He paused, and Gini saw his glance move around the room, taking in the bookshelves, the fireplace, then the objects on the mantelpiece—some postcards, a pottery jar and, just to the side, because she had wanted to keep it, Napoleon’s collar. It was made of blue leather. It had a nameplate and a small bell attached. Gini thought Hawthorne saw none of these objects, for all he looked at them. His concentration was directed inward, toward his own life.
She looked at him uncertainly. There was evil in this story, and as Pascal had said, evil did not show in a man’s face, or in his gestures, or his voice. Even so she did not sense evil here: despair, yes; exhaustion, yes; bitterness, possibly—and beyond that, a desire for exactitude and for honesty that was clearly at odds with Hawthorne’s reserve. Mary was right, she thought: This was not a man who liked, or found it easy, to speak openly about himself.
As he looked away, she glanced quickly down at her watch again. She was worried about Pascal, and this inexplicable delay, but she was unwilling to let Hawthorne see that. This opportunity might not come again, and if she was honest with herself, it was more than a journalistic opportunity. It was not easy to remain distanced, she realized, or to remember that her function here was that of a reporter. But then, of course, Hawthorne was not addressing her as if she were a journalist. He was addressing her as if she were a friend. Was that simply a clever maneuver on his part? It could have been—but when she looked at his expression, she thought not.
His gaze had returned to her face. “I’m not good at this. It’s something I’ve never discussed with anyone. But I think the problems were there right at the beginning. Lise and I married primarily for political reasons, for dynastic reasons, if you like. A senator needs a wife. My father promoted the marriage, Lise herself sought it and I went along with it. There was no one else I loved. Lise seemed sweet, very young. I thought, maybe, with time…But I was wrong. The marriage was a disaster, almost from the first. Within a year both Lise and I knew we were incompatible in every possible way. Especially sexually.” He looked at Gini. “I don’t want to dwell on any of those details. But the situation deteriorated very rapidly. It became—painful and ugly for us both. Within six months of our marriage we were sleeping apart. Lise then seemed to expect me to lead a celibate life, except on the few occasions, the very few occasions, when we could overcome our mutual dislike and go to bed.”
He gave a small shrug. “Well, that proved unworkable. I’m no different from other men. From time to time, I need sex.”
He looked at Gini intently as he said this. When she did not speak, he leaned back in his chair, and continued, still in the same even voice. “A year and a half into our marriage, I finally did what Lise had already been accusing me of doing for months. I was away at a conference. I met a woman there who made it plain what she wanted, so I took her to bed. She was about your age. She was blond-haired. She was pretty, kind, generous, and inventive. We spent three nights in my hotel room, and I’ve never seen or heard from her since. I remain deeply grateful to her. She reminded me of what sex can be between two adults. Something purely pleasurable, not part of an endless appalling bargaining process, not a power game, not a contest—and it was all of those things with my wife.” He glanced sharply at Gini. “You disapprove?”
“I don’t approve or disapprove. Adultery happens. It’s not for me to judge.”
“I expect you do, one way or the other. Never mind. It doesn’t matter….”
His gaze moved away from her face, and he looked across the room. When he continued speaking, she had the feeling that this confession was aimed particularly at her, but also beyond her, to those listening walls, perhaps, or to himself.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” he went on. “For a man in my position, there’s only one question that counts. Has he or has he not screwed around? If so, when, and with whom? No one ever cares or concerns themselves with the why—just, did he do it, and with whom?” He paused. “Tell me something. You’ve met Lise. What did you think of her?”
Gini hesitated.
“Tell me the truth, Gini.”
“I thought she was afraid of you. I thought she was confused, forgetful. She kept contradicting herself. She stressed her devotion to you some of the time. She quoted you constantly. …”
“Oh, I’m sure.” He smiled. “And you found it convincing, did you, all that devotion?”
“I found it overstated, if you like. Sugary, perhaps.”
