The Party
Zach saw Becca through the window as he was walking up the drive to Professor Reichart’s house in winter early dark. She was already at the party—a casual dinner buffet for their German drama class hosted by their teacher at his home a short distance from campus—and, being Becca, already engaged in friendly conversation with some of their classmates. Zach winced at the sight, stopped in the middle of the drive, and considered turning to leave. Herr Reichart, whom Zach considered a friend as well as teacher, would be disappointed by his absence; but Zach could fabricate some believable excuse and offer a conciliatory gesture in return—he had an early twentieth-century copy of Rilke’s Advent that he’d already decided to give to Herr Reichart at the end of term; he could move that gesture forward by two months. Such maneuvering, while awkward, would surely be preferable to spending a long evening watching Becca work her magic on others while being excluded from those charms himself. The sight of her in this social setting vividly recalled the pain, never far from the surface, that he endured in honoring her request for a pause, some time off from their active involvement to “find herself” and reestablish her identity independent of Zach. This pause, reluctantly agreed to by Zach (what else was he to do?), had not gotten any easier in the three weeks since it had been implemented. And this party would be their first social engagement together since stepping back from the searing fire of their relationship.
But there in Herr Reichart’s dark drive, Zach took a deep breath and decided that he was strong enough and mature enough to handle the challenges inherent in this occasion. He was not aware of, or at least did not consciously acknowledge, a more perverse motivation for continuing up the hill to the party—he craved being in her presence, even if at some physical and emotional remove, even at the price of significant pain.
As it turned out, there was no pain for Zach to endure, and virtually no awkwardness. After a stiff nod in Becca’s direction (and her smiling response) on entering the spacious and airy living room with its cathedral ceilings, Zach got caught up in the party kept lively and stimulating by their scraggly bearded, rotund, boisterous, and ribald host. Herr Reichart was a refreshingly irreverent and unorthodox teacher in class, and he raised these characteristics to a gloriously higher level in the familiar environs of his home and fueled by the large doses of top-quality cabernet he downed while holding court. He managed to tread the fine line between overwhelming (and ultimately boring) his rapt student audience and lingering too long to let them catch up (thus letting the conversation lag). He tread this fine line by engaging all the students at the party in some aspect of the conversation, not letting anyone opt out; to this end, he leaned especially heavily on Zach to provide a foil to his flamboyance, a straight man for his theatrics. Zach happily complied, glad for the distraction and this chance to shine in Becca’s witness.
So the evening passed quickly and pleasantly in a mix of good food—some well-prepared German delicacies including Wiener schnitzel and Linzertorte alongside other international specialties including hummus, tabboulleh, and pepperoni pizza—a little wine, and stimulating conversation. Before Zach knew it (and well before he would’ve chosen), the other students began retrieving their coats from the guestroom bed and heading for the door, most of them no doubt pointed toward other parties (and less encumbered alcohol consumption) on this mid-semester Saturday night, still so young and teeming with possibility. For his part, Zach had no idea where he might go next. His only known prospect—his dark and lonely apartment—had little to recommend it. The mid-term paper and poems in progress he was working on would be ascetic fare after this sumptuous party. But what other options did he have?
So as he emerged from the bedroom with his coat, the last to leave, he was surprised to see Becca lingering in the hallway leading to the entry foyer—surprised to see her still here and even more surprised to realize he’d totally forgotten about her in the joviality of the evening. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of this mix of feelings his face betrayed on looking up and seeing her there. But then this was Becca—two short strides ahead and looking up at him with a tilted head and a cautious smile. That was all it took to melt away his surprise, his ambivalence, his cool reserve. This was Becca after all, after all.
They didn’t speak but walked down the hallway, she in front. Herr Reichart stood in the tile foyer, having just closed the door on the prior departees. On seeing Zach and Becca, he launched a huge smile accompanied by a shout of glee in their direction. He raised his arms, a little wine sloshing out of the glass in his right hand, and exclaimed, “The Golden Couple!”
Becca blushed but had the instinctive grace to nod thanks for the sincere compliment.
