by Owen Thomas
“I just find that hard to believe, Beth. I mean, I guess I don’t know him real well, but I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. He seems an honorable man.”
“Honor is the whole problem. My father is a good man. I don’t mean to say that he isn’t. I just couldn’t risk, you know, bringing shame. He’s worked so hard for me. To support me ever since mom died. The bank. His reputation. I just couldn’t risk it.”
“And that’s why you called me instead of calling him. That’s why you needed me to pay the money.”
Beth smiled wincingly, an expression spilling over with remorse and gratitude.
“Yes. I’m terrible. I’m … yes. My father understands nothing and I knew you would understand everything. I knew I could trust you to come. That’s why I didn’t tell you anything on the phone. I didn’t want you to call him and I knew you wouldn’t say anything until we could talk; until you had more information. I had to see you.”
“And you had to see if we could work something out… money wise… without involving your father. So that he’d never know.”
Bethany looked at the table, stuffing her hands down into her lap. When she looked up again her eyes were wet blue pools. She blinked and a thin stream of tears slipped down her cheek. “Do you hate me?”
Hollis smiled. “No. Of course not.” He reached across the table, navigating past the pyramid, and dried her cheek with his thumb as she gave a little sniff and began to blush. “Of course not. But you should have just told me the truth.”
“I couldn’t just call you up and ask you for... for sixteen thousand dollars because I was accused of… of… I had to see you, Hollis. I wanted you to come. I wanted you to be here. I needed you to be here Hollis. And you came. You dropped everything and you came and I love you for that. I love you.”
He stared at her, not speaking, powerless in the grip of that word. Her eyes pleaded with him to understand, to reciprocate. He felt young and terrified and humbled. He felt like he had when he was eighteen standing shoulder to shoulder with Naughty Dillon on the stoop of Minnie Watson’s modest home, his knees weak as she smiled and shook his hand in that dainty way of hers, in that sleeveless green dress and with those velvet brown eyes that had told him that she knew he would come, that she had missed him, that she loved him; all looks and words intended for his friend but that had been his for the taking because he had wanted her so desperately and because wanting is enough when you are young and foolish. Wanting it to be true is all you need at that age. Wanting made it possible and possible made it real.
“All you ever have to do is ask, Beth.”
Hollis paid the bill and they headed back outside, jocund and gorged and moving slow. Bethany grabbed his hand on the way across the parking lot. It felt natural and right. It felt innocent. The Civic watched as they approached, its gleaming silver and glass reflecting the streetlights back out into the dark, arid air, sweet with desert flowers.
He unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her. When he turned she kissed him again, only slower than before and with a languid, soft luxuriousness to it. Hollis bent earthward, closed his eyes and let the sensations pull him down into the heart of the moment like he was falling into the sea. He wanted her. He knew she was lying to him. Somewhere inside he must have known that. But he wanted her anyway, like he had wanted Minnie Watson, like he had wanted Susan, not the sex entirely, not just the sex, but far more urgently, that keenness of perception, that ability to feel each sliver of the future, each micro-particle of time just before it is born, passing into the realm of the present and exploding against the emulsion of all things past. It was the electric feeling of limitless possibility, of omnipotence itself, taking corporeal form. It was his first kiss, his first car, his first sexual conquest, his first medal for the 200-meter freestyle, his wedding day. It was that first really big closing on that trio of office buildings that would become Compson Plaza. It was the birth of each of his children. It was the stuff of life swelling in his veins, hardening him like a sword tilted toward the battle. He remembered this feeling. Craved it. He was not through with this life. His blood maddened at the prospect.
He drove to her hotel, windows open, buffeted by the cooling desert, their way strangely lit, like they were kestrels, flying low, hunting the crepuscular tunnels that crisscrossed the sand. He lost his way twice by missing exits from distracted inattention. She spoke next to him, talking with her hands like some willowy windblown flower, primrose or blue phacelia, and he lost himself reading those fingertips. He had offered to take her to his hotel.
