She was tense and wincingly dry, but he didn’t know it. He was busy trying to get hard, holding himself over her as if he were in the up motion of a pushup, brushing his hips back and forth between her spread legs which she’d opened for him correctly, widely, a very good girl. If he was embarrassed by his lack of a hard-on, he didn’t say. He wasn’t saying anything, but working away, flopping against her. Leaning on one hand, he reached for her face, her jaw, and pulled himself up the bed and loomed over her, nudging at her mouth with his cock. She tried to suck, but he wouldn’t hold still. He flopped against her lips and chin. It was the joke punishment: fifty lashes with a wet noodle, but she’d better not laugh. She’d better make a good job of it—fuck him and get out of there. She’d better mind his feelings. On paper, her career was in Seattle now. Her tenure application was laced with his name.
Better a participant than a witness, he’d warned her, but she’d stayed on alone with him in that room, the room where he slept, exposing herself.
The buzz inside her brought on by her thrill over Alan and James and stoked by her furious writing had halted. Her voice was stopped up in her throat. She was going to have to speak, at least to tell him to put on a condom. If they got that far. His cock flopped loosely against her face. She gasped, drawing breath when she could, as the doughy expanse of his belly pressed up and down on her, forehead to collarbone. He was older; of course he’d have a paunch. She saw the purpose of the cunning pleats in his Italian trousers. She saw how he worked it from the podium: the trousers outlining the slender legs, the blackness of the tailcoat drawing the eye up to the wide shoulders, the tails drawing the eye down and away from the vacant white shirtfront over the frog belly. To make room to breathe, she reached to raise his belly, but he batted her hands away. He lifted her chin, adjusting her to him. The lights on the Sound jerked in her sight as he bounced. One eye was blocked by his belly. With her other eye, she peered into the room and, between bounces, noted where her blouse lay on the floor by her sandals and her skirt, flung over the chair where a half hour ago she’d sat, yakking away.
She couldn’t think of that now; she might, like a little girl, give way to tears—like Meggy, she thought, and then realized she’d never seen Meggy cry. Her heart contracted. Why did Meggy never cry? One of her eyes had started to leak, but Rose wasn’t crying, oh no, she was not a little girl but a grown woman in bed with a man.
Why wasn’t he getting hard? Maybe it was the brandy. He’d refilled his glass more than once that evening. Or maybe he didn’t really want her either and would see that and quit. Maybe she’d be excused; maybe she could still face his wife in the morning.
He moved down again and spread her knees wide, grinding heavily on her. She rocked her hips a little, in time with his thrashing. If he didn’t get hard, he might blame her. If he didn’t get hard, they’d never get this over with, whatever it was going to be.
People would say she’d gotten to where she was—Composer in Residence, Seattle Sinfonietta—on her back. There was talk already, she realized. She heard again the wry remarks, saw the raised eyebrows, the winks in her direction. She saw now that people assumed she’d been sleeping with Stephen Orrick all along. Which might as well be true, if she were willing to pay this price to see her commission through to performance.
His words and his tone had seemed practiced, getting her undressed and under him. It was apparently what he did: took women to bed. She grasped that now. Of course, he was far from the only conductor to make his way across women’s bodies, though he would gain nothing professionally by sleeping with Rose. It was likely just a reflex.
Wealthy volunteers, almost all of them female, who raised and maintained concert halls, who kept the books, paid salaries, funded commissions, and who saw to it that the seats were filled, did not do all that for nothing. The savvy conductor “played” the volunteers as a sort of second orchestra, and what better way to string them along, the bevy of them, than to offer at least the possibility of going to bed with him? Stephen had no paid staff, other than a stage manager and a secretary. Even the bookkeeper was a volunteer. Such women did not turn over their time— what might otherwise be full-time paid work—for the purely altruistic love of music. They did it at least partly for the life around the music: the gossip, the flirtations with artists, the intrigues.
Stephen gave a sigh and rolled off of her. “Well.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice swift and quiet and not her own. “Really.”
“I’ll be better at it in the morning.”
In the morning? “Sure,” she said.
“Or shall we see what we can do for you now?” For the first time, he reached his fingers between her legs. She caught his hand quickly and raised it to her lips—she wouldn’t have him find her dry, frightened cunt. Rarely had she thought of herself as that—hole to be plugged, cunt. And she wasn’t even that; she had no desire. She turned on her side away from him. He ran his hands over her, touching her breasts and stroking her ass. Fear held her there beside him, fear of the harm he could do her.
“Ah, Rose. I knew you were hot. I knew you were a hot one,” he said.
Why? Cold to her bones, she nearly asked him why. She couldn’t see a clock. It was probably too late to catch the redeye flight from Seattle to St. Paul, and the train would not depart until the evening, but she could go and camp out at the station. She’d pack and head out. If she could only move.
“Well,” she said, “I’m off to bed now,” and with great effort sat up.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back to him. “Nuhuh. You’re sleepin’ wif me.” Baby talk? He thought he’d hold her with baby talk?
“Look,” she told him, “I can’t be here when the house wakes up.”
