The Forever Marriage

by Ann Bauer

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, Tim rolled his eyes. He was from South Dakota, a boy with bizarre, savantlike mathematical skills, Jobe had told her while Tim was out in the hall, using the bathroom. His buffalo-ranching parents had thought he might be insane when he was growing up. Now, Tim turned to Jobe and yawned. “How long are we going to be babysitting?” he asked.

  Carmen flushed and the room around her pitched. Fixing her glassy eyes to the floor, she stood. “I’m going to leave so I don’t throw up all over your table, okay?”

  But, of course, there was no place to go. They were all in one room, with the all-purpose table wedged in a corner. Jobe had made a bit of ceremony out of unrolling a camp-style sleeping bag for himself on the floor.

  Carmen pulled a book from her bag and tried sitting on Jobe’s bed, but the mattress was thin and lumpy, so after a few minutes she sank to the floor and into the sleeping bag, which was covered in flannel and filled with soft down. Exhausted, craving a sort of nest, she burrowed down inside, not even caring that the men were still watching. Once inside, she wriggled out of her jeans and tossed them out of the opening, onto the floor. Then she closed her eyes but didn’t sleep. Instead, she floated dreamily on the low murmur of their voices—once Tim and Jobe had resumed their conversation—the way she had when she was a child and her parents were talking in the front seat of the car.

  She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she awoke in the middle of the night, abruptly, unable to figure out for a couple of minutes where she was. There were bodies above her, two large forms like shadowy specters. Still struggling to place herself, frantically trying to remember the night before, she wondered whether they were good or evil. She thought for a flash that she might have died somewhere along the way and was just becoming aware of it. Or perhaps she was underground in a cave, buried alive among foreign things.

  She moved—it was excruciating, like stepping into a scary, dark chasm—and then became aware of a stickiness between her legs; the hazy, moonlit night beyond the windows; and the eyes of Tim, either awake or sleeping with them open. Maybe he was insane. She untangled herself from the sleeping bag, feeling with one bare foot the streak of blood that she’d oozed like slime.

  Emerging like a trapped bug tearing its way out of a spider’s web, she gathered her shirttail and tried to cover herself, wrapping it around the upper part of her legs where she imagined there were probably bright stains.

  Lurching a little as she walked toward the door, Carmen rubbed her abdomen and moaned. How could it be that she’d never asked Jobe where the bathroom was? It had to be close; Tim had been gone only a few minutes when he used it. But was it for men only? Was it locked? And if so, where was the key? Carmen looked around the room, which became more real by degrees. The fuzzy illumination of a streetlamp came through the window. Tim blinked, his eyes yellow slits in the soupy light.

  “Hey, where’s the bathroom?” She tried to sound tough, but she was beginning to panic. There was a heaviness in her gut, thick liquid on her legs, and she had to pee, urgently.

  “What’s wrong, little girl? Not feeling well? Need some love?” Tim’s voice was low and sinister, and he pulled back the covers to show her that he was naked underneath. “Come on in. I’ll make everything better.”

  Just then a cloud covered the moon and the door’s outline vanished into the murk. The room seemed to have sealed itself, like some sort of pod in a science fiction movie. She stood clenching like a kindergartener about to wet her pants. And she was furious, but for some reason this made her feel like crying. Tears and urine threatened to let down together. Then she heard a voice from above, low and as mean as a six-year-old’s and wrecked with sleep.

  “Leave her alone, Tim.” There was a rustling of covers and now Jobe was standing beside her, his skinny chest bare and brushing her arm. Carmen clenched and managed to contain the liquid that threatened to spill out of her. “Here.” He grabbed her arm almost roughly. “I’ll take you.”

  Jobe’s hand found a doorknob that materialized for Carmen the moment he reached for it. He pulled the door open and led her down the hallway to a tiny WC where he tugged a cord and an overbright light flooded the room. Carmen covered her eyes and whispered, “I need my knapsack, from back in the room.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back in a minute. You …” Jobe gestured, then seemed at a loss for words. He backed out and Carmen slammed the door, then peeled her sticky underpants away and sank down onto the chipped toilet.

