An Honest Woman

by JoAnn McCaig

  “Thanks so much . . . ” (name a blank) “for that . . . kind. Introduction.” Voice shaky and pitiful and thin. Even the tiniest drop of spit would be enough, just a single — “I’d just like to do a short, um . . . ” Breathe, dammit! “Reading from the. Um, first ch — ”

  “Pardon me.”

  That voice.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt but — ” The rush of feeling at the sound of that warm kind voice — “but I’m not sure that we’ll be able to hear you properly in the back.”

  he-ah you prawpawly

  “So if you wouldn’t mind just — ”

  She is suffused then, a feeling radiates out from the centre of her chest and to every extremity, the trembling stills, blood moves through her again, her mouth moistens. She moves the microphone down so that it aims at the point of her chin — something he taught her back in Toronto. “Is this better? Okay, then. Perhaps I should begin again.”

  She has learned from watching Leland read to select two or three vivid, short sections, all of which leave the listener wanting to know more. To end with warm thanks and a polite statement to the effect that, “I don’t wish to take questions. I do thank you all very much for honouring my work with your presence and attention this evening. I look forward to speaking with you out in the lobby in a few moments.”

  In the hubbub following the reading, she can tell she’s in London. The wineglasses aren’t just glass (Toronto) as opposed to plastic (Calgary), but they appear to be fine crystal. The appetizers actually look appetizing, no mangled curled-up cheese on a Safeway tray, but uniformed waiters passing silver platters laden with smoked salmon, shrimp, samosas with mango chutney. She scans the room, trying to remember how to make polite conversation while tracking, tracking; he wouldn’t just leave, he couldn’t. She is introduced to a plump, sweaty little man with a thick grey moustache, streaked yellow under the nostrils. And only after their brief, stilted conversation is over does she recall where she’s seen his name before: on the masthead of the TLS, Jesus Christ almighty, but there —

  Shin Joy cries, “Oh Leland. How lovely to see you here. May I present Jay McNair?”

  His kind grey eyes, grave smile, his cool smooth hand. “We’ve met, actually. Last year, I believe it was. At the Toronto festival.”

  “Yes. Yes, Mr. MacKenzie, it’s . . . good to see you again. You’re looking well.”

  He has held on to her hand just a fraction of a second too long. He’s still there, but cautious. “Enjoyed the reading very much. Has no one offered you a glass of wine?”

  Shin Joy slaps her forehead. “My god, I forgot. Leland?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks. But I promise to guard your precious charge ’til you return, and to introduce her to anybody who’s even remotely important.”

  “Bless you,” Shin Joy trills and negotiates her thin body with lithe expertise through the crowd.

  Because of the noise, Jay has to lean close; what is he saying? A voice bawls in her ear: “Mizz McLean, what a pleasure to meet you, I so enjoyed your reading, and . . . why Leland, what a surprise to see you here, you never attend this sort of thing!”

  By the time she has corrected this over-made-up interloper — “it’s McNair, actually” — and been introduced to the woman’s under-made-up companion, and then the companion’s agent, and then the agent’s neurasthenic and infuriatingly gender-nonspecific escort, the space where Leland stood has been reoccupied by Shin Joy, bearing wine.

  The roar of sound in the room suddenly seems distant, muffled. Jay sleepwalks through an exchange with the extremely intense editor of a famous feminist press; she knows she should be paying attention, but can’t focus. She abruptly excuses herself, ignoring Shin Joy’s squeals of protest, and bolts for the lobby, eyes down but senses alert for his presence.

  She huddles in the bathroom cubicle for as long as she dares, then rouses herself to face the din for a few minutes more — twenty, tops, before she can escape for good, pleading jet lag. He’s not in the Thames Foyer. Not near the door. She tries to move purposefully through the room (she can sense him), figuring that if she just keeps moving, she’ll see that blue-grey tweed shoulder, the sweep of greying dark hair. He’s a tease, always on the edge of her admittedly myopic vision, then disappearing again. She finds herself trapped in a clutch of near hysterical Canadian expats all screaming at once about the oil sands and the Stanley Cup, one of those cross-purpose conversations where she observes her social self as if from above, as if she’s having a near death experience; oh god, sees herself and her companions shouting at each other as if they are wild beasts arguing over a kill —

  “Excuse me, I believe you dropped this.” His hand. A matchbook. He drops it into her pocket.

