Always and Forever Read online

“What restaurant?” he asked, impatient for night to arrive.

  “There’s a great little French place in the West Fifties.” She told him the name and address. Expensive, he noted. But he was avoiding the cost of a hotel room.

  “What time?”

  “Early,” she said. “Six-thirty. Before the mobs descend.” Now she shot a brilliant smile to someone behind him. “Jean, that cape is gorgeous.”

  A little past five Phil phoned Kathy to explain that he and his father were staying in town for the night.

  “Where will you be?” He heard a wistful note in her voice.

  “Gee, I’m not sure. Dad had his secretary make reservations for us. But I’ll call you later and let you know.”

  “You don’t have to do that. It’s just for the night.”

  “This has developed into a real blizzard. You all right out there?” he asked solicitously.

  “I’m fine,” Kathy assured him.

  “Give Jesse a big hug and kiss for me,” he ordered. “I’ll miss you, honey.”

  “I’ll miss you, too. But I’m glad you decided not to drive.”

  “Call and ask Clara if she can baby-sit Jesse tomorrow night,” he said amorously. “I’ll take my old lady out to dinner.”

  Julius decided to let the office staff and the workers leave at four o’clock because of the storm. When Phil came in to say good night, he noticed the zaftig little bookkeeper was lingering over a ledger. He’d been right, Phil told himself. The old man had plans.

  “I’m taking off, Dad,” he said casually.

  “Where you staying?” Julius asked.

  “Up in the West Eighties with this guy I know from my theater days. He has a small part in a Broadway play.” He saw his father’s supercilious smile. A Broadway star Julius Kohn respected. An actor in a small part was nobody. “I called him up earlier.” He hesitated a moment. “Look, Dad, if Kathy happens to bring it up, just say I went to the Taft with you.”

  “Hun-hunh.” Julius grinned. “You’re going to the Taft with a hot little number.”

  “Not the Taft.” He exchanged a loaded glance with his father. “See you for breakfast as usual?”

  “Skip breakfast,” Julius said. “I’ll talk to you later in the day.” He winked knowingly. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “That gives me a lot of leeway. See you tomorrow, Dad.”

  Leila was waiting for him in the restaurant vestibule.

  “I reserved a table for us in the name of Phillips,” she told him, moving insinuatingly close for a moment. “Just in case the blizzard brought a rush of business.”

  The softly lit, attractive restaurant was empty except for two other couples. Their table was in a private corner, as Leila had requested. Right away he knew she was one of those women who liked to linger over dinner. He would have been happier to rush through it and head for her apartment. They’d have a devil of a time finding a cab. Maybe he should have booked a room at a nearby hotel.

  They had a cocktail before dinner and white wine with their meal. He was conscious of a heady pleasure at being here with Leila, knowing what was to come. This one would be game for anything, he told himself.

  “I know a lot of people are staying in town tonight, but maybe we could get a hotel room close by,” he said over dessert. “It’ll be a bitch to find a cab in this weather.”

  “Slum with me,” Leila taunted. “We’ll take a subway. I like my own place. All cozy and comfortable.”

  “So we’ll take the subway,” he agreed.

  Leila lived in a gray stone on West Seventieth, close to West End. Once it must have been an elegant townhouse. Now it was slightly shabby, struggling to keep up pretenses of its earlier status. Leila’s third floor walk-up apartment consisted of a square living room with a Pullman kitchenette and a tiny bedroom and bath.

  “Take off your wet shoes and relax,” she told him as she headed for the bedroom.

  Phil kicked off his shoes, walked across the thick gray shag rug to a window. Only an occasional car creeped along on the street below. Parked cars were blobs of white, not likely to be moved tonight. God, he felt like a kid again. It was great.

  “If you’d like wine,” Leila called from behind the partially closed door, “there’s a bottle of Chianti in the fridge.”

  “You trying to get me drunk?” he joshed.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said with a throaty laugh. “I have other plans.”

  Heat was pouring into the apartment. It was beginning to feel like a tropical jungle, he thought. He pulled off his jacket and loosened his tie. Why were New York apartments either overheated or freezing?

