“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Kathy says, hugging his arm with both her arms. “The whole world around us but all alone.” She nods at the few other pedestrians. “Well, almost. I thought about wearing this blond wig I got. Then I thought, Who do you know that actually walks across this thing?”
“It’s funny . . . I never did. I was on the Circle Line a couple times. Parties and such. And you go under this bridge and you think, I’ve got to get up there.”
“And you never do?”
“You never do. It’s a long walk, for one thing—”
“Great! It’s a first. I was hoping it was.”
Kathy wondering what would be more spectacular than the top of a water tower, and she thought of the Brooklyn Bridge. And she thought, Yes, that’s it. We’ll do it in the center of the damned Brooklyn Bridge and I’ll tell Robie I’ve got it all figured out.
“You’re in a good mood,” he says again. “What’s going on?”
“I’m just so glad to see you.” She stands in front of him and unbuttons her coat. Watching his face. She takes his hand and places it over a breast. “You know what we’re going to do?”
His head recoils an inch. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Don’t be afraid. Be happy. I’ve got it, Robie. I know what to do now.”
What a radiant smile, he thinks. Where’s she get the confidence? He feels her fingers on his fly. He glances to the side, find out if anyone is walking by. Two men coming but still a long way off. He stands even closer to her. Yeah, what difference does it make? With their coats open, who can see what’s going on between them?
“Oh, you do?” he says, kissing her nose. Both hands now covering her breasts, massaging them slowly. Now and then spinning the heels of his palms over the hard nipples.
“I do, sweetheart.” She reaches in his pants. Almost laughing, she goes on, “I’ve got the whole world in my hands.”
“And what,” he asks, trying to match her playfulness, “are you going to do with it?”
“No,” she insists. “What are you going to do with it?”
He’s not sure how to respond. His face turns questioning. A look she doesn’t like to see.
She slides her hand under his hands, unbuttons her blouse. “It’s one of those hook-in-front jobs.” With one hand she unhooks it, pushes the bra aside so he can see her breasts. Down between them he can see her other hand sliding on his prick. “I’ll tell you, Robie. . . .”
They’re silent while the two men walk on by.
“Robie, we are here on this solemn occasion, before God and man, to fuck. And to celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives.”
He recoils minutely. “What?” Fumbling with her breasts, trying to watch everything, feeling the pressure of her fingers, feeling breathless, not in his body exactly, in his head, he thinks, sensory overload. What’s she mean she’s got it all figured out, she knows what to do now? Trying to keep up with her is hard work, Jesus, look at this woman, such beautiful red nipples. . . .
She nods at the lamppost they’ve stopped by, at the base of it. “Move me over there. . . . It’s a bridge, Robie. It goes from one place to another. That’s—what do you say?—poetic or something, isn’t it?”
She steps up on the base. Now they’re eye to eye. But he’s not staring at her eyes, but down between them. At how she’s stroking his prick with one hand, easing her skirt up with the other, tucking the hem in her belt, tugging the panties aside, steering his prick up inside her. “There,” she says, with a sigh and a smile of triumph. “Fucking on the Brooklyn Bridge. Hey, Mom, look at me now. Do it, lover. . . . Don’t worry, Robie. People’ll think we’re just grinding. Who thinks anybody’s fucking in the middle of this old bridge? . . . Bet it’s happened a million million times before!” She’s laughing now, leaning so close their glasses are an inch apart, saying, “Fuck me, my good man. Now and forever. Everything is A-O-K.”
Robie tries not to glance at people that might be coming, tries not to think of what’s they’re doing—We’re on the Brooklyn Bridge, for God’s sake—but to focus, concentrate on Kathy’s body, all the wonderful parts of it, his body in hers, that almost animal smile on her lips, the little dirty things she says suddenly and randomly, her ass in his hand, her breasts he’s tossing around just below his chin. Go with her, Robert. Fuck with everything you’ve got. Not big strokes, just little strokes. Who can tell anything? . . . Damn, man, just see if you can keep up, in any sense. . . .
