by Jane Smiley
“I’ve never heard of that happening,” said Felicity. “There are three types of things that happen, you know. There’s the usual thing that happens, that no one ever talks about. Then there are the things you hear about or read about that happen every so often but are unlikely, so they get into the paper, but you don’t really need to worry about them; a good example of that would be kidnapping, say. And then there are the things that never happen, that can’t happen, like what you just were talking about, and those sorts of things you don’t have to worry about at all.” She laughed happily. I knew the happiness was for me.
“Marcus knew someone it happened to.”
“I doubt it,” said Felicity. She turned to me.
I said, “The Sloans made an offer.”
She pressed, with all apparent casualness, more closely against me, then said, “Big crowd tonight.” Her fingers skated across my fly, went away, came back. She kept talking the whole time. “What did they decide on?”
“Dutch Colonial. One of those ones on Praed Circle that your father built ten years ago.”
“It took them a year to find a house like that?”
“They seem enthusiastic. You know, I’ve given up trying to figure out what people”—she squeezed me—“see. Ah.”
She grinned. She spoke in a low voice. “Have you ever been in New York, in a really crowded subway car, all pressed together, and everyone is avoiding your gaze and someone just feels you up?” She was smiling. “It’s so dangerous, isn’t it? I mean, I knew someone who had her purse opened and her wallet stolen. Anything could happen in a situation like that.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “I always wait for the next car if the one that comes seems too crowded. But this just reminds me.” She pressed her side against me again; then she leaned around me and said to Fern, “Did you get those books I left at Mom’s for you?”
“I haven’t been over there today,” said Fern.
She squeezed me harder this time, and I stood quietly, looking down at my beer.
“Well, they’re on the front hall table there. You’ll see them.” In a quieter voice, as if through a trick of producing two voices at once, she said to me, “I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Show me that house in Deacon, on Fourth Street.”
“That California-style bungalow?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow at ten. I saw those people moving out last week.”
“They’re in Vermont by now.”
“Mmmm.” She went back to her public voice. She said to Bobby, “Well, I’ve delivered, so I’m going now.” She backed away from the bar.
I said, “Yes, you have. Good to see you.”
She grinned. “You too. I don’t see you enough, really.”
Neither Bobby nor Fern looked up, so I allowed myself a smile. I could feel her track through the barroom and out the door. It opened. It closed. I knew where she was every step of the way, even though I was still looking down at my half-full glass.
At nine-thirty the next morning, just as I was taking the keys to the Deacon house off the keyboard, the phone rang. It was George Sloan. He said, “Has that house sold?”
“You put in the first offer, Mr. Sloan, and it was accepted. We should be absolutely fine.”
“Not that one. The other one.”
He didn’t have to tell me. I said, “It’s still listed.”
“I want to go see it again.”
After a moment, I said, “I think it’s time to put that idea out of your mind, Mr. Sloan—uh, George.”
“I went up there last night and stood on the front step, on my way home from work. It’s only thirteen minutes door-to-door from work. It’s twenty-six minutes to the other house.”
“Even twenty-six minutes isn’t a major commute around here. I–”
“Can you get the keys again?”
“Sure, but, say, you know. George.” Felicity was enlarging in my mind. “George. Think of it—this house, I mean—as something you really want but shouldn’t have. Something that is hugely tempting but not good for you. Something that will hurt you. Do you know what I mean?”
Surely he did.
I said, “Did you ever—ah, smoke?”
He said, “Yes.”
“But now you’ve quit, right?”
“No.”
“You know you should, though, right?”
“Well, sure.”
Oh, I didn’t want to be having this conversation. It was twenty to ten. “Do you ever calculate how much money you spend on cigarettes in a year? That’s something that’s supposed to help you stop, right?”
“About a couple hundred bucks.”
“Well, this house is going to cost you, in repairs alone, about fifty or sixty thousand bucks.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“George, I’m going to be frank with you. You can’t afford it. I’ve seen the financial statement you made out for the bank. You could get in there and pay the mortgage, but that’s all, and that’s not enough.”
“Can I get the key again?”
“You call her. You’ve got the number.”
“That’s okay?”
“That’s okay.”
He hung up.
I got there at ten-ten. The driveway was empty and the house looked a little too uninhabited—the windows were shut tight and the kid I’d hired to mow the lawn was a couple of days late. There was a weekly shopper on the front porch, yellowed and flat, and the porch itself needed sweeping. All these annoyances vanished when Felicity’s BMW rounded the corner and pulled up to the curb. She got out of the car with a wave, turned, locked the driver’s side door, and came toward me up the walk, swinging her handbag. She was wearing a loose moss-green dress, about knee length, and sandals. Her hair was spread out down her back in a dark wave. I opened the front door of the empty house, and she stepped up onto the porch and held out her hand. I shook it. Her face was alive with playfulness. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Stratford. Thank you so much for showing me this house. I’m sure it will be lovely.”
I said, “There’s plush carpeting in the main bedroom.”
