Most of the time, except when I’m doing business, I keep to myself. I went out for lunch one day, about a month ago, and saw Andy sitting in the restaurant. The sight of him froze me; I didn’t want him to see me, my ego wasn’t strong enough. It hit me like a thunderbolt, I didn’t know that feeling was there until the moment it happened. I actually felt myself shaking.
His back was to me. I turned to my companion, a young lawyer from the office next door, and made some feeble excuse about having to get back, I forgot an important phone call was coming in.
Out on the street I broke into a sweat. I started walking back to the office, trying not to run.
“Hey, Will.”
Andy had spotted me after all. Slowly, I’d turned and walked back towards him.
“Hello, Andy,” I said, forcing a casualness I most certainly didn’t feel.
He looked at me.
“How are you?” he said. The tone of his voice was not throwaway conversational.
“Getting by,” I replied.
He looked me over more carefully.
“What’s that on your shirt?” he asked, pointing to a stain my tie couldn’t cover.
“I spilled some coffee this morning,” I answered defensively. “Normally I’d have changed but I don’t have any appointments this afternoon …” I heard my wimpishness even as I found myself unable to stop explaining. Why did I feel I needed to justify myself to this man?
He ran a thumb and forefinger down the placket.
“Doing your own laundry these days?” he asked, half-joshing.
“The occasional shirt,” I admitted sheepishly.
“If you’re going to do your own washing you’d better learn how to iron,” he said. “That shirt looks like you slept in it.”
“I don’t sleep in my clothes,” I said, “and what difference is it to you what I look like? I’m not with the firm anymore, I can’t embarrass you.”
“You’re an embarrassment to yourself, Will,” he said bluntly.
“So go to hell yourself.” I started away. He put his hand on my shoulder, stopping me.
“You’re still fucking up, Will,” he said. “Worse than ever.”
“Like hell I am,” I told him. He had me on the run and I didn’t like it. “And anyway what’s it to you?”
“You’re a friend, that’s what. And I still give a shit about you, even if you don’t give one about yourself.”
“Save the sermons for the courtroom.”
He looked at me with a combination of pity and disgust.
“You’re falling off the edge, Will,” he said. “And you’re closer than you think.”
He turned and walked away, leaving me shaking.
Since then I’ve had Susan bring me in a sandwich from the deli, or I go to places I know he and Fred don’t frequent.
That incident scared me; it showed me that under all my jive independence I do care about how others see me, and how they do see me isn’t very pretty. I’ve got to work on it, either stop being a victim of my ego, or stop giving a shit about how others see me, or both. The funny thing is, I thought I was that person. I was working with a safety net then; when the net’s taken away you’re not as brave as you thought.
It’s disquieting, feeling vulnerable. It’s a feeling I’ve never known. Scratch that, it isn’t true; what’s true is it’s not a feeling I’ve ever admitted to.
I’m doing penance for all the years I’ve been bullshitting myself. I hope there’s a payoff to it.
“HELLO, STRANGER.”
“Hello your own self.”
I didn’t know she was behind me.
“You look good, Will. Fit. Trim.” She punches my bicep. She packs a good, strong punch.
“I’ve lost a few pounds,” I tell her, flexing my arm. I didn’t know she was so strong. “About ten, actually. Been working out.”
“It looks good on you. Not that there was anything wrong with the old look,” she adds.
“You look good, too, Mary Lou.”
“Thank you, kind sir. So where are you headed?”
“Denver. I’ve got a deposition,” I say. Goddam, does she look good. All dressed up in her power-lawyer’s clothes. Unlike Patricia, on her it looks natural. Probably just a case of different expectations. She smells good, too; she’s right on top of me, it’s a crowded line, I can’t help it, the combination of perfume and her own bodily essence is unmistakable even though it’s early in the morning and she showered a couple hours ago.
“What about you?” I ask.
We’re in the United ticket line at the Albuquerque airport. Besides her briefcase she has a small suitcase and a carry-on garment bag.
“Same place,” she says.
“Denver too? What for?” Shit.
“Mini-seminar. Products liability. Today and tomorrow.”
“That’s right, I forgot about that,” I say. “I was going to attend,” I add, “but I’m not doing much of that these days so I passed.” I can’t help myself; I’ve got to let her know I’m current. That it’s still business as usual.
“Lucky you,” she says. “It’ll probably bore my tits off.”
“Hope not,” I say, glancing down reflexively.
“You could check it out this evening,” she says provocatively, laughing. “Only kidding, Will,” she adds quickly. My face must look very silly right now. She changes the subject.
“Where are you staying?” she asks.
“I’m not. I’ll be done by three. Just a quick in and out.”
She smiles at the inference but doesn’t comment. In the old days with the firm I might have stayed over, had a good meal, spent the evening entertaining a potential client. Now that it’s all my own money I’m more frugal. It’s not a comfortable feeling, it reminds me of when I was a kid going out on a rare occasion to a restaurant with my parents and only being allowed to order the cheapest entrees on the menu, hamburger steak or spaghetti and meatballs when I really wanted the fried chicken or breaded veal cutlet that cost an extra quarter. I’ve never forgotten that feeling.
