City Mouse

by Lender, Stacey;

  Tami took out one of the joints and lit it with a match—the familiar smell wafted over us and mixed with the salty air and I couldn’t wait to be the next to inhale and feel that mellow tingle again.

  * * *

  I felt the sand crunch beneath my toes as I walked toward the marina, dangling my sandals in one hand and holding a plastic cup with what looked like a very watered-down vodka cranberry in the other. I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been holding it, or even where I got it. With every few steps I felt it splash, on my hand, on my foot, each time wondering where it came from and then realizing it was me who was spilling the drink. The bay and the lights in the distance came at me as if through a viewfinder: a blink and a click and in a second they appeared. I lifted the cup to my lips and tasted the sweetness, tart and wet and warm on my tongue, and could feel the alcohol seeping straight through the lining of my cheeks directly into my bloodstream, funneling through my veins, pumping through my ventricles, in and around and back out again, lost and amazed in the slowed seconds of stoned awareness.

  “Did you see Stories I Have Told?” Steven asked.

  His voice brought my gaze back outward, back to realizing I was walking on a beach and I was not alone, that I was walking with a man who was basically a stranger. The air suddenly felt cold and I noticed my shoulders were bare and that I wasn’t wearing the sweater with which I had started the night. I looked ahead and didn’t see Tami or Alyson or anyone else—just a long line of wet sand and pebbles lit by the light of the moon.

  I glanced to my right and noticed Steven had rolled up his sleeves, and that he had thick strawberry-blond hair on his forearms. What if he grabs me? What if he grabs me and rapes me and throws my body behind a rock to drown in the rising tide? I didn’t have a key or a stick or anything to defend myself with, just a credit card and a few folded bills tucked in my back right pocket.

  It’s just the pot, my rational voice reminded me. Nothing’s going to happen, he’s a colleague, for god’s sake, not a murderer. Just breathe, take a deep breath and the paranoia will pass.

  Of course: the pot. I took a breath and felt my heart slow to a more regular pace. Up ahead I heard Tami’s laugh and was relieved; the group wasn’t far. I quickened my steps to catch up and tried to remember what it was that Steven said that I was supposed to respond to.

  “I loved that show,” I eventually said, wondering if my reply came out at the five-minute delay it had felt like in my head. “I didn’t know it toured to Boston.”

  “I saw it in New York. My buddy from college was the director and invited me to opening night.”

  “No way.” I slapped his arm and felt the hard bicep under his shirt. “I was at that opening too.” Small world getting smaller every minute. How was it possible Steven and I had never crossed paths before? We had so many connections, so many six-degrees between us.

  “I have something for you,” he said, pulling a small bundle wrapped in tissue out of his pocket.

  I looked at him quizzically and began to peel away the layers—A present? For me?—wondering what on earth it could be. As I tore away the final piece of tissue my mouth dropped open: it was the other half of my chicken cutlet bra. Even in the dark, I could feel my face turn beet red.

  “I was wondering where this m-might have landed,” I stammered, and then began to giggle. And then the giggle turned into a full-out laugh. I could barely breathe I was laughing so hard and started babbling, “Thank you, Steven. Thank you so much. Really! These things cost like forty bucks a pop! I am so glad you found this!”

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied, laughing with me.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I will never mention it. As long as you promise never to mention it,” I said seriously. “I wouldn’t be able to look you in the face at the next League conference without totally cracking up.”

  I glanced up and saw that Tami and Alyson and a line of other people had turned onto one of the last docks of the pier. Where is Carolann? And Ivy? It felt like I hadn’t seen them for hours, but maybe it had only been a few minutes.

  “His boat’s down this way!” I heard Brad shout.

  The rough sand scratched the bottoms of my bare feet but I couldn’t manage to send the signal from my brain to stop and put my sandals back on. We stepped onto the dock and it took an unexpected pitch downward. “Whoa,” I said, and almost lost my balance, but Steven took my arm to steady me. At the end of the pier, we reached a long metal ramp leading up to a huge ship, The Alexandria, white and boastful and gleaming in the moonlight. This is fun, I thought; I had never been on a yacht before.

  “Whose boat is this?” I asked, but if he answered, I couldn’t hear. As we stepped into the main cabin, a surge of music blasted through the air.

  Champagne popped from a bar tended by none other than Carolann, standing amidst mirrored rows of shiny bottles. Every surface of the boat was smooth and lustrous, glowing in the light of candles everywhere. Attractive strangers milled about, lounging on low couches with martinis in hand and dancing on the deck to the pulsing music. It was as if we’d entered a party in the French Riviera, suddenly friends with a billionaire.

  A man in a white linen shirt standing behind Carolann opened a bottle of Patrón, and when a shot came my way I drank it down like nectar.

  “Let’s do body shots,” a woman next to me suggested to no one and everyone, and I watched as the tequila man stared her down with seductive brown eyes and then walked over and slowly licked the side of her neck. He poured the salt and licked it again and, after taking a swig from the bottle, sucked on the lime she’d placed between her lips while his free hand squeezed her ass.

