Commitments by Barbara Delinsky Page A

He read the papers each day - it was a compulsion, he decided. He didn't think about driving to the North Woods of Maine as he used to do each summer. He didn't think about fastening his shell to the roof of the Saab, driving north from Manhattan and sculling along the Mohawk as he'd done when he had just a single day free. He didn't think about filet mignon, water beds or clothes washed in fabric softener. He didn't think warm or soft or gentle. M S brina made him think warm and soft and gentle. s cell was dim. Stray shafts of light fell through the bars: not enough to keep him awake if he'd been inclined to sleep, but - since he was up - just enough to illumine his surroundings and remind him where he was. Not that he could have forgotten even if he'd been blind. The night was punctuated by muted snores and grunts, the occasional sleep-talker, the shuffling and rummaging of insomniacs, the punctual footfalls of the guards taking count. There'd been many a night before his imprisonment when he'd fallen asleep over the Kem machine at the office, or at home on his sofa 60 the television on, but no broadcast studio or late had ever sounded Page 20
    Barbara Delinsky - Commitments
    like this. The sounds and of prison were unique. It was mankind at its k wanted to know why she'd come. He'd asked over and over again, and she'd hemmed and hawed, finally blurted out something about wanting tanding and warmth. Understanding and from him? It would be laughable if it weren't Id told her, and held meant it, that she was naive. as particularly true if she believed that he had e i g to give. She had no idea of the hell that was life. Boredom. Isolation. Wasted days, one after er. Frustration. Distrust. The constant battle st an inner fury that would easily eat him alive if didn't appease it with carefully sculpted plans for revenge. He wanted to know why she'd come, because he couldn't shake the picture she'd left in his mind. It brought a new and different kind of ache, and he Iresented that. He'd never claimed to be a monk. At the age of thirteen, frighteningly soon ifter he reached puberty, he bluffed his way into the arms of the hottest seventeen-year-old number in the neighborhood, and he never looked back. He'd been a sexual terror by twenty. By the time he reached thirty, held grown more discriminating; and by the time he reached thirty-five, he'd had several long-running affairs. The past few years had been dry by choice: sex for the sake of sex had grown empty, and held been too involved in his job to spare the emotional output that would have made the difference. 61 In that sense, and in that sense alone, his incarcera. tion'had been bearable. He hadn't left behind a special woman. It had been years since held seen his sex drive as a source of status. He hadn't had a bell of a lot to lose in the sexual sense by being imprisoned. He wasn't a prig; he didn't begrudge the men whose muffled moans suggested self-gratification in the night. Nor did he begrudge those who found willing partners, though he'd had no trouble refusing the invitations he received himself. He had contempt, though, for the groups who cornered innocents in isolated spots and caused anguished cries of pain and degradation. Had it not been for razor-sharp reflexes, a mean left hook and the strength born of revulsion, he'd be one of those victims himself. Strength bom of revulsion? It had been bom of fear, too, but even more of anger and frustration and impotence. That night little more than a year ago, in another town, another prison, he needed an outlet for his rage. There was nothing sexual about the way he battered his attackers. It earned him ten days in the hole, a scar he'd wear for life and a reputation that would stay with him for the duration of his imprisonment. No, there'd been nothing sexual about his thoughts that night, or on arty other night. Until now. Sabrina Stone touched him. She'd done it that first time they'd met, when he'd equated her with