“I’m at the Brown Palace,” she says. “There’s a cocktail party this afternoon. Why don’t you come over after you’re done? I’m sure you’ll know most of the people there.”
I’m sure I will, too: that’s the problem.
“Yeh, okay, maybe I will.” It’s an obvious lie, she has to know it.
“I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.” She looks me square in the eye. She’s persistent, I give her that.
We buy our tickets, drift over to the boarding area. I pour myself a complimentary cup of coffee, glance at the headlines in The Wall Street Journal.
“So are you dating anyone these days?” she asks abruptly.
“Actually, I’m celibate these days.”
She arches an eyebrow.
“It’s true,” I say. “Honestly. I haven’t had a date in … I guess a couple months now.” I hadn’t realized it was that long.
“That’ll be the day,” she says.
I sip the coffee. It’s bitter, undrinkable. “What about you?”
“Here and there.”
I shrug; I hope it looks like it’s casual. “Anyone in particular?”
“Would you be jealous if I was?” she asks.
Fucking aye I’d be jealous. “Curious,” I say. “Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.” My palms are sweating, I feel my face getting red.
“Too bad,” she says. “I was hoping you would be. Even a little bit.”
She’s being straight with me; it stops me cold. I owe her that much in return.
“I would be,” I confess. “At least a little bit.”
Her fingers touch mine. I want to kiss her, badly.
“Stay over tonight.”
“I didn’t bring a change,” I say.
“I’ll buy you one.”
I REALIZE NOW THAT Patricia has set me free. An unconscious act, definitely not premeditated, in fact had she known on a conscious level,
she might have approached everything differently, because of her jealousy of Mary Lou, not only of Mary Lou’s participation in our highly-publicized murder case and the career advancement that came with it, but of Mary Lou’s proximity to me, professional and personal. Mary Lou not only got to work with me (something Patricia had been burning to do for years, both as an acknowledgment from me that she was legitimate, that she belonged, that she was as good as the others, something she’d never believed while she lived in Santa Fe, and as an avenue to the big leagues, at least what goes for the bigs in these parts … stop putting yourself down, man, those days are over, remember?, that was a big league case for sure and you were a star, even in a losing cause), she became my lover as well, only for the one night then, yes, but in my heart and gut for a longer duration, as I look back now she was never not there from that first time we touched in the office late at night. Patricia didn’t want me, I know that, we’ve both known it for a long time, there are real, fundamental reasons we didn’t make it, but like me, she didn’t want someone else to have what she didn’t have, even if she didn’t want it, couldn’t have it.
Or maybe it’s all my own shit, transposing myself onto her.
Either way, the move to Seattle, physically taking Claudia away from me, and her own change into the new her, the her I didn’t know and am not comfortable with, don’t desire anymore, makes it possible for me to make love to Mary Lou now in a way that’s different from the way I’ve made love with any woman I’ve been with for the past ten years: since Patricia, when it was still the real thing.
Mary Lou comes out of the bathroom naked, her clothes folded neatly across her arms, lays them down on one of the Queen Anne chairs, slides under the covers next to me. In the bathroom, besides putting in her diaphragm, she’d stripped her face of makeup, brushed her hair back. Her skin glows, musky and flushed.
“Do you take your diaphragm wherever you go?” I had asked peevishly, jealously, when she’d told me she needed a minute to get ready.
“Jesus Christ. Why are you so insecure?”
“It strikes me as being a bit …”
“Unprofessional?” she laughed.
“You know what I mean.” You’re ready for a fuck if somebody comes along that turns you on. What happened to true love?”
“Do you remember that phone call I made from the plane? I had a friend go over to my apartment and same-day Fed Express it up. It got here an hour ago. Stop being jealous, Will, you’re too much an open book, I only make love with men I’m crazy about, so I haven’t since we did it.”
There’s a book by a writer named James Crumley called The Last Good Kiss. I read it years ago, and I don’t remember what it’s about. That doesn’t matter; the expression has stuck with me, but until this moment I hadn’t realized what it means.
It’s what we’re doing now. The long, slow ride towards heaven on earth, the sheer egolessness of giving and receiving pleasure. There is nothing else, nothing, no pinpricks of the world outside the two of us: job, children, past, future, none of that exists. She fascinates and fulfills me completely, all delight.
It’s at least an hour before I enter her. It matters, but it almost doesn’t, because I want to be with this forever.
This is what making love is supposed to be all about. It’s different when you’re forty from when you’re twenty—you don’t have that pure, limitless animal energy and stamina—but the absoluteness of sensuality and pleasure is so much stronger, so consciously there. The first time we fucked, back during the trial, was that: a first-time fuck. Fortunately, it was good; they aren’t always, even us noted cocksmen know that to be so; but good or bad, first-time sex is its own experience.
This is different. I’m not religious but this goes beyond any strict interpretation of evolution. People fall in love this way.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“Famished.”
“Ahhh, don’t, I’m too sensitive down there now! No! Let’s rest for awhile.” She grabs me by the hair, pulls me back up so we’re face to face again.
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re wonderful.”
“Not beautiful?”
“Handsome.”
