by Amy Lapwing
He smiled at what he took to be a pet name. “You know, we haven’t been boss and bossee for a while now. I was just wondering—” He stopped by the entrance to the Modern Languages building. “Let’s sit down.” They sat on a wooden bench to the side. “I’ve been thinking, I would like to see us take our relationship a little further.”
She folded her hands in her lap.
“I know you’re a reserved girl, a reserved person, and you don’t plunge into things. We’ve been going together for some months now and I think we’re getting along pretty well, don’t you?”
Justina let out a breath on which floated her misgiving. Had there ever been a denser guy? Dense but earnest. Oh, James was so earnest. Sometimes it drove her up the wall, particularly when he wanted her to share his amazement at something dumb, like the people taking him for a modern Christ. Give me a break! They just were wondering what this crazy American was going to do to them and what it would take to get him to go away. It occurred to her she should get James to go away, but she knew it would require an emotional scene, and that was the last thing she wanted. She was very awkward at such things, she knew. It would be easier to just go on as his pal, letting him think he was a suitor. But now, Justina, she heard her mother saying, would that be nice?
A glance at his expression, his eyes on her, his almost voluptuous lips pursed, reminded her of his question. “I guess so, for a couple of nerds.”
He laughed. “I simply want to let you know that I want to include you more in my life. We’ve been doing things together, work-type things, you know, but there’s more to me than my interests in films and lectures and libraries.”
And I bet I’m up there, on the list. An interesting girl.
“I bet you didn’t know I show dogs, for instance,” he continued.
Somebody somewhere would be thrilled to hear this. There’s a girl sitting out there listening to some other guy tell her he flies model airplanes when what she really wants is to hear James tell her about his Clumber Spaniels.
“And I role-play in medieval festivals. And I like photography. And I play guitar. And I write songs.”
Do I feel a song coming on?
“I’d like to play you some of my songs. One, in particular.”
Firing neurons in the love lobe of the brain would be setting off sparks in that other girl right now, if she were here. Wait a minute, James, I’m just the stand-in, let me get the real actress, the girl born to play this role, I don’t even have a script.
He was waiting for her response, certain that he was charming her, carrying their relationship to a deeper level by the simple admission that she had brought him his muse. She was wondering what he saw in her that created this effect in him. He must be seeing something, some idea of love that if she did not encourage, she in any event did not contradict.
“Can I do that, Justina? Can I sing for you?”
“What a romantic thing to say.”
He beamed. “I think I’m a romantic man.”
I’m looking worried, James, look at me, carefully, don’t you see it? This is what a worried look looks like.
“School hasn’t started yet. You want to come to my place tonight?” he continued. “I’ll cook us coq au vin blanc. It’s really good.”
She tried to deepen her look of misgiving.
“Come on, say yes,” persisted the romantic man, “it’s easy. I promise I won’t keep you out late.”
She knew she should say no and oh, by the way, let’s not do things together anymore, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Instead she said, “Okay.”
The man was ecstatic, his blue eyes blazing as they say in those novels. They set a time and he bounced away to class.
I’m hopeless, I’m totally hopeless. She went inside to get to work on her course planning. She drew up a rough outline of topics for the elementary French courses, unable to summon enthusiasm for daily lesson plans. She reviewed her notes for the first few lectures in Survey, then turned with pleasure to the new course she was doing in Old French literature, Marie de France through Chrétien de Troyes. She needed to mix lectures on the language with background on the time, and then of course focus on the readings.
‘Salzburg Sweetheart!’
Was that for real? Was he just talking, or was he trying to get to me? And Louisiana, who was she? ‘Delightful!’
She turned again to her notes on Arthurian legend, a course in itself, but she would do just a brief run-through. Of all the things he could have talked about, why had he done a run-through of his past affairs? Casual ones, at that. He knew she was listening, that was why. The prick!
“Allez! C’est la récrée!” Pascale stood in her doorway. “Let’s go for ice cream, I hate to pig out alone.”
Justina looked up, her irritation at her thoughts still showing.
“Come on! You can run it off later. What’s the matter?” Pascale sat in front of her.
“Did he really have a woman in Salzburg?”
“Nom de Dieu! Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“Why was he talking about that? He never mentioned having a woman in every port before. He was, like, Joe Monk, most of the time, is what he told me.”
“I don’t know why it should matter to you. Really, Justina, I’m getting tired of interpreting your love affair for you. You need to think for yourself.”
“He was trying to piss me off, Pascale. It sucks! I’ve never seen this side of him.”
“You two are driving me crazy. You’re driving each other crazy. You need to, I don’t know, go fuck somebody or something. Well? It might be instructive.”
“Why do I think we’ve had this conversation before?” complained Justina.
“Because we have! You didn’t understand me then and you still don’t. If you’re not being hopeless, Justina, you’re being freaking dim.”
“Come on, let’s go get some ice cream.”
