by Maggie Estep
“I want to.”
“Okay. So you’ll stay?”
He finally looked me in the eyes. He was searching for something. I doubt he found it. But he agreed that he would stay on, sleeping on the couch. I felt inexplicable relief.
I went back into the bathroom to finish drying off. I slathered myself in body lotion, brushed my hair thoroughly, then put on the jeans and T-shirt I had hanging on a hook in the bathroom. They were relatively clean. Or, at least, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn them.
“You want me to make some dinner?” Clayton asked when I came out.
“Dinner?” I said dumbly. For one thing, it was not yet 5 p.m., and for another, I had never seen Clayton cook anything.
“I’m trying to pull my weight here, Alice.”
“That’s okay. I’m not hungry yet. But thank you.”
“I’d cook something later but I have to go out and do that job estimate in an hour.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I felt uncomfortable with this new mutual solicitousness. Clayton had, I suppose, always been solicitous, but he’d never gone so far as to offer to cook. And I had never been at all solicitous. I tried that sort of thing on for size in a few past relationships and it had always backfired. Whenever I went out of my way for some guy, he took it as a sign to walk all over me. So I’d cut solicitousness from my repertoire several years earlier and never looked back.
“Well …” Clayton’s arms were hanging loose at his sides and he was looking down at his feet. “I guess I’ll take a shower.”
“Okay,” I said softly. I didn’t know where I was getting this new inclination toward being empathetic to the big oaf. Maybe I was getting some sort of sickness, some disease of the brain, a particularly insidious tumor that would make itself known only by changing my behavior.
I went into the bedroom and sprawled face first on the bed. Candy was nesting on one of the pillows, licking herself. Her wet fur had left moisture all over the covers.
When I woke up it was nearly dark out and Clayton was gone. I got up and wandered room to room like a ghost. Normally, I’d be hard at work on the next day’s races but I didn’t think I could focus. Candy followed me as I wandered, wondering what the restlessness was about and if it could possibly lead to something good for her, like a walk or a meal of gooey meat.
I eventually settled in front of the computer and checked my e-mail. I’d sent William a note reiterating that I am single, since he’d seemed reluctant to believe it. Apparently, he was still reluctant.
He’d sent a return note stating that even if Clayton and I had downgraded to an “open” relationship, he didn’t perceive me as unencumbered.
I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten the idea that Clayton and I were having an open relationship. Even though monogamy is a tenuous proposition at best, I am a monogamist. I thought I had made that clear to William. I would not be seeking to swap spit with him if Clayton hadn’t broken up with me.
I MapQuested the address on the signature line of William’s e-mail. I knew he had both an office and an apartment in the same building. There was a reasonably good chance he’d be there.
I went into the bedroom, threw open my closet door, and stared savagely at my clothes. My eye rested on a fetching knee-length red dress. It was sexy but understated, if a red dress can ever be understated. I changed my underwear, putting on matching black bra and thong. I looked at myself in the closet mirror.
Cheap slut. Tramp. In my head I could hear my mother jokingly admonishing me.
My hair needed a trim but I didn’t imagine William would be scrutinizing my split ends. That was the sort of thing I only had to worry about when having a dinner with one of my gay male friends. Gay men are relentless in their attention to the details of their female friends’ appearances. Heterosexual males don’t do much more than take in the tits, the ass, and the mouth.
My eyes weren’t too puffy and my eyebrows, which had started getting thicker when I hit thirty-five, looked like they were having a tame evening. I had shaved my legs a day earlier, had a bikini wax last week. The yoga and kickboxing had made me a little less bony and more toned, or so I imagined. I felt about as comely as I ever feel. I pulled the dress over my head then put on my suede knee-high boots.
As I stood near the front door, hesitating, Candy looked up at me expectantly and wagged her tail.
I was a rapacious woman in a red dress, I might as well take my little dog too.
I put Candy’s leash on and we walked to the subway. I picked her up and carried her under my arm like a football as I went through the turnstile. The man in the token booth either didn’t notice or didn’t care about my canine companion.
On the 7 train, an elderly woman complimented Candy’s good looks.
“What a beautiful dog. Looks like an artic fox.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though I’m never sure how to respond to such things. It’s not like I had anything to do with my little mutt’s attractiveness.
At 42nd Street, I switched to the F train that brought us down to the Lower East Side. I walked up from the city’s murky bowels and into a night that wasn’t much brighter. I put Candy down. She sniffed at the pavement and seemed to make a face.
I remembered Ridge Street from long ago when, in my early teens, I’d had a junkie boyfriend whom I’d accompanied to score heroin. Puerto Rican and Dominican boys with firearms stood on corners watching for police cruisers and potential undercover cops while dozens of junkies, thin and smelling of death, lined up, waiting to buy little glassine baggies. Now, with shiny stores and eateries lining every block, it was hard to remember the area’s past.
The building was a four-story brick, narrow but sturdy-looking. In the ground floor window stood a discreet placard reading, Nichols Architecture. There was a light on even though it was nearly 9 p.m.
I rang the buzzer. Nothing happened.
Candy looked from me to the door, wondering what was taking so long, eager to go in and explore this new place.
