Mortal Friends by Jane Stanton Hitchcock Page A

late, then fell ominously silent.
    “The embassy, sir?” Maxwell said.
    Bob nodded curtly. He always took my hand when we were in the car, but that night he didn’t. He stayed close to the window on his side with his legs crossed, the dark green mink blanket almost like a barrier between us. I knew something was wrong, and that made me even more nervous.
    “Can I ask you a hypothetical question?” I said.
    He paused, then turned to me, looking distracted.
    “Sure. What’s up?”
    “Okay, let’s say you found out that the wife of a very close friend of yours was cheating on him. What would you do?”
    “Nothing.”
    “You wouldn’t tell him?”
    He shrugged and looked contemptuous. “God, no.”
    “Why not?”
    “Men don’t tell each other that kind of stuff.”
    “Do women?”
    “A lot more than men.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Because it’s been my experience that women can’t wait to break up their friends’ relationships,” he said with a bitter chuckle. “You gals are always egging each other on to leave us guys. You’re always telling each other there’s something better out there.”
    I got the feeling he had a specific case in mind.
    “Is that what Melody’s friends told her about you?” The question flew out of my mouth. I regretted it the second I asked it.
    “This is your hypothetical case, not mine,” he snapped.
    “Okay, so you wouldn’t tell him—even if you knew his wife was making a fool of him?”
    “Maybe he knows she’s having the affair. Maybe he doesn’t mind. Maybe it turns him on.”
    “There’s a revealing comment,” I remarked.
    “I don’t think people’s sex lives are anybody’s business but their own. The last time we made a big deal about an affair, it cost the country a billion dollars, made us the laughingstock of the world—and to what end? Anyway, you can’t prove it unless there’s a video cam in the bedroom…or DNA on the dress, of course…. So who’s your girlfriend?”
    “What girlfriend?”
    “The one with the unfaithful husband who you can’t decide whether or not to tell.”
    “Very good.”
    “You’re not subtle,” he said. He didn’t say it gently or jokingly. He said it rather cruelly. I turned away.
    He reached across the blanket, took my hand, and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I have a lot of things on my mind right now. I didn’t mean to be so dismissive. How can I help you?”
    “I don’t know. I think I’ll have to figure this one out for myself.”
    He cast the blanket aside and moved in close to me, putting his arm around me. “You look beautiful tonight.”
    “Thank you. Can I ask you a personal question?”
    “You can ask. I may not answer,” he said sweetly.
    “Were you ever unfaithful to your wife?”
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “Okay. You don’t have to answer.”
    “I don’t mind answering. I just want to know why you want to know?”
    “Because…I guess I’m trying to understand what drives two people apart.”
    He spoke as if he were talking to himself. “It’s much more interesting to try and understand what binds two people together. Why we stay with each other is much more of a mystery than why we don’t.”
    “So why do people stay together?”
    “I guess it’s different in every case. The only thing I know is that it’s hard to stay married. You gotta work at it. Marriage is work, work, work. People just get sick of the job.”
    “Did you get divorced because there was someone else?”
    He thought for a moment. “No…no one in particular, that is. Just kind of everyone in general. I got to a point where I figured I’d done the best I could for my kids, and I wasn’t getting any younger. To be honest—I wanted to be a kid myself for a while.”
    “How did your wife feel about that?”
    “Angry. Hurt. Resentful. But she got over it.”
    “How?”
    “Partially through the biggest divorce settlement the District had ever seen up to that