The Dwelling

by Susie Moloney

  He had read her résumé, he’d said. It was complete, he’d said. He’d asked her some questions about her department and the work that she was currently doing. She had answered everything with dignity and confidence—a confidence that went up and down as the lunch progressed, veering wildly in both directions.

  Mr. Huff had Scotch straight up, which seemed to Becca terribly CEO-ish of him, and she wondered if he was doing it to impress her (it had). He had downed the first one quite quickly and she wondered if that meant he was nervous. But the talk had been entirely shop and she was starting to relax. Her career was not, in general, a source of anxiety for her. While they stayed in the realm of the current, she was fine. When they moved into the director’s position (a position she could practically taste, almost reach out and touch), the nervousness returned. Ambition made her tremble with anticipation and fear.

  While she had no reason to be thinking of hotel rooms and beds, the conversation did get personal. But he asked her almost nothing about herself.

  “Do you have children, Rebecca?” he asked her. When she said no, she braced herself(why?) for the married question, but it didn’t come. Instead he told her he had two children, both in university. They talked of schools for a while. She used the opportunity to mention her education and a course currently offered by the local university, andWhat do you think? Is it worth looking into? By-the-book flattery; men rarely noticed.

  And so it went.

  Becca looked at her watch several times—discreetly—but he did notice. She wondered unkindly (and a little gleefully) if that was because her arm was attached to her chest, and whenever she looked away, his eyes wandered back there.

  “You’re very conscious of the time, Miss Mason,” he said, and she wondered about his vacillating use of her name, Miss Mason one minute and Rebecca the next. She frowned inside, thinking it meant something and she would have to figure out what: was he moving randomly between intimacy and distance, or was it a power thing; Miss Mason when she was being a bad girl, and Rebecca when he was condescending(good girl) to her? She tried to pay closer attention. She enjoyed such challenges: they were easier, in a way, than sitting back and hoping for the best; it was like working a room or being a wallflower. Math as opposed to guesswork. Active versus passive.

  “Do you have a meeting?” he asked.

  “No, but I have some things I would like to get off my desk today,” she said importantly. In fact, she was checking out how long they had been at lunch. How long she had been listening to stories of his university days and the time he caddied for Jimmy Carter.

  “When you’re a director”—(he said when!)—“lunches will take up your afternoon. It’s part of the job. A director has to spend a certain amount of his—or her—timemaking nice. Do you know what I mean?”

  It was then that she became most confused. Making nice. Her mouth went dry and she casually took a sip of her wine. “I think so,” she said. “I think there’s a certain amount of time that most of us spend advancing the Center. On or off the job.” She tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck. She looked at the table. Remnants of lunch. Her salad had gone mostly uneaten. Her head was light.

  There was a pause in the conversation that seemed important. Her head was buzzing. She was having trouble focusing. She would have liked another glass of wine, something to take the spin out of her head and make it stay put in an easy place.Do you like to dance? she would have liked to ask him.Do you think Prada will come out with a new line for fall or do you think this heavy-heeled, masculine thing is going to go on forever? I’m thinking of painting my office pink. What do you think of pink as a working environment? Do you like my shoes? They were three hundred dollars. Easy things. Things with answers. She put her glass down and reminded herself not to touch it again.

  If he had said at that moment that a room was waiting for them at the Houston, she would not have refused. She would have gone meekly, just to lie down. Just so the unanswerable portion of this thing would be over.I will sleep with you for the job. There it is. If only she could say what she thought he might be thinking. It was all very exhausting. Innuendo was hard for her.

  She would rather he just gave it to her because her work was good, of course. It just didn’t feel likely. His eyes on her body made it feel less likely. Her work flashed occasionally before her eyes. She had no idea if she was the right person for the job. She couldn’t have said at that moment that the current holder of the job, Mr. Caldwell Anderson, was the right person for the job. They all felt the same to her. She was thelogical choice for the job; of that she had no doubt.