  “Oh thanks, I — ” but he’s gone.

  She manages, in less than two minutes, to extricate herself from the expats, but the journey from there to the exit is a minefield of must-meets and do-say-hello-tos: it is nearly 9:45 when, gasping, she achieves the front doors of the Foyer, moving quickly outside into the April evening. In the shadows of the marble columns, she snatches up the matchbook. The Red Lion, a pub, an address, and scrawled inside, 10:30?

  Crowded, smoky — he wouldn’t be at the bar. She notices small anterooms towards the back, she thinks they might be called snugs, and fights through the crowd. London seems like one big crowd after another, suffocating. He’s there, in the last little room at the back. She slides eagerly toward him on the faded brocade banquette, but a slight recoil, a tightening in his shoulders, warns her off, sets the limits. This is his hometown, people know him here. “Can’t you bloody ignorant Canucks tell time? It’s only ten past.”

  “Can’t you snotty Brits be a little flexible for a change? You saved me out there in the — I was going to say ‘arena’ because that’s what it felt like.”

  “My first impulse was to shout out, breathe you silly bitch! But I opted for something a bit more subtle.”

  “Well, it worked. God, I haven’t frozen up like that for years.”

  He sits back, sips his drink. “I found it rather amusing. Especially because you certainly know how to freeze a guy out.”

  She looks at him with what she hopes is insouciance, but underneath the table, her left hand is tightly holding on to her right, to keep it from drifting onto his thigh.

  “Six months,” he mutters.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on. No word. No attempt.”

  “You have a wife.”

  “You expected me tonight.”

  “Did I?”

  “You reacted to my voice.”

  “Maybe.” She turns the conversation to the surface of things, the vagaries of literary travel. When he brings the second round of drinks, though, she says, “That’s something I always thought that Charlotte Bronte got wrong in Jane Eyre. The scene with the gypsy? She would have known it was Rochester as soon as she heard his voice.”

  “No. I think not.”

  “You just said yourself — ”

  “Jane could have had no physical sense of Rochester,” Leland says quietly, reasonably. “Neither she nor her creator had sexual experience of any kind. You and I, though — ”

  “Bullshit! Leland, you of all people should know it all happens up here.” She points to her forehead. “This woman wrote the most perfect romance of all time. Well, along with her even less ‘experienced’ sister. I’m saying it’s an authorial mistake, not her lack of experience. Jane would have known him at once, because Charlotte had done the most unspeakable things with Rochester in her cold little bed in the parsonage in Haworth, night after night after night.”

  “As you have with me? Before we ever met, I mean.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Am I even better up here?” he grins, tapping his head.

  “No comment.”

  “Well, you’re fabulous in my head. You’re always on your knees . . . ”

  “Oh fuck off.”

  “So. How are all your little
cocksuckers these days, anyway?”

  “What?!” She startles, then gets it. “Oh.” And the exchange of news — kids, work, gossip — carries them until the lights flash and the bartender announces time. Leland does not hesitate: “Can I come back to the hotel with you? The family’s in France. I join them there tomorrow.”

  “Well, then — ”

  “I’ll just pop into the gent’s — ”

  But when she glances around the partition, she sees him standing at the end of the bar, his back hunched, a telephone held to his ear.

  The heavy door of her room clicks shut behind them and she is on him with a hunger that she observes with a kind of detached dismay. She has him undressed within minutes, but then leads him to her bed and makes him wait there while she prepares herself in the bathroom, wriggling into a lacy ensemble purchased for just this eventuality. She makes her entrance only to find him watching the late news on TV but he genially switches off the remote, pronounces her outfit “very alluring” and tugs on the lace straps so that it billows to the floor beside the bed, lying there ’til morning.

