When they’d first met through a mutual friend, Isabel had found Christopher rather frail and sweet. She’d mentioned her first impressions of him to her friend, who’d laughed loud and long and assured her, “No way, he’s neither of those things.”
In the beginning, Christopher and Isabel shared little or no tension, and it wasn’t until they worked together that she began to see Christopher as the antithesis of her first impression of him. It was this schism in her intuition that intrigued her at first. Christopher defied all of Isabel’s instincts. His pull wasn’t just on the surface of things; he became more of a mystery to her the better she came to know him.
The moment she’d fallen in love with him was as much a conundrum as the course of their entire relationship. After a staff meeting held in Christopher’s office one afternoon at Pink, Isabel stayed behind after the others had left. Christopher closed the door as if he had something grave to discuss. Instead, he surprised her with an unusual suggestion.
“Let’s trade pants,” he announced.
“Now? Here, in the office?” Isabel asked, perplexed and thrown off guard—something she would become accustomed to later with Christopher but hadn’t yet.
“Yes, right now. The door is closed.” Christopher made the idea sound perfectly plausible.
They pulled off their bottoms, giddy as children, and threw them across the desk to each other. Christopher caught Isabel’s low-hipped black cotton and Lycra bell-bottoms in his left hand just as his summer-weight gray wool trousers landed on Isabel’s head.
They stood for a moment facing each other, pants-less but now serious, as if the next few minutes of this escapade would infer some greater meaning.
Isabel stood in her Agent Provocateur bright green lace thong with fuchsia ties.
“I like the pink ties,” Christopher told her. Isabel flashed her matching bra before Christopher encouraged her: “Go on, put on my pants.”
Isabel shook out Chris’s trousers and slid her strong legs into them. She pulled them up and zipped them, then tied her silk blouse in a knot above her navel, as if preparing for the rest of the day in new drag. Her butt filled the trousers nicely, but they were too long by eight inches and huge around her waist. “Hey, give me your belt,” she demanded.
Christopher whipped it across the desk, and she caught the buckle before it hit her face. She threaded the belt through the loops, cinched it across her narrow waist, and then rolled up the pants legs. When she was done, she twirled around for Christopher to inspect.
“Hey, not bad, Is. You could totally pull that off. It’s rather chic.”
Christopher shimmied into Isabel’s pants, but he couldn’t close the zipper and button over his crotch, now bulging against the hip-hugging fabric. He stood before her, his smooth white abdomen peering out from her now distressed pants, crisp white cotton boxers spilling out.
“Can’t say the same for you,” Isabel offered. “You look ridiculous.”
They were laughing uncontrollably until Christopher’s assistant buzzed in with a phone call that couldn’t wait. All silliness between them retreated as Christopher paced his office, barefoot. Isabel sat down in the chair opposite his desk and put her shoeless feet on the edge of it. She watched him as he spoke into the receiver, marveling at the composure of her friend and colleague despite how absurd he looked. Inexplicably, it was the sight of Christopher’s flat white belly and skinny, hairless ankles peeking out from her tight pants as he paced the office, earnestly discussing how to win back an important client, that changed forever her heart. By the time Isabel pulled on her own pants again and left the office, she felt melancholy and miserable.
Everything was different after the exchange-of-pants episode. A little angry about the heart she left in the pocket of Christopher’s trousers that day, she felt tricked, as if he had stolen something from her. From that afternoon on, he’d held a part of her he didn’t even know he had and wouldn’t want even if he did realize it. For a year she cried herself to sleep out of frustration and confusion after charged evenings with Christopher that ended with her alone in bed. Their seduction of each other held to a certain point but somehow always stopped before sex. Only after Isabel had fallen for Sam had she finally had the nerve to ask Christopher about it one night over dinner.
“Why have we never had sex?”
“It would change everything between us,” Christopher said matter-of-factly as he continued to cut into the steak he was eating. He paused, then put down his fork and knife and looked at Isabel with some tenderness. “I don’t want anything to change.”
