by Jules Moulin
Jake considered this. “How will you ever meet anyone?”
“I won’t,” Ally said without self-pity. “But that’s okay. I have a plan . . .”
“Tell me,” he said. He ran the soap along the short diagonal path that divided her leg from the start of her torso. Ally’s bikini line, if she had one. And then he moved it between her legs. “Tell me the plan.”
She winced with pleasure and closed her eyes. “Oh my goodness, that feels so . . .”
“What’s the plan? I want to know the plan.”
Ally smiled. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. What’s the plan?” He brought the soap back to her belly.
Ally relented. “When Lizzie’s out of school . . . living responsibly on her own . . . I’m going to take a French-style lover.”
“French?” Jake asked, annoyed because he wasn’t French. He was Irish and Italian and Polish. American. “Why does he have to be French?”
“No. French-style,” Ally corrected. “Meaning we love each other, and he pays for my life, but we’re not married.”
Jake paused. He looked at the wall, at the tile. “Your plan is to find a sugar daddy?”
“No,” she insisted. “A lover. We’re in love. It’s all civilized and grown-up and loving. We’re just too old to—”
“You’re his hooker?”
“No!” Ally laughed. “He’s madly in love. With me. He is. He’s just too busy for some conventional hetero-normative—”
“Hetero-normative? You mean, like, marriage? He’s too busy to marry you? What?” Jake was mocking her. “This is the plan—from Brown’s foremost Fem Ec professor?”
Ally laughed again. She leaned forward and placed her bottom between his legs. She reached and turned the faucet back on. The water was cooling and she wanted it hot.
“So how does it work? With your pimp?”
Ally grimaced, bent her knees, and swiveled around, facing Jake. She pulled her knees up to cover her chest and Jake placed the soap on the edge of the tub. “Well,” she said, “every week he sends a car and his driver takes me to a five-star hotel. Wherever he’s staying. Sometimes New York. Sometimes the driver takes me to the airport and hands me a ticket.”
“And?”
“I check in and go to the room. But he’s not there. He’s never there.”
“Why not? Where is he?”
“He’s busy.”
“Too busy? When you came all that way?”
“Yes. But the bed is covered in gifts.”
“Gifts?”
“Shopping bags filled with lingerie, chocolate, shoes . . .”
Jake shook his head. “I’m calling Meer. First thing Monday. Ally Hughes is no feminist.”
Ally rose. “That’s right. And Meer will agree: Ally’s no Marxist. Ally’s no feminist: a term that only means two hundred things to two hundred people. And Meer is the proud postfeminist because she’s ‘sex-positive’—she says. Another term that drives me nuts—because it implies that if I hate porn, I’m sex-negative. Which I’m not.”
“Obviously.”
“Then she says—accuses me—of being more third than second wave. Says I’ve proclaimed some critical stance from second wavers, and so I say, well, if she must define me, peg me, whatever—she’s welcome to call me a retro-essential-feminist-mother-with-first-wave-leanings.” She took a breath. “You can too.”
Jake smiled. “Did I push a button?”
Ally relaxed back into the water. “Sorry. But Meer’s constructions—so ivory tower—they drive me— I don’t know. So many people—they feed and clothe girls, protect women—with no allegiance to Meer or anyone’s movement.”
Jake leaned forward and placed his hands on Ally’s thighs, smoothing them in the sudsy water. “Back to the hotel?”
“Sure.” But then she sat up. She couldn’t help it. “Meer stole me from Economics. She thought I was exactly like her. Point by point. But I’m not, so now I’m her giant mistake—a huge disappointment—because I believe in the evil free markets. Capitalism. So now she wants to kick my butt to the curb.”
“Who would kick that pretty butt?”
“Meer,” she said and relaxed back again.
“Breathe,” said Jake. “She’s not in the room.”
“I know.”
“Breathe.”
“Okay, so I get all dolled up. Garters and stuff.”
“Good. Better.”
“Lace.” She smiled and rested her head on the wall to the side of the tap. “He finally comes.” She stretched out her legs on top of Jake’s. “We eat, catch up, and then he bends me over the bed and we screw for hours.”
Jake looked jealous for a moment.
“Then I wake up and he’s gone. I’m alone.”
“Without a good-bye?”
“It’s morning. He’s off! And that’s the end.”
Jake rolled his eyes.
“So I stay in bed, watch the Today show, drink a little coffee—”
“He needs to marry you.”
“I take a dive in the hotel pool—”
“One of those things—that stuff on the bed—all those gifts—there should be a ring.”
Ally smiled.
“A diamond ring. Call me old-fashioned.”
“The bellman comes up, takes down my bags—”
“The ring, Ally.”
“Why, Jake? Why the ring?”
“To make it real.”
“The ring makes it real?”
“It makes it a start to something real.”
Ally smirked. “Then I go home and it happens again, every few weeks in all different cities around the world. Paris, London, Rome, London . . .” She sat forward, up on her knees, then stretched out her body on top of his. The tops of her thighs on top of his thighs. Her belly to his belly. Her lips to his lips.
