Lying In Bed

by Rose, M. J.

  Some people’s faces are open. Their expressions easy to read, all their features following in a certain logic. Their lips and eyes and their facial lines declare the same emotion at the same time.

  This man’s face did not fall into one easy-to-read communication. Yes, he was smiling – his lips moved, the left side lifting a little higher than the right, and the grin showed irony and humor. But his eyes retained something more serious and deeply curious. At the same time they were rebellious. As if he didn’t only accept what he saw but challenged it.

  As he continued cradling my hand in both of his, I was aware of where we made contact but I didn’t know why.

  It was unexplained.

  And the unexplained troubled me.

  It occurred to me, standing there, in the store, with a man I didn’t know but felt as if I did, that it would be better if I disengaged my hand, stepped back, excused myself and asked Grace to help him.

  But I didn’t. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t run away.

  Instead I let him continue to hold my hand as a shiver of – what? recognition? pleasure? fear? – shot up my arms and down my neck and pushed my pulse into overdrive. How long did it last? Probably thirty seconds? Maybe ten minutes. A day? Two nights? I didn’t seem to be thinking straight.

  “Do you have a first aid kit here?”

  I said there was and that I’d clean up the cut.

  “You won’t be able to do it with only one good hand. Show me where the kit is.” He wasn’t asking, he was mandating.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  I had assumed he’d drop my hand and walk off. But he didn’t. He just stood there, his continued presence as clear a communication as if he’d spoken.

  “Okay, its this way.”

  I led him to the restroom, where I pulled out the first aid kit from under the sink and handed it to him. After gently rinsing out the cut and looking at it closely for a long time to check there was no glass in it, he poured peroxide over it. It stung and I winced, involuntarily jerking my hand away but he’d anticipated that and held on.

  “I know. Hurts like hell doesn’t it? It’ll stop in a minute.”

  He was right. By the time he’d finished dressing the wound, the sting was gone

  Done, he gently ran his finger around the edge of the Band-Aid to make sure it had adhered.

  “Cut still throbbing?”

  “A little.”

  “But it’s not stinging anymore is it?”

  “No.”

  We were still standing in the small white-tiled room, by the sink. I put the first aid kit away and he followed me out into the hall.

  “You were right.” I said.

  “I never mind being right.” He grinned - and the corner of his mouth titled upwards again. “But right about what?”

  “It would have been hard for me to do that with my left hand. Now, how can I help you? Can I find something for you? Obviously you didn’t come into the store to play doctor.” I cringed at the double entendre, surprised that I even noticed it. Hoping he hadn’t. “But thank you.”

  He nodded.

  “So… what can I help you with?” I asked.

  “Marlowe Wyatt, is she here?”

  He wasn’t joking.

  “I’m Marlowe.”

  A frown creased his forehead and I felt as if I’d been dropped from a high distance and was in a free fall.

  It occurred to me to ask him why he was disappointed that I was the person he’d came to see. But I didn’t. Partly because his face had relaxed so quickly that I was no longer sure I’d read his expression correctly.

  “Marlowe,” he repeated my name as if he was getting used to it. “I called earlier. Someone named Grace told me that you’d be here and I didn’t need an appointment.”

  “No, you don’t. Except for the eight weeks before Valentine’s day.”

  “Yeah, I read about you and Valentine’s Day gifts a few months ago. That’s why I’m here.”

  Since the article had run I’d been incredibly busy. Sending lovers, husbands or wives sexy letters or stories had become a popular gift. I’d gotten more than thirty clients. Including the woman who’d shot the photos for the article, Vivienne Chancy. First she’d taken me up on my free offer and then hired me to write three more letters for her. She was on the road, working on a travel book and was trying to keep a new relationship going while she was gone. The long distance, she said, wasn’t working in her favor.

  I’d been surprised she’d needed to try so hard. She was a talented, successful woman, not someone who I imagined needed the help of erotic letters to attract anyone.

  When I told Grace what I thought, she said her soul swam in shallow water and it would stop her from succeeding at the kind of relationship she craved.

  How did she know? I asked.

  Grace had winked - code for the spirits, the stars, and magic.

  “Grace told me someone had called. Mr. Brown, I think she said. Is that you?”

  “Gideon,” he said as he extended his hand and then withdrew it. “Forgot about your hand.”

  “Thanks again. For helping me. For walking in when you did.”

  I opened the door to my office and he followed me inside.

  “So,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  5.

  “How many of these have you written?” he asked me after I’d handed him the heavy scrapbook of my samples. On the front, in hand-tooled gold letters read: Lady Chatterley’s Letters.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a few dozen originals… a hundred personalized from pre-existing stories.”

  Examining the cover, Gideon ran his long fingers over the letters, tracing their outlines. I responded as if he were drawing them on my bare skin. The L slid down my spine, turned and then swaggered halfway across my waist. The C curved in a smooth semi- circle under my breast.

  When he stroked the smooth leather cover, I felt his hand glide between my thighs.

  “You aren’t sure?”

  “I never counted.”

