The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

“I’m so tired,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “I’ll have you home in a few minutes, Sasha. Can you hang on?” he asked, reaching over to pat her shoulder, but she shifted in her seat, and instead his hand came down on her left breast.

  She let out a hiccup of laughter.

  His face burned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  She laughed and waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you sure that was an accident?”

  “Yes, I’m so sorry,” he croaked.

  “I’m not tired tired,” she said after a moment.

  He glanced over but she had turned toward the window. “You’re not?”

  “I’m just tired of being a wife and a mother. I make more money than Jim does. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I know, but he won’t let me take a year off. He actually makes enough to support us but he says, ‘What if I lose my job?’ He never will, but he still won’t let me take any time off. So I work. In the one-in-a-billion chance that he gets laid off and we end up in the gutter.” She laughed angrily.

  “There’s really no danger of that?”

  She snorted. “No. He’s ridiculous. I deserve a fucking year off if I want one. I only took off two and a half months when Quinn was born.”

  “I think you deserve a year off too.”

  “If I were married to you, you’d let me have one, wouldn’t you?”

  He wondered if before tonight she had ever thought about what it would be like to be his wife. “Of course I would,” he said, pulling off Lake Shore and turning onto Monroe Street before turning again onto her street. He hoped that her doorman would let him park his car in the circular drive for a few minutes while he helped her upstairs. She did not seem very drunk anymore, but he knew from the thickness of her voice that she wasn’t yet sober.

  “You wouldn’t bitch at me for forgetting to pay the water bill, I bet.”

  “No, probably not,” he said.

  “I think I might have kissed the father of Quinn’s porn star friend,” she said.

  Michael turned into her building’s driveway, his eyes on the front entrance, on its windows with their wafers of inviting yellow light. “You think you kissed him?” he said, keeping his voice level. “Or you know you kissed him?”

  “I know,” she said and laughed. “I suppose.”

  He said nothing.

  “But for Quinn’s sake, I’m not going anywhere, other than to Chicago every week for the next four and a half months.”

  “Do you have feelings for the guy you kissed?” he asked, not sure if he felt more jealous than upset—for his brother and for himself. If Sasha divorced Jim, she wouldn’t want to bother with him, the younger brother who had also married a woman who divorced him.

  “Forget I said anything,” she said quietly. Her hand raised, then dropped to her lap. “I shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “But you must want to. I would, probably.”

  She fixed him with a bleary stare. “Nothing ever happens anymore. That’s what you and Tess missed by not staying together: nothing.”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “You could say that in our case, too much happened. Her bipolar diagnosis, the cats she kept adopting without asking me first. Then I caught her trying to sell our cars for two hundred dollars each to the con man down the street before she tossed my keys out the window and kicked me out. It was time for me to leave anyway, but I would have preferred not to have to paw through a rosebush for my keychain in the middle of a thunderstorm.” He put on the hazards and opened his door. “I’ll help you upstairs. I think I can park here for a couple of minutes.”

  “You’re such a gentleman, Michael,” she murmured. “Really, you’re so nice to me. If I’d met you before—” Her voice trailed off.

  “Don’t say that,” he said.

  “I can say whatever I want,” she said flatly. They were out of the car and she was leaning against him more heavily than she had on their way out of the restaurant.

  In the elevator lights, trying not to look at her, he realized that he was angry with her.

  As if reading his thoughts, she mumbled, “I can kiss whoever I want to too.”

  “You can,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea if you want to stay married to my brother.”

  She had turned her whole body toward him; her breasts pressed against his arm now, and she was talking into his shoulder. “I don’t want to,” she said. “But I will. At least until Quinn goes off to college. God, I hope she does.”

  “She will,” he said.

  Sasha sneezed. “She could become a drug addict, for all I know. She could get knocked up and drop out of high school.”

  “She’s not going to do that.”

  “She could, especially if I can’t wait six years to tell her father I want a divorce.”

  “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

  She nodded, her head bobbing next to his chin. Lavender and the street scents of wind and dust rose from her hair.

  “You’ve maybe had a little too much to drink,” he said. “I think you’ll feel differently about everything tomorrow.”

  “Tess was crazy to kick you out.” She smiled crookedly. “No pun intended.”

  He tried to return her smile. “In fairness to her, a lot of people are bipolar. Our problems stemmed from other things too.”

  “See how nice you are?” she said. “Your ex-wife was such a bitch to you, even when she was on meds, and you can still see her point of view.”

  He said nothing. The elevator stopped and disgorged them onto the sixteenth floor, with its taupe carpet and eggshell-colored walls. Her apartment was at the end of the hallway, away from the noise of the elevator shafts. She dug into her purse, and after some struggling that included a fumbled wallet and two lipsticks dropping to the carpet, she unearthed her keys. Michael took the keys and opened her door. The apartment smelled of something recently burned and was messier than he expected. Two blouses, one white, one pink, along with a pair of gray dress pants, were strewn across her sofa. A half-dozen empty Diet Pepsi cans and an open box of Cheerios, with a dirty bowl and spoon next to it, sat on the island in her kitchen.

