Love Love

by Sung J. Woo

  “She’s the most selfish person in the entire universe. She thinks I should be as independent as her, so you can see why she makes a shitty parent. And yet she goes out of her way to help strangers, maybe just to piss me off, so yeah, you should stay with her. She loves to have company she doesn’t know.”

  “Your mother sounds weird.”

  “She is.”

  It was almost four o’clock, the end of their session. They walked to Alexa’s enormous tennis bag on the bench, big enough to hold six racquets. She sat down and unlaced her sneakers then took off her socks, her ritual after practice.

  “You’re still painting all of your toenails black, I see,” he said.

  “Might as well,” she said. “The two middle ones are still all messed up after I jammed them.”

  Outside of her imperfect toes, everything about Alexa was new and hopeful, and maybe that’s why he enjoyed talking with her: the infinite possibilities of youth, the unblemished, unknown future ahead of her.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll opt for the hotel, if I go. I mean I can’t just up and leave.”

  She stepped into her sandals and applied the straps across the gentle hills of her feet.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . I have a job?”

  “That you don’t like anymore,” she said, and her words whacked him. All this time, he thought he’d kept his dissatisfaction to himself, and he felt sorry that his misery was affecting others like her.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  She stood up.

  “No.” She slung the bag over both shoulders like a backpack. “I’m just perceptive.”

  They walked toward the exit, together. She was almost as tall as he was already, their gaits in sync. She’d probably grow another two to three inches, about six feet, a good height for today’s power game. If she kept at it, she could really be something, but did she have the love, the desire, the drive? At one point in his life, Kevin thought he had what it took, but he hadn’t counted on how lonely tennis could make you. Even in boxing you could at least bear-hug your opponent or receive some words of inspiration from your corner between rounds, but tennis left you out there to suffer with no place to hide and no one but yourself to blame.

  Kevin parted the canvas curtain for her to walk through.

  “So this might be good-bye,” Alexa said. “I don’t like good-byes.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you Tuesday evening.”

  She looked down at her feet, and Kevin looked down, too, at her shiny black nails, the gold chain with a red heart she wore on her left ankle. Even though she looked and acted like an adult, she was also a child, living in that awkward purgatory of adolescence.

  He offered her his hand.

  “Just in case this is good-bye,” he said.

  “No kiss this time?” She shook his hand. “You’ll miss me.”

  “For sure,” Kevin said.

  She walked away through the opening, then turned around.

  “But not for too long,” she added.

  “Why is that?”

  He thought she was going to make a joke, but she remained serious. “Because that’s just the way it is. People come, people leave, and we all go on.”

  She slipped past the slit in the canvas curtain, climbed the staircase that led to the lobby entrance, and pushed open the door. She didn’t look back.

  9

  Judy had promised him they wouldn’t have sex last night, but she’d made no such promise this morning.

  Lying next to her in bed, Roger asked, “Are you sure?”

  As the morning light beamed through the windows, she had watched Roger sleep, his lips slightly parted, his hands curled by his cheeks. He looked like a little boy, except for that screaming dragon on his shoulder. The juxtaposition intrigued her; it made him a real person. It made him sexy.

  She answered him by slipping out of her panties and helping him out of his boxers.

  “You’re right,” Judy said to him at one point, looking up at the flushed face that hovered over hers, “it is of appropriate dimensions.”

  It made him laugh, and it made her laugh, too. A perfect joke in the middle of their breathless, inspired lovemaking—she’d almost forgotten that this primal act was a talent of hers. In bed, she was as fluid as Jackson Pollock’s paintings: bold, colorful, daring.

