by Devan Sipher
Leaving the bar, she had feared he lived in some basement lair in a ramshackle house north of Main Street. She’d imagined some kind of hoarder’s hovel with an excavated pit in the back like something from The Silence of the Lambs. She had kept her hand around the mace on her key chain the entire walk over, ready to make a run for it. But he actually lived in University Towers, one of the only high-rise buildings on campus. And he had impeccable taste in home decor.
She luxuriated in the feel of the expensive slate-gray sheets while chastising herself for her recklessness. And she wasn’t just being reckless; she was . . . she was quivering. No, she was making bad choices. She was also quivering. But that didn’t mean this wasn’t a bad choice. She belonged home working on her dissertation proposal. She needed to keep track of what was important, and the most important thing in her life was coming up with a way to convince her adviser that she was on track and on schedule, though she was currently neither. She was playing with fire, because she was already at risk of academic probation due to the two incompletes on her transcript. After twelve months those would change to failing grades if she didn’t hand in final papers, which was in addition to writing her dissertation. So she had more than enough work to occupy a Saturday night without a date.
But it was like a fever had come over her. Sitting alone in her apartment hours earlier, her skin had begun to itch, and she’d felt an intense craving. Not necessarily for sex. Or danger. Though she was self-aware enough to realize that must have been part of it. What she’d craved was attention. Validation. And, oddly enough, peace. There was something so peaceful about being wanted. About knowing a man wanted something very specific from her, and knowing she had control over whether or not he got what he wanted. She so rarely got what she wanted. And it was the next best thing.
There was an increasingly fast rhythm between her legs. She felt a vibrating sensation, like when her dentist gave her laughing gas. “Oh God,” she called out. “Oh, Hal.”
The rhythm stopped. A red and wet chin came into view. “What did you call me?”
“Hal?” Mandy said softly, and when that didn’t get a response, “Al?”
He laughed. “My name is Phil.”
She was mortified. She pictured someone videotaping this moment and submitting it to an X-rated version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Phil.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I kind of like Hal.”
“What?”
“I want you to call me Hal.”
And then he went back to work on her clit, before untying her and fucking her. They spooned for an hour or so afterward, which might have been her favorite part. She liked how it felt having his dense body draping hers. It made her feel smaller. Thinner. And, strange as it seemed, protected.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The tennis ball went wide. But Austin hit it back anyway because Len was unbearable when he lost. However, Austin had intended to hit it back deep. Instead, it sort of plopped down just short of the service line, and Len was all over it with an inside-out forehand to the far corner of the court. Austin went racing for the ball, but the point was over before he made it even halfway there, putting Len ahead for the set by four to two.
“Yes!” Len exclaimed. “That’s the way to do it!”
Missing the ball seemed to be the metaphor for Austin’s life since his trip to LA the previous week. But there was something about losing to a man close to thirty years his senior that was particularly demoralizing. Initially, Austin had been losing on purpose, but he hadn’t planned to fall so far behind. His goal had been to give Len an extra point here and there, not let Len run roughshod all over him. It wasn’t good for Austin’s ego—or their working relationship.
As Len prepared to serve, Austin tried to loosen up by running in place. He was determined to get back in the set and even out the score. However, he still had to be careful not to actually win, because whenever he did, Len ended up in a snit the rest of the day, criticizing Austin at the office in front of the staff and purposely delegating to him the least desirable of the patients. Playing tennis with Len was a lose-lose proposition. Austin had tried passing on their weekly matchup at the Franklin Athletic Club, but that also put Len in a foul mood.
They weren’t even supposed to be playing for points. But Len got bored, as he did every week, and said, “You know what would make this more interesting? If we had a little wager going.” It wasn’t like Len was much of a gambler. All they ever bet was a coffee or a bagel. But . . . There always was a “but.”
“That means we have to play for real points,” Len said, as if he was having the thought for the first time. “You up for the challenge?”
And what was Austin supposed to say? “No, I prefer not to be challenged. I prefer you not use our tennis game as a place to work through the aggression you feel toward your wife.”
Austin thought he was being pretty clever about letting Len win without making it conspicuous. It actually took a fair amount of mental calibration, finding ways to give Len a few line calls in his favor and purposely flubbing the occasional volley. But being two games up was bringing out Len’s inner Agassi. Years seemed to be melting off his gait and his swing. His footwork was smoother. His shots were deeper and stronger, requiring Austin to hustle around the court in a way that was completely in conflict with the nonaggressive game he had been previously playing. Meanwhile, Len’s serves were increasing in speed and spin, with the latest skidding off the court at an obtuse angle before Austin could get his racquet on it, bringing the set’s score to five-two as they both approached the courtside water cooler.
