30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  The Room

  So what does he do now? He didn’t want to have sex with her. He told her when she came to his room. Well, she was goodlooking and he wouldn’t mind doing it, he thought then, but knew he shouldn’t because of his wife and that it could get complicated with this woman and he did what he could to stop it. He said, “Really, this isn’t a good idea. I’ve never done it outside of my marriage, not even an amorous kiss. Better you go home and I go to sleep alone, I’m sorry. I know I don’t sound too convincing, but I’m really convinced about it. You’re attractive and pleasant and so on, but I just wouldn’t know what to say to my wife,” and she said, “You have to say anything? Why would you want to hurt her, if that’s what it’d do? But if you want me to leave, of course I’ll go without a fuss. It’s not like I invited you out here just for this.” He’s driving home from the college he gave a reading at. He was met in the hotel lobby late yesterday afternoon by this woman. She said, “Oh, you took the service stairs instead of the elevator: the athletic type. Hi, I’m Sheila, welcome,” and shook his hand hard. “How was the journey?” and he said, “An hour longer than you thought it would be, not that I’m blaming you.” “Thank God for that; I’m not sure I could take it. What, there were major delays on the road?” and he said, “None, smooth all the way, and I mostly kept the speed at nine above the limit and followed your directions to the letter. Incidentally, they were perfect.” “Then is your watch accurate or you switched to Daylight Savings Time during the drive?” and he said, “I’m telling you, four hours and a few minutes, with a quick pit stop to hit the men’s room and get a container of coffee and, at the border tourist office next door to this restaurant, a free Pennsylvania road map. But it wasn’t bad, since I was able to pick up a few classical music stations on the radio, and the best one an hour from here and with the call letters of your university. All of Byrd’s masses. Very unusual. This is a good music area,” and she said, “How’s the hotel? I know it isn’t big-city plush but we got you the nicest around,” and he said, “The staff’s friendly and I don’t mean to sound like a chronic bellyacher, but the room’s so depressing. Jesus, you want to blow your brains out, that’s the room to do it in. Though it does have a Jacuzzi, not that I’ll use it. But its one modern touch, with sliding frosted doors on the other side of the tub that open onto the rest of the room—what’s that all about? Another entrance in case you locked the bathroom door accidentally? Or to take a bath or do the Jacuzzi with someone in the main room watching? Some architect’s idea of chic or kink?” “Is that what made the room depressing?” and he said, “No, mystifying. For depression, just about everything else: furniture, carpet, drapes. All different muddy colors, and dim bulbs in ugly lamps, and a view of rundown row houses across the hotel parking lot and an abandoned railroad track.” “Not abandoned; that’s our famous spur. You’re liable to hear a slow freight train choochoo-ing at midnight and again around five, or that’s what several other guest speakers have told me. They liked it—small-town America—and they said the train had a very soothing whistle. It’s picking up and delivering to what’s left of the big steel mill in town.” “Anyway, I’m reporting, not complaining. A life I couldn’t live there, but a night?—it’s fine. And thanks for having me out. Your fee is more than fair.” Thinks: Should he take the alternate route to 83, coming up in a few miles? About twenty minutes longer, she told him when she gave directions to the hotel, but prettier and less traffic, and he’d like seeing different scenery going home. No, stick to this one, get back soon as he can, and, if the kids aren’t around, tell his wife. “I don’t know what happened last night. I mean, I know but can’t quite believe it. But the teacher who coordinated the whole event and introduced me to the audience? Well, she ended up in my room later. In my bed. Minute after I said good night to her in her car downstairs, she knocked on my door to say she had to use the bathroom. I said why didn’t she use the one in the lobby, and she gave some feeble excuse that it was being cleaned and she really had to go badly. We had sex. She forced me to. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it and protested profusely till she stuck a washrag in my mouth. Before that, when we were having dinner, she must have slipped me a mickey or whatever it is that knocks you out in an hour or just makes you too weak and dizzy to fight back. Next thing I knew I was tied to the bed, on my back, spread-eagled and with no pants on, four ropes for four limbs plus duct tape, and she was on top of me, wielding a knife and threatening to mutilate me if I didn’t perform. That’s when I started protesting and the washrag went in. Twenty minutes after it was over she started in again, with the same threat, because she said she hadn’t taken the risk she did to get so little satisfaction. Sound nuts? Believe it, because she was crazy. But that’s all I did: perform, and good thing I was able to. I had her arrested in the morning after I got out of those ropes. Thought of calling you about it but then decided it’d be better to tell you face-to-face. She’s in jail now. I’m pressing charges of assault and battery, whatever that last half is, and rape. I’m so sorry, but you have to see it was totally excusable on my part and that perhaps my being able to complete the sex act twice saved my life.” They drove to the school building he was to read at. She was pretty, pleasant, intelligent, easy to be with, wavy red hair, strong build, short, lean-legged, nicely dressed, about twenty years younger than he, immediately effusive and friendly, with a much older and frailer woman’s gravelly voice. Was she sick and just didn’t show it? She asked about his wife and kids; he asked if she was married and had any kids. She had married early, childhood sweetheart, divorced after the birth of twins; two more brief marriages but no kids from them. The boys go to different colleges on opposite coasts. They’re freshmen, only out of the house for three months and she misses them terribly. She lives alone in the foothills with a dog and several songbirds and her sons’ cats: their dorms wouldn’t permit pets. “If the car stinks it’s because of the dog. He won’t let me leave the house without him. Today you got lucky, except for the stench, which can’t be avoided, I’m afraid, since I hate all those fake deodorizers. He’s big and hairy and romps around in our nearby swamp a lot, and I can only give him so many baths a month. I even take him along when I teach or go out to a movie or dinner. He stays quietly in the car, hence the stench, which I must have grown used to, since I never smell it. Maybe my passengers are exaggerating it to reap some advantage from me. He’s also good protection in this deceptively benign town of unemployed drunks and epigonic car thieves. But am I talking too much about him and not enough about my boys? That’s because he’s my best friend now and I love him—he’d never desert me for higher learning—and he’s never given a sign that his car confinement is any kind of mistreatment,” and he said, “Then you’re probably doing the right thing, when you weigh it against his staying home and being lonely. How come you left him behind today, though again, I’m not complaining?” and she said, “The possibility that you could be allergic to dogs like our last guest; by the time I thought to call you about it, you were on the road,” and he said, “I have no allergies, and though the smell is detectable, I can live with that too for a short time.” “You know, I like you: you’re a good guy. I mean; relaxed, equable, direct,” and he said, “I only seem that way because I’m a little tired from the trip,” and she said, “I like that about you too: your false modesty, which is only there to deflect further conversation about yourself. So many of the lecturers and writers I invite for the day because I like their work, though also because they’re within a three-hour driving radius of here and don’t insist on apparitional stipends, turn out to be cranks, egomaniacs, lechers, and jerks,” and he said, “Three of the four I’ll admit to being now and then, and a lech I might’ve been many years ago. But it’d be ridiculous to be one now—right?—not only because I don’t want to bust up my marriage and hurt my kids, but my age. But what are we talking about?” and she said, “We’re just talking, everything harmless, getting to know each other like two new people often do
when they’re suddenly stuffed into a small smelly car filled with dog hair for more than ten minutes. The conversation will change, though, and become rangy. That’s a word I think I made up: wide range. To be honest, something I’ve never put to a real word man before; what do you think of it?” and he said, “If it catches on, and I’m so out of touch with contemporary culture that maybe it already has, I’ll remember I heard it here first.” “Now you sound sarcastic; what happened to change you?” and he said, “You’re going to make me apologize. I didn’t intend to sound sarcastic. And ‘rangy.’ Rangy? It’s okay, but few people will understand it unless you explain it as you did to me.” “Then I’m wiping it from my vocabulary. I’m serious—it’s erased. Think of it as a value assessment of your judgment and technical know-how,” and he said, “Don’t be rash; it was just a single opinion of mine and maybe rushed.” He thinks in his car, Maybe he won’t say anything to his wife. Since he never did anything like it before, why would she suspect it now? He’ll park in the carport—probably get home an hour and a half before the kids, the way he’s moving—walk in, if she’s not outside—she doesn’t usually go out unless he or one of the kids or her student helper is around, afraid she might get stuck someplace in her wheelchair or motor cart and have to stay there till someone comes by or call a neighbor on her portable phone to help her—say, “Sally, you around? I’m back.” If she’s outside, and she won’t be too far from the carport and the kitchen door, he’ll see her when he pulls in. They’ll kiss, she’ll be very happy to see him, unless she’s going through or has recently gone through something difficult with her illness. Then she probably won’t be outside. “Hi, welcome home, you got back earlier than you thought you would,” she might say. If she’s not feeling well or has had a bad morning, he’ll say, “What can I do for you? Anything you want?” Say, “I shouldn’t have gone. I knew something like this could happen.” Would happen? Would. “Even with people covering me,” she might say, “they can’t be here every second.” He’ll swear he’s not going to accept another reading date out of town, if she had a bad time while he was gone. Yesterday when he called, soon after he got back to the hotel after dinner and just a few minutes before what’s-her-name—he can’t believe it; he’s forgotten her name already—Sheila knocked on his door, she was fine: nothing had gone wrong, the girls had been a great help. “If I go slow and think about every move and am very careful about my transferring, I’m usually okay.” “It isn’t worth it,” he could say today. “The reading fee is taxed, what, twenty to twenty-five percent, so if I get six hundred max for it as I did for this one I only end up with four-fifty or so.” “There are expenses for the trip,” she’d probably say. “Thirty-one cents a mile when you go by car, IRS allows you, and your meals and hotel.” “All paid for,” he’d say, “except the car costs and coffees along the way. Though I can pad,” and she’d say, “No padding; let’s be completely honest.” My God, he thinks in the car, how subliminal or subconscious or whatever it is, that last line. Anyway, they’ll kiss, outside or in the house, no matter how bad she feels. She’ll be glad he’s home even if she’s not feeling well; she just won’t show it as much. He’ll say, “Want some tea?” no matter how she’s feeling. “I’m going to have some, since I had too much coffee on the road and for breakfast and I just want to sit tranquilly for a few minutes,” and he’ll make tea for himself or them both and say, “Want to sit with me outside?” and she could say, “That’s an enticing idea, not only to be with you but I haven’t been out today,” and if she’s outside when he gets there, then, “Sure. I can take a break”—from reading or marking papers or from her wheelchair snipping branches or pulling up tall weeds—“and you can tell me about your trip.” He’ll make the tea, bring the mug or mugs outside, wheel her out to the patio table right beside the carport or just to the table if she’s already outside. The weather should be good for it; it’s nice now and doesn’t seem as if it’ll change, and the TV report for central Pennsylvania, which he saw when he was having a buffet breakfast in the hotel lounge, said it’d be clear and sunny the entire day and in the high sixties, and the weather there shouldn’t be that much different from Baltimore. They’ll talk, he’ll tell her what he had at dinner and what the town’s like, and more about the reading than he did last night on the phone. “The reading coordinator, Sheila something—she also teaches nineteenth-century lit—Sheila Haverford, just like the small college near Philadelphia. I wonder if she’s in any way related to the founder or whoever gave the college its name. If that’s how it did get its name, it’d seem like too much of a coincidence that she isn’t. Anyway, she was quite pleasant, smart, has twin sons in college—freshmen—though looks much younger than that … than a woman with twins that age. She could have married young, seventeen, eighteen, but while raising her kids she also must have worked hard getting through school for so many years; she has a Ph.D. in your least favorite subject and what you also call the most farcical, comp lit. Maybe she had help from her husband, plus lots of sitters and nannies, though that can run up. But if she is a Haverford and the Haverfords still have money—haven’t given all of it away to the college, if that is, as I said, how it was named—there could be plenty of family money there, plus a couple of grannies to help her. But she said she divorced early, so who knows. I also recall now that her father was a watchmaker in a small New Jersey factory and died in a fire when she was around twenty. So, maybe fire insurance, if she was an only child. Her introduction—if I’m talking a lot about her it’s because she was there from almost minute one till she dropped me back at the hotel after dinner, and there’s almost nothing of comparable interest, not that this is interesting, to say about the trip—her introduction at the reading was typically embarrassing. Why don’t they just cite a few facts—he did this, got that, his feet are flat and because of it he suffers from sciatica and has a bad back—and not try to assess your work so glowingly? I hate it when they gush on like that and I have to sit through it like a schmuck with everyone there to see me grimacing and squirming appreciatively. The turnout was pretty good—seventy-five, maybe. Good for me, anyway, but I think most were undergrads ordered to attend by their teaching assistants so as not to embarrass the department, as well as to justify my fee, which is what we do in my department when a non-hotshot guest gives a reading or lecture. I actually saw one of these TAs walking up and down the aisle taking attendance, or maybe she was only jotting down atmospheric notes for the academic novel she’s writing. The Q-and-A’s were the usual, though one I’d never heard: not ‘Do you get a lot of your material from your own life?’ but ‘Why do you use so much of your life in your work, and because of the nature of what you write about, don’t your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and especially your family object to your naked portrayal of them?’ I said, ‘How did you decide I do that? Are you writing an unauthorized biography of me, speaking to people I know behind my back, going through the garbage I put out for the trash haulers, attaching listening devices to my phone and through my home and office walls?’ and he said, ‘I’m sorry if the question offended you, sir. I thought it was a fair one but I can see your point,’ and all I could think to say was Touché! which caused a few giggles and oohs from the audience, though of the kind that made me think they felt I got the worst of the argument and had spoken like a fop, but big deal. After, I suggested to the woman that a couple of the students or TAs come to dinner with us, but she said it wasn’t in the budget. So just the two of us,” and she might say, “Maybe that’s what she counted on,” and he’d say something like, “I doubt it.” Anyway, that’s when he’ll probably tell her what he ate and what the restaurant was like, though he thinks he did that last night. “Then—and I had three glasses of wine, she had one, the two choices they had being American chablis and Chilean merlot, and the glasses were relatively small and came a little more than half full, and when I pointed both these things out to the waiter, he said, ‘That’s the way the house pours them, which is based on the gui
delines of the chain that owns this place, and the only size wineglass we have’—she drove me to my hotel. I never slept in such a depressing room. If there ever was an ideal one for suicide, this was it. In fact, if you had been in that room before you might even choose to go back, just to sustain the suicidal urge, to do yourself in. Dark ugly furniture—did I tell you this?—same with the drapes and rug, and floral wallpaper and an urban-blight view. And at midnight—this I know I couldn’t have told you—and again at four A.M., a freight train choochoo-ed by… really, about ten feet past the hotel parking lot, on a spur line or track, whistling hysterically though it was only going about five miles an hour, after picking up and/or delivering goods to what’s left of the huge steel mill in town. The last piece of info the desk clerk told me when I asked about the train while I was checking out. There was—the room’s one contemporary touch, though for all I know something a lot more modern in bathrooms superseded it a dozen years ago—a Jacuzzi in the bathtub, which I didn’t use.” She might say, “Why not? It would have relaxed you, taken your mind off suicide, and helped you sleep well, which you apparently didn’t do,” and he’d say, “Too much of an effort. You have to stick a hand on the drain—first you fill the tub to this silver dot between the regular bath and shower controls—and at the same time your other hand on another spot in the tub to get the Jacuzzi going. A little of me thought I’d get an electric shock—I mean, this place wasn’t in the greatest shape. But the major part of me thought, Who can pamper himself like that? And do you soap yourself in a Jacuzzi—which is what I wanted to do: get clean—or just lie in it, letting the thing do whatever it’s supposed to to you? A quick shower and then bed, with maybe a little reading, that’s all I wanted.” “You took a shower before you went to bed?” she could say. “How unlike you. You always exercise and run in the morning and then shower,” and he could say, “I did my exercises and ran in place for about a half hour in the room last night, feeling if I did them then I wouldn’t have to do any of it in the morning. I wanted to set off early today. I thought if I got back an hour or more before the kids—by the way, the drive there and back took an hour longer than this woman said it would—maybe you and I could have some fun … what do you say?” and he might jiggle his eyebrows or make a silly face or both, and she could say, “I wouldn’t mind,” and then he’d push her into the bedroom, to get it started sooner, help her undress and get on the bed, and she’d prepare herself if she had to and they’d make love. While on the bed he thinks he’d say, “I forgot to tell you about something I did there,” and she might say, “You had sex with Sheila this morning—she called you up for an early breakfast. Or with one of the students—she knocked on your door last night, while you were wondering whether you should take a shower, Jacuzzi, or bath, for a late evening snack,” and he’d say, “No, but close. I cable-hopped—what’s the expression the kids use for flicking through the TV set with the remote? Channeling? Station surfing? Television diving? I wanted to get a taste of American culture we don’t have any access to or want, and oh, boy, did I!