I didn’t go to Yvonne’s after my session. I didn’t want to be alone. Anywhere. I called Brian and asked if I could go over there and though he said yes pretty readily, there was a slight hesitation in his voice. I heard it. He teases me whenever I accuse him of being tired of me. “You’re nuts,” he says. “I love having you here.” But still, I don’t know, sometimes I can sense his relief when I leave.
A crowd of people waited along the platform at the 96th Street station. I leaned over the edge but the long curve of tunnel looked unpromising. An impeccably dressed man walked by me carrying a shopping bag with OBSESSION lettered on the side. I took it as a sign. A warning. I’ve become obsessed. Sarah tells me. Elly tells me. I have the distinct impression they’ve discussed me over coffee, used me to woo and flirt with one another. But it’s true. I’ve become obsessed. About Yvonne. About Brian.
I can’t stop thinking of Brian. Where is he at any given moment? How much does he care about me? Want me around? I think it’s because he gives so little away. He’s circumspect. Says things like I’ll always hold you in high esteem. Now what would he mean by something like that? I try to remember every word he says. Songs he’s hummed, lyrics from tapes he’s given me. Who was he thinking of when he heard that song? What kind of message was he sending when he recorded it for me? Or did he simply like the chord changes and ignore the words? Sometimes I feel like I’ve missed or forgotten something important—some small response or comment that would give me what I need to figure it out. Does Brian like me as much as Mark likes Yvonne? I monitor his words and gestures the way you go over a body looking for ticks.
The man with the OBSESSION bag stood a few feet away. The subway showed no sign of coming, no promising string of lights along the tunnel wall, but the man just stood there. Not once did he lean over the platform to check for the train. It makes me think that we could evolve into a completely expressionless species that exhibits no thoughts or feelings, but carries placards to indicate our states of being. Obsessed. Depressed. Elated. Suicidal. Guilty. I wish Brian would carry a sign. Or Mark. What would Mark’s sign say? Not Guilty. Because he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.
The lights flashed then brightened on the tunnel wall and when the subway screeched in I followed the obsessed guy. I sat next to him. Maybe Sarah is right. I need to figure out how to be enough. Figure out why all of a sudden I need Brian to love me. It keeps coming down to that. Does he love me? If he says he loves me one day why do I need him to say it the next? How could it change in one day? Sometimes while we’re making love it feels like he loves me, but it could be just the indications of love, and not real love. Sarah says what I call love is more like obsession. That I don’t believe someone loves me unless they’re obsessed with me. “I really care about you, Terry, but I think you want me to lose my balance,” Brian said the other night. Can a man hold and caress and kiss and fuck a woman in like? Of course. Men can hold and kiss and caress and fuck in hatred. Or disinterest. So why not in like or enjoyment? And why would that be so bad? Why do I need him to love me? We’re friends. I keep telling myself that. He likes being with me. Likes to talk to me. Maybe that’s how it is with Mark and Yvonne. Maybe he just likes her a lot. But if he does I’m sure she’s trying her damnedest to pin him down to love. To cross that bridge from like to love. Then again, maybe there is no bridge. Maybe all likes do not have the potential to become loves. And maybe you like some people more who you like than you actually like the people you love.
You look pretty hot in that bikini. What a stupid thing to say. But it definitely sounded like he liked her. The train jerked and I realized I’d been staring into a poster of a very tan woman in an orange-flowered bikini. Why not spend a weekend on St. Croix? the poster read. Maybe Yvonne would have a great tan.
The guy beside me sat, bag in hand, not moving or looking in any direction, not even reading. I’ll bet if he saw his shrink on the street he’d notice him immediately and strike up a pleasant and decorous conversation.
Between 72nd and 66th the intercar door slammed and a tall, bearded guy came through with a packet of Streetnews tucked under his arm.
“I no longer have to panhandle or beg,” he shouted in a whiny monotone. “I am regaining my dignity.”
I want to regain my dignity. To stop feeling so desperate. Get my balance back.
The obsessed guy beside me shifted. I wondered if he were going to buy a copy of Streetnews and whether I should too. Then the door opened and slammed again and a short fat black woman in a striped wool hat lurched into the car.
“People, I’m hungry,” she said. “It’s not easy, people. I have no home. I have no job, people . . .”
Now that’s desperate, that’s a tragedy, I thought. Not to have a home, a job. I’m just having a hard time, that’s all. Things will work out. Then I looked back at that woman in the orange-flowered bikini and I couldn’t imagine how.
