The Naked Truth

by Leslie Morgan

  * * *

  Still wet from the shower the next morning, my hair wrapped in a towel, I riffled through the shirts in my closet. Did I have the guts to do it? I had to give Marc some kind of visual sign, an answer to his dirty texts. Plus, I had to do something, anything, to stop feeling haunted by Dylan’s email.

  I felt like calling KC, but some things you have to decide yourself. Squaring my shoulders for courage, I took a pale blue blouse off its hanger and pulled on the Capezio pants. Then, for the first time in my adult life, I walked out my door braless. Thank God my mother was dead.

  At the station, I didn’t say hi to Marc or make eye contact. I can’t tell you what he was wearing or if he’d shaved that morning. I stood in front of his desk, as I usually did, with my back (and the ballet leggings, and what was inside them) a few inches from him. I pretended to read my notes, when I was actually trying not to flush fire engine red.

  After counting to fifteen in my head, I unbuttoned one more button on my blouse, and turned and leaned in front of Marc’s desk, pretending to pick up a pencil from the floor. To everyone else, I’m sure I looked totally normal. Maybe.

  Marc froze. Pretending to read my flash cards, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. After a moment, he went back to staring at his computer. He said nothing.

  I got a text as soon as I’d left the studio after my segment.

  I need to see you. Alone. Tonight.

  So he had noticed.

  I texted back. I can’t. Kids will be home.

  He replied right away, as if he’d been holding his phone and counting the seconds until I responded.

  Then now. I have to fucking see you right away.

  Laughing, I texted him again. Cleaning lady is here.

  This was fun.

  I don’t care. I’ll cover your mouth when I make you come, so she won’t hear you scream.

  God, he was bold.

  Ok, I texted back. Then I typed my home address into the phone. And pressed send.

  * * *

  The doorbell rang. So little time had passed since I’d texted Marc my address, it was as if he’d run all the red lights and parked sideways in front of my house like a character in a Batman comic. I opened the door, and there he was, adorable, his hands jammed into his jean jacket pockets. His hair was ruffled and his face unshaven. As soon as I let him into the foyer, he slammed the door shut with his foot and pushed me up against the mirror in my hallway and started kissing me.

  “Jesus, I could hardly drive, my cock was so hard.”

  He closed his eyes and started kissing me again, his mouth open, his tongue adamant. My back was pressed up against the gold lacquered mirror frame. He slipped his hands up my blue shirt and cupped a breast in each hand.

  “Your breasts are gorgeous,” he said, palming them. “Nice trick, showing them to me like that. Ahh, they feel good, too. I knew they would.”

  Before I could do more than kiss him back, he slipped his right palm down the front of my yoga pants, cupping his warm hand over my crotch.

  “I’m keeping these pants,” he said. “So no one else can see you wear them.”

  Then he slipped two fingers inside me. I was soaked. My knees buckled. He let out a groan.

  The basement door squeaked. I whirled around, holding his wet hand behind me.

  “Kiki!” I said quickly. “This is my friend Marc.”

  Marc flushed pink to his temples. He stepped beside me and folded his hands over the zipper of his jeans. I wiped his saliva off my lips with the back of my hand. Our housekeeper, Kiki, had taken care of the kids, the cats, our house, and me for over ten years. During which time she’d read all my rough drafts, tweaked my TV makeup, seen me cry a dozen times, heard me yell at the kids, checked on me while I was vomiting from food poisoning, and clucked over the weight I lost while worrying about my divorce. She’d probably seen Marty twice during that entire time.

  “Nice to meet you.” She greeted Marc in her Japanese accent, with a small, formal bow, as if he were a visiting diplomat. “Can I get you both something to drink, Miss Leslie?”

  Kiki always pronounced my name Resrie. Which seemed fair, because the kids had altered her name from Keiko to Kiki when they were little. She made all of us keep calling her that, even after Tim and Bell learned better pronunciation skills. “Sexier name,” she had deadpanned to me one day when we were home alone together.

