“And all this time you’ve never seen anyone else?”
“Until I saw you, there was no one worth seeing.” Daniel leaned in and kissed her once more. Lexie felt liquid and boneless.
Her phone buzzed.
Lexie scrambled off the bed, taking the sheet with her. She wasn’t confident enough to do the naked walk across the room. The tail of the sheet caught on Lexie’s foot and she started to stumble but turned the fall into what she hoped would be taken as a deliberate plummet into the quilted chair by the window. She reached into her purse, on the floor, and pulled out her cell phone. It was Peter.
Lexie picked up. “Hey babe.” Blood rushed into her ears. The sound was magnified, as if she were underwater.
Naked Daniel watched Lexie, carefully, calmly. She tightened the sheet around herself. How was it that a man could be more than half a century old and still have a body as solid as wood, carved in all the right places, nothing dangling, folding, puckering, or crimping?
“Where are you? I thought you’d be home hours ago.” Peter was chewing as he spoke. Lexie clamped the phone against her shoulder, lifted her butt, and pulled out her bra. She slipped the bra over her arms so that it hung, unhooked, against her chest.
“I forgot I have dinner duty tonight because last Friday didn’t count.” Lexie stared back at Daniel. She wanted to remain in his world, this bed, his arms. She didn’t want to detach and climb into the cargo van, drive down the road for dinner with the students, followed by a drive across the nearly-empty Massachusetts freeway to the trail of wood shavings that usually started around the front door—dropped from the bottoms of Peter’s boots—as if she and Peter were hamsters living in a cedar-bed cage.
“Oh, man! I was going to surprise you with a Crock-Pot dinner! I put all those old vegetables and some broth in there today around noon . . .” Each word was followed by a cracking chomp.
“That’s so sweet.” Lexie wasn’t listening. She took inventory of her clothing: Her bra was loose across her breasts; she was sitting on her skirt; her blouse was in a heap at her feet. Where were her panties?
“Well, I guess it wasn’t a true broth. I used boullion cubes. Have you ever tasted one of those things? If you swallowed one whole the salt would probably kill you. It would kill an infant, that’s for sure . . .” Peter worked alone all day. Sometimes he didn’t talk to anyone until Lexie got home. He claimed he didn’t need much human interaction, but around dinnertime, he often burst forth with a stream-of-consciousness narrative that always made Lexie think he was wrong about his needs.
Lexie looked at her watch. She was due at Ruxton in fifteen minutes. Daniel continued to stare at her. How would she manage to put on the rest of her clothes without bending her body in any way that might reveal a bulge of dimpled flesh, a fold in her belly, a glimpse of her ass from an unflattering wide angle?
“. . . and I programmed a movie for us tonight, that French new wave thing that you’d said you wanted to watch—”
“What are you eating?” Lexie asked. Using her toes, she plucked the blouse off the floor, lifted it to her hand, and placed it in her lap.
“What am I eating?”
With the sheet doubled around her lower half, Lexie hooked her bra and then put on and buttoned the blouse, all while managing the phone. “You’re chomping.” Lexie scanned the floor for her panties.
“Carrots. I put some in the pot for you. I also put in . . .”
Daniel shimmied across the bed on his stomach. He flopped one long arm off the edge of the bed and reached for Lexie’s foot. He grabbed her big toe and tugged. Like a diver pulling her up to the boat for air. Lexie sent him thought-pangs of love.
“Babe, it all sounds so good, but I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta finish a bunch of work before I show up at the table. Can I call you on my drive home?” Aha! The panties! They were curled like a napping kitten on top of Daniel’s suit pants.
“No problem. Love you,” Peter said.
“You, too.” Lexie clicked the phone shut and turned it completely off so that she wouldn’t risk a pocket call while she was with Daniel. She dropped the phone into her purse. “Shit.”
“You’re okay,” Daniel said soothingly. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“What am I going to do?” Lexie reached under herself, pulled out the skirt and slipped it on beneath the sheet.
“You don’t need to do anything.”
Lexie stood and let the sheet drop to the ground. “I cheated on my fiancé.” Her voice quivered. She patted her skirt pocket and felt for the Klonopin. She would take it only if she thought she was going to pass out.
