• Anne goes down the steps into the basement. A delicious tenseness in her whole body. Things you aren’t supposed to do . . . why are they so much fun? Well, no, she thinks, not fun exactly. She’s nervous, scared. She can feel the beat of her heart. But she wants to do this; she’s sharply aware of enjoying it, in a way. It’s not just the hope that she might learn something. It’s the knowledge—there’s a voice in her head saying this—that she’s doing something she shouldn’t do.
But then you do it anyway, she thinks. You just do it. And there’s this odd, sickly pleasure. The way orchids are. They’re just too pretty, and they smell evil. . . . Oh well, all my people were Puritans, what can you expect?
She glances at her watch. 6:34. Robert called to say he’d be a little late, he thought he’d be on the 7:07. How many times is that now? She should have been counting, keeping a record. But that was never their style. One of them was always late, or changing things in a minor way. What difference does a half hour make? Or even an hour? Still, she’s sure that it’s happening more now. Or New York’s more chaotic than last year, and editors work more. . . .
I have to start listening more closely to his excuses, she thinks. Never mind. I’m safe now. Coming down here. . . .
It’s an almost empty basement, used only for storage. Twenty big cardboard boxes are stacked along one wall. There are piles of magazines and old clothes. They talked about putting a ping-pong table down here, or a pool table. There was always the sense that they’d have children and then the whims of the children would decide what filled this useless space.
The man who installed the recorder looked around and said, “Well, it’s getting warmer. Nobody wants a blanket now.” He put the device on two magazines, under a half dozen folded blankets. “You don’t have flooding, do you?”
She said, “No, never.”
Anne stands with her arms folded, staring at the stack of blankets. The odd thing is that she can access the device by telephone, from anywhere. But she worries she’ll push the wrong buttons, erase something. No, that’s so little of the truth it’s a lie. She likes coming down here to this musty place. She likes touching the expensive little piece of hardware and listening to what it contains.
She likes, she realizes, the rising anxiety in her chest. The totally alert sense that each second is important, that every sound is something she must pay attention to. The sounds on the machine. The sounds that could come suddenly from upstairs. It’s a very long shot that Robert would say he’s going to be late, then come early. Still, she knows she is vulnerable.
Anne tries to remember something in her life that combines danger and anxiety and sin, the way this does. She has to go way back. Nothing she did as an adult seems to qualify. There’s nothing in college or B school. She thinks about all that hot, clumsy making out when she was a teenager growing up in Ohio. But how sinful is that? Everybody’s telling you to do it. All she can think of, really, is when she first masturbated, when she was fourteen, fifteen, somewhere in there.
Yes, she remembers the time with a putter. An uncle—her favorite uncle—played golf and he left the clubs in the front hall. She sat in an old chair and played with his putter. She remembers twirling it. The adults were in a room close by. She could hear their voices; that was a big part of it, the fear of discovery. She remembers how she sat there on that hot summer day, in some loose shorts, and fondled—really, that’s what it was—the putter. And then she got the idea of sliding the handle along her thigh, inside the shorts, until the blunt end of the putter touched her underwear. And very carefully she pushed it against her vagina, feeling exquisitely evil, then up higher to her clitoris. She remembers how she leaned forward, covering what she was doing. Still, the putter was sticking out way past her knee. Anybody would have suspected something. She moved it just a little, steady flicks of her wrist. God, she can still remember the turmoil in her thighs, her pelvis, right up past her stomach to her pounding heart. Every few seconds she had to monitor the voices, make sure nobody was moving around. She got wetter and wetter, until she was sure there would be a stain on the chair’s upholstery. But she didn’t want to stop, she remembers this clearly, she wanted to keep going, going and going, forever. Her body tightened just like a string on her Gibson guitar, everything seeming more shrill and high pitched. Dear God, it was wonderful. The room started to become hazy and brighter. There were probably minutes when the whole family could have been watching, and she wouldn’t have known. Maybe they did; and they were always too polite or embarrassed to mention it. Maybe, she realizes, you secretly hope for some horrible exposure, a scandal that proves how truly evil the whole thing is, and how evil you are. But what she remembers for sure is how she struggled with every nerve to make sure nobody did see her. How she stayed with it, cunning and furtive and watchful, and jabbed that putter against herself until a wave of prickly heat seemed to rise through her body. She remembers gasping but trying not to, almost little hiccups. And when the wave passed, she could suddenly smell herself, she was so wet and sticky, which seemed to her the perfect finishing evil touch. She put the putter back and ran to her room. When she was changing her clothes, she realized that her uncle might later smell the putter. The very part he would be holding. Her favorite uncle! She wetted a cloth and raced back to wipe off the putter. The voices still droning in the nearby room. Then she went back to her room again, threw herself on her bed, and thought something like, Gosh, that’s so horrible, thanks, God.
Anne is smiling at the details still so clear in her memory. She realizes with a start that she’s pressing her thumb against the front of her skirt. Not much, just a subtle accompaniment.
Going to the dogs, she thinks. Robert comes home now, I may attack him. Well, that could be awkward if he’s been . . .
She looks at her watch. 6:51. Damn.
She goes back to the steps, listens upstairs. “Robert!” What if he came in while she was daydreaming? “Robert?”
When there’s no answer she goes quickly to the blankets, squats down next to the recorder. She plays the voices at a very low volume, just listening for Robert talking to a woman, fast forwarding through anything else, through her own conversations. Listening also to any sounds from upstairs. The whole time keenly aware of the almost sexual pleasure she’s getting from all this.
It takes ten minutes to check the last three days of calls. Nothing. Still nothing. And yet she’s more sure, just on instinct, that Robert is pulling back from her, drifting somehow, spinning into another orbit.
The bastard, she thinks, resetting the machine, concealing it again.
I really need him now. I wish he would throw me on the living room floor and make love to me. But what if . . . ? I could pull him into the shower, wash him off, like it’s a game.
Another woman, she thinks, knowing that she still doesn’t really know if there is one. Definitely something evil here. She wonders if the thought excites her even as it repels her. Robert’s body still smelly from another woman? Or maybe I don’t care. It’s Robert’s problem. Okay, stud, let’s see you do two.
Or maybe trapping him, finding him tired and impotent, is a turn-on. Oh, Robert, that’s really a shame, and I thought you were such a man. Getting old, I guess. . . .
Anne goes energetically up the steps, knowing she’s on edge and she’d better watch herself. Knowing also she’s, by her own standards, getting a little nuts.
So, she wonders, what will fix it? I find for sure that Robert is mine and always wants to be? Yes, that and he comes through the door and tears off my clothes and makes love to me. An Anne Klein outfit?—sure, what the hell!
Or maybe I’ve got enough time to run upstairs and finish what I’ve started here. Maybe find a putter. . . .