Austin was now one game away from losing his dignity along with the one-set match. He was frustrated with himself for caring and more frustrated with Len for taking advantage of his conscientiousness. But Len didn’t know Austin was being conscientious. Len probably just thought Austin was playing crappy. And he was. Which wasn’t solely because of Len. Austin was having a hard time focusing his thoughts on anything but Naomi.
“You look like you’re a million miles away,” Len said. More like eleven hundred. “Have you called that girl in Miami?”
Of course Austin had called Naomi. Numerous times. But he always got her voice mail. He had also e-mailed, and she had replied. But her replies were somewhat delayed and never more than a few words. She seemed distant. Or evasive. Or both. He couldn’t tell if she was mad at him or waiting for him to make the next move, and he wasn’t sure what the next move was if he couldn’t even get her to engage in a conversation. If she lived in town, he would have just asked her out to dinner. But she didn’t live in town.
It was possible she simply wasn’t interested in him. But, ego aside, he had sensed a connection between them, and he refused to accept that it was all in his head. Then again, if he was so convinced she wanted something more, he should have acted on it when he had the chance.
“Your problem is you live your life the way you play tennis,” Len said between gulps of water. “No follow-through.”
Austin had a terrible problem with follow-through on his ground strokes. It seemed so easy and obvious when he watched professional players. Just let your arm keep on moving after you hit the ball. Let the momentum carry the racquet head up and over your shoulder. But when he was on the court his racquet often stopped immediately after hitting the ball, like a train coming to an abrupt halt right after leaving the station. Not only did it deprive Austin’s game of topspin; it did nasty things to his right shoulder, which took the brunt of all that acceleration coming to a quick stop.
“You always seem like you’re holding back,” Len said, picking up his racquet again. “You need to leave everything on the court. You should have nothing left to give.”
As Austin prepared to serve, he silently vowed to show Len just what it looked like when he didn’t hold back. But the problem was Len was right.
He needed to change that. He needed to risk putting everything on the line, he thought as he tossed the tennis ball high in the air and whipped his serving arm in a circular orbit before pummeling the ball for a clean winner.
Len looked perplexed. “I wasn’t ready,” he said as he trudged across the court to get in position for the next point. He must not have been ready for that serve either, because it was another winner.
Austin managed to bring the score to a more respectable five-four. He felt galvanized and decided he needed to take the same aggressive approach off court. He decided right then to send Naomi a bouquet of roses. Two dozen. What the hell, three dozen. But he didn’t have an address for her. He wondered how inappropriate it would be to ask Steffi while she was still on her honeymoon. Based on the texts he’d been receiving from Stu, it probably wasn’t a good idea. From the scowl on Len’s face, winning the last two points might not have been a very good idea either.
“I think I twisted something in my knee,” Len said with the most exaggerated grimace Austin had ever seen on someone over the age of six. “Not sure I should keep playing,” Len said, meaning he preferred to lock in his one-game lead rather than risk losing the set, which was fine with Austin.
But winning by default didn’t seem to offer the same palliative effect on Len’s mood. “I’m not getting the response I expected from the job ad,” he grunted on his way to the locker room.
Len had placed an ad for a new junior partner more than a month back. “No one you want me to meet yet?” Austin asked.
“Not really anyone to meet, period. A couple nibbles, but no one’s come in for a first interview.”
Maybe Len’s reputation as a micromanager was preceding him. It had given Austin some trepidation before he jumped on board. And he probably wouldn’t have, if Len hadn’t guaranteed that he would be retiring in five years, which meant he would be retiring in the coming year, which meant Austin would soon be a senior partner. Having a job with long-term security had appealed to Austin, but now he wondered if it was unappealing to Naomi.
“You’re a million miles away again,” Len said. “Why don’t you just go down to Miami already? Just not on Labor Day weekend. I’m taking Cindy to Hilton Head.”
While Austin showered and changed, he replayed Len’s words in his mind. The truth was Austin had been thinking about going to Miami since watching Naomi’s plane depart LAX. He had considered buying a ticket on the next plane, before deciding it was a bit crazy.
Instead, he left her a voice mail while she was still in flight, telling her how much he’d enjoyed their time together, and his intention had been to bring up coming to Miami when she called him back. He had even contemplated the possibility of pulling off an additional visit or two before the holiday season. And not that he wanted to get ahead of himself, but since Naomi knew Mandy and his mother, he figured if things went well, it wouldn’t be out of line to invite her to join his family in Michigan for Thanksgiving. And once they were talking about Thanksgiving, it would be a very natural progression to asking her out for New Year’s.
But none of that was happening. The entire scenario seemed to have crashed and burned after his initial phone call. Now he wished he had waited to call until after she had landed in Miami. Maybe he would have reached her instead of her voice mail. But that didn’t happen. And they hadn’t spoken. And it seemed presumptuous to invite himself to Miami without even asking her opinion.
As he was leaving the sports club, he texted Mandy for her opinion, and he noticed he had three texts from Stu.
