The idea of Isabel’s age had stopped his confession, returned him to reality; Owen swivelled to the side, seeming grateful that something had.
Isabel felt a bit offended. She had seen that movie, or at least part of it once—had heard of it anyway—and besides, he was too young to have seen it originally, either; he wasn’t that much older. In any case, she knew that in the only way that mattered, they were the same: Owen was a person going to waste, as she was.
“I do know,” she blurted out, and thought she sounded even younger, a child asserting sophistication. It made him smile—mostly with his eyes, if that were possible, as he barely moved his mouth—and that hurt her even more.
Still, her youth meant something to her: Isabel waited for him to speak before continuing the conversation—not because he was her boss, exactly, but because what he was going through was something she hadn’t experienced, the depth of his despair was something she had never known. Wasn’t that worthy of respect or at least silence? This wasn’t about her impressing him, after all, though she wanted to, had to force herself not to keep trying, to make him know that she understood him, understood everything, even though she sensed she didn’t.
But Owen wouldn’t respond, so Isabel had no better idea than to leave. When he saw her start to go, he rose at the same time, actually making a decision, moving toward her as she moved to the door. He was faster than she, because he wanted to get where he was going more.
Owen stood before her, no longer on the verge of tears, as if feeling beyond what tears could tell her. He offered himself as a desperate supplicant, without any other options, beyond all embarrassment.
“Please,” he said. “Please. Use me.”
At first Isabel didn’t know what he meant. Then she realized that she was fighting knowing and did not resist as he came closer, in fact she placed her hands at his hips to help. Soon he was near enough to whisper, “Anything you want. All for you. Use me.”
As he undressed her, he discouraged her doing anything in return, shaking his head or murmuring “No” when she as much as raised a hand to touch him. She felt she was being prepared—anointed, that was the word—for some ceremony, saw herself in a Roman movie scene, a princess stripped, bathed, and placed naked under robes by female slaves. In that case, though, they would have been careful how they handled her, not wishing to offend—and, moaning, Owen was stroking and kissing every inch of her he could after he removed her one good white (un-ironed) shirt, then her bra, her skirt, and, as he placed her with her help upon his—slightly cold—leather couch, her underwear (it had been too warm that morning to wear tights).
Still fully dressed, he moved down her, and she spread her legs, not sure but daring to assume that’s what he wanted. Then he said softly but she was almost sure, “I want to lick the alphabet on your clit,” and that’s what he did, speaking each letter before he formed it (with surprising efficiency) upon and across her, something she suspected he had seen in a porn film, but a good and imaginative one that she had missed. By the time he licked the three lines for the stems or the arms or whatever they were called of the “E,” she came, feeling more naked even than she was, though this was how he’d wanted her; she was only obeying him by allowing him to submit, or something.
Then he laid his head against her thigh, breathing with what seemed like relief that he had actually had an effect on anyone, made an impact—that he might be remembered by someone for doing something. She didn’t dare to reach down and touch his head (the grey hair of which she now decided she liked, without knowing why), though it was her impulse to at least acknowledge how good he’d made her feel. Soon he had recovered and was undressing himself, moving her gently (again with her subtle assistance) so that she lay beneath him. “So big and beautiful,” she thought he whispered, though she wasn’t positive and couldn’t say “What?” because that would be weird, given what was going on—though she was curious, wanted to hear the compliment. She realized he already had a condom, was taking care of everything, was supremely adept at assisting—her sexual valet in a sense, her “man” as they called it in old comedies about butlers, and the word had so many meanings now, she thought, as he entered her, and she realized she was sort of babbling to herself, because she was so nervous and so aroused. As he pushed into her, he knew what she wanted though he hardly knew her; he was catering to her, customizing her account, as it were, her AOL or whatever, in bed. Soon she stopped feeling guilty about giving nothing and decided to go along, for that’s what he wanted, to enjoy being on the receiving end, accepting now an action in a way it had never been before.
That he was acting for himself and for her—that he was aware of what effect each push was having, that her pleasure caused his—was something new. She thought of someone rowing and how the digging of his oar into the ocean moved his boat, rippled the water, and built the muscle in the rower’s arm, a seamless situation. Now she was the water, or merely made of water, and when he pushed into her, he was, well, not like the oar exactly, but like an entire man disappearing into a wave, which was her. She now knew what “so excited” meant, and it was different from what she had pretended it meant with Martin, when it had meant nothing, when it had been something from a porn film and bullshit.
“Oh, my God,” she said helplessly as he pushed particularly hard and pressed the front of his abdomen (which she noticed was flatter than Martin’s, despite his being so much older—fifteen or forty-five years—though she had only briefly glimpsed Martin’s soft stomach through his unzipped and partly pulled down pants) against her clitoris. She thought of a dolphin, as if she was still in an ocean, and how it butted against you or something when it liked you and you swam with it. He (or maybe just his erection) was like a strong and slippery dolphin, rock hard but really responsive, and making that little chirping radar sound, which she now realized was coming from her own open mouth.
