Married Sex

by Jesse Kornbluth

  If Kundera was right, love goes wrong at the very beginning. With innocent decisions, made with the best intentions. The flaws are baked into the relationship.

  Change? We say we want to be different, to be better, but we don’t want to change; we want to be changed—we want to download the app and let the device do it all for us.

  Students were streaming in. Greetings exchanged. Banter with the bartender as beers were ordered. A man reading a novel and dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief? Must be a good book.

  Chapter 35

  And on the next day, another email came:

  FROM: Blair.Watkins@gmail.com

  TO: David@DGLaw.com

  SUBJECT: “You’ve got to keep thinking/ You can make it thru these waves”

  D—

  You very smartly did not ask what “it” is like with Jean. You’re not entitled to know. But if, going forward, we’re smart enough not to keep big secrets from each other, I need to say something or the unexpressed curiosity will kill you.

  Jean’s life could not be more different than ours. In her refrigerator: champagne, yogurt, and probiotics (because yogurt alone does not, apparently, keep your gut pristine).

  I’d cook for her, but she’s not interested. So we go out for dinner. And in restaurants, men send us drinks and then come over to hit on us. Gay? Neither of us registers that way.

  I’ve been invited to more conferences this year, and I’ve gone out of town twice. Let me tell you, it’s even weirder sleeping alone in a hotel room than sharing a bed with a woman. Coming in from the airport the first time, I got confused and asked to be taken to Central Park West. Only when we stopped in front of our building did I realize I wasn’t going “home.”

  But you want to know about the sex. Short answer: It’s confusing.

  I keep reaching for something that isn’t there. Toulouse-Lautrec often painted lesbians. He was a friend to many. Watching them sleep, arms and legs entwined, he wrote, “This is superior to everything. Nothing can compare to something so simple.”

  Nothing? He was on the outside, doing that male gaze thing.

  On the inside? Nothing is that simple. I wish it were. Start the countdown.

  Every word thrilled, the almost explicit message most of all.

  The leaves had turned, and Blair had too—she wasn’t going to spend forty-two days with Jean.

  She’d be home soon.

  The subject line was confirmation.

  It was from “Blue,” by Joni Mitchell, one of Blair’s favorites.

  I knew it well. And what followed:

  Blue, here is a shell for you

  Inside you’ll hear a sigh

  A foggy lullaby

  There is your song from me.

  “A foggy lullaby”—it wasn’t late, but I wanted to go to bed, to imagine Blair’s good-night kiss, the day’s last declaration of love, her warm breath in my ear. In the dark, I’d remember all the nights behind us and hope for the ones ahead. I’d recall cool sheets in summer, hiding under the duvet in winter, my hand massaging her shoulders as foreplay, her hair streaming across the pillow as she slept.

  I wanted to respond but didn’t trust myself not to fill a page. I’d been listening to a lot of blues and soul—what a surprise—and I kept coming back to Otis Redding, who was all man and all emotion. Before I thought about it, I hit Reply and typed the title of one of his songs:

  “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (to Stop Now)”

  Chapter 36

  But Blair didn’t come home.

  I read her email a dozen times, and I never failed to extract the message I wanted. She hadn’t sent a hint, a wish, a statement of intent; the email was an affirmation of a contract. Of a new contract. Starting well before Thanksgiving. That the contract lacked a start date—I overlooked that.

  So I was hopeful on October 29, jumpy on October 30, and agitated on October 31.

  Halloween night: the worst. Ours is a small building by Manhattan standards—four apartments per floor, with just a dozen floors—but I would have sworn the bell rang a hundred times. Each time I opened the door, I expected to see Blair, and every time it was some grinning kid from the building.

  “Cool costumes,” I told the first callers as I doled out the candy I congratulated myself for remembering to buy. But soon I was offering candy in smaller amounts, saying nothing, annoyed that so few had charity boxes to fill with coins for the poor.

