The Astronaut's Wife

8

Jillian Armacost had had her doubts about Spencer leaving NASA and the two of them leaving Florida, particularly for a destination like New York City. But with the deaths of Alex and Natalie Streck, each grotesque in its own, unique way, she knew she could not stay there any longer. The place was haunted for her now, and perhaps a radical change of place and style of living might be enough to banish the bad memories and the hellish images.

And yet New York was quite a stretch. There were two fundamental problems to deal with. First off, the city itself—the noise, the confusion, the polyglot population—was disconcerting at first, but Jillian was sure that she could adapt to it.

With the other problem she wasn’t so sure. Suddenly and without warning, she found that she was rich. The aerospace corporation that had hired Spencer was paying him in a year what NASA paid in a decade. In addition to the salary, the company provided a vast duplex company apartment in the heart of the Upper East Side, along with a company car—a Jaguar—that came with a private parking space that cost as much as the rent for a two bedroom apartment back in Florida. Jillian just wasn’t used to being able to afford anything she happened to see and the effects were quite disconcerting.

Oddly enough, and to Jillian’ s immense surprise, Spencer took to the New York way of living without the slightest hesitation. Without a second thought all of his old clothes went to Goodwill and he spent a couple of days outfitting himself at Bergdoff’s, Paul Stuart, and Barney’s. Jillian had to ad-mit that her husband looked pretty sharp and well turned out in his new clothes, but somehow he did not quite look like Spencer—that is, Jillian‘s Spencer.

In addition to all this, Jillian was not quite used to the social life that went along with corporate life. It seemed as if they went out at least five nights out of seven, but always during the week, never on Saturdays or Sundays—rich New Yorkers appeared to vanish on weekends— which was quite a bit more socializing than Jillian was used to.

The nature of the entertainment was different, too. Until the move to New York, Spencer and Jillian had socialized in bars not unlike the one where their tragic farewell party had been held— back-country taverns where the drink of choice was long-necked beers, where people only had scotch on their birthdays.

Now they went out to dinner almost every night. New Yorkers of a certain type made a fetish out of first-class restaurants and if you didn’t know someone on the inside of the most chic restaurants in the city, you might have to wait up to a month for a reservation. Jillian had to admit the restaurants were fabulous, beautifully designed, with exquisite food faultlessly served. One thing puzzled her about these palatial places—she wondered how they could charge such extortionate prices for such minute portions. But since they moved to New York, price had ceased to be a consideration. The company credit card paid for all—Spencer’s expense account was virtually without limit. And, Jillian noticed, he seemed to enjoy using it.

Dinner was almost always preceded by a cocktail party. Sometimes they were held in fabulous apartments with million-dollar views of Central Park, sometimes they were held in places not normally open for parties like the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or at the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. But wherever they might be held they always had one thing in common. When Spencer announced that they had to go to yet another cocktail party and Jillian groaned and moaned about it he could always silence her with a single reason. So far, it had never failed.

“We have to go,” he said. “It’s business.” That night, “business” took them to a party in the gargantuan lobby of a building on Wall Street that had been built as the old U.S. Customs House for the Port of New York. But these days Fifty-five Wall Street housed a bank—a bank very interested in doing business with the company that featured Spencer’s name so prominently on its stationery.

For once Jillian did not object to going out to a cocktail party—Spencer had told her that there was a rumor that the big boss, the head of the company might attend this particular function. She had heard so much about the mysterious Jackson McLaren that she was very anxious to meet him—even if it meant another night out on the social scene.

Fifty-five Wall Street had been built by the same firm of architects that designed Grand Central Station and some of the pharoanic scale of that building lingered in this one. The lobby was vast, a space so huge and beautiful it was almost daunting. The ceiling seemed so high above the pavement it appeared to have been lost in the night sky. Fifty-five Wall, the high cathedral of high finance, was built to prove that money was the greatest power known to man.

The power of the room and the people in it had the usual effect on Jillian. She felt absolutely insignificant. She stood with a glass of champagne in her hand watching men and women in faultless dinner jackets move through the crowd bearing trays of canapes almost too beautiful to be eaten.