  I am the logical choice for the job, for Chrissakes. Don’t make me have sex with you.

  She looked him in the eye. “I’m the right person for this job, Mr. Huff,” she said anyway. She didn’t say the rest.I will do anything to have it. To be it.

  He might or might not have known that. He reached over and put his large hand over hers. She looked down at their hands. His was covered in hair. It was white. It would be demanding. She could tell.

  He rested it there for a moment and then shook it a little. “I’ll see what happens,” he said. “In the meantime, this has been a very pleasant lunch. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

  And it was over.

  Ambiguity.A job description for women.

  Just before leaving work, packing up her desk, memos, notes, phone messages that had gone unreturned through the course of the afternoon fog, and with the beginnings of a headache probing her temples, she decided that if he wanted her to sleep with him, she would just do it. It wouldn’t be cheating. It would be business. It wasn’t as though she’d like it.

  It was just the way things were. Probably (maybe not) everyone did it.

  She loved her husband. This was just business. In a perfect world, he would understand.

  Dan’s afternoon had not been particularly productive, although he had started out with good intentions.

  The jumpiness of the morning had simply had to give way to work. He started with his pivotal frame, the Reporter and the Headhunter locked in an emotional and politically savvy embrace on the rooftop of the abandoned building. It was good, great even. And he worked backward.

  He ran quickly through preliminary sketches of Hanus and Malicia in the office headquarters. He had a nice early sketch, an overhead view of Hanus on the phone, Malicia pacing patricianly. That was the first frame. They wanted the Headhunter.

  He roughed out five frames with those two, then backtracked for another with the Headhunter, the first study of him. He’s in his cave, head and shoulders illuminated by his computer screen, face pensive, reading headlines out of indymedia.org. Dan had to come up with an expression other than pensive for him. So far he had onlypensive andlonging. Weren’t they very nearly the same muscles?

  Dan worked through the afternoon without pause. Repeatedly, he slipped outside for another toke. He smoked cigarettes (four) in the studio. Becca would probably freak, right up until she heard the good news. Then she would back off.

  What’s Apex?

  A publisher.

  I’ve never heard of them.

  They’re small. They do graphic novels.

  (Snort.)

  She would be happy, once she figured it out. She loved that he was an artist. Or used to. He had had a show in college that made her cream, made her his virtual slave for weeks. When he and his partner won the award at Starmon, she’d cooked every night for a month. And he’d never had to ask for it.It would be fine.

  He worked frames until he got as far as the moment when the Headhunter is in the crowd at the subway station. It’s rush hour, early morning. A New Yorky scene. The crowd is surging forward into the train. The Headhunter, in his Truthsuit, hears something. It is Hanus and Malicia (whom he’s never seen) not far away. They are sketched into the crowd, full-frontal. The reader sees them. The Headhunter only senses danger.

  In profile, he looks for them; looks for what he knows is there, but
cannot see.

  Dan glanced up at the wall in front of him for the profile sketch of the Headhunter. And it was gone. The wall is somehow different. He runs his eyes over it.

  Marching along the wall are only sketches of the Reporter.

  Maggie.

  Huh?

  She stared back at him, innocent, knowing, smirking, breasts pressing out against her little sweater, nipples (when had he drawn those? Had he given hernipples?) pushed out against the coarse fabric of her top. Eyes longing, wide-spaced.

  All the other sketches were gone.

  He looked on the floor, leaning up over his drawing board. Nothing was there. He looked up again. She stared back.

  Dan backed away from the drawing board, into the table where he kept his pens and ink, his pencils and small smudgers, the pastels, the nibs for pens, his straight edge, compass set that his dad had given him. He spun around, as though he’d tripped over (a body) something.

  In a tidy pile on the table were the other sketches. On top was the Headhunter, the full-frontal sketch, coat blowing in a dark night wind, like wings, around his body.

  I took them down.