  Leila emerged from the bedroom. She’d brushed her blond pageboy into a silken wildness that fell about her shoulders. Her sheer black negligée over an equally sheer black nightie—displaying small breasts, huge nipples—reminded him of a bordello he’d visited in Paris; her perfume was a blatant aphrodisiac.

  “Sensational window dressing,” he drawled. “You ought to be starring on Broadway in that. Every man in the audience would have an erection.”

  “Do you know people in the theater?” All at once her face was luminous with excitement.

  “A few,” he said casually. He might have known. A model with stage aspirations. “We’ll talk about it. Later.”

  In a sudden surge of passion he reached to pull her close. She lifted her mouth—already open in welcome—to his. For a few moments they were satisfied with a mouth-to-mouth duel while their bodies nuzzled in sensuous invitation.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said when their mouths separated with mutual reluctance, and she clucked in reproach.

  “Don’t be like an overheated college boy,” she taunted. “Persuade me.”

  “Honey, you’ll never be persuaded better,” he boasted and with deliberate slowness began to strip away his own clothes. “Me first, you next.”

  For a moment her eyes followed his progress, then with the same slowness she slid the black negligee from her shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor. She pushed aside the pencil-thin straps of the nightie from her shoulders, coaxed it over milk-white breasts, past narrow hips and thighs, to join the negligee on the floor. They stood naked and flexed for action, like gladiators in an arena. Her mouth parted as her eyes watched him harden in arousal.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, her smile dazzling, and dropped to her knees before him.

  “I’m all yours, Leila,” he murmured hotly. “Show me how good you are.”

  He gloried in her manipulations, murmuring passionate encouragement while his hands cradled her head. And then with sudden urgency he ordered her to her feet.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, baby.” He pulled her tightly against him for a moment, then prodded her back toward the sofa. This was going to be a long night, he promised himself. A great night.

  Chapter 10

  KATHY ENJOYED THEIR SMALL New Year’s Eve house party. Rhoda and Brian from the Hamburg group were there, which lent a special poignancy because the three of them remembered New Year’s Eve in Germany and the sense of hopelessness among many of those they tried to help. She remembered David spending most of New Year’s Day—officially a day off for them—with a despairing Bergen-Belsen survivor who had attempted suicide the night before.

  Rhoda had come with Derek Williams—Phil’s friend—who had a tiny part in a current Broadway hit. Rhoda said he was talking about their getting married in the summer. “No ring yet because he’s working for Equity minimum, but who needs a ring?”

  Brian was leaving for Greece in three weeks on a magazine assignment. He said if conditions were as bad in Greece as reports claimed, he’d remain there for a while. Marge was hoping to leave for San Francisco in late spring. Kathy felt herself caught in a vacuum in Greenwich. The phone was her lifeline to the outside world.

  An instant later she was filled with guilt. How could she envy Brian and Marge when she had Phil and Jesse in her life? So many girls
in her graduating class at Barnard would love to be in her shoes! When the weather was better, she’d get into the city more often. And they’d have friends up for spring weekends, she promised herself. She’d stop feeling this awful loneliness.

  A week later Phil came home, excited about new plans for his role in the business. Over dinner he elaborated in detail, growing apologetic when he talked about an imminent two-week trip through the Midwest.

  “I know it’s going to be tough on you, baby, but this pushes me closer to that partnership!” he gloated. “And the traveling won’t begin until late March. We need time to formulate the set-up.”

  Kathy was silent for a few moments as she tried to assimilate what lay ahead.

  “Kathy?” Phil was solicitous.

  “It sounds wonderful.” She forced a smile. “But I’ll have to learn to drive. I can’t be alone here for two weeks without being able to get around.”

  “You need something, just call over to the house. Clara drives. You tell her what you need and she’ll get it for you.”

  “No.” Kathy smiled, but she was firm. She would not be stranded in Greenwich with a young baby. Even Clara, his parents’ housekeeper, drove. “I know you’re busy so I’ll arrange to take lessons.” Marge had warned her never to ask Phil to teach her to drive. “No family—I went through hell with my brother teaching me. Spend a few bucks and take lessons.”