  Then it was over, and I sat drinking rum and Coke—a quick high and a certain headache, not that I cared about anything but the high—by the window. The breeze felt like the tide coming in on a quiet summer night. By my second drink, I was almost content. And definitely buzzed.

  The bell rang. Intrusive. Irritating. But there was candy left, and I still had the faintest hope Blair would be there with arms open, so I answered it.

  “May I?” Jean asked, and breezed into the foyer without waiting for an answer.

  I found myself a beat behind, nodding and closing the door. This was not right. I wished I’d had less to drink.

  “Where’s Blair?” I asked, not exactly blocking the hall but not exactly welcoming her in.

  “The loft.”

  “Where does she think you are?”

  “The parade.”

  Of course. The Greenwich Village Halloween parade. Mardi Gras for gays. Better: Carnival. Floats. Puppets. And fifty thousand people, many in costume. Blair would have assumed—or Jean would have told her—she was going there.

  “Blair didn’t go?” I asked.

  “Not her thing. You’ll be pleased to hear: Blair’s not cut out for the gay life. Or even downtown.”

  “Why doesn’t she come home?”

  “I’ve asked her. I don’t know.”

  “Pride,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. She’s full of good qualities I don’t seem to appreciate.”

  I could have been thrilled. Should have been. But rage surfaced—I hated that Jean knew Blair well enough to understand her.

  A verbal sneer: “Perhaps your appeal wasn’t to her good qualities.”

  “You’re drinking,” Jean said.

  “Rum and coke. I’d offer you one, but that would be a friendly gesture.”

  “Well, I’m here as a friend.”

  “That worked with the doorman,” I said. “It doesn’t with me.”

  Jean had faced down icebergs and volcanoes. A boozy lawyer on Central Park West wasn’t capable of delivering an insult that knocked her off her purpose.

  “I’m here as a friend who wanted to see you one last time.”

  “Promise?”

  She pulled a small, thin package wrapped in brown paper from her bag.

  “And I brought you a present.”

  What could I say? I stepped aside, and Jean walked in. I followed, a security guard who suspects the worst.

  At the end of the hall, she had a choice.

  To her left was the living room, dark except for two small lamps. I grew up in a home with a TV set in every room; one of the pleasures of this apartment was having a living room without one. Blair and I used to spend evenings here, books in hand, drinks. Since she left, I’d avoided this room; it looked like a set for a show that had closed.

  To the right was the dining room, lined with bookshelves. The table told the story: This was home base, everything I might want—computer, books, liquor—within easy reach. Dimmers worked overtime here, but at least it wasn’t a chamber of despair, so Jean wandered in. I followed.

  “Let’s not prolong this,” I said, and held out my hand.

  Jean handed me the present. I wanted to play it cool and set it down, unopened, as if it were a trifle that could wait until later. But I wasn’t that cool—I ripped the paper off.

  It was a black-and-white photograph. Of Blair, naked
to the top curve of her breasts, eyes wide open, staring directly into the camera. The twin to the picture that Jean had taken of herself and given to us.

  “It’s …” The sentence died there. No adjective conveyed my appreciation of the picture’s beauty or Blair’s willingness to drop every defense for Jean’s camera or—and this is what stopped me—the indisputable fact that this was a photograph of a woman I knew very well and not at all.

  Jean turned her attention from me to a book of Helmut Newton photographs on the table. I’d been looking through this book for a reason Jean could never have guessed: Although Newton’s models were tall, leggy, and small-breasted, they reminded me of her. Tough. Clear-eyed. Unapologetic. Perverse. When I wanted to imagine what Blair and Jean were like together—I mean in bed—this book was the springboard for my fantasies.

  “A lovely man,” Jean said, running her hand over the cover.

  “Seriously?”

  “Not in his books … but there’s a picture of Helmut on his deathbed. His wife is holding his head. It’s just …”

  Jean closed her eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked, hoping, for my sake, that I was the only one on the edge of a large, messy emotion.