“Grab me harder,” she hisses at him, “hurt my ass. Oh, yes, yes. Get in there. . . . Now if I could just figure a way . . . to suck you at the same time, we’d have it then, wouldn’t we? . . . Nice, baby, nice. . . . I’m dripping all over the fucking bridge.” She laughs maniacally.
• • •
“Oh, shit,” she mutters. “Oh, wow. . . . Great. . . . You think anybody saw us?”
“Didn’t you look?”
She smiles. “I was quite busy. . . . Let’s just stand perfectly still for a few minutes.” She hugs him tightly. “Don’t ever leave me,” she sighs. “Whoops, it just left me. Actually, I was watching your face. When you came. It’s a kick. It gets all scrunched up, like this.” She imitates him, which is funny and vaguely unsettling. “I’m just gasping like a horse, right? Somebody drowning?” She laughs softly, not waiting for an answer. “Hell, I was. Drowning on the Brooklyn Bridge.” She screams: “Hey, people, figure it out! . . . Hey, is that my spit on your lapel? Sorry. Robie, having a good time? There”—she zips up his pants—“all proper.” She glances down. “Wish I could say the same for me. Jesus, mister, WHAT have you done to my tits?”
She fixes her clothes, says, “Come on. We’re walking to the other side. Get a drink at that bar there.” When Robie glances back toward the skyscrapers of Manhattan, she says: “No, no. We have to go all the way across. It’s part of the ceremony. Fuck in the middle. Go all the way across. Got it?” She grins at him. “Besides, there’s thousands of people back there watching with binoculars. Probably better if we don’t let them see who we really are.”
“Damn.” Robie shrugs uneasily. “You are so up. . . . Alright, we go across. You going to tell me what’s . . . going on?”
“I told you. I got it all figured out.” They’re walking now.
“Go on.”
“You love me, Robie? You want to marry me?”
“I do. You know I do.”
“So tell your wife what’s happening. Or if you want to go the other route, I can handle it myself. You have to do something, you know, a token. I have to have that. But the fact is, I could do the whole thing without you. I know that now.”
Robie looks at her with a startled, almost frightened expression. “Kathy, how do you know that?”
She smiles, swaggering a little as they walk along toward the lower skyline of Brooklyn. The bridge sloping down now. “I just know.”
“Damn, Kathy. Tell me. What happened?”
“Details aren’t important.” She hesitates, figuring how to play this. “Look, Robie, I don’t want to upset you. Don’t ask for details. The short version is that this guy bothered me, in the street, you know. Mugger, I guess. And I handled it, Robie. I looked at this guy, and I thought, Fuck you, buddy. And I knew what I had to do. Just saw it in my head. How to talk to him, how to stand, how to act. I was completely cool. And I said I thought I had another ten in my pocket and I put enough Mace in his face so he’s rolling on the ground. And I walked away. And I thought, Yeah, I can handle the other thing, too.”
“That’s amazing,” Robie says with awe in his face. “I mean, wonderful.”
“If that’s what you want to do, you got it. My gift to you, Robie. Let me show you how much I love you.” And, she doesn’t mean to think this, let me show you how to be a man. She quickly hugs his arm, smiles at him. “I’ve even got a plan.”
Robie watches her as though she’s something he hasn’t quite seen before. The wind ruffles her hair. She’s smiling to herself. T
he bridge slopes down into Brooklyn. They have to descend some stairs and walk back several blocks to find the River Café. The parking lot is almost empty. They stand a few minutes looking out over the water. Kathy points up to the high arching span of the bridge. “Right up there,” she says, laughing, “they ought to put a plaque.”
He impulsively hugs her, thinking, She’s amazing, what an amazing creature. . . .
“You keep on the glasses,” Kathy says. “Nobody knows me. Besides, you look good. . . . I’d think about doing it with you.”