—enough to hold me for a couple of years. Every movie, new, old, or ancient, including two jammed pornos—those you paid extra for, so I could only hear the dialogue, moaning, clothes being torn, and someone splashing in a bath—was silly, poorly written, and inconsequential, and I had a choice of about seven. And all the regular shows and reruns, from TV sitcom to cable stand-up, were no better and equally frivolous and often stupid about civility, marriage, intellectual discourse, history, art, violence, and sex. On the cable shows, and there were about thirty, mainly local, was everything from a preacher preaching, guru guruing, TV and movie critic critiquing, and several salespeople selling, to weather predicting for parts of the globe almost nobody but diplomats, the very rich, and jetting businessmen will go to, and consciousness-expansive talk fests for both genders and all adult ages and stages of parenting and most sexual preferences—I don’t know them all—and heritages and races. I felt that two hours of this in that room but without the nearby and then distant train whistles—that could only help someone come to his senses—would turn a healthy mind to abnormal thoughts of suicide.” No, he’d only tell her that nothing worthwhile was on, not go down a list she was probably familiar with and he’d added nothing original to, and he doesn’t know how he could deliver it without sounding condescending and pompous. Besides, she’d question his being able to make such decisive judgments about so many things in the shows—art, history, intellectual discourse—in so short a time. “It was all shit, period, but I got my taste,” will be all he’ll say. He actually did channel-surf—he thinks that’s the right expression—for an hour after Sheila left. He couldn’t sleep or read. It was around one A.M. He feels tired now and should stop for coffee and to rest his eyes a few minutes. He showered before surfing. Wanted to get the smell of them off. It all happened pretty fast. He fell asleep briefly after the first time—holding her, not holding her, or being held; he forgets—but she was there. Then she was rubbing and kissing him—for a moment he thought he was being licked and nibbled on by one of his daughters’ cats—and he did it again, half asleep, and doesn’t recall which position he took or if he came. That would have been unusual for him, twice in less than an hour, but he supposes with a new woman, or the only woman but his wife in almost twenty years, that could happen. Before she left—she was by the door, dressed, hair brushed; he was nude, sitting on the edge of the bed—she said, “Like me to drop by for breakfast?” He remembers thinking, Does she expect me to go to the door and kiss her goodbye? I think I’ll just sit; if she comes over, then I’ll have to kiss. “I know the hotel gives you a complimentary buffet breakfast at the bar—dry cereal, frozen fruit juice, muffins, and packaged bagels; you toast them in the toaster they provide—and weak coffee. But there’s a great breakfast place in town, the real McCoy. Opens at five, a workmen’s café that doesn’t get much business now that the mill’s ninety percent shut down, and I’ll clean the interior of my car first. I could tell you were more put off by the dog smell and hairs than you let on.” He said—by this time he had covered his genitals with the bed cover or sheet in case he got erect again—“No, this should be the end of it,” while he thought, Now what am I going to do? I never should have got into this stupid mess, and she said, “Hey, what do you think, I’m planning an affair with you? It was spontaneous, which is how it should be, and we had our kicks. If I’m still free and willing and you want to come around the area again, please do, but not for a second university check. Next time, if there is one, it has to be singularly for me,” and he said, “I meant that what I want to do six hours from now when I wake up is take an early run, maybe limber up beforehand on the weight-room machines downstairs, breakfast quickly in the bar, and then head home. It’s best I don’t stay away too long, though I can’t think of any good reason right now other than to be there when my kids get back from school and maybe to get some work done at home,” and she said, “And of course for your wife too—you can say it. Hell, it’d be natural, and by the way you spoke of her at dinner, I know she’s a fine woman,” and he said, “That’s right, I didn’t intentionally leave her out; for her too. As for my coming back here; much as I admire you, and I certainly don’t regret having done it”—You’re lying your eyeballs out, he told himself while he was saying this—“I think this was the only time for that too,” and she said, “Good, I can appreciate that, and I didn’t expect much more. I can also see no kiss good night will be forthcoming from you. If you wish, send it in a letter, but not care of my department,” and he said, “I don’t quite understand,” and she said, “Home, dummy, nothing furtive or disapproving implied,” and smiled, blew him a kiss, and left. In her car after dinner she said, “So, do you want to be driven straight back to the hotel?” and he said, “Sure, where else?” and she said, “Oh, this town’s loaded with fun-producing dives: just joking. But there are a couple of roadhouses for nightcaps a short drive from here. How about one of those? I love the word ‘nightc
ap.’ It puts the lid on things, does what a combination word like that’s supposed to: reverberate and ring with multiple meanings. What do you think?” and he said, “I guess so.” “And you deserve a nightcap. You deserve two, but I haven’t got all night either. It was a terrific reading and you gave the students half an hour longer in the Q-and-A session than they normally get from our visitors. It was apparent they kept asking questions because they were interested in you, liked your mind and forthrightness, and had been stimulated by the reading,” and he said, “Oh, God, I thought I was awful. I read too fast and was inarticulate in most of my answers. But I really am tired and would rather go back, maybe have a glass of wine in my room—I brought a glassful in a jar to help me doze—and then read for a while and go to sleep.” “The bar there—the Rendezvous Room, if you can believe it; can you think of a more inappropriate name for a grungy steel town in the heart of beerland?—but it’s a good one, designed with taste and sometimes lively. Why not have a drink there instead of in your room—that’s too depressing to think about—and we’ll put it on the bill. It all comes off the university. One of the perks of being the reading coordinator: I get to indulge my incipient alcoholism. I’m joking again,” and he said, “I don’t know …” and she said, “Hey, Mr. Reader, I’m not going to twist your arm. No? Then no,” and he said, “Sure, one drink, a brandy or cognac if they got,” since he thought he had hurt her feelings and she was paying him a decent fee for coming out here and if he’s cooperative for another hour she might invite him again in a couple of years. So they drank, sitting at the bar. TV was on above them; several men with the same kind of name tags on their jackets and shirts had taken up all the settees and most of the tables and chairs. He was the one who suggested sitting at the bar. He felt people drank faster there, and if she wanted a second drink—that would be his limit—they could get it quicker there than from a waitress at a table. He thought then: Did she have designs on him? He didn’t think so. It could be she was a little lonely—the stuff about her sons indicated that, and it didn’t seem she had a boyfriend—and visitors from outside were probably interesting company to her. She started talking about previous visitors—“Do you know Anya Malcolm?”—and he said he knew her work and had once been introduced to her at some function. “She was a bit full of herself, maybe because everyone but me was making a big to-do over her, but I guess she was all right. I have to admit I don’t think much of her work, though,” and she said, “From all you’ve said since you got here, whose do you like? I bet nobody’s,” and he said, “There are some, but if I tell you their names, you’ll say, ‘But they’re all dead,’” and she said, “Anyhow, Malcolm was wonderful, congenial, modest, contemplative, and as generous with her time to the students as you were. I think she bedded down with one too—in this hotel—or took his phone number, but that’s her business. He trailed her like a puppy. Later I learned she also has that reputation, a quiet killer,” and he said, “That I didn’t know. She’s not married; she can do what she wants,” and she said, “I don’t know if that argument holds. But one of our visitors—Malcolm was at least discreet about this student—but this fellow: a first-class character. We’ve had scholar characters too, I have to tell you, but none came near to doing what this one did—the males,” and she gave his name and he said, “I’ve heard of him, of course. You do get some big shots here, something I thought you said you couldn’t afford, for you sure didn’t get him for what you’re paying me, though I’m definitely not complaining. I never read or met him. The reviews of his work didn’t make it seem very interesting, and I don’t trust awards. But what’d he do, if I may ask?” and she said, “What’d he didn’t, know what I mean? Believe me, and I’m going to sound uncharacteristically vulgar now, but if there were a telephone pole with a hole in it shaped like a vagina, and it needn’t be greased, he would have jumped it. And you don’t have to ask; I’m telling you. That’s what I in fact told this gigantic creep I’d do: tell everyone, not that it’d stop him from waylaying other reading coordinators and students or disenhance, can I say? his literary eminence. Mr. Pulitzer Prize was on me from the moment I picked him up at this hotel. In that fetid car of mine to the university auditorium he kept saying, ‘You have magnificent eyes, silky skin, the most swanlike shoulders and neck I’ve ever seen.’ ‘Swans have shoulders?’ I asked. They could, but I couldn’t resist asking it. Anyway, malarkey. I know my eyes and shoulders and neck aren’t like that, but he persisted. My ears, my arms, my fingertips especially. He wanted to suck on them. Just looking at them gripping the wheel, they made him swell, he said. That’s the word he used. He wanted us to stop for a prereading drink, then after the reading we’d have predinner drinks, during-dinner wine, and finally at this bar postdinner drinks and nightcaps. It wasn’t from him I got the word. Truth of it is that for weeks after I had to overcome thinking it was the most scrofulous I’d heard. When I wouldn’t stop he took several swigs from a sterling silver hip flask, a gift from a reading coordinator in Minneapolis, he said, with an amorous-erotic inscription on it alluding to his legs and phallus and lips, even though I asked him not to read it. Then, while I’m driving, he tries grabbing my crotch and I said, ‘Hey, you nuts? Get your paws off or we’ll crash.’ When he realized I wasn’t ever putting out for him—we were about to enter the auditorium and the room was packed; I’m sorry, but the guy really draws them—he said if I don’t promise this instant to sleep with him after the reading, he’s going to make a beeline for the exit now and blame it on me in a way where he’ll get his full payment, even though he didn’t show up, and I’ll get canned. He’ll cook up the most credible story too, he said. ‘I’ll work on it for a day, put aside my other writing, and send it to your dean. Writers are the best liars when they put their minds to it,’ he said. For a minute I was in a dither what to do. I thought should I consent and then go ahead with it? because I was sure if I did consent and then reneged after, he’d concoct an even worse believable lie against me. I was petrified. I have a year-to-year appointment, I don’t earn much money, but I’ve been teaching here so long that my university pays half my kids’ college tuition for four years.” “You didn’t go through with it, did you?” “First I said, ‘I have to go to the ladies’ room,’ and he said, ‘You can pee later; tell me now.’ I said I’d report these threats to his wife. He said she knows all about what he does on the road and gives her blessing, since they have an arrangement that when he’s gone she gets to knock around too. I said he was lying, and he said, ‘Here’s her number; call her,’ and pulled out his cellular phone. ‘Then your department chairman,’ I said, ‘or your provost or dean.’ He said his school’s lucky to have him. With his celebrity the last few years, besides his mobility, he could teach anywhere. ‘I want an answer in ten seconds,’ he said, and I said, ‘Then the hell with my job. You’re a greasy repulsive slob, and too skinny, and I loathe your guts.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘you called my bluff; I love it,’ and kissed the top of my head, and we went in and he delivered a beautiful reading and had the audience enthralled and begging for more. Later he went partying with a few of the grad students and teachers, and I hear he was thoroughly charming and gracious, though I’m sure he secretly ended up with one of the girls.” “He sounds like a drip. It’s what I always thought about most writers, and especially the rare ones whose work you like—meaning: you don’t want to kill it? don’t get to know them. But listen, I’m tired. I’ll have to drink up and say good night.” “Fine, then, good night, and thank you for coming. Next time, if I can finesse it, I’ll try to get you out here for a lot more money,” and he said, “Thanks, I’d love to come back; the students were terrific. And also thanks for having me here this time,” and she said, “And thank you for thanking me so plentifully, sir. Compared to the creep, you’ve been a hundred-percent gentleman,” and he said, “Thank you,” and went to the elevator. She tapped on his door about twenty minutes later. Tapped? Knocked? What’s the difference? But what’d she do till then? He did
n’t ask. Maybe she got in her car and stayed parked or drove for a few minutes, even toward home, before deciding to turn around, or had another drink in the bar, since that’s where he left her. Once he headed to the elevator she even could have known what she was going to do but wanted to give him a few minutes. He was stuffing his shoes and clothes he’d just worn into his day pack. “Who is it?”—thinking maybe someone from the hotel staff or a guest who had the wrong door or one of the name-tag men downstairs as a prank—and she said, “Sheila; may I come in?” He said, “What is it, you forgot or lost something?” though for the most part knowing why she was there, and she said, “Something like that; it’s important. Open the door,” and he said, “I have to get some clothes on”—he was only in boxer shorts and socks—and then opened it. Then—it might have taken ten minutes—they were in bed. But how’d they get there? They started kissing and she was touching him through the pants and put his hand on her breast and his other on her buttock and unzipped his fly and put her hand inside. It seemed that was all she had to do. Jerked it around and then pulled him to the bed by it, got on her back first, got her arms around him and pulled him on top of her; then they had to separate to get their clothes off. “Your socks,” she said, “everything, since all of me’s off too.” But why’d he let her in the room, even? Why didn’t he say at the door after he opened it, and this was what he was feeling at the moment, “I’m sorry, but if it isn’t something you lost or forgot, and since you were never up here, it couldn’t be … if it isn’t important, as you said it was, then you really have to leave because I got to get to sleep”? She walked in when he opened the door. He said, “Excuse me?” but in a way that clearly meant, Where do you think you’re going? He didn’t know if he should shut the door or leave it open. He shut it, since he didn’t want anyone to see her in the room and he also may have to raise his voice to get her out. He thought he’ll tell her to go; he knows what’s on her mind and the same thing isn’t on his; he’s sorry. But first he’ll ask her to be more explicit why she came here: maybe there is a legitimate reason. “Excuse me,” he said, “but it is pretty late. Truthfully, what’s the reason you’re here?” and she said, “I’m aware of the time—and it isn’t that late—though I also realize you’ve had a long day and you’re probably tired. But how can I explain it other than to be direct: all that talk about the voracious Mr. Slime didn’t do anything titillating to me before, believe me. It’s simply an involuntary and actually very pleasant attraction I’ve had to you almost since you got here, not to speak of equally enjoyable sensations, and instead of leaving it alone I thought I’d see where it went and if anything comparable was happening to you. I apologize for not coming out with it at dinner or in the bar, and because you were married—and happily, it seemed—and just natural reserve about something like that, I felt somewhat shy,” and he said, “Look, you have to understand I’ve never done anything like that, what you’re suggesting, and I doubt I’m going to start now.” That’s what he said, almost exactly that. What he should have said was: and I’m in no way going to start now and neither do I like the uncomfortable position you’ve put me in, since you know I gave you no signs I was interested. Whatever you were feeling, you just should have kept in. She nodded agreeingly to what he did say, seemed to think about it a few seconds, eyes off to the side, then came up to him and said, “You doubt you’re going to start anything now but you’re not sure, am I reading it right?” and put her arms around his waist, and he said, “No, you’re wrong, I don’t want to; I just don’t have a firm way of saying things,” and tried pushing her hands off from in back. She was shorter than he by almost a foot and looked up and smiled softly but in no way cheaply or seductively or anything like that—saucily; it was a lovely smile—and pressed an ear against his chest and said, “I’m going to say something real dumb; I can feel your stomach pumping, what do you think it means?” and he said, “Sure you can. Come on, let’s stop this,” or “end this,” “drop this,” “forget this,” and tried prying her hands apart from in back, but she had them locked. He didn’t want to use more force and possibly hurt her. She might get excited, start lashing out at him, physically or with words. She does this screwy thing, coming up here and persisting, who knows? He had an erection because she was pressed into him there and all the talk and stuff, but so what? He gets them and they go. He should have gently pushed her away till her hands broke loose and, if they didn’t, then maybe turned around and pulled them apart. His back to her like that would have been a good sign, and the two combined, his back and pulling her hands apart, might have done the trick. She said, arms still around him, “You really don’t want to sleep with me? I’d like to with you, now even more than when I knocked on your door, which in answer to your question before is why I came here, but I won’t beg.” Why didn’t he just say no at that point, demonstrably, even angrily—“and thanks for your directness but it’s not working on me and in fact is misplaced”—so also sarcastically, and tell her to leave, even say, “Listen, I mean it, get the hell out of here,” and go to the door and open it and say, “Now come on, out, out!”? They started kissing just around then, but what’d they do between that moment and when she said she wouldn’t beg? How did they get so far, in fact, where they started kissing? She looked up at him—doe-eyed is the expression that was once commonly used—after she said that about not begging, raised herself on her toes a few inches, and he bent over—he can even see himself now bending down to her face after she raised hers closer to his—and kissed her, thinking, One kiss and that’ll be it, and maybe even saying, “It’s tempting, you kiss well, that was very nice but all there’s going to be. We kissed and now you have to leave, I’m sorry, and my goddamn erection means nothing. I get them from all kinds of things, even wind.” But she was grabbing him through the pants now, and they kissed more and she put his hands on her and her hand went inside his fly, and then they were on the bed. He could have stopped it there perhaps, when he got off her to undress, but by then he was very excited and she almost never stopped jerking him, so it was just too late. After it was over—the second time; after the first, not that he put much into it, he dozed off—she said, “Excuse me, but how many years has it been since you did it with anyone but your wife?” and he said, “Why, my participation was sort of mechanical?” and she said, “I didn’t say that,” and he said, “Anyway, without meaning to provoke you, it’s none of your business,” and she said, “You’re angry at me because you think I pushed you into it?” and he said, “Angry at myself. But I did it, enjoyed it the first time; the second time I was barely functioning, I was so sleepy, so whatever happened or didn’t, I don’t even know, but okay. But I’m asking you not to tell anyone about it. I know that’s a difficult request—one has best friends, but best friends have big mouths—but please do what I ask,” and she said, “That means you’re not going to tell your wife?” and he said, “That’s for me to decide,” and she said, “I only said that to know how many people you intend to tell and if I should expect a letter or phone call from her. I’d rather not get one of those—I never have. All but one of the men I’ve been attached to since my last divorce weren’t married at the time—so don’t worry: I’ll keep our little secret secret.” He wanted to say he didn’t much like that remark, “our little secret,” but didn’t want to antagonize her. Out of revenge, or more because if she lost any warm feelings she’d had for him she could spill everything to who knows whom, so best to get her out of here in a good mood. But to be on the safe side, he said, “I’ve definitely decided not to tell Sally, so please don’t tell anyone yourself,” and she said, “I wasn’t going to. I already said: it’s between us.” Then she got dressed, mentioned breakfast and some other things, and left. After she was gone he thought, Why’d she want to have anything to do with him? He’s got about twenty years on her. He’s not goodlooking anymore. She may have liked his mind but he doesn’t see why, because he didn’t show much intelligence or wit since he got here and was fa