“Shitty plan,” he said, and she kissed him. “Fancy shit and a guy you only see twice a month?”
“I know,” she said. “I’m so ashamed.” She wasn’t at all.
Jake’s leer moved past her and landed on a pail perched by his foot. Vinyl sea creatures sat inside it, frogs, fish, snails, next to goggles and a gold bottle of No More Tears. He kicked it all off the edge of the tub.
“Whoops!” Ally turned toward the crash. “You did that on purpose!”
“Yup.” He smiled. They locked eyes as he gripped her ass. Ally felt him grow. Quickly again, it happened so fast, in a matter of seconds, he was large, inflamed, and pressed against her inner thigh.
They had made love already twice in the bath and he wanted her again? Ally was flattered, embarrassed, pleased.
He peeled a tendril of hair from her cheek and tucked it away behind her ear.
She studied him too: His dark blue eyes. The valentine curve of his fleshy lips, bright red and broken from all her sucking. His thick, wet lashes.
She’d never made love in daylight before. She could see him so clearly. Every pore. Every scar. Every freckle.
But it had to be noon. She had so much to do, besides grading papers. “Jake,” she said gently, “I’ve loved this so much . . .” She studied his pink, dewy face.
“But we should get out and get on with our day?”
Ally nodded and smiled regretfully.
“CAM GIRL? CAMMING? WHAT is that?” Ally stood at the kitchen counter, chopping onions to cook a brisket.
She needed something to savor that morning, a fleshy food, warm and dripping, to bite and chew and swallow. She’d tripled the wine and the brown sugar and simmered the beef for six long hours on low, low, low, until it would practically melt in her mouth.
“They set up a camera and people sign in and it’s live,” Jake explained, his cap pulled low and sunglasses on. He was walking north on Fifth Avenue, weaving t
hrough tourists, back to the St. Regis.
“It’s live?” Ally asked, chopping and holding the phone with her shoulder.
“Yes,” he said.
“What do they do?”
“People pay money to, you know, watch.”
“Watch what?”
“To tell the girls—what to do.”
Ally stopped chopping and put down the knife. “Are you kidding?”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
“Like sexual things? Naked things?”
“The girls get off or dance around. Some have sex.”
“Is it recorded?”
“It can be,” said Jake.
Ally said nothing. She turned and looked around the kitchen. What was going on with this child? What was Lizzie thinking? “Has she—has she started this yet?”
“She said she has an audition today. She’s going this morning with Weather.”
Ally turned and walked out of the kitchen, furious. “That Weather. That girl—always has the most bizarre— You should see her.” She didn’t speak as she walked down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor.
After some moments, Jake wasn’t sure if she’d hung up or not. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help? Can I come over?”
“I won’t be here. I’m going into town. I’m going to find her and lock her up.” Ally stepped into her closet, looked around. She found a pair of jeans and pulled them on over her underwear.
“Tell her I told you. She asked me not to, but I don’t care.”
“Thank you,” she said, zipping up her jeans.
“I thought you might—”
“Yes. Thanks. It’s right that you called. How did you leave it? Was she mad?”
“We left it fine.”
“We have a rule. I call three times and she calls back. She’s breaking the rule. It’s unbreakable. She’s ignoring me.”
“She just laughed. I told you she would.”
“Good,” Ally said, unrelieved. “Will you see her on set?”
“No, that’s done. She did her line. But I can call her.”
“Please, and tell her to call me. Please.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Jake?” she asked plaintively. “Why would she do this? Did she say?”
“She wants her nose.”
Ally closed her eyes in anguish.
—
Minutes later on Cranberry Street, Ally, dressed, flew down the stairs. She grabbed her purse and keys from the table. She grabbed an umbrella from inside the closet. The bell rang as she opened the door.
The UPS man stood on the stoop. “Morning, Ally.”
“Morning, Frank.” Surprised, she signed for the unexpected box. She thanked Frank, took it inside, and set it on the floor at the foot of the stairs.
Quickly she glanced at the little white sticker in the top left corner, to see who’d sent it. “La Perla?”
Then she stood up, as straight as an arrow. It must be a gift, but from Ted? Ally drew a quick breath in.
Ted?
Or Jake? Or Jake.
AFTER HER FIRST THREE sexless years, Ally decided that not having sex brought about its own brand of thrill. Maybe not widely known or exalted. In America. Or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. But celibacy, chosen or not, was underrated, she decided. It was. She was sure. She was sure that monks knew some kind of joy, a spiritual pleasure, sensual even, that sex-having people did not understand.
“It’s the kind of pleasure that brings you back to when you were ten,” she explained to Anna one day on the phone. Before puberty reared its head. “Remember? When life was about morning cartoons? Snuggling with your doll? When you were eight?”
“Actually,” Anna explained, “the whole idea of a latent period in middle childhood? All that Freud shit? That’s been debunked. Middle childhood is sexual. Sort of.” Anna was studying psychiatry.
“I’m not talking Freud,” Ally argued. “I’m talking about the pleasure of being barefoot in spring. Riding bikes. Apple slices. All those bubble baths. Baking cookies, cocoa in winter, lemonade in summer . . .”
