Cradle. Part 5

At length the guard raised the gate and Nick moved his car forward again. "The guy's really a pain in the a.s.s," Brenda said to Nick, smacking her gum as she talked, "Christ, you'd think he owned one of the places or something." Nick had heard about Windsor Cove. Or rather had read about it. Once when he was over at his uncle's home in Potomac, Maryland, there had been a copy of Town and Country magazine on the table and he had read about the "gracious life of Windsor Cove." Now, as he drove past the estates in the most prestigious section of Palm Beach, he was awed by the personal wealth displayed.

"Over there. That's Teresa's house." Brenda pointed at a colonial house set back about a hundred yards from the road. Nick drove into the long semicircular driveway and eventually stopped in front of a walkway leading to the front of the house. It was an imposing place. Two full floors, six white columns over twenty feet high, an opulent door whose top half was an arched, stained gla.s.s window of a white heron in flight against a blue sky filled with fleecy clouds.

Brenda looked in the back of the car where her friend was pa.s.sed out. "Look, I'd better handle this. I'll go up and talk to Mrs. Silver and explain what happened and everything. Otherwise you could be in deep s.h.i.t. Sometimes she jumps to conclusions."

By the time Brenda reached the front door to ring the bell, it had already opened. An attractive woman in a red silk blouse and a pair of chic black slacks was waiting. Nick guessed that she had probably been called by the security guard. He couldn't tell much about the conversation, but he could see that Teresa's mother was asking questions. After a couple of minutes, Brenda and the woman came back to the car. "You didn't tell me she was still pa.s.sed out," Nick heard a surprisingly husky voice say. There was also some kind of accent, European perhaps. "You know, Brenda, this is absolutely the last time she can go anywhere with you. You just can't control her. I'm not even sure that you try." The voice was angry but not strident.

Nick opened his door and climbed out of the car. "This is the guy I was telling you about, Mrs. Silver," Brenda said. "Without him Teresa might still be lying on the beach."

Mrs. Silver extended her hand. Nick took it, feeling a little awkward. He didn't know how to shake hands with a woman. "I understand that I'm in your debt, young man," Mrs. Silver said graciously. "Brenda tells me that you rescued Teresa from all sorts of horrors." The light from the street lamps played about her sculptured face. Her hand was soft, sensual. Nick smelled just a trace of perfume, something exotic. Her eyes were fixed on his, unwavering, inquisitive.

"Yes, Ma'am," Nick said clumsily. "I mean, well, she had had too much to drink and I thought the crowd of teenagers she was with were a little bit out of control." He stopped. She was still watching him, measuring him. He was becoming agitated and didn't understand why. "Somebody had to help her and I just happened to be there . . ." He trailed off weakly.

Mrs. Silver thanked him again and turned to Brenda. "Your mother's expecting you, dear. We'll stay out front until you get home. Flash your lights to let us know you're there." Brenda looked happy to be dismissed. She scampered off into the night in the direction of the nearest house about a hundred yards away.

There was a momentary pause as they watched the sixteen-year-old disappear into the night. Nick found himself stealing furtive looks at Mrs. Silver's profile. An inchoate awareness of what he was feeling made him more nervous. Jesus, she's beautiful. And young. How could she be the girl's mother? He was wrestling with a jumble of thoughts as he saw the lights flicker in the distance.

"Good," she said, turning to Nick with a smile, "Brenda's home. Now we can worry about Teresa." She stopped for a moment and laughed. "Oh, I almost forgot. We haven't been formally introduced. I'm Teresa's mother, Monica Silver."

"I'm Nick Williams," he said in response. Her dark eyes were fixed on him again. In the reflected light the expression in her eyes seemed to vary. One moment she was a pixie, then a seductress, then a very proper Palm Beach society woman. Or was Nick imagining it? He couldn't return her gaze anymore. He felt his cheeks flush as he averted his eyes.

"I had to carry her from the beach to the parking lot," Nick said abruptly, as he went around to the back door of his car and opened it. The teenager had been leaning against the door and nearly fell out. She didn't stir. He picked Teresa up and threw her over his shoulder. "So it's no problem for me to carry her for you now. I'm used to it."

They walked quietly down the path toward the house, Monica Silver leading by a few steps. Nick watched her walk in front of him. She moved effortlessly, like a dancer, with almost perfect posture. Her dark hair was wrapped up at the back in a chignon. It must be very long, he thought to himself with delight, imagining her hair flowing down her beautiful back.

It was a warm and humid Palm Beach evening. Nick was sweating by the time they reached the entrance. "Could you do me one more favor, Nick?" Mrs. Silver asked. "Could you carry her up to her room? My husband's not here and the help has all gone to bed. And I doubt seriously if she's going to get herself together well enough to climb the stairs, even with my help, in the near future."

Nick followed Mrs. Silver's instructions and carried Teresa through the atrium, into the living room, up the entry steps onto the platform, up the left flight to the second floor, and then into her bedroom. It was huge. In her room Teresa had a king-size bed with four posters, a giant television, an entire cabinet of movies for the VCR, and a sound system that would have been a credit to any rock and roll band. Bruce Springsteen posters and photos were all over the room. Nick laid Teresa gently on her bed. She murmured "Thank you," indicating to him that at least she was semiconscious. Her mother bent over her and gave her a kiss.

