Frosting on the Cake Read online

  I assured her it was not a problem and Sydney saw her out to the hallway. They continued to talk for a few minutes, then Sydney returned to the sanctum. Without pausing she came directly to me, straddled my lap and took my face in her hands. The hunger in her eyes was piercing. I answered her breathless kiss with one of my own.

  “Syd, I forgot about the time—oh God, I’m sorry!” Alitza stood in the doorway, and I was certain my face was as red as hers was.

  Sydney, amazingly, seemed only amused. She got off my lap with a grin. “It’s a good thing you didn’t wait five minutes. Then we’d really be blushing.”

  “I just—the time for the women’s caucus was shifted back,” Alitza stammered. “I thought I’d pass it on since I only just found out about it myself.”

  “I’ll tell all to double-check it, then,” Sydney said.

  “I am so embarrassed,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m going home now. I will not be coming back for any reason.” She glanced at me as she spoke and I saw the transformation that had taken place. She had known Sydney was a lesbian, but it had been an academic understanding. Suddenly Sydney was a sexual being to her. Her face was full of trepidation and an unwilling fascination. Her gaze flicked not to Sydney’s eyes but to her body. In that brief heartbeat of time, I saw Alitza’s entire world tilt out from under her.

  Sydney must have seen it too. She must have. How could she not see that Alitza was retreating not in embarrassment, but fear? Sydney said good-bye with a laughing remark about closing the door this time and Alitza was running for her life. I had not wanted to love Sydney either, so I understood her terror.

  I understood, too, why Sydney immediately came back to me, murmuring, “It’s been a long time since I’ve made love to you in this chair.”

  Steeped in her body, in her sex and her hands. I didn’t want to recover from my delirium. I didn’t care why, only that she take me again, yet again, and that she let me inside her, body and soul, bathe me in the sweat of her desire and hold me tight in her dreams.

  She satisfied me again and again and yet there was no moment I wasn’t craving more. For the next two days it seemed as if every minute she was not working she was in bed with me. When, I worried, would she wonder at the cause of my sudden sexual addiction, equal to her own. Eventually she would ask herself why she arrived home already wanting me, and found me again unexpectedly eager for continued coupling that should have, at some point, been enough.

  I wiped my mouth on her thigh and released my hold on her leg. She slipped off the bathroom vanity where I’d pushed her. I had tried not to look at her as she got ready for a luncheon, knowing what would happen if our gaze locked. A sharp exclamation of distress had made me turn to see her rubbing her scalp and glaring at her hairbrush. She wore only her thin, silk robe. It was more arousing to me than any negligee.

  “Dang snarl,” she had explained. I stood staring because I was helpless to do anything else. The hairbrush clattered out of her hand. She said, “What’s gotten into us,” and untied her robe, turning as I went to my knees.

  “I don’t know what it is, but I like it,” she was saying now as she pulled me to my feet to kiss me. “It almost makes me want to spend two months apart again if this is the result.” She tasted herself on my mouth and murmured, “I love you.”

  “I feel bad—I’m not letting you get any rest.” Truly, she looked as tired as she had after the all-nighter at the statehouse.

  “I’d rather do this than sleep.” She caressed my shoulders and the planes of my back. “I’d certainly rather do this than go to a rubber-chicken luncheon, even if it is for a good cause.”

  “I’ll come with you and pass you notes under the table, if you like.” We’d whiled away many tedious evenings with me providing her quotes and her writing back the source. We played the game frequently.

  “Now that’s starting to sound like a good deal. Yes, come with me. I’ll have Mary phone a head’s-up on the seating change.”

  The luncheon turned out to be sponsored by a women’s civic group to provide funding for neonatal care for homeless and at-risk newborns. Although I wholeheartedly supported the cause—I couldn’t imagine a child beginning life without a home—it was impossible not to grow weary of the similar speeches of thanks. I surreptitiously scrawled “I could peel you like a pear” in the small notebook I’d brought with me and set it on her knee, which was just a few inches from my own.

