Surface

by Stacy Robinson

  “There’s the guest room.” The words seemed to come from someone else as she indicated the doorway in the hall, instead of telling him to take the call in his car and leave. She watched him look back at her as he walked toward the door, his confidence and obvious desire for her rendering her paralyzed. She knew she should stop him and tell him to go, but she just stood there. Things like this did not happen to people like her. And yet. It was lopsided origami everywhere.

  When she was finally able to unglue herself, Claire began to pace the long gallery-lit hallway outside the guest bedroom, punctuating her thoughts with the odd articulated word, and fighting to banish images of Michael and Nicholas. She stopped in front of a large oil painting by a still unknown modernist—the painting she’d wanted to show Andrew.

  Lightly tracing the raised ochre curves of the nudes on the canvas, she listened to Andrew’s muted voice as she tried to re-summon her strength. Turning away from the painting, she slid down the wall to the floor, still wanting and knowing that she shouldn’t.

  “This was a mistake,” Claire said as she pushed open the bedroom door, “and you need to go.” She squeezed the doorknob with one hand, and rubbed at her temple with the other. Her pulse hammered into her knuckles. “Please.”

  Andrew was just placing his phone into his pocket. “Claire,” he said, moving toward her. “You can’t tell me that’s what you really want. You don’t want me to leave now.” He grasped her biceps. “I don’t want to go,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  Her arms dropped to her sides. They stood hip to hip and she felt the energy between them again, and sensed her fragile control slipping. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

  “Shh.” He placed his fingers on her lips. “It’s okay. Don’t think so hard.” His mouth grazed her earlobe and dotted a path down her shoulders.

  “No.” She didn’t move.

  He kissed the side of her neck. Her skin prickled as he circled around to her throat, his breath hot and then cold on her. She pulled away from him, and the unsettling sensation that had flooded her evaporated. There was a dreamlike instant of quiet in her head, a cessation of thought. She took his face in her hands and kissed his mouth deeply until it was no longer a kiss and they were devouring each other’s lips and tongues. Andrew tugged her head back by the nape of her hair and caressed the hollow at the base of her neck. Then, winding her arms around his back, she yanked his shirt from his pants and ran her nails up the curve of his spine. Their clothing left a haphazard trail as they stumbled from the door to the bed.

  Andrew laid her down and cupped her right breast in his hand and stroked her nipple, softly at first and then pinching it until Claire felt the reverberations between her thighs. She arched her head back and moaned as he flicked his tongue over her other nipple. It was a raw nerve, hard as a pebble. As she watched his face move rhythmically down her stomach, he whispered what he planned to do to each inch of her, what he had imagined doing since the night they’d met. “Do you want more?” he asked with a soul-seizing fervor that Michael had never displayed in their composed and quiet lovemaking.

  “Yes,” she panted.

  Andrew leisurely alternated between her breasts and the small of her stomach, teasing open her thighs with his fingertips each time his mouth dipped to her belly button. She felt heat between her legs and a sudden, scorching desire for him to plunge his fingers inside her. As he caressed her nipples again, she reached down and his hand met hers. “Do you want me to touch you, Claire?” he asked, running his fingertips up the insides of her thighs.

  “Yes,” she whispered again.

  “Where?”

  She guided his hand between her legs, and he began to stroke her.

  “Do you like it right here?” He ran his finger slowly over her clitoris, back and forth. “Or here?” He pushed his finger gently inside of her.

  All she could do was gasp.

  Andrew took a pillow and propped it under her hips and then slowly spread her legs apart, staring at her like a sculptor before soft clay. She froze, waiting. But he kept his hands immobile and his gaze fixed on her, even as she begged for his touch with her eyes. When she could no longer hold herself still, she ground her hips into the pillow in a slow arc, trying to replicate the sensation of him.

  A look of glazed ecstasy washed over his face. Maintaining eye contact, he eased himself down onto his stomach and caressed the invisible line from her navel to her inner thighs, moving in with his tongue, licking and then sucking until she began to sigh.

  After several moments, he lifted his chin above her hips. His hair glistened with sweat. “Do you like my mouth on you?

