Susan Phillips - Hot Shot

Someone touched her elbow. For a moment she thought it was Sam and tried to shake him off. Her arm was clasped more firmly, and she realized that Paige was at her side.

It was easier to concentrate on her sister than on the abscenity she had just witnessed. The lesser pain of Paige's hatred seemed almost a safe harbor in comparison to the starkness of Sam's betrayal.

Susannah felt her lips quivering again. Sam and Mindy. Sam was having sex with Mindy. Her husband. The man she had loved so blindly for so very long.

She realized she was in the kitchen. An awful pain traveled from her throat down through her stomach, a pain that crushed her heart and filled her breasts like bitter milk.

Paige spoke hesitantly. "Let's get out of here."

"Go away." Susannah shoved the words through a narrow passageway before her throat closed on a sob.

Paige's fingers grasped her arm. They were icy cold, distracting Susannah from her desperate need to draw another breath.

"Let me take you somewhere."

Susannah couldn't tolerate pity, especially coming from someone who hated her so much. "Just leave me alone," she said almost desperately. "I don't ever want to see you again."

Paige released her arm as if she had been burned and closed the keys Susannah had thrown at her in her fist. "Suit yourself. I'll send your car back in the morning."

Susannah stood at the kitchen windows and stared out into the darkness. Seconds ticked by. Paige's icy white dress whipped past. Before long, footsteps clicked on the floor behind her.

She kept her eyes on the blackness beyond the window. It was as dark as the inside of her grandmother's closet, as malevolent as a shed on the edge of the desert.

"The old silent treatment, Suzie? It's so goddamned typical of you, I don't know why I'm even surprised."

Her breath caught on a sob. He had gone on the attack. Why hadn't she realized that was what he would do? The pain was so fierce, she didn't think she could bear it. She gathered herself together as best she could and turned slowly to face him.

His black, straight hair fell over his forehead and stuck out near his ear just the way it did when she ran her fingers through it as they made love. Except this time it had been Mindy's fingers that had rumpled that beloved hair.

"I sent Mindy away," he said, as if that would make everything all right.

Tears were sliding over her lips. She tasted their salt and thought of how hard she had been fighting for her marriage, of the baby she had wanted so badly. "Was Mindy the first?" The question slipped out unwanted, but the moment she heard the words, she knew she had to have an answer.

He combed one hand through his hair. She could almost see him gathering his forces for the struggle-relishing the fact that there would be a struggle. This was what he did best-charging blindly at an insurmountable obstacle and pounding away until it gave. Her chest shuddered as she tried to hold back another sob.

"It doesn't make any difference. How many doesn't matter. Infidelity. Fidelity. Those are just words. That's not what you and I are about."

He was angry, defensive, electric with restless energy. He began to pace the kitchen, his body vibrating with tension as he dodged the black granite islands. "We've never tried to push our marriage into someone else's mold. That's why it's worked for us. We're smarter than that. We know what we want…"

He talked and talked and talked.

"… the two of us are bigger than convention. We can do anything together. That's what's made us strong. What happened tonight is little shit, Suzie. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, but it's not important. Don't you see? It's little shit. It's not goddamned important!"

Her hands closed over a ceramic bowl on the counter in front of her. With a slash of her forearm, she sent the bowl crashing to the floor at his feet and expelled the questions that were killing her. "I want to know if she was the first! Were there others? How many others?"

Some of his belligerence began to fade in the face of her agony. For the first time he looked frightened.

"How many?" she screamed.

He was an idealist, a man dedicated to speaking the truth, and he kept to his code. "A couple of times on the road," he mumbled. "A girl I used to go with. What difference does it make? Don't you understand? This doesn't have anything to do with us."

"Yes, it does!" she screamed as she snatched up another bowl and threw it across the kitchen. "We're married. When people are married, they don't fuck other people!" She punished him with the tough, nasty obscenity that she knew he would hate.

"Stop it!" He lurched toward her, his expression vicious. "Stop doing this!"

She hissed with pain as he caught her shoulders and then, without warning, backhanded her across the cheek.

She slammed up against one of the counters. With a gasp of pain, she lifted her fingers to her face. Her nose was running. She dabbed at it with the back of her hand. As she drew it away, she saw a smear of blood.

He saw it, too. His eyes widened, stricken at what he had done. He took a step forward. "Suzie, I-"

The sight of her blood chilled her. She moved backward.

His face crumpled like a child's. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I-God, how could you do this to me? How could you make me do something like that?"

She walked past him with uneven steps, crossing the kitchen and making her way to the foyer. The closet was tucked behind a slab of polished granite that looked like a tombstone. She pulled out the small traveling bag she kept packed with basic necessities. Her cheek throbbed and her hands trembled as she snagged the strap, but a deadly calm had settled over her.

"Don't do this." Panic rang in his voice as he came up behind her. "Don't you leave me! I mean it, Suzie. If you leave, don't plan on coming back. I mean it, do you hear me?"

Tears were running down her cheeks. She turned toward him, and when she spoke, her voice was as rusty as an old saw. "You've made a mistake, Sam. Don't you see? I've turned into your vision of me. And the woman you've created won't put up with you any longer."

Susannah rushed from the house. Dimly, she remembered that she had no keys and that Paige had taken her car, but she didn't care. She would walk. Nothing could make her go back in that house.

