"Well, now, Mr. Trent, that takes care of the portion of the interview that covers your attitudes toward vacations and hobbies." Hobart Batt glanced up briefly as he turned the page. His eyes sparkled behind the lenses of his round glasses. Hobart obviously loved his work.
The counselor was a small, dapper man who apparently had a penchant for vividly patterned vests and heavy gold jewelry. The prism who was focusing for him this afternoon was an older woman who sat quietly nearby.
During the grueling interview, Lucas occasionally felt the erratic twinges of awareness which told him that Hobart was focusing his syn-psych talent.
Without Amaryllis to construct a prism and hold the focus for him, there was no way for Lucas to tell just how much Hobart was relying on his psychic skills. Lucas didn't care. He was not in a good mood. He felt trapped. He could almost see the door of a large cage slowly closing on him.
"Let's go on to the section that details your feelings about sex, shall we?" Hobart asked brightly.
"Sex?" Lucas stared at Hobart. "What about it?"
"Do you enjoy extensive foreplay or do you prefer to engage in the sexual act with a minimal amount of the preliminaries? In other words, would you call yourself a touchy-feely sort of person?"
Lucas glanced at the prism. "Do we have to discuss this in great detail?"
"Don't mind Mrs. Drake," Hobart said. "She's been through hundreds of these interviews. Now, about fore- play."
Lucas thought about the indescribable intimacy of the focus link that he experienced with Amaryllis. Sex would never be as good again without it.
"Foreplay's okay," Lucas said.
Amaryllis watched with morbid fascination as the syn-psych counselor turned the page.
"Now, that takes care of vacations and hobbies." Mrs. Reeton, a pleasant, competent woman in her early forties, looked at Amaryllis. "Let's proceed to the section on sexual attitudes."
Amaryllis blushed and glanced at the prism seated next to Mrs. Reeton. "Is this part necessary?"
"Don't be shy, Amaryllis, we're all professionals here." Mrs. Reeton gave her a reassuring smile. "And I assure you that sex is a very important part of marriage. Do you enjoy extensive foreplay?"
"Foreplay?" Amaryllis thought about the deeply sensual feelings that flowed through her whenever she was with Lucas. She cleared her throat and avoided the prism's serene gaze. "Yes, I think foreplay is very important."
Hobart Batt turned to the next page with a crisp movement of his beringed hand. "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement, 'Marriage is forever but the occasional affair is an acceptable diversion, so long as it is handled discreetly and does not embarrass the family.' "
Lucas remembered the cold emptiness he had felt when he had realized that Dora had gone to another man. "Disagree. Strongly disagree."
Mrs. Reeton waited, pen poised, for Amaryllis's response to the question she had just asked.
Amaryllis thought about the parents she had never known. She recalled a photo she had once seen of a laughing, green-eyed man named Matthew Bailey. He had gotten her mother pregnant although he was not free to marry. Another image followed on the heels of the first, a picture of her mother, Eugenia, carefree and careless at eighteen. They were both locked in Amaryllis's memory, the two people whose affair had produced repercussions that had haunted two families for years.
Are you my grandmother?
You have no grandmother. You're a bastard.
A sudden sharp pain made Amaryllis glance down. She saw that she had made a fist with one hand. She was sinking her nails into her palm.
"I strongly disagree with that statement," she said softly.
Lucas glared at Hobart Batt. "What the hell do you mean, how do I deal with anger? I get angry, that's how I deal with it. Damn it, how much longer is the stupid interview going to take?"
"I feel that people should communicate their emotions freely in a relationship," Amaryllis said. Then she thought of all the taunts and name-calling she had endured as a child. "But they should exercise self-control and restraint so as to avoid hurting the other person's feelings."
"Food?" Lucas thought about it for approximately three seconds. "I like home cooking best." Home cooking presupposed a real home. "I don't care what it is, just so it's cooked at home."
"Food?" Amaryllis frowned in thought. "It's all right to eat out in restaurants once in a while, but most of the family's meals should be prepared at home. The food we eat directly affects the various synergistically aligned systems of the body. The only way to assure a proper balance of fresh, nourishing fruits and vegetables in the diet is to do most of the cooking in the home."
Mrs. Reeton smiled. "How would you describe your attitude toward money, Amaryllis?"
Amaryllis heaved a small sigh of relief. This was an easy one. "I believe that a household should have a disciplined, comprehensive budget. Every source of income and expense should be carefully monitored and recorded. A certain percent of the income should be put into savings every month. All the bills should be paid on time. There is no excuse for receiving past-due notices. Credit is to be avoided except for very rare, extremely large, and important purchases such as a house."
"Let's move on to the topic of money." Hobart chuckled. "I'm sure that's an important subject for you, Mr. Trent. Any man who's made as much money as you have will no doubt have some definite opinions on the matter."
Lucas thought about it. He had never set out to get rich. He had searched for jelly-ice because he was good at it and because it gave him an excuse to lose himself for days or weeks at a time in the jungle, where he could be alone with his maddening flashes of talent.
At first, the money had simply been a way to keep score. It paid for the next exploration trip. But somewhere along the line it had taken on a life of its own. He needed it to support the rapidly increasing number of people who depended on him. Icemen and their families looked to him for a livelihood. Contracts had to be filled. Young, enthusiastic syn-gineers kept asking for more research and exploration funding.
One day Lucas had looked around and realized that the entire economy of the Western Islands had become completely dependent on Lodestar Exploration. He had obligations.
The money had come with the package, but in and of itself, it had never meant very much. No amount of it would ever fill the void in his life after Amaryllis married another man.
"Easy come, easy go," Lucas said.
Amaryllis felt utterly drained when she walked through her front door shortly before six. The interview had been an ordeal she hoped she never had to repeat. Every question had been an excruciatingly painful reminder that her affair with Lucas was doomed to be short-lived.
She kicked off her shoes and hung her jacket in the closet. With some vague notion of making a salad for dinner, she trailed listlessly down the short hall and went into the kitchen.
The first thing she saw when she opened the icerator was the bottle of green wine that she had put there that morning. It looked considerably more therapeutic than the lettuce beside it.
She removed the bottle and set it on the counter. It took a while to find the corkscrew. Lucas had stored it in the wrong drawer. It figured. He did not have her organized approach to housekeeping.
Well, she wouldn't have to worry about that sort of thing much longer, she thought as she went to work on the cork.
She poured a glass of wine and hoisted it in a silent toast to the scientific wonders of modern matchmaking techniques. The only way to go, she reminded herself as she took a swallow of the green wine.
She heard the front door open just as she prepared to take a second sip.
"Amaryllis?" Lucas sounded as if he had just come home from a very bad day at the office.