Rules Get Broken

by John Herbert

  “That’s great,” I said. “I mean it. That’s really cool. And I liked what you said about happiness not coming to you—that you have to go find it. A lot of truth in that.”

  Nancy didn’t reply. She just twirled her straw in her drink and smiled. Sadly, I thought.

  “I’m surprised you were free tonight,” I said after a few moments of silence.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I had intended my statement to be an indirect compliment, but something told me Nancy hadn’t taken it that way.

  “Well, you know. I called you Thursday afternoon, and this is a three-day weekend. I was just surprised you didn’t already have a date for tonight.”

  “Why would that have surprised you?”

  “I would have assumed you were involved with someone,” I answered, knowing that wasn’t the right thing to say either as soon as I said it.

  “Why?” Nancy asked.

  I chuckled, realizing I was getting in deeper with every word, and tried to figure out how to answer her without making things worse again.

  “You’re a very attractive young woman,” I said, “and I would have thought there was someone special in your life.”

  “Well, there isn’t,” Nancy replied flatly.

  “Kind of between involvements?”

  “No. Not between involvements. More like I’ve never been involved. With anyone. Not seriously, at least.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. Every guy I’ve ever gone out with turned out to be a jerk before the evening was over. So I haven’t had many opportunities to go out with someone more than once. Which means you’re talking to someone who’s never had a serious relationship with anyone and who, truth be known, has no experience with men whatsoever.”

  By the time Nancy had finished talking, she was almost whispering. She took another sip of her drink and looked over at me. “I don’t believe I just told you that,” she said shaking her head in embarrassment.

  “Me neither,” I replied.

  We sat quietly for several seconds, both of us looking into our drinks, each of us wondering whether we should continue this line of conversation or drop it entirely. But before either of us could make up our minds, our waiter appeared to take our order for dinner.

  We talked through our appetizers, our entrees and over espressos until Caminari’s was empty, and it was time to take Nancy home. I asked for our check, and Nancy went to the ladies’ room. While I waited for her, I found myself thinking about how surreal the evening had been. I felt married, but I wasn’t. I had little kids to take care of, and I wanted to be home with them, but I wasn’t. In one sense, I didn’t want to be here at all, but I was. I couldn’t deny the evening had been fun, but it had been wrong. Waiting for Nancy to come back to the table, I felt like I was seeing another woman. Like I was cheating on my wife. I felt guilty about that and guilty at the thought of how much I had enjoyed talking to Nancy and listening to her—guilty at the thought of how I had enjoyed being able to forget, if only for a few hours, what my life had become.

  Fifty-Five

  We left Caminari’s at nine forty-five. Hardly anyone else was on the road in spite of the relatively early hour, which made the ride back to Nancy’s apartment strangely peaceful. Streetlights in this area were few and far between, usually appearing only at the occasional intersection, so most of the time we sat in darkness except for the light from the dashboard. Again, the interior of the car was filled with the smell of Nancy—the smell of soap and shampoo and perfume. She smelled wonderful. Intoxicating.

  We were on a particularly dark stretch of road, one without any streetlights for over a mile, when I reached across the seat and took Nancy’s hand. I had only intended to hold her hand, but as soon as I felt the warmth and softness of her skin, the need to be more intimate with her became irresistible. I could not sit in the dark with her like that, feeling her presence next to me, and not do something more. So without thinking I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the tips of each of her fingers. Then I parted my lips and ran my tongue first around the tips of her fingers, then down the sides of her fingers and finally down to the web of skin between her fingers. I felt her body stiffen, and I felt her eyes on me. But she didn’t pull back her hand, and I kept running my tongue up and down and between her fingers while I stared at the road ahead. As we approached a streetlight, I dried her fingers with a few kisses and brought her hand back down to the seat beside me.

  Nancy stared at me as pale yellow light momentarily filled the interior of the car. “Well,” she said. “That was quite something. Although I’m not sure what it was.”

  I glanced over at her in the fading light of the street lamp, now behind us. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

  “No. No. That’s…okay. I’ve just…never had that done to me before.”

  I looked over at her again, but now I could barely see her in the dark. “Funny thing is,” I admitted, “I’ve never done that to anyone before.”

  Nancy said nothing, but she pulled her hand away, not abruptly but purposefully, and she turned to look at the road in front of us.

  The lights of Northern Boulevard were just ahead. A right on Northern Boulevard and we’d be at Nancy’s apartment in a few minutes.

  Fifty-Six

  I turned onto Nancy’s street, and just as I had done earlier in the evening, pulled into her landlord’s driveway so I could turn the car around and park in front of the house. I stopped a few feet behind Nancy’s car and turned off the ignition.

  “Can I buy you a drink before you go home?” Nancy asked.

  “Sure,” I replied, surprised by the offer but pleased at the thought. “I’d like that.”

  I reached into the back seat to retrieve my jacket, got out of the car and joined Nancy on the sidewalk. But as I turned in the direction of her apartment, I saw that she was about to head down the street. I stopped, confused.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “I thought you were going to buy me a drink.”

