30 Pieces of a Novel

The Friend

He sees his mother’s best friend from the block and yells out, “Margaret, Margaret!” and says to his mother, “Mom, there’s Margaret,” and Margaret stops, looks around, catches him waving at her from about forty feet away; What do you know, what a nice surprise, her look seems to say, and she starts over to them while he wheels his mother to her. They’re on Columbus Avenue, around three in the afternoon on a normal weekday, but the sidewalks and restaurant patios are all crowded, sky’s darkening and wind picks up a bit, and it looks and feels like rain though no one seems to be hurrying to avoid it. “Listen, maybe I shouldn’t have stopped her, because we haven’t got too long to talk,” he tells his mother, leaning over her wheelchair. “I don’t want us to get caught in the downpour,” and she says, “Why would we?” and he doesn’t know if she means get caught in the downpour or talk too long, when Margaret reaches them. “Beatrice, Gould, how are you?” she says, bending down to take his mother’s hand while she kisses her cheek. He kisses Margaret and says, “And how are you doing? It’s been awhile,” and his mother looks up at her, doesn’t seem to recognize her — maybe she’s tired; this is around the time she takes a nap, and she had a good-sized drink at lunch just now — and then says, “Oh, my dear, it’s a treat to see you,” and he’s still not sure she recognizes her. “Did my son tell you we’d be here?” and he says, “No, Mom, we just happened to bump into her.” “I’ve lost so much weight lately and also with this ugly scarf covering my head, I’m surprised you noticed me from that far away,” and his mother says, “But now I can see you and recall all the kind things you’ve done for us, but I’ve always had a problem with names.” “It’s Margaret, Mom. From the street. How are you feeling, though?” he says to Margaret, and she says, “I’ve been terrible, to tell the truth. I hate to complain, so don’t let me start in about it and bore you, but I’ve had big troubles, I’m afraid; a fluke to end all flukes.” “Do you think it’s going to rain?” his mother asks him, and he says, “Why, you want to get back? You tired, cold? Because I don’t think the sky looks too threatening,” and she says, “It wouldn’t bother me, a little rain. I’d even like it — the drops on me; something different for a change. But I didn’t think you’d want to get soaked.” “Why don’t we all walk together then, if you’re heading home,” to Margaret, and she says, “I was actually on my way to Pioneer for a few things.” “So, how are you, dear?” his mother says. “You’re looking fine,” and she says, “I was just telling Gould that I haven’t been that well lately. I’ve had big troubles, something entirely unforeseen, Beatrice,” and his mother says, “At our age it’s always one setback after the next. Either we lose somebody or we lose some part of our body. I’m sick of doctors. It never lets up and they’re all no good.” “Mom, excuse me, but let her finish,” and Margaret says, “But if she’s tired or cold?” and he says, “You’re okay, aren’t you, Mom?” and she says, “If you say so — only kidding. I’m not quite up to par today, but I’ll survive, why?” and Margaret says to him, “If there’s a cloudburst?” and he says, “Believe me, we both would rather know how you are, and we’ll just duck in someplace if it rains and then get a cab somehow,” and Margaret says, “Well, it’s a ridiculous thing; and talk about the unexpected, this one takes the cake. I had a mole I didn’t know about on my scalp,” and he slaps his hand to his mouth and looks at his mother, and she’s staring up at her placidly. “Or maybe this mole all of a sudden grew there, but at the beauty parlor six months ago the girl cutting my hair nicked it with her scissors. Really, the first time I was ever nicked with scissors or hurt in a beauty parlor in any way, not even my nails, and I’ve been going to one every two months for more than fifty years and it has to be this one tiny mole on my head. And something went wrong with it — you both know how that can happen with moles — and it quickly spread and now I’m getting radiation for it every other day and they think they might get it under control.” “No! Oh, my goodness,” he says, and his mother looks alarmed at him and says, “What is it? Is it your wife? One of your children? He has two young girls”—to Margaret — and he says, “No, they’re okay,” and, to Margaret, “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” and she says, “That’s why I’m wearing this kerchief. From where they cut, and also some hair falling out. But I’m hoping for the best; what else can I do for now? Just, I’ve been feeling sick so much of the time because of the treatments. The stuff I’m going to Pioneer for is really for my stomach, to settle it, since I hardly eat anymore, even if they say I’m supposed to. But how can I eat when everything I put down wants to come up?” and he says, “I can’t believe it. God, what happens in life!” and she says, “Isn’t it amazing? But if I don’t get cured I at least know I had three wonderful sons and lived my normal life span and maybe a decade beyond,” and he says, “Don’t talk like that. You’ll get better,” and she says, “I pray so. Now you get your mother home. I also didn’t go out with an umbrella — this weather wasn’t expected. The radio said it’d be mild and sunny all day, and for some reason rain’s not supposed to be good for me, not just sun,” and he says, “Because of the radiation?” and she says, “Maybe I have it wrong. It could be the sun that’s the one bad egg, which is another reason I wore the kerchief. Goodbye, Beatrice,” and his mother says, “Are you going so soon? Don’t be such a stranger, dear; come and see me,” and she says, “I’ve been meaning to but things have sort of slowed me down lately. But I’ll try; I love our talks,” and they kiss and he kisses her and wheels his mother toward home. “Tell me, was that Margaret from our block I just spoke to?” and he says, “Yes, your old drinking buddy,” and she laughs and says, “When was that? But she’s not been well, has she? I could tell by her voice. So weak. And something about her expression.” “She’s sick, all right,” and she says, “What of?” and he tells her about the accident and now the radiation, and she says, “Age is an awful thing. People today live too long, I honestly believe that,” and he says, “It has nothing to do with age. You know her; she was strong as an ox. Lifting heavy garbage cans, shoveling snow and washing her windows outside and in. It was that fluke accident, as she said,” and she says, “How?” and he says, “I told you,” and she says, “Tell me again. With all this street noise and because you’re speaking behind me, it’s sometimes difficult to hear.” About a month later, when he calls his mother, the woman taking care of her and who answered the phone says, “You remember Margaret, your mother’s good friend, the one who used to come by here every week or two and they’d talk and have drinks and cheese?” and he says, “She died, didn’t she,” and she says, “You knew? It only happened a few days ago. The mailman, Frank, told me,” and he says, “No, but I saw her when I took Beatrice out last time I was there, and she said what was wrong with her and it really seemed bad,” and the woman says, “They were a real pair. Talked and laughed; I never knew what it was over, but she was the only one your mother did that with and it could go on for hours. She’s going to be real sorry when she hears about it,” and he says, “Maybe it’s best we don’t tell her,” and she says, “What about when she asks me to phone Margaret to come by and for me to make sure there’s enough Jack Daniels left for them, which she used to do regularly?” and he says, “Has she done it recently?” and she says, “No, but she’s going to, I feel it, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to lie to her with a straight face,” and he says, “I think she’s already sensed something was wrong — the way Margaret looked last time and her not seeing or hearing from her for so long — and, I don’t know, has put it out of her mind because it’s too sad to think about. It’s a real loss, besides that she was such a nice person. Is my mother able to come to the phone?” and she shouts out, “Mrs. B, your son’s on the phone, pick up,” and his mother picks up the phone in her room, and he says, “How you feeling, Mom?” and she says, “Could be better, I guess. Do you remember my dear friend Margaret?” and he says, “Yes, sure, down the block, brownstone next to the big apartment building,” and she says, “She owns it, you know. She used to work for this elderly couple — years ago — she and her husband, though she did most of it, laundry, cooking, small repairs, and all the custodial work, when first one and then the other of this couple quickly died and they left only Margaret the building. Her husband was no good. A charmer, from Portugal, and a ladies’ man they said — she told me everything — so he used to disappear for months on end. I haven’t seen her for a long time. I don’t think it’s a mystery either but that it’s because she died. No one phoned me, not that I could have gone to the funeral. I don’t have the heart or energy for those things anymore. Do you know anything about it?” and he says, “Unfortunately, you’re right. I just found out myself. And if her sons didn’t tell you, I’m sure it’s because they thought you had problems enough. What a wonderful person, though, huh? and what a friend to you,” and she says, “It’s such a pity. All the old-timers from the block are either gone or they’ve moved away and you never hear from them again, and I don’t even think I have any sisters or my brother left. But how’s your wife? The kids? All my little darlings. Everyone’s okay?”

The Shame

He’s trying to get in touch with an old friend about something; calls the number he has in his address book, it’s no longer a working number; calls Manhattan Information, and there’s no number for him or any number for anyone in the entire city for him or just with his last name and the first initial H; calls Harold’s ex-wife, which is the same number Harold used to have when he was still married to her, and that number now belongs to someone who says he got it from the phone company two years ago; doesn’t know how to reach Harold, and then remembers a mutual friend from college and about ten years after who became Harold’s best friend and whom he last bumped into about four or five years ago — at the time this guy said he was living on West 89th Street near the park — and gets his number from Information and dials; and a woman’s recorded voice says Amber and Emmiline aren’t in, please leave a message, and he says who it is and that she might even remember him—“I’m an old friend of Andrew’s from way way back”—and could one of them have Andrew call him, and gives his phone number. He assumes they got divorced and Amber kept the apartment and their daughter lives with her, but then why would she still list Andrew’s name in the phone directory, unless they’re only separated? Maybe, if they are divorced, to ward off creepy men from calling her because there’s only a woman’s name listed or just an initial for a first name. Anyway, two days later Andrew calls and says, “I got your message. What’s up, how’s it going?” and he says, “Fine. I’m just trying to reach Harold. Neither he nor Lynn are listed in the phone book in New York, she hasn’t kept their old phone number, and I didn’t know who else to go to. And excuse me if you think this is being nosy, but I assume, because your wife only mentioned her and your daughter’s names on the answering machine recording—” and Andrew says, “We split up more than four years ago, soon after I last saw you, I think,” and he says, “Sorry to hear that,” and Andrew says, “No reason to be. It was a lousy marriage for years. The worst part, as I’m sure it’d be for you too, is the daily deprivation of seeing my daughter. She didn’t want to move to San Diego, and you can’t blame her — friends, school, her mother — and it was too good a job for me to turn down and stay in New York just to be near her. But I’ve started socializing again, so I’m not as lonely as when I first got here, and I get to see Emma about six times a year and for a month this summer, which helps out. I’m even getting to like this city. Weather’s ideal, if you’ve had your fill of icy rain and snow and extreme cold, and there are plenty of good bookstores and places to eat, and people here are a lot more civil to you than they are in New York. But what about Harold?” and he tells him his mother died a month ago and he thought Harold would be able to advise him on what to do with her jewelry and antiques and some of her furniture. “He’s the right guy for that, and you’d be dealing with someone you can trust, for a lot of these estate and appraisal people can be jackals of the worst order. But he’s not in the antiques business anymore, though he could still give you good advice. And I’m sorry to hear about your mom. I don’t remember her that well — we’re talking of more than thirty years ago when I last saw her — but I know how it feels, when my own dear mother died twenty-two years ago. I still think of her almost every day, and now more than the last few years, maybe because of my divorce and my daughter. You have a pen?” and he gives Harold’s phone numbers off the top of his head, his apartment and studio and also his office. “Who knows why he’s unlisted. Debts, I doubt. As for Lynn, she goes by her maiden name now, Katz. Since they parted ways, I haven’t seen her, though her last address is Three-ten West Nineteenth Street, one zero zero eleven for the ZIP. I only know it because she once asked me to send her one of our products. So listen, this has been nice, and if you ever get out to San Diego—” and he says, “I was there three years ago for something and don’t see any chance of a repeat visit soon,” and Andrew says, “Too bad I wasn’t here then. I mean, I’m glad I wasn’t; I was still in New York and seeing my daughter almost every day. But if I had been here and knew from Harold or someone you were coming. Next time, perhaps. Or in New York, if you get there and our stays overlap. No, then I reserve all my free time for Emma. But it’s not often I run into old friends out here, and I miss it and that New York openness and humor. Do you run into anyone from college or after whom we both knew?” and he says, “Hardly ever. You might’ve been the last, several years ago, coming out of a subway station I was walking past, or the other way around, or it could have been one of us going in it and the other coming out, I forget,” and Andrew says, “I remember that, Broadway and Seventy-second. I was heading to Fairway from my office downtown for some deli and Eli’s bread and you were cutting across the island the station’s on to buy Mahler’s Tenth — the Rattle version, I think you said — at that big record store on the corner, the one I like to call MSG. Matter of fact, our conversation that time was mainly about music. You’d recently had a letter in the Times magazine section where you criticized an article they’d run on Vladimir Horowitz. ‘Petty-minded and abjectly cheeky and pejorative’ were some of the things you said in it, and I remember asking you how come you’d got so worked up about the subject,” and he says, “Well, if I recall, I thought Horowitz was entitled to his so-called eccentricities, if that’s what it took for him to—” and Andrew says, “I know; you told me in front of the subway station. I disagreed, didn’t think the writer of the article had been as unsympathetic and sarcastic as you’d said in the letter, though you might have been right; and now Horowitz is dead. Anyway, about San Diego, take my number, just in case you’re ever out here or somewhere close — L.A., even, since I get up there once a month,” and gives it, and he writes it down though doesn’t think he’ll transfer it to his address book. He’s not going to San Diego, and even if he did he wouldn’t try to see him and he doesn’t know what he’d want to speak to him on the phone again for. What he wants now is to get off, but Andrew’s talking about the White House — how’d they get into that? — “Because what do you make of it? I think the scandals and skulduggery will ultimately crush him, and to our great misfortune too. Because liberal as he isn’t, he’s still two times five more so than any Repub who’ll succeed him if the shit sticks, and then say hasta luego to abortion rights, gun control, military spending restraint, health, welfare, and education support, besides aid to the arts of any sort and free condoms, and then crime on the street will next be on your doorstep and then in your hair. In other words, poverty and lousy housing and too many unguided defiant children—” and he says, “That could be, though if the guy and his cronies did