I felt like a jackass in a red dress. I considered what to do next. Maybe go to one of the few remaining bodegas and buy some cigarettes, then smoke, and walk my mutt down the once-scary streets, maybe even head up to 7th and B to see if, by some miracle, the horseshoe bar was still there.
Just as I was about to turn around and start walking uptown, there was a humming sound and I realized someone had answered the buzzer. I pushed the door open and walked into the hall, where I found William peering out from his office.
“Nice dress,” he said, not showing the least surprise at my materializing there uninvited.
“Thanks.”
“I was just firing off irate e-mails, come in while I finish up.”
His big pit bull was standing at the door, wagging her tail. Candy approached warily and, when William’s dog sniffed at her head, growled slightly. The big dog backed off.
“Sorry, Candy has that little-dog Napoleon-complex thing.”
“Gumdrop doesn’t care. She’s the easiest-going dog I’ve ever known,” William said. “Make yourself comfortable.” He motioned at a low, modern gray couch that didn’t look designed for comfort.
I sat down. Candy jumped into my lap; Gumdrop came and stood near us, wagging her tail.
William’s office was clean and completely devoid of clutter. Sleek, modern wood shelves were lined with manuals and books. A slender, elegant desk held an enormous desktop Mac.
William had gone right back to what he was doing. I realized I’d expected that the mere sight of me would melt him. Not that I am known for making men melt on the spot, but once they’re interested in me, it usually takes a bulldozer to drag them away.
I gave William thirty seconds more, then stood up.
“I’m not sure why I dropped in unannounced, you obviously have work to do,” I said, walking toward the door.
He swiveled his chair around to face me. “What?” He looked at me like I was insane.
“We’ll s
ee each other some other time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I need ten seconds, then I’ll give you my undivided attention.”
He looked right into me as he said it. I sighed and sat back down. I stared at the bookshelves.
William finally got up from his hi-tech office chair and came to sit next to me on the couch. He touched my face.
“Hello, Alice.”
“Hi, William.”
He leaned closer and kissed me lightly.
I kissed him back, hard.
He put one hand on my chest and pushed me away.
“What’s your status?” he asked.
“Status?”
“The live-in companion.”
“He’s still living in but he isn’t a companion. At least not with any romantic implications. I thought I had made that clear.”
“You did. But I still hesitate to put myself at your mercy.”
“Mercy? There’s no mercy involved.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I laughed.
“Come,” he said, getting to his feet and taking my hands in his.
We went up three flights to the top floor of the small building. William unlocked the door and opened up into a small but surgically tidy apartment furnished similarly to the office.
“Oh,” I said, “it’s nice.”
“You say that as if you’re surprised.”
“I’m surprised at the tidiness.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know many tidy people.” I shrugged and looked at him.
“Well, now you know one.”
He seemed proud of this attribute. But it worried me slightly. The only extremely tidy men I knew were gay or weird.
But William didn’t seem gay and, as far as I could tell, was in possession of his faculties. And he really was easy on the eyes. Those broad shoulders, that long neck. The wide-set, light-brown eyes.
I came closer to him and kissed his neck. The skin was so soft.
He looked at me, then, seeming to reach a decision, put his hands on my hips and steered me toward the front of the apartment where the bedroom was. He pushed me down onto the bed, then lay next to me. For a few minutes we stayed like that, looking at each other, wordless. Then he pulled me on top of him. I lifted his sweater and buried my face in his chest. It was hairless and soft without being feminine.
He sat up halfway, pulled my dress over my head, and examined me.
“You look like a wood nymph,” he said as he ran his hand from my stomach down to the tip of my left foot.
“A wood nymph?”
“A slightly otherworldly creature. Delicate but capable of building a shack from sticks.”
“Wood nymphs build shacks? Don’t they just live in trees or something?”
“I admit I’m not as well-versed as I should be in the habits of nymphs. I imagine them as capable but lovely creatures.”
“Thank you, I think.”
He bit my neck and put a hand inside my thong. I was ridiculously wet. I fumbled with the buttons on his jeans, letting out a sigh of relief when I’d gotten them undone and reached my hand inside his boxers. His cock was thick. I craved him.
He flipped me onto my stomach, ran his hands down my back and ass and legs. I kept reaching out, trying to grab hold of him, any part of him, but he batted my hands away.
“Shhhh,” he said, “let me explore.”
He bit the backs of my thighs. He put a pillow under my hips, elevating my ass, and entered me from behind. Very slowly. Teasing. Torturing.
Every time I tried reaching back to touch some part of him, he’d slap my hands away; at one point, he pinned them under his own as he slid in and out of me.
Eventually, he relented. He flipped me over, then pulled me on top of him. He’d been tormenting me long enough that within a few moments of straddling him, I came.
I didn’t look at him. That would have been too much, but as my body collapsed forward onto his, I buried my face in his neck.
He wasn’t done with me. He let me lie on my side, recovering, as he slid in behind me. He fucked me like that for about ten minutes then, finally, let himself come.
He held me tightly.
I closed my eyes.