Jillian surveyed the crowd. She was becoming familiar with the New York types. There were the old men, men in their seventies and eighties, men so rich they were worth more than some small countries. They had been so rich for so long that they automatically commanded a certain kind of respect. Accordingly, they were treated like heads of state. These men were usually attended by women of the same age, perhaps a year or two younger, but never more. These were first wives who had married these men fifty or more years before, members of a generation who believed that a marriage vow was something that was not to be taken lightly—particularly the “for richer or poorer” part.

Beneath these wealthy old lions were the men in their fifties and sixties, men who still had careers as CEOs and CFOs or in brokerage firms and banks. These men almost all had one thing in common—they had started out in their banks or brokerages back in the late fifties and early sixties, grateful to have a job with a nice firm and hoping to have something approaching a lengthy and comfortable career. They married their high school, college, or hometown sweethearts and bought little houses in the suburbs on Long Island, in Westchester, and in New Jersey. They never missed the 5: 23 train home because back in those simpler days there was nothing to be gained working late, tracking something as bizarre as a foreign stock market or the track record of a company manufacturing something in another country-like Japanese cars, for example.

The idea was to take the train into work in the morning, do your job, have a couple of drinks at lunch, go back to work, leave your desk at five on the dot to make your train back to Islip or Scarsdale or Ridgewood and hearth and home. The closest they got to a New York experience was having a Manhattan at lunch. One thing these guys in their short-sleeve shirts and crew cuts and Brook Brothers suits had never figured on happening was getting rich. They hoped they would make it up’ to twenty-five or thirty thousand bucks by the time they were in their forties, but real money—that was an impossibility. Bankers and brokers didn’t get rich. They made other people rich.

Then everything changed. The market exploded. Investment banking started to pay well and the wage slaves started to get rich. Moderately rich at first—they bought nice jewelry for their wives, their kids didn’t have to apply for financial aid when they went to college. And Dad got rid of his Dodge and bought himself a boat or maybe a sports car—an MG, perhaps or maybe a Thunderbird or a Corvette. No one knew it at the time but those shiny new sports cars were the beginning of the end, the thin edge of the wedge.

Then everything changed again. These guys were too old for the summer of love or the Vietnam war, but they felt that something fresh was in the air— and that was the bull market of the sixties that erupted like a skyrocket and yanked the wage earners into higher levels of wealth, heights they had never expected to attain.

And that’s when everything really changed. Miraculously, stock brokering and investment banking came to be considered sexy occupations and suddenly, the wage earners were no kidding, honest-to-God rich. They felt like they could do anything— and they did anything they chose. The first wife, the college sweetheart, the hometown girl was the first thing to go. Resentful kids suddenly had stepmothers who were younger than they were and bitter first wives took healthy alimony payments and opened gift shops that failed after a year or two.

The men were now in their fifties and sixties and had beautiful young wives in their twenties. The first wives got the house in Scarsdale, because their divorced husbands were now living in Manhattan, because that was the only place that the new, trophy wife would consider living. And it had to be on Central Park West, or the Upper East Side, and definitely west of Third. The apartments were huge by New York standards, but rarely the size of their old garage out in suburbia. And they had to have a playroom and a room for the nanny, because these rich men in their sixties now had a second set of children in diapers—children these men would not live long enough to see drive a car.

But right now, they were the most powerful men on Wall Street, which meant that they were some of the most powerful people on the face of the earth.

Beneath them were the wannabes. The class of wage earners was gone forever, replaced by the overpaid yuppies. The guys (and now gals) who, on their first day of work, put their boss in their sights and vowed (silently) to have his job in a year (and their boss’s boss’s job the year after that). They planned on getting rich, they planned on attaining Old Lion wealth, but they were going to be younger when they did it. And there wasn’t going to be a little old society lady in black on their arm, either. They had no plan to buy a Corvette. They were headed straight for the Ferrari dealer.

