‘It’s not the sex,’ she knew only too well. It wasn’t the details of her minor adultery that she thought about. Like he said, it was the sexual tension that came out of her imagination, images of what could have gone on in ‘ the abbreviated version of ‘The Course’ that still glowed in her loins. In her imagination he had put her in the position of a young, beautiful woman wanting to learn how to please, wanting to learn how to ask for it as well, wanting to learn power over men. Long ago she had learned to use the power of her beauty, learned to indulge in its benefits. And it was true that the erotic tension of possibility was something few men could resist. It’s not what happens; it’s what could happen that counts.
The reunion took Laura back to places she remembered that gave time meaning in her life: the hallways, the classrooms, the smells and the colors that were so alive, so much a part of the unconscious reality of her youth. It was especially true of the parking spot where she and Eugene had sat on the wide door ledge under the open Gull Wing door and talked and kissed and touched each other as they looked out over the starlit bay perpetually steeped in the gin smell of Juniper. It was not what had happened, but what could have happened that came back to her with such mixed feelings. The men you leave mean as much as the men you choose. Memory was a two sided gaff that had hooked hard into her heart; regret on one side, relief on the other, a gaff slashing still water for small, tiny, tender fishes to fry. Eugene had been small fry, a farm boy with an inexplicably exotic car.
She wondered what would have happened if she had spent the last year of high school with George instead of Eugene. But he had given no indication then of the exciting imagination he now obviously possessed. She had remembered Eugene with a soft nostalgia, now she remembered George with serious interest, and still unconscious intent. She remembered he was the first to grow long hair; the first one to talk back to teachers like it was his right to do. He was the first one who didn’t act like she was sexually terrifying. She remembered the cast party. She was amazed at how many of the details she could recall, because she had been very drunk that night. She was amazed to learn, after all of these years, that she had taken George’s virginity.
Having done this much, would there be more? ‘Should there be, do I want there to be even more? More of what? More of what could have happened.’ All those years later, the same questions remained. The thrill of life was in the strike and the battle: one man, one woman; people and things escaped or were landed, it was always a battle, the story of a woman and a fish. “Will he call me?” “Should I call back?” “What is it he wants?” “What is it I want from him?” Questions of youth still applied. The gaff of her memory was something she could feel inside her as she drove the two and half hours home. Wine, sex, starlight and memory ran before her on the dark highway as she pressed harder on the accelerator. Her heart pounded when she crested a hill and saw the blazing, flashing red lights of a police cruiser that had pulled over a speeding car that had been ahead of her. She slowed down and the gaff of memory cut closer reaching ahead in time for her husband Ian and her daughter Amanda.
Her husband, Ian, was pleasantly, maddeningly predictable, so ready to work so hard to please her and to please his daughter. He pleased them constantly without satisfying either one of their needs. She thought of his familiar touch in the dark, his hand always reaching first for her thigh. Marriage was forgetting to remember what once was its fire. Marriage was constraint made flesh.
Her daughter was ears in the darkness, ears she had come to fear she was offending or worse. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let herself go and screamed unconstrained, soft moans rising to shattering gasps. Amanda the climax killer. Sex used to be the one thing she and Ian could count on.
‘Ian, my husband, Amanda my daughter, I can see where they’re sleeping deep in the city.’ And then she remembered what she would find in the morning: suppressed anger and cool civility, the fingernails of unwanted attention raking everyone’s skin. Always her asking… ‘We’re the only ones on this island, are we going agree on some rules?’ ‘Who’s in charge here, her or us?’
‘Why are you always the good guy?’ ‘Why does she always have a problem with me and never you?’ A family was one of those choices in life that demanded more and more attention that resulted in less and less control
The thought of the hard mousse in Amanda’s venal red hair hit Laura like the glare of on-coming headlights that made her tighten her grip on the steering wheel. Sixteen and sexually active; like mother, like daughter. With permission came prevention and her absolute insistence that she see her daughter swallow her contraceptive pill every morning at breakfast. There would be no unwanted pregnancies; like mother like daughter no more. Misty watercolor memories of cold middle class reality.
She pulled her mind away from her life and the image was once again George. Imagining phone sex, imagining what she would want to imagine him doing, imagining that she wanted him to give her ‘The Course’. What was ‘The Course’? What would be its course? Maybe phone sex would be just auditing the course, no grade, no credit. It really wouldn’t count.