  A couple of minutes later, there was a knock. She stood and slid herself back into her squishy clothes. “Here.” Jobe shoved the knapsack through the wide crack she made in the door, along with the longest white T-shirt she’d ever seen. “Here’s something to change into. I’m going to wait out here to make sure you get back.”

  There was blood on Carmen’s fingers and a few drops on the floor. The little WC was beginning to look like a crime scene, and her panties were completely ruined, the elastic bands around the leg holes soaked a rusty red. She looked around, but the room had no waste-basket. Just a toilet with a tank on the wall and a sink with one faucet—undoubtedly cold—and no soap.

  She washed herself off as best as she could, using the water (which was, indeed, ice cold) and a wad of scratchy toilet tissue. Then she fanned herself, one foot up on the toilet rim. Someone had left a towel on the sink. Carmen picked it up, found a rough edge, and ripped it, folding the square she made, praying it was mostly clean, using it to line a fresh pair of underwear, then putting them on. Finally, she pulled on Jobe’s T-shirt, which fell to her knees. By the time she’d washed her hands, stuffed her bloodied panties into the space behind the toilet, and opened the door, fifteen minutes must have passed. But he was still there, leaning against the wall at a tilt, eyes closed, half sleeping.

  “Everything okay?” He moved carefully, detaching from the wall as if he were protecting his sharp bones. He was wearing scrubs, like a doctor, the pants tied tightly around his narrow hips.

  She nodded and said quietly, “I’m fine,” and felt an abrupt wave of affection for him. Alone, in the dark, his awkwardness was touching.

  They walked silently back to the room. Jobe reached down with one hand to work the knob and pushed the door open with the other above her head. For a few seconds, she was inside the span of his arms. And surprisingly—like when, many years ago, her grandmother had taken her out for lunch and Carmen had ended up enjoying the prim meal of Cobb salad and Earl Grey tea—she experienced a flicker of pleasure. Jobe reminded her of a tree, the kind you take shelter under. It wasn’t sexy, but maybe it could be nice for a change.

  She had been with plenty of men: four just since arriving in Europe, and six in her lifetime before that. All but three of them had been dark-haired and handsome. One was black. There’d also been a Scot—her first redhead—just a few days before. Ten was a risky but not an unreasonable number, on the far edge of normal (most of her girlfriends claimed between five and eight) but nowhere near the territory of a true slut. Many of her friends were skirting the rules anyway, by going out with men and doing only “uncountable” acts: jerking them off, giving them blow jobs, or sleeping in the nude—this was the oddest one, as far as Carmen was concerned—pressed up against each other but utterly chaste.

  She knew she didn’t want to suck this guy off, and tonight there was no chance of her sleeping without clothes to hold her diaper on. But Carmen decided on the spot she would be willing to trade a quick hand job for a spot next to Jobe in his clean bed.

  “I’m sorry it’s, um, kind of a mess ….” Carmen said, gesturing at the sleeping bag. “Look, I’ll find a laundry and wash it tomorrow. Can I just get in next to you? I promise I won’t kick or anything.”

  “Sure.” Jobe’s voice was so low she could barely hear it. “Come on.” He flattened and inserted himself into the bed like a sheet of paper in an envelope. She followed, feeling round and extravagantly three-dimensional next to his plank of a body, lying in the
space he’d created by backing all the way up against the wall. They lay for a minute not touching, though this must have required Jobe to practically not breathe. Finally, he relaxed and his body contoured against hers, all ridges and planes, long angled bones, and the distinct shape of his erection.

  She moved her hips slightly, and it grew. Carmen was caught between disgust and a sense of power. It required so little effort for her to control a man’s body—this man in particular, it seemed, who wanted her despite the fact that she’d soaked his sleeping bag with blood. She reached down with one hand and touched the hard, curled lump that was straining against his cotton scrub pants, causing Jobe to jump back a half inch or so.

