Trick of the Mind Read online

  “Did they forget to swim upstream this year?”

  “Yes, madam. The salmon.” He hurried off without taking her menu.

  She asked Joel, “Is it me?”

  He was about to say something when the wine steward arrived with a fresh carafe and stepped through the proscribed ritual of allowing the lady a first taste and then pouring generous amounts into both glasses.

  When he left, Kendra raised the glass for a toast but hesitated. Joel was sitting back, arms crossed and eyes hooded with weariness. She blinked down at his untouched wine glass. “You’re not drinking?”

  “Had one too many.”

  “I wasn’t that late. Fifteen minutes ...”

  “The reservations were for five,” he said. “To beat the dinner crowd, you said.”

  Almost two hours ago.

  Her mind scrambled. She tried to think. Had she missed something? Did they miscommunicate? “We were meeting at six-thirty. I told you ... I had to put the finishing touches on the presentation ....”

  His pointed stare returned. He reached forward, but his fingers fell short of the wine glass. The deep color of the merlot shimmered in the candlelight.

  “So you didn’t go to the club. You’ve been here the entire time.” She feared asking but did anyway. “Did you go ahead without me?”

  He didn’t answer. Sweat joined the pasty whiteness of his face. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  She asked, “What did you order?”

  He was slow to say but eventually came out with it. “Shrimp scampi.”

  “I see.” Her vision swept over the table. The plates, silverware, and glasses were in their proper places. Dinner for two. Six-fifty-eight. Friday evening. A day in October. All as it should be. But to trust her eyes, her memory, and her sensory perception put at risk her very sanity. “I see. You ate with Jordan. Why didn’t you tell him I was coming? We could’ve eaten together.”

  Deciding he was in a drinking mood after all, Joel drained his glass very slowly and very steadily. When he set it back down, he did so with absolute precision, sliding the glass across the tablecloth and withdrawing his fingers with utmost care. His eyes were impenetrable.

  “Or did you bring along an associate. What’s-her-name. Your new law clerk.”

  “Tina Ambrose.” With the hands of a surgeon, he refilled his glass, twisting the carafe in the same fussy manner the wine steward had used. “And no, I didn’t have dinner with her. Our dinner reservations were for five. To beat the rush.”

  “For you and whoever ordered the salmon?”

  “For me,” Joel said. “And you.”

  “Six-thirty. I distinctly remember ...”

  “Five sharp,” he repeated.

  “You’re not saying that I ...?” She replayed the evening in sequence. Nothing was amiss. She left the office at six-fifteen. Late, but not that late for a dinner date at half-past. She hit the street at six-twenty. She walked from Michigan Boulevard to Madison Avenue and headed west. All of twenty minutes counting stoplights. She tried to reach Joel, but he didn’t pick up. She noticed the flasher. The gentleman past his prime. His trophy girlfriend. The maître d’ who couldn’t find the reservation until he flipped his book one page back. And the table covered with the leftovers of an intimate dinner for two, where one of the diners wore burgundy lipstick. The color Kendra favored. Midnight Rage by Rive Gauche. “Joel? Who did you have dinner with?”

  He dragged his hand off the table. The fragrance of melting candle wax saturated the air. Neighboring conversation solidified like cold soup. The romantic lighting amplified a notch.

  “You,” he said. “No one but you.”

  Chapter 2

  STRANGERS STARED AS Kendra bolted to her feet and fled from the dining room. Joel called out her name just the once.

  The stairs toppled before her as she made a mad dash for the exit. Unable to breathe, she clutched at her chest. She remembered her coat and circled back to get it. The coat check girl regarded her with wariness but gladly accepted the tip.