A man walked down the aisle dropping those deaf alphabet hand signal cards with rabbit’s feet and requests for money attached to them on everyone’s lap and it started to feel like a traveling Al-Anon meeting. I thought that maybe I should stand up and start talking about Yvonne.
“. . . people let me tell you, I’m not living in a house like yours. I am sleeping on a train, people. I am barely surviving.”
I’ve always wondered how God figures out in what order to help people. Whose prayers he listens to first. Sometimes it feels like he’s not listening to anyone. Like nobody’s listening to anyone.
The Streetnews guy stood against the wall as though he didn’t know whether to continue or leave. From the other end of the train an old Chinese man approached with beepers and baby nipples on long strings and cordless phones and toy tops—all of them spinning and beeping simultaneously.
“. . . I am barely surviving, people. Please, people. I worked at the World Trade Center . . . Have a heart, people . . .”
I pulled out a dollar for the woman and the Chinese guy raced over to me holding out a beeping top. I tried to ignore him but I couldn’t get the woman’s attention. I shoved the dollar back in my pocket.
When I got to Brian’s, “If I Fell” was playing on Mark’s old turntable, which I’d brought over there. I’d given him my prize Beatles single—“If I Fell” / “And I Love Her”—for his birthday. It was hard to part with but I like to give him things. I have the feeling he hasn’t been given enough. Hasn’t been cared about enough.
“’allo there, luv,” Brian said and pulled me toward him.
I hugged him. Pressed into him. The softness of his lips doesn’t surprise me anymore. It’s getting familiar. The song started working on me, making me sad, but I think Brian’s begun to anticipate me. He reached back, flipped to the guitar wood-block opening of “And I Love Her.” He pulled me close and we began a slow circling cross between a cha-cha and a waltz. 1-2, 1-2-3. It’s one of my all-time favorite songs but I never realized it was a cha-cha. We circled, Brian holding me, me kissing his neck, occasionally tripping over a book or pile of papers.
I love it when he feels close to me. When he’s right there. Brian. Not the monster I make up in my mind who is resisting me, pulling away. I love it when he stays with me, touching me, kissing me, when I can’t feel his body pulling away, gently, like he’s waiting for the right time to disentangle. He says it’s my imagination, but I can feel things like that—an impatience, a caution. How nervous he’s gotten since pleasure turned into need.
It was only two days since I’d spent the night and I was getting the feeling it hadn’t been a good idea. I had wanted to tell him about hearing Mark on Yvonne’s answering machine but then I’d have to tell him about going to her apartment. Anyway, what you can tell people changes when you go from friend to lover.
“Things are a little crazy,” I said as we danced. “With Mark and everything.”
“What happened the other night?” he asked. “What did your husband say when you got home?” Somewhere along the line Brian stopped using Mark’s name.
“Oh, you know, ‘Where?,’ ‘Who?,’ blah-blah-blah.” I was smoothing his T-shirt over his chest, rubbing his nipples. “It’s funny,” I said, “I’m scared of him finding out about you—and I know all about him and Yvonne.”
The truth is I still have the tiniest bit of doubt. There’s still the possibility I’ve misunderstood something. That I jumped to conclusions. I keep thinking about Romeo and Juliet. Things aren’t always what they seem. And I don’t want Mark to know about Brian in case it’s not true about him and Yvonne. It case it’s nothing. Just a flirtation. The reason Romeo and Juliet is such a tragedy is that everything is so unnecessary. All those deaths. And we know it all the time and can’t prevent it. I always use it with my students to explain dramatic irony. It’s the same with Othello. He believes Desdemona is guilty. Because she seems to be. He wants her to be. He believes everything about the handkerchief. Immediately. So I try to cover my bases—in case I’m wrong.
“So what did you think of my paper?” Brian asked. In some ways Brian is just like Mark.
“It was great,” I said. I still feel a little awkward about being his teacher and lover. “I love the part about Yeats’s exploration of aging in the Crazy Jane poems.”
In fact Brian’s was one of the few papers I could actually read with attention.
Brian kissed me, pulled me over to the couch. A candle burned inside the top of a Chianti bottle. I hadn’t seen him light it. With the Beatles in the background and that Indian restaurant smell it all seemed impossibly sixties.
“So,” he said, “now for my reward.”
He pulled me on top of him, rolled up my T-shirt, and started licking my tits. I hadn’t expected to, but now I just wanted to fuck all afternoon and not think about anything. About Yvonne. About Mark. About seeing things I didn’t know I was seeing and whether Brian loved me.
