“This is more fun—there’s an element of walking along a high cliff. We could both get busted—crash and burn.”
“Not likely. The kids are at school and he’s never home before five.”
“What about the neighbors?”
“The whole street empties out before nine o’clock. Everybody works except Phyllis Copperfield across the street, and she’s a friend. She knows about you. She doesn’t know about this. But she’s off on a run and then she’ll come back and nap with her baby.”
They looked at each other. There was an inevitable, though unspoken, element of evaluation about it. They had told each other so much on the telephone. She knew of his childless marriage to Marta, a good woman who was ten years older than he, and of his searching for someone, seeking to feel passion again. And she had told him of Warren’s essential prudishness, a religious man for whom lovemaking was a very specific kind of performance, with such elaborate trappings of romance that she felt stifled by it all—poor Warren never got beyond his sense of the kiss and the fade-out. She had told him all of this over the telephone, several weeks ago. They had established that both of them loved their spouses, and that this meeting would be nothing more than what the Internet site on which they had met claimed to provide: people mutually looking for extramarital excitement without commitment.
“What does this Phyllis person know about me?”
“Just that I have a friend online.”
“Jesus—you told her? Did you say what the site was?”
“No, no, no, no, no. I would never tell anyone a thing like that. You’re the only one who knows about that. I just told her I’d met someone I liked talking to.”
“You didn’t name me.”
“No. God, no.”
“Well, really.”
“You haven’t talked to any friend about me?”
“Not one, no.”
“Well, Phyllis doesn’t know anything.”
“Look,” he said. “Is it safe here for us?”
“Yes.”
“And he suspects nothing.”
“Nothing,” she said. “Believe me. I pay the bills. I take care of everything.”
“I still worry about the e-mails. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“They’re in a file on my own computer, buried in code. Trust me. It takes three different passwords to get to it.”
“And you’ve never done this before.”
“We’ve been through all that.”
“I’d like to hear you say it, anyway.”
“You’re the first and only,” she said.
His gaze went around the room. “I drove like a crazy man, getting here.”
“You’re nervous,” she said. “Me, too.”
“I was your first hit on the site.”
“Nathan,” she said.
“I don’t guess it makes much difference.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I make it a regular practice. I’ve seen five hundred different women this way.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m scared,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d be so scared.”
This was one of the things she liked about him. That he could talk this way so simply and honestly about his feelings.
“Nathan,” she said.
His smile changed everything about his face. She liked that, too. “Here we are,” he murmured.
Again, they were simply staring at each other. She felt the breathlessness she had experienced earlier. She held still.
He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’ve dreamed about this. You’re even prettier than your picture.”
“You sound even sexier in person,” she got out.
“Those wonderful phone calls—I never would’ve believed people could do those things over the telephone.”
“Me, either.”
He said nothing for what seemed a long time. He sat there, staring, another evaluative pause, as if the two of them were waiting to recognize each other. His eyes were slate dark, and big. They looked past her own, into her.
She began to speak, asking if he wanted a cup of coffee, but he was rising, coming toward her, and she opened her arms.
“Where’s the bedroom,” he said. “Where do we go?”
She led him into the spare bedroom, and while she pulled the blanket back he got out of his clothes. The speed of this surprised her. She found it awkward, as close as they had been on the telephone. It had been wild on the telephone. She had lain awake nights, replaying it all in the dark, full of yearning. He flopped onto the bed, rolled to his back with his arms at his sides, gazing at her, waiting for her to remove her robe. She let it drop to one hand, and tossed it against the baseboard. She wanted to talk more, to go slowly. “Beautiful,” he murmured, smiling. It was such a good, wide smile. She crawled in next to him and when he put his mouth on her breast she patted the back of his head. “Easy, baby, we’ve got all morning.”
He looked up. “I’m hungry for you.”
“Can we talk a little first?”
He lay over on his back. “Okay. Of course—I’m sorry.”
“It’s just that it’s so new. I want to enjoy it all.”
“Okay.” He smiled and nodded. “Me, too. I want to savor it.”
She leaned up on one elbow and looked at him. “How are you?”
“I’m on fire.”
“I’m still so nervous,” she said.
He pulled her down, and began kissing her. His hands were rough—the skin was rough, callused—and she felt the power in the fingers, moving on her back and shoulders. He rolled with her, and was on top, kissing her neck, muttering words. She couldn’t hear the words, and she tried to push his shoulders, wanted him to support himself a little so she could catch her breath. He did so, came to a kneeling position, straddling her. “I want to look at you.”
“Yes,” she said. She could feel it now, the excitement, all that she’d ached for and not had, the letting go, utterly.
“Do me?” he murmured, almost shy, offering himself.
“Oh,” she said, sitting up, coming to him. “Oh, yes. I will. I will.”