  “That’s a picture I’d love for someone to take of me—and no one ever will.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, David, you are such a child.”

  “The future’s not a straight line.”

  “I’ll see someone I want for a lover, and he’ll stick around?”

  “Or she will,” I said.

  “Like Blair?”

  “Like someone.”

  “Never gonna happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want a man. And when a woman hits forty, she becomes … invisible to men.”

  “No one could overlook you,” I said.

  “You did.”

  “Then.”

  “Tonight too.” She whispered, but her whisper was urgent: “Look at me, David. Like you were taking my picture. Please.”

  So I did.

  Tonight Jean was wearing a white men’s dress shirt and faded Levis. Under the shirt, she had on a black tank top. You see this look all over New York, and on one of the last warm nights of the fall, it made sense.

  But Jean did nothing the way other women did. And the difference was critical.

  No bra.

  Jean wasn’t wearing a bra, and the tank top was made of some stretch fabric, and there, in outline, I could see her nipples. I might have noticed them earlier. Now I made up for that inattention by staring unashamedly.

  Jean’s breasts seemed bigger, fuller than I remembered. I pictured her displaying them, offering them, hands crossed underneath as she gently pulled on her nipples. I pictured her leaning over me, teasing my mouth. I pictured her …

  Her gaze was steady and knowing. The tank top wasn’t a casual choice. She hadn’t “forgotten” to wear a bra.

  “One last time,” she whispered. “To say good-bye.” Yes, and to get what she wanted when we met. To make me betray my understanding with Blair. And, surely, to get even with Blair for not falling in love with her.

  These motives were clear to me. But they were less compelling than Jean’s breasts. They were both concealed and revealed, which is always incendiary.

  Was I a child? More like a teenager. The moment seemed to expand.

  Jean took a deep breath.

  I believed her breasts were pleading to me.

  We kissed, hard and deep. Her shirt was discarded, then her tank top. Breasts were honored but in haste. In thrall to urgent, dirty, backseat-of-the-convertible sex, the floor was our certain destination.

  I pulled away—I don’t know how, but I did—and stood there, panting. As was Jean.

  “The room is spinning,” I said, and eased myself into a chair.

  She smiled. “Again?”

  Jean went to the kitchen. She returned, carrying water. She held the glass while I sipped. I leaned back. She dressed, kissed me gently on the top of my head, and I fell asleep. And then she was gone.

  It was just ten when I woke up. Still Halloween. The night beckoned.

  Out I went, into the park. It felt like paradise: pools of light, trees in silhouette, and the occasional falling leaf. As I walked around the reservoir toward Fifth Avenue, I fell in with Halloween revelers who also seemed to cherish big sky and open water in the center of the city. We made an unlikely circus troupe, with me, in a business shirt and jeans, the most unlikely.

  Some kids were singing on the steps of the Met, but the rest of Fifth Avenue, from the East 80s to the Apple cube, was deserted. I walked down to an Italian restaurant on Madison that was filled with buffed, painted women and aimless men in loafers without socks who didn’t mind paying $300 for a bottle of champagne. I knew no one. I didn’t want a hookup. Amid frivolity, I drank in peace.

  At some point, it seemed like a good idea to breathe fresh air and call my wife. Leaving the restaurant was easy. Dialing a number was a challenge.

  “Happy Halloween.”

  Not that Halloween was a holiday Blair and I celebrated.

  “David? Where are you?”

  “On Madison Avenue. Looking for the straight parade.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “If ‘drunk’ is okay, I am beyond awesome.”

  This moment lacked precedent. Silence from Blair.

  I remembered my reason for this call. “When are you coming home?”

  “David, please …”

  “Fuck ‘please.’ Enough, Blair. Come home.”

  “Soon. I’ll be there soon. Really.”

  Her tone was soothing. I couldn’t argue with her.

