She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  “No, I’m still in the middle of some things.” Big fat lie.

  “Ah.”

  Jane didn’t offer anything more. It was going to be up to him. He said, “I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Have you.” He must have all kinds of practice at getting women mad at him, and then talking himself back into their good graces.

  “Hold on a minute.” There was a sound of rustling, then unidentifiable small collisions, then liquid swallowings and smackings. “Sorry. Bit of a dry mouth this morning.”

  “Why’s that,” Jane asked, careful not to sound very interested.

  “Debauchery,” he said, and Jane giggled in spite of herself. “You didn’t think I had such a big vocabulary did you?”

  “No, I figured that’s a word you might know.”

  “Oh, good one. I didn’t know you had a mean side.”

  “You haven’t seen mean yet.”

  And just that fast she was happy with him again, and carrying on like a rabbit in heat. Which was pretty much how she’d wanted to be, wasn’t it? Except with a little more dignity. Farewell to dignity. “We should get together sometime,” Patrick said, and Jane’s rabbit heart went thumpity thump, and an agreeable agitation, a kind of sexual washing machine, started up in her. Then the dread settled in.

  “That would be tricky,” Jane said, thinking of Katie’s mom, and how she could hardly call up and beg another favor, not after her lame shopping story. “I don’t know.”

  “If it’s easier, I can come there.”

  Instantly Jane envisioned every small or large disaster, beginning with the erotic unsuitability of a house decorated to withstand two young children, the ringing phone or doorbell that would require answering, the unexpected arrival home of her husband/children/neighbors who would be greeted by the sight of Jane entertaining Patrick in some naked fashion. Was she actually going to do such a thing? It was beginning to seem that she was. “It would be pretty hard without a car.”

  “All right. I guess—”

  “A weekend might work.” Eric could watch the kids. Evil alibis occurred to her. She would say she was going to a museum. The opera. “I mean, if you didn’t have to work.”

  “Ah, they owe me. Or they could do me a favor and fire me.”

  “I need a couple of days to try and set things up.” She wished she didn’t sound so cold-blooded and businesslike. Set things up, she sounded like she was in charge of a catered luncheon. A phrase came to her: my heart misgave me. What did that even mean, how could your heart give or misgive? But she knew what it felt like. “Look, I’m still not sure about this.”

  “That’s my job, isn’t it. Convincing you.”

  Eric was mildly surprised when she told him she had a chance to see an Edward Albee revival with an old friend from her blood-bank days. No one he knew. It did not occur to him to suspect her of anything transgressive because it did not occur to him that she might be capable of doing so. It was as if her entire life had been camouflage, and now she might rob banks or hijack planes. She might be a little late, she told Eric. He was not to worry.

  Should she go shopping for a new outfit? She decided not to, out of a combination of guilt and thrift, plus confusion as to what, exactly, she wanted to look like, suburban sex kitten or virgin sacrifice. In the end Jane settled for a plain white V-neck shirt, pencil skirt, and modest heels. Her black trench coat over that, both because of the blustery weather and to add, she hoped, a bit of rakish glamour.

  There were also certain mortifying decisions regarding underwear.

  They were supposed to meet at a bar in Patrick’s neighborhood so that she could be plied with liquor, although this had not been stated outright. It was just after sunset when Jane arrived and circled the block looking for a place to park. Here was the intersection where she’d had her accident. (She was driving the Toyota again, now repaired. Eric had leased the extravagant BMW, which Jane thought was a billboard for a midlife tantrum, although she did not tell him this.) She found a space at the curb where it looked like she might not get towed, and was about to get out when she saw Patrick across the street.

  He was walking with his phone to his ear, slowing to talk, now stopping entirely and tucking his chin, as if for privacy on the busy street. His forehead churned, listening. He was wearing his leather jacket, which Jane understood was an important garment, both utilitarian and a token of vanity. His hair was a darker, damp color and it still showed comb tracks. Jane watched him. Again an agitation filled her, both pleasant and not pleasant, and she gave herself over to it, letting herself imagine a first and a second and third thing, and then Patrick put the phone away and it came to her, in the way such certainties did, just who he had been talking to.

  Jane waited for him to walk on. She got out of the car and followed him down to the end of the block and watched him open the glass door of the nice-looking bar he’d selected. She dawdled for as long as she could, then she too went inside.

  Although she was only a couple of minutes behind him, already Patrick had a drink in front of him at one end of the bar and was chatting with the barmaid, a tall girl with a brutal haircut dyed a shimmering orange. He turned to look at Jane as she approached and she saw from his gaze that at least she looked all right.

  “Hey.” He stood and leaned in to put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get a table. What do you want to drink, wine? White wine?” He picked up his glass. “Sheila, why don’t you bring us some of that Pinot Grigio. How’s that sound?”

  Jane said that sounded fine, thanks. She let him fuss over her chair and with hanging up her coat. The barmaid arrived with Jane’s glass of wine. The cropped orange hair elongated her neck and made her seem even taller, like a giraffe who’d learned to serve drinks. Patrick settled himself in the chair across from Jane and leaned over the table toward her. Jane said, “How’s Bonnie?”

