Pulse

14

“I love your body,” Lou Gainer said to Ann Spellman. “You made that clear just a few minutes ago,” Ann said. She was still breathing hard, and her twenty-four-year-old nude body glistened with perspiration. She watched her diet and worked out faithfully almost every day, but even though she knew Gainer was several years older than she was, it was all she could do to keep up with him physically. He appeared deceptively slender in clothes. The grace of his movements and cut of his suits made his lean, hard physique a surprise.

She was aware of Gainer watching her closely as she rose from where she’d been seated on the edge of the mattress. After veering to the window to turn down the thermostat on the air conditioner, she padded barefoot into the bathroom.

In the mirror she caught sight of her compact, busty body, dark eyes, and thick black hair. It had been amazing how Lou had used her body, how much pleasure he’d given her, and derived from her. She felt a brief uneasiness about how skilled a lover Gainer was, how experienced he must be. His knowledge and lovemaking skills weren’t intuitive. They had to have been learned. Nothing about that concerned Ann, other than that someone had to have taught him.

Jealous. That’s all I am.

She pushed her worries to the back of her mind, pinched the flesh of her waist to make sure she wasn’t putting on any excess weight, and turned on the shower. Testing the water carefully with her hand to make sure it wasn’t too hot, she thought about trying to preserve what was left of her hairdo. Then figured screw it. She’d dry her hair with a towel and then comb it damp.

The steady spray of water was lukewarm and soothing, making her sorry she couldn’t spend more time under it. But it didn’t really matter. Warm water in this building didn’t last long before it began to run cold.

Ann had no serious misgivings about her affair with Lou. He was her boss at Clinton Industrial Designs, where she worked as one of half a dozen graphic artists. The other employees all knew by now that Ann and Lou were a couple. One of them, an attractive and immensely talented artist named Gigi, had even asked in a roundabout way if Ann might be thinking about a wedding.

Ann hadn’t been, until Gigi put the idea in her head. Twenty-four already. I’m not so young anymore, and the clock is ticking.

Standing beneath warm needles of water in the tiled shower, Ann had to smile. Sleeping with the boss was one thing, but marrying him was something else altogether. There was a sense of adventure in their affair, spiced by secrecy even if it was an open secret. She wouldn’t want to undermine that with talk of marriage. She needed to be careful here.

She was still smiling as the shower curtain was suddenly swished and jangled aside.

Lou stepped into the shower with her. He kissed her wet forehead and fondled her soapy breasts. Began sliding his hands down her back and over her buttocks.

“You’re trembling,” he said.

“You startled me. Haven’t you ever seen Psycho?”

“I had another kind of movie in mind. Ever think what a hit we’d be in a porno film?”

She laughed. “Is that a proposition?”

“Just an idle thought.”

Deciding more soap was called for, he picked up the tiny oblong sliver from the soap dish and shook his head. “Times are hard,” he said, showing the thin oval of soap to Ann.

“So’s something else.”

He reached around her and rotated the chromed knob to make the downpour from the showerhead warmer, simultaneously kissing the side of her neck. The thin wafer of soap slipped from his other hand and didn’t make a sound as it was taken by the gauze of water rippling on the shower stall floor. Lou used his bare foot to slide it over where it was out of the glide of water toward the drain.

“Speaking of hard,” he whispered in her ear, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

She felt the warm tip of his tongue in her ear and squirmed, grinning, to wrench her head away. “So go ahead and tell.”

His hesitation, something in the sudden stillness of his body, warned her, but she didn’t grasp the meaning of her sudden premonition.

“I’m going to have to fire you,” he said.

She toweled dry in a fury and stood before him in her white terry cloth robe, her wet hair a dark tangle like her thoughts. Her brown eyes danced with anger. Lou finished putting on his pants, then his shoes.

“What else do you have to say?” she asked.

He looked up at her from where he sat on the bed. “That I hate like hell to have been the one to tell you. But I had to. It’s part of my job.”

“Is it something I did-or didn’t-do?”

“For God’s sake no, Annie! It’s the economy. I wasn’t kidding when I told you times were hard. You know we’ve lost some big accounts. The company simply can’t justify paying so many employees.”

“I’m not the only graphic design artist there.”

“And I’m not the one who decided to let you go. It was a board decision.”

“Aren’t you on the board?”

“You know I am.”

“Boards are just a way to dilute responsibility,” Ann said.

“C’mon, Annie…”

“Did you fight for me?”

“Hell yes, I fought.”

She didn’t believe him. The lie was in his eyes like an ominous object floating just beneath the surface of dark waters. He wasn’t leveling with her. He’d decided to end her employment, probably as a way to end their affair.

And there the bastard sits. On my bed.

“So you thought you’d drop by one more time and have one last piece of poor, dumb Ann before telling her she’s being cut loose. Or did you expect to keep coming over here and dropping your drawers while I was drawing unemployment?”

“That’s not in the cards, Annie. It can’t be.”

“Better damn well believe it.”

“The board knows you’re good, and you’ll probably soon be working for the competition. How’d it look if you and I were still having this secret affair that everyone knows about?”

She had a hard time catching her breath. “Lou… I can hardly get my mind around this.”

He hung his head. “Me, either. We just got caught up in circumstances.” He raked his fingers through his damp hair and looked at her petite, tight body. But it was an oddly impersonal appraisal, as if he were assessing a piece of statuary rather than a real person. Ann realized he was fixing her in his memory. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever slept with.”

She was still struggling with her comprehension.

“I’ll have your stuff sent here to you,” he said, “along with your final check. You know how they are. They don’t want you in the office once you’ve been severed.”

“ They? You are they.”

He stood up and looked at her sadly. “Did I ever say I wasn’t?”

She rubbed her towel with vicious abandon over her mussed wet hair, squinting at him through flying droplets. “You are really a sack of shit, Lou.”

He nodded in silent agreement, put on his shirt, and left.