by Amy Lapwing
“Fine, thank you,” said James. He had almost called him Mr. Michael.
“And I don’t think you’ve met James’ friend?” said Pascale, pulling the huge Jacques from Justina’s side. “This is Jacques Muflot. Michael Calderón,” she said.
Michael shook his hand, too. “James is showing you the sights, is he?” he said.
“We have been touring the region,” he replied. “I think James is our guide, more than Justina, even though it is she who lives here.”
“Justina? Has been showing you around?” asked Michael.
“Oh, yes, she is very generous to us,” said Jacques, smiling over his shoulder at her. “And her hospitality is very great.”
Michael smiled and gave his head a shake. “Her—?”
“Hospitality? It is the good word, no?” Jacques looked to Pascale. “I stay at her house, to diminish the crowd at Pascale’s house,” he explained to Michael.
“Well, next time you come, Jacques, you can stay with me,” said Helena, smiling with her shoulders hunched and her chin in the air, as though he was the world’s favorite house guest. She turned to Michael and said, “The concert was unbelievable, Michael, the best you’ve ever done— in the past five years, anyway! When Grace sang, oh! My God! I never heard such a beautiful sound. Is this the first time she ever sang a solo?”
Michael responded graciously to their praise, which they kept brief. When someone else was speaking, he glanced at Justina. She smiled with one side of her mouth and kept changing the position of her hands. She did not look at him.
Charles and Helena excused themselves to go and find something non-alcoholic to drink, and Pascale and Denis went off to call the baby-sitter, dragging James and Jacques with them.
“A toute à l’heure,” said Jacques to Justina. But Michael understood him. ‘See you later.’ His fist tightened and opened as he imagined knocking his shaggy block out.
“He’s staying at our house?” said Michael when they had been left alone, trying to sound casual; it came out as a whine.
“Just a few nights,” Justina said, pushing away the air by her right hip.
“Since what night?”
“Thursday.”
“Thursday? Last night? I was there last night,” he said, hoping what he was thinking was not true. “Was he there when I was there?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“He was! He was there and that’s why you wouldn’t let me to go get my shoes!”
“I can have someone stay at the house if I want to,” she said.
He lowered his voice. “Were you seeing him when you— when we first separated?”
“No!” she said. “He wasn’t even here then.”
“How long he is here?”
“Michael, that was a good thing you did for Grace.”
He lowered his tense shoulders and let his smile match his still-fresh elation. “She was wonderful, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
There was that sad smile again. She knew he wanted her to respond, he was always wanting something from her. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone, let her do her work and eat her food and watch her shows and flirt with her new guy?
“You have not moved!” bellowed Jacques. He offered Justina a glass of wine. “I would brought you some wine, fellow, but I did not know—”
Michael waved away the apology. “I’m going to go find something to eat,” he said and he gave a shake to Jacques’ proffered hand. He kissed Justina’s cheek, pressing her to him a moment, and then a moment more, and disappeared between backs and shoulders.
Chapter Twenty-one
Keep Secret
Jacques asked Justina if they could leave early, he was tired. “Too much sightseeing, I suppose.” She left her nearly full glass and they retrieved their coats and went out.
She had not left any outside lights on. They found their way in and she flicked on the light in the kitchen.
Bending over she peered into the refrigerator. “White Zinfandel or Chardonnay?”
“Zinfandel, I think,” said Jacques, smiling at her backside.
She poured him a glass of the wine Michael had left for her.
“You aren’t having any?” he asked.
“I don’t feel like it.”
“I don’t either, then. I guess I’ll just turn in.”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
“You going to bed soon?” he asked.
“Probably.”
He hesitated, studying her face. She was staring at the wine bottle label. Grapes aren’t really pink like that, are they?
“Goodnight,” he said and he went upstairs.
She went into the den and watched a scandal show rerun for a few minutes. A hurt-looking young woman wept before the studio audience. Her husband had cheated on her, several times, and wanted out of the marriage; she was pregnant with their child. And she still loved him. A woman in the audience was shouting something. Sally Jessy gave her the floor and she stood up and said, “Get on with your life, girl, because a leopard does not change his spots.” Her speech was praised lustily by the audience women.
She wished she had praised the concert more to Michael. He was looking like a beat puppy. And so skinny! Wasn’t he eating? She turned off the television and switched off the lights downstairs.
In the upstairs hall she ran into Jacques, still dressed, coming out of the bathroom. He stopped outside her door. “Justina,” he said softly, “may I come in?”
What for? her mind blared.
“I can give you a very nice massage,” he said.
Oh. Massage, you say? I like massages. Michael, he’s my soon-to-be-ex-husband, gives a great massage. “Okay,” she said.
She flicked on the light as they went in.
He instructed her to lie face-down on the bed. He straddled her hips and massaged her neck and her back, talking softly to her all the while, about how tight her muscles were, about stretching exercises she should do, foods she should avoid, bad thoughts she should not let into her mind.
