The Guest Room(22)

“You’re shaking,” she’d whispered into his ear a moment later.

“It’s fine,” he had whispered back.

They would kiss again before going upstairs, and they would kiss again on the stairs themselves. Each kiss had left him breathless, the air abruptly gone from his lungs. Had his first kiss with Kristin been like this? Of course it had. It had. It had just been such a long time ago.

But then again, had it really been that…hot? Their first kiss had been a few yards from the corner of Fourteenth and Fifth, after he had taken her to dinner for the second time, the kiss just beyond the sight of the doorman for her building. She had not invited him upstairs, both because it was only their second date and because she was one of three young schoolteachers in a two-bedroom sublet. She shared a bedroom with one of the other women. The kiss had been clumsy and brief; neither had been sure when he bent to kiss her on the lips whether their mouths should be open or closed. In the end, the kiss had been a little of both, an awkward hybrid. He remembered walking to the subway a little afraid that she would think he was a bad kisser. They’d never talked about that kiss or laughed about it; he wished, in hindsight, that at some point they had. But then again, maybe not. A few nights later he took her to a Radiohead concert, and they had kissed there. And that kiss had been rock concert hot. They were on their feet amid the noise and the bass, and their kissing grew into the most beautiful, wrenching torment imaginable, and suddenly she was grinding against the thigh of his blue jeans and his hands were under her shirt. Even now whenever either of them pulled some Radiohead vinyl off the shelf, it was a prelude to sex—an aural aphrodisiac, the strawberries of sound.

He took a deep breath and looked up from his shoes at his wife, and he lied. “We kissed once,” he said, “sort of. Before I knew what was happening she had kissed me. I pushed her away. It felt wrong and she smelled of cigarettes. It was all too…too intimate. I was a little disgusted.”

She seemed to think about this, and slowly her body hunched over, her arms now wrapped around her chest—not in defiance, but as if she were ensconced in a straitjacket. She was still crying.

“That’s the truth?” she asked.

“That’s the truth. Absolutely.”

She wiped her eyes, and he went to her. He tried again to wrap an arm around her shoulders, and this time she let him. Her body relaxed into his. He noted that she was wearing some pretty sultry pantyhose, and his mind reeled at the idea that he could even think about having sex with her right now.

…

At precisely eight-thirty that morning, Richard called a lawyer from his mother-in-law’s guest bedroom. He was beyond tired, but his hangover was responding to the Advil and the gallons of water he had been drinking; he no longer worried that the excruciating spikes of pain behind his eyes were going to cause him to wilt like a flower in a fast-motion film—to just collapse against a door or a wall with his head in his hands. He rang the fellow who had drawn up Kristin’s and his wills and set up their trust, relieved that he had the attorney’s home number on his cell phone and that the guy actually picked up. He was pretty sure that Bill O’Connell knew next to nothing about criminal law and probably wouldn’t end up representing him—if, please, no, he actually needed representation—but he had to begin somewhere. He was glad now that the attorney was male. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to a woman what happened last night. And, as he expected, Bill told Richard that he wasn’t his man. But the firm did have a couple of people who could help him, one who was indeed female, and one who was male. Immediately Richard asked for the home phone of the attorney who was male, but Bill surprised him.

“I think you should call Dina. Sam is very, very good, but Dina is a lot smarter than me—and probably, based on what went on in your home last night, a lot smarter than you. She has to be the smartest person I know. And if you ever do need her as a face—in depositions or in court—it would be great to have a woman.”

“I’d really prefer a man, Bill.”

“Get over it. Sam is terrific—he really is. But in this case, you’ll be a lot better off with Dina.”

He swallowed hard. He thought of his wife and his daughter. He had to be smart about this. He took down Dina’s number.

“One more thing,” Bill said.

“Sure.”

“Don’t talk to reporters. If you get a call and don’t recognize or can’t see the number, don’t pick up.”

“Reporters,” he murmured, repeating the single word to himself. He recalled what the detective had said in his living room. “Fuck.”

“Yup. Be smart about that, too. Don’t say anything. Eventually they will find you. It’s their job. When you don’t take their calls, they might come to your house. They might come to the building where you work. So postpone the inevitable. By the time they corner you, you can just send them to Dina.”

He thought again of Kristin and Melissa, this time imagining what they were going to read about him: his looming public mortification. He wanted to crawl into the bed on which he was sitting and pull the covers over his head. He really did need to sleep. Almost desperately. But he couldn’t close his eyes. Not yet, anyway. As soon as he said good-bye to Bill, he called Dina. He must have sounded so pitiable, so pathetically in need, that she agreed to meet him in ninety minutes in her office in midtown. He would have used that time to nap, but he had to shower and shave; he needed to wash last night from his body.