A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  He couldn’t bear to admit to Belinda that he could not think of a time recently when he felt even a shred of Joy’s ardor. On the rare occasion that she approached him, it seemed that all she relished lately in their sexual encounters were her quick, multiple orgasms, of which she seemed infinitely capable. An avid exerciser, Joy had a toned body that obeyed her every command. But mostly, he suspected that his very presence in the same bedroom had come to annoy her. He assumed this also had to do with her loss of the baby and figured it would pass at some point, although waiting for that moment had become damn near excruciating.

  “You love her, don’t you?” Belinda had finally asked.

  He was silent, then nodded, unable to lie, but also aware that whatever he was creating with her would have to fit into the truth of his life as it was.

  “That’s good,” was all she said, stroking his hair as if his answer, oddly enough, gave her peace. “Always remember that.”

  As she continued to caress him, there was no sign that she was disappointed or even discouraged by his outburst. She simply drifted off to sleep with her arm around him as if they’d been together for years.

  A week after their first encounter, they met again outside his office on Park Avenue. Although on most Fridays he took the earlier five o’clock train home, he told Joy he’d be working late again. It was her book club evening, anyway, and she never got home before midnight from those meetings, eager to sleep off the dinner, wine, and female chatter.

  Tonight, Belinda took him to an Italian restaurant, Giovanni. They went down two flights of stairs from the sidewalk and he had the feeling that only regulars would have known of its cavernous whereabouts. In his eagerness, he wolfed down the risotto and osso bucco he’d ordered—as good as any he’d had in Rome— and Belinda’s choice of a lush Chianti slid down his throat like a balm. It seemed a positive omen.

  She turned to him during dessert. “Where are we going with this, Richard?”

  He swallowed more wine, savoring its hint of plum and cherry. “All the way,” he said, as steadily as he could.

  “Which is?”

  “Wherever we want it to go.”

  She sipped her espresso.

  “Where do you want it to go?” he said, hating the ambivalence in his tone.

  “I asked you first. You’re the one with the most to lose. I’m not married.”

  “Are you asking how I’m going to deal with my wife or with my feelings for you?”

  “Both,” she said.

  “I’m totally wanting to get to know you better,” he heard himself insist, staring at her face, afraid that if he took his eyes off her even for an instant she’d detect the faltering behind his gaze. “I’ve never wanted anything so much.”

  “And you’re sure this won’t cost you?”

  “Cost me?”

  “Your current life. Your wife. Your stable marriage.”

  “My marriage is on the rocks.”

  Her eyes seemed to penetrate him, although her expression hadn’t changed. “Not entirely.”

  “This isn’t going to cost me,” he said.

  As much as he meant what he said, and despite his suffocating, urgent hunger for Belinda, he knew he was lying. He also wanted Joy.

  With the way his relationship with Joy had been lately, betrayal would certainly create an even bigger rift between them. He knew that he could still get out of “this” if he wanted to, could still get home to Joy and his life without giving up much. A few brief encounters could be forgotten. Yet, it seemed that he and Joy together had nothing at the moment besides a confused and lacking world. All they’d had previously was not just in jeopardy, but in doubt. And the lack he felt of love and desire and fulfillment—how much of that had he really had even before Stephen?

  He was sinking into this guilty awareness of his unsolved issues, half praying for his good sense to snatch him back from the brink of temptation, when Belinda reached across the table and touched his lips with her slender, cool fingertips. He closed his eyes and realized, with a somewhat sinking heart, that he was hooked. In spite of his thought to the contrary just a moment before, he’d missed the moment when he could have escaped and spared himself, and Joy, of what surely must come next. Now that the moment had slipped by, it wouldn’t come again. He’d crossed over into his new life, and like it or not, he’d have to deal with all the consequences.

  He couldn’t help asking himself, then, who Belinda really was and why she didn’t seem to mind hanging around with someone not entirely available to her. She had asked him where this was going, after all, so she seemed to care about their relationship continuing, perhaps without caring that she could not have more than this: interludes. Perhaps she was some new breed of woman looking for a lover rather than a relationship. Maybe what she wanted was a sugar daddy, or maybe the conquest of a married man would boost her ego. But none of that seemed to fit what little he knew of her. She had asked where the relationship was going, and yet, hadn’t seemed to need to know. She didn’t seem to need anyone or anything, in fact. Like an amoeba, he thought, she seemed self-sufficient and content on her own.

  He called Joy and told her he’d be spending the night in the office accommodations again, not unusual when he had a late working night; but instead of going to the Dumas Hotel, they took a cab to a West Side hotel Belinda suggested.

  At first, he was too excited by the prospect of the night ahead to notice the shabbiness of the hotel, expecting to find it the same sort of surprise as the restaurant, unconventional but inviting. It wasn’t. The room was depressingly Spartan, and it smelled of artificial spray and stale cigarettes. The loud window air-conditioner seemed to amplify the street noise.

  Belinda, to his surprise, looked enchanted. “Not bad,” she whispered, as she took in the unattractive room.

  “Well. . . .” He started to say they could change rooms, but her happy smile made him forget his unease. “If you like it, it’s fine.”

