Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  Alicia must have been frowning at the memory. Finn said, “Don’t be pissed off. You look great. I’m just surprised you’ve gone female on me.”

  “The Female,” was the nickname they’d given the agency’s art director, Sonya, because of her hysterical, insecure overreactions to the slightest criticism. Whenever Sonya burst into tears at a staff meeting, Alicia thanked God for her one-of-the-boys status. It’d be horrible to be thought of as emotionally fragile.

  “There’s a difference between going female and wearing a skirt,” said Alicia. “If you can’t handle it, I can put on track pants.”

  Finn said, “Don’t do that! I just need a second to get used to the skin.” He gazed at her legs for a count of three. Then he said, “Okay, I’m inured,” and turned his attention to the computer to do his morning lap of blogs and email accounts before they got down to the business of the day.

  Alicia sat behind her desk and started her own morning lap on the computer, her mind distracted and unsettled. Finn had been flirting, right? she asked herself. A fantasy crept up on her, of Finn coming toward her, grabbing her, bending her over her inbox, raising her skirt, and taking her in full view of the entire office.

  If such incredible events were to unfold, Alicia would be grateful for it. She would let life happen. She’d welcome the excitement with open legs.

  Had there been an exact moment when she decided that having an affair was within her moral capacity? In the last few weeks, her take on infidelity had gone from one extreme (a rot-in-hell sin) to the other (a worthy act of self-preservation). She’d kept her sexlessness a secret for over two years, was rooted in denial about her loneliness. When Alicia revealed the truth at the poker game, her own desperation hit her full force. That brought about a perspective shift. She would not continue to tell herself that (1) Tim’s chronic rejection was okay, and (2) she was content with celibacy.

  Alicia was in the throes of a reversal of suppression. A 180-degree reversal. Simply put, Alicia had turned into a sex-crazed maniac. If Finn starred in her occasional masturbatory fantasies before, in recent weeks he’d blossomed into a throbbing obsession in Alicia’s feverish daydreams.

  If only she could have sex with Finn, just once, Alicia believed she’d return to a normal, stable state of mind. Her head would clear and she could accurately assess her life and marriage.

  In the meantime, as in, right now, Alicia didn’t know which end was up, down, or sideways. If someone put a gun to her head and said, “Do you still love your husband?” Alicia couldn’t rightly say. She and Tim were friends and co-parents. Was that love? He seemed content to exist in this half relationship. Indeed, how could he not? His options were limited. Alicia earned the family’s income, modest though it might be. If she and Tim split up, what would he live on? Where would he go? How could either of them survive if she was to pay alimony or support Tim in a second apartment? They could barely cover the expenses they had now.

  Alicia shook off the image of Tim, destitute, in torn clothes, living under a bridge, cursing her name and shaking his grimy fist at the gods.

  It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t find a job! It wasn’t her fault he hadn’t had sex with her. If she’d done nothing wrong, why was she being tormented hourly with fantasies of Finn naked with a rock-hard, throbbing, two-foot-long erection?

  Alicia put her fingers on her temples and rubbed. These violent swings of emotion were exhausting. This was the unfortunate result of opening up. But she couldn’t go back to numb even if she wanted to. An affair would settle her down. If she were held, touched, and treasured by a man for just a little while, she knew she’d feel better about everything. Maybe Tim would instinctively know she’d been made love to, and the heady perfume of sensuality would reignite his passion for her. Alicia was convinced that if she had sex with someone else, Tim would want her again.

  She glanced across her desk at Finn. He sensed her eyes were on him, looked up, and smiled at her.

  She smiled, too, like a lioness over a flank of raw meat.

  “Did you have breakfast?” he asked. “You look hungry.”

  “We never go out after work,” she said brazenly. “I mean just the two of us. We should have a drink.”

  He squinted at her, trying to figure that out. Finn was too handsome not to register a come-on when he heard one. This one came out of left field, though.

  “We totally should,” he said, polite and maddeningly neutral. Finn had never shown any particular interest in Alicia’s personal life. He knew she was married. Finn had met Tim and Joe a few times. Finn either wrote her off as off-limits or he hadn’t thought of his mousy, older (by seven years) office mate in that way. But he did like her. They laughed together, inspired each other at work. He respected her.

