“Have some more chocolate,” he said cheerfully as he took her cup, then poured more liquid out of the big thermos. “I think this is going to be a great vacation for both of us. No strings attached. No worries about any physical relationship coming between us. I know that things aren’t great between you and your husband, but I think that you’re the kind of woman who would respect her marriage vows.”
When he didn’t say any more, she looked up at him and saw that he seemed to be expecting her to answer.
“Oh, yes,” Madison said. “Great respect.” As she drank the chocolate, she wondered if Roger and little Terri were also respecting his marriage vows.
“Perfect,” Thomas said. “Absolutely perfect. Now, what would you like to do first? Any suggestions?”
“You know what there is to do better than I do,” she said, looking up at him.
“I’m sure it was presumptuous of me, but I thought you might like this idea, so I did a little preplanning. In about two hours Pretty will meet us on the other side of that mountain—or maybe to you it’s just a hill—with a pickup full of supplies and a rubber raft. We’ll set off from there and take a little trip. Not too long. Three or four days. Think you can handle that?”
All Madison could do was blink at him. Three or four days alone in beautiful wilderness with a man she found extremely attractive? Days away from constantly having to encourage a man to do his exercises? “I can’t,” Roger would whine, then Madison would have to tell him he could. Then when he did it, she’d have to praise him. And praise him and praise him.
“Who cooks?” she asked, squinting up at Thomas.
“We’ll split it. But most everything has been made by Adelia and put into little bags. She dries her own fruit, smokes the meat herself. She even makes the granola from scratch.”
Part of Madison knew she should say no. A big part of her knew she should return to the cabin and discuss this with Roger. After all, he was still her husband. He didn’t act as if he was and he’d made it publicly clear that he—
“Yes,” Madison said. “I would like that very, very much.”
Nine
“So what happened?!” Ellie demanded as she held her glass out for Leslie to refill.
Madison lit another cigarette, then exhaled before speaking. “I had the most wonderful time of my life.”
When she didn’t say any more, Ellie looked as though she were going to strangle Madison. “Details! I want details. You were there with that lazy, no-good husband of yours; then you went off into the wilderness for days with a man who wanted a platonic relationship with you, and—” She broke off when Madison started laughing. “What?!”
“Thomas was lying. Every word about his ‘proposition’ was a lie. Later he told me that he was so hot for me that I made his palms sweat. But when he saw that all men everywhere had that reaction to me, he knew he wouldn’t have a chance if he made a play for me.”
“I see,” Ellie said “That makes sense. From a writer’s point of view, that is. So he wanted to give you time to like him.”
“Yes,” Madison said softly. “That’s just what he wanted. He wanted me to get to know him, away from his family, away from every outside influence. And he wanted to get to know me, the me inside, not just the outside of me.”
“Yeah, I have that problem too,” Ellie said. “You too, Leslie?”
When Leslie was silent, Ellie turned to look at her. “Believe it or not, I did at one time. Not my face so much as my body. But now it’s hard to remember back that far.”
Madison squinted through the smoke at Ellie. “Don’t you start acting like you’re not pretty enough to set men on their ears.”
“Maybe. But I’ve never inspired men to great heights of lust the way you two have. You know what men like to do with me?”
Madison lifted her eyebrows. “Sure you want to reveal that?”
“Maybe your secrets are private, but all mine have been printed and published. Anyway, men have always liked to talk to me. No, it’s true. Give me ten minutes with a man and he’s telling me things he wouldn’t tell an analyst.”
“With me, men wanted acrobatic sex,” Leslie said with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe the things that the boys in college proposed to me.”
When both Madison and Ellie looked at her expectantly, Leslie smiled. “Ellie may write all her secrets down, but I’m keeping mine to myself. So go on with your story.”
But Madison didn’t speak for a moment. “If men only understood that one thing, they could win any woman in the world. The ugliest man could have the most beautiful woman.”
“Did I miss something?” Ellie said. “What ‘one thing’ do men need to understand?”
“To give a woman what she wants, not what he thinks she wants,” Madison said in a faraway voice; then she looked at the other two women and smiled
. “What Thomas realized is that, all my life, men had been making passes at me because of my looks. So of course what I hungered for was someone to talk to me. I used to fantasize about falling in love with a blind man, a man who couldn’t see me, so he’d treat me like other women.”