“God he was sexy.” she moaned out loud, remembering the curled tongue in the moonlight, she could still feel how it had touched her. The embers of middle-aged desire dropped like a lit cigarette in her lap. She almost felt like she had to reach for it. ‘It’s not about the sex, Right.’
The empty lanes multiplied, express and collector lanes wove themselves among tall thin towers of light. When she made her exit she was amazed that she felt so young and alive. She knew it wouldn’t be many minutes before she would crawl in beside her sleeping husband and wonder if her daughter had come home.
Would he call or wouldn’t he? That was the question. She expected he would. But then again, she had slammed the bolt of his ego pretty hard. He had young, beautiful girls. Would she, would he compare? Then with the big wind slam of a transport passing, a terrible question hit her, what if it was all just an act? What if George was having her on, an actor’s improvisation meant to get him laid? It didn’t matter. She was home, the condo by the lake overlooking an island, and the coloured lights of a perpetual fall.
The underground parking door ratcheted regularly as it opened in front of her.
The whump of the car door closing echoed emptily in the half-light, the only sounds were her sandals walking on cement and her keys jingling in her hands. Her hand pulled open a big steel door and it closed with the big breathless gasp of a sleeping giant. She quickly reached the elevator and rattling cables ran while she stood helplessly waiting for what was to come.
Her door key…… her impeccable home, her door opened and closed with simple hard clicks, like two ticks of a clock.
Amanda was in the big sunken living room sofa wearing only a long cotton nightshirt that said, No Roots. She wore headphones for the CD walk man that lay on her stomach, her legs quivering to the music in her head.
Mother and daughter locked eyes at last and Laura’s heart jumped because of her guilt, because she was worried that what she was feeling, what she had been doing would actually show. Pure role reversal. Laura forced a smile as Amanda stared back at her and talked over the music in her head.
“This is late, even for you.” said Amanda, ignoring her mother’s smile.
“You’re not the only one that can pull in past four.” she replied.
For a mother and a teenage daughter, life was always a weigh-in where both tried to gain some psychic advantage for the brawl that was scheduled to come only too soon.
“I’ve been home three hours.” Amanda replied. “So where have you been?”
Laura didn’t want to talk. “I saw a bunch of old people at my high school reunion. Now I just want to go to bed.” she said flatly and went down the hall to her en-suite bathroom.
The feel of cold water that had made her face bare clung in her hands as she walked into the bedroom where Ian slept.
>
Sleeping so still, he seemed to be hardly breathing at all as she looked as him there, a soft middle-aged man with a sharp widow’s peak. It’s not what happened. It’s what could have happened. Ian. He didn’t move as she slid in beside him where she tried to sleep with her new secrets, her memories and the embers of desire that had fallen into her lap. Imagination wasn’t funny. But it certainly was interesting.
Morning was always late on Sunday. Amanda slept late after Saturday parties. Laura always caught up on sleep that she usually needed from the middle of the week. Ian was the only one alive.
He jogged early, showered, made great coffee and sprawled with a big stack of newspapers. Finally, near eleven Laura came out of the kitchen cuddling a coffee, wearing a big terry cloth bathrobe and looking like she needed more sleep. That was the way she usually looked on Sunday. Ian looked up at Laura and saw by her face that he should keep his distance and keep small talk to a minimum. Warning! Don’t expect me to react or to respond with anything but need to know. He knew he should at least ask about the reunion in a general way, not to press, not to expect details quite yet.
“So was the reunion good for you?” he asked.
The unintended double meaning slipped down Laura’s throat like a piece of ice that had appeared unexpectedly in her coffee.
“It was kind of good. Middle-aged and old isn’t pretty.”
“You were the exception that proved the rule.” Ian replied cheerfully.
Laura didn’t reply to the compliment and she didn’t know why she did it, but after a slow sip of coffee, she told Ian about Eugene and his dying and his many adopted children and his fierce capitalist wife and that they were all worth millions and that Eugene still had the beautiful Mercedes Gull Wing Coupe.
“A Gull Wing Coupe, my God!”
Laura was shocked that the only thing he reacted to in her long movie of the week trailer was the car.
Amanda came in carrying a coffee. She was dressed in the same long nightshirt and barely looked at her parents as she slid into a big leather armchair, picked up a remote and selected some music to play. Mercifully for her parents, neither the song nor the volume was unendurable. Ian looked between his dour faced ladies and wondered how long before the first finger nails began sliding over slate.
