It all sounded innocent enough. Maybe I’m wrong, Robert thought. Maybe Monte Banks is a guy in a white hat. Our government wouldn’t have protected him if he were a spy, a criminal, into drugs…The truth is that I’m still trying to hold on to Susan.
Being a bachelor again was a loneliness, an emptiness, a round of busy days and sleepless nights. A tide of despair would sweep over him without warning, and he would weep. He wept for himself and for Susan and for everything that they had lost. Susan’s presence was everywhere. The apartment was alive with reminders of her. Robert was cursed with total recall, and each room tormented him with memories of Susan’s voice, her laughter, her warmth. He remembered the soft hills and valleys of her body as she lay in bed naked, waiting for him, and the ache inside him was unbearable.
His friends were concerned.
“You shouldn’t be alone, Robert.”
And their rallying cry became “Have I got a girl for you!”
They were tall and beautiful, and small and sexy. They were models and secretaries and advertising executives and divorcées and lawyers. But none of them was Susan. He had nothing in common with any of them, and trying to make small talk with strangers in whom he had no interest only made him feel more lonely. Robert had no desire to go to bed with any of them. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to rewind the film back to the beginning, to rewrite the script. With hindsight it was so easy to see his mistakes, to see how the scene with Admiral Whittaker should have played.
The CIA has been infiltrated by a man called the Fox. The deputy director has asked for you to track him down.
No, Admiral. Sorry. I’m taking my wife on a second honeymoon.
He wanted to reedit his life, to give it a happy ending. Too late. Life did not give second chances. He was alone.
He did his own shopping, cooked his meals for himself, and went to the neighborhood laundromat once a week when he was home.
It was a lonely, miserable time in Robert’s life. But the worst was yet to come. A beautiful designer he had met in Washington telephoned him several times to invite him to dinner. Robert had been reluctant, but he had finally accepted. She prepared a delicious candlelight dinner for the two of them.
“You’re a very good cook,” Robert said.
“I’m very good at everything.” And there was no mistaking her meaning. She moved closer to him. “Let me prove it to you.” She put her hands on his thighs and ran her tongue around his lips.
It’s been a long time, Robert thought. Maybe too long.
They went to bed, and to Robert’s consternation, it was a disaster. For the first time in his life, Robert was impotent. He was humiliated.
“Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “It will be all right.”
She was wrong.
Robert went home feeling embarrassed, crippled. He knew that in some crazy, convoluted way, he had felt that making love to another woman was a betrayal of Susan. How stupid can I get?
He tried to make love again several weeks later with a bright secretary at ONI. She had been wildly passionate in bed, stroking his body and taking him inside her hot mouth. But it was no use. He wanted only Susan. After that, he stopped trying. He thought about consulting a doctor, but he was too ashamed. He knew the answer to his problem, and it had nothing to do with medical advice. He poured all his energy into work.
Susan called him at least once a week. “Don’t forget to pick up your shirts at the laundry,” she would say. Or: “I’m sending over a maid to clean up the apartment. I’ll bet it’s a mess.”
Each call made the loneliness more intolerable.
She had called him the night before her wedding.
“Robert, I want you to know I’m getting married tomorrow.”
It was difficult for him to breathe. He began to hyperventilate.
“Susan—”
“I love Monte,” she said, “but I love you, too. I’ll love you until the day I die. I don’t want you ever to forget that.”