RHODA: I guess that has to happen, doesn’t it? It’s too hard to maintain a close relationship at a distance.
HARRY: It seems that way. Hell, you expect that. But you also expect new friendships to develop in a new location, and that hasn’t happened. I think we probably moved too far away. We’re actually out in the country here, and our neighbors, the closest thing we have to neighbors, aren’t people we have anything in common with. Let me get you another drink.
RHODA: But make it light.
HARRY: Uh-huh. The thing of it is, I don’t know, you talk about self-sufficient, Priss and I being self-sufficient. Sometimes I really feel that we are. Sometimes I feel that other people are nothing but an intrusion and that all we need are each other for company and enough income to balance the outgo. I would say I feel this way by far the greater portion of the time.
RHODA: And the rest of the time?
HARRY: The rest of the time I need more than I get.
RHODA: This is a little dangerous, this conversation.
HARRY: It’s just talk.
RHODA: Sure.
HARRY: People who connect the way we do, you and I do, ought to be able to say things to each other. You talk about being afraid you’re getting in the way, crowding us, Christ’s sake, Rho, there’s no way you could crowd us. You’re part of the family.
RHODA: Uh-huh.
HARRY: Where was I?
RHODA: Sometimes you need more than you get.
HARRY: Right, and the thing of it is
RHODA: That you and I have a thing for each other, and you’re thinking about trying it on.
HARRY: Jesus.
RHODA: That’s where you were running with the ball, isn’t it?
HARRY: That’s where the goal line is.
RHODA: Priss is my best friend on earth, Harry.
HARRY: Just your friend?
RHODA: Huh?
HARRY: Nothing. Priss is my best friend, too. That doesn’t cut it. I still want to ball you.
RHODA: No.
HARRY: She never has to know.
RHODA: Harry, I don’t want it. The whole thing is just too heavy. If we did make it I would have to move out and I don’t think I’m ready for that. I mean I like it here and I would hate to fuck it up and have to go away.
HARRY: You wouldn’t have to go.
RHODA: I couldn’t handle it.
HARRY: I want you.
RHODA: Look, damn it HARRY: And you want me. Tell me you don’t.
RHODA: You’re attractive, I dig you, I relate to you, yes, I suppose I want you, but HARRY: Come over here.
RHODA: No, I’m sorry.
HARRY: I want to kiss you and eat you and fuck you.
RHODA: Stop it.
HARRY: Just kiss me once.
RHODA: Then will you drop all this?
HARRY: If you still want me to.
RHODA: I’ll still want.
HARRY: Fair enough.
RHODA: But no more than one kiss. Or I’ll scream. That’s melodramatic, I can’t help it, but it’s what I’ll do because there’s more happening here than I can hold together. I can’t handle all this. Promise that you’ll let me go to sleep.
HARRY: I promise.
They kiss, she and he. He tests her lips with his tongue and her mouth opens like Sesame. His arms circle her and one of his large hands claps her on the buttocks and draws her loins to his. Involuntarily her anal sphincter tightens, her crotch thrusts forward, and she feels his erection press her. She thinks of Priss sleeping a few rooms away, blonde hair on her pillow, facial mask relaxed in sleep, innocent sleep, and recalls Priss’ lovemaking, and feels Priss’ husband’s cock working rhythmically against her parts, and she very very nearly melts entirely away.
But she doesn’t. She taps some reservoir of determination, hauls herself up by emotional bootstraps and ends the kiss. Each takes an unplanned step backward. They regard each other at some length.
HARRY: I knew it.
RHODA: So did I.
HARRY: That it’s all there for us. That all we have to do is let it loose.
RHODA: Not now.
HARRY: You know we will sooner or later. Nothing is going to keep us from fucking each other.
RHODA: I HARRY: So why wait?
RHODA: You promised.
HARRY: I know.
RHODA: If it’s going to happen it will. But not tonight. It can’t be tonight. I have to get my mind right.