I opened my eyes while he was kissing me and saw one of those cheap Chinatown alarm clocks on his shelf. He must have just bought it. He’d never had a clock before.
He tongued my ear, tugged at the lobe.
“Do you love me?” I asked.
His body tensed.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said before he could say anything. I ran my hand between his legs. “Just fuck me,” I said and unbuckled his belt.
It was all pretty fast after that. Brian on top of me. Me on top of him, straddling his hips, sucking his nipples, his fingers rubbing my clit the way I’ve showed him. I came before he did, quietly, as I’ve learned to do with him. It’s the way I used to come when I was a kid, with Lisa and Carla in the next bed. The way I could rub and squirm, barely moving, come without making a sound. I think it lets both of us pretend we’re not really doing this. Maybe two Catholics together is a bad idea.
Brian groaned oh Jesus and collapsed onto me. I stroked his head, rubbed his ass, scratched him and pet him and wriggled my finger around his asshole while he leaned into me making low moans and animal sounds.
“And I Love Her” had ended without us noticing and the needle skidded back and forth over the label making that sst-sst-sst sound, but neither of us got up to turn it off.
Brian rolled onto his back and spread his arms. He smiled. It made me think of this fresco I saw in Italy of Jesus lying at the bottom of the cross in Mary Magdalen’s arms. I rubbed the milky tip of his penis, his belly, scratched the thatch of hair under his arm, and all the time he was sighing and moaning like a dreamy dog. I pulled him over again, and began to rub his ass in small slow circles. His arms reached around me, his lips wet against my neck. An armful of him. That’s what I love. The heft of him on me when he’s quiet like that. When I can hold him, talk to him. Like I own something in him.
“Mmm,” he hummed, “mmm.”
And then I started to feel it. Probably even before he did. The way I can feel him thickening to come. The world coming back. Something he had to do. His body began to stiffen, pull back into itself.
“It’s getting late,” he said.
“Hold me,” I said, and he wrapped his arm around me and lightly scratched up and down my back. Dutifully, not with delight—the way I touch him. Now we were on a schedule. Now he had to determine how short a time he could decently hold me before he could get up and dress.
I tell myself over and over that I’m too demanding. And before I know it I’m whining. I’m like a train on course and there’s no stopping me.
“You’re not really holding me,” I said, and then he really moved back.
“I am,” he insisted. “Terry, ease up. Come here,” he said, trying to appease me, but it was too late because I could already feel how annoyed he was. That we’re always on my schedule. That I see him when it’s good for me, even though it’s not always convenient for him. That his time gets all twisted around and he ends up having to cram in schoolwork and freelance jobs. That he’s lonely when I can’t be around for him and I want him when it’s convenient for me.
He didn’t say any of this. He never does. He rubbed me and I knew he was trying to see that new clock. And I couldn’t stop.
“Don’t you want to hold me?” I asked. “I love to hold you. To touch you. It feels good. God, I mean I don’t want to have to beg you.”
It all feels justified, legitimate, though when I step back I can see how I overreact.
Then he starts to seem exasperated and I am afraid he is going to say we should end it, so I rub his hair and say, “It’s okay, honey, I know you’re busy. I know it’s hard. I’m sorry,” and then we can start to get up.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said.
“Ssh,” he whispered, and kissed me. He pulled his jeans toward him, yanked a sock from the ankle of the pants leg. “I didn’t know you were coming by, you know. I wouldn’t have made plans.”
What plans, I wondered. But I didn’t ask. I pulled on my clothes, and began, slowly, to check my jewelry, to feel for the bits of silver and gold. Bracelets, earrings, watch. I hate rushing out the minute I have my clothes on. There’s something not quite decent about it. To rush from that almost timeless feeling you have when you’re making love—when you seem fused to the other person, fused to yourself—to break apart, go back and forth about plans or time or where you might go for dinner. It takes a little time to move from being naked to being dressed. The way you let wine breathe. The way you don’t rush up to the coffin to look at the body the minute you enter a funeral parlor. You hang back, talk to the relatives. Console.
“Come on,” he said, “walk me to the laundry. I have to drop this stuff off.”
Like it’s normal to think about laundry right after you make love.
I hadn’t planned on going to the gym but I passed by after I left Brian’s and before I knew it I was down in the locker room. I’d felt so awful after seeing Eric, and being with Brian hadn’t made me feel any better. Nothing was making me feel good. It was getting hard to keep all of myself inside myself and I thought a half hour swim would make me feel more normal before I went home. I needed to get some endorphins going. Besides, the gym is closed the week after Christmas and I’d already missed a few days.
