by David Wiltse
“Adults? Or men?”
“Men, I guess.”
“Well, his father, of course. I don’t entertain much, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“I’m not driving at anything,” Becker said. “I just meant that he seems very, very shy, and I supposed it was because he isn’t exposed to people like me very often. I mean friends of the family, social friends, that kind of thing. Uncles. Cousins.”
“No uncles, no cousins. When you get home at seven and have to cook and feed your child and get him into bed by nine, you don’t entertain a whole lot.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“The baby-sitter is here by eight in the morning and I have to get to work by nine. Every other weekend, when Jack is with his father. I’m working, trying to catch up on what I would have done if I didn’t have to be home by seven. On the weekends when Jack is with me, I devote myself to him.”
“Um.”
“What does that mean?”
“It sounds rather grim having someone devote herself to you.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Becker, is there anything about me you do like? You criticize the way I raise my son, you make fun of my cooking… ”
“Your cooking?”
“I heard what you said about the ragout. ‘That stew thing with the chicken and tomatoes.’ ”
“That wasn’t criticism,” Becker protested. “I liked the stew.”
“Then you mock me in front of Jack with all that farting business. I hate that word.”
“We weren’t mocking you…”
“Farting in the soup is your idea of showing respect?”
“I was just trying to befriend him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“Why would I want that?”
“I’m not sure, but you certainly set us up that way. You were hiding in the kitchen for half an hour.”
“I was doing the dishes, then I was cleaning up. I happen not to like a messy kitchen, if that’s all right with you, although I gather it isn’t. Apparently nothing about me is all right with you. I’m sorry if you were subjected to such an ordeal.”
“It wasn’t an ordeal… What are you so mad about?”
“I’m sorry if you think I’ve deprived my son of an adult male role model, which I happen to think he can get along without very well, thank you, especially considering the kind of role models that seem to be available.”
“What are we talking about?”
“I don’t know… Oh, it’s just too hard, it’s too damned hard.”
“What?” Becker asked.
“Getting along.”
“With me?”
“Who else are we talking about?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, don’t look so woebegone. It’s not just you, it’s men. They’re such a waste. I mean, really, John, you’re all such a waste. You never say anything supportive, you don’t seem to have a clue how hard I work or how difficult it is to raise a child by yourself and still hold down a full-time job and all I hear is criticism…”
“I think you’re doing a terrific job at everything.”
“I know what you think of me as a parent. You’ve made it equally clear you don’t think I’m much of an agent, either… ”
“You’re a very good agent…”
“You think I’m a soup farter in everything I do. Maybe I am…”
“I think you seem to have lost your sense of humor a little bit
…”
“Not funny enough for you either,” she said. “You see, everything I do falls short.”
“I think…”
She dropped heavily onto the sofa.
“Who gives a shit what you think, Becker? Why don’t you just go home.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You drove me here. I don’t have a car.”
Karen slumped into the cushions, all the fight gone. “Oh, why don’t you stay then,” she said. “I just don’t have the energy to fight you.”
“You were doing a pretty good job.”
She dropped her head to the back of the sofa. Her face stared at the ceiling.
“I am such a bitch sometimes.”
Becker sat beside her on the sofa, but she continued to stare upward.
“The hardest part is right at the end. The last fifteen, twenty minutes before I say good night to him. I’ve had the whole day’s work, the commute both ways, the hassle with the couple dozen agents who think they’re a better man for the job than I am, fixing dinner, doing the dishes, cleaning up. I’m so damned tired, all I want to do is sit in front of the television and glaze over for an hour, then collapse on my bed, but instead I have to sit with him and read a story, then go through this ritual of saying good night in just the right way. If I’m impatient, he knows it. If I try to cut it short, he jumps on me for that. I’ve got to do it all just right or else do it over again, and he’s watching me every step of the way to make sure I’m not faking it. Kids are so superstitious. Putting him to bed is absolutely the toughest part of the day-and yet it’s my favorite part, too. I see so little of him and then for these few minutes we’re completely alone together with no distractions, and I love him so much and he needs me like I’m his next breath. If I do say everything just right, he’ll feel safe and secure and he’ll be able to sleep through the night. God, how can I ever be impatient about that? I am such a bitch. I’m not fit to be a mother.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re a great mother.”
“Do you really think so?”
“He’s a nice kid, Karen. You’re doing a good job.”
“He’s a great kid… And I’m doing a terrible job.” She turned and looked directly at Becker. “John, he doesn’t sleep. He’s so afraid.”
“Of what?”
“He can’t tell me, or he won’t tell me. Sometimes he talks about robbers getting into the house, but that’s not it; it can’t be that simple. Some nights he won’t let me go. He grabs hold of me and just won’t let me leave the room. He says he’s afraid I’m going to die.”
“What do you say to him?”
