Free JM03 - Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman Page A

was one answer, but maybe not the only one. His marriage, his career, his reputation, even the reputation of Klein & Sons— David had put them all at risk.

    We’d walked the shop streets until the shops had run out and Clare had gotten hungry. There was a hamburger stand at the bottom of Main Street that was open for lunch and she’d led me there and ordered something messy, with onions. I’d ordered the same and we found another bench by the water. Our burgers steamed in the cold air and a couple of gulls had stared at us hopefully.

    We’d driven the last ten miles to Orient Point after lunch. We crossed the causeway and Route 25 became Main Road and ended at the ferry terminal and the state park. The park was open and we walked in. There was scrub oak and red cedar along the sandy path, patches of snow in their shadows and a white rime at the edge of the pond. Beyond the trees and the pond and the long brown grass were rough beach, gray water, and sky, and they were bare, bleak, and gorgeous. Clare took off her glasses and opened her coat and walked at the water’s edge. I thought about Holly and David and Stephanie as I watched her.

    After a while Clare came back. Her face was pink and her hair was a tangle of gold. She leaned against me and put her mouth on mine. Her body was warm and firm and I could smell the ocean in her hair. “My hands are cold,” she said, and she put them inside my coat and under my shirt. We stayed that way until I spoke.

    “Why do you do it?” I’d asked.

    “Do what?” Clare whispered into my neck.

    “Why do you see me, when you’re married?”

    Clare stiffened in my arms and let out a long sigh and otherwise didn’t move for over a minute. Then she took her hands off me and stepped away.

    “Why do I cheat on him, you mean?” Her voice was flat and empty. I nodded and a grim little smile crossed her face. “All of a sudden you’re curious?”

    “I’m just looking for some insight.”

    Clare snorted. “Into what, for chrissakes?” She put on her sunglasses and buttoned her coat and said something else that the wind snatched away. Her face was rigid and the sun flared on her black lenses.

    “You want to hear all the desperate details? Fine. He’s twelve years older than I am; his first priority is his business; I’m wife number three; and my best guess is he’s been fucking other women since before we were engaged. No one in particular, but a rotating cast of characters.

    “There’s a certain type he goes for, a kind of well-bred shopgirl type, young, nicely schooled, a little arty maybe, but impressionable and deferential, used to keeping the customers happy. The girl who manages the art gallery he buys from sometimes, the fund-raising girl on the hospital committee, the one handling PR for the museum benefit— that kind. I was surprised when I found out— hurt, even— but it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was working at Christie’s when I met him, appraising some prints he wanted to sell. He was married at the time and never made a secret of it.

    “We don’t discuss it, but he’s discreet and I try to be too, and it is what it is— an arrangement that works well enough for both of us, at least for now. Not what I had in mind in high school maybe, but better benefits than at Christie’s.”

    She’d stood with her hands in her pockets and said it matter-of-factly, like a slightly boring school recitation, and when she was through she’d turned up her collar and walked past me.

    “I’ll be in the car,” she’d said.

    * * *

    “Shit,” I said to myself. My notes were stacked on the table from the night before and my laptop was still on, and for no other reason than that I didn’t know what else to do with myself, I took off my coat and started looking again for Holly Cade.

    9

    Despite my best efforts, and all the permutations of “Holly” and “Cade” and “Wren” and “Gimlet” I could think of, Google