“You need to enjoy life more, you are sleep-walking through your life,” he purred. “That’s not for you. You’re a pretty woman, you should enjoy living. ‘Do what you like, but do it with passion.’ Good advice, no?” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. He smelled of over worn clothes. Gently he pried her shoulder up and she turned over. He sat on her legs and took his time looking at her breasts; his caress on her arms reminded her this was not a doctor’s examination. Satisfied, he kissed her.
She could not move, he was so heavy, but she did not want to. She had never had a Frenchman before, they were supposed to be so romantic. She loved the French people, she should love a French person. She had missed her chance during her junior year abroad— Algerian did not count— here was Jacques to give her another shot. He lifted her sweater off of her and took his shirt off. She thought about birth control. He reached around her waist and tried to unzip her skirt.
Oh, gah, please, please, please, please, please!
As he pulled the tongue of the zipper, she let loose with a loud bleat of expelled intestinal gas.
“Oh!” chortled Jacques, “you are so—!”
There was a knock at the bedroom door. “Justina?”
Jacques tried to pull her skirt down, but she did not lift her hips off the bed. She did not move.
Another knock. “Justina, do you use a condom? Did you know he was in Africa last year for a month? Pascale told me.”
“Shit!” Justina whispered.
“I have one, if we’re out.”
What is he doing here, the prick!
He knocked again. “Justina, I’m worried about you.”
Justina went to the door and shouted through it, “Go away, Michael!”
“That is your ex-husband?” said Jacques.
“He’s very large, Justina, he could hurt you, maybe he’s not accustomed to small women.”
“Jesus!” She flung open the door. Michael stood there in his t
ux. At the sight of her in her bra and her unzipped skirt down around her hips, he hastened into the room. He made for Jacques who had just enough time to get off the bed and deflect Michael’s punch and hold onto his arm. Michael whipped his arm free and punched Jacques in the stomach. More irritated than pained, Jacques socked Michael one in the jaw, knocking him off-balance. Justina yelped, “Oh!” as Michael staggered a moment. He straightened and rushed at the big man who ducked his swing and grabbed his arm again.
“J’veux pas te battre, mec!” said Jacques, his voice frantically amiable.
“Hijo de puta!” growled Michael and he put his hands around Jacques’ neck. Jacques pulled Michael’s hands off him, and Michael made to grab him again. Jacques hit him in the face again and he fell to the floor.
“Shit!” cried Justina and she turned on Jacques. “Get out of here!”
Jacques looked from Michael, sitting addled on the floor, to Justina. “He was bothering you!”
“You bother me!” she screamed. “Get out of here!”
Jacques threw up his hands at this crazy woman and her ex-husband and stomped out to his room where he ranted and stuffed his belongings back into their cases.
Justina ran into the bathroom and wet a washcloth. She dabbed Michael’s chin and mouth. His lip was torn, just like in the movies. She helped him up to sit on the bed.
“Jesus, Michael!” She took his hands, first one, then the other, and straightened each finger; they were all right, he had not actually hit the brute, except in his soft stomach. “What were you thinking, attacking a huge guy like that?”
“What were you thinking?” he retorted.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I knew what I was doing, I was saving you from making a mistake!” he said.
He had stirred up her anger again. “What ‘mistake?’”
“You thought you will hurt me to make yourself feel better,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
“That’s not why I was doing it!”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t! I wanted to! I wanted to!”
“You don’t love him.”
“So?”
“You would hated yourself in the morning!”
“Ha! Why?”
“Because you’re still my wife, and you would have been unfaithful and you took a vow—”
“Unbelievable! You’re going to tell me about vows now?”
“You took a vow that you were going to break it out of spite. Deliberately. With a cool mind. And a cold heart.”
“You have absolutely no room to talk.”
He let out a deep breath. They heard Jacques lumber down the stairs. Michael looked in her eyes as they heard the rumbling of the other man’s voice below them on the telephone. “Can we stop?” he asked softly.
“It was your idea to be separated.”
“I don’t want to divorce. I want to stay with you. Nothing like this will ever happen again. It can’t. It’s too painful.”
“I know it’s painful. You don’t have to tell me it’s painful.”
“Then let’s stop. Let’s be happy again. We deserve it.”
His soft voice was calming. She felt annoyance at the unraveling of her anger. “I’m very pissed off right now,” she said. “I think you should go and leave me alone.”
“You don’t want to be alone, Justina—”
“I can’t help it! I’m alone right now. I’m either with you and pissed off, or alone and—” Dead, her brain completed, or dull, take your pick, it said. She sat on the foot of the bed.
He laid his knee on the bed and turned to face her, to encourage her.
“Why did you come back?” she asked.
Answer quickly, his mind coached, she is talking to you. “Because I realized I wanted you.”
“Then why did you leave in the first place?”
“I thought,” he let out a breath of disgust, “I could be what I wanted to be a long time ago when I first knew her. I don’t know, it’s as though she awakened a dream I used to have and she made me believe it again.”
“Why did you stop believing?”
“It was just, not mine, it was a stranger to me. She was a stranger to me.”
She fixed her eyes on the collection of photos on her long, low chest of drawers. There was one of her father, a more recent one just of her mother, one of Kim and his babies, another of Robin. There was one of Pepita, another of Pepita’s baby. The Michael pictures were a group shot of his mother and father and sisters and their families and the two of them; the old picture of his father and his sisters and him when he was five; and a picture just of the two of them. No individual picture of him.
