Birthday Girls Read online

  “Men like you have wives, Peter. It helps them be better in bed. They appreciate sex more from a stranger.”

  He withdrew his finger. “And if I tell you I don’t?”

  “I’d say you are lying.”

  He rolled onto his side and looked deeply into her eyes. “More research for your book?”

  “No. Well, in a sense, maybe. Lexi Marks is always on guard against giving her heart to sexy men.”

  “What about Kris Kensington?”

  “Kris Kensington gives her time, her body, and her experience. She does not give her heart.”

  “That sounds like a badly written scene.”

  “I assure you. It’s not.”

  His hand darted back to her vagina. She jumped at a sudden burst of orgasm. “Oh, God,” she cried.

  He massaged his palm against her pulsating flesh. She spread her legs; her opening swallowed his fingers, his strong, callused, rock-climbing fingers.

  “Tomorrow I will take you somewhere even more extraordinary,” he said. “I will take you to my home in the country. We will go into the meadow with a hamper of cheese and fruit and wine, and I will fuck you in the tall grass, where the sheep graze in the sun.”

  She reached down and pressed him more deeply inside her. She slid her hand to her breast and rubbed her swollen, aching nipple. “And your wife?”

  “There is no wife, Kris. There will be only the flock of woolly beasts to watch.”

  Slowly she rocked back and forth. Slowly she arched her hips as she pinched the pain of her nipple. “Then we’ll give them a show they will never forget. Now fuck me again,” she demanded. “Fuck me again until I scream for you to stop.”

  He did.

  She’d thought about flying to Paris and catching the Concorde back to New York. But Kris was in no hurry, and the idea of spending more hours in a plane, secluded, uninterrupted with her laptop, was more appealing.

  Devon, her agent, would not be thrilled by the delay, but the results would make him rich. Richer than she already had made him.

  Her gloriously mellow frame of mind was, of course, thanks to Peter. It was not often that Kris found a gorgeous man whose lust matched her own, who understood what she wanted, when, and why, and who knew better than to ask for explanations, or to ask for more.

  It was the only reason she’d broken her self-imposed rule and had sex with him twice. And in a remote pasture in the Swiss countryside, their heat had proved to be even more exciting than in Chamonix.

  Some people, Kris reasoned, used drugs. She only needed sex. Hot, great sex.

  And now, 35,000 feet in the air—a little more than twice as high as she had climbed up the Matterhorn—Kris settled into her first-class seat of the 747, took a last glance at the carpet of white mousse clouds outside the small window, turned on her computer, and prepared for Towanda to meet her fate at the skilled hands of Lexi Marks at the top of the Matterhorn.

  Needles of ice crystals power-sprayed her cheeks, Kris typed. She sat forward on the seat, touching her face, trying to recall the sensation.

  Then, from the corner of her eye, Kris noticed the man sitting beside her. He had shifted closer and was attempting to peer over her shoulder. She turned her head and looked squarely into his eyes with what she hoped was an obvious, blank stare.

  He was very large and very black. He grinned, his wide, white teeth forewarning friendliness. Exactly what Kris neither wanted nor needed right now.

  “Working?” the man asked pleasantly.

  She nodded and returned her attention to the small screen, hoping he would get the message.

  “My work is done for now,” he continued and rested his head against the seat-back. “I’m headed to Chicago. Back to the real world.”

  His words were meant to prompt her to ask where he was from, what he did for a living, etc., etc., etc. They were meant to induce conversation, an act she performed with strangers only when she was doing research. Or was in need of a good screw.

  “My work never ends,” she said brusquely. “And I have a deadline awaiting me in New York, so if you’ll excuse me …” She started typing again; this time not really writing, just putting down garbage to reinforce her disinterest.

  “Wait,” he said, sitting up straight. “I know who you are. My goodness. You’re Kris Kensington. You’re the writer.”

  A small groan threatened to escape from her lips. “That’s me,” she responded without looking up.

  “I’ve read all your books. In fact, so has my wife. We both think it’s marvelous that you’ve had so much success. Especially a sister—a black woman—such as yourself.”

