Free The Puzzled Heart by Amanda Cross

assumed.” Reed took a large swallow of Scotch and got up to fetch more. He took Kate’s glass too.
    “Did you resist,” Kate asked, “and if so, why, and if not, why not?” She realized that her tone did not achieve quite the quality of playful indifference for which she had aimed.
    Reed answered flatly enough. “Good question. I’d like to say it was out of determined fidelity to you, despite the temptations and their temporary nature, but the truth my darling is that if a fuck would have got me out of there, I would have been more than willing, even without the flaunted lusciousness of the seducers. The last nymph, the blonde, half naked and alluring, did her best. I suggested that we repair to a hotel where we could enjoy ourselves in guaranteedisolation. When she declined that, I knew I’d been right.”
    “Right about what? Am I being particularly stupid?”
    “No, just insufficiently male. I’d suspected from the beginning that what they wanted were photographs, video, and stills. Think what they could have done with them. ‘Feminist’s husband finds relief at last,’ or whatever nastiness they, with the eager help of the media, might have made public. Not to mention that such pictures would not do my career any particular good, whatever delight they might have given the majority of my colleagues. They went on about wanting mature men like me, blah, blah, but when the blonde refused the hotel, I knew they had to stay where the cameras were operating. I do hope Harriet looks for them.”
    “Hadn’t we better let her know?”
    “I daresay she and Toni will have thought of searching the place. They were clever to figure out where I’d be.”
    “I figured it out,” Kate said, with a degree of insistence that surprised her. “Not that they didn’t do good work. Oh, damn.”
    “Please don’t cry, Kate, that is a quite unsuitable response to my return. Finish your drink. Tell me about every moment you spent since I failed to show up at that restaurant. Because Toni is right. We’ve got to get our wits working. We’ve got to figure out, starting tomorrow, who was behind all this. Sure, it wasboyish and girlish pranks, but they didn’t invent it, and they didn’t work out the details. They told me that I would be kept until you wrote an article saying you were no longer a feminist but were embracing all the family values of the Christian right. I said no one would believe it, but they said you had only a short time in which to comply. I hope like hell you didn’t.”
    “I didn’t, but I would have if we hadn’t found you. And I can’t stop crying. Did you really want to screw those girls?”
    “Passionately. Have you ever heard the phrase
to fuck somebody
, as in ‘He really fucked me over, man?’ I would have enjoyed fucking them over nine ways to Christmas. But I didn’t. Kate, what’s happened to your sense of humor?”
    “I think I’ve lost it,” Kate said.
    “No you haven’t,” Reed said. “Never, never. It must have been horrible for you. I was just locked up, fed regularly, and shown a parade of seductive young things. You were sick with worry. If you want to really laugh, try to think of our positions reversed.”
    “It’s not the same thing,” Kate said.
    “No,” Reed said, “it’s not. It was a mean and horrible thing to do to you, and I have every intention of finding the people behind this and making them pay. It’s not any different, except in degree, from fundamentalist violence everywhere. If people don’t see things their way, they deserve to suffer. I knew this country had become vulnerable to terrorists, and now I know it personally. So do you. Shall we getreally drunk? I wish we could switch to champagne, however inadvisable that would be, but we’re lucky to have what we do. You have good friends, Kate.”
    And at last she smiled.

Six

    T HE next morning four of them, Kate and Reed and Toni and Leslie, held a council of war in Leslie’s loft. Harriet