You stupid asshole, I thought to myself. I was reasonably sober again, and we were lying naked together in Kelly’s queen-sized bed along with her menagerie of stuffed animals.
“All I want is for life to be like Pretty Woman,” said Kelly, leaning over to nuzzle my throat.
It was a movie she watched at least once a month, crying at the sappiest moments as if they were cherished friends she hadn’t seen for years.
“I have to go,” I said.
We had started sleeping together in the summer. Her car salesman husband had decided she was aging too fast and was in the process of trading her in for a younger model. But the imperfections that bothered him only made her seem more attractive to me. The creases around her eyes, the wrinkles, the slightly sagging skin along her jawline all made her seem more vulnerable and real.
It had seemed fine at the beginning. She was personally very tidy. Her house was immaculate. She didn’t smoke or chew tobacco. She had a good sense of humor and a good laugh. She took good care of her cat. Her house plants were healthy. She was honest. She worked out all the time. She was a good lover.
I silently added up all the things I had learned since. Even though she had a good sense of humor, she could never laugh at herself. She had a “thing” about black people. She hadn’t read a book since high school. I wasn’t sure if she had ever read one. Up to the moment she fell asleep, she never stopped talking. It was as if any elapsed quiet time between us aside from sex might cause the end of the world. Her favorite subjects were soap operas and bodily functions. She hated jazz and classical music. Her television set was always on, even if she wasn’t home. The only thing she knew how to cook was chili.
“My lawsuit is going forward,” she said.
“That’s great,” I said.
“The Razzano brothers have agreed to represent me,” she went on. Rolling on top of me, she straddled my hips and added, “I’m going to sue the hell out of them, Jake.”
Kelly had interviewed a few months earlier for a hostess position at a Hustler’s restaurant near Binghamton. Like Hooters, it specialized in amply endowed waitresses. After being turned down, she became convinced that it was a case of age discrimination.
“Are these anything to be ashamed of?” she demanded, fondling her breasts as if they were Fabergé eggs.
“No,” I agreed.
When it came to breasts, Kelly’s were spectacular. Even in her forties, they rose heavenward like twin sidewinder missiles.
“Hustlers only hire children with big tits,” she said angrily, “and that’s wrong.”
She lowered herself toward me and nestled into my arms. As her erect nipples grazed my chest, she slid me inside her again. Her hair covered my eyes, blotting out the sunlight from the window.
She began to ride me with a leisurely, measured rhythm. By the time we reached climax, the two of us were thrashing around the bed like rabbits in a snare, her lips locked onto mine and her tongue at the back of my throat. After my heart stopped pounding, I tumbled back into a black hole.
I was awakened by the sound of garbage cans being overturned in the alley behind her apartment. When I opened my eyes, Kelly’s face was a few inches from mine. Droplets of sweat dotted her forehead. She used her fingertips to sweep away the tendrils of blonde hair that covered her eyes. Her hot moist skin was still adhered to mine.
“I love you, Jake,” she whispered. “If you marry me, I’ll fuck you like this every day and night.”
I glanced at my watch. It was two fifteen.
“Shit,” I said, sitting up.
Her eyes filled with tears. It was pointless to explain that I was already late for the sheriff’s interviews. She had heard too many different excuses in recent months to believe me anymore.
“You’re already married,” I said, putting on my socks.
“I meant after,” she said earnestly. “You deserve to be happy, Jake. You were so depressed when I met you. I could make you happy. I know it. I so love you, baby.”
She was waiting for me to repeat the love word back to her. That word so often used to rationalize basic sexual needs, the poetic justification for millions of desperate couplings every minute all over the world. I had given love once, and Blair had thrown it away.
At the same time, I despised myself for what I had become. I knew I had given Kelly pleasure, just as she had me. We shared the same desperate hunger. But for my part, it was no more than the need for intimacy, the temporary pushing back against the loneliness of the spirit, cornering it for a time in a dark place while we were joined together. When it was over, Kelly and I were lonely strangers lying in the same perfumed bed surrounded by her stuffed animals.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
As soon as I stood up, my headache kicked in again with a vengeance. Glancing momentarily into the gilt mirror as I went past, I thought that I could actually see my head throbbing. Usually, my headaches built like a slowly developing storm front. This one was coming on fast. I could feel it gathering strength in my sinus cavities and behind both eyes.
Kelly kept a full supply of headache, back ache, and female remedies in her medicine chest. I swallowed four extrastrength Tylenol tablets with a glass of Alka-Seltzer and stepped into the shower. I kept it at the hottest setting for as long as I could and then adjusted the faucet to full cold.
Ten minutes later, I was out the front door and headed on foot for Tau Epsilon Rho.