wrong, they should own up to it and pay the consequences, even if in the long run we’ll all suffer,” and thinks why, of all things, did he say that? and then a movie Andrew saw last month that he thinks the most literary and intellectual film since early to middle Bergman. “I mention him also because I remember you once said he should get, almost before anyone — and I’m dipping back here around twenty years — the Nobel for literature,” and he says, “I did? It’s a blank to me, and now I think all those prizes are ruinous and ridiculous,” and Andrew says, “Come on, you wouldn’t turn down something good like that if it was offered,” and he says, “I don’t know; maybe only not to embarrass the giver. But what’s the title?” and writes it down, and then a novel Andrew read in three sittings last week—“long as we’re talking about literature”—that he thinks Gould would like, and gives the title and author, and he says, “Never heard of it or her,” and Andrew says, “Gallop, don’t shlep, to your bookstore for it. If you were here I’d immediately loan it to you. She’s doing things with language and story and structure that practically no one but some of the Latin Americans are doing, or used to, but for their culture, and she’s maybe just hit thirty. It’s worth every dollar of the hardcover price and it’s a big book too but reads as if it’s one third the size — that quick, despite its density and intricateness,” and he says, “I’ll certainly take a look at it; thanks for the tip,” but doesn’t write the title or author’s name down. If it’s that good, someone else will tell him about it or he’ll see it advertised or prominently displayed in the bookstores, though he still won’t skim through more than a dozen pages of it. Writers have to be — if it’s novels, not stories — dead or at least a few years older than he for him to like, he’s not sure why. Not envy, he doesn’t think, or for the last ten years; the young ones don’t have much to say or very interesting ways to say it, and American Americans less than most of them, but he doesn’t want to say that now and get into a whole other discussion and probably be ridden a little for it. “So, it’s been nice talking to you,” and Andrew says, “Same here, and don’t forget what I suggested to you,” and he says, “You mean if I’m out there? I have your number,” and Andrew says “That too, but I was referring to Tiffany Hissler’s novel. It’d be major at any age; the girl’s a wonder,” and he says, “I won’t, I got it: Time Off,” and Andrew says, “Time In,” and he says, “Anyway, Time, so I’ll find her alphabetically either way,” and they say goodbye and hang up, and he thinks, I should have added “by name and title.” The guy will think I’m a jerk. Right after, his wife says, “Who was that?” and he tells her and why Andrew called back, “but I feel so lousy about him, because of his first wife,” and she says, “They obviously broke up and divorced. Or something terrible happened to her?” and he says, “I did something I’m so ashamed of,” and tells her, and she says, “Well, when you get older this is what you learn, or ought to, and better now than never,” and he says, “Oh, I’ve known it for a long time, right from the beginning, not that it stopped me from doing it again and again, with her and others. I just didn’t think it’d come back to me like this after thirty years. I almost wanted to bring the matter up on the phone, get it out finally,” and she says, “Bad idea. If he doesn’t know, why hurt him now just so you can unburden yourself? And if he knows—” and he says, “He has to. He was always smart and sharp, read a lot, picked up things quick, was a great quipster, would have me in stitches, and I could tell by our conversation before that he doesn’t miss a trick or forget a thing. And they must have talked about it at least once during the breakup. She screwed around with a few other guys during the marriage, and I remember Harold once saying that was one of the reasons Andrew agreed to the divorce: he couldn’t trust her. I’m sure Harold didn’t know about me; if he did he would have pilloried me for it: ‘Andrew was our friend,’ and so on. Of course, as a couple — well, not of course; but Andrew and Clo didn’t seem that compatible. He was precise and buttoned up; she was kind of sloppy and hang-loose and said whatever crossed her mind no matter how insulting or vulgar, another reason he must have known: her big mouth. But both were sensitive to little things; seashells, I remember; usually pink and translucent and kept in tiny plastic boxes. Miniature watch faces without bands; they’d started a collection together. And children. Meaning, they seemed relaxed and affectionate with them, playing on the floor and that sort of thing. She wanted one desperately then, he didn’t at all, but when she was married she told me she only wanted one with him. I’m sure, if she had asked — and who knows if I didn’t even suggest this — I would have gladly supplied the seed and not thought of the consequences. That’s the way I was then — I mean, I wouldn’t have gone around bragging I had a child, but kind of stupid and irresponsible. He eventually had a daughter with Amber, his second wife; Clo had about three kids with her second husband. I bumped into her about ten years ago on the subway; maybe I told you this,” and she says no. “She’d gotten a little dumpy, had always been prone to it, being short and squat and big-boned and a voracious eater, all of which was a turn-on to me when she was much younger. She was so strong, physically. I helped them move a couch once, and she was easily my match on her end of it. Lifted it without struggling. Andrew, who’s at least six feet but quite gangly, stood on the side, saying it only takes two to lift it, three would unbalance it for the one who had to take an end by himself, so let Clo do it instead of him, since she’s a lot stronger. Maybe she was also more sexual than he, but that’s their story, nothing I want to know about. She did allude to it but I forget what it was, something about her sexual appetite, I think, which, if you were only doing it sporadically with her — this is what I think now, not what she said — was probably easy enough to satisfy. And it could be — this is legitimate — her physical strength had the opposite effect on him than it did on me, and that his second wife’s leanness, almost emaciation — I saw her once — was a turn-on to him, sending him into sensual frenzies. I’ve always preferred, but haven’t always ended up with, women who can take a lot of banging around in bed, with strong thighs, a decent-sized rear and spread, plenty of energy, no wilting delicateness or fake excuses.” “Was there any spark there when you saw her on the subway?” and he says, “There was never much spark between us. It was physical, though we had laughs too, and she was bright and also well-read, so occasional good conversations. But mostly food, wine, sex. I knocked on their door once — we lived in the same building. I was on the ground floor and they were on the third. I in fact got that apartment through him. They gave a party, I attended, liked the neighborhood, and told him I had to get out of my sublet across town, and he said there’s a small studio apartment in their building, fairly cheap because it’s sort of an illegal residence, carved out of another apartment and maybe not even reported to the city’s Rent Commission. So one day — he was away on business for the week, I didn’t know that, though,” and she says, “Of course you didn’t,” and he says, “I’m telling you; I didn’t see them much. Once every two to three weeks and if not for dinner, which was maybe once every three months, then usually just a quick chat by our mailboxes or in the supermarket or on the street,” and she says, “So that’s when one of them told you and you used that information to make your move,” and he says, “But I’m almost sure they didn’t. That’d change the whole story, make me into an even worse creep than I thought I was. Because the way I remember it is I went to their apartment to speak to Andrew. I wanted to borrow something — his car, I believe, to drive my folks someplace,” and she says, “Was it evening?” and he says, “Afternoon, I think,” and she says, “So why would you think Andrew would be there, unless he worked nights?” and he says, “Then I don’t know what time of the day it was: evening, afternoon — or the weekend; you forgot that. To be honest, somehow I see daylight in the picture, and open windows, so summer or early fall or late spring; I even think there was a breeze. They had a big two-bedroom apartment with a terrace and several exposures. Really quite grand and nicely furnished, floors finished, everything done in good taste. But anyway, I knocked on their door — or maybe I did know he was gone and I was going to the market and wanted to know if she needed anything. I thought it was about the car, but now the going-to-the-store-for-her seems right, and I think because she was sick,” and she says, “You could have called for that,” and he says, “How do you know I had a phone? I probably didn’t, as I avoided them for years in my apartments. It saved money; I didn’t have a lot. I even had the phone turned off in the previous place I sublet. And if I did have one it would be more like me to think it was profligate to call from two floors below rather than walk upstairs. I was a bit of a cheapskate then too, but it’s something I’d still probably do. Anyway, I rang their bell, didn’t knock — you ring bells for apartments unless the bell’s broken, and this was a good building, well taken care of — and either asked through the door for Andrew or if she needed anything at the market, or if they needed anything at the market, because I might have thought they were both in, when she answered it. Though first the peephole opened, probably to make sure no one was with me. She must have stretched on her toes to reach her eye to it, since she was at the most five-one, and then she said, ‘Hold it,’ and the door opened and she was nude except for her panties. Jesus! I thought, What the hell’s she doing?” and she says, “She wanted you in there, what else? Or she was so laid back that a peek at her bosom didn’t mean anything to her. But judging from what this is leading up to, I doubt it. But was she like that, sort of a nudist?” and he says, “I don’t know. I mean, she was European, or of descent, from Czechoslovakia, came here when she was five. But she certainly at the moment was nonplussed that I saw her. But there she was, her enormous breasts, which don’t mean anything to you but were very exciting to me, and slim panties, more like a bikini. I could see her pubic hair through them and sticking out around them, and of course after I said ‘Excuse me’ or something, I wanted to jump her. That’s how I was then. That’s why I’m so ashamed, or there’s a better word for it, but of what I did and continued to do a few times and I could have stopped it right there,” and she says, “But if that was her purpose and you just quickly picked up on it — and that was the climate at the time, if I’ve got my decades straight — then you’re not that much to blame,” and he says, “But he was my friend; I knew him long before I met her,” and she says, “I forgot; that’s what you were saying; so I suppose you should have turned around and left, saying you’ll come back at a more convenient time, giving her the benefit of the doubt,” and he says, “And that might have been what I would have done too, even though I know I was immediately worked up, but she said, ‘Hi, Andrew’s not home, he’s out of town for the week’—something like that. And ‘Listen, I can’t keep the door open, one of our neighbors might walk by, so if you want to come inside, do.’ And I went in — I didn’t have to; she gave me that out — and knew we were going to have sex, although at the same time, as you said, I could have thought her nudity meant nothing to her and certainly not among friends. For all I know, if I hadn’t quickly moved in on her — I mean, I must have had my arms around her and was pressing my erection into her in the little alcove there — she might have gone and got a bathrobe for herself, invited me to have coffee, just to chat. And she might have been sick — as I said, that’s also what I remember from that first time — and so had just hopped out of her sick bed to answer the door and didn’t attach any importance to her exposed breasts but had put her panties on along the way, or else already had them on in bed. And friends, up till then, was all we’d been. I liked her. I told you. She was bright, lively, good sense of humor, and was generous, just like him. They’d had me up for dinner a couple of times, had also invited me to parties with them. They must have thought, or one of them did, that I should meet someone, was by myself too much, and so on. I didn’t know any women to go out with, then, or anyone who gave parties but them, which is where you do meet women. Though of course if I was that alone, maybe that was my main impetus to have sex with her, and also she could have known or sensed that too — that I had to be horny, or am I pushing the motivations there? But we’d never kissed, hugged, touched: none of that before. Just friends, and not real close ones. When the three of us were together, or when I did bump into her on the street or at a market, we talked a great deal, Clo and I, and I think laughed and joked around a lot too. Our attitudes were somewhat alike; Andrew was a bit more serious. We found it absurd the way people overbought, overdressed, went into debt, put on airs, wanted to impress, were desperate for high-powered jobs and plenty of money and attention and success and those sorts of things, while also not doing much deep thinking or reading. Well, Andrew thought much like that too, though I was far crankier and more judgmental. He was a good guy. I’m telling you, I liked and admired him. I sound phony now, don’t I, but believe me, I’m not. I remember they also invited me to a few movies with them. I’d see them on the street or somewhere; they’d say, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I’d say, ‘Nothing,’ because I was usually doing nothing, meaning nothing with people, and they’d say they’re going to a movie and to come with them. They sat in the theater, she usually between us — I mean, it only happened two or three times — held hands, ate from the same box of popcorn, passed the box to me, though I couldn’t stand the smell, sound, or feel of the thing. All of this I swear I remember. Did I ever before that first time think of her in a sexual way? I don’t think so. Or, if so, fleetingly: the breasts and strong shape, and I have an imagination and could see what she was built like through her clothes, but with no designs on her, none whatsoever, my personal designs, I’m saying. Why? She was his wife, and maybe up till the moment she opened the door I was never attracted to her,” and she says, “So what it took was for her to take her clothes off; you never once mentioned her face,” and he says, “She had a pleasant one; smiled a lot, but authentically. And I suppose so, regarding the no clothes. And it also might have been the most optimum time, too: he being away, she saying so immediately, maybe something about the light and temperature if not balminess of the day, and my being just before I rang her bell overwhelmingly priapic, though nothing concerning her, and she being the same from the woman’s side, which I’m just guessing now, since I don’t remember that at all. As for those movies, they went a lot, so it wasn’t so unusual for me to go with them a few times, because he was thinking of leaving his job in advertising to try his hand at becoming an independent moviemaker. I think that’s why he didn’t want any children then.” “And her job?” and he says, “Fabrics designer. I think she quit when she started having kids, or continued it at home was what she said when I met her on the subway. I was a substitute teacher at the time. So I had to have had a phone then; no other way I’d get work. And it must have been on a weekend when I went to their apartment, since I subbed almost every schoolday there was, the per-diem pay was so low, and she went to her own work downtown, unless she was sick and had taken the day off and that was the one day in the month I wasn’t able to get a sub job. So now I forget why I went to their apartment, though I’m still almost sure it was during the day and the weather was warm.” “To have sex, why are you denying it? If she hadn’t come to the door half nude — that was an act of fortuity for you — you would have been the one to devise an excuse to get inside. I’d even bet you called first to say you’d like to borrow something — coffee, toothpaste — and she quickly prepared that impromptu surprise for you, knew why you were really coming up