Writers & Lovers(58)

‘Serious? What are you talking about? You two laughed for five minutes straight when you saw each other.’

‘No, she laughs, she’s fun, but you heard her. Like when she brought up that article on Edmund Wilson. She’s pretentious.’

‘She was curious what you thought about it.’

‘But the words she uses.’

‘You think she’s trying to impress people?’

‘No, I think she probably thinks that way.’

‘So, she’s being authentic. You have a problem with her authenticity?’

‘Look, she’s a good woman.’

‘A good woman?’

‘She’s rigid. Fixed in her ways. She’s like a confirmed old bachelor.’

‘She seemed loose and vibrant and happy to me. Why wouldn’t you want that?’

‘Are we really fighting about why I’m not with someone else?’

‘She’s your age, she’s beautiful, and she’s into you.’

‘It’s just that je ne sais quoi.’

But I know the quoi. She is reading in churches and auditoriums. She’s going to London tomorrow for a European leg of her book tour.

The house is dark. I’ve never been here when no one’s home. Oscar flips on the lights, and it all feels different, like they’ve painted the walls a cooler color. Even Bob has been taken away.

Oscar takes a glass from a shelf and fills it with water. ‘Want one?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Look,’ he says. ‘You made it on the fridge.’

I go over to him. It’s a new drawing by ZAZ. A few black lines, a green squiggle, and a small brown tornado. Oscar points to the tornado. ‘That’s your hair. And that’s your body over here. And that is either a golf club or an asp. I’m not sure.’

‘Wow. This is a great honor.’

He puts down his water and kisses me. ‘Thanks for coming tonight.’ He kisses me again. ‘You made it so much nicer.’ Kiss. ‘Those things really knock it out of me.’ He rests his head on my shoulder heavily. ‘I’m beat. Let’s go up.’ He picks up his glass and moves to the stairs.

I stall, pretending to look at the drawing a little longer.

‘Can you hit the lights?’ he says, halfway up.

His bedroom is big, with a king-size bed. You can see that his wife initially designed the room, with a pretty painted mirror and white bureaus, but you can also see where time has crept in. There’s a cheap laminate desk in the corner with piles of paper and a cardboard box for dirty laundry.

He comes out of the bathroom in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. ‘Come here.’ His mouth is minty.

I’m used to boys. I’m used to their colt-like energy. I’m used to making out on sofas and peeling off our clothing bit by bit. I’m not used to a guy brushing his teeth before fooling around. I’m in my head, and my head is racing. I take off my skirt and sweater and get into bed with him. He slides an arm under me and pulls me against him. I thought maybe sleeping in someone else’s bed might be better, but it’s worse. I can feel the panic mounting.

His arm glides down my back, over my bum, and back up. ‘Mmm,’ he says. Our bodies are lying down alongside each other for the first time and it doesn’t feel as good as it does when we are standing up with more clothes on.

I don’t know what I want. It’s nothing like lying next to Luke or kissing Silas in his car. Fireworks or coffee in bed, I hear Fabiana saying.

‘Are you nervous?’ he says, grinning and kissing me. ‘We can take it slowly. This is nice just like this. This is what I want. And it’s been so long since I’ve wanted anything.’

His tongue is cold. He moves to one of my breasts. My mind is full of people in chairs at the bookstore and Vera Wilde leaning against the restaurant table. He slides his fingers into my underwear but they don’t go in the right places and he has a couple of sharp fingernails. I imagine him bringing Vera Wilde home and going down on her on the living room rug. It helps. I shift away from his fingers and press my butt against him and we find a rhythm and he is breathing hard at my neck and we move faster and he tenses and stops breathing and I feel the pulse against me through our underwear and when it’s over he says he feels like a teenager and laughs loudly in my ear.

He puts on a fresh pair of boxers and pulls me close. ‘“But O that I were young again/And held her in my arms,”’ he says in my ear. Three minutes later he’s asleep. I try to follow him there, try to imitate his long sleep breaths and trick my body into it, but I’m awake. I lie there a long time. After an hour or more I get up and go downstairs.

There are a few extra chairs pulled up around the coffee table from the workshop the night before. It’s clear where Oscar sits, in the walnut chair with the leather seat, pulled back from the others, a bit higher. I take the seat I would sit in if I were in the workshop, in the middle of the couch, protected by people on both sides.

I should have wanted to be him, not sleep with him. I don’t seem to want to do that either, though.

My body won’t stay seated so I walk around, past the front door, the closet, the bathroom, the TV nook, the fridge, the island, back around to the living area. There’s very little clutter. No photos. A bookshelf neatly organized by author. One copy of each of his own. I open the closet: parkas, boots, tennis rackets, a wiffleball bat. In the kitchen is another closet: broom, mop, bucket, slender vacuum cleaner, and a recycling bin. There, on top of a stack of papers, is a story called ‘Star of Ashtabula.’ It’s been typed on a manual typewriter so it has a faded, irregular look to it. Silas’s name and address are in the top left corner. I shut the door. I go sit on a chair near the window. I shuffle a deck of cards near the TV. I go back to the closet with the recycling bin.