  I had an insane desire to tell him that the number was immaterial, that the only thing that mattered was the one letter I could never write because there was no address to send it to. Of course, I didn’t. I had never discussed that last letter from Joshua asking me to write him back and forgive him. Not with Grace or any of my other friends. I certainly was not going to disclose it to a stranger. That I’d even had the thought astounded me.

  He opened the book.

  The fluttering inside my stomach could not have been more intense if he had literally pushed my legs apart with his knees

  Forcing my concentration back to the desk, the scrapbook, my work and the store, I tried to ignore my body’s intense reaction.

  Where was it coming from? Why was it happening? This wasn’t like me – to be attracted to someone I didn’t know.

  Men who are attached to other women yet manage to move you, are dangerous the same way a mercury spill is. The mineral glitters and teases attracting with its pretty, slick, smoothness. Looking at it you can almost forget that it is in fact, poison. But you mustn’t.

  “Here,” I said, pulling the first letter out from it’s the clear plastic sleeve. “You should look at it the way the person does who gets it. The letters are as much about touch and feel and smell as they are about words.”

  I leaned over my desk, awkwardly using my left hand since my right was hurt. His eyes took in my movements and my skin burned where his eyes traveled.

  If he looks up at me now, I thought, I’ll ask him about this combustion. If he feels it too. If he knows why it is happening. But he was already looking down at the letter I had succeeded removing it from its cover and handed to him.

  The words were written in a vibrant, verdant green ink on parchment paper that I had decorated with pressed flowers, a scattering of pine needles and a border of moss-colored ribbon. An original Victorian vignette of a brilliant red cardinal perched on the crossbar of the large capital H that began the fir
st word.

  “You’re an artist,” he said sounding surprised and – what was it? Disappointed? Annoyed? Something I couldn’t figure out.

  I shrugged. “This is only how I earn my living. What I really do is create collages.” I nodded towards my wall where some of my personal work hung. “But it’s not easy to make a living at fine arts and garrets don’t appeal to me. Besides there are no garrets in New York anymore.”

  “No, I imagine not.” He laughed and looked around my little office now, his eyes taking in the sketches on the wall and the three hanging boxed collages. If people even noticed them, they usually merely glanced at them, but Gideon put the letter down on the desk, got up and walked over to inspect my work more closely. He stood, silently, in front of the first, looking at it for a long time, and then gave the second an equal viewing.

  “You have an amazing imagination and great eye,” he finally said and then sat down, picking up the letter again. “So do you design every letter?”

  “Yes. Unless someone hires me to be the author. Then they write it out in their own handwriting on their stationery or cards that they can pick out here.”

  He ran a finger over the smooth nap of the translucent paper and down the satin border. He touched everything, I realized. My hand, the Band-Aid, the cover of the book. As if he knew it better by touching it. Then, lifting it to his face, he inhaled.

  I’d used real pine needles, rubbing and crushing them into the back of the paper infusing it with the green, minty scent. And he was taking it in.

  I expected him to read it, of course, but what I hadn’t anticipated, what had never happened in the months since I had started writing Lady Chatterley’s Letters, was that he would read what I had written out loud.

  But he did. Unlike his own staccato way of talking, the story had an abundance of words and he read them smoothly and much to my surprise, lushly. His voice was dark and his head was down, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face and he couldn’t see the one on mine. For which I was thankful.

  Hearing the music, I thought it was the sound of a brook running through the forest. Smelling the perfume, I thought there were flowers growing deep in the woods. The taste of the air had to be the taste of the trees.

  I didn’t expect you to be the source of both the sounds and the scents and tastes.

  The tree trunk was as thick as two men and hid me well so I stood there holding onto the bark, letting it bite into my fingers while I watched.

  I should be sorry I stole time that we could have been holding each other but I had to watch you there by yourself, I had to see you like that, unaware of me, but waiting for me.

  The bed you had found for us had a canopy of leaves, interwoven, crisscrossed, filtering out all but slim rays of light that fell on your breasts. The headboard was made of rocks covered in soft moss, two inches thick.

  I had never heard anyone read aloud what I had written. Even though I had consultations with my clients so I could tailor the content to personal taste, I composed the letters and stories alone, in my apartment, after I came home from work, dinner with friends, or one of the many disappointing first or second dates that rarely inspired me to accept any more.

  And so hearing Gideon read my story disoriented me. Listening to the phrases that until that afternoon had existed only as thoughts inside my head or in calligraphy on paper, filtered through his voice, was a violation of my privacy. Invading without invitation.

  Who was this man to walk in to Grace’s store to buy one thing and instead steal something else?

  I wanted to reach across the desk, grab the book and tell him to go away the way I might tell a man I didn’t know well to leave the room if he had accidentally walked in on me while I was getting undressed.

  Instead, I crossed my legs over each other, moved my arms into an X on my chest, shifted in my seat enough so that I was facing away from him, bit the inside of my cheek and waited for him to finish. I didn’t ask him to stop reading even though it was what I wanted to do. Instead I convinced myself I was overreacting and waited him out.