  She jotted something down and passed it back.

  I expected her to have written The Lion in Winter, and to have perhaps added the rest of the line, “and God himself would call it justice,” but she had not. Instead she had written, “Please do, but not here.”

  I glanced at her profile. The corner of her mouth quirked with amusement. I fought back a blush, having not realized how bald the words on the page would appear. I set my mind to work, then wrote, “Dare I eat a peach?” I knew she had read T.S. Eliot.

  If I hoped to discomfit her further, it didn’t work. Instead I was the one who squirmed when she simply wrote, “This morning.”

  My lips were still raw with the memory. “Where the apple reddens, never pry,” I scrawled.

  “The breakfast table,” she answered.

  I gave it up. She appeared to be at least following the speeches, but I was lost in the memory of last night before we’d moved to the bedroom. Alitza simply did not exist for me at that moment and I could only think that nothing else mattered except that she wanted my body, even after five years of having it, and that my mind still intrigued her. My parents had survived in their marriage on so much less.

  She sat like a complete innocent in the back of the hired car that took us home after the thanks and well wishes. No one, not even the driver, could see that her hand was up my skirt, stroking the high inside of my thigh. She was grinning as I tried to squirm away. I was raised a good Catholic girl. I had overcome much of the indoctrination, but not all of it.

  “Bad girl,” I hissed.

  “I’ve done worse,” she answered, which I knew was true. She rarely alluded to her drinking days. I was never jealous of anything Sydney had done in that life before me. She had been another person.

  The driver turned in at the gate only to find it open— caterers were unloading trays of food for the evening’s party. I had forgotten all about it.

  So, apparently, had Sydney. “Damn,” she said. “Jacob will want to go over details and I…” Her fingers squeezed my thigh.

  I leaned across the car to whisper in her ear, “Perhaps we could also have a brief meeting in the office.” I had the satisfaction of seeing her blush.

  I didn’t mind the party, not at all. Though some politicians could be deadly dull, and others lacking in any ambitions that weren’t completely self-centered, Sydney had assured me that only the interesting people had accepted her invitation. The conversation would be diverting, and I looked forward to learning more about the bill to which Sydney had devoted a year of her life.

  Feeling nostalgic, I slipped on the medieval gold band that Sydney’s brother had given me even after I’d told him the truth about my sexuality and what that obviously meant for our future. Eric remained brotherly with me, and I had never seen a flicker of any other emotion from him. Around my neck I hung a closely matching locket, a gift from Sydney. There had been a time when wearing more than a year’s salary as mere accessories had made me nervous. When the value of the platinum and diamond wedding band I wore was added, the total was frightening. I was used to it now, but I valued the photo of Sydney inside the locket more. We had taken it in one of those four-poses instant photo booths. She was just Sydney in the picture. No Senator. No Van Allen.

  I opened the bedroom door to join the bustle downstairs, and I heard Sydney’s laugh as she greeted someone. Light, enthusiastic, open, warm, all Sydney. She sounded like she had the day we’d squeezed into the little booth for the pictures.

  Alitza had arrived and in the space of that moment I lost all my certai
nty that the passionate, brief encounter behind the closed door of the office downstairs had been engendered by thoughts of me.

  Why did it matter so? Why could I not just let it go? Perhaps because nothing—not even a casual infidelity— seemed more brutally unforgivable to me than “I don’t love you anymore.”

  Sick at heart, I joined the party. I felt I was watching the middle act of a play. Two remarkable women, equals in drive and ambition, honor and charm, fell in love. The principal players had such skill that it seemed unconscious. In the final scene, if the play ran true to course, they would find themselves in a promising clinch. When the curtain rose on the final act, I would have my own part to play, but I couldn’t stomach it.