  It was another twenty minutes before he got the message and retreated upstairs to the lounge. By that time, her good mood was gone.

  Kris turned her laptop to “sleep” and wondered why her stomach hurt. Why was it that every time someone called her a “sister,” a “black woman,” she felt sucker-punched in the gut?

  She leaned back and closed her eyes. In the first place, she questioned, why did most people assume she was black? She was not. Her father had been white, her mother black. So why did everyone call her black? Why did no one call her white? And what the hell did it matter? She had proved herself to the world. Why the hell did anyone still care what color she was … or was not?

  It wasn’t as though she had a husband to answer to; it wasn’t as though she’d had children. No, she thought. No children. Only men. Many men.

  The men in her life—the never-ending string from the Matterhorn to the Australian outback—perhaps all assumed she was black. In their beds, however, it did not seem to matter. There, she was who she was: a hot-blooded, horny woman who thrilled to the quick flash of sex, who loved the climax after climax they all made her achieve. She had never been one to expect to be held. Or loved. She had only wanted their sex, as they did hers. Color didn’t matter beneath the sheets.

  Still, it seemed the more famous she became, the more people wanted—needed—to make it an issue. It was not the way she’d been raised, in a cultured home where her political activist, South African parents did everything possible to make Kris’s world free of prejudice, free of pain. They sent her to the best schools, exposed her to the finest people.

  But their mission, apparently, had not been completely successful. Now that they were dead, and Kris was on her own, she wondered if it might have been better if she’d learned to live as a black-and-white woman in a black-or-white world, if she had learned how to live and how not to get sucker-punched.

  She checked her watch. Over six hours to New York. There was no point in working right now; her agitation was too great, and the mellowness of Peter had melted, had cascaded down the slide of reality. She closed the lid of her laptop and reached for the airphone. There was only one way for Kris to regain her balance, and that was by talking with her agent, Devon Reynolds.

  Unbelievably, Devon was in his office. Unbelievably, he picked up the phone.

  “My wandering beauty,” he chortled. “How was the Matterhorn?”

  “Delicious,” Kris answered. “I do believe Lexi Marks has done it again.”

  “Fended off evil and peril to the world?”

  “Of course. Now tell me what’s happening in the city. Any news on Acapulco Gold?” The book depicting Lexi Marks’s quest to stop the resurgence of a hashish invasion into the United States had been released last winter; the film had been optioned but not yet produced.

  “They renewed the option for another six months.”

  Kris smiled. The longer it took the studio to get into production, the more money she made for doing absolutely nothing. “Good. Anything else?”

  “Lots that can wait. You did have one interesting call, though. From Abigail Hardy.”

  Her eyes locked on the seat-back in front of her. A small rumble began somewhere in her sucker-punched gut. “Abigail?” Visions of pop beads and hula hoops came into Kris’s mind, 45-records and scrawling the names of boys across the pages of sch
oolbooks and … and Windsor-on-Hudson. “What did she want?”

  “At first I thought she wanted you to cook on her show. Then I remembered you don’t cook.” He chuckled. “Hell, you hardly even eat.”

  Kris squirmed. She wished he’d get to the point.

  “I didn’t know you were in school together.”

  “We were more than ‘in school,’ ” she answered quietly. “We were best friends.”

  “You? And the queen of the kitchen?”

  She closed her eyes and gripped the receiver more tightly. “What did she want?”

  “Lunch. Wait a minute. The note’s here somewhere.”

  Kris heard papers being rustled. She wondered how long it had been since she’d seen Abigail … not since the baby-naming ceremony for Maddie’s twins. Had they talked since? No. She knew they had not talked even once.

  She opened her eyes, stared out the small window, and wondered why, after all this time, the mention of Abigail Hardy’s name still evoked so much … emotion.

  “Here it is,” Devon said. “It says: ‘Lunch at La Chambre. September 24th, one o’clock. Someone named Maddie will be there, too.’ ”

  Abigail. Maddie. Her long-ago friends. Her long-ago partners in childhood pranks and childhood crime. She drew in a short breath. “What’s the occasion?” Abigail, after all, had always had an agenda. There was no reason to believe that she’d changed.