“Do you regret it?”
“No.” Lexie looked at Daniel. “I want to do it again.”
“Don’t think about it. Go to school. Eat dinner. Go home and don’t question your relationship.”
“Don’t question my relationship? Doesn’t this whole thing put it into question?” Lexie scanned the room. She went to where her panties were and instead of slipping them on, she discreetly tucked them into Daniel’s pants’ pocket. How she could be seductive and playful while simultaneously guilty and panicked was a mystery to her. It was as if she existed in two consciousnesses at once. “I mean, this was huge for me. Wasn’t it huge for you?”
“Yeah, it was.” Daniel almost sounded hurt, or insulted that Lexie might think it wasn’t a big deal for him. “You’re the first woman I’ve been with since my wife. It’s monumental. But you’re engaged and I’m not going to get my hopes up.”
“For a New England boy you sure have some California mellow in you.” Lexie tucked in her blouse and then dropped to her knees and flipped up the bed skirt, looking for her boots. One of them was there. She sat on the ground, pulled out the knee-high stocking and put it on inside out before tugging on the boot. She got up and tottered around the room, lopsided, as she looked for the other boot.
“I’m rational. Panic never does any good for anyone.” Daniel continued to watch Lexie.
“Then why does panic exist?” Lexie looked behind the chair, under Daniel’s clothes. She opened the minibar as if her boot might be in there.
“Originally, to save you from the saber-toothed tiger. But in the modern world it eliminates the rational. It fucks with you.” Daniel lifted his arm and bobbed his pointer finger up and down as he directed Lexie toward the threshold into the bathroom where the other boot lay.
“Panic fucks with me frequently.” Lexie hobbled to the boot.
“The only thing that should be fucking you is me.” Daniel flipped his hand so his thick, square-tipped finger was pointing at himself. Lexie slipped on her other stocking and boot. She went to the bed and kissed Daniel one last time. He smelled so good she wanted to gather the scent in her fist and carry it around with her.
LEXIE DROVE THE VAN WITH THE WINDOW ALL THE WAY DOWN AND the fall chill needling her face. Outside it looked like someone had turned down the lights, everything was a black-and-white photo. But inside the van, inside her body, Lexie felt as if she were radiating pink and red. Different scenes from the afternoon replayed in her head. Like jumping songs on a great album, the sequence in which she saw the scenes didn’t matter. It was all good.
Once she was parked at school, Lexie brushed her hair, put on lipstick, and checked her face in the rearview mirror. Her pupils were the size of pencil erasers; she was smiling at herself. Lexie got out and circled the van to check the locks, and then she ran—as fast as she could in the high-heeled boots—toward the dining hall. She got there as Don McClear approached the podium for evening prayer. Although Ruxton wasn’t a Christian school, it had been founded over two hundred years ago and some traditions (a chapel on campus, prayer before dinner, a tie worn to classes, and a jacket worn in the dining hall) had never been dropped.
Lexie quietly wove through the tables to her assigned seat. There were seven students at her table, four girls and three boys. The students would eat together for three weeks before being broken apart and re
assembled into a different group. The groups rotated tables every night.
One of the more entertaining students, Desi Moreno, was at Lexie’s table. His family was from Colombia and Desi had once told Lexie that they had bodyguards, armed men at the gates of their compound, and a mirrored stick was passed under the family cars before anyone turned an ignition key. Lexie usually loved dinner conversation with Desi Moreno. But tonight, even with Desi at her table, Lexie couldn’t shift into the head space required for conversation with seven teenagers.
“Amen,” the collective voices said. Lexie had forgotten they were praying. She added her amen a second too late. The students seated on either side of the teachers, in Lexie’s case Craydon Covington (one of many girls with an asexual name that Lexie assumed was her mother’s maiden name, or a family name that had been passed down for five hundred years) and Steffi Levine, rose to gather the serving platters. While waiting for the food to arrive, the other kids chatted about the usual: sports, boys, girls, teachers, classes, homework, and whatever dumb-ass behavior someone did that cracked them up.