“No,” she had said. She wanted to “get out of this dress.”
He had smiled. She had smiled.
“And brush my teeth and wash my hair and reunite with all of my stuff. I’ve been locked up in the joint, you know.”
He knew, and he laughed to tell her so.
“Besides,” she said, moving the petals of her fingertips over the rim of his ear, “my place is closer.”
The Westin, from its sand-colored, river rock façade, to its pretentiously unpretentious cliff-slot foyer, to the low stone lobby furniture beneath angled windows, was a corporate homage to Taliesin West, a reverence that reached as far as the registration desk and stopped abruptly at the Ocotillo Garden Gift Shop. Revolving racks and staggered shelving festooned with Southwestern kickshaw; ceramic hares, shot glasses, key chains and caps. Hollis stopped suddenly, looking inside at the clerk stocking candy and gum in front of an array of miniature toiletries.
“What?” asked Bethany, coming back to him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, not wanting to share the realization that he had forgotten the condoms in his carry-on. “Just looking.” He smiled and turned away from the clerk. Bethany found his hand and tugged him toward the elevator.
For whatever pull Frank Lloyd Wright may have had below, Kokopelli ruled the upper floors. The dancing, flute-paying Anasazi Casanova was endlessly under foot, like stepping stones, guiding them along the piebald carpet pathway to her room, which was at the extreme southern end of the 7th floor. Bethany released his hand, opened her yellow purse and extracted a card key with two fingers, wiggling it in front of his nose like she wanted him to take a bite out of it. Hollis plucked the card from her grasp and opened the door, guiding her inside with a palm to the small of her back.
The door closed heavily on its own. Bethany dropped her purse in the chair by the window on top of a discarded blouse and a rumpled pair of jeans. She stepped out of her heels, down onto the carpet, groaning in relief.
“You have no idea how it feels to be out of those shoes. I’m never wearing heels again. Men are so lucky.”
She angled her head from one side, then the other, removing her earrings from behind the blonde waterfall and placing them on the table. She stepped lightly to the windows and drew the blinds. Hollis stood awkwardly in the narrow space between the closet and the bathroom, watching her body interact with the inanimate world.
“We are somewhat more utilitarian,” he said. “But we’re not much to look at.”
She padded across the room and stepped up onto the tops of his shoes, pulling her face to within an inch of his nose. Her breath was hard and old, but because the world is always what we want it to be, it was a sensation that registered as raw and primal.
“Well, I like to look at you,” she said, then kissed his lips.
“I’m glad.” He pulled her waist into his, pestle to mortar. “I’m very glad.”
They stood that way for an eternity of seconds, necking like teenagers. Bethany dropped a hand, feeling him through the fabric of his pants.
“I stink, Hollis,” she said.
“What? No.”
“Yes. I want to take a very long hot shower. And wash my hair. I want to brush my teeth. Twice. And gargle some mouthwash. Then,” she kissed him again before separating their bodies and unbuttoning his shirt and running her fingers through the white carpet of his chest, “then we can conti
nue.”
She disappeared behind him into the bathroom and closed the door. Hollis stood, motionless, not quite knowing what to do next. He heard tinkling from within. Susan – her image, her voice, her presence – suddenly filled him. This, he realized, tinkling, urination, was a sound of marriage. Familiar. Personal. Part of the nightly sonic ritual.
His brain spring-boarded into wondering where his wife was at that very moment, what she was doing, who she was with. In his mind’s eye she was alternately fifty-eight and twenty-two, lounging barefoot around the same campfire, smoking the same joint, singing the same song, laughing until she was crying. The stringy-haired boy with a guitar morphed into a middle-aged lesbian and back again. He, she, was playing for Susan and the fire burned brighter. Hollis could barely see them through the flames.
The toilet flushed.
Hollis walked over the edge of the bed. He sat down and unlaced his shoes. He took off his shirt and folded it. He took off his pants and folded them. He removed his socks and his underwear and placed them neatly on top of the shirt. He picked up the stack of clothes and turned in a circle looking for a place to put them.
