Good Intentions Read Free Page B

emotional blackmail, of souls lost and only occasionally found. It was part of her job to listen, to sympathize, to analyze, to find solutions if possible. And when she was through listening and finding possible solutions, she would write up her reports, trying to force some sense into the madness she had heard. Pain was part of her job as a social worker in the Department of Social Services in Delray Beach, Florida, but it was not part of her life.
    And so it was only after her husband of fourteen years had packed his bags and his law books and moved out thatthe bitter truth began to sink in, and she realized that, like thousands of other women across the country, she had been unceremoniously dumped for another woman. And now that woman’s husband was standing in her living room. Why? He still hadn’t told her.
    “Could we get to the point of your visit, Mr. Cameron?” Lynn heard the impatience in her voice and realized from the way his shoulders slumped that Marc Cameron had heard it too. “Is there one?”
    “I’m not sure,” he admitted, dropping his large frame back into the green-and-white-striped chair, for which he suddenly seemed too big. “I thought there was when I phoned.” He paused, his smile slowly spreading across his face. “My intentions were good. At least I thought they were.”
    “You said there were things I should know.”
    He shrugged. “There are things I could tell you, things that might help you with the settlement you’re trying to work out with Gary, things, I don’t know, just things. But I realized as soon as I walked through the door that none of them would be the truth of why I’m really here.” He paused, a flair for the dramatic in the pacing of his words. “The truth is that I was just curious. That word again. The spurned husband was curious,” he clarified, “to see what you looked like. You’re prettier than she is, you know.”
    “Am I supposed to say something?” Lynn asked after a long pause during which she desperately tried to think of a witty response.
    “I guess I was hoping you’d be as angry as I am, that you’d want to tell me all about it. All the sordid little details—when you found out, what exactly Gary said to you, what
you
said, how you felt, if Gary told youanything about Suzette, if he said anything about
me.
If he said that
she
said anything about me. If I was a lousy husband, a lousy father, God forbid, the worst cut of all—a lousy lover. Details, details. Grist for the writer’s mill.”
    “I’m not a big talker,” she told him truthfully, not wishing to find herself dissected in the pages of his next book. “I
am
a good listener, however,” she surprised herself by continuing. “If
you’d
like to talk about it …”
    “The truth is,” he said, standing up abruptly, his words gaining speed and conviction, “that I
would
like to talk about it. The truth is that I’d like nothing better than to sit and compare notes with you, match you juicy tidbit for juicy tidbit until we were both too bored to care anymore, and then I’d like to take you to some motel, preferably the same motel they went to the first time,
definitely
the same motel they went to, preferably the same room with the same goddamn bed, and then I’d like to …” He stopped abruptly. “Maybe my intentions weren’t so good, after all.”
    There was a long pause during which nobody seemed to breathe.
    “That was quite a speech,” Lynn said after several moments, trying not to sound shocked or excited, though, in fact, she was both.
    “Take that one for a walk on the beach.” He finished the last of his beer and deposited the glass roughly on the rattan coffee table between them. “Tell me, social worker, how you put that proposition in its proper perspective.”
    “You said it yourself—you’re a very angry man,” she told him, not sure what else to say and feeling shamefully flushed from the heat of his words, hoping her face didn’t betray the