  He continued to move with her, slow and quick and slow and quick, tiding in and ebbing away like an ocean wave. At certain moments, she stared at the face of the dragon tattoo, pretending that it wasn’t a man who was making love to her but this serpentine creature. It was a weird fantasy to have, probably rooted in those Korean folk tales her mother used to tell many years ago. The most memorable one was about the kumiho, the nine-tailed fox. Once it lived to a thousand, the kumiho turned into a beautiful girl so it could marry a man. At the time, Judy had been fascinated with the story, even counting the number of tails when she saw a fox in a book or on television, but as she grew older, the story depressed her. A fox somehow manages to live ten centuries, and all it wants is to marry some guy? Pathetic.

  But wait a minute. She really should’ve been paying attention to what was going on here instead of letting her mind wander, because her man was getting ready to blast off. She felt his entire body coil up, his muscles turning taut.

  Right here was her favorite part of sex. Judy had borne witness to her share of masculine denouements to know of their obvious commonalities—the quickening of breath, the increased force of motion, the eventual spasm, and the long, satisfied sigh. But at the same time, they were as singular as snowflakes, and Judy believed she could tell a lot about a man from his brief ride through penile ecstasy. Because here, there were no walls, just a clear window into the vulnerable truth of a person.

  He grunted, once. He exhaled as if he’d just finished some complicated task, an expression of relief rather than gratification, almost a “Whew!” Underneath his now-still body, Judy thought: Who are you, Roger Nakamura?

  Roger was in the shower, and Judy was in bed, mulling over what just happened. She glanced out the window, at the neighbors across the way. Everywhere she looked, she saw the same beige house with brown trim, row after row. It was like two mirrors facing one another.

  “Waaaaaah.”

  Having announced his presence, Momo jumped up onto the bed. His eyes were a deep, sapphire blue.

  “Not so afraid of me now, are you?”

  The tan cat with brown paws apparently decided she wasn’t a monster after all. Judy kept perfectly still as he walked up to her face and sniffed her lips. He pushed the top of his head against her hand, forcing Judy to pet him. His throaty purring was a quiet, soothing combination of sound and vibration. She scratched his chin; the harder she scratched, the more he liked it.

  If a man’s orgasm was a fingerprint, then Roger’s was a blank. Everything happened the way it was supposed to—obviously he had an erection, and she’d felt his penis pulse inside her as he came, but then there was this odd stillness in the end instead of the familiar release. It was almost as if he’d experienced no pleasure, that while Judy had gotten off twice, the second time stronger than the first, he was pretending to feel something. Was it even possible for a man to fake an orgasm?

  The more likely explanation was some sort of sexual disorder. She’d never heard of such a condition, but what did she know?

  “Hey?”

  His hair was still wet from the shower, a towel wrapped around his hips.

  “Hi!” she said.

  “You were so deep in thought,” he said.

  She reached out and kissed him.

  “You gave me a lot to think about,” she said. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but at the same time, it was. So there it was, her first fib with her new boyfriend, if he was even her boyfriend. In the shower, as she lathered herself in the steamy dimness, she wished for better words, less frivolous words, than boyfriend and girlfriend for a couple in their late thirties.

 
They made breakfast together. It took a little doing to gather the equipment—they found the frying pan hiding underneath a giant bag of Doritos in the pantry, and they had to be creative with the ingredients, too. The loaf of bread on top of the fridge was pocked with mold, so while Roger scrambled the eggs, Judy warmed rice cakes in the toaster oven. The kitchen was as small as the one in her own apartment, not big enough for two people to walk by without touching each other, but that was okay. In fact it was more than okay when Roger, with a whisk in one hand and broken eggshells in the other, hugged her from behind and kissed her neck. She fell wholly into it, pressed her body against his. All she was wearing was an old T-shirt of his, and she felt him getting hard again, but instead of it exciting her, it tinged her with sadness.

  It was possible that she’d been mistaken, wasn’t it? That she’d made the whole thing up? Maybe it was another facet of her fear of intimacy, a way for her psyche to bring her to emotional ruin. The answer was simple: She’d have to fuck him again, perhaps as many as a hundred times to absolutely make sure, and the raunchiness of her thoughts made her smile.