  “It’s a pit,” she said. “Sorry. I never spend any time here. I’m always at work or on the way to work.”

  He looked around, spotting two pairs of high heels, one pair beige, the other navy, in a small heap next to the kitchen island, gray nylon stockings snaking out from the mouth of one of the navy pumps. “Maybe you should have a cleaning service come in once a week?” he suggested.

  “I thought of that,” she said.

  “I’d better get going,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting at seven tomorrow and still have an hour or so of prep to do for it.”

  She yawned, her jaw popping. “The young executive.”

  “No, not really,” he said, embarrassed. He was one of the two main people who managed his university employer’s financial software and he was good at it, but he didn’t plan to do it forever. He was thinking of going to culinary school but had told no one. It seemed a shameful secret, like binge drinking or bulimia. He could already hear Jim’s droll comments about how you couldn’t trust a skinny chef, so, did Michael plan to get fat?

  At the door, Sasha kissed him good-bye, her lips pressed wetly against his cheek for several seconds. “I want you to meet someone nice,” she said, pulling back to peer up at him. “I can’t have you, but you should have someone better than me anyway.”

  He looked at her, taken aback. “How long have you wanted a divorce? I should have said earlier that I’m very sorry to hear this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A while,” she said.

  “I’m not going to say anything to Jim. This is between you and him, obviously.”

  She blinked. Her face sagged with fatigue, as if in that moment she could scarcely hold her head and body upright. “I didn’t think you would
.”

  “I won’t,” he said quietly.

  The following Wednesday they did not meet for dinner. Sasha sent him an email on Monday afternoon saying she had a meeting that would include dinner on Wednesday evening, but next week she’d be free again, if he would be in town and wanted to go out for steak at Ruth’s Chris? Or did he like Morton’s better?

  Yes, he would be in town, he replied. He asked how Halloween had gone, if Quinn had in fact dressed up as a zombie. Had her friend gone as a porn star? Had Sasha kissed the kid’s father again? This last question he typed but then deleted before sending the email.

  Halloween was rainy, Sasha replied the next morning, and Quinn and she had gotten into a bad argument that resulted in Sasha grounding her for a week. Quinn had ignored her curfew of ten thirty on Friday, the night of the party to which she had worn the infamous zombie costume. And she hadn’t answered her phone when Sasha called at ten forty-five to ask where she was, and therefore, Sasha had gone seething to the house of the porn star boy and hunted down her twelve-year-old daughter, who was in the backyard eating candy corn held before her by the front teeth of the porn star, potato still obscenely visible in his tight jeans.

  There was no mention of the father Sasha had once kissed, nor what he thought about his son pretending in a semi-public place to advertise a large, tumescent penis. Michael guessed that there would never again be a mention of this man, unless Sasha left Jim for him. He and his brother had had no contact since before the night Sasha had too much to drink and mentioned wanting a divorce, but Michael didn’t usually talk to or email Jim more than once or twice a month, unless it was to discuss something related to their parents, who were retired and often preoccupied with golfing in Florida and photographing birds and trees in Canada, where they took frequent road trips in their Airstream RV.

  When they met at Morton’s for dinner, Sasha ordered an iced tea. “No margaritas for me this time,” she said with a sheepish smile. “I had an awful hangover after our last dinner.” She had on a tight black V-neck blouse, a strand of gray pearls, blue jeans, and her hair was pinned up into a makeshift bun. Michael found himself consciously averting his eyes from her breasts and sometimes also from her direct, assessing gaze. He had gone out with a new woman over the weekend, a friend of the co-worker’s sexy cousin’s, who had gotten in touch with him based on the cousin’s recommendation. Her name was Sparrow, which he wasn’t sure he believed, but she was attractive and articulate and liked to laugh, and several times he had noticed his heart beating hard during the meal. She had long dark hair and slipped in and out of rooms with feline grace; she’d studied acting in college and in the past year had been cast in supporting roles in two of the bigger productions at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He liked her upon sight but did not invite her to his place or accept her offer to go back to hers. When he kissed her good-bye by the gate outside her redbrick Wrigleyville apartment, she smiled up at him and said that next time he would have to come in or she would be forced to slip him a roofie at dinner.

  Michael told Sasha about Sparrow’s forthrightness, and Sasha rolled her eyes. “Well, so much for playing hard to get,” she said dryly.

  He glanced at his water glass, a lemon wedge still impaled on its rim. “I guess so.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea to exercise a little restraint?”

  He looked at her, wondering if she was being ironic. “I do, but you could say that’s not always necessary.”

  “Well, I suppose you’re not getting much sex right now.”

  They had never talked frankly about his sex life or hers, and he did not want to start. He regretted mentioning Sparrow. By making Sasha jealous, he was exposing them both in a shabby, underhanded way.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” said Sasha, looking down at the Caesar salad she’d been picking over for several minutes. “Sorry to sound like such a shrew. But at least your conscience is clear.”

  “She invited me over,” he said, not sure what she meant. “Not the other way around.”

  “You could easily have gone home with her,” she said. “But you decided not to take advantage of what I’m sure she was offering you.”

