by Mike Heppner
Stuart opened the door. “Celia, hi, I was just”—he reached up, felt the dry hair on the top of his head, said it anyway—“getting out of the shower.”
Celia handed over the mail, which he held dumbly against his chest. “I won’t take up much of your time,” she said. She’d left the house without her jacket, just a mouse brown cardigan over a black AC/DC T-shirt. Celia’s face was elfin, and her out-of-sorts gray hair expressed the up yours, asshole persona commonly found in academia. “If I could just borrow your ear for one second.”
“Sure.” Stuart crossed his arms around the mail. From behind, he could hear Marlene taking her time in the bathroom, hands dashing under the faucet.
“I know you’re a good person, Stuart, believe me, I’m a big fan of your work—”
“Oh, well, thank you.”
“—and that’s why I’m asking you to stay away from Nathaniel Pike, stay away from him like the devil. That man is a vulture and a parasite, and he exploits the goodness in everyone.”
Stuart retreated into the foyer. “How so?”
“I know these things, Stuart. I know because I care, because I’m involved with this community.” Meaning I’m not, Stuart thought. “Besides, it’s in the papers. Read the Providence Journal front to back sometime. You think you can keep a secret in Rhode Island?”
He froze; the implications were too much for him—not today, not a mere six hours after he’d stood naked in front of the window on the first floor of Siemens and McMasters. “I’m actually doing research, Celia. It’s for a book I’m writing about transgress—”
“That’s no excuse.” She reached into her cardigan, pulled out a Xeroxed flyer and thrust it at him. “Don’t lose this,” she warned, almost grabbing it out of his hands. “I’m trying to keep our copying costs down. We’re a grassroots organization with an extremely limited budget.”
Stuart looked at the flyer and immediately found that it bored him. “Well, then, here—I don’t want it.”
She refused it. “Think about what you’re doing, Stuart. You don’t know that man as well as I do. Ask Keeny Reese, she’ll tell you.”
Keeny Esther Reese was Gregg Reese’s mother and the real head of the Reese Foundation. Other than Keeny, Gregg’s only surviving blood relative was his daughter, Allison, with whom he lived on the East Side. Gregg’s ex-wife, Renee, lived in London.
“Nathaniel Pike is nothing but an ignorant lowlife from South County,” Celia hissed. “What business does he have owning a mountain in New Hampshire, anyway? What’s he want to do with it? Build a casino? A strip club? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“It’s a free country, Celia.”
“You’re damn right it is! That’s why I’m organizing an anti-Pike rally in Concord next month. I expect you to be there.”
“In Concord?” He smiled, deliberately missing the point. “That’s a pretty little town.”
“Yes, and how would you like to see Nathaniel Pike come with his bulldozers and knock the whole goddamn thing down?” She crouched deep and swept both arms out in a giant leveling motion.
Again, he was struck by how much her passion, her political commitments, bored him. Seeking a quick end to the conversation, he said, “How does dinner next Tuesday sound? I’d like to hear more about . . .”
Nothing honest came to mind, so he just smiled agreeably until Celia finally said, “I am occupied every night next week,” and marched down the steps, adding at the foot of the drive, “Don’t forget, Stuart, you have an obligation to the rest of the community.”
“Okay,” he said, waving cheerfully from the top step.
“You, as an artist, you should understand this.”
“I do, I do.” Closing the door.
“We all share the same respons—”
“Yep.” Back inside the foyer, he told himself, I did not just shut the door in that woman’s face, then slipped off his robe and joined Marlene in the bathroom just off the kitchen. She’d covered herself with a blue beach towel but took it off when she saw that the coast was clear. “Is that hard-on for me or for Celia Shriver?” she asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
They kissed, then went to the kitchen, where she poured them both a full glass of Chardonnay. Marlene poured wine like it was Coca-Cola, and Stuart had to make sure to pace himself correctly—one glass for every two of hers—or else he’d never be able to have sex after dinner.
Two glasses later—he’d lost track of how many she’d had— he pulled himself up from the living room sofa, where he’d been trying to read the uncorrected proofs of a first novel his agent had sent him (“Write more like this,” he’d said over the phone), and set about preparing a Lean Cuisine for dinner. Marlene was in the kitchen, paying bills at the table.
“Hey, do you want to go to Martha’s Vineyard next May?” she asked after some time had passed.
She was getting that dopey look in her eyes; somehow she’d refilled her glass without his noticing. He didn’t answer, just grumbled noncommittally as he pulled the Asian-style chicken out of the microwave and set it steaming on the counter. Wanting to be helpful, she got up and watched him slice through the TV dinner’s cellophane wrapper with a pair of safety scissors. “This one’s for you,” he said, spooning the chicken over a desiccated lump of rice.
Marlene took the plate but didn’t go back to the table. It was rude, she felt, to start before her husband, particularly since he’d gone to the trouble of making dinner. “Carla and Bill are renting a beach house, and they asked us to come along. It’s a whole week, though, and I know you’ll have a lot of work to do.”
“Hardly.”
They watched as the second round of Lean Cuisine quaked under the auburn glow of the microwave. The spicy smell of the food cooking was making them both hungry.
