by Amy Gentry
Bethany melted silently back into the kitchen, and as if I were her mirror, I reeled backward into the hall, my only thought to get out of there before they saw me watching. One of my heels caught on the runner, and I tripped and fell to my knees with a bang. When I looked up, Rocky stood over me, cracking jokes as he gallantly helped me to my feet. The conversation restarted with a rush as if a radio had been turned back on. By the time the four of us had settled back around the table in our respective spots, we were all laughing louder than ever, Gwen loudest of all, flushed and defiant over her empty wineglass. Everything looked the same. Nothing was the same.
It wasn’t just a pass. Even a very drunk Gwen would have shown some confusion, perhaps even revulsion, if it had been the first time he’d touched her. Instead, I had seen something on her face I had never seen there before, in all our time as best friends. It was a combination of anxiety, tenderness, and raw, unbridled lust.
They had already slept together.
What’s more, Bethany knew. Had known. The whole time we were seated around that table, laughing and drinking and gorging on zakuski, I had been the only one who’d been in the dark.
* * *
Dinner had a long snout, but a short tail. I had seen what I’d been meant to see.
Somehow or other, the beef was disposed of, a desultory offer of fruit rejected, and dessert wine poured in lieu of actual dessert. The party never quite made it to the living room, where we’d been headed; instead, we gulped our tiny glasses of tokaji in the entry hall. Only Bethany seemed capable of understanding, much less orchestrating, the part of the evening that had to happen next, herding us away from the living room and toward the coat closet. Gwen was weaving on her feet like a boxer about to go down, and Rocky looked only slightly better. The shock I had experienced, and the rush of adrenaline that went with it, had given me the presence of mind to stop drinking afterward. As a result, I was just sober enough to see that Gwen was in no shape to answer questions, but still drunk enough that I wouldn’t be able to resist asking them.
Perhaps to stall that inevitable moment, I stopped by the bathroom once more, slouching onto the toilet seat and letting go with a sigh of relief that this evening would soon be over. The chorus of mumbles from the entryway, amplified in curious ways by the wood floor, was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of coat zippers. It was a comfortingly final sound. Whatever happened next, we had all survived dinner.
While I was washing my hands, I heard Bethany’s voice ring out unexpectedly loud and clear: “Be a dear and walk Gwen home. Mac and I have some things to talk over.”
I tried to open the door without drying my hands, slipped on the doorknob, toweled them off quickly, and burst out, all the while hearing Rocky’s slurred objections and Bethany’s overruling statements. But I was too late. By the time I made it to the entryway, Rocky and Gwen were gone, and Bethany was locking the door behind them.
She turned, her hands still on the doorknob, and leaned her back against the door. Then she broke into a wide, slow smile. “Well,” she said. “Finally.”
“Why did you send them off—?” I almost said “together,” but I couldn’t quite bring it out.
“To get Gwen home safely, of course. You’ve heard the neighborhood is dangerous, I think.”
“How thoughtful of you. But I think I could have managed Gwen myself.”
“Yes, you’ve been doing a bang-up job of it so far.” She left her position by the door and walked over to the sofa, where she curled up like a cat, folding her legs and tucking her bare feet under her thighs.
“What do you mean?” I made my voice icy to cover a tremble.
“You saw them.”
“I saw—” I closed my eyes for a moment, forcing myself to see it again. “Nothing really. Hands touching. It could have been an accident.”
“Don’t play stupid, Mac. You know as well as I do that whatever’s between them didn’t start tonight.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Well, I do.” She smiled smugly.
“Then why—for god’s sake, why haven’t you said something? And why invite us over here? Is this your idea of a fun evening?”
She stretched her arms up above her head, the bat wings of her cowl-neck sweater tugging at the hem. “I didn’t say anything because I was waiting to see whether she’d tell you herself. You are best friends, after all.” She dropped her arms back down. “And I invited you to dinner to give her a reason to tell.”
“Why would you want that?”
