“Have a look around,” she says, turning on more lights.
The kitchen is small and immaculate. I go past that into a dining-living area furnished in a contemporary style and mostly black and white. On one wall is a framed painting of what seems to be a courtyard in some hot country—perhaps North African. I notice the initials I.B. in the lower right corner.
“You did this?” I say.
“It’s from my blue period,” she says, and she laughs.
“Iris, I’m astonished. This is good. Have you done much painting?”
“That’s it. My one and only.”
“Where is it?”
“Morocco, I think. I didn’t go there. I copied it off somebody else’s painting.”
Beyond, by the windows, is another sitting area, with a built-in bar on the left and her computer and desk on the right. Adjacent to the dining room is a TV room and in the centre of one wall is a kind of picture window that has Venetian blinds. The blinds are open and I can see the bedroom through the window—and a king-size bed.
“Your place is lovely,” I say, “and so nicely kept.”
“Thanks. If you need a loo, there’s one just there, and another at the back off the bedroom. I’m going to get more comfortable—why don’t you?”
I look at her. I try to put a look on my face that doesn’t reveal my shock. I think I know what she means, but I remember her saying at Gwen and Charlie’s that she prefers sex in the morning. There is the possibility, though, that she doesn’t mean that at all—and for some crazy reason I have this flashback to a night in the previous century when I was at Marcia’s aunt’s apartment and Marcia left the room and I thought she was going to get more comfortable and she didn’t. Perhaps Iris really is going to get comfortable—put on sweats or something—and my jangled, liquor-laced imagination conjures up preposterous scenarios—Iris coming out in a filmy negligee (do women still wear negligees?); Iris dressed as some famous stripper like Gypsy Rose Lee; Iris in good old-fashioned pyjamas … but if she does want to fool around, shouldn’t I be kissing her right about now? For God’s sake, she probably expected me to take her into my arms as soon as we entered the apartment. Oh, I’m so out of touch with this sort of thing.
She turns from me and starts in the direction of that other bathroom.
“Iris?” I say.
She turns back and I put my arms around her and kiss her. She feels so soft and substantial and perfect. I open my mouth against hers—
“Mm—” she steps back “—sorry, I’m not big on wet kisses. Nothing against you—they just don’t do it for me, all that exchange of saliva, to say nothing of the bacteria.”
So much for the long-awaited return of The Kissing Bandit, I think, feeling like some sort of insensitive oaf. I say, “I’m sorry, I haven’t—I didn’t—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just me, okay? It’s no biggy. Now, just give me a few minutes and I’ll meet you in there.” She gestures toward the bedroom.
“I thought you said you didn’t … on a full stomach …”
She smiles. “I’m making an exception for you, okay?”
“I don’t have a French—a condom—”
“It’s okay! I’ll take care of that. See you in a few minutes.”
She kisses my cheek and walks around a corner to the bathroom I haven’t seen. Her rebuff of my kiss seems to be only a slight glitch in what is rapidly becoming Jenkins’s Most Amazing Adventure. I go into what I suppose she regards as the guest bathroom and I close the door.
To understand the extent of my excitement, my anxiety, my worry, you’d have to think back to—I don’t know—maybe the time you took your driver’s test. You’ve read the manual, you’ve had the lessons, you’ve become pretty good at backing your dad’s car out of the driveway and parallel parking on vacant lots, but here you are, having to take a car through a variety of situations dictated by a stranger, getting tested on what exactly you know how to do. There is nothing like the real thing. All right, maybe that’s not a good example, unless you think of Iris as both the car and the tester. All those adolescent dates flash past me as if I’m drowning—kissing Louise in the dark, feeling Trudy’s bra cups, peeking at Shirley’s big eye, necking with Alice and Dianne, holding Janie’s hot body against mine as we dance, fondling Mary’s plump bare breast with her parents in the next room, enduring endless double dates, indulging in petting and heavy petting in the Neck Room—the adolescent dates and all those years of marriage in no way prepared me for this night. Friends e-mailed me photos of gorgeous naked women with balloon boobs and clean-shaven pussies, and I’ve seen my share of those boring story-less porno flicks, and none of them could’ve prepared me for this night. And I’ve read innumerable books, from Masters and Johnson on Sex and Human Loving to The Vagina Monologues, and one that seems especially relevant to my situation, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History, by David Allyn, which reviews all the ways western society has changed, especially in regard to recreational sex, but this erudition did not prepare me for this night.