That evening she followed James in her car to his apartment. It was just on the other side of campus, in a cluster of three colonial buildings facing each other around a tiny common. He brought her to his room, a single, they were all singles, it was housing for grad students, and she helped him carry provisions from his refrigerator to the kitchen on his floor. He sat her down in a chair and proceeded to try to do all the cooking alone, relenting and allowing her to chop the scallions and parsley when he found himself getting behind in the sautéing. It was smelling really good after about forty-five minutes, so he tested it, let it cook another fifteen, and pronounced it done, and she helped him carry it back to his room. They quickly laid the desk with real cloth placemats and napkins and everything. He lit candles and asked her to sit in the desk chair while he pulled up the armchair and sat on the other side. They tasted it, James scowled and wailed about having forgotten the basil.
“It’s delicious, really, you don’t miss it,” she said.
“Thanks. You’re sweet.” They ate in silence a few moments. He had become shy. She smiled to him and he began talking again.
“I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve had you over, we’ve been dating all summer.”
“It’s not exactly ‘dating,’ is it?”
“Doing things together, I meant. Oh, geez!” He got up and went to the refrigerator. “I almost forgot. I hope you like Chenin Blanc.” He opened the bottle of wine, got down a couple of mugs and poured. “Pour Mademoiselle.” He gave her a mug with a picture of a Labrador Retriever on it and sat back down with the other. “Santé!” He held up his mug for a clunk, and they sipped. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get you drunk.” He smiled rakishly, for James. Embarrassed for him, she looked away.
After dinner he had her sit in the armchair and he sat on the bed with his guitar. He sang in a thin, nasal tenor some French folk songs, including the children’s song “Il était une bergère,” all of whose verses he knew. She asked if he knew “Trois jeunes tambours,” and he sang that, too, all verses. She repeated the ones she did not know, to
learn them. She asked if he would sing them to her French One and Two courses, and he was thrilled.
“They say if you can talk baby-talk in a language, you’re really fluent,” he said.
“I have a ways to go, then.”
“Oh, no, you’re fluent!”
“Not quite.”
He strummed chords meditatively and hummed, then glanced at her solemnly. He sang, watching his hands.
“I went down to the dock, I saw her there,
rocking gently on the waves;
A whole world called ‘cross the water somewhere;
I made her ready and we cast away,
I rowed to help her little sail,
she was just a dinghy, a dinghy upon deep waters.”
He dared to look up as he played the bridge and he saw her watching him.
“The day was waning, her tired sail sagged;
we hadn’t come far, I looked ahead:
No light from a far shore, no foreign flag,
but just a buoy, all painted red,
bobbing in the current, warning me,
‘She’s just a dingy, a dinghy upon deep waters.’”
His expression turned pleading and he began the next verse. His playing was loud and ringing; he did not look at her.
“I came about, through the lacy foam,
the happy dock winked in the black,
her sail filled and we headed home.
Out and back, we went out and back
and I never saw the other side;
I sailed her home, my dinghy upon deep waters.”
He played the denouement. Sitting there small and fragile, he awaited her response.
She went to sit beside him on the bed. “That was beautiful.”
He leaned the guitar against the bed and took her hands. “I wrote it for you.”
“I know.” He was not a fool, she had treated him like one, but she had been wrong. She kissed him. He recovered quickly from his surprise and put everything he had into that kiss, a year’s quiet yearning. He caressed her cheek. “Justina! Oh, Justina! You take my breath away!”
“You’re so sweet,” she said. She stood up and wandered to his bookcase, looking for something to do. He followed her.
“I don’t want to go too fast, Justina. I can tell you don’t want to, either.” She smiled at him, wanting to be nice to him. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested. “I think we’d better get out of here.”
They walked around the dark campus, a cool breeze finding its way through the moist air. James started out holding her hand; he took her waist when he sensed he could. She was receptive to him. He marveled that his song had wrought this change in her: music was magical! he exclaimed to himself. They came back to his building and she said she had better be going. He kissed her as she leaned against her car.
“I wish I had thought of this a long time ago,” he murmured.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“I thought so.” He kissed her again and said goodnight and she drove home.
The cheerful apartment still felt empty when Justina entered it. All year, her own spirit had been enough to animate it. But not now. As she lay in bed, she still felt the afterglow of James’ tenderness, and she knew she felt differently about him. But she still felt bigger than he, and she was afraid she had gone too far. She wondered how he would seem to her tomorrow; she hoped he would not be proprietary.
Holding hands with James in the lunch line, Justina looked anywhere but at him, his eyes big upon her. The window became the object of her study as she averted her eyes just in time to avoid catching Michael’s glance as he and Charles joined the line behind her. Pascale was insisting Michael sit with them, so he and Justina took up a familiar configuration, across and a few places down. James kept taking her hand, then letting go so she could eat her sandwich.
Justina was embarrassed to have James holding her hand so much, but then she remembered Salzburg and Louisiana, and stopped pulling her hand away. She wasn’t using James to make Michael jealous, she told herself, she just wanted him to know her life was going on, like his apparently was.