He caught himself in the long, wood-framed mirror hanging on the wall next to the watercolor saguaro. He turned profile and inflated his chest, sucking in his gut, tightening his buttocks. His penis, highly encouraged, looked thick and heavy; but then again, so did everything else. The shower sputtered and hissed to life in the bathroom. He turned away wishing he had not seen himself in such a cheap, obviously warped mirror.
He placed the stack of clothing in the corner chair on top of Bethany’s purse and clothes. He arranged her shoes beneath the chair and then he arranged his shoes next to hers. He pulled back the covers on the bed and lay down, first fully exposed but then, remembering the mirror, pulling the sheet up to his chin. He folded his hands over his chest and listened to the water running. He could hear its changing patterns and distance as she bent and turned. He could hear each stream striking her body, which he imagined was now well lathered. He indulged a brief fantasy that she would not dry off; that she would step from the shower, leaving the water running, and that she would come lie on top of him wet and slippery. He imagined others watching them. His colleagues at the bank who, in their fawning obsession over young know-nothings, had had no inkling of his vitality. Wally Nunn, who was probably deep into his retirement depression as his wife nagged him to get off of the couch and clean the garage. Susan, jealous, remorseful, longing with a new appreciation for what had been laying idle, right there next to her all of these years. Charles Compson, laughing, cheering him on from the bleachers as he was rounding the bases for home plate. Captain Wycoff who… who…
But the thought of Captain Wycoff slipped suddenly down into the wormhole opened by the unbidden sports analogy. He re-emerged on the other side of the interrogation table at the North Robson police station talking to him about minor league baseball.
Bret Moss played for the Syracuse Chiefs.
Suddenly, Hollis felt again the uneasiness that had shadowed him all evening. He didn’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He shook his head in three small, sharp, rapid-fire jerks, as if to be free of some insect alighting on his scalp. But the feeling persisted and intensified and adopted a voice that spoke to him, mocking him from the shadows. Soon it was clear that none of it was going away. If there was any hope for tonight, he needed to be free of that critical, disbelieving whisper.
Honestly, Hollis, said the voice.
He pulled back the sheet and swung his legs off of the mattress and went over to the chair. He hunched over the stack of clothing and stuffed in his hands until he found the purse. He pulled it out, unzipped it, paused to listen again to the running water, and looked inside. In addition to the expected cosmetic cylinders, there was cash; easily three hundred dollars, mostly in twenties; more than enough for a cab ride. And there were two neat square paper packets, which on closer inspection turned out to be condoms. Lastly, there were two plastic cards: a VISA and a driver’s license, both of which bore the name Lynnette I. Moss. He held the license up to the light. The person in the photo did not look like Bethany Koan.
It was Bethany Koan.
Hollis felt his stomach flip over. He returned the cards to the purse, zipped it up and returned the purse to the pile of clothes. A dying hope counseled a quick search of the pockets of her jeans. They were empty except a scrap of paper with the name and address of a bookstore. Nothing had been inadvertently left behind that night; certainly not cash or identification.
The shower stopped. Hollis replaced the jeans and returned to bed, his mind a jumble. Thirty-seconds of reconnaissance now threatened to change everything. Blood began to evacuate his nether regions and return to his head, which was foretelling discomfort with the first threads of heartbeat now registering in his temples. He tried desperately to stem the tide, encouraging his own tumescence like he was reeling in a slack line that only seconds ago had been taut with promise, hoping to again feel that familiar weight, that fighting presence of life with a mind of its own.