“Leslie’s driving the girls over to church. They’ve got a thingie at Sunday school. We won’t see ’em till lunchtime.” He snuggled closer.
“Leslie,” she echoed and waited for shame. Instead, what came was hatred. She hated all husbands and wives. Alan, she thought, would admire the arrangement—the guestroom so convenient to Stephen, the wife asleep out of earshot, off in another wing. Of course, Alan and Frances were a different matter: the tricks, schemes, and maneuvers seemed mutual. Stephen’s Leslie had done nothing to coerce Stephen to marry her, as far as Rose knew. Theirs was a storybook courtship as they both told it.
“Do you like doing it in the morning?” he asked, his voice husky and sly.
Or maybe Leslie did know. She had, after all, lit candles for Rose and Stephen, turned off the lights, and absented herself. Maybe she knew all about his affairs; maybe she even arranged them, luring in female house guests to distract him so she wouldn’t have to suffer his wretched love-making. How could Leslie stay married to such a man? Rose realized with dread that he was the sort she herself had sometimes imagined marrying, a prominent, accomplished man. This one had nothing to offer her, not even marriage, but even so, he had seized her and flung her down; he had taken her. Apparently she was easy to take.
His arms were tight around her. His palm, as he brushed over her breasts, caused her nipples witlessly to tighten.
This is sex, she told herself bitterly, what you long for, what you’ve been missing.
A whistling blew through her hair. He was snoring: an accordion with a toneless, gasping inhale and then a labored, whistling exhale. She let it fill her ears. She was going to travel on that whistle; she was going to get up and out of there. He shuddered, and his breathing seemed to stop. She waited as if at a deathbed. At length he sucked in again.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she muttered, wresting herself free and swinging her legs out of the bed. He half-roused, reached for her, and grabbed air.
She quickly gathered skirt, blouse, sandals, and wristwatch. She couldn’t find her underpants, but he’d be handy, no doubt, at disposal of underpants.
In the guest room, she dressed, pulled on her jacket, thrust her feet into her running shoes, and threw her bag over her shoulder. She could already feel on her skin the damp predawn air of Seattle. She hardly cared if she got lost; she had hours to find the train station—if only she weren’t exhausted and dizzy. She told herself she would sleep soon. She’d nap next to some nice woman at the station, someone she could ask to guard her while she slept. She lurched back across the hall for her toothbrush, then sat on the bed to gather herself, and shouldn’t have. It was irresistible not to tip over, to lie on her side a moment and close her eyes. Then he was standing in the doorway.
“So you’re just going to cut and run?”
“Stephen,” she said thickly. “Listen.” She sat up and shook her head to clear it. She’d fallen asleep. “Look, Stephen, you’re my conductor. The most talented conductor I know, certainly the most important—”
“What is this—an awards ceremony?”
“—the most important conductor I’ve ever been privileged to know.”
“Past tense?”
“I really hope not. Please, I’m asking you to realize my position.”
“Oh, I want to. All your positions. I’m better at it in the morning, I told you.”
“That’s really, I mean really, beside the point.”
“Well, what is the point, Rose?”
In the doorway, he straightened and widened his shoulders. The room was filling with a dim, achy light that for a moment cast in grandeur the wedge of his torso. His eyes seemed carved, yet alive, blinking at her.
“You need love,” he continued. “Are you too worried about your friends and your family, are you too worried about your career to let yourself fall in love?”
In love? She gave a startled laugh.
“Or are you just afraid?”
She stood up. In his mouth, the doleful litany of her worries seemed a lie, so clearly was he self-serving. Really, he did her a favor. Parroting her fears and her sorrows back to her for his own transparent purpose, he showed himself to be her enemy, and a stupid one. He stood blocking the door. If she was afraid, she was not going to show it.
“Are we in love?” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“But we are. Or could be in a second. Have you any idea how lonely you are?”
“You’re a married man,” she said. “And your wife, Leslie, is my friend.”
“Leslie is not your friend. You are acquainted with her through me. To stay in this house, you would have to know Leslie.”
What an asshole he was. Why had she never seen it? She’d exposed her sorrows to him, but he apparently had none, nothing but the snoring, nothing but the limp dick, whatever that meant—hell if she knew. She didn’t know him or Leslie either. But she wouldn’t let him go unopposed.
“I’ll be the one to say who is and is not my friend,” she told him.
“I thought I was the friend. The best friend?”
“It seems I was mistaken.”
“Really?” he said, frigid and remote. “Then I’ll get out of your way.”
Yet he stood there. She waited.
“An ironclad celibate after all,” he said, stepping backward into the hall.
“You wouldn’t know,” she allowed herself to say.
“Oh, you can’t hide it. It shows. It shows in the music.”
Her ears rang as though she’d been struck.
“I’m going.” She’d get on an early train and get a connection back to St. Paul. She’d go to Omaha first if she had to. She’d go to Winnipeg.
“Christ. Aren’t you tired?” His voice sounded normal again, almost warm. “Go to bed, Rose. I’ll take you to the station in the morning.”
But it was morning. A distant rustling came from the kitchen.