  “I am.”

  “Why are you walking down the street then?” I asked.

  Now Nancy was confused. “Because Ricky’s is down the street. On Roslyn Road.”

  “Ricky’s?”

  “Yes, Ricky’s. The restaurant at the end of the street. You can see it from here. I thought we’d have a drink there.”

  “So you were really going to buy me a drink.”

  “Of course I was. What did you think I meant?”

  “I thought you were going to have me in for a drink. In your apartment.”

  “Oh no,” Nancy said, without hesitation and with a gentle shake of her head. “I didn’t mean I was inviting you back to my apartment for a drink. I meant that I wanted to buy you a drink. As in pay for it. At Ricky’s.”

  “Ahh,” I replied, embarrassed at the misunderstanding and suddenly feeling very clumsy. “I didn’t realize that was what you meant. I’m sorry.”

  A moment of silence in the dark.

  “Look, Ricky’s is fine,” I assured her, regaining my composure. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  But Nancy didn’t move, uncertain as to what to do. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, looking first down the street in the direction of Ricky’s and then up at the darkened second floor windows of her landlord’s house. “It’s silly to go there, I guess. I mean, we’re here, so maybe you should come in.”

  “We can go to Ricky’s if that’s what you’d like.”

  “No. Really. Come in. Just ignore the mess. I’m still unpacking and trying to get organized.”

  “I promise I won’t look.”

  Nancy gave me a quick smile and started up the walk to her apartment door. She had forgotten to leave the outside light on when she left the apartment, so the side yard between her landlord’s house and the house next door was in almost total darkness. As a result, we couldn’t see the walkway as we walked down the side of the house but rather had to
feel for the pavement through our shoes—a soft step meant we were off the walk and on the grass.

  “Here we are,” she announced, and she opened the screen door.

  I stood close behind her and held the screen door open as she rummaged through her pocketbook looking for her keys. The neighborhood was absolutely quiet—the only sound a slight rustling of leaves in the branches above us—and the quiet allowed me to think about how erotic, how illicit, how wrong it felt to be standing in the dark with this woman, waiting to be let into her apartment.

  But my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Nancy’s key going into the lock and by the sound of the lock turning open. I stepped inside and followed Nancy down a short hall. We turned into an eat-in kitchen, walked through another short hall past a bathroom and a closet and into a large wood-paneled living room, lit for the moment only by the light from the kitchen.

  I stopped a few steps into the living room and surveyed the room in front of me. To the right of the doorway was a large overstuffed armchair, and against the right-hand wall was a small shelf system for Nancy’s stereo and records. Directly ahead was a large convertible sofa with an end table and lamp at either end and a cocktail table in front. To the left of the sofa a pair of sliding glass doors opened onto a patio and the back yard. In front of the sliding doors were potted plants of all different sizes and types, some on the floor, some on plant stands, others on folding snack tables. Against the wall to the left was a round dining table with four chairs. All in all, Nancy’s apartment was simple, but warm and inviting. And there was no mess to forgive. Everything was in perfect order. Somehow I was not surprised.

  Nancy switched on each of the end table lamps and pulled the drapes across the sliding glass doors. Then she turned to me and asked what I’d like to drink.

  “What do you have?” I asked.

  “Not a lot. White wine, beer, gin, vodka—I think—and a little brandy. Although I don’t know how good the brandy is. But that’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll take vodka. With lots of ice, and a twist of lemon if you have it.”

  “Vodka with ice and lemon,” Nancy repeated as she walked past me and over to the closet next to the bathroom. She pulled out a bottle of Smirnoff. “Is this okay?” she asked, holding the bottle up for me to see.

  “That’s fine,” I replied, and I sat down on the sofa to wait for her.

  She came back a few minutes later with a glass of white wine in one hand and a twelve-ounce highball glass in the other, filled to the top with ice cubes and vodka. She sat down on the sofa—close enough to show she felt comfortable with me, yet far enough away to be proper.

  I touched my glass to hers. “Again, thank you for joining me tonight,” I said, looking into those green eyes.

  “And again, you’re welcome,” Nancy said, returning my look for only a second before turning away.

  I took a sip of my drink and almost gagged. As I leaned forward to put my glass on the cocktail table, I saw the cause of the problem. Instead of using a twist of lemon skin, Nancy had cut a large wedge of lemon and squeezed it into the vodka and had then dropped the crushed wedge into the glass. The combination of lemon juice and vodka was ghastly and made the drink almost undrinkable.

  “Is something wrong with your drink?” Nancy asked, noticing the look on my face.

  “No. Not at all,” I replied, too quickly. “It’s fine.”

  “It isn’t,” she pressed. “I can tell something’s wrong with it. You looked like you were going to choke.” She paused. “Tell me what I did wrong. I’ve never made a drink like that, and I’ll never learn how unless you tell me what’s wrong with this one.”