Jillian looked around at the crowd and saw that it was mostly made up of the young wannabes. They were the guys who didn’t think the hors d’oevres were too pretty to eat—they wolfed them down—not caring that they were spilling cocktail sauce on their thirty-five-hundred-dollar suits. When someone spotted that the bartenders were pouring eighteen-year-old scotch that retailed for a hundred and twenty-five a bottle, consumption increased dramatically…

Spencer held a glass of it himself as he talked to three yuppie sharks who were hanging on his every word. They may have been predators who would eat you alive in the arbitrage market, but they were still little boys at heart and they were getting to talk to, to hang out with, a genuine, honest-to-God spaceman.

“You’re sitting on top of what amounts to a fifteen-story building packed with high explosives…”

“Cool,” said one of the sharks, slugging back about twenty-five dollars’ worth of single malt.

“Then what?” asked another of them.

Spencer laughed. “Well, that was the part that none of us ever could figure out… After they strap you in, anyone with any sense backs off the gantry by about three miles.”

“Then what?” the third one asked. “What happens then? What does it feel like?”

“You feel your first kick after the main engines spark,” said Spencer. “But then the solid rocker boosters come on and that’s when you know you are about to go someplace very fast.”

“Zoom, zoom, zoom, huh?” said one of the Wannabes, crunching an ice cube between his very white teeth.

Spencer nodded and smiled slightly. “That’s about it… zoom, zoom, zoom.”

“Man,” said one of them, “I’d give up my 401k to go for a ride in a spaceship.”

“But you are,” Spencer replied simply. “You’re riding in one right now.”

“I am what, right now?” they guy asked, looking puzzled by Spencer’s enigmatic observation.

“You’re on a spaceship,” Spencer replied. “We all are. That’s what the earth is. A spaceship.”

“I mean a real spaceship,” the guy said. “None of that Whole Earth Catalogue stuff. I Want to ride in the shuttle. I want to feel those rockets kick in. Zoom out to outer space.”

Spencer shrugged. “Shuttle? Earth? What’s the difference? The Earth is a real spaceship. And believe me—we are in outer space right now.”

One of the yuppies looked around at the rich crowd, the vaulted ceilings of Fifty-five Wall Street and laughed. “You know, it’s not quite what I expected. Though I think I’ve spotted a couple of alien life forms here.”

Spencer smiled thinly. “Space is never what you expect it to be. Never.” One of the first wives who had not yet been dumped by her newly rich husband—and who looked like she expected the news at any minute—had buttonholed Jillian. She was a rather dried-up woman with a plummy accent and in an attempt to compete with a host of younger women she had dieted and exercised herself down to mere skin and bone. Jillian remembered something that she had once heard an old black Floridian woman say about someone else: “She’s as thin as six o’clock.” That sort of summed up this woman.

Jillian was wondering why she was even on this woman’s radar. What she did not know was that it was social death to stand alone at one of these functions. Jillian was just a port on her way to some place more socially acceptable.

“I used to be into AIDS,” the woman was saying, “but it got so crowded with the wrong sort.”

“Really?” Jillian said, wondering just what the hell this old socialite was talking about.

“Really,” she said emphatically. “It just became too, too trendy, you know.”

“I see,” Jillian replied.

The woman made no secret of the fact that she Was scanning the crowd over Jillian’s shoulder, searching among the party-goers for a greater social catch. Her hunt for someone else to talk to was so obvious that it made Jillian nervous. She took sip after sip of her drink and wished that someone Would come along and rescue her from this extremely awkward situation.

“So I gave up AIDS,” she said, her eyes darting back and forth. “And now I’m into hunger.”

Jillian felt that she had to say something. “I teach,” she said. The Armacosts’ move had, providentially, coincided with a shortage of school teachers in New York. With her credentials from Florida and glowing recommendations from her former superiors, Jillian had been welcomed into the New York City school system. It was the one thing in her life that seemed normal, even if some of her pupils had names like Ahmed, Jesus, and Ang. Kids were kids and Jillian just loved being with them.

This admission elicited a faint flare of interest from Jillian’s companion. “You teach? Where abouts? At NYU? Columb a? Or do you commute up to Yale in New Haven?”

