He removes my panties. He runs one finger through me, between the folds. I scream.
“No, no, it’s not time yet.” John carefully separates those folds with his fingers, and licks my clitoris with his tongue. Immediately I arch upward. My pleasure is already so close, close enough to touch. But he moves away. And he leaves. I moan in desperation. John returns, and I can feel him parting my legs, and tying them, too, to the bed. Now I am completely tied up, spread eagle on the bed. I can’t see. I can only hear the rustling of clothing. John must be getting undressed. He returns to the bed and slowly, slowly, slides one finger into me. I am floating. I am dissolving, melting into a puddle. And my tormentor begins to move that finger while he sucks at my clit. I know I am about to explode. And then – he stops. I’m alone again. Once more, I moan. Then he starts to kiss my right leg. Slowly, in no hurry, he moves down, to my calf, and takes my calf in his hands and massages it. He takes my left calf in his hands and massages it. He starts to kiss my left leg, moving from the bottom up. He comes all the way to my clit and sucks it again. I scream out loud. I can’t hold back any longer. I need to come, and now.
“You want it so bad, Emmy? If you ask me nicely, you can have it,” John whispers.
“Please, please!” I beg, and scream.
“Please, what?” How can he be so cruel?
“Please let me come, don’t torture me anymore!”
“Fine, go ahead, come.” John inserts one finger into me quickly, then another, and he continues to suck. And I come hard, long, and very loudly.
That’s it – I am no more. My body has evaporated and disappeared. I am weightless.
John unties my legs, lifts my bottom off the bed and rams into me, full force. I practically jump in surprise. My eyes are still hidden beneath my dress. He fills me completely. I can feel him deep inside me, and there the tension starts to build again. He holds me tight, and moves fast, rhythmically. Then I hear his husky moaning, and one finger starts to massage my clit. We reach our finale together.
Once he catches his breath and comes back down to earth, John unties my hands, and I finally take off my dress. For a while, we just lie there next to each other. I look at the ceiling. My drunken fog is slowly receding. It starts to dawn on me what just happened here. It’s nobody’s fault but my own. Yes, if John hadn’t told me about Paul and Rachel, I wouldn’t have felt so helpless and malleable. Or so aroused, more importantly. Still, he hadn’t actually forced me to do anything. John was right. I was a full-fledged participant in this process. He had given me a choice, and I had made it. And I had experienced immense pleasure. Just as promised! Oh, that bastard. He really knows what he’s doing. It was as if some spring had been wound tight in my body, and now it has sprung, filling me with this insatiable sexual ardor. Right at this moment, though, I feel completely satisfied. So just like that, both satisfied and unhappy, I fall asleep.
Chapter 16. A Conversation with Paul
In the morning, I wake up alone. My dress hangs neatly across the back of the chair. There is light outside the window, but it still seems to be fairly early. I feel tired, as if I have been exercising hard. It is difficult to move. And where has John gotten to? I get up and go into the bathroom. My body is sore and aching from new, unfamiliar sensations. At the same time, I feel some sort of perverse satisfaction that I have had a night like that in my life. Something that I might never have discovered, has been laid open before me.
Only what will happen with us, now, with me and Paul?
I get dressed and go downstairs to the kitchen to have some coffee. John’s car is gone, which means he’s already left. But when? Hadn’t that night left him exhausted, too? Or had he just wanted to avoid meeting Paul, no matter what? And what about Paul? When was he coming? When would he finish with Rachel? I wonder if he’ll tell me how he and she did it? And what about me? Will I be able to tell him that I spent the night with John?
No, I don’t think I’ll be able to tell Paul all the details. I’ll be too embarrassed. Usually we don’t talk about things like that. And again, what’s the point of him knowing how exactly, and in what positions, John had had me? Or I had had John? The main thing was that it had happened. I had a lover. Other than my husband. And it had been inimitably good with him. How had it been for him, with Rachel? Not bad, probably, if he did it with her more than once. I shake my head. Any minute now I’ll wake up, and this will turn out to be a bad dream. This doesn’t happen in real life! No… I woke up long ago, and I’ve even had my coffee, and all of this really happened.
