“What does?” He was without a clue.
“Calling him by name. Repeatedly doing it, I mean.” He stared at me.
“Well, I’m not trying to be critical,” I went on, making matters worse.
“I’m just mentioning it as a friend because no -one else would, and you should know. A friend would be that honest, I’m saying. A true one would.”
“Are you quite finished?” he asked.
“Quite.” I forced a little smile.
“Now, then, do you want to tell me what’s really bothering you, or should I just bravely hazard a guess?”
“There is absolutely nothing bothering me,” I said as I began to cry.
“My God, Kay.” He offered me his napkin.
“I have my own.” I wiped my eyes.
“This is about the other night, isn’t it?”
“Maybe you should tell me which other night you mean. Maybe you have other nights on a regular basis.” Wesley tried to suppress his laughter, but he could not. For several minutes neither of us could talk because he was laughing and I was caught between crying and laughing. Stan the waiter returned with drinks, and I took several swallows of mine before speaking again.
“Listen,” I finally said.
“I’m sorry. But I’m tired, this case is horrible to deal with, Marino and I aren’t getting along, and Lucy’s in trouble.”
“That’s enough to push anyone to tears,” Wesley said, and I could tell it bothered him that I hadn’t added him to my list of things wrong. It perversely pleased me that it bothered him.
“And yes, I’m concerned about what happened in North Carolina,” I added.
“Do you regret it?”
“What good does it do to say that I do or I don’t?”
“It would do me good for you to say that you don’t.”
“I can’t say that,” I said.
“Then you do regret it.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you don’t regret it.”
“Dammit, Benton, leave it be.”
“I’m not going to,” he said.
“I was there, too.”
“Excuse me?” I puzzled.
“The night it happened? Remember? Actually it was very early in the morning. What we did took two. I was there. You weren’t the only person there who had to think about it for days. Why don’t you ask me whether I regret it?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re the one who’s married.”
“If I committed adultery, so did you. It takes two,” he said again.
“My plane leaves in an hour. I’ve got to go.”
“You should have thought about that before starting this conversation. You can’t just walk out in the middle of something like this.”
“Certainly I can.”
“Kay?” He looked into my eyes and lowered his voice. He reached across the table and took my hand.
I got a room in the Willard that night. Wesley and I talked a very long time and resolved matters sufficiently for us to rationalize our repeating the same sin. When we got off the elevator in the lobby early the next morning, we were very low key and polite with one another, as if we had only just met but had a lot in common. We shared a taxi to National Airport and got a flight to Charlotte, where I spent an hour with Lucy on the phone.
“Yes,” I said.
“I am finding someone and have in fact already started on that,” I told her in the US Air Club.
“I need to do something now,” she said again.
“Please try to be patient.”
“No. I know who’s doing this to me and I’m going to do something about it.”
“Who?” I asked, alarmed.
“When it’s time, it will be known.”
“Lucy, who did what to you? Please tell me what you’re talking about.”
“I can’t right now. There’s something I must do first. When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. I’ll call you from Asheville as soon as I get a feel for what’s going on.”
“So it’s okay for me to use your car?”
“Of course.”
“You won’t be using it for at least a couple days, right?”
“I don’t think so. But what is it you’re contemplating?” I was getting increasingly unsettled.
“I might need to go up to Quantico, and if I do and spend the night I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t mind.”