“Kate won’t mind if you drew me.”
Christian froze at the sound of the sultry voice and looked at Sarah. She moved toward him, all skin and warmth. “Stop,” he said, too gently.
Kate’s gaze went from Christian’s tense, rigid body to Sarah’s soft, captivating curves. Christian dropped his sketchbook and pencil and went toward Sarah. Kate covered her mouth in anguish. She wanted to run out of the place, but was stuck by his straight face.
Christian stood in front of Sarah, close enough to touch her breasts. When Sarah did a 360-turn, Kate saw his gaze drop to her round, solid buttocks. As Sarah faced him again, there was a look of triumph on her face.
But Christian only grabbed the throw from the back of the couch and handed it to Sarah. “I’m only interested in Kate.”
Sarah’s cold eyes overrode the smile on her face. “Are you sure?”
He glanced at the couch. “Can you just sit?” He picked up the sketchbook, and Kate leaned against the wall, trying to ignore the thumping of her heart, and felt her voice stick in her throat like a stone.
Christian barely looked at Sarah after that, though she lay on the couch in her panties and bra, pretending to read a magazine she had found on the floor. Kate was more conscious of her than Christian. It took a long time for her heart to stop drumming her annoyance. She hated that a half-naked woman should be so close to Christian, and with this realization, she couldn’t ignore that she had fallen for him.
He showed no interest in the body sprawled on the couch, not even in stolen glances. Finally Kate felt it was only the two of them in the studio apartment and relaxed. She watched him fill page after page with her face and knew because of him, she’d found the strength to accept her husband’s infidelities. She had seen the signs during the last two years: Colin’s late meetings, the immediate showers upon his return and his distance, but mostly the moments she found him gazing into space with that longing look in his eyes and his crooked smile—the expression she’d always associated with sex.
Colin would not have been able to ignore Sarah. He would’ve watched her appreciatively as she undressed and clenched his fingers with the desire to touch her. After all, he hadn’t been able to hide his attraction to the woman at Jeanne’s dinner party.
Christian approached every now and again and, putting his soft fingers under Kate’s chin, tilted her face this way and that. She didn’t know what she would’ve said if he had asked her to undress, though she felt disappointment crouch in her stomach like a runner waiting for the starting gun and was glad it had no need to take off.
They stopped at two o’clock. Kate felt tired, her body drained as if all emotion had been drawn from her onto the page.
Christian had ordered pizza while he worked. When the doorbell rang, he brought Sarah’s dress to her. “Pizza’s here,” he said as he placed it by her feet. He picked up his drawings, took Kate’s hand and led her into the small kitchen before answering the door. They sat at the small square table.
Sarah didn’t join them. Kate didn’t know if it was to leave them alone or if it was the thought of having to dress that kept her on the couch, but she was glad as Christian told her about his friend Josh’s hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
“What’s that?”
“Fear of long words.”
She laughed. “There’s no such thing.”
She noticed how his eyes danced when he smiled. “There is. I’m telling you, look it up. He got it late in life when he started studying philosophy.”
“You’re having me on.”
He crossed his heart. “I’m serious. When you meet him, you’ll have to ask him about it.”
She froze with his assumption of becoming a part of her life, and she saw the apology in his eyes and wanted to wipe it away. “I don’t think I could say it. It’s the longest word I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah. Cruel, isn’t it?”
She gestured toward the other room. “Your ruined paintings, have they got anything to do with you being celibate for a year?”
He nodded and she raised her eyebrows. He laughed. “You want to know the nasty details?”
She leaned forward, nodding, and folded her arms on the table.
“I was getting ready for an exhibition and really busy. My ex couldn’t stand I was putting it before her. One night, because I’d missed dinner, she took a knife from the table and cut my canvases while I was showering. I found her sitting on the couch as if what’d she’d done just warranted a slap on the wrist. I kicked her out that night.”
“But you’ve kept the paintings.”
He nodded.
“Don’t you think it’s time to let them go?”
“Do you?”
After a few seconds of silence, she lowered her eyes and reached for a slice of pizza, which she nibbled on like a well-fed mouse. With the slice eaten, their attention went to his drawings. “What are you going to do with them?”
“I want you to choose one and I’ll paint it.”
She picked a side profile of her looking out the window, light dribbling down her chin. She thought she looked certain and unwavering.
“I like that one too. You look hopeful in it.”
“Maybe I was.”
* * * *
“I had to test him,” Sarah said later as she and Kate walked away. “He passed.”
Kate already knew. She remembered the way Christian kissed her cheek when she was leaving. “Will you come back?” he’d whispered and she nodded, her chin brushing against his. He’d glanced at Sarah briefly and tipped his head, more in a gesture of dismissal than anything else.
When they got to the parlor, Kate paused at the open door. She couldn’t bring herself to go inside, never mind touch another man, not with her day with Christian spreading behind her like a gown. She wanted to hold onto him, if even for a few hours. “I’m going home. It’s late now anyway. No point in working for an hour. Tell Arlene I said thanks.”
