Two if by Sea

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  “There hasn’t been any this yet. But more to the point, Claudia, you’re standing naked in the hall. Come in here.” Clutching the robe, she reached behind her and brought out a bottle of wine that had been sitting on the floor.

  “This was for celebration. For when Pro covered himself in glory.” Tears shimmered in Claudia’s eyes.

  “Do you usually bring condoms for celebration, too? Like, to a dinner party?” His was a dumb joke. But she smiled.

  “Well, you don’t know how crazy dinner parties get in Madison. La vida loca.” She said, “Didn’t you think of me this way?”

  Frank stopped to consider. “Yes. No. Of course. You’re gorgeous. But I never thought of us having sex. Correction. Of me having sex. With anybody. Except maybe myself.”

  “You’re a young man.”

  “Not since last Christmas.”

  Claudia got up and searched for the long ends of the robe belt, but didn’t tie it.

  “Don’t feel you’ve made yourself foolish,” Frank said. “For coming here.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I hope you can forgive me bringing up Natalie. You’re like her. You’re like her and you would have liked her. She was a hardheaded doctor.”

  “Do you want some wine?” Claudia asked. Frank said he did, and Claudia, still unsettlingly half clothed, found round hotel tumblers, expertly popped the cork, and poured the champagne. Frank noted approvingly that it was Roederer, which Natalie, who liked her wine, insisted on for their wedding. “How am I like her?”

  “Natalie was athletic. She was bold, the way you’re bold. She fancied herself a drinker but got drunk quickly.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And me.”

  Claudia drained her glass and set it down. “I am tired. I will return to my maiden’s bed for a few hours before I go to the clinic and see about Prospero. No hard feelings.”

  “None.”

  A knock came at the door. “Mike and Minky’s,” said a voice.

  “Stripper?” Claudia asked.

  “Worse. Ladies’ clothing.” Motioning for quiet, Frank answered, and, standing in the doorway, chose one of two boxes proffered. He said, “I paid on the phone.”

  Claudia wanted to see what was in the box, but Frank demurred. “Come on!” she said. “Is it drugs?”

  He opened the box to reveal a long ocean-gray cashmere sweater with the hint of a rolled collar. Confused, Claudia said, “I don’t . . . Is it yours?”

  “For my mom. There’s this boutique here, called Mike and Minky’s. Hope loves the clothes because they’re usually from Italy. So I bring her something.”

  “Just from here? Or anyplace you go?”

  “I guess anyplace,” Frank said. “I got used to getting her things from here when I lived here. Christmas, Mother’s Day, just for nothing, because she works so hard. I know. A bit much.” Frank glanced down, abashed.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. That’s sweet. And in good taste.”

  She got up to leave, and as she did, Frank’s longing for her scent, like oranges and cloves, as well as the delights he knew could come, nearly strangled him. At the last moment, he said, more in a growl than he meant, “Look, Claudia, please stay. I’m some kind of idiot. Of course I want you. I have a bum leg, so I can’t carry you to this bed, which they seem to have short-sheeted, but if you come over here, I’ll try to make us both happy.”

  So she let the robe drop, and lay down, stretching her arms up over her head to pull his head to her. Her mouth tasted of the wine, and that same tincture of cloves he’d smelled. In his arms, Claudia, tall and assured, felt smaller, her rib cage bowed, as some people’s were, and her legs frankly thin, topped by those overdeveloped thighs, like renderings of Demeter. He lifted her breasts, gently rolling the nipples between his hands, which, he now noticed, were as hard as hooves. His mouth must have been soft, for when he suckled her, he heard Claudia first sigh, then draw in her breath sharply.

  “Let me,” she said. She helped him out of his sweats, and his shirt, and they faced each other naked. “We’ve never kissed before. And here we are.”

  “I’m shy,” he said. “Everybody says you feel like a kid. It’s a cliché, but you really do.”

  “Oh, me, too. I wish we still had clothes on and were stuck on the seat of the truck. Hurry up and kiss me.”

