Do This For Me

by Eliza Kennedy

  “Who’s Hugo?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing!” He swiveled his chair to face me. “What’s up?”

  “You’ve been looking at sex, right? As part of your research into infidelity?”

  “You bet.”

  “Can you give me an overview?”

  “Sure.” He started shifting around some papers and textbooks. “Do you want a seat?”

  “I’m fine standing.”

  He hauled his binder into his lap. It had ballooned to four inches and was littered with flags, tabs and colored Post-its. He flipped through a few pages, then cleared his throat.

  “Picture it, Boss. Virgin land, blue sky.” His long hands swooped, shaping clouds and rolling hills. “Forests as far the eye can see. Mastodons roaming the fertile plain. The world is new.”

  “Mastodons lived during the Pleistocene,” I said. “The world wasn’t new.”

  He looked hurt. “I’m trying to set the scene here.”

  “Consider it set. What’s the upshot?”

  “Humans love sex,” Cameron replied. “Boning is in our bones. We’ve evolved over the course of millennia to be joyful, enthusiastic, polyamorous sex havers.”

  “You’re talking about men,” I said.

  “Men and women,” he said.

  “But men like sex more than women.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  I crossed my arms. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that women like sex as much as men do.”

  “Nope.” Cameron grinned. “I’m going to tell you they like it more.”

  * * *

  —

  “Are you sure you don’t want a break?” Jared said. “Some water?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s keep going.”

  It was later that day. I’d come to the gym straight from a session with Bogard. I was once again enraged.

  “Okay. This next move is a killer. I want you to stand with your feet together, your arms raised and core tight.”

  “My core is in my chest?”

  Jared’s brow crinkled. “Not as such.”

  I summarized for Bogard everything Cameron told me. “He showed me these studies suggesting that women underreport their masturbation and porn use. They have rich fantasy lives. They get more excited by the possibility of sex with strangers than men do. And they lose desire for their long-term partners far more swiftly than men.”

  I plunged on, rattling off facts and statistics, ignoring Bogard’s puzzled expression. “My paralegal suggested that the conventional wisdom that men like sex more than women might be insidious cultural conditioning. We believe that women behave in certain ways, so we teach and persuade and shame them into behaving in those ways, then we turn around and say, ‘See? That’s how women are.’ ”

  Bogard lost patience. “Again with other people! This is about you—what you want, and what you do, and how you think about yourself. These are the issues you should be examining.”

  “Now go into a low squat,” Jared instructed me. “Keep your heels on the ground. Put your palms down, then jump into a plank, then jump quickly back into a squat, then jump up into a standing position. Good. Do it again.”

  “I am examining myself,” I told Bogard. “Have I been brainwashed into not being interested in sex? If so, all I have to do is unbrainwash myself, and everything will be fine. But if it’s something more inherent, then—”

  “If,” he scoffed. “You’re launching yourself toward some solution without bothering to ask how you actually feel, and what you want.”

  I didn’t say anything. What did I want? I wanted to fix our problems. I wanted my marriage back. But I was lost in a labyrinth, dark passageways twisting off in every direction. The harder I worked to find the exit, the farther away it seemed to become.

  “Between you and Aaron, who usually initiated sex?”

  “Neither of us. It was mutual. Unspoken.”

  “Did you climax regularly?”

  “Not always, but often. Aaron always did.”

  He pounced. “What made you say that?”

  “You were asking about orgasms.”

  “Yours,” Bogard said. “Not his.”

  “Most people take these moves a little slower,” Jared said. “You don’t want to get your heart rate up too high.”

  “You complain I don’t give you insights,” Bogard said. “Here’s one: when we talk about sex, you always turn the conversation to Aaron. And everything you say suggests a dynamic in which his pleasure was the focus.”

  “And…ten!” Jared clapped. “Let’s take a…okay, eleven…twelve…thirteen…”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I told Bogard.

  “A few weeks ago you said you always made sure that your sex life was satisfying,” he pointed out. “As if it was your responsibility.”

  “I’m his partner. I wanted to satisfy him.”

  “Did he satisfy you?”

  “He always tried. I didn’t have to come all the time to be happy with our sex life.”

  Bogard didn’t say anything. I threw my hands in the air. “What do you want me to say?”

  “What you really think,” he replied.

  “You seriously need to stop now,” Jared told me.

  I leaped up from my low squat, hands in the air. “I think I like sex!”

  Jared stepped back.

  Blood rushed to my head and I bent over. “I am…not…an aberration!” I was fighting for air.

  “Uh, okay…”

  “I’m interested in sex,” gasp, “but not fascinated. Engaged, but not,” gasp, gasp, “obsessed. That doesn’t make me a freak.”

  I straightened up. Bad idea—my vision went dark around the edges. I bent over again. But I had to get my point across.

  “Forget about the stupid studies.” Gasp. “Whether it’s nature or nurture, this is who I am.” Gasp.

