One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  She hoped the walls were thick, though. She couldn’t usually hear the neighbors, but it might be they just didn’t shout at each other. She didn’t really want them knowing what was going on in here.

  She stayed up late, went to bed at two, shut the door loudly and tossed around and pulled the blankets off him and did everything she could to make sure he woke up.

  Now she’d started, she had days and days worth of rage inside her ready to come out.

  *

  Robert was in the shower when Beth woke up. She could hear water running. She got up and went downstairs, made coffee, put muesli in a bowl for her breakfast. She sat at her big wooden table and chewed slowly.

  Robert came downstairs and put on toast. “Should we talk?” he said.

  Beth shrugged.

  Robert stood there until his toast popped, and she ignored him. He spread peanut butter on his toast, looked at the chair beside her, then sat on the couch.

  “Don’t eat on the sofa,” Beth said.

  He looked up at her, and kept eating.

  She got up, walked over, and dropped half a bowl of muesli and milk into his lap.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Robert said. He didn’t stand up, didn’t shout.

  “I’m going to have a shower,” Beth said, and went upstairs.

  She went into the bathroom, and saw Robert’s razor and shaving cream and deodorant on the bench. She scooped all three up, went to the top of the stairs, and threw them down.

  “Don’t leave your shit lying around,” she shouted.

  The cans and razor bounced down the stairs. The top of the razor came off, and clattered away somewhere. The shaving cream hit a step top-down and spurted some foam out.

  It reminded Beth of Ethan coming on the stairs, coming on her, and suddenly she couldn’t be bothered fighting with Robert right now.

  Robert was standing there watching her. He didn’t say a thing.

  She went back into the bathroom and slammed the door, and was pretty sure Robert had no idea what to say.

  Half an hour later she walked past him without a word and left the house.

  She phoned Ethan, and took him to a hotel, and had some of the slowest, dirtiest, sweatiest sex they’d ever had, until all the anger and irritation and annoyance she felt for Robert was burned out of her.

  *

  Beth went home. Robert had cleaned up the muesli and shaving cream before he left, and had put everything he’d had in the bathroom away somewhere. He must be trying to calm her down.

  He didn’t come home until late. Beth cooked, pasta and a tomato sauce, and was eating it at the table when he walked in. He stopped in the hall and looked at her.

  “Want some?” she said.

  He looked at her, a little wary. “Yeah, sure.”

  She got up, and put some food on a plate. “Wine?” she said.

  He nodded.

  She put the plate opposite hers, across the table, and handed him the wine. “Cutlery in the drawer.”

  He sat down and looked at her. After a while he ate some pasta.

  “I don’t understand you any more,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Are we okay?”

  She looked at him and chewed slowly and didn’t answer.

  “Beth, I just want to understand what’s going on.”

  “You want to understand what’s going on?” she said.

  “I do.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Well, maybe you should try harder to work it out.’

  She sat there for a moment, the pushed her plate towards him. Pushed it slowly, right across the table, so it hit against his and both of them slid onto his lap. One plate fell onto the floor and broke with a crash.

  He sat there and watched her, like he’d thought she was going to stop, right up until everything landed on him.

  She stood up and walked around the table and tipped half a glass of wine onto his lap too.

  “What was that for?” he said, still quite calm.

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “My mistake. It sure as fuck sounded like it.”

  She was wondering what she was turning into.

  “If you want to understand me,” she said, “Just listen to me. Instead of talking all the fucking time and asking me such asshole fucking questions.”

  “Beth, I…”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  He watched her go like some unknowable monster had suddenly appeared in his life, and she was pleased.

  Beth lay down in bed and read, the most complicated of her maths books, because for some reason it irritated Robert to have equations in bed with him. He came upstairs after ten minutes and got in the shower, then came into the bedroom.

  “I cleaned up,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  He climbed into bed behind her. “How do I ask you what’s wrong without pissing you off?”

  She lay there for a while. “I really don’t know if you can.”

  He put his hand on her hip. She was still sleeping in clothes, so it wasn’t as rude as it would have been if she was naked, but it was still an interruption while she read.

  She didn’t move, didn’t respond, but didn’t push him away.

  She was lying with her back to him. After a while he slid over and kissed her neck.

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re tired?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”

  He looked at her for a while. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you don’t want me to touch you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Got your period, got a headache, hate the sight of me, what?”

  She put down her book, and turned off the light. “I don’t want to fuck right now, Robert, it doesn’t have to be for a reason.”

  She wanted to tell him about Ethan, and just get it over with. She didn’t know why she hadn’t. She wanted to tell him, and get him out her life, and get Ethan back here where he should be. Except she loved Robert and couldn’t.

