If I could live my life over, things would be a lot different for me now. I had made enough stupid choices during my youth to last a lifetime. I could not imagine Robert’s reaction if he ever found out about the relationship I’d had with Clyde.
I no longer loved my husband, but compared to most women, I had a good life, and I didn’t want to lose it. At least not yet. Robert and I were not happy together, but I wasn’t ready to make it without him. And as miserable as our relationship was, I enjoyed the prestige of being married to a successful architect.
My father owned the house we lived in, so if Robert and I ever did split up, I’d always have a place to live. But I still had way too much to lose. I didn’t want to think about how a divorce would affect the kids.
I called Clyde at his used car location. “I need to see you,” I said stiffly.
“Uh-huh.”
“We need to get a few things straight.”
“We done already done that. I done told you what you got to do. All you need to know is where and when.”
“It’s not that simple, Clyde. I don’t want to discuss this over the phone. I need to see you tonight before my husband comes home.”
“Well, you caught me at a bad time. I got somethin’ else I need to take care of tonight. We can discuss anything we need to discuss right now. Like I said, all you need to know is where to go and when. After you done what you supposed to do, you call me at this same number. We hook up somewhere, you give me my money, and that’s the end of it. You won’t hear from me no more.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Tomorrow night, the Hyatt Regency Hotel, room 301, eight o’clock. Don’t be late.”
“I hope you burn in hell.”
“And I probably will. But in the meantime, I got to do what I got to do. Now, we straight?”
I sighed with defeat, convinced that there was no way out of this mess. “I’ll be there.”
“Well, you better be your White ass there. Oh, and wear somethin’ normal. Show some class. Put on a business suit, some low-heeled pumps, make up your face, carry a briefcase, wear your hair in a bun, and splash on some Chanel No 5. Don’t go up in that hotel lookin’ like no two-dollar streetwalker.”
Two hours after my difficult conversation with Clyde, I was still awake when Robert crawled into bed. I flinched when his toenail scratched the side of my leg.
For the first time in a month, he slid his arm around me, patting my crotch and nudging me with his knee.
“Meg?”
I ignored him.
“Meg? Honey, how about it?” he whispered in my ear.
I could feel his erection against my ass, the hardest one I’d felt in years. But I ignored that, too.
I wore a yellow tweed suit that I had not been able to squeeze into since before my weight loss. I crawled into a cab and headed for the Hyatt Regency Hotel, near Union Square, the following night after my conversation with Clyde. I could feel the four shots of vodka I’d drunk in place of a dinner, floating around like acid inside my empty stomach.
Robert had left the house earlier that evening for a business meeting, not that his presence would have made a difference. He never asked what I was doing or where I was going.
I had allowed myself enough time to sit in one of the hotel bars, where I gulped down another shot of vodka.
Finally, I took the elevator to the third floor, but it took five minutes to drag myself to room 301 from the elevator, a few feet away.
I’d been in the same hotel before for the same reason as tonight, many years earlier. More than once, I’d shared my body with men whose faces and names I could not remember. A stockbroker from Sacramento, an Iranian businessman on vacation, a bachelor party with a group of rowdy college boys from U.C. Berkeley. A trick was a trick, but this time the trick was on me.
I held my breath and knocked. My husband opened the door.