by Lisa Zeidner
“They must have—made a mistake,” he repeated. Then smiled.
I didn’t smile back at him, but I didn’t move, either. He appeared to be paralyzed too—by embarrassment, or by the automatic lust of a male presented with a naked female. Five seconds, maybe, we stayed like this. I managed to focus enough to compute that he was going to read my behavior here as an invitation. And he must have, because now he looked around the room. Actually bent backward a bit, to position himself for a full view of the empty bathroom, as if to ascertain that I was alone. (Stupid of him—my bruiser-boyfriend could have been out fetching coffee.)
I managed to say, evenly, “Gotta go.”
“You don’t have to,” he offered.
I watched him walk slowly around the side of the bed. With equal deliberation, he reached out a hand and, with thumb and forefinger, squeezed one of my nipples, maintaining eye contact. “We could share,” he said, thick-voiced.
Both of us were now looking down at the breast, the big hand with the wedding band, flesh puffed around it, the black hair on the knuckles.
I processed the following thoughts: that my response time here was inadequate. That some woman could actually enjoy this. That I probably wouldn’t, although I felt a strange lack of animosity toward the man. Even, oddly, sympathy: this was the only time in his life he was going to behave this way. I don’t know what came over me, he would tell himself for years, with mingled horror and pride.
Then, from his extended pressure on the nipple, a trace-memory of breastfeeding so powerful that I gasped, and recoiled.
“Sorry,” he said immediately, rearing back himself.
“No,” I said, reaching only now for the sheet. “I’m—you know, I lost a child a while back.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “How terrible.”
I didn’t argue.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“No. Just let me dress. I’m leaving anyhow. Do you have kids?”
“Two boys,” he admitted.
“My boy was getting ready for college,” I said. I don’t know why I told this lie at this point, but it did seem to calm me, immediately. “I’ll just go in the bathroom here.”
He turned his back politely as I grabbed my clothes.
When I came out, dressed, he was gone.
I was surprised to find myself surprised. I’d expected him to stick around for apologies, condolences. Maybe offer lunch. I’d refuse, of course, but—as I followed this train of thought, I decided that after two weeks, a respectable vacation, I was approaching the end of the line.
My business in Wilkes-Barre was done. After Philadelphia, I could fly home. I sat in the room watching CNN, the half-hour spin cycle of victims and refugees, and tried to feel like a normal traveling salesman, whose home is a nest brightly shining over the next hill. I was in the room long enough to be caught, was numbly resigned to a stern knock. But no one showed up or even called.
At the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, I thought, churlishly: why am I here? Seeing children in wheelchairs, children with IVs, is not something that should be expected of me.
Inside, I walked fast, head down, as if dodging snipers.
“Is everything all right?” asked the purchasing officer’s secretary, when I arrived.
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“Your husband called Bill. He said—well, hold on.” She buzzed my contact, who opened his office door and shook my hand with pointed warmth, except that he didn’t actually step out of his office. He stuck out one hand and anchored the other inside somewhere, on a desk or doorknob, to avoid getting dragged off.
“Bill,” I said lightly. “What’s up?”
He closed the door, gestured for me to sit. I did, while he leaned against his desk—a bad sign. “I spoke to Ken,” he said, “and I know what’s happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“I understand. After the—after, no one expected you to continue in this line of work. Isn’t it torture, really? Like you’re afraid of flying, and have to work as a stewardess?”
“Bill, what are you talking about?”
“Or you hate cockroaches, and you’re an exterminator.”
He smiled, pleased with the analogy, then reeled himself back.
“We’re all burned out,” he admitted, subdued now. “It happens. How could it not? But you. I mean, you don’t need to be doing this.”
I stood.
“No offense. Nothing sexist. Hey, if my wife were a surgeon, do you think I’d be here?”
“Look, I don’t know what Ken said, but I can’t imagine what it has to do with anything. Don’t we”—I looked at my watch, for emphasis—“have an appointment?”
“Not today. Go home, hon.”