  “The occasion? Christ, I’m your agent. Not your social director. Besides, you can forget it. You’ll be in Houston on the 24th. The Texas tour, remember?”

  The Texas tour. Of course. Kris closed her eyes again. No matter what Abigail had on her mind, work must come first.

  Or must it?

  Slowly Kris felt her curiosity grow. Curiosity—her weakness, her passion, her foible. What could Abigail want? After all these years, what could she possibly want?

  Still, it would be fun to see them again. Abigail and Maddie. Just like old times.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  It all depended on how much Abigail knew.

  “Change the Texas tour,” Kris heard herself say.

  She quickly clicked off, listened to the hum of the jet engines, and tried—not for the first time—to convince herself that chances were Abigail had never found out, and that anyway Kris had done absolutely nothing wrong.

  September 1997

  Maddie couldn’t believe that she’d let Sophie talk her into bringing a copy of Abigail’s latest book.

  “If you get her autograph, I’ll make pot roast for dinner.” Her mother’s words echoed now, the wheels of the train clack-clacking beneath Maddie’s feet. She’d been racing out the door, knowing she’d have to speed to the station to make the 11:15 into Manhattan, pissed that she was late and equally irritated that September 24th had come so fast, before she could mentally gear up to see her old friends again, before she could find enough ways to make herself believe she was as successful and happy as they were.

  “Mother!” Maddie had screeched. “This is shameful bribery! Abigail is my friend. Not some hot-shot celebrity.”

  But Sophie’s eyes twinkled as she repeated, “Pot roast. With gravy.”

  So Maddie had taken the book, silently thanking God that her mother did not like fiction and had never read one of Kris’s hair-raising, edge-of-the-seat tales, or Maddie would be toting copies of those, too.

  She stared out the dirt-streaked train window and wished she were more excited about seeing Abigail and Kris again. But four days in L.A. last week had left her drained: four days of behind-the-scenes grunt work for six hours of shooting a star. Thankfully, Madonna had not lost it when the donkey shit on the set. Thankfully, the photo turned out to be dynamite.

  Still she was exhausted. And today, when she should have wanted to feel great and look great, she did not.

  Dressed in a long dirndl skirt and matching shapeless vest that she’d hauled from the back of her closet, Maddie knew her only fashion salvation was the large antique cameo at the throat of her beige satin shirt, and the brown, high-buttoned shoes on her feet.

  Yet she also knew she couldn’t blame her lack of enthusiasm on being tired. Or on looking like a frump.

  Removing the chestnut-colored tam from atop her brown-and-gray, straight-hanging hair, Maddie tossed it on the seat beside her backpack, reached into the bag, and pulled out the book that Sophie prized.

  In the Rose Garden with Abigail, the title read. Beneath it a full-color photo showed Abigail Hardy dressed in a pale peach sheath that screamed Neiman-Marcus, clutching a pair of snippers in one hand and a bundle of blooms in the other. She was framed by a cluster of coral roses. Though the set was predictable and the lighting too harsh, even Maddie had to admit you could almost smell the fragrance.

  “She’s still just as pretty as can be,” Sophie said each time she received another volume from Abigail’s monthly book club—of which Sophie had been a charter member from day one.

  It was a proclamation that wasn’t new. Sophie had always admired Abigail’s petite, lady-like looks. Maddie supposed it should have made her crazy, each time she looked at her own football player shoulders, her big hands, or her thick, squat thighs. But her physique—like her sullenness—had been inherited from her father, and even at a young age Maddie knew she was who she was and that she could never have changed her skin to “fair” and manufactured those blushy pink cheeks for herself.

  She was, after all, a photographer, not an artist. Her canvas was real life reproduced, not embellished.

  Besides, Maddie had never really wanted to look like Abigail—maybe because she knew how hard Abigail worked at being flawless and struggled with her endless preoccupation with perfection.