  She parted her lips to speak, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

  “You taste so good.”

  Claire moaned, hoping he would continue.

  “Or do you like my fingers?” He stroked her again, building up to a frenzied momentum, then slowed. “Tell me what you want.” He stopped, waiting for her.

  What she wanted was to cut free and swim in the deep murky waters of him. But she was paralyzed again, the torment both frustrating and exquisite. She sat up and tried to reach for his erection, but he guided her down to her back.

  “Not yet,” he whispered.

  “What do you want from me,” she finally whispered, desperate for him to touch her again.

  “I want you to just let go,” he said. “No one’s looking, Claire. Tell me what you like.”

  “Please . . . I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  The words rolled around in her head—his words, her own, things she hadn’t said out loud in years—until finally, need trumped decorum. She closed her eyes. “Don’t stop. Please.” She was dizzy and panting, shedding her propriety like a coat. “Make me come,” she moaned. “Please.”

  His mouth was on her again. It was as if he’d removed her skin and exposed every raw nerve ending. It was as if she were swimming in the infinite, exhilarating dark.

  By the time Andrew came up for air, Claire had come two times. He slid up to her breasts and kissed her chin, and she rolled over onto him, feeling his heart pulsing under her chest. His body was slick, his sweat smelled of musk and sandalwood. She inhaled him—that smoldering scent of handsome bad boys and possibility—and she was a nineteen-year-old sophomore again, losing her virginity to the only boy who had ever moved her to be wild. She kissed her way down Andrew’s stomach, running her tongue over him, biting him softly, lost in lustful time and space. Straddling his thighs, she heard her throaty voice ask for a condom, knowing he must have one, and afraid that if he didn’t she wouldn’t stop.

  He slid from under her and reached for his pants. There was the sweet tearing sound of the packet, and he was on his knees in front of her, ready. “I was a boy scout,” he said.

  “Of course you were.”

  Andrew brushed the hair off her face and, taking her cheeks into his hands, kissed her deeply. Claire floated in his desire for her, a devouring kind of lust she realized in that moment that she’d never inspired in her husband, even in their erotically charged early years, and she grew hotter with each kiss. He traced her shoulders and torso, her waist, until finally his hands came to rest between her legs. Within seconds she was writhing and moaning atop her formerly pristine eight-hundred-thread-count sheets, her body on fire and spasming at his touch, her voice screaming, “fuck me, fuck me now,” as if she had never wanted anything more in her life. He obliged, wrapping her legs around his neck and holding her hips tight. It was an electric jolt to her limbic system, a surrender that felt somehow safe and liberating.

  “God, you’re exquisite,” Andrew said, his chest muscles contracting with their shared rhythm. She came again, this time a halo of exploding mirror flashing behind her closed eyes. Words of gratitude, even love, rattled around her head.

  An hour had passed, maybe more, when they were finally able to pry themselves free from one another. They lay quiet and motionless as they waited for thei
r bodies to calm. And as the hungry glow ebbed and the cool chill of reality blanketed the room, the passionate words Claire had imagined saying also slipped away. She rolled to the edge of the bed, suddenly nervous that Nicholas might actually come home instead of going to Reese’s. The numbers on the clock flashed amber like a cat’s eyes in the darkness. “We should . . . get moving.”

  They dressed in hurried silence. As they stepped into the hallway Andrew reached for her hand, and she shivered, feeling the sudden weight of her recklessness shroud her skin.

  CHAPTER 4

  Claire walked Andrew Bricker out into the June night, dazed. The temperature had dropped while they’d been in the house, and the scent of roses perfumed the gusty air. She inhaled and waited for the soothing effect of her garden to work its magic. Instead, like a weed, apprehension choked her.

  “Incredible night,” Andrew said, looking skyward, his voice gravelly and sated. Claire forced a nod and contemplated him from the side as they made their way to his car—his lingering smile and ruffled hair, the scar. But still she had no words for him, as if being clothed and vertical again had caused a shift in something more than her posture. Goose bumps flared on her bare arms and she hugged them to her chest, slowing her pace. When they reached the edge of the pathway, Claire watched him fold his body deep into the interior of his borrowed Porsche, his green eyes locked on her face. “When can I see you again?” he asked.