“Because, Mac,” she said coolly. “If she’d told you, that would have proven it was just a harmless little crush, a freshman fling—for both of them. Rocky’s a big boy, but he’s still a boy. He does this all the time.” She looked at me pointedly. “That can’t come as a shock to you, can it?”
I blushed, remembering Rocky’s fingers on my neck, his hand on my knee. To clear my head, I said, “Don’t you . . . mind?”
“When I was coming up, we all slept with our professors. It was a rite of passage, an apprenticeship of sorts. Mitch Betelman, my sweet old adviser, used to marry a new student about as often as he had his regalia dry-cleaned. Nobody raised an eyebrow unless it was an undergrad—and even then, it could be managed. With a proper waiting period and a certain amount of decorum.” She laughed drily. “Things are different now. Except they’re not different at all.”
“You knew that when you married Rocky?”
For the first time, she looked truly startled by something I’d said. “My dear, he was my student at Penn.”
My head was spinning, disconnected thoughts whirling through it. A rite of passage, like getting flashed on the subway in New York. Was this ethical negation in practice? A question at last, but this wasn’t office hours. I put my hand to my forehead.
“And you think Gwen . . .”
“If Gwen had confided in you, it would have been because this has all been an exciting, naughty little adventure for her. A good girl—she’s practically a virgin, isn’t she?—gone bad. You would have giggled about it together, and the secret would be out, and eventually it would be over on its own.”
I walked over to the armchair where Rocky had been sitting at the start of the evening and, not yet ready to sit, put my hand on its back to support me. “But she didn’t tell me.”
“Obviously.” Bethany rearranged her cowl officiously.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’s playing another game altogether. Something far more important to her. And more dangerous to me.” To us, I had thought she was going to say, and somehow I thought that was what she meant.
I narrowed my eyes. My head was starting to hurt, even the heavily shaded lamp near Bethany was glaring. “We’re not playing a game here. Gwen is my friend—”
“And she went behind your back to fuck someone you were fully intending to fuck yourself,” she said. “Listen, don’t bother denying it. I don’t blame you. He’s very good-looking. Why do you think I married him? It wasn’t for his brains, I can tell you that. I’ve got all the brains I need right here.” She tapped her temple. “He makes me feel young. And he’s fantastic in bed.”
Fantastic in bed. I thought of all the frantic fucking I’d done in college, trying to compensate for the fact that Gwen was off strolling the green lawns of the Ivy League while I was at Urbana College. It had been thoroughly adequate fucking, and I liked the orgasms. Moreover, I had chosen every encounter. I never waited for men to come to me; I went to parties, zeroed in on my best shot, and attacked, and I rarely missed. But in the Program, I had become suddenly, uncharacteristically celibate, despite being surrounded by attractive, intelligent colleagues making eyes at one another across the library carrels. What more had I wanted? Was it Rocky? He was certainly better looking than most of my peers: broad in the chest, slender in the hips, always armored in those stiff layers of suiting that made grown men so mysteriously untouchable, all you could think about was sliding a
hand beneath their jackets and finding the hidden pockets. His frank stare and constant teasing made me blush. And the way he’d leapt to offer me a ride, knowing we’d be alone together in the car, had made me feel, for once, chosen.
As if anyone would choose me when Gwen was standing right there, pretty and petite with a thoroughbred sheen. I thought of Gwen staggering off alone with Rocky into the night, laughing and leaning on him all the way home, dropping the keys as she let him into our apartment. Rocky kissing Gwen hard up against the wall, dragging the shift up over her hips, hoisting her body easily up to the chair rail, and wrapping her legs around his waist so he could stumble with her down the long hallway to the bedroom. Pushing her down onto taut, smooth sheets with such a high thread count they felt like human skin.
Fantastic in bed.
As if she could read my thoughts, Bethany smirked. “I wouldn’t worry about tonight,” she said. “He won’t be a stallion after all that vodka. They’ve probably passed out by now. As a matter of fact, you should really stay here tonight, to give them time to sleep it off. You wouldn’t want to embarrass them in the morning.”