  “This is the BBC world news. The EU Council of Ministers will meet in Brussels today to discuss — ”

  “Jesus Christ,” Leland groans, reaching over her to fumble for the OFF button.

  Jay says, “I had to. I’ve got an interview, have to get ready. And you have to go anyway. Don’t you?”

  “Come here.”

  She twists away, raising her arms to drop the discarded nightie over her shoulders. As it floats onto her body, she says, “They’re not in France, are they?”

  Silence.

  “Not exactly.”

  Silence.

  “We’re all flying out together. This afternoon.”

  “What did you tell her when you phoned her from the pub? No, wait, don’t tell me, I’m sorry I asked.”

  “We’ve got a little more time, Jay. Here’s your chance to fulfill that deep-seated, most secret desire of yours — ” He reclines like a pharaoh, nodding slightly crotchward, a devilish smile.

  “You’re out of your mind,” she says. “I have to go be famous now, well, moderately famous, and you have to find your clothes.”

  She notices that despite her puffy eyes and ratty hair and probable toad breath, she feels absolutely ravishing today.

  Leland appears to concede, wriggles out of the bed. “Right then, I’ll be off.” But stops with his boxers drawn only half way up, another smile and gesture, “Though I’m sure you’ve changed your mind — ”

  “Trust me on this one, sunshine. I’ve never been so sure of anything.” She waits ’til he is safely dressed, before she can risk the admission: “When you made that call last night. At the pub. I knew. I really knew this time. And I decided not to care.”

  “Was that difficult?”

  “It was made easier by the fact that this time I’m, well, being dishonest too. No, I’m not married, but I’ve been sort of . . . keeping company with a man for a few months now. His name is Gray. A sculptor. Someone I’ve known and liked for a long time, and things just — ”

  Leland twists in his chair, tugs his shirt collar, turns his back to her. At last he asks, in a cool voice, “Is he good to you?”

  “Yes, he’s interesting and fine and kind. And single. When I’m with him, I’m happy.”

  He looks away, as does she. Then he crosses the room and disappears into the loo, closing the door softly behind him.

  She sits in the easy chair he has just vacated — blissful, stupefyingly sad. This could be the last time. She’s crazy, she’s lost, isn’t even aware that he’s returned to the room ’til he crouches before her, gently lifts her hands, taking each one, first the right, then the left, to his lips. She tries to see his eyes. “Leland. When I’m with Gray I always wish I was with you.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “You uppity prick.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m off, then. To France. And you’re off to spend a famous day.”

  “And afterward a couple of tourist days. I’ve got a friend covering my classes the rest of the week.”

  “Well, then.”

  He hesitates, then says, “Last night, I did an experiment, actually. Before the reading, and again after. I tracked you through the room. It was odd, really. I tried not to speak, but on occasion, just to preserve what miniscule social reputation I still have left in this town, I did have to respond verbally to someone. And you reacted to my voice from a distance of about three meters. I could see your head turn, you were trying to locate a familiar sound. Amazing, in all that din. Your other sense, though, your bodily sense, was not as . . . well it was acute in the sense that your reaction was more visceral. There were several occasions when I passed close by, always at your back though, and I could see your senses heighten, a kind of animal alertness visible in the way you held yourself. It had to be closer than for the voice, though. A metre or so. I found it rather erotic.”

  There’s nothing more to say. He rises, knees creaking. She rises too, and leads him to the door. She turns the knob, then looks back to see him standing motionless two paces behind her.

  A slight gesture to a place just below his belt buckle. “Last chance,” he says. A wicked smile.

  She takes a deep breath. “Son of a bitch!”