Afterward, they lay quietly, he with one leg over her abdomen, one hand on the side of her face. “I got married to Warren so young,” she said. “I didn’t know anything.”
“None of us did, at one time, I guess.”
“We were babies.”
“Everybody says just to leave.”
“Well, I won’t—I can’t. I love him.”
He stared. “I’m exactly the same about it.”
“It’s just that you and I need sparks. Right?”
“That’s us,” he said, and kissed her ear.
They were quiet, listening to a dog barking in the neighborhood.
“There’s not much else to say,” he murmured. “But we keep having to say it.”
“Warren told me before that this—that anything other than, well, the normal thing, you know—that it makes him feel sinful.”
“You had no trouble talking about all this on the telephone. Missionary position, right?”
She put her head on his shoulder and sighed.
“Religion,” Nathan said. “It’s killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined, and it’s ruined the pleasure of the rest of us.”
“Let’s not talk about it, now,” she told him.
“I think it’s a sin for him to deny himself the pleasure you can provide.”
“That’s sexy.”
He started kissing her again. She worried about her stomach a little, with the coffee she’d drunk. But she had dreamed of this, of not having to worry or hold back from being curious, the strongest element of herself, wanting to know, to feel it all, and wanting it to go on. As it did go on, and she lost herself in it, reveling in it for the difference from how things had always been. She had known this kind of experience only from books, and from some of the sites she had wandered among on the Internet. He was there fo
r her at every turn; his imagination was boundless. The morning went fast.
Finally, he pulled the blanket with him, removing himself gently and getting out of the bed, and he stood there, looking around the room. “I expected more religious kinds of stuff on the walls.”
She saw the gleam of sweat on his chest and abdomen, and the little lines of where her nails had scratched his upper arms. “No,” she said. “It’s just the Bible for him, you know.”
“A waste.”
“I thought it was sweet when he and I were first together. I did. I thought it meant he’d be true. And he is. He’s sweet. He calls me angel. And I actually like it when he does that. We have a nice family life. A good life—like you and Marta.”
“Marta’s a fool,” he said. “But then so am I.”
“You’re feeling guilty.”
“No.” He turned slightly, still taking in the room. “A little, maybe. I must not be a very nice man.”
This upset her. She lifted herself slightly and looked at him. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You’re a wonderful person.”
“Yeah. Well. I think sometimes maybe it’s me, you know. Maybe I just don’t stir her drink.”
“Does she get any pleasure—I’m sorry. We’ve been through this.”
He looked at her. “I gave you pleasure. I saw it and felt it.”
“Oh, yes.”
A moment later, he said, “This isn’t where you sleep.”
“No.”
“Let’s do it in there.”
“Okay.”
“One minute,” he said, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. She got up, put her robe back on, then stepped to the window and looked out through the little slit in the blinds. No one on the street. The dog was still sending its two-note complaint into the sunny air.
In the kitchen she put the water on for coffee, and then she went back down the hall to the bathroom door. “I’m making coffee.”
“I don’t ever drink it. Remember?”
“Do you mind if I have some?”
He opened the door. He still had the blanket wrapped around him. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“Let’s have something to eat and then go back,” she said.
“We don’t have that much time, baby.”
She turned the burner off and let him lead her into the master bedroom. But then she hesitated, pulled back, so that he stopped and his hand tightened on her wrist.
“I don’t know,” she said. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I sleep here every night.”
He looked at the room, still holding her wrist. “That makes it especially good.”
“Please,” she said. “I know it’s silly. But I just can’t.”
He let go, and walked by her, across to the other room. She closed the door and paused there for a few seconds. She would never have believed that her life could become as strange as this. Her heart was thudding against her breastbone. She had never felt more alive. Except that there was also a kind of macabre sense that she had opened a little crevice in a fortification on the other side of which something awful awaited—there did seem to be an element of morbidness about all this. She could not decide if it was something she remembered from her upbringing or if it was real. She was not a bad person. She was gentle and loving to her husband, the children, her parents, his, the whole family, everyone she knew. Yet the whole of her previous existence seemed unreal, now, distant, a faint rumor.
She put her hand on the wall and steadied herself.
He was waiting for her. There was a curve to his eyebrows that she had liked from the first glance at his picture online. He patted the bed by his side. And she went to him.
She said his name, and kissed along his collarbone. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “It’s just a silly superstition, and I’m more comfortable here. You want me to be comfortable, don’t you?” He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a sound, moving against her.
“Nathan?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. And he put his face down in the pillow at her ear. “Sweet, oh, so sweet. I don’t care, I don’t care.”
She nuzzled his neck and moved herself, taking him deeper, and feeling the thrill. “Oh, let’s just keep on, baby. Let’s just keep on.” She moaned into the hollow of his shoulder.
