Nothing was simple, though Leslie tried to make her think otherwise. She did not believe they were just having a bit of fun together, a bit of a lark, as he said. Sometimes she was shocked by the mixed-up feelings she had for him. For instance, there was the time when he told her there was no danger of her getting into trouble because he and his missus had both been tested and it had been found that he could not make a child. He thought she should be relieved, and happy, even, and she supposed she should be, but she was not. She knew how unlikely it was that a time would come when they could have a baby together, yet the fact that it could never happen, not ever, gave her a sort of empty, hollow feeling in her stomach, as if a part of her had been removed.
No, nothing was simple. And to make it all even more complicated, as well as their very private life together she and Leslie had a sort of a public one, too, in which she had to pretend to be nothing more than his business partner. The Silver Swan was doing well, better than she, or Leslie, either, she suspected, for all his confident talk, would have dared to hope. There were more rich, bored women in this city than she could have imagined. Nor could she have imagined how many of them would be funnily inclined: hardly a week passed that she did not have to fend off the advances of some stark-faced viper with razor-sharp fingernails and eyes like bits of ice. In time she came to think of these women-they claimed to be women, though they were more like men than some men were-as hazards of the trade, and added a hefty premium to their bills.
And how the money rolled in. It had been a surprise to discover what a shrewd head for business she turned out to have, but it was just as well she had, for Leslie, as she very soon discovered, was hopeless-charming, but hopeless. In fact, his sole asset was his charm, and there were many among her clients, she knew, though obviously not the icy-eyed ones, who came to her chiefly in the hope of cornering him for a cozy chat, at least, and no one did cozy chats better than Leslie. She made a point of not criticizing him for his incompetence or his laziness. Why should she complain? For the first time in her life she felt fulfilled. She had confidence, security, money in her purse, and a brand-new Baby Austin to drive, and next winter, if things continued as they were going, she would be able to buy herself a mink coat. In other words, she was no longer Deirdre Hunt-she had become Laura Swan. And she had Leslie, too, into the bargain.
He showed her how to do things that, before she knew him, she would not have thought of even in her most secret fantasies. They were things that made her ashamed at first, which of course was a big part of the pleasure of them, but soon they became a source almost of pride to her. It was like learning a new skill, training herself to new levels of daring and endurance. She had always been shy of her body; she supposed it was because of being brought up in the Flats and having to sleep in her parents' room even when she was well past being a child, with no privacy anywhere, even in the lav, since her father would not fix the lock that had been broken for longer than anyone could remember. Now all that awkwardness had disappeared, Leslie had seen to that. There was only one worry she had, which was that Billy might notice the change in her. One night in bed she forgot herself and guided him into a place he had probably thought she would never allow him even to touch-she had been fantasizing that he was Leslie-and afterwards he had heaved himself off her and flopped down on his belly, panting, and asked in a muffled voice where she had learned that sort of thing. In a panic she said she had read about it in a magazine that someone had lent her, and he had snorted and said that was a nice kind of magazine for her to be reading. The next morning when she looked at herself in the mirror she saw for the first time something in her face, a new hardness, a sort of tinny sheen, and, worse than that, a look she had never noticed before: it was, though it shocked her to have to admit it, a look of her father.
Yes, this place Leslie had brought her to was a different place, a place she had not known existed, and yet somehow it felt not at all strange to her. It was like a place she had been to in childhood and had forgotten about and then had come back to suddenly, unexpectedly. What she felt when she thought of Leslie was the same feeling that she would have when they played games of blind man's buff at home at Christmastime. It was a mixture of giddy anticipation and gleeful terror, and it made her skin tingle and her throat go thick. Or maybe it was a feeling she had known even further back, when she was a baby, yes, that was it, with Leslie she was a baby again, a babe in arms. She had tried to explain this to him one day but of course he had only laughed at her, and said sure, she was a babe, all right, his babe, and he had pinched her breast so hard with the long, pearly nails of a finger and thumb that it had made her gasp.
It was strange, too, that she was not jealous of the woman in the fox fur, the woman she had seen Leslie meeting in the bookshop on the bridge, the one showing herself off so brazenly in the photo. When she asked Leslie about her he had given that smiling shrug of his and said that of course he had fucked her-the word made the blood rush to her cheeks-and then picked up the other photographs and splayed them under her nose like a hand of cards and grinned in that cold-eyed way that he did sometimes when he wanted to hurt her and said, "Fucked them all, didn't I." She did not know whether to believe him or not, but it did not matter, she did not care if he was telling the truth or lying just to tease her. No, she did not care; she was not jealous. Where she was now, the old rules did not apply. It was all right if Leslie had slept with Foxy-that was the nickname she had invented for Mrs. T., since Leslie still refused to tell her the woman's real name-and even if he had slept with every one of those women in the photos, that was all right, too. Somehow, they did not matter, they were like the people in the fantasies she wrote out for him, not real at all. Leslie, for his part, said he did not mind if she went with other men. In fact, he wanted her to find people to sleep with, men, women, anyone, so long as she would tell him about it afterwards. On that one thing she was adamant, though: she would never go with anyone but him.
"Oh, yes," he said, "and what about old Billy Boy?"
That, she had discovered, was Leslie's one big weakness: she might not be jealous of his women, but he was certainly jealous of Billy. The thought of her husband so much as touching her made him furious. She had to pretend to him, had to swear to him, that she would not let Billy near her, ever again. It was hard to convince him. When he had first demanded that she promise it she had asked, offhandedly, almost laughing, just how she was supposed to fend Billy off, for he was a strapping fellow and insisted on his conjugal rights. Leslie had given her a frightening look then, his head at an angle and his eyes seeming to draw even closer together, and had said nothing; only when, a little later, they were in bed together, he had twisted her arm up behind her back until she thought it might break, and had breathed into her ear the one word, "Remember."