  He stared at them from his ungainly position, half leaning into the table, his buttocks pressing against it.

  I took them down. Of course I did I was obsessed with getting her right yesterday I took the others down to focus.

  Self-consciously, he turned slowly and pawed through them, leaving the pile as untidy as it had been tidy, digging out the profile sketch that he needed. He did not tape it to the wall with the others, but propped it on the lip of the drawing board and went back to work.

  The breathing that he heard was his own. Consciously, he put a new CD on the stereo when the other ran out. Loud. He played it loud and jumped, sometimes at shadows.

  Five

  In the night, there were sounds.

  Dan woke up at three. He did not, at first, search out the clock. Instead he raised his head and looked around the room. Everything was as it should have been: the room was lit with the streetlight that shone just outside the window.I have to ask her where the curtains are this room needs a set of curtains. Regular breathing came from Becca’s side of the bed. He realized he was naked, except for shorts. He looked down at his wife. The sheet was tangled around her again.She’s getting to be a real cover thief, he thought, anything to drown out the sound that was coming next, and he knew what it would be. He dropped his head and pulled the pillow over it, pushing it close to his head on either side.

  Outside, a car pulled to a stop.I don’t hear this. The door opened and closed.

  Footsteps up the concrete walk.I don’t I don’t hear this.

  The front door opened, boldly. And was shut.

  I don’tdo nothear this.

  Tiny heeled steps down the hall. A door opens and closes.

  Before the music started, Dan was out of bed and at the top of the stairs.This is a dream.

  Come in.

  He crept down with utter silence, his feet nothing more than fleshy pads on bare wood. The stairs did not creak. Upstairs he thought he heard movement and paused briefly. It was not coming from the bedroom (Becca), but from somewhere else. The attic. Mice.

  Dan stepped down off the last stair. All had been quiet until he reached the floor. Then, as though whoever (what) knew he was coming, the first strains of music began.

  Lilting, hesitant, jazzy; tinny like from a record player that wasn’t very good.

  After you’ve gone, and left me crying

  He heard it clearly. He must have heard it many times before that night, because he knew the next verse and could have sung along with it, but did not.

  After you’ve gone, there’s no denying

  You’ll feel blue, you’ll feel bad—

  Dan inched his way down the hall, strangely calm, the only giveaway his dry mouth. He moved carefully, so as not to bang anything, not to step on a creaky board, the one by the phone—he passed the phone easily, not reaching to pick it up.

  He simply did not think about what he would find.

  The door was open a crack. Light spilled out into the dark hall in an arc, as he knew it would.

  He stood in front of it and reached out with his whole hand. He pressed his fingers against the cool wood of the door and pushed. It protested for a moment, a slightsqueak on old, unoiled hinges; he pushed it all the way open. As it swung forward, the smell of flowers—maybe lilac—filled his nose, a sweet, pungent scent that lasted only a moment, the sort of smell, not entirely pleasant, that you got off the sweaters of old ladies at funerals. Too sweet. The door caught, not caught, but paused like a breath, and Dan saw that the bed was down. The light in the room was from candles. Shadows danced with the opening of the door, flickering everything in shadow.

  In the middle of the room, as though waiting, was a woman.

  Come in.She smiled, lips parted. Tiny white teeth showed through, like pearls.

  Come in.She was naked. Beautiful. Her smile, her mouth was of pleasures, secret things he would like to know. Candlelight flickered off the glow of her skin, smooth, supple, inviting. Blood pounded in his ears. The music played, in the back of something. He could no more have moved than not. A standstill. Stalemate. His erection—there, always—kindled, pulsed. The woman’s eyes glanced casually down at it; her smile deepened, a red smile(was it really red?), something knowing.

  Come in.

  He must. He did.

  Time went somewhere, but he did not follow it.