I sank down in the armchair with my head in my hands.
“Mac, she doesn’t want him. She wants the Joyner.”
I looked up, stung with the suddenness of the revelation.
Bethany steepled her hands, pressing the fingertips together. “And the sooner you decide she can’t have it, the better for both of us.”
It was dawning on me, clearing the confused fog of grief and rage and desire I had felt at the thought of Rocky and Gwen, their limbs intertwined. “But you said your students always get the Joyner. You said Rocky’s students don’t stand a chance.”
“Normally that’s true. He doesn’t have any influence with the committee. But with Gwen, he might just have a shot.”
“She’s that smart?”
“You’re smart,” Bethany said. “Gwen’s perfect.”
It hit me hard, and I swallowed it down like a shot of vodka—cold and burning.
“You’re going to have to work hard, Mac. Harder than you’ve ever worked before. Your attention is still divided, and that’s what’s going to lose you the Joyner. Quit the job, live on rice and beans if you have to. Gwen doesn’t have a job or any other distractions—just Rocky, and he’ll move heaven and earth for her now. He knows he’s closer with her than he’s ever been. He thinks she could take him to the top.”
“That’s what he wants, too?”
“Poor puppy. He’s tired of being treated like a spousal hire. He wants to take me down a peg. Hooking the Joyner will make him look like the next big thing.” She sighed. “And I’ll start to look my age.”
“And what about me?” It came out before I could stop it.
“He doesn’t care about you,” she said. “Or Gwen, for that matter. It’s just a bonus that a girl with brains like that is also such a nice piece of tail.”
My head was pounding now. “I need some water.”
“Of course.” She stood up immediately, back in hostess mode, and hustled off toward the kitchen. “I’ll get you some headache powders, too,” she called over her shoulder. I heard the tap run, a drawer open with a squeal, and then she was back, holding a glass of water and a wax paper packet. “Trust me, these are as powerful as aspirin, and they work twice as fast. The secret is a tiny bit of caffeine. Just try not to taste it.”
I ripped open the packet and threw the powder toward the back of my throat, where its bitterness instantly brought tears to my eyes. Then I chugged the glass of water all the way down.
“Good girl,” she said, like Rocky. “Now come over here for a minute. I won’t bite.”
I sat at the opposite end of the sofa.
“Allow me.” She pulled my right boot up onto the sofa, moved her hand around the back of my calf to find the zipper, and pulled it down. The hot leather unstuck itself from my tights, and a cool current of air rushed down my leg. It felt wonderful. She slid the boot off and looked at it for a moment before zipping it back up and setting it carefully on the floor. “What lovely boots. Now the other one, please.”
The headache powders peeled a thin layer of pain away from my skull all at once and, overcome with lassitude, I obeyed. A gush of cool air hit my left leg, and the other boot was gone. I rubbed the webbed toes of one foot on the arch of the other, enjoying the delicious feeling of stocking feet. Bethany leaned back on her side of the sofa, pulled her knees up in front of her so that our toes were almost touching, and began lightly brushing the tops of my feet with her fingernails. It felt incredibly soothing. I closed my eyes and let myself sink into the pause, a sweet stillness that I knew would have to end soon. I pushed away the thought of why.
“Bethany,” I said, eyes closed.
“Hmmm.”
“Please tell me something. Honestly.”
“Of course, Beauty Queen.”
“Was I your first choice?”
There was a pause.
“I mean, would you rather it was Gwen? If none of this had happened. If Rocky hadn’t—started working with her. Did you only pick me because she was already . . . ?” I trailed off.
Bethany left off playing with my toes and got down, to my surprise, on her knees on the carpet between the sofa and coffee table. She trudged up the little trench until she was even with me, looking into my eyes. “No, little star. I picked you because you’re better. You have guts.” She placed a hand on my stomach. “Gwen has brains and so do you. But you want it more. You reek of it.”
She leaned toward me as if to inhale, paused an inch away, and instead put her mouth over mine. Her hand slid up from my stomach to my breast.
