“Nate?” she asked finally.
“Yeah?”
“Is everything okay? You seem kind of … I don’t know … distracted?”
“I’m fine,” he said. He flashed a quick smile to compensate for what was unconvincing in his voice.
A moment later, Hannah got up to use the ladies’ room. As he watched her walk away, he noticed that the jeans she was wearing made her bottom half look bigger than her top half, her hips and ass strangely wide and flat. He wondered why none of her girlfriends had told her this, about the jeans. Why hadn’t she herself noticed? After all, a huge, full-length mirror took up a quarter of her bedroom.
When she returned, she asked if he was mad at her.
As if she had done anything that would have entitled him to be mad at her. Why the fuck did women, no matter how smart, how independent, inevitably revert to this state of willed imbecility? It wasn’t as if he had the emotional register of a binary system, as if his only states of being were “happy” and “mad at her.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not mad at you.”
She drew back.
Before anything more was said, the waiter brought their burgers. Finally. The game began. As he ate, Nate turned his attention to the television screen above the bar. He began to feel better.
“That really hit the spot,” he said of his burger.
Hannah was doing something on her phone and didn’t look up.
Nate pretended not to notice. “How’s yours?”
She raised her gaze slowly and blinked several times, as if trying to determine by this means if he could really be such a moron. “You’re asking me how my burger is?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I get grouchy when I’m hungry. It’s no excuse, but I am sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“I should probably start carrying nuts in my pockets.”
He saw the barest hint of a smile. She immediately suppressed it. But it was a start.
In the process of wheedling Hannah back into good humor, Nate, too, was revived. Having a project—getting back into Hannah’s good graces—dispelled boredom and silenced that critical voice. He told her (because women love talking about personal life) about Aurit, who was flipping out because Hans was still balking about moving to New York.
“She treats his concern for his career like it’s a transparent excuse. I’ve got to get her to quit that before she really pisses him off.”
By the time their plates were cleared, all traces of Nate’s former mood were gone. He appreciated that Hannah had gone along with his desire to watch baseball. He had a good time.
On the walk home, Hannah turned to him. “Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“What was the deal before?”
He tensed. He’d already said he was sorry. And what had he done, really? Spoken sharply to her? In fact, all he’d actually said was “I’m not mad at you.” It could hardly be deemed a vicious comment. Maybe he’d been a little curt before. But. Come. On.
“I don’t want to be overly dramatic,” she said. “But … I don’t want to be treated that way. If you’re unhappy about something—”
“I’m not.”
What was he supposed to say? That maybe she should do some tricep curls so her upper arms didn’t jiggle? Buy some jeans that had been vetted from all angles? He sounded, even to himself, like some sick fetishist of female emaciation. He sounded like a real bastard.
He took her hand. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”
“You know, Jason,” Aurit said. “There’s a certain type of man who likes to be with women he feels intellectually superior to.”
“Who says models can’t be smart?” Jason shot back, glancing at Nate for support.
The three of them were standing by an open window at their friend Andrew’s new apartment. Andrew and his boyfriend were throwing a housewarming party. Jason was telling them about the Lithuanian model that the art director of his magazine had promised to set him up with.
“For your information,” Jason said, “Brigita studied electrical engineering in Vilnius.”
“It’s like Lydgate in Middlemarch,” said Aurit, apparently unimpressed by electrical engineering. “ ‘That distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feelings and judgment about furniture, or women.’ ” Aurit smiled sweetly at Jason. “Lydgate ends up with the dumb blonde, by the way. She ruins his life. His career, too.”
Jason wrapped one of his long arms around Aurit’s shoulders. “Aurit, darling, you’re so cute when you get riled up. Like Mighty Mouse. But I’ve got to tell you, Lydgate’s the best character in that book. Also”—he paused to take a sip of his beer—“of course George Eliot would think the way you do. She’s not exactly unbiased. Smart women have a personal stake in vilifying men who fail to appreciate smart women. Trust me, men can do great things no matter who they marry.”
“Jesus, Jase,” Nate said.
“Think about it,” Jason said. “If so-called companionate partnership between two intellectual peers were the measure of a man’s worth, there’d be maybe two first-rate men in all of history—Eliot’s own pseudo-husband and John fucking Adams.”
Aurit had slipped out of Jason’s grasp. She eyed Jason coolly. “Does the fact that you have no soul ever worry you, Jason?”
Nate snorted.
Their group broke up. Nate migrated from the window. The living room was packed. In the scrum of bodies, Nate spotted Greer Cohen, looking rather fetching in tight jeans. Before he could wave hello, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Josh, a guy he played soccer with. Josh worked at a publishing house, and he congratulated Nate; he said he’d heard good things about his book, sensed growing excitement.
“Thanks, man,” Nate said.
“It comes out in February, right?” Josh asked.