“So did you see any old boyfriend’s at this high school reunion?” Amanda asked her mother, adding that she couldn’t imagine her mother ever being young. The single fingernail didn’t faze Laura.
“The only old boyfriend I remember is dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Laura replied.
“Bummer. What did you say to him?” Was he like in a chair like Stephen Hawking?”
“No, I just heard it from one of his friends. He wasn’t there.”
“Well, that was a break.” Amanda seemed seriously relieved for her mother. The idea that Eugene would be there in a chair had never occurred to her. She doubled her daughter’s relief.
“So I wanted to talk to you two about what we eat and don’t eat around here.” Amanda began, “Seeing as we eat out and order in so much, I want to pass on dinner from now on. I want to get my own food from now on, if it’s O.K.?”
“You’ve never even scrambled an egg, how do you plan to do this?” Laura replied.
“I plan to eat salads and eat stuff that doesn’t come in a Styrofoam box.” she shot back.
Laura decided she wasn’t going to go for the bait. “Suit yourself; you could probably afford to lose a little weight.” She rolled her eyes when she saw her daughter had taken her seriously. “You must be pushing a size four at least.”
Ian cut in quickly before the flash powder hit the stored munitions. “You have to promise me that you’ll take your vitamin supplements and you’ll make an effort to eat regularly.”
“Do I have to sign a contract, or what? So, I can do it?”
“So when don’t you do whatever you want?” her mother asked wistfully.
“Like most of the time.” Amanda shot back.
“It only feels like that because we worry about you.” said Ian, “You wouldn’t want us not to worry about you? That would mean we didn’t care what happened in your life.”
“You can worry all you want; I just don’t want you living my life.”
“Honey, we just don’t have the time.” added Laura
“Right.” And they all were uncomfortable with the fact that what Laura had said was too true.
That Sunday afternoon was typical for the McCalls. Ian went to boomer basketball at the YMCA, Amanda cocooned in her room with her phone and her stereo and her computer chat room. That Sunday Laura called her friend and sometimes analyst, Ann Marie, to confirm their bimonthly walk in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.
She had met Ann Marie George more than sixteen years before, when they were both in prenatal classes. Ann Marie had been ten years older than Laura, having her first baby at forty- four.
Time had accelerated more for Ann Marie than Laura. Having a sixteen your old was a lot harder at sixty than fifty. Her professional role as a psychologist was often reversed with Laura as she had raised a child that had been far more difficult than Amanda, at least until the last year. A native woman, a single mother, a doctor of psychology, a wild, funny lady, she had bonded with the golden white woman Laura as they had huffed and puffed in simulated labor all those many years before. They were both sure then that they would be lousy mothers. Until the last year only Ann Marie was sure it was true.
Once every two months, unless there was an emotional crisis, they met to complain and commiserate about motherhood, men and work. Ann Marie called the two of them, The Power Sisters. The imaginary badges that they awarded one another were worn secretly on their sleeves, only they could see them; only they appreciated what it took to earn them. The gross male personal habit endurance badge was awarded with great regularity. The perfect crushing one-liner badge was also quite common. Far less common was the drop dead gorgeous badge that was awarded only for formal occasions where the competition really mattered. But the most common award was the incomparable suffering motherhood badge. Ann Marie had demanded her due almost every time the two of them met since her daughter Megan was four.
Ann Marie had called their walks Cemetery therapy, the only place a body could feel truly alive. Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto was famous for its famous dead folk. It was also big and quiet and lovely in the rain and the snow and the sun, among the trees and the flowers and head stones carved with the hard-edged ironies of life.
It was especially beautiful that day as the trees were flushed with the first brilliant colors of fall. The two friends embraced and, as always, they looked into each other’s eyes for the tell- tale signs of anxiety and stress. It was the way they decided who got to talk first. But this week Ann Marie saw an unusual spark in Laura’s liquid blue eyes.
“So what have you been up to? You’ve got secrets, I can tell.”
Laura was amazed and less than pleased that it showed.
“I had Bill Clinton sex. Only I was the Commander in Chief.” Laura confessed with a grin.
“With who? Where? What’s going on?” Ann Marie was shocked and excited and strangely pleased that her adulterously challenged friend finally had some dirt to sift. It was Ann Marie who had had the long series of lovers of various durations and levels of commitment. All right or all wrong, bitter and sweet or both, filled with high hope and unavoidable destiny, she had shared her relationships and her feelings about them with Laura as she had with no other friend. Now the roles were reversed and it was she who would get to watch the clash of possibility with inevitable heartache. A friend is never a friend more than when they are confessing a weakness.