When she got to the station, she almost went back to Christian but she couldn’t. She was still Colin’s wife. No matter how she felt, things needed to be sorted out. If she returned to Christian’s apartment, she imagined him opening the door and them staring at each other for moments of heated silence. She would not allow herself to think of the rest.
Kate looked at her watch. She’d be home by three. Enough time to shower and get her thoughts in order. It would be hard to talk to Colin. He seemed happy to continue as they were. Whenever she brought up the change in their marriage, he shrugged it off as if their problems were in her head. She had to stay strong. She wasn’t happy anymore. She didn’t love him.
The train was empty. She sat by a window, gazed out and saw a faint outline of her face, like a stranger peering back at her.
Chapter 14
“Just one more time,” Colin told himself as he answered the phone in his office. He’d been waiting for Melanie to call. “Hi.”
“Can you finish early? Say, four?” Her voice still made him smile.
“Why?”
“I can’t wait ’til everyone leaves. I want you now. We can go to my place early and you’ll make it back to your wife on time.”
“Melanie…”
“Come on, Colin. I want it to be one to remember.”
“Okay. See you there at four thirty.”
“Perfect.” She hung up.
* * * *
Just as Kate got home, the phone rang and she ran to it. “Hello?”
“Hello. How are you feeling?”
Kate straightened as a shiver ran through her. Whoever this woman was, she didn’t give a crap about how she felt. “Who are you?”
“I work with your husband, and he said you weren’t feeling well.”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Curiosity thawed the icy edge in her voice. “What do you want?”
“I want you to understand what kind of man your husband is. Do you have a pen? You need to be somewhere at four thirty. Take down this address.”
Kate obeyed. “I don’t understand.” But she did, and stopped lying to herself.
* * * *
Melanie sighed and hung up. She had taken a chance on ringing, though she doubted Kate’s frailty. Colin went from describing a woman as hard as nails to one who was suddenly suicidal. She saw the holes and knew they were big enough for Colin’s slippery body to get away. Lying bastard.
She finished work at quarter to four and went home to put on some lingerie. She called Colin on the way. “Don’t be late.”
“I won’t.”
Melanie changed and went into the sitting room, wearing a gray silk dressing gown. The large window looked over a small garden fenced in by iron railings. Across the road was a small playground. Placed snugly between houses, it was carpeted by leaves.
When Melanie looked out the window, she saw a woman standing by a naked tree. She nodded, and the woman tensed. With Melanie’s second nod, the woman begrudgingly did the same.
Melanie knew Colin would turn down the side street beside the house to park his car in her garage and take few steps to the kitchen before coming to this room. The woman standing across the road would not be noticed on arrival, and Melanie would make sure she would not be important once he stepped inside. She was aware all she needed to do was give him Judas’s kiss, but she’d meant it when she said she wanted this to be one they would remember.
She heard the garage door close and threw off her dressing gown. Her bodice hugged her breasts and was attached to the scanty blank panties underneath with two silken threads and a small button Colin loved undoing. She imagined the sound of his wife’s gasp as she stood in her black lingerie.
* * * *
Kate held the tree for support. She couldn’t believe what she was watching. She wanted to run from this woman’s perverse idea of a joke but couldn’t.
She knew what Colin would do even before he entered and walked toward the woman with long strides. She had known for a long time he would not turn away from something like this. She saw her husband bend and kiss the woman. He slid his hand inside her black panties before he became aware of the open curtains.
Kate wanted to be swallowed by the tree. Her feet were like lead. She found it hard to breathe as she watched her husband walk away from his mistress toward the window. The woman grabbed his arm and said something as she moved her other hand to his zipper. His confident smile disgusted Kate. He faced the woman and let her undo his belt.
The woman’s hand disappeared inside his trousers, and Kate saw the breath filling him, could remember it from only a few nights ago when she had stroked his penis herself.
His trousers fell, and the woman bent down. Kate’s mouth opened in a silent moan of disbelief. Why was she still standing there? Was it so he couldn’t argue with her? Did she really think if she left with just the kiss behind her eyes he could plead his way out? Yes, she knew he could disentangle his way out of everything.
Suddenly she understood the woman’s tone in the phone. I want you to understand what kind of man your husband is. What had he told his mistress, that his wife was fragile and unstable? She’d seen how well he played the sympathetic, compassionate husband. At the dinner party, his falseness had made her sick, yet she’d thought it was Jeanne and Frederick she couldn’t stand.
Colin lowered his head. She imagined his eyes were closed. The woman had him in her mouth, her red lips swallowing him. When he trembled, she stood, one hand holding his erection, her fingers sliding on her mouth juices as she brought her other hand to the buttons of her bodice. She opened one before he was upon her. He undid them quickly, and his head fell down on her round breasts, as full as the moon, and he slipped his hand between the woman’s legs.
The woman looked at Kate. Their eyes met and a jolt ran through Kate. Colin’s lover was like a hurt animal, fighting back. There was no malice in her stare. Instead, her dark eyes were soft.