They go inside the restaurant and ask for a table in the corner; it seems the most secluded.
“Two brandies, that RSVP stuff,” Kathy tells the unsmiling waiter.
“Sorry . . . oh, Remy Martin. VSOP,” he corrects her.
Robert reaches across the table and holds her hands in his. Stretching out his arms until he can secretly stroke her breasts. They smile at each other. She pulls his hands more against her. “I can’t get enough,” he says, wondering if he’s gone over some kind of edge. Technically, clinically? Or maybe his reactions are the most normal thing in his life. If he can have a phenomenal woman like this, maybe the sick thing would be to let it go. “Alright, go ahead”—his voice hesitates—“tell me the plan.”
“Let’s get the booze,” she says.
“That was quite a surprise. On the bridge.”
“It was . . . really great. Yeah, it was. Try it again on the way back.”
“I’ll have to take a cab up to the train.”
“Robie, lighten up. It was a joke.”
“Sorry.”
“We’ll do it here.”
“Another joke?”
“You never know. . . . Do you?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes I don’t.”
The brandies come, and Kathy says, “A toast. To us, darling.”
They touch glasses and sip the gently burning liquor.
“Ohhh, that’s nice,” Kathy says, “just the way I feel now.”
“Seems more like straight Kentucky bourbon,” Robert says. “You, I mean.”
“Really? No, this is classier. I feel like this.”
“Alright, tell me.”
“We’re doing it the hard way?”
“Well . . . you mean . . . Yes, I think it adds up better that way. Go on.”
“Well, like you said, you see a lot of different stories in the papers. And one thing they do is go to somebody’s house. At first, this seems crazy. But then you think about the other ways. Following somebody around, trying to catch them by surprise. What you were talking about, basically. Think about the problems. You can’t be sure when the person will be somewhere. And you can’t be sure who else might show up. So why not go where the person always is? Alone, thinking about the checkbook or something. You knock on the door, and say, Hi, I’m from down the street; can I come in, talk a minute? And that’s all you need.”
Robert listens to the tone as much as to the words. The very casual, very comfortable tone. Like she’s talking about the weather or going on a trip somewhere. Yeah, she’s right, she can handle it. He’s impressed. Then relieved. Then apprehensive. The feelings going around in him.
“You can do this?” he says, not sure what to say.
“I told you already. And the thing is, you can always pull back. Abort, they say. You just have to be cool, see if the conditions are right. Otherwise, you don’t go through with it. You quietly retreat and nobody knows anything.”
“Maybe try again.”
Kathy smiles. “There you go.”
“And me?” Robert tries to appear ready for anything, but he’s thinking about the word she used. A token. He liked the sound of that.
“You’re the alibi. That way you don’t have to be there. I mean, it’s going to be harder for you than for me. But you’re still a part of the deal.”
She sips some more. Her face becomes more serious.
“I have to have that, Robie. Not because I couldn’t take the risk by myself. I damned well could. But you have to do something for me, too. Otherwise, I don’t want . . .”
She stares at him, sort of sadly, he thinks. It’s rare she seems vulnerable. She does now. Letting him feel how important this is to her.
“No problem,” Robert says. “Whatever you say.” He squeezes her hand. “Tell me the rest.” He smiles, trying to lighten the mood. “You’ve done your homework, I can tell.”
“Alibi means you see me somewhere else. Say you tell the people in the office you have to go out for a walk, clear your mind. You just happen to see this woman you know on sight. Certain time, certain corner. Maybe we wave. No doubt in your mind it’s her. Me. We’ll run through it one day. But, hey, there’s no reason it ever comes to an alibi. If everything goes right, it’s just a mystery. You come home from work and . . . Well, that’s what you have to be prepared for.”
Robert finishes his glass. Thinks over what she’s said. Tries to.
“The only other thing I need,” Kathy says, “is a day when she’s home. She take personal days? Bad periods?”