  “Does it hurt?” she whispered. “It’s like a rock. I can’t imagine having a part of me just … change like that.”

  “Uh, no, not hurt, exactly.” Jobe was still edging back in the bed, but he couldn’t get quite far enough away from her for his penis not to be touching. “I’m sorry, it’s just something that happens sometimes. Maybe if I lie on my back.”

  “Oh.” Carmen had been preparing to close her hand on his cock, but it looked now like she didn’t have to do anything in order to stay.

  Outside there were drops falling like coins on the roof and Carmen relaxed into Jobe’s side. The arm he’d stretched out under her neck—because where else was there to put it?—tightened and curled a little, drawing her in. And she sighed and drifted as if she were being carried on a raft toward sleep, nose against Jobe’s upper arm, the faint, spicy deodorant smell of him mixing with the steel scent of the rain.

  MAY 2007

  Tuesday afternoon, flopped on a bed at the airport Holiday Inn, Carmen looked out the smeared window at planes lifting, showing her their bellies as they rose through the air.

  “It’ll be strange going back to work.” She reached for her glass. There was no longer any concern about Jobe’s smelling the wine on her breath when she got home at five, having to come up with some invented client meeting that involved marinated olives and a bottle of Chardonnay.

  “Afraid you’ll have to play the part of a devastated widow?” Danny, lying beside her, reached for her free hand.

  “Sort of.” She sighed. The truth was that Carmen was confused. The house felt large and lonely, she was perpetually turning corners expecting Jobe to be there. But how did she explain this? I didn’t expect to be sad about my husband’s death, but in fact, I am. Instead, she had to pretend that there had been no such gap—that she was slowly ascending from dark horror rather than just now going into it. “People will be whispering about me, asking constantly how I’m holding up. Even if Jobe had been the great love of my life, I doubt I’d have known how to grieve.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a copy of Joan Didion’s book. You can study up.” Danny ran his hand up Carmen’s torso, tobogganing it roughly over her nipples and sending sparks through her chest and up into her throat. “Just wear dark clothes, buttoned all the way up to your neck. You’ll have to hide these beautiful breasts for at least a year.” He grew serious then, wearing his library face. “Or you could tell them the truth: that you’re exhausted from the last year and relieved that Jobe’s not in pain anymore. People will give you space.”

  Carmen took the last swallow and lay back as Danny used both hands to massage her breasts then moved his mouth slowly down her body, finding the place he wanted between her legs. She couldn’t even talk to her lover, revealing that she wasn’t simply relieved; she was, to her surprise, constantly wistful, thinking about Jobe. His death had released memories that puzzled more than distressed her, but he was always present in her thoughts—even now. She closed her eyes and floated on the sensation of Danny’s gentle licking and it became like a series of warm rings that kept expanding out. Infinite golden zeros. At the same time, something was happening to the part of her body farthest from Danny, who was crouched inside her knees. It felt like two oversized palms—one on her forehead and the other at the nape of her neck—supporting her head.

  After she came, he plunged into her like a javelin, practically making an arc with his small body as he leaped up from the foot of the bed. They were almost exactly the same size, Carmen often thought: like two matching toys designed to be locked together. No wonder this had always worked so well.

  Little had changed since Jobe’s death, at least on the surface of their meetings. Danny still held to the same schedule: every other week, on Tuesday, from one to four. How he’d worked this out with the library, she never knew, though he had a relationship with the director that led Carmen to believe they’d slept together at least once. She imagined the woman with her proper suits and tight hair getting a little tipsy after a party—something to celebrate the digital conversion of the card catalog perhaps—making out with Danny in some dark corner, tomes about botany sitting dustily on the shelves around them, taking him back to her office where there likely was a comfortable couch. The woman was married, and an indiscretion would have given Danny leverage, leeway. It was a small price to pay for freedom. This, Carmen understood.