Nate nodded. Then he saw Eugene Wu. He told Eugene that he liked his review of the British author. Though he tried to conceal it, Eugene seemed pleased. After a bit, he and Nate got into a protracted argument about the relative proportion of women with breast implants in New York versus in red states. Nate realized he was having a good time. It occurred to him that he had more fun at parties when he had a girlfriend than when he didn’t. Being in a relationship spared him from having to hit on girls, from getting into long, boring or boring-ish conversations with girls he barely liked in the hopes of getting laid. He was free to talk to the people he actually wanted to talk to.
As he left the party, he called Hannah. “Hey,” he said into his cell phone when she picked up. She sounded as if she might have been sleeping. “What are you up to?”
Although they hadn’t had concrete plans to see each other, he had told her earlier in the day that he “might” call. He had contemplated asking if she wanted to join him at the party, but he hadn’t. He didn’t really know why. He just hadn’t felt like it. Besides, she’d been the one who said, when they’d fought over brunch, that they didn’t have to spend every minute together.
He paused in front of a subway entrance and asked her if she wanted him to come over. She hesitated. “I’ll probably be in bed,” she said. “But you’re welcome to come. If you want.”
The night air smelled pleasantly of burned leaves. It was starting to feel like fall. Nate decided to walk to Hannah’s instead of taking the train. On his way, he stopped at a deli and bought her a Hershey bar because he knew she liked them, preferred them to fancier chocolates.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier,” he said when he arrived. “I just got caught up in things.”
She was wearing an oversized Kent State T-shirt, and her hair was loose, a little messy. “It’s no big deal,” she said. “I had a chance to do some reading.”
Nate sniffed. He could tell she’d smoked a cigarette recently.
They sat on the chairs by her window and caught up a bit. He hadn’t seen her for several days. She told him she’d been feeling a little down lately.
She ran her fingers through her hair. She said she thought she needed to get back into her book proposal, something that she could really throw herself into. She hadn’t been writing enough lately. Maybe it would cheer her. Nate felt a flicker of guilt. He suspected that he, that things between the two of them, might also have a role in her mood. He knew he’d been a little distant. But he agreed with her plan. “Work is always a big help for me,” he said. “In terms of mood. That and sports, doing something physical.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you know how many Pilates classes I do?”
Her tone was challenging. It reminded him of how she’d been on their early dates. Lately she’d been … more tentative, almost nervous.
He ran his eyes down her scantily clad body. “I know you look hot,” he said. “C’mon.” He took her hand, pulling her toward the bedroom.
In bed, he peeled off her T-shirt and underwear. The taste of cigarette in her mouth as they kissed wasn’t ideal—over time her smoking had begun to bother him more—but it wasn’t a big deal. He fondled her a little. Soon he was on top of her, sliding into her easily. At first, he felt great. But he was drunk and a little desensitized. He needed more. He began riffling through various mental images. He saw Hannah lying naked on his bed, one of the first times they’d slept together: an abandoned look on her face that he’d never forgotten, the way she’d arched her back as he approached, pushing up her breasts. This held his attention for a moment. Then he became conscious of a clock ticking and the whine of a bus outside. He turned his mind to Internet porn, a petite brunette who looked a little like Greer Cohen in a hiked-up businesswoman’s suit getting it from behind on a big wooden desk.
Beneath him, Hannah’s eyelids were crinkled shut. Then her eyes opened. For an instant, she and Nate looked directly at each other. She froze, as if she’d been caught. What he saw, before she masked it, was total vacancy, absence, as if she were a log floating down a river, as if she were scarcely conscious that he was fucking her.
Nate, leaning his weight on his elbows, looked away from her face, craning his neck and staring angrily at the wall behind her. If she wasn’t having the best sex of her life, he couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t all his fault. She was too … merely acquiescent. Her bedroom persona was meek, pliable. Even her body, her pale flesh, had a soft, quivering quality—melting, enveloping, but lacking something … some plasticity, some pushback.
After a moment, he turned her over on her hands and knees. He felt a pang as he positioned her this way. It was one thing to do it doggie style when the sex was energetic and smutty, when it was in keeping with the joint mood. This wasn’t that. This might as well be masturbation. It had nothing to do with her.
As her glowing white ass lurched back and forth, the loose flesh of her thighs flapping from his momentum, he couldn’t help but think that there was something humiliating—to women—about doing it this way. But for him it was better, in terms of sensation. Besides, she was probably relieved that she didn’t have to look at him. The expression on her face now was probably worse than absent. It was, no doubt, resigned.
He pounded harder. Hannah’s hair, moist with sweat, parted in clumps on either side of her neck. Finally, he felt an orgasm build, and he reached underneath her to cup her breasts, thrusting a few last times as the waves of his climax coursed through him.
Afterward, he curled up against her. His orgasm had swept his irritation away. He felt a little bad for the way he’d pawed at her. He hadn’t really done much to get her into it. Next time … He wrapped his arm around her in atonement, nuzzling his chin into the crook of her shoulder as he lay behind her. He felt spent and peaceful as he began to drift into sleep.