Nick left the two of them alone and went back down the stairs into the living room. He could not believe that somebody really could live in a house like this. Why the living room alone was bigger than the house in Falls Church where he grew up. He wandered around the room after he came down the stairs. There were original paintings on the walls, crystal gla.s.s chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and art objects and bric-a-brac both on the tables and in every nook and cranny. It was all too much for him. He was overwhelmed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and involuntarily recoiled. Monica Silver chided him, "Goodness, you're jumpy. It's only me. " He turned around to look at her Was he imagining it or had she somehow combed her hair and put on fresh makeup in the few seconds they had been separated? For the first time he saw her in the full light. She was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. His breath was taken away and he felt giddy. Outside he had not been able to see her skin clearly. Now he found himself staring at her bare arms, following the elegant contours of her neck. Her skin had the smoothness of ivory. It called to him to touch it. Watch yourself, Williams, he heard a voice inside him say, Or you are going to be outrageous. He tried to calm himself.

But it was useless. He could not take his eyes off her. She was saying something. She had asked him a question. He had not even heard it, so dumbfounded was he by what was happening, by where he was. She was leading him somewhere in the house. His imagination was running wild. She took him into a small room with a table and told him to sit down.

"It's the least I can do," she was saying, "to repay you for what you did for Teresa. I know you must be hungry. And we still have some great food left over from the party tonight."

Nick was in a breakfast nook just off the kitchen. To his left a door led to the patio and then outside, into the back yard. The lights around the huge swimming pool were still on. He could see manicured gardens with roses in bloom, chaise longues, colorful umbrellas, white iron tables with twisted, lacy legs - he could not believe that it was all real. He felt transported to another world, a world that existed only in books and movies.

Monica Silver laid out some food on the table. Smoked salmon, onions, capers, cream cheese, two different kinds of bread, plus a dish of some other kind of fish that Nick did not recognize. "That's marinated herring," she said with a smile, noticing Nick's quizzical expression. She handed him a wine gla.s.s. He took it and unconsciously looked her straight in the eyes. He was transfixed. He felt weak and powerless, as if he were being drawn into her deep brown, bewitching eyes, into her world of richness and luxury and beauty. His knees were weak, his heart was racing, he could feel his fingers tingling She poured some white wine in his gla.s.s and then in her own. "This is a brilliant Burgundy, Clos des Mouches," she said, touching her gla.s.s to his with a light tinkle. "Let's make a toast."

She was radiant. He was enthralled. "To happiness," she said.

They talked for over three hours. Nick learned that Monica Silver had grown up in France, that her father had been a small, struggling fur merchant in Paris, and that she had met her husband, Aaron (the biggest of the big Montreal furriers), while helping her father at the shop. She had been seventeen at the time of the whirlwind courtship. Mr: Silver had proposed just seven days after they had met and she had accepted immediately even though her husband-to-be was twenty years older. She moved to Montreal and married him before she was eighteen. Teresa was born nine months later.

Nick told her that he was in his junior year at Harvard, majoring in English and French to get a good liberal arts education and prepare himself for either law school or graduate school. As soon as she found out that he was in his third year of French, she switched and spoke to him in her native language. Her name became Monique. He missed some of what she said, but it didn't matter. He understood the gist of it. And her dramatic voice plus the sound of the foreign language only increased the power of the spell already cast by the wine and her beauty.

Nick also tried to speak French from time to time. Whatever self-consciousness he might have ordinarily felt was swept away by the magic of the setting and their growing rapport. They laughed together easily at his mistakes. She was gracious and charming when she corrected him, always adding "mais vous parlez fran,cais tres bien" in the early part of the evening. Later, as their conversation became more personal (Nick talked about his problems with his father; Monique wondered aloud if there was anything a mother could do with a teenage daughter except hope that some basic values had been learned), Monique changed to the more personal "tu" form in talking to him. This established an additional intimacy between them that deepened in the wee hours of the morning.

Monique talked about Paris, about the romance of the streets, the bistros, the museums, the history. Nick visualized it all and felt transported with her to the city of lights. She told about her dreams when she was growing up, about walking in the sixteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt among the wealthy and promising herself that someday . . . He listened closely, enraptured, an almost beatific smile upon his face. In the end, Monique had to tell him that it was time to go because she had an early tennis lesson in the morning. It was after three o'clock. He apologized as they walked together to the door. She laughed and said that it had been fun. At the door she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. His heart soared out of his body at the touch of her lips. "Call me sometime," she said with a playful smile, as she closed the door behind him For over thirty hours Nick thought of nothing but Monique. He talked to her in his mind during the day; she was his lover in dreams at night. He called her once, twice, three times, each time talking to her answering machine. The third time he left her his phone number and address and suggested that she try to get in touch with him when her schedule would permit.

By noon on the second day after his evening at the Silvers' Palm Beach mansion, he started to calm down, to realize that there was no sense in his continuing to worship the image of a woman he had met for a single evening. Especially a woman who was married to someone else. In the late afternoon he went out on the beach to play volleyball with some of the other college students he had met during his first days in Florida. He had just served an ace when he thought he heard his name being called by a husky, accented voice that was absolutely unmistakable.

He thought for a moment he was dreaming. Standing in the sand not ten yards away was Monique. She was wearing a bright red and white striped bikini and her long black hair hung down her back to just above her waist. The volleyball game stopped. His friends whistled. He walked over to her his heart pounding in his temples and his breath struggling to find its way out of his constricted chest. Monique smiled and slid her arm through his. She explained that she had brought Teresa into Lauderdale for a small high school party and since it was so hot . . .