irly unpleasant a lot of the time—cynical, acerbic, critical of others—and nobody goes to bed with you because of your writing. In comparison, she’s bright and cheerful and articulate and reasonably pretty, with an athlete’s body, almost—the physique of someone who runs or swims but works out every day—and with a nice fullness, and, for their one shot in bed, more sensual and uninhibited than he. He’s in shape, but the shape he’s in wouldn’t appeal to a much younger woman. And he’s not famous, he can’t get her a job in his department, he can’t do anything for her. Even a reference from him for a fellowship or teaching promotion or another teaching position or even to get into an art colony wouldn’t do much, as he’s not considered very highly in academic and literary circles, and he has no contacts at these places or other schools. If she did ask for a reference he’d give it and say very complimentary things, not just to keep her mouth shut but because they’re the truth based on what he saw: an excellent mind, a fine teacher, a considerable knowledge and love of literature, and she’s well-spoken and personable and has a rapport with her students that he found believable and unusual because they genuinely liked and respected her as a teacher and friend, and she didn’t get these reactions from them by having to act younger and more “with it” or diminishing herself in any way. “I recommend her most highly and would put her in the top five percent of young teachers I’ve seen teach.” He’s not being facetious here, he thought. This is what he’d say of her. So, she had her own reasons for coming on to him, that’s all. He reminded her of someone, or she was particularly keyed up to have sex because of something physical or personal he was unaware of and he happened to be there and wasn’t too unpleasant-looking to her or maybe not at all and hadn’t acted obnoxiously or like an oddball; and that he didn’t make a pass or show any attraction to her may have been to his credit, or the way she saw it, and so on, plus she must have assumed he wouldn’t make a fuss after, calling her up and wanting to see her again when she might not want him to. He was mature while being slightly unconventional, she might have felt, and maybe that’s mostly what it was, and also safe in a health way in that he’s been married and faithful—though his monogamy she only could have guessed at earlier in the evening—for almost nineteen years straight. Oh, what’s he going on about? he thought. He doesn’t understand why she went for him the way she did, and so assiduously, and all the reasons he just thought of border on the ridiculous. In the car he thinks maybe he shouldn’t get home before the kids. If he does, an hour before, let’s say, his wife could say, “We have an hour before the kids come home and I’ve missed you; want to have some fun?” He already thought that; but could he refuse? She might get suspicious or perplexed. He’s almost never refused. Maybe five times since they first slept together, or ten times then—twenty. Anyway, about twice a year, if that. And out of extreme fatigue or because he was sick or coming down with something and she didn’t know this, and maybe he didn’t either, when she suggested making love, or the rare time when he was depressed and didn’t think sex would take him out of it. Because in bed he may feel so guilty that he can’t perform: and that’s the word for it, perform, for his mind would be on what he did last night. It’s also possible that his sex drive will be slight because he did it twice with Sheila, and the second time only about twelve hours ago, and he was bushed while doing it, but he thinks that would only be a small part of his not being able to perform with his wife. She’d be sympathetic and tender and try some things to help him—“Leave it to me” or “Lie back and let me see what I can do,” she’s said a number of times—and maybe these wouldn’t work either. That’s happened a few times too, though usually only when they tried doing it twice in a short time. And he might then just tell her, thinking now’s better than later—since he feels he’ll probably have to tell her sometime—when she sees, even in this way, what it’s doing to him. “Now’s probably as good a time to tell you as any,” he could say. “For certain I don’t want you to find out from anyone but me. This is why I can’t do anything now, I’m sure of it. I had sex with a woman last night, the reading coordinator, Sheila. She also teaches there. I didn’t want to but I ended up doing it. She was a bit pushy but I could have resisted. She came to my hotel room after we shook hands and said good night downstairs in the bar. We only had a single drink and I didn’t even want to do that; I wanted to say good night and goodbye to her in her car. Or I kissed her cheek goodbye, though we also might have shaken hands, when I left her, and she might have kissed mine. Anyway, nothing more than a friendly kiss on the cheek from us both. I didn’t want to let her into my room but she sort of barged in when I opened the door. I know this sounds farfetched but it’s the truth, I swear to you. I said through the door, after she knocked on it and identified herself, ‘What is it you want? It’s late,’ and she said, ‘It’s important, open the door.’ Because I thought it was important—maybe she forgot to give me the check for the reading, though to be honest I expected it to come by mail in a couple of weeks, as she’d said earlier, or even that someone in the hotel was after her—I opened the door. I wasn’t going to let her in—I thought I could deal with whatever it was at the door—but she walked right past me. I said something like, ‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ because by now I knew it wasn’t about the check or anyone stalking her in the hotel. She was tenacious and aggressive and undiscouraged by anything I said to her, but still, as I told you, I could have resisted and I know that, so don’t think I’m trying to get out of this by saying I don’t. I could have said, ‘Are you insane? Get the hell out of here, beat it, or I’ll throw you out, and I mean it: get out now!’ I actually did say something like that, though not as forcefully, like, ‘Listen, this is all wrong and you have to leave here. I’m married, happily married’—that’s what I told her, the exact words, foolish and inept as they must have sounded—‘and I don’t want to do anything with you, period. Besides, I’m very tired and I want to set off early tomorrow, so will you please leave this room?’ I think I even showed her the door—went over to it and put my hand on the doorknob but didn’t open it, because I was concerned people in the corridor would see her in my room. In other words, I wasn’t sure what to do about her persistence but I knew I didn’t want to have sex with her—if I wasn’t married or going with anybody, maybe I would have wanted to or at least wouldn’t have been so adamant in wanting her to leave. But I eventually caved in. I’m still trying to figure out why, and I’m not trying to be funny there. I’m being apologetic. I feel miserable about it. She started undressing then, and I said, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ Then she threw herself on me—put her arms around me, I mean, and her shirt’s off and so’s her bra—and then started pulling off my shirt and I swear to you I tried putting it back on. But then it was off, and I think she tore part of it, and next thing I know she’s grabbing me through my pants and I push her hand away and she grabs me again and starts stroking me down there and I think, Oh, I give up; I don’t know why, but I knew by this time I was finished. As dopey and fake as this must sound, she was unstoppable and I ended up being conquerable. I was also, and I know this plus my tiredness contributed to some of it, a little drunk but not soused from the wine at dinner and the martini before and then that one brandy or cognac after in the bar. In fact I’m beginning to think—I’m almost convinced, though again this isn’t to worm out of it—that that’s what contributed to it the most. All the alcohol made me lethargic, stupid, and maybe even amorous, the way it can. But that’s what happened and how. I did it with her just once, I doubt I got half my clothes off, and I don’t remember a lot of it or if I even completed it: that’s how tipsy and sleepy I was. And the whole time she was there—from the knock on the door till when she left—was maybe thirty minutes in all. Believe me, I’m so sorry; I can’t tell you how much, and it’ll never happen again, never. I didn’t want to do it and I’ll know how to resist it next time. For one, to stay away from that much alcohol when I’m on the road, if I ever go again, even for a night, and I don’
t think I will. It could be I drink more when I’m away from you and alone, but also eat less, thereby getting high quicker through two ways, but that’s still no excuse for it, and this whole thing took me by surprise. She was much younger than I—more than twenty years. I’m practically an ugly guy by now, and to her an old man, and that’s how I thought she saw me—completely uninterested in me physically—till she came into the room, so I don’t understand it. But she was capricious and a bit odd and wild in her way and obviously turned on by something, not necessarily me, and I was just about drunk and she had a few glasses of wine in her too and also that brandy or cognac, and that’s all I can say to explain it. Not even that I was flattered and went for her finally because she was so much younger and pretty and showed me this kind of attention. But you know me: I couldn’t care less and even react against it, when someone says nice things about me or my work, which she didn’t, by the way, except for the dutifully complimentary things reading coordinators always say to you after a reading. And it also isn’t that just because I never did this in almost nineteen years, made love to anyone but you, I was curious if not eager to try it, especially when it was practically thrown at me—given on a silver platter, that sort of thing—because the truth is I haven’t had any urge to do something like that since we got married or even since we first met. Of course not when we first met or anytime around that, because I was crushingly in love and attracted to you, as I am now, and I’m not just saying that, and sex with you then was new and we were just starting something, so why would I want to be with anyone else, and ruin things with you, or even think of another woman that way? Anyway, for our entire relationship, I haven’t wanted to. You were always enough for me and out of consideration or something else, when you weren’t feeling much like it, always made your body available to me except when you were sick or it was the beginning of your period or during our worst moments together, which I was usually responsible for, just as I’ve always been available to you that way, except during those kinds of times too. Oh, I’ve had my fantasies about other women a lot, but that’s as far as I ever took it—all in my head and fleeting, where I knew they were strictly fantasies