by Robert Cohen
“The thing is,” she said, “I do want to be friends. Is that so bad? I’m entitled to make new friends once in a while.” Her nose was red. She clutched his shirtsleeves with both hands, pinching the fabric. “What happened to you back there?”
“What do you mean?” He gazed dully at the door that led to the backyard. The cats had left scratch marks at the bottom.
“Well, something changed. Didn’t you feel it? About halfway through. It was like being kissed by two totally different people.”
“Only two?” he said.
He led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs—as if they were his stairs, as if she were his wife—and down the long wainscoted corridor to the master bedroom. Sunlight was pouring through the blinds, striping the bed and Don’s black cat, who lay asleep on the quilt. Ties hung from a hook on the back of the door. He watched Gail sit down on the bed, and now she too was striped.
“Okay, Cato,” she said. “Scram.”
The cat slunk off the bed and onto the floor with a thud. Any half-sentient creature could see Gail wasn’t to be trifled with today.
Once she’d laid claim to the bed, the rest followed as a matter of course. Off went the duvet. Off went the throw pillows. Off went the leather clogs, the nubby sweater, the rayon skirt. Of her bra and panties she divested herself with such deft erotic efficiency—her bracelets tinkling like a xylophone as they rode her arms—he began to wonder if she’d done this before. Was she an old hand at this adultery game? Had she been the one putting the moves on him all along?
A draft came rattling through the storm windows and into his bones.
“Second thoughts?” She regarded him from high on the bed, lying cushioned against plumped pillows like a queen. “You look a little nervous.”
“Why would I be nervous?”
“Then why don’t you go ahead and take off your pants. I’m getting cold.”
God help him, he did like a woman who took charge in bed.
The sex itself was touch and go, with an emphasis he supposed on the latter. Gail’s movements were deliberate, like someone recovering from an illness; she would not be hurried along. At one point he looked down at her eyes, which were closed, and her jaw, which was clenched, and he wondered whom, if anyone, she was thinking about. He felt reasonably sure it wasn’t him. Yet even knowing this did not detract from Oren’s pleasure, but in an odd way enhanced it. He was accustomed to solo sex these days; this seemed just another agreeable variation.
Slowly, as they warmed to the act, her breath in his ear grew hoarse, insistent. Her soles gripped the backs of his thighs. He tightened his sphincter, squelching himself back, so as not to come too soon. He knew how to squelch himself back, all right. In the end however he wound up tarrying behind and almost failed to come at all.
Neither of them spoke. They lay side by side, like twins joined at the hip. Okay, he thought, he’d had better sex in his life. He’d had much better sex in his life. But it was their first time. He’d endured plenty of first times before; he knew what they were like. Knew too that they didn’t always lead to second times necessarily. So he tried to remain philosophical when Gail said, “You were so quiet. I’m not used to that.”
For a number of reasons Oren decided to take the observation at face value and try not to see it as the complaint it probably was.
But she wasn’t finished. “With Teddy, he huffs and roars, you know right where he is. But you’re different. I couldn’t tell if you were with me or not.”
“I was with you, believe me. I was with you the whole time.”
“You don’t have to say that, you know. I’m not fishing for compliments. I was just trying to understand.”
Too bad there was no rule book for adultery, Oren thought, because surely, if there were, to compare your lover’s prowess in bed to your husband’s—and unfavorably at that—would have to be considered a major infraction by any standard. Just uttering the man’s name seemed an act of bad form, bad faith, and bad magic. It conjured him into bed with them. And because that bed, Oren reminded himself, belonged to yet another man, with that other man’s books piled on the nightstand and that other man’s antiquated and unflattering wardrobe moldering away in the closet, and a triptych photo of that other man’s now ex-wife poised atop the dresser, this made four, no five people present and accounted for in the bedroom. Plus watchful old Cato, slinking stealthily along the floor, lying low. How did adulterers manage to get any actual sex in, Oren wondered, with all these crowds around?
“I’m always quiet,” he said, “when I’m trying to concentrate on something.”
“You’re not supposed to have to try. It’s supposed to come naturally.”
“You were trying too though, weren’t you?”
“A little,” Gail conceded.
“So you see. When it comes down to it, we’re not so different. We’re both…”
“Sensitive?”
“That’s one word for it, I guess.”
“Repressed? Ambivalent? Neurotic?”
“Okay, that’s three words for it.”
“There’s only one problem.” She got up on one elbow to look at him. “We can’t both be those things. It doesn’t work. The energy’s all wrong.”
“Actually I thought the energy was pretty good there, once we got going.”
“Oh, hey, listen, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I enjoyed myself, honest.”
“But?”
“No buts.” She frowned, as if making an effort to stop herself; then she went ahead and made her admission. “But maybe I thought it would feel different somehow.”
To which he very sensibly said nothing.
“Scratch that.” She shivered a little, crossing her arms over her breasts either for warmth or protection. “See? I am neurotic. That’s the truth, my dirty little secret. The only ones who’re onto me are my daughters. They see everything. Everyone else thinks I’m the together one. The solid one. Even Teddy. But I’m not, you see. I’m afraid all the time.”
“What of?”