Marlene set her plate down on the range-top and edged his legs apart with her knee. “It might be fun. We could get naked on the beach.” Her fingers crept down his back, pricking at the waxy hair under his balls. “There’s a nude beach somewhere, I think. Right where the Kennedy plane crashed.”
He laughed gruffly. “I have no interest in going to a nude beach.”
She looked surprised. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not sexy. There’s nothing remotely erotic about it. You go to the beach, take off your clothes and wander around with a bunch of other naked people. Big deal. It’s like going to the grocery store to buy groceries.” He stared into the microwave, where the cellophane wrapper seemed to respirate as it swelled, shriveled, swelled and shriveled again. “I don’t like nudists. There’s too much bullshit philosophy involved. Back to nature and all that.”
“Oysters are erotic. They have oysters on Martha’s Vineyard.”
“They have oysters in Providence. Oysters per se signify nothing.”
She smiled, listening to him speak; he was teasing her, and she knew it.
“Besides,” he said, “my editor has a summer house on the Vineyard. Or maybe it’s Nantucket. Anyway, I don’t want to risk it.” The microwave dinged; he hit the button to give it another thirty seconds.
“I think it’d be fun,” she said tentatively. “Knowing me, I’d probably bail out at the last minute. I wish that I could just turn off my brain and let myself go.” Tired of waiting, she picked some chicken from her plate, blew on it, then popped it into her mouth, thinking as she chewed. “I wonder if you can have sex and masturbate and stuff like that.”
“At a nude beach? I doubt it.” He stopped the microwave and took out his serving. Slicing the wrapper, he arranged the chicken over the rice and mushed it up, quelling an urge to touch the hot fork to her skin. “Come on, let’s eat,” he said.
They dined in silence. It was dark outside, and something was going on at the church down the street.
After a few bites, Marlene pushed her plate aside and stared down at her breasts. Her nipples appeared slightly yellow, and she wondered if this made her more attractive or less.
Her stare became a reverie; it felt good to see her breasts, just as it felt good to see her husband across the table with a paper napkin in his lap. “I started reading your book again yesterday,” she said.
He didn’t look up. “What on earth for?”
“Because you were gone, and I missed you.”
“Marlene, my book isn’t a substitute for me.”
“I know, but it’s a nice reminder. I’d forgotten all about the scene at the funeral home. I love that scene.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you’d forgotten all about it.”
She laughed to hide her embarrassment. “I mean, I forgot about the details. You know what I mean.”
His shoulders, which had been tense, slumped. “I know . . . I’m just being an asshole. I wrote that book a long time ago, Marlene. Words came easier to me then. I wish it wasn’t so hard now. I guess that our minds just go soft after awhile.” He paused. Sometimes he felt that these conversations would be a whole lot easier if he and Marlene weren’t naked.
After dinner, they went up to bed and watched TV until eleven. During the commercials, he told her about his day at work. “I suppose it’s hard not to admire Nate’s spontaneity,” he said. “The guy never seems to worry about anything.”
She could tell from his tone of voice that something was bothering him. “We can be like that, too. We can be spontaneous,” she said.
“No, we can’t. We’re boring.”
“We’re not boring! Look at us. Does this look like a boring couple to you?”
He glanced at their naked bodies, which in truth he was getting tired of seeing. “In a way, yeah,” he said.
She sat up in bed. “Then let’s make it exciting again. Let’s do something dangerous.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . let’s have sex in the backyard.”
He laughed. “Oh, shut up.”
“I mean it. Come on, right now.”
She took his hand and started to rise, but he pulled her back down. “No. Next brilliant suggestion,” he said.
Still high on the idea, she said, “All right, maybe not that. But let’s just stick our necks out. For one minute, Stuart. It’ll be fun.”
“No, it won’t.”
No longer kidding, she said, “I’ll go by myself.”
“Oh, no.” His grip tightened on her arm. “You’re gonna get yourself in a lot of trouble.”
“Come with me, then. You can protect me.”
He sighed. Marlene’s single-mindedness could be impressive at times. “All right . . . for one second. Not even that. A half-second.”
Still unsure of himself, he followed her out of bed and down the stairs to the first floor. From behind, Marlene’s body looked pale and shapeless, and he remembered how much he enjoyed pressing himself against her fleshy bottom, his erection fitting snugly in the crevice of her buttocks. This sense-memory helped to block out some of the doubts that were pervasive inside his head.
At the back door, they spoke in whispers:
“Should we leave it open?”
“Yes, but bring a key just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“Just to be safe. The wind might blow the door shut.”
“But if we leave it unlocked—”
“Let’s not get into an argument about it. Here—”
“Is there something wrong? Are you mad about something, baby? ’Cause we can—”
“No, let’s just do it. But one second, and then we—”
“Shhh . . .”
Easing the door open, she placed one foot on the wet brick patio, then continued a few steps away from the house. Stuart followed but stopped where the light from a street lamp fell at his feet. He didn’t feel safe out here. The area behind the house was enclosed by a six-foot-high fence that ran along the perimeter of the yard. Above the fence, the second and third floors of the neighbor’s house lurked behind a thicket of bare trees. The rain had lessened somewhat; he could feel it on his back and chest.