  “Ah, no, that’s okay, Kiki. I’m going to show Marc the house. We’ll have a drink later.”

  “I go back to the laundry,” Kiki said, trying to keep her face expressionless. Her jaw twitched slightly and her black eyes sparkled in amusement. As I ushered Marc up the curving mahogany staircase to my bedroom, I looked over my shoulder. Kiki simpered at me, and made the universal finger shake with her free hand that meant “smoking-hot handsome,” snickering as she retreated down the basement steps.

  As soon as we were upstairs in my bedroom, I started taking off Marc’s clothes. Unlike with Dylan, I wasn’t on edge with Marc. It was as if I’d saved up my sexual desire for years and it all came out in bed with him. True to his promise, he made me scream. Twice. He couldn’t cover my mouth, though, because at the time he was using both hands to spread my legs as far apart as he could, his unlined, unshaven cheeks rough on my thighs as I squirmed. He was into nipple biting, which I’m not in general, but at the time, it turned me on. Everything he did turned me on. Luckily, we’d turned his favorite country playlist to the highest volume on my bedroom stereo. Forget about alarming the cats and freaking out Kiki; I was worried about my neighbors and strangers on the sidewalk calling the po-po.

  Afterward, exhausted, I lay in his arms with the afternoon sunlight streaming through the French doors to the balcony. Marc reached over to turn down the volume on the music, my sea-green sheets wrapped around his waist. I watched him in wonder. He had dark brown chest hair, muscular pecs despite his skinniness, and forearms sprinkled with the same dark hair. We talked—well, he talked, and I listened—about his problems and ambitions, much in the same way my kids and their friends talked to me about where they wanted to go to college.

  He began reciting, starting in 1970, the Country Music Association’s annual Song of the Year.

  “You show-off,” I teased, laughing. He was showing off. However, the real reason for my giddiness was awe that I had just had sex with a handsome thirty-year-old sexpot who was naked in my bed. I felt like taking a video to prove it to KC and Winnie.

  “What year were you born?” Marc asked, oblivious to my delight. “I’ll tell you your song.”

  “Ha, nice try, Marc,” I retorted. “NFW. I’m not telling you how old I am.”

  “Nineteen seventy-three?” he guessed, smiling, looking like a country music star himself.

  He was off by almost ten years. “Not telling,” I insisted. I formed the words that would explain how complicated age is for women. Then I hesitated. Sharing about myself felt inappropriate, as if I were the teacher or therapist here, and shouldn’t divulge personal details about myself, even as I encouraged Marc to open up himself.

  I had to change the subject to something more preferable than my age.

  “So . . . what do you think of anal? I tried it a few times in high school.” I rolled over and sat up on one elbow. “I had a crazy adventurous older boyfriend. We didn’t fully understand the importance of lubrication. It wasn’t a terribly successful experiment. Ouch.”

  Marc bolted up on the pillow next to me. He shook his head in the afternoon sun. He examined me in wonder, with a melting cookie-dough glow in his eyes.

  “You are fucking kidding me. Are you perfect? It’s the one thing I’ve never done. Can we please do it right this minute?”

  His dick grew hard under the sheet, almost like a Playboy cartoon drawing.

  He started kissing my lips like they were edible fruit. He turned me over and cupped the sides of my naked butt in his hands. Above my bed I’d installed a large rectangular mirror right after
Marty moved out, to bring the light into the bedroom. In the glass, I could see Marc looking at my ass like he was afraid it might vaporize if he didn’t get cracking. I reached over for an industrial bottle of lube from my bedside drawer.

  “Use a ton,” I said, meaning it.

  I watched him in the mirror as he entered me from behind. He was gentle, taking it slow. He had his eyes closed almost the whole time, his lashes forming half-moons. The expression on his face, reflected in the mirror above my head, was like a child tasting his first ice cream cone.

  I asked him how it felt.

  “Amazing,” he managed to gush, his eyes still shut.

  In all my years, I’d never knowingly been a man’s “first” in anything. It felt like one of the most intimate things I’d ever done with another human being. Life as a forty-nine-year-old MILF was as confusing, and electrifying, as being a teenager in the 1970s.