Craydon and Steffi returned quickly with a platter of sliced turkey and a pan of eggplant Parmesan. They went back to the serving station and returned again with a bowl of peas, a bowl of mashed potatoes, a basket of rolls, and a green salad. Lunch at Ruxton was buffet, but dinner was served family-style, using painted china, real silver, and cloth napkins, with nothing indicating that the pan of eggplant was one of many, or that the mashed potatoes had been made in an industrial mixer big enough to stir up a Portuguese water dog.
“I had a meeting off-campus,” Lexie said, once everyone had served themselves. There was a pitcher of water and a pitcher of milk on the table. Craydon and Steffi were filling glasses as requested.
“Anything exciting we should know about?” Desi asked.
“No. But I came directly here from the meeting so I didn’t consult the topic directory. Does anyone know what’s on the list for tonight?” Many teachers told their students in the last-period class what that evening’s dinner topic would be.
“I only remember the stuff we’ve discussed already,” Steffi said. “Is Violence Necessary? What Does It Mean to Know Thyself? . . .”
The students rattled off everything they’d covered. Lexie wondered how Don McClear came up with these lists. She imagined him spending insomniac summer nights reading Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, and Locke with a notebook and pen in hand, writing down ideas until he’d come up with enough to cover dinner every single night during the school year (except Saturday when there was no formal dinner and the kids were invited to go to the dining hall anytime within a two-hour window and serve themselves from what was laid out on the buffet).
“We could ask someone at another table,” Desi pointed out.
“Nah,” Lexie said. “That would be too easy.”
“We could sit here silently, listen to the other tables and try to guess what the topic is,” Emily Fleming said.
“That would be fun,” Lexie said, although she worried that if they were to sit there in silence with little to distract them, the students would read the micro-emotions on her face and quickly realize she’d had the most mind-blowing sex of her life. Sex that she was worried might leak out of her and leave a spot on her skirt. Lexie crossed her legs tightly.
“We could make up our own topic,” Desi said.
“Let’s do that,” Lexie said. “But you can’t tell anyone, this has to be our secret.”
“Do we vote on one? Or . . .” Ellie Goodrich asked.
“Everyone say your ideas and we’ll all agree on the best one. But do this: Pick a subject that reaches beyond what’s usually on that list. Go deeper or wider. Be imaginative.” Lexie was buying time. She could barely hold herself in her seat, let alone eat peas and potatoes. She wanted to scream, rush back to the Inn on the Lake, rip off her clothes, and dive into bed with Daniel Waite.
While the students were throwing out ideas, Lexie scanned the room for Ethan. There he was, a few yards away, at Delton McGarry’s table. Delton was the dean of academics, a poindexter with a beautiful, sexy wife. They were visually mismatched and this led Lexie to believe that they had a wild sex life, pulling in a third (or fourth!). Or maybe implementing complicated tools and appliances. It was hard to trust such a proper bow-tie-wearing exterior.
Ethan was sitting up straight while listening to Delton drone on. Lexie knew from the students that there was nothing worse than a teacher dominating the dinner conversation, treating the topic of the night as a lecture. And of those who did lecture at dinner, Delton McGarry was the most tedious, pedantic, and, usually, condescending.
Ethan’s head dropped to one side. Lexie saw his eyes wander. He had the same beautiful angled jaw as his father. And the same coloring: black hair, blue eyes, white teeth trapped in a rectangle-on-side smile. Black Irish. Lexie wanted to text Daniel that very minute to find out if they were Irish. Unfortunately, she’d have to wait until she’d left the no-cell-phone zone of the dining hall.
The kids had chosen their topic: Is there a moral imperative for humans to mate for life? If so, why? If not, why not?
“That’s a good one,” Lexie said. “Who wants to start?”
Ellie raised her hand. Before she could speak, Craydon started talking. Lexie didn’t stop her, but she should have. She should have saved Ellie from being pushed to the back of the conversation. But that simple act alone was currently too much for her. Lexie casually folded her hand across her nose and mouth; she was smelling him. Daniel. The musty scent of intimacy.