  Frank kissed her and she put the hook of her smooth calf around his leg. No matter what else he was doing—anywhere and anytime, for these past months—whatever else he was concentrating on, Ian was there, too, present as another personality. Claudia’s touch forced even Ian out of his mind. He didn’t want to explode like an eighteen-year-old, so he tried to think of Prospero and the likely laminitis that would ensue if they could heal the break . . . When he attempted to slide down Claudia’s belly to taste her, she said, “No, no. Can’t do that. I’m prissy. That’s for later. For next time.”

  He felt the same way.

  “Is there something we can do that you do like?” he asked, suppressing a gasp. Her thumbs were stroking his hipbones, her strong hands massaging his cock as though it were a newborn rabbit, a touch so delicate and firm he wanted her to stop, go faster, maintain that touch forever.

  “Well, I ride horses,” she said finally.

  Frank pulled Claudia astride him, and she descended with aching deliberation. She said, “Be slow.” Be slow? he thought. “It’s been a while for me, too,” she explained. “It’s not like hospital TV shows. We’re not screwing away in abandoned supply closets.” Frank supported her with his hands around her waist, and she with her hands on his shoulders, and, wanting to push deep into her but obliged to wait, he followed her into a shy rhythm that had his hairline beaded in sweat. He could feel Claudia gathering, shuddering. “Wait,” she said. “Wait. Wait. I forgot the condom. I have to get it.” Frank wanted to murder the inventor of prophylactics. Claudia slipped off him, leaving him awkward and exposed. He quickly used his toes to shed his socks; what a rube. Then she was back, and the thing was on and the transient awful foreignness quickly swallowed by her heat. She was down all along his length, her breast brushing his mouth, her hands urging him deeper.

  “Oh please, please,” he said. “Oh, Claudia. How did we get in this position?”

  “In the world or this bed?”

  “In the world.”

  “Oh, just shut up for now. Make me come a hundred times, okay?”

  “Not on this ride,” Frank said, breathless. “I don’t think I’m in for endurance.”

  He rolled her over onto her back and sucked in his breath as she raised her legs to clamp his waist with her thighs. “Did I hurt you . . . ?”

  “One of the uncounted benefits of riding is a strong seat. That was just amazement.”

  Then there was a soft rap at the door.

  “Ignore it,” Claudia said. “This is too sweet. Just be here with me now. Even if it’s the fire department.”

  Frank called, “Come back later!”

  “’S Pat!” a voice called. “I need you now, Frank.”

  “I’m getting out of the, uh, shower. I’ll come right over.”

  “Wait here,” Patrick said, and they heard him sit down, hard.

  Frank groaned. They stopped.

  “He won’t leave.”

  “And he won’t notice, the shape he’s in. But I will.”

  “Okay,” Frank said, moving slowly, feeling way too familiar for how unfamiliar all this was. Claudia put her hand over his mouth and, pulling a corner of the pillow across her own mouth, she whimpered out as she clasped Frank to her, bore down hard on his shoulders, and with her orgasm, forced him to give up his own. For a moment, Frank thought of Glory Bee in flight over a triple combination. He hadn’t jumped a horse since the time that Tarmac, his Morgan, gathered himself and took a five-rail fence when they were chasing down a couple of fire starters in a forest preserve. It had only happened a single time, but the sensation was the way he imagined flying when he dreamed of fly
ing—one animal, aloft in a soundless tranquility, like the line from the Koran his father had scrawled once on a desk blotter, “And thou shalt fly without wings, and conquer without sword.”

  That was like this.

  “Well, thanks. What if I had let you leave? God, I’m glad I didn’t let you leave, Claudia,” Frank said.

  “Speaking of God, big points from me for not calling out to God while we were having sex. I hate that,” Claudia whispered, stifling giggles as she kicked the robe under the bed and ran for the bathroom. Frank was shocked at the realization that he hadn’t considered her having sex with anyone else, ever. Now Claudia was inventorying him against a phalanx of Nordic Ivy League rowers who supplicated Jesus.

  He remembered Patrick.