“Let’s have a look at it, then.”
I closed the door behind us and heard the lock click. Morning shadows, crisp and cool, fell across the living room floor. The house was quiet, the way closed empty houses are. Even the hum of the refrigerator was missing. I said, “I feel snowed in.”
She said, “Ooh, Joey. I feel indescribable.”
We crossed the kitchen and entered the back hall, which was dim and close. She moved toward me and put her hand into my shirt. I put my arm around her waist and felt that she was wearing nothing underneath her dress. There was only the slip of mossy fabric over the smoothness of her skin. We stopped right there and began kissing against the wall of the empty pantry. She unbuttoned my shirt and opened it, then lifted her dress and pressed her breasts against my solar plexus. I whispered, “You are so undomesticated.”
She whispered, “No one knows that but you and me.”
I couldn’t kiss her enough. Her lips fit with perfect softness inside mine. She didn’t move them, but they were electric, and I seemed to feel their every little charge in my balls and my cock, which was pressed against her belly. It went inside her and she squeezed, and then pressed her tongue into my kiss and against my tongue. We seemed equal in this—I was pushing into her and she was pushing into me. It was painfully exciting. I lifted her over to the washer/dryer and sat her against it, then leaned into her. She began to cry out and I did too, at first kissing and then with our heads back and our mouths open. She hooked her ankles behind the small of my back. The heel of her foot seemed to dig into my lower spine, causing waves of sensation to move outward like rays. I pushed harder into her. I thought, She can take it. She can take a simple thing, the throwing off of all restraint. I had never known any other woman who could take that. I ran my hands down her sides and gripped her waist and she opened her legs even wider, anchoring her
hands on my shoulders and coming all over me in a wet wave. Then it was my turn.
The next thing she said, in a low, pleased voice, was, “That took four minutes.”
I laughed and said, “Is that good?”
“It was great. Wasn’t it?”
“Of course. But why did you time it?”
“It didn’t seem like four minutes, did it? It seemed like forever. I love that.” She sighed and lay back across the washer/dryer combo. I eased out of her and she twisted her legs away, making a spot for me on the corner of the washer. She said, “This is comfortable in a way. Cool.” She pulled her dress down and smoothed it, then lifted her hair off the back of her neck. I said, “The bedroom is nice, too.”
“Look in my bag.”
I pulled out a cotton sheet, single-bed size.
“I thought the carpet might be rough, but this is nice. Private.”
“Old Realtor’s trick.”
She stretched her back and lifted her arms, then put her hands on my cheeks. “I wish I could roll over next to you now and just tickle you all over and chat about something. What do you think we would chat about if we were comfortable?”
“We’d probably complain. I’d probably complain. Or we’d gossip.” I still felt enjoyably drained. “Maybe I’d add up money. I’ve made a lot of sales lately, especially over there with those townhouses. Maybe I’d lie there and talk myself into being rich.”
“Daddy thinks those townhouses are a sow’s-ear silk-purse sort of thing. Marcus just sits there looking quietly confident. Let’s go lie down on the floor of the bedroom.”
I helped her off the washer/dryer and led her to the back of the house, where she spread the white sheet over the thick champagne-colored carpet. We lay down. She said, “This room has nice windows. You know, I’ve lived in the same house for twelve years. I think everyone is moving but me. When the boys were twelve and thirteen, we could have expanded, but now it’s time to contract.”
“Is this chatting?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“Maybe it will lead to second thoughts.”
“On your part?”
“No. On yours.”
She looked at me. She said, “It’s okay for us to have no future. Two people having a future is more or less a habit, when you think about it. It’s what you do in high school when you don’t have any idea of what else to do. Look at Fern. The reason they can’t get her to marry Bobby is because she has other things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Study cats.”
“Is that really something to do?”
“It is for her. You’d be surprised how little is known about cats. If you were chatting with Fern, she would have something to say. It would be about cats, but it would be something.”
“You have something to say.”
She ran her finger around my lips for a moment. “I’ll tell you about me. I am a person who is interested, but I’ve never really pursued anything, so I’m still more interested than interesting. I changed my major six times in college, and then I got married instead of graduating. I mean, I’ve never—”
“I think you’re very interesting.”
“I know you do, but that’s essentially reproductive behavior. When you smell my hair or want to fuck me because I have a certain demeanor, you are not really finding me interesting. It’s not the same for me. I find you interesting because you’re different from other men.”
“I never would have thought that.”
“I know. The funniest thing about you is that you think you’re an average guy. But you are kind.”
“Maybe I’m just not very, oh—”
“Ruthless?”
“Well, I was going to say smart.”
“I don’t know about that, but you do tempt me to find the limits of your kindness.”
I tried to make a joke of this. “That doesn’t sound like fun. At least not for me.”
“Do you know that I’m not kind?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“I’m not. I am affectionate, though. And I like you very much. As much as anyone.” She put her head back and looked at me. “You know I only use the word love in its most technical sense. Mother, father, husband, wife, sister, brother.”
