Other People's Houses(3)

“Shit . . .” Frances dropped her eyes, began to back out. “Sorry, Anne, Kate forgot her toilet roll tubes . . .” Stupidly she raised her hand with the Whole Foods bag in it because, of course, that would make it better, that she’d interrupted Anne and Charlie having a quickie on the living room floor. It was OK, because she was just here for the toilet roll tubes. Nothing to see here, move along.

The man realized something was wrong, finally, and raised his head, looking first at Anne and then turning to see what she was looking at, why her face was so pale when seconds before it had been so warmly flushed.

Frances was nearly through the door, it was closing fast, but not before she saw that it wasn’t Charlie at all. It was someone else entirely.





Two.


Anne closed her eyes and shivered. Frances had let in a draft, along with the potential end of the world.

The younger man laid his cheek on her upper thigh and smiled ruefully up at her.

“Uh . . . I’m going out on a limb here and guessing you didn’t want that person to see me.”

Anne shook her head, shifting her weight and pulling her legs out from under him, drawing them up, covering herself. “No. Although of all the people who could have walked through that door, she was the least disastrous.”

“Your friend, not his?”

She shrugged. “She’s both of our friend, but she won’t say anything to him, she might not even say anything to me.” She noticed he still had an erection, bless his youthful stamina. If she’d been young herself, she would have felt an obligation to blow him—but those days were long gone.

“Are you sure she saw me?” Richard was still hoping this session could get back on track, and tried kissing her knee. Maybe he could get a consolation blow job.

She frowned at him. Stood, turned, reached for the dressing gown she’d been wearing when he had walked in. They hadn’t made it any farther than the living room floor; it had been a long time apart. If they’d gone upstairs their secret would still be safe, Anne thought, but she felt queasy about fucking this guy in her marital bed. Not that the marital bed saw much fucking, but still.

Richard, watching her face, now that her body was covered, wondered for the thousandth time what this woman was thinking. She confused and worried him; he was so drawn to her, even though he knew what they were doing was total karma suicide. The one female friend he’d told, a woman he used to date in college, but who’d turned into a much better friend than girlfriend, lost her temper with him for the first time in years.

“She has children?” Richard clearly remembered the look of disgust on her face.

He’d tried to laugh it off. “I’m not asking her to leave them. It’s just an affair.”

His friend knew better, and wasn’t appeased. “It will end in disaster, it can’t possibly end any other way. I can’t believe you’re being so selfish. For sex! You’re not seventeen, for fuck’s sake, can’t you keep it in your pants?”

Richard looked at Anne now, or her back at least, as she left the room. She had twisted her dark brown hair into a knot, literally tying it within its own length. It was magical to him, watching her do things like that. He had wanted this woman from the moment he’d met her, in the fevered way he remembered from high school, when just proximity to a girl was enough to make him hard. He had thought he was long past that phase. He was an adult, he paid taxes, he had a job. He had lived with a woman for three years, bought her tampons, talked to her through the bathroom door while she took a crap, watched her dress and undress morning and night. He was getting ready for marriage, he could tell. God knew his mother was starting to bug him for grandchildren. But then that relationship had ended, almost by accident, as if they’d dropped a baton somewhere and run farther and farther apart before they noticed. The lack of emotion when she moved out was embarrassing.

But then he’d met Anne at an art store, where both of them wanted the last piece of a special handmade paper. They’d started friendly, both offering the piece to the other, then he’d prevailed and made her take it and they’d stood outside the store and talked about art . . . And when she’d smiled at him he was aroused. He was good with women, he was handsome and artistic and somewhat remote; he’d rarely been turned down. But when he’d asked for her number, she had laughed, blushed, and refused. She was married, she had kids, she’d even mocked him gently for asking out a woman who could have been his mother . . . though that was far from true; less than a decade separated them. He’d persisted and, suddenly possessed by a madness he’d never suspected in himself, told her the truth: that he wanted to take her to bed and drive her mad with pleasure, that he’d never seen a woman so beautiful before, that his apartment was four blocks away and no one would know. No one would ever know, Anne, come with me now and give in, let me tangle my hands in your hair and make you gasp and shudder.

And Anne, so used to being sad that she didn’t even see beyond the end of each day, said yes. Walking into his small apartment had been like pushing her way through fur coats in a closet and coming out in Narnia. She left herself behind, and Richard saw an Anne no one else ever had.

For him this whole affair was unreal, a liminal period like a hangover, or the days between Christmas and New Year’s. Intense sex, interspersed with long silences and days where Anne took her kids to Disneyland, bickered with her husband, made meals that everyone took for granted, tried on clothes that suddenly fit her again, decided to end the affair and then picked up the phone to call him one more time. All he knew were the sex and the silences, of course, though he wondered about the rest.