“I tell him I’m not going to die, what else can you say? Oh, I word it a little better than that. I tell him everyone dies eventually, but it will be so long from now that he’ll have his own grandchildren by then, blah-blah, but what can you really say? How can you promise anyone you won’t die?”
“Is he worried because of your work?”
“My work? I’m not in any danger because of my work. Most of the time I’m in an office.”
“Except for this case.”
“Except for this case. But that doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”
“Does he know that?”
“I don’t know what he knows. He won’t tell me. But I’ve seen him. John. I’ve looked in and he’s just lying there, my baby’s just lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. It kills me.”
Becker took her hand. She allowed it but did not respond. Her hand lay in his palm as if it were dead.
“Why don’t you leave the light on?” Becker asked.
“He has a night light.”
“I mean the overhead light, the bedside light, the light in the hallway, every damned light in the house if that’s what it takes.”
“He’s got to learn to sleep in the dark sometime. He can’t grow up and keep the lights on…”
“Why not?”
”… I’m not sure.”
His thumb rode slowly back and forth across the top of her hand.
“I don’t know anything about kids,” he said. “Nothing at all. But I know something about fear. If he’s afraid of the dark, get rid of the dark. Maybe you’ll figure out eventually what he’s really afraid of-or maybe you won’t. Maybe he’ll learn to deal with it himself-or maybe he won’t. But in the meantime…”
“Turn on the lights.”
“Right.”
He took her hand in both of his and gently worked his thumbs into the muscles
on each side of the palm. Karen sighed and closed her eyes. Becker worked on each of her fingers individually, lightly but insistently pulling one at a time, then insinuating his fingers between two of hers, letting them fall to the valleys, then all the way out to the tips. Karen’s lips parted and she moaned with a sound as light as her breath. When Becker finished one hand she gave him the other without opening her eyes.
“You have no idea how good that feels,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
Her head lay all the way back on the sofa, her lips were still open and smiling now.
“Nobody just touches me anymore,” she said.
When Becker stopped massaging her hand, Karen slid all the way down on the sofa and lifted her feet into his lap.
“Please,” she said, her eyes still closed. But Becker had already started massaging her feet.
Karen abandoned any pretense at decorum and moaned aloud. Becker ran a finger between her toes and she shivered.
“How can I ever repay you,” she asked.
“It’s my payment for dinner,” he said.
“Dinner was never this good,” she said. “I feel like I’m purring.”
He pressed his thumb into the muscles of her foot and she stiffened, then relaxed.
“A lot of tension in your feet,” he said.
“Who would ever have thought there was so much pleasure down there? Ohhhhh… How did you learn how to do this?”
“I’ve had a varied life.” Becker said. He ran his fingernails lightly across the smooth skin atop her foot. Karen gasped and tensed and relaxed and gasped again.
“That feels so good it almost hurts,” she said.
“It does get confusing.”
He worked on her feet for a long time, and after a while they stopped talking. Karen simply lay back, eyes closed, and moaned openly while Becker massaged and caressed in turn, patiently and thoroughly.
Eventually he relinquished her feet and ran his hand slowly up the underside of her calf.
“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.
Becker didn’t bother to answer. At the tender skin under her knee joint he smoothed his fingers like feathers and she gasped with pleasure.
He ran both hands halfway up her thigh, gripped firmly, then slowly and with some pressure pulled his hands down the length of her thigh, her calf, across the foot and all the way off the toes.
“My God.” Karen said. “Do you know what that feels like?”
“Yes,” Becker said. He did the same with the other leg.
“I feel that everywhere.” she said. “It may be better than sex.”
“It is sex,” Becker said.
He repeated the procedure, this time using his fingernails instead of the palms of his hands and going even slower. Karen groaned every inch of the way and arched her back.
“All this for dinner? I didn’t even offer you dessert.”
“I’m sure you will. You’re too good a hostess not to.”
“And you are a presumptuous male swine,” she said lightly. She pressed her foot into his groin.
“You seem to be a little tense in spots yourself, John.”
“It comes upon me at times.”
“I’ll let that one pass,” she said. ‘Too easy.”
Becker slid his hands all the way up her legs until his thumbs came to rest at the top of her inner thighs. He left his hands there, resting lightly with just a hint of pressure.
She opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time in minutes.
“When did you know we were going to do this?”
“Right about when you did,” Becker said.
“I didn’t,” she said.
Becker grinned at her.
“I didn’t!.. I did not,” she insisted. Becker continued to grin. “All right, I did.”
“When?”
“Not until I saw you hanging from the mountain,” she said. “Not a moment before that, I swear.”
She slid her legs around his back and pulled him onto her. After a moment she stopped him with a touch and slipped out from under his body.
“Pray he’s asleep,” she said.
Karen tiptoed to her son’s room and peeked silently at his recumbent form. His eyes were closed and his breath came slowly and easily. She said a quick and indifferently directed prayer of thanks for small favors and returned to the living room.