  My trainer gazed at me with wide, befuddled eyes. He had no idea I was arguing with someone who wasn’t there.

  “I’m not totally uninhibited. But I’m not inhibited, either.” Gasp. “I’m…hibited.”

  “Hibited,” he repeated.

  “Yes.” I straightened up at last. “I’m hibited. I’m just right.”

  “Um, good!” Jared said. “That’s good. Let’s get you some water.”

  * * *

  —

  “Hibited,” Sarah said the next day.

  The skepticism in her voice spoke volumes. I put my head on the table.

  We’d met at our usual café on Sixth Avenue, now draped with twinkling lights and fake icicles. Christmas was two weeks away.

  “I need a Kleenex,” Mercer said.

  “That’s not how you ask,” she informed him.

  “Please can I have a Kleenex?”

  She reached into her bag and held out a packet of tissues. A grubby hand rose from under the table and snatched it.

  “Does he ever go to school?”

  She snorted. “It’s pre-kindergarten. I mean, it’s New York City pre-K—he’s probably missing a session on personal branding—but whatever. We’ll muddle through. What’s this about being hibited?”

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  She dumped a packet of sugar in her coffee. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because ‘Can I ask you something?’ never precedes a question.” She tapped her spoon on the edge of her cup. “It always precedes a judgment. You should just say what you mean.”

  “Fine. Can I judge you about something?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Do you really like sex that much?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m hungry,” Mercer declared.

  “I’m Sarah. Nice to meet you.
”

  “Please may I have a snack?”

  She pulled a package of crackers out of her bag and passed it to him.

  “I guess I thought you were unusual,” I said. “Or exaggerating. Kind of overplaying your interest, you know?”

  “Nope.” She sipped her coffee. “I genuinely, unreservedly love to screw.”

  “So it’s me, then. It’s not Aaron. I’m the problem. I’m a freak.”

  She reached for my arm. “Honey, you’re not. Some people like sex, some aren’t so crazy about it. You’ve never shown a lot of interest.” She chuckled. “Remember that time in law school, when you were trimming down there, and you thought your clitoris was a cancerous growth?”

  “I didn’t know it was that big!”

  “Because you didn’t know it was there.”

  Mercer poked his head out from under the table. “What’s a clitoris?”

  “Drink your juice,” Sarah told him.

  “Why are you being so hard on me?” I complained.

  Her expression softened. “I’m not trying to be. How can I help?”

  I looked gloomily into my chai. “Aaron said we had a relationship problem. We’d drifted apart, I’d closed myself off. At that point, part of me wished his affair was a sex thing—that he’d morphed into a middle-aged hound dog. That seemed fixable, containable. Now I find out we had a sex problem, too, and that seems equally complicated. Am I really not all that into sex, or am I so alienated from myself I don’t know what I want? How do I figure it out?” I looked at her hopelessly. “How am I supposed to be, Sarah?”

  “May I have a toy please?” Mercer said.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake!” She grabbed her bag and threw it under the table. Then she pushed her coffee aside. “Can I make a totally off-the-wall suggestion?”

  “Please do.”

  She looked me in the eye. “I think you should sleep with someone else.”

  I was aghast. It must have shown, but she pressed on.

  “Sex is all about chemistry, Rane. Maybe you and Aaron aren’t compatible. It happens, you know? Even with the most loving, otherwise in-sync couples. You want to know if you like it? Play around. After what he did, I’d say you have a pass. What about that guy who asked you out?”

  “Singer? No! And he didn’t ask me out.”

  Sarah looked confused. “You said—”

  “I misinterpreted him. I’m sure he meant it as a work thing. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t, Sarah. I don’t want to. Aaron and I are trying to work this out.”

  “Right,” she said. “Okay. Well, it was only a suggestion.”

  SEVENTEEN

  A few days later, I walked into my suite after a client meeting. “Mickey Singer’s got a real bug up his ass,” Renfield announced.

  “Sounds painful. Give him my condolences.”

  “I’m sure you’re very comical. He’s called three times in the last ten minutes.” The phone rang, and she glanced at the display. “There he is again.”

  I went into my office and picked up. “Hey, Singer.”

  “You did it!” he cried.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “So bright, and yet so dim. Read the e-mail from the court.”

  I found it near the top of my inbox. The judge in the Hyperium case had granted defendant’s motion to dismiss.

  The defendant. That was us.

  We’d won.

  “They’ll try to appeal, but if we throw a few thousand bucks their way, we’ll be done with it.” He paused. “Our general counsel wants to meet with you.”

  I felt myself starting to smile. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “How about Monday morning? That’ll give you the whole weekend to sharpen your knives.”

  I laughed. “It’s tight. But I should be able to manage it.”

  * * *

  —

  Aaron met me after work that night. We went to an Italian restaurant in the Village. As I watched him talking to the waiter, something in me just…let go.

  I don’t know if it was the good news at work, or the culmination of our conversations over the previous months, or a little of both, but at that moment, I knew the worst was over.

