“I’m off Monday,” he said as she was getting dressed. “I’ll be here all day, waiting for you. Come when you can. Whenever. Just come, Larissa.”
She buttoned her blouse, slipped on her sandals, smoothed out her hair, got her keys, her purse. Was she forgetting something? “This Monday?” What she wanted to say and couldn’t was, I can’t wait until then to see you again. I’m not going to make it. I cannot wait.
His hands grasped her hips, his mouth was in the swell of her breasts. He cradled her to himself. “Every Monday.”
3
All Else Shall Vanish
On Monday:
Shower 7 minutes
Drying 2 minutes plus air dry
Lotion 2 minutes
Hair 1 towel-dried minute, plus 1 minute for gel
Makeup 5 minutes for mascara
Dressing 5 minutes
Misc. 5 minutes
Total 28 minutes
Larissa was at Albright Circle by nine in the morning. His door opened as soon as her Jag pulled into the drive. He dragged her inside, shut the door, pressed her against it. “Good morning,” he said, tilting his head, kissing her deeply, kissing her neck, staring besotted into her embarrassed eyes. “I bought croissants, bagels. I bought eggs. I didn’t know what you’d like for breakfast.”
Larissa didn’t speak. She didn’t trust her voice. Her eyes were closing at feeling him next to her again. But he was grinning so happily, still keeping her against the door, his hands over her body. “Did you miss me?” he said huskily. “Tell the truth, did you?”
“A little bit,” she croaked.
“Did you think about me?”
“A little bit.”
“What did you think about?” His hands were already under her skirt, between her thighs, on her buttocks.
“Oh, you know, this and that.”
“Well, what was it?” This…
Or that…
Still by the door! Against the door! Her keys falling to the floor, like she was about to fall to the floor.
“Would you like some croissants?” He unbuttoned her blouse, looked for the bra clasp.
“It’s in the front.”
“Ah, convenient.” With one motion it was unhooked, her breasts spilled out, her nipples still raw from Friday, pleading for more. She pressed her fists against the door trying very hard not to moan.
He was panting, excited pupils black against the whites of his eyes, wet mouth on her. “Come with me,” he said, fondling her, tugging on her nipples, making her shudder. “I see you came early today. Not like Friday.” From ear to ear was his smile. “Why did you come so nice and early today, Larissa?”
Kai, come on, don’t drive me crazy.
Why not? He picked her up, carried her to the bed, dropped her on it, fell on top of her. You drive me crazy.
They were instantly naked.
Kai, I want…
I know what you want. His hands were filled with her body. I cannot believe how wet you are. I’m going to go insane. I can’t believe it. But now that I know I can give it to you, I want other things first.
She took him into her hands, moaning, bent down to put him into her mouth.
No, no. I mean, yes, yes. But later.
Now is when I want it.
I know. But now that I know I can give it to you, I want other things first.
He propped pillows underneath her, to arch her hips to him. He kneeled between her parted legs. He looked at her, gazed at her, lifted his gaze to look into her face, he panted, he shook his head in wonder. Larissa didn’t think touching her at this point would be necessary. One hot breath from his mouth, and she would be finished.
Every girl is different. Will you tell me what you like?
Okay.
Will you tell me what you love?
Okay.
What I want, Larissa, he said, lowering his head to her, kissing her gently, touching her gently with his fingers, is to make you come with my mouth. Can you tell me how to do that?
If I remember how, she thought but didn’t say. It had been a long time since she had come that way.
Turned out she remembered how.
And he turned out to be a quick learner. Imagine what you might like me to do to you, she whispered, clutching the sheet, his wild head, his hair. Do it just like that, but much much gentler. No, gentler, Kai…please.
Okay. Okay. Okay. What about my tongue?
Yes, also good. Very good.
What about my fingers?
Yes, also good.
Fingers everywhere?
Oh, God help me…
Is that a yes or a no, Larissa…?
There was no more instruction after that, just current running through Larissa’s third rail body until 2:15 p.m. when he was drenched like he’d run a marathon and she had to run.
The other life melted away, like ice in heat. A frozen block started to drip, and before she knew it, it was a puddle on the ground, and the spring sun beat on. The ground became dry; soon there was no indication that once last winter in that place stood a house, a husband, children, day-to-day things, breakfasts, shopping, friends, theater! which had been the primary driving passion. Not even a damp stain remained where the old evaporated life had been.