  When at last she rushed into the night, darkness slapped her across the face. Awakening from a nightmare of a thousand deaths, she breathed in cold, searing air and rejoiced in the pain. Her eyes flew across the cityscape. Downtown wore the clothes of desertion. She didn’t recognize anything. Frantic, she gathered her bearings. Eventually she turned towards the sunset that was no more. The wind had become fiercer. A freezing drizzle soothed her burning cheeks. After less than a block of sprinting, Kendra began to hyperventilate. She pulled up and squeezed the aching spasm in her side. The drizzle turned into a soaking rain. Though the animal inside her wanted to cry out and bay at an invisible moon, she pushed her face to the sky and let the water wash over her in silence.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder followed. The downpour changed into a sheet of steel. She had no idea where she was going, no final destination mind, just to run until the rage consumed itself.

  The el platform loomed ahead like a fat caterpillar, black against a blacker sky but stippled with confetti lights. She had galloped halfway up the stairs, her thighs burning misery, when Joel grabbed an arm and wrenched her around. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Making a scene in public!” He was angry. More than angry. He was enraged.

  But no more than her. “Tell me!” she yelled over the thunder. “Tell me you’re not seeing another woman!” It was the only logical conclusion. He was having an extramarital affair and trying to hide it.

  He made a backing-off gesture, both hands raised and palms pressed forward. The gap of a single stair step divided them. She wasn’t used to looking down at him. The skewed perspective framed a different Joel Swain, this one contrite and beside himself with anguish. “You called,” he said. “Around four. Told me your meeting had been cancelled.”

  “I ... I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I rearranged my schedule.”

  “We had a date for six-thirty. So I was a little late. It’s no reason for you to ...”

  “Five. You changed it to five.”

  “—play a mind game on me!”

  “You told me not to be late. Said you had a special surprise.” He blinked up, his face clouded with confusion. “Don’t you remember?”

  “You don’t have to lie. Not to me.”

  “You think I’m making it up?” His voice, normally a tenor, screeched an octave higher.

  “So you’re seeing someone else ....” Even while her heart was exploding, she made excuses for him and tried to convince herself it wasn’t a big deal. Hell, the marriages of all her friends were falling apart. Why shouldn’t hers?

  “I’m not seeing anybody else.”

  “You don’t have to sneak around. Or make up stories. I can take it. I’m a modern girl.”

  “I’m not making anything ...”

  “Jesus, we only invested three years of marriage. No big loss.” Her burst of laughter tasted sour. “Irreconcilable differences, isn’t that how it goes? You’re the expert.”

  The driving rain melted his clear eyes into slush. He had pocketed his glasses, rendering him incapable of seeing her true rage in all its harsh lines and pinched nerves. His own outrage having been spent, he had given up accusing her of God knows what. Forgetfulness ... fickleness ... madness?

  “I’ll even make it easy for you,” she said. “You can have everything, including the cat. Seeing he’s a roamer too, you should get along just fine.”

  His face turned into the mask of a wrongfully accused husband. He reached out and snatched her into his arms. Rivulets of wetness poured down his cheeks. He shook her hard. “Tell me ... tell me you remember.”

  “So says Joel Swain, attorney for the prosecution, smooth operator.” She struggled to break free.

  He clasped an arm around her waist and bound her so close she couldn’t look anywhere but straight into his face. His breath was rapid, his expression fierce, his grip constricting. He grazed his lips against her ear and whispered, “It’s
okay. Really. I’m not mad. Just worried.”

  “Just tell me the truth!” She pushed herself away and heard the slap before realizing the palm of her hand smarted.

  He jerked his head aside and clenched his jaw. Stung by insult as much as pain, Joel slowly he brought his head back around. The look in his eyes sliced her in half. Letting out an elongated, “Shit,” he let her go and pounded down the stairs. When he reached street level, the night swallowed him whole.

  Her legs gave out. She collapsed onto the stair step and dropped a weary head into trembling hands. Numbness crawled up from her toes to her fingertips. Hail powdered the metallic overhang. Rain lacerated the street below. She was prepared to sit there until dawn, but to do so was this side of insanity. And since Kendra McSweeney Swain considered herself perfectly sane, she pressed to her feet and trudged the rest of the way up, moving like an old woman with arthritis.

  Reappearing out of the night, Joel drew beside her and paid for both fares. A northbound train had just rolled out. In silence, they waited on the platform for the next train. City lights glittered through the downpour.

