Envious Shadows

by R.P. Burnham

  Secrecy

  Other people, particularly women, called Marilyn Prence a predatory female. If they meant to insult her by that epithet, they sadly missed the mark. She didn’t care what others thought of her, especially other women. She was a woman who knew what she liked, and she liked sex. It was her way of loving the world she had been born into. Earlier, as a girl, she learned to love the world in similarly direct ways. She was a tomboy who loved sports, especially soccer and softball and in the winter to a lesser degree hockey. She was naturally muscular and strong (a condition that continued into adolescence and adulthood), and she maintained her muscularity without the need to work out much. In softball, which by the time she got to high school was her favorite sport, she was a power hitter and an outfielder with a great arm. But even before she played organized sports, and for as long as she could remember, she loved physical activity, running, skating, kicking a ball, swinging from a tree, or even more elementally she reveled in physically being alive to sensations, the feeling of being a presence in a world that was material: the feel of grass under her feet, the flexing of muscles when she walked, the tightening of her buttocks and crotch when she stood up, the feel of rain on her head, the goose bumps on her arms when she got wet and a breeze washed over her, the taste of ice cream and the feel of the cold slivering down her throat, the urgent and rhythmic sound of waves pounding on the beach. In all these ways her reality was primarily physical even before she found out about sex.

  That momentous discovery came when she was fifteen. Her mother had been divorced for several years, during which time she had had a series of live-in lovers. One of them initiated Marilyn into the exquisite pleasures of sex while her mother was at work one day and she had played hooky. This arrangement lasted for several months, a period that seemed timeless in its intensity and which made her old love for running and jumping and hitting a ball seem almost dull. Especially exciting was to be living a secret life, experiencing the most unbelievably intense pleasure during the day while her mother and sister and fellow students were going about their mundane affairs. It ended when her mother confronted her with a dozen forged notes to the headmaster; the truth came out when Marilyn was forced to explain what she had been doing during all those days when she wasn’t in school. Her sister Tammy had helped her mother in extracting the information so that ever after that day Marilyn was more or less estranged from her two closest relatives. The man, of course, a lazy layabout plumber of thirty-five with blond hair and a movie-star face, was thrown out of the house and disappeared from her life. She was grounded for two months, and after she was allowed her freedom again she found a boyfriend at Courtney Academy who was her own age. The relationship didn’t last very long, however; the boy was an inept lover and afraid of the kind of experimentation she had enjoyed with her mother’s lover. It seems her experiences with the handsome plumber were formative in another way as well, for when she began having sex with the boyfriend of one of her teammates on the Courtney Academy women’s softball team, she found the sex more intensely pleasurable because it was done secretly. She had numerous liaisons through the years, many of them one-night stands and others conventional relationships that lasted for months, but the best ones were always illicit affairs with married men. Secrecy was a turn-on and a revenge against people like her sister and mother who disapproved of her. The plumber had taught her the importance of protection, so she never got pregnant or caught any venereal diseases.

  She was not very pretty and knew it, but she also knew she wasn’t plain either and that her best asset was her magnificent body. She was very proud of her large, firm breasts, her almost perfect legs, and her muscular, rounded posterior. Using these attributes, she knew how to attract men and had self-confidence to an extraordinary degree. She loved her body and loved to display it, to make men stare at her and lose all self-control. She knew her body gave her power over men, power that was almost as delicious as sex itself. So her body made her feel invulnerable, and liking that feeling too, she grew hard, vowing that no man would ever control her. She did lose control sometimes, but it was caused by an exhibitionist impulse that in her early years was compulsive. In college, which she attended on a softball scholarship, she got a job as an exotic dancer in a sleazy nightclub and got a rush from sexually exciting scores of men at the same time, some of whom tucked ten- and twenty-dollar bills into her secret parts when she danced just for them. She came back to her dorm room that night feeling exhilarated and would have continued the work if the softball coach hadn’t found out about it and made her quit. Other times at parties she caused minor scandals when some man would doubt that her breasts were real and she would display them and allow the man to feel for himself. Women often hated her for these bold acts of exhibitionism, but aside from most of her teammates and some of her relatives like Fiona Sparrow, she didn’t care a fig about their opinions. But in time she brought this impulse under control too. She schooled herself to be self-contained in everything except sexual activity itself, and then she was so totally uninhibited that many men told her she was the wildest filly they had ever ridden and therefore the best lover they had ever had. She was proud of that too.

