Panic Attack

by Jason Starr

  She told him she was extremely flattered but she couldn’t, and she insisted on paying for the drinks and left.

  She barely slept that night. It hit her how truly unhappy she had become at home, and she couldn’t stop thinking about Tony and wishing she’d gone back to his place with him. She fantasized about him doing things to her until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to go into the guest bedroom and use her sex toy.

  The next day Adam said he was working late again, and at around four fifteen Dana arrived at the gym, remembering Tony telling her he would be getting off work at five. Working out on the elliptical StairMaster, she looked in the mirror and saw Tony get distracted, checking out her ass several times while training a client.

  At five to five she went up to Tony and said, “So does that offer still stand?” About ten minutes later, they were at his place, screwing against the wall, then on the living room floor. It was by far the hottest, rawest sex Dana had ever had. God, it had been more than twenty years since she’d had sex anywhere other than a bed. She’d never been with a guy so strong, so powerful, and it felt good to feel his strong hands pinning her down, squeezing her ass. The fact that he wasn’t very bright and they had nothing in common made him even sexier. It reduced him to being a total sex object. He was just man— raw, simple man who gave her pleasure. She’d thought that so many things were missing in her marriage, that she and Adam had such underlying problems, but under that grunting bodybuilder, she felt like all she’d needed all

  along was to get laid.

  In a few hours she had more sex than she’d had in the last two years with Adam. Pathetic, but true.

  She felt very guilty and conflicted afterward. She’d felt great with Tony, but now she felt like a horrible person, a liar, a slut. In the past she’d watch a movie and see a woman cheat on her husband and think, What a total idiot, and now, somehow, she’d become that woman. She’d been faithful to Adam for twentyseven years, including the time they’d been dating, and now she’d have to go through the rest of her life knowing that she’d been unfaithful. Making it worse, she knew this was totally one-sided; Adam would never even consider cheating on her. She didn’t plan to ever tell Adam, but how did she know Tony wouldn’t go bragging about his conquest in the gym? For all she knew he was sleeping with dozens of other unhappy married middle-aged women. Tony and Adam saw each other at the gym all the time; they weren’t very friendly, but they said hi to each other. She knew that if Adam somehow found out he’d never forgive her, and she was angry at herself for getting into this position. With one phone call, some young muscle-head trainer from the New York Sports Club had the power to ruin the rest of her life.

  But this didn’t stop Dana from seeing Tony again. She met him a couple of days later, and then they started to see each other regularly, three or four times a week. She couldn’t stop thinking about him when they were apart, about how good it had felt to be taken away to a place so foreign that her normal life seemed dull in comparison. Sometimes they text-messaged each other or talked on the phone; although they had very little to say to each other, she got excited every time she saw his name flash on her phone or heard his voice. She felt like she was a teenager again, in her first relationship, and everything was fresh and exciting. To deal with her guilt, she told herself that she was having a fling, which somehow seemed more harmless than an actual affair. A fling felt like something she could compartmentalize, something that wasn’t potentially destructive. A fling was like a star that would shine briefly and brightly and then gradually peter out. She’d use the fling to help her get through this rocky period in her marriage, and then everything would return to normal.

  Some days she was so sore from sex with Tony that if Adam came on to her she’d have to make up stories. I’m too tired. I think I’m coming down with something. The constant lying was the worst part and was beginning to wear on her, overshadowing all the positives of the fling. Then Tony did something that told her it was really time to end it.

  She came home from shopping one afternoon, and Gabriela, who was cleaning in the kitchen, said, “I think somebody like you, Mrs. Bloom.”

  Typically, since she’d gotten involved with Tony, Dana feared the worst, and her fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in. “What’re you talking about?” she snapped.

  “Look in the dining room,” Gabriela said. Oh shit, had Tony been to the house?

  Dana went through the swinging doors, ready to scold Tony, tell him it was over, and then she saw the large, tacky bouquet of flowers on the dining room table. Well, it wasn’t as bad as him showing up, but it was almost as bad.

  She read the computer-printed note:

  Hey you were fucking great last night baby You got a sensational body baby

  Love T-Bone!!!!

  She called him up, furious, and he said he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong because he’d made sure the flowers would be delivered during the day when her husband was at work.

  “How’d you know he’d be at work today?” she said. “What if he was home?” He admitted that, yeah, that probably hadn’t been such a great idea and promised he wouldn’t do anything like that again, but she saw this as a major wake-up call. He’d been getting reckless lately—texting her dozens of times a day and calling her a few times when Adam was home. She had a marriage to protect, but he was a single guy with nothing at stake, and it was starting to feel too unbalanced. Besides, he was getting too hooked on her, even saying the other night when they were lying in bed, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” There was no doubt about it—she definitely had to end the fling now, or things were going to spiral out of control.

  She said to Gabriela, “Promise me you won’t say a word about this to Adam.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gabriela said. “You can always trust me, Mrs. Bloom.”