  If there really was a God, Patrick would be passed out on the floor. But, although he fell into the room when Frank opened the door, Patrick was wide awake.

  “And you slept all this while,” Patrick said.

  “I didn’t sleep the whole time. But I don’t like to watch a competition. It gets on my nerves.”

  “So you wouldn’t know.”

  “That . . .”

  “She’s fifth in the field, Frank, going into tomorrow! Her a filly, well, not a filly, but a young mare, and half the age of most, and a tenth of the training. She’s like Red Rum, or Milton, like your Ruffian . . . She could be better than all of them . . .”

  “That’s down to you, Patrick.”

  “That’s down to the horse.” He turned to leave. “I just wanted you to know. I have to get my sleep. I need sleep.”

  “You need to lay off the sauce is what you need.”

  “I had a drink.”

  “Or six.”

  “Three, on my mother’s name.”

  “Do you have a mother, Patrick?”

  “I do not, not since a child. But I have a father, the dirtiest old fir in Sligo. And a sister in Sligo, God love her, called Pen.”

  “You don’t talk about her.”

  “She’s my twin,” Patrick said, as if that explained it. “She’s got three little ones and her husband a bastard after my own da.”

  “Of course,” Frank said, hearing water run in the bathroom and elaborately glancing out into the hall, so that it seemed the water was coming from another room, while Patrick followed his gaze. “I’ll come tomorrow. I wasn’t really asleep. I did some reading.”

  “Did she tell you?”

  “Claudia? Yes.”

  “At least Prospero didn’t go ahead and try to do the round.”

  Lowering his voice, in clear understanding that Patrick would be as doleful as possible about Prospero’s chances, particularly in his cups, Frank asked, “How bad did it look?”

  “He wasn’t even lame. If it’s a fracture higher up and not clean through, he could live well. I’ve seen horses healed carry the blind. Children.”

  Nodding, Frank said, “You did well. Exceptionally well, Pat.”

  “Thank you, guv.”

  Frank had no sooner closed the door than Claudia emerged, stereotypical as a college girl in Frank’s shirt. But the door hadn’t latched and Patrick was in again, and already saying, “I should sleep. But first, I need to go back over and see to Glory Bee, give her a rubdown, unless you want to. Claudia. Hello there.”

  “Hello, Patrick. Uh, hi. I was just stopping by. You’ll excuse me. I have to get the rental car now. It should be here by now.”

  “It’s after ten,” Frank said.

  “I want to go look after Pro.”

  “You said you’d go in the morning.”

  “You wouldn’t, and neither would I.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  With a modest maidenly crouch, Claudia retrieved and slipped into her robe.

  “You can’t,” she said. “Your horse could be jumping for a ribbon tomorrow.”

  “She is right, Frank,” said Patrick. “Hello, Claudia.”

  “You said that, Patrick.”

  “It’s a four-hour drive. I went to school in Champaign,” Frank said. “Patrick, I’ll go over and see to Glory Bee. You get some sleep. Claudia, are you sure you don’t want me to come?”

  “I’m a very good driver.” Claudia said to Patrick, “You look better than when I saw you last. You’re standing up.” Patrick glanced at his black boots. “I’ll leave my suitcase with you, Frank, and just take my bag with a couple of things. I don’t know for sure how long I’ll be gone. It depends on Pro’s . . . hopes.” Claudia made a wide loop around Patrick and left.

  Desperate for a topic, Frank said then, “Why was she fifth? Glory Bee? Why wasn’t she out of it altogether? Or first?”

  Fortunately, spirits had loosened Patrick’s tongue and he gave what amounted, for him, to a valedictory speech.

  “She knocked out a pole. It was a clear round otherwise. I didn’t drive her as fast as I could have. I didn’t know how much of a chance I could take. I don’t like to think of getting hurt either. The water . . . she didn’t even notice it. She could have done it again twice, and half again as fast. Horse like that . . . Frank, she could do anything.”

  “Don’t bitch it,” Frank said, an old sliver of his father’s superstition pinning him between the shoulder blades. He didn’t know anyone who worked with horses who wasn’t deeply superstitious, whatever other belief system or lack of it went on in that person’s life.