They walked along, the beach and talked as the sun set behind the condominiums. They were oblivious to the young people all around them. The gentle waves washed their feet with warm water as they walked. Monique insisted that they eat in Nick's condo, so they stopped for tuna fish, tomatoes, onions, and mayonnaise to put on their sandwiches. Cold beer, potato chips, and sandwiches on a bare formica table was the dinner. Lovemaking was the dessert. Nick almost had an o.r.g.a.s.m on their first kiss and his pa.s.sion made him klutzy and funny in trying to remove her bikini. Monique slowed him down, smiled softly, neatly folded her bikini and his bathing suit (while he of course was going wild), and then came to join him on the bed. After two kisses naked on the bed, Nick was seized by a paroxysm of l.u.s.t. He rolled roughly on top of Monique and began gyrating with his hips. At first a bit alarmed, Monique slowed him just a bit and guided him gently into her.

Monique's body was nearly perfect. Nice, full, upright b.r.e.a.s.t.s (they had been reconstructed of course after she had nursed Teresa but how could Nick have known or cared?) slim waist, rounded, feminine a.s.s (not one of those boyish a.s.ses that really skinny women have), taut muscled legs kept in shape with lots of exercise. But it was her skin, that magnificent ivory skin, that sent Nick into ecstasy. It was so soft and easy to the touch.

Her mouth seemed to fit his perfectly. Nick had been with two women before, a high-priced call girl given to him as a Christmas present after the Harvard swimming team had discovered he was still a virgin at the end of his freshman year and Jennifer Barnes from Radcliffe, his sometimes steady date during most of his soph.o.m.ore year. Jennifer's teeth always clanged against his when they kissed. But that had not been the only difficulty in his relationship with Jennifer. She was a physicist and her approach to s.e.x had been almost clinical. She measured sizes and durations and frequencies and even quant.i.ties of ejaculant. After three "scheduled performances" with Jenny Nick had decided it wasn't worth it.

Nick gasped as he slid into Monique. Both of them knew it would be over soon. Ten seconds later Nick finished his climax and started to withdraw. But Monique held his rear firmly in her hands, keeping him in place, and deftly (how did she do it?) rolled over so that she was on top. Nick was now out of his element. In his limited experience, withdrawal was the next step after o.r.g.a.s.m. He didn't know what Monique was doing. Ever so slowly, her eyes half closed as she hummed a piece of cla.s.sical music to herself, Monique rocked back and forth on top of him, her v.a.g.i.n.al walls holding tightly to his now flaccid p.e.n.i.s. After a couple of minutes she began to grind her pelvis forward as she rocked and, much to Nick's amazement, as her breath shortened he found himself becoming aroused again. Now her eyes closed altogether and her rhythm became stronger, the thrusts of her forward motion grinding with a little pain into his bones. Nick was now definitely erect and he started following her motion, lightly gyrating in pattern with her.

Monique leaned forward, concentrating but smiling with her eyes closed, preparing for her own o.r.g.a.s.m. She was acutely aware and delighted that Nick was up again. Timing her own progress perfectly (and in complete control of the situation), she adroitly and softly reached down and began t.i.tillating Nick's nipples in rhythm with her forward thrusts. Nick had never had his b.r.e.a.s.t.s touched in lovemaking before and was shocked. But the raw excitement was overwhelming. She increased her play, even pinching him when she saw (and felt) his response. As wave after wave of delightful release coursed through her body, Nick uttered a loud, wailing scream and had his second o.r.g.a.s.m in fifteen minutes. At the end of the climax he was completely given over to pleasure and made animal sounds and shook involuntarily from exhausted satiety.

Nick was a little embarra.s.sed by his noisy and uncontrolled response, but Monique's playful and friendly afterplay a.s.sured him that everything was all right. She went to his closet, pulled out one of his three dress shirts, and put it on. The tails came almost down to her knees (Monique was only five feet five and Nick was a shade less than six two) and she looked positively gamine with her pixie smile, long hair, and man's shirt. Nick began to declare his love but Monique came forward and put her finger to his lips. Then she kissed him lovingly, told him that she needed to pick up Teresa, jumped in the shower for what could not have been more than a minute, dressed, kissed him again, and walked out the door. Nick did not move during this entire time. After she left he fell asleep contentedly. He did not dream.

For the next eight days Nick was on top of the world. He saw Monique every day, most of the time at her Palm Beach mansion, but sometimes at his uncle's condominium. They made love at every opportunity and it was always different. Monique was full of surprises. The second time Nick went to her house, for example, he found her in the back, swimming naked in the pool. She told him that she had given all the servants the day off. Within minutes they were frolicking and laughing on the gra.s.s between the garden and the pool.

Their affair was conducted in French. Monique taught him about food and wine. They shared their knowledge of French literature. One pa.s.sionate night they argued about Andre Gide's La Symphonie Pastorale both before and after lovemaking. Monique defended the pastor and laughed at Nick's insistence that the blind Gertrude was "an innocent. " Another evening, when Monique demanded that Nick wear a black Halloween mask and a pair of white leotards throughout their long French dinner, they read Jean Genet's Le Balcon together as a prelude to s.e.x.