The texts had started coming the first day of Stu’s honeymoon. While Hurricane Bethany had been a significant inconvenience for Austin, Hurricane Cordelia and Hurricane Daphne had wreaked major havoc on Stu and Steffi’s trip to St. Barts. Though Cordelia never hit St. Barts, it delayed their arrival by a day, which was what prompted the first texts from LAX. Then when Stu and Steffi finally arrived in the Caribbean, everyone was battening down the hatches for Daphne, who took her time before besieging the island with pelting wind and rain.
The forced indoor seclusion could have worked out nicely on a honeymoon, except that Steffi was suffering from some kind of yeast infection. Stu had been sending missives describing in graphic detail the cauliflower-like eruptions from his wife’s vagina, under the mistaken belief that Austin’s ophthalmology training made him knowledgeable about gynecology—and immune to nausea.
“She’s shopping again,” Stu wrote in his latest message. The storm system had moved on, but the yeast infection had not. “She loves to shop. She can shop twelve hours a day. Who knew?”
“You would,” Austin wanted to say, “if you had married someone you’d known longer than a baseball season.” But instead he typed, “All women like to shop. I think it’s genetic.” He didn’t really believe that all women liked to shop, but he thought the sentiment would improve Stu’s mood.
“Oh, first you get upset when I ask you for gynecological assistance,” Stu texted, “but now you’re a geneticist.”
Or not.
Stu was about the only person Austin hadn’t asked for advice about Naomi. It didn’t seem appropriate, given what Stu was going through. And so far, being a newlywed wasn’t exactly bringing out his romantic side.
Another text arrived: “I never thought I’d be beating my meat on my honeymoon.”
Stu was definitely not going to be of help, and Mandy hadn’t responded. Austin tried calling her on his way to Ford Hospital, where he was giving a lecture to first-year medical residents. It was something he did a couple of times a year. He didn’t have the patience for a career in academia (he didn’t know how Mandy put up with the byzantine bureaucracy), but he enjoyed the give-and-take with students and felt the interaction kept him sharp.
His call went straight to voice mail, which was becoming a recurring event for him when contacting women. Except he didn’t imbue it with any particular significance when it happened with Mandy, so why did the same outcome elicit a different response when Naomi was involved? This was the danger with straying from the scientific method. Emotions got in the way of clearheaded logic. And you could end up seeing what you wanted to see. Or what you feared to see. Rather than what was really there.
Turning onto the Southfield Freeway, Austin noticed the lack of traffic, which was odd for almost nine a.m. He remembered as a kid, the six-lane highway would be bumper-to-bumper at rush hour as hundreds of thousands of auto industry workers commuted to manufacturing plants and sales offices and executive suites. But now there were so few vehicles on the road, Austin could have been doing doughnuts if he’d wanted to.
It was unsettling to think about where all the people had gone. It was possible they had relocated to the same places the jobs had migrated. But that was unlikely, given that so many of the auto jobs were now in places like Mexico and China. This was one problem that couldn’t be blamed on the 1967 race riots, which were responsible for much of what was dysfunctional about Detroit.
The problem was the city wasn’t adapting to changing circumstances. It was a city trapped in old ways of thinking. Austin wondered if he was also a product of that thinking. Could a city’s political impotence have an environmental impact
on an individual’s psychological development? He wondered if anyone had ever done a study on the subject. He’d have to look it up. More important, he needed to counteract any such effect by taking bolder action. Like going to Miami. If Naomi approved.
“Just tell her that you’re coming,” Mandy said, sounding tired of the topic within seconds of answering his third call.
“But isn’t that being pushy?”
“Sometimes women like guys to be aggressive,” Mandy said.
“I don’t want to come off as abrasive,” Austin said. “Or a stalker.”
“How about annoying? Are you worried about being annoying?”
“Do you have some other brother who has put up with all your relationship and pseudorelationship drama for twenty years and never asks for your help in return?”
“Never asks for my—”
“Almost never,” he corrected himself.
“Don’t tell her that you’re coming,” Mandy said, reversing herself.
“You mean don’t go?” Austin liked that suggestion even less than her previous.
“No, I mean the opposite,” she said. “Just go. Don’t try to figure out the right thing to do. Just do it. Whether it’s right or not. Maybe there isn’t a right thing to do. Maybe there are just things that feel right.”
“You’re where?” Naomi asked, sounding a little breathless.
“I’m at the Miami airport,” Austin said again. Actually, he was in a room at the Miami airport Marriott Courtyard, but that didn’t go with his cover story. “I’m attending a medical meeting in Miami, so I figured I’d give you a call and see if you’d like to get together later.”
“I’d love to get together,” Naomi said. She had no idea how good it felt to hear that. “It’s just a total surprise. I’m actually on my way to the airport.”
Austin thought he’d heard wrong. “You’re on the way to the airport?”