  Sydney, of course, had had nothing to drink. Alitza had had just enough Champagne to sparkle herself. True, everyone was in the relaxed, gregarious mood I likened to end-of-term relief in academics. At times the mood was so infectious I could almost forget what was unfolding before my eyes. But as midnight approached I escaped to the backyard, where the humid, late summer air was as oppressive as my apprehensions.

  I instinctively went to the deep shade that sheltered the gazebo, cursing myself for a fool to read so much into Sydney’s friendship for another woman. I sat in the dark with my closed lids acting as a movie screen that would not stop replaying the depth of Sydney’s smile, and the awakening, uncertain response in Alitza. Sydney had no idea, I knew, of her own allure and the profound effect she was having on Alitza. To my eyes, Alitza still didn’t know what had hit her.

  Sydney would come to me tonight, later, as wanting and aroused as she had ever been in her life, and I would be with her, equally hungry and eager. Could I live this way? I did not know. When I went back to Chicago in a few weeks for the new term, would I have dreams of Sydney with me or nightmares of Sydney with Alitza? She would not cheat on me but I could hear the pre-echo of the words that would destroy me.

  I don’t love you anymore…anymore...

  “Faith?”

  I dashed the tears off my cheeks, grateful for the darkness.

  “I’m in here.”

  “Needed a break?” She sat down on the bench next to me. “For just a few minutes.”

  “Me, too. It’s a great party, though.”

  “Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.” I didn’t know

  how much more I could take. I wanted to scream something, but I didn’t know what. I wanted her to put her arms around me, but I dreaded it, too. I would succumb to desire and hate my weakness.

  The silence between us was at first companionable but grew awkward as it stretched. I could not see her face and did not know if she wanted to go back to the party, or kiss me, or to talk. I knew her better than she knew herself and yet her heart was suddenly a stranger.

  In that extremity, she proved to have more courage than I did.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her voice was calm, but not cool. She did not touch me; perhaps she knew it would lead down a road that accomplished nothing.

  Hot with desire, sick with dread, I couldn’t speak. I had wondered about her state of mind and believed her to be so wrapped in her work and Alitza that she had no time to spare thinking about me. I was wrong.

  “I know there’s something,” she said. When I remained silent I felt her take a deep breath. “Tell me. Is there someone else?”

  Of all that she might have said, this was completely unexpected. “No,” I gasped. “No, of course not.” Not for me, I should have added.

  “Then what is it? You’re—it’s like you’re desperate to forget something. By being with me. You know what I mean.”

  “That’s not it,” I said. So she had wondered at my unprecedented sexual demands.

  “Then there is something wrong.”

  Lawyer-like, she had trapped me into that admission and I groped for a way out. There had to be another explanation besides the truth. My mind was a swirl of indecision. “Why do you think so?”

  “I didn’t, not until tonight.”

  “I can’t—” My throat closed.

  Gently, and with fear, she asked, “Are you sick?”

  I shook my head violently enough that she could tell in the dark.

  “Can I help?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  She lost patience with me then, and I could not blame her. “I can’t play twenty questions,” she snapped.

  “I’m sorry” I whispered.

  “If I leave you alone will it get better?”

  I nodded. A lie.

  “All right, then.” She was angry and worried, but after a deep breath she said, “I’ll try to stay out of it.”

  Her footsteps rustled over the grass as she went back to the house. I wished, not for the first time, that there were back stairs of some sort to our sanctum. I would have to stay out here until I was composed. Composure was not in the cards, however. I broke down every time I realized that she had thought I was the one falling out of love and using sex to deny it.

  I did not know how much time had passed, but there had been car doors slamming out front and the babble from the house was dying down. Finally I left the gazebo for the patio and watched her moving between the groups of guests who remained. Her public face was firmly in place. Genuine, certainly, and poised, but always more the senator than the woman. Until she spoke with Alitza. With Alitza it was the woman who spoke, who smiled, who unconsciously charmed and seduced.

  I went around to the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs, thankfully meeting no one along the way. Though the night was warm I was shivering, and a scalding shower did not help. I was wide awake when she finally came upstairs to our darkened bedroom after the guests were gone and the caterers all packed up.