  They set the table together, her placing the forks on the left of the plate, Roger following her and sliding the knives on the right, the tiny clang of the metal salt and pepper shakers ringing like a bell. Usually the morning after was more awkward than this. This was a good omen.

  The eggs were overcooked and the rice cakes stale, and outside, the landscaping crew for the townhouse association was out in full force, polluting the air with the numbing noise of their trimmers and blowers. It should’ve been a bad breakfast, but when Judy looked across the table, not a whit of the external unpleasantness mattered. Because there was Roger—long-faced, calm-faced Roger, forking up piles of egg bits and heaping them on top of the rice cake, trying to make an open-faced sandwich out of it.

  “I don’t think that’s gonna make it taste any better,” Judy yelled across the table to make herself heard over the landscaping noise.

  She was trying to be funny again and was possibly failing. Roger smiled small and shrugged, then took a crunchy bite. While he looked out the window and chewed away, she watched him, and whatever spell she’d been under—possibly the afterglow of sex—was starting to shrivel.

  Was he an overly sensitive guy? Would she have to watch her words, to make sure she wasn’t hurting his feelings? Who exactly was he, anyway? She knew so little about him, and it would take work to find out who he is. And conversely, while she was finding out about him, he would find out about her, all her issues, her peccadilloes, her psychoses. All her previous relationships had ended badly, so why would this one turn out any different?

  She was being pessimistic, but after Brian abandoned her, she didn’t know if she had it in her to do this again. Maybe it was too soon. Besides, it wasn’t as if Roger was perfect. He had this weird fake-orgasm thing, plus that enormous tattoo. The mysterious pull the dragon had on her had abated, and all that remained now was the harsh reality of what he’d done to himself. Who in his right mind defaces his body like that? Obviously Roger had his share of problems, and she had enough of her own, thank you very much.

  “Well hey,” Judy said. “I should get going.”

  Roger blinked a couple of times.

  “I’m sorry, what?” he asked. In his left hand, he held a full glass of orange juice, and in the other, the remaining half-moon of the disgusting rice cake. In her sudden panic to escape, she hadn’t even noticed that he was still in the middle of his breakfast.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, and she forced a smile to her lips. She picked up her knife and fingered the smooth curve of its handle. It looked practically brand-new compared to the one by Roger, which made sense, since she hardly ever went deeper than a single layer of her own utensils tray. On one side of the blade were tiny engraved letters, GIORGIO and WALLACE.

  Last night she’d been too drunk to notice, but he was a slow eater. Slow was a good adjective to describe him, actually. Even the way he sat down, it was like an old man aware of his delicate bones. He was careful while she was careless. He was patient while she was hurried. They were different people, but who knew, maybe they would have a good time for however long it lasted. With low expectations, everything was a gift.

  Roger took his last bite and chased it with his glass of orange juice.

  “Thank you,” Judy said. “I had a nice time.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  Outside, the gardening crew shut down their machines, and the room overwhelmed them with silence. They sat there staring at each other, neither speaking, the moment elongating until they were both smiling.

  “When’s the last time you played this game?” Judy asked.

  “I’m not sure if I’ve ever played it,” Roger said.

  “No siblings?”

  “Just me.”

  “So what’s the deal with the tat on your back?”

  “Young and stupid.”

  “Anything else I should know about?”

  “I like bread.”

  “Bread?”

  “Plain bread, with nothing on it.”

  He had nice eyes, shaped like canoes, wider and bigger than her own.

  “I can go on all day,” Judy said.

  “I hope you do,” Roger said.

  She lost, but only because she’d been double-teamed. At some point, Momo had sneaked down from the bedroom and scared the hell out of her when he jumped onto the dining table.

  They drove back to Red Bank to get her car. She’d parked on Front Street by a busted meter, but that hadn’t stopped the city from slipping a pink ticket underneath her windshield wiper for leaving a vehicle overnight.