“What’s anyone afraid of? I’m afraid the best part of my life is already over, and here I am waiting for it to start.”
“Maybe it’s coming along right now.” He ran his hand down her back, along the bumpy ladder of her spine. “Or does that scare you too?”
“You bet it does.”
“Why?”
“You’re a shortcut, Oren. Nothing good ever comes from shortcuts.”
“I disagree. When you want something in a hurry, a shortcut can be just the thing. Anyway, what are we even talking about? I’m losing track.”
“We’re talking about what we always talk about. This affair we’re not going to have. All present evidence to the contrary.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She wheeled to face him. “Because people like us are no good at these things.”
“Maybe you’re worried we’ll be too good at it.”
She mused on this for a second, her lips compressed almost to the vanishing point. “No way. We’re amateurs, let’s face it. Look, we even forgot to draw the shades.”
“I thought you don’t care what other people think.”
“Look, I have to live in this town, okay? I have a practice here. I do yoga here. I shop at the supermarket here. My daughter on her good days even goes to high school here. It’s tough enough at the moment, thank you, without pinning a scarlet letter to my chest.”
“You’re right,” he said, “let’s forget it. It isn’t practical. We’ll be proper New Englanders. Good fences, good neighbors.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No, of course it isn’t what I want.”
“Are you sure you know what you want? You don’t sound sure.”
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. He never sounds sure.”
“Think about it,” she said. “A middle-aged woman with menopausal tendencies, not to mention married to someone else. Who h
appens to be your boss. Talk about a no-win situation.”
“I’m not looking to win. I’m happy just to play. Of course in an ideal world,” he added, “that finding-out stuff won’t happen.”
“It’s a small town. It might. You’re willing to take that chance? Why? I’m not even good in bed. I’ve been married my whole adult life, and Teddy, bless his heart, has never been one for variety.”
“So what?”
“So we’ve just run through about half my carnal repertoire, that’s what. I’m forty-nine years old, my dear. Just getting me lubricated at this point is a half-hour project.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Oh my.” One hand went to her cheek. Had she not blushed, he’d have thought she was making fun of him again. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying you actually want to fuck me again, Rabbi Pierce?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“And specifically. This time you’ll let go a little? Maybe even make a little noise?”
“I’ll try,” he said, though from the level way she continued to regard him, it was as if he hadn’t answered. “Wait, you mean right now?”
When she laughed, or cried—and she appeared to be on the verge of one or the other—Gail’s face reddened and shrank, like the heating element in a toaster. It was doing so now. Before he understood what she was up to, she’d climbed on top of him and begun to work her hips back and forth, burrowing in, making a place for herself at the center of him. She was a slender woman; her weight wasn’t much. And now her breasts, warm and pendulous, came brushing against his face, and the tiny hairs on her calves were prickling against his ribs, putting the flesh there, the flesh everywhere, on high alert. “You’ll try?”
He looked up at her through the bars of ocher light that came streaming through the window. The stretch marks on her belly were illuminated, their faded calligraphy gone vivid and flushed, inked in blood. He thought of how she’d looked the other day emerging from the pool, blinking, slinging back her hair. How he had wanted her then! Still, he’d wanted a lot of women in his time, and what did he have to show for it? For Sabine too his desire had proved unreliable, more broad than deep. When it came to wanting, he was destined to be a generalist, he feared, a floater, a free agent. Even now he had to strain to stay on task, to keep his mind on the problem at hand—Gail—and not go straying off into peripheral areas…a book he’d meant to reserve at the library, a concert up in Montreal he’d meant to go online and buy tickets to, that new take-out Thai place on Route 17 he was still hoping to try…all the many small pleasures dangling like paper lanterns along the side yards of consciousness, smoky and fragrant, lighting up the dark…
“Yes,” he said. “Hell, yes.”
“Golly.” She mock-fanned her face with one hand. “An unequivocal yes from Oren Pierce. Be still my heart.” Hovering above him, she made an oblique, thoroughly nasty adjustment in the area where their legs conjoined. “So this is what you want?”
“Yes.” His breath was shallow, spongy. He could hear a fly buzzing on the window, bumping its head moronically against the pane. “Dammit, yes.”
“How do I know which one of you is even talking—that first guy I kissed, or Bachelor Number Two?”
“Take your pick. Whichever you want.”
“Bronnk! Wrong answer.” She lifted herself off him partway. It was a game and it also wasn’t. “Try again, please.”
“Number Two. Number Two.”
“Good.” She allowed her weight to descend in slow, moist increments, absorbing him like a sponge. “You could have gotten up anytime, you know. But you just lay there.”
“Don’t knock lying down. It’s a perfectly respectable posi—”
“Okay, shush now.” Her hand was on his mouth. “Shush and come here, before you blow it for real.”
10
The Burnt Ones
Waking in darkness, he had no idea where he was, who he was, even that he was. He’d been deep in night’s well; he’d lost hold of the ropes that bound him to the surface. He blinked and stretched. The unshared bed seemed far too large; with all his bulk, he seemed to barely occupy it.
