I told myself my concern was practical, simply about legalities. That I needed to keep seeing her to meet the terms of my probation. This was thin enough that even I could see through it—they could assign me another therapist. Still I tried to stay on this plain. Not drift into thinking about how she could make me feel, when she wanted to, which didn’t seem often enough.
I couldn’t face calling her. Spent the day—Saturday—avoiding this impulse. Finally went out to avoid it because I couldn’t stand that she might play cool and aloof and impossible. That this weekend might completely match the last one, with me ordering myself around her, running to her and not knowing how I’d find her. I already had this sense that she took up too much of my life, or maybe all of it. And right when I needed badly for this not to be true I ran into Burt.
This was not a hard thing to do. It was only a matter of going to certain places at certain times. And so I did these things believing I had no plan in mind.
He was at that same bar, with Jeremy this time. And I’d seen his car in the lot with the same guy waiting behind the wheel.
They sat me down at their table. Began buying me drinks and all through this I had that same nagging sense of wondering just what they wanted me for. They weren’t talking to me really, not exactly. I was just there listening to them and then they got up and we all went out and they gave me a ride home, which was good since I still wasn’t driving my car.
This put me pretty much where I’d been, only later and drunk, and so my resolve was nowhere and I found myself calling Beth. She sounded sleepy and irritable but not quite surprised and so I couldn’t help but feel she’d won.
I didn’t ask to see her, it seemed the only way to preserve some kind of dignity. This seemed to confuse her, and after all I hadn’t called with anything else in mind so we stumbled around a while with her finally saying, “Why don’t you meet me at noon.”
She said it in this in-between way that almost made me say where, and besides her office seemed too small and not right. We didn’t say any more and I went to sleep feeling, well, happy is not quite the word but secure maybe. Drunk, anyway.
I woke up later than I’d intended and with the sense of having made a mistake. I thought quite seriously of standing her up. Really wanted to, though the motive was filmy, hard to determine, harder to act on.
I arrived at her office disheveled and discouraged. She’d gotten there already and she came out to the waiting room and took my arm in a way that reminded me we hadn’t always been like this, and when we went into her room we both sat down. I felt oddly comforted by this, unsure now what I wanted from her and she seemed that way too, tentative and different than she’d been in a long while.
I didn’t say anything but found myself looking at her intently. Meeting her eyes for what seemed like a long time. Then I noticed what I was doing and so my eyes found the floor and stayed there. And when she spoke, when she said, “Are you all right these days?” the sound of her voice—any noise really would’ve startled me.
I didn’t know how she meant this. How widely she meant. How much ground I was allowed to cover if I answered. The easy thing would’ve been to say, yes, I’m fine, but this was so far from true I couldn’t shape the words. What I said instead was, “I don’t really think so.”
I looked at her when I said it and wished I hadn’t because it seemed to have hurt her. She maybe had wanted the other answer. How could I know what she wanted? And I was so weary of trying to know what was in her head and of her never letting on. This last thing maybe provoked me to say, “Are you?”
Her face changed again. She looked like she’d no idea what I’d said and so quickly I added, “all right, I mean.”
Her eyes went cloudy and then teared and my own vision blurred from the same things and we just sat there staring at each other.
I wondered the way through this, how to come out the other side and quickly. But just when I thought I’d be unable to stand this another moment, it grew sweet and I felt a closeness I hadn’t felt in what had to be months. And while this took over my body, while this sweetness roamed my chest and then the rest of me, taking hold in my limbs, I willed my brain to keep out of it, to stay still and not wreck it, not start me pumping to leave or push this toward sex because of course those escapes were there too, always there and calling.
She didn’t fidget, and she didn’t look away. But she didn’t say anything either. Not for the longest time. And then finally what she said was, “I’m afraid I’m not helping you.”
I couldn’t imagine how she meant this. I wanted to laugh, but she seemed genuine. Seemed not at all to see the absurdity of what she’d just said. This left me lightheaded, nearly giddy. Unsure I could keep hold of what seemed maybe like anger.
There was so much room here for nastiness, for sarcasm. The only thing stopping me was the look on her face, still truthful and gentle. To meet that with cruelty seemed just wrong. What I did instead was stall. I said, “How do you mean?” And I truly wanted to know because the eeriest thing was the way I could never tell if she acknowledged all of what went on with us or if she kept it too far buried.
“I think you’re getting into trouble.”
I wondered if she was talking about herself more than me—if she meant I was getting her into trouble—because now her eyes left mine and stared out the window until this began to feel like all the other times she’d tried to keep herself away from me.
“How?” I asked her.
“You’re going back to it.”
“Not really, not that much. Not lately.”
“Weren’t you just last night?”
This threw me. And when she looked back at me her eyes looked sore. I found myself trying very hard to see what she was saying in some other way than that she’d gone looking for me.