The term seemed to please him. “Sugary? Honeyed? I’d agree. Lise overplays the devotion sometimes, the same way she overplays the charm. She’s always done that, long before this illness. The fact is that our dislike for each other is shared. Lise detests me—but Lise is a very good actress, an exceptional actress. It was one of the reasons my father advised me to marry her. He believed—and still believes—that acting ability is essential in a future president’s wife.”
He sighed, and drained his whisky. “My father’s a cynic, of course. He now views Lise as a liability. He’s advising that I engineer an annulment and marry again in due course.”
“Could that be engineered?”
“Of course.” He made the statement blandly, as if it surprised him she should even ask it. “If you have contacts at high levels in the Catholic Church, it can always be arranged. It would be difficult without Lise’s cooperation, and while she remains this ill, it’s an impossibility. But in the future, perhaps. If Lise could ever be persuaded that she had an identity of her own, that her fame and preeminence, all the things she enjoys, did not depend on her status as my wife.”
“Do you think she ever would feel that?”
“No. Probably not.” The answer was given in an offhand, almost lazy way. His gaze returned to her face. “Of course, if I ever were free to remarry, I’d have to educate my father a little. He’d have to understand that I now require rather different qualities in a wife.”
“Such as?”
“Stamina. Discretion. Unselfishness. An ability to love. Intelligence…Intelligence especially. That would help.”
Gini looked away. The intensity of his gaze was now making her self-conscious. “Lise didn’t strike me as exactly stupid,” she began.
“Oh, come on.” Hawthorne rose to his feet impatiently. He moved across to the table and refilled his glass. “Come on, Gini, you’re better than that. Lise is a vain, vapid, self-obsessed woman. She’s prodigiously stupid. She lives in a permanent state of anguished vanity and discontent. She has this need, this appalling, inexhaustible need to be the center of attention. Lise is the greatest egoist I ever met in my life. If cuddling sick babies in front of photographers gets her that attention, then that’s what she’ll do. If slashing her wrists gets her attention, she’ll do that as well. Dear God, I’ve been married to the woman for ten years. She’s the mother of my children. You think I don’t know my own wife?”
There was a silence. Gini was shocked by the sudden and impassioned vehemence with which he spoke, and Hawthorne, as if realizing that, gave a sigh, and a hopeless gesture of the hand.
“I know. I’m doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do. I didn’t mean to discuss Lise, or run her down. But sometimes—just for once—I’d like someone to understand what my famously perfect marriage is actually like. I’ve fathered two children by a woman I neither love nor respect—and if Lise is paying the consequences for that, so am I. Unlike Lise, I don’t take refuge in lies, or pills. I have other remedies. Sometimes drink—just to get me through the night—and sometimes women. The drink is too addictive, too dangerous, as we saw with your father tonight. So these days I settle for something that’s easier, readily available, and much less habit-forming. Women. I screw around, Gini. Yes.”
There was a pause. Gini could sense it again, that little pulse of danger in the room, and unease too.
“Are women not habit-forming, not addictive?” she said.
Hawthorne looked at her closely. “Is that what McMullen implied? That I needed women for som
e kind of regular fix?” His face hardened. “Well, if he did, it wouldn’t surprise me. Lise has made that particular accusation, and variations upon it, many times. I don’t think it’s true. I told you. I like women. I like sex. So, yes, I’ve been unfaithful to my wife. I was unfaithful for the first time eighteen months into our marriage, and I’ve been unfaithful on many occasions since. If you want chapter and verse, in eight and a half years I’ve had four affairs of some duration, in each case with kind, discreet married women. Women I liked. Women I respected. They began by mutual agreement and ended without tears the same way and—” He stopped, as if considering whether to reveal the rest. “And, all right,” he went on angrily now, “there have been other episodes as well. One-night stands, if you like. I’ve slept with other women for no better reason than that I was away someplace, and I was tired, and I was lonely and sick at heart, and they were there. So, just like a million other men, I gave in to the illusion that a woman might help….” He stopped again. “I’m a politician, not a priest, Gini. Sometimes it’s very simple. I just meet a woman I want to fuck.”