And yet, there was Larissa. And she still had to get up, and get her children up and out, get their backpacks, first to school, and then their towels and bathing suits for their swim lessons; she had to make their lunches and wash their wet things, she still had to pick up Michelangelo from school. Every day. The balcony for the Much Ado production was built three inches too small for six-foot Trevor, who played Benedick and who kept hitting the upper beam with his forehead every time he stepped forward to sing, The god of love that sits above, and knows me… The balcony had to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch; just another delay and headache for Larissa. There was still Maggie. Larissa still had to drive Emily to her friends’ houses and to her music lessons, and she still had to go shopping, and think about dinner, and she had to come home and put the food away, and chop onions and marinate meat, and fix drinks, and help Asher with his Spanish words and Michelangelo with his addition. She had to unload the dishwasher, and clean Riot’s paws and put gas in the Escalade and the Jaguar. She still had to smile for Jared when he came home, and sit at his table and listen to him talk about the impossible goals of lowering operating costs without laying people off while magically increasing revenue; she had to monitor the kids and clean up. She still had to undress and lie down next to Jared, and on the weekends she had to lie down under him. On Saturdays, after running to Pingry to rehearse for three hours and paint the trap door for Hell and Ghosts in just the right shade of Sherwin-Williams cast-iron gray, she still had to spend the day with her family, and soon they would go to Lillypond up in Pennsylvania, hours away, and she simply didn’t know how that would be possible. She walked, sleepwalked through her life with a vacuous but ever-present smile, and the fact that no one noticed told her that the vacuous, ever-present smile was not too far off from her previous smile, for it must have been the same face that the external Larissa had carried in the world for many years because now that her internal geography had altered utterly, no one had even noticed.
Except for this. She moved faster. She sped down halls and staircases. She speed-dialed numbers, tapped her impatient pens and fingers, unloaded groceries at warp drive. Dinner was served and cleared before Jared had a chance to take off his tie. Kids were in bed on the dot of nine-thirty and out the door before eight. She took five-minute showers, she learned how to—she had to. No more anointing her head with two hours of lubricant. Her anointing was waiting for her at Albright Circle. She ran from the parking lot to the school and through the halls, and once Ezra caught her and yelled into her back, “Hey, no running in the halls! You wanna get written up?” And to Jared a few days later said, your wife was skipping through my school today. What do you make of that? Positively skipping.
“Skipping?”
said Jared, like he’d never heard the word before. “You mean like with joy?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m just saying. It was odd.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I told her to cut it out.”
“Well played. And she?”
She, who was sitting right there at her own table, pouring Margaritas to everyone but herself (for she had reduced her social drinking—wanted to stay in control), said, “I haven’t been written up since high school.”
“Exactly. Bet you haven’t skipped since high school either.”
“What’s with the skipping?” asked Maggie.
“Your husband is as always employing considerable literary license to state the plain truth. I was late to rehearsal, and was hurrying. But,” Larissa added, “I am glad winter’s over. It’s good to be warm.”
She wore her spring dresses, her denim skirts, her silken blouses, and then she lay down in the white bed with him while the gauzy curtains blew spring all over the room, wet and warm April, dry and singing May.
And Kai, in between the brief moments of waiting for ardor to return to his body, serenaded her with the ardor in his soul, by sitting next to her in bed and strumming the strings of his ukulele, singing to her a song she barely knew, hardly ever heard, yet he sang it like he wrote it and he wrote it for her.
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee…
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody…
They lay on their backs, counting their fingers and toes, counting their minutes and their blessings. He kissed her between the shoulder blades and whispered murmurs of lust into her back, and she tried to listen, but the uncooperating body was keening, arching to find him, searching for him.
“Okay, tell me the first time you wanted to sleep with me,” she said, turning over to lie on his chest, threading her fingers through his. Tick tock, the clock by his bedside went. Tick tock, tick tock.
“Hmm, lessee…” He pretended to think, looked at the ceiling. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was…that time in the supermarket parking lot.”
She shook him, tickled him. “Come on. Be serious.”
“What? It was.”
“Kai, I don’t have all day.”
“No kidding. Okay. The first time, well, I guess if you’re forcing me to tell you…it’d be that first day I saw you.”
“What?”
“Of course.”
“That can’t be true.”
“Why? Of course it is. Don’t you know anything about men and women?” He tried to sound wise. “Sheesh. All guys, not just me, but all guys, and when I say all guys, I mean all guys as in every guy you’ve ever met, know within the first five minutes of meeting you if they want to sleep with you. To give you credit where credit is due, I probably knew with you after the first ten seconds.”
“Come on!”
“It’s true. But usually? Five minutes, tops. We don’t need to figure it out. We have it all figured out. We don’t need to look deep inside ourselves and say, she’s a good friend, but do I like her in that way? We know immediately. Either we want to see you naked or we don’t.”
“Oh, so romantic.”
“Romantic? You’re the one who asked that prosaic question. When did you want to sleep with me?” He mock-huffed. “And I’m not a romantic.”
“All right, all right.”
“So…when did you first know you wanted to sleep with me?”
“I’m still deciding, lover-boy.”
“Ahh. Of course you are. Well, you are a woman.” His mouth bent deep into her breasts, to her swollen nipples. He cupped her, fondled her. “Is there anything I can do to help you make your decision quicker? Because I don’t know if I can wait much longer.”
She moaned.
“You know what I got? A flame Ducati, baby,” he said, opening her softened body with his kisses, on his arms over her. “It can go one forty an hour, and it does, and it won’t stop till it runs out of gas after it does things to you six of which I’m certain are illegal in the state of New Jersey. Decision: Yes?”
“God, oh yes. Please, oh yes.”