The days raced by relentlessly, clothed in the magic of love and intimacy. Once Nick showed up at the mansion and Monique greeted him dressed in an incredible coat, a full-length Alaskan seal fur with indigo fox trim around the collars as well as down the lapels and framing the sleeves from the shoulders to the wrists. The coat was the softest thing Nick had ever touched, even softer than her tantalizing skin. His playful paramour had turned the air conditioning up as high as it would go so that she could wear her favorite coat. She was wearing nothing underneath it. After lovemaking that evening she dressed Nick's naked body in one of her husband's beaver coats, explaining the presence of half a dozen fur coats in Palm Beach with a simple "it's our business and we like to have some things to show our friends and acquaintances in case they are interested."

Nick professed his love with increasing zeal each time they met anew. Monique responded with her usual "je t'aime," but would not reply to Nick's insistent questions about the future. She avoided all questions about her relationship with Mr. Silver, except to say that he was a workaholic and that he stayed in Montreal most of the year. He had bought the place in Palm Beach primarily because Monique did not like the cold and wanted a more active social life than the one they had in Montreal. Monique usually spent the period from Christmas to Easter in Palm Beach; Teresa, who had just finished her spring break from her exclusive private school and had returned to Canada, came down as often as possible so that she could be with her mother.

Monique gave short, terse answers about her present life. But she waxed rhapsodic about her childhood in Paris. She never criticized her husband or complained about her married life. Yet she did tell Nick that her days with him had been the happiest time of her life. She also talked about some of her friends, but Nick never met any of them. They were always alone.

One day she picked him up in her Cadillac and they headed toward Key Largo so that he could do some diving at the Pennekamp Recreation Area. As always, she was wearing her wedding ring. On this particular day Nick had vowed to himself that he would get some answers about the future, and the constant presence of her wedding ring p.i.s.sed him off. He asked her to remove it. She politely refused, then grew angry when he pressed her. She pulled the car off the highway in the marshland north of the Keys and stopped the engine "It is a fact that I am married," she said resolutely, "and taking the ring off is not going to change anything. I am in love with you, without doubt, but you have understood my situation from the beginning. If you cannot deal with it anymore, then perhaps we should just call it quits."

Nick was shocked by her response. The thought of being without her terrified him. He apologized and professed his love. He began kissing her pa.s.sionately and then jumped in the back seat. He told her that he needed her right then, that moment. She somewhat reluctantly joined him and they had intercourse on the back seat of her Cadillac. Monique was quiet and pensive most of the rest of the day.

On Friday, exactly a week after they had met, Monique took Nick to a tuxedo shop to have him fitted for a black tie dinner with some friends that she was having on Sat.u.r.day night in her home. So finally he was going to be seen with her. "And," Nick thought, "now she will talk about our future." Nick was supposed to be in Boston on Monday morning and his parents were expecting him Sat.u.r.day night in Falls Church, but he a.s.sured himself that he could drive all day (and all night if necessary, so pumped up was he in his love for Monique) to get to cla.s.ses on Monday morning.

Nick was full of hope and dreams when he showed up at the Silver mansion on Sat.u.r.day night. He looked elegant in his summer tux, and the smile with which he greeted Monique at the door could have won a prize. Even with the doorman standing by, he handed her a dozen red roses, gave her a kiss, and told her that he loved her. "Of course you do," she said lightly, "doesn't everybody?" She took him inside and introduced him to the four other people who had also come early as the "young man who saved our Teresa one day in Lauderdale." Then Monique excused herself. It was her fashion, Nick later learned, to ask a few select friends to come early to a party, to greet them in casual attire, and then to return an hour or so later, when everyone had arrived, with a grand entrance. As Monique gracefully walked up the stairs of the mansion, Nick's eyes followed her with an unmistakable look of adoration.

"Isn't she magnificent?" Nick was asked by a relaxed, tanned man of about fifty who offered him a martini. His name was Clayton. "Once I was with her all weekend on their yacht, while Aaron was in Montreal. I thought she had invited me for a little diversion." He laughed. "But I was wrong. She just wanted some company and I could talk about France and Europe. Come with me (he slipped his arm through Nick's) and I'll introduce you to the select group that was invited early today."

Nick was treated with extreme courtesy by the other favored guests, but he was wary of their questions about Monique. He was, after all, a Southern boy, and if there was something to say about their relationship, it was her place to say it. So he answered politely but modestly and didn't elaborate at all.

One of the two women at the bar, who introduced herself as Jane Somebody, said that she was Monica's oldest friend in Palm Beach. (They all called her Monica. It was impossible for Nick to call her anything but Monique. Nick wondered if they could guess what was going on or if Monique had told them.) Jane was in her late thirties, plump and raucous, a heavy drinker and a chain smoker. She had once been fairly attractive but had lived too hard too soon. She was one of those people who touch everybody during a conversation. She made Nick nervous.

The other guests began to arrive. Jane and Clayton (as in Clayton Poindexter III of Newport and Palm Beach. Clayton, when asked by Nick what he did, answered, "NVMS." Nick of course had absolutely no idea what that meant. Clayton laughed. "NVMS - No visible means of support - a term used to cover all b.u.ms.") seemed to be acting as hostess and host in Monique's absence. They introduced him to everybody. Nick had three or four martinis and told the Teresa story at least seven times during the first hour that he was in the Silver mansion.