  The next day Dana went to the gym and told Tony there was something important she needed to talk to him about, and they went into the sales office. She knew he’d be upset and hoped that telling him in the gym would prevent a big scene. He got melodramatic, told her she was doing the wrong thing and he couldn’t live without her, but she managed to leave before the real begging started.

  The breakup was hard for her, too, surprisingly hard. She didn’t miss him as much as she missed the idea of him, of having something exciting and unpredictable in her life. Suddenly being home with Adam felt excruciatingly dull; she felt like a prisoner serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. She was back in her old rut, in her empty, meaningless, lonely life, living day to day, with nothing to look forward to.

  Tony had left two phone messages and six text messages on her cell. He wasn’t taking the breakup well, and she wanted to call him, tell him she’d made a mistake, but she resisted and deleted all the messages without playing or reading them. God, this was even harder than when she’d quit smoking, but she knew she had to treat it exactly the same way, like she was breaking an addiction. The first days of getting over the addiction were always the hardest, and the trick was to stay strong, not give in. She was glad that she and Adam and Marissa were planning to go to Florida to visit Adam’s mother. Getting away from New York for a few days would be a huge help.

  The next day she was home alone, and she felt the familiar intense urge to call Tony and arrange to meet at his place for a quickie during his lunch break. She fought it and called her friend Sharon instead and went over to her house a few blocks away for coffee. Keeping the fling a secret for so long had become draining, and Dana needed to talk to someone about it.

  Opening up to Sharon was a big help. It made her feel like she’d done the right thing, ending it when she did, before it snowballed out of control.

  Sharon told her, “You and Adam have invested so much time together, whatever you do don’t throw it away, especially for some guy you don’t even really like.”

  Sharon’s words were like a refreshing blast of reality. Dana continued to delete all of Tony’s messages and managed
to make it through the most difficult first few days. She spent more time with Adam; she met him in the city one night and they went out to their favorite Spanish restaurant in the West Village, and another night they stayed home and watched a movie together, cuddling on the couch.

  They had to cancel their trip to Florida because of the tropical storm, but Dana didn’t feel the desperate need to get away anymore. Tony had gone a whole day without trying to contact her, and she was starting to think of the fling in the past tense. It had been fun for a while, but it had ended, and now it was time to repair her marriage.

  Then the robbery happened, and now here she was, relapsing, going back to Tony, about to mess up her life all over again.

  She knew that restarting something that had been so hard to end was a huge mistake. It was wrong to take her anger about the shooting out on Adam in this way, and it definitely wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Despite everything they’d been through and how angry she was, she loved Adam and wanted to improve their marriage and work out their differences. She knew that if she didn’t get herself to turn back she could ruin her life, but the pull to be with Tony and screw things up was so intense. She felt like something beyond her was controlling her, making her decisions, and she was just a witness to it all.

  On the stairs, going up to his apartment, she was still trying to talk herself into turning back, reminding herself how much Adam meant to her, how this wouldn’t resolve anything, how it could make things worse, much worse, and then she saw Tony—in tight black boxer briefs and nothing else—and a few seconds later they were in his apartment and he was kissing her neck, pushing her up against the back of the front door. Her pants and turtleneck were off and he was sliding his hands up under her red lace panties, over her ass, saying, “I love when you wear this shit,” and she was moaning, “Oh, God, baby. Oh, God . . .”

  Then, afterward, under his body on the floor, she thought, What the hell am I doing?

  Tony looked into her eyes, smiled, and asked, “You want some Gatorade or somethin’?”

  “I . . . I have to go,” she said, bending down, reaching for her jeans. “What’s the hurry?” Tony said. “We got all night.”

  “This was a mistake,” she said out loud, but to herself. “This was a huge mistake.”

  “What’re you talking about?” He sounded seriously confused. “I thought you said you missed me.”

  She pulled her jeans on, not bothering to zip or snap them. She was muttering to herself like a mantra, “Gotta get home, gotta get back, gotta get home, gotta get back . . .”

  When she was about to put her turtleneck on Tony grabbed her wrist hard and said, “Come on, what’re you doing?”

  “Please let go of me,” she said. “Why? I don’t get it.”

  He let go of her wrist, and she finished getting dressed.

  “Was I too rough on you?” he asked. “I thought you like it like that.”

  When she left his apartment and was going downstairs he screamed after her, “When am I gonna see you again? Don’t do this to me, baby! You know how much I love you, baby!”

  She walked fast, saying to herself, “What an idiot, what a fuckin’ idiot.” She didn’t know if she was talking about herself or Tony, but she couldn’t believe she’d done such a stupid, impulsive thing. What the hell was she doing? She was forty-seven years old, acting like she was seventeen. It was no wonder Marissa had been giving them so much trouble lately—look who she had for a role model.

  Several minutes later, as she approached her house, she was a little calmer— less emotional, anyway. Okay, so she’d had one minor slipup, but she could forget it ever happened; it didn’t have to mean anything. She just wondered about Tony. There was a tone in his voice, anger she’d never heard before. He’d already sent those flowers; what was he going to do next?