There was another silence, and this time Gini could sense the danger in the room acutely. He had been shifting their relationship, she realized, throughout this conversation, drawing her deeper into an area of his life where it was unwise to trespass, and now—with that one final verb—he had shifted their relationship again. This was no longer a confession, and it had long ceased to be an interview: They were now simply a man and a woman, alone in a room at night. Hawthorne might have been scrupulous up to that moment, attempting to curb his emotion, keeping his distance, but the instant he uttered that word, all that changed. The silence between them was now loaded, and it carried a sexual charge.
She was not certain if Hawthorne had planned it that way—she thought not. But she knew he could sense it as acutely as she could, and she could read it in the alteration of his face. He put down his glass and leaned forward.
“That shocks you?” he said. “You look shocked.”
“No. I’m not shocked. It’s not a word careful politicians use too often. Maybe it’s that.”
“I’m not speaking as a politician. I’m not speaking carefully. I thought you understood that.” He met her eyes. “It’s a common enough word. It’s exact.”
“It is that.”
“You find it distasteful all the same.” He half smiled. “Don’t deny it, I can see it in your face. There…” He leaned across the space dividing them and touched her forehead very lightly, between her brows. He withdrew his hand at once. “There. The smallest frown. And in the eyes too. I can see it. You disapprove.” He sighed. “Why, Gini. Is it so bad? Just to want to fuck someone? Isn’t it honest to admit it, at least?”
“It isn’t that.” She rose hastily to her feet.
“Would you approve more if I told you I’d been looking for someone to love?” He looked up at her, still with that tired half-smile, then he also rose. They were now standing very close to each other. His expression became serious.
“Would you rather hear that? Most women would.”
“No. Why should I? It makes no difference.”
She began to move away. Hawthorne touched her arm lightly and drew her back so she faced him. “Wrong,” he said. “Wrong, Gini. It makes all the difference. You know that….”
Gini gave a small, quick defensive gesture of the hand. She had the sensation that events were moving, turning, speeding up. They were flashing past her eyes very fast, like a succession of lights on a freeway.
“Listen,” she began in a rushed way. “It’s very late. I think perhaps you should leave now, and—”
She stopped. Hawthorne had taken her hand in his and raised it to his lips. At exactly the moment she felt his breath against her skin, the telephone rang on her desk. She jerked her hand quickly away and turned. She stared at the telephone.
Hawthorne said in an even voice, “I imagine that will be Pascal Lamartine, who is now some two and a half hours late coming for you. You’d better answer it, don’t you think?”
She crossed to the desk and picked up the receiver. There was silence at the other end; she turned to face Hawthorne, still holding the receiver. He was watching her closely. “Pascal?” she said into the silence. The line crackled. Then she heard not Pascal’s, but another male voice, a familiar voice.
“Gini,” it whispered. “Gini, is it you?”
She caught her breath. She felt the blood drain from her face. She realized that she was afraid, suddenly very afraid, of both these men, the one who had just kissed her hand, and the one who whispered his secret wishes in her ear. Were they alike in those wishes, or not? She froze, staring at Hawthorne. The voice whispered on.
Hawthorne frowned. He moved closer, then closer still. His eyes never once left her face. When he was two feet away from her, then one foot, she knew he could hear the whispers too. She saw those scratchy obscenities register in his eyes. He showed little surprise, but she saw his mouth tighten with anger. He listened for a moment or two, then held out his hand.
“Give it to me, Gini,” he said.
She handed him the receiver. He listened a moment more, then said in his clipped, cold East Coast voice, “Are you monitoring this call? Do you know who this is?”
There was a click, then silence. The recording must have been terminated, for the whispering stopped.