Laura confessed, in detail.
When the confession was done they had walked for half an hour and Laura was secretly satisfied that the story she had to tell was easily as exciting as anything Ann Marie had ever shared with her. ‘The Cour
se’, the moon light, the sexual control of a willing man with such an exciting imagination was almost as exciting to tell about as it was to experience.
“I can’t believe this is you. I can understand it, but I’m still impressed.”
Laura did not know how to take the compliment, if that’s what it was. “What makes you think that I couldn’t cheat?” she asked.
“Nothing except the fact that you haven’t. With all your opportunities, this must have been special.”
“It was exciting, but I wouldn’t call it special. He’s a failed actor for God’s sake.”
“There is that.” Ann Marie agreed.
Then they talked about guilt and how hard it was to muster. They both agreed that some situations involved special circumstances where codes of behavior were hard to enforce or even remember. Ann Marie loved special circumstances. Adultery depended on special circumstances.
Laura told her friend everything that had happened but nothing of what had gone through her mind as she lay in the car and then above it, indulging her imagination, like Molly Bloom, in a way she hadn’t done since before her first marriage.
Ann Marie’s final pronouncement was that she always thought Laura was immune to her hormones and even to the inevitable curiosity that came from meeting countless interesting men.
“I was curious, but yellow.” Laura replied.
“No longer yellow, but still curious I’ll bet?” Ann Marie teased.
“Still curious, but a very pale yellow.” she replied. Laura always imagined herself as being racked by indecision and doubt even though she covered it impeccably.
“Do you ever think of old lovers, things that you did, things that you could have done, but didn’t?” Laura asked.
“Rarely, it’s hard enough living in present relationships without trying to replay old dead ones. Besides, if you start thinking about old lovers, it’s dangerous. It’s just too easy to pick up a phone. So was it a onetime thing or are you going to see him again?” From what Laura had said, Ann Marie knew that regardless of what her friend was about to say to her, she was almost certain there would be a lot more to tell.
“He didn’t even ask for my number.” Laura said, dismissing the possibility.
“You’re not that hard to find. If he wants to find you, he will.”
Laura didn’t reply and wondered whether she hoped or feared that her friend was right.
They walked slowly through the aged crimson oaks, the blazing red burning bushes and the butter yellow sugar maples. One maple shed a leaf that drifted by Laura’s face so she had to only reach out to take it from the air. She did. It was kid- leather soft. In a day it would be dry and brittle and stay for a long time on the dashboard of her car.
“Just don’t forget,” Ann Marie said to her friend, “When someone tells you it’s not about the sex, it’s about the sex.”
“It really isn’t about the sex.” Laura insisted, but she was less and less sure of that the more she talked.
Red and black granite monuments all around them had names and dates cut with absolute perfection, cold perfect monoliths that marked the end of all relationships, all the worrying and all the possibilities that even the most extraordinary people could imagine. The friends parted with a hug that was closer and longer than usual. Laura felt like she was being sent off to school: the school for scandal, the school of hard knocks, where she wondered if she would be taking, ‘The Course’.
Sunday night was quiet with Amanda still in her room with her salad and bagel and her phone network from school. Laura and Ian ate at the local Italian restaurant where they stoked up on red wine and carbohydrates, gearing up for work the following day. Ian listened attentively as Laura went through her checklists of things to do and people to see that were the highlights of the following day: who was hard, who was easy; who was accessible and who was not. People who were hard to reach were bad people, people who were difficult were worse. Ian helped her in this way every week, letting her organize her mind and settle her preliminary anxieties.
Egos needed stroking, writers and agents needed mothering attention that sometimes made her daughter seem to be the essence of accommodation and good cheer. The phone, the fax, the email you give and the email you get, her life was like her daughter’s in more ways than she would ever imagine or admit. When Ian saw her starting to rise through the gears of work anxiety, he deftly changed the subject to the high school reunion.
She told a completely different version of the previous night than she had that afternoon with her friend. Even the drive in the moonlight was best edited out; even though she knew she could have told him that part without raising any suspicion. It was only a few years after they married when they were so busy and so over their initial emotional territorial skirmishes that being faithful became second-nature, trust became the cord on the pot roast, the tie that binds.
