David stood up, his headache pounding with the movement, and walked toward her. She typed without pause, more like a secretary copying an already written document than a novelist struggling to create. He fought off his surprise at the ease with which she invented by reminding himself it was only a stupid romance book. When he was within a few feet she stopped and looked at him. She had a blank look on her face, as though they were strangers in a public place: David someone she had noticed on the subway while she glanced up to see if this were her stop.
He put his hand on the back of her head, his fingers gripping her hair possessively. He turned her away from the typewriter toward him and pulled her up slightly to meet his lips. She was pliant, willing to be uncomfortably posed, partially off the chair, her neck back, her head paralyzed in his grasp, while his mouth and tongue fired away at her stationary full lips. She left her lips slightly open and only reacted when his tongue invaded, her teeth closing against the departure as he pulled away. David stopped to look at her, a puppet held aloft by his hand, her eyes closed, her mouth open, a fish mouthing at the water for food. She held her balance with the balls of her feet, so her belly was arched, her tight stomach flexed, her hip bones jutting out enough to open a view down her panties, her breasts thrust forward, her nipples making hard points in the soft translucent material of her bra.
With his free hand he reached inside her bra and found one erect nipple and squeezed. She moaned slightly and her hips, moved from side to side as though she were a lonely dancer pretending she had a partner. He let go and roughly pulled his hand out, the bra pulling off crookedly so it covered only the top of her breast. He ran the flat of his palm over her rippling stomach down to her bony pelvis and grabbed her cunt hard. His finger penetrated like a swimmer diving; there was no resistance to his invasion, only watery absorption.
She swiveled on his hand, her body twisting and rocking, her head cradled in his hand. She was like an obscene doll designed for decadent children. She’s a whore, he thought with a dark, harsh inner voice whose tone was alien. And she was so wet, so totally enthralled by sexual feeling: her eyes closed, her lips sighing to be kissed, her body bucking with desire. He could feel nothing but contempt for this abandon, it made her worse somehow that she could enjoy sex with him if she didn’t love him. And he knew she didn’t love him. The jokes were the truth, the protests of love were the jokes.
He pulled his hand out. She quivered sadly at its departure and her behind rested once again on the chair. There was a moment in which he stood there, over her, doing nothing. Her head was down, looking like a penitent awaiting a blessing. Slowly—he thought reluctantly—she reached up to his groin and rubbed his erection through the material. He didn’t move or look down: he stared off impassively, waiting to see if she would do his bidding without even a hint. There was a moment of uncertainty, when she shifted on the chair, drawing one of her legs up under her. But then her small hands came up to his belt and began to strip him.
Silently, motionless, he stood there while she exposed his penis and took it in her mouth, her head rocking steadily below him, the warm funnel sliding with dull regularity, as though she were a sleepy farmgirl milking a cow. He could almost see her dull sense of duty as she serviced him. Flashing into his brain while he put his hands on her head and urged her to take more and more of him each time; answering his question while he felt himself emptied into her mouth: She can enjoy it when I make love to her because she pretends it’s someone else. When she makes love to me, it’s her job, her rent check.
She kept his shrinking penis inside and sucked and licked slowly, a pro finishing with meticulous care. He patted her on the head and walked away. Silent. Ignoring the obvious civility of doing something for her. He waited for a protest, for a demand that would disprove his theory. He sat on the couch and picked up that week’s Newstime. After a few long moments of quiet anticipation, while he stared at the magazine typeface, the black letters dissolving into meaningless zigzags, he heard her typewriter begin again. You really earned it tonight, Patty, he said to himself, and tried to laugh bitterly. Wisely.
Instead, he felt tired. And the dull throb of his headache returned.
Tony Winters stood at the bathroom mirror studying his just-shaved face. It had the puffed whitish look of a baby’s. His hair was lustrous from the shampoo. He looked good: young, open, his eyes shining with optimism. He felt almost as if he were seeing a photograph of himself as a college freshman; smooth-faced, eager, beaming cheerfully at the hostile world, confident it would welcome and praise him.