Zach said, “Just two grateful guests, Herr Reichart.”
Reichart lowered his arms and frowned above his scraggly beard. “Trouble in paradise?”
“No trouble,” Zach said. “And no paradise either—not here on earth, or anywhere else for that matter. Haven’t you read your German philosophers?”
Reichart scoffed loudly. “A gloomy lot! You’ve got to look past their siren call of existential angst.”
Zach roared in laughter at the sheer audacity of this sweeping claim. For a brief moment he considered dropping his coat on the foyer table, asking Herr Reichart to uncork another bottle of wine, and sitting down at the still well-provisioned dining room table to engage this German Rasputin in a long night of one-on-one repartee. But then he remembered Becca, caught a whiff of her hair in the close confines of the foyer. He turned to Reichart. “There may be no paradise, but this evening came as close as one might expect to get. Thank you very much for inviting us.” Zach surprised himself with the sincerity of his gratitude.
Reichart took a half step back, put his arms behind him, stiffened his shoulders, and made a deep formal bow from his waist. “Herr Sandstrom, Frau Coles—you are most graciously welcome.”
Zach and Becca both nodded, though not nearly so deeply or formally, then awkwardly shook his fleshy hand as they walked past and out the door.
They were halfway down the drive and beyond the reach of the house’s floodlights before either spoke. “He’s something,” Becca said finally.
“Quite a character.”
“Where’s he get his passion?”
“Teaching is his whole life,” Zach said.
They’d reached the narrow and quiet residential street. Becca’s car was on the far side, directly across from the drive. Zach’s truck was about fifty yards away to the right. Becca paused in the drive. Zach wondered if she were waiting for him to turn toward his truck. “I can at least see you safely to your car, can’t I?” he asked.
Becca laughed. “It’s allowed.”
Zach led the way across the deserted road, then stood to one side next to the driver’s door and waited.
Becca followed and came alongside the car but didn’t extend her hand to the door’s handle. She turned and faced Zach in the faint glow from the streetlight farther down the hill. “Where are you headed?”
Zach tried to ignore the possible double meaning of her question, a double meaning that he knew originated in his head, not her question. “Home, I guess—no other plans. You?”
Becca looked at the ground, nudged something—a twig? a leaf?—with the toe of her clog. Then she looked at him. “Zach, I’ve missed you.”
Zach didn’t know what to say. All of his recent vulnerability and pain flowed in to fill the silence.
Becca took a small step toward him but left a few inches between her and any part of his body. “I’ve really missed you.”
Zach shivered the length of his body. Becca must’ve seen but gave no sign.
“So can I come by your apartment for a little while?” she asked.
Zach nodded. “Follow me there,” he said, then turned to walk to his truck, fumbling for his keys in the darkness.
He pulled his truck into one of the empty spaces alongside his building and Becca parked her car in the next space over. They w
alked side by side not touching down the path and up the stairs and along the second-floor breezeway to the door of his apartment. Zach put the key in the lock and turned the knob and the door swung open. Just as quickly, his hand reached out and slid under her open field coat and around her waist and pulled her against his body. She wrapped both arms around his waist and hugged him with all her strength. His lips found the crown of her head, cascaded down over her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, cheeks, ear, found her open mouth. They kissed with panting desperation, trying to find in lips, tongues, teeth and breaths some release, any release, to weeks of stored longing. Becca’s hands slid under Zach’s bomber jacket, yanked his shirt out of his pants waist, pressed her fingers against the bare skin of his back, dug her fingers and nails into his skin, ground and pressed and grabbed his skin. Zach slid her sweater up, then her blouse, slid his hands under her belt and beneath the waist of her jeans and under the band of her panties. Becca arched her back and his hands slid down over the small of her back and then around the sides and over her hips and then to the warm creases of skin leading downward. Zach pulled his hands from the waistline of her jeans, grabbed her around the waist, and lifted her off the breezeway’s concrete. She wrapped her legs around his waist and linked her feet at the ankles behind him. They panted hard into each other’s mouths. Zach turned and carried her into the apartment and kicked the door shut behind them. He knelt on the carpeted floor of his living room, his arms still around her, her legs still around him. He gently, carefully leaned her back onto the carpet, bringing her to rest on the floor, his elbows on either side of her waist bearing his weight. Only then did their lips part, their common breaths slow, their eyes open for the first time since Zach had opened the door.