  All my struggles—my agitation and overanalysis and relentless thought—suddenly seemed so unnecessary. Yes, he’d made a mistake. And yes, I’d suffered. We’d faced a dire test. But we were Aaron and Raney. We’d loved each other for half our lives. We were going to be fine.

  Though there was one last thing I had to do.

  I reached across the table and took his hand. “I betrayed you,” I said.

  He smiled when I touched him. Now he stopped. “Sorry?”

  “What I did to you, the day I found out,” I said. “The ways I punished you. I was hurt, and I lashed out, and it was totally wrong. There’s more than one way to betray someone you love. It’s taken me a long time to see that. I’m so sorry.”

  He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay.”

  “You called it, right away—that was a sign that something wasn’t right between us.”

  He started to respond, but I wasn’t finished.

  “There’s more. You do so much for me, and I never acknowledge it. I wouldn’t be who I am, and where I am, without you. I’m going to try really, really hard to open up, the way I used to. I’ll have to get back in the habit. Maybe you can help me.”

  “I’d love nothing more,” he said.

  We smiled at each other. I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t sad, or hurt, or confused. I was happy to be with him.

  So when we arrived home and tiptoed up the stairs, it felt natural to face each other in the darkened bedroom. To kiss. To touch him again and inhale his scent. To feel the pulse in his neck. His jaw, slightly scruffy after a long day.

  We undressed. Aaron was very hard. Were we going to do it the way we always did, me below, him above, face to face? Maybe we should try something new. I turned to pull down the sheets. I was bending over. We could—

  He turned me around. Okay. We were doing it the old way. Made sense. We needed to ease back into it. Get reaquainted. We could try harder later. I sighed and arched my back.

  How do you “try harder”? How do you spontaneously create lust? Seems like—

  I told myself to focus. Aaron put a finger inside me, then two. He brought them to his mouth. He wet them and touched me again, because I wasn’t quite…but soon I was, I was ready. We began to move together, Aaron thrusting, me pushing upward to receive him. He pressed his body close to me, as he always did, his face hovering above mine. My arms around him.

  Was this how he did it with Deirdre? Close and slow, skin to skin? Or did she push him onto the bed? Did she hold his wrists over his head, as she straddled him, as he strained upward, ready to—

  Stop. I tilted my hips upward. I wrapped my legs around his waist. He moaned. I kissed his neck. The meeting with Hyperium was set for nine o’clock on Monday. Marty thought it was a done deal. I wondered if Singer would be there. I wondered if—

  Stop thinking. This is good. Tender and intimate. But should we be doing something new? Too bad I didn’t have a bullwhip handy. There I go, cracking jokes. Bogard said my tendency to joke about sex revealed my profound discomfort with it. What did he know? I pulled Aaron’s face close to mine. I kissed him, opening his mouth with my tongue. He groaned and bucked against me. He liked that. But what about me?

  Who cares about me? It’s hard to have sex when you’re thinking about sex. Even harder when you’re thinking about thinking about sex, and how you feel, and what you’re supposed to feel, and how you feel about being told how you should feel, and how—

  “Do you want me to touch you?” Aaron whispered.

  “I don’t think it’s going to happen for me tonight.”

  “Are you sure
?”

  I kissed him, kissed his neck and chest. “It’s okay.”

  Aaron came, calling out my name. I felt his heart beating fast as he lay on top of me.

  “I love you, Raney,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”

  I kissed his temple. “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  —

  On Monday, Hyperium’s general counsel and a handful of in-house lawyers joined Marty and me in the conference room on forty-five. Singer wasn’t there. But I’d be seeing plenty of him in the future. I’d be seeing plenty of all of them.

  We spent a few hours running through their most active litigations. We developed a plan for transferring cases from Rayburn. We were all pleased, all full of praise and compliments.

  When it was over, and the door of the conference room closed behind them, Marty pulled me into a hug.

  “You did it, Raney Jane! Congratulations.”

  I wandered back to my suite. Renfield wasn’t around. I entered my office, but instead of taking my seat at the desk, I stretched out on the sofa. I put my hands behind my head.

  I felt very, very good.

  Wally appeared in the door, grinning like a wild man. “All hail the rainmaking goddess!”

  I smiled up at him. “Word travels fast.”

  “Hyperium!” He pounded his chest. “That is awesome, Moore. You are awesome.” He threw himself into a chair. “You’re going to be managing partner someday.”

  Jonathan followed him in. “We should rename the firm.”

  “Fuck Hartwell,” Wally scoffed. “Guy was a Nazi. Calder, Tayfield and Moore. I like it.”

  “You deserve this, Raney,” Jonathan said. “Especially after the last few months.”

  I propped a cushion behind my head. “They’ve been rough. But I think Aaron and I are going to make it.”

  “I knew you would,” Wally said. “You two are rock solid.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. We’re not one hundred percent over it. We still have work to do. I need to give more of myself to Aaron, not keep it bottled up inside. And then there’s sex.”