Marlene walked purposefully to the edge of the lawn, then returned, smiling, radiant. “Where’d you put the keys?” she asked.
He nodded toward a window ledge near the door. “They’re right there,” he said, adding for his own sake, “they’re not going anywhere.”
Out in the church parking lot, a car door opened and closed, and both Stuart and Marlene watched as a man in a long raincoat trod up the steps to the rectory entrance. She called out to him, “I’m naked!” but then, just as impulsively, scurried across the patio and into the house. Stuart didn’t move, just stood in the gray glow of the streetlamp, letting the rain patter on his head, the same as it fell on the yard, the deck furniture, the unraked leaves. The wind blew sidelong across his body as he watched the man in the parking lot go into the church. He could feel the whole world looking at his penis, and he braved this prickly sensation for a full five seconds before sauntering across the wet brick patio and going inside.
An hour later, they were both still awake. The halogen track lighting over the bed cast ultraviolet rings across the stippled white-plaster ceiling; it all seemed a bit harsh for 12:23 in the morning, but with the booze wearing off—along with the shock of what they’d done—they craved a certain midday orderliness, the comfort of seeing definite shapes instead of blurs: the nightstand, the TV on top of the dresser, the closet door half open.
“Maybe we should’ve waited till later,” Marlene said. She was sitting up in bed with three navy-blue pillows wedged between her back and the headboard. Her eyes had narrowed to anxious slits. “The Taylors still had their lights on. What do you think the chances are that someone saw us?”
Stuart didn’t answer. He was trying to remember the past hour, but already it seemed like something that hadn’t really happened, none of the sensory information—the wet leaves on the ground, the prick of the cold night air under his arms and between his legs—available to him except as mere description: the word “cold” but not the sense of it, the word “naked” but not the fact.
Marlene flung off the comforter and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Damn it! This always happens. I always spoil things for myself. Maybe I should’ve had another glass of wine first.”
“No more drinking, Marlene. Not if you’re going to act like this.”
His cautious interjections went unheard as she crossed to the dresser and began laying out clothes for work. “I’m tired of being such a scaredy-cat. I want to do everything, honey— streaking, public masturbation, you name it.”
“All very much against the law,” he warned.
She turned and beamed at him. “Nothing bad will happen to us as long as we’re together. Trust me, Stuart.”
As much as he wanted to believe her, he couldn’t. “I admire your confidence,” he said.
“I’m not confident,” she insisted. “Not like you. My God, you wrote and published a book. That’s amazing! I haven’t done anything amazing.” She looked down, and he followed her gaze to the floor. “I think . . . I want to start flashing people. I dunno.”
She finished setting out her clothes, climbed into bed and, with the reluctance of a performer not wanting to leave the stage, turned off the lights. They kissed and held each other, but the spell was broken; neither felt like having sex. Ten minutes later, the sound of loud, masculine snoring from her side of the bed startled him.
Lying next to her—it was three in the morning, and he’d still not fallen asleep—he considered the smallness of the world, the connective fibers that existed for no other reason than to render a person self-conscious. This state in particular—the smallest, most insular one in the country—was a pressure cooker for self-consciousness. Everybody knew everybody else. Even Nathaniel Pike and Gregg Reese went to the same parties. In a growing panic—at 3:00 a.m., then at four and still unable to sleep—he remembered what Celia Shriver had said to him that afternoon:
You think you can
keep a secret in Rhode Island?
Four-thirty, now . . . resisting the urge to go outside and do it again . . .
4
Allison Reese and her boyfriend, Heath, were arguing. It was one in the afternoon, and neither had gotten dressed or even out of bed. Heath’s bedroom, one of two rooms in his East Providence basement apartment, was cozy and cluttered, with film canisters and videotapes piled on the floor, giant posters from gore and exploitation flicks covering every inch of wall space, their corners curled where the tape had dried and come loose. Heath’s prized possession was a high-definition, wide-screen Panasonic television, which he’d bought for three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars wasn’t remotely in his price range, but he’d done it anyway, and in the weeks since, he’d joined the Panasonic online mailing list, sent in the lifetime warranty and read the sixty-eight-page owner’s manual from cover to cover. He wanted to be a good parent to his TV.
With the DVD player on pause, Allison sat up in bed and blocked his view of the screen. “I don’t see what’s misogynous about it, just because it shows one woman sexually dominating another in front of a man. I mean, that’s like saying sexuality is misogynous. What’s misogynous about Marguerite Duras, or Anaïs Nin?”
“I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it’s misogynous,” Heath replied. The film they’d been watching was Ilsa: The Wicked Warden, which showed a female warden sticking pins into a woman’s breasts, another being suffocated to death in front of her sister, still another lying on a torture table while a prison guard injected acid into her vagina—all fairly typical of the 1970s women-in-prison genre but not, perhaps, the best choice for Thanksgiving Day entertainment. “I’m not making a value judgment about it,” he continued. “I think misogyny is a perfectly valid form of artistic expression. Look at Philip Roth.”