  That was probably why she felt so angry.

  After a while, in the darkness, he said. “Are you trying to drive me away?”

  “No.”

  “It feels like it.”

  “I’m not. I’m really not.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m angry,” Beth said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Still no answer. After a while he rolled over and seemed to go to sleep.

  *

  Robert wasn’t in bed when Beth woke up the next morning. It seemed late. The sun was up and she could hear traffic outside. He tended to run away after problems, so he might already have gone.

  She lay there for a moment, then shouted, “Robert.”

  No answer. She shouted again, then rolled over and got a vibrator out the drawer.

  She needed this. She needed this most days. It inside her, hugging herself, thinking of Ethan.

  Robert came in halfway through, saying, “Did you shout?” and then, “Oh shit.”

  It was warm, so she’d pushed the covers back. She’d taken her underwear off, to reach, and had pulled her tee-shirt up so it didn’t get marks on it. She was lying on her back, and had her free arm over her face, pressing her mouth against it, like she did during sex, and like he knew she did during sex. The vibrator was on her, buzzing loud and madly. She hadn’t put it inside, where it might conceivably have been hidden, and let her somehow cross her legs and muffle the noise and pretend it wasn’t there.

  It was obvious what she was doing. There was no way he could misunderstand, and he just stood there and looked at her. Too shocked to move, she thought.

  “Fuck off,” she said, “For fuck’s sake. Let me finish.”

  He pulled the door closed, and went away. And she made herself come twice, becaus
e apparently being horrible felt sexy.

  “Should we talk?” he said, when she went downstairs.

  “Not a chance.”

  He looked at her for a while.

  “I thought you were gone,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “What do you think I do when I’m not fucking you?” she said. “For fuck’s sake,” and left.

  *

  Beth had a lecture at the same time as some kind of big political rally near the library. She could hear them in the distance as she walked to her class, shouting and chanting. Robert’s political rally, the one he and his friends had been organizing. Beth looked around her class and realized a few of her students were missing. They might be there, but they might just be lazy. She probably wouldn’t have noticed if Robert hadn’t been irritating her about it lately, talking about the rally, all the time.

  “This will be on the exam,” she said, and wrote a proof on the board.

  They all started writing.

  “And don’t say that to anyone who isn’t here,” she said.

  Most of them looked confused. A few of them seemed to understand.

  Someone must have complained. She got bailed up by two of the older professors on the way back from the tearoom later that afternoon, and asked what she thought she was doing.

  She almost said something awful, something she couldn’t have got back from. She thought at the last minute, and instead just smiled and said she didn’t know what they were talking about.

  “In your lecture today.”

  “Sorry, still no idea.”

  They didn’t push. No balls, she thought. The whole problem with people like that. Chattering gossips, but they wouldn’t just stand up and say what they meant.

  Someone told Robert, though, and he was sulking and whiney that night.

  “Like you aren’t writing political shit up on the board all day,” she said.

  “I’m actually not.”

  “Because you say it?”

  “Because I don’t let my political views interfere in my teaching. Even when I believe them strongly.”

  “Bullshit.” She looked at him for a moment, then decided he was serious. “Okay, but you must be the only one in the whole polisci department.”

  “No idea,” he said.

  “I’ll do it again,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Are you angry?”

  He shrugged and walked away.

  She went to her office and fucked Ethan on her desk, and wondered why she was still trying so hard with Robert.

  Chapter Nine

  Beth was taking risks. She had Ethan at her place far more often than was sensible, as if some part of her was tired of lying and wanted to get caught. She felt a kind of desperation to be with Ethan, to touch him. She needed him, and her need seemed to be made stronger by having to keep him away. She took risks, knowing it was only a matter of time until something went wrong, and didn’t actually seem to care.

  One day it went wrong. Badly wrong.

  Robert cancelled a lunchtime lecture because of a broken projector. Cancelled the lecture, and told his students to go home, he’d put everything on the course website, and he went home too.

  Beth only found that out later.

  She was lying on her back, on the bed, watching Ethan jerk himself off onto her face. She was laughing, was stroking Ethan’s balls and telling him to come. His cock was shiny and slippery with her and her spit, and she vaguely thought she heard something downstairs, but ignored it because she knew Robert had a class. She was distracted. Ethan was close, and she was close, and they’d just been sixty-nining and she was waiting for Ethan to get himself off so he could go back down and finish her.

  Ethan came. Semen landed on her cheek, and went in her mouth, and she stuck her tongue out and caught what she could because she knew Ethan would be looking.

  And Robert said, “Beth,” from the doorway.

  It was about the worst way to get caught she could think of. There was no way Robert would ever understand.