I’m sitting there at the table with my empty coffee cup, still thinking, when Paul walks into the kitchen.
“Hi. Are you alone?”
So, he’s been told, too. Thumbs up, John and Rachel, you score! Good team work.
“Yes, I am. John already left. Did you come here straight from Rachel’s?” I had to let him know that I knew everything, too. Surprisingly enough, my voice sounds calm, almost normal.
“No, I stopped at home first, took a shower, changed my clothes.” Paul sits down across from me at the table and looks me in the eyes. This time, he looks much more self-possessed and collected. Only his eyes are as sad as before. “You know, I wouldn’t have gone for it the second time, but she told me you were with John, and I imagined the two of you together...”
“Yeah, me too.”
“What?”
“I imagined you two together. Because John told me that you and Rachel were having sex at that very moment... Such a simple trick, but it works, I guess.” I look up at Paul and laugh sadly. “They manipulated us so well.”
“Did you like it, having sex with John?”
“Why do you ask? What about you, was it good with her?” He doesn’t answer and I go on. “Yeah, it was good for me. Better than it’s ever been before. Happy now?” I’m scared, my voice trembles, and I jump up and move to the far corner of the room, farther away from Paul. Paul sits there where he is. He runs both his hands through his hair. Then he passes them once over his face, as if he’s trying to wipe something off of it.
“It was good for me, too. Better than ever before.” Putting his hands on the table he looks me in the eyes. “Emmy, don’t rush to judgment, please. Think for a minute. It’s all my fault that it turned out this way.”
“How is it your fault? Did you and John have some sort of agreement?”
“No, don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that I didn’t agree to this at all. I only learned what was going on yesterday, just like you.” Paul stands up, shoves his hands into his jeans pockets, and starts pacing back and forth. A furrow appears down the middle of his forehead. “I was thinking about it all the way here. It is clear to me now that if I had behaved differently with you from the very start, this would never have happened.”
“Explain.” My back is pressed against the wall so hard I might be trying to disappear.
“When you and I met, you knew almost nothing about sex, and, most importantly, you didn’t want to know. You had only one boyfriend before me, and that guy was no expert, from what you told me.” Paul takes his hands out of his pockets and runs them through his hair again nervously. He is clearly having trouble pronouncing each word, each phrase.
“Who said I didn’t want to know anything?” He is completely right. Nobody would have called me a luminary when it came to sex. But I wouldn’t have minded learning more. It just felt uncomfortable talking about it.
“Did you want to?” Paul looks at me closely.
“Sure. I’m a woman like any other woman.” A fact of which I am now convinced, as of last night. But that part I don’t say out loud.
“Then why didn’t you ever say so?” Paul starts walking around the table, hands back in his pockets. “You kept your lips sealed, like you were being interrogated. I never knew what you liked most or what you wanted. You never even seemed to care about sex at all. If I asked for it, sure, you’d do it, but without any enthusiasm, like it was just a duty to perform. And
if I didn’t ask, you didn’t care.”
I say nothing. I don’t have any rebuttal. He’s right. That is exactly how I always behaved. I have no idea why I was convinced that was the right way to act.
“And I didn’t say anything to you. I didn’t tell you I wanted more, and I didn’t tell you how it could be different. I never asked you to try new things or experiment with me. So I’m the idiot. I thought about it the whole way here, and I decided that if John hadn’t turned up, somebody else would have, sooner or later.”
“But why? Why didn’t you teach me anything, or insist on more? I thought you were fine with me just the way I was.” An undignified pleading tone is creeping into my voice. I want him to tell me he liked having sex with me.