  “What?”

  “How is she?”

  “I guess she’s all right.”

  “Weren’t you talking to her? A little while ago?”

  “What?” he said again, attempting puzzlement. “What, she said that?”

  “I saw you on the phone and I guessed it was her.”

  “Well that’s, I don’t know why you would think that.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business. Except actually it is. I don’t need to get any more into the middle of things than I already am.”

  “Honestly, I was talking to—”

  Jane held up her hand. “Did she say anything about my husband? You can tell me that, at least.”

  “No,” he said, defeated, drained of good cheer. “She called me, OK? I guess she’s still mad at me about, you know, that money. Other stuff too.” He shrugged, picked up his drink, put it down again. Suspicious. “Were you listening to us? Did she call you too?”

  “It was a guess. Or a feeling, call it. I get them sometimes.”

  “You’re into surveillance, aren’t you? You have those eavesdropper things. You do phone hacking stuff. A buddy of mine, that’s what his ex did.”

  “No, it’s more like intuition. A really strong sense that I know something. I can’t explain it.”

  “You mean you have superpowers?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her. “Or, not super,” she qualified. “It’s not like I can fly, or start fires with my mind or anything. I know, it’s a little weird.” Jane waited to see how he’d react. She watched him visibly consider, trying out one idea, then another.

  “That’s real interesting,” he said finally. “In a disturbing kind of way. Can you read minds?”

  She thought there were probably times she could read his. She shook her head.

  “Good, because that’d make me nervous.”

  “Ha ha.” They relaxed, they offered up small bits of conversation. Jane drank her wine and nudged herself back
into carnal mode. Should it matter if Bonnie called him, for whatever reason? She didn’t want to be thinking about Bonnie but it could hardly be helped, with all their crossing of paths and sharing of men. Fine, now forget about her. Jane let the wine slide through her. It left a trail of glowing heat. She smiled at Patrick. “Tell me more about your softball team.”

  They ordered a second drink but Jane left most of hers behind. They strolled out onto the dark street, Patrick’s arm draped around Jane’s shoulders, and how ordinary and how amazing it was to be nothing more than a body, an amorous body yearning toward another body. For just this moment she had no history, no resentments, no agenda. She was only a normal woman looking forward to normal sex. All right, she wanted it to be a lot better than normal. Small geysers of sensation erupted within her. She and Patrick kept lurching and knocking against each other. He was so oversized, it was hard for her to get in sync with him, and not for the first time Jane imagined herself flattened, crushed, obliterated beneath his weight, oh Lord yes.

  “This is it.” He stopped at a doorway in between two unidentifiable dark office fronts and unlocked the outer door’s many and serious locks. Inside, a landing and stairs, on the worn side. “No elevator, sorry.”

  He was on the third floor. Jane labored up the stairs, wishing she had drunk either more or less of the wine. Patrick was saying his place was nothing fancy, really. As if she was there for the decor. He said he’d tried to pick it up a little, but he hadn’t been home much, you know? “Ta da,” he said, ushering her inside, and Jane thought the apartment wasn’t any worse than she’d imagined, rather like the back room of a sports bar, and right away she asked for the bathroom, overcome by an ignominious need to pee.

  Any cleaning efforts had not reached the bathroom. It was inhabited by swampy towels and a number of end rolls of toilet paper lined up along the sink. Jane had seen worse, but probably not since college days. The light was too bright and she squinted at the mirror, thinking she didn’t look too bad, and anyway she’d gotten herself this far so she must look good enough.

  When she came out again she passed the bedroom, empty, the covers pulled up on the unadorned bed in an attempt at neatness. She’d imagined him waiting there for her but no. She made her way back to the main room. Patrick was seated on the oversized couch with the television remote in his hand, clicking through the stations. Jane, confused now, stood in the doorway until he patted the seat next to him and she sat.

  “Want something to drink? A beer? That’s all I have, sorry.”

  “No thanks.” He was still fiddling with the remote, leaning forward and trying to get something on the screen to advance. They should just, you didn’t want to say, get on with it, but that was how she was thinking, get on with it before she talked herself out of it, before she had to start worrying about driving back home, had to think of her innocent, needy children, had to go back to being Jane the uptight frigid dope. She looked around her at the unpromising furnishings, the bookcase with no books but the line of sports trophies, the magazines on the coffee table (automotive, football), the sweatshirt hung over a doorknob, the stack of newspapers under a chair, and the edge came off her desire.

  “OK, wait a minute . . . wait a . . . here we go.” He settled back and put an arm around Jane, drawing her in even as her muscles tensed. The television screen brightened and the sound track started up in scratchy mid-note.

  “What are we watching?” Jane asked, because the picture quality was uneven, both shadowy and washed out. A woman was making a phone call in a kitchen. Cut to the doorbell ringing and the woman opening the door and inviting the young blond pizza delivery boy inside. She couldn’t find her money, or maybe it had somehow fallen on the floor? She bent over and her short skirt rode up to reveal her bare behind and a nether costume consisting only of a garter belt and black stockings.