Nick was becoming fairly spiffed by this time. He sang to himself as he took another martini off the c.o.c.ktail tray being proffered by one of the servants. The alcohol had buoyed his spirits and made him feel somehow temporarily suave and debonair. Nick was on the patio talking to Monique's "riding partner," a lovely woman in her mid-twenties named Anne, when he heard scattered applause from the living room. "It's Monica," Anne said. "Let's go see."

The grand stairway in the Silvers' colonial mansion rose to a platform maybe six feet above the living room floor and then split, with two different sets of stairs then continuing up to the second floor. Monique was standing on the platform, acknowledging the applause. dressed in a simple navy blue knit dress that seemed form-fitted to her perfect body. The back was cut way down, almost to the bottom of her spectacular hair (she turned around to please the forty or so guests), and, in the front, two thin pieces of cloth ran from her shoulders to her waist, covering each breast adequately but leaving plenty of cleavage to be admired. Entranced by the vision of his queen, Nick cheered l.u.s.tily, a little too loud, "Bravo. Bravo." Monique seemed not to hear his cheer. She had turned and was looking up the stairs.

It probably took an entire minute for Nick to comprehend the sight he was seeing. A man, a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, wearing a custom-made tan tuxedo and sporting an amazing sapphire ring on his little finger, came down the staircase and put his arms around Monique's waist. She reached up and kissed him. He smiled and waved at the crowd as they politely applauded. They walked down the stairs together to the living room.

Who is that? Nick thought to himself and even through the gin and the vermouth and all the incredible feelings the answer came back, That is her husband, Aaron. What is he doing here? Why didn't she tell me? And then, following very swiftly, How could she do this to me? I love her and she loves me and there is something very very wrong. This cannot be happening.

Nick tried to breathe but felt as if a large piece of earth-moving machinery were pressed against his chest. Instinctively he turned away from the sight of Monique and Aaron walking down the stairs arm in arm. As he did he spilled part of a martini on Anne's shoulder. His apology was very clumsy. Now completely dis...o...b..bulated, he stumbled over to the bar, trying desperately to breathe and to stop the pounding in his chest. No. No. She can't be doing this. There must be some mistake. His mind could not read the message that his eyes were transmitting. He drank another martini swiftly, barely aware of his surroundings or the jumbled feelings torturing his soul.

"There he is." He heard her voice behind him, the voice that had come to signify everything that was valuable and important in life, the voice of love. But this time he was terrified. Nick turned and Monique and Aaron were standing right in front of him.

"So finally I get to meet this young man I've heard so much about," he said. Aaron was pleasant, friendly, without a trace of anything but grat.i.tude in his voice. Aaron Silver was holding out his hand. Monique was smiling. G.o.d, she's so beautiful. Even now, when I should hate her. Nick mechanically shook Aaron's hand and quietly accepted his thanks for "helping Teresa at a difficult time." Nick said nothing. He turned to look at Monique. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Oh those lips. How I long still for those lips. Why? Why? What happens to us now?

Nick suddenly realized that there were tears in his eyes. OhmyG.o.d . I'm going to cry. Embarra.s.sed beyond measure, Nick abruptly excused himself and walked out onto the patio. Now the tears were running down his cheeks. He was afraid he was going to sit down on the gra.s.s and start bawling like a baby Confused, puzzled, he walked around the garden with his head down and tried, without success, to draw a regular breath.

He felt a hand on his elbow. It was Jane, the last person on Earth that Nick wanted to see at this moment. "She'll be out to see you in a few minutes. First she and Aaron have to make the rounds, you know how it is at parties when you're the hostess." Jane lit a cigarette. Nick was certain he was going to puke. He turned quickly to ask her to put out the cigarette and he lost his equilibrium.

Maybe it was the drink, maybe the adrenaline, maybe it was just too much. Nick's head was spinning around and around. He inadvertently leaned against Jane for support. She misunderstood, and then pulled his head to her shoulder. "There, there," she said. "Don't take it so hard. You and Monique will still be able to have some time together. Aaron will only be here for a couple of days and then he'll go back to Montreal to work. Besides," she said with gusto, "if you're anywhere near as good as Monica says you are, I'd be delighted to take care of you when she's with Aaron."

Nick pushed her away and staggered back. He felt as if he had just been hit in the face with a sledgehammer. The full impact of Jane's comment sunk in slowly and an uncontrollable mixture of anger and hurt surged to the surface. What? What? She knows. This cloying b.i.t.c.h knows. Maybe they all know. What? f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k this altogether. And then, almost immediately, as his mind began to take the measure of the evening's events, How do I get out of here? Where is the exit? As he walked around the house to the front (he was not about to go inside again), from deep inside Nick there now came a sound, a sound that welled up to the surface and could not be contained. This was the wail of pain, the unmitigated and ineluctable cry of the animal in total despair. Millennia of acculturation have made it rare to hear such cries from human beings. But this loud and untoward scream, which rose into the Palm Beach night like a siren from a police car, gave Nick his first comfort. While the partygoers were trying to decide what they had heard, Nick climbed into his 1977 Pontiac and drove away.