As he worked, he reasoned. So what if she is not being entirely honest? She’s embarrassed. She’s scared. People are complicated. Complex. It’s not reasonable to expect full disclosure so soon and all at once. Had he, after all, disclosed everything to her? Had he been completely honest? Well, no, of course he hadn’t. Hadn’t he bent the truth about Susan? Not completely, and it had all been for Beth’s own good, of course, but enough so that maybe, in just the right light, it counted as dishonesty. No, not dishonesty. Delayed honesty. So why should she be any less entitled to dole out the truth as she saw fit? It was all okay. Nothing has changed. She was fundamentally the same person he had come to know and desire. And love. Yes. There. Love. Was it so wrong? No, by God, it was not wrong. It was not wrong. And he would not be ashamed of his feelings for this wonderful, sweet, intelligent, sexy, vibrant, optimistic, human being who loved him back; who loved him for everything that he was and everything that he knew and everything that his own family had long since come to either ignore if not outright resent. Bethany Koan saw the truth in Hollis Johns and that’s the bottom line; that’s all there was to it. She had soaked him up and made him part of her, no questions asked. Why shouldn’t he do the same? And why should he resist her attraction for him? Why? Because others may disapprove? Fuck the others. Fuck the rest and all who would judge us – wasn’t that the Charles Compson ethic? Yes. Fuck the rest.
The sound of running sink water quickened his efforts up to a pace that his father would have considered a frenzied self-abuse and it was now beginning to bring back the muscle pain in his bicep that had only recently subsided beneath conscious levels.
Not that his efforts were entirely without some effect. But while his personal hydraulic pressure had leveled off, it was not building. He knew the plateau would be short-lived and that the transformation of his throbbing man muscle into an old man’s penis was still very much in progress. He cursed himself for dismissing the whole notion of… the little blue pill. But there hadn’t been time and he did NOT, damn it, suffer from erectile dysfunction and he would NOT become the kind of person, the kind of enfeebled senior citizen, who takes an entire rainbow of pills, one for each activity of his life, just to make it through the day. Meditation. Exercise. Diet. Mindfulness. Damn the pills!
He redoubled his efforts, conjuring Beth’s body in his mind, bending and twisting it to his will, making it do all manner of unwholesome things that he would never ask of her in the world outside his head. He even invited Katie into the action, with her scrubby white tennis shoes and her honey-blonde ponytail, golden skin still glistening from her CoreFlexx 9000 workout, so that in this increasingly desperate fantasy, no part of his imaginary body would be neglected.
But nothing he could imagine, no amount of contortion, no power of magnification, no aspect of Beth’s physical presence – not her eyes, or her lips, or the incarnadine
perfection of her tongue, or the arches of her wonderful little feet, or her flawless skin, all of which he imagined in great sensory detail – none of it resulted in the resurgence he needed and needed right now. It was as if, in the blink of an eye, Bethany Koan had become someone else. Someone to whom he was sexually immune.
The black, unblinking eye of the television stared out at him from the armoire against the wall opposite the bed. He saw the faint spectral image of himself, propped up in the bed, working furiously beneath the popping white sheet.
And then, suddenly, there was hope.
Inspired, Hollis dropped the languorous appendage and traded it for the remote control on the nightstand. He turned on the television. There was a blast of sound, which he quickly muted. Silence restored, he began flashing through the channels looking for the kind of nighttime cable programming that he had frequently found at home and that had never failed to do the trick.
But a complete cycle of the stations revealed nothing promising. He began another rotation, slower this time, hoping he had missed something. By the time he had come full circle, back to the two men engaged in sober, silent conversation across a round spot-lit table, his penis was small, soft and withered, sleeping like a baby bird.
He stared at the men in their discussion, not really seeing them, just as he had not really seen any of the two-dozen previous channels. He had given up hope that television would come to his rescue. Worse, his mind had long since drifted back into the shadows of the things he did not want to think about. Honestly Hollis, whispered the voice, sounding very much like his wife. You have no idea who you’re hopping into bed with. Bethany Koan is a fiction. Who brings condoms to a book-signing reception? Lynnette Moss, that’s who. A petty thief. A con artist. You’re already into her for sixteen thousand dollars. You’ve invested. You’ve bought in. How much more are you good for? She’s fishing for big dumb men who think with the wrong head. You’ve been hooked in the dick and she’s reeling you in.
“Whatcha watchin?” Bethany Koan stood in the hallway in a white robe, open down the middle, toweling her wet hair.