  Later, as we soaped each other up with green Vitabath in the shower, he leaned over to kiss me again, water pouring down over us. I could feel him getting hard against my thigh. He groaned and pressed me against the shower wall tile.

  I suddenly remembered the rest of my life—specifically, the daughter I needed to deliver to the summer camp play. I pushed his chest away and grabbed a towel. I lunged for my phone, which I’d managed to throw in the sink at some point, to check the time. I had to pick Bella up in seven minutes.

  “Oh my God, Marc! You have to go.”

  After a hasty good-bye, I jumped in the TT, rushed to pick up Bella from Marty’s babysitter, and we sped to the summer camp amphitheater. When I checked my phone at intermission, I got Marc’s first text.

  You’re not going to be able to walk tomorrow, he wrote, adding a devil-head emoji.

  I could barely walk now, so he was probably right.

  Then, an hour after Marc’s smiling-devil emoji, another text arrived. It was right after the final curtain call. The cast of ninth graders had finished bowing amidst thunderous parental applause. The mom next to me was so close, I could smell the mint gum on her breath and see the chips in her pink nail polish. I knew she’d think less of me, that she’d judge any woman, especially an older mom like me, for having a sex life that included a wild daytime frolic with a man twenty years younger. I didn’t care what she thought, but I also didn’t want her bad-mouthing me to other moms, and I certainly did not want my kids to hear any nasty rumors about me. So I angled my phone away from her, so she couldn’t read my screen.

  Babe, that was incredible. Totally mind-blowing. I had to do that. You are unforgettable. But . . . I have a girlfriend. I don’t want to ruin it with her. So, I think this has to be a one-time thing. Are you okay with that?

  On what etiquette planet is it okay to tell me now that he has a girlfriend?

  Goddamn younger men. They (according to my data set of two) want . . . everything. Adorable, direct, lighthearted, and ridiculously talented between the sheets, maybe because they came of age with 24/7 access to Internet porn . . . and then, poof! They’re done?

  Having sex with twentysomethings was like using crack. Once.

  I could still taste Marc on my lips, and he couldn’t see me again? Ironically, Marc made me feel terrific—valued—because I was older and wiser. Maybe someone would say Marc was using me for sex, or that I was using him. Maybe both were true. However, the absence of long-term intention, coupled with our intense desire for each other, felt simple and refreshing, like gulping cold water after a long run in the desert. I wanted to see him again, soon. And he wanted to see me again never?

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or both. Sitting in the theater, clutching my phone, watching children I’d known since kindergarten hug their parents on the varnished wood stage, I felt delirious. And, as I crossed my legs, very sore. This was not, in any of its physical or psychological details, how I imagined my life would be the day Marty moved out and I vowed never to have sex again. How was it possible that Marc could make me feel so sought-after, and so rejected, at the same time? Was this yet another chapter in the art of masculine manipulation, a man telling me again, I decide how, and when, you matter to me? Had I fallen yet again for a man’s pursuit and abandonment?

  I didn’t know. I sat back, exhausted by the mental gymnastics. The bottom line: despite the flimflam of Marc and Dylan and Damon, or maybe because of it, my old married life didn’t hold a tiny Bic lighter to my new single one. This adventure, no matter where it led, was better than the slow death of being with a man who didn’t love me, or even like me. But obviously, I had more to learn about men, and what I wanted from them.

  I smiled to myself and slipped the phone in my purse without replying.

  * * *

  “Did you hear Mishka’s back?” Bill asked, holding a yellow measuring tape larger than the Crazy Cat Lady mug the kids had given me for Mother’s Day. Bill was the owner of the construction company Marty and I had used for our kitchen renovation a few years back. I’d asked him to stop by to give me an estimate to repaint the walls after years of scuff marks and scratches caused by Timmy using the hallway as a pitcher’s bullpen.