  She said, “How about tonight? Are you free?”

  His eyebrows shot up. She was fumbling this. Too aggressive.

  “Tonight is the poker game,” he said.

  “What poker game?” she asked.

  “First Tuesday of every month,” he said. “Me, Chaundry, Jake, Larry, and a few other guys.” He’d rattled off the names of their CEO and account managers.

  “Everyone in the agency but me and Sonya?” she asked. “I can see why you didn’t ask The Female, but why not me?”

  He shrugged. “Do you even know how to play Hold ’Em?”

  Alicia suppressed a grin and said, “A little.”

  “It’s a money game,” he said. “Big time.”

  “Really,” she said, instantly deflated.

  “Yup,” he said. “We play for pennies, nickels, and dimes. Think you can handle that kind of action?”

  That, and a lot more, she thought. Alicia was struck with an insta-fantasy of Finn losing his shirt to her. And his pants, shoes, and boxers. And then laying down on top of the poker table, ante (way) up.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  “Raise!” shouted Alicia, tipsy—actually, drunky—as she threw a handful of bottom-of-purse change into the pot.

  “Is she talking about the bet or my pants?” asked a friend of Finn’s, a chubby leering buffoon who really liked short skirts or flat-chested women. Or both.

  “Shut up, McAlvoy,” said Finn.

  “I can defend myself,” said Alicia. “Shut up, McAlvoy.”

  “Hey, if you want to play with the boys, you’ve got to be willing to play with the boys,” said the idiot, cupping his nuts.

  Her boss, Chaundry, said, “I hope you appreciate how respectfully we treat women at Bartlebee.”

  “You mean compared to this belch?” She jerked her thumb at McAlvoy.

  Finn said, “Bet’s to you, Larry.”

  Alicia had a good hand. A very good hand. Two pair after the flop. She’d put two dollars in, raising and reraising with wanton abandon. The guys matched her greed and cockiness. Poker with men was fun! It made her women’s game seem like a tea party.

  The seedy atmosphere fed her newfound adventure-lust. The conference room at night was dimly lit, smelling of open beer bottles and male competition. Alicia sat next to Finn. He rolled up his sleeve and left his bare arm on the back of her chair. Ten times, she’d leaned into it, feeling the heat from his skin all the way through her blouse.

  She flashed to what she’d be doing tonight if she hadn’t agreed to play poker. Sitting on the couch a good five feet away from ice-cold Tim, laughing half-for-real, half-out-of-habit at his pithy and sarcastic remarks about whatever TV show they were watching. Then purposeful yawning, nocturnal brushing and fussing, winding up with the two of them climbing into bed, aka the loneliest place on the planet, the pit in her stomach growing.

  “Oh!” Alicia gasped suddenly, when Finn put his palm flat on her lower back.

  “Bet’s to you,” he said, smiling.

  By the river card, everyone had folded, except Finn, McAlvoy, and Alicia. Her hand remained the same, two pair. The five communal cards, a lot of hearts, might mean a flush for the other players.

  “C
heck,” she said.

  “Check?” asked McAlvoy. “Lost your confidence? I’ll raise. Four dollars.”

  “That’s over the limit,” said Chaundry, ever the officiator and arbiter (he was a natural diplomat and a good boss). But no one really stuck by the game rules. The bet was to Finn.

  He folded. “I’m already down cabfare home.”

  Alicia eyed McAlvoy. Was the pig bluffing? It was the biggest pot of the night, around twenty bucks. She’d already put in eight dollars. What was another four? She had to see it through, play the hand until the end, regardless of the consequences.

  Glancing at Finn, she thought, If I win this hand, we will have an affair.

  “I’m in,” she said, putting her quarters in the pot and her cards on the conference room table.

  Two pair, kings and fours.

  McAlvoy laughed. “You bitch,” he said, and showed his hand. Pair of fours. Nothing.

  Alicia screamed and bounced in her chair. She leaned across the table to rake in her winnings, saying, “Mine, all mine! You lose, sucka!”

  Finn said to McAlvoy, “You went over the limit on a pair of fours?”

  The jerk shrugged. “I didn’t think she’d call.”