Furious isn’t a nearby galaxy. Behind my back, my husband had threatened my working relationship with one of my biggest clients, maybe threatened my job itself, since he would have had to sketch out the situation to my office to track down the appointment. Was this even legal? Bill opened the door for me, and I flew past his secretary—“Hon? Hon?” she called (a conspiracy of condescension!) talking aloud to myself, like an actual street person. What is this, the fucking fifties? What’s he gonna do next, commit me?
People don’t behave this way in children’s hospitals. It’s heartbreaking, really, how soldierly people manage to be, like John-John, Jr., saluting his father’s coffin. As I got to the lobby, a security guard sprang to alertness; I watched the arc of his hand reaching for what I feared was a gun, then saw was a walkie-talkie. Lobby to parking garage? I changed course, left my car where it was, took the main doors into an invisible fence of heat and humidity, took a cab that was moving before the door was closed.
My usual hotel was out of the question, obviously, as an unpaid or paying guest. For all I knew Ken was there already, waiting. I could leave Philadelphia immediately, except that Ken might be skulking around the airport.
I directed the cab to the Four Seasons and was almost there before I realized that my luggage was still in my car, in the hospital garage, so I took the cab back, had the driver wait while I fetched my things from the trunk. The meter, obviously tampered with, pinwheeled crazily.
The Four Seasons had rooms. Rooms were not a problem. Nor did I expect to sneak in. I fully planned to pay in the ordinary fashion. So thirstily did I want to submerge in the pool that I could almost taste the click my credit card would make as it got imprinted on the little machine.
But my credit card was declined.
“Happens all the time,” the clerk reassured me. “Bureaucratic screwups. Want to try another plate?”
I reached for another credit card to discover that I didn’t have one. Only now did I remember that, in a recent spasm of efficiency, I had gone through my wallet, removed all the plates I did not regularly use: not only the Visas with bad interest rates but the library card, the stamp card that would entitle me to a free sandwich after I bought another dozen at a restaurant I no longer frequented. This act had been inspired, partially, by the colleague who had gotten his belongings stolen from the locker at the YMCA. Now I would have less to fret about and reconstruct, in case of theft. How pure and light, productive and organized I’d felt doing this, for all of ten minutes. The pleasures of middle-class life: the orderly sock drawer! The change not scattered on the dresser but sorted by type, brought to the bank! I’d actually hefted the cleaned-out wallet, as if the purge represented a major human accomplishment and life improvement. But this meant I had no other credit-card plate to offer the hotel. And in a flash I knew what Ken had done.
“Give me a sec,” I told the clerk.
In stepping aside and dialing on the cell phone, I provided my mother’s maiden name to a voice in an unidentified state, and learned that yes indeed, the card had been reported stolen. A new one, with a new number, had already been issued this morning to my home address. How did Kenneth, who was not listed as a coholder on this or any other of my credit-card accounts, have it
canceled? His secretary, no doubt. His secretary given my dead mother’s maiden name. I could certainly give the new number to the hotel, the operator offered. What was the point? By now my husband was probably calling hourly, to track the card’s use.
But I outwitted him. Asked the location of the nearest ATM machine, pushed past panhandlers with their medieval smell, withdrew $300 in cash, the maximum, and paid for the room with bills so stiff and fresh—made right there in Philadelphia, at the Federal Reserve—that I had to lick my thumb to pry them apart. Paid with what my tailor called “cash money,” as an adulteress would, or a prostitute.
No doubt Ken felt very clever about the credit cards, but he had no experience with banks or cash. He didn’t go to grocery stores; he didn’t pick up dry cleaning; he ate in the hospital cafeteria, on a monthly account. He probably hadn’t entered a bank in a decade, every transaction that wasn’t automatic done for him, by me or his secretary; it would be days before cash occurred to him, if it ever did. And he couldn’t freeze the bank accounts. They were joint. He would need my signature, which he couldn’t forge—he wrote like a surgeon, and his secretary wrote like a Catholic school eighth-grader.