  Mishka was the project manager from Texas who’d overseen the remodel. He’d practically lived in our house for six months, six in the morning to four in the afternoon, five days a week. I saw him about a hundred times more than I saw Marty.

  I remembered something eleven-year-old Bella had said at the time.

  “Mom, why does Mishka stare at you like that? His face gets all loose.”

  I’d thought I was the one who had a crush on Mishka. He was one of those quiet men, always pausing before he answered a question. He was clean-shaven, with biceps large enough to pouf out the sleeves of his work shirts, like he’d stashed two blueberry muffins under the fabric. On his breaks, he liked to ask me about the national parks I’d hiked. Big Bend in Texas was the top of both our bucket lists.

  It had not occurred to me that Mishka had a crush on me, too. He was ten years younger, which made me feel like a pedophile. (This was before I knew about younger guys and MILFs.) I started sneaking longer looks at him. Bella was right. He did stare at me for a few beats longer than normal, and his eyes lost focus when talking about wall studs and retractable screen doors. And we think children don’t notice these things. However, I’d never let on to anyone, even myself, that there was chemistry between us. Part of the unwritten good-wife contract was that I had to erase men as sexual beings, and just as important, to block it out when men, like Mishka, looked at me, even though I’d craved that kind of attention. Being a wife got complicated.

  “Glad to hear that,” I said to Bill. “Last I knew, he was somewhere in Hawaii. On Oahu’s north shore. Working as a lifeguard? Engaged to marry a local girl.”

  “Yep,” Bill explained. “He’s back to being single and he’s done being a beach bum. Starting his own subcontracting business. Drywall, painting, that kind of thing. You could hire him instead if you want. Help him get started. We’re probably too busy for this small a job, anyway.”

  Hmmm.

  After Bill left, I texted the number he’d given me for Mishka. He wrote back a few hours later.

  Great to hear from you!!!!!!!

  There were almost as many exclamation points as there were actual letters.

  I asked if he could stop by to give me an estimate. Friday at two o’clock, the doorbell rang, echoing up two flights of stairs to my office. I was lost in my computer like it was another galaxy.

  “Fuck,” I yelled. I hated when this happened, when I was writing furiously and found myself jolted back to reality by mundane life events like mail delivery. Half of what I paid Kiki for during the two days a week she worked was to open the door.

  I thought it was probably UPS, or neighborhood kids selling candy bars. I thundered down the stairs before whoever was ringing the bell abandoned ship and decided to come back to interrupt me on another day. I threw open the door, breathless. There stood Mishka, his light brown hair streaked blon
d and falling to his shoulders now, like the Hawaiian surfer he’d become. A slight tan still colored his cheeks under the stubble. He wore faded jeans, and had his hands folded under his armpits like a nine-year-old boy.

  He grinned at me impishly, like he’d been waiting all week to smile.

  I had completely forgotten he was coming.

  I gave him a hug, groaning over his shoulder to myself. Why hadn’t I put on lipstick or brushed my hair? My leggings were covered with white cat fur. I had coffee breath.

  I’d blown it again.

  We walked around the first floor, looking at the white scrapes on the molding and gouges on the walls that made it seem, inexplicably, as if miniature medieval soldiers had used my house to practice sword fighting. Mishka and I had spent hours alone together every day when he was working on the house and I was home writing, so even after not seeing him for a few years, it felt natural for us to be alone now. He walked a few steps in front of me, hair spilling down his back, his thighs muscular in his Levi’s, gently assessing my walls with his calloused hands. He stopped to pencil a few notes onto his clipboard. His yellow number 3 pencil looked tiny between his fingers.

  He radiated sexy.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, ducking into the bathroom as he stopped in the hallway to run his fingers over a few dents in the cream-colored walls.

  Once inside, I turned on the fan and faucet. I grabbed the lint roller under the sink and got the worst of the cat hair off my pants. I rinsed my mouth. I put on champagne lipstick and fluffed my hair as quickly as I could, so I wouldn’t give away that I’d been primping.

  As soon as I came out, he turned to me, holding his clipboard expectantly. He stopped mid-thought.