Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [52]
“I don’t know what to think sometimes,” Jeannette said. “It’s all so confusing.”
Rotondi was tempted to break through her confusion with another speech against the war, but thought better of it. Lyle had adopted his usual stance of seeing both sides without committing to either.
Phil and Jeannette had been seeing each other on a fairly regular basis since the previous fall. They were “an item” to some, the handsome basketball and track star and budding attorney, and the strikingly lovely daughter of a wealthy Connecticut family. But it hadn’t all been smooth sailing.
Like many seniors, Jeannette viewed her final undergraduate semester as a time to kick back and soak up springtime after four long years of study. Her grades were slightly above average, more than good enough to graduate. She wanted to be with Rotondi every waking minute—at least it seemed that way to him—which wasn’t possible. Unlike many of his peers, he considered his senior year to be the time to really turn it on academically, to raise his grade point average as high as possible. He felt an obligation to Maryland University’s law school, which had granted him a scholarship. They were putting their faith in him, just as his father had, and he was not someone to take that lightly. Added to that commitment were the debate team’s demands and extended, strenuous track team practices and meets.
Which left scant time for Jeannette. She wasn’t happy about that, of course, and had become open in expressing her dissatisfaction to him. While she admired his drive and commitment, she had her own needs to satisfy, and many a night at the sorority house found her sharing her growing frustration with sorority sisters. The prevailing, giggle-inducing subject was, of course, sex.
• • •
Their first full-fledged sexual encounter occurred shortly before they were to leave campus on their Christmas break. There had been frantic grappling on local lovers’ lanes in Lyle Simmons’s Thunderbird, which Rotondi managed to borrow on occasion. Jeannette found these moments to be immature, the stuff of freshmen. She was, after all, a senior, a grown woman about to leave behind sophomoric backseat fumbling. The libidinous 1960s were not long gone.
Philip was not without sexual experiences of his own. But Jeannette was different. Those few other women had meant little to him in a personal, caring sense. They’d come and gone. Making love with Jeannette Boynton transcended the physical for him. This was love in all its glory, which was precisely why he had trouble initiating sex with her.
“Why not?” she asked. They’d been necking in the car, juices flowing, frustration levels nudging the unbearable. She suggested taking a motel room.
“I’m just not sure that we should,” he said, his breathing labored.
“Why not?” she repeated, discarding the bra that he’d pulled down to her waist.
“Because—because I love you, Jeannette.”
His words dumbfounded her. She said, “That’s exactly why we should make love, Phil, because we love each other.”
“I just don’t want you to think I’m with you because of sex, because I’m after your body. I want you to know that I love you, the person. It’s more than sex, Jeannette. At least it should be.”
Does he have a sexual identity problem? she wondered. That had been a recent topic in her class on human sexuality.
In any event, his rationale didn’t appease her. She put herself back together, turned from him, and stared out the passenger’s side window.
“I want us to sleep together,” he said, touching her shoulder.
“Then why won’t you?”
“I—I will. I have to get the car back to Lyle.”
“Call him. He’ll understand.”
The way she said it pricked him. It sounded as though she was making a comparison with Simmons, one not favorable to him.
“All right,” he said.
They drove to a motel that posted a VACANCY sign. He told her to wait in the car while he registered for a room, and used the pay phone in the lobby to call Lyle.
“Lyle, is it okay if I keep the car overnight?”
Simmons’s laugh