  Her body tensed. Never? Tomorrow? She glanced up at the veiled moon for encouragement, as the wind whipped the branches of the Aspen trees along the circular drive and lifted dust into the air. She moved closer to the car, sensing the coming storm. Wiping cottonwood flecks from her lashes, Claire looked down at Andrew and then quickly away toward her house in the billowy moonlight, afraid to get caught in his gaze, afraid that if she spoke, regret would tumble from her mouth like rocks.

  The chimneys and archways of the house cast wild shadows on the manicured lawn. Nicholas’s lacrosse nets flapped in the gale. Interior lights glowed orange and comforting through the silk draperies. She ran her tongue across her upper lip, tasting Andrew and smarting at the rawness he’d left behind, wishing he were already gone. And in that split second, the possibility of escape and refuge was as bracing as the snap of a rubber band on skin. Claire gathered her windblown hair into her hand, looked back at Andrew, and shook her head as she closed his car door. Turning, she walked to the house still shaking her head in silent response, counting the steps to the front door. She heard him call her name over the wind several times, but she stayed her course. As the sound of the car finally faded beyond the gates, Claire prayed that Michael would not invest in Andrew’s deal. She wanted to be free of anything that would tie their lives together any further. It was all such an incomprehensible lapse of everything that was at her core.

  Claire shut the door behind her and leaned into it with all of her weight. She felt the curve of the carved mahogany between her shoulders, and exhaled like a woman who had just outrun the ghost in her dreams. She rushed to the guest room to survey the damage they’d left behind. It was as if the storm building outside had already passed inside. Pillows on the floor, sheets gnarled and tangled around the bedpost. She could smell him everywhere; she could smell them. She pulled up the bedclothes and opened a window, hoping the breeze would somehow suck out all traces of him. But the air outside had gone suddenly still and the moon had disappeared. Claire let go and watched the window slide back into place with a dull thud. She sank down onto the bed and, gathering a fistful of sheet, pulled it to her nose and closed her eyes.

  In the darkness she imagined Andrew’s hands on her body again, his lips on hers. She ran her fingers down her neck and over her breasts, reached her hand out to the empty space beside her. The sheet was cool and wrinkled under her palm. An unexpected beginning and an abrupt end. She knew this was how it had to be. But still it weighed on her, the heaviness of knowing that she’d never be able to get this night out of her head.

  She had tasted his compliments and his desire, and so satisfying were they in their intensity that she had nearly burst out with love for him as he was making her come, had nearly said something even more ridiculous. Thank God for small favors, she thought. Claire understood as she lay alone that she wasn’t full of love for Andrew. He’d just shaken off the dust and drawn her in with some inexplicable sway. She had certainly never begged anyone to fuck her before. Not Michael, not anyone on the short list before him. At least not in that particular vernacular. Fuck me. Those words and the others he’d incredibly coaxed from her curdled in her mouth, the sharp tang of guilt coating her tongue.

  She buried her face into a pillow and cried. “Damn it!” she screamed out to the empty room. “Damn you,” she whispered, her mouth now dry as parchment. When she looked back at the clock a few minutes later, it was eleven. She wiped damp strands of hair from her eyes and headed upstairs. A shower first, and then she would change the bed, clean things up.

  Claire removed her clothing for the second time that night, catching her reflection in the mirror. Her lips were puffy. Her eyes were swollen and red, the jagged crimson threads illuminating her irises to the brilliance of emeralds. Her hair was disheveled and matted like one of her mother’s bouffants. As she was about to step into the shower, she noticed eight tiny pink half-moons on the small of her back—four on either side of her hips. She inched closer to the mirror, craning at the remnants of Andrew’s grasp on her. How, she wondered, had the slice of his fingernails eluded her? Was pleasure that potent an anesthetic?