“You don’t have to use the word love with me.”
“It’s better if I don’t. There’s no precedent, and it’s too confusing.”
Now the frenzy of our earlier coupling seemed distant. I wasn’t sure why. I said, “Right now, I have to say, you are very interesting.”
“If I thought that was a laudable goal, I would be glad to hear it, but I don’t. I am just enjoying myself.” She kissed me.
“Tell me what’s enjoyable about talking like this.”
“Well, it’s not the same sort of talking we always do, for one thing. I mean, haven’t you noticed that people always talk about the same things over and over? I look at my parents and hear them say the same things they’ve been saying for years to each other, as if they were in church or something. ‘How was your day?’ ‘Could’ve been worse. Where do you want to eat tonight?’ ‘I don’t care. Do you want me to cook?’ ‘You don’t want to cook.’ ‘I can cook. I don’t mind cooking.’ ‘Ah, why mess up the kitchen?’ Then he kisses her.”
“I’ve heard that conversation.”
“Who hasn’t? That’s the Betty-and-Gordon conversation. The Hank-and-Felicity conversation isn’t as long, but it’s just as—you know. I’m not going to complain about him to you.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Linda and I were talking about that at lunch yesterday. When you start having a friend—a woman friend, I mean—one of the first things you always do is complain about your husband and kids. It’s incredibly tempting. You make fun of them a little and you throw your hands around and you use a certain tone of voice, a very emphatic tone of voice.”
“I know that.” But what I really wondered was what Linda said about Marcus.
“It takes on a life of its own. You start getting outside your own family and then it’s hard to feel inside it again. You’re easy to talk to, like Gordon.”
“I don’t have a lot else to offer, dear.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Are you upset about something?”
“No.” She lay back on the sheet and looked up at the ceiling. “I miss Sally. Sally would have led the march out of here. I couldn’t do it by myself. Anyway, I just want you to appreciate what a pleasure this is, to have no future.”
“And nothing public.”
“Exactly.” She looked at me. “Do you miss Sally?”
“Not the way you do.” I wanted right then to tell her that I loved her, but I didn’t dare.
She nestled into me and I started kissing her again. The desire that had receded returned effortlessly.
Afterward, we folded up the sheet and looked around the house for a minute or two, and then we went out of the house, and I shook her hand on the step and we went to our separate cars without looking at each other.
CHAPTER
11
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, Gordon, Marcus, Crosbie, Bart, and I met with Mrs. Thorpe and her lawyer. We signed the papers; they signed the papers. Salt Key Farm became the property of Salt Key Corporation, which was owned by Gordon (40 percent), Marcus (35 percent), and me (25 percent). I had agreed to put my two small farms on the market as a token of my interest. I thought they might bring about a hundred and fifty thousand together, but in fact we spent nothing; principal, interest for one year, and fees for the loan were covered by the loan itself. After Mrs. Thorpe and Calvin Visser had left, Marcus said to Crosbie, “Now, of course, we’ll need another loan for preliminary development costs. Gordon and I were thinking that two-fifty ought to cover it for six months, maybe a year.”
Crosbie nodded without turning a hair, and Bart said, “I’ll see to the paperwork.”
When we were walking to our cars, I kep
t glancing at Marcus and Crosbie chatting. As far as I knew, Marcus had nothing except a heavily mortgaged house and a job that paid on commission, but he carried himself importantly, and Crosbie nodded and laughed and made a big deal of him and stood there and waved him off when he drove away. I didn’t know what to attribute this to, and in the end I decided it was genius. After all, everything he had told me had been right, hadn’t it?
Marcus and I went looking for office space. This was Gordon’s idea, Marcus told me, because he wanted the Salt Key Corporation to start out in an organized way. Marcus himself was keeping the books. The county was deep into autumn; every road ran through a golden tunnel of color that blazed up to a brilliant dome of blue. Autumn rains had returned the pastures and roadsides temporarily to thick green splashed with late flowers, and Marcus was in a good mood. I said, “I thought you had a job.”
“I do.”
“I mean with a firm: you know, the sort of job where you go to the office and talk on the phone.”
“I do. But this I like better. You know, you can invest in anything now. It’s like everything in the world all of a sudden turned into money, and whatever it is you just pass it back and forth and it’s all the same. That’s the secret.”
We got to the outskirts of Deacon, and I pulled into the parking lot of a modest strip mall, built in the sixties. “No,” said Marcus.
“Well, let’s at least go in—”
“Why?”
I started the car again and backed out of my parking place. As we drove down Main Street, he turned his head back and forth. Part of the charm of Deacon was that it had gotten very ferny in the seventies—flower beds in front of every house, big old houses turned into professional offices rather than being torn down. Marcus said, “I’ve been thinking about Deacon. I’m not sure Deacon is the place. Too funky.”
“Look at the foot traffic. Deacon is the most desirable commercial location in the county.”