but wanted to speed things along a little,” and he says, “Wrong, believe me, that’s not how it was. And now, I don’t know where it came from — probably from just talking about it — but I think I know why I went upstairs. I wanted to know if they’d be interested in two tickets I had for a recital that night. Myra Hess, at Carnegie Hall or City Center, but I think the Hall; I’d bought them for some woman and me. So I apparently was seeing a woman then or was starting to date one, or that was to be our first date. But she called to say she was sick — that’s probably where the sick business comes in, though Clo could have been sick too; an Asian flu could have been floating around — and had to cancel and I didn’t want to go alone and try hawking the extra ticket in the lobby, and the truth is I didn’t want to go at all. Like the popcorn, there are some things I haven’t liked for forty years — ask the kids about me and popcorn in movie theaters today. And though I love classical music and the piano especially and particularly the way Hess played on LPs — I had a few; we still have them though don’t use them much and I don’t know if any have been transferred to CD — I don’t like concerts or recitals of any sort; larger the hall, less I like them. No doubt I only bought the tickets to make an impression on this woman. All right, I was trying to impress her: Dame Myra Hess, if she was a Dame by then; Carnegie Hall; probably Beethoven, Scarlatti. Or maybe she only said she was sick because she disliked concerts and recitals as much as I. That would have been a laugh, if she had told me later, but I don’t think I ever saw her after that. By calling in sick she might have been saying it had been a mistake to make the date, if that was to be the first one, and she didn’t want to go out with me, period. Anyhow—” and she says, “No, this is what I think happened, if this new version of yours is true. You were already sleeping with this woman you were dating — you don’t remember half the women you slept with and almost none of their names. Or you had gone out with her long enough to feel that after the recital would be the first time you slept with her. But when she canceled you knew there’d be no sex that weekend — I’m assuming it was a weekend, a big date and an important recital like that — and you also knew that this Clo … Wait. How come you didn’t invite her to the recital, once the other one bowed out, if you knew she was going to be alone? Because you didn’t want to bother with any preliminaries like that?” and he says, “Because when I went upstairs to their apartment I didn’t think she’d be alone. I thought Andrew would be there, or there that night in time for the recital. Now why didn’t I invite her when she opened the door and said Andrew was out of town for however long it was? Maybe I did, or was about to or was thinking if I should, but because she was half nude she quickly whisked me inside — the neighbors, remember? But my intention when I rang their bell was that after all the meals they’d had me up for and parties they’d taken me to and so forth, this would be a nice payback to them, two tickets to a great pianist’s recital, even if the seats were way up and maybe the second cheapest. Hess was past seventy then, I think, and very fragile — I know she looked much older than she was, you remember the record jacket photographs: bony and gaunt. And this recital was billed as being part of her last American tour and perhaps even her last performance in America ever,” and she says, “So, did you end up taking her to it?” and he says, “No, but I did go myself — I remember sitting in the third or fourth row from the top of the balcony. I don’t think I tried to sell the extra ticket in the lobby or out front — no guts to — so just gave it away. That part of it’s vague, but what isn’t is my feeling so far away from the stage while the music, because it was piped up to us, seemed close. Also, I think Clo was too sick to go and would have construed it as a date or something, once we had made love, since I’m almost positive we did it in the afternoon before the recital. No, I’m sure of it. All she wanted, it seemed, was sex in bed and then for me to disappear. I mean, once I got into the apartment and put my arms around her and started things going with my lips and hands. We also did it another day or night before Andrew came home, and then a couple of other times over the next six months or so when he was away. I forget what led up to them, but that’s usually the case and you only remember the first. Though once, when she was sick again and he was away or at work in the city that day and I couldn’t get a sub job, or something like that — maybe I didn’t even try that day, and not because I knew this would happen — she rang my bell and asked if I had aspirins, she’d run out. This time she definitely had a bad flu, had to stay home from work, I think she said. I said I did — the aspirins — and she came in and was in a bathrobe and I might have seen something through it — a leg, a breast — not that by this time in our little sex affair I needed that to get me going, though it couldn’t hurt, and we started kissing, bad flu and all, and she took the aspirins … I’m making the last part up. I know I had aspirins to give her — I don’t think I’ve run out of them in forty years — and I believe that was my last time with her, so the only time in my apartment. I went away for a month that summer — August, an artist colony, always August, my summer vacation retreat those days — and they’d separated by the time I got back and she’d moved out and he kept the apartment, which was originally his, and she quickly got herself a steady boyfriend and married either him or the next one in a year,” and she says, “Did Andrew ever say anything to you about it — hint, at least, that he knew?” and he says, “Never, and it wasn’t that I couldn’t read the signs — I was fiercely if not even over-obviously on the alert for them — and I never brought it up, since I was already a little ashamed — that started at the artist colony — and after that the shame just grew. Andrew and Harold and his first wife and I did go to a couple of things together that fall after the separation — a movie, maybe, and I think once that Japanese-Californian health food restaurant that was on Columbus between Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth a short time and where you could bring your own sake and beer. I remember they’d even heat up the sake for you and put it in a pretty carafe. Andrew and I, in all the time I knew him, never socialized just the two of us. We weren’t that companionable, and I don’t think we even felt comfortable together without Clo or Harold there, though we did meet on the street or in the building’s vestibule a few times, as we had in the past, and chat briefly and amicably about nothing, really. After that, Harold sort of drifted away from me, which now makes me think he did get wind that I’d slept with Clo, which as I said would have been a definite no-no with him — I could sleep with whomever’s wife I wanted to so long as it wasn’t a mutual friend’s or his own — and also makes me think Andrew told him that that’s what he thought I’d done but to keep it a secret. Because he also never mentioned it to me, though he almost had to know, even without Andrew’s saying anything, since he knew what I was like then,” and she says, “And what was that?” and he says, “What do you think? That my prick came first, scruples second, when it came to women I was attracted to, though on most other counts I was a fairly to even an avidly scrupulous person. High minded, maybe a bit self-righteous, definitely socially conscious — is that how you say it? — running after robbers, stepping into arguments and trying to reconcile matters if I thought someone was going to get hurt … you know my stories. Helping blind and lame and elderly people cross the street, stopping traffic to do it if I had to. Worried about very young children when I see them alone outdoors, and so on, risking my life and getting a punch in the jaw sometimes too, but it was that or not being able to face myself, I thought. Even with your father, twenty years later, that time the Korean produce store was being robbed and we were all walking past together and saw it and I wanted to run in, and he grabbed my shoulders and said, ‘You have a family now’ … I had to be a little crazy, I know, and not just then. So what was I saying?” and she says, “That there was a decent side to you at the time too. But what happened with Andrew after that?” and he says, “He moved out that winter or so. He started making — well, he’d always done well, compared to me, since college — but now a lot of money, and he wanted a better apartment,” and she says, “And to perhaps be out of the house of bad memories and also the same building as you,” and he says, “I don’t think people take it that far in New York if they’re paying a fairly modest rent with no huge annual jack-ups for a nice large place. No, he wanted something with more light and a better view and a working fireplace and floors he could walk on barefoot without his feet continually getting splinters in them, I think I remember him saying. Their apartment was in back and faced a twenty-story residential hotel. Mine was on the street and got light most of the day but was much noisier and, in the summer, because of the car fumes and the garbage cans right outside, smellier. He got a floor-through in the Village with two fireplaces, a lovely brick townhouse on West Eleventh, I think, but I never saw it, just heard, since he didn’t invite me to it and by that time our only mutual friend, Harold, wasn’t, as I said, much of a friend to me anymore,” and she says, “Maybe, in addition to how he felt about you sleeping with Andrew’s wife, he thought you’d go after his,” and he says, “I’m sure he never worried about it, since he knew that Gwen, his first wife, and I didn’t even like each other much, something he actually brought up a couple of times and I probably said, ‘Oh come on, why do you think that?’” and she says, “But sexually? She’s still attractive, or only time I saw her; must have been much better looking then and shapely rather than what’s getting to be a matronly figure. And did you have to like a woman to want to bed her? You yourself said—” and he says, “That’s true, to a degree, but what do you think I was then? besides your missing my point. With Clo there must have been some attraction I kept back because Andrew was my old college friend and had been so generous to me since I moved into the building and also because they lived upstairs and I didn’t think anything like that could possibly happen with her. And then it did happen because he was away for a while and I must have been all rutted when I rang her bell and maybe feeling sexually dispossessed and she made that first overpowering display, you could say — at least irresistible to me at the time. While now I think my libido, being somewhat lower or less urgent or demanding or whatever a libido becomes with age—” and she says, “You don’t have the sex drive you once did, you’re saying. But maybe you do, or it’s off by a small fraction since I’ve known you, but because we live together and if I’m not sick and you’re not being obnoxious I’m usually agreeable and even eager for it, you don’t have to go out of your way to get laid,” and he says, “That could be true too. But what I was going to say was that if I were in the same situation today, and even if it wasn’t true that you’re usually compliant and my sex drive isn’t as strong and I’m married with children so I’d have a lot more to lose by going along with it, I’m sure I’d be able to resist: the breasts at the door — and let’s say you and the kids were away for a week too — large beautifully shaped young breasts, I feel a little stupid saying, and skinny bikini panties, if that’s what they’re called, and quick invite to come inside. But with Gwen there was nothing for me to resist — no attraction, not that she wasn’t physically attractive then. And forget opportunity, because even if I had rung their bell one day to see Harold — just happened to stop by — and she opened the door completely nude and said he suddenly had to leave town for the year, or that they were getting a divorce and he was no longer living home and she’s been waiting for this chance with me for a long time, and grabbed my penis through the pants or did whatever with it that would normally make me excited, for you know that just about any handling by you or pressure on it, even a book, would do it—” and she says, “Oh, come on,” and he says, “‘Oh, come on’ nothing. Anyway, my point in all this, just so we don’t forget, is my shame, how every time I talk to Andrew — maybe once every five years, and that includes bumping into him on the street or seeing him with Harold … actually, at Harold’s second wedding a number of years ago. You saw him there too, the only time I think you met. He came alone; we in fact sat at his table. I mean it wasn’t organized like that; you sat where you wanted to sit and he was the only person I knew there other than Harold and I seemed to be the only one he knew. So it would have been insulting to him, I thought, not to sit there, and he seemed pleased that we sat next to him. And the three of us had a good conversation, intelligent and stimulating and long, do you remember? You had very nice things to say about him after, that he was a person of high quality and so on, and later we drove him home — it was on our way — and I don’t think Harold holds it against me anymore what I did with Clo. That’s what I get from his attitude toward me, few times we’ve seen each other the last ten years. Anyway, I always feel constrained with Andrew: small, humiliated somewhat, even base, other things. I really feel it can only end if I bring it up to him, what I think, my regrets and shame — I’d even say that to him: that this is why I’m bringing it up. And that I’m nothing like that now, haven’t been that way for twenty years and have no excuse for what I did then, and how sorry I am and that I only wish there was some way of making it up to him. Though when you think of it, he did remarry, no matter how that one turned out, and got a child out of it — in her teens now, college, whom he adores, by the way he talks of her. So if I and some other guys were partly the cause of his breakup with Clo, at least he can say … well, you know, and of course I’d never say any of this to him. I’m just sort of rationalizing, putting into his head what I’d think if I were in the same situation: I got a great kid the second time around and that was worth all the heartaches of the first marriage, and so not to hold a grudge against the guys who screwed my wife, though of course not to thank them either,” and she says, “That couldn’t have been it, you and these other men, even partly, or only a tiny part of partly. Those problems can be worked out and were only a symptom of what was wrong. There had to be basic incompatibilities between them of long standing, things they must have tried to fix. I think you once said he’d gone through a lot of therapy since college, so I have to assume she went through a little too, and then when their marriage was falling apart they went individually and together, and also marriage counseling. And she was young then, like you and Andrew, and that was a free-for-all time in America if there ever was one — we’re talking here of almost thirty years ago, I think you said,” and he says, “Maybe even more than thirty. Let me think when it was exactly,” and she says, “Doesn’t matter. But I don’t think you ever want to talk to him about anything related to it unless he brings it up first. It would only revive certain things for him he probably prefers to forget. And if it’s only to relieve your conscience, is it worth it when you consider the damage you might do him? This is the price you pay for your past promiscuity. It’d be different if he wanted to renew his friendship with you or wanted to get all these things out. Then, maybe, you could work out your differences, past associations, and all that, and it would also be easier for him and seem a lot more reasonable too, since he would have initiated it and would know what he’s getting into and if it got too messy for him he’d only have himself to blame,” and he says, “He did say that if I got to San Diego again I should look him up, and gave me his phone number,” and she says, “That’s not the same thing,” and he says, “I suppose not. No, of course, you’re right, so I’ll just have to live with it. It’s a shame,” and she says, “Why? Because you like him now, or as much as you did before, but can’t really be friendly with him because of what you did to him then?” and he says, “That too.”