LEXIE TOOK THE SLIGHTLY LONGER ROUTE HOME SO SHE COULD stop—for one minute—at the Inn on the Lake.
Daniel’s car wasn’t in the lot. Lexie killed the engine and sat, parked in the space where his Mercedes had been this afternoon. He was probably out to dinner, Lexie decided. An eight o’clock reservation somewhere nice, or as nice as you could get within twenty-five minutes of Ruxton. People like Daniel didn’t eat dinner before eight. They didn’t finish work until at least seven thirty. They were in their own time zone.
Lexie’s phone rang. She yanked it out of her purse, her heart thumping. When she saw it was Peter, she dropped the phone on the passenger seat, started the engine, and pulled back out on the road.
At home, Lexie parked on the long, uphill driveway. She footed down the parking brake. Eventually, Lexie opened the car door. She sat for a minute with her legs hanging off the seat toward the ground. Eventually, she stepped out and walked into the house. It wasn’t until she had closed the front door behind herself that she realized she hadn’t locked the van. It was as if she were a new person. Someone who didn’t spend half her mental time in a movie theater wanting to run outside to double-check that she’d locked the car’s doors. Someone who didn’t return home, only seconds after leaving, to be sure the front door was locked. Someone who’d never need a Klonopin.
“Hey babe.” Peter came right over to Lexie and kissed her on the mouth. She wondered if she tasted like Daniel.
“How was the Crock-Pot soup?”
“Awful. The vegetables were all bitter and dangly. I threw it away and ate the leftover spaghetti. But I made you dessert in the Crock-Pot.” He leaned in for another kiss. Lexie ducked away.
“I’ve gotta take a shower.”
“Take a quick one. You’re going to love this dessert. I threw a bunch of blueberries, oatmeal, and brown sugar in there—it tastes great.”
In the shower, Lexie thought about what had gone down in the hotel room and quickly masturbated. Afterward, she washed herself inside and out, even opening her mouth toward the needle-fine spray and cleaning her throat, her teeth, the roof of her mouth. Lexie toweled off, wrapped her hair, and put on old blue flannel pajamas. She didn’t want to look sexy. It had been five nights since she and Peter had had sex. That was about their limit, so she’d have to come up with a good excuse.
At the kitchen table, Lexie spooned the blueberry gunk in her mouth while smiling fals
ely at Peter. “Delicious.”
Peter didn’t hear. He was leaning over his bowl, scraping the last blueberry smears from the bottom and rapidly feeding himself. “Guitar lesson?” he asked.
“That’d be great.” A guitar lesson was as appealing as a meeting led by Janet Irwin. Lexie looked at the spoon in her hand and saw she was shaking. “But no pick work, okay? Only chords.”
7
AMY’S ’BAMA ACCENT WAS OUT IN FULL FORCE. “HONEY, YOU gotta be shittin’ me!” She fell into her rolling chair.
Lexie had run to the infirmary straight from her morning class. She had wanted to call Amy all weekend, but there was never a second when Peter wasn’t within five feet of her. And she didn’t want to hide in the bathroom with the faucet running, or run to the front yard while Peter was in the shower. She knew the confession required a conversation she wasn’t willing to have whispering in a corner.
Lexie hopped up onto one of the sickbeds. “Nope. I’m not shittin’ you.” Lexie was grinning. She felt great: like her hair had grown and thickened and her skin had smoothed out into glittering, waxy taffy. The physical manifestation of joy.
“So you did it without an STD panel?!”
“Yup. And I went to bed the last three nights without triple-checking to see if the front door was locked.” Lexie could not stop smiling. She had smiled all through Health and Sexuality class as they talked about the endocrine system. So much so that Phillipa Graves had said, “Miss James, you totally love the endocrine system, don’t you?”
“I hardly recognize you now.” Amy looked up at Lexie. “You did use a condom, though, right?”
“Nope.” Lexie threw her hair over her shoulder and lay on her stomach, facing Amy, her feet kicked up behind her. She was wearing the same high, sleek boots. They reminded her of Daniel. And they made her feel sexy.
“Are you kidding?”
The Trouble with Lexie Page 7