  It was, in fact, the basis of her identity and to a certain extent her philosophy. She sometimes said all’s fair in love and war to people. Most thought she was being flippant or merely joking, but she meant it. She took life as she found it at an individual level. Abstractions like politics, religion, morality or ethics were of no interest to her. She read women’s magazines but rarely books. She wasn’t prejudiced, perhaps because she grew up with her cousin Fiona Sparrow, who was half black; but she didn’t give much thought to social problems like poverty, racism or injustice; she had only a slight interest in abortion rights, though she did think most antiabortionists were sexually repressed yahoos; and she was indifferent about ecology and pollution. She did watch what she ate, however, preferring natural food, because maintaining her body was extremely important to her. She expected to marry well some day, but to the extent she planned ahead that expectation was not to be seriously pursued until she was over thirty. Now she was young, in her twenties, and didn’t the world belong to the young? She was selfish and self-absorbed, but then wasn’t everyone? At least she was honest with herself. She knew the score and played to win. These two clichés were also part of her philosophy, though when people asked what her philosophy was she would simply shrug her shoulders and say, “Live and let live,” knowing that she was being hypocritical but thinking they didn’t have to know it.

  Bill Paine had entered her life serendipitously. She had come to play softball with women and had not expected to meet any men, but once there she noticed he looked at her with a hunger in his eyes that she recognized instantly. The other men there, like all men all the time, stared at her swaying breasts and perfect legs as she ran and were mentally undressing her, but Bill Paine’s expression was different. He had a need that he didn’t know he had. She always recognized it, and especially when the man was good-looking, though even good looks were not always necessary if the man displayed a certain macho self-confidence, she was ready to be receptive. She trusted those glimpses into the inner man; to her they had a validity beyond words. Words could lie, but spontaneous displays could not. The body was a truer guide to reality than what a person said. Words were weapons, she knew, for that is how she used them. The teacher she had been bringing along, Brian Hadley, was still on her mind, but she believed in keeping her options open, and then when she went over to retrieve an errant ball and Bill said, “You’re going to give us a good game,” she had the perfect opportunity to verify the hunger she had seen in his eyes which he didn’t know he had. “Good, I like to give a man a good game,” she said.

  It worked. The words went right to his groin. Now she was ready for further opportunities. It was a good sign that he couldn’t keep his eyes off her during the game, and just as she hoped, they made plans for a meeting at Tony’s the following Friday.

/>   She arrived at Tony’s early and accompanied by a teacher from her school, who drifted off with a man a half hour after they sat down at a table in the back. A renovated warehouse, Tony’s was very spacious, almost cavernous. It had high ceilings that showed the beams and utilities, a long bar perhaps fifty to sixty feet in length, and numerous tables scattered across a rickety wooden floor. Later strobe lights and wall sconces would illuminate the place, but now it was dark with the only light coming from narrow high windows fifteen feet above the floor. She sat facing the door, nursing a beer, and kept away other men who came up to talk to her with opening lines that were supposed to make her rip her panties off from their cleverness. She’d heard them all before, though often she let the men think they worked on her because she liked their looks. But not tonight. Bill came in about quarter to five. Quickly she found that she could read him like a book. When he walked into the bar he was hoping she wasn’t there. She could see it in his eyes as he surveyed the crowd. If he walked out she would let him. She was in no hurry. She had been in this situation enough times to know that one simply let events unfold, and she knew that his hope that she wasn’t there was actually a good sign. It meant that he was already obsessed with her and was struggling to remain faithful to his good little wifey wife back home with her brood of brats. So she wasn’t bothered in the slightest by what she read in his mind, nor did she feel the need to formulate a plan because she didn’t have to. Her instincts told her he would need more time than other men to work through his middle-class morality and leftovers from his good little Protestant Sunday school lessons. She didn’t respect him less or like him more because he would need time. It made the game more exciting and the sex, when it came, more urgent and intense.

