Danielle Steel - The Klone and I - A High-Tech Love Story

Paul had lunch often at Peter's club, when we didn't spend the day in bed, and I had to do errands or keep appointments. It was hard having an affair with him, and keeping the rest of my life in order. And out of a sense of sheer obligation, every few days, he went to Peter's office to make sure everything was all right there. He loved it. I didn't question why he went, although I suspected it made him feel important. People bowed and scraped and catered to him, just as they did to Peter when he was there. It was heady stuff for a simple Klone. And he loved running his meetings, and making corporate decisions at random. It was hard work for him, he mentioned more than once, but he felt he owed it to Peter to put in an appearance for him. After all, initially that was why Peter had built him, although Paul admitted to me sheepishly his business systems weren't complete yet. But he said coming home to me after a hard day at the office made him feel nearly human. He loved being with me, and I with him.

Amazingly, the kids adjusted to him remarkably, and seemed suddenly to have no problem with the idea that he was sleeping in our guest room. After Charlotte's earlier vigilance about our “doing it,” she no longer seemed to care now and asked no questions, perhaps because she knew what the answer could be and didn't want to hear it. I continued assuring them that we were sleeping separately, though I'm not sure even Sam believed that anymore, but neither of them objected. And I forced Paul to go back to the guest room every night after our long sieges of passion. It was usually four or five in the morning before he got there, and a mere two or three hours until I had to cook breakfast. I didn't get a lot of sleep while he was there, but it was a sacrifice I was more than willing to make, considering what the rewards were.

And it was on one of his trips back to what we now called “his room,” that Paul ran into Sam at five o'clock in the morning. I hadn't noticed when he left me that he wasn't wearing the now familiar G-string, but had opted to make the brief walk back to the guest room naked. Had I seen that, I would have strenuously objected, in case he ran into Charlotte. But at that hour, he had been fairly sure that they were both sleeping. And covering his body was not always something he thought about. Since all the parts were interchangeable, and apparently he changed them regularly, he felt less intensely private about them than you or I would. I had to remind him more than once to wear clothes to breakfast, as he prepared to breeze from the room without so much as his G-string. He seemed to view his collection of Versace as aft more than an obligation to be decent.

In any case, he ran into Sam at five A.M. in the hallway. Apparently, Sam had had a bad dream and was on his way to find me, but ran into Paul instead, sauntering happily toward the guest room. I heard voices through the haze he'd left me in, and I peeked through the door to see my son looking up at Paul, who stood there, smiling at him, naked.

“How about a game of Monopoly?” Paul offered valiantly, as Sam stared at him in amazement. They played for hours, much to Sam's delight. The rest of us hated it, and Sam was so relieved to find someone to play it with him, he didn't even mind the fact that Paul cheated each time they played it. Sam beat him anyway, but this time he only guffawed at the offer.

“Mom would get real mad at us…. I have school tomorrow.”

“Oh … what are you doing up then?”

“There was a hippopotamus under my bed,” Sam explained with a yawn. “It woke me.”

“feah. That happens to me too sometimes. You've got to leave salt and half a banana under your bed. They hate salt and bananas scare them.” He said it with complete authority, as I debated whether to leave them alone or enter into the conversation. But I didn't want Sam to know that I was up, or that we'd been together.

“Really?” Sam looked impressed. He'd had the hippopotamus dream for years. The pediatrician had told me he'd outgrow it. “Mom says it happens if I drink too much soda before I go to bed.”

“I don't think so …” Paul said thoughtfully, and then looked at him with concern. For a minute, I was afraid he'd offer him a bourbon, but he'd been pretty good about not doing anything like it so far, although he drank enough of it himself to refloat the Titanic. “Are you hungry?” he offered instead, as Sam pondered the question and then nodded. “Me too. How about a salami sandwich, with pickles, and peanut butter?” It was a concoction they had devised together, and Sam's eyes lit up at the suggestion. And with that, Paul put an arm around him and began heading for the kitchen.

“You'd better put some clothes on,” Sam suggested helpfully. “My mom might wake up and come to see what we're doing, and you'll scare her if she sees you like that. She doesn't like anyone walking around naked, not even my dad when he lived here.”

“Okay,” Paul said, and disappeared into his bedroom for an instant, only to emerge in a fuchsia satin bathrobe with purple tassels and yellow pom-poms that even Gianni Versace would have balked at creating.

And with that, I saw them turn the corner in the hall and disappear toward the kitchen. I left them alone, satisfied that they would share a private moment over the salami sandwich they made. It was good for Sam in a way to have a man to talk to, even if he was bionic. I felt certain that nothing untoward would happen, and went back to bed to catch up on the little sleep still left to me before I had to make Paul's favorite waffles for breakfast. And in the morning I inquired innocently about the salami rinds in the sink and the open jar of peanut butter on the counter.

“Did someone get hungry last night?” I asked, as I put a plate of bacon between Paul and Sam. As usual, Charlotte was still dressing.

“Yeah, we did,” Sam confessed easily. “The hippo was back under my bed, and Peter made me a sandwich. He said to leave half a banana under my bed, the hippo'll be scared of it and he won't come back.” Sam sounded in control of his fear of it for the first time I could remember.

“And salt … don't forget the salt,” Paul reminded him, “it's the salt they're really scared of.” Sam nodded thoughtfully, and then smiled up at him for a long moment, as I watched them.

“Thanks, Peter,” he said softly. Paul hadn't told him how silly he was. Instead he had offered tools, however absurd, to fight it. And it might just work, I knew, if Sam believed him, and he appeared to.

“It works, you'll see,” Paul reassured him, and then dove into his waffles, explaining why waffles were better for you than pancakes, because the little squares were filled with vitamins, even though you couldn't see them, and all the vitamins fell out of pancakes when you flipped them. Listening to him, I almost believed him, and even tired as I was, I loved the sound of Sam's laughter.

Paul was great with the kids, he was one of them, and his patience with them was endless. He took them out on the weekend, and played with them tirelessly, took them to the movies, and went bowling with Sam. He even went shopping with Charlotte, which was pretty scary and resulted in the purchase of a patent leather miniskirt I vowed to burn when he left us. They were absolutely crazy about him.

But at the end of the second week, knowing it would all be over soon, he started getting depressed, and very quiet. I know Paul was thinking about leaving. He was going through cases of Cristalle, Yquem, and bourbon. But he held it remarkably well, and because of his delicate mechanisms, he never got hangovers and was immune to headaches. The only sign of drinking excessively he ever showed, was when he got in a little accident on Third Avenue in Peter's Jaguar. He managed to hit a cab, and careened away from it, narrowly missing a truck parked outside Bloomingdale's, and hit six parked cars and a traffic light. No one got hurt, but he totaled the front of the car, and managed not to injure the trunk, where he was carrying three more cases of Chateau d'Yquem. He felt just awful about it, and didn't want me to tell Peter when he called, so I didn't, out of loyalty to him. He said the car needed a new paint job anyway, the silver was so mundane. In spite of his fondness for silver lame shirts and underwear, he thought it was a poor choice of color for a car, and had it repainted canary yellow. He swore to me that Peter would be much happier when he saw it. And he had the wheels painted red, which was sweet of him.