  Dan lay on his back on the Murphy bed. In his hands were the buttocks of a woman, round and soft and full. Dan was buried deep inside her heat. She threw her head back in pleasure and tightened muscles that he should know, but at the moment couldn’t name; he could not think, but only respond. He responded by pulling his body up, tightening his own muscles, the ones in his abdomen, and a groan escaped his lips. He felt her move under his hands, and he gripped her, pressing his fingers into the soft flesh there as presented. His leg was caught under the sheet at the bottom of the bed, confining him, restricting him. It added, in some way, to the pleasure. He tried to move a foot, and gave up. He was caught.

  Briefly then,This is real I can feel it I am caught.

  When he opened his eyes, her breasts, perfect and high, bounced delicately in front of him with each upward motion. His hands reached out to graspround beautiful firm soft them and she leaned forward to accommodate him. She rode him, powerful thighs tensing and releasing in turn against his own tensed thighs. He wanted to swing her off, drop on top of her, pound himself inside her, but he was beyond such physical control by then.

  “Ah ah ah ah ah,” he said, gasps barely coming out of him. Just air. He squeezed her breasts, under his palms he felt her nipples, hot, hard little lumps of separated flesh, standing out in lurid detail; he thought if he looked he would see the pink-brown flesh puckered around them. They would taste of soap and rouge. He worked one thumb over to a sweet hard bud toplay—

  Just as it brushed the pad of his thumb, just as he was thinking about how it wouldtaste feel in his mouth he went over the edge into sweet, black darkness, pressed his eyes shut tightly and—

  Red, everywhere. Then nothing.

  Six

  Dan woke to Becca talking on the phone.

  He sat up suddenly on the Murphy bed. He’d been sleeping, splayed across the bare mattress, legs akimbo, arms up over his head. He felt vulnerable, waking up. He covered himself, oddly, with his arms for a moment. The door was wide open. Light in the hall. Morning.

  She was mumbling (whispering?) something into the phone. He heard it click onto the cradle. The sound of disconnection. All around.

  Quickly, very quickly, he sat up. He heard her move into the kitchen. Water ran. The clink of glass on the counter. He heard the fridge open. Heels clicked on the tile floor as she moved around. She was dressed for work. The fridge doorwhooshed shut, nearly silent. He heard it.

  Memory flooded. He swung his head around. The roo
m was in shadow, but silent. Empty.

  Dan jumped, literally, out of the bed. It bounced on the floor.

  “Becca?” he called. There was no answer. He stepped (very fast) out of the studio, glancing just once over his shoulder at the bed, laid out, sheetless. Blameless. The black, empty space behind it yawned lazily at him.

  “Bec—”he said. He rounded the corner into the kitchen to his wife.

  “Why did you sleep down here?” she said, not concerned, but mildly annoyed, like being left out of the joke.

  He blanked. Blinked. “You were restless,” he said. “Kicking up the sheets.” She was. He remembered the tangled sheet. Or was that something else?

  “Coffee’s on,” she said. That was enough of an explanation.

  He stared, still blank. Still wandering. “You look nice,” he said.

  She looked up quickly, blushing, guilty? Thinking, searching his face, for something missed. “Thank you,” she said finally. “Did you sleep well?” she asked. The coffee chugged. She sipped from a glass of orange juice.

  He sat down on the stool by the counter. “I don’t know,” he said. She wasn’t listening. She watched the coffee pour into the pot with the distant look, the Sunday-morning stare. The room smelled like coffee.

  “I guess I’m getting in the shower,” he said, tried to make it cheery, discountable, when in fact he felt filthy, sweat-stained. Then she looked at him. Looked him over.

  “You should. Doesn’t look like you had a restful night, either,” she said. She indicated his head, sticking out her chin in its direction. “Bed head.”

  And he smelled. A sweet smell, like perfume, gone over.

  Gordon Huff had called. Asked for a meeting. Ten-thirty. No, she didn’t have to check her book, she was free. His voice had been light, different. An equality? He’d called her Rebecca. Was she a good girl?