The young waitress returned.
‘Did you want another glass of wine?’
‘No. Thank you.’
I turned to the doorway again. Someone was leaving – an early-bird couple. Two men entered and came to the bar.
‘Maybe you should give me the check,’ I said. ‘In case I have to leave quickly.’
‘Your friend’s really late?’
‘Something might have happened,’ I offered.
‘Didn’t he try to call you?’ she asked, assuming it was a man.
I didn’t correct her. I didn’t want to add an iota of fact. However, I should have realized, in this day and age of cell phones, old excuses lost air and fell flat.
‘He doesn’t have a cell phone,’ I said. That was about as far as I wanted to go with information, but I also realized that my being vague and secretive made my being here seem more illicit. Afterward, she would probably elaborate and invent her own fantasy. It wasn’t unlike a game my girlfriends and I played occasionally during our Thursday lunches when we saw a stranger enter the restaurant and sit at a table alone. It could never be anything innocent.
‘No cell phone?’ She looked incredulous.
‘He’s old-fashioned. He still writes letters and mails them.’
She nodded, barely listening now. He sounded boring and had to be old. She wrote out my check and put it on the table. ‘You should think about having something to eat anyway. We serve in the bar, and the food here is fantastic.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here.’
Actually, the prospect of eating alone was terrifying. She waited a moment, flashed another smile and returned to the bar. I looked at my watch. It was ten after eight. Now I was feeling rather foolish, all dressed-up and eager. All I could think of was getting out and never returning. I dug into my purse, came up with some money that would also suffice as a good tip and placed it on the check. After taking one more glance at the door, I nodded at the young waitress and rose.
‘Night,’ she said, hurrying over. ‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’
‘Probably isn’t,’ I said. It was a dumb thing to say. This was serious already as far as I was concerned. Like anyone angry about being stood up, I told myself I would accept only a fatal accident as an excuse and walked out. I paused just outside the door. Two more cars entered the parking lot, but both had couples in them. Slowly, my head down, I made my way to my car.
I got in and just sat there, imagining Ronnie at the game, screaming at the refs, slapping high-fives when the home team scored, he and his friends magically shedding years and becoming high school seniors again. Ronnie’s marriage, his fatherhood, his job would be like some distant fabrication, almost a nightmare. A mortgage, saving for your kid’s college education? Who had put such ideas in his head? He was back in the days debating whether to ask Tami Woods or Kirstin Dance out next weekend. Both had been giving him signals, promises of a hot date – no teasing, no hesitation, just raw lust.
I conjured up Kelly next.
She was sitting in the living room with her girlfriend, slopping down pieces of pizza and maybe sneaking a glass of wine or a beer. They were both talking fast to get out their thoughts and desires ahead of each other. Music, boys and taunting sex filled their heads. They were at the point of confessing secret thoughts, each swearing to protect the sanctity of the other’s revelations. It would be a satisfying evening, both for her and for Ronnie. They would go to sleep wrapped in warm contentment. All was right and safe in the world.
I would lie there with my eyes wide open, staring into the darkness, waiting for sleep like a regular bus line’s passenger standing dumbly at the pickup station, not aware that the bus company had gone bankrupt.
I hated myself like this. I pounded at the images and drove them away just in time. The passenger-side door opened and he slipped in like an afterthought, cloaked in the shadows drawn by the way the parking lot lights carved out the darkness.
‘Where were you?’ I asked.
‘I was here. Waited fifteen minutes and left, but then I thought I would wind back and spotted you coming out of the restaurant.’
‘You waited fifteen minutes and left? What was this, a college class?’ I remembered it was an unwritten rule that if your professor was fifteen minutes late, you could leave. ‘Why didn’t you wait longer?’
‘To be honest, I had the feeling you didn’t want to be here tonight, that you were having second thoughts.’
‘What gave you that feeling? I didn’t say anything.’
‘I’m a supersensitive guy. I can feel things others are about to feel.’
‘You’re going to give me a complex. You keep telling me how easy I am to read, like you’re the NSA tapping into my thoughts as well as my telephones.’
He shrugged.
‘When you get close to someone, you’re able to anticipate more. You can do that with your husband, can’t you?’
‘That’s no challenge.’
He laughed.
‘Well, you can see now that I came and you’re feelings were incorrect.’
‘Perhaps you came reluctantly?’ he suggested.
‘Look at how I’m dressed, the care I took with my hair and my makeup. Does that suggest reluctance?’
‘Maybe I left because I wanted to give you the chance to change your mind, catch your breath. What’s happened between us has been fast and furious.’
‘If I wanted to change my mind, I wouldn’t need anyone to give me a chance to do it. I’d just do it.’
He laughed again. ‘Spirited.’
‘When I can be, yes.’
He stopped smiling. ‘Look, these things happen in spurts sometimes. It’s like riding a rollercoaster. Eventually, you want or need to get off.’
‘Is that what you want? Is that why you’re saying these things now?’