At first I thought she’d maybe seen my car in the parking lot. Made her conclusions from there, but then I realized I hadn’t been using it and so what did that mean? That she’d actually been in that bar last night?
“I tried calling you,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were okay. I hadn’t heard from you. I was worried, and so I went by your place but there were no lights, and you didn’t answer but your car was there.”
She stopped here like this was too painstaking, too time-consuming. Her eyes drifted away and when she started again she said, “I saw you with those men.”
She said all of this like it made sense. Like what she’d done was the most ordinary thing for a person to do. It was hard not to go along with her. Not to feel that yes, of course, she’s the one who knows what she’s doing.
I kept my head just above water. I said, “What is it you think you saw?”
“I saw you get in a car with them.”
I wanted her to look at me, wanted to get her to, because all I could see was her sitting in her car in that lot watching for me. I couldn’t stand what this had me wondering and it made me plainer than usual. I said, “Look at me,” but when she did she seemed to almost be crying and so now I looked away.
“So you thought up the rest of it, made it up.”
“Should I have stayed and watched?”
I wanted to say, “What were you doing there in the first place?” because this all gave me too much to sort through. I felt both unnerved and afraid of her, and at the same time cared for—that she would go to such lengths, but out of what?
“They drove me home.”
“Oh, and that’s better?”
“No, that’s it. That’s all of it.” I said this not quite understanding how quickly I’d become the one defending my actions, though it served both of us. Let her stay above question and let me not think what the questions should be.
I stole a look at her and then another and when I was sure she’d got hold of herself I kept looking. This put us back to staring at each other, which started hard and almost mean before it went gauzy. I wouldn’t touch her. I kept telling myself this over and over in my head until I believed it,
but I began to see leaving as the only way to ensure it.
It wasn’t me, but something about her that demanded I do this. I don’t mean how it usually went, with her telling me to. This instead felt like, “Get out before it’s too late, this time might really hurt.”
I did leave, and she didn’t stop me. But I went home to find something I’d never have expected. Inside my building, just outside my door, Ingrid was sitting on the steps. The sight of her took away whatever will I’d ever had with her. And then with Beth at my back, the sight of Ingrid felt like relief.
We went inside and she stayed standing near the door, sort of hovering there like she didn’t know any better than me why she’d come. I put my keys down. I took off my shoes without thinking because my feet had begun to hurt from all the walking I’d been doing.
I sat on the couch and waited. Ingrid finally sat down, but she kept her coat on; looked confused with me or herself, I couldn’t know. Something looked even more wrong than usual and this made me reach over and pull her coat from her shoulders, pull her toward me and I held onto her while she cried, and I kissed her hair and just held her.
I didn’t think I wanted to know what had happened—what on earth could’ve put her in the head to come here. I knew we’d wind up in the bedroom but I hoped it’d take a while because I was afraid what I might find on her body.
It was bruises, all along her left side. The kind you get from someone getting you down on the floor and kicking. She never said how, never explained it at all, but then I suppose that’s what I offered, someone she could go to without explanation. Someone who’d just simply know and know exactly.
We didn’t really do anything more than lie around with each other. Finally I went to find some ice for her, though being only as far away as the kitchen gave me the distance to ask what jeopardy she’d put me in by coming here. And if she began making a habit of it? This appealed to me even as it frightened me.
I went back to her. Laid a towel on her side and then the ice and then put some pillows around her and all of this began me thinking about the way it’d been in their house. The way it had worked with her and me and her husband. Her cleaning up the mess he’d made of me, taking care of me afterwards. And through the same kind of logic people seem to know me for and even count on, I began to feel I owed her this. That she’d do the same for me. That she already had.
In the morning, I had trouble with Ingrid even being there. I got up, took away the towel, now soggy and cold. I did these things trying not to wake her and she went along with this, seemed dead to anything I might do and I was glad for it.
I needed some time by myself. I needed at least to figure out what day it was and where I should be. It felt like Sunday but knowing it wasn’t did nothing to put me in motion.
It was late enough that the phone began ringing and I knew it’d be my boss at the store trying to find me. That was about the last thing I could see dealing with so I unplugged the phone. Decided right then I wouldn’t go back to that job.
This meant having the day with Ingrid. Maybe it did. After all I didn’t know her plans. How long she expected to stay. I’d remained in an in-between of not wanting her there and feeling closed in, but at the same time afraid of her leaving, not for her but for me. Afraid of being alone with myself in a way that might make me sort through the things I was doing.
Ingrid did stay. She spent the day in bed, not really ever awake. I waited on the couch, realizing finally that what I was missing were my afternoon drinks, the ones that usually started at lunch. I pulled out a bottle and a glass and lay there drinking awhile, watching Ingrid through the bedroom door.
About when I was getting dressed to go see Beth, Ingrid got up and went into the bathroom. And after a while of her being in there I heard water running, heard what sounded like her getting into the tub and I went in to brush my teeth.