He nods. “Often she does. They’re not that bad. But she figures she deserves a day—”
“When’s the next one?”
Robert pauses, looking at the seriousness in Kathy’s face. She’s thinking so fast, moving so fast. When’s the next one? That’s good. “Well, two weeks ago or so. . . . About ten days, I guess.”
“Well, lover? What do you think?”
Robert glances uneasily about the room. It’s all so real when Kathy talks about it. And so immediate. Hell, this is countdown. This is saying Anne’s got ten days left. . . .
“You can just walk up to the house?” he asks. “Disguised or what?”
“It’s typical suburban, right? Oh, I’ll go up and take a look.” She’s sorry she never told him she was there. But this isn’t a good moment either. “The houses aren’t that close together, right? And who’s looking? . . . Yes, Robie, I’d be disguised.” She wonders if that’s why she cut her hair short, because she always knew she’d end up wearing a wig, for one reason or another.
“You’ve thought of everything. I’m so impressed. . . . Really, it’s amazing—”
“Stop, Robie. ‘What do you think’ means, yes or no?”
“Yes, absolutely. No question.”
He grabs her hands, lifts them to his mouth, kisses her several times. Yes, he thinks, the best partner a man could possibly have. Everything to the limit. I won’t even be there, I’ll be miles away. God, I’m not sure I could’ve done it the other way. But this, this is perfect.
Kathy feels his lips on her fingers. Sees the way his head is bowed in front of her. The dream was getting away, at least she was frightened it was. But now, she thinks, I can make it happen, you just have to fight. A great day, that’s what I figured.
“She’s not suspicious, right?”
“No,” Robert says. “I’m sure of it.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
She slips down low on the seat, pushes a shoeless toe into his groin. “I don’t know,” she says, smiling, “this kind of talk does make a person horny, doesn’t it?”
Robert kisses her hand some more, says in a joking way, “Don’t. Please. We’ll get arrested. I have—”
“Oh, I’m just talking. Relax. I won’t do anything, even if you beg. . . . Well, maybe if you beg real nice.”
“I don’t know. . . . Horny? Maybe it does. You get me flying, I know that. I’m tingling all over, whatever the reason is. I’m surprised I know my name. . . . What is it, by the way?”
They laugh, all four hands in a writhing ball.
“It’s amazing,” Kathy says. “We’re sitting here talking about doing away with you-know-who and I’m thinking about fucking on the table. . . . No! It’s too late. You had your chance. Don’t beg.”
“Please.”
“Oh, alright.”
They laugh more loudly.
“Seriously, Kathy, it would be an honor to
beg you.” Robert looks puzzled. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she nods, “it’s very sweet. Thank you.”
“We’ll get a cab back to the city,” Robert says, “and I’ll beg you all the way in.” He raises a hand, signals the waiter. “I’ve got a wish list already.”
“How many wishes?”
“Just three or four main ones.”
“I’ll try to hold out. . . . At least out of the parking lot.”
They’re laughing when the thin waiter comes over. He gives them a prim stare of reprimand. Kathy eases on her sunglasses, gives him a fuck-you smile.
PART
IV
Chapter
28
• Anne faces a wall in the firm’s cafeteria, sitting alone, eating in an absentminded way.
Stan, a young attorney in the firm, is walking toward the serving line. He stops and watches her for a moment. Something very intent, even grim, about her. He hesitates to interrupt her, almost doesn’t. A nice-looking woman, pleasant, smart, he thinks, probably a good body but not exactly Miss Conviviality.
Oh, well, he decides, putting on a big smile. He walks over and says, “Anne, hi. How’s everything?”
She looks up with a blank expression. “Ohhh . . . Stan. Fine.”
“Can I sit down a moment?”
“Certainly . . . of course.”
Stan sits facing her. “You probably don’t even remember . . . but I thought I’d tell you something.”
Too Easy Page 14