  So she waited for him to find her, and if he did not it still wouldn’t be a sign. He looked back at the door, longingly, she thought, but still she waited. Finally he caught sight of her and hurried over, his eyes now eager and expectant. Already he had forgotten that he had hoped she wasn’t here. She felt herself becoming aroused, glad that she’d turned away men in the half hour she had waited for him.

  “Well, hello there, stranger,” she said. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  She had changed from her school clothes to a top with a deep V that showed her breasts to their fullest and tight, body-hugging jeans. She could see him already clouded in judgment as the narcotic presence of her body overwhelmed him.

  “Hi, Marilyn,” he said, not able to suppress a wide smile. “This place is hopping. Are you alone?”

  “Yes and no. I came with Katey Pouliot, but she met someone. That’s her over there at the bar.” She pointed with her chin. “The one with the long blond hair. She teaches with me.”

  He got a beer and they talked for a while about their day. She had had a sick child who threw up in the classroom and caused a commotion. Marilyn told the story comically, describing the shock on the faces of the other children as if they had seen a ghost. He told her about some accounts he was handling for a paper manufacturer in Westbrook. Another round of beers came. They started talking about the softball game, but the jukebox was competing with the crowd noise to see which could be more deafening, and talk was difficult now. They finished their beers, and when some couples got up to dance to a slow number, she suggested they dance too. He looked doubtful and glanced at his watch, but already he had trouble saying no to her. They went over to the small, cleared area in front of where the band would play live later in the evening. She used a few pelvic thrusts and crushed her breasts against his chest to get him excited. Afterwards, back at the table, she was sure he would suggest they go somewhere, but he surprised her by saying he had to get home. His sister-in-law and her husband were coming to dinner and he couldn’t be late. He promised, however, that he would see her next Friday.

  Through the workweek she thought about Bill often, but not while she was teaching. She had an amazing ability to compartmentalize her life. She was a good teacher, having infinite patience with the little ones perhaps because she never had high expectations. In school she herself was not a fast learner, and when she taught eight- and nine-year-old children she remembered that. Her patience paid off, because it got results. It also helped that all the students knew she was an athlete and respected her. This week they were finishing up the school year with the multiplication tables. Except for her friend Katey, no one, and especially not the prim, Baptist principal, Miss Johnson, suspected that she spent nights and weekends among the fleshpots of the world. She dressed conservatively at school and usually kept her private life private. Her attraction to Brian Hadley was partly based on a certain dangerousness of getting involved with a colleague under Miss Johnson’s very nose.

  She’d been keeping Brian on a line even after her stronger interest in Bill Paine developed and planned to reel him in only if Bill turned out to be a disappointment. In the teacher’s room and at lunchtime she would see him. He was always friendly but shy, talking around what was really on his mind. One day he told her about his friend who taught science in a high school in Portland. They had talked about the Cosmic Atom, the tiny point of incredible energy that when it exploded created the entire universe that was still rushing away through space. He held up his thumb and index finger and pressed them together. “Think of it, a space smaller than the space between my finger and thumb held all the matter of a billion galaxies. And that’s not all. My friend thinks there are billions of Cosmic Atoms and universes out there.” Marilyn wasn’t really interested. It was too unreal. To her all that was important was people, people she knew. She only listened with the appearance of interest because she was still interested in him. She suspected that he was close to virginal in his experience and had thought that it would be fun to introduce him to the science of lovemaking. But suddenly he seemed rather dull, and then he was no longer the fallback plan in case Bill Paine didn’t come through.