He drove south toward Fort Lauderdale, his heart still pumping like crazy and his body trembling from adrenaline. He didn't think about anything coherently. The pictures in his mind seemed to come at random, without any clear connection between them. Monique was the focus of all the pictures in the montage. Monique in her Alaskan seal coat, Monique in her red and white bathing suit, Monique in her dress tonight (Nick winced, for just off-screen left in his mind's eye, he could see Aaron coming down the stairs). Had it all been meaningless? Was it just a game? Nick was too young to know about the grays of life. For him it was a simple question of black or white. It was either wonderful or it was s.h.i.t. Monique either loved him pa.s.sionately and wanted to give up her luxurious life to marry him, or she was just using him to satisfy her s.e.xual needs and her ego. So, he concluded, as he arrived at his uncle's condominium in Fort Lauderdale, I was another of her toys. I was like her furs and horses and yachts and clothes. I made her feel good.

Disgusted with himself, depressed beyond belief, a headache starting to tear his brain apart from the martinis, Nick rapidly packed his clothes. He didn't bathe or eat. He took his two suitcases down to the car, left the rented tuxedo with the managers of the complex, and drove out toward Interstate 95. A couple of miles before he reached the freeway, Nick pulled the car off on the shoulder and allowed himself a few tears. That was all. The external hardness that would characterize the next ten years of his life began at that moment. Never again, he said to himself. I will never again let some b.i.t.c.h make a fool of me. No way, Jose'.

Ten years later, early on a March morning in his condominium in Key West, Nick Williams would idly play with a metallic golden object sitting on his coffee table and experience again the terrible pain of seeing Monique with her husband at that party. Wistfully, with some mature chagrin, he would remember also how, when he reached 1-95, he turned left and south toward Miami and the Keys instead of right and north toward Boston. He couldn't have explained why at the time. He might have said that Harvard was trivial after Monique or that he wanted to study life and not books. He didn't understand that his need to start absolutely fresh came from the fact that he could not face himself.

He had not played the memory of Monique through from start to finish for five years. This morning, for the first time, Nick had been able to distance himself from the recalled emotions, ever so slightly, and to see the entire affair with a tiny bit of perspective. He recognized that his blind youthful pa.s.sion had set him up for the anguish, but he was still reluctant to find Monique faultless. At least the memory no longer destroyed him. He picked up the trident and walked to the window. Maybe it's all coming together now, he said to himself. A new treasure. A final molting of the last adolescent angst. He thought about Carol Dawson. She was vexing but her intensity fascinated him. Always the dreamer, Nick visualized Carol in his arms and imagined the warmth and softness of her kiss.

3.

CAROL watched in fascination as the octopus captured its prey with its long tentacles. "Imagine what it would be like to have eight arms," Oscar Burcham said. "Just think of the brain architecture necessary to separate all the inputs, to identify which stimulus was coming from which limb, to coordinate all the tentacles in defense or acquisition of food."

Carol laughed and turned to her companion. They were standing in front of a large. translucent gla.s.s window inside a dimly lit building. "Oh, Oscar," she said to the old man with the bright eyes, "you never change. Only you can think of all these living creatures as biological systems with architectures. Don't you ever wonder about their feelings, their dreams while they are sleeping, their concepts of death?"

"Aye, well I do," Oscar replied with a twinkle in his eye. "But it's virtually impossible for human beings, even with a common language and developed communications skills, to truly describe their feelings. How could we even know or appreciate, for example, a dolphin's sense of loneliness? In our maudlin way we ascribe to them human emotions, which is ridiculous." He paused for a moment to think. "No," he continued, "it's more fruitful to conduct scientific inquiry at levels where we can understand the answers. In the long run, I believe that knowing how these creatures function, in the scientific sense, is more likely to lead us to their emotional quotients than conducting psychological experiments whose outcomes cannot be interpreted."

Carol reached over and kissed him fondly. "You take everything I say so seriously, Oscar. Even when I'm kidding, you always pay attention to my comments." She stopped and looked away. "You're the only one who does."

Oscar pulled back dramatically and put both his hands on Carol's right shoulder. "Somewhere here there's a chip . . . I know it for a fact . . . It's almost always here . . . Ah, I found it." He looked at her knowingly. "It's not becoming, you know. Here you are, a successful, even celebrated reporter, still suffering from what could only be described as terminal insecurity. What's this about? Did you and the boss have a big fight this morning?"

"No," Carol replied, as they walked across the room to another part of the aquarium. "Well, sort of I guess. You know how he is. He takes over everything. I'm working on this big story down in Key West. Dale comes to the airport to pick me up, takes me out to breakfast, and proceeds to tell me exactly what I should be doing to cover my a.s.signment. His suggestions are almost all good, and I appreciate his help on the technical issues, but it's the way he talks to me. As if he thinks I'm stupid or something."

Oscar looked at her intently. "Carol, my dear, he talks to everybody that way, including me. He doesn't mean anything by it. He is absolutely convinced of his own superiority and nothing has ever happened in his life to change his mind. He was a millionaire from his own patents before he graduated from MIT."

Carol was impatient and frustrated. "I know all that, Oscar, believe me, I know. But you're protecting him again. Dale and I have been lovers for almost a year. He tells everybody how proud of me he is, how much he enjoys being stimulated by my mind. But when we're together, he treats me like a fool. This morning he even argued with me about what I was having for breakfast. For Christ's sake, I've been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize but the guy who wants to marry me doesn't think I can order my own breakfast."

They were standing in front of a large tank with crystal-clear water. About half a dozen small whales were swimming in circles around the tank, occasionally going to the surface for air. "You came and asked my opinion in the beginning, my young friend," he said quietly. "And I told you that I thought your souls were not compatible. Do you remember what you said to me?"