  She looked nostalgic. “It reminds me of a place I stayed at in Thailand, once. That was one of my best trips.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen worse in Kyrgyzstan.” In fact, several months ago he had bitterly complained to the bank’s overseas travel bureau that they do a better job of researching before booking their staff into dumps like that one in Kyrgyzstan. But tonight, he’d pretend they were in some mesmerizing stink-hole where this was the best to be had. He could see being in a hovel in Thailand, or even Kyrgyzstan, with this woman and not minding it one bit.

  He overlooked the natty bedspread, along with the thought that they might wake somebody in the next room through the cheap walls. All he wanted now was to be swallowed up inside her.

  As he lay in bed after she fell asleep, he could still hear her deep, cadenced voice. There was a musky quality to it, as if her low notes carried a rich scent of amaretto. Maybe that quality came with her dark Italian hair and skin. Joy’s voice was much higher and lighter by comparison, and she was fair-skinned and blonde. Cerebral was the word that came to mind to describe his wife. It seemed right, somehow, that Belinda was so different from Joy, that he was not tempted to compare them so much as to note their differences. In some ways, they were a species apart. Intellectual, artistic Joy; fiery, earthy Belinda.

  He was aware, however, that Belinda had some of the traits he’d fallen for in Joy, mainly her love of exotic settings. Maybe he was doomed to desire this in a woman, to seek out the antithesis of himself, although by now he knew the pitfalls.

  His differences with Joy strained their relationship more than he wanted to admit. He never felt adventurous or daring enough for her, especially in unfamiliar situations. Joy was always at ease confronting the unknown, whether it was walking into a room full of strangers or exploring a new environment. Whereas he’d always had an overactive instinct for self-preservation, Joy happily threw caution to the wind. Obviously, Belinda did the same.

  Maybe his stubborn reserve was a response to his mother’s restlessness, wh
ich had been on display until the day she finally packed up and left altogether. He’d never gotten over her need to pursue her own life beyond that of his father, his younger brother, and himself. Perhaps his choice of a steady career in business had been an attempt to salvage some shred of stability after the crushing upheaval of his mother walking out on them.

  Both Belinda and Joy loved teaching, although on different ends of the spectrum: Belinda taught small children, and Joy taught college kids. Yet teaching was something he had little knack or patience for, even when it came to training his own assistants at the bank. By now, he’d surrendered to being the recalcitrant, adoring pupil at the back of the classroom, helplessly vulnerable to the will of the teacher, drawn to women who enjoyed leading the way.

  9

  “I couldn’t wait,” he said happily, quickly walking up to her.

  “Darling!” she whispered, looking elated to see him.

  The motel, the Adriatica, was on the outskirts of Astoria. He’d found this place in a travel magazine, suspecting Belinda would enjoy flowers on windowsills and the slightly shabby, old-world appeal of the quaint wrought-iron doorway and striped awnings.

  She’d just given some teachers a workshop at an elementary school in a neighborhood in Queens. Before the violent Balkan events, he’d thought of it as a Yugoslav neighborhood. Now he assumed it was ethnically Croatian because of the multitude of Catholic churches. Even the motel seemed to have been airlifted straight out of Zagreb and into this New York borough. The embroidered chairs at the reception desk reflected a bygone European elegance, and the place smelled like aromatic, aging wood. Belinda seemed captivated enough.

  He’d been agonizing all day, imagining her scent, barely getting through a particularly stressful afternoon at work, and leaving an hour early to avoid traffic. Now here she was, wearing a pink dress, her hair in a ponytail, looking more like a schoolgirl than a teacher. He felt an inadvertent ripple of discomfort with her looking so prim and innocent when he’d had other ideas.

  Once in the room, however, she undid her hair and came to him, laughing and fervent, once more the vixen. He started to undo the buttons of her dress, but overcome by desire, gave up and simply lifted her skirt. She seemed no less impatient, kicking off her panties and coaxing him into her.

  She folded herself around him like a silken pretzel, wrapping her legs around his back, calves caressing his spine, her chest rising up to him. Although he was careful not to hurt her, she seemed to luxuriate in these convoluted postures, her eyes closing indolently with her moans.

  “I feel I exist to excite you,” she murmured, caressing the back of his head as if he were a prized lion, smoothing away the tension from his day, preparing him for love. She stroked his back, massaging his neck and shoulders as if he were an athlete whose muscles needed reconditioning.

  It seemed important to her that he felt loved. She paid careful attention to the kinds of foods he liked when selecting a restaurant, to the mood he was in when recommending a wine. In truth, he never expected to be treated as this special by a woman. Conflicted though he was, he recognized that he was more than lucky. He was downright blessed.

  Later, while Belinda lay in bed watching television, he went into the bathroom.

  “Damn!” he called out.

  “What?”

  “A condom. Someone else’s condom in the toilet.”

  She came into the bathroom, peeked from behind him, and started to giggle.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, flushing several times before the thing disappeared.