and would never be carried out. But when she—” Oh, enough of it. “But when she” what? When she put her hand in his fly and started pulling on him, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He wouldn’t tell her half of what he just thought of, and she’d probably by now be crying to whatever he did say, possibly from when he first said he made love to a woman last night, which would be one of the first things he said, so who knows how much he’d be able to tell her? Much of what he doesn’t say today, if he does decide to tell her about it, he can save for another day when she’ll be more willing to listen. But if she was crying he’d try to comfort her, maybe try to hold her, hold and comfort her and say comforting and loving and apologetic and remorseful and self-damning and -hateful things, but she’d have none of it and would push him away, if he was holding her, he’s almost sure of it, and maybe say things like “You fucking bastard, you stinking shit,” and not say but scream them at him, and get dressed and leave the room or take her clothes with her and dress somewhere else, if he did start telling her this while they were in bed with no to few clothes on and preparing to make love. But he’s often impulsive and might just blurt it out sooner—to get it over with, he might give as a reason to himself—in another room or outside where he saw her when he got home but before there was any chance they’d go to bed, because of all places and occurrences he wouldn’t want to tell her there and then, and not blurt it out but say calmly and solemnly—and the solemnness would be real—that he has something important, disturbing, and grave to tell her and even frightening to him because of the effect it might have on her, and nothing to do with his health, he’d quickly add, since he wouldn’t want her getting alarmed at that possibility and then finding out what it really was. Maybe just say immediately that he’s done something he’s terribly ashamed of … deeply… anyway, he’d find the words. And after he told her he slept with a woman last night he’s almost sure she wouldn’t, after she told him what she thought, say much to him for a week. He can picture her—she’s done it before over less serious things between them: when he called her a cunt once. “There it is,” she said, “it’s finally out, what you truly think of women: they’re all just cunts to you, right? Well, I won’t listen anymore to your jackass insults”; another time, near the beginning of her illness when she was only limping a little and sometimes felt weak, when he said how sick can she be that she can’t even straighten a room out or wash a dish: “You’re completely without understanding and compassion and talk like the dimmest lowbrow I know. From now on think of me as deaf”—cupping her ears—and before that probably saying something curt like, “Shut up, I’ve heard enough, there is no word for you, get out of my sight.” Or she might not say anything, what he’d tell her would be so bad, and would only look stricken for a while and maybe even crazed, before getting herself away from whatever place he told her this at. After that, he thinks, the only things she’d say to him for a week would be for the kids’ benefit, so they wouldn’t think something irreconcilable had happened between their parents. She hates when he starts an argument when they’re around and usually says something like, “Save it for later when they can’t hear us, and I’m not saying this to defuse you but to spare them.” Or she might hear him out soberly like that and then say she doesn’t understand: if he didn’t want to do it with this woman as much as he said, at what point did he give in? and it might be then he’d have to say—if he didn’t say, “Forget it, let’s drop the subject for now”—“When she put her hand in my pants. Something just happened to change things,” and she could say, “Drop it? No, I want to hear all of it,” and then, “So that’s it? She grabs your dick and massages it half a minute and you totally capitulate? Worse comes to worst and it was overcoming you when your conscience or governing intelligence or whatever that higher part in you that screens and is supposed to thwart these kinds of actions didn’t want it to, as you said, and you knew it would jeopardize our marriage and hurt me and indirectly inflict similar distress on the kids, why didn’t you push her hand away and, if that didn’t work, wrench it free without injuring her or your penis and bark in her ear that this isn’t what you want to do, exciting as it’s obvious you find it, and if that didn’t sink in and she kept grabbing at it, then excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, even say you have to defecate—she couldn’t refuse you that, and I doubt she’d accompany you there—and lock the door and masturbate?” He actually should have done that, the last part, and there at least would have been some pleasure in the act rather than not having completed anything—maybe a great deal of pleasure, considering all the hot stuff that preceded it—and then come out of the bathroom and tell her what he did and he’s sorry but it was the only way he could stop from making love with her and now he won’t be good for anything involving sex for an hour and probably two—that’s been the pattern the last ten years—so she better just go since he really won’t want to do it in two hours or even an hour from now any more than he wanted to do it before, and it would also be much later than he wants to stay up. But who knows how his wife would take it, if he did tell her, though he’s almost sure she’d be cold and sharp and sullen to him for a lot longer than a week, no matter how often he apologized for what he did, and she wouldn’t let him make love to her—even let him embrace or kiss her or hold her from behind while they slept in bed—for a month, maybe more. She probably wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with him for a couple of weeks, though he thinks she’d insist on taking over the guest bed in her studio, since he does most of his work on his desk in their bedroom. But after that—after many discussions between them and verbal soul-searchings on his part that in a way, and he’d tell her this, he feels she let him off lightly—he thinks most of it would be worked out. He’d periodically say how bad he felt about it and still does, just so she wouldn’t think he was trying to forget it, and that
he knows it could never happen again, not only because it was wrong and morally indefensible and a breaking of her trust in him and things like that—not “morally indefensible”; that’s too much like a cliché—but because the consequences to them both and the children were so great, till in a few months she might tell him to stop bringing it up: it’s for the most part over and done with, she could say, and a certain healing’s taken place, significant as the event was to them then and the one that caused the greatest rupture in their marriage and nearly blew it apart. But she’s satisfied it won’t be repeated, so less said about it now the better, since there doesn’t seem to be anything pertaining to it she hasn’t heard from him a dozen times, doesn’t he agree? He’d say, “Without question, and I’m glad to hear that’s how you feel.” Maybe in a year things would be completely normal between them again. “Like the Jewish mourning period,” he could say. “It’s possible that’s the tradition in other religions, but concerning mourning and bereavement I only know the Jewish ones, and not well.” In two years they might even banter about it if one of them alluded to the incident in some way—he doubts it’d be he. “You know what anniversary today is?” she could say. Would this be something she’d do? He’s only using it as an example. And he’d answer with something like, “You know me and memory. I’m very bad with birthdays and wedding anniversaries and those kinds of personal dates. World history I’m better at. August sixth, the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima—or was it Nagasaki? August ninth—this is 1945—the second A-blast on the city that wasn’t hit first. No, definitely Nagasaki for the second one, and I’m not trying to be flippant about it. August eighth—notice the opportunistic timing—the Soviet Union declares war on Japan or just invades some of the more vulnerable Japanese-occupied territories on the Soviet Union’s Asian borders. August fourteenth, V-J Day, and September second, I believe, Japan signs the surrender papers on the Missouri, so the official end to the entire war, as the one in Europe ended on May eighth the same year.” “It’s two years to the day you told me about Sylvia, or whatever her name was, and when I thought, Am I going to use this transgression to start immediate divorce proceedings against you? Because I had never felt so let down by anyone. I remember the date exactly because it was the last day of the month and was my childhood friend Rejelika’s birthday,” and he could say, “It was that bad for you? I knew I’d hurt you, but you never told me how much. Me too, but on the opposite receiving end. I hoped, though, you’d forgotten it to the point where you didn’t even know—no, I was going to say—oh, what’s the difference what I was going to say, but it was ‘it had happened.’” “God,” she could say, “you were so guilty and penitent that day, I thought you’d never stop apologizing, and that went on for weeks, perhaps, where your guilt and contrition hardly receded. The only plus side of it was that you were also much sweeter and more indulgent to me and the girls than you had ever been to me, or since the first few weeks after I gave birth to each of them. And you kept using phrases in your apologies that I hadn’t heard from you before, such as ‘higher sense’ and ‘breach of faith’ and ‘moral duty’ and words like ‘perfidious,’ ‘unscrupulous,’ and ‘corrupt,’ which had always been part of your vocabulary though mainly confined to governmental and academic politics, never in relation to yourself,” and he could say, “I felt miserable over it—what can I tell you?