  “Hey,” Jane said, meaning it as protest, but Patrick’s hand was working around the side of her bra to the front, even as the pizza boy grasped the situation, and then the lady, dropping his pants to reveal his erect, dark red penis. “I don’t want to watch this,” Jane said, even as Patrick divided his attention between Jane’s left breast and the action onscreen, where the woman was now on her knees, her mouth busy, and the pizza boy’s face took on an expression of writhing agony.

  “Patrick!” Jane succeeded in detaching his hand. She pushed away from him and stood up. “Cut it out!”

  “What’s the matter, huh?” He had a visible erection, Jane noticed.

  “Turn that off, please.”

  “You don’t like this one?” He picked up the remote and the couple froze in mid-groan. “There’s all kinds of others. There’s one in a swimming pool, it’s really hot.”

  “No, why do you think I want to watch that, it’s gross!”

  “Really?” He seemed uncomprehending, as if she had announced that she was neither a Sox nor a Cubs fan. “I thought it would, you know, help you. Get you in the mood.”

  “Well it really doesn’t.” She didn’t know if she should be angry, or if it was the kind of thing you could laugh at. “I’m sorry, watching other people have sex, that does nothing for me.”

  “Oh.” He aimed the remote and the screen went dark. He looked around the room, considering. “You want me to light some candles?”

  “No. I mean that’s all right, I don’t need candles.” It was funny, she decided. In a despairing kind of way.

  “Come on and sit back down. Jeez, I’m sorry.”

  Jane sat, but at some distance from him. Her mouth was dry from the wine. She didn’t feel angry, just disappointed and dreary at this latest failure. Maybe you were supposed to like porn. Maybe Bonnie did. “I should probably go.”

  “No, come on. What’s the problem, huh? It’s no big deal, it’s a stupid movie. Relax.”

  It really wasn’t a big deal and Jane told herself that and tried to send the Relax command to her central nervous system. The message wasn’t getting through. She knew she wasn’t being fair to him, backing down like this, and that made her feel even worse. She tried to explain. “I guess I’ve never been very good friends with my body.”

  “Friends,” Patrick repeated, uncomprehending. “You can do that? Be friends with yourself?”

  “Comfortable with your body. Natural.”

  “Yeah? How come, you think?”

  He was trying, gamely, to follow along. Jane said, “I’ve always been more of a . . . spiritual person.”

  “You mean, religious?” He was wary now. “Because I gotta tell you, I’ve done my time with girls who got totally messed up by nuns.”

  “No, don’t worry, I’m not Catholic, or anything else. I meant, living in my head. Not being very physical.”

  “You have a really nice figure, you know? Especially for having kids.”

  “Thank you.” She guessed you had to take your compliments where you found them.

  “I mean it, is that the deal, you think you don’t have a good body? I like a tall girl, they don’t go to fat. Is that all right for me to say? I don’t want to get you mad again.”

  “No, that’s OK.” She’d been thinking of her mom boobs and her stretch marks. Maybe you had to get over things like that.

  “I wish you’d come sit a little closer.”

  Sitting closer did not commit you to any particular course of action. Without standing up, she moved herself along the cushions, stopping just short of his reach. He made a mock grab for her, failed, and fell back against the cushions. “She’s hard to get,” Patrick said, as if to an audience. “She’s making me work for it.”

  “I’m not making you work for anything,” Jane said, although she was beginning to like the idea of doing so.

  He was studying her now, pretend-solemn. “So will you help me out here? I need, like, spiritual enlightenment.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

&nb
sp; “Naw.” He was trying, and failing, to keep a straight face.

  “Yes you are.”

  “Maybe a little. But you have to tell me, seriously, is there some way you like doing it better than others?”

  Jane shook her head, embarrassed all over again. Was there? She didn’t think so. But then, she had not spent much time considering the matter.

  “Fantasies,” Patrick suggested. “Give me a clue. Work with me here. Think of me as your friendly neighborhood sex therapist.”

  Her fantasy was that she was Bonnie. Someone who knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about it. Jane reached behind her, unhooked her bra, and let the straps slide down her arms. Unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt and leaned back. Crossed her legs and let her skirt ride up.

  “Whoa.” Patrick took a measuring look at the space between them. “You’re not going to sit over there all night, are you?”

  She was such a tease. She liked that he was excited, that he acted like she was worth putting up with, worth pursuing. “Would you turn off the lights?” she asked, and he got up to do so.

  You could be anybody in the dark. She stood, stepped out of her panties; took off her stockings, skirt, and bra; put her shirt back on. There was a bit of dim light from the hall, enough to see the shape of him moving toward her and she guessed he could see her too, her white shirt, her hair, maybe, because he went right for her and everything began to happen fast.

  He had her lie back on the couch and there were the sounds of his belt buckle loosening and the sounds of unzipping and the next minute he was inside her. He was standing in between her legs and holding them apart and he went slow at first, holding back. “You’re so big,” she murmured, because he was, and because she knew he would want her to say it, it was the kind of thing you said to a man, and she was the kind of woman who said such things, at least she was now, wasn’t she? He let go of her legs and put both hands beneath her to pull himself even farther in and come at her harder and it hurt, at least until she got used to it, but she thought this was how it was supposed to feel.