He walked out, the heels of his new shoes sounding a dramatic approach, into the kitchen. Betty was there, dressed for work, reading the Times. He noticed a headline slug at the top of Section C: “BUNTING, NEW PLAY AT CIRCLE REP OPENS.” and decided he wasn’t up to reading either a rave (depressing—it could have been me) or a pan (infuriating—why are they putting that on instead of reviving my plays’?). Betty was reading the Hers column. He laughed at that. She glanced up casually and then steadied her gaze. “You look so handsome,” she said.
“Thank you, darling,” he said casually, but he was pleased she had confirmed his bout of self-admiration at the mirror.
“Why are you so dressed up?”
Tony walked to the stove so he wouldn’t be looking at her when he answered. “Got a lunch date with Bill Hadley.”
“Who’s Bill Hadley?”
“My roommate freshman year.” He poured himself coffee. “I feel like I’m in college today.”
“You do,” she said, smiling delightedly. “Your short haircut makes you look like a boy.” She put out her hand as he neared the table, and her arm went around his waist. He bent over and met her lips. When he pulled away after a quick peck, she insisted, and brought him back for a longer kiss.
I should have stayed in bed until she left, he thought, waiting for her to release him.
When she did, he took Section A from her and looked at the stories, reading paragraphs senselessly, waiting, waiting, waiting …
“Don’t you have to be at work?” he asked, unable to restrain himself.
Betty glanced at their designer wall clock with its minimalist lines instead of numbers. “Oh my God,” she said. “I’m late.”
She hurried out of the apartment. Tony listened for the sound of the elevator doors opening to swallow her and to remove any chance she might overhear. When he had, he picked up the phone and dialed:
“Sherry Netherland. Good morning.”
“Lois Picker, please.”
“Thank you.”
He had been up most of the night, sleeping lightly, waiting to make this contact, but now, hearing the phone wire click as he was switched from electronic point to electronic point en route to Lois’ room, he felt dread.
“Hello.” Her voice was alert. She had flown in last night, arriving at ten or so. She should have had trouble -falling asleep. He had pictured her still in bed, the heavy curtains drawn. Instead, he thought, she must be fully dressed, a breakfast finished on a nearby table, a flat folded newspaper now crumpled and disassembled.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she said, the hard businesslike tone softening.
“Should I come up?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. I’ll get a cab.” He hung up, his stomach rumbling. Suddenly he was falling apart—no longer eager, thrilled to have a clandestine life, his body keenly anticipating passionate lovemaking. His legs felt weak, disconnected from his torso, out of step with each other. There was tremulousness in his belly. In the taxi, when it jolted over potholes, he felt as if his intestines were a badly sewn pocket, its seams crumbling.
He got out on Madison, hoping that the one-block walk to Fifth would settle his nerves. Spring must have arrived, Tony decided, because of Central Park. Its pretense of natural beauty in the heart of New York seemed a perfect companion to his own hypocrisy. The trees were like large decorator plants rising out of an enormous stone pot set in the cit
y’s waiting room, a false gesture made by nature to prettify an arrogant manmade world. His adultery seemed just as self-conscious and showy. Betty had done nothing to deserve this: it was an act of narcissism, not desperate love. He could easily live without Lois’ admiration. He would still be a self-sufficient city if he avoided elaborately landscaping his emotional life with a pastoral scene of romance.
The nervous guilt wore off while he walked aimlessly looking at the park, replaced by a petulant anger, an aggrieved feeling that he was oppressed by antique notions. To be faithful, to be honest, to sustain intimacy with only one person; they are dull bourgeois values, he lectured himself. The image of himself as a virtuous married man, living out a lifespan of sexual monogamy, was appalling, as though he were being forced to decorate his apartment with flocked velvet wallpaper and kelly-green shag rugs. He caught a glimpse of himself wearing a lightweight Burberry raincoat—tall, slim, a pleasant, wise smile—and asked the world: Would anyone really believe I could be faithful? Even if I maintained my vows, the world would think otherwise.
