Eventually they had to stop meeting at Marguerite’s house. They were almost caught by Marguerite’s Aunt Rachel when she made one of her surprise visits. She had called one morning while Sor was there to say she was coming over and that she was just two blocks from the house. Luckily Sor was already dressed. He barely had time to get into his car and pull out of the driveway before she arrived. He was only about a hundred yards from the entrance to Marguerite’s home when, through his rearview mirror, Sor saw her aunt’s lime green Volkswagen pull into the driveway. It was so close, Sor felt certain she had seen him leaving the house.
The incident shook both of them, and Marguerite decided it was too risky to continue meeting at her place. Sor looked for another place where they could meet, where the likelihood of running into people they knew would be minimal. He found a small hotel, inexpensive, nearer to the college than the motel in Deerfield Beach.
The Banyan Tree Hotel was located on a quiet side street in Boca Raton. It was not the kind of place where faculty or students would gather, since it did not have a bar or restaurant. The wicker furniture, the ceiling and floor fans (it was built in the 1920s and had no central air conditioning) and the mahogany wood floors gave the impression of being thrown back in time, that one might very well run into Ernest Hemingway in the lobby, or Wallace Stevens dropping in to take a break from his writing. Marguerite loved it. She called it their place.
Sor always requested the room with the wobbly fan that made the slow whooshing sound as it spun above their heads, the room with the window that looked out on the large, thickly leafed banyan tree in the back of the hotel, and from which the hotel took its name, according to the brochure in the lobby. The hotel’s staff broke the rules for them by allowing them to check in at odd times. Sor paid by cash and registered them under the name Mr. and Mrs. Fuego.
They met there every Tuesday morning at nine o’clock. Marguerite would always bring sandwiches, grapes and cheese, and sometimes a small quiche she’d made. Sor would bring a half-bottle of champagne or wine. They would stay in the room until one or one-thirty. If she had finished a painting, Marguerite would bring the canvas along for Sor’s appraisal, which was becoming more and more important to her. They’d talk about it at length.
Since her letter beseeching him to be patient with her, Sor had tried to be less aggressive and demanding. But he found it impossible to control himself. He wanted her in his life, and that was it. He would voice how he felt, and Marguerite would again ask him to be patient. He would be silent on the matter for a few days, but then he would soon lose self control and tell her how much he wanted her in his life, that he wanted to wake up with her in his bed, spend his days with her. He tried to convince her that what they had was special, that their kind of love could bring them that rare happiness only a few individuals experienced in their lives.
The more Sor got to know Marguerite, the more he wanted her. The fact that they were both married no longer mattered. He saw only her, not the impediments that might stand in their way. Instinct—raw, primal, monkey instinct—guided his behavior. Sor Avraham wanted Marguerite Spares in his life and that was all. Nothing else mattered.
He began to do things for Marguerite he had never done for any other woman, not even Jasmine. In the fifth week of their relationship he told her he wanted to buy her something, a bit of clothing, or a piece of jewelry, something she could wear, something that would remind her of him when they were apart. She said she would love to have something from him. It would be the first time in a long while, she said, that a man would have bought clothing or jewelry for her. Edgar preferred to get her practical gifts, things for the house. He gave her money to get clothing when it was her birthday, but he wouldn’t go shopping with her. She would have liked that.
The next day, before his afternoon class, Sor went to the Bloomingdale’s in the big mall close to the university. Hesitating slightly, he went into the lady’s lingerie department. There was only one sales clerk, and she was helping an elderly woman choose a slip. The woman’s husband was sitting next to the checkout counter. Sor wandered uncomfortably among the panty display racks. He wanted to buy Marguerite panties, something skimpy, sexy. The sales clerk, a young woman of about twenty-five, came over to where Sor was standing. He was inspecting a pair of bikini panties with a leopardskin design.
“May I help you?” she said, politely.
“It’s my wife’s birthday,” Sor said, “and I’d like to surprise her with some lingerie, maybe panties, or a slip. I think panties. That would be more of a surprise.”
Sor felt no guilt in lying to the sales clerk. All he could think of was Marguerite’s face lighting up with joy when he gave her the gift.
“Do you know your wife’s size?”
Sor didn’t know Marguerite’s size. He looked at the young woman, her shape, height, hip, stomach. She was about the same height and build as Marguerite. She had a nice behind like Marguerite. It had just the same type of curvature—subtle, not too distended—like Marguerite’s. It seemed firm like Marguerite’s, maybe soft, too, soft and firm, like Marguerite’s.
“I think she’s your size,” he said. “She has your build.”
“Then she must wear a medium,” she said, a slight grin taking hold on her face.
Sor asked her if she thought the leopard bikini panties he had been admiring and was still holding would be appropriate.
“Is it something your wife would wear?”
Jasmine wouldn’t wear them, Sor thought, but Marguerite would. When they had met on Tuesdays at her place, she would have nothing under her dress—but the times when she wore something, they were usually flimsy little items, and often had laces and frills.