And in the diffuse light leaking through and around the shabby curtains drawn across the room’s lone window, Zach saw in the beautiful young woman wide-eyed and smiling and fully clothed beneath him what he’d known so well before their separation and never for one minute forgot in the weeks of pain and confusion—there would never be, could never be, anyone more perfect for him. What’s more, looking up at him, in this moment and for the first time, Becca felt exactly the same way about him.
So, over the next two hours, and contrasted with their frenzied lust-filled entry into the apartment, they joined in a slow, methodical, and exquisitely gentle and tender and solicitous uniting, every touch all the more impassioned for its attention to pleasing the other, every act and word and gesture fueled by the single goal of fusing their bodies into a physical manifestation of the perfection each saw in the other, the perfection they saw in their love. In the slow disrobing of each by the other, in the wandering and lingering kisses and licks that each offered the other’s body, in the cooing and the avowals and the giggles and the moans and the laughter, in the eventual and inevitable and inexorable merging of one flesh into the other and in the deliciously slow but determined climb to a final dissolution and the breathless graceful glide back to earth—in this instinctive sequence of myriad actions and intentions that was finally a single action and intention, in all these seconds and minutes and hours of gifts given, gifts received that was but one prolonged instant’s gift, both given and received, they found the physical embodiment of their love, their most ancient longing, now granted never to be taken away.
Becca shivered despite Zach’s warmth. He reached behind him and pulled the afghan off the couch and draped it across her shoulders and waist and hips.
“Thanks,” she said, and lay there for a while catching her breath, slowly regaining her senses.
Zach glanced around the room. From this vantage point and in this light, it all looked very unfamiliar—like a stranger’s house or a motel room.
Becca followed his gaze then kissed him on the cheek. “The company’s perfect, but I can’t say much for the setting.”
Zach laughed and rapped on the plywood beneath the shag carpet laid without a pad. “Kind of a hard mattress.”
Becca giggled. “Carpet burns?”
Zach nodded. “A few. And you?”
She laughed. “In places I wouldn’t have thought possible.”
Zach said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, silly. I caused more than you did.”
“Sporting injury.”
“Worth the price.”
“Every bit.”
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Starving.”
“Me too. Let’s go out and get something to eat.”
They jumped up and put their clothes back on without switching on the light. Zach spent a minute trying to find his keys, then opened the door to discover them still hanging from the knob’s lock. He sighed in mild wonder, as if finding some trinket from a bygone age. The keys still worked, though, as he proved by locking the door behind Becca. He followed her down the steps and to her car.
She paused and faced him from the driver’s seat before starting the engine. “Have I told you how much I love you?” She well knew she hadn’t, not in so many words.
Zach answered, “Yes, in about a thousand different ways.”
She nodded thanks, then leaned across the console and said in a firm whisper, “Then add this one to the list—I love you, Zachary Taylor Sandstrom.” She kissed him on the lips, holding that contact for several seconds before turning back and starting the car.
Zach’s bottomless well of thanks got stuck in his throat, but he had no doubt she fully understood his permanent gratitude.
The Cellar Sports Bar was surprisingly busy for the late hour (or maybe because of it). A basketball game beamed in from the west coast played on the large-screen T.V.’s mounted on each wall. A cluster of undergraduates played pool at a table in the middle of the room, and another group gathered around a foosball table off to one side. Couples cuddled up in booths and snuggled together at tables. Music blared from the jukebox—the Knack’s “My Sharona.” The whole cave-like space pulsed with noise and sexual energy.