  She sat on the edge of the bed for a while, then said, “I know you’re not asleep.”

  I rolled over to face her, but there were no words that made sense. In the dim illumination from the clock, she looked remote. The hand that stroked my cheek seemed cool. Then her thumb brushed my lower lip.

  “At least this hasn’t changed,” she said, and her lips feathered the line of my jaw. “God, you’re delicious.”

  I had made no resolve to resist her, so the quickness with which she conquered me held no sting. But I was still caught between selfish desire and what was left of my dignity. Kiss for kiss, touch for touch. We had never been like this, not even at the first. We shuddered with completion that led to longing, moaned as release became torment for more. We wore ourselves out on each other late into the night, finally stopping because tears made kisses impossible.

  “Tell me you love me,” she demanded, her voice choked with emotion. “Say that you still love me.”

  “I haven’t changed,” I managed. “I’ll always love you.”

  “Then tell me. I can’t bear to see you in this kind of distress. Let me help.”

  I found some glimmer of courage. “Do you love me?” “You know I do.”

  I looked at her wanly in the faint light.

  “Faith?” She turned on the bedside lamp and I turned my face away. “You know I love you.” The silence was filled with her disbelief. “Don’t you?”

  I think that it was then that she understood at least the nature of my distress, but the cause was still a mystery. “What have I done to make you doubt that?” More sternly, “Has someone been telling you lies? Because there’s no truth to anything you could have been told—”

  “I know that.”

  “Then what have I done?” She was angry now, earnestly convinced my doubts were groundless and upset that I gave them credence.

  “It’s what you will do,” I said, choosing the wrong words and unthinkingly giving a profound insult to her integrity.

  She paled. “You think I’m going to fall off the wagon? That I’m going to get a seven-year itch? I thought you knew me well enough—”

  “That’s not it.” Before she could demand, again, that I tell her exactly what it was, I just said, “Alitza.”
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  She was stunned. She stared at me for perhaps a halfminute before she said numbly, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I have eyes and ears. I know nothing has happened, but you spend time with her and then you come to me—”

  “Good God! Do you think I’d bring her into our bed?”

  It was exactly what I thought, but I had run out of courage.

  She told me things I longed to hear, but she was in a rage and meant to hurt me. “I’m in bed with you because you’re the woman I love. I’ve been all over you because I missed you. I fucked you because that was what you wanted and it turned me on to think you wanted me that bad. I didn’t bring anyone else into our bed, you did that. You have nothing to be jealous of because I will always love you, though right now it’s kind of hard.” She scooped up the comforter and made a dignified exit, leaving me with tangled sheets. The quiet click of the bedroom door across the hall reduced me again to tears.

  I was going back to Chicago. I had no other plan in mind than that. I thought no further ahead than getting to the place I had called home for five years. Sydney had left before I woke up and I was going to run. Run away from her, I suppose that was what I was thinking. I had nothing to run toward.

  For nearly an hour I dithered about how to leave. I didn’t know what to put in a note. I didn’t know how to explain myself. I loved her, but I didn’t have the cynicism to be Bogart, nor the distant nobility to be Paul Henreid. I wanted my Ingrid and I didn’t care that the world was bigger than the problems of two people.

  Finally, I decided to ask Jacob to let Sydney know where I had gone. It was my first setback.

  “But madam, I didn’t know you would need your car. The mechanic towed it to the garage. Let me check on its readiness.”

  I had forgotten about the brakes. I gathered the few things I had brought with me and then put on the ring and necklace I’d worn last night. They were pieces of my life I didn’t want to leave behind.

  It was at least fifteen minutes before Jacob knocked on the bedroom door. “I’m afraid there is a difficulty with your car, Professor.Something called a boot ruptured and the Mercedescertified parts have only arrived today. The mechanic said it would be a lucky thing if it was ready by this evening, even though I did stress that it was inconvenient.”