4
Jared and Larissa’s Dry Week
I‘m not singing to an imaginary girl, Kai sang to her. But I am, Larissa whispered. I am imaginary. When I’m here, it is as I would like to be, wish I could be, wish I had been. But not as I am.
That’s not true. This is how you are.
No. No, this is how you are. I’m only this because of you.
But, Larissa, my delight is not imaginary. Remember acting out a motorcycle on stage, the pale rendition of what it is really like to be on a Ducati? Same here. My joy is real. And my joy is you.
I’ve never known anyone like you. No one who loves like you, who comes like you. No one who touches me like you. No one who wants to be touched by me like you. I simply don’t understand how you exist. Is this what all women are like at forty?
No. Only me. Is this what all young men are like at twenty?
Yup, pretty much.
It’s not that she didn’t believe him. It’s that to say those words, pressed against full soft breasts, a bare stomach, with white legs wrapped around you, with adoring eyes on you, with a mouth that’s crying, chest against a heart that’s weeping with ecstasy, all could be said at those moments. And all was.
It was a breath in her day. The other twenty-three hours Larissa spent doing nothing but ensuring that she could continue to take that one breath with which her lungs were filled, her soul was filled.
She made sure not only that she was punctual, but that she was a couple of minutes early everywhere. When Michelangelo was doing his homework at the island, she returned every phone call she missed during the day. She scheduled to be at play rehearsals on Saturdays, on Tuesday lunchtimes and Wednesday afternoons, and made sure she was always present. She drove to Pingry every morning at ten o’clock and helped with the sets, she oversaw construction and painting, she drove to Sherwin-Williams and bought the paints with her own two hands. She repainted the columns herself, she redesigned the discovery space underneath the balcony, and went to a curtain store to choose the curtains. Every dispute over teenage costumes she presided over, and she made sure that before she fled school, she sat down in Ezra’s office with a coffee for him and went over the day and the play.
Preempting Tara’s calls to go walking, Larissa called her herself. She called during times she expressly knew Tara wasn’t going to be there. “Tara, darling, I’ve got to run to the school, but do you want to have a walk now?” she would leave as a message, and then Tara would call back and leave a message on Larissa’s machine. Thanks so much for calling and inviting me for a walk. So sorry I missed your call. I was taking Jenny to playgroup. Maybe tomorrow?
And at home, Larissa became more of a mother. To make it easier on herself, she bought prepackaged brownie mixes, pre-made cookie dough, ready-made biscuits. But every day in the early evening, something sweet emanated from the hot oven, as Larissa poured a lemon marinade over her chicken, and helped Asher with his three-dimensional paintings and talked to Emily about the importance of dressing appropriately for formal occasions like the NJSSMA auditions. Larissa ran the rest of her life like clockwork, so that the one moment of undisturbed chaos would continue to be allotted to her. It was almost as if she were saying, look how good I am. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to, I’m excelling at my life. I’m juggling it all, keeping all the balls in the air, I’m not mixing my whites and colors, and I’m not pouring bleach over dry towels. I’m not forgetting ice cream in my trunk anymore, and I’m not learning words to the wrong play. I’m fresh-smelling and happy, my children are well-tended, their needs taken care of, and Jared is taken care of; I’m not forgetting him. I’m not forgetting my friendships. I remember to listen to my close friends about their problems. And for this, for being so good, I get one littl
e tiny thing for myself. It affects nothing. Except the way I feel about my life. It’s the thing that makes everything else so much more worthwhile. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
There was only one thing Larissa could not do, and the silence of that omission screamed louder than the noise of all her other actions.
Larissa could not write to Che.
“Close your eyes.”
“No, why?”
“No questions, just…close them.” Kai met her outside his place on the gravel, down the steps and at her car before she barely turned off the ignition.
“I don’t want to close them. I’m afraid.”
“Oh, be afraid…” he lowered his voice to corn-husky. “Be very afraid. But close your eyes anyway.”
“No.”
He kissed her. In the driveway, in full view of the world, leaned in and kissed her against the car, smiling, happy, holding her hand. “I’ve got a present for you upstairs.”
She looked up to his windows. “What is it?”
“It’s a surprise. Why so much talking? Close your eyes, and in ten seconds you’ll see.”
“Is it a puppy?”
“No.” He put his hand over her face. Closing her eyes finally, she allowed him to lead her across the courtyard to the steps.
“Is it a boat?”
“A boat? Careful, hold on to the railing here.”
“Is it a…television?”
“You need a television, Larissa?”
“Is it a…pair of shoes?”
“Yes, because that’s me. A shoe shopper.”
“Is it…?”
“Just go on up, two more steps. You’ll see.”
“Will it make me happy?”
“Well, I suppose you’ll let me know in about five seconds. Keep ‘em closed. We’re almost inside. It’s very important you keep them closed. Otherwise you’ll ruin the surprise.”
“Is the present in the surprise, or in the actual present itself?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. In both?” Not trusting her, he put his hand over her face as he led her across the threshold, past the entryway, slowly across his wood floor.