  “I called you, all right! In your face!” said Alicia.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” counseled Finn, looking nervously at McAlvoy.

  “Oh, come on! He can take a little trash talk,” she said.

  “Very little,” grumbled McAlvoy. “I’d feel better about it if you’d do a victory dance on my lap.”

  Alicia immediately went for the top button of her blouse. Finn stared, stunned, nearly swallowing his tongue.

  She giggled and said, “You really thought I was going to unbutton my shirt?”

  Finn dramatically blushed. Fire-engine red. It occurred to Alicia that Finn, for all his serial girlfriends and emotion disinterest at work, might be harboring a little crush on her, too.

  She couldn’t resist. Alicia reached up to touch Finn’s flaming cheek. Instinctively, his hand went up to cover hers and for a nanosecond, they were the only two people in the stuffy, stinky conference room.

  Chaundry said to Larry, an account manager, “Do we have a policy on intra-office romance?”

  Larry started shuffling. “Fuck if I know.”

  Alicia dropped her hand and said, “Gimme those cards. It’s my deal.”

  Hours later, Alicia crept into her Red Hook apartment. It was around midnight. She vaguely remembered swearing she’d be home to tuck in Joe. Oh, well. She’d make it up to him in the morning.

  The living room was dark. Tim hadn’t waited up, of course.

  Alicia crept down the hallway, bumping into the walls only enough to make her giggle. She cracked the door to Joe’s room and smiled at her son, visible by lava lamp light, brown hair pressed against his forehead, baby face, sleeping and still.

  The pang of regret, a flash of guilt. Just a taste of negative emotions, thankfully mitigated by beer, victory, hot skin, and a purse heavy with quarters.

  Alicia closed Joe’s door and moved along to her own bedroom. She expected to find her husband asleep is his usual position—curved on his side, facing the wall. Alicia was both relieved and disappointed to find him exactly like that, impenetrable, blocking himself from her, subconsciously or consciously.

  She did her bathroom routine, and then returned to the bedroom to undress in the dark. She began with her top blouse button, the one she’d pretended to undo at the game. She smiled at the memory of Finn’s reaction. To make a man react! It was almost too arousing—slide-off-the-seat arousing. How had she gone so long without feeling that? Slowly, soundlessly, she shrugged off her shirt and stepped out of her skirt, the garment that started it all, and her underthings.

  Once naked, she folded her clothes (needed dry cleaning) and held the pile to her nose. She could still smell Finn on the fabric, the male essence of competition and cologne. She sat at the vanity like that, naked, inhaling the joy of the night, for quite some time, reliving moments, touches, accidental-on-purpose thigh contact under the table, elbows grazing when reaching for cards, his arm on the back of her chair, on the small of her back, her hand on his cheek.

  Finn asked her, considering her winnings ($25) and his losses ($15), to share a cab downtown, and drop him first at his place in Battery Park City on her way home to Red Hook. His eyes, the questioning look. She believed he was really asking her to go home with him, or at least make out in the taxi on the way there. She begged off, saying the subway would be faster.

  Alicia could rationalize having an affair. But she wasn’t quite ready to actually do it.

  Besides, the subway might as well have been a magic carpet. At the game, she’d basked in the glory of being a woman—but not a female. She was a cool chick, someone to hang with, but also a turn-on. Her presence had added a sexual tang to the night, and all the players enjoyed the flavor. She smiled at the intoxicating idea that, if even for a fleeting moment, every man there imagined what it would be like to have sex with her.

  “What time is it?” warbled Tim from the bed, making Alicia gasp.

  “You scared me,” she said, clutching her heart. It felt like she’d been caught thinking.

  “Midnight,” he grumbled, checking his night table clock. “You said you’d be home to put Joe to bed.”

  “Sorry,” she said, finding her contrite voice.

  “Good game?” he asked, turning toward her now. “You’re sitting in the dark naked?”

  “Just finishing up,” she said, throwing her blouse into the corner.

  “Did you win?” he asked.

  “Twenty-five bucks,” she said.

  She looked at Tim in the bed, now unfolding and opening himself to her. Even in the dim light, she could see the angles of his face, the cheekbones she’d always admired, his long neck. Once, she’d loved to press her mouth against his jugular vein to feel his pulse on her tongue.

