Chapter Thirty Four

She kept telling him that she would divorce her husband.  She kept telling him that she would leave her professor, but the Remedy knew that she wouldn’t do it.  She couldn’t face that kind of uncertainty, and she knew that he, her lover, was unreliable.  He might have been her alcoholic womanizer, but he was still just an alcoholic womanizer.  She never said as much, but he knew what she was thinking.  He was everything he had ever told her about, and less.

        They were lying in bed one afternoon, while her husband was at the university.  He was lying on his back with his head on a pillow.  She was on her side, with his left arm around her back.  Her head was on his shoulder, and he was looking down over the curves of her body at a small end table, where a family photo rested.  As he studied the photo he imagined her husband in his classroom, illustrating some obscure point, his words attaining such heights of meaning that few could even glimpse them, least of all the man in his wife’s bed.  

        The bedroom was tastefully appointed, with new varnished furniture and hues that matched.  It was a very feminine room, full of accessories that he failed to see the point of.  There was, for example, a charming blue floral cloth that hung atop the chest of drawers where her husband kept his clothes, and also a tray for every set of items on her makeup table.  The curtains were secured behind matching sashes, which were in turn clipped to hooks carefully installed next to each window.  There was a lovely Persian rug over the wood floor, with the bed precisely arranged to receive the best light in the mornings.  The sheets upon the bed felt expensive, and the pillows came in meticulously prescribed sets of three.

He gazed down at her large nipples, visible beneath the golden strands of her hair. She was only wearing a pair of powder blue panties that she had pulled on moments before.  She was more than lovely.  She was a song made flesh, and it was a song describing lost loves, and doomed romance.  Her eyes were deep green.  Her features were sharp.  Her curves were generous, without giving one the impression that she tended towards fat.  Her skin was the color of wheat, seen upon the hillsides in the summer.  

Her smile was the only thing that gave her intentfulness away.  Had she not possessed that sardonic smile, one might have mistaken her for some primeval force, some constant that one did not judge so much as withstand.  As it was, however, there were always reasons to doubt her purity.  That smile spoke of plans, and goals yet unspoken.

He was nude beneath the sheet that covered him, and he could smell their lovemaking in the bed.  He knew that he was still a handsome man.  Yes, she was somehow gaining ground on him in the game of aging, but he was still a handsome man.  He wasn’t so gray then, he was still in relatively good shape, and it would be some time yet before his muscles softened into fat, until his hair shone silver, and before the lines upon his face spoke more of middle age than of time spent outdoors, or of time spent in the hub, stacking boxes.

        “I think you should work on the floor below mine,” she was saying, “That way it won’t be too obvious.  I’m not sure what they do down there, but I can find out.  The boss has been very happy with my job performance, and I’m sure the right word will get you in there.”

        “Sure,” he answered, glancing down at her.  “But what the fuck do I know about digital image processing?  I mean, is it easy?  I have trouble reading, you know, so if they give me a lot of papers….”

        It hurt him to say that last sentence, but it was true.  Even after all that time, big words still gave him trouble.  There were times when words thrown into conversations perplexed him.  Sometimes even restaurant menus were a source of confusion.  

It was difficult not to think back to that semester at the university when he’d met her at the party, and of how much better he’d been getting – how good he’d been getting – only to see his progress fall away into a chasm of odd jobs and injuries, into bottles washed down with pills in the presence of strange women and temporary friends.  

He decided then that His One Great Love had no grasp of tragedy, and that this was her one tragic flaw.  She had never been denied anything.  She had never been outsmarted.  She was too clever a strategist for that.

        “Don’t worry about it,” she interpolated, “I’ll take care of it.  I mean it’s the least I can do.  Then, after I get the divorce, I can move into another department.  Or even a different company.  And we’ll both have jobs.  It’ll be very stable.”

        Yes, he thought, but you’re not really going to do that.  You have two daughters and this house, and you’re not about to lose any part of what you’ve built.  You’ll think about all the things you’ve collected over the years.  You’ll think about what a good man you think he is, and you won’t want to hurt him.  Around and around we go.

        Not that he was all that bitter.  When he had her in bed he found it hard to regret anything.  He watched her get up to pick at one of her dainty toenails, and as she did so her nipples emerged from behind her golden tresses, breasts still perfect at 35.  After two kids and so many years, most women would have been sagging.  But not her.  She had always taken scrupulous care of herself.  She said it was for him.

        And it may have been ridiculous, but he suspected that this was true.  She did love him.  Just as much as he loved her.  But they both knew that they were incomplete as human beings, and their being together failed to account for all the parts they were missing.  Each needed the other, but that other was never quite enough.  With her it was a family she could never share, and a set of imperatives he could never fully understand.  With him it was always self-pity, failures, and being left alone in the dark.

        “Just think about it,” she went on, “I know you need the work.  And we could see each other every day.  We could even have lunch together sometimes.  We could work that out.  Nobody would know anything.  And we’d have all that time.”

        Yes, and maybe he’d find out that she was fucking other guys in her office, or she would find out that he was doing the same with her female coworkers.  Maybe she would find that having him around all the time grew tiresome.  Maybe it would be too painful to be so near to her, and yet to play the part of a stranger.

Things would become difficult then, and she would have to find some way to get rid of him – not for good, but just long enough for it to hurt.  Even knowing this, he knew that he would say yes to her proposal.  He knew he would submit.  There were no obvious avenues of escape, and he lacked the resolve to analyze his way out of her mazes.

        “Could I have the weekends off?” he asked as he reached out for her.  With a careful hand he brushed the remaining hair from her right shoulder, revealing more of her body.  Soon he would be inside of her again.  Then he would have to leave, before her husband returned.

        “Not a problem,” she was laughing.  Her eyes glittered.

        “And can I receive your ‘personal supervision’ during coffee breaks?”

        “No,” laughing again, “My boss will handle that.  Are you alright with assuming the position under another man?”

        “I don’t know,” he lisped, “If he’s really cute, I guess it’s OK.”

        “He isn’t,” she giggled.

        He pulled away the sheet and he was hard again, drawing her back towards him.  He wanted only to pull her panties down her soft thighs.  His mouth found hers in the sunlight, and he was ready to forget everything that had ever made him unhappy, everyone who had ever made him feel small.  He thought about all of the history the two of them shared, stretching all the way back to that first, failed semester of college when he’d been in her dorm room, and seen the picture of the man who would later be her husband.  He had known that man from somewhere.  He could never entirely register the face, but he had seen him.  Then, in the mists of his desire the image of that other man dissolved, leaving behind the mystery.  No time to think with her in his arms, with her mouth pressed against him.

        It was always so much faster, the second time, with her.  With other women it was often an act of will, but with her it was always easy, like returning home after a long trip.  She would wipe his semen away with a carefully placed tissue.  No stains on the bedding to tell tales.