More kissing, more touching. We lie on our backs, fingers intertwined, worn out.
“Actually, I am hungry,” I say.
“Actually?”
“Actually.”
“Actually, I am, too. For your cock. And maybe a club sandwich and a Heineken’s.”
“And some cherry pie. A la mode. Butter pecan.”
“You sound like you’re stoned.”
“I am. Eating you’s like taking a mini-acid trip.”
“Shit, Will. I mean is that poetic or what?”
I stagger into the bathroom for a glass of water. I can barely crawl, let alone walk.
“I’ll call room service,” she says.
“Good idea. I don’t feel like getting dressed.”
“They wouldn’t let you into the dining room, anyway,” she tells me.
“Why not?”
“Look in the mirror,” she giggles. “Your face is a dead giveaway.”
“Giveaway what? What face?”
“The face of an obsessed pussy-eater. They don’t allow pussy-eaters in the public rooms of the Brown Palace Hotel.”
There’s no feeling in the world that can compare to the beginning of a love affair. Of falling in love, of the feeling of falling in love, the wanting, the desire of it. The eagerness to please, to have, to take, to give. The hidden delicious fear of is this the real thing, finally? All this is in and out of my thoughts as we make love all night long almost, almost until dawn, finally I’m able to shut the goddam brain down, to just be with this emotionally, so that I hold nothing back, there’s none of the spectator at the match, the watching of the doing while the doing is happening, the self-censoring man. It all goes to her, it all comes back to me from her, through her.
She’s a wonderful lover, skillful yes, I knew that from the first time, but that’s only the surface, she flows constantly, heart and sex together. To please me, to give me love. We’re a great fit, the way our bodies come together physically, the distance between her breasts and pussy the right match for my chest and cock, our mouths together effortlessly, our legs wrapped together. She smells erotic, not just between her legs but everywhere, her underarms, legs, under her breasts, her neck, her feet, her palms, fingers, toes. Eat, kiss, suck, fuck, rest, body against body, then touch, stroke, kiss, bite, suck, fuck again.
No fantasy has ever been this good. Life, better than imagination.
At three o’clock we order up a bottle of Dom Perignon from room service. $175.00. She signs for it, leaving the kid night-bellman not only a lavish tip but a hard-on, he doesn’t even try to conceal the bulge in his pants as she sits cross-legged on the bed signing the check, a blanket loosely draped around her, covering virtually nothing, her laughing after he leaves backing out (his eyes glued to her all the while) at what the reaction will be when it shows up on her expense account. We drink it from the bottle, watching part of a movie on TV—Wuthering Heights. I mean shit, come on, somebody in heaven has to have had an eye on us. It has to have been ordained, this evening, this day, this night.
We fuck once more, then collapse into sleep, her hand resting delicately across my cock and balls.
“Wake up, Will,” she sings. “Time to smell the coffee.”
“No way.”
I grab at her blindly, my eyes still closed. How the hell can anyone sound so cheerful on two hours sleep? She sidesteps my hand, pulls the sheets off me.
“Come on back to bed, Mary Lou. We haven’t made love yet this morning.” I hear my voice; I sound like the kid who wants two chocolate doughnuts, who won’t be satisfied with the one that was offered. I want it all, the whole candy store.
“Aren’t you the greedy little bugger. We made love at four o’clock,” she reminds me, as if I’d forgotten.
“It was s
till dark out so it was technically night. Anyway who cares?”
“Me because I have a meeting this morning. Early this morning.”
“Bag it.”
“Would that I could.”
I open my eyes, prop myself up on my elbows. She’s dressed for business, serious business.
“You’re beautiful. Even in clothes.”
“Thanks. So’re you. Even not.” She sits on the edge of the bed. “But you’ve got to get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Got a problem.” Pointing.
She lightly brushes the pulsing head with her blood-red fingernails.
“Not fair,” I groan.
She casually strokes me for a moment, semi-consciously; then she goes down on me, gorging on me, taking it all. I come almost immediately, flopping back on the sheets like a spent fish.
“I’ll start your shower,” she says, wiping her mouth delicately with a corner of the sheet.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I tell her. “I’ll wait here for you. You do whatever it is you have to do and then come back. To my waiting arms.”
“No can do. I’ve got meetings all morning, a symposium over lunch, then I’ve got to fly home and brief my senior partner on this stuff before we close shop for the day.” She yanks the covers down. “Chop, chop, big boy. Up and at ’em. You’re taking me to breakfast and we have to move quick. Come on now.”
She drags me out of bed, shoves me into the bathroom. As I’m adjusting the hot water I hear her on the phone. She sounds impatient. “As soon as possible, okay? Just hang onto your britches.” The power-lawyer talking to a recalcitrant client.
I luxuriate in the shower less than I’d like; she’s got an agenda and I have to meet it, at least until after breakfast. I put on the new clothes she bought me yesterday at Neiman’s, and we ride the elevator down to meet the day.
“What’s wrong with the hotel dining room?”
“This’ll be better.”
We’re driving through downtown Denver. She’s at the wheel, in a rented Taurus.
“You know your way around.”
Against the Wind Page 28