“That assumes it would change for the worse. Why would you think that?”
“Because sex fucks things up,” he said as if it should have been obvious.
“Since when did that stop anyone? Besides, I don’t buy it, Chris. You just don’t want to fuck me. Which is fine, if perplexing,” Isabel retorted without rancor.
This imbalance of desire worked like a charm on Isabel’s heart until she had a revelation.
The ersatz couple had been inseparable over a long weekend, which started with not one, but two different stage versions of Hamlet. Halfway through the second one—they walked out at intermission—they raced out of the city in Christopher’s new sports car to a private beachside hamlet just an hour outside Manhattan. (How he procured these spaces at no cost to himself was another bit of witchcraft on his part.) Isabel had spent two nights wrapped around Christopher in his bed. No sex: she felt as though the tensile strength of his affection was now choking her. On the second night, he spoke to her in great detail about a new girlfriend he was pursuing, a supermodel he’d recently become obsessed with. Isabel got up from the bed, pulled on a long robe, and walked to the end of the great property leading to the Long Island Sound.
She thought at first that she would have a good cry, but instead she sat on a bench facing the water. Isabel felt her heart soar away from her body, out over the Sound, black and still under the moonlight. Separating her heart from her body as a kind of surrender helped her to see clearly for the first time Christopher’s pull on her. She understood his actions toward her as a declaration of a kind of love, but a kind where he had all the control. He’d created a tightrope of his affection on which she found herself willingly—if perilously—walking, with no net to catch her were she to fall. Staring into the darkness, she realized that this sort of unrequited romantic love was not love at all, but an exercise in self-annihilation. The appeal only to the suffering itself. She made a pact with herself there and then to refuse to sustain that suffering. When she stood again she had finally retrieved her heart.
After that night, Isabel maintained something else for Christopher, something she’d never felt before in her long life with men. An easy romantic affection took hold, one she could still call love, but of a different sort, and without a name.
Absent the high-wire act of seduction that Christopher relied on to hold Isabel close, the tension between them cooled. They still spent time together, but with the balance of power now neutralized, Isabel wondered how long the friendship would last.
The ride downtown was blessedly long, allowing Isabel time to daydream: the city held so many memories for her. Certain buildings, street corners, restaurants, entire blocks . . . it was impossible to watch the city fly by without visiting moments past. How would the city look to her once the baby arrived? Would its frenetic energy and controlled chaos—what made the city so seductive to Isabel—suddenly become threatening once she had an infant in her care? The thought of fleeing the city for the suburbs like so many new parents made Isabel shudder. Would having a baby end the life she had created for herself? Or would parenthood simply be a continuation of life as she now lived it, just plus one?
Isabel realized that none of these questions was answerable, but she intuited that this was the only time she would ever be alone again for a very long time. Even though she could have no idea what her life would be once the baby arrived, she was sure that he
r child would occupy the greater part of it—in the physical sense for certain, but also in an emotional and psychic sense. This was time for her now. And although she missed Sam like crazy when he was out of town, she was thankful for the time without him.
Sorry the taxi ride hadn’t lasted longer, Isabel paid the fare and thanked the driver for the gift of solitude he’d unwittingly granted her. As she approached her apartment door, Isabel heard music coming from the other side and felt a moment of terror in her belly. She didn’t remember leaving music on when she left for work in the morning. Too afraid to open the door, she pressed her ear against it and listened more closely. When she made out that the music playing was Tabula Rasa by Arvo Pärt, she realized with relief that Sam must have made it home.
Pärt was Sam’s favorite composer, and it was his habit to play his music when he returned from work as a way to reset his focus. Tabula Rasa was a mesmerizingly melancholic piece, and Isabel suddenly felt sad that she hadn’t been there to greet Sam. She opened the door and called her husband’s name. His suitcase was lying by the door. She could see an open bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter and hear the shower running in the bathroom. Instead of interrupting him, she sat quietly on the couch, savoring the few extra moments alone, calmed by his presence.
