four of them carried on, taking turns reading, until Suzanne said, “This is depressing. The world is full of some very strange people.”
“Don’t despair,” Rina said, holding up a sheet of paper. “This one sounds interesting. ‘I remember the cave. It was above the bay, where people sunbathed nude.’”
“That was all in the ad,” Suzanne broke in.
Rina held up her hand and read on. “‘The sand was so fine, the color of milk. Like the skin of your breasts, where the sun hadn’t touched them.’”
Suzanne sucked in a breath. “That’s true. Oh my God, this could be him.”
Rina continued. “You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and it killed me to know you were my best friend’s wife.’ Oh! Oh my!” She glanced up, her eyes wide, then went back to the letter. “‘We agreed it would just be that once but I couldn’t get you out of my mind and that’s why, when we all got back from holidays, I left town. But if this is really you, Jaclyn, and you want to see me, tell me where and when and I’ll be there.’”
She put the piece of paper down. “Tacky.”
“Yeah. Messing with his friend’s wife,” Jenny grumbled.
Suzanne, who realized her mouth was gaping, closed it. “Yes, but…” Oh my God, what had she done? “You weren’t there. That place was special. It cast a spell on me. Maybe it did on them too. I don’t…” She took a quick gulp of wine. “I just realized I honestly don’t know if my guy was married, single, engaged. It never occurred to me.”
“That is definitely not like you,” Ann said.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you!”
“You hate adultery,” Rina said.
“Of course I do,” Suzanne snapped. And the thought that she might have committed it made her feel sick.
“Okay, okay, we all understand that our Suzie was temporarily insane, drunk and sunstroked,” Jenny said. “Let’s get back to the letters.”
A busboy came to clear away the now-empty platter. They ordered coffee and baklava, then went back to reading—skimming now—aloud.
After another dozen losers, Ann held up the next. “This is from ‘caveman.’ What do you think, folks? Another cute and corny?”
Jenny turned to Suzanne. “How about it, did he whack you over the head with a ten-inch dick and drag you off to that cave?”
“No, Eros sprinkled us with magic dust and set our feet on the path.”
Ann began to read. “‘I was underneath you, hard inside you, as you stared out of the cave, describing the scene below.’”
Suzanne felt as if the cave had kissed her with its cool breath. Goose bumps pricked her arms.
“‘Do you remember the gay lovers?’” Ann read.
“Yes,” Suzanne breathed. “One was reading to the other.”
“‘One was reading to the other,’” Ann read, her voice trembling. “‘It was Lord Chatterley’s Lover.’” Ann glanced at Suzanne. “He must mean Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
Suzanne shook her head. “I said that the man who was reading was switching it, making it Lord Chatterley with the gamekeeper. Because they were gay, you know?” She put her hands to her cheeks. They were burning, though cold shivers made her whole body tremble. “It’s him. My God, it’s really him.”
Ann thrust the piece of paper toward her. “There’s more. You read it.”
For a moment Suzanne couldn’t force herself to reach out and take the paper. When she did, it rustled in her shaking hand. She glanced first at the top part. “It came in on Saturday night.” Had he been thinking of her when she was dreaming of him?
The waiter began to set coffee cups on their table, and Suzanne was glad of the excuse to scan the message before she read it aloud. It was so incredible, knowing her lover really existed, and had typed these words to her.
When the waiter left, she took a quick sip of coffee, almost scalding her mouth, yet needing the moisture before she could speak. Then she took up from where Ann had left off. “‘I’ve thought of you so many times. Yes, my outrageous lover, if you do want to meet again, tell me where and when. I’ll walk toward you and you’ll walk toward me, and we’ll see what fate has in store for us this time.’”
Suzanne put the paper down, realizing she’d gripped it so tightly she’d crumpled the edge. She tried to smooth it out, pressing repeatedly against the paper until Ann said, “You can print another, Suze.”
She gave a little laugh. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” Then she laughed again, louder, hearing a note of hysteria. “He’s real. What am I going to do?”
“See him!” Jenny yelped, thumping her fist on the table.
Their waiter, approaching with plates of baklava, leaped backward and nearly dropped their dessert on the floor.
Jenny rolled her eyes. “Be careful with that.”
He came forward in a timid rush, almost threw the plates on the table and took off again.
Rina leaned across the table and touched Suzanne’s hand. “You wanted to know if you were dreaming. Now you do. So think, Suzie, will you be happier if you see him, or if you leave it like this?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to be the party pooper here,” Ann said, “but you took a serious risk that afternoon, Suze, and you’ve got a hole in your memory. You say it was sunstroke, but what if this ‘caveman’ drugged you?”
Suzanne shook her head. “We didn’t eat or drink anything.”
“The next thing you remember is being in your room the next day, feeling awful. Could you have fallen, hit your head?”
“Or maybe he bashed me over the head with that ten-inch dick? No, Ann, I don’t think so.”
“Then why don’t you remember? You must have repressed it. But why, if it was this idyllic, erotic afternoon, and the two of you made a sensible decision to leave it at that?”
“She got sunstroke and fried some brain cells,” Jenny said. “Don’t make such a big deal of it.”
Suzanne realized her head was throbbing, full of her friends’ words, and her own worries and fears. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, to remember. After a moment, she said slowly, “You know what I think? Now that I know he’s real, that I really did it—did all those things that were utterly out of character—I think my brain, my conscience, tried to forget. Sex with a stranger, not knowing if he was single, not using a condom.” She shivered. “I couldn’t come to terms with what I’d done, yet I couldn’t manage to forget.”
“You remembered the sex but not the conversation?” Ann said.
Suzanne
