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He had been observing this couple just coming out of the slanting April rain all aflutter and out of breath as they shook off drops from their raincoats before handing them over to the hatcheck girl at Pumpkins, the pricey restaurant on Second Avenue, Maggie’s choice, where the cooking was West Coast eclectic and the atmosphere luxury-liner Art Deco.
Ken, who was sitting facing the restaurant’s entrance, saw her first in profile as she patted her cheeks dry with a tissue. Couldn’t be, he decided at first, realizing suddenly that he had actually searched for her face in crowds for more than two decades.
Of course, he tried denying it, knowing it was the trigger to this precognition. No Way. This could not be Carol Stein. The process of aging cannot stand still. Yet he could not tear his gaze away. There was that same easy grace of the floating swan, the same question-mark dancer’s posture, the same high-cheekboned cat’s face, the same angled head, emphasizing the sharp line of tilted chin overhanging the long, thin, white neck.
Aside from the emotional power of this hard punch to the solar plexus of his psyche, his physical reactions, too, took him by surprise. His heart seemed to skip a beat, many beats. His back broke out into a cold sweat and his throat ran dry.
Then his wife, Maggie, waved and the tall man in the blue double-breasted wide pinstripe and elegant gold-and-blue-striped tie beside this replica of Carol Stein acknowledged the gesture with a movement of his own, tapping the shoulder of the woman who could not be Carol Stein.
He watched her move toward him with a ballerina’s dainty precision, her body gliding in step with some inner rhythm that made her long challis skirt seem driven by a gentle breeze over soft kid boots. The movement seemed to have a remembered signature, vibrating an old erotic chord within him.
Was this Carol Stein walking into his life after twenty-three years? He felt a blast of heat from that old furnace, firing up the passion and possession that had inflamed his youthful soul.
As she came closer, denial faltered and he felt trapped with all exits closed off. He would be an exhibit for her to observe and gloat over. Another tide of anxiety washed over him as he imagined the bloated remains of his former being lying on a cold slab awaiting Carol Stein’s coroner’s knife. Who could hide one’s failure from that kind of scrutiny? He felt ashamed, the bitter bile of his lost dreams on the verge of exposure. Suddenly there was no place to hide.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Four friends, two husbands and two wives, each involved in an adulterous affair with the other`s spouse, confront the deception and duplicity that have marked their relationships. Seller Inventory # OM-BK-2021-06-01-41
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # Abebooks165293