It was only 4:30 so I had time for 20 minutes on the bikes before I swam. I changed, stretched, and went up to the Aerobic Fitness Room.
And there was Yvonne.
She was on a bike, pedaling fast and looking straight ahead. She wasn’t reading a magazine or listening to a Walkman or anything. I’d assumed she was one of those people who pedal leisurely for a few minutes, thumbing through a copy of Self, but she was engaged, really working out. She looked, not depressed, but more thoughtful than I’d ever seen her look. The way you look when you think no one’s looking at you and you’re just kind of drifting in yourself, thinking.
She didn’t even look tan.
You look pretty hot in that bikini.
It had been only two days since I heard that message, and I thought maybe Yvonne would look at me and hear those very words. Then I remembered I’d erased them.
She stared ahead, not looking at anything, and pedaling like mad, the way I do, to burn calories and raise your heart rate but not create those big bulgy muscles. She was sweating—that surprised me—but she still looked neat. Like everything fit inside her, like there weren’t all these pieces of herself, pieces of other people, spinning around inside her. I wonder what it feels like. To feel like all of yourself fits inside yourself. To feel like just the way your clothes look so perfect and feel so perfect, that all of yourself fits so perfectly inside. It must feel wonderful. Like figure skating with a great partner to the most exquisite music. Just skating and spinning and holding the balance. Except that you’re by yourself. You’re your own partner. It must feel really great.
But maybe she doesn’t feel like that at all.
Yvonne looked up at me. For a minute she looked like she was trying to figure out who I was. Then she nodded. I was right by the Stairmaster and could have gotten on, but the gym was empty and the bike beside her was unoccupied. I adjusted the seat and got on.
We said hello.
She was breathing hard. Her Elapsed Time readout said 5 minutes. She was doing a manual program at level 2. I punched in the same levels. The blinking red lights reminded me of her phone machine.
“How are you?” she asked between breaths.
The last time I’d seen her I’d been here at the gym. Leaning against her leg, her fingers on my neck. Looking at that bruise on her thigh. I wondered if she was thinking about that.
“Fine,” I said.
She gripped the bars to check her heart rate. 157. A good target rate for someone our age.
I pedaled quickly, watching her readout grid and inside of 2 minutes and 13 calories I matched her rate. We were both at 112 pedal rpms. Me at 2.37 minutes, Yvonne at 7.42.
“Our hearts are in the same place,” I said. But I’m not sure she heard.
We pedaled in silence. I was surprised at how I had to struggle to keep up. I didn’t have my usual energy. And my rpm kept slipping if I didn’t pay attention, but then Brian and I had just made love and you don’t have as much energy after sex. Yvonne was really going at it. I was impressed and relieved. I figured if she had just fucked Mark she wouldn’t even be at the gym. Not with that kind of energy.
“Don’t you usually swim?” she asked. She looked straight ahead as she spoke, leaning her body toward me slightly. Her locker key dangled from her wrist.
“This first,” I said, already out of breath. I looked at her legs. Those little moles. “How come you’re not tan?” How come you’re fucking my husband?
She said something about sunscreen. The seconds and minutes ticked away on the time/calorie readout and she kept on talking about sunscreen. Like I was Maggie or some casual acquaintance. I didn’t want to be talking to her. I wanted to watch her. I wanted to look at the body my husband evidently found so appealing and see what made it so different from mine.
“I shouldn’t have gone down alone,” she was saying.
My rpm started climbing. I couldn’t think of what to say. Gee, too bad Mark couldn’t get away. Something like that.
Two women jogged side by side on Lifestep and another couple worked the benchpress. Aside from the echo of a pounding basketball the gym was pretty quiet. I could hear Yvonne panting.
“I heard some great reggae,” she said after a while.
I hate reggae.
“I love dancing to reggae,” she said.
It’s like dancing to someone whining and hiccupping. For hours. I can’t imagine anything more boring than dancing to reggae. I should have known Yvonne would like reggae. Maybe she bought some of those tapes while she was there. Well, if she thinks Mark’s going to like reggae she’s in for a big surprise.
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Meet any nice men?” I asked.
“I wasn’t really looking,” she said.
There might have been an edge in her voice. I was at 10 minutes, 66 calories, 3.52 miles, 115 rpm.