Jillian smiled. “No, not quite anything as grand as that. I teach second grade.”

The woman smiled, too… “I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought you just said you taught second grade.”

Jillian nodded. “I did. I teach second grade over at—”

But the socialite was looking over Jillian’s shoulder again. She gave a little smile and wave to someone in the middle distance. “Ambrose,” she squealed. “You look great, darling.” She flashed a smile at Jillian. “Marvelous talking to you, dear,” she said quickly. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

But before Jillian could even open her mouth to give her assent, the woman scooted away.

Jillian was not offended, not in the slightest. She was relieved at being left alone. She located Spencer in the crowd and mouthed the words “help me” at him. He immediately broke from the little knot of feral yuppies and started toward his wife, but before he could reach her he was grabbed by a very distinguished-looking man who was carrying a cigar so thick it looked like section of bicycle inner tube. As the man led him away, all Spencer could do was shoot his wife a look that plainly said “What can I do?”

Jillian scanned the crowd and for one terrifying moment she locked eyes with her former companion and it looked as if she was going to have to go over and be introduced to the man known as Ambrose who did not look all that great, Jillian thought. But she dodged that bullet when a woman closer in age to her sidled up to her, drink in hand. She was smiling, plainly reading the social fear on Jillian’s face.

“Don’t worry about her,’.’ said the younger woman. “The total lack of body fat has rendered her something rather less than human. I would doubt if she’s had her period for over three years. Which, I guess, is a blessing for the gene pool. Wouldn’t you say?”

Jillian smiled and tried to think of something clever to say in reply. Nothing came.

“I’m Shelley McLaren,” the young woman said.

“I’m Jillian Armacost.”

“I know,” she said with a little smile. “I Saw you when you came in with your husband.”

Suddenly Jillian understood. “McLaren,” she said. “Your husband must be—”

“Jackson McLaren.” She tossed her head in the direction of the man with the big cigar who had snagged Spencer. They had been joined by two more rich-looking men. They also had cigars. Spencer did not have a cigar and he did not want one.

Shelley laughed. “They all had cigars… but Jackson had the biggest cigar of all,” she said, pretending to be wistful, as if recalling some far-off days of yore.

She then stopped a passing waiter and grabbed two flutes filled with champagne. She handed one of the glasses to Jillian and they clinked glasses.

Jillian felt she had to make conversation. “This is an amazing building,” she said.

“It will be when it’s finished, but don’t let it fool you,” she said with a wink. “It’s made entirely of processed cheese.” Shelley McLaren sipped her champagne. “I can’t tell you how excited Jackson was to get your husband on his board of directors. Apparently there was a real little bidding war for brave Spencer Armacost. Jackson won of course. Because Jackson always gets what Jackson wants.”

She looked away from her husband and surveyed the vast space they were standing in and then looked over at Jillian, indicating the giant room with her chin.

“Seems pretty strange to you, I’ll bet,” said Shelley McLaren sympathetically.

Jillian nodded. “How ever did you guess?” she said laughing. “Does it show that much?”

“Don’t worry,” Shelley McLaren said warmly. “It happens to everyone. And a room like this. … it’s supposed to make you feel the way you do.”

“What way is that?” Jillian asked.

Shelley waved her hand vaguely at the high ceiling and the marble columns. “Qh, you know,” she said. “It’s all designed to make you feel insignificant. No woman would ever have built a place like this. Why do men always confuse size with power.” She sighed, as if contemplating the follies of the male species and then took a drink from her champagne glass. “So tell me, have you made any friends in the city yet? It can be difficult, I know…”

Jillian shook her head and smiled ruefully. “No… not really. Of course, I’ve made some friends at work, but I don’t know them well. It’s only been a couple of weeks… But there’s Spencer, of course. I guess we’re best friends.”

Shelley’s eyebrows shot up toward the vaulted ceiling—this rich, sophisticated woman looked genuinely surprised by Jillian’s startling admission.