HARRY: All right.
RHODA: Goodnight.
HARRY: Uh-huh. One of our best.
RHODA: Goodnight.
HARRY: Goodnight.
In bed, she wraps herself up securely in the bedclothing and clutches tightly to her pillow. For a long time she lies awake listening to the silence. Then, just as she is on the point of sleep, she hears them fucking through the wall. Bed springs, and moans.
She wants to cry, she holds on, and she miraculously sleeps.
CURTAIN
The next morning, I stayed in bed until I heard Priss yawning her way around the house, then took a shower and met her in the kitchen. She was going to the supermarket and the laundry and wanted to know if I felt like keeping her company. It was a way to avoid being alone with Harry, and hence postpone opening that can of worms (or box of Pandora’s) and I jumped at it.
(Jumped at the chance, not at Pandora’s box, or anyone else’s, actually.)
I remember that it rained while we were driving, a misty English rain that was well suited to the English midlands feel of the countryside. The wiper blades swept methodically back and forth, back and forth, like a hypnotist’s prop.
We discussed how you could tell a really great cheddar from a not-so-hot one, and how much better Portuguese sardines were than any other kind, and then from out of nowhere she was saying, “I’m just so glad that you’re here, Rho. I mean for selfish reasons. You’re very good for us, for Harry and for me.”
“You two are good for each other.” God alone knows what prompted that line.
“Yes, I think we really are,” she said, thoughtfully. “I do think we are. There are times when I’m not so positive of that, you know.”
“Every couple has that.”
“I’m sure they do. But you know I’m not really clever enough for Harry.”
“I’m not sure I follow that.”
“His mind is better than mine.”
“All well and good. It’s not as much better than yours as he thinks it is-”
“Oh, I know that.”
“-or even as much better than yours as you think it is, but in any case I’ll tell you something, you’re much better off that way. When the gal is brighter than the guy, and when they both know it, then you’ve got real trouble.”
“You and Bob?”
“Me and the mental giant, yes. I literally hate the son of a bitch for a lot of things, but I must admit he had a tough row to hoe, to coin a phrase. For him to be married to me had to be a very deballing experience.”
“Well, Harry and I have nothing like that.”
“Oh, God, no. His ego feeds on you.”
“Uh-huh. Rho? I don’t know how to say this.”
I waited. Apprehensively.
“Do you remember, no, of course you remember, what I mean is do you often think of what we once were to each other?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes. Uh. You were the only girl that I even-”
“And vice versa.”
“I thought so. Ever since I got your letter I’ve wondered what it would be like, being close again.”
“And?”
“The fact that we were, that we used to be, uh, lovers, and are now friends again.”
“You wondered if it would be awkward.”
“Awkward, yes.”
“Is it?”
“No.” Eyes turning quickly to me, then back to the road again. “No, not awkward at all. But as if we’re closer today for having shared this experience what, ten years ago?”
“Today is Tuesday.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow Harry goes into New York.”
“I know.” Would he invite me to come with him? And would I go? I wondered about this, and almost missed what she said next.
“We’ll be alone together, Rho. All day.”
I felt a hand curl its fingers around my heart and begin to squeeze.
And in a rush, “I still want you. I want you more than I ever wanted you. I can’t help it. I think I knew it the day your letter came. I don’t know. Every day I try to think of a way to tell you this and I never can find the right words and now I don’t care if the words are right or wrong, I can’t hold it in any more. Rhoda, I still love you. God, I love you!”
Parts of my flesh were as frozen, other parts alive and singing.
I said, “Stop the car.”
She pulled the car onto the shoulder, put the transmission in Park, and sort of sagged behind the wheel. I reached across her to cut the ignition. On the way back she caught my hand and pressed the back of it to her breasts.
I remembered kissing Harry, and kissed Priss.