Laura talked about the evening and the people she met before George had come along. She gave an ironic analysis of old friends like Jo Anne and Sally and casual acquaintances that had been gathered at the table in the gym. She described the generations dancing, focusing on the way people had dressed and the way bodies faded and shrank after first swelling and getting soft. Swollen from their own self-indulgence, careless of style and fashion, being at the center of such a mass of ordinary people was not something she could describe as pleasant. She had always insisted that Ian stay in shape just as she had always expected it of herself. Then she told as much as she knew about Eugene because she knew that Ian would be interested in people with such an unusual lifestyle, unusual in that it seemed to have led to wealth where it was so unlikely to expect it. Rural and rich and sixteen children did not add up at all. Ian seemed to really regret the fact that he was unlikely to ever learn more about Eugene’s family.
“I can’t even stand’ disease of the week’ movies, much less one that has an old boyfriend actually dying in it.”
“I can see how you feel.” Ian replied and then added, “They’d have to be rich if they had to buy clothes and send that many kids to college. The thing that I find most curious is that you say they bring a half a dozen foster families to live with them in the summer. How do they feed everybody? Where does everyone sleep? Aren’t you intrigued?”
“I’m more intrigued by how anyone ever has a sense of privacy with all those people running around.” Laura replied. Then she changed the subject to their usual discussion that deconstructed Amanda’s mood swings.
Until Amanda was a teenager, Ian, and to a lesser degree, Laura had managed to give her quality time: trips to museums and galleries, rock concerts and plays and even the occasional Blue Jay baseball game. All that stopped in the last year because of Amanda’s rebellion and the influence of friends that were even less than working-class. Her friends and the parents of her friends were the kind of people that Ian often ended up defending on charges of domestic abuse, drunk driving or worse. Living in the bowels of the big city carried the serious risk of infection and parasites. Their daughter seemed to have no fear of any of the identifiable social diseases typical of the underclass. They were afraid for her much of the time.
The Amanda report for the week was good and with every good report came some tenuous hope that they were getting over the rebellion that could and would ruin her life if it went on too long. This week was hopeful. She had been in before midnight every night of the week. She had generally replied when spoken to. When Ian reported that he had actually seen her smile, they raised a toast to their good fortune and finished the last of the wine. At home their good fortune was short-lived because Amanda had gone out on Sunday night without leaving a note, without having asked for permission to go.
In bed it was Laura who reached for Ian and surprised him when she enthusiastically led him through a rather operatic release. Then they both slept like babies.
Work was wild that week for Laura. Even early mornings when she was usu
ally fresh from her work out and shower, Laura found email messages piled up in her computer. Her work was basically negotiating favors: either convincing someone you are doing a favor for them; or convincing someone that you’d be ever grateful for a favor you are asking them to do for you. To the messages that sounded angry or upset she immediately called back personally to soothe anxieties or ruffled feathers. Such feelings could harden into anger and make it more certain that what Laura was wanting to get off the ground would be much more difficult to fly.
Usually lunch was the shmooze of the day and if she could arrange it, it was in her favorite pub The Big Bull where publicity types and CBC people gathered to see and be seen, to smile and be smiled at, to touch base or make a connection, to pick up the buzz that would turn to honey. The working Laura knew how to work a room with the best of them: she could pump information and spread interesting gossip; she could keep track of relationships and social occasions and figure out how they connected to her best advantage. The Canadian art scene had evolved from a tight high school clique to a burgeoning network that was fed by new corporate money. Her book tours and author promotions were a tiny corner of what was going on. She stayed connected to as much as she could because it made doing her job so much easier.
Tuesday lunch was personal and professional; the personal that was the political that eventually buttered her bread. It was her weekly lunch with her friend David Orser who was a senior editor at the biggest publishing house in town. They had known each other when neither of them was connected to anything. The looked out for each other and gave each other the best hard-nosed opinions they could muster. They were friends who connected almost entirely through the way they made a living. They gossiped and joked and caught up on current times and circumstances. She called him David Orser and he called her Babe, which he told her he meant on a whole lot of levels. The latest one was a movie about a talking pig. They had agreed that their lunches would be a demilitarized zone where they turned off pagers and cell phones and ate salads and appetizers and drank dry Russian vodka martinis because it was only once a week.
