Other People's Houses(4)
He could hear her now, in the kitchen. He reached for his clothes, scattered on the floor, and started to dress himself. Maybe Anne was making coffee, her slender fingers efficient. Maybe she was splitting open a brioche with just one twist, and getting out the jam. Or maybe she was slitting her wrists with one of those fancy ceramic knives she liked. His throat tightened, and he hopped slightly, tugging on his jeans.
In the kitchen Anne reached for the coffee and wondered what Richard was doing in the other room. Getting dressed, hopefully. Seeing Frances had thrown her so badly, all she wanted was for him to leave. She opened the coffee bag, cursing when the little wire-and-paper thing that held it shut fell off. Why do they even make that kind of bag, where the wire and paper thing was glued on? She much preferred the other kind, where the wire was part of the bag. Integrated, integral, whatever. This kind, the thing inevitably fell off, and then you couldn’t close the bag. Eventually when you opened the cupboard one morning, when things didn’t seem able to get much worse, the bag would tip onto the counter, flipping in mid-descent, dumping the coffee grounds onto the counter, onto the floor, where you would track them all over the house and they would work their way into the carpet like poppy seeds in your teeth. She tossed the broken bag, three-quarters full, in the trash. Let’s just avoid that disaster, she thought to herself, her mouth turning up a little, despite the tightness with which she was holding it closed.
Richard came up behind her, his hands smoothing the silk dressing gown over her hips, his fingertips folding around her hip bones possessively. She felt different from the younger women he’d slept with. She wasn’t perfect. She had broader hips, despite her narrow waist, and her butt wasn’t firm from the gym. But he craved her. Dreamt about her every night, wanted right then and there to bend her over the counter and finish what they’d started in the living room.
Anne twisted away from him, gently. Pouring half-and-half into her coffee she raised an eyebrow to ask if he wanted some. He shook his head. “I guess I should be going, right? I’m getting that sense.”
Anne wondered how she would explain him to Frances. Clearly, Richard was gorgeous and young and sexy, that part clichéd and obvious. But that wasn’t what drew her to him, although it might have been easier to explain it that way. She liked how he talked, the different vocabulary, the occasional pop-culture reference she missed, the otherness. He was interested in what she had to say, found her novel and wise, valued her experience. It didn’t hurt that he constantly wanted her, that when she ran out of things to say she could lose herself in sex.
Charlie, her husband, loved her dearly, but in the way one loves a sibling, with all the wrinkles and scabs those relationships have. If she made a joke, he’d heard it, if she wore something new, he noticed but wondered if it had been on sale. Richard thought she was fascinating. Charlie thought she was competent and strong. Richard wanted to go down on her, to immerse himself in her body, to put his fingers inside her and then suck on them, grinning. Charlie was fine to wait until another night, no problem, babe, no, I understand, let’s snuggle.
“I think you should go now, yeah. I’ll text you or something.” She held her mug of coffee tightly: WORLD’S BEST MOM.
He left by the back door, and she’d turned away before he was even out of the garden.
Three.
Frances was amazed to discover her legs were propelling her in the usual fashion as she walked down the street toward her own house. Birds appeared to be singing, the sidewalk wasn’t opening underneath her, and her cat was still standing where he had been twenty seconds earlier, washing his tail. She herself felt light-headed and woozy, as if gravity wasn’t working so well, or she’d accidentally had four shots of J?germeister.
“Hey, Frank!” Startled, Frances looked up to see her cousin Iris crossing the street toward her, glowy from the gym. “Drop-off go OK? Did Wyatt behave himself?”
“Of course.” Her voice worked, too. It was astounding. “He was the sweetheart he always is.” She was going to be able to have a conversation without blurting out what she’d just seen. Such casual perfidy.
“For you, he is. For us, he’s the spawn of Satan.”
“Maybe you should have looked more closely at the donor profile.”
“You think?” Iris grinned. “Maybe Nick O’Deamus wasn’t the six-foot Irish-American hottie and geologist he claimed to be?”
“Yeah . . . ‘My hobbies include collecting minerals like sulphur and brimstone, sharpening my scythe, and propelling souls into eternal damnation.’ It’s important to read the whole thing.”
Iris laughed. She was tall and blond, with strong features. She and Frances had grown up together, essentially, because their mothers were sisters who lived four blocks from each other on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When Iris and Sara, then a struggling actress making the occasional TV commercial, moved to L.A. they’d encouraged Frances to come, too. When a house on the same block was about to come on the market, Iris had called Frances and told her to jump on it. She and Michael left everything behind and made the move, and had yet to regret it. Today might be the day, of course.
“Are you OK?” Iris looked at her cousin closely.
Frances thought about telling her, because it would feel so good to just blurt it out and split the headache, but then she realized she couldn’t. She had no idea why Anne was fucking around on Charlie, couldn’t understand why she would threaten her entire existence by doing so, but until she’d spoken to her she couldn’t tell anyone else what she’d seen. It was the omertà of friendship.