"Yes," she answered with a rueful smile. "I asked you what the chief scientist of MOI could possibly know about souls. I'm sorry, Oscar. I was sorry at the time. I was so headstrong. Dale looked great on paper and I wanted your approval - "

"Forget it," he interrupted her. "You know how I feel about you. But never underestimate a scientist. Some of them," he said abstractedly, "want to know facts and concepts so that ultimately they can understand the overall nature of everything. Including the putative soul.

"Now take these whales," Oscar continued, increasing the tempo and adroitly changing the subject. "We have been mapping their brains for almost a decade now, isolating various kinds of functions in specific locations, and trying to correlate their brain structure with that of a human being. We have been reasonably successful. The language function that governs their singing has been separated and the location of the physical controls for all parts of the body have been identified. In fact, we have found an area in the whale brain that corresponds to the equivalent function for every major capability in the human brain. But there's still a problem, a mystery if you will."

One of the whales stopped in its normal circuit about the tank. It seemed to be watching them. "There's a large section of their brain that we have been unable to allocate to any specific function. A brilliant scientist years ago, after listening to the whales' songs while they were migrating and correlating those songs with the rest of their behavior, postulated that this large, unmapped portion of their brain was a multidimensional memory array. His hypothesis was that the whales store entire incidents in that array, including sights, sounds, and even feelings, and that they relive these incidents during migration to alleviate the boredom. Our tests are starting to confirm his theory."

Carol was intrigued. "You mean, they might put in that array the entire set of sensory impressions from something important, like calving, and then have, in a sense, a full instant replay during a particularly boring part of the migration route? Wow. That's fascinating. My memory irritates me all the time. It would be great if somehow I could go in there, in a directed sense, and pull out anything I want. Complete with feelings." She laughed. "There have been times in the summers when I couldn't remember exactly how great it felt to ski and I have almost panicked, worrying about whether or not that feeling might be gone the next winter."

Oscar waved at the whale and it swam away. "Be careful," he said. "Other people have also thought that it would be fantastic if our memories were more complete, like a computer's. But suppose we did have a perfect, multidimensional memory like that hypothesized for the whale. And suppose we had the same lack of entry control that is characteristic of human memory as it now exists. You know, where what we remember and when we remember it are not under our individual control. Then there would be problems. We might even be nonfunctional as a species. A song, a picture, a smell, even the taste of a cake might suddenly force us to confront anew the full emotions a.s.sociated with the death of a loved one. We might have to see again a painful fight between our parents. Or even the trauma of our own birth."

Oscar was quiet for a moment. "No," he said finally, "evolution has served us in good stead. It couldn't develop an entry control mechanism for our memories. So to protect us, to keep us from being demolished by mistakes or past events, evolution built a natural fade process into our memories - "

"Carol Dawson. Carol Dawson. Report immediately to the audiovisual conference room adjacent to the director's office."

The loudspeaker interrupted the quiet in the MOI aquarium. Carol gave Oscar a hug. "It's been great, Ozzie, as always," she said, watching him wince as she used her pet name for him. "But it looks like they've finished developing the pictures. Incidentally, I think the whole business about the whales' memories is fascinating. I want to come back and do a feature on it Maybe next week sometime. Give my love to your daughter and grandson."

Carol had become so engrossed in the discussion with Oscar that she had momentarily forgotten why she had flown to Miami early that morning. Now she felt anew a keen sense of excitement as she drove back to the main MOI administrative building from the aquarium. Dale had been confident at breakfast that processing the infrared images would reveal something of interest. "After all," he had said logically, "the foreign object alarm was triggered repeatedly And nothing could be seen in the visual images. Therefore, either the infrared observations caused the alarm or the algorithm did not work properly. The second possibility is very unlikely, since I designed the data flow myself and my best programmers tested it after it was coded."

Dale was uncharacteristically excited when she walked into the conference room. Carol started to ask him a question but was silenced by a vigorous negative motion of the head that followed his smile of greeting. Dale was talking to two of the image-processing technicians. "Okay, then, we're squared away? Display the images in this sequence. I'll call for each one by using the pickle." The technicians left the room.

Dale came over and grabbed Carol. "You are not going to believe this," he said, "what a bonanza. What a f.u.c.king bonanza!" He settled down a little. "But first things first. I promised myself that I would not spoil it for you. "He showed her to a seat at the conference table in front of the large screen and then sat down beside her.

He pushed the remote-control switch. Up on the large screen came a still frame of the three whales in the reef area under the boat. The fissure could clearly be seen to the right and beneath the whales. Dale looked at Carol. "I see," she shrugged, "but what's the deal? I took pictures with my underwater camera that are just as good."

Dale turned back to the screen and pushed thc remote several more times. The successive scenes zoomed in on the hole in the coral reef, eventually isolating and centering on a small glint in the lower left side of the fissure. Again Dale looked at Carol. "I have a similar blowup," she said pensively. "But it's impossible to tell if something is really there or if it's an artifact of the photographic process. "She stopped herself. "Although the fact that two distinctly different techniques found the light in essentially the same place suggests that it might not be a processing distortion." She leaned forward, interested. "So what's next?"

There was no way he could contain himself Dale jumped up and started pacing around the room. "What's next," he began, "could be your ticket to the Pulitzer dinner in New York. Now I am going to show you exactly the same sequence of images, only these were taken in the infrared a fraction of a second later. Watch closely, especially in the center of the fissure."