Sometimes lunch went on for almost two hours, the two them enjoying the fact that they trusted each other so much that no defensive positioning was required. Their friendship was sweet like the little white onion sitting at the bottom of the funnel shaped cocktail glass. And this Tuesday was more than a two-hour lunch, the turning bubbles of gossip had risen in her blood and when the kicker at the bottom of the fourth glass hit her she started to vent on her life: no time, no energy, not enough sex, not enough fun, and an out of control daughter who played her like a big bass drum.
“You know the worst thing of all, the thing that really sucks is that the future is either absolutely unpredictable or is going to be absolutely and crushingly the same.” She never slurred. She was proud of that. Only David Orser got to hear this kind of talk. Only David Orser understood.
“You are personally and professionally just too soft.” he replied sympathetically.
“Take that back!” She raised her voice in mock indignation and outrage, then sat back and gave David Orser a smile that came from the blue depth of her eyes. He smiled back. And then he did it. He asked her to do him a favor, just like anyone else. She was helpless to say no and they both knew it, and it left a sad little pang in her heart to hear him finally asking. The unspoken rule had always been not to ask for work favours.
“Anthony Holtz has his collected works coming out in a month. If I begged and begged and promised to never ask you for anything again as long I live, would you do his publicity and book tour? Nobody in the office will do it. He makes everybody cry, including me. Please! I’ll never ask for anything ever again.”
Anthony Holtz was the aging bad boy poet of Canadian letters, a drunk and a womanizer with a vicious tongue that friends and lovers and strangers all knew to fear.
“Can’t I slay the Minotaur instead? You’re just not serious.” Then she saw and knew that he was absolutely serious. “My God, he even makes interviewers cry. Do they still call him Anthony Adverse?”
“It won’t be so bad. He’s been on the wagon for nearly a year. He’s given up smoking. I talked to him this morning and it was almost, I swear, almost a pleasant exchange. If there’s anyone who can handle him, it’s you. Please, because you love me so.”
He always knew how to hit her mothering buttons, and if she somehow survived the experience, people would know about it. And if Anthony Holtz had any of his old madness inside him she would also be talked about extensively. She took the job.
Laura thought that writers were often emotionally arrested teenagers: they needed the same bribes and threats and stroking to get through the brittle eggshell of their egos. It worked about as well and as often as it did with a petulant teenager. And, like teens, they also understood greed and gossip.
Even with a four martini buzz on, Laura was able to mentally put together a difficult-poet action plan: people to talk to, institutions to phone, anyone she could think of who might have some interest or use in attaching themselves to the shadow of a great old poet. After lunch, when the Stoly buzz was finally fading, she picked up the phone and called Anthony Holtz.
She introduced herself and talked about their new relationship and reminded him of the few times they had met at parties. She was pleased and surprised that he remembered her, but less than thrilled when he described her as another media whore.
“Isn’t it fun? Unlike some old media whores, I’ve never sold my sex life to the public and called it high art.” she shot back, reminding him of his kiss and tell poems.
“I’m sure your sex life is tedious modern banality like most pretty girls.” he replied, coldly.
“I thought that by the time someone was your age they would have stopped obsessing about sex. Maybe we should decide to pass on the insults and think about the fact that I’m the one that’s going to decide whether your collected works sell a few hundred copies or many, many thousands. Does greed still motivate you, Anthony?”
“It does.” he replied.
“Then we will get along just fine. I understand that we can count on you being sober. That’s the last tough question, but I have to hear it from you.”
“That isn’t a problem. One day you may wake-up to find the pleasures of life’s indulgences are no longer as attractive as the life despoiled by those very indulgences.”
“Regrets, we’ve had a few?”
“I like you. We’ll work well together.” Anthony pronounced, and hung up the phone without a goodbye.
When they met the next day he behaved as if she had already passed an important test. He was gracious and warm and considerate of her thoughts and feelings as she described her initial ideas to get publicity and attention for his book.
He tossed his flowing white hair almost like a schoolgirl, one of his many practiced dramatic gestures. His hands conducted moments and memories, his eyes and smiles punctuating his best lines. After all the years and the endless procession of women, he couldn’t help himself; he was flirting with Laura. She let him. She did it back. She asked him to read her one of his’ hot little lyrics’. And he was thrilled to do so. She asked for one of her favorites and she could see from his reaction that she had made a good choice. He read her the poem about tropical flowers and their various strategies for pollination and, as he was reading, Laura realized it was a dense, delicious version of ‘The Course’ seducing a woman by putting her in touch with her sexual power.
“And so I touch my firm sweating finger to the back of your languid epiphytic throat.”