We held each other for what seemed a very long time. There was no urgency to this. There wasn’t, truth to tell, a hell of a lot of sex to it. I was closer to tears than passion, and closer to wordless joy than either.
We didn’t talk again until the car was again rolling down the highway. Then I said, “There’s still time to stop.”
“No, there isn’t. Not for me. I don’t think there ever really was, my darling.”
“Are you sure you know what we’re getting into?”
“No. I’m not sure of anything. Except that this is what I want and need.”
“I don’t want to wreck anything. You and Harry have a good thing going.”
“He’ll be in New York.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He goes early in the morning and stays the whole day. He sometimes doesn’t get back until late at night.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get out of bed in the morning.”
“I won’t.”
“After he leaves I’ll come to you. Stay in bed and I’ll come to you. Will you do that? Will you wait for me?”
“Yes.”
“I was so afraid to say all this. To let you know. I sensed that you wanted me as I want you but I thought that it might be wishful thinking, that I was seeing what I wanted to see. But it’s not that at all, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t think I ever stopped wanting you, Priss. During school, after school, during my marriage, I wasn’t always aware of it, but it was always there. I never did get over you.”
“We’ll never get over each other,” she said. “Never never never.”
And that is where this chapter is going to have to stop. I have written things before, longer things than this, some of them personal and some of them not so personal, but I have never written anything that so thoroughly exhausted me. This is hard work.
I thought this chapter would carry the story further, to include the Wednesday morning scene between Priss and me. But I seem to have come closer to total recall of the two foregoing scenes than I had thought likely.
Which is perhaps just as well. Because the hardest part of this for me is to get across the way I was attracted to both of these people at once, with each attraction reinforcing the other. I wanted Harry and I wanted Priss, and I also wanted him because he was hers and her because she was his. I wanted her for my sister and him for my brother and I wanted the two of them to be my parents and my children.
I could not kiss either of them without thinking of-and yearning for-the other.
So you can do the sex part, Priss. In the morning, after Harry left, as I lay curled fetally in my little bed and waited breathlessly for you to come to me.
PRISS
Rhoda, you asked me if I knew what I was getting into.
Rhoda, we never know what we are getting into. Never. We didn’t know what we were getting into when we started writing this book. It started off as a lark. We knew what you wrote in the first chapter, that we had an unstated purpose of some deep sort, but we could not have known we would open up in quite this fashion, or that so many unknown things would come to light.
Every day or so one of us writes a chapter, and the other two read it, and no one says anything whatsoever. There seems to be an unvoiced agreement that the disclosures and conjectures and revelations of our writings can only be commented upon in subsequent writings. And this is necessary, I think, because if any of this were voiced Harry, I knew that you made something of a point of getting laid on Wednesday. On any Wednesday. I knew it partly because I am intuitive, and know you well, and partly too because one notices things, keeps unconscious track. You always seemed to avoid making love to me on Tuesday nights before a solo trip to New York, as if saving up your passion for whoever you hoped to see. And so often on Wednesday nights you would throw me a duty fuck. And I could tell, or thought I could tell, the difference between those heroic duty fucks on days when Marcia or some other lucky girl had taken you to bed, and the therapeutic fucks on days when there was no one in New York to ball and you came home genuinely horny.
I also knew, though I didn’t ever dwell on it, that you were probably fucking Marcia.
But to read about it, even now, even in view of our three-way lack of jealousy, our open attitudes, tore the shit out of me. And literally so. It turned my stomach inside out, and I kept running to the bathroom while my intestines had spasms.
It’s the intimacy that is so painful. The conversation, the two of you playing back and forth to each other. I hate Marcia for being able to fill this need of yours. And hate you for being a person, a functioning person, while away from me.
Do we all do that? Do we expect the people in our lives to exist only when they are in our presence? To have no hidden thoughts, to keep their lives entirely above the surface? Perhaps I tend to do this, perhaps everybody does it.