  “The car ...”

  “We’ll be home in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  The high beam of another northbound train snaked around the corner. More passengers joined them on the platform. Like Joel and Kendra, they huddled against the driving gusts of wind. The train chugged into the station. The doors released. Everybody piled on and searched out seats or standing room.

  The interior lights glared brighter than noontime. Though the train was largely empty, Kendra refused to sit. A pole near the exit became the strength that kept her erect. The el train groaned away from the station, its iron wheels stroking the tracks and crowding out the racing thump-thump-thump of her heart. Swaying with the motion, Joel closed his fists around her hands. She sniffed aftershave and the sweat of spent emotion. Garlic lingered on his breath. The sweetness of wine seeped through his pores, the kind of odor winos reek of, usually after spending the night in a stairwell and conversing with the moon. She expected a whispered cliché or a gushy kiss, but it was just the reverse. He wanted a gesture from her: a token of affection or a syrupy endearment. She had nothing to offer.

  He pried her fingers away and took her hand. She allowed him to lead her to the rear of the car. When he found the conductor’s cabin locked, he threw open the connecting door into the next car. Kendra recoiled. Grasping her hand more tightly, he guided her safely across the shifting platforms. They strolled through the length of the adjoining car, Joel taking up the rear this time. A passenger or two glanced up with disinterest. In the third car over, they switched places once more. After walking the length, he squired her behind the metal door of an empty conductor’s compartment.

  The train pulled into the Merchandise Mart station. Passengers hopped onboard, their muffled voices arriving from a distance. From a different car, the conductor’s voice squawked over the intercom. The doors shut in unison. The train pulled out of the station, wheels squealing at high frequency and lights flickering in answer to intermittent electrical power.

  Everything suddenly extinguished like blown-out birthday candles.

  Kendra barely made out Joel’s profile in the dark. They fit themselves lengthwise across the narrow bench seat. He reached beneath her clothing and located the seed of her wrath, nestled between pressed thighs. She protested, but he methodically nudged down her panties. His body weight made flight unrealistic. Her mewling complaints went unheard. Besides, she didn’t want him to stop.

  The train churned past a deserted el station. The platform lights switched his face on and off, highlighting the profile of the man Kendra fell in love with five years ago. Soggy outerwear frustrated her urgency to bring him nearer. She leaned against the clattering window, raised her knees, and braced her pumps against the inner wall. They wrapped each other in damp wool and London Fog while the compartment door rattled with a steady hammering impossible to suppress. She counterbalanced his immoderation with a dose of her own, yearning to make the many fractious noises women release during lovemaking. But she couldn’t. Not in a public place. After all, there were limits to impropriety.

  When the train braked, Joel collapsed against her exposed breast. His liquid eyes stared blindly. Beneath layers of clothing, her flesh received the exquisite caress of his fingers while his body, not ready to relinquish ownership just yet, throbbed inside her. Kendra stroked the outline of his square jaw. Beard stubble rasped beneath her touch. He reacted like a babe at its mother’s teat and transferred the suckling to her fingertips, and then to her encasing palm.

  An electrical short sputtered the train lights. The outer doors clacked open and a short time later, slapped back together. When the train lunged away from the station, the cabin plunged into renewed darkness, sealing married lovers inside an illicit cocoon.

  She had retreated to the merry-go-round of her childhood. Reluctant to appear frightened in front of the boy propelling the whirligig on a fast run, she thrust her face upward and tracked the gyrating sun across a sky that was blue as a diamond. Her heart skipped a beat and then another. Her panic accelerated. She wanted off. Her only choice was to jump. If she let go, the centrifugal force would rocket her across the playground, tumbling her with humiliation and bruised pride. So she clung to her handhold, praying for deliverance, while the crowns of many trees smeared the sky green. She imagined herself home, where it was safe, and where her mother was preparing a bologna sandwich and pouring a tall glass of cold milk. She sat at the towering kitchen table, her tiny hands reaching up to the red Formica surface and her gym-shoed feet dangling off the chrome chair. She smiled at two green frogs that could spit out salt and pepper when called upon. Her mother placed a comforting hand at her neck and delivered a cooing kiss to her cheek. But the loving care of a devoted mother failed to stop her fingers from slipping off the table. She was losing her grip on the spinning carousel and falling into a bottomless chasm ...