Later, showering alone, she thought the rest of their time together might be long. It troubled her, and she hummed aloud, listening to the echo of her voice and knowing he could hear it, too. He was making coffee for her. (Getting her cup and setting out the French press and showing him how it worked provided a pleasant diversion about which they could tease—he had never heard of French press coffee. “French press,” he said. “Sounds like a sex act.” She smiled at him and stood quite still while he kissed the side of her neck.)
Now, drying off, she saw mental images of the children, and of Warren—unwanted reminders. She brushed them away, felt it as a mental exercise akin to this motion of drying herself with the towel. She put her robe on and walked out and made her way to the kitchen. There he sat, naked, turning the pages of the newspaper. She went and perched on his knee, kissing him. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“Oh,” he said. “Let’s.”
The phone rang this time, just as she straddled him, and they paused. He moved once inside her and then held her by the arms.
“Don’t answer it.”
“No.”
They waited. It rang and rang. Finally she disengaged herself and went to answer it. He said nothing. It was Warren, calling from work.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“You okay?” he asked. “You sound breathless. It rang and rang. I was about to hang up.”
“I was in the other room. I ran to answer the phone.”
“Should’ve let the machine get it.”
“I don’t have it on.”
He breathed into the line.
“Warren, what is it?” she said.
“I’m going to take off early—so I’ll pick up the kids from school.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah—you relax a little.”
“That’s sweet,” she said.
“See you in a little while.”
“Okay.”
She put the receiver down and turned to find Nathan getting into his clothes. “Oh,” she said. “We’ve got an hour, still.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
But the lovemaking this time felt rushed and faintly mechanical; they finished and got dressed, and then went into the kitchen, to the breakfast nook, where she drank cold coffee, and he had a glass of orange juice. The sunlight through the leaves at the window gave a soft green cast to the room, and she had the thought that this was something she would not notice normally.
She told him about it.
“I think women get all the credit for noticing things. I think it makes them feel like they’ve got to.”
“No,” she said. “I honestly don’t notice that sort of thing. Small things, I mean.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She looked out at all the shades of green on the back lawn, and felt the day closing too fast, the time slipping.
A moment later, he said, “I never believed I’d do a thing like this.”
“I know. God! I know.”
“I’ve got to go soon.”
She touched his hand. “I miss you already.”
“Are we terrible people?” he said, and he looked like he might cry.
She smiled, through what she realized now was her own weeping. He was waiting for her answer.
Then: “Are we?”
“Yes,” she told him.
When he left, he walked with his briefcase held up under his left arm, striding quickly away, without looking back. She watched him for part of it, but then worried about crazy Phyllis across the street, and closed the door. She went to the bedroom window and watched him from t
here. He hurried along, looking a little funny, a man with an appointment for which he was late, his coat lifting in the breeze.
She moved through the house putting things back to normal. She could feel the ghost-pressure of him between her legs, and she took another shower, washing carefully, taking extra care of her neck, her breasts, her inner thighs. She cleaned her teeth again, and looked at her mouth.
Finally she got into her jeans, blouse, flats, pinned her hair back, and went into the bedroom to stare out the window. She saw Phyllis come out and look over. Phyllis walked across the street and knocked on her door.
Diana took her time going to answer it. When she did, Phyllis went by her into the living room. “I’m sleepy. I just had a nap, and I’m exhausted and the baby’s asleep. I can’t stay. Tell me who he is.”
“He’s—he wanted to sell me a direct TV network plan.”
Phyllis stared. “Come on—it’s not your Internet friend?”
“No,” Diana said through a tightening at her chest. “Nothing so exciting.”
“I wish it was—I’d tell you to send him over to me. I’m going batshit over there.”
“Can’t help you. Next time I have a Jehovah’s Witness, you’re first on the list.”
“Don’t be so high and mighty.”
“I’m just kidding.” She held the door for her friend, realizing that she wished to extricate herself, not just for the moment, but for good. Phyllis could find some other woman to be her neighborhood sounding board. In the next instant, as Phyllis stepped by her out onto the little stoop, the realization arrived that this feeling was an aspect of something else: everything was changing. She had wanted so badly only to taste fully the passion that she believed was in her nature.
“I’m going to reserve a bed on the psychiatric ward,” Phyllis said. “If you’re not going to provide any excitement. I thought there might be something to do this afternoon other than watching the fucking idiot box and cable.”
At last, alone, she lay on the sofa and tried to drift off. It would be all right to be asleep when Warren and the children arrived. But sleep eluded her.
The children came in first, a welter of noise and argument. Warren was still out at the car, collecting their book bags, and a raincoat that Lauren had left at school, last week. He came up to the door with it draped over his arm, carrying their bags.
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