‘I want what you want,’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for me to be someone’s little episode, but people don’t always realize there could be a price to pay later.’
I was silent. Nothing he was saying hadn’t occurred to me. It was just different to have it clearly pointed out. I was more like Kelly, or she was more like me, than I wanted to admit. I, too, believed that, like most things in our lives, we could ignore them comfortably until we couldn’t.
Another couple arrived, and when they got out of the car, they immediately sought each other’s hand, reaching like two swimmers in the ocean desperate to be safe. They didn’t look any younger or older than Ronnie and me. We didn’t hold hands very often anymore. Sometimes, I wondered if we even looked married. If I didn’t say anything, he would shoot out ahead of me and stand waiting for me at the car. I used to complain, and he always apologized and swore he wouldn’t do it again, but he did, and I gave up, just like I had given up with many other troubling things between us.
‘Are you hungry? Do you want to go back in there?’
‘No, not there,’ I said.
As stupid as it might sound, I didn’t want to face that young girl again. I didn’t want to appear desperate or needy, especially to someone who reminded me of my own daughter. I had no doubt now that she would realize I was with someone other than my husband. My wedding ring seemed to burn into my finger, glowing in the dark.
‘I understand,’ he said. I looked at him. ‘I know what you need.’
‘Do you?’
‘When we were kids, we would make love in places where it was possible we’d be discovered. It added to the excitement. The challenge became who would take the most risk. One couple made love in the school, right around the corner from the principal’s office and got away with it. They got the prize.’
‘Which was?’
‘Just admiration.’ He turned and nodded at the backseat of my car. ‘Looks big enough.’
‘You’re kidding. This is like being in high school.’
‘Isn’t that part of what you want?’ he asked. ‘A return to high school?’
He stepped out be
fore I replied, opened the rear door and got into the back seat. Another couple left the restaurant. They were laughing as they walked by my car. Whatever they were talking about captured all their attention. They never looked my way. I thought for a moment. I could see him in my rearview mirror, but I couldn’t make out his face that well in the shadows. Was he smiling?
‘This is madness,’ I said, recalling the night I had lost my virginity in Jeffrey Morton’s father’s limousine, but I got out and, before anyone could see me, opened the rear door on my side and got in. He had loosened and lowered his pants already.
‘This isn’t going to be very comfortable,’ I said.
‘Leave it to me. I’m a contortionist,’ he replied.
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘You will be,’ he said with confidence.
I wanted to resist, I really did, but that was like looking back at an exit off the freeway you had missed. There was nothing you could do but ride on. The best you could do at that point was sit back and enjoy it.
Which was exactly what I intended to do.
FIVE
He was definitely a contortionist. Somehow, despite the restricted space, he was gentle and loving. We didn’t grope each other like teenagers in the back of my car. He kissed my breasts, the small of my stomach, and pressed his lips farther and farther up the inside of my thighs. I tried to contain my moans of pleasure, but at one point it was impossible. Every woman wishes her lover would go slower, think about pleasing her at least as much as he thought about pleasing himself. Unless it’s rape, it’s not a selfish act, or at least should never be. I almost wished I could have Ronnie standing by, watching us to learn.
‘See?’ I would say afterward. ‘This is how it should be done.’
Every few moments, I reminded myself that I was in a car in a restaurant parking lot. There were parking lot lights, the glow of which invaded our small dark space. It should have made me more hesitant, reluctant, but he was right about it being more exciting because we were practically out in the open, and I was conscious of the danger of exposure. Throughout it all, I heard people passing by, some closer to my car than others. I held my breath, anticipating either a scream of outrage or hysterical laughter accompanied by some wisecrack or other if they happened to look in and see us. None of that happened.
Actually, we found a very comfortable position. I was on top, and when I gazed down at him with the glow of the light washed across his face, I saw his smile, not a smile of arrogance, but a genuine smile of amusement and pleasure. I moved gently, working him inside me, fast and then slow, occasionally stopping completely to see the expression on his face and feel him urge me to go on.
‘You like to be in control,’ he said.
I didn’t answer. It was obvious. He laughed when I increased speed and demanded more and more from him, until I was exploding like the firecrackers and fireworks in Summertime with Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. Just as I had been thinking while I was waiting for him in the restaurant, we all want to be in the movies. I guess I shouldn’t be so critical of Ronnie and his playful excursions into one film or another, imitating this actor or that and humming theme music.
When it was over, I lay there on my left side, curled in the fetal position. I felt his hand on my hair, stroking it lovingly, but in a way that was more parental than erotic and sexual. In fact, I kept my eyes closed and resurrected my childhood. I felt the way I did when my mother comforted me. That was what he was doing now, I thought. He was comforting me. I should have been annoyed by it, but I softened and felt as if my body was oozing off of my bones. It was the contentment of an eight- or nine-year-old and not the afterglow of a mature woman who had just made very passionate love.
‘Still hungry?’
