A Likely Story

Sunday, July 3rd

And it isn’t even over.

I was seated on the back deck a little while ago, reading the Sunday Times Magazine, and then I looked around at the three other people also on the deck, also reading sections of the Times, and I found myself thinking: I have been to bed with all three of these women.

The thought did not make me feel like a harem master or anything particularly macho. In fact, all I felt at that moment was vaguely scared. Three women in bikinis in the sunshine, reading Travel and Arts and Leisure and The Week in Review. If they were suddenly to rise and turn on me, they could tear me to shreds. Sitting there, looking at them, thinking about it, I could find no very good reason why they wouldn’t rise and turn on me. Dropping the Magazine — I hadn’t found the rift between the French Newer Left and the Roman Catholic Church all that fascinating anyway — I rose and announced in a loud confident voice that I really ought to do some more work on the galleys of The Christmas Book. Then I fled away up here to Ginger’s and my bedroom, where I have made a fairly useful desk out of a closet door lying across plastic milk crates stacked two high. We don’t particularly need a door on the closet up here anyway. (The knobs are at the back.)

One thing we hadn’t foreseen in April, when we rented the place, was that in the summer this upstairs room would be an absolute oven in the daytime. I may have to buy a fan, if I’m going to do much work up here. In the meantime, baking here in the heat is still better than sitting down there among my women.

From time to time I glance out the window at them, still all sprawled there, legs stretched out on the webbed chaise longues, sunglasses on faces, strategic bits of colored cloth interrupting the flow of flesh. A smell of rancid cocoanut rises from the suntan oil that makes that flesh so prettily gleam. From time to time they turn a page or exchange sections of the paper. Periodically Vickie rolls over onto her stomach, to sun her back, but is never comfortable that way and soon rolls back again. The only good thing I can say about the scene is that at least they aren’t talking to one another.

Am I a misogynist? Am I one of those men who claim to love women but who secretly hate and fear them? Am I guilt-ridden? Do I feel I deserve to be torn limb from limb by a shock of bikini-clad avengers?

Uhh, actually, no. Everything would be fine, perfectly normal, if it weren’t for the addition of Vickie. No matter how trapped I am, no matter how justified in the whole Vickie thing, Ginger would be very upset if she found out about it. When Ginger was The Other Woman, it was a very straightforward role; I was falling out of that previous nest, and she was passing by underneath. But now Ginger is simultaneously The Other Woman and The Wronged Woman, and debased in both roles.

As for Mary, the one thing that has kept our relationship relatively smooth has been her belief that I have tried to be honorable. Failed sometimes, but at least tried. One of the reasons she wants me back is that she thinks I’m a decent guy. If she found out about Vickie, it would remove the dignity from the ending of our marriage; I would have proved myself unworthy to have left her.

Whereas, if Vickie were to discover her main attraction for me was bookish rather than bawdy, she’d lead the posse.

My women.