—
A week after he received the report, Rupert went for a late lunch at the Oyster Bar. Catching sight of Vera, he asked to sit in her section. “Less noisy,” he said to the hostess. As he read the menu, he sensed Vera coming up behind him. “Would you like a Greenpoint oyster?” she said. Rupert kept his eyes on the menu. He felt the blood rushing in his ears. “Could you get off work at three thirty?” he said, not looking at her. “Yes,” she said, “if it’s worth my while.” He turned to look at her. She looked scarcely older, still Lana Turner. His eyes went to her cleavage, then to her left hand. She was wearing a cross and a small diamond ring. Keeping his seat, he took out a billfold and handed her five fifties. “It’s three now. Meet me across the street in the lobby of the Hotel Coolidge in thirty minutes.” Vera counted the bills. “Real money,” she said. She leaned down and pressed her hand against his crotch. “Just making sure,” she said. He held her hand there for several seconds.
Rupert arranged for a room in the Coolidge in the name of Robert Fairchild. “I expect you to be discreet,” he said to the clerk, handing him twenty dollars. “No one will know I’m here. Is that understood? Let me know if anyone asks for me or follows me.” The clerk nodded. He had been threatened before by johns but never in an English accent. “Yes sir,” he said. “Good,” Rupert said. “We can do business. I expect to come regularly. I want a different room each time, but I will always see the same woman. You will show her up. I want the room cleaned with fresh bedding. I will call and pay cash, in advance, and I will pay extra for extra services. Is that understood?” The clerk nodded. “Yes sir.” Rupert handed him another twenty. “One last thing,” Rupert said. “You will treat her with respect.”
—
Rupert and Vera met regularly at the Coolidge over the next six months, at least once a week, often twice, occasionally three times. They came to terms quickly that first afternoon. “Would you mind taking off your clothes while we negotiate,” he said. “I want to see all of you. I remember your beautiful body.” Vera obliged with a slow striptease. Rupert talked. They would meet in the morning at eight thirty. He would arrange to pay her a thousand dollars a month, deposited directly in her bank account, or in cash if she preferred. She would make herself available to him whenever he wanted her, Tuesday through Friday mornings. He would accommodate her job. She could meet other men as she wished, but not at the Coolidge and not in the morning. He would be her first of the day. She would take the birth control pill. If she got pregnant, if she ever tried to find out where he lived or worked, if she ever talked about their past, he would break off the arrangement.
“Do you agree?” he said. “We exist together only in this room.”
“Very professional, very businesslike,” Vera said.
Rupert said nothing.
She walked over to him. “Do you want to start now? It seems a waste of”—she gestured to her nakedness—“not to.”
He nodded. “Lie down on the bed for me, will you, on your back.”
“Aren’t you going to get undressed?” she said.
“No,” he said, unzipping his fly. “Like the first time.”
Rupert took feral pleasure in Vera’s wondrous, compliant flesh. With her, it was always the first time, bringing him to the brink of ruination. He thought if he died during sex with Vera, it would have been worth it.
Their sessions always began the same way. She would strip in front of him as he sat on the bed, dressed in his shirt and trousers, watching her. He would then lie down, still in his clothes, his fly open, and she would get on top of him so he might look at her breasts. He was as quick as a youth with her.
The rest of the morning followed no plan. Vera was very adept at sex, inventive and improvisational, and she quickly figured out how to please him. She never refused him, realizing that submission was what he wanted. “I’ll do anything you want,” she’d say. “Everything you want.” If he had wanted a dominatrix, she’d have obliged there as well.
At the end of their sessions, Rupert had her wash him in the shower. He would then get dressed. He left the room first, leaving her naked, on her back on the bed so he could have a last look. He would never tire of her.
The end came as it had come before. The session had begun as usual, Vera on top of him naked, he below clothed, looking at her beautiful breasts. They seemed fuller to him, more beautiful than ever. He knew in a flash.
“Please get off me,” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“You know what’s the matter,” he said, his voice low, angry, breaking. “You’re pregnant.” She slid off him. He sat up. “Why did you do it? I’d have paid you forever.” He got up and walked toward the bathroom.
Vera shrugged.
While he dressed, he asked her to lie naked on the bed. “A last look, if you will,” he said. He put on his jacket, then sat next to her, stroking her breasts. “God, I love them. You ruined it. You ruined it again.” He took out his wallet and gave her twenty fifties. “This is it,” he said. He got up to go.
Vera sat up and took hold of his jacket sleeve. “Remember,” she said, speaking so softly he had to lean in to hear, “you came looking for me. I never went looking for you.” She let go of the jacket and lay back down on the bed. “You’ll be back.”
—
Straus’s company hired Rupert as their lawyer. The Maynard, Tandy partners elected him to the management committee. Rupert had the PI follow Cardozo. He wasn’t sleeping with Eleanor. Rupert thought fleetingly of hiring the PI to follow Eleanor but rejected the idea on grounds of self-respect and self-preservation. “Are you over whatever it was?” she asked him the evening of his first management committee meeting. They were getting ready for bed. He gave her a thin smile. “What doesn’t kill you makes you unkinder.” He pressed her against the wall and pulled down her underpants. “I always want you,” he said. “Yes,” she said.
The money going to Vera stopped for six months, then resumed.