While most of the booths were occupied, Zach and Becca found an empty one off in the corner. They sat on opposite sides of the butcher-block table. They ordered a pitcher of beer and two burger platters from the bubbly and flirtatious waitress, a girl named Diane whom Zach had spent fifteen minutes chatting with at a frat party two weeks earlier, while in the throes of loneliness following Becca’s request for time off. While nothing had come of that particular exchange, the possibility of future contact had remained open for them both. In taking their order, Diane gave no hint of that prior encounter, but suggestively brushed Zach’s shoulder as she reached across the table to retrieve his menu. She turned and walked away.
Zach blushed and shrugged to Becca.
Becca shook her head but her smile never faltered. “An old friend, or a new one.”
Zach shook his head firmly and leaned across the table. “No one but you.”
Becca nodded. “I know.”
Though Zach meant every syllable of his promise, meant them to a near reckless degree, he couldn’t help but acknowledge a renewed sense of doubt and foreboding at their presence in this late-night, libido-driven swap den. He couldn’t say if this foreboding originated from outside their relationship, pressing in; or from inside—a revival of the doubts and fears that had defined the start of the evening—pressing out. So he looked to the only one present offering any hope of guidance or reassurance, choosing to ignore for the moment the equally true parallel fact—that she was also the only one present capable rendering on him real pain and loss. “So how are you doing?” he asked.
“You mean since we last talked?”
He nodded.
“I’m good. I’m doing real well, Zach. I feel like I know who I am again, like I’m back on level ground.”
“That’s great.”
“I also know now that the confusion I felt wasn’t your fault. It was inside me. I didn’t do a very good job of processing everything that was coming at me.”
“From me.”
“
And from lots of other sources—my family, my friends, school, all of it. I got knocked down by the sheer magnitude of it all and had a little trouble standing back up and finding my bearings.”
“But now you have?”
“Now I have.” She held her arms out, palms up. “The new me.”
At just that moment, Diane brought their pitcher of beer and two mugs. She looked Becca up and down then said, “Looks O.K.”
Becca returned her stare and, without missing a beat, said, “Why thank you, dear.”
Diane gave a sly grin, set the pitcher and mugs between them, and left.
Zach poured the two mugs full then raised his. “To the new Becca.”
Becca raised hers. “And the old us.”
They clicked plastic in the smoky air between them.
“So what about you?” Becca asked.
“Except for missing you—”
“I’m here now.”
“—I’ve been fine. Classes are good. Writing is proceeding well enough. I’ll be going with Barton to Rome over spring break.”
“So that worked out?”
“Passport arrived last week; already got my tickets.”
“That’s wonderful, Zach. Are you excited?”
“I guess.”
“That’s great. I’m so jealous. What an opportunity.” She raised her mug again. “To Zach in Rome—for a spectacular trip.”
Zach tapped her mug with his, but with less than full enthusiasm. The trip was only two weeks away. He had been thinking of it as a good chance to distract him from missing Becca. Now he saw it as a cause for missing her more, a prolonged interruption to their newly revived relationship.
Becca saw his frown. “Don’t worry, Zach. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Zach nodded and said, “I’ll be counting on it,” but with less than complete conviction.
Becca smiled mischievously. “That is, unless you return with some pretty ragazza stowed in your suitcase.” (She’d had two years of Italian at UNC.) She reached under the table and gently squeezed his thigh. “You wouldn’t do that to me would you, Darling?” She leaned forward and kissed him, lightly brushing his lower lip with her teeth.
Diane arrived with their food, set it on the table, and said, “Looks like you already have plenty to eat.”
Becca, her hand still on Zach’s thigh, winked at him then turned to her and said, “Never enough.”
Diane left in a huff.
Zach and Becca ate their food in silence, each choosing for their own reasons to put past and future aside and bask in the fresh glow of contentment, surrounded by but delightedly immune to the frenzied sexual gamesmanship playing itself out in the bar.
Later that night—now become early Sunday morning—they added to that contentment, built their defensive wall of bliss still higher, by joining their bodies again, in Zach’s rudimentary bed this time, wrapped in his sheets and blankets, in each other’s arms and legs, finding in their quest this time neither desperate longing nor grace-filled perfection but instead discovered an old open-eyed, open-hearted merging of all each had to offer, food enough to keep their famished souls sated at least till morning, maybe beyond.