When he finally strode into the Sherry Netherland, it was with the self-righteous air of an injured party collecting his court-awarded compensation. Goddamm it, his bearing seemed to say, I deserve this!
In the lobby, when the deskman told him to ring up Lois’ room, it occurred to him that someone who knew him might walk by and stop to ask whom he was seeing in a hotel at ten-fifteen in the morning. After all, this wasn’t some out-of-the way motel. Show-biz meetings were held here, in the rooms of visiting producers, studio executives, and the like.
“Hi, it’s me. What’s your room?” he blurted at the sound of Lois’ voice.
“Twenty-one forty-two,” she answered in a startled tone.
He dashed across the narrow lobby to the elevator banks and told the uniformed boy the floor number, praying the doors would close quickly before anyone else had a chance to enter. Even in the relative security of the twenty-first floor’s hallway, Tony moved quickly, glancing at the brass-plated oval room numbers in search of Lois. He found her waiting, the door open, at the end of the hall. He trotted to her, sweeping her in his arms and kicking the door closed behind him, his fearful actions making a good imitation of passionate desperation.
She hugged him hard, as if to say, “I’m here, darling, you have me” to his wild run of longing. His misunderstood performance now began to work its magic on him. He buried his head in her shoulder and nuzzled like a devoted pet greeting a long-lost master. Clasped in her thin, muscled arms, pressed against her tense bony body, he felt welcomed. At home. Celebrated. Cheered. She loves me, he thought, swelling with pride, and loving her back not out of mere politeness but out of gratitude.
There was desperation in their lovemaking. Impatient, they didn’t even strip before coupling. Both her jeans and his pants were around their ankles, her blouse was unbuttoned and open but still on her arms, and though her breasts were exposed, the empty bra was on her, lewdly covering ribs and stomach.
He entered her with almost no preliminaries. She urged him to, unzipping his pants and pulling desperately at them in an awkward attempt to lower them. When he did, she took hold of his penis and guided it into an already warm welcome and then put her long fingers on each buttock and pulled him toward her, her back arching, her eyes closing, with a quiet moan of relief and satisfaction.
Tony withdrew a little and then pushed hard, not stopping when he was fully inside and felt her hard pelvic bone press on his, but shoving angrily against the impasse. Lois opened her eyes, like someone coming blissfully to consciousness in heaven, free at last from the world’s cares and evils, to look in his eyes. “I missed you,” she said. It was the first words they exchanged.
A part of his mind, yearning to answer her truthfully, searched for a summary to the complicated feelings he had about coming here to this physical consummation of the emotional adultery begun in LA ten months before. He had fantasized this illicit sex so vividly for so long that to leave it unfulfilled at the altar of his dreams, unwed to reality, had seemed cowardly and stingy. In LA she had seemed fascinated by him; he wanted more of her intense interest. He wanted that distillation of what an audience provides en masse: uncritical silence and admiration for the playwright’s soul, ideas, and feelings. He had become fond, through months of phone calls and letters, of her outer hardness, so different from Betty’s genteel manners: and Lois’ inner yielding to him was just as different from Betty’s secret aloofness. Lois transformed him into a new person, less cocky and sure of himself about the world, but utterly in command of the emotional war. She had broken her sword and surrendered to him in a way Betty never would or could.
Betty would die fighting to maintain her dignity, a pretense of negotiated equality: Do you love me? Then I love you. Will you help me? Then I will help you. And so on. in the dull negotiations respectable people conduct, believing that emotions can run on schedules, picking up anger here and depositing understanding there, arriving at a terminus of happy unity. For Tony, the train never seemed to go anywhere. Instead, with Betty he often felt alone, a lawyer seated across an oak table from another skilled logician, nitpicking over contractual details. I want to have a baby. I’m not ready. Let’s not go to their party. I want to. They don’t like me. Yes, they do—you don’t like them. That’s right, I don’t like them and neither do you. I can’t think of an idea for a new play. You will, sweetie. How do you know? You always do—I need a book for the spring list. Why don’t you publish my collected plays? Ha, ha.