I jerked upright. Put both feet on the floor.
She sat back on her haunches, unperturbed, tracing her index finger around my ankle. “Mac, let’s enjoy this. We know their secret, and they don’t know ours. That gives us power.”
“I’ve never—” I stopped.
“Not even with Gwen? I’m surprised.”
I meant with a professor. She meant with a woman. Either way, putting Gwen into the sliver of space between us felt somehow sacrilegious. “Of course, not with Gwen.”
“Look at me. Look at me, Mac.” She maneuvered herself around me until she was kneeling between my legs, looking up into my eyes. “Mac, you are the one I want. I don’t want Gwen. I never wanted Gwen. It was always, always you.” She slid her hands up my calves to my knees. Then her hands moved to the insides of my thighs; one wrapped around my hip to pull me closer while the other warmed the crotch of my tights. She leaned in close, her breasts touching mine, her hands generating a warm friction that affected me like a drug. I relaxed and tensed at the same time, pure animal. “Think of Rocky and Gwen,” she breathed, the fingers of her left hand walking up toward my navel, then hooking the waistband of my tights and sliding downward. “Think of what he’s doing to her right now.” Her right hand slid up my back and grabbed the hair at the base of my skull just as the fingers of her left hand sent a shock of electricity through me. “Think of him inside her.”
And then she was inside me, and for the first time since I could remember, my mind went blessedly, perfectly blank.
December 30, 2021, 1:27 a.m.
SkyLoft Hotel, Los Angeles
I wake up naked, straddling Harvard on my hotel bed.
This is not the first time I’ve come out of a blackout in the middle of sex. My medication lowers my tolerance to that of a featherweight, and on the occasions, rare these days, when I throw caution to the wind to enjoy a beer with a colleague, I often slip and fall into a pool of blackness before I even have time to feel tipsy. There have been indiscretions. When blacked out, I seem to revert to my undergraduate days of sleeping with whoever gets me into a broom closet first; or perhaps, as in my undergraduate days, it’s me doing the pushing. I become pure id.
I really shouldn’t drink. Either that or, and this may be the crux of the issue, I really shouldn’t m
edicate.
Harvard grunts beneath me. I gaze down at his narrow chest, the brown wing of his bangs falling across his bulging eyes, now pink-lidded with excitement. He’s just as attractive as he was in the reception, more or less, but I’m through. I lift myself off him and roll over to one side.
“Hey, wait,” Harvard slurs. I see several empty mini-bottles on the nightstand, silhouetted in blue by the glowing alarm clock, a miniature city to match the empty skyline outside the window. A plummeting sensation in my stomach heralds an oncoming wave of depression. This, too, is not uncommon after a blackout.
“Claire?”
The name is unfamiliar for a moment.
“Claire?”
Still breathing heavily, Harvard shakes my arm, as if to snap me out of a trance. When I fail to respond, his brows contract. “Fine, okay. First you keep me waiting up here until I give up and crash. Then you wake me up, horny as hell, and just when it’s getting good—poof!” He smacks a hand down on the mattress. “You’re done.”
“Don’t be petulant, Harvard.” The world around me feels strange, foreign. Unheimlich, to use the Freudian term. Hotel rooms are such horrible places. This one, thrust skyward on the tip of an art deco erection two hundred feet above the business of humans, seems to whirl around me with particular malice. “I don’t think I can take it right now.”
“What about what I can take? I have an early panel tomorrow.”
Graduate students in the humanities. It’s so easy to forget, when these beetle-browed, hollow-chested brutes are swanning around in their scarves and elbow patches, that beneath the tweed they’re just men with feelings and an abnormal interest in sharing them. I consider the prospect of finishing him off just to get some peace and quiet, but then I catch another glimpse of the clock on his nightstand. (My nightstand, I correct myself. My suite, my bed, my nightstand.) One twenty-seven a.m. There goes my beauty sleep before the interview.
But looking at the time has joggled something loose in my brain, and a scene from the lost hours of my blackout flashes through.