  Then things started looking bad because the next Friday Bill didn’t show. After waiting for an hour and a half and just as last week turning guys away who approached the table by saying she was waiting for someone, she became angry. Sometimes she ran across men who used her for flirtation and to boost their self-confidence with their wives or girlfriends who were becoming distant, and she always resented being used. All-talk-and-no-delivery guys she called them. Eventually she relaxed and trusted her instincts. Bill might be afraid to cheat on his wife; consciously he might argue with himself for hours upon end that he had to be faithful; but she would bet a year’s salary that he wanted her and was obsessed by her. So she decided not to waste her time worrying, and when a guy came up to her with the rather blunt but honest line, “Are those babies real?” things worked out nicely and they spent the night together in a motel making love. His name was Paul, and she gave him her name, but names did not matter. He had to leave early in the morning to go somewhere, but not until they made love one more time. Then she showered and went home, expecting a furtive call from Bill.

  Just as she expected, he called her from his mobile phone in the late morning. He said he couldn’t talk long because his son was in the car. He’d told the boy Daddy had to make a phone call and was apparently standing in front of the car where he could keep an eye on his son as he talked. He told her he was forced to work late last night and didn’t dare call Tony’s because there were people all around him. From his tone of voice, which betrayed an almost desperate desire that she not be angry with him, she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe him. He told her the family vacation was coming up and that he wouldn’t be able to see her until late June, and again she believed him. He said that he’d call as soon as they got back and that he would be thinking of her all the time he was gone. She thought of him making love to his wife and thinking of her as he did it and was very pleased. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you,” she said gaily. And as a tease, she added, “and I’ll be thinking of you, especially at night.”

  She kept herself sufficien
tly busy during these two weeks, first with another one-night stand with another man she met at Tony’s the following Friday and then with moving to Portland the second week. School was out for the summer and she had time to find a place off lower Congress Street about halfway between Long-fellow Square and the Maine Medical Center that was pleasant, roomy enough and reasonably priced. She had been trying to get her cousin Fiona to share an apartment with her for months and tried one last time to interest her in the idea, but Fiona said no. She was seeing Lowell Edgecomb and though she was too embarrassed to say so, Marilyn understood that she didn’t want to leave Waska because that is where he lived. Marilyn didn’t argue the point; she had already found she could afford the apartment by herself. She wished her cousin good luck and made arrangements to take the apartment, which was empty and available. She was actually pleased to have her own place for the first time in her life. She’d had a lot of trouble with her current roommate because she’d often bring men home for the night—it was in fact the reason they were not renewing the lease and were parting ways. So on the second weekend using Tara Wright’s pickup truck and with the help of some of her teammates she moved in. Then she spent a quiet week getting the place just right, buying curtains and the like and decorating the living room and hall with some French Impressionist prints and some softball posters from her high school and college teams. In her bedroom she also mounted three prints of couples making love and several nude picture of herself in sexually receptive poses that had been taken by a male friend in college. She had had both sets of pictures for years but had not displayed them until now because she hadn’t had a place of her own. She grew excited thinking that Bill would christen the bedroom with her soon.

  When she met him the following Friday at Tony’s, he was ready for a frank discussion about what they both had in mind. She had judged rightly that he was now sexually obsessed with her and thought about her constantly during his vacation. Not only could she read it in his eyes; he admitted it to her. With their cards on the table, it became a question of logistics, and here her devious mind came up with a solution. He mentioned that his wife’s birthday was coming up, and she hatched a plan whereby she would purchase the set of earrings he planned to get her tomorrow morning and then Bill, telling his wife he was to go shopping for her birthday present, would come directly to her apartment.

  The operation went smoothly and next afternoon he was inside her door. They greeted each other quickly and, understanding each other’s intentions, went into the bedroom. The nude photographs of her got him excited and within five minutes they were on the bed where she had to call upon all her skill and experience to delay him until she ready to explode. Afterwards they lay on the bed exhausted for a long time. Finally she stole a glance at him. Now that he had sated his lust and his obsession had become a reality, he was feeling guilty. He had a what-have-I-done? stricken look on his face which she had seen before in other men. Most of them got over it, some taking comfort in the statistics that showed over half the married couples cheated at some time or other in their marriage. They were just being human—she’d said that to a few men in her day, though knowing Bill would not be receptive to such a comfort, she decided that silence was the best strategy. He would have to think his way to acceptance, and if he did not the urges that brought him here would soon reassert themselves and be another kind of solution. One thing she was sure of: she wasn’t interested in playing nursemaid to his guilty soul. So for five minutes she remained lying on her back beside him until the silence began bothering her. “That was wonderful,” she finally said. “Simply wonderful. You were great.”