“I have to go out for a bit,” I told her. And though she looked stricken, she pulled back from this I guess because her voice was steady when she said, “Would it be all right for me to stay here a few days?”
I considered this, knowing I would never refuse, but that alone wasn’t enough to keep from figuring out where it’d put me. Having her here while I went back to work for real in the parking lot? The way this would up the chances of her husband showing up looking for me. Or sending someone else to do it.
“You can stay as long as you need…. As along as you want.” This was what I finally told her. And when I began my walk to Beth’s I saw my car as I passed the little lot by my building. I wondered if I should move it, put it somewhere else. Whether it could be something that would tip Ingrid’s husband all the faster to my whereabouts. But then of course I knew he’d find us easily whenever he bothered to try.
I got to Beth’s still edgy and distracted. I couldn’t tell how she was and it seemed forever since I’d seen her, what with all that had come in-between. She looked different to me, but then she did look different during the week. More distant and composed even if just on the surface.
“You didn’t go to work again.”
She said this just as a statement of fact, while I was still standing. Running my fingers over a glass paperweight full of trapped, dead flowers. This object sat on her desk and I surprised myself to notice this meant I was standing right behind her—something I’d never done before.
She didn’t turn to look at me when she talked. Instead she looked straight ahead. Looked at the chair where I ought to be sitting, and I might’ve sat down if I didn’t know that soon as I did she’d find anything else to look at but me.
Having Ingrid in my home gave me some kind of false something. I guess bravado, because I felt less like I needed Beth, though I suppose really I needed her more, if only she’d ever been someone I could talk to.
I’d moved quickly to the other side of what I’d just been feeling. Began feeling so swiftly small and afraid that I did sit down and when I did I astonished myself. I said, “I think I’m in trouble.”
She looked at me, for real she did. She said, “Tell me what’s happened.”
I had enough sense to know I couldn’t do that, not exactly. I said, “I can’t go back to that job. There’s some way I just can’t. There’s too much else…”
I expected a lecture, something standard she’d shift into from habit but instead she said, “Do you want to do the other thing more?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I just know I can’t play store any longer. I don’t belong there. I don’t know who I am there because I’m never there, not really, not me.”
“You belong where?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the hooking suits me better. It’s all clearer.”
I didn’t know why I was saying these things to her and I believed I’d better stop because it seemed dangerous. She seemed dangerous if I let on what really went on inside me.
I waited for her to argue with me but she didn’t, she said, “Why do you think that?”
“Because I know what to do, what’s expected of me.” And then I thought of Burt and said, “Most of the time, anyway.”
I sat there unable to say anything more, and as I looked at her, this longing for her seeped into every space in me. It gave me a strange solid feel, but with a weight to it. I didn’t believe I could get to my feet if I tried. But she was on hers and holding her hand out to me, and when we walked to her car, she kept her arm around my waist and I leaned into her and the heaviness of my body just felt pleasant.
She drove us to a park near her house. No one much was there, it being later than dusk and cold out. I pulled the coat she’d given me tighter around me and it was odd to be among swings and slides, things children play on, but the cold air felt good and she felt good, still with her arms around me, still guiding me around. The sweetness of all of this made me want to cry and the funny thing of it was that’s what I did.
I cried in her arms for what seemed forever until I really couldn’t stand up anymore. And so we sa
t on top of a picnic table, her still with her arms wrapped around me. And then it somehow seemed time to get back in the car. I wanted her to turn down the street to her house but she didn’t. She drove me home.
My place did make more sense, what with her having a husband, but then here I was with someone else’s wife, so what could I do? She said, “Will you be all right? Do you want me to come in with you?”
And of course I did. I wanted her more in that moment than maybe I ever had. And Ingrid upstairs? I couldn’t tell Beth about that. There was nothing to do. I said, “No, I’ll be okay. I’m all right.” And then I said, “Thanks.” And before I got out of the car I put my arms around her neck and held on for a little bit, and when I went up my stairs I felt okay again. For a little while I really did.
Ingrid was on the couch and dressed. She really did look like a wife all of a sudden and she’d somehow fixed us dinner, or bought it somewhere and so we ate and had some drinks and it began to seem normal to have her there. And though I’m not proud of it, it crossed my mind she might take care of money for me for a while. Postpone my having to go out again.
We were drinking still and smoking and the phone rang and my instinct of course was not to answer it, except for knowing it was Beth.
I picked it up and she said, “I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
I walked with the phone into the bedroom and closed the door to Ingrid, but I still couldn’t shift gears so fast. I felt the jerky guiltiness in my voice when I said, “I’m okay, really.” And everything about the way I was speaking made plain my impatience. She couldn’t know why, just sounded sort of confused and what she wound up saying was, “Tomorrow, why don’t you come later than we said.”
“When?”
“Six, I guess. That would be better I think. I have a full day and…”
She didn’t bother to finish as if she remembered who she was talking to.
Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica Page 15