  Dressed and marginally calmer, Claire toweled her hair dry as she walked downstairs. She thought of Michael’s early morning kiss when he’d left for London, his car pulling away and the rush of sadness and excitement she’d felt in that moment. Eyeing the light still on in the guest room, she rubbed her hair until it stood on end and her scalp burned. How did people do it? How did they sneak around without making themselves crazy with guilt? Claire set the towel on the foyer table and rested her hands on the cool glass. She leaned in to smell the arrangement of lilies that nearly overflowed their vase.

  Closing her eyes, she drew her face in closer to the cascading blooms. As the sweetness wrapped around her, Claire couldn’t stop replaying the last few hours. The sound of the doorbell, the taste of her anxiety and ecstasy, the anvil oppressiveness of her remorse. She traced her jaw and neck with her finger, and she wondered if she would forever associate the flowers of her wedding bouquet with a man who was nothing like her husband. As if scalded by the thought, she flung her hands out, accidentally slapping a cluster of stems and knocking the vase. She caught the rim just before it crashed and shattered—the vintage Baccarat vase Michael had given her for their last anniversary. She assessed the near disaster, her shirt soaked and stained with pollen, her heart thudding in her throat. It took her a full minute to catch her breath.

  Hydrangeas flashed through her brain. She would buy hydrangeas in the morning. And when Michael returned, they would sit down and finally discuss the distance that had grown between them. She would force him to acknowledge his distraction and withdrawal. She would apologize for her own. And they would work together at finding their way back to good.

  But, Jesus, she thought, still straining for equilibrium, it was all so disturbing—this alien and now undeniably muddled picture of what had once felt perfect. How had they gone from such mutual fascination and desire to spend all their free moments together planning adventures, going, doing, living—to her falling into bed with a virtual stranger? She and Michael had it all, her mother had frequently pointed out. Of course that once prevailing sense of exhilaration and self-satisfaction had morphed into the real-life demands of managing a demanding business, raising a child, and the attendant missed dinners, cancelled vacations, guys’ fishing trips, girls’ spa escapes, and less than emotionally satisfying sunroom encounters. But not only was this real life, Claire had reminded herself on any one of those occasions, this was midlife. They wer
e no longer lusty twenty-five-year-olds with wide eyes and boundless energy. Relationships, like people, necessarily evolved into more staid phases.

  And yet. Standing there just yards from the place where she had trampled over her vows and moral principles, Claire struggled to pinpoint what it was about this last year in particular that felt different from run-of-the-mill midlife exhaustion and ennui. When once they had walked beside each other—in theory, if not in fact—now it seemed as if she was always running to catch up with her preoccupied husband and remind him she was there. A dull pain fanned across the space between her temples, and she wiped her eyes and stared at the bunched-up flowers in the vase. Despite the Bogie and Bacall fiction of it all—or maybe because of it—she wanted them to feel connected and foolish for each other again. Not tethered by some dusty license in a safe-deposit box. They needed to get back to that good and satisfying place.

  Claire checked her watch. It was nearly midnight. She walked down the hallway to retrieve a fresh set of sheets from the linen closet, dizzied. As she stepped through the doorway of the guest bedroom ticking off in her mind the list of things she needed to do, something felt wrong. She peered over the stack of sheets and pillowcases and saw movement near the bed.

  The linens fell from her arms.

  Nicholas lay convulsing on the floor. An inky red trail trickled from his nose onto the rug.

  “Oh my God, Nicky,” she screamed, dropping beside him, her fingers instantly bathed in his blood and vomit. His eyes were open, but he didn’t respond to her. She put her cheek to his mouth to feel for breath, to listen for obstruction, for something. His body suddenly stiffened and a strange, loud gasp popped from his throat. Claire fell back, terrified. She fumbled for the telephone on the night table as Nicholas’s face began to twitch, his right arm and leg jerking in a violent one-sided dance. Afraid to let go of his body, Claire held his seizing hand and dialed 911. Then she saw the chalky trail on the night table, the vial and a rolled-up twenty below it on the floor, and she knew. She felt herself slipping sideways from reality. Fighting the urge to scream, she hit the speakerphone button with a sharp jab.