But then the nagging sense of injustice returned, and with it the need for revenge, as it had countless times before. An eye for an eye. Get the motherfuckers who framed you and tell the world about it. Anyway, he concluded, it wasn’t about going back, it was about going forward. Because then and only then could he begin to live again. Exhaling, he watched the smoke rise into the air and evaporate. He was feeling better already.
It was Todd Prescott’s persistent erection pressing between her buttocks that finally woke his wife Kelly. With her head buried deep in linen-covered duck down she stifled a groan. Then lifting a blonde tousled head, she whispered, ‘I’ve got to pee.’
Gently Todd grabbed her hips, his fingers pressing into hard flesh. ‘You’re not getting away with that old line … Come on, honey, be nice to your baby. You know how horny I get before congress.’
Kelly pushed her ass into her husband’s groin, biting the corner of her lip as she felt his hot hands ease her buttocks open. If there was one thing she detested about Todd, it was his hands. It wasn’t the only thing, but they were high on the hate list. Hairless soft hands, the small fingers capped with tiny white nails. ‘Your husband’s got a politician’s hands – like pumping wet fish,’ her brother had commented on more than one occasion. She was forced to agree.
Kelly loathed watching Todd’s limp fingers stroke her body; clamped her eyes shut when they slid into her pubic hair; and usually thought about a new Donna Karan dress, or the big beefy hands of her yoga teacher and occasional lover, when the baby fingers probed inside her.
But this morning she was thinking about something she’d read late last night in the Boston Globe. The headline had been running through her brain like tickertape ever since. ‘Kaminsky Released from Cedar State Pen.’ A grainy photograph of Jay as a nineteen-year-old Harvard freshman had accompanied the article. Lantern-jawed, with heavy-lidded chestnut eyes that could look dark brown depending on his mood. Thick hair, shining like ebony, slicked back above a high tanned brow. Her prom date, her first ‘let him go all the way’ date; her sweet, considerate, innocent teenage love.
As Todd pumped, she thought about Jay. She wondered if prison had destroyed his good looks. Would all that bitterness and anger have warped not only the inside, but also the outside?
Todd’s shouting intruded just then. ‘Baby! My sweet baby.’
Wiggling her bottom, Kelly contracted her internal muscles at the same time to hurry her husband along on his final lap. Two more thrusts and it would all be over. Kelly was counting. It took four. Until the next time, she thought, and there always was a next time.
It was the story of her life. Ever since her father’s death when she was nineteen, then losing Jay, she had been filling in the gaps in a desperate quest for the one thing that constantly eluded her. Love. The word rang in her head, bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball.
She felt Todd’s hands on her shoulders, and suppressed the urge to recoil. His voice was whispering in her ear, but it was her father’s words she could hear. Kelly, you are a beautiful princess, and there will always be men who want you. But you were one of the lucky ones. God was generous; he gave you a brain as well. And so there’s nothing you can’t have, no place you can’t go. Don’t waste a minute.
Paul Tyler had been right. At forty-three, there were few places she hadn’t been and there had always been a man. Her first husband, Maynard Fraser Jnr, a wealthy Wasp businessman, had showered her with gifts. Jewels were his thing, and Kelly wore his success. The purchase of a new tower block would be followed by Kelly’s glittering appearance in an antique diamond choker. But three years into the marriage, when Maynard was fifty-two and Kelly a few days off her twenty-ninth birthday, he was killed in a light aircraft somewhere in British Honduras. His body was never found. Kelly had never loved Maynard; she’d been fond of him which was a totally different thing. Yet she was genuinely sorry to lose him, and in the first few months of bereavement she missed his ebullient presence in their vast apartment on Manhattan’s Eastside, and their sprawling beach house in East Hampton. To ease the loss, Kelly threw herself into Maynard’s electronics business, doubling the profits in the next two years as the technological age began to grip the entire world. A merger with the giant multi-national Cirax diluted her stake, and the much-publicized battles between its megalomaniacal head and Kelly Fraser made ‘Beauty and the Beast’ headlines more than once in the Wall Street Journal.
In 1986 Kelly had sold out and bought a house in the Caribbean, where six months later she met the man who was to become her second husband. Tim Reynolds, two years younger than herself, was a budding film producer, overflowing with creative angst and poetic romanticism. They met on the beach: she was searching for shells, and he was pretending to read whilst watching her over the top of his book, catching her off guard. This time, with Tim, she had told herself, it’s for real, like in all the schmaltzy movies and love songs. And for two years Kelly believed in the myth, convinced herself that she was loved and in love. Whenever yet another bizarre film scheme floundered, she backed her husband both emotionally and financially – until the final straw, the one that breaks even the most ardent camel’s back. She found Tim in their bed with one of her so-called best friends, a guy called Jack Silvers.
In the next few years Kelly had managed as much as humanly possible to forget. Yet occasionally something would remind her of what she privately referred to as her ‘twilight time’. She couldn’t remember half of the men she’d slept with; they’d all merged into one huge grey mass. It was her friend Weston Kane who had rescued her, rebuilt her self-esteem and persuaded her to go back into business, and in 1990 Tyler Publications was born. The media had proved a natural arena for the gregarious and charmingly devious Kelly. At last she had found her forte, and she could honestly say that the last few years as head of Tyler had been the happiest of her life.
Kelly slid out of bed, ignoring Todd’s glancing peck on her right shoulder, and his muttered, ‘That was great, baby.’
She crossed the large room, her bare feet making no sound on the deep pile carpet. As she stepped into the bathroom, she felt Todd’s hot sperm dribbling down her inner thighs and shuddered with distaste. The door closed behind her with a quiet click and she walked towards the shower at the far end, passing white walls, white handbasins and stacks of white towels. Even the travertine marble that cooled the soles of her feet was white. Everything was white and, according to the interior designer, the absolute last word in minimalist chic. It looked like a luxurious hospital theatre on first impression, and Kelly’s comment to Todd that it was ridiculously large for one person had produced a dismissive shrug. She’d gone on to say that an entire family could live in her bedroom and dressing room; combined, they were bigger than the average apartment. Then she’d quickly reminded herself that this was where she’d always wanted to be. The ultimate ‘Chez nous’, the biggie, the colonial spread on Capitol Hill: M Street, Georgetown, Washington DC. Complete with European antiques, impressionist paintings, fully equipped gym and a state-of-the-art kitchen that she rarely went into.
Suddenly a voice sprang into her mind, interrupting Kelly’s musings. It was saying something she had buried deep, so deep that it sometimes felt as if it had happened to someone else. Kelly wanted to scream like she had as a child when she’d turned over a stone to find a teeming mass of worms underneath. She turned on the shower, but made no attempt to step into the cubicle.
Placing both hands against her ears she pressed hard, humming a tune, but the words would not go away. ‘Jay Kaminsky, you have been found guilty of the manslaughter of Matthew Fierstein. I have no option but to …’ Kelly blinked, and at the same time a shutter clicked in her brain: she saw Jay on the day he’d been sentenced, his face a study of total incomprehension. He looked like a frightened little boy who’d misunderstood the sentence and was certain the judge and jury would tell him they’d made an awful mistake and he could go home soon. Jay’s shocked expression had plagued her for months afterwards; so much so, she’d thought at one point she would go mad. When the image