“I missed you,” Tony answered Lois in a whisper and resumed his movements in and out, avoiding her eyes, because they looked at him with sad longing, as though their image of eventual separation loomed behind his loving body, so that each movement seemed to contain both comfort and sorrow. She pushed him in harder and harder each time, impressing him on her, as though she could stamp herself with his devotion permanently. Soon she sighed and groaned with satisfaction, her chest heaving, her feet trying to untangle themselves from her pants so she could wrap her legs around him for the final moments of orgasm.
He was amazed at her easy climax. With it, he felt abstracted. His penis felt at home, comfortable with its occupation of her. This was unusual. Normally he felt the pleasures of the vagina too awesome to control; a little boy, he lost control and peed his passion away too soon. He would repeat the act a little while after ejaculation, less out of desire to prove virility (he told himself) than a wish to screw calmly. But seconds always felt like second best. There was a loss of intensity. Now, with Lois satisfied and concentrating on him, her hands playing up and down his backside, her hips working, even the walls of her cunt contracting and loosening, her mouth teasing his neck, his mouth, soothing his eyes, there was both: the miraculous joy of surrounding warmth, an unbearable overload of pleasure, but also the calm sense of ease, unhurried passion, controlled, building, pulling him out, out of himself, widening from his groin, vibrating through his legs, washing up his belly, breaking down his observing mind, blinding his sight …
He slept. For an instant the narrator was silenced and he floated unconscious in her. Someone sang. No! Moaned. It’s me! It’s me! Oh God! I love, I love, I …
He absolutely lost control: he bucked against her like a wild stallion, making sounds of joy and triumph to the hotel walls, an animal seeding its mate with blind, agonized joy.
When he fell against her again, utterly drained, and noticed the sweat, the color of the carpet, he felt himself again. He understood he was in the Sherry Netherland, lying on the floor of a room with his pants cuffing his ankles. He could picture what the sight would look like to an audience: an automatic laugh, the sight gag to be revealed to a cuckolded husband or a shrewish wife: or the automatic reveal in a drama, the scales falling from the eyes of a betrayed husband, or the ultimate humiliation of a neglected wife. He felt stupid. Small. An easily dismissed category of human. The arrogant, self-serving bourgeois artist, without scruples or shame. H
e felt shame at his lack of it; he felt belittled by his own condescension to himself. Appalled that he felt appalled. Guilty that he was guilty. And, finally, remembering how completely he had lost himself, howling like an animal while his prick jerked its liquid into her, as though she were merely a vessel, he felt embarrassed.
He glanced at her shyly. Lois was smirking proudly. There was love in her eyes, but there was also pride, the look of someone who had secret knowledge. The confident look of a person in power.
Tony laughed. “I guess I enjoyed that.”
“It was great,” she said, her proud smile widening even more.
He realized she thought of it as her achievement, a tribute he had paid to her. He had been shamed by the revelation that he loved sex so much, that it could so overpower him. He didn’t think of it as having much to do with Lois.
“Do you always come so loudly?” she asked playfully.
Tony wondered at this strange moment. There was almost nothing in his memory (at least at that moment) of life with Betty that could compare to the nakedness of this. Lois was asking if she possessed him, owned a greater percentage than his wife’s holdings. He had spent only a few days with Lois, and this was his first sexual experience with her, and yet she could ask him that. And he felt perfectly at ease answering: “No.”
The seriousness of tone wiped Lois’ smile away, replaced with a look of openness and interest.
“You don’t come like that with Betty?”
“No,” he said again in a sonorous tone, like a Shakespearean ghost.
“Ever?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Lois hugged him and whispered in his ear with undisguised greed: “Good!”
Suddenly Tony felt lost. He had come to the hotel thinking he understood everything about the action. That he could foresee every possible result, understood the boundaries. But now he was lost. Surprised at the outset, and baffled by the future.
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