  “I don’t know why you have to drive,” Phil balked. His face flushed. “I don’t want to have to worry about you when I’m away.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me.” All at once her heart was pounding. She and Phil had never had a real fight, but the atmosphere now was heavy with his hostility. “Millions of women drive.” His mother had been driving for over thirty years, she’d said once when Julius complained she’d dented the fender of her new Cadillac convertible. “Once in thirty-eight years, Julius—that’s a good record.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Phil hedged. “Any more of that pot roast?”

  “I’ll bring it to the table.”

  Phil was not going to stop her from learning to drive, she promised herself. If she had to, she’d borrow the money for lessons from the emergency fund Phil kept hidden away in a garment bag. Several hundred dollars had been sitting there, she remembered, since they moved into the house. This was an emergency. She had to have a driver’s license before Phil left. Suppose Phil was away and, God forbid, something happened to Jesse? She had to know she was mobile. She couldn’t depend upon his family or their servants.

  The following morning Kathy called a nearby driving school. With Jesse in a car-bed on the rear seat she took her first lesson.

  “I have to be driving by the end of March,” she told her instructor. “I mean, I have to have a license by then.”

  “It’ll be a snap,” he said good-humoredly. “Let’s schedule the lessons. And I’ll put in for a road test in mid-March. How’s that?”

  “That’s great.” Her smile was convivial, but she dreaded the confrontation with Phil when she told him that she’d borrowed from their emergency fund—and that she was a licensed driver.

  Early in February Phil came home to announce that they were invited to a dinner party the following month.

  “It’s the old man’s sixtieth birthday,” Phil told Kathy in high spirits. “Mother and the girls decided the big six-O deserved a real bash. You’ll need an evening dress. Something splashy.”

  “Where will it be?” Already she felt tense at the prospect of meeting a lot of strangers.

  “At the house,” he told her while they walked toward the nursery. “All of a sudden Dad’s on an art collection kick. He’s dying to show off two old masters he managed to buy from some German refugee who smuggled them into the country. The caterers will handle the dinner. Gail will handle the music and the flowers.”

  “I’ll go into the city one Saturday to shop,” Kathy said tentatively.

  “I’ll open a charge for you at Saks,” Phil told her. “Don’t look at price tags. Just choose something that’ll make you look like a movie star. My wife will be the best-looking broad at the party,” he said amorously and paused in the hallway to pull her close. “I don’t hear any sounds from Jesse. Is he asleep?”

  “He had a rough afternoon, poor baby. The new tooth is finally coming through. He fell asleep a few minutes ago.”

  “I had a rough afternoon, too,” he teased and nuzzled her ear for a moment. A sure sign that he was aroused. “Can dinner wait a while?”

  “Sure thing.” Most week nights Phil just wanted dinner, an hour of television, and then he was ready for sleep. He always laughed and said Saturday was their night to howl.

  Hand in hand they walked into the dark bedroom. Kathy left the door ajar, though she doubted that Jesse would awaken. Phil crossed the room to close the drapes at the two windows, then reached for her.

  “I thought we’d never get off the parkway tonight,” he murmured, swaying with her. “I couldn’t wait to get home to you.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to get out of your suit?” she joshed.

  “I’m popping out of it already.” He brought her hand to his crotch. “How’s that?”

  “First class,” she approved.

  In mutual silence they hurried to undress. Phil pulled her down on the bed beside him and began the sensuous exploring that shot off rockets in her. And then—while his mouth caught one nipple between his teeth—she saw in the ribbon of light from the hallway the long, blond hair that lay across his shoulder.

  All at once all her senses seemed to sharpen. She saw the long, blond hair, and she caught the scent of pungent perfume. A woman’s perfume. No, she reproached herself. She mustn’t be one of those suspicious wives. Phil worked around women. A blond hair could fall across his shoulder.