I take off my sport jacket. I wash my hands. I wish I was the kind of guy who could look at himself in the mirror and wink. I find myself avoiding my reflection, not because I’m ashamed of what I’m doing—not at all—but because I don’t like the proof that I’m not young anymore. I wish, for Iris’s sake, that I could take off my clothes and find Superman underneath. I wish I could yell Shazam! and bring down a lightning bolt that would change me into Captain Marvel, with a Marvelous repertoire of pleasure-making moves.
On a more realistic level, I wish that I could brush my teeth—my breath is probably terrible after all the beer. I remember the mints I picked up at Earls. They’re in my jacket pocket, each in a little package. Good! I unwrap two and put them in my mouth.
I untie my tie, undo the top button of my shirt and take off the tie. I undo my belt, unbutton and unzip my trousers, while my thoughts alternate between This is ridiculous and This is amazing! I step out of the trousers—oh, no! I forgot about my elastic support stockings. They are so comfortable, the way they let your legs breathe like a second epidermis, but I can’t leave them on. It’d be like wearing an I am an old man sign. The problem is, I don’t have the rubber gloves with me, the ones you’re supposed to use to put the stockings on and take them off. They help you avoid a snag or a tear. Well, too bad. The less Iris knows about the stockings the better. I’m going to take them off as best I can, snag or no snag.
I need to go out of the bathroom and sit in a chair if I’m going to peel the stockings off effectively. But I can’t risk having Iris see me. I don’t want to sit on the toilet seat lid in case my weight cracks it. Best, I figure, to perch on the edge of the bathtub, though it’s lower than a chair. With one leg crossed over the other, I feel precarious, as if I’m balancing—not something easily done after a few drinks. I try not to think how unlike Casanova I am as I pull off one sock and concentrate on peeling off one stocking and then, switching legs, manage to get the other sock and stocking off without slipping off the tub onto the floor. I give myself a Way to go! sign in the mirror and stand up and fold the stockings into one of the pockets of my sport jacket. I take off my Timex wrist watch and stash that in the pocket, too.
I undo my shirt, nervously fumbling with each button, quaking at the fact that I’m nudging closer and closer to the moment of truth. As I part the two halves of the shirt, I glance at the mirror and instinctively pull in my gut. I am going to have to remember to do that when I leave the bathroom. I turn from the mirror and take off the shirt and, for a moment, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here and what in blazes she sees in me. Enough of that. I take a deep breath, hold it, and look once more at myself, my chest extended as far as I can manage. Go get ’em, tiger! I tell myself.
But in boxer shorts?
To hell with it. As unmanly as they seem, I think I should be wearing something. I take another deep breath and go into the bedroom.
Iris i
s apparently still in the other bathroom. I sit on the bed, feeling my heart thumping away. I get up and turn out the lamp on the night table, figuring if we keep the light subdued, she might not notice my varicose veins and myriad other blemishes. The light in the hall should be all we need. Of course, then I won’t be able to see her as clearly. Well, I reason, she’ll likely find the softer light more conducive to whatever she has in mind.
I wonder if I should turn the bed down. At this stage, I’m pretty sure that we’re going to get into bed. Since I’m nervous and want things to do anyway, I do turn the bed down, going around to the other side to make sure it’s turned down equally on either side. I sit again, on the side facing her bathroom. Like Baby Bear’s bed, this one feels just right.
I hear her door open. It sends a shiver right through me. Iris turns off the bathroom light and walks toward me at her normal pace, confident, un-shy.
She is naked.
“Hi there,” she says.