She fended James off till the weekend, no mid-week dating, she decreed. He had gotten into the bothersome habit of kissing her whenever he took leave of her, no matter where they were: in her office after dropping off her mail, in the lunchroom if they were not going to the same place after, in the library after simply running into her. Just quick kisses, but they said, “You belong to me.” She thought it would be mean to tell him to cut it out. She knew most people would be touched by so much attention. That she was not did not tell her the obvious, that she did not care for James; instead she thought she was being irritable and uncharitable and she told herself to shape up and relax and be nice. Besides, she wanted Michael to see the kisses, which was mean, but it was different, she told herself; he was asking for it, sleeping around so soon after telling her he would never get over her. She felt bigger than James and smaller than Michael; she had to be nice to James, and she could not help it if she was mean to Michael.
James invited her to his room again Saturday night to celebrate the end of the first week of classes. He cooked a vegetarian meal of lentils and potatoes and tomatoes. She teased him, calling it “girl food,” as Kim did, and he lectured her on the importance of limiting intake of animal flesh. “For longevity,” he said. “Every vegetarian meal you eat adds a day to your life.”
“So, vegetarians are immortal?”
“We’ll never know, because the rest of us’ll be dead.”
She snorted; he thought she laughed. After dinner he wanted to sing for her again, that had gone so well last time. He hoped they would get a little further than kissing this time, maybe they would actually discuss having sex. He gave her his photo album to look at while he cleaned up in the kitchen. After he went out she moved to the bed and spread the huge album open. He had obviously taken the photos, they were not like most people’s snapshots. Some were of people, but many were of objects in curious juxtaposition, a horse beneath a stop light in an empty intersection, an egg in a dirty ashtray. “Did you develop these yourself?” she asked when he came back in.
He stood still as a good pointer when he saw her sitting cross-legged on the bed. “The black and white ones, yeah. Color’s a little beyond me right now.” He came to sit beside her on the bed and pointed out the people in the pictures. “That’s my grandmother, and my mother and her sister and my cousin. They all have the same hair, isn’t that something?”
She tilted her head at the family resemblance and turned the page. He pointed out his father, his older brother and his wife, she was really nice, a great girl, his younger brother who was into snowboarding and not much else, his grandmother, again, and his great-grandmother, she must be ninety-two, no, ninety-three, and the first English Setter he ever had, she was called Cameo, she was a great bitch, and here was the ribbon he got when his dog took Best of Opposite Sex at the show in Woodstock two summers ago. She smiled, knowing the album would end sometime.
“But you don’t want to look at all these strange people.” He closed the album and put it on the floor. He looked in her eyes, smiling at something he thought he saw there. She smiled indulgently, wondering what kind of husband he would be, someone who would tell people she was a ‘great girl?’ And gush over the tuna casserole she cooked, and tell her she was pretty as a picture when she dressed up? She sighed and noticed that his expression changed, his eyes focusing on something farther away than her face, while still looking in her eyes. He placed his hands on her shoulders and caressed her upper arms.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever known.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “I love you,” he said and kissed her again.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on his kiss, analyzing its nuances, then trying not to analyze, just feel what it was doing to her. She kissed him back, waiting. Nothing happened, she fell back on analysis; he was a good kisser, not too hard, not too soft, not all t
he same movement, not too much spit. She wondered if he was analyzing, too. She flinched when he touched her breast.
“Sorry,” he said and resumed kissing her. He leaned on her, making her lie back on the pillow. They kissed this way, she flat on her back, he on his side and up on his elbow. “Justina, do you trust me?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Can I touch you?”
She did not understand.
“I just want so much to touch you,” he breathed.
And you're asking for a permit? What am I supposed to say? He ran his hand down her side, up onto her belly and then up, stopping short of her breasts. Why not just say yes? Get it over with. If I say no, he’ll just ask me again, maybe every time he sees me, that would be a very Jamesian thing to do. 'Oh, Justina, I was wondering, have you decided yet if I can touch you?'
She pulled his head toward her and kissed him, easily pulling his shirt out of his pants while he sucked in his flat stomach. He pulled the shirt off over his head and took over. She sat up and he pulled off her sweater and waited while she undid her bra. He fell upon her breasts, kissing and gently squeezing them. She endured it, trusting it to get better as they went on. He undid her pants and pulled them off her, and then her panties and socks. He got up on his knees and unzipped his jeans and took them off with his underpants, and frantically pulled off his socks as though they were burning his feet. He pounced on her mouth, kissing her with renewed energy, as though she were a spinning plate that had been neglected and was about to wobble and come crashing down. “Are you on the pill?” he whispered.
“No!” she said, insulted. Who does he think I'm doing it with?
“That’s okay.” He got a condom out of the drawer. “Will you put it on me?”
Do it yourself, that’s the James way. She tore it out of its wrapper and started to put it on him, but she could not bring herself to put her hand on his penis. He finished putting the condom on and kissed her again, the spinning plate. He straddled her hips and she put her legs down flat, together. He pressed one knee between her legs and thrusted back and forth upon her pelvis, but she would not spread her legs any wider.