  His naked shoulder? Beneath his shirt? And that perfume. Her throat grew tight as she struggled to cope with this. There was a logical explanation, she told herself. From time to time even now he was at the store. He was doing his usual shtick, as he liked to call it, and paving the way for a saleswoman to sell an expensive fur. Somehow, that blond hair made its way beneath his collar. The woman wore too much perfume. When he held the coat for her, some of the scent clung to him. She mustn’t become one of those suspicious wives who made a big thing out of nothing.

  “Kathy?” He paused.

  “I thought I heard Jesse—” she fabricated.

  “Relax. He’s fast asleep. This is fun time, baby.”

  The following Saturday—though the day was gray and bitterly cold—Kathy prepared to go into New York to buy a dress for Julius’s birthday party. Grumbling mildly at having to wake up early on a weekend, Phil drove her to the Greenwich station in time to catch an early train and then headed with Jesse for his parents’ home. Sitting in the train as it pulled out of the station, she strained for a last view of Phil and Jesse in the car.

  She felt guilty at her eager anticipation of a day in the city on her own. She’d go out to Borough Park from Grand Central and spend some time with the family. At three she was to meet Marge inside the Fifth Avenue entrance to Saks. At five she and Marge would meet Rhoda, who was treating them to tea at the Plaza. How wonderful that Marge and Rhoda had become instant friends, too.

  Rhoda had been mysterious about the reason for the super-extravagance of tea at the Plaza, Kathy remembered. Hardly a routine part of a schoolteacher’s budget. Marge suspected Rhoda was having this little celebration to announce her official engagement to Derek. With the school spring vacation just ahead, maybe they’d get married then. Rhoda’s parents would be upset. They didn’t consider an actor a responsible provider.

  Kathy was glad that on this dreary Saturday few people were bound for Manhattan. She dozed much of the way into the city. At Grand Central she left the train for the shuttle to Times Square, then headed for the Brooklyn-bound BMT. One thing she didn’t miss was the New York subway system, she thought humorously. All those years of chas
ing back and forth between home and Barnard! Marge teased her about getting spoiled now that she had married “into the rich Kohn family.”

  She was hardly leading the rich life, Kathy analyzed, other than living in a half-furnished, half-closed-off house in Greenwich. Phil’s sisters both had full-time domestic help, drove Cadillac convertibles, wore shockingly expensive clothes, vacationed at Palm Beach in the winter and Maine in the summer, and took cruises at frequent intervals. She recalled that Phil said his father was talking to brokers now about a house in Southampton.

  She left the train at the 50th Street station in Brooklyn and headed for the apartment. She paused before the store for a moment. Her father was in absorbed conversation with a long-time customer while he simultaneously made a soda. They’d be arguing about politics as usual, she thought affectionately. Oh, it felt good to be standing here again!

  “Kathy!” He’d seen her. “I’ll be right there.” He hurried from behind the counter with outstretched arms. “Mom went upstairs a few minutes ago. You’ll have lunch with her and Aunt Sophie, then Mom will come down and I’ll come up. And how’s Jesse?” His face lighted with love.

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s got another tooth coming in. And last night he tried to pull himself up in the crib.”

  “In such a rush to walk. Like you, Kathy.” His face lighted in reminiscence. “But go on upstairs. I’ll see you later.”

  Aunt Sophie had lunch ready on the gas range. For a few minutes they were caught up in greetings, then the two older women were plying her with questions about Jesse.

  “Such an angel!” Aunt Sophie glowed. “I tell the neighbors. They’ve never seen a baby like Jesse.”

  Mom never said anything that reflected badly on Julius and Bella, yet Kathy sensed her mother’s disapproval. Mom knew Phil’s parents were not the normal, doting grandparents. For a man who was so anxious for a grandson, Kathy thought bitterly, Julius was a cold grandfather. Even with his granddaughters he was cold. For the business he had warmth.

  Feeling herself enriched with their love—but mindful of the time—Kathy left her mother and Aunt Sophie a little past two, and stopped by the store again for a final embrace from her father. For a moment she considered calling Phil, then dismissed the thought. He’d be at his parents’ house with Jesse. Clara would have taken over by now. From little things that Phil said now and then she surmised that Clara had been more of a parent to Phil than either his mother or father.