Writers Tribe Review: Sacrifice Writers Tribe Review, Vol. 2, Issue 2 | Page 89

and she was thrilled when he suggested she join the actors for lunch. Carl was away on business, the kids were with friends, and today was her own. Maybe, she thought, she could learn something from this man's warmth that she could pass back to Carl.

The actors had the day off; Raylene remembered the afternoon as floating on a sea of red wine and chatter. Six of them had squeezed into one red-leather banquette in the dark smoky restaurant, and Raylene's heart raced to be pushed so close to Pat that her leg could not escape touching his firm thigh. It seemed much warmer than Carl's, but she had no reason to sit so close to Carl anymore, so she couldn't compare, really. She tried to follow the actors' war stories about crazy productions and shady producers, but Pat's warmth kept getting in the way of her concentration. He emitted a light aromatic musk, like some great masculine fruit just ready to burst. Carl had always been rather odorless. She'd thought his smooth dry skin reflected his calm, even mind—a definite asset with the children—and had been thankful for her life's placid waters. So why now, after seventeen years of marriage, could she not calm her heart? When she caught herself wondering how far down Pat's curly chest hair extended, she was scandalized and tried to focus on the loud blonde across the table, hoping the group's liveliness would distract her. But every time Pat shifted on the leather bench, Raylene's skin danced. It had been years since that had happened. The small boat of her soul bobbed so giddily for so long on the edge of turbulence that she scarcely noticed she'd become unmoored.

* * *

"Well, where to now?" Pat had asked when they were finally alone in the glinting four o'clock sun. The company had left them without condescension or "looks," as if it were perfectly natural in 1967 for a woman wearing a wedding ring to continue to stay with a man she scarcely knew after the party was over.

"I was going shopping . . .” Raylene said doubtfully.

"When do you have to get back?"

"Oh, no special time," she lied. The kids were old enough to get their own dinners for once. They rarely told her they liked anything she prepared anyway.

A broad grin lifted Pat's moustache, and his eyes twinkled. "Well I’d be delighted if you could join me tonight at the Coconut Grove—"

"Huh!" Raylene gulped the air she was supposed to exhale.

"Sammy Davis's playing—"