  He stirred. “You’re very beautiful, Marilyn. You too were wonderful.”

  Then he reverted to silence, and to get his mind off the guilt and regret he was experiencing, she decided to talk about something completely different. She cast about in her mind for a suitable subject and remembered the discussion she’d had a few weeks before with Brian Hadley.

  “A teacher I know was talking about the Cosmic Atom the other day.”

  He gave her a strange look for bringing up a subject that was the furthest thing from his mind. “You mean the Big Bang, that Cosmic Atom?”

  “Yes, that one. A tiny point from which everything emerged.”

  Bill rolled over on his side and put his arm over her belly. “Well, it certainly gives you a perspective, I suppose. Like we’re tiny bugs.” He frowned thoughtfully and rolled over onto his back again.

  “I don’t feel like a bug. I feel like a woman, a woman who took the bare minimum of science in college. I remember Fiona was telling me once something about a drop pitch—or was it a curve ball? Anyways, it conforms to some law of physics. That’s all very fine, but it’s better, much better, just to whack the ball and start running.”

  “I get your point,” he said after thinking about it for a moment. “But sometimes I wonder if we go to other planets and the stars if it will change us. Would you want human nature to change?”

  “Hmmm, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I do think those sci-fi movies where they show human beings supposedly totally cerebral are idiotic.” With a sudden motion she rolled over and straddled him as he lay on his back. “Would you give up this for pure mind?”

  He wouldn’t, and the second and most reliable of her two alternatives for forgetting guilt was effective.

  After the second session he said he had to go. They took a shower together, which led to a third session standing up, and then with their clothes on they talked for a bit.

  “Could you get out early next Friday? I’m out of school now and could be here in the afternoon.”

  Bill took a deep breath and considered. “I think so. At least I could get out at three, tell the boss I had some personal business. Then I could say at home that I had to work late. I wish, though…I wish…”

  “You wish you didn’t have to lie. I understand. Bill, let me give you some advice. Love is never easy. It’s usually hard, in fact. Just let things happen. Go with the flow. You know what I mean? Things will sort themselves out.”

  “I guess so,” he said doubtfully.

  “I want us both to be happy,” she said, kissing him good-bye.

  That was the right thing to say, for he gave her a genuine smile of gladness, but its effect was short-lived, for watching him walk to his car she saw him stop suddenly as if considering coming back to cancel the assignation, then sighing in resignation and walking slowly to his car. She frowned angrily and resolved not to put up with it much longer. She would give him another week, maybe two. She liked secrecy but only if the man was a coconspirator. She understood that guilt and sex did not mix. He was going to have to understand that too.

  But a pleasant surprise awaited her next Friday afternoon. Bill was a totally different man when she saw him. He had a carefree bounce to his gait as he got out of his car and he even appeared to be whistling. Then she heard him bounding up the stairs two at a time. “Hi, Marilyn,” he said gaily when she opened the door. He took her and twirled her around. “I’m free tonight!”

  She smiled. He couldn’t possibly have left his wife already? “What do you mean?”

  “My wife’s mother had a minor heart attack, and she’s taken the kids to upstate Maine to be with her this weekend. They won’t be home until Sunday night.”

  “Can you stay over? It would be wonderful to sleep with you.”

  He shook his head. “That might be too dangerous. The neighbors might notice I wasn’t home and tell Becky. But still!”

  He was excited. He wanted to go to dinner. He wanted to walk the streets. He wanted, it seems, more than just a sexual relationship; he wanted her to be his girl. Gingerly she suggested that if he was afraid the neighbors might notice his absence, wasn’t there also a chance they would be seen together in public? He wasn’t worried about that, he said. He told his wife he might work late and eat in Portland, and when she worried that he would have to eat alone, he had said one of his colleagues migh
t work late too and they would go out together. “So if anyone sees us, you’re an accountant.” He grinned, a boyish grin that pleased her. Innocence had its attractions, especially when it made a guy look handsome.

