Forty Degrees Below

Chapter 12

"I have to say; I don't like the thought of your husband taken for a ride."

"Well, you're not exactly a saint yourself!" she retorted, as she steered the four by four down the drive.

"You've got a strange perception. As I see it, as far as you're concerned everyone's tarred with the same brush until you deem them innocent, but let me tell you there's a difference between lying out of fear, and outright deception, in case you hadn't noticed," Jake replied a might bit irate. "Anyway, I was delaying the revelation for fear he might say no. What's your excuse?"

She went bright red. Jake couldn't tell whether she was angry or just embarrassed, but he guessed he was about to find out.

"May I remind you that you're a guest in our house, staying out of courtesy of my dear husband. How dare you accuse me of going behind his back! I should pull over and shove you out of the car right now for being so disrespectful." Her hands were visibly shaking.

"You wouldn't know the meaning of the word," he mumbled to himself.

"Sorry?"

In a louder voice, he retorted, "I said, I expect you're meeting with those clowns we bumped into this morning." This time, she flushed pink with embarrassment.

"Look," he said in a calm voice. "I just don't like the thought of Curtis being taken advantage of, I like the guy, and even if I didn't, I don't think I could bring myself to do something like that."

She pulled the car over and switched off the engine. "You think I'm having an affair, don't you? Don't you?" She said, looking him in the eye. "Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Having said that, you don't know what it's like being married to him for all these years. He can be insufferable sometimes, but an affair? - no way!"

"Yeah, well even so, being an 'insufferable' guy is no excuse for going behind his back and deceiving him now, is it?"

They both sat in silence for a while looking fixedly out of the window. Anya had parked up on the crest of a hill, and they had unbroken views of the sweeping bay of Santa Barbara and the sea far below. Jake turned to look at her. She was staring, tearful into her lap.

"Okay, so what do they want?" he said sympathetically.

"I don't know; they didn't say."

"Are they CIA, FBI, the IRS snooping around his affairs?"

"I said, I don't know! Please believe me," she replied exasperated, burying her head in her hands.

"Okay, okay. Well, why don't you tell Curtis? A problem shared is a problem halved, and all that."

"Because he'll only end up wet-nursing me. He knows I don't like mollycoddling, and he would only become obsessive and worry about it, I couldn't stand that, or the thought of it eating away inside of him."

"So, why have you agreed to meet them? Couldn't you tell them to take a running hike?"

"Running hike?"

"Its slang for get lost?"

She Chuckled to herself. "Oh, I can see you possess the subtlety of a Pitbull," and then coughed to clear her throat. "What interests you about Curtis? Is it his charisma, his prose, his popularity, his fame?"

He thought about this for a while. He wondered how to play it. How much to reveal, or keep concealed. "I guess, in a way, it's all of those things. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, just curious," she said looking away. 

He caught her staring at him from the corner of her eye.