  “Fucking A,” Judy said. According to the time scribbled on the parking ticket, they’d just missed the meter maid.

  “If only Momo had come down a little earlier,” Roger said.

  Judy closed her eyes and felt the glossy paper between her fingertips. A warm breeze blew in from the Navesink River, birds chirped, and a little while ago, she was in bed with this very nice man, having a very nice time. Life was good, and this ticket was a small, inconsequential thing.

  She opened her eyes when she felt a tug on the ticket.

  “It’s my fault,” Roger said. “Why don’t you let me pay for it?”

  “No, I’ll handle it.”

  “I really would like to.”

  “I said I’ll handle it. Okay?”

  Roger reluctantly let go, then thrust his hands into his pants pockets. “Okay,” he said, and he leaned in to kiss her. It was a good kiss, longer than a peck and shorter than a faked-up romantic face-sucking, a solid B+, maybe even an A-.

  Grading kisses. It was like she was back in junior high.

  10

  At the traffic light on Pittstown Road, Kevin cut a quick left at the last second and was almost rear-ended. As the long, angry car horn blared, he glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the driver, a woman in a red top, pound her hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

  “Sorry,” he said to no one but himself.

  But he wasn’t really sorry. As Kevin ramped onto the interstate and away from the tennis club, he was actually proud of himself. He’d always been a man of routine, taking the same road to work, slurping on the same medium cup of coffee bought at the same coffee shop, but this morning, he broke out of his pattern. He’d felt an impulse, and instead of quashing it as he had his whole life, he followed it.

  Kevin flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed Bill’s extension and hoped it would go to voice mail; it did. He informed Bill about the Monday-morning game with Robert Weathers III, the CEO who had to win every game, telling him to take it easy, none of Bill’s inside-out forehands because Robert’s left knee was bothering him.

  Now driving down Route 287, he got off at the Somerville exit and passed the large round insignia of a dancing stopwatch on the peak of Time to Eat Diner. On Fridays, he and Alice had met for lunch there. He would order the burger topped
with a fried egg and crumbled blue cheese, and she would get the chicken francese with asparagus and roasted peppers. For how many years did they eat there? A decade or more, not that it mattered now.

  After the divorce papers were signed and Alice had vanished from their house, the sudden void had shocked Kevin into a numbed stupor. It’s like that, friends told him, friends who’d gone through the pain of separation. Strange to have all that emptiness, but they assured him he’d get used to it. But they were wrong. As the months rolled on, he thought of her more often, more than he ever did when they’d been together.

  Kevin turned into the entrance of the Somerset Medical Center and followed the curves until he found the sign for Outpatient Services. He located her car after spinning around the parking lot twice. She’d removed the Obama bumper sticker he’d stuck on for her, but the remnants of the glue still remained. He hoped the gray rectangle remained forever.

  He’d tried to get over her. That first month, he went out with a different woman each Saturday night, two of them certifiable knockouts, dinner and dancing and even sex with one of them. But by the second month, Kevin could start to feel an odd blooming inside him, the opening of some dark, sad flower. And now, eleven months after he lost his wife of fourteen years, there was a black bouquet embedded in his chest, wishing for the person who was no longer there.

  As he stared at her car, he could imagine her so clearly, shutting her car door with an easy pitch of her hips, slinging her purse over her right shoulder, tucking a loose curl of her strawberry-blond hair behind her ear as she made her way toward the hospital. Wearing a beige blouse and a knee-length black skirt, she would be dressed as anonymously as every other woman heading toward the entrance, but she wasn’t everyone.

  Kevin parked his car in the visitor’s lot and killed the ignition. He was here because he wanted to see her. Because he wanted to tell her everything that happened so far and what he was planning to do. Ultimately, she wouldn’t care, he knew that, but that didn’t matter. He opened the door. He rose and took in the crisp autumn air, wishing he’d worn something else than the white Izod shirt and the matching white shorts.