The Room

So what does he do now? He didn’t want to have sex with her. He told her when she came to his room. Well, she was good-looking and he wouldn’t mind doing it, he thought then, but knew he shouldn’t because of his wife and that it could get complicated with this woman and he did what he could to stop it. He said, “Really, this isn’t a good idea. I’ve never done it outside of my marriage, not even an amorous kiss. Better you go home and I go to sleep alone, I’m sorry. I know I don’t sound too convincing, but I’m really convinced about it. You’re attractive and pleasant and so on, but I just wouldn’t know what to say to my wife,” and she said, “You have to say anything? Why would you want to hurt her, if that’s what it’d do? But if you want me to leave, of course I’ll go without a fuss. It’s not like I invited you out here just for this.” He’s driving home from the college he gave a reading at. He was met in the hotel lobby late yesterday afternoon by this woman. She said, “Oh, you took the service stairs instead of the elevator: the athletic type. Hi, I’m Sheila, welcome,” and shook his hand hard. “How was the journey?” and he said, “An hour longer than you thought it would be, not that I’m blaming you.” “Thank God for that; I’m not sure I could take it. What, there were major delays on the road?” and he said, “None, smooth all the way, and I mostly kept the speed at nine above the limit and followed your directions to the letter. Incidentally, they were perfect.” “Then is your watch accurate or you switched to Daylight Savings Time during the drive?” and he said, “I’m telling you, four hours and a few minutes, with a quick pit stop to hit the men’s room and get a container of coffee and, at the border tourist office next door to this restaurant, a free Pennsylvania road map. But it wasn’t bad, since I was able to pick up a few classical music stations on the radio, and the best one an hour from here and with the call letters of your university. All of Byrd’s masses. Very unusual. This is a good music area,” and she said, “How’s the hotel? I know it isn’t big-city plush but we got you the nicest around,” and he said, “The staff’s friendly and I don’t mean to sound like a chronic bellyacher, but the room’s so depressing. Jesus, you want to blow your brains out, that’s the room to do it in. Though it does have a Jacuzzi, not that I’ll use it. But its one modern touch, with sliding frosted doors on the other side of the tub that open onto the rest of the room — what’s that all about? Another entrance in case you locked the bathroom door accidentally? Or to take a bath or do the Jacuzzi with someone in the main room watching? Some architect’s idea of chic or kink?” “Is that what made the room depressing?” and he said, “No, mystifying. For depression, just about everything else: furniture, carpet, drapes. All different muddy colors, and dim bulbs in ugly lamps, and a view of rundown row houses across the hotel parking lot and an abandoned railroad track.” “Not abandoned; that’s our famous spur. You’re liable to hear a slow freight train choochoo-ing at midnight and again around five, or that’s what several other guest speakers have told me. They liked it — small-town America — and they said the train had a very soothing whistle. It’s picking up and delivering to what’s left of the big steel mill in town.” “Anyway, I’m reporting, not complaining. A life I couldn’t live there, but a night? — it’s fine. And thanks for having me out. Your fee is more than fair.” Thinks: Should he take the alternate route to 83, coming up in a few miles? About twenty minutes longer, she told him when she gave directions to the hotel, but prettier and less traffic, and he’d like seeing different scenery going home. No, stick to this one, get back soon as he can, and, if the kids aren’t around, tell his wife. “I don’t know what happened last night. I mean, I know but can’t quite believe it. But the teacher who coordinated the whole event and introduced me to the audience? Well, she ended up in my room later. In my bed. Minute after I said good night to her in her car downstairs, she knocked on my door to say she had to use the bathroom. I said why didn’t she use the one in the lobby, and she gave some feeble excuse that it was being cleaned and she really had to go badly. We had sex. She forced me to. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it and protested profusely till she stuck a washrag in my mouth. Before that, when we were having dinner, she must have slipped me a mickey or whatever it is that knocks you out in an hour or just makes you too weak and dizzy to fight back. Next thing I knew I was tied to the bed, on my back, spread-eagled and with no pants on, four ropes for four limbs plus duct tape, and she was on top of me, wielding a knife and threatening to mutilate me if I didn’t perform. That’s when I started protesting and the washrag went in. Twenty minutes after it was over she started in again, with the same threat, because she said she hadn’t taken the risk she did to get so little satisfaction. Sound nuts? Believe it, because she was crazy. But that’s all I did: perform, and good thing I was able to. I had her arrested in the morning after I got out of those ropes. Thought of calling you about it but then decided it’d be better to tell you face-to-face. She’s in jail now. I’m pressing charges of assault and battery, whatever that last half is, and rape. I’m so sorry, but you have to see it was totally excusable on my part and that perhaps my being able to complete the sex act twice saved my life.” They drove to the school building he was to read at. She was pretty, pleasant, intelligent, easy to be with, wavy red hair, strong build, short, lean-legged, nicely dressed, about twenty years younger than he, immediately effusive and friendly, with a much older and frailer woman’s gravelly voice. Was she sick and just didn’t show it? She asked about his wife and kids; he asked if she was married and had any kids. She had married early, childhood sweetheart, divorced after the birth of twins; two more brief marriages but no kids from them. The boys go to different colleges on opposite coasts. They’re freshmen, only out of the house for three months and she misses them terribly. She lives alone in the foothills with a dog and several songbirds and her sons’ cats: their dorms wouldn’t permit pets. “If the car stinks it’s because of the dog. He won’t let me leave the house without him. Today you got lucky, except for the stench, which can’t be avoided, I’m afraid, since I hate all those fake deodorizers. He’s big and hairy and romps around in our nearby swamp a lot, and I can only give him so many baths a month. I even take him along when I teach or go out to a movie or dinner. He stays quietly in the car, hence the stench, which I must have grown used to, since I never smell it. Maybe my passengers are exaggerating it to reap some advantage from me. He’s also good protection in this deceptively benign town of unemployed drunks and epigonic car thieves. But am I talking too much about him and not enough about my boys? That’s because he’s my best friend now and I love him — he’d never desert me for higher learning — and he’s never given a sign that his car confinement is any kind of mistreatment,” and he said, “Then you’re probably doing the right thing, when you weigh it against his staying home and being lonely. How come you left him behind today, though again, I’m not complaining?” and she said, “The possibility that you could be allergic to dogs like our last guest; by the time I thought to call you about it, you were on the road,” and he said, “I have no allergies, and though the smell is detectable, I can live with that too for a short time.” “You know, I like you: you’re a good guy. I mean; relaxed, equable, direct,” and he said, “I only seem that way because I’m a little tired from the trip,” and she said, “I like that about you too: your false modesty, which is only there to deflect further conversation about yourself. So many of the lecturers and writers I invite for the day because I like their work, though also because they’re within a three-hour driving radius of here and don’t insist on apparitional stipends, turn out to be cranks, egomaniacs, lechers, and jerks,” and he said, “Three of the four I’ll admit to being now and then, and a lech I might’ve been many years ago. But it’d be ridiculous to be one now — right? — not only because I don’t want to bust up my marriage and hurt my kids, but my age. But what are we talking about?” and she said, “We’re just talking, everything harmless, getting to know each other like two new people often do when they’re suddenly stuffed into a small smelly car filled with dog hair for more than ten minutes. The conversation will change, though, and become rangy. That’s a word I think I made up: wide range. To be honest, something I’ve never put to a real word man before; what do you think of it?” and he said, “If it catches on, and I’m so out of touch with contemporary culture that maybe it already has, I’ll remember I heard it here first.” “Now you sound sarcastic; what happened to change you?” and he said, “You’re going to make me apologize. I didn’t intend to sound sarcastic. And ‘rangy.’ Rangy? It’s okay, but few people will understand it unless you explain it as you did to me.” “Then I’m wiping it from my vocabulary. I’m serious — it’s erased. Think of it as a value assessment of your judgment and technical know-how,” and he said, “Don’t be rash; it was just a single opinion of mine and maybe rushed.” He thinks in his car, Maybe he won’t say anything to his wife. Since he never did anything like it before, why would she suspect it now? He’ll park in the carport — probably get home an hour and a half before the kids, the way he’s moving — walk in, if she’s not outside — she doesn’t usually go out unless he or one of the kids or her student helper is around, afraid she might get stuck someplace in her wheelchair or motor cart and have to stay there till someone comes by or call a neighbor on her portable phone to help her — say, “Sally, you around? I’m back.” If she’s outside, and she won’t be too far from the carport and the kitchen door, he’ll see her when he pulls in. They’ll kiss, she’ll be very happy to see him, unless she’s going through or has recently gone through something difficult with her illness. Then she probably won’t be outside. “Hi, welcome home, you got back earlier than you thought you would,” she might say. If she’s not feeling well or has had a bad morning, he’ll say, “What can I do for you? Anything you want?” Say, “I shouldn’t have gone. I knew something like this could happen.” Would happen? Would. “Even with people covering me,” she might say, “they can’t be here every second.” He’ll swear he’s not going to accept another reading date out of town, if she had a bad time while he was gone. Yesterday when he called, soon after he got back to the hotel after dinner and just a few minutes before what’s-her-name — he can’t believe it; he’s forgotten her name already — Sheila knocked on his door, she was fine: nothing had gone wrong, the girls had been a great help. “If I go slow and think about every move and am very careful about my transferring, I’m usually okay.” “It isn’t worth it,” he could say today. “The reading fee is taxed, what, twenty to twenty-five percent, so if I get six hundred max for it as I did for this one I only end up with four-fifty or so.” “There are expenses for the trip,” she’d probably say. “Thirty-one cents a mile when you go by car, IRS allows you, and your meals and hotel.” “All paid for,” he’d say, “except the car costs and coffees along the way. Though I can pad,” and she’d say, “No padding; let’s be completely honest.” My God, he thinks in the car, how subliminal or subconscious or whatever it is, that last line. Anyway, they’ll kiss, outside or in the house, no matter how bad she feels. She’ll be glad he’s home even if she’s not feeling well; she just won’t show it as much. He’ll say, “Want some tea?” no matter how she’s feeling. “I’m going to have some, since I had too much coffee on the road and for breakfast and I just want to sit tranquilly for a few minutes,” and he’ll make tea for himself or them both and say, “Want to sit with me outside?” and she could say, “That’s an enticing idea, not only to be with you but I haven’t been out today,” and if she’s outside when he gets there, then, “Sure. I can take a break”—from reading or marking papers or from her wheelchair snipping branches or pulling up tall weeds—“and you can tell me about your trip.” He’ll make the tea, bring the mug or mugs outside, wheel her out to the patio table right beside the carport or just to the table if she’s already outside. The weather should be good for it; it’s nice now and doesn’t seem as if it’ll change, and the TV report for central Pennsylvania, which he saw when he was having a buffet breakfast in the hotel lounge, said it’d be clear and sunny the entire day and in the high sixties, and the weather there shouldn’t be that much different from Baltimore. They’ll talk, he’ll tell her what he had at dinner and what the town’s like, and more about the reading than he did last night on the phone. “The reading coordinator, Sheila something — she also teaches nineteenth-century lit — Sheila Haverford, just like the small college near Philadelphia. I wonder if she’s in any way related to the founder or whoever gave the college its name. If that’s how it did get its name, it’d seem like too much of a coincidence that she isn’t. Anyway, she was quite pleasant, smart, has twin sons in college — freshmen — though looks much younger than that … than a woman with twins that age. She could have married young, seventeen, eighteen, but while raising her kids she also must have worked hard getting through school for so many years; she has a Ph.D. in your least favorite subject and what you also call the most farcical, comp lit. Maybe she had help from her husband, plus lots of sitters and nannies, though that can run up. But if she is a Haverford and the Haver-fords still have money — haven’t given all of it away to the college, if that is, as I said, how it was named — there could be plenty of family money there, plus a couple of grannies to help her. But she said she divorced early, so who knows. I also recall now that her father was a watchmaker in a small New Jersey factory and died in a fire when she was around twenty. So, maybe fire insurance, if she was an only child. Her introduction — if I’m talking a lot about her it’s because she was there from almost minute one till she dropped me back at the hotel after dinner, and there’s almost nothing of comparable interest, not that this is interesting, to say about the trip — her introduction at the reading was typically embarrassing. Why don’t they just cite a few facts — he did this, got that, his feet are flat and because of it he suffers from sciatica and has a bad back — and not try to assess your work so glowingly? I hate it when they gush on like that and I have to sit through it like a schmuck with everyone there to see me grimacing and squirming appreciatively. The turnout was pretty good — seventy-five, maybe. Good for me, anyway, but I think most were undergrads ordered to attend by their teaching assistants so as not to embarrass the department, as well as to justify my fee, which is what we do in my department when a non-hotshot guest gives a reading or lecture. I actually saw one of these TAs walking up and down the aisle taking attendance, or maybe she was only jotting down atmospheric notes for the academic novel she’s writing. The Q-and-A’s were the usual, though one I’d never heard: not ‘Do you get a lot of your material from your own life?’ but ‘Why do you use so much of your life in your work, and because of the nature of what you write about, don’t your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and especially your family object to your naked portrayal of them?’ I said, ‘How did you decide I do that? Are you writing an unauthorized biography of me, speaking to people I know behind my back, going through the garbage I put out for the trash haulers, attaching listening devices to my phone and through my home and office walls?’ and he said, ‘I’m sorry if the question offended you, sir. I thought it was a fair one but I can see your point,’ and all I could think to say was Touché! which caused a few giggles and oohs from the audience, though of the kind that made me think they felt I got the worst of the argument and had spoken like a fop, but big deal. After, I suggested to the woman that a couple of the students or TAs come to dinner with us, but she said it wasn’t in the budget. So just the two of us,” and she might say, “Maybe that’s what she counted on,” and he’d say something like, “I doubt it.” Anyway, that’s when he’ll probably tell her what he ate and what the restaurant was like, though he thinks he did that last night. “Then — and I had three glasses of wine, she had one, the two choices they had being American chablis and Chilean merlot, and the glasses were relatively small and came a little more than half full, and when I pointed both these things out to the waiter, he said, ‘That’s the way the house pours them, which is based on the guidelines of the chain that owns this place, and the only size wineglass we have’—she drove me to my hotel. I never slept in such a depressing room. If there ever was an ideal one for suicide, this was it. In fact, if you had been in that room before you might even choose to go back, just to sustain the suicidal urge, to do yourself in. Dark ugly furniture — did I tell you this? — same with the drapes and rug, and floral wallpaper and an urban-blight view. And at midnight — this I know I couldn’t have told you — and again at four A.M., a freight train choochoo-ed by… really, about ten feet past the hotel parking lot, on a spur line or track, whistling hysterically though it was only going about five miles an hour, after picking up and/or delivering goods to what’s left of the huge steel mill in town. The last piece of info the desk clerk told me when I asked about the train while I was checking out. There was — the room’s one contemporary touch, though for all I know something a lot more modern in bathrooms superseded it a dozen years ago — a Jacuzzi in the bathtub, which I didn’t use.” She might say, “Why not? It would have relaxed you, taken your mind off suicide, and helped you sleep well, which you apparently didn’t do,” and he’d say, “Too much of an effort. You have to stick a hand on the drain — first you fill the tub to this silver dot between the regular bath and shower controls — and at the same time your other hand on another spot in the tub to get the Jacuzzi going. A little of me thought I’d get an electric shock — I mean, this place wasn’t in the greatest shape. But the major part of me thought, Who can pamper himself like that? And do you soap yourself in a Jacuzzi — which is what I wanted to do: get clean — or just lie in it, letting the thing do whatever it’s supposed to to you? A quick shower and then bed, with maybe a little reading, that’s all I wanted.” “You took a shower before you went to bed?” she could say. “How unlike you. You always exercise and run in the morning and then shower,” and he could say, “I did my exercises and ran in place for about a half hour in the room last night, feeling if I did them then I wouldn’t have to do any of it in the morning. I wanted to set off early today. I thought if I got back an hour or more before the kids — by the way, the drive there and back took an hour longer than this woman said it would — maybe you and I could have some fun … what do you say?” and he might jiggle his eyebrows or make a silly face or both, and she could say, “I wouldn’t mind,” and then he’d push her into the bedroom, to get it started sooner, help her undress and get on the bed, and she’d prepare herself if she had to and they’d make love. While on the bed he thinks he’d say, “I forgot to tell you about something I did there,” and she might say, “You had sex with Sheila this morning — she called you up for an early breakfast. Or with one of the students — she knocked on your door last night, while you were wondering whether you should take a shower, Jacuzzi, or bath, for a late evening snack,” and he’d say, “No, but close. I cable-hopped — what’s the expression the kids use for flicking through the TV set with the remote? Channeling? Station surfing? Television diving? I wanted to get a taste of American culture we don’t have any access to or want, and oh, boy, did I! — enough to hold me for a couple of years. Every movie, new, old, or ancient, including two jammed pornos — those you paid extra for, so I could only hear the dialogue, moaning, clothes being torn, and someone splashing in a bath — was silly, poorly written, and inconsequential, and I had a choice of about seven. And all the regular shows and reruns, from TV sitcom to cable stand-up, were no better and equally frivolous and often stupid about civility, marriage, intellectual discourse, history, art, violence, and sex. On the cable shows, and there were about thirty, mainly local, was everything from a preacher preaching, guru guruing, TV and movie critic critiquing, and several salespeople selling, to weather predicting for parts of the globe almost nobody but diplomats, the very rich, and jetting businessmen will go to, and consciousness-expansive talk fests for both genders and all adult ages and stages of parenting and most sexual preferences — I don’t know them all — and heritages and races. I felt that two hours of this in that room but without the nearby and then distant train whistles — that could only help someone come to his senses — would turn a healthy mind to abnormal thoughts of suicide.” No, he’d only tell her that nothing worthwhile was on, not go down a list she was probably familiar with and he’d added nothing original to, and he doesn’t know how he could deliver it without sounding condescending and pompous. Besides, she’d question his being able to make such decisive judgments about so many things in the shows — art, history, intellectual discourse — in so short a time. “It was all shit, period, but I got my taste,” will be all he’ll say. He actually did channel-surf — he thinks that’s the right expression — for an hour after Sheila left. He couldn’t sleep or read. It was around one A.M. He feels tired now and should stop for coffee and to rest his eyes a few minutes. He showered before surfing. Wanted to get the smell of them off. It all happened pretty fast. He fell asleep briefly after the first time — holding her, not holding her, or being held; he forgets — but she was there. Then she was rubbing and kissing him — for a moment he thought he was being licked and nibbled on by one of his daughters’ cats — and he did it again, half asleep, and doesn’t recall which position he took or if he came. That would have been unusual for him, twice in less than an hour, but he supposes with a new woman, or the only woman but his wife in almost twenty years, that could happen. Before she left — she was by the door, dressed, hair brushed; he was nude, sitting on the edge of the bed — she said, “Like me to drop by for breakfast?” He remembers thinking, Does she expect me to go to the door and kiss her goodbye? I think I’ll just sit; if she comes over, then I’ll have to kiss. “I know the hotel gives you a complimentary buffet breakfast at the bar — dry cereal, frozen fruit juice, muffins, and packaged bagels; you toast them in the toaster they provide — and weak coffee. But there’s a great breakfast place in town, the real McCoy. Opens at five, a workmen’s café that doesn’t get much business now that the mill’s ninety percent shut down, and I’ll clean the interior of my car first. I could tell you were more put off by the dog smell and hairs than you let on.” He said — by this time he had covered his genitals with the bed cover or sheet in case he got erect again—“No, this should be the end of it,” while he thought, Now what am I going to do? I never should have got into this stupid mess, and she said, “Hey, what do you think, I’m planning an affair with you? It was spontaneous, which is how it should be, and we had our kicks. If I’m still free and willing and you want to come around the area again, please do, but not for a second university check. Next time, if there is one, it has to be singularly for me,” and he said, “I meant that what I want to do six hours from now when I wake up is take an early run, maybe limber up beforehand on the weight-room machines downstairs, breakfast quickly in the bar, and then head home. It’s best I don’t stay away too long, though I can’t think of any good reason right now other than to be there when my kids get back from school and maybe to get some work done at home,” and she said, “And of course for your wife too — you can say it. Hell, it’d be natural, and by the way you spoke of her at dinner, I know she’s a fine woman,” and he said, “That’s right, I didn’t intentionally leave her out; for her too. As for my coming back here; much as I admire you, and I certainly don’t regret having done it”—You’re lying your eyeballs out, he told himself while he was saying this—“I think this was the only time for that too,” and she said, “Good, I can appreciate that, and I didn’t expect much more. I can also see no kiss good night will be forthcoming from you. If you wish, send it in a letter, but not care of my department,” and he said, “I don’t quite understand,” and she said, “Home, dummy, nothing furtive or disapproving implied,” and smiled, blew him a kiss, and left. In her car after dinner she said, “So, do you want to be driven straight back to the hotel?” and he said, “Sure, where else?” and she said, “Oh, this town’s loaded with fun-producing dives: just joking. But there are a couple of roadhouses for nightcaps a short drive from here. How about one of those? I love the word ‘nightcap.’ It puts the lid on things, does what a combination word like that’s supposed to: reverberate and ring with multiple meanings. What do you think?” and he said, “I guess so.” “And you deserve a nightcap. You deserve two, but I haven’t got all night either. It was a terrific reading and you gave the students half an hour longer in the Q-and-A session than they normally get from our visitors. It was apparent they kept asking questions because they were interested in you, liked your mind and forthrightness, and had been stimulated by the reading,” and he said, “Oh, God, I thought I was awful. I read too fast and was inarticulate in most of my answers. But I really am tired and would rather go back, maybe have a glass of wine in my room — I brought a glassful in a jar to help me doze — and then read for a while and go to sleep.” “The bar there — the Rendezvous Room, if you can believe it; can you think of a more inappropriate name for a grungy steel town in the heart of beerland? — but it’s a good one, designed with taste and sometimes lively. Why not have a drink there instead of in your room — that’s too depressing to think about — and we’ll put it on the bill. It all comes off the university. One of the perks of being the reading coordinator: I get to indulge my incipient alcoholism. I’m joking again,” and he said, “I don’t know …” and she said, “Hey, Mr. Reader, I’m not going to twist your arm. No? Then no,” and he said, “Sure, one drink, a brandy or cognac if they got,” since he thought he had hurt her feelings and she was paying him a decent fee for coming out here and if he’s cooperative for another hour she might invite him again in a couple of years. So they drank, sitting at the bar. TV was on above them; several men with the same kind of name tags on their jackets and shirts had taken up all the settees and most of the tables and chairs. He was the one who suggested sitting at the bar. He felt people drank faster there, and if she wanted a second drink — that would be his limit — they could get it quicker there than from a waitress at a table. He thought then: Did she have designs on him? He didn’t think so. It could be she was a little lonely — the stuff about her sons indicated that, and it didn’t seem she had a boyfriend — and visitors from outside were probably interesting company to her. She started talking about previous visitors—“Do you know Anya Malcolm?”—and he said he knew her work and had once been introduced to her at some function. “She was a bit full of herself, maybe because everyone but me was making a big to-do over her, but I guess she was all right. I have to admit I don’t think much of her work, though,” and she said, “From all you’ve said since you got here, whose do you like? I bet nobody’s,” and he said, “There are some, but if I tell you their names, you’ll say, ‘But they’re all dead,’” and she said, “Anyhow, Malcolm was wonderful, congenial, modest, contemplative, and as generous with her time to the students as you were. I think she bedded down with one too — in this hotel—or took his phone number, but that’s her business. He trailed her like a puppy. Later I learned she also has that reputation, a quiet killer,” and he said, “That I didn’t know. She’s not married; she can do what she wants,” and she said, “I don’t know if that argument holds. But one of our visitors — Malcolm was at least discreet about this student — but this fellow: a first-class character. We’ve had scholar characters too, I have to tell you, but none came near to doing what this one did — the males,” and she gave his name and he said, “I’ve heard of him, of course. You do get some big shots here, something I thought you said you couldn’t afford, for you sure didn’t get him for what you’re paying me, though I’m definitely not complaining. I never read or met him. The reviews of his work didn’t make it seem very interesting, and I don’t trust awards. But what’d he do, if I may ask?” and she said, “What’d he didn’t, know what I mean? Believe me, and I’m going to sound uncharacteristically vulgar now, but if there were a telephone pole with a hole in it shaped like a vagina, and it needn’t be greased, he would have jumped it. And you don’t have to ask; I’m telling you. That’s what I in fact told this gigantic creep I’d do: tell everyone, not that it’d stop him from waylaying other reading coordinators and students or disenhance, can I say? his literary eminence. Mr. Pulitzer Prize was on me from the moment I picked him up at this hotel. In that fetid car of mine to the university auditorium he kept saying, ‘You have magnificent eyes, silky skin, the most swanlike shoulders and neck I’ve ever seen.’ ‘Swans have shoulders?’ I asked. They could, but I couldn’t resist asking it. Anyway, malarkey. I know my eyes and shoulders and neck aren’t like that, but he persisted. My ears, my arms, my fingertips especially. He wanted to suck on them. Just looking at them gripping the wheel, they made him swell, he said. That’s the word he used. He wanted us to stop for a prereading drink, then after the reading we’d have predinner drinks, during-dinner wine, and finally at this bar postdinner drinks and nightcaps. It wasn’t from him I got the word. Truth of it is that for weeks after I had to overcome thinking it was the most scrofulous I’d heard. When I wouldn’t stop he took several swigs from a sterling silver hip flask, a gift from a reading coordinator in Minneapolis, he said, with an amorous-erotic inscription on it alluding to his legs and phallus and lips, even though I asked him not to read it. Then, while I’m driving, he tries grabbing my crotch and I said, ‘Hey, you nuts? Get your paws off or we’ll crash.’ When he realized I wasn’t ever putting out for him — we were about to enter the auditorium and the room was packed; I’m sorry, but the guy really draws them — he said if I don’t promise this instant to sleep with him after the reading, he’s going to make a beeline for the exit now and blame it on me in a way where he’ll get his full payment, even though he didn’t show up, and I’ll get canned. He’ll cook up the most credible story too, he said. ‘I’ll work on it for a day, put aside my other writing, and send it to your dean. Writers are the best liars when they put their minds to it,’ he said. For a minute I was in a dither what to do. I thought should I consent and then go ahead with it? because I was sure if I did consent and then reneged after, he’d concoct an even worse believable lie against me. I was petrified. I have a year-to-year appointment, I don’t earn much money, but I’ve been teaching here so long that my university pays half my kids’ college tuition for four years.” “You didn’t go through with it, did you?” “First I said, ‘I have to go to the ladies’ room,’ and he said, ‘You can pee later; tell me now.’ I said I’d report these threats to his wife. He said she knows all about what he does on the road and gives her blessing, since they have an arrangement that when he’s gone she gets to knock around too. I said he was lying, and he said, ‘Here’s her number; call her,’ and pulled out his cellular phone. ‘Then your department chairman,’ I said, ‘or your provost or dean.’ He said his school’s lucky to have him. With his celebrity the last few years, besides his mobility, he could teach anywhere. ‘I want an answer in ten seconds,’ he said, and I said, ‘Then the hell with my job. You’re a greasy repulsive slob, and too skinny, and I loathe your guts.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘you called my bluff; I love it,’ and kissed the top of my head, and we went in and he delivered a beautiful reading and had the audience enthralled and begging for more. Later he went partying with a few of the grad students and teachers, and I hear he was thoroughly charming and gracious, though I’m sure he secretly ended up with one of the girls.” “He sounds like a drip. It’s what I always thought about most writers, and especially the rare ones whose work you like — meaning: you don’t want to kill it? don’t get to know them. But listen, I’m tired. I’ll have to drink up and say good night.” “Fine, then, good night, and thank you for coming. Next time, if I can finesse it, I’ll try to get you out here for a lot more money,” and he said, “Thanks, I’d love to come back; the students were terrific. And also thanks for having me here this time,” and she said, “And thank you for thanking me so plentifully, sir. Compared to the creep, you’ve been a hundred-percent gentleman,” and he said, “Thank you,” and went to the elevator. She tapped on his door about twenty minutes later. Tapped? Knocked? What’s the difference? But what’d she do till then? He didn’t ask. Maybe she got in her car and stayed parked or drove for a few minutes, even toward home, before deciding to turn around, or had another drink in the bar, since that’s where he left her. Once he headed to the elevator she even could have known what she was going to do but wanted to give him a few minutes. He was stuffing his shoes and clothes he’d just worn into his day pack. “Who is it?”