  “Who’s next?” he asked with a strong foreign accent and I heard Ivy say, “Me!” as she floated over with a cigarette dangling between her fingers. She is so fucked up, I thought; I’d never seen her smoke a cigarette. And as I watched, he did her too—he licked her neck but instead of doing the shot out of the bottle, she got down on her knees and lifted her shirt and leaned back and he poured the tequila down her bare stomach. He lapped it up like a tiger and then he moved his head up to her breasts to suck the lime she’d buried between them.

  Steven pulled me onto the deck outside, into a crowd swaying to a reggae beat. Flashes of Tami and Alyson on the dance floor, guys pressed against them in front and behind, making a sandwich. I giggled out loud, a Tami-and-Alyson sandwich.

  “What’s so funny?” Steven asked, passing me a joint—more pot for me, the more the merrier, pass it around. Whoa, Jessica, let someone else have a toke. I stumbled to the couches lining the deck and felt a tug on my arm. “Come sit.” I fell onto a lap and was startled to feel something harden under me. Well hello there. I slid off and sank like butter into the fluffy cushion, light as a feather, stiff as a board, and let the party happen all around me.

  I heard a splash and thought for a second someone might have gone overboard but spotted a Jacuzzi across the deck. Shadows of bodies filled the tub, illuminated by blue and green lights below; five, no six or maybe more people, “Everybody in!” coiling around in a tantric circle. Tami slid in topless—Where did her dress go?—and I watched as she made out with the man beside her, such a kissing bandit—Where’s the camera now?—and then she turned to another as the hands of many caressed her chest and her neck and her bare freckled shoulders. Carolann sat on the edge staring in a daze, making tiny splashes with her toes pointed like a ballerina’s. Was that Sean or Colin? I was never good with names, but whoever it was whispered in her ear. Carolann smiled and stood and led him up the main staircase, exit stage left, like I was watching a play. Step right up, get your tickets now.

  “Check it out, there’s a dolphin!” someone shouted, and I heard myself say, “I want to see it too.” I rose from the couch as if pulled by a puppeteer and followed the rush of people up the stairs, one flight, two, but when I got to the top deck there was no one else there. I noticed a door to my left and turned the knob but it was locked and I could hear t
he unmistakable Oh yes, oh yes of people having sex on the other side.

  I heard footsteps banging up the stairs behind me and felt frightened, like I wasn’t supposed to be there—You’ll be in trouble—and I ran and ducked down behind a metal pole to hide. I stayed there, frozen for what felt like a long time. So long my right foot fell asleep. I didn’t want to move but it felt so uncomfortable, finally I had to stand up and stomp it awake. Just then, I thought I saw a shadow moving on the deck and quickly ducked back down. Totally paranoid. Goddamned pot.

  I poked the top of my head up and tried to make out the shadow. It was about ten feet away, leaning against the railing; it looked like a woman with long dark hair. Her head was tilted back and then I saw there was more, a man with his head buried between her legs and the woman was groaning with pleasure. His hand squeezed her breast freed from her blouse while his other worked her hard from underneath. She stroked his hair, guiding him, “That’s it, right there,” circling her hips in a quickening rhythm, and I sat there transfixed, shocked to be watching as he lifted her higher, faster, writhing together right in front of me, and even more shocked at the stir I started to feel in my own underwear.

  The light shifted and suddenly I could see more of the woman’s face. At first I thought it was a mistake—it couldn’t be; it must have been my pot-and-alcohol haze. But her profile was unmistakable and when I caught the sparkle from her crotch in the moonlight, I knew. It was Alyson.

  Click click click, the whole night, the whole weekend, the whole year lined up like a freight train in my head. I turned to run and stumbled down the stairs but couldn’t figure out where to exit and I flew through a galley and a stateroom and across an empty deck, smack into Steven.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Was he following me? He was so close I could smell him—Patrón and soap, so different from Aaron.

  “I . . . I . . . I just saw something.”

  “The dolphin?”

  “I wish,” I said, feeling suddenly sober. I buried my head in my hands. “This night has gotten totally out of control.”

  “Tell me about it—Colin just puked his guts out on the dance floor. A few weeks ago, when his wife told him she was leaving him, I had a feeling this vacation might get ugly. But not this ugly.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know Colin, I didn’t know his wife. I sat down on one of the deck chairs. “How long have they been married?”

  “About seven years, I think.”

  “How long have you been married?” I wondered out loud, glancing at his ring.

  “Nine years last month.”

  So why are you here? Why are you out partying instead of home with your wife and why am I standing here alone on this boat with you? I knew I should turn and hightail it out of there, say, Good night, nice to meet you, let’s forget we ever met. My head felt strangely clear but I still must have been stoned because instead of running away or asking any of those questions, what flew out of my mouth next was, “Are you happily married?”