  She whirls, grabs his shirt front and pulls him toward her, then shoves him back against the closed door. Pressing his chest firmly with one hand, she runs the other down his shirt front to his belt. Realizing quickly that the operation will require two hands from here on, she eases her thighs and hips against him to hold him still, arches back (all those years of doing Cobra in yoga class paying off big time) and undoes the belt and trousers, backing off only to let his shorts fall like cottonwood fluff in June. The shirt-tails are an obstacle, so after some caresses of his hips and backside, she unbuttons the shirt from the bottom up, ending with a tender kiss at the base of his throat. His eyes are on her, but she will not meet them; she’s not interested in anything above the neck. He doesn’t speak, and she bats his hands away when he reaches for her, one hand sweeping his chest and nipples, the other moving on his nascent hard-on. She sinks to her knees.

  Jay has often thought it an odd fact of her historico-cultural moment that she learned how to give head a full year before her first full sexual encounter. She obtained the information from a book on her parents’ nightstand, a paperback bestseller called The Sensuous Woman. At fifteen, she pored over this book with biblical fervour, memorizing the Butterfly Flick, taking to heart the suggestion to “lightly flick his testicles (balls) with your free hand.” To this point she has been fairly neutral on blow jobs; in fact once, in her early twenties, a combination of too much booze and poor depth perception caused her to gag and puke all over a guy’s belly. But now, today, this moment, she is liking it very much indeed. She thanks the anonymous author of the book now, most fondly. Leland is liking it too. His whimper of pleasure, his surrender to her hands and mouth seem the sweetest things on earth. He’s close now — she’s been using one hand at the base, and the other to flick and cradle away, but now he’s very close, and she takes all of him into her mouth, moving her hands on his butt and thighs, and massaging his hips with her thumbs. He gasps and cries out and then slumps against the door, his breath ragged yet deep. She holds him in her mouth a moment then gently releases him. She remembers that “the recently depleted member must not be handled roughly.” So she slides up to her feet, wet mouth on his belly and chest and throat, then begins to dress him. Top shirt button first, down to the bottom, then crouching to pull up his shorts, ever so tenderly tucking the little soldier, still bobbing, inside. She crouches again to retrieve the pants, and aside from an occasional oops from her, and a gasp from him, they are silent. The button on his fly gives her some grief, as does the belt — one usually does this from the other side — but she manages, gently tucks the shirt in, rests her hand on his chest, smoothing t
he shirt front with wifely propriety. At last she meets his eyes. They’re deep and wild, but she feels perfectly in control, blissful, relinquished. She pats his chest. “There you go,” she says. Then steps back, and in one smooth motion, twists the doorknob, hands him his jacket, and shoves him out the door, shutting it behind him.

  12.

  Leland stands, stunned, against the door, blinking in the sudden shocking brightness. He can’t remember where his legs are, or what they’re for, so he stays completely still, head tilted back against the solid surface, eyes closed. He really is quite disinclined to move, and in the remote area of his brain capable of coherent thought at this moment, he senses that Jay waits silently on the other side of the door, listening. But what more is there to be done or said, really? More of the same guilty chances. Sure, she knows about Christa, and the children. But not about Christa’s episodes. Nor about Meg.

  “Excuse me, sir. Are you unwell? May I be of any assistance?” Bellhop. Christ almighty — “Fine, really. No worries.” Leland detaches himself from the door, staggering slightly with the sudden movement. “Sorry.” Did he hear a rustle of silk behind the door, an intake of breath?

  “May I help you find your room, sir? Have you forgotten your key?”

  “No, I’m not a guest, actually.” Christ! And as he is propelling himself toward the elevators, who should he pass but the gossip columnist for the bloody Mail? Jesus Christ, worse luck, dammit, dammit, dammit — “Yes, lovely to see you, too. I’m just — uh, good day!”

  But outside, the April morning shines brightly in the wet streets and Leland observes, as if for the first time, how richly colourful the world is: the flowers in pots outside the hotel, the cheery jackets of passersby, the reds and blues and greens. He hails a cab for the train station and home.

  13.

  Another six months pass. Jay nearly misses his name in a mid-October flurry of department email. Her students appear to be suffering from every form of disaster the human imagination can conjure: dead grandma, sick grampa, snowed in, roommate trouble, spouse walked out, even a couple of pregnant pets. It takes her a moment to see it, to register his name. And the single word on the subject line erases any hesitation.