“Hi,” I say, in kind of a choked voice.
“Got the lights just about right, I see.”
“Good.”
There’s a passage in Robert Olen Butler’s novel, They Whisper, in which the narrator says he wished he could remember to ask a woman “to walk just a few steps away from me when she was naked and turn and let me take her nakedness in whole” but he never did. I wish Iris could’ve hesitated in her progress toward me and let me focus on the complete head-to-toe sight of her. As much as the two outfits I’d seen her in promised beauty, nothing could’ve prepared me for her in the nude. Unfortunately, the glimpse of her is over in two seconds, and she’s beside me and saying in a soft voice:
“Move over a little and just lie back.”
I’m grateful for direction—I have no idea how to begin. I lie back and she takes hold of my shorts and pulls them down and off.
“Hi there!” she says to my cock, which, thank goodness, is ignoring all my worries. She tosses my shorts across the room with a matador-like flourish.
She kneels beside me on the bed and magically produces a condom. She rolls it on and she follows her hand with her mouth, which feels warm and right, and she proceeds to do such lovely things that I can only moan. I close my eyes, but that’s nuts, I’ve got to see this, and I open my eyes and see that what she’s doing is hidden by her peekaboo bang, so I reach to pull aside the curtain of her hair and—
I poke her in the eye.
“Ow!”
“I’m sorry—god, how could I be so clumsy—oh, Iris, I’m sorry—”
“Ouch!”
“What a stupid—are you okay?”
“I think so. It was more the shock than anything.”
“Let me see …”
“It’s okay. Amazing how fast your eye can shut when it’s being invaded.” She’s sitting on the bed now, her legs off the edge. “What were you doing, anyway?”
“I couldn’t see your face. Your hair was in the way and I wanted so badly to see your face—I’m so sorry!”
“Listen, it’s okay! Nothing to beat yourself up over.”
We sit there for a minute or two, I feeling mortified, afraid to put my hand on her shoulder even in a comforting gesture. And, of course, I’ve wilted.
“I see he’s sorry, too,” Iris says. “We can do something about that.”
“No, no, it’s all right. I’ll go before I do any more damage.”
“Don’t be silly. Stay there.”
Though I feel like a complete dolt, I stay on the bed till she returns from her bathroom. She has a narrow bottle in her hand and she sits beside me and takes off the cap. She pours some of what I assume is lubricant into her palm and puts the bottle down on the night table. She gently takes hold of my penis and spreads the oil over it.
“Come on,” she says, “concentrate.”
We both watch what she’s doing with rapt expressions on our faces. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything, but I’m astonished at how quickly that most unpredictable part of me responds.
“There we go,” she says, wiping her hands on a tissue. “Should I get on top?”
“Yes, please,” I say, now back into this as if there’s never been a false move.
She gets up on her knees, straddling me, and she puts me into herself as if she’s been doing such a thing for years, and I don’t care if she’s been doing such a thing for years because she’s doing the same kinds of wonderful things that she was doing earlier with her mouth, kind of teasing me but titillating me too.
She moves up and down on me and says, “You can touch me, you know.”
Of course! I think, and I take her breasts in my hands and play with them as if I’m an adolescent again.
And she says, “You can move, you know.”
And, cursing myself, I do move, raising my hips to meet hers and dropping them down again and raising them again and I’m into the moment and I’m into the zone and she’s saying, “Yes, yes,” and I gloriously ejaculate.
She bends down to me and I hug her tight and, not knowing what in hell to say, I whisper, “Thank you.”
She coughs, ejecting me.
“Sorry!” she says. “Don’t know where that came from.”
“It’s okay,” I say, wanting to giggle with post-coital glee.
She lies down beside me. My heart is thumping audibly. We lie there for a while without speaking. My breathing and my heartbeat gradually become normal. Iris sits up to grab the sheet and pull it up over us. I wonder how this night, this absolutely fabulous event, could’ve possibly happened, and then I chastise myself for having such a thought. All I want to do is lie next to her. I move closer, so that our bodies touch from shoulder to ankle. I rest my head on her shoulder. We lie like that, I wanting never to get up again.