He only half woke up when he felt her wriggle from his embrace and slip out of bed. He heard the bedroom door close and opened one eye in time to see a yellow stripe appear underneath as she turned on the living room light. He fell back asleep. He woke up again when Hannah got back into bed. It seemed to him like a long time had passed.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
But there was something aggrieved in her voice, an unstated recrimination that, even in his half-asleep state, awakened a sense of dread. Tomorrow, he decided as he began to fade back into sleep, he’d call Jason or Eugene, see what they were up to. He was in a guy mood.
{ 14 }
One night, Hannah told him she had slept around in high school. This was news to him. They were on their way back from a movie, and he’d made a comment about women in slutty Halloween get-ups. It was getting to be that time of year.
Hannah said that when she was a sophomore, she slept with a senior, a football player she felt sorry for because, though sweet, “he was so very stupid.”
“I thought these probably were the best years of his life,” she said. After that, various of his teammates wanted to go out with her. She went out with them, each of them, in turn. She shrugged as she told him this. “It seemed sexist and old-fashioned to act as if chastity really was a virtue like the born-agains thought.”
She was a little tipsy—they both were—and her manner was flirtatious, but also defiant, as if she were daring him to be so prudish as to chastise or pity her. As if. Nate was titillated by this story, more turned on, in fact, than he’d been in a while.
When he’d been with Elisa, he had learned that contempt is very compatible with lust. Anger, even actual dislike and flashes of hatred, seemed to be a close enough approximation to sexual passion that the result was virtually the same. Guilt, on the other hand, is a very unsexy emotion. But now … It wasn’t just that he found Hannah’s blasé attitude toward her virginity sexy, the way atheism and Marxism and other antiestablishment, intellectual isms are sexy in an attractive woman. It was something far more corrupt. The image of those empty-headed, teenage douche bags fucking Hannah, passing her around from one to the next, of her obliging them because she was nice, turned him on like porn turned him on. Her dumb naïveté, that bovine, Marilyn Monroe–like credulity, transformed her from the Hannah he knew to a girl who allowed herself to be used and shared, a stupid chick who ought to be fucked. And that night Nate fucked her, fucked that other Hannah.
It was the hottest sex they’d had in a long time. From a certain perspective (say, a pornographer’s), it may have been the hottest sex they’d ever had.
The next morning, Hannah woke up bright and cheerful. She suggested making eggs. Nate had to admit there was nothing obviously offensive in that. But as she sat there, with the sheet around her chest, her head cocked as she waited for his yea or nea, she struck him as cloying, overweening, as if there was nothing in the world she wanted to do more than make him goddamned breakfast. What she really wanted, he felt, was to have a cozy morning in—to bathe in post-coital togetherness.
“I don’t want eggs,” he said.
The happy expression—also much of the color—fled from Hannah’s face.
“Okay … ,” she said. “Well, I’m hungry. You want me to go and get bagels?”
“It’s your house. You can do what you want.”
She made a face and then shook her head quickly, so her hair fanned out. “Okay. I’m hungry. I’m going to get a bagel.”
With her back to him, she began pulling jeans on.
“A whole-wheat everything with cream cheese and tomato …”
She turned around. She looked as if she might give him the finger. Nate smiled hopefully.
“Please, please? Take money from my wallet. Sorry to be testy. I didn’t sleep well.” He picked up one of the corduroy pillows on her bed and threw it across the room. “That thing was eating my face all night.”
Hannah stared at him for a moment. “Fine.”
When she was gone, Nate fell back into bed and gazed at the ceiling.
At moments Hannah seemed to trigger something sadistic in him. He could swear he didn’t want to hurt her, but sometimes, when she looked at him in a certai
n way, or that eager note crept into her voice, a perverse obstinacy rose within him; to go along, to do what she wanted, felt treacly—intolerable.
The sheer white curtains on her window twisted in the cool October breeze. Nate stood up and looked outside. He felt ungainly, comically masculine, as the gauzy curtain grazed his bare chest.
He noticed the stack of books on Hannah’s bedside table. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, A Sentimental Education, The Kreutzer Sonata. Was he imagining it, or was there a theme? Books about lovelorn women, men whose feelings were shorter-lived. Maybe he was being paranoid. Maybe his girlfriend just had impressive taste in literature.
Nate heard the key turning in the lock, then Hannah’s footsteps, quick and determined, as she moved through the apartment. He waited for her to come to the bedroom, intending to make up for his churlishness earlier.
After a minute, she pushed open the bedroom door. “Your bagel is on the table.”
Before Nate could respond, she threw a clump of bills and coins at him. Then she turned around and slammed the door behind her.
As he collected his change from her sheets, Nate wondered if Hannah had intentionally echoed a john throwing money at a prostitute. He hoped so. It would reflect a certain malicious imagination that he couldn’t help but admire, aesthetically.
He pulled on his undershirt and stepped tentatively out of the bedroom. On the table, he saw a white paper bag, bearing the words La Bagel-Telle. Hannah was nowhere in sight; after a moment, he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He sat down to eat his bagel. The irony was he really would have preferred eggs.
Elisa wanted his advice about an upcoming job interview, for a position at a weekly newsmagazine. When they met up, Nate wondered if excitement about the job was the whole difference. Because something was different.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Page 18