—and afraid for weeks I’d lose you and, by losing you, lose the love and respect of the kids and seeing them every day. Now I know you lose that respect no matter what undeviating good you do for them and how straight a line you toe, I think they say—people who say such things—and then get the respect back at some point, if your undeviating toe is good, though we haven’t come to that end of it yet. But I thought we’d agreed, some three months after the thing happened, not to go into it at length anymore—that we’d said just about everything we could on the subject and it had become so irksome for you to hear me refer to it again that you didn’t know what was worse, you said, what I’d done or that I was about to reproach myself and beg forgiveness for it once more,” and she could say, “You could be putting words in my mouth there—after all, it was almost two years ago, and if your memory’s not so sharp about nonhistorical things, as you said, why should I believe you’d remember that?” and he could say, “Dates, I didn’t say ‘things.’” “Anyway,” she could say, “that one romp with Madam S, I’ll call her, doesn’t upset me any longer and hasn’t for a year, and I feel we can even banter about it, it’s such ancient stuff and where there’s little chance of it being repeated, wouldn’t you say?” and he could say … what? “Yes,” he could say, “I could say that,” and she could say, “There is one aspect of it … do you mind my continuing with it a bit further? There was something in your past explanation that never sat well with me,” and he could say, “Why I went ahead and had sex with S—even I’ve forgotten her name, though I know it’s not Sylvia—when I had so many reasons not to? But you do believe she sort of forced herself on me after she finagled her way into my hotel room and that I didn’t initiate or encourage the action though I eventually did participate in it, right?” and she could say, “Yes and no, though I won’t at this moment, maybe just to be mischievous, say which expression goes where,” and he could say, “Okay, get it out, you’re entitled, I guess, and I never want to stifle conversation between us except when I’m too sleepy to speak or hear, though I hope this is the last time we talk about it for a while. I think”—what could he think? he thinks in the car—“I think, in spite of the long break in our even referring to it, that I’m kind of fed up with the subject now too. Because you did say you were fed up with it, true? Or was that almost two years ago?” and she could say, “One, you were only going to be away from home a day, and by the time the romp took place you’d been gone a mere twelve hours. Two—” and he could cut in and say, “First let me go over your figures to see if they’re correct and also if they’re of any importance in the matter,” and she could say, “Two, you showed no signs of loneliness or need for another woman in any capacity since we met, as far as I could make out, as we’d for the most part been compatible, lively, conversational, stimulating, and supportive—oh, I detest that word and have always shunned it in my conversation and writing, so I don’t know why I used it now—with each other. And our sex life together had been, and seems to be to this day, despite the romp and minus the month after it—at least for me and for you as well, from what I could tell—frequent, sufficient, and robust. Three—‘robust’ is a word better used for economics, but you know what I mean—three, you said in your original explanation that you knew from the start when you let her into the room and she made a romantic move to you that having sex with her would be wrong, a breach of faith and so forth, not to say—which you never spoke about then but both of us should have seriously considered and later taken a test or two for to resolve the possibility—that you’d risk getting a viral infection or disease, and some of the worst ones were floating around then and the most dangerous one was at its peak,” and he could say, “At the time … at the time … I really can’t quite come up with a reasonable justification or pardonable excuse right now why I didn’t think of that at the time. It’s possible I never thought I’d get anything from her but disappointment during and after the act and acrimonious mail a few days later documenting her disappointment, she seemed that physically fit and careful and clean and of course all charged up to do it, so easily let down when it didn’t meet her expectations and because of the nonviral risks she took in aggressively bedding me.” “And four,” she could say, “you said you didn’t find her attractive and that she was in fact somewhat overweight, over made-up, and doughy,” and he could say, “I don’t remember saying that. From what I can remember,” and he could shut his eyes briefly—no, that would look too much like reverie—“she was fairly attractive by just about any man’s idea of good looks—considerably so. Nice face, nice age and shape, nice teeth and low-keyed hair, smart, sparkly, moved gracefully, lots o
f laughs and devil-may-care, though came on as too saucy and sexy—I squirmed a bit at that but let it pass and didn’t show my squirms expressively for reasons I might go into later. Usually, though, saucy provocative women, through behavior, gestures, makeup, dress, voice, and the words they use—and I don’t mean by that ‘aggressive women’—appear silly to me and end up dampening and often freezing my fantasies and, before I hooked up with you, my ardor. And what’s with this doughiness? Muscular butt, dancer’s legs, trapezist’s chest, cheerleader’s waist, swimmer’s back—I’m only repeating hackneyed descriptions I might have read somewhere or even wrote myself, and I forget the one about hips but know it has a horsewoman in it. She was short, but that never put me off and it can sometimes make a woman seem sort of doll-like and performable if her body’s also compact and slight. Was I drunk? No, I wasn’t, as I know I told you. Just a bit tipsy, but you’re not going to see me fall back on that time-eaten excuse. I was sleepy, but there too, and I’m not even certain—I’m only assuming I did because she never said I didn’t and seemed the type that would: the accusations and letter never came—if I completed the act or even got started doing it, which if I didn’t then forget the possibility of infection and disease and taking tests, as I’ve been unwaveringly faithful since S and we did nothing but touching without open cuts or soul kisses, and she a lot more than I—I can’t even say for sure I did that except where she placed my hands. As to why I let the saucy sexy stuff pass: what I wanted most was to get her out of the room fast as I could, and not just to get to sleep because I was so tired but to avoid prolonging what I didn’t want to get involved in originally. So I didn’t want her getting miffed at my gestures and remarks and possibly building it up into a scene—‘You tin highbrow and finicky prick and so-called man of the people who keeps his nose in the air’ and stuff like that—which also might be why I went through with the sex in the first place, if I did: I saw, after a while, because she was so fired up and unrelenting and confident, that I had no other way of getting rid of her. No, that doesn’t work or even make sense, I think, not that I’ll try to reprise the last line to see if it did, but maybe one of these will, because believe me I’ve had a long time to think about it. The truth is I did it because, if you recall, and if you don’t, please take my word—at the time we were short of cash, in fact, strapped, which is something you’d have to remember, being the one who does the tax returns for us—and she said she’d add another six hundred to my reading fee—she had that much power—besides finding it kind of exciting at my age to be compensated, and for so large an amount, for my sexual services for a first time. Of course when I didn’t perform up to snuff or even penetrate, if I didn’t, or even get into a position to—it had to be one of those or she was just lying to me—she went back on the offer but was unable to kill the original reading fee. The room was so depressing and I was feeling lonelier and more estranged from things than I had in years, maybe because I was away from you for the night, which wasn’t that unusual an occurrence, so probably also because of the depressing room and my sense of worthlessness after such a lousy reading and my dumb responses in the Q-and-A, that I felt somewhat suicidal, and she by throwing herself at me and comforting me in various ways, like saying a few nice things about my work that I never hear from anyone, including you—‘It invariably floors me and ultimately floors all the people I have to force, since they’re more interested in movies and TV, to look at it too’—not that I’m trying to shove the blame on you, that she sort of saved me, you could say, so we should be grateful rather than resentful to her even if she did renege on the second six-hundred-dollar fee. I was drugged, I’m afraid, and for about a half hour I thought she was you and we were doing what we’d normally do in a hotel room, no matter how depressing the setting was, if we were free for a night from the kids. I was simply curious as to what another woman’s nudity would feel like after almost twenty years and she was willing to take off her clothes and lie on the bed and align her body against mine so I could find out, and I guess one of us got carried away, though I can’t remember that I was the one who did, and the other was swept along with it and away from the original plan. I was drunk, plain and simple, and you know I didn’t want to fall back on this lame excuse but it’s the truth—I didn’t want to drink so much booze, especially since I knew how it’d affect my driving the next day, but ended up doing it eagerly for some reason, maybe because of one of the previous ones concerning depression and estrangement and crummy feelings about myself and so forth—and felt simultaneously woozy and sexy and didn’t know what I was doing and hardly whom I was doing it with, and also so sleepy that I didn’t even think any of the lovemaking was taking place. When I awoke after and saw her snoozing beside me I thought it was a dream and because I was still tired I went back to sleep, and when I awoke again she was gone without a trace and had even left her side of the bed looking unslept-in and I thought I’d imagined the whole thing, even the sexy dream. It was only during the drive home that it came back to me for real—that I’d had sex the night before with someone other than you—and I felt horrible over it but thought I’d keep it from you. I was afraid how you’d take it and what it’d do to our marriage—but then thought, No, tell her the whole truth, from start to finish, or at least all you know and can remember of it—since it’s true that I was a little soused and quite tired during the hotel-room part of it, and that’s what I did shortly after I got home that day,” and she could say, “Of course I’m glad you did tell me, though at the time I wasn’t glad to hear it. But I knew even while you were telling me of the incident that it was better you got it out then, rather than conceal it from me. Something like that would almost have to come out eventually, either from a buildup of guilt or through some slipup, and then it would be much worse for me, not only because of what you’d be revealing but that you had kept it from me for so long, since we had grounded our marriage and relationship from the beginning on being thoroughly up-front and undeceitful with each other and anything noticeably less would be detrimental to us,” and he could say, “Maybe that’s also why I decided to tell you right away—I’m almost sure of it,” and then she could