“That’s just the point. Things with you were fine for me like that.” Paul says just what I need to hear. I can always rely on him for that. He starts pacing nervously back and forth again. “And I honestly adored you. You were this untouchable, squeamish princess, and all those sex games were sort of filthy perversion to you. I wanted you to stay that way. Untouched, pure, innocent... essentially, just the way you were when I first met you.” Paul stops and looks at me for a long time, clearly trying to think of what he is going to say next. “Before I had you, all the women I dated needed something from me. I had to kiss them in a certain way in a certain place, or caress them this way and not that way, say this but not that, give them presents, or call at a certain time. Basically, in order to sleep with a woman, I had to act out a role she had already written for me. No, that’s not quite it. I felt more like a trained monkey in a circus. If I did everything just right, I’d get a reward, and if I didn’t, I’d get punished. But with you, I was able to stay myself, to say and do what I wanted. You can’t imagine what that meant to me. Somebody needed me – me, not my words or my body, just me. I made somebody happy.”
“But if we had had good sex, too, you would have made me – and yourself – twice as happy,” I say, trying to fill in the blanks. He’s right, of course he’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“Three times happier,” smiles Paul, wistfully. “Because then I wouldn’t be standing here now and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“We’ve never once talked about this. Why?” It’s so easy and tempting to blame it all on him. He started it. I’m the idiot, it’s all my fault, he said. But I hadn’t been in a coma all that time. Where had I been?
“What, don’t you remember? You walked away from that conversation every time. Literally walked away. Out of the room, the house, or the café. All I had to do was make the smallest remark about what we did the night before and you’d blush like crazy and try to change the subject, or think up an excuse for leaving that very second. And I stopped trying. I was terrified of losing you, understand? Isn’t it ironic? The result of my fear of losing you is that I’m losing you right now.”
There. He had said it. What we were both thinking about. Our future. Did we have a future together?
“So how did you manage? If I was so ignorant and didn’t understand anything about sex, how did you satisfy your needs?” Now there’s a completely unnecessary element of sarcasm in my voice. Apparently that untouchable princess he had mentioned had not completely died off inside me.
“Simple. The Internet. You can find anything there. Any kind of porn.” Paul wipes a hand across his eyes, like he’s trying to rub out whatever remains of what he saw online, and walks over to me. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do now?”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask the question very quietly, because I’m frightened. Frankly, I am terrified that if I say what I’m thinking out loud, our relationship will be shattered, forever. Does that mean I want to protect it? My relationship with Paul?
“I want you to finish this commission and come back home. To me. I need you. You are mine, and I am yours. I can’t live without you.” Paul articulates every word calmly and evenly while looking me directly in the eye. His voice is steady, no trembling. He sounds absolutely confident in what he is saying. I know him too well, though, and I notice a muscle twitching in his cheek. It must take all his willpower to appear calm and confident.
“But why, why, why, if I mean so much to you, did you fuck Rachel? More than once!” Yes, I’m screaming now, and saliva is flying out of my mouth. I’m hurt and scared.
“You want to know why? Everything? How she set it all up? Should I give you all the details?” Paul is yelling now, too.
“No. Please. Don’t tell me. I can’t.” I sit down at the table, hide my face in my hands, and start to cry. Paul is quiet. After a little while, I calm down. He hands me a tissue, and I blow my nose and wipe my eyes. I need caffeine, right away. I stand up again and go to the coffee maker.
“I need to think this over. How to move forward, what to do next. I need time.”
“Fine,” responds Paul, quickly. Too quickly. I thought he would argue. It hurts that he agreed with me so promptly. As if he couldn’t wait to get away from me as soon as he could. Would he go to Rachel?
“Are you going to see her anymore?” I blurt out.
“No. It was actually her seeing me, not me seeing her. And I think I managed to explain to her convincingly enough that I only want you. Even after what happened between you and John. Are you planning to see him again?”
“No. There’s no reason. We had a very intensive course in sex ed. But I never felt anything for him and I still don’t.” I pour myself some coffee. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure. I’ve been drinking so much lately I’ve got coffee running through my veins where the blood used to be.” Paul plops down tiredly in his chair.
“Aren’t you sleeping? Conscience bothering you?” I can’t help taking some pleasure in his pain.
“Yeah, it is. And I keep working long hours.”
We sit quietly and drink our coffee. Then Paul stands up and walks out onto the terrace. I hear him exclaim in surprise, and I walk out to where he is.