“She wears things with laces and frills,” he told her, “and bright colors.”
The clerk advised him against the leopard and guided him to a rack with a large assortment of panties with frills and lace. He took a pair of red panties with red lace, but bought the leopard ones as well. He was sure she’d love them.
Back at the college, he put the box in his desk drawer and locked it. He would give it to Marguerite the next day. Driving home that afternoon, he bought a bottle of Jasmine perfume in a small store that sold imported perfumes and soaps. The perfume would complete the gift, he thought.
When they met the next day, Marguerite was like a child, ecstatic with joy when she saw what Sor had bought her. They were in their special room in the Banyan Tree. Sor had waited until she had undressed before giving her the gifts. After kissing him repeatedly, Marguerite opened the bottle and held it in front of Sor’s nose so that he could smell it. It smelled musky, almost overpowering, like lust. She told him that in Spain mothers would not permit jasmine plants to be grown in front of the house if there was an unmarried girl living there. It was bad luck—they feared the young woman would not get a husband. She also told Sor that the scent of the jasmine plant, especially in its pure, undiluted form, was considered to be an aphrodisiac. She put some on the tip of her finger and rubbed it on Sor’s nipples and on her own. Then she put on the leopard panties, and laughing, danced erratically, like a little girl overcome with happiness upon receiving some special gift she had always wanted from her parents. She danced wildly in a circle at the foot of the bed.
Sor, sitting in the only chair in the room, overwhelmed by her joy and excitement, could no longer control himself. He got up and held her close to him. Then, looking her straight in the face, he almost shouted, “I want you in my life, Marguerite Spares, all of you, all the time.” Then in a lowered voice, “Listen to me, Marguerite, and do not be frightened by what I am going to say to you. The truth is, if I hold it in any longer, I will explode. I must say what I feel. That’s who I am. Even if it’s unfair to you, even if it drives you from me, I have to say it. It’s how I feel.”
Marguerite stopped dancing and sat in his lap.
“I�
��m very cautious about the choices I make in life, no matter how insignificant they may be,” he continued. “I think hard about the things I am going to do before I do them. I like to believe I have a level head. Even now, I like to think so. I’ve acted impulsively at times in my life. Still, I was always able to correct my impulsive behavior before it brought me or another human being uncalled-for misery and unhappiness. I’m speaking about hasty, impulsive, romantic connections that I’ve made with women. I have in the past, before I met my wife, met other women whom I felt an attraction for when I first met them, and made arrangements to meet with them on dates. But then, when I recognized that my attraction for them was based solely on lust, and that all I wanted to do was sleep with them and have it end there, I would call and cancel my date with them.”
“I’m telling you this because it has not been so with you. From the first day I met you, something felt right between us. I had no qualms or fears or doubts regarding my feelings for you. I feel you ought to be happy. I feel I ought to be happy. It’s madness, but it is so. It is how I feel.”
“Say the word and I’m yours. People don’t love like this ordinarily. They might experience the kind of sex we experience, they might even experience the level of passion that drives us toward each other, but the ease we feel with each other, as if we have known each other for eons—that is not the experience of many people. Don’t let us throw it away. I want you in my life. I want to be with you. Because you’re married, because I’m married—this should not stand in the way. Be brave for me, Marguerite. My life needs you.”
When Sor had finished talking, he wondered if he had been too forceful, and if he had gone too far with his proclamation of love. He had picked up an expression of discomfort on Marguerite’s face while he was talking, but it was fleeting, and by the time he had stopped talking she had regained her pleasant, happy demeanor.
“God! It’s good to be loved,” Marguerite said, a hint of nervousness in her voice, and as if to keep from saying anything else, pulled him down onto the bed, holding him tightly, quieting him with her kisses.
NINETEEN
Because you’re married, because I’m married, this should not stand in the way. Be brave for me, Marguerite. Sor’s words kept repeating themselves in Marguerite’s head. The first time Sor went off like that over lunch at the Embassy Suites hotel it had frightened her, shocked her a little, because she thought it was too sudden, too soon in the relationship for him to be saying such things. But later, she thought it was probably just a moment of impulsiveness on his part. A result of the wonderful time they had had together, she decided, that day at the beach.
This time it was different. There was no mistaking that he meant what he said: he was in love. He wanted her in his life, and was willing to ignore all the circumstances that hindered them from being together.
She wondered if Edgar and the boys had seen the change in her since she started seeing Sor. It must be quite apparent. Maybe they thought it was just another one of her “my art is calling me” periods. But she had been like this for several weeks, so they must have thought it was more serious than that. Edgar had asked her once when they were driving to friends for dinner what was bothering her. She shrugged off his question, telling him it was nothing. She was sure he still felt it had to do with her art, that she wanted to devote her time to painting. He had told her in the car that she could stop teaching at the end of the semester if she liked, reminding her that it was her decision to teach at the university, not his, and that they could live quite comfortably on his salary. Edgar was one of the senior partners with the law firm of Willis and Marx. He was their most sought-after litigator, with a high rate of success in defending the firm’s clients in court. He brought the firm a lot of revenue, and the firm in turn paid him well. “No,” Marguerite said. She loved teaching, she told him. It was her creative and intellectual stimulus. Teaching was not the problem, she thought to herself. What stifled her creativity, kept her from the kind of freedom she wanted as an artist, were her responsibilities as a mother and a wife.