“I don’t think we had the same childhood,” Anna said.
Ally ignored this. “My point is: Pleasure was about something else. It was different, sure, but comparable, right? To sex? Just different. Right?”
“I think you need to get laid, Ally.”
—
She knew it was silly to be modest now, now that they had had sex in the bathtub twice in the bright light of morning. But she couldn’t help it.
She wasn’t the type to walk around naked in front of anyone, even a man who had seen every inch of her body in daylight.
Quickly she dressed and brushed her hair, thinking of all she had to do: the papers, the grades due Monday. Monday by noon. She had to buy bananas. The hampers were full and she had to buy bleach to wash the whites. She had also promised to drive to Connecticut, to an antique toy store, to buy figurines for Lizzie’s report. The diorama was due on Tuesday. Tuesday, which was Lizzie’s birthday. She needed vanilla to bake Lizzie’s cake. She needed to sign her up for camp.
“Can I come with you?” Jake asked, stepping from the bathroom, pink and clean, zipping up his jeans.
“Where?”
“To Mystic, right?”
Ally paused. She looked concerned.
As much as she had enjoyed herself, enjoyed Jake, Lizzie was due home in a day. Sunday morning. Yes, that meant they had twenty-four hours, but the whole thing had to end sometime. He couldn’t spend the night again. Could he?
Or could he?
Did he want to?
That would be cutting it way too close.
But another part of Ally, an aching part, wanted him to stay and stay and stay. She looked down at his sock on the floor. She wanted that sock to stay there forever. On her floor. Next to her bed. She would never complain about that sock. “Jake,” she said kindly, pleading in a way, turning to him.
“What? Say it. We’ve had our fun?”
“That’s not what I was—”
“You don’t want company on your drive?”
Yes, she did, but—
“Let’s grab lunch.”
“What if—what if—someone sees us?”
Jake picked up his button-down shirt. He couldn’t find his T-shirt. “At some little store in a whole other state?” He pulled his arm through it.
Ally put her brush down and looked at the bed, its rumpled sheets and fraying blanket. She then looked at Jake as he buttoned his shirt. If she sent him home now, would she see him again? Ever? No.
“Come on,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “We’ll eat oysters and churn butter.” He ran his fingers through his thick wet hair. “It’s a beautiful day.” He turned and started to straighten the bed.
“You don’t have to—” She crossed to him.
“Yes, I do.” She joined him and they pulled up the top sheet together, then the blanket. Jake began to tuck them in.
Ally then stopped. She was struck by how easy it was to make a bed with someone else. It’s a two-person job, a bed. It’s a two-person job, this life.
And then she said, “I don’t tuck.”
Jake looked up. “Why not?”
“Why tuck when you’ll kick it out tonight?”
Jake grabbed the pillows. He threw them to her and she arranged them.
“You know,” he said, picking up his sneakers, “it’s fun to escape from your life for an hour, but it’s more fun to do it with a friend.”
LIZZIE HAD FASHIONED HER costume at Weather’s. They stood in front of the bathroom mirror.
She was please
d. Brown ringlets hung to her waist. Fake red nails extended her fingers. Colored contacts turned her eyes blue. She drew, with precision, two fake birthmarks, one on her back and one on her belly, with waterproof mascara, and they both wore stilettos, shorts, and white tank tops.
“Wife beaters,” Lizzie said as they gazed at themselves. “That’s what these are called.”
“We don’t look like battered wives,” Weather replied. “We look like hookers.”
Lizzie turned to her and smiled. “Perfect.”
—
Ally took the train to Fourteenth. She walked eight blocks through the sweltering heat to Lizzie’s building.
She buzzed and buzzed with no real hope, then took out her phone and looked for a place to sit and wait.
Across the street, she found a stoop in a patch of shade under some blue wood scaffolding. From there she could see east and west across the whole block. She’d see Lizzie first when Lizzie came home.
“I already texted you. You ignored those,” she started, leaving her a message. “And we have a deal. Three calls—you call me back. Three calls. And this is, like, my twentieth. Two days. I’m upset.”
She left it at that.
She looked across the street at Lizzie’s building and wondered why they both lived alone.
Wasn’t it the millennial thing? Kids fresh from school living with their parents? Lizzie could have an entire floor on Cranberry Street.
Ally felt badly. She should have offered. Now she would. She called Lizzie back. “By the way, I’m sitting outside here, at your building, and I’m wondering why you’re paying rent when you don’t have to. I know you need your freedom—but it seems so silly. It’s really a very American thing. To insist on living on your own. Okay? Call me.”
—
Lizzie ignored her mother’s call. They rode the train to Brooklyn, hopped off on Carroll, and walked to Red Hook.
Across Third Avenue and under the Gowanus, they found the building. Only the ground floor looked alive, with a limousine depot and a small shop selling radiator parts. Fishman had rented the top two floors, the ninth and tenth, with fourteen offices inside each. The rest lay fallow, collecting soot.
They looked for the entrance for fifteen minutes and finally found it around the block, where Fishman was waiting.