  “Good,” I whispered. I stood, phone to my head, wondering why I was putting her through this.

  “Can someone find a cab for you?”

  “I can get home.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  Again, I heard a promise but not a date. A cab stopped in front of the restaurant. A woman stepped out. I didn’t merit a first glance. I took the cab.

  Chapter 37

  I would have preferred the park, but smoking anywhere in Central Park is now a crime. So when early November brought the last of the warm weather and the gaudiest of foliage, I took to sitting on a Fifth Avenue bench after work, reading and thinking and smoking a cigar.

  After work one warm afternoon, I sat for hours. There was some kind of cocktail party or book party or charity launch in a townhouse just off Fifth, and as it ended, guests who hadn’t come in town cars started toward the avenue to flag taxis. I didn’t know all of them, but through clients and lawyer gossip and years of just being around, I had intimate knowledge of many of these A-listers. And I saw them with a terrible clarity.

  The CEO who lived at the Carlyle with his mistress. At seven thirty most weekday mornings, you could see him leave the hotel to walk his dog. But that walk led only across the street, because when you have a suspicious wife in bed upstairs and another lover across town, it’s better to drop coins into a pay phone than create a cell phone record that could become evidence.

  I saw the real estate czar who had announced at a party, “If you have less than seven hundred and fifty million dollars, you have no hedge against inflation.” Then came the crash of 2008, and he had no hedge. He had even less when his wife divorced him and took nearly half of what was left. But he had the great good luck to marry an otherworldly heiress who wouldn’t sign the prenup he had us write for him because it was, she said, “too long.” Now the gods had made her ill, and he was doing a good impression of a man who didn’t care that a marital tragedy would put a fresh billion in his bank account.

  I saw the copper king whose Bolivian mines created mounds of waste. The wind sent lead and arsenic from that waste airbor
ne while slagheaps dripped those poisons into lakes, where Bolivian children eat the fish and breathe the air, and you don’t want to think about the sicknesses there. The copper king had brought his son, a teenager in a school blazer. The boy looked smart, healthy, and decent, but as I considered his criminal of a father, I pictured the kid as a Bolivian teenager, ravaged by disease. And that felt like justice to me.

  Ah, a correspondent for a network news magazine and his new wife. V and I represented his first wife in their divorce. She told us a story of her husband working on a piece in Kansas, calling her to check in, then going on to his next call—only there was a glitch, and she didn’t get disconnected, so she had the pleasure of hearing him chat up some bimbo, repeating tidbits he’d just delivered to her. The secret of life is repeat business; I looked forward to representing the new wife.

  And here was the serial entrepreneur and his society wife, standing on the corner, looking for their driver. Blair and I had been at a dinner party they gave to celebrate the opening of yet another restaurant. (They actually used that word: celebrate. Like a restaurant was a milestone.) We were the poorest people there by about $500 million. Several guests had just bought brownstones. They’re quite the rage these days, and expensive; anybody who wants to spend less than $20 million is talking Brooklyn. When the entrepreneur said he had a construction crew—nonunion, Chinese—he’d be happy to loan to them, these people were beside themselves with delight. And I thought: How are the rich different from you and me? They’re cheaper.

  And why was I not surprised to see Billy and Nancy Robb Russakof? Arm in arm, they turned the corner and started walking home to their penthouse. A very happy couple. Well, she had every reason to make him think so. Better to have all the frequent flyer miles than to fight for half.

  These people were like middle-aged fashion models, cosmetically flawless, with warehouses of smiles to share with one another. In a city where diversity is our greatest asset, they had turned their backs on it and formed a village, separated from the rest of us by a thick wall of money.

  They knew only one god and one law: Don’t lose your fortune.

  Let the record show that I have carried water for these people, flattered them, and made good on all promises to them. One on one, I like them, or at least have enough compassion not to sneer. But sitting on that bench, watching a gang of them, I hated them.