Mister X

49

They'd each had two glasses of wine, white and red, with a gourmet dinner at Le French Affaire. Or had Lilly had three? Two glasses of red? She wasn't sure, and it wasn't like her to lose count.

She'd dressed up for this meeting, this date. No simple black outfit for this one. She was wearing her pale blue Aghali silk dress, with a low neckline and a skirt cut on the bias so it showed a lot of leg without seeming too immodest. When she'd tried the dress on, the sales clerk had described her as an asymmetrical dream. Her ivory cultivated pearl necklace set off the dress and her pale and flawless complexion. A touch of Givenchy dabbed between her breasts and here she was. Ready for the jousting of the heart. Ready, as ever, to close the deal. Watch out, Gerald Lone.

Gerald, sitting across from her, turned out to be charming, and obviously a skilled jouster himself. He was witty and involved in conversation, with a direct manner of looking at her-into her-that caused something inside her to stir in a way she hadn't felt in a long time. He seemed, on this first meeting beyond mere chat and coffee, to be…well, a man who was her equal. Lilly had, in her mind, encountered few of those.

They were both players with the same objective, who didn't waste time or talk. Neither wanted to reveal too much information during the usual blather about finding things in common. Gerald had described his occupation as "helping to put pieces back together in the financial community," but avoided going into detail. Lilly had told him she was in "high-end" Manhattan real estate, but didn't mention that she was at the moment virtually unemployed. She figured a few secrets at the beginning of a relationship didn't matter. Neither of them was searching for a lifetime soul mate.

On the other hand, if things developed as swimmingly as they were going now…

Or maybe it was the wine.

Whatever, they were still taking each other's measure, like two characters in a sophisticated play, having a grand time and ad-libbing the scene as they went along. No script for tonight, but the Cole Porter mood should be maintained.

"There's a German Expressionism display at MoMA," Gerald said, over raspberry sorbet.

"Maudlin stuff," Lilly said. "I love it." Keep him off balance.

"Didn't you mention that your apartment was near the museum?"

"I did," Lilly said. "Maybe we should take it in. German expressionism can be very erotic." Stealing the play from Gerald. Staying in charge. She was getting a kick out of this verbal exchange with pretentious sharp swords. Two deft fencers.

Gerald smiled and glanced at his watch. It looked like a gold Rolex, but who could tell these days, with all the brand-name knockoffs floating around New York?

"I believe that at this hour the museum is closed," he said.

"It is. I was thinking about in the morning."

"After breakfast at Benentino's?"

"After we screw each other's brains out."

That took him slightly aback. But he recovered nicely, as she knew he would.

"You are a Lilly and not a shrinking violet," he said with a smile.

She nibbled at her sorbet and took a sip of wine, enjoying herself immensely. "My sense is that we're both people of intelligence and experience. People who don't waste time but go in short order to the quick of matters."

His smile became a grin. "That would be my impression of you," he said. "And I admire that. In all honesty, I admire you."

"And I you."

"And not only your mind."

She leaned across the table, letting some cleavage show, and gripped his right hand gently with both of hers. "Do we really want to finish dessert?"

"The wine," he said. "It's too good to waste." He held up the bottle and studied it. "Almost empty. I know what. I'll order a bottle to go, and we can enjoy it at your place."

"Afterward," Lilly said.

He laughed. "Let's drink to that and then leave."

Lilly laughed with him as he poured what was left of the wine into their glasses. She studied him without seeming to do so.

He always has something to say. He should be selling something other than himself, with his gift of gab. Or be a politician. Or lobbyist. He should be in something that requires copious amounts of blarney.

And for all she knew, maybe he was.

"Is that you, Pearl?"

Pearl winced when she heard her mother's voice. That would teach her to rush to the ringing phone and snatch it up as soon as she entered her apartment.

"Me, Mom." She slumped down on the sofa and used each foot to work the shoe off the other.

"What I called for was an awful thing I learned," her mother said in ominous preamble.

Pearl went cold with sudden alarm. "Something happen? You okay, Mom? I mean, your health?"

"My health, never a finely tuned mechanism, is not so good insofar, as the doctors say, the mind affects the body, which it does."

There was something not only in her mother's words but in the tone of her voice. Pearl sensed something wrong that didn't at all concern her mother's physical well-being.

"So what's affected your mind, Mom?"

"My peace of mind, you mean, dear. As a mother grows older she forgets more and more, to be sure, yet we grow in motherly wisdom."

"You think you're missing a piece of your mind, Mom?"

"Are you being facetious, dear?"

Pearl wasn't.

"It was the news I heard," her mother said. "News that skewered your mother's troubled heart like a sword."