“Spencer is your husband and your friend,” Shelley exclaimed. “If I were you, I wouldn’t let the other wives get wind of that little fact. If they do, they’ll be sure to haul you up on charges. Friendship and marriage aren’t supposed to mix in this class stratum. But I guess you can be forgiven for not knowing that yet. But believe me, in time, you’ll learn all the rules about that sort of thing.”

For the first time since she had arrived in New York City, Jillian threw back her head and laughed. She laughed loud and clear and without a whit of self-consciousness. It felt good to her. And it sounded good, too. People in that vast room looked at her as she laughed, and envied her. Very few people had the privilege of laughing like that. Not in polite society anyway.

Even a slightly jaded sophisticate like Shelley McLaren was taken in by Jillian’s honest laughter. “Now that,” she said, “I like.”

“Like what?” Jillian asked, genuinely mystified. “What do you mean?”

“Your laugh.” Shelley said.

“My Laugh?” Jillian looked at Shelley McLaren as if she had lost her mind. “What does my laugh have to do with anything?”

“It’s an honest laugh,” Shelley explained. “And let me tell you, it’s been a while since I heard one like that. You weren’t laughing because you thought you were supposed to—you were laughing because you heard something you found funny.”

“Isn’t that why people laugh?” Jillian was frankly surprised by Shelley McLaren’s reaction.

“Not in this town, Shelley replied. She drained her champagne glass. “You’d be surprised at the number of phonies you are going to run into in New York, Jillian. Sometimes it can be quite scary. No one means anything they say. The check is never in the mail. The best way to follow up a lie is with another lie.”

Jillian frowned. “That’s sort of cynical, isn’t it. Do people really live that way?”

“It’s a cynical town, sweetheart,” said Shelley McLaren, sounding like a hard-bitten chick from an old movie. “But you’ll get used to it in time. Believe me. I did.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” Jillian replied. Her voice was as honest as her laugh. “I don’t want to be so cynical about everything. Or anything, really.”

“Think of it as armor,” Shelley McLaren advised. “Kevlar body armor. My husband manufactures it, you know. He’s got a factory in North Carolina. Makes a fortune on it. And he sells it to the good guys and the bad guys. How do you rate that for cynical?”

Before Jillian could say anything in reply a waiter scurried up next to Shelley and whispered something in her ear. She nodded a number of times and her countenance darkened. “Okay,” she said to the waiter. “You tell Andre I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”

The waiter bowed from the waist. “Very good, madame. I’ll tell him now.”

“You do that,” Shelley McLaren snapped. Then she turned to Jillian, smiling as if nothing had upset her. “I have to go,” she said. “It seems that there has been some minor disaster in the kitchen. Something concerning burning rum balls and no one on earth, it seems, can take care of it but me and me alone.”

Jillian looked surprised. “This is your party? I though that the bank was throwing it.”

“Absolutely correct, madame,” said Shelley laughing. “But Jackson is a majority shareholder in the bank. Hence they want to invest in his company… and the party is up to me.”

“Oh,” said Jillian, feeling like a naive fool. She should have known that. Spencer should have told her about their host and the multi-layered complexities of the evening. “Of course. If you’re needed in the kitchen you should go.” She paused for a moment or two, then asked, “I could help out, if you need me.”

Shelley McLaren waved her off. “Don’t be ridiculous. I shouldn’t be bothered with it so why should you be? Have another glass of Kristal and forget about the rum balls. That champagne is costing my husband a hundred dollars a bottle. Drink as much as you can—I will, I’m trying to bankrupt him from inside. You know, like an undercover agent or something.”

Jillian laughed again. “No you’re not. I can tell. You love your husband.”

This time Shelley laughed. “I am going to call you and we are going to go out and listen to that wonderful laugh of yours. Yes? Am I right, Jillian?”

“Okay,” she replied. She felt as if she had really made a friend, her first one in New York City.

“Good,” said Shelley. “I’ll hold you to that. Now… if you’ll excuse me…” It was exactly the same thing that the dried-up socialite had said when she had wanted to dump Jillian. When she heard the words her face fell. Maybe she had been wrong about Shelley McLaren. Maybe New York was only interested in her husband.

