartment when she was alone and then he raped her. She fought him and was terrified. He had her, but it was entirely against her will. She was still unsoiled. He didn’t hurt her, he just made her angry. But she was angry at the stranger in the ski mask, not at him. He would still be one of her friends who was invited to her home. The fantasy was highly satisfactory in one way, because it made him come, but in another way it wasn’t complete. He didn’t know why not, but he would wait. His life had a way of running its own course lately, showing him what he wanted without his having to understand until it happened.

March 1975

Ellen Rennie’s current lover’s name was Jim Vector, he was an advertising executive and had a wife and three children in Scarsdale. Although her daughter Jill thought he was gray-faced and flabby, Ellen thought he was handsome, charming, considerate, and superior in bed. He always gave her so many orgasms she thought she would faint. They had been going together for a year now, and to celebrate they met for cocktails in the dim and elegant recesses of the Plaza bar, at a table by the window where they could gaze out at the park when they were not gazing into each other’s eyes. He had told his wife he had to work late again, she supposed. She had told Hank she had to meet with someone from her office. It didn’t matter if anyone who knew Hank saw them. Her husband didn’t know anything about her job, any more than Jim’s wife knew about his, she imagined. The channels of communication were so much more open with people you weren’t married to.

After dinner they would go off to “their” motel—or perhaps they wouldn’t even bother with dinner. Jim had wanted to be bold and rent a suite at the Plaza, but Ellen had refused, shuddering.

“Something horrible happened to me there on my wedding night,” she said. “I could never stay there again.”

“What, sweetheart, what? Tell me.”

“No … I don’t want to talk about it. Even to you.”

Especially to you, was more like it, Ellen thought wryly. The Horrible Thing was what she always did to Jim with great mutual enjoyment. But she had been so much younger then, and so innocent, it was as if all that had happened to another person who just happened to be wearing her body.

“That’s why your marriage went wrong from the start,” he said.

She nodded. “That was the main reason.”

“I’d like to punch him!”

She put her hand on his, gently, and then lifted his hand to her lips. “No. Forget Hank.”

Tonight in the bar Jim ordered champagne. Ellen’s recollections of her traumatic wedding night did not include a distaste for champagne. They toasted their one beautiful year together.

“People will think we’re rich,” Ellen said.

“I’ll tell them you just got a promotion.”

“I wish I would. I have such good ideas for publicity. I feel wasted doing what I do. But it’s been only two months. They said I’d get more responsibility very soon. Funny, I was wasted in my job eighteen years ago, and I’m still being underused. Opportunities for women aren’t all people say they are.”

“We won’t talk about the office tonight,” he said. They smiled at each other.

“Tonight it’s just us,” Ellen said.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “I told my wife.”

Ellen felt her skin prickle. If she’d been an animal with guard hairs they would all be standing up. “Why did you do that?” she asked shrilly.

“Don’t be afraid. I had to tell her. I couldn’t stand it any more. I told her I love you and I want a divorce.”

“Oh, no,” Ellen breathed. “No.”

“You’re such a good, dear woman,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hurt her. But I can’t go on like this any more. I’m not good at dissembling. I want to marry you.”

He’d ruined it. What an anniversary present! How could he have done such a stupid thing? “You can’t leave your children,” Ellen said. “I can’t leave mine. It’s not their fault you and I fell in love.”

“I’m willing to leave my children,” he said. “And you can get custody of yours. They can come to live with us. I’d be
glad
to have your children live with us.”

“You don’t understand. My children adore their father. They’d be heartbroken …”

“Children are selfish little beasts,” Jim said. “If they have two parents trying doubly hard to make it up to them they don’t mind a divorce at all.”

Ellen sighed deeply and trotted out her lie. “Jill, my older daughter—you know, the beautiful one you met?—she came to me just this Christmas and she said to me; ‘Mommy, promise me you and Daddy will never split up. I want us to be a family.’ How could I ever hurt her?”

He looked down at his glass, and when he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “Ellen, my wife … she … she cried all night. Then she said she would stay with me anyway. She knows about us and she’s willing to stay with me anyway. Why are we so insensitive?”

“I’m
not
insensitive.”

“I am. I would leave her even though she’s willing to stay with me. She said she hoped I would stop seeing you, but she wouldn’t demand it. She said she’d put up with even that.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman. You mustn’t hurt her any more,” Ellen said.

“Look, if I could talk to Jill. We could all go somewhere together, the zoo or something, and she could get to know me …”

“Sixteen is too old for the zoo,” Ellen said coldly.

“All right, all right, we’ll take her to the theater. To the ballet? We’ll take her to the Rainbow Room.”

“You are the most heartless man I ever met.”

“I’m not. I only want to do the right thing.”

“Then don’t ask me to break my children’s hearts,” Ellen said. Her panic was beginning to subside and she felt in control again. He could go back and tell his wife he was willing to try again. It wasn’t too late. Jim was too impetuous—it was part of his charm but it was also his downfall. She could never marry him. He might give her daughters everything in the world, but he wasn’t the father they wanted. They wanted predictable old Hank. “You know how little girls are,” she said. “They think their father is perfect. They don’t see him the way I do. I think Hank is boring, they think he’s brilliant. But you see, darling, as a father he
is
brilliant. I never want them even to
suspect
about us.”