The pathetic thing, I planned to tell my home answering machine, was that I was coming home. I told you I was. You should have believed me, because now you have made it impossible.
But I didn’t make the call, because I realized he was probably tracking my cell-phone calls, too. Looked toward the phone booth, but even if I remembered my phone-card number from pre–cell-phone days, he might be on that trail as well, and I felt no urge to reassure the man who had forced me to need fistfuls of coins.
When I returned to the desk, my luggage, computer, and briefcase were gone.
I had just left them there, unguarded.
After a power surge of panic, I calmed myself. Either I would reconstruct all the records at the office, when and if I ever got back, or I wouldn’t. Just quit. Underwear, toothbrush—so little was necessary, really. Taking loss lightly was the point, after all, of this sojourn. I could buy a bathing suit in Philadelphia.
This being the Four Seasons, however, it turned out the octogenarian valet had discreetly moved my belongings to a luggage rack, and once the clerk and I had finished our transaction (if I’d known I’d be paying cash, I could have used a pseudonym) I was being led to my room at a pace both efficient and stately, like a rajah in a carriage.
Trembling slightly, the valet opened my drapes, cracked the closet door, flipped on the lights in the bathroom. How I loved these hollow rituals, the turned-down sheets, the tinseled chocolates. I tipped the valet a ten, for return of my worldly goods.
Although it was rush hour, no traffic was audible. At the window I watched the eerie mime of cars lurching forward in spasms. The pool was what I wanted, but I wanted to be there alone, and first I wanted to drain the day out of me. On the bed, with the blinds closed, I zoomed in on an image of my wheeled suitcase adrift on a sea of carpeting, twisted the axis so the bag soared away like a spaceship, hardware glinting, rode the ship’s tail fin into sleep.
When I woke up I went straight to the pool, to find it had closed for the night.
No way around it. Doors were locked everywhere. I couldn’t even get near the freight elevator. I had to eat room service, go back to sleep, and wait until late morning, when the businessmen cleared out.
Not only did the Four Seasons have a guard at the pool at all hours of operation, it had a waiver form. Guests signed to assure the Organization that accidental death will not be its fault. Everyone everywhere covering their asses. A guard, a waiver form, and then, of all things, surveillance cameras, as if at a bank or convenience store. Security cameras at the door, in the locker room, and aimed straight at the pool itself, documenting all horseplay, anemic crawl, or drowning incident.
There were no other guests. But the laconic guard, and the camera’s eye, made me self-conscious. My stroke felt military. I couldn’t relax the muscles in my mouth.
I kept going, not looking up and pointedly not changing my pace, as another guest dove into the pool. You are not supposed to dive, of course, into three-and-a-half feet of water, unless you want to crack your head open. Signs everywhere reminded that it was prohibited. The guard barked, “No diving.” But the guy, crash-landing, didn’t hear her. He had already gone into the butterfly, the stroke of assholes.
Anyone doing butterfly anywhere is an obnoxious idiot, but to do it in a small hotel pool is beyond endurance. Arrogant, preening, beady-eyed little pricks in muscle shirts do butterfly. Marines and state troopers, premature ejaculators. The kind of men who clap between push-ups.
He plunged right into a showy intramural-style routine—a lap of butterfly with a flip turn into backstroke, with a flip-turn into breaststroke, then a flip turn into freestyle. Given the size of the pool, this was ludicrous, a cartoon of swimming. Who was he performing for? The guard was reading a book. I stayed in the lap lane I’d already been occupying, refusing to acknowledge him, persevering through the batter he made of the water.
He was quite bothered that I wouldn’t admire him. He kept edging closer to me. He couldn’t bump me out, unless he came under the rope, but he had managed to get our progress across the pool almost parallel, and on the breaststroke part of his routine he was almost swiping me with the overreaching arc of his powerful arm.
Did I need this, after the pig in Wilkes-Barre? Were all business travelers these days just right of certifiable—auditioning to be rapists? I started to come out of the water with my mouth in a rictus, ready to tell him off, but then stopped, shocked, because, now that I regained my balance, I saw his face, turned my way for his gulp of air.
