Read Online Caroline's Daughters by Alice Adams - Free Book Online Page B

she was not reduced to these sleazy conversations with her half-sister’s sleazy husband, for heaven’s sake. She would not be there when he called, or not answering the phone. He could ask her answering machine how much money she had, if he wanted to know. “This is a very sleazy conversation,” she says to Noel.
    He laughs. “I’ve had sleazier, and I’ll bet you have too.”
    Well, he’s right there, and for an instant, it is fortunately just one instant, Jill is tempted to tell Noel about certain things that she used to do. Things that would really shock him, that he would never expect of her, Miss Successful Corporation Lawyer. Daughter of Dr. and Mrs. James and Caroline McAndrew. Noel is kind of a snob, she feels that—but he also has a way of making her want to talk to him. Or maybe she is simply lonely.
    â€œWhat’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she asks Noel. “Aside from cheating on my sister, that is.”
    â€œYou’re some lawyer, Ms. McAndrew. Okay. One, I don’t cheat on your sister all that much. Nowhere near as much as she thinks I do. In fact she’s very flattering, that way. And, two, sure I have done worse things than that. So now let’s hear about you.”
    Sitting up, pulling silk-smooth sheets around her shoulders, Jill laughs, comfortably. “You wouldn’t believe me,” she tells him.
    â€œTry me.”
    â€œNo, I have to go. I just remembered there’s a really good book on my table.”
    â€œWell, of all the—” He laughs, defeated.
    â€œI mean it, I want to read for a while.”
    Jill puts the receiver down very lightly, and reaches to the table next to her bed for the book that she did in fact just remember, a nice new edition of
The Last Chronicle of Barset
, which is her mother’s favorite book (Jill believes). She herself finds it hard to tell one Trollope from another. But she has always meant to read this one.
    Most of Jill’s reading is of magazines, she must subscribe to a couple of dozen, all very glossy, bright—and by contrast this book seems so heavy; she does not really want to read it at all, she finds. Annoyed, she puts the book down, and recognizes that she is more than a little turned on by Noel. She feels sexy and restless, her mind very lively, roaming all over.
    And for both reasons, sexiness, restlessness, she begins to think about what she used to call (to herself) the Game, which is what she came so dangerously close to telling Noel about. How he would have loved that! The only man she ever did tell almost went crazy, he was so excited. He adored her for what she had told him, he said. As Noel would have.
    The Game began in a curious way, one day at lunch with a sort-of friend of Jill’s, a round-faced, pink-skinned, nebbishy-looking guy named Buck Fister (so wrong, he was the last person for a name like Buck). Buck was a big success in something odd, like lighting fixtures; no one was ever exactly sure what he did, a lot of people always said he made his real money dealing—the only explanation for so much funny money, these days. And he was usually good for some blow, if you felt the need.
    Buck was always around in the places Jill was around, hanging out at lunch at the Balboa, sometimes the Elite at night, Campton Place or the Zuni Cafe. He used to call Jill a lot, apparently just to talk, he never actually asked for dates. He seemed to want to be friends (he could have been gay but no one thought he was) and every now and then they would do lunch, and always on him, Buck insisted on that, and usually in a fairly pricey restaurant. He was a pretty fun lunch, lots of insider scam on everyone, he always knew just who was in big trouble with money or drugs, who had just tested positive, he knew a lot.
    Jill always wondered, though, just what he was up to: what did he really want of her, anyway? She knew there was something.
    And then it came