“God, she’s up early,” he said. She, the woman of the house, his woman, his house, his everything. His eyes passed over Rose and did not linger.
Leslie approached up the hall with steaming mugs on a tray. Rose couldn’t look at her, but Leslie didn’t seem to notice.
“Everybody’s up early,” she said pertly. “The girls are already dressed.” She set the tray down on the guestroom bed.
Could she tell that it had not been slept in? Was there anything to remark in Rose being dressed while Stephen stood there in his bathrobe?
The breakfast room was spangled with sunlight. The little girls pranced in, all frilly dresses and shiny shoes. Rose looked past Leslie to Stephen and noted again the high Tchaikovsky forehead and prickly beard as though viewing a portrait. She couldn’t fathom that she’d kissed him, yet a patch below her lip burned from his mustache. The girls chatted over their fresh-squeezed orange juice and croissants. She thought of Meggy and how she’d envied Starr and Alexis for Meggy’s sake, how she’d imagined Meggy in this house, safe, prosperous, and lucky. She didn’t know if she should fear for Alexis and Starr, but she no longer envied them. At least Natalie’s troubles were out in the open.
She took the earliest excuse to leave the table. Stephen got his coat and met her in the foyer, handing her her underpants, tidily folded, if dirty, and her manuscript, stacked neatly in a new file folder labeled R. MacGregor. She’d meant to leave it with him; she had her own copy. But she packed it without a word.
On the way to the station, he began speaking, mildly, a trifle absently.
“Many a symphony has been played too soon, of course. You need time. Lots of time. Brahms, as we know, took twenty years writing his first. Worth the wait, of course. So, let’s postpone, shall we? A year at least.”For the Susan B. Anthony Birthday event, he could substitute the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein. Rose’s commission would, of course, be paid in full.
As quickly as he dropped her at the station, he’d dropped her from his season.
She hadn’t thought this could happen, and she had no alternative plan. She’d finish the symphony, of course, but who could say when she’d next find an orchestra to perform it? Her tenure portfolio was due at the end of summer, barely two months away. Once she deleted Seattle from her list of upcoming premieres, what would be left? Commissions and residencies couldn’t be invented; new opportunities couldn’t be hurried.
Gripping the arms of her seat aboard the train, she held herself up as firmly as she could. Even so, she felt herself falling as the train sped homeward. She rested her head on her bag between her knees, her purse buried inside it and, for good measure, her wallet tucked in her armpit, up inside her sleeve. Any money she had seemed about to run out. She rested her eyes and for brief minutes slept. The return trip took her through a day and a night and into another day.
And then she was home again in her condo, in her own big chair. And still falling. Her life had to be more than her career and surely could not be ruined by a single blunder. She needed food and a bath and sleep, but she couldn’t move. The evening breeze rustled at her window, springtime pushing onward, ardent and naïve.
As though from another world, the sound came of Frances pounding on the door and calling out to her. “Rose, are you there? Are you all right?”
What day was it? Had Rose missed something crucial? “It’s open,” she called.
Frances came in with Jewels in her arms. Placed momentarily in Rose’s lap, the cat jumped down, refusing to know her.
“What day is it?” she asked Frances and staggered over to her calendar.
“Tuesday, last day of May. Graduation was this morning,” said Frances.
Rose had missed graduation—a mistake while under scrutiny for tenure, though she hadn’t had any special duties, no speeches or presentations. Maybe nobody had noticed her absence. She double-checked Meggy’s court date. It was not for another ten days.
“Dear, oh, dear,” said Frances. “What are you doing to yourself? Old boyfriends in the middle of the night? Unplanned jaunts to Seattle?”
Boyfriends in the night?
“Oh,” Rose groaned and looked away, remembering the lie she’d told Frances to cover for Alan and James. Frances was brighteyed and lively, her coloring up, her very short hair not desperate, but endearing. Rose could tell Frances about Stephen. She’d been through a wringer or two of her own; Frances would understand humiliation.
“Well?” prompted Frances. “The boyfriend in the night and then Seattle? There’s a connection?”
Rose decided there had better be. She put Stephen in her apartment in place of Alan and James. Then she put herself running after him to Seattle.
“Of course. Your conductor.”
“You’re not going to like this, Frances. He’s married.”
“Oh. No, I don’t like it.”
“But you know how it could happen,” said Rose. Frances had, after all, carried on histrionically over the married department Chair.
“All right,” said Frances. “It does happen. Is he nice to you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then dump him,” said Frances.
“Okay,” said Rose. That was easy.
Frances, full of kindly concern, studied her. “You want to find some-body all of your own,” she said earnestly. “Someone in the free-and-clear. Really,” she said, “you would not believe the contentment.” She seemed to glow. “Things get humdrum, of course. It can seem like a whole lot of nothing for a great long while, and then. . . .” She paused in mock suspense.
“And then?” Rose asked dutifully.
“And then your husband is making love to you again. Sometimes, once you’re married, you hardly make love at all. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Rose, dully piling on another lie. Why Alan was making love to Frances, she couldn’t imagine.