  Grace had taught me how to treat clients, to be polite and respectful even when I didn’t feel it they deserved it. So I sucked in my outrage and tried to think of something – anything – else so I wouldn’t hear his articulation of my secrets.

  But I couldn’t.

  You were naked, your skin dappled with the yellow light that sneaked through the trees. A single beam flashed off of the flute you held up to your lips as you pressed a kiss to the opening.

  It was like watching you take another man in your hands and into your mouth. And I was jealous that you would treat an inanimate object so intimately: coaxing melody from its shaft the way you coax pleasure from mine.

  There were leaves woven into your hair, caught up in the curls, and flecks of earth on your bare back and legs. Wide bracelets made of soft willow branches braided together decorated your wrists and ankles.

  It was difficult, in that low, green-tinged light to know where you began and where the forest ended.

  I tried to stay quiet and still but the moan escaped of its own volition. And when you heard it over the music and turned, when I saw how happy you were to see me, I wasn’t sorry anymore that I had stolen those five minutes to watch you when I could have been with you, on you, or inside of you. I would have missed the expression on your face if I had. And that, would have been a shame.

  5.

  Finally he stopped reading, slipped the letter back into its plastic sleeve and turned to the next page. But I couldn’t just sit there and watch him read another. I got up.

  “I feel sick…” I mumbled and I walked out of my office.

  I used to know what it was like to be stripped bare in front of a man but I had no interest in experiencing anything like it again.

  It was only when I stepped out onto the floor that I knew I was looking for Grace. To ask her to take over for me with Gideon Brown. To hope she would read something in my mood or my inflections or my eyes that would encourage her to take me in her arms and hug me and tell me that everything would be all right. To be, for a few minutes, the recipient of the motherly Grace that was the best she offered.

  I’d never walked out on a client before. But she and I had talked about the possibility of needing to when I first went to work for her. She warned me that it was conceivable for a man or, for that matter, a woman to come in ostensibly to hire me to write a letter, but to take advantage of our being in a room alone together. The fact that I wrote erotic letters and stories for hire might not be that far a leap for someone to make and assume I would perform for them in some erotic way also. So we had a protocol set up: an alarm button under my desk that I could press without anyone noticing and hat would alert her and most of the rest of the sales staff.

  I’d never had to use it. I’d never been in danger with a customer. And the kind of danger I felt from Gideon was not like that. It was inside my head.

  I’d forgotten to use the button. My need to get away from him quickly had been that urgent.

  In front of me was the central, wide-open aisle that branches off into all the different areas of the store. Grace might be working in any one of them.

  First, I walked through the ribbon department where Debra, a saleswoman, was working with a customer in front of the kaleidoscopic wall of ribbons, arranged row after row by color.

  Debra was taking out spools of different blues, holding them against a sheet of foil wrapping paper, waiting for the customer’s yea or nay, and then putting them back. Ephemera stocks more than 500 different ribbons which sell by the foot or the yard. The most expensive, at fifty dollars a yard, was made of hand sewn lavender florets surrounded by leaves.

  Some ribbons were edged with gold, others were wired so that once the bows were formed they would hold their shape. There were heavy satins and silks in every hue, in several different thicknesses, from a quarter of an inch to three inches. Grosgrain, chiffon, tapestry, patterns, and solids. We
even stock a ribbon made of real silver so thin you could use it to sew with.

  Grace wasn’t in the decorative paper department either. We offer a selection of more than 100 different designs from all over the world. Large sheets, 24 inches by 36 inches, hung over wooden dowels the way newspapers were sometimes displayed in libraries.

  We had more than two dozen different marbleized papers all made in Florence, Italy. Flames of gold, oranges, reds, or swirls of turquoise, azure and purple. Other papers came from China and Japan, some made from rice with petals of real flowers woven into their fibers, or printed with vibrant colors, repeating patterns of fans, butterflies or wisteria blossoms.

  You could also find paper in several sizes in every solid color from rustic browns to shimmering sea green. Most had envelopes to match.

  Continuing on, I glanced at the wooden glass-fronted cabinets that display a wide assortment of writing instruments – from expensive lacquer Mont Blancs to unusual, old fashioned fountain pens that need to be dipped in ink wells. But she wasn’t working there. Nor was she at the showcase of antique seals or two shelves of sealing wax in brilliant shades.

  Crisscrossing through side aisles of arts and crafts items, greeting cards, the pre-made stationery, journals - some covered in alligator, others in suede, date-books and photo albums, I kept looking for her. Usually walking through this Ali Baba’s cave of delight stimulates my senses. Normally I stopped to look at the ribbons, the papers, the imagery on the stickers to hunt around the hundreds of rubber stamps and get inspiration on how to decorate the letter I was working on.

  But that afternoon, I could only see the afterimage of Gideon Brown sitting at my desk reading my work and feeling as if he was rifling through my underwear drawer.

  No one had ever requested a letter that I hadn’t been able to write. But I was sure than no matter what he wanted, it would be beyond my ability, so I wanted Grace to intercept. To go to him and tell him I’d gotten a phone call, or gone out into the street for a cigarette and been struck down by a car, or arrested, or taken away in an ambulance. Anything.