His eyes shone as he looked at her while he spoke the last line and she smiled back at him as she told him how much she loved that. Then she decided to ask him about his ex- wife’s forthcoming autobiography. She asked him if there were any surprises she should know about. She told him that the buzz on the street was that it went on about how his sexual prowess was the gr
eatest creation of his imagination. She said it because it was true, and because it was where he lived. Laura figured that his ex-wife’s book would do half her work for her. She wanted to know how much he could build up a catfight between them before he got too apoplectic.
He seemed delighted at the idea of a catfight with one of his ex-wives, so Laura pulled out the galley proofs of his ex-wife’s book from her briefcase and gave it to him. When he saw what it was, he was truly impressed, because he had tried very hard to get even a small peek at them himself.
“Well, let’s see if she knows how to write.” was his comment as he dove into the book like it was a breaker rolling onto a beach.
She left him to his reading as she excused herself, and smiled as he distractedly waved goodbye.
As the week went by, Laura started booking the media appearances that she thought would best serve Anthony’s book launch. There was a new radio interview show called Hot Times that was getting quite a big audience and, what was even more important, some water cooler buzz about some of the things that people had said on the show. It was hosted by a twenty-eight year old woman with a sweet child-like voice she used to ask relentless, rude personal questions of guests who should have known better than to be there. She ate actors for breakfast and more actors kept coming to try her. Her interviews were emotional gunfights and she was too fast for anyone who had tried her so far.
Laura would book Anthony because she knew his chances were better than good that he would make it memorable. A pompous, womanizing, old drunken poet would make the gonzo radio gunslinger salivate. Laura anonymously sent along a few of the best pieces of Anthony’s ex-wife’s book as a teaser and waited for the call.
The week had a lovely flow: people behaved; people replied; they said yes a lot more than they usually did; and the number of imagined and real disasters from people needing absolutely total and immediate attention were few and far between. Even Amanda was there for dinner all week. Even Laura managed to be home three days before seven. Take-out came in or Ian improvised a respectable dinner they shared together like real people. Amanda’s diet was finding exceptions based on how good the food looked and whether dessert was tempting. Ba Ba au Rum. That week life was like the girl with the curl, that week was very, very good.
On Friday before she left work she checked her email messages and saw one titled ‘An unquenchable thirst’. It was George Marshall. He had found her. It described the feeling of thirst that comes after exhilarating exercise. Only the imagination could quench certain thirsts. Only he was offering libations. But he had resigned himself to the deserts of young flesh, and he left her with only one question, one challenge: ‘What would you do to make your husband go absolutely wild with desire?’ His last comment was that it was probably a question she hadn’t asked herself in a long, long time. He said he would appreciate a report on her progress, if she desired to give it. Against her better judgment she put his return address into her address book. She thought about George’s insidious challenge. He wanted to have vicarious sex with her. He wanted her to have sex with her own husband for his private pleasure. It was just too delicious. She decided to seduce her own husband, slowly, deliciously, in her imagination, in real time, and she decided she was going to share it all with George. It was like a secret three way affair.
Of course George was right; the thought of inspiring desire in her husband was a question she hadn’t asked herself since before Amanda was born. She didn’t feel guilty, but she did feel intrigued by the challenge. George was a hot little pistol. But then again, so was she, and perhaps was still.
The ride home was a montage of sexy little gestures playing through her imagination, images mostly taken from the movies: fingers on chess pieces; fruit between pressed lips; transparent blouses and slowly crossed and uncrossed legs. She was amazed how soon she ran out of personal or celluloid memories. She would have to improvise and the thought of it gave her a rush. George asked the best questions. She would seduce Ian/George. Her husband would be her surrogate lover. She was having fun just thinking about it, and he’d never know what hit him.
She decided on the rules of the game to inflame Ian. She decided it included everything except body contact, because the imagination really worked best as a non-contact sport.
First came the change in her wardrobe at home: comfy became silky; silky became sheer and everything a whole lot smaller and shorter. There was a delicate balance she tried to find between obviously asking for it and making it obvious she was definitely a desirable woman. Ian noticed, and so did Amanda when she occasionally drifted between rooms. Ian’s appreciative looks were contrasted with Amanda’s scowls.
“Aren’t you cold?” Amanda had asked sarcastically.
“No colder than you are.” her mother replied.
When she brought home the rented video of Nine and a Half Weeks she watched her husband squirm slowly beside her as