But it turned out that she was wrong. Shelley walked a few feet, then turned on her high heel and walked back to Jillian Armacost. She looked’ at her for a moment, then spoke, and Jillian could tell she was speaking from the heart.

“Jillian-can I call you Jillian?”

“Of course,” Jillian replied.

“I don’t want you to worry…”

“Worry? Worry about what?”

Shelley waved her arms, as if gathering the entire vast room up and clutching it to her slim body. “About all of this. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry if you never get used to this whole New York society thing. I never did.”

Jillian was completely calm. “I’m not worried about it, I’m here because my husband needed to be here.”

And Shelley McLaren smiled. “Just remember, AIDS is overcrowded with the wrong people.”

Jillian looked right back at her, her gaze not wandering, not even a centimeter. “But hunger is hot.”

Shelley laughed and touched her cheek lightly. “You’re learning so fast. You are going to be just fine…”

Then she walked away, leaving Jillian alone in that strange and alien crowd. Jillian took her slim flute of champagne into a corner of the vast room and sat down on a black velvet sofa. She took a sip of her drink and thought about how much her life had changed in the space of a few months. It had all been put into motion by that terrible accident that had befallen Spencer a few months before. If it had not been for those few terrifying minutes in space Alex Streck would still be alive, Natalie Streck would not have gone through with her bizarre suicide. She and Spencer would still be in Florida, he would be preparing for the next Victory mission, she would still be with her old second grade class… Calvin and Sarah under her charge… instead of being a neophyte socialite in the big, impersonal social capital of the world, New York City.

It was enough to make her mind whirl. So much had happened so quickly. She was almost scared to think about what would happen to her next.

As she sat on the little velvet sofa, musing on her immediate past and the chances for her immediate future, Spencer walked up to her. He held a flute of champagne in each hand and he swayed slightly on his feet as he looked down at her. It was apparent he had been drinking, but he did not appear to be drunk.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked, looking down at the small patch of black velvet next to her.

“Well,” said Jillian, “I guess not. I was saving it for my husband, but I don’t think he’s going to show.”

Spencer looked at his wife from head to toe, his eyes traveling the length of her slim body. “Your husband, huh? I’d say he’s one very lucky man.” He sat down heavily and handed one of the glasses of champagne to her. “Some men don’t understand just how good they have things. They don’t understand just how wonderful their wives are. Your husband… I’m guessing he’s some kind of pig.”

Jillian smiled but shook her head. “No, not a pig exactly… but recently he’s been a bit negligent.”

“My apologies,” said Spencer. He sounded sincere, as if he really had not realized that he had been neglecting his wife. His brief time in their new adopted city had been even more hectic and disorienting than hers. Now it struck him that he might have been just a tiny bit selfish. “Drink your champagne and feel better,” he said.

Jillian put the glass down on the little table next to the couch. “I’m afraid I’ve hit my limit, Spencer,” she said.

“Oh come on,” he replied. “Have one more glass. With me. It’ll do you some good.”

Jillian looked around the room, watching the rich people drink expensive spirits. “You know,” she said, “I thought your flyboy buddies back at the base could drink. But it looks like these people have got a real love for the joy juice.”

Spencer did not answer. He was looking deep into his wife’s eyes, so deeply in fact and with such intensity, Jillian felt slightly uncomfortable and blushed noticeably. He raised his glass and tapped it lightly against Jillian’s in a quiet toast.

“To us, Jillian,” he said softly.

“To us,” Jillian replied, her voice barely rising above the level of a whisper.

They both drank. Spencer took a mouthful, but Jillian merely sipped, barely wetting her lips with the golden champagne. She lowered her glass and touched her brow, suddenly feeling the tiniest bit woozy. She was not much of a drinker, but nervousness in these social situations had made her take more than she was used to.

“Oh …”she said. “That’s the one that does it. Just one glass too many.”

Spencer was still staring at her, but his look had altered slightly, now he was looking at her as if he was searching for something in his wife’s face.

“What?” Jillian asked feeling self conscious under the intensity of his gaze. “What is it?”