The first processed infrared image covered the same area underneath the boat that the first visual image had shown. In the infrared picture, however, what was shown were thermal variations in the scene. In the processing, each pixel (an individual picture element in the image) was given a specific temperature based on the infrared radiation observed from that portion of the frame. Similar temperatures were then grouped together by the computer processing and a.s.signed the same color. This process created isothermal regions, or regions of roughly the same temperature, that were visually connected by color. The result was that in the first picture the whales stood out in red, most of the reef plants were blue, and the normalized water temperature formed a dusky gray background. It took Carol a moment to adjust to the display. Dale was smiling triumphantly. Before Carol had a chance to focus on two small regions, one red and another brown down in the center of the hole in the reef, the zoom process had begun. In a few seconds an infrared close-up of the fissure clearly demonstrated why Dale was so excited.

"I told you there was something under the boat," he said, walking to the screen and pointing at a brown, elongated object. The object was cylindrical at one end and tapered to a point at the other. The fissure had been blown up by the zoom process so that it almost completely filled the screen. Even with all the magnification, the quality of the infrared image was superb. Inside the opening three or four different colors could be seen; however, only two, the brown and the red, were continuous over a significant number of pixels "Holy s.h.i.t," said Carol, involuntarily rising from her seat and walking over to join Dale, "that brown thing must be the lost missile. It was underneath us all the time. " She picked up the pointer and waved it at the screen. "But what's this red area? It looks like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland."

"I'm not absolutely certain," Dale replied, "and it's probably not anything of major significance. But I do have a crazy idea. Actually it's based on what you told me about the strange behavior of the whales down there. It may be the head of another whale, back away from the light, looking out of the cave. Or whatever the opening is. Here, look at this. By zooming out a little we obtain one single picture that shows both of the red isothermal regions. Look how the red region in the middle of the fissure and the red from your sentinel whales look the same. Even with additional stretching, the two regions remain comparable in temperature. Not a proof of any kind, but it certainly supports my proposition."

Carol's mind was racing ahead. She was already planning her next move. It was essential that she retrieve that missile before anybody knew it was there. She needed to return to Key West as soon as possible. She picked up her purse and her briefcase. "Can someone drive me to the airport, please, Dale? Right now. I want to call that Lieutenant Todd again and scare him a bit. You know, make him a little more cautious and buy some time for us."

She paused, thinking of a million things at once. "But I can't call him from here without making him suspicious . . . And I must make some arrangements for a boat for tomorrow . . . Oh, incidentally, I a.s.sume you have hard copy of those pictures available for me."

Dale nodded his head. "I do," he said. "But first sit down and relax for a second. I want to show you something else. I don't yet know if it's a real phenomenon, but if it is . . ." Carol started to protest but there was something in his manner that told her to acquiesce. She sat down. He launched into a discussion of enhancement algorithms, explaining how the information in pictures could be stretched to highlight special features and allow easier interpretation.

"Okay, Okay," she said at length. "The bottom line is what I need. I know already how clever you and your engineers are."

Dale put the first infrared image back on the screen, the one that showed the full view of the three whales underneath the boat. "This picture does not have much thermal granularity. Every pixel in the region colored red, for example, does not correspond to exactly the same temperature. In reality, the spread in temperatures for the same color is roughly five degrees. Now if we stretch the image, and make the isothermal regions only cover a total spread of two degrees each, we obtain this picture."

In the new image there were ten different colors. It was much harder to see individual features, and spurious data points made the picture extremely difficult to interpret. A portion of the front of one of the whales was now a different color from the rest of the animal.

"The limit of accuracy of the equipment, by the time the raw spectral data is converted to temperatures, is about one degree. If we show another stretch of the same picture, with the connected isothermal regions now only covering a total range of one degree each, then the picture almost becomes gibberish. Now there are twenty different colors for the isothermal regions and, because the noise or error in each data point is of the same magnitude as the spread in the isothermal region, it is virtually impossible to see the figures of known objects like the three whales. I tell you all this up front to make certain you realize that what I am about to show you may be completely wrong. It is, nevertheless, absolutely fascinating."

The next image projected on the screen was a close-up down on the floor of the ocean, just above the trench that Carol had followed when backtracking to find the origin of the tracks. The familiar parallel lines just barely showed up in the infrared image The fissure was almost off the left side of the image. On either side of the trench, blue color broken with some occasional green marked the two reefs. Carol looked at Dale with a puzzled expression on her face.

"This close-up has the same five-degree granularity as the big reference image. There is nothing of note here." He flashed another picture. "Nor here, where we have increased the number of colors to ten again. But look at this." One more image went up on the screen. The picture was very difficult to follow, much less interpret. As many as twenty different colors connected odd regions in what appeared to be random patterns. About the only thing that was regular in the picture were the background rocks on which the coral and other sea life were living. And it was those background rocks that had Dale so excited.

"This is what I wanted you to see," he said, waving his hand at the rocks on the two sides of the trench. "The two reef structures do not have the same color. For some unknown and absolutely inexplicable reason, every background rock area on this reef is coded chartreuse. On the opposite reef, just across the trench a few feet away, all the background rock is yellow. A one-degree difference. Now if some of the yellow pieces were interspersed with the chartreuse, and vice versa, then I would say that the data clearly has no significance and that what we are seeing are noise signatures. But this pattern is compelling."