Kate unclenched her fists and she eased. That woman had loved and trusted the man in front of her as Kate had once done. Her heart ceased its pounding, and her hands were steady by her side as she stepped closer, stopping at the edge of the curb. Then the woman was gone from her, lost in his touches, giving herself up to him.
When Colin lifted the woman to the couch and put her down, pushing her legs further apart before kneeling in front of her, Kate turned and walked away.
* * * *
When Melanie looked again, the street was empty. The straight-backed, dignified woman was gone. She was so much more than Melanie had expected. There was no anguish in her face and no blame either. Instead, her slightly upturned mouth showed a mild acceptance. She looked as if she’d been expecting this.
Melanie closed her eyes, thankful for Kate’s calm and the lack of screams and blows. She thought her affair with Colin would end with a bang and had been expecting brutal tirades against her character from the cuckolded wife. She hadn’t thought she would gain something from Kate, the woman she had secretly hated for a year.
Colin’s tongue was soft and wide. He moved slowly around and inside her edges. Her body trembled with the gentle tide rising in her. She moaned, fondling her breast.
Soon, Colin would be inside her for the last time. He would move in that wondrous way of his. She would ask him to take her softly this time. She wanted their last time to happen slowly so he could touch every part of her. She would hold him and try not to cry for the loss of a man she never really knew.
Melanie would kiss him gently when it was over and show him the door, tell him to go home. She could already see his self-depreciating nod, that of a martyr. And, before the door closed, she would tell him, for his wife, it had to be over. She would be calm and self-assured. All day she’d imagined the things she would scream at him. But with the memory of a woman across the road, who had understood her more than the man who filled her up, she would give him nothing else.
* * * *
Kate’s steps quickened. Colin and the woman would be making love now. He would be inside her.
She didn’t know if she had started to run to enhance the distance between herself and the lovers or because the sight of them together had switched something inside her and made her want to see Christian, but she owed Colin nothing anymore.
Her chest burned, but she couldn’t stop. It had been such a long time since she ran, really ran, like a child, frightened of nothing.
Kate was afraid. She always would be. Nothing could change that, nothing could bring back the Kate of two years ago, but now she would not be reminded of her vulnerability constantly. In moments stolen away from the world and barricaded so memory could not get through, she might be able to forget, like she did this afternoon sitting at a kitchen table while eating pizza.
She got to the train station panting and had to bend, taking in air and letting it out in quick gulps. With her breaths, the man she had believed Colin to be was taken in for the last time. He was expelled with the image of him touching another woman, who had wanted to hurt her. But seeing Kate standing apart and indifferent to his touches, his mistress had to understand Kate had stopped believing in him long time ago.
When she got on the train, she remembered the first day she’d visited the parlor. She’d come out of the station and got as far as the street corner before turning back. She had clutched the bag on her shoulder as though it was a bomb. She’d wanted to cry that day for her indecision and everything that had led her to that point.
Today, when she disembarked from the train, there was no indecision. Instead she walked quickly and tried not to run. She banged on Christian’s door. When he answered it, she threw her smile at him. He caught it, and slowly, lifting his lips, gave it back. She noticed his bare feet and the paint on his t-shirt and jeans before he stepped aside without a word. She walked up the steps, feeling nervous, but she held onto her anxiety like it was the hand of a rebellious child. She would not let it run riot in this room.
Kate stopped at the top of the stairs. He watched her. She knew
he was waiting for her to unwrap her thoughts.
“What’s wrong, Kate?”
“It’s over.”
“What is?”
Kate felt their nakedness in the parlor was nothing compared to her honesty as she answered, “My marriage. Everything. I had to come.”
The shaky smile was a halfhearted apology Christian brushed aside. “It’s okay. I’m glad you did.”
Her lips quivered, and Christian put his arms around her before the first tear touched her cheek. His gentleness and understanding had finally let the tears loose. She sobbed for a life she had once believed in and for the memory of her husband moving toward another woman with a hard desire that had made him look unrelenting.
Christian embraced her until her body became still and quiet. When he stepped away, she felt tired and empty, but not like she had in the last few years. It was emptiness she felt capable of filling.
“Want to tell me about it?” Christian stroked her moist cheek.
She nodded. Holding her hand, he led her to the couch and they sat with their legs touching. She rested her head on his shoulder and, tucked under the darkening evening, she told him everything.
* * * *
Colin came home to an empty house. He went from room to room, calling Kate’s name, and thought his voice echoed in the deserted space. In the bedroom, he stood by the door and felt he’d walked into the wrong place. Suddenly, he’d lost control of the role he was playing.
Kate had left high heels on the floor at the edge of the bed. The lingerie spilled out of a bag like a dark leak. He saw a tube of lipstick by it. It was the bag that threw him off. He never saw it before. Had Kate been outside? Where did she go?
A figure came into his mind’s eye, a blur of jeans and auburn hair outside a sitting room window. No. How the hell would she have known about Melanie?
His eyes darted to the bag, evidence that his wife had more strength than he’d known. She wasn’t as frightened of going out as he thought.
The Masseuse Page 16