“You call again, and you’ll regret it. You’ve got that?” Hawthorne spoke clearly and succinctly, as if in no doubt that he was being heard. His face was now wiped of any emotion. Reaching around her, he replaced the receiver with a click.
He moved back, so he was directly in front of her once more, and Gini was backed up against her desk. He looked down into her face, and when she looked into his eyes, she could see anger in them, way back, like burning ice.
“Has that happened before?”
“Yes.”
“When? Since when have you been getting calls like that?”
“This week. I forget when they started. Tuesday. No, Monday. The day I got back from Venice—”
She broke off. That word, and that admission, had been made before she had time to think, when all she was conscious of was Hawthorne’s proximity, and the pressure behind her of the edge of her desk. She saw it dawn in his eyes the second she said it She crimsoned. Hawthorne gave a small sigh. She felt his whole body relax.
“Gini. Gini,” he said in a low voice, half amused, half sad. “I know you went there. I know why. It doesn’t matter. Just trust me a little. A few more days. If you’d only do that. I—” He broke off. “Don’t believe all the lies. Dear God…”
He lifted his hand and touched her hair. “You have amazing hair, such beautiful hair, Gini—and—Gini, when I look at you …”
“Don’t.” She put her hands between them, and tried to push him back, but he pressed closer against her then, his hand grasping the nape of her neck so her face was turned up to his.
“You mean that?” he said. “You’re sure you mean it? Gini, look at me. No, don’t turn your face away. Yes. Like that.”
Gini became absolutely still. She looked up into his face. He was breathing more rapidly now, and she knew he was aroused. That made her very afraid. There was some desperation deep in his eyes, and a new urgency in the way he held her. He began to speak, then stopped, then began again in a low voice. He took her hand in his.
“This is what you do to me….You must know. It happened the first time I ever set eyes on you—and it shocked me then. It happened again, the other night, at Mary’s. What were we talking about then? I can’t even remember what we were talking about. I knew exactly why you were there, and even that made no difference. A whole roomful of other people made no difference. Tonight, when your father went to hit you. We’re alike. We’re kin. I know you can feel it. I can see it in your eyes. This is what they say to me—and this.”
He gripped her hand tight, and pressed it against his chest. She felt the beat of his hear
t through her fingertips. Then he gripped her more tightly still, and drew her hand down between their bodies. His penis was erect. He shuddered as he made her touch him.
“Gini, listen to me. Look at me.”
He began to press her harder, back against the desk. Gini struggled to free her hands. She wrenched her face away.
“Stop this,” she said. “That isn’t true. Get away from me. Stop this, now.”
“Look at me and say that. You can’t…” he said, but when she turned her face, he bent and kissed her hard on the lips. He pushed her back; he groaned, and began to caress her breasts. Gini gave a cry; he drew back just a little, and she saw his face change, become both urgent and triumphant. He twisted her arm behind her back and bent her against the desk, bearing down with his full weight, so he half straddled her, and his erection thrust against her crotch. He pulled her blouse open. She felt the shock of his hand on her skin. His hand closed around her breast.
“Don’t speak. Stop struggling. Darling—don’t…” He caught her hand as she raised it to push him back. Then he was half lifting her, one hand easing up her skirt. He pushed her down and back against the desktop. He pushed her thighs apart, jerking her body up against his penis. Then he crushed her against him, caught her by the hair, forced her head back. She cried out again, and he pressed his mouth against hers and pushed his tongue between her lips.
He was very strong, and these moves were swift. There was no hesitation, no suggestion that she might find his actions unwelcome or would resist. Gini fought to free her hands which were now trapped between their bodies. The pressure of his mouth was painful, and the more she struggled, the harder that pressure was. She let her body go limp, and he responded at once to that.
“Yes,” he said. “Darling, Christ, yes…”
He began to kiss her throat in a frantic way. Gini freed her hands. She waited; she tensed; she thought: When he lifts his head…