  One thing did feel different, however. It was something that Carmen had trouble naming. The sex was just as good, and Danny’s manner with her was, if anything, even more accommodating. That could be because she had insisted on paying all three times for the hotel, putting a stop to that odd moment at the front desk where they usually negotiated quickly whose turn it was, feeling guilty about the $5 million insurance check, which had arrived and sat in her bank account like a phantom that had taken up residence. Despite Jobe’s parents’ wealth, they’d never lived like anything but a professor’s family: comfortable and scruffy. Now, her return to work had become a choice, a diversion. And this affair somehow no longer was.

  It reminded Carmen vaguely of unloading the dishwasher, taking bundles of forks out and setting them in a drawer. Not unpleasant, by any means, and satisfying in its way. Her relationship with Danny still seemed necessary, but more in the way of an everyday task. The daring otherness of it had evaporated. No longer was this the secret that gave dimension to her unfulfilling home life. These days, with Jobe gone, it felt simply like three recreational hours in a cheap hotel.

  She scissored up to sit in bed, using her abdominal muscles the way she’d been taught in Pilates class. It wasn’t like Carmen to beg but she was desperate to shake Jobe from her thoughts. “What I need is a change of scenery,” she said to Danny, who had turned the other way and was reaching down for his boxers. “I know you can’t get away. But let’s do something, I don’t know, different. Maybe a museum in D.C.? It’s not like Mega has spies. We could get a room at the Monaco; have dinner somewhere really nice. I have some extra cash right …”

  Danny made the motions of putting two legs through the holes of his shorts then turned to look at her, his face set and mournful in a way it never was.

  “Carmen,” he said, putting one hand on her sheeted leg and staring at her exposed breasts, rather than her face.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to leave your wife.” She inhaled, defiantly jutting her chest out. “All I want is some room service, a little champagne. C’mon. I’m a little rattled, frankly. I don’t think this is too much to ask.”

  “It’s not that.” Danny shook his head and when he raised it, his face was sad. Carmen never thought of him as Indian, but seated there with a stony expression and his broad bare chest he reminded her of the photos she’d seen of warriors, sitting atop horses, feathered head-dresses blowing in the wind. “I, uh, felt something, earlier. I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you. It’s right …” He reached out and touched two fingers—so lightly that Carmen suspected he actually was hovering a single electron orbit’s distance away from her surface—to the outer curve of her left breast. “Here.”

  She sat perfectly still. Danny withdrew his hand and revolved slowly so he was facing her, cross-legged on the bed. He took both her hands, the concerned gesture of a husband or old friend. Carmen was certain
he did it to keep her from touching herself in the same spot.

  “You felt something like … what?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It was smaller than a golf ball, bigger than a marble, I guess. Kind of rough and”—he took a breath—“very hard. From everything I’ve read, it’s probably something you need to get checked out.”

  “You’ve read about this?” Even she could hear how sarcastic and frightened her tone was.

  “People call the library for information. You’d be surprised. Sometimes it’s the first thing they do after talking to a doctor.”

  Terror was licking at her now, icy against her temples and neck. “Lucky me. I can just bypass that medical part, seeing as how I have the librarian’s ear.” She pulled her right hand free and Danny let her but kept gripping the other. Gently, as if afraid of hurting herself, she traced the outside of her left breast, starting at the top, around one o’clock, thinking of all the self-exams she hadn’t done, pressing the pads of her fingers into the skin more deeply as she went along.

  There was nothing there! He was wrong. He must have been imagining it; could it be he wanted her to be sick, wanted her out of the way now that she was free of her marriage and could become a bother? A stalker. Showing up at his house late at night, slashing Mega’s spandex clothes with a steak knife, boiling rabbits on his …

  Carmen’s fingers ran into the knot just at the point where she had become too confident and started digging down in earnest. Why anyone would call this a lump, she couldn’t understand. The word implied a softness, like the lumps of flour in gravy that could be easily batted apart with a wooden spoon. This thing was more like something you’d encounter in the bark of a tree, heavy and coarse, with an odd, spiraling tail that seemed to trail down into the space under her arm.