"We're at war?"

"Worse. Much worse. My only and lovely daughter is, as it came to me, even to me, here where I sit alone-and should I not have been the first rather than last to hear?-that she is engaged to the reptile Yancy Taggart."

"Quinn told you," Pearl said, her anger rising.

"Only when I called him to check on your health and well-being, as I do frequently from here in my isolation. He assumed that I'd already been told, being, as I am, your only mother."

"I was going to call you tonight and tell you the news, Mom. I just got home."

"Tell me the tragedy, you mean. You may take it, Pearl-and I offer this with love and even some small hope that the consummation of such a proposed legal and unblessed union will not occur-that I do not approve of the match."

"If you spent some time with Yancy, Mom, took the time to really get to know him, you would approve. I guarantee it."

"The mongoose approves of the cobra, and in point of fact is fascinated by the cobra, just before the strike."

"I'm not a mongoose, Mom. I've never even seen a mongoose. And Yancy is not a cobra"

"A reptile is a reptile, dear."

"I'd like for you to meet and talk with him before you lock yourself into that conclusion," Pearl said.

"People met and talked with Hitler. Hitler loved to talk. Loved to ensnare people in the webs of his lies. He could fascinate people and make them do anything he wanted for every evil purpose. Sound familiar, dear?"

"Maybe if you talked to Yancy you would fall for him like Mussolini did for Hitler," Pearl said.

"I discern insubordination, dear."

"I'm sorry, Mom. I just want you to give Yancy a chance. He and I would both like your approval. It's important to us both."

"Both? You and your mother? Or you and the reptile?"

"The rep-to me, and to Yancy, it's important."

"Yet you would marry without such approval?"

"Well, yes."

"You were always headstrong and in some ways heart weak, Pearl."

"The wedding will be in Las Vegas, Mom."

"Too far away for your mother to attend, even if, God willing, I am alive at that time and not dead of broken wishes for my only daughter. Wishes that she would come to her senses, and see before her a man like Captain Quinn."

A bitter column of bile rose in Pearl's throat. "He isn't a captain, Mom."

"Nor is he a reptile, dear. And neither is Dr. Milton Kahn."

"Now there we disagree," Pearl said.

"Perhaps if you would stand back from your unfortunate betrothal and truly analyze the situation, our disagreement would blow away like smoke. An engagement can be a wonderful thing, dear, or it can be a steel trap about to spring shut."

"Mom, Yancy and I-"

"Love can be such a trap, Pearl."

"Mom, please reconsider how you feel about this."

"I have considered and reconsidered, Pearl. How I feel, what I see, is a reptile in the marriage bed alongside my daughter. The thing has a reptile's greedy eyes, a reptile's sharp teeth, a reptile's tongue."

Pearl felt herself getting excited. "Sometimes two people, even if one of them is a reptile-"

"My heart is heavy, Pearl."

"So is the phone, Mom. I'm hanging up."

And Pearl did.

A gift, Gerald thought, as they walked from the restaurant, Lilly weaving ever so slightly and leaning on him from time to time, he with a brown paper bag tucked discreetly beneath an arm. She was smiling slightly.

He kept his anticipation-and his thoughts-nicely hidden.

Why not tonight?

There were times when things were made unexpectedly convenient, and one had merely to make slight adjustments. Maybe luck. Maybe destiny. He believed in both.

He did not believe in spurning a gift from fate.

Seize opportunity when you find it.

He could act on short notice. He could improvise.

He hailed a cab, and they kissed long and passionately in the backseat. His arm snaked around her, and his hand found its way beneath the low and graceful neckline of her dress, found the softness of her breast and the sensitive tender nipple.

By the time they got to her apartment he could convince her of anything.

While she was undressing in the bedroom, he told her he'd get the wine ready for them, put it on ice so it would be cooling while they were doing everything but that. She giggled and agreed and directed him to her high-tech European kitchen.

He glanced around the kitchen. Very nice. White pine cabinets that matched the paneling, brushed aluminum twin ovens, lots of pale green floor tile laid on the diagonal. There were three dark green oval rugs with brown strands woven through them. Throw rugs. Usually the most dangerous thing in the home. Not tonight, though.

Gerald knew he had to remember everything he touched. Everything. He was careful to stay in the center of the room and let his eyes explore.

There was the refrigerator, looking like part of the paneling. He didn't bother opening it, but instead placed the wine bottle, still in its paper sack, on the granite sink counter. Using a decorative dishrag for a makeshift glove, he rummaged around for a few minutes more in Lilly's kitchen before finding what he'd really come for.

The drawer where she kept her knives.