She fled past a row of shrubbery and saw her car still parked in the drive. Paige sat behind the wheel, waiting like a vulture to pick the bones from her carcass. Susannah bit back a sob. She couldn't bear any more. Why hadn't Paige gone away? Didn't her sister have a speck of compassion left?

The front door banged open behind her. "Suzie!"

She heard his voice calling out to her just as he had the day he had stolen her away from her father. She stumbled, righted herself, and rushed awkwardly forward. He called out for her again. She saw Paige reach over from behind the steering wheel and push open the passenger door.

"Suzie!" he cried.

Paige's gloating seemed the lesser evil. Thrusting her traveling case into the car, she jumped in after it. Sam reached her just as Paige threw the car into reverse. She glimpsed his contorted face at the window, and then they hurled backward down the drive.

She knew Sam's ruthless determination, and she waited with dread for him to run for his car and give chase. But he stood in the glare of the headlights without moving. She felt an absurd surge of gratitude that at least he was giving her this. Then she remembered Mindy and realized that Sam wasn't letting her go out of compassion, but because he had given Mindy his car.

The tires squealed as Paige spun onto the road and raced down the mountainside toward the highway. As times, she barely seemed to have the car under control. Maybe they would die. The prospect didn't seem so terrible.

As they moved out onto the freeway, a broken sound slipped from Susannah's lips. Her cheek still stung from his blow. Her throat was burning and her eyes were filled with hot tears. Small spasms began to wrack her body.

She had no idea how much time passed before they stopped. Numbly, she lifted her head and saw that they were at the airport. Paige walked around the front of the car and opened the door to pull her out.

"I can't-Please, Paige."

Paige gripped her arm firmly. "You'll do what I say."

Susannah tried to push her away, but her limbs had no strength. Although it was late, people were still milling around. She realized with paralyzing certainty that Paige was going to parade her in front of everyone in the airport and that she couldn't do anything to stop her.

She was wrong. Her sister led her into a private lounge and immediately brought her a cup of coffee. Her stomach rebelled at the smell and she pushed it away. Paige searched through her case and pulled out the passport that Susannah always kept there. She slipped it into her own purse, then went over to a phone bank and began making calls. A little later she returned.

"There's a British Airways flight leaving for Heathrow in an hour. I've booked us seats. We'll pick up a plane to Athens from there."

"Athens?" she repeated dully. "I can't go to Greece. I have a job."

"Your job will hold for a few weeks. I've got this house on Naxos." For the first time, Paige hesitated. "It's nice there. The sun's hot and everything's white and pure." And then her mouth grew sullen, as if she didn't really care whether Susannah accepted or not.

Susannah covered her cheek with her hand. "I can't possibly go away. I have responsibilities." Even as she forced out the words, she couldn't imagine going to work on Monday and facing Sam again.

Paige stared out into the middle of the lounge and plucked at one of the bead-spangled flowers on the skirt of her evening gown. "I have these cats. They're silly, really. Not pedigreed or anything. But I want to show them to you."

A strange combination of belligerence and yearning mingled in Paige's voice. She continued to pick at the beads on her skirt. Susannah stared across the lounge and tried to take in what had happened to her, but the pain kept her mind from working. Suddenly, it seemed perfectly reasonable that she should fly halfway around the world to see Paige's cats. At least she wouldn't have to go to work on Monday.

The rocky islands of the Cyclades lie spattered over the turquoise waters of the Aegean like so many pebbles flung by a giant fist. Birthplace of ancient myths and legends, the islands are a mecca for lovers of Greek antiquity. The spirit of Narcissus is said to have been reincarnated on Mykonos, Thira is suspected to be the lost continent of Atlantis, and Naxos was the refuge of Ariadne after she saved Theseus from the labyrinth of her father, King Minos.

Susannah had been to the Greek islands several times before, although never to the island of Naxos. As the battered jeep made its way inland from the dusty airstrip, a white-hot sun hovered in the bleached sky overhead. They had left the tourist town of Chora with its discotheques and Coca-Cola signs far behind and were crossing the heart of the island. Susannah was barely aware of the breathtaking contrasts around her-the stark moonscape of rocky hills silhouetted against the brilliant blue green of the sea. Squat windmills perched near slopes terraced with vineyards, fruit, and olive trees. The gears of the old jeep ground ominously as they made their way through the steep twisting streets of the villages, some so narrow that the driver had to stop and wait for a donkey to pass because there was not enough room for both animal and vehicle to travel side by side.

Susannah's eyes scratched like sandpaper against splintered wood and her body ached with exhaustion. They had been traveling forever. She was no longer even certain what day it was, and she couldn't remember why she had ever agreed to come on this trip.

Paige sat silently next to her. The fierce glare of the late afternoon sun turned her tumbled hair into tarnished silver. In her rumpled, soiled evening gown, she looked beautiful and dissolute, like a ruined playgirl left over from a Fitzgerald novel. She had handled passports and tickets, the delay at Heathrow, the complex arrangements to get to Naxos, all the business of traveling that Susannah normally managed so expertly. In all that time Susannah hadn't spoken a word to her.

It was evening when they reached the cottage on the eastern side of the island. Susannah stumbled numbly into the room Paige indicated. She was aware of the sound of the sea and clean lavender-scented sheets. Then she slept.