“It’s good, it’s good,” she said, and again she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.
Then, suddenly, he stopped moving, obviously could move no more without ending everything, which meant that she was on, it was up to her. Instinctively she wrapped around him, inside and outside: outside with her arms—and inside she had never known she had such flexibility, like when you realize you can bend a finger back all the way without breaking it, only this was better. She had never known that she could be tender with a grown man, not just her baby sister or her old kitty cat Monkey, kissing and kissing them—she was passionate, that’s what she was, and why had it been embarrassing to say before now?
Coming with him felt like (she could not stop comparing things; it made her feel safer to do it, put things in perspective so she wouldn’t feel she had entered an environment alien and disorienting—it was still her own life, she had not gone insane, you know?) that trick where the magician pulls out a tablecloth and all the plates stay put: she was the tablecloth, the table, and the plates. And he came, too, immediately after, or actually during, though she suspected he’d started a little ahead of her, could feel him doing that pulsing that of course came from his heart and had been weaker in her hand when it came from Martin. And Owen’s sound was bigger: Martin’s was like air going out of a balloon and Owen’s was like one bursting, like a whole float in, say, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or he was a terrorist exploding himself along with everything else, and she had made him into one. That was so exciting that it made her come again, or maybe it was just the end of her first orgasm, an aftershock, like they say there are in earthquakes.
“I can’t stop,” she said, and perhaps that was another trick, because she wanted it to continue and thought saying that might be the spell to make it so.
Then he placed his lips against her temple, where her hair was wet and slightly stuck to the area above her ear. Would he say he loved her? She didn’t think he did; she didn’t love him—she didn’t fool herself, she wasn’t a baby. Maybe she wanted him to say it so she could feel superior, c
ould feel less than he and so more in control. (She had read once that the young are more powerful in young-old affairs, because, well, they live longer. But what about her uncle’s second wife who was twenty years younger and who died first? Who was more powerful then? Her uncle, obviously, who was still alive.) Soon she didn’t care about creating distance. She found herself kissing him, too, his cheek, which was not unshaven but getting there with the night coming on; things were changing, growing all the time, and now she knew it, this was proof.
Her boss had wanted to work for her, and that was what he had done; he had not been lying, been, what was the word, rhetorical, and that made her want to serve him—not serve, that was subordinate and not what she meant—to give to him, to know what he knew, to get pleasure by giving pleasure, to feel the connection or current, the wet finger in the spilled liquid that was then stuck into a socket, only good and shocking, not bad.
She took him into her mouth even though he protested, weakly, that this was not for him but only for her, tried to insist and sincerely, not coyly, not to get what he pretended not to want. But she wouldn’t listen and soon, her breasts intentionally squashed against his leg, she kissed at the grey pubic hairs she had not noticed on him before (and which, for reasons she could not articulate, excited her in a new and discombobulating way). It was only seconds after she started, sort of forced him to experience it, had hardly moved her mouth on him, was just getting ready to do her stuff, or figure out what stuff would do the trick for him, that he came. More than melting in her mouth (as crass girls in college called it), he seemed to completely disappear, his head tilting back, his eyes closing, his arms laid flat, his hands opening as if going under in that ocean again—or better, being pushed off a cliff by coming. It almost scared her. She suddenly knew how lonely he had been and yet he hadn’t used it against her but for her, had wanted to deny himself until she wouldn’t let him anymore (or was the denial his way of getting over the guilt of sleeping with a young girl who was his employee? If he got nothing, in other words, what had he done wrong? He would be a kind of sex saint).
But then she didn’t care what was his way to explain it to himself, was just glad that she had given him this, given him something—God knows she gave him nothing at the job—and soon he seemed to reappear, to float up to the surface again and exist, and she moved to lie against him. He buried his face in her sweaty neck, maybe ashamed of how much he had shown of himself, uneasy about how much she knew him now, though she liked knowing him—he knew her, so why not?—secretly wanted to know him more, to know everything, even though she suspected that it would be impossible, would probably never happen, that this was as close as they would ever get, this instant, this afternoon.
Isabel didn’t see Owen often after this. Only once did they meet in his house, when his wife was away. While Isabel was there, the door to the bedroom stayed closed, and she could imagine how its dark (was it oak?) wood might have to him a vexing and mysterious power—intergalactic or timeless or whatever it had been in the film—if always in that position. They used a den but mostly stayed in the bathroom, where he washed her slowly in the shower, aroused as he always was by fulfilling a function, being employed, even if the need was one he had created in her. She did need him now, just wanted him, had had trouble waiting for him from the time they entered his home. Otherwise, they met in his office whenever they could, for he had obligations, and—without saying so, without saying much of anything—they both regarded their time together as a gift, could not be greedy for more, just had to be grateful.
Isabel barely spoke to Martin now. Her duties seemed less stultifying, filled as they were with subtext, the numbers on her screen changed into symbols of longing found on another planet or formed in the future. But Martin seemed even more frustrated. Isabel could hear him sighing from where he sat, and she believed it was both for her benefit and a genuine expression of dismay. She was sorry for him but not guilty, no matter how much she thought she ought to be.