He was a child. Seventeen, eighteen tops, almost hairless chin, his height and heft so new that he hadn’t grown into them: his butterfly not a mating dance as I’d assumed but a celebration of his body’s new power. He just wanted to play, like a puppy. But he’d been fooled by my slimness and stroke. Now that he saw me face-up, he looked embarrassed. Even with goggles on, I could not pass for a teenager.
“Slow and steady wins the race,” he offered.
“No race,” I said sternly. “Just trying to do some laps.”
We had both stopped now, at one end of the pool.
“In the Soviet Republic of the Four Seasons,” he said, jerking his head toward the guard, still immersed in her trashy paperback.
“It’s like a high-school gym here,” he added. “I don’t know. The Four Seasons. I expected—”
I couldn’t help but smile.
He was still breathing heavily. He took his hair out of its ponytail, regathered it, smoothed it back from his forehead, on which I could see a touching spray of acne. An unconscious gesture, not a seductive one, and strangely not effeminate, though the hair was long, still that shade of childhood summer—cornsilk on top, darkening to brass underneath—that no hairdresser can duplicate. The softness of children’s hair and skin! It had been a while since I’d remembered the pleasure of stroking and smelling a baby, holding a child’s foot, the sole still completely smooth: not smooth as silk or butter, not comparable to any other substance or sensation; just the essential footness of it. At almost four, Evan still had those relaxed baby feet, the toes with an almost dewy plumpness.
The boy heaved himself out of the water, went for his towel. I found myself propping myself up by my elbows on the concrete edge of the pool, hands tucked under my chin, flirtatious as a girl, watching his back.
And I thought, Evan! Allowed my brain waves to ebb around the smooth wet surf-rock of my son’s name.
The boy turned around in a T-shirt: Brown University.
No transcendental coincidence, I fully recognize. But given the direction of my thoughts at that moment, it was hard not to exclaim “God!”
He looked uneasy.
“Swim team?” I asked.
Now he smiled. “I start in the fall.”
“My son, too!”
I was
still wearing my goggles and bathing cap. Found myself wanting to look, to him, bold, Amelia Earhartish. Whipped off the goggles, so he could see me.
“Really?” he said. “You don’t look that old.”
“Well, thanks, I guess. My alma mater. What’s your major?”
“Premed.”
“I’m an MD.”
“Yeah?” he said, sitting down by the side of the pool. “What’s your field?”
He expected internist, pediatrician. By eighteen they’re already sexists. They can’t help it. So I surprised him, whipping off the cap and freeing my hair as I announced: “Cardiothoracic surgery.”
“Cool,” he said, pronouncing it coo with an ironic teenage head-bob like a dashboard accessory, but clearly he was impressed.
How far was I willing to go with this? In the shudder or shutter of that instant, I decided, pretty far.
Women did this. I personally knew a couple of them, had listened to their breathless confessions over white-wine lunches. As story, tryst with younger man was already codified. Professor and student, movie star and personal trainer. Always, unless it was wartime—the grown men all out of town, all relevant parties orphaned or widowed—the older woman had to be in a position of power; unlikely the twosome would meet in a bar or swimming pool.
The boy who introduced himself as Zachary, I decided, was too young to think of the poster for The Graduate, the innocent boy framed behind the woman’s leg, the leg raised and threatening, like a nutcracker. We chatted about medicine. Now I had done my residency where Kenneth did his residency—in North Carolina, in tobacco country, where people guzzled Jack Daniel’s and gorged on pure lard, every single adult a potential client. I rattled off some of Ken’s more dramatic stories as if they were my own, with a mounting desire to—the phrase was in my head like an army sergeant’s shouted command—jump his bones.
Describing a procedure, I caught his eye, pointed to the relevant place on my own chest, let my fingernail trace an arc near my nipple, its outline visible through the wet suit. Traced the path again as if to plant an idea of roundness, entering, hypnotize him into the dizzy middle of some kind of Stonehenge circle.