  Maybe she had one more hand to play tonight.

  Standing, she moved toward the bed. Tim watched her coming and shifted a bit under the covers. Maybe her eyes were deceiving her, but Alicia could have sworn she saw something rigid under the moving sheets at hip level. Her heart pounded with surprise and anticipation.

  Expect it when you least expect it, she thought. As soon as she was seriously contemplating an affair, her husband returned from the sexually dead.

  Alicia slid into the envelope of soft cotton sheets, and stretched, she hoped, seductively, forcing her modest boobs against the covers.

  Please, for the love of God, touch me! she screamed at her husband in her mind.

  He watched her languid settling in, and said, “Alicia, I’ve been meaning to talk.”

  “About?” How much he missed her. How much he wanted her. How much he loved her, didn’t want to lose her, deeply regretted hurting her feelings and neglecting her needs. Alicia had never been more eager to have a talk.

  He leaned back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. “Since you started this card game with the mothers, I’ve felt taken advantage of. And now this new game with the guys at work just makes it worse.”

  Taken advantage of? “I’ve been out six nights in the last three months,” she defended. “I work hard. I deserve some time to myself.” She also thought, but didn’t say, “I have friends now—new thing for me—and I need them. Your companionship isn’t enough.”

  “You sound like some nineteen-fifties husband defending his weekend golf game,” said Tim. “And I’m like a nagging wifey on pills.”

  She was like a husband, and he the wife, a thought that wasn’t flattering to either of them—or sexy.

  “Who’s stopping you from going out?” She caught herself before saying “after work.” Since he refused to discuss his feelings about his chronic unemployment, she’d backed off from asking. But how could he not feel depressed about it? Meanwhile, his criticism wasn’t fair. For a “husband,” Alicia sure did a lot of wifely chores. They divid
ed duties. She dropped Joe off, Tim picked him up. She shopped, Tim cooked. She did laundry, he vacuumed. She did the dishes, he did the recycling. She wanted more sex, he had a two-year headache.

  Tim said, “I’ve been feeling lately like my life is to make your life possible.”

  Alicia bundled the comforter tight, her body temperature dropped down to frigid. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of what she’d thought would happen between them tonight. Instead of affection, she got hit with his emasculation. He made her life happen? And all this time, working her ass off, supporting the family, she thought her life was devoted to making their lives possible.

  “I guess we agree,” said Alicia.

  “We do?” he said, shocked she’d concede so quickly.

  “We’re both unhappy. We’ve been unhappy for a long time,” she said.

  Tim didn’t respond to that. Alicia remembered reading that eighty percent of divorces were instigated by the wife. This last bit, Tim’s blaming her for his dissatisfaction, pushed her over the edge. Alicia felt a creeping coldness, not only of body, but of mind. She was starting to hate him.

  “Dr. Sacket?” he asked, naming the counselor who steered them through some hard times during the infertility years.

  “Do you think that would help?” she questioned.

  Tim sighed and said, “When I was twenty years old and I imagined what my life would look like at forty, this wasn’t what I pictured.”

  The choices we made, the long-forgotten decisions, the painfully unforgettable ones, are the framework of our lives, thought Alicia. All of her choices and decisions had brought her to this moment in bed with Tim. When you looked at life that way, it was hard not to blame yourself for your own unhappiness.

  “Sex is not the answer,” announced Alicia at Bess’s brownstone a week later.

  “That depends on the question,” said Robin, in a silk tunic, patchwork suede maxi skirt, and wool tights. (Did she try to look like an aging anorexic hippie? wondered Alicia.)

  It was the Diversity Committee pre-Thanksgiving gathering. All of the women were under pressure with the holidays approaching. They squeezed in the meeting, though, and Alicia was grateful. Her mood lightened in this circle of friends. She brought Joe with her tonight. Since her talk with Tim, she’d been spending all her free time at home. If she decided to leave him, she wanted to be sure Tim couldn’t use nights away from Joe against her in a custody battle. The simple fact that she was having these thoughts shocked and terrified her. This was big. Ending a marriage made celibacy seem a trifle.