“I’m not going to shut up and go away,” Charlotte said, the words coming out in that nasal Society whine that made his teeth grate. You’d think, after years of listening to Bill Buckley and Katharine Hepburn, that women like Charlotte would know better. “I’m not going to drop the subject,” she said. “This has gotten completely out of hand, Tony, and you know it.”
“I know no such thing. The only thing that seems to be out of hand is you.”
“You can’t expect me to just sit still while you … well. While you make it plain to everybody we know—”
“It’s been plain to everybody we know since the day we were married. More than plain. Nobody on earth was fooled, not even you.”
“You think it was plain to everybody we knew that from the day we were married you couldn’t stand to fuck me?”
“Where do you get the language, Charlotte? Sometimes I listen to you and I think I’m hearing the boys at the YMCA.”
“You don’t go to the YMCA.”
“I don’t, no. What’s your point?”
Charlotte shifted in her seat. Her fingers were long and thin, but not as long and thin as his own. Her nails were covered in clear polish. “It’s one thing to have the sort of mistress they all do,” she said carefully. “Actresses. That sort of thing. I do understand that sort of thing. But that’s not what you’re up to, and you know it.”
“I’m not actually up to anything. There is no other woman. I am not having an affair. I’m too damned busy to do a mistress any good.”
“Maybe you just hate sex. All kinds of sex. That would be amusing.”
It was already dark outside. The car lit up every time they went under one of the tall arched lamps that lined this part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Tony toyed with the idea of telling the driver to keep driving, to miss their exit, to head for the mountains and Lehigh and that long stretch of road with no exits at all.
“I don’t think you heard me,” Charlotte said.
“I heard you. I don’t consider this discussion worth having.”
“You didn’t always hate sex, though. I should know.”
“Should you?”
“You’ve managed to father four children.”
“At least. I should think that would be enough. I should think that would be enough of me for you, to be precise. What is it you really want here, Charlotte?”
“I want you to give it up.”
“Give what up? You haven’t discovered anything I’m doing that I could give up. There isn’t anything to discover. And you can’t want me to go back to sleeping with you. You barely stood it the first time.”
“I want you to give him up.”
“David?”
“Yes, David. I want you to give him up.”
“Why? Or do you now imagine that I’m sleeping with David? God only knows when he’d have the time, considering the fact that he’s sleeping with half the debutantes in Philadelphia and three-quarters of the debutantes in New York. At last count. And he’s completely in control of the Price Heaven mess, which is a mess, and which is likely to get messier very soon.”
“I don’t see why you stick up for him,” Charlotte said. “He’s not just in charge of Price Heaven now, he set that whole thing up to begin with. He’s managed it from day one. And what did you get? There’s going to be a bankruptcy any day now and you know it. I can’t stand the sight of him. He makes my skin crawl.”
“Why?”
“How should I know why? He’s insidious. And I don’t care who his family is. He’s not—right. I don’t know how to put it.”
“You never did have much of a talent for words.”
“I don’t need that kind of thing from you now, Tony. I really don’t. I need him out of my life. At the very least you can stop inviting him to where I am.”
“David is my confidential assistant. We’re in the middle of a major crisis. You’re behaving like a spoiled brat.”
“You’re always in the middle of a major crisis. To hear you tell it, there’s nothing in life but major crises. The story of American banking.”
“Often, yes.”
“Get rid of him, or I’ll get a very public divorce.”
“Nonsense.”
“Maybe I’ll do something better. Maybe I’ll leak it to the press. Not the press you own, the other kind. The tabloids. I’ll say you are sleeping with David Alden. You know they’ll believe it.”
“The tabloids aren’t interested in me. Their readers don’t know who I am, and wouldn’t care if they did.”