  I couldn’t believe she was so concerned about my drink, but she was. So in spite of not wanting to make a big deal of it, I did as she asked. “Well, first, the next time someone asks for something on the rocks,” I started, “give them their drink in a rocks glass. You know, the short, stubby ones. Not a tall one like this. And only give them an ounce and a half or two ounces. I mean…I’ll never be able to finish all this. And, second, a twist of lemon means you peel off a strip of the lemon’s skin, just the skin, and then you give it a twist before you put it in the glass. That way you get just a hint of lemon and not lots of lemon juice.”

  She listened attentively to what I was saying, but the second I stopped, she was off the sofa and reaching for my glass. “Let me make you another drink,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “No. This is fine. Really. Sit. Besides,” I said, holding up the glass and seeing what must have been seven ounces of vodka, “there’s too much here to waste.”

  She stood in front of me for several seconds, seeming to debate whether she should wrestle the glass out of my hand, and then she sat down with a sigh. “Next time I’ll do it right,” she announced softly.

  “Can there be a ‘next time’?” I asked.

  She looked at me, looked away, then turned back to me. “If you want…yes.”

  I smiled at her and took her hand. I ran my thumb over the back of her hand, feeling her skin, her bones, her sinews. Seconds passed. Neither of us spoke.

  “Will you go back to your house soon,” Nancy asked, “or will you move in with your parents?”

  “I won’t move in with my parents,” I said pensively, watching my thumb go back and forth over her hand. “I’ll go back to my house. Sometime within the next few weeks, I guess.”

  “What’ll you do about your children? You know, in terms of child care while you’re at work?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll hire a housekeeper or a full-time babysitter or something. But right now…I just don’t know.”

  Nancy looked at me sadly for several moments before she spoke again. “I can’t stop thinking about your kids,” she said. “Especially Jennie. She’s so little, and yet she’s old enough to know what’s happened. Just not old enough to know why.” She shook her head slowly. “Not that anyone knows why, I guess,” she added.

  I nodded in agreement, but I didn’t respond. I knew if I did, the dark thoughts that had been my constant companions for the past two weeks, that had been just outside the edges of my mind tonight, would come rushing in, and I’d lose control. So I said nothing and tried to keep those terrible thoughts at bay, at least for a little while longer.

  Nancy continued to look at me, staring intently into my eyes. I tried to hold her gaze, but I couldn’t. Instead I looked at her hair, her forehead, her eyebrows, those deep green eyes, her mouth, her neck, her shoulders. And then without any forethought, without any preamble, I heard myself saying, “May I kiss you?”

  Nancy smiled for the first time in several minutes. Her smile was a nervous smile, an uncertain smile, but I took the smile as a yes.

  She was sitting at an angle to me, one leg up on the sofa curled under the other. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder to bring her closer to me. Ever so gently. My fingertips felt the warmth of the exposed skin of her arm. I leaned forward and downward to her upraised face. Her eyes were already closed, her lips barely together.

  We kissed. An ever so soft, barely touching kind of a kiss. Just enough to let me feel the velvet touch of her lips and the heat of her breath, tinged with Chardonnay.

  I drew back, but Nancy’s eyes were still closed. I kissed her again, this time harder, feeling her lips give way to mine, feeling them part slightly more. We kissed again and again and again. Each time her smell, her warmth, her softness enveloped me.

  I slid closer to her, then next to her, then tight against her. I kissed her ear, then the side of her neck, then her throat. Too low. Too soon, I thought. I kissed the side of her neck again and then her throat, again too low, far too low.

  “God, you taste good,” I whispered. I stopped kissing her and looked at her face. I could feel the flush on my cheeks and hands. She opened her eyes and gave me a very tentative smile.

  “May I take off your dress?” I asked in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. I hadn’t thought about what I was
saying. I just said it because it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to ask. And because at that moment, more than anything, I wanted to pull down the zipper of her dress and watch it fall to the floor.

  Nancy sat back and slowly, deliberately, pushed herself away from me and out of my arms. She gave a nervous laugh and looked at me. “I don’t think so,” she replied, pulling the left shoulder of her dress back up where it belonged.

  I muttered an apology and sat back, trying to calm down, knowing I shouldn’t have asked, yet not at all sorry I had. I had never done that before in all my years of dating. I had never been so bold, so forthright. I had simply never had the nerve. So what had made me behave like this tonight with Nancy, so easily, so naturally, so quickly? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I knew was that the dark thoughts were far away.

  Nancy looked at her watch. “You should go home,” she said softly. “It’s late.”

  It was almost midnight. Not late, really, but given what had just happened, time to go. “You’re right,” I agreed. “I should be getting home.”

  “I hope I didn’t upset you,” I said as we walked towards the kitchen. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve never done that before either. I mean, never so bluntly. So quickly. With someone I’ve only just met.”

  Nancy looked up at me in the nicest, softest way. “It’s okay. I’m not upset.” She paused. “I just kept my dress on.”

  “Yeah, you did, damn it,” I said with a laugh.

  Nancy laughed too, a genuine, comfortable laugh, and led the way down the hall. When we reached the door, she turned on the porch light and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Get home safely. And thank you for a wonderful evening. I enjoyed being with you.”

  “You’re welcome. And thank you. Again.”