  Oh my god, I thought, he’s going to think I want to fool around! Those were words said right before a kiss: Are you happy? No? Well then, let’s get busy. But I didn’t want to kiss or do anything like that with Steven. I just wanted to tuck myself into a ball and crawl into the hole I’d dug—so what if the boat sank.

  But he answered easily: “We are. We met on the set of Rain Over Easy, remember that show? She was an understudy and I was cutting my producer chops on Miranda Sinclair. What a handful she was. Miranda, not Becky. The show didn’t last a year but Becky and I are still going strong; we’re among the lucky ones, I guess. My married friends seem to be dropping like flies. Poor Colin, he had no idea it was coming. How about you? How long have you been married?”

  The way he spoke, it was like we were old friends sitting in a coffee shop, not on an orgy party-boat off the shore of Kiawah Island. “Going on ten years,” I said. Nearly a decade. A decade of my life and it’s gone by in a blink. Except lately it felt like we’d been dredging through mud. “It’s hard sometimes, don’t you think? My husband Aaron, he travels a lot and we moved last year and now have to commute like an hour-plus each way. It’s really taking a toll.”

  “Commuting’s a killer. I did that for a year from Providence up to Boston and it was the worst. So draining.”

  “I know, it’s like we’re running and running and then we finally fall into bed at night but we’re both too exhausted to do much of anything. We’ve been stuck in this tired, boring funk for a while now and it seems like everyone around us is having a lot more sex than we are. A lot more.” Had I just said that out loud? To Steven Masterson from Stages in Boston?

  But he didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. He sat down on a lounge chair across from me and said, “Well, first of all, it’s a guarantee most people are overreporting. And every couple’s different. A lot for one couple might be a drought for another. Have you talked to him about it?”

  “Not really. I want to. I still love him. And beneath it all I believe he loves me. But part of me is scared if we start that conversation, he’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear, like maybe he’s bored with me. Or even worse, that he doesn’t want me anymore.”

  Never had I shared such intimate marital details with anyone, not even Liza—I’d never admitted those words and thoughts even to myself before.

  “Look, I don’t know your husband. But guys are pretty simple creatures. Most of the time if you tell them what you want, they’ll respond. Hunt. Fetch. Have more sex with me.”

  “But I want him to say that to me.”

  “So tell him.”

  It seemed so obvious, spoken on the deck of that yacht with the muffled sounds of the party still going on below us. Obvious and right. I felt so grateful for Steven’s advice and relieved he wasn’t one of those creeps just trying to get lucky. And I somehow knew that when Aaron and I did open up about our fears and wants and needs in and out of the bedroom, it would start to be good between us again. It might be even better.

  “Thanks for listening, Steven,” I said quietly, instantly jolted into the self-conscious realization that I was in the midst of a sexual therapy session with someone I wanted to work with. “This isn’t like me, to blab about personal stuff like this.” I felt my face blush. “I hope you don’t think I go around discussing this kind of thing with all my clients. I mean, client prospects.” Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said any of what I’d just said.

  “Please, it’s fine. Sometimes it’s easier to talk it out with someone on the outside. And you should absolutely call me next week to discuss a few projects we have coming up.”

  A splash and a “Woo-hoo!” sounded from the deck below. The throbbing beat of the next techno dance song echoed through us and out over the water, into the night.

  * * *

  A screen door slammed and I was startled awake by Tami’s voice: “Daylight come and we have to go home.”

  “Enough already with the song, Tam,” Alyson said, sounding annoyed.

  “Ah, there’s the sleeping beauty. We were wondering where you disappeared to.”

  I opened my eyes and for a second had no idea where I was—windows, curtains, table—none of it looked familiar. I stared down at my body splayed on the couch and consciousness hit me like a boulder. My right ankle throbbed and my throat felt like someone had braided my tonsils with wool. I squinted at my watch: 7:27 a.m.

  Ivy and Carolann walked in, giggling. “Or we could go out for breakfast,” Ivy said, kicking off her heels. “A Grand Slam at Denny’s would taste really good right now.”

  “I can’t believe you’d still be hungry after your grand slam last night,” Alyson teased.

  “Ha ha,” Ivy said. She strolled into the kitchen and stared into the refrigerator. “I guess we should probably use up the eggs and the rest of the Bisquick before we leave. What time’s our flight, like around one?”

  “One forty-five, Ivy,” Carolann answered,
plopping down on the love seat across from me. I noticed the buttons on her blouse were one askew. “It’s about an hour drive to the airport—and we need to leave enough time to get gas and return the rental car. I cannot even believe we have to go home this afternoon. Next year we have to stay another day.”

  “Another day at least,” Ivy said. She closed the fridge and filled up the coffee carafe with water. “On second thought, what I really need more than food right now is a hot shower. My hair totally reeks like fish. How on earth did you guys convince me to go swimming at four o’clock in the morning?”

  “That was Xavier’s idea,” Carolann said. “Or was that Milo you ended up with, Ivy? For the life of me, I could not tell them apart.”