I woke up and squinted into the darkness of the room. Candy was curled up at the edge of the bed but William was nowhere to be found. And I couldn’t see a clock anywhere.
I got up, turned on a very modern and beautiful bed-side lamp, and started rooting around for my strewn panties and dress.
“Hey, what are you doing?” William appeared in the bedroom door.
He was completely naked. His body wasn’t perfect, there was a hint of spare tire around his middle, but he was at ease with himself. I wanted him again.
“Why’d you put this back on?” he asked as he tackled me back to the bed and put his hand under the dress and inside my thong.
“It’s illegal to walk the streets naked,” I said before completely losing the power of speech as he put his mouth between my legs.
At some point, after sating each other again, after lying entwined and touching each other’s faces, I asked what time he thought it was.
“Why? Where do you have to go?” He propped up on his elbow and stared at me almost menacingly.
“Home. To work. I was distracted thinking of you all afternoon and didn’t do my work for tomorrow’s races.”
“Ah.”
I wasn’t sure he believed me.
“So.” I said, “any idea what time it is?”
“About 11.”
“Oh. My powers won’t be at their peak.”
“Your powers are most assuredly at their peak,” he said, scooping his hand under the small of my back and squeezing me to him.
We stayed entwined for another half hour before I finally forced myself up and out of the bed. I had convinced myself that I had to get home to work. There was a carryover in the Pick 6. Arthur had text-messaged asking if I wanted to work on it with him. I didn’t. But now I told myself I was going to. I told myself that Clayton had nothing to do with my needing to leave this man who turned me upside down.
“See you,” I said as I stood near the door, Candy at my side.
William kissed me. He kissed my mouth, my forehead, my cheeks, my neck.
“Yes,” he said, “you will see me.”
I liked the verging-on-threatening tone.
I walked out onto Ridge Street. It was a dark but warm night. Not a person or cab in sight. Candy squatted in the street and peed, then sniffed at everything as we walked north up to Houston where I hailed a taxi. The driver, a cadaverously thin man whose skin was as gray as his hair, didn’t fly into a rage when I told him I was going to Queens. In fact, he barely paused in the intense conversation he was having into the headset of his cell phone.
I wondered, as I often do, who cab drivers find to talk on the phone with them, seemingly endlessly, in the middle of the night.
The apartment was dark when I came in. I saw Clayton lying on the couch, on his side, his back to me. He was wearing his clothes and didn’t have anything covering him.
I quietly went about my nighttime ablutions, washing my face and applying liberal doses of night cream. I inspected myself in the mirror and found my pasty skin was glowing a little. The circles under my eyes weren’t visible. I looked happy.
That’s ridiculous, Alice, I told myself.
I went into the bedroom and got in bed without even thinking about doing any work on tomorrow’s races. I rested my head in a nest of soft pillows and fell right to sleep, Candy curled at my feet.
7. KIMBERLY
“Are you pregnant?” Joe asked.
“Hardly,” I said, gazing up at him from my position on the bathroom floor where, after vomiting prodigiously, I had crumbled next to the toilet.
“It’d be cute if we had a kid,” Joe said.
“Joe, you can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“I’m
menopausal.”
“I hear some women get pregnant even a year after their last period.”
I stared up at him, dumbfounded.
“Joe,” I said evenly, “my youngest daughter is nearly thirty. I’m not pregnant. It’s just a flu.”
“You sure?” Joe scrutinized me.
“Quite.”
I thought of my daughter Alice’s complaints about all men wanting to get her pregnant. I had always suspected she was exaggerating. The men who’d impregnated me had not intended to do so. But now, my fifty-six-year-old next-door neighbor Joe, with whom I’d been having a lovely fling for eight weeks, sincerely seemed to want me pregnant. I was sure it was a passing phase, a fleeting, whimsical wish, the kind one becomes prone to in advanced middle age.
As I thought all these things, Joe gazed down at me with what I strongly suspected was love. Love? It seemed so foreign after the Battle of Betina. And the Battle of Claire, Betina’s predecessor, who had also been young and difficult. In retrospect, these relationships didn’t really have as much to do with love as with conquering.
“Kim,” Joe said, reaching for one of my hands and helping me to my feet, “I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, Joe.”
“Oh, Joe? What kind of response is that?”
“I’m fifty-three years old and I just vomited. I can’t imagine anyone deciding to love me at this particular juncture.”
“I didn’t decide it. I just do.”
“Oh, Joe.” I reached up and touched his face.
“You keep saying that.”
“I’m at a loss for words.”
“Do you have any positive feelings for me?”
“Many. Yes. There is even a good chance I love you.”
“A good chance?”
“Can I just brush my teeth and then we’ll get out of the bathroom and discuss?”
“I suppose so.” He gave me a wounded look then walked out of the bathroom, softly closing the door as he left.
I turned to the sink and took my toothbrush from the holder. Ours was the kind of relationship where I felt comfortable doing things like leaving a toothbrush. Not that I ever spend the night. When Joe and I want to sleep together all night, we do so next door, at my place, so as not to abandon the dogs. But leaving things at his place has made me feel girlish and I can’t say that I’ve ever in my life felt girlish.
