A Different Kind of Forever(53)

“Your fans must be disappointed in you.”

“If they knew I was spending the morning naked in bed with you, some of them would be very disappointed.”

“True. Do you think if people found out about us, it could hurt your career?”

“Are you kidding? You sexy older women are very in right now. I’d be the envy of all my fans.”

“Ah. Is that why you keep coming around?”

His hand, which had been resting lightly on her stomach, suddenly moved.

“That’s one reason. Here’s another.”





They fell into a pattern as the summer wore on. The nights they spent at Diane’s, they would cook out on the grill, often asking Sue Griffen and her husband Pete to join them. Michael and Pete were both Mets fans, and after dinner, Diane and Sue would take a walk around the neighborhood and the two men would watch the ball game together. Sometimes, Sharon and her husband Richie would come by and the four of them would go out to Richie’s favorite pub. Richie played darts, and he began coaching Michael, who was a quick study and became fairly proficient. Sometimes, all three couples would meet at one home or another for drinks. Michael liked her friends. They liked him as well.

At Michael’s, there were a string of guests that came and went even if Michael was not at home. Mark Bender would come by to sail into the middle of the lake, then spend the day fishing. Theresa Milano, Michael’s first childhood love, would drive in on days off, swim laps for an hour, then fall asleep on Michael’s shady, perfectly mown lawn. His family came by often, to sail or to fish, often staying for dinner and far into the night.

Members of the band dropped in and out, checking on the progress of Michael’s work. They were starting to lay down tracks for the singles on the soundtrack. The Martone brothers did not want to spend any more time away from home, so the band decided to do as much work in Michael’s studio as possible. The band worked quickly together.

She started making dinner at Michael’s, two or three nights a week. She would stop by the store on her way back from Merriweather, and come back to his house with bags of groceries. Fred Chu, a Buddhist and vegetarian, never accepted her invitation to join them. He cooked and ate his own meals in the apartment he lived in over Michael’s three-car garage. Diane loved to cook, and Michael would often wander out of his studio to watch her. Seth and David Go would join them. For Diane, it was like cooking for a new kind of family.





She was careful they didn’t spend a full week together. She found reasons to spend a night alone. She would drive down to the shore to see her daughters, staying at a motel. She would start cleaning her house, pulling closets apart, calling Michael late in the afternoon saying she was going to stay there and finish up. She would catch the bus to Manhattan and spend the night at Rachel’s.

For the first time in a long time, Diane felt she was slightly out of control. Her feelings for Michael were a complete surprise to her. Her physical desire for him was intense. She would find herself, in the middle of the day, doing something as ordinary as washing dishes or watering plants, when a sudden wave would come over her, beginning as a throb deep in her belly and moving up, a physical jolt, leaving her breathless and wanting.

But she knew, and not just from the many nights that she slept peacefully beside him without passion, that it was not just his touch that held her to him. He had a boundless energy and enthusiasm about everything that she found a complete delight. They could talk about any subject. They laughed a great deal together. When she was with him, the world was in sharper focus. When they were apart, she found countless things to remember to tell him, to ask him about. Her solitude was no longer a comfort to her. It was just time spent waiting to see him again.

She thought that she was in love with him. She would turn to Jasper and say the words aloud, trying on the sound of them.

“I think I love Michael.” Her voice was always in a whisper when she said it. The cat would blink wisely in response. She would take a deep breath and go on with her day. But the thought was always there, crowding out the quiet and carefully planned life that she imagined she would be living.

“I think I love him,” she would say to herself, driving out to his house. She sometimes reasoned that Michael was so irresistible to her because she had married relatively young. She had missed the sexual adventures of other women her age. She had slept with only a few other men before meeting Kevin, her high school sweetheart and a couple of brief college flings. She had loved Kevin deeply when they married. She was twenty-one, just out of college, and he, being five years older, had not wanted to wait. She continued to love him for many years into their marriage, and had remained faithful to him, despite the attention other men may have paid to her.