  He had trouble reading her expression: was it distaste or impatience? Possibly both.

  “Maybe, but if she offers again, I probably won’t turn her down.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would.”

  They ate in strained silence after this. He tried to tell her about his boss’s son’s elaborate bar mitzvah preparations—a trapeze artist, fiery hoop-jumping poodles—hoping to make her laugh, but she hardly smiled, and after another few minutes she asked their waiter for the check, which she insisted on paying. They parted ways outside the restaurant, she refusing a ride back to her building. “I’ll take a cab,” she said. “I have to call Jim and Quinn. If I do it in the cab, it won’t take as long as if I wait until I get home.” She paused. “I’m a bad mother.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re just tired.”

  “That’s true,” she said, nodding. “But I’m also a bad mother.”

  The next afternoon she sent Michael an email while he and Sparrow were exchanging flirtatious instant messages. He had plans to see Sparrow that night, and at lunchtime he had gone out to buy an expensive fine-spun cotton shirt he’d been eyeing for a few weeks at Macy’s, along with several pairs of boxer shorts, the kind he remembered from high school, the brand’s ad campaign with a rapper-turned-actor and his gym-built abdominals nearly ubiquitous.

  Sasha wrote in the email that she thought they should stop meeting for dinner, at least for a few weeks. It was a strange time for her and she felt embarrassed by her disclosures of two weeks ago. She was afraid of becoming emotionally dependent on him and couldn’t trust herself. Did he understand? She was sorry, and maybe he shouldn’t come up for Thanksgiving either—could he think of some excuse?

  An hour later, before he replied, she wrote again. You should come for Thanksgiving. I don’t mean to be so selfish and coldhearted. I’ve just been having a hard time lately. Please ignore/forgive me. Love you, S

  She had never before signed off with those two words. He was thirty-six and at loose ends romantically and trying not to do something stupid. It seemed to him then that this was how his life, any life, should be measured. His obituarist might write: It went all right, overall, because he didn’t do anything too stupid. Or else: He tried, but was, unfortunately, often very stupid.

  Sparrow’s message window popped up again: Want to see you in those CKs. Then in short order see them on my bedroom floor. : P

  His cell phone began to ring, Sasha’s name and number appearing on the screen. His stomach leapt; he didn’t pick up.

  Me too, he replied to Sparrow’s message. See you soon. After he hit return, he signed out of his messaging account.

  Sasha’s voicemail was brief: Call me when you have a chance? Bye, sweetie.

  Instead of calling her back, an hour later he called Jim and confessed to his brother’s voicemail that he was thinking of going to culinary school. Jim didn’t return his call, but before long sent a text, one that hinted at nothing: Busy today. Talk soon.

  He went out that night with Sparrow without calling Sasha back. They had dinner at a Japanese restaurant near her apartment, where she doused their shared rice in soy sauce, but then asked him, her brow furrowing, “Do you have a problem with sodium?”

  “No, but after I eat some of that, I might,” he said wryly.

  “Oh shit. Should we ask the waiter for another bowl?”

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m teasing you.” The flirtatious woman of their first date was nowhere in evidence. Sparrow also kept glancing at her phone as they ate. “I know it’s a terrible habit,” she said with a nervous laugh. “But it’s like I’m on drugs or something.”

  He realized within thirty minutes that he wanted to be at home, alone with the Bulls game and a lightly salted dinner, one made in his own ki
tchen. The new shirt, the new underwear, the afternoon’s sexual suspense—none of it mattered. He was tired and he understood now exactly what Sasha had meant when she’d claimed to feel the same debilitating fatigue. Aside from his bad marriage, most of his life had been a committed exercise in the avoidance of suffering. He had no children, no dependents, no responsibilities other than to himself, and marginally, to his parents. Despite what the attractive woman sitting across the table from him seemed to be offering, he wanted to be alone and unbothered by anyone, pretty or no. Okay, so he wasn’t stupid, but he was a little … strange.

  When the check came, he had already pulled out his credit card and handed it to the server without looking at the total.

  “Would you still like to see my place?” Sparrow asked as she watched him sign the receipt a few minutes later.

  He lifted his eyes to meet her hopeful gaze, but before he’d spoken a word, she shook her head and glanced away. “If it takes you that long to decide,” she said quietly, “I can tell that the answer is no.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” he said, his face reddening. But he was lying and she knew it.

  “Don’t bother. It’s okay.” She laughed sadly.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “I swear, it’s not.”

  She gave him a weary look, her dark eyes glistening. “It isn’t? Then who else is it?”

  In the cab on the way home, he stared down at his knees unseeingly, wondering if he should stop at Binny’s for a bottle of vodka and some orange juice and get drunk in front of the TV. He hadn’t done that in a while, and the last time had not been on purpose. He and Tess were still together and she was in the next room, playing online backgammon. He decided not to ask the cabbie to stop and sent a text to Sasha saying he was sorry that he hadn’t yet called her back. She replied within a minute to say that he shouldn’t worry.

  A few seconds later, his phone rang. “Come over,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Or I’ll come up to you. I didn’t go back to Madison today. I had to put in some extra hours this week.”