82 Desire

his own.
    But at first they were only sailing buddies—the three of them, and later, when Beau Cavignac joined the company, the four of them. Beau, utterly preoccupied with sports, was more or less a dolt as far as Russell was concerned. Still, he was an inoffensive dolt.
    And over the years he hadn’t met any of the fascinating people he meant to, and had come to accept these three as his friends. The whole deal was cemented when Edward introduced Russell to his cousin.
    He had resisted. “I don’t know, Edward. No offense to your family, but I think I need someone with a real name. Bebe’s just a little too adorable.”
    “Come on, she’s a lawyer—she’s not even slightly adorable. Call her Babette, if you want to. Call her Queen Elizabeth, I don’t care. Just meet her—I promised my mother.”
    He had imagined someone whose personality more or less resembled cotton candy.
    She met him at the door in jeans and a white shirt, though Edward’s wife and Douglas’s date had on fussier clothes—dressy pantsuits, with lots of jewelry and plenty of makeup. Bebe had lived her whole life in Uptown New Orleans—she had to have known they’d dress that way. He liked the fact that she’d done what she pleased, anyway. She had an honest face, he thought, or maybe an intelligent one. At any rate, she looked different from the women he’d met lately. More serious, perhaps. He liked her instantly.
    When, in the course of the evening, they found themselves talking about war and its consequences, World War Two and Vietnam—not just one, but both—it occurred to him that he hadn’t had so much fun on a date since Harvard.
    Bebe had been a history major; she had opinions about things most women he met had no interest in. She also had values he liked; good politics, which for him meant more or less liberal.
    And she had ambition. She wanted a career in politics.
    Once he met Bebe, he changed. He was so awed by her, by her strength, her ambition, her fineness that he found in himself some shred of self-respect he’d forgotten.
    Despite the loathsome fact of his father’s interference, his job at United was actually a pretty good gig. In fact, there was a lot about oil to interest him, a lot about business, for that matter, to sink his teeth into.
    He married Bebe as quickly as he could arrange to and then set about building a life based around her ambitions, which he admired but didn’t have himself. He would make money; he’d be a good husband and, later, father. She would conquer the world.
    He settled into a period of contentment, both in his job and in his marriage, a contentment he never expected or even dreamed of. When he looked back on it now, it was undoubtedly the best time of his life.
    His father, of course, thoroughly disapproved of Bebe, which made her all the more attractive; the old man mistook her vitality for aggressiveness, her naturalness for a feminist statement—and feminism was something for which he hadn’t a moment.
    The first time she ran for office, they worked night and day on the campaign, and when she won, the exultance, the sweetness of hard work that paid off, a victory well deserved, was the strongest high he’d ever experienced—more vivid, even, than the birth of their daughter.
    Bebe had had a special glow, almost like a garment, that turned her gold and luminous. It was a new confidence, perhaps. He didn’t know, he was just overcome with the feeling that he hardly knew his wife and he wanted her like you might want a performer, someone you didn’t really know, but found sexy as hell on stage.
    She felt it, too. All during the victory party, she kept giving him these looks, and on the way home, leaned far enough over to put her hand on his cock and nibble his ear.
    She came out of the bathroom in something he’d never seen before, something white and possibly diaphanous (if he understood the meaning of the word). Her hair was wet and she tossed it over her shoulder with an impertinent turn of her head. “How would you like to fuck a city councilwoman?”
    He was already hard.
    Their political life had been like that for a long time—a literal turn-on; the glue that held them together. Never, never was he jealous of her—he didn’t want to be her, he just wanted to be with her; wanted, possibly, some of the fairy dust to fall on him.
    It was a sun-kissed, ever-spiraling high, fed by his own rapidly rising fortunes, which were attributable in large part to his