  “Let me off.” At first, her voice was a whisper. With each successive plea, her protests increased in volume. “Let me off, Joel! Let me off!”

  The cabin door crashed in. The conductor filled the doorway, fists clenched and cheeks flushed. “You kids, you better get on out of here, or I’ll call the cops on you, see if I don’t.”

  Joel rolled onto the filth-encrusted floor, his mouth twisted with laughter. “Us kids? Shit. Do it. Arrest me for indecent exposure. In front of my wife.”

  The conductor thrust his legs apart. The bill of his conductor’s hat threw a shaky shadow over his brow. He nervously thumbed the controls of a walkie-talkie.

  “I can see you mean it. Lead the way, Porter, and I shall follow.” Joel clambered to his feet and flung a careless arm over the big man’s shoulders. “Pray tell. What three things does drink especially provoke? Doth thee not know the answer? You shouldest, Porter. You haven’t been studying your lines.”

  Kendra caught him in her arms. They dashed for the exit. Joel wheeled around, backpedaling, and completed the lecture. “Your line, gay Porter, repeat after me. No? Then I shall say it for thee. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine!”

  With a last laugh, Joel towed Kendra through the shuttering doors, and they whirled out into the ink-brushed night. The train tottered down the line while their gaiety spent itself like the steam rising from the weathered platform. He swirled her into his encasing arms, and she leaned against him for added warmth. Making forbidden love to a rapid-transit flasher provoked the worst in her, removing inhibitions and painting her a brazen woman.

  Several minutes later, another train pulled into the station. They stepped aboard, still wild with passion, and stood just inside the doorway. Anyone observing them would have thought they were just-met lovers: callow, untroubled, and only just experiencing the headiness of romance and wine. They would have been right. It had been like this since the beginning.

  At the Addison Street station, they let other passengers exit ahead of them
. Halfway down the stairs, he shoved her into a nook stinking of carbolic acid and urine. The arched enclosure echoed their whispers. Acting like teenagers sneaking love in a public venue, they discovered each other yet again, Kendra drenched with excitement and Joel rigid with yearning. Caught up in the merriment, she slid a finger around his ear and said something salacious. He beseeched her with cruder words and pinned her with his pelvis.

  Breathy with longing, she said, “Who did you have dinner with?”

  His eyes glazed over. Before she had a chance to protest, he hooked an elbow around her neck and wrestled her downstairs. He waved at the booth attendant, who returned the gesture with a congratulatory guffaw.

  The rain had let up. They began the short hike toward Marshfield Avenue. Kendra held onto him, her arms wrapped front and back, and her step staggered. Sliding her head onto his shoulder, she gazed into his eyes. “You can tell me. I can handle the truth. Who did you have dinner with?”

  He repositioned his hold. They rounded a corner and left the bright city lights behind. “You,” he said. “I had dinner with you.”

  “Some dinner.”

  Swift and unkind, he slammed her against the broad trunk of a horse chestnut. Bark dug into her spine. Grabbing her arms, he pitched his forehead against hers and huffed through pinched nostrils. Rain dripped from the swaying tree branches above. Streetlamps gleamed through rustling leaves, coloring everything copper. He said, “You ordered salmon piccata and rigatoni ...”

  She corrected him. “Angel hair pasta ...”

  “With marinara sauce ... on the side.”

  Wavering between laughter and sobs, she chose laughter. “I think I know what I ordered.”

  His eyes hardened into ball bearings. “I ordered shrimp and angel hair pasta.”

  “Just because I insulted the waiter doesn’t mean ...”

  “You’re crazy?” He said it as a dare for her to either admit or deny.

  She sucked in a breath and held it. “You’re making something out of nothing.” She tried to push him away.