One dusk, both were alone in the elevator going down, though she usually avoided exiting the building with him. They rode in silence until, a few floors from the lobby, Martin spoke a rare, completed sentence.
“I know that you go with him,” he said.
Isabel started, and the little bell rang as they hit the ground floor, seeming to underline his remark. She didn’t respond, only walked quickly ahead and away from him, but she knew that things were different, had entered a new phase; she could feel it, and he had made it happen.
The next day in the office, Martin kept on talking to her in the same clear voice he had either always had or acquired for the occasion, feeling he had no alternative.
“Why don’t you tell me about doing it with him?” he said.
Isabel didn’t answer, just kept looking as if interested at her screen, though she knew it was absurd to try and fool him in this way.
“I want to hear about you and him,” he said, and his voice conveyed at once the sincere need to please himself and punish her, which was new; before he may have been selfish but not unkind.
Isabel turned to see him and he didn’t avoid her, kept staring at her as he had been the whole time. Her response was reflexive, though this reflex was also new.
“I won’t,” she said, and saw him appear shocked, not because she had officially ended something between them, she didn’t think, but because he was being denied something obviously available: brand-new information that would no doubt be exciting and could have been given to him easily, as if newspapers were being thrown from a boy’s bike onto everybody’s lawn but his.
As Isabel pushed by him to leave early (being privileged by her association with Owen, she did not need to explain herself), she realized that Martin had always thought her stories were true, and this made her feel differently about him, though in what way she wasn’t sure.
For a few days, to Isabel’s relief, they sat in virtual silence. Finally, Martin addressed her on their way into a meeting, among a crowd in which it would be hard for her to reply.
“I told her,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she whispered back. “Who?”
“His wife. About you and him. I left a message on their machine.”
Isabel stopped, bumped by another employee trying to get past. Waiting to be alone with him in the hall, she reached out and grabbed Martin, got hold of his shirt, which she nearly ripped and which he yanked back, annoyed, so she wouldn’t. They stood there staring at each other, Isabel nearly shaking with rage both at him and her own inarticulateness; it was as if, with a few words, he had taken everything away.
Martin didn’t look triumphant; he seemed shaken, even shocked by her reaction. He then grew apologetic and stammered, reverting to his old, un-socialized self.
“I-I-I had to do something,” he said at last.
This was right before the weekend. On Monday, Isabel arrived late and Martin was already there. He sat faced away, his complexion pale, his chin in his palm, the computer screen before him blank. Was he sick again, she wondered? Or just afraid to acknowledge her?
Soon she noticed a general absence of people around. When she looked out in the hall, many doors were shut, others open to reveal no one but a briefcase or bag hastily, even indifferently tossed in a corner or on a chair. It was like a science fiction film in which a plague breaks out—or a bomb drops—that kills people but not things. She wondered if a meeting had been called without her knowing, but now that she knew Owen, she was always in the loop.
Isabel walked out and after a few steps began passing others. All were either heading toward Owen’s office or returning from having been there. There was a feeling of people drifting to and from a crime scene or a free outdoor concert at which some were turned away. Isabel could not remember there ever being this kind of purposeful movement in the office, such urgency, concern, and curiosity. Had the company been sold? Owen been fired? One woman was in tears. Isabel
heard someone say, “I can’t believe it,” and another, “They found him in his house,” and a third, somewhat snottily, “I would have thought it would have been his wife.”
Isabel began running through the hall, her feeling of fear in action, and soon was nearly flying. She knew that if Owen’s door was closed, it would be bad news—or would it be if his door was open and people were in his office crying the way she was not yet allowing herself to cry?
Now she was running faster than anyone ever should inside, with too much speed to be contained in the office, as if she were about to burst out of it at any instant. And it was true: she would be, in a way, exploded into life by death as soon as she rounded the corner at the end of the hall.
THE SON HE NEVER HAD
Weeks after he came home from Florida, Ben looked at a picture of his son. He had never thought he would approve of someone being punished, especially in such an extreme way. He had never approved of any kind of punishment, not the corporeal kind certainly, not even spanking, when he had been a young enough parent for it to matter.
Ben’s son Alan, though, had seen him as punitive, not physically but emotionally, when he had been young, younger, a college student, at the age to be cruel and accusing in order to separate himself from his parents—or so Ben had read in a self-help book, in order to soothe his rattled nerves after twenty-year-old Alan had lashed out at him (“Don’t you see what you’re doing to me?” In public, no less, in a restaurant. “Don’t you see how it fucking makes me feel?”). Ben had driven home, shaken, after the whole horrible evening—driven only with his wife, Miriam, for Alan had escaped into the night on foot, worrying his mother, who was also worried about Ben’s driving. “Alan’s at that age, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” she said, though she was clearly upset herself. “Watch where you’re going, you won’t solve anything by getting us killed.”
The Family Unit and Other Fantasies Page 22