  Back in bed, he glanced around the room at the threadbare carpet and the tear in the curtain. The European-inspired decor now had considerably less appeal. He thought of Joy’s attention to hotel rooms whenever they traveled, how they almost always changed the room originally assigned them if Joy didn’t like it. He’d become almost as critical of the accommodations he stayed in now, convinced that something better could be had with a little needling of the concierge; yet, while he and Joy shared this fondness for ambiance and comfort, it seemed to hold no attraction for Belinda. He was beginning to understand that she not only seemed bent on making do with an unsavory room—she liked it for that very reason.

  Back in bed, he pulled hard on the starched white sheet to get it above his chest, smoothing it over the bedspread as far as he could to ensure that none of the outer spread touched them.

  “How come it upset you so much to find that in the toilet?” Belinda asked with a grin, her black curls winding across his chest.

  He looked down to the part in her hair revealing her ivory scalp. He kissed her there, wiping away the thoughts of Joy. “Because it’s disgusting.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is.”

  She laughed. “Does it bother you that others come here for the same reason we do?”

  “Which is?”

  “To satisfy their sinful urges,” she said, a wicked look in her eye.

  “No, it doesn’t bother me that others come here to—share love.”

  “Then?”

  “I feel the place hasn’t been cleaned up well after its last tenants. That’s all.”

  “Is it?”

  “Sure.” He thought a moment. “How else did you think I meant it?”

  “Well, you might be feeling that this is a place where people come to fuck and that we’re just like them. Does that bother you?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “Just the unsanitary aspect of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “No guilt feelings or anything?”

  “Guilty is the last thing I feel with you, baby,” he said, but he knew that this was only partly true.

  She shrugged. “Each of us comes into the other’s life for a reason, Richard. The point is to make use of the experience, not try to figure out what the purpose of our having met is. Don’t make it a bigger deal than it is.”

  He held her, saying nothing. Being with her was a big deal. At least to him.

  “The Eastern belief is that nothing is permanent,” she went on. “We, and everything else, are changing all the time. What we have together today we may not have tomorrow. What you have with your wife today may change tomorrow. Have you ever thought of that? That you’ll leave me someday and have a satisfying marriage again with your wife? What if I were just meant to be a spark to reignite your marriage?”

  “A spark?” He looked at her in disbelief. “My relationship with you is more than a spark. It won’t just go away like that.” He was annoyed that Belinda had virtually summoned Joy into this hotel room. “And I don’t know what will happen with my wife in the future. Right now, we’re going nowhere. But let’s forget about that for now.”

  She sighed. “Some couples are meant to be together for the long haul. Others not.”

  A few minutes later she started to gnaw at his stomach playfully. “You’re squeamish, know that? About germs, I mean.”

  “Because other people’s germs disgust me?”

  “Because you grew up in Manhattan, not in Ohio like me. Germs should be second nature to you.”

  He suddenly grew defensive. “People catch lethal viruses. A friend of mine nearly died from one.”

  She seemed to consider this, then lifted herself up. “So, we’re not taking a shower later?”

  “No.”

  She giggled, then seeing he was serious, she frowned. “Richard.”

  “That shower stall could be deadly.”

  Showering together was one of their favorite things, their way of saying goodbye: lathering each other, kissing under the flowing water, slippery, sudsy shower sex. Sometimes it led them right back into bed, making her late for her bus.

  She moved to lie on the pillow rather than his chest. He pulled her back to him. “I want us to be smart, that’s all.”

  “You just haven’t been to some of the places I have,” she said. “Try peeing in the bushes in Pakistan. Our bus stopped outside Karachi once to let us have a pi
t stop. Women went one way and men another. I was crouching in my baggy tunic, so I was covered enough, but I heard one of the other women scream, and the next thing I knew a snake as thick as my ankle was slithering through my own legs. I was too scared to move, but I remember it had a streak of green at the end of its tail, and I was sure it would rear its head and bite me.”

  He squirmed at the image of the snake’s fangs in her flesh. “Was it poisonous?”

  “Most snakes there are.”

  “Christ. What if it had bitten you?”

  “It just slid on by. I guess it didn’t like me.”

  He turned to find her eyes bursting with mischief. Sometimes, even when he knew she was teasing, she scared him. That other life she’d led had plunged her into experiences he couldn’t even imagine and didn’t really want to know about.

  Several minutes later, he was back on top of her, going again where that fool snake had not.

  Afterward, Belinda laid several of the motel’s bath towels on the floor of the shower stall to completely cover the tile and any possible toxins.

  “There.” She nudged him under the water with her, bumping her soapy breasts against his chest, turning this way and that, all to show him what he would have missed had he not allowed himself the pleasure of a shower with her.

  He chuckled in spite of himself. He would remember, next time, to put flip-flops in his briefcase.

  10

  “You hardly ever talk about love,” he said to her one day.

  They were in bed in a hotel off Central Park, the Wainwright. His choice. Although not swanky, it was more refined than those she usually chose. It had Egyptian cotton robes and slippers in the bathrooms.

  She cocked her head. “I guess I don’t think about putting it into words.”

  “You hardly even say you love me.”

  She sat up and pulled back her dark hair as though to hear him better, a gesture he imagined her using to let her small pupils know she was paying full attention to them.