Her behavior, she thought, was also causing the boys to act strangely. They didn’t say anything, but it was as if they suspected something. The older boy, Mark, became withdrawn. She missed their long talks together. She used to love that they were so close, that they could share so much, and that he felt so comfortable with her. Lately he kept mostly to his room.
Aunt Rachel, too, seemed to know something was amiss. She had dropped by on several occasions when Marguerite should have been home. And she had questioned her about a car she saw leaving Marguerite’s driveway one Tuesday morning. Marguerite told her it was one of the faculty from the university. They had come by—she didn’t mention the driver’s sex—for a document she had promised to drop off at their office the day before but forgot. Her aunt advised Marguerite to be careful. “Remember, you have nosy neighbors.”
Marguerite did not like what was happening. Sor was impetuous, a bright, philosophical man, but at the moment, he wasn’t himself. She was afraid that she might hurt him, a fear she had voiced to herself ever since they met. She couldn’t understand why he had to become so possessive, why he had to want her like that. She loved Sor’s love, his attention, the wildness he unlocked in her body, the way he made her feel. But it scared her.
Marguerite wished she had someone to talk to about what was going on in her life. Several times in the past week she had thought of calling Julian Plum. He was her closest friend. In college she would confide in him rather than her girlfriends.
But this time, she felt uneasy about discussing what was happening between Sor and herself with Julian. Julian knew Sor. They were almost friends. He had spoken to her about Sor, even before she started seeing him. But that wasn’t the real reason why she felt uneasy. It was the complexity of what was happening. She wasn’t sure she knew her true feelings, whether it was love, or whether she was blinded by the fantastic sex they had together. This was not one of her college romances she could speak of lightly with Julian. This was huge. Sor was asking her to leave her children, her husband. He was becoming too possessive.
She’d probably have to break off the relationship with him at some point, she thought. She didn’t know how. She couldn’t be too abrupt, though. It would be too painful for him. It would be painful for her, too. She had never experienced love and passion like this before. Her college romances and Edgar were lightweights compared with what she felt with Sor. And the impact his presence in her life had on her art was so powerful—she had started painting with oils, producing works that were different and original. Edgar had walked into her studio a few days before (he rarely took any interest in her work) and wanted to see what she was doing. “Damn, this is good,” he had blurted out when he saw one work in particular—an oil painting of a street scene in South Beach at night. It was actually copied from a watercolor she had done a year before, but in oil. It seemed to breathe life, a rich but combustible life, like how she felt being in love with Sor.
But even with all this, she knew her relationship with Sor couldn’t continue. I’m not that brave, she thought. She couldn’t walk away from her husband and children. She’d slowly extricate herself from the relationship, gradually free herself from him. It was going to be painful, and she didn’t know how she was going to do it. And she’d miss him. She didn’t know how she was going to live without his love, the sweet times they spent together at the Banyan Tree Hotel. Just thinking about them made her body ache for him.
She’d break it off gradually, bit by bit, and stop seeing him as often. But what would she say to him? He’d soon realize that she was drifting away. What do you say to a man so deeply in love? She’d tell him the truth. She wouldn’t be able to leave her family. Not her boys. She didn’t want to destroy their lives. Divorces do that sometimes. She’d say, too, that her art came first, and that even if, down the road, she left Edgar when the boys were grown, she didn’t th
ink she’d want to be married, be tied to another person, and have that kind of responsibility again. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t understand immediately, but in time he will, she thought. She was sure of it. She sighed deeply, and wished even more that she had someone to confide in.
TWENTY
Two weeks later, Sor was waiting for Marguerite to join him at the Banyan Tree Hotel for their weekly Tuesday rendezvous. He was already in their room, the bottle of champagne he brought sweating on the little mahogany writing table. The wobbly old fan spun lethargically above his head, its intermittent whooshing sound seeming louder in Marguerite’s absence. It was nine-thirty, and she had not yet arrived. He had called before he set off for the hotel that morning and she had said she would be there, though she had sounded somewhat hesitant. Where could she be? What could have happened? Was she in an accident? She had never been late before.
Lately, Sor thought, she seemed to be making herself less accessible to him. When he called her on her cell phone she would not call him back immediately as she used to. She also took a long time to respond to his e-mails, and when she did, her letters were short, dry, almost formal. She avoided speaking about her feelings, anything that touched upon her love for him. When he called to make lunch arrangements, she was often not available because of some prior commitment.
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