  It had always amazed Maddie that when they were kids Abigail would never even leave her house until her bedroom was spotless, until everything was neat and orderly, as though the Queen of England would come while Abigail was out and take away her princess crown for being a slob. The weirdest part was, Abigail didn’t even have to do those things: she had servants, for godssake. Servants, and no mother to cluck-cluck behind her back if a dust bunnie lurked under her bed. Not that Sophie ever would have clucked.

  But mother or no mother, Abigail had continued to primp at her vanity, clean her room, then primp again. As for Maddie, she merely brushed her teeth, washed her face, then set out to do fun things, like roam the school grounds with her camera while the dust and clutter seemed to grow in her absence.

  Looking at Abigail’s perfect smile now, at her perfect white teeth and professionally styled hair, Maddie wondered if she should have paid more attention to herself back then. Certainly Abigail had no obvious gray hairs, no lines on her face, no sag to her cheeks, or other nearly-fifty, dead-giveaways. And though Maddie knew the salvation of photo retouching, she shuddered at the possibility that with Abigail, none had been needed at all.

  Neither, she supposed, would any have been required for Kris.

  She slid the book back into her bag next to the other volumes that she’d tucked inside: two photo albums of their early birthdays, memories of years past.

  It had been a last-minute thought, the reason she’d been late.

  The idea had come yesterday. She’d spent the afternoon rifling through old pictures, the pictures the others had always mocked her for taking, though they’d always been ready with a smile and a pose. She’d put her son Timmy to work in the darkroom making duplicates from the ancient, black-and-white, scallop-edge prints, and threatened the young man at the camera shop that she’d take her business elsewhere unless he hunted down two matching, nostalgic-looking albums.

  Timmy had been easy to coerce; since he was four he had loved hanging out in his mother’s studio. The young man at the camera shop, who she’d learned was named Cody and was twenty-eight years old, was equally compliant: he had recently bought the small operation and was probably hungry for business.

  She’d worked until three o’clock this morning, but the
results had been worth it: the identical albums captured the innocence of their youth.

  Hopefully, her friends would like them. And hopefully, the albums would help deflect the conversation from the disaster of Maddie’s life, from Parker and Our World, and from the hideous fact that she had been dumped.

  Still, Maddie mused as the lights surged overhead and the train rumbled into the bowels of Grand Central Station, she did have something that neither Abigail nor Kris had accomplished: two healthy and hearty teenage sons who loved their mother—no matter that no one ever asked for her autograph, no matter how many dust bunnies still lurked under her bed, or how many years it had been since Parker had left her and never come back.

  Though it was politically—and legally—incorrect to abolish men from a restaurant, La Chambre made its own statement with its pink-and-gold decor, Chantilly lace tablecloths, and nearly translucent china. Even the chairs were delicate, with small padded seats and no arms. The menus, of course, had no prices—all menus, not simply those handed to the hostess’s guests. It was exactly as Abigail preferred.

  The table she’d reserved was tucked in a quiet alcove in front of a large, many-paned window that overlooked East 64th Street. Peering past the organdy draperies and gazing outside, Abigail wondered how long it would take to know if she could count on her friends for help. She wondered if they’d think she was crazy. Then she twisted the gold bracelet on her wrist and wondered if maybe she was.

  At first her idea had seemed merely a dream, an unattainable goal. But in the past few weeks it had taken hold of her heart, seizing her with quiet frenzy, emphasizing her resolve in bold print, underlined, capital letters, a headline imprinted on her soul, a shout to the world that she had paid her dues.

  It was, of course, not an impossible plan to execute—not for someone, perhaps, other than Abigail Hardy, someone who had not spent a lifetime closed in by rigid expectations and self-perfection demands.

  The initial step had been the most difficult: calling Maddie, calling Kris, admitting to herself she could not do this alone. And now, what had begun as that dream might become her new reality—if she could hold on, if she could remember that of all the people on the face of the earth, Maddie Daniels and Kris Kensington were the only ones she could trust. Or, at least, they had been once. Long ago.