You know what else, damn it? I can almost come just reading that scene with you and Marcia. It bothered me, it still bothers the hell out of me, but it also turns me on in a way that I do not normally get turned on by written things.
Do you still see Marcia? You don’t have to tell me. I wish I knew how I really and truly feel about her.
I would like to suck her cunt and scratch her eyes out.
HARRY
Why not scratch her cunt and suck her eyes out?
PRISS
God damn it, please don’t do that again. It’s like that Henny Youngman joke. That his wife is so neat that he gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when he comes back, the bed’s made.
I stopped at the end of a paragraph to go fix myself a cup of coffee, and you went in and read what I wrote and wrote a cute little line of your own, and it’s funny, there’s no argument there, but I don’t like it. I really don’t. This isn’t a conversation where you can make fun of me and put me down and get laughs that way. I don’t mind being Gracie Allen some of the time, but I want to write my chapter and get it the way I want it without having my thoughts pushed out of place.
I’m really pissed off. (Which is a ridiculous expression. What does it mean? Pissed off. The opposite of pissed on, I suppose. Next question?)
I’ve lost track of what I was going to say-about Marcia, about people existing independently. Whatever it was probably wasn’t all that important. Priscilla, who is not as scatterbrained as she seems, is still the most scatterbrained of our company, isn’t she? So it’s unlikely that she would have anything truly deep to contribute. She can advance the plot line a little, she’s good enough for that, but we wouldn’t want to waste anything thought-provoking on her, would we?
Sorry. I’m being bitchy, and I don’t like it either.
I am by inclination a late sleeper, and usually do not even know when Harry gets out of bed. Somewhere along the line I’ll roll
over and know that I’m alone in bed, and will roll over again and pull the blanket of sleep back over me, and emerge yawning a couple of hours later.
This particular Wednesday morning I was awake before he was, which was as frustrating as it was unheard of. He never set alarms but slept until some inner alarm woke him, and this could happen any time at all in those hours before dawn. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock, and it was a quarter to five. He might wake up at any moment, or he might sleep another hour and a half, and until he did get up and get out I had to lie there in agonizing anticipation.
(I keep overwriting. I have these purple expressions. How does one avoid that? Agonizing anticipation, for Christ’s sake. I don’t talk like that. Why do I write like that?)
After ten endless minutes of agonizing anticipation, I decided to hurry things along. I grunted in my sleep, making a variety of unpleasant noises. Hairy slept through them. I rolled over then, and bumped into him, jostling him a good one. Then I rolled back again and returned to mock-sleep while he yawned and stretched and bestirred himself.
I listened to the shower, then heard him dressing. It is interesting to watch someone who does not know he is being observed. I watched Harry get dressed, peeping carefully at him from the bed. He had a tie on and knotted before infuriatingly deciding that it was not at all the tie he wanted to wear. I wanted him to hurry-he was spending minutes tying his tie that I could be spending in Rhoda’s bed.
But at the same time, and I remember this very well, although I don’t think I’ve thought of it since that morning, at the same time I had a very strong yen for this man. I wanted him to get the hell out, I wanted him to go into New York to lay whoever it was he laid in New York, I wanted to be with Rhoda, but I also wanted to call him back to bed and suck his beautiful cock and pet his balls and have him fuck me into a coma.
(Writing dirty turns me on. I don’t suppose that’s surprising, or rare. But it certainly is nice.)
I did not call him back to bed, or do any of those fine things to him. Before he left he bent over to kiss me lightly on the cheek, and I thought, Priss, you total bitch, this is your man and you love him and what is the matter with you that you have to do this thing with Rho? Because I had never made it with anyone other than Harry since I met him. No real urge to. I would see men whom I found attractive, and I might speculate about them, throwing them a quick fuck in the province of my mind. And a couple of times-but far less often than you seem to think, Harry-I would bring one of these men mentally into our bed, and cheat in the mind while having Harry in the flesh.
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