“Wow! Emmy, these are great!” Paul is looking at my paintings.
“Yeah, I think it’s true what they say, that artists need bleed to paint well. When I’m suffering, I do much better work.”
“I don’t want you to suffer – ”
“Too late,” I interrupt.
“I don’t want you to suffer, but if it helps you to paint so well, then maybe it’s for the best. Anyway. I guess I’ll head home. Or do you want me to stay?”
“No, I don’t,” I answer, quickly. “I need to spend some time alone.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ll be waiting for you at home.” Paul stands quietly for a little while, looking at me.
“Okay.” I don’t feel like saying anything more. It irks me somehow that he isn’t insisting, trying to convince me to let him stay. He turns and goes. I watch after him, watch him walk to his car, get in, and drive away. I watch after him for a long, long time.
Chapter 17. Art and Life
The whole next week I work feverishly fast and virtually all of the time. I hardly eat or sleep. By the end of the week, all the landscapes are finished. Paul and I communicate by short text messages: “How’s it going?” “Fine, alive and well. How are you?” Once Tom calls from the gallery to ask when I’m bringing the paintings. We agree on Friday evening. He has good news for me. The customer Tom and Rachel had mentioned, from Seattle, I think, the one interested in monochromatic art, had bought all of my black-and-white paintings, and he wanted to hire me to paint a mural in his office building, too. “The paintings he bought are for the same building,” Tom explains. “Can you do a sketch for a mural? Then I’ll send it to him for approval. If he likes it, you’ll need to spend some time in Seattle.”
I’m surprised and overjoyed. A trip far away from here is exactly what I need! I thank Tom effusively and incoherently.
“Don’t mention it, honey,” he reassures me. “I’ve got my own reasons. You wouldn’t believe the kind of bargaini
ng I did over these paintings of yours. You’d be so proud of me!” Tom’s voice is high-pitched and girlish. It feels like talking to a girlfriend. I grill him about the mural – What size? What’s the deadline? How much does it pay? Tom answers all my questions in detail, very businesslike. Something comes alive inside me. Something very much like hope. If I get this commission, I can go away for a while, and maybe that will be enough to help me understand what I need to do next.
On Friday afternoon, I lock up the cabin, hide the key back under its pot, and drive straight to the gallery. It’s a pretty long drive, but I hardly notice the road. My poor head is bursting with thoughts. I wonder if Cinderella ever cheated on her prince while they were living happily ever after. Did she? With some stable boy or woodcutter when the prince was off slaying another dragon? And during his travels, did the prince ever meet a peasant girl, or a shepherdess, or a serving girl, who helped him forget his troubles for a while?
I have no idea how I’m going to talk to Paul when I get home. I’m so frightened at the thought that I’m shaking inside. For that reason I drive straight to the gallery without stopping at home. I want to put off that unpleasant moment as long as possible.
At the gallery, Tom greets me joyfully. I look around with suspicion and ask about Rachel.
“Our birdie has flown the coop, the cat’s away, she’s in San Francisco till the end of next week. Nevertheless, you have an incredible, incomparable seller of paintings and creator of artistic websites – me! – right here at your service.”
“Look, I made a sketch for the mural.” I pull the drawing out of my folder and hand it to him. Tom goes right to the scanner to make a copy for the buyer, and I head back to my truck to get the paintings. Tom catches up with me outside.
“So, how was your trip?” he asks, trying to glance inside the car over my shoulder. I shrug. Did I have a good trip? Depends on how you look at it. I had painted like a woman possessed, and I think I had produced my best landscapes ever. My paintings had finally started to sell. I had experienced an unbelievable orgasm – no, several different unbelievable orgasms. I now know what people mean when they talk about passion and lust. And maybe best of all, I had started to see the world in color again. From that point of view, luck had smiled on me. Meanwhile, I had betrayed my husband, the person closest and dearest to me of all. And he had betrayed me, too. With somebody else’s wife. That could hardly be called good fortune. There it was, my grandmother’s good-and-bad luck, catching up with me and knocking me off my feet.
Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage Page 8