“Hey, baby, I thought you were out for the evening.”
Sam startled her. She hadn’t heard the water stop—maybe she’d dozed off for a minute or two? He stood above her next to the couch with a towel wrapped around his lean waist, using a smaller one to dry off his thick dark hair.
“I wasn’t feeling very well. What about your meetings in Chicago?” Isabel wanted to jump up and kiss him, but her body wouldn’t comply. As Sam dropped onto the couch next to her, his towel slipped off and onto the floor. He flipped her legs over hers.
“Lead counsel had an appendicitis attack while he was on vacation with his family in Greece and couldn’t make the conference call as scheduled. The meeting was postponed for two weeks. I got on the next plane home. That means I don’t have to go anywhere for a while.” He kissed her on the back of her neck. “I missed you.”
Isabel snuggled up to Sam and held his cock in her hand. Sam was the only man Isabel had been intimate with whose penis was a source of comfort as well as pleasure.
AT FIRST GLANCE, Sam Burston was an unlikely husband for Isabel. Slick and impeccably groomed with his dark blue suits, crisp white shirts, and Hermès ties, Sam seemed to epitomize the corporate player, the kind of man who squelches individualism in service to climbing the corporate ladder, a ladder erected on the firmament of well-trained minds. Eccentrics and outthinkers need not apply. No, at first glance, Sam was decidedly not Isabel’s type.
It didn’t help that they met when Sam tried to pick her up in a crowded restaurant. He had spotted Isabel while she and Beth were waiting for a table. Just as they turned to leave and try their luck elsewhere, Sam touched Isabel’s elbow to get her attention. “Excuse me,” he said in a soft voice, “my friend and I have room at our table. Would you like to join us?”
Isabel was counting on a quiet dinner with her best friend and hoping for some sound advice about how to extract herself from Christopher’s spell. Her quick assessment of Sam and his friend—suits chasing tail—caused her to dismiss them with a quick shake of the head until Beth pinched her butt in protest. Sam was handsome in that frat-boy way that appealed to her best friend. Beth had experienced a tragic few years in romance, so Isabel quickly turned her coldhearted no into a warm smile of acquiescence. Beth didn’t miss a beat and sat down next to Sam. Isabel was stuck with his close-eyed, close-shaven-headed friend.
By the merciful end of what seemed like an endless dinner, Sam surprised Isabel by asking her out when Beth got up to use the ladies’ room. Beth had monopolized much of the conversation over dinner with her witty repartee, by which Sam seemed enthralled, so his advance on Isabel didn’t follow. She accepted the date more out of surprise than desire.
Walking through the cold, wintery night toward the subway after making their good-byes to Sam and his friend, Beth complained, “Well, that didn’t go as planned . . . At least he might distract you from that elusive nutjob Christopher.”
“Oh, I’m sure nothing will come of it,” Isabel told her best friend. “These guys seem like throwbacks to me, playing a role that should be long gone . . . you know, the midcentury organization man. What do they do now that we no longer need them to provide for and protect us?”
“For fuck’s sake, Is, the guy wants a date. That’s what guys do, and unless I’m mistaken, it’s what we gals do too.”
“Yeah, I know . . . but don’t you think that men these days are like nineteenth-century heroines? They are stuck in roles that are less and less relevant and they all seem slightly depressed to me. It didn’t end well for Emma and Anna, and I don’t see it ending well for them.” Isabel wasn’t sure if she was just trying to make her friend feel better after being slighted or if she was onto something.
“I thought Sam seemed pretty put together. If it doesn’t work, toss him my way, will ya? And besides, how much of this crap has to do with Christopher?”
Isabel’s philosophical reverie was broken. “Oh, Lord, I don’t know. Everything doesn’t always have to go back to Christopher.”
It was true that during the entire dinner, she was lost in the not-so-distant memory of a naked wrestling match with Christopher in his apartment. Afterward they’d drunk warm milk with Ovaltine. Then she’d dressed and went home, as their maddening custom dictated.