‘Not any more,’ I said. He laughed. I turned and looked up at him. His face was still cloaked in shadows. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
‘Don’t you know enough about me?’
‘You must be kidding.’
He looked away.
‘I’m whoever and whatever you’d like me to be.’
‘Stop avoiding it. Reveal yourself.’
‘OK. As you probably imagined, I’m independently wealthy – some of it inheritance and some of it just good investment strategies. You know from what I have already told you that I travel a great deal, see wonderful places, startling scenery, and meet interesting people, which is something you’ve always wanted to do, I’m sure. Like you, I have eclectic tastes in music, art and literature. I’ve been to the world’s greatest museums – the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Louvre in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid to name a few. I’ve seen operas in the world’s most beautiful opera houses, musicals in the West End in London, plays off and on Broadway. I’ve met many authors and artists. I don’t concentrate on just one type of anything. One minute I’m listening to Frank Sinatra, and the next I’m moving to Lady Gaga. Do I fulfill your expectations of me?’
‘So you have eclectic tastes, even in people?’
‘I can get along with anyone.’
‘Tolerate anyone, you mean.’
He laughed. ‘You’re so cynical, but when you think about it, the result is the same. And I’m not that unlike you.’
I sat up and brushed back my hair and then thought of something.
‘So are we trains passing in the night?’
‘Eventually, we all are trains passing in the night to each other, aren’t we? It just takes longer for some to pass us. You’ve said something like that to me.’
‘Have I?’
‘I think you put it in a quote. It’s better to have love and lost than never to have loved at all.’
‘You don’t forget a single thing I say, do you?’
‘Aren’t you flattered?’
‘Beside Nixon who taped himself in the Oval Office, who wants his or her every word to be remembered? We all say things we wish we hadn’t.’
‘The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on …’
‘You quote all my favorite lines. So, how long will you be here?’
‘Until you tire of me,’ he said. ‘Until you turn away when you see me, yawn when I speak, and have your eyes open when we’re making love because you’re looking or thinking about something else.’
‘Nothing or no one demands you be elsewhere before that happens?’
‘No. Envy me?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘Oh, there are old home bodies, even your age or less, who couldn’t care less about traveling and shedding responsibilities. You know that. Not everyone has that hunger, that thirst and desire to experience and consume from the wonderful smorgasbord waiting out there. Besides, a moving target is harder to hit, so I keep moving.’
I laughed. ‘Who’s trying to hit you?’
‘The list would take the rest of the night.’
I thought about it. Was his mystery getting too deep, losing its novelty, its romance? Do I want to continue asking questions and getting answers? For now, I couldn’t help it.
‘Were you ever married?’
‘What do you think?’
‘No. You don’t look or sound as if you have ever had any responsibilities for anyone other than yourself. What about family?’
‘I create new family everywhere I go.’
‘So what are you, beside an independently wealthy man – a poet, a musician, an artist? You have to be something, have some interests.’
‘I’m all three.’
‘You want to remain my mystery man.’
‘Isn’t that the way you’d rather it be? You don’t really want me to start giving you those sorts of personal details. You’ll start thinking about them and corrupt the purity we have between us. Once you learn all those details about someone, you begin to consider the influences of religion, status, peers, geography – the whole enchilada.’
‘As I said before, you seem to know a great deal about me – even how I think and what I believe. And don’t give me any r
omantic gibberish.’
‘Is that so difficult to do? No offense,’ he added quickly.
‘Am I really that obvious?’
‘No more or less than most people.’
‘You sound very arrogant when you say that.’
‘Confident. I always wonder where the line is drawn, don’t you? Everyone hopes their children will have self-confidence, but no one wants them to be arrogant. When do you know there’s enough and stop pouring the compliments into them, stop boosting their egos? You’re certainly confident about yourself in many ways, aren’t you?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Everyone has that little insecurity. You can’t be perfect, but you do a good job of balancing the two.’
‘You’re not perfect?’
‘I’ll be as perfect as you want me to be.’
‘Everything to please me? Even that?’
‘Can’t you tell from the way I make love? Most men make love to a woman as if she, too, has only one orgasm. Very inconsiderate.’
‘You’ll get no argument there. I have half a mind to introduce you to my husband.’
‘In little ways, you have. I feel like I know him already, know what you want me to know about him.’
‘Have I?’
‘When you’re with someone as long as you have been with your husband, you can’t help but bring something of him along with you. Some of it is influence; some of it is … stains. Even people who get divorced, after long marriages especially, can’t wash them away.’
‘Tennyson’s Ulysses? I am part of all that I have met?’
‘Yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world. Yes,’ he said. ‘Something like that.’
I sat back. More people came out of the restaurant. I watched them walking slowly, talking, some couples still holding hands, some pausing to kiss. It wasn’t a chilly night by any means, but the couples I saw seemed to huddle as if to protect themselves from sharp winds coming from places hidden inside them.
Lost in His Eyes Page 8