  Damn it, she usually showered after having sex with Tony, and now she reeked of his cologne.

  She opened the front door quietly, hoping Adam wasn’t home. “Honey, that you?”

  “Fuck me,” she muttered.

  WHEN ADAM saw all the news trucks and reporters out in front of the house, he thought, Oh, no, not again. He just wanted to get away from the house for a little while, de-stress, not have another pointless argument with Dana. He didn’t want to go through all of that having-to-defend-himself-tothe-reporters nonsense again.

  He was planning to be curt, answer a question or two, then say, Sorry, in a hurry, and walk away. But surprisingly, the questioning today seemed to have a much different tone than last night. Even while asking questions like “Do you think your maid’s murder was related to the break-in last night?” and “Who do you think killed your maid?” and “Do you think your maid robbed your house?” the reporters seemed almost apologetic.

  One reporter asked, “In the wake of the shooting this morning in Jackson Heights, do you feel vindicated, Dr. Bloom?”

  “No, I don’t feel vindicated,” Adam said. “I feel justified, yes, but I felt justified yesterday, too. In my mind, nothing’s changed.”

  Adam didn’t feel nearly as self-conscious as he had during last night’s questioning. He even ended making an impromptu speech, looking right into the camera, saying, “My family’s very saddened by the death of Gabriela Moreno. I don’t know if she was involved or wasn’t involved in the robbery of our house, but she was a wonderful woman, and I hope whoever killed her is brought to justice as soon as possible.”

  Walking to the gym, he was proud of the way he’d handled himself. If there was a bright side to all of this, he was definitely overcoming his glossophobia. He thought he came off as confident and well-spoken, and the last bit was a perfect touch, not publicly blaming Gabriela, showing people that, despite everything, he was compassionate and forgiving. Okay, so maybe he was letting his ego take over and he was enjoying the attention a bit more than he ought to, but was there really anything so wrong with this?

  As he walked along Austin Street in the main commercial area of Forest Hills, he couldn’t help looking around to see if anyone was recognizing him. No one seemed to be, but he expected people at the gym to come up to him. He didn’t know very many people there—most of the regulars were in their twenties and thirties—but they had seen him around and might have seen him on the TV news earlier and made the connection.

  The girl at the front desk who scanned his membership card didn’t have any unusual reaction, and in the main part of the gym people were in their own worlds, watching TV, reading magazines or newspapers, listening to their iPods, or just focusing on their workouts.

  After Adam did a half hour on an exercise bike, he headed toward the weight room. He passed Tony, one of the trainers. Tony was a nice guy, always talking to Adam about the Knicks, the Mets, and the Jets. He thought Tony might say something to him about the shooting, but he didn’t, and he wasn’t particularly friendly either. He glanced at Adam, then looked away and kept walking. That was weird. Eh, maybe he was just in a bad mood.

  Adam finished his workout, breaking a nice sweat. He’d only lasted sixteen minutes on the treadmill, but maybe he could get up to twenty or twenty-five next time. He was looking forward to showering at home and making a few calls for work, and then maybe he and Dana could watch a movie together. He felt bad about fighting with her before, especially about the way he’d ended the argument, just walking out on her like that. He felt like he’d been manipulative. He knew how much his being dismissive bothered her, and it was wrong of him to try to push her buttons that way.

  But then, when he arrived back at the house, he found a note:

  Went to Sharon’s. Be back later. D

  The way she’d signed it “D” and not “Love, D” or even “XO D,” the way she normally would’ve, showed she was seriously upset, which annoyed Adam.

  He could understand why Dana would be angry at him, but it seemed like she was taking it too far, going out and leaving a curt, nasty note. After all, had he done something so awful? He’d walked out o
n her in the middle of an argument and, oh yeah, he didn’t want to get rid of his gun—the gun that she had agreed to let him keep in the house, the gun that had saved their lives last night. He didn’t see why any of that warranted this kind of reaction, and, come to think of it, he didn’t like what she’d said to him before, how he was ruining their lives. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? Up until today he’d thought things had been pretty good between them lately. Okay, they needed to start spending more time together—what couple didn’t?—but they’d been expressing their anger well and hadn’t been arguing as much as they used to. But now, just because something horrible had happened to them last night, because they’d been through a tragedy, she was making him out to be this horrible person, this tormentor who was ruining her life?

  The more Adam thought about it, the more upset he got. And to think, he’d actually been considering coming home and apologizing to her. He was the one who deserved the apology, damn it. He’d been traumatized, and all he got from her was what, blame? Where was the support? Where was the love? How come he hadn’t heard, “Don’t worry, honey, everything’s going to be okay?” Or even a little hug would’ve been nice. He knew this was just another example of how Dana twisted things whenever they had a disagreement, making him feel like everything was his fault when in actuality he’d done nothing wrong.