He did not answer with words. Instead he leaned in and kissed her forehead softly, brushing his lips across her skin. It was the sort of gesture a parent might make if taking a child’s temperature. Jillian did not notice the oddness of the gesture.

“Mmmm,” she said, closing her eyes. “That’s nice.”

“Yes it is,” Spencer replied. Still looking into her eyes, Spencer let his fingertips brush across the skin of her neck, touching her lightly, as if taking her pulse. Jillian swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment, her head whirling.

Spencer leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Maybe we should get you some air.”

There was a dark corner of the vast room, a niche some distance from the bulk of the crowd. The noise of the party echoed in the space like a far-off fair and no words could be clearly heard there. There was an occasional burst of laughter, nothing more. It felt very strange to be alone and yet so close to such a large throng of people.

Jillian and Spencer faced each other, very close together. Spencer put his hard, powerful hands up, resting them lightly on the soft bare skin on her shoulders.

“Feel better?” he asked.

Jillian took a deep breath. The air seemed cooler in this dark corner of the room and it cleared her head a little. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “A little better…”

Spencer held her gaze with his eyes, then allowed his hands to slide down her arms until his fingertips were touching her slim wrists. She did not notice that his index fingers touched her pulse for a moment or two before entwining his fingers with hers.

“Spencer…” Jillian whispered.

Her husband silenced her by putting his lips to hers and kissing her lightly. Then he moved his mouth close to his ear and whispered softly to her.

“There’s something I need to tell you. Jill,” he said quietly. “I have to tell you something about what happened back then. Something about those two minutes…”

Jillian was surprised and her eyes widened. “But… you never talk about it.”

“I want to now,” he replied. He smiled softly. “I guess I’ve had enough champagne to loosen my tongue.”

He unclasped his hands and held her palms in his. Their bodies were very close, but they were not touching. Jillian wondered what he would say next.

Spencer’s voice never raised above the level of a Whisper. “After the explosions, our suits began to shut down. The lights went off. The radio went out. It was black. Silent.” He sighed heavily and seemed to shiver. “All there was…, was the cold, Jill. A cold like you have never experienced. No one has, no one had before as far as I know and has lived to tell about it. Alex and me are the only two.”

His hands moved from her palms to her hips, as if looking for warmth.

“But I know. what that cold was, Jill,” he whispered. “It was death. Death had taken hold of me.”

Suddenly Jill had tears in her eyes. The thought of her husband actually dying was too horrible for her to contemplate. Dying out there, as Natalie Streck had said, alone…

“And then,” Spencer said, “it must have been after the first minute or so, the cold began to fade and I began to feel… warmth.” His hands slid down the hem of her dress, his fingers stroking the inside of her thighs. She put out her hands to stop him, grabbing him by the wrists and looking around worriedly as if someone might see them. But they were in the shadows and far from the crowd.

“I knew what that warmth was, Jillian,” Spencer whispered. “It was the warmth of you.” He slid one hand higher, working his way up her thigh. This time she let him do it. His other hand held hers, tight and intense, as if trying to telegraph something to her through their interlaced fingers.

“I felt the warmth of your body. I felt the warmth of your hands, Jillian…” His hand inched higher. “I felt the warmth of the inside of your mouth.” He leaned forward and kissed her. But it was not a paternal kiss on the forehead; this time he opened his mouth and thrust his tongue up against hers.

He moved his hand further up her leg, his fingers brushed the edge of her panties.

“I felt the warmth inside of you,” he said. He pushed aside the silky material and slipped his fingers into her, feeling the slick warmth between her legs. Jillian gasped and her mouth opened, her head tilted back, leaning against the cool marble.

“Oh, Spencer,” she said breathlessly.

Beneath her dress, Spencer’s hand moved slowly, working in and out of her. “Your warmth. Jill, I felt it all around me.” They kissed again and she found herself giving in to the hot sensations that were washing through her. She let herself go in the moment and her legs opened and she pushed back against his hand. In rhythm with the thrusts of his fingers her hips swayed and rolled and she could feel the passion growing from somewhere deep inside her…

“Oh, Jillian,” Spencer whispered.