say, “If you don’t mind, there is one final thing I’ve never asked you regarding it and then I’ll drop the matter for good, not even to joke or banter about or refer to it in the future. Have you heard from her since then? A personal or professional letter or phone call or fax inviting you to read there again or asking you to do what you can to reciprocate your visit by inviting her to lecture or read at your school for a comparable fee?” and he could say, “No, so she probably did see after I left and she had time to think it over how upset I was about what we’d done and what I thought it might do to you and our marriage, so she felt it best not to communicate with me again. And also because she might have felt guilty about it too—that she had obviously pushed me into doing something that for a long time that night I had done everything I could to show her I didn’t want to do, besides having manipulated her way into my hotel room, because she knew I certainly didn’t ask her in, and maybe even manipulated me to her school for a reading in the first place because of some bull that she liked my work, though that might be stretching it a bit,” and she could say, “Oh, yeah, I bet that’s what she did; saw a photo of you on a book from about twenty years ago and said, ‘He’s for me,’” or say, “Maybe that’s so, you never know, I mean about her guilt and not communicating with you again, but from everything you said about her she didn’t seem the type to feel much remorse over it or exercise that kind of self-control,” and he could say, “Well, I just wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and not set her up as a total predator, since both you and I agree I had to be partly responsible for it, but as you said, you never know.” He decides to take the longer way home. That’ll add to the trip twenty to thirty minutes, barring tieups and unexpected heavy traffic, though those could happen on either road. He’ll also stop at a rest area for coffee, maybe read there for an hour or so, even h
ave a salad without one of their thick packaged dressings or something else simple and light; he doesn’t know why—maybe it’s because of the tacky fast-food atmosphere and strong smells of the fried food—but he hates eating at those places, though the coffee’s never that bad. He wants to get home after the kids. They and some house chores—shopping, doing a laundry if one needs doing—can occupy his time for a couple of hours, and then he’ll make dinner and they’ll eat it and he’ll read a book and the newspaper for an hour after and then say he’s tired from all the driving—some of the roads were congested and the trip took longer than he thought it would—and he’s going to turn in early, and when she gets to their bedroom a few hours after he’s shut off the light he’ll be asleep, or pretend to be. He doesn’t think he’ll tell her what happened last night. No, he’s definitely not going to, or doesn’t think so. No “doesn’t think so”; he isn’t, he’s sure. He hopes Sheila won’t contact him again. She won’t for a lecture or reading at his school, since she knows she hasn’t the credentials for that yet—no first book out or scholarly following—and he for sure won’t go out of his way to try and convince his colleagues otherwise. And he thinks he made it clear to her that he wouldn’t be interested in sleeping with her again and that even seeing her again wouldn’t be a good idea. “Why?” she could say, and he could say, “There’d be no point and it’d even be embarrassing to me and I don’t want to say why it’d be embarrassing or go into the matter any deeper.” He still doesn’t know why she wanted to have sex with him so much and pursued it the way she did. Aggressively, did he say? No, he only thought it, but he can’t recall any woman who went after him more. Be honest, though: did he enjoy it? No, probably because he really can’t remember most of it except that she had a nice body—much harder and somewhat slimmer than his wife’s and she was a few inches shorter, though he can’t picture her body, while he can his wife’s—and chapped lips the few times they kissed. What else? Her long hair; the time she screamed when his arm was on it while she tried to move her head. Eye color, nose shape, large or small aureoles?—a blank. Teeth extremely white and even, he thinks. He thinks he thought, when she first greeted him at the hotel, She could be advertising those teeth and that smile, though he can’t picture her smile either, while he can his wife’s. He does remember getting on top of her—he thinks she said, “What’re you waiting for, silly? Come on,” but with a nice smile, nothing snide or hard in it—but he doesn’t remember any thrill at the end of the act. So did he enjoy it? There was a minute or two, when he was going in and just about all the way out of her and getting as much friction from it as he could, that he thinks he lost himself in the pleasure of it. But when his climax was coming—some thirty seconds away—he told himself, “Goddammit, what am I doing? Why in shit did I ever start in on this and then let it continue?” and opened his eyes and saw her with that dreamy look and her mouth parted just so and those teeth, and it sort of dissipated for him—at most, just a leak—and after it was over and he was lying almost flat on her and she was rubbing his back in a circular motion with one or two hands and saying something like, “You’re long and wiry but heavier than I thought, so get off before you squash me,” he thought, It wasn’t my fault, I’m almost sure of it, but still one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. But if I tried to explain it, who the hell would believe me? and rolled off her and wanted to excuse himself and go to the bathroom to think what next to do and how to get rid of her now, but she shut off the lights and said, “Let’s nap awhile, you must be tired,” and put her arm around him from behind and her other hand grabbed his penis and just held it and she kissed his shoulders and neck several times and he fell asleep. So why sex with him? Loneliness, kids gone, only the animals to take care of, small town and college, few prospects, and, despite what she said, no romantic interests right now, not even someone solely for sex or to pursue for it. She pull this on other readers or lecturers she brought to the school for a day? He’ll never know, so don’t even think of it; or think of it but a lot of good it’ll do you, for so what if she had? Probably most went for it a lot more agreeably than he, if there were any, and he thinks there were, and if one or two were able to stop it, he wonders how. She also must have thought he was a good mark for just one night: of an age where he might like a much younger woman, and his writing clearly stamps him as a hetero and possibly interested in outside sex, since there are so many guys having it in his prose, though that’s ridiculous because she’s aware as anyone that one doesn’t have to have anything to do with the other and in plenty of cases and for many different reasons the writer might be writing about precisely what he’s not and never experienced or would, and then he’d be home the next day and there’d be no complications or communication between them except for something related to the reading, perhaps: the check, if it doesn’t come and he has to write her for it, or she writes him that it’s going to be issued much later than she told him it would, and so forth. She make that clear to him regarding her? Sort of, but he forgets lots of what she said, and if she did say she hopes they meet again one day, which he thinks she did or something like that, it was probably out of politeness or habit. She also could have thought that all that stuff about this being the first time in twenty years for him was a bunch of bullshit, but how does that speculation help him decide if he’s going to tell his wife about last night? It doesn’t; he was only going back a few steps and thinking why she wanted to have sex with him. But she won’t want to make anything more of it, if only to protect herself, if there was no other reason, so it’s all perfect: silence on both sides. So she won’t bother him, won’t try to see or contact him again other than for the most practical reasons, or make any kind of stink, especially because there’s nothing—now, this is useful—to be gained from it that he can see, and she also may decide—may have already decided last night—that he’s way too old for her and not that intelligent or exciting or attractive in any way or good in bed, as it wasn’t an especially successful sexual encounter, besides being too damn difficult to get. And he shouldn’t write her either, which he always does to the reading coordinator after a reading, thanking her for inviting him and the courtesy and hospitality showed and also something complimentary about the students: very bright and stimulating, some of the best questions asked of him that he’s ever heard, the audience responses to the nuances and humor of the works he read were right on the button, so of course heartening to him. Oh, what a phony he is. In the past all these things said partly out of his own courtesy and genuine gratitude for having been invited, but also so he might be invited back. “Hey, what a great guy, because how many of our invited readers have written their thanks and said the wonderful things he did?” So he’s not going to tell his wife. Sure of it? Sure, positive. But he doesn’t have to decide now. He can arrive home, walk into the house, kiss her as if nothing’s happened, not tell her till later: tonight after the kids are asleep, tomorrow while the kids are in school, next week, even a few weeks from now. He could say then, or tonight or tomorrow, that he didn’t know how to tell her till now, that he had in fact spent the entire car trip right till the time he got home thinking of how and when he’d tell her; and why? Because he knew that what he did with this woman was so wrong, and so on. No: he’s sure, positive. It just isn’t worth the risk. He doesn’t know how she’ll take it. It could end up being the worst thing that ever happened between them in their marriage. Of course it’d be the worst thing, for what in the past that he’s done was worse? Some mean thing said, some mean thing done, but nothing like this. If Sheila, for some reason, does try to contact him or tells some people what they did and it gets out to his wife but not through him—she finds or receives a letter, for instance—he’ll just have to explain in the best way he can why he did what he did that night and why he didn’t tell her himself. But he doesn’t see what’s to be gained by talking about it to her before then—he’s never going to do again what he did last night—except as continued lip service to honesty in th
eir marriage, if that’s the right use of that expression. Is it? Anyway, he knows what he’s trying to say, and it’s close enough.