—thinking maybe someone from the hotel staff or a guest who had the wrong door or one of the name-tag men downstairs as a prank — and she said, “Sheila; may I come in?” He said, “What is it, you forgot or lost something?” though for the most part knowing why she was there, and she said, “Something like that; it’s important. Open the door,” and he said, “I have to get some clothes on”—he was only in boxer shorts and socks — and then opened it. Then — it might have taken ten minutes — they were in bed. But how’d they get there? They started kissing and she was touching him through the pants and put his hand on her breast and his other on her buttock and unzipped his fly and put her hand inside. It seemed that was all she had to do. Jerked it around and then pulled him to the bed by it, got on her back first, got her arms around him and pulled him on top of her; then they had to separate to get their clothes off. “Your socks,” she said, “everything, since all of me’s off too.” But why’d he let her in the room, even? Why didn’t he say at the door after he opened it, and this was what he was feeling at the moment, “I’m sorry, but if it isn’t something you lost or forgot, and since you were never up here, it couldn’t be … if it isn’t important, as you said it was, then you really have to leave because I got to get to sleep”? She walked in when he opened the door. He said, “Excuse me?” but in a way that clearly meant, Where do you think you’re going? He didn’t know if he should shut the door or leave it open. He shut it, since he didn’t want anyone to see her in the room and he also may have to raise his voice to get her out. He thought he’ll tell her to go; he knows what’s on her mind and the same thing isn’t on his; he’s sorry. But first he’ll ask her to be more explicit why she came here: maybe there is a legitimate reason. “Excuse me,” he said, “but it is pretty late. Truthfully, what’s the reason you’re here?” and she said, “I’m aware of the time — and it isn’t that late — though I also realize you’ve had a long day and you’re probably tired. But how can I explain it other than to be direct: all that talk about the voracious Mr. Slime didn’t do anything titillating to me before, believe me. It’s simply an involuntary and actually very pleasant attraction I’ve had to you almost since you got here, not to speak of equally enjoyable sensations, and instead of leaving it alone I thought I’d see where it went and if anything comparable was happening to you. I apologize for not coming out with it at dinner or in the bar, and because you were married — and happily, it seemed — and just natural reserve about something like that, I felt somewhat shy,” and he said, “Look, you have to understand I’ve never done anything like that, what you’re suggesting, and I doubt I’m going to start now.” That’s what he said, almost exactly that. What he should have said was: and I’m in no way going to start now and neither do I like the uncomfortable position you’ve put me in, since you know I gave you no signs I was interested. Whatever you were feeling, you just should have kept in. She nodded agreeingly to what he did say, seemed to think about it a few seconds, eyes off to the side, then came up to him and said, “You doubt you’re going to start anything now but you’re not sure, am I reading it right?” and put her arms around his waist, and he said, “No, you’re wrong, I don’t want to; I just don’t have a firm way of saying things,” and tried pushing her hands off from in back. She was shorter than he by almost a foot and looked up and smiled softly but in no way cheaply or seductively or anything like that — saucily; it was a lovely smile — and pressed an ear against his chest and said, “I’m going to say something real dumb; I can feel your stomach pumping, what do you think it means?” and he said, “Sure you can. Come on, let’s stop this,” or “end this,” “drop this,” “forget this,” and tried prying her hands apart from in back, but she had them locked. He didn’t want to use more force and possibly hurt her. She might get excited, start lashing out at him, physically or with words. She does this screwy thing, coming up here and persisting, who knows? He had an erection because she was pressed into him there and all the talk and stuff, but so what? He gets them and they go. He should have gently pushed her away till her hands broke loose and, if they didn’t, then maybe turned around and pulled them apart. His back to her like that would have been a good sign, and the two combined, his back and pulling her hands apart, might have done the trick. She said, arms still around him, “You really don’t want to sleep with me? I’d like to with you, now even more than when I knocked on your door, which in answer to your question before is why I came here, but I won’t beg.” Why didn’t he just say no at that point, demonstrably, even angrily—“and thanks for your directness but it’s not working on me and in fact is misplaced”—so also sarcastically, and tell her to leave, even say, “Listen, I mean it, get the hell out of here,” and go to the door and open it and say, “Now come on, out, out!”? They started kissing just around then, but what’d they do between that moment and when she said she wouldn’t beg? How did they get so far, in fact, where they started kissing? She looked up at him — doe-eyed is the expression that was once commonly used — after she said that about not begging, raised herself on her toes a few inches, and he bent over — he can even see himself now bending down to her face after she raised hers closer to his — and kissed her, thinking, One kiss and that’ll be it, and maybe even saying, “It’s tempting, you kiss well, that was very nice but all there’s going to be. We kissed and now you have to leave, I’m sorry, and my goddamn erection means nothing. I get them from all kinds of things, even wind.” But she was grabbing him through the pants now, and they kissed more and she put his hands on her and her hand went inside his fly, and then they were on the bed. He could have stopped it there perhaps, when he got off her to undress, but by then he was very excited and she almost never stopped jerking him, so it was just too late. After it was over — the second time; after the first, not that he put much into it, he dozed off — she said, “Excuse me, but how many years has it been since you did it with anyone but your wife?” and he said, “Why, my participation was sort of mechanical?” and she said, “I didn’t say that,” and he said, “Anyway, without meaning to provoke you, it’s none of your business,” and she said, “You’re angry at me because you think I pushed you into it?” and he said, “Angry at myself. But I did it, enjoyed it the first time; the second time I was barely functioning, I was so sleepy, so whatever happened or didn’t, I don’t even know, but okay. But I’m asking you not to tell anyone about it. I know that’s a difficult request — one has best friends, but best friends have big mouths — but please do what I ask,” and she said, “That means you’re not going to tell your wife?” and he said, “That’s for me to decide,” and she said, “I only said that to know how many people you intend to tell and if I should expect a letter or phone call from her. I’d rather not get one of those — I never have. All but one of the men I’ve been attached to since my last divorce weren’t married at the time — so don’t worry: I’ll keep our little secret secret.” He wanted to say he didn’t much like that remark, “our little secret,” but didn’t want to antagonize her. Out of revenge, or more because if she lost any warm feelings she’d had for him she could spill everything to who knows whom, so best to get her out of here in a good mood. But to be on the safe side, he said, “I’ve definitely decided not to tell Sally, so please don’t tell anyone yourself,” and she said, “I wasn’t going to. I already said: it’s between us.” Then she got dressed, mentioned breakfast and some other things, and left. After she was gone he thought, Why’d she want to have anything to do with him? He’s got about twenty years on her. He’s not good-looking anymore. She may have liked his mind but he doesn’t see why, because he didn’t show much intelligence or wit since he got here and was fairly unpleasant a lot of the time — cynical, acerbic, critical of others — and nobody goes to bed with you because of your writing. In comparison, she’s bright and cheerful and articulate and reasonably pretty, with an athlete’s body, almost — the physique of someone who runs or swims but works out every day — and with a nice fullness, and, for their one shot in bed, more sensual and uninhibited than he. He’s in shape, but the shape he’s in wouldn’t appeal to a much younger woman. And he’s not famous, he can’t get her a job in his department, he can’t do anything for her. Even a reference from him for a fellowship or teaching promotion or another teaching position or even to get into an art colony wouldn’t do much, as he’s not considered very highly in academic and literary circles, and he has no contacts at these places or other schools. If she did ask for a reference he’d give it and say very complimentary things, not just to keep her mouth shut but because they’re the truth based on what he saw: an excellent mind, a fine teacher, a considerable knowledge and love of literature, and she’s well-spoken and personable and has a rapport with her students that he found believable and unusual because they genuinely liked and respected her as a teacher and friend, and she didn’t get these reactions from them by having to act younger and more “with it” or diminishing herself in any way. “I recommend her most highly and would put her in the top five percent of young teachers I’ve seen teach.” He’s not being facetious here, he thought. This is what he’d say of her. So, she had her own reasons for coming on to him, that’s all. He reminded her of someone, or she was particularly keyed up to have sex because of something physical or personal he was unaware of and he happened to be there and wasn’t too unpleasant-looking to her or maybe not at all and hadn’t acted obnoxiously or like an oddball; and that he didn’t make a pass or show any attraction to her may have been to his credit, or the way she saw it, and so on, plus she must have assumed he wouldn’t make a fuss after, calling her up and wanting to see her again when she might not want him to. He was mature while being slightly unconventional, she might have felt, and maybe that’s mostly what it was, and also safe in a health way in that he’s been married and faithful — though his monogamy she only could have guessed at earlier in the evening — for almost nineteen years straight. Oh, what’s he going on about? he thought. He doesn’t understand why she went for him the way she did, and so assiduously, and all the reasons he just thought of border on the ridiculous. In the car he thinks maybe he shouldn’t get home before the kids. If he does, an hour before, let’s say, his wife could say, “We have an hour before the kids come home and I’ve missed you; want to have some fun?” He already thought that; but could he refuse? She might get suspicious or perplexed. He’s almost never refused. Maybe five times since they first slept together, or ten times then — twenty. Anyway, about twice a year, if that. And out of extreme fatigue or because he was sick or coming down with something and she didn’t know this, and maybe he didn’t either, when she suggested making love, or the rare time when he was depressed and didn’t think sex would take him out of it. Because in bed he may feel so guilty that he can’t perform: and that’s the word for it, perform, for his mind would be on what he did last night. It’s also possible that his sex drive will be slight because he did it twice with Sheila, and the second time only about twelve hours ago, and he was bushed while doing it, but he thinks that would only be a small part of his not being able to perform with his wife. She’d be sympathetic and tender and try some things to help him—“Leave it to me” or “Lie back and let me see what I can do,” she’s said a number of times — and maybe these wouldn’t work either. That’s happened a few times too, though usually only when they tried doing it twice in a short time. And he might then just tell her, thinking now’s better than later — since he feels he’ll probably have to tell her sometime — when she sees, even in this way, what it’s doing to him. “Now’s probably as good a time to tell you as any,” he could say. “For certain I don’t want you to find out from anyone but me. This is why I can’t do anything now, I’m sure of it. I had sex with a woman last night, the reading coordinator, Sheila. She also teaches there. I didn’t want to but I ended up doing it. She was a bit pushy but I could have resisted. She came to my hotel room after we shook hands and said good night downstairs in the bar. We only had a single drink and I didn’t even want to do that; I wanted to say good night and goodbye to her in her car. Or I kissed her cheek goodbye, though we also might have shaken hands, when I left her, and she might have kissed mine. Anyway, nothing more than a friendly kiss on the cheek from us both. I didn’t want to let her into my room but she sort of barged in when I opened the door. I know this sounds farfetched but it’s the truth, I swear to you. I said through the door, after she knocked on it and identified herself, ‘What is it you want? It’s late,’ and she said, ‘It’s important, open the door.’ Because I thought it was important — maybe she forgot to give me the check for the reading, though to be honest I expected it to come by mail in a couple of weeks, as she’d said earlier, or even that someone in the hotel was after her — I opened the door. I wasn’t going to let her in — I thought I could deal with whatever it was at the door — but she walked right past me. I said something like, ‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ because by now I knew it wasn’t about the check or anyone stalking her in the hotel. She was tenacious and aggressive and undiscouraged by anything I said to her, but still, as I told you, I could have resisted and I know that, so don’t think I’m trying to get out of this by saying I don’t. I could have said, ‘Are you insane? Get the hell out of here, beat it, or I’ll throw you out, and I mean it: get out now!’ I actually did say something like that, though not as forcefully, like, ‘Listen, this is all wrong and you have to leave here. I’m married, happily married’—that’s what I told her, the exact words, foolish and inept as they must have sounded—‘and I don’t want to do anything with you, period. Besides, I’m very tired and I want to set off early tomorrow, so will you please leave this room?’ I think I even showed her the door — went over to it and put my hand on the doorknob but didn’t open it, because I was concerned people in the corridor would see her in my room. In other words, I wasn’t sure what to do about her persistence but I knew I didn’t want to have sex with her — if I wasn’t married or going with anybody, maybe I would have wanted to or at least wouldn’t have been so adamant in wanting her to leave. But I eventually caved in. I’m still trying to figure out why, and I’m not trying to be funny there. I’m being apologetic. I feel miserable about it. She started undressing then, and I said, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ Then she threw herself on me — put her arms around me, I mean, and her shirt’s off and so’s her bra — and then started pulling off my shirt and I swear to you I tried putting it back on. But then it was off, and I think she tore part of it, and next thing I know she’s grabbing me through my pants and I push her hand away and she grabs me again and starts stroking me down there and I think, Oh, I give up; I don’t know why, but I knew by this time I was finished. As dopey and fake as this must sound, she was unstoppable and I ended up being conquerable. I was also, and I know this plus my tiredness contributed to some of it, a little drunk but not soused from the wine at dinner and the martini before and then that one brandy or cognac after in the bar. In fact I’m beginning to think — I’m almost convinced, though again this isn’t to worm out of it — that that’s what contributed to it the most. All the alcohol made me lethargic, stupid, and maybe even amorous, the way it can. But that’s what happened and how. I did it with her just once, I doubt I got half my clothes off, and I don’t remember a lot of it or if I even completed it: that’s how tipsy and sleepy I was. And the whole time she was there — from the knock on the door till when she left — was maybe thirty minutes in all. Believe me, I’m so sorry; I can’t tell you how much, and it’ll never happen again, never. I didn’t want to do it and I’ll know how to resist it next time. For one, to stay away from that much alcohol when I’m on the road, if I ever go again, even for a night, and I don’t think I will. It could be I drink more when I’m away from you and alone, but also eat less, thereby getting high quicker through two ways, but that’s still no excuse for it, and this whole thing took me by surprise. She was much younger than I — more than twenty years. I’m practically an ugly guy by now, and to her an old man, and that’s how I thought she saw me — completely uninterested in me physically — till she came into the room, so I don’t understand it. But she was capricious and a bit odd and wild in her way and obviously turned on by something, not necessarily me, and I was just about drunk and she had a few glasses of wine in her too and also that brandy or cognac, and that’s all I can say to explain it. Not even that I was flattered and went for her finally because she was so much younger and pretty and showed me this kind of attention. But you know me: I couldn’t care less and even react against it, when someone says nice things about me or my work, which she didn’t, by the way, except for the dutifully complimentary things reading coordinators always say to you after a reading. And it also isn’t that just because I never did this in almost nineteen years, made love to anyone but you, I was curious if not eager to try it, especially when it was practically thrown at me — given on a silver platter, that sort of thing — because the truth is I haven’t had any urge to do something like that since we got married or even since we first met. Of course not when we first met or anytime around that, because I was crushingly in love and attracted to you, as I am now, and I’m not just saying that, and sex with you then was new and we were just starting something, so why would I want to be with anyone else, and ruin things with you, or even think of another woman that way? Anyway, for our entire relationship, I haven’t wanted to. You were always enough for me and out of consideration or something else, when you weren’t feeling much like it, always made your body available to me except when you were sick or it was the beginning of your period or during our worst moments together, which I was usually responsible for, just as I’ve always been available to you that way, except during those kinds of times too. Oh, I’ve had my fantasies about other women a lot, but that’s as far as I ever took it — all in my head and fleeting, where I knew they were strictly fantasies and would never be carried out. But when she—” Oh, enough of it. “But when she” what? When she put her hand in his fly and started pulling on him, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He wouldn’t tell her half of what he just thought of, and she’d probably by now be crying to whatever he did say, possibly from when he first said he made love to a woman last night, which would be one of the first things he said, so who knows how much he’d be able to tell her? Much of what he doesn’t say today, if he does decide to tell her about it, he can save for another day when she’ll be more willing to listen. But if she was crying he’d try to comfort her, maybe try to hold her, hold and comfort her and say comforting and loving and apologetic and remorseful and self-damning and — hateful things, but she’d have none of it and would push him away, if he was holding her, he’s almost sure of it, and maybe say things like “You fucking bastard, you stinking shit,” and not say but scream them at him, and get dressed and leave the room or take her clothes with her and dress somewhere else, if he did start telling her this while they were in bed with no to few clothes on and preparing to make love. But he’s often impulsive and might just blurt it out sooner — to get it over with, he might give as a reason to himself — in another room or outside where he saw her when he got home but before there was any chance they’d go to bed, because of all places and occurrences he wouldn’t want to tell her there and then, and not blurt it out but say calmly and solemnly — and the solemnness would be real — that he has something important, disturbing, and grave to tell her and even frightening to him because of the effect it might have on her, and nothing to do with his health, he’d quickly add, since he wouldn’t want her getting alarmed at that possibility and then finding out what it really was. Maybe just say immediately that he’s done something he’s terribly ashamed of … deeply… anyway, he’d find the words. And after he told her he slept with a woman last night he’s almost sure she wouldn’t, after she told him what she thought, say much to him for a week. He can picture her — she’s done it before over less serious things between them: when he called her a cunt once. “There it is,” she said, “it’s finally out, what you truly think of women: they’re all just cunts to you, right? Well, I won’t listen anymore to your jackass insults”; another time, near the beginning of her illness when she was only limping a little and sometimes felt weak, when he said how sick can she be that she can’t even straighten a room out or wash a dish: “You’re completely without understanding and compassion and talk like the dimmest lowbrow I know. From now on think of me as deaf”—cupping her ears — and before that probably saying something curt like, “Shut up, I’ve heard enough, there is no word for you, get out of my sight.” Or she might not say anything, what he’d tell her would be so bad, and would only look stricken for a while and maybe even crazed, before getting herself away from whatever place he told her this at. After that, he thinks, the only things she’d say to him for a week would be for the kids’ benefit, so they wouldn’t think something irreconcilable had happened between their parents. She hates when he starts an argument when they’re around and usually says something like, “Save it for later when they can’t hear us, and I’m not saying this to defuse you but to spare them.” Or she might hear him out soberly like that and then say she doesn’t understand: if he didn’t want to do it with this woman as much as he said, at what point did he give in? and it might be then he’d have to say — if he didn’t say, “Forget it, let’s drop the subject for now”—“When she put her hand in my pants. Something just happened to change things,” and she could say, “Drop it? No, I want to hear all of it,” and then, “So that’s it? She grabs your dick and massages it half a minute and you totally capitulate? Worse comes to worst and it was overcoming you when your conscience or governing intelligence or whatever that higher part in you that screens and is supposed to thwart these kinds of actions didn’t want it to, as you said, and you knew it would jeopardize our marriage and hurt me and indirectly inflict similar distress on the kids, why didn’t you push her hand away and, if that didn’t work, wrench it free without injuring her or your penis and bark in her ear that this isn’t what you want to do, exciting as it’s obvious you find it, and if that didn’t sink in and she kept grabbing at it, then excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, even say you have to defecate — she couldn’t refuse you that, and I doubt she’d accompany you there — and lock the door and masturbate?” He actually should have done that, the last part, and there at least would have been some pleasure in the act rather than not having completed anything — maybe a great deal of pleasure, considering all the hot stuff that preceded it — and then come out of the bathroom and tell her what he did and he’s sorry but it was the only way he could stop from making love with her and now he won’t be good for anything involving sex for an hour and probably two — that’s been the pattern the last ten years — so she better just go since he really won’t want to do it in two hours or even an hour from now any more than he wanted to do it before, and it would also be much later than he wants to stay up. But who knows how his wife would take it, if he did tell her, though he’s almost sure she’d be cold and sharp and sullen to him for a lot longer than a week, no matter how often he apologized for what he did, and she wouldn’t let him make love to her — even let him embrace or kiss her or hold her from behind while they slept in bed — for a month, maybe more. She probably wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with him for a couple of weeks, though he thinks she’d insist on taking over the guest bed in her studio, since he does most of his work on his desk in their bedroom. But after that — after many discussions between them and verbal soul-searchings on his part that in a way, and he’d tell her this, he feels she let him off lightly — he thinks most of it would be worked out. He’d periodically say how bad he felt about it and still does, just so she wouldn’t think he was trying to forget it, and that he knows it could never happen again, not only because it was wrong and morally indefensible and a breaking of her trust in him and things like that — not “morally indefensible”; that’s too much like a cliché—but because the consequences to them both and the children were so great, till in a few months she might tell him to stop bringing it up: it’s for the most part over and done with, she could say, and a certain healing’s taken place, significant as the event was to them then and the one that caused the greatest rupture in their marriage and nearly blew it apart. But she’s satisfied it won’t be repeated, so less said about it now the better, since there doesn’t seem to be anything pertaining to it she hasn’t heard from him a dozen times, doesn’t he agree? He’d say, “Without question, and I’m glad to hear that’s how you feel.” Maybe in a year things would be completely normal between them again. “Like the Jewish mourning period,” he could say. “It’s possible that’s the tradition in other religions, but concerning mourning and bereavement I only know the Jewish ones, and not well.” In two years they might even banter about it if one of them alluded to the incident in some way — he doubts it’d be he. “You know what anniversary today is?” she could say. Would this be something she’d do? He’s only using it as an example. And he’d answer with something like, “You know me and memory. I’m very bad with birthdays and wedding anniversaries and those kinds of personal dates. World history I’m better at. August sixth, the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima — or was it Nagasaki? August ninth — this is 1945—the second A-blast on the city that wasn’t hit first. No, definitely Nagasaki for the second one, and I’m not trying to be flippant about it. August eighth — notice the opportunistic timing — the Soviet Union declares war on Japan or just invades some of the more vulnerable Japanese-occupied territories on the Soviet Union’s Asian borders. August fourteenth, V-J Day, and September second, I believe, Japan signs the surrender papers on the Missouri, so the official end to the entire war, as the one in Europe ended on May eighth the same year.” “It’s two years to the day you told me about Sylvia, or whatever her name was, and when I thought, Am I going to use this transgression to start immediate divorce proceedings against you? Because I had never felt so let down by anyone. I remember the date exactly because it was the last day of the month and was my childhood friend Rejelika’s birthday,” and he could say, “It was that bad for you? I knew I’d hurt you, but you never told me how much. Me too, but on the opposite receiving end. I hoped, though, you’d forgotten it to the point where you didn’t even know — no, I was going to say — oh, what’s the difference what I was going to say, but it was ‘it had happened.’” “God,” she could say, “you were so guilty and penitent that day, I thought you’d never stop apologizing, and that went on for weeks, perhaps, where your guilt and contrition hardly receded. The only plus side of it was that you were also much sweeter and more indulgent to me and the girls than you had ever been to me, or since the first few weeks after I gave birth to each of them. And you kept using phrases in your apologies that I hadn’t heard from you before, such as ‘higher sense’ and ‘breach of faith’ and ‘moral duty’ and words like ‘perfidious,’ ‘unscrupulous,’ and ‘corrupt,’ which had always been part of your vocabulary though mainly confined to governmental and academic politics, never in relation to yourself,” and he could say, “I felt miserable over it — what can I tell you? — and afraid for weeks I’d lose you and, by losing you, lose the love and respect of the kids and seeing them every day. Now I know you lose that respect no matter what undeviating good you do for them and how straight a line you toe, I think they say — people who say such things — and then get the respect back at some point, if your undeviating toe is good, though we haven’t come to that end of it yet. But I thought we’d agreed, some three months after the thing happened, not to go into it at length anymore — that we’d said just about everything we could on the subject and it had become so irksome for you to hear me refer to it again that you didn’t know what was worse, you said, what I’d done or that I was about to reproach myself and beg forgiveness for it once more,” and she could say, “You could be putting words in my mouth there — after all, it was almost two years ago, and if your memory’s not so sharp about nonhistorical things, as you said, why should I believe you’d remember that?” and he could say, “Dates, I didn’t say ‘things.’” “Anyway,” she could say, “that one romp with Madam S, I’ll call her, doesn’t upset me any longer and hasn’t for a year, and I feel we can even banter about it, it’s such ancient stuff and where there’s little chance of it being repeated, wouldn’t you say?” and he could say … what? “Yes,” he could say, “I could say that,” and she could say, “There is one aspect of it … do you mind my continuing with it a bit further? There was something in your past explanation that never sat well with me,” and he could say, “Why I went ahead and had sex with S — even I’ve forgotten her name, though I know it’s not Sylvia — when I had so many reasons not to? But you do believe she sort of forced herself on me after she finagled her way into my hotel room and that I didn’t initiate or encourage the action though I eventually did participate in it, right?” and she could say, “Yes and no, though I won’t at this moment, maybe just to be mischievous, say which expression goes where,” and he could say, “Okay, get it out, you’re entitled, I guess, and I never want to stifle conversation between us except when I’m too sleepy to speak or hear, though I hope this is the last time we talk about it for a while. I think”—what could he think? he thinks in the car—“I think, in spite of the long break in our even referring to it, that I’m kind of fed up with the subject now too. Because you did say you were fed up with it, true? Or was that almost two years ago?” and she could say, “One, you were only going to be away from home a day, and by the time the romp took place you’d been gone a mere twelve hours. Two—” and he could cut in and say, “First let me go over your figures to see if they’re correct and also if they’re of any importance in the matter,” and she could say, “Two, you showed no signs of loneliness or need for another woman in any capacity since we met, as far as I could make out, as we’d for the most part been compatible, lively, conversational, stimulating, and supportive — oh, I detest that word and have always shunned it in my conversation and writing, so I don’t know why I used it now — with each other. And our sex life together had been, and seems to be to this day, despite the romp and minus the month after it — at least for me and for you as well, from what I could tell — frequent, sufficient, and robust. Three—‘robust’ is a word better used for economics, but you know what I mean — three, you said in your original explanation that you knew from the start when you let her into the room and she made a romantic move to you that having sex with her would be wrong, a breach of faith and so forth, not to say — which you never spoke about then but both of us should have seriously considered and later taken a test or two for to resolve the possibility — that you’d risk getting a viral infection or disease, and some of the worst ones were floating around then and the most dangerous one was at its peak,” and he could say, “At the time … at the time … I really can’t quite come up with a reasonable justification or pardonable excuse right now why I didn’t think of that at the time. It’s possible I never thought I’d get anything from her but disappointment during and after the act and acrimonious mail a few days later documenting her disappointment, she seemed that physically fit and careful and clean and of course all charged up to do it, so easily let down when it didn’t meet her expectations and because of the nonviral risks she took in aggressively bedding me.” “And four,” she could say, “you said you didn’t find her attractive and that she was in fact somewhat overweight, over made-up, and doughy,” and he could say, “I don’t remember saying that. From what I can remember,” and he could shut his eyes briefly — no, that would look too much like reverie—“she was fairly attractive by just about any man’s idea of good looks — considerably so. Nice face, nice age and shape, nice teeth and low-keyed hair, smart, sparkly, moved gracefully, lots of laughs and devil-may-care, though came on as too saucy and sexy — I squirmed a bit at that but let it pass and didn’t show my squirms expressively for reasons I might go into later. Usually, though, saucy provocative