“Michael, when you’re with your chorus—” she began. Her eyes shrank as they looked to the champagne rug for expression. “You are out of yourself. You’re pure gift, mind and heart and soul, whatever, all given to music.”
He looked at her with reverence, not daring to dab the drop of blood cooling on his lip.
“But that’s not all,” she went on, dissatisfied with her words. “The students and you, you’re all one thing. It’s like, you’re only you when you’re part of them. When you’re part of others. Alone, you’re not complete.”
Yes, yes, I have felt that. I need the people with me.
“It’s not in you to get up there and tempt the bad boys of singing. You can’t deal with worrying if you’ll hit those high notes right, night after night. You can help others who want to do that.” She sat up, she had found it. “That’s your role in opera, Michael. You’re a teacher. Not a performer.”
Oh! I understand now, she thought. The Vlatil thing, and the dissatisfaction he has with Grace, the frustration he felt not having a role in the world he loved, the wrong role. The wrong woman. Stupid man! He’s older, he’s the experienced one. I don’t even have tenure yet.
His fingers lifted up slowly from his knee toward her elbow.
She got up from the bed and went to the window. They heard the door slam downstairs and she saw Jacques walk to James’ car in the driveway.
“I want you to go now,” she said.
He stood up and she hurried to clutch his arm as he staggered. He waited a moment for the dizziness to subside. Softly he squeezed the flesh of her upper arms. She let him see into her eyes, the blue had turned an opaque gray with brown undertones in the low light. His fingers slipped under her hair and touched her brow, sliding softly to her eye, the bone of her cheek, the delicate turnings on the ear and the tiny dollop of lobe, the fullness of her face about the jaw, the rounded chin that she stuck out when she was thinking. So soft was her skin, a little chapped about the mouth, he pulled down her lower lip with his thumb and kissed her. She dropped her chin, but he found her mouth again and gently insisted, holding her face in his hands. It was sweet, her hair on her neck made her tingle and all her want ascended to her skin, clamoring for his touch, telling her protesting mind to shut up, already. She pressed her hands against his chest and felt each rib down to the last. So skinny, he was so small, smaller than she. His hips were hard like wood, she could feel the sharp edges of his pelvis. She put off touching his penis, it was hard against her belly, and she reached around and felt his buttocks. He tensed them and she gasped and brought her hands forward onto his cock. Little panting sounds, then he kissed her again. So many clothes to get him out of, she started with his slacks. On her knees she pulled them off his legs and reached up for the black silk. His balls smelled of fabric and sea water, he took little breaths in through his teeth as she licked and mouthed the loose skin all a-pucker with thick hairs. A long lick up the shaft and her lips around the glans, tasting the faintly sweet drop, she arose and went to work on the rest of his goddamned clothes.
Quickly, quickly, before something happens and she stops. He got his jacket and tie off and helped her with the rest of his buttons. She opened his shirt, so solemn, what did she expect to find? A mark, some sign of his sin? He pulled the shirt off his arms
and wrists and she closed her eyes as her arms encircled his chest. Sweat, the smell of him, a faint soap scent. A tentative look in his eyes on top of the commanding look of desire. She undid her bra and he fell upon her breasts, his back one curve, his cock another.
She pushed him to sit on the bed and kept pushing and he scooted back to lay his head on the pillows. She laid herself next to him and they kissed on their sides, he drew her hips to him with his leg. She laid flat again and pulled his hips toward her.
“I want you,” she whispered, “in me.”
She let out an endless “Ah!” as her vagina slowly opened only just enough for him, squeezing again and again, the repetitive pleasure. He came out and slithered down the bed and put his mouth on her vulva and flicked his tongue back and forth like a uvula in a singing throat, and rolled his eyes to hers.
Too good, he has me, like this. “Ah!” she breathed and closed her eyes. No. She pulled on his arms and he crawled up to hear her command. “Come in me.”
He thrusted himself in her again and kissed the inside of her mouth until he could not kiss anymore and he put his face by her ear and whispered cries from deep inside him. He was close.
Not yet, you can’t come yet. “Show me,” she said in his ear, “what she did.”
He stopped moving, kept his face hidden. Slowly he picked up his movement again, he must have misheard her.
“Show me!”
His elbows on either side of her shoulders, he looked at her, fearful.
Her eyes followed his as he averted his gaze to her mouth, to her breasts, anywhere but her eyes. “Show me how she fucked you,” she commanded. She held his buttocks tightly against her.
“No,” he pleaded.
“Show me. You show me how she did it.”
He expected madness but saw only resolve in her eyes. They could not avoid this. If he refused, she would send him away forever. She wanted this from him, he couldn’t keep it for himself.
He reached behind him and tried to pull her hand off him, but she resisted. He looked at her, his pleading gone, only determination left. She let him take her hand. He held it by the middle finger and kept his eyes on her. He put her finger in his mouth and wetted it all over. There was no wavering in her eyes, her expression was still hard. He put her hand back on his ass and pushed her fingers in his crack.