Indiscretion Read Online Free PDF Page A

enjoyed meeting her.”
    Harry stands up too. “Of course. Glad you could come. Watch out for riptides.”
    They depart, and Harry begins to tell another funny story.

2
    S everal weeks pass. It is Saturday morning. Claire has rented a car. She is driving out to Clive’s house. She hasn’t seen him since that weekend. He’s been away, in the Far East, he told her. Or was it Eastern Europe? To her surprise, he has invited her out again. She almost declines, but then he tells her that they’ve been invited for dinner at the Winslows’. How do I know this? I was also invited. What’s interesting is I think that it was my idea.
    “You don’t need to rent a car,” Clive had protested. It was a lot of money for her, but she had insisted. She didn’t tell him why. She told me later that she hated feeling dependent on him, had wanted to be able to go where she wanted, when she wanted.
    As she got closer to Southampton and Route 27 became increasingly congested, she began to regret her decision to drive out. The sun is high over the barren scrub pines that line the highway, and it reflects off the roofs of a thick stream of expensive cars heading east, blocking her way. They inch forward past gas stations and motels, car dealerships and farm stands. None of the glamour is visible from this road. Cars speed past in the opposite direction on the other side of the median. Claire is hot and irritable. Even the radio is annoying her.
    When Clive’s call came, she had almost stopped thinking about him and was ready to move on. Her roommate, Dana, said she was crazy to dump a rich, handsome Englishman with a house in the Hamptons during the summer. She should at least wait until the fall.
    She asks herself, not for the first time, why she is doing this. She knows she will have sex with Clive. He is an exciting if selfish lover, but she is no longer interested. It will mean nothing, a small price to be paid for admittance. She will spread her legs for him, and then, when he is finished, she will close them up again and go to sleep, both having gotten what they wanted. I can imagine her. She will make the noises required, rake her nails across his back, gasp appropriately, sigh appreciatively. She is not what she seems.
    Who is she exactly? She is half French, she will later tell me. Proud of the fact. It makes her more exotic. Her father was an American officer with an Irish name, a graduate of an undistinguished college, dashing in his uniform and generous with his small paycheck. Her parents had met while he was on furlough in Paris from his base in Germany. Her mother was younger, barely out of convent school. An only child, the daughter of older parents. The father a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. They lived in an old house in Asnières-sur-Seine, a suburb that is perhaps best known for being the home of the Louis Vuitton family. I have been there. It is surprisingly bourgeois.
    Her mother married her father shortly before his discharge. It was a small ceremony held in the local Catholic church. Another soldier was best man. It had been a hasty affair, the small bump that was to become Claire barely noticeable under her mother’s dress. Afterward they came to live in his hometown in Massachusetts, near Worcester. Before long there was another baby, Claire’s younger brother. But her mother could never adapt to the harsh winters or reserved inhabitants of New England. The language had been difficult for her. Her accent too strong, too foreign. Claire remembers her mother withdrawing to her room for hours, days, when the long, dark months enfolded their town. She began to smile again only with the return of spring. Meanwhile, Claire’s father strove. He worked as a salesman, then a stockbroker. They bought a new house, a large Victorian in a dreary neighborhood. He had prospered but never became rich. There had been good years and bad. A green Jaguar that once adorned the driveway was replaced by a Buick. Claire