  Ethan said, “Shit,” and panicked, and looked around for something to hide his cock behind, found a pillow in the end, and knelt there holding it in front of himself. Beth knew how he came fairly well, and was almost certain he hadn’t finished, that a couple more spurts would have gone onto the pillow. Unless Robert appearing had put him off enough he’d just stopped.

  Beth wanted to laugh. That surprised her. She wasn’t worried and she didn’t get a fright. She wasn’t embarrassed at what she was doing, not really, or violated by being watched. She just thought it was funny. Robert was there, and she’d been caught, and she was naked with Ethan’s spunk all over her face, and she just wanted to laugh.

  Robert hadn’t said anything, so Beth sat up. She could taste Ethan. She could smell sex in the room, and feel Ethan’s semen warm on her chin and cheek and lip. She had some in her mouth, and didn’t know if she should swallow, because even here, even naked and caught like this, having someone else see her make a swallowing movement seemed far too personal. In the end she had to, that or choke, so she did, quickly, then just sat there, and Robert still didn’t react. After another minute she leaned over and got a couple of tissues, and wiped her face, then pulled the sheet up over her chest.

  She didn’t know what to do next.

  Robert was just standing there, like he was too horrified to move.

  “Could you give me a sec?” she said to Ethan.

  “I’ll go.”

  “Don’t go, just wait downstairs.”

  He nodded.

  Ethan looked around, and seemed to remember his clothes were somewhere downstairs, and kept hold of his pillow while he edged out the room.

  Robert almost didn’t move out the doorway. Enough Ethan had to hesitate, and look at him, like he was wondering whether to ask.

  “Get the fuck out of the way,” Beth said to Robert, and then Robert stepped aside.

  That was when Beth realized Robert was angry. He wasn’t showing it, because he hardly ever did. He was motionless and calm, probably because he didn’t know what else to do. He clearly didn’t know how to deal with this, if he should shout at Beth, or call her a slut, or throw things, or what. So he just stood there.

  Beth sat for a while, silent too. Robert still didn’t do anything. She decided he wasn’t going to, and wiped her face again, on the sheet, put it down, and went into the ensuite to drink a little water out of her cupped hand. Her hand still tasted of Ethan.

  “How long?” Robert said from the doorway.

  She hadn’t realized he’d followed her. “A while,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “He’s your student.”

  She nodded.

  “So this is why we haven’t been having sex.”

  “Nope. This was because we haven’t.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  She looked at him for a moment and wondered if he wanted to hit her. She almost wanted to ask.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I didn’t know where you and I were. I met Ethan. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You should have told me. That was wrong.”

  “That was inconsiderate, not wrong.”

  “Beth…”

  “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped forward, and he got out her way, let her back out into the bedroom. Her clothes were downstairs too, in the hall. Robert must have seen them when he came in and known something was up.

  “How long were you standing there?” she said.

  “Long enough.”

  She opened a drawer, got jeans and a tee shirt, didn’t bother with anything else. “How long?”

  “How could you let someone do that to you?”

  She pulled the jeans on. “Come on me?”

  He looked at her.

  “Just because you don’t want to,” she said. “Doesn’t mean no-one does.”

  He didn’t answer that, either. She pulled the shirt over her head, and said, “I
’ll go talk to Ethan. You can stay up here, or leave, whichever you want. One or the other. I’ll talk to you later, when you’ve calmed down a bit.”

  “I’m not un-calm.”

  “That’s the fucking problem. You should be.”

  He didn’t seem to understand.

  “I’m kind of waiting for you to lose it,” Beth said. “I don’t want to be around when you do.”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Even so.”

  He nodded slowly. “I’ll go.”

  “Okay.”

  “Could you be here later? In a couple of hours? And make sure he isn’t?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll talk to you then.”

  Beth followed Robert downstairs. Robert looked at Ethan as he went past, a kind of sullen, angry look, but didn’t say anything. He went to the door, went out without speaking, and that seemed to be that. Beth stood where she was for a moment, until she was sure Robert had gone, then went over and kissed Ethan and said, “Sorry.”

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. “I suppose that’s been bound to happen.”

  “What will he do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He seems weirdly calm.”

  “Yeah. University people. He’s so busy detaching from the world and thinking about what he feels that he doesn’t actually have feelings.”

  Ethan looked at her.

  “Almost not joking,” she said. “Come back to bed.”

  He seemed surprised. “You still feel like it?”

  “Ah,” she said. “Yeah. I haven’t yet.” After a minute. “And don’t look at me like that.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You think I’m some kind of monster.”

  “I think you’re sexy and smart and do things your way.”

  “And haven’t come yet,” she said. “And I’d like to.”