  She had worked herself up waiting for him and was ready for sex, so she made an approach to him, kissing him passionately. For a moment she sensed his reluctance, but when she whispered it was too early for dinner, he agreed. They went into the bedroom and had a session on the bed, then another in the shower, which took longer than expected with the result that the water turned cold on them. They dried each other, laughing all the while at the goose bumps their dalliance had raised and laughing even harder when he reversed the usual joke and asked of her pointed buttons, “Are you cold or just glad to see me?” He was on his knees drying her abdomen. With her hands she took her breasts and rolled them on his face to get them warm while he stroked the towel over her mound. That made them both hot again, but they decided to delay satisfaction and go to the Tandoor Restaurant to eat.

  “Let’s go to a movie tomorrow afternoon,” he said on the way. “That way when I come home late tonight I’ll have a story that I went to a movie.”

  At the restaurant they had a serious discussion, not about themselves and their relationship, but about Fiona and Lowell. Both had heard about the racist attack on them last weekend.

  “It makes me sick,” Marilyn said, speaking sincerely too—for racism did disgust her. She had had several flings with black men, and the important thing about those flings was that they were with men, male human beings.

  “Tara told me Fiona was very upset. I talked to her last night and agree. I think Fiona believes she’s brought trouble to Lowell and is considering if the right thing to do is to split up. What does Lowell say?”

  “He talked to my mother and me last night. He’s upset that Fiona is upset, and he’s in a rage against Rett Murray, the Nazi. He asked me if I thought the Nazis could be sued for civil rights violations, but I told him an exchange of words, even an argument, would be a difficult case to make.”

  “What about the pamphlet they were passing out? Isn’t that illegal?”

  Bill pursed his lips and considered. “I don’t think so. It’s a free country.”

  “What about punching the creep in the nose?” Marilyn asked, taking a sip of Masala tea. “I remember he was not afraid of those two sexist yahoos at the softball game.”

  Bill shook his head grimly. “Lowell is the bravest guy I know, but he’s also nonviolent. It’s not his way.”

  They paid for their meal and walked out. It was a pleasant, cool evening after a boiling hot day, and they sat on a bench in a tiny park a short distance from the restaurant to enjoy the evening air. Here Marilyn made a miscalculation. She playfully asked Bill if his wife liked the earrings she had chosen for her. Instantly his face clouded and he appeared almost ready to cry. His guilt hadn’t gone away; it had only been temporarily in hiding.

  Shocked, Marilyn was silent for a while. He looked so bad she actually felt sorry for him. “Tell me something, Bill. Do you still love your wife?”

  He turned and looked at her, his face still contorted. He was very agitated, having a terrible struggle with himself. He was grasping for certainty, she thought, something the world didn’t offer. “Yes, I think so. Yes. But what we have together… I’m so confused. And I wonder if she loves me. All she thinks about is the kids.”

  Marilyn frowned. She didn’t like to think of kids. She couldn’t compete with them. But she didn’t really want to encourage him. She wasn’t done with him yet: she felt their thing together was just beginning. But the sex would be no good if guilt was the third body in bed with them, so she said, “I can live with whatever you decide, Bill. I too think we have something special. But if it stops being special for you, it’s no good for me either.” She paused, pleased with herself for expressing her position in such a way that the onus was on him. “You decide.”

  He stared into vacancy without speaking for so long that she started getting very nervous. “Does what happened to Lowell and Fiona bother you to? Is that part of the problem?”

  “Lowell?” he said quietly to himself as if remembering something. “He’s been like a father to me. He’s my older brother. He showed me the way.”

  Marilyn leaned forward and placed her hand on his knee. “When I was talking to Fiona about her being worried about loving a white man, I told her to follow her heart. This is America. It’s the third millennium. You can love whoever you want to. I’ll say the same thing to you, Bill. I won’t argue with you. You have to do what you feel is right. But here, now, in this land, you can love who you want to love.”

  He nodded and stood. Together they walked slowly to his car side by side but with a slight space between them.