women, through behavior, gestures, makeup, dress, voice, and the words they use — and I don’t mean by that ‘aggressive women’—appear silly to me and end up dampening and often freezing my fantasies and, before I hooked up with you, my ardor. And what’s with this doughiness? Muscular butt, dancer’s legs, trapezist’s chest, cheerleader’s waist, swimmer’s back — I’m only repeating hackneyed descriptions I might have read somewhere or even wrote myself, and I forget the one about hips but know it has a horsewoman in it. She was short, but that never put me off and it can sometimes make a woman seem sort of doll-like and performable if her body’s also compact and slight. Was I drunk? No, I wasn’t, as I know I told you. Just a bit tipsy, but you’re not going to see me fall back on that time-eaten excuse. I was sleepy, but there too, and I’m not even certain — I’m only assuming I did because she never said I didn’t and seemed the type that would: the accusations and letter never came — if I completed the act or even got started doing it, which if I didn’t then forget the possibility of infection and disease and taking tests, as I’ve been unwaveringly faithful since S and we did nothing but touching without open cuts or soul kisses, and she a lot more than I–I can’t even say for sure I did that except where she placed my hands. As to why I let the saucy sexy stuff pass: what I wanted most was to get her out of the room fast as I could, and not just to get to sleep because I was so tired but to avoid prolonging what I didn’t want to get involved in originally. So I didn’t want her getting miffed at my gestures and remarks and possibly building it up into a scene—‘You tin highbrow and finicky prick and so-called man of the people who keeps his nose in the air’ and stuff like that — which also might be why I went through with the sex in the first place, if I did: I saw, after a while, because she was so fired up and unrelenting and confident, that I had no other way of getting rid of her. No, that doesn’t work or even make sense, I think, not that I’ll try to reprise the last line to see if it did, but maybe one of these will, because believe me I’ve had a long time to think about it. The truth is I did it because, if you recall, and if you don’t, please take my word — at the time we were short of cash, in fact, strapped, which is something you’d have to remember, being the one who does the tax returns for us — and she said she’d add another six hundred to my reading fee — she had that much power — besides finding it kind of exciting at my age to be compensated, and for so large an amount, for my sexual services for a first time. Of course when I didn’t perform up to snuff or even penetrate, if I didn’t, or even get into a position to — it had to be one of those or she was just lying to me — she went back on the offer but was unable to kill the original reading fee. The room was so depressing and I was feeling lonelier and more estranged from things than I had in years, maybe because I was away from you for the night, which wasn’t that unusual an occurrence, so probably also because of the depressing room and my sense of worthlessness after such a lousy reading and my dumb responses in the Q-and-A, that I felt somewhat suicidal, and she by throwing herself at me and comforting me in various ways, like saying a few nice things about my work that I never hear from anyone, including you—‘It invariably floors me and ultimately floors all the people I have to force, since they’re more interested in movies and TV, to look at it too’—not that I’m trying to shove the blame on you, that she sort of saved me, you could say, so we should be grateful rather than resentful to her even if she did renege on the second six-hundred-dollar fee. I was drugged, I’m afraid, and for about a half hour I thought she was you and we were doing what we’d normally do in a hotel room, no matter how depressing the setting was, if we were free for a night from the kids. I was simply curious as to what another woman’s nudity would feel like after almost twenty years and she was willing to take off her clothes and lie on the bed and align her body against mine so I could find out, and I guess one of us got carried away, though I can’t remember that I was the one who did, and the other was swept along with it and away from the original plan. I was drunk, plain and simple, and you know I didn’t want to fall back on this lame excuse but it’s the truth — I didn’t want to drink so much booze, especially since I knew how it’d affect my driving the next day, but ended up doing it eagerly for some reason, maybe because of one of the previous ones concerning depression and estrangement and crummy feelings about myself and so forth — and felt simultaneously woozy and sexy and didn’t know what I was doing and hardly whom I was doing it with, and also so sleepy that I didn’t even think any of the lovemaking was taking place. When I awoke after and saw her snoozing beside me I thought it was a dream and because I was still tired I went back to sleep, and when I awoke again she was gone without a trace and had even left her side of the bed looking unslept-in and I thought I’d imagined the whole thing, even the sexy dream. It was only during the drive home that it came back to me for real — that I’d had sex the night before with someone other than you — and I felt horrible over it but thought I’d keep it from you. I was afraid how you’d take it and what it’d do to our marriage — but then thought, No, tell her the whole truth, from start to finish, or at least all you know and can remember of it — since it’s true that I was a little soused and quite tired during the hotel-room part of it, and that’s what I did shortly after I got home that day,” and she could say, “Of course I’m glad you did tell me, though at the time I wasn’t glad to hear it. But I knew even while you were telling me of the incident that it was better you got it out then, rather than conceal it from me. Something like that would almost have to come out eventually, either from a buildup of guilt or through some slipup, and then it would be much worse for me, not only because of what you’d be revealing but that you had kept it from me for so long, since we had grounded our marriage and relationship from the beginning on being thoroughly up-front and undeceitful with each other and anything noticeably less would be detrimental to us,” and he could say, “Maybe that’s also why I decided to tell you right away — I’m almost sure of it,” and then she could say, “If you don’t mind, there is one final thing I’ve never asked you regarding it and then I’ll drop the matter for good, not even to joke or banter about or refer to it in the future. Have you heard from her since then? A personal or professional letter or phone call or fax inviting you to read there again or asking you to do what you can to reciprocate your visit by inviting her to lecture or read at your school for a comparable fee?” and he could say, “No, so she probably did see after I left and she had time to think it over how upset I was about what we’d done and what I thought it might do to you and our marriage, so she felt it best not to communicate with me again. And also because she might have felt guilty about it too — that she had obviously pushed me into doing something that for a long time that night I had done everything I could to show her I didn’t want to do, besides having manipulated her way into my hotel room, because she knew I certainly didn’t ask her in, and maybe even manipulated me to her school for a reading in the first place because of some bull that she liked my work, though that might be stretching it a bit,” and she could say, “Oh, yeah, I bet that’s what she did; saw a photo of you on a book from about twenty years ago and said, ‘He’s for me,’” or say, “Maybe that’s so, you never know, I mean about her guilt and not communicating with you again, but from everything you said about her she didn’t seem the type to feel much remorse over it or exercise that kind of self-control,” and he could say, “Well, I just wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and not set her up as a total predator, since both you and I agree I had to be partly responsible for it, but as you said, you never know.” He decides to take the longer way home. That’ll add to the trip twenty to thirty minutes, barring tieups and unexpected heavy traffic, though those could happen on either road. He’ll also stop at a rest area for coffee, maybe read there for an hour or so, even have a salad without one of their thick packaged dressings or something else simple and light; he doesn’t know why — maybe it’s because of the tacky fast-food atmosphere and strong smells of the fried food — but he hates eating at those places, though the coffee’s never that bad. He wants to get home after the kids. They and some house chores — shopping, doing a laundry if one needs doing — can occupy his time for a couple of hours, and then he’ll make dinner and they’ll eat it and he’ll read a book and the newspaper for an hour after and then say he’s tired from all the driving — some of the roads were congested and the trip took longer than he thought it would — and he’s going to turn in early, and when she gets to their bedroom a few hours after he’s shut off the light he’ll be asleep, or pretend to be. He doesn’t think he’ll tell her what happened last night. No, he’s definitely not going to, or doesn’t think so. No “doesn’t think so”; he isn’t, he’s sure. He hopes Sheila won’t contact him again. She won’t for a lecture or reading at his school, since she knows she hasn’t the credentials for that yet — no first book out or scholarly following — and he for sure won’t go out of his way to try and convince his colleagues otherwise. And he thinks he made it clear to her that he wouldn’t be interested in sleeping with her again and that even seeing her again wouldn’t be a good idea. “Why?” she could say, and he could say, “There’d be no point and it’d even be embarrassing to me and I don’t want to say why it’d be embarrassing or go into the matter any deeper.” He still doesn’t know why she wanted to have sex with him so much and pursued it the way she did. Aggressively, did he say? No, he only thought it, but he can’t recall any woman who went after him more. Be honest, though: did he enjoy it? No, probably because he really can’t remember most of it except that she had a nice body — much harder and somewhat slimmer than his wife’s and she was a few inches shorter, though he can’t picture her body, while he can his wife’s — and chapped lips the few times they kissed. What else? Her long hair; the time she screamed when his arm was on it while she tried to move her head. Eye color, nose shape, large or small aureoles? — a blank. Teeth extremely white and even, he thinks. He thinks he thought, when she first greeted him at the hotel, She could be advertising those teeth and that smile, though he can’t picture her smile either, while he can his wife’s. He does remember getting on top of her — he thinks she said, “What’re you waiting for, silly? Come on,” but with a nice smile, nothing snide or hard in it — but he doesn’t remember any thrill at the end of the act. So did he enjoy it? There was a minute or two, when he was going in and just about all the way out of her and getting as much friction from it as he could, that he thinks he lost himself in the pleasure of it. But when his climax was coming — some thirty seconds away — he told himself, “Goddammit, what am I doing? Why in shit did I ever start in on this and then let it continue?” and opened his eyes and saw her with that dreamy look and her mouth parted just so and those teeth, and it sort of dissipated for him — at most, just a leak — and after it was over and he was lying almost flat on her and she was rubbing his back in a circular motion with one or two hands and saying something like, “You’re long and wiry but heavier than I thought, so get off before you squash me,” he thought, It wasn’t my fault, I’m almost sure of it, but still one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. But if I tried to explain it, who the hell would believe me? and rolled off her and wanted to excuse himself and go to the bathroom to think what next to do and how to get rid of her now, but she shut off the lights and said, “Let’s nap awhile, you must be tired,” and put her arm around him from behind and her other hand grabbed his penis and just held it and she kissed his shoulders and neck several times and he fell asleep. So why sex with him? Loneliness, kids gone, only the animals to take care of, small town and college, few prospects, and, despite what she said, no romantic interests right now, not even someone solely for sex or to pursue for it. She pull this on other readers or lecturers she brought to the school for a day? He’ll never know, so don’t even think of it; or think of it but a lot of good it’ll do you, for so what if she had? Probably most went for it a lot more agreeably than he, if there were any, and he thinks there were, and if one or two were able to stop it, he wonders how. She also must have thought he was a good mark for just one night: of an age where he might like a much younger woman, and his writing clearly stamps him as a hetero and possibly interested in outside sex, since there are so many guys having it in his prose, though that’s ridiculous because she’s aware as anyone that one doesn’t have to have anything to do with the other and in plenty of cases and for many different reasons the writer might be writing about precisely what he’s not and never experienced or would, and then he’d be home the next day and there’d be no complications or communication between them except for something related to the reading, perhaps: the check, if it doesn’t come and he has to write her for it, or she writes him that it’s going to be issued much later than she told him it would, and so forth. She make that clear to him regarding her? Sort of, but he forgets lots of what she said, and if she did say she hopes they meet again one day, which he thinks she did or something like that, it was probably out of politeness or habit. She also could have thought that all that stuff about this being the first time in twenty years for him was a bunch of bullshit, but how does that speculation help him decide if he’s going to tell his wife about last night? It doesn’t; he was only going back a few steps and thinking why she wanted to have sex with him. But she won’t want to make anything more of it, if only to protect herself, if there was no other reason, so it’s all perfect: silence on both sides. So she won’t bother him, won’t try to see or contact him again other than for the most practical reasons, or make any kind of stink, especially because there’s nothing — now, this is useful — to be gained from it that he can see, and she also may decide — may have already decided last night — that he’s way too old for her and not that intelligent or exciting or attractive in any way or good in bed, as it wasn’t an especially successful sexual encounter, besides being too damn difficult to get. And he shouldn’t write her either, which he always does to the reading coordinator after a reading, thanking her for inviting him and the courtesy and hospitality showed and also something complimentary about the students: very bright and stimulating, some of the best questions asked of him that he’s ever heard, the audience responses to the nuances and humor of the works he read were right on the button, so of course heartening to him. Oh, what a phony he is. In the past all these things said partly out of his own courtesy and genuine gratitude for having been invited, but also so he might be invited back. “Hey, what a great guy, because how many of our invited readers have written their thanks and said the wonderful things he did?” So he’s not going to tell his wife. Sure of it? Sure, positive. But he doesn’t have to decide now. He can arrive home, walk into the house, kiss her as if nothing’s happened, not tell her till later: tonight after the kids are asleep, tomorrow while the kids are in school, next week, even a few weeks from now. He could say then, or tonight or tomorrow, that he didn’t know how to tell her till now, that he had in fact spent the entire car trip right till the time he got home thinking of how and when he’d tell her; and why? Because he knew that what he did with this woman was so wrong, and so on. No: he’s sure, positive. It just isn’t worth the risk. He doesn’t know how she’ll take it. It could end up being the worst thing that ever happened between them in their marriage. Of course it’d be the worst thing, for what in the past that he’s done was worse? Some mean thing said, some mean thing done, but nothing like this. If Sheila, for some reason, does try to contact him or tells some people what they did and it gets out to his wife but not through him — she finds or receives a letter, for instance — he’ll just have to explain in the best way he can why he did what he did that night and why he didn’t tell her himself. But he doesn’t see what’s to be gained by talking about it to her before then — he’s never going to do again what he did last night — except as continued lip service to honesty in their marriage, if that’s the right use of that expression. Is it? Anyway, he knows what he’s trying to say, and it’s close enough.