Becker was not in the room, but her bedroom door was ajar. She entered expecting to find him naked under the covers, but when she saw him standing in the middle of the room with only his shoes off, she realized how much she had forgotten about the man. He was a deliciously slow and lingering lover, accomplishing in an hour what more energetic men would fail to achieve in ten minutes, and he relished every step of the process. So did she.
“He’s asleep,” she said. “We’re in luck.”
“I’m the lucky one.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, pressing against her from foot to face as if no amount of contact could be enough. The kiss was a form of seduction in itself. His lips explored hers languidly, almost shyly, but at the same time with a certainty of purpose. They seemed to Karen to be seeking out the proper join of his flesh and hers, and when they found it, his lips rested there on hers, pressing just firmly enough. She felt herself weaken and behind her closed eyes she had the sensation of a long, slow, very safe tumble through space. She loved to kiss, and Becker was one of the few men she’d ever known who loved it as much as she did.
They seemed to kiss for hours. Karen knew that later the kisses would become hard, fierce, demanding, but not until they were both ready and could no longer restrain themselves. That was lust, this was love. Or at least it felt that way, she thought. For the moment it felt that way and for the moment that was more than enough.
Finally his hands began to move, stirring as if awakened from slumber. Slowly they traversed her back in opposite directions. One hand reached her neck, caressed her there, then moved upwards into her hair. Karen felt her whole scalp tingle with his touch. As earlier with her hands and feet, she became aware of a source of sensory pleasure she had long forgotten. She wanted it never to stop and, as if sensing her desire, Becker ran his fingertips to the top of her head, across her temples, gently down over her ears, then started back up again from the neck. Karen groaned against his lips. Once more she had the feeling that her mind was being released and tumbling languorously backwards. A swoon must feel like this, she thought.
Only when his fingers had stopped moving on her head and returned to her back did his other hand begin to explore. It slid slowly downwards, into the small of her back where it paused, as if seeking permission, before slipping onto the swell of her buttocks. It followed the curve of the buttock to where it met the leg, then came up again until it reached the hip. His fingers spread across the hipbone and stretched until they stopped just short of the pubes.
Karen pulled his shirt from his belt and ran her hands up his back. He leaned away from her just far enough to insinuate one hand into the neck of her blouse. His fingers began the slow and tantalizing descent to the rising mound of her breasts. Again he lingered for a long time, just beyond the breast, as if uncertain or not daring to continue. By the time his hand lowered still farther, Karen’s body was screaming for him to continue.
Later, when his lips replaced his fingers on her nipple and she emitted a shuddering sigh, Karen admitted to herself that she was overmatched. Becker seemed capable of giving her more pleasure and more excitement than she could stand. Certainly more than she could give in return.
And much later, when he had finally removed all of her clothes and she had torn away the last of his and he eased her to the bed, she decided she was just a greedy bitch who was going to have to take all of this magnificent love-making and quit worrying about what she brought to it. It was not a hard decision.
They lay breathless for some time, as if stunned by what had happened. At the end they had both been howling, a
nd Karen had bitten into her pillow to stifle some of her loudest roars. The howls had turned to astounded laughter as they drifted down together, and then subsided altogether as they lay in each other’s arms and panted against each other’s skin.
“I’d forgotten what you were like,” Karen said at last.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I mean that as a compliment. I don’t think you used to make love this way, did you? How can you possibly do it that way all the time?”
“I don’t, normally,” Becker said. “I happen to like you.”
“I got that impression.”
“Actually. I don’t do it at all, lately. It’s been a long time.”
“I know.”
“Is that in my file, too?”
“The Bureau isn’t that interested in you, John… It’s been a long time for me, too… Do you think that accounts for it?”
“For what?”
Karen buried her face in his chest and willed herself to shut up. There was a difference between complimenting him on his sexual performance-a blandishment she knew men required-and gushing like a schoolgirl who’s just had her first orgasm.
After a pause, Becker said, “It is being duly noted that you didn’t immediately say, ‘I like you, too.’ ”
“Do you want me to say that?”
“I’m just noting that you didn’t.”
Like you, Karen thought. Like you? I want to chain you to the bed and feed you oysters and clams. I want to have your magnificent knowing hands surgically implanted onto my flesh.
“I don’t know if I like you or not,” Karen said aloud. “But I obviously respond to you. Well, that’s a bit of an understatement. I responded like a bitch in heat-and proud of it, let me add. As for liking you, I guess I don’t not like you. But you’re a hard man. John. Can we just live with that ambiguity for a while?”
“It would be very adult of us,” he said.
“Do you want to take back saying that you liked me?” Becker paused.
“You don’t really get to take it back, you bastard,” Karen said hurriedly. “It was a bogus offer.”
“Oh, I don’t want to take it back,” he said. “I was thinking of clarifying the statement.”
“Don’t,” Karen said, and immediately regretted it. “You’re right. It speaks for itself. I was just going to gush for a while.”