  “Wise,” Patrick said, as if insanity-as-gospel meant perfect sense.

  A few minutes after Patrick left, there was another knock. Frank had just struggled into his jeans and shirt. Claudia was back, her face washed clean, wearing jeans and a denim jacket. Frank pulled her to him and kissed her throat, swiftly undoing her jeans and sliding her up onto the edge of the laminate bureau.

  “No time,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She hopped down and walked a few steps away.

  “I know,” Frank told her. “I have to see to Glory Bee before she’s stiff anyhow. I’m sure Pat rubbed her down, but I’m not satisfied it was well enough.”

  Claudia said, “Sure. By the look of him at the Steel Pier, I would say you have cause to wonder.”

  Frank said, “What were you doing at the Steel Pier?”

  “Having a whiskey. Not like Patrick. Prospero was hurt and I couldn’t do anything for him, and it got to me. I was shaken.”

  “So you went in a bar and ordered a whiskey by yourself?”

  “Yes, Frank. Girls do. Would you have said this before tonight?”

  Frank told her, “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not a lady.”

  “I think you are.”

  “I’m not, though. I’m a jock. I’m a doc. I’m a jock doc.” Claudia crossed back to his side and stood on her toes to kiss him goodbye. Then, in an afterthought, she kicked off her pants, slipped up onto the long console, and, looking up at him from under her eyelids, offered him the condom packet while slowly opening her legs.

  “Not being a lady,” she said.

  “Not called for at a moment like this.” They did it clothed, standing there.

  Later Claudia said, “I didn’t mean to start a thing.”

  “Serves you right. Whiskey-swilling cowgirl.”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  Frank watched as Claudia made her way down the hall, wondering all the while why he didn’t just walk down with her, as an ordinary person should. He thought that the elevator had probably already come and gone when he called, “Wait! Claudia!”

  From a distance, he heard her call, “What?”

  “Come back here for a moment if you can?” She did, impatient, wary, her keys whirling on her finger. “Sit down for a moment.”

  “Frank, don’t get agitated. Don’t think I expect you to be my boyfriend now.”

  “That’s the problem, see.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I want you to expect that. I want you to hope for the best between us. Do you think that the best between us is only one night?” />
  “I’m okay if it is,” Claudia said, twirling her keys briskly.

  “But I’m not,” Frank said.

  Claudia let her keys go still and then said, “Oh.”

  “So what do you think the best between us can be?”

  “I guess I think it can be . . . I don’t know. The very best? Maybe you have nasty habits. Like you pick your teeth.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” she said. “Maybe if I did, I’d change.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to.”

  “I can be awful,” Claudia said. “I can be an awful, stuck-up, snobby know-it-all bitch!”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “No. It’s a description. I’m just telling you.”

  “Okay. I’m not afraid.”

  “And if you ever lie to me about anything, I’ll leave you. Even if it seems like a little nothing. Of course, you don’t have to tell me everything. But if it affects me, us, there can be no secrets.”

  Oh, Frank thought, oh no.

  “Well,” he said, making his slow way from one supercharged precipice to the next, even higher, willing himself to keep going and not to look down, aware that he’d never before been the one who did all the talking—that every woman who came before, including Natalie, had done all that, for both of them. “I don’t know how this story goes. I’m not saying that we’re in love. What I’m saying is, I’m a sentimental guy.”

  Claudia came into Frank’s arms. He held her, and kissed the top of her head.

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Frank swung into the truck and zipped over to the coliseum barn, where he showed a couple of tiers of security his credentials. Considering the millions of dollars in horseflesh sleeping or rustling back there, he appreciated more than one checkpoint. He was surprised to see a girl who looked to be twelve or thirteen outside Glory Bee’s box stall.

  “Hey!” he called. “That’s my horse.”

  Smoothly, the young woman—the closer he got, the more she looked like a young woman and less like a child, although she was no taller than five-feet-nothing at the most—held out her hand.