Outside, the drone of a siren. The sound had woken him, he realized. Some kind of alarm or emergency signal. Were they under attack? He remembered the soldiers at the airport. The travel advisories, the embassy postings. Armed conflicts were in progress all around the Horn. Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan. And those were only the ones you heard about. Doubtless there were others.
Slipping from bed, he padded barefoot to the window and drew back the curtains. What he expected to find he wasn’t sure—something like Jericho, he supposed. But the view told him nothing. The sky was oatmeal gray, sodden with mist. The ghostly silhouettes of banana trees swayed over the rooftops. Across the street two skeletal office towers leaned precariously against their bamboo scaffolding, listing in the wind. The window shuddered in its frame. The siren wailed on, insistent, like a tape in an endless loop.
Maybe he was dead, Teddy thought, and this noisy droning limbo was his afterlife. If so, it wasn’t much of an improvement.
He got down on his hands and knees. No point letting his body go to seed just because he was halfway around the world, jet-lagged and exhausted and under assault by some great, powerful voice he did not comprehend. But he’d forgotten the altitude. The push-ups left him dizzy, light-headed; the crunches stole his breath. After a while he lay on his back, inhaling whatever ancient dusts resided in the carpet as he waited for his heart to stop juddering in his chest. At last it was quiet. The room, the very world, seemed a vast, expectant place.
He went into the bathroom, showered and shaved, used the last of his mineral water to brush his teeth, and evacuated his bowels explosively. Then he came out in his boxer shorts with his hair still dripping and sat down on the bed to wait. It was not yet six. He heard voices stirring in the other rooms, footsteps thudding across the ceiling. Every separation between himself and other people seemed provisional, arbitrary. He wondered what Gail was doing at this moment. He was so many hours ahead of her now, it seemed impossible to reconcile their schedules.
His first day abroad, and the intrepid explorer was already homesick.
He picked up the remote and turned on the television. There was no signal.
“Oh, that,” Danielle said over breakfast. “Yeah, the call to prayer. It’s pretty intense.”
“Christ, I thought I was going out of my mind. You’re telling me you wake up to that every morning?”
She nodded. “The mosques have these huge amplifiers now. State-of-the art. It comes blasting out five times a day. For some reason morning’s always the loudest though.”
“And no one complains?”
“Only the tourists.” She smiled. “You’ll get used to it, Daddy. Everyone does. You’d be surprised what you get used to here.”
“I’m already surprised.”
They were sitting in the hotel dining room, eating cold eggs and toast, pale wedges of melon. The coffee was so good he was happy just for that, just to make contact with the real thing for a change, bitter and strong, close to the source. He drank it down black. Never mind that his stomach was rioting like a cellblock; he motioned to the waitress for more. A solemn-faced woman in traditional dress, she bent toward him shyly with her metal pitcher and smiled, as if nothing gave her greater pleasure than serving breakfast foods to white people from a rolling cart.
“Stop gawking, will you?” Danielle said when she’d gone. “They’re not that beautiful.”
“Come now. They most certainly are.”
“Okay, you’re right, they are. They’re absolutely gorgeous. Especially that one there.” Her eyes followed the path of a waitress at the far end of the room. “See that blue tattoo around her throat? She’s a Mursi. From the south. Supposedly the Queen of Sheba had a tattoo just like that.”
“Very fetching. Maybe you should get one.”
“Please,” Danielle snapped. “I h
ate it when people swoop in and start appropriating signifiers like that out of all cultural context. It’s so ignorant.”
“I was only kidding, Danny.” Signifiers, he thought. Good Christ. For a change he was almost glad she’d dropped out of college, or whatever she called this little impromptu sabbatical of hers. “Aren’t you eating? This fruit’s delicious.”
“Not hungry.” She was still steaming.
“Fine, I’ll have it.”
“People are so stupid.” He remembered this now, the girl’s righteous, ranting streak, her fast burn. Another genetic gift he’d bequeathed her. Once she got started there was no dialing her down. “There was this girl I met in Nepal, she had one of those Chinese-character thingies on her shoulder? Totally hideous. She thought it meant ‘dragon.’ Except then she actually went to China, and guess what? It really meant ‘roof.’ And it wasn’t even Chinese—it was Japanese.”
“That’s just the sort of thing Mimi would do,” he reflected sadly.
“Leave Mimi alone. She’ll be fine.” Danielle had a way of drawing herself up and baring her neck when she was concentrating, like a bird alert to danger. She was doing so now. “Tell me about this cancer thing. It was just a false alarm, right? I mean you’re okay, bottom line. Healthy as a bull and all that.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
Now they were both annoyed.
“I don’t have cancer,” he said. “I had what might have turned into cancer, or might not have. Nobody’s sure. For all I know it still might. Or might not. In other words I’m about where most people my age are.”
“Clueless?”
“In the middle. Somewhere between okay and scared to death. Above all, in no mood to waste any more time.”
“Aren’t you wasting time right now though? Playing hooky like this in the middle of the school year?”
“Not at all. So far, so good. Being here makes me feel closer.”
“Closer to what?”
Sipping his coffee, he hesitated. There seemed a thousand names for it. No one of them successfully made the journey, however, from his mind to his mouth.