“Oh—’scuse me—” she breaks away from me and throws the sheet off. “Holy crap!”
“What’s the matter?”
“A hot flash. They come out of nowhere. I swear I’ve got the world’s longest-lasting menopause. Whew!”
“They come when you least expect them?”
“I often get them when I drink. I had one in the restaurant and that’s why I had to get out of there. And I can get them from just being too warm. Like a minute ago.”
“I thought we were nice and cozy, cuddling.”
“Yah, you’ve got a portable furnace going there. It’s okay, no offence. I’ve never been much of a cuddler, even before the menopause.”
“Sorry—I thought we were enjoying, you know, the afterglow.”
“Mmm.”
We lie there for a few minutes. I reach and pull my side of the sheet up to my waist.
“I guess we’d better be going to pick up your car,” I say.
“Aww, not now.”
“When, then?”
“Why don’t you stay over?”
What? And miss my nightly rituals? Not check my e-mail, not floss my teeth, not take my Baby Aspirin? Go to bed without my pyjamas? I say none of that. I’m aghast at her suggestion, but I don’t have a plausible reason for leaving.
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” I ask.
“Sure. You could drop me off. Best of all, I’ll get my morning sex.”
She gives me a wry smile, daring me to say No to that. Aside from my being unsure whether I can perform again that soon after being out of action for so long, I wonder if morning is a good time for me. Like most men, I’ve always thought lovemaking was the perfect end to an evening out. But the morning after? The pressure is definitely on.
“Does your sofa make into a bed?”
“What’s wrong with this?”
“I’d sleep right here?”
“Big enough, isn’t it?”
That isn’t the point. Could I really sleep with someone who—let’s face it—is virtually a total stranger? I say none of that.
“Hey, why not?” I say. “It’ll be fun. Like I’m a kid again. Out on a sleepover.”
“Oh, goodie,” she says, clapping her hands a
s if she too is a kid again. “Do you want to watch some TV? Maybe we could find some news.” She points to the flat-screen mounted just beyond the foot of the bed.
“Okay.”
“Want anything to drink?”
“Some milk would be nice.”
“And Kahlua?”
“Sure.”
“Want me to see if I can find something you could wear to bed?”
“No—um—I’ll probably just put on my shirt and shorts.”
“Okay. So why don’t you go and lose that thing and I’ll go scare up some milk and Kahlua.”
“Right.”
She jumps out of bed as if she truly is excited that I’m staying over. I get up, pick up the shorts off the floor and go into the bathroom, where I’ve left my clothes strewn across the vanity. I take off the condom, flush it away, urinate, flush again, and give myself a sponge bath here and there with a wet cloth. I look at myself in the mirror. You idiot. What are you moping for? You’ve just had sex with a gorgeous woman over twenty years younger than you, and there’s going to be more in the morning. SMILE, for Christ’s sake! I smile. I take a towel and dance behind it as if I’m Salome with the last of her seven veils.
I put on my shorts, shake my shirt and put that on. Pretty crumby nightwear, but they’ll have to do. This isn’t exactly roughing it.
As I open the bathroom door, I’m singing an old Pepsi commercial, not knowing where the hell that came from.
“Good mood?” Iris says. She’s coming from the kitchen with two glasses. She’s wearing a thigh-length T-shirt with the Seven Dwarfs on the front.
“If I felt any better, I’d be dangerous.”
“Excellent.” She hands me a glass.
Mine is the spiked milk; hers is a large glass of cranberry juice. We clink glasses and sip. We arrange ourselves in the bed, I sitting up and she lying down with a couple of pillows raising her head.
“Oh, the clicker’s on your side,” she says.
I hand her the remote. “You know how it works. Find whatever tickles your fancy.”
She flicks through the channels, watching CNN for two minutes, an old movie starring Charlton Heston for half a minute, one of the CSI programs for five or so.
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