“I didn’t say everything goes back to Christopher. You did, Is.”
Isabel and Sam’s first date lasted four days and ended with them hitting the trifecta at Belmont during the Triple Crown, winning more than $2,000 on a blind bet. They forever referred to it as “the four-day date that never ended.”
Sam surprised her at every turn. Nothing about him was as she expected. His bookshelves held the collected works of Nabokov, Thomas Bernhard, and Borges, as well as Carl Jung and Karen Horney. He could recite the psychiatrist’s monologue from Equus, her favorite play. He played the saxophone, and he could dance. She’d never met a straight man who could dance with abandon but without aggression. Isabel fell in love and accepted Sam’s proposal of marriage, cherishing the seashell ring they’d found at a beachside souvenir shop.
Now Isabel nodded off while gently stroking Sam. Besides vomiting and fucking, the urge to sleep often overcame her. One often preempted another. Sam carried Isabel to their bed, slipped off her shoes and dress, and tucked her under the cool white sheets.
The phone rang just as Isabel was sinking into slumber, and she heard Sam pick it up as if from far away.
“Hello? Yeah, hey, thanks, Chris. We’re pretty excited . . .”
Isabel woke with a flutter at the mention of her friend’s name. She raised her head from the pillow to catch the rest.
“No, she just passed out. I’ll let her know you called . . . Uh-huh, yeah, man, sure . . . Okay, good-bye.”
Sam quietly entered the bedroom. “Is, are you awake?”
“Hmm . . . barely . . . who was on the phone?” she mumbled.
“No one important . . . go back to sleep.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Maggie
FROM THE MEDIA room across the vast loft, Maggie could hearNino Rota’s jaunty score accompanying the finale of La Dolce Vita. That the film wasn’t clicked off immediately meant that John had likely fallen asleep in front of the TV, which also meant that he was not tending to Lily. Before Maggie had a chance to register her annoyance, she heard her two-year-old daughter’s feet patter across the loft.
“Mommy? Where are you? Krispies stuck in the toilet. Come see!”
“I’m in my office, Lily,” Maggie yelled. “I’m coming.”
“Where? I can’t see you!”
The advantages of living in a huge space were sometimes at odds with the logistics of child rearing. Maggie and John had moved from
a cramped six-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village to a four-thousand-square-foot loft in Jersey City when they were expecting Lily. Having to support two home offices, one toddler, and John’s two grade-schoolers, space was the one thing Maggie thought might keep them all from driving one another crazy. Still, Maggie often wondered if the move had really been all that necessary in the end.
“We occupy only two hundred square feet,” she’d said to her husband one night. They were all piled on the couch eating ice cream cones and watching Kiki’s Delivery Service. “What did we need thirty-eight hundred extra for?”
With its towering forty-five-foot ceilings, buttressed by the original exposed iron supports, and seemingly endless open space, the loft was incomparable with any Maggie had ever seen in Manhattan. Rays of light shone through the two-story-high windows, reflecting off the polished but mottled wide-planked maple floors. It would be the perfect home if it weren’t in Jersey City, but that was what made it affordable. As long as they were inside, Maggie was happy. She complained bitterly, though, when she didn’t feel like cooking and wanted decent take out. She would drive her minivan into Manhattan just to bring home a decent order of rice and beans, fried sweet plantains, and ropa vieja from her favorite Cuban-Chinese joint.
Maggie found Lily in the bathroom, peering into the toilet. Rice Krispies were, in fact, stuck against the sides of the bowl and the waterlogged box floated inside.
“Froggy hungry. Box too big,” Lily explained.
Maggie then spotted the green plastic frog bobbing under the cereal box and understood everything. “Oh, I see. Honey, go wake up your father, please. I think he’s on the couch in front of the TV. I’ll clean this up and we’ll give Froggy something else to eat.”
The End of Men Page 7