Of course she wasn’t looking. I couldn’t figure out why she’d gone down there. She doesn’t swim. She didn’t get any sun so I know it wasn’t to dazzle Mark with a winter tan. Maybe she went for the reggae. Maybe she’s a shell collector. Maybe she hadn’t even gone to St. Croix, but I don’t know why she would have lied about it. I thought I could follow her to the locker room and wait until she took off her clothes. She’d at least have a faint tan line. A thin strap across her back, her ass a shade whiter than her thighs. I pictured her ass, the way she bent over the bench to her locker. Mark wriggling his finger up inside her while he talked to her. Mark lying on top of her, kissing her neck, fingering those little moles on her legs. Whispering I love you and you feel really wet, while she wrapped those legs around him.
Stop pedaling if you feel pain the readout grid said in big warning letters. I’d never noticed it before.
“Yvonne,” someone yelled.
I looked up. It was the first time I’d heard anyone call her by her name. It was really strange to hear that, to see one of her friends. Then I realized the woman was looking at me. Someone I’d talked to a couple of times near the showers. She was smiling and wiping her face with a towel. I kept pedaling and looked back at my readout as though I hadn’t heard her.
“See you after the holidays,” she called.
Yvonne looked like she was trying to place the woman, trying to be polite.
“Have a good one,” the woman yelled.
“You too,” Yvonne called out, and I opened my mouth and mouthed the words too. I was afraid the woman would take it as a sign of encouragement and come back over. But she didn’t.
I don’t think Yvonne noticed anything.
My heart was pounding, the bike shifted slightly. I looked at Yvonne’s grid. 24.49. I saw her look at mine. I wondered how long she’d keep going. Maybe she was waiting for me. Maybe she was just as curious about me as I was about her. I mean I would be curious about the wife of the man I was having an affair with. I’d want to know everything about her. I hit 20 minutes and kept going. I wasn’t going to stop until she did.
We were panting. Sweat dripped off my hair down my chest, my arms. Yvonne was soaked. Her legs gleaming. Her heart rate flashed 164. Maybe she’d have a heart attack. I looked straight ahead and raced to catch up. Through a tangle of weight machines and equipment I saw the two of us in the mirror across the room. Black shorts, white tanks, speeding, our legs in sync. We looked like precision dancers. We looked so much alike that anyone looking at us might have thought we were sisters.
My pedal rpm went to 123, 136, 147—the highest I’d ever gone. I kept waiting for the Pedal Slower light to start flashing, but it never did. The mile-per-hour readout was ticking away faster than I’d ever seen it. I was going so fast the bike started rocking and I thought it would tip. At 27.58 the pedal strap popped, my foot slipped out banging against the side of the bike, and I couldn’t catch the pedal again. I stopped.
“I’ve had it,” I said. I balanced on the seat with my legs dangling and waited to catch my breath. Then I got off.
“Me too,” Yvonne said after a couple of seconds.
We were drenched. Yvonne’s face was red. I was spinning. My legs felt like they were still pedaling. We walked over to the mats and dropped down side by side, Yvonne right beside me. I could hear her panting, myself panting, just lying there face up beside one another, our breath in sync. I lay there feeling my heart pump.
And then I smelled her. I mean at first I wasn’t sure if it was myself or Yvonne I was smelling, but then I knew it was her. Sweat and Opium. Really sexy. I guess she could have smelled me too. I could feel her listening to me. I could have moved my head over to her and rested it on her chest, let it rise and fall with her.
We lay there quiet and panting. Like we belonged together. Like two enemies side by side on a battlefield.
After a while we stretched. We didn’t say anything, we just stretched. I thought of that scene in Norma when Adalgisa swears to give up the man she loves, who is actually Norma’s secret lover, Pollione. How she vows to beg Pollione to return to Norma. Then Norma and Adalgisa have this beautiful duet where they swear eternal love and friendship. That their loving hearts will beat together for the rest of their lives. Except that Norma is still supposed to end up with Pollione. Maria Callas just rips me apart in that scene.
Yvonne stood up, stretched, and got ready to go. It’s funny, but I almost felt hurt—the way I’d felt earlier when Brian checked the time and got up to leave.
“You going to swim?” she asked. She pulled off her sweatband and pushed her hair back. She stood over me, looking down at me. What could she have seen? My stomach rising and falling. My skin all wet and flushed. Mark’s wife, is that what she thought? Would she have gone to him to beg him to return to me? Would she have chosen me over him? I looked up at her. She looked really beautiful. I shook my head. I thought I was going to cry.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have a date.”
I watched her walk out and didn’t even follow her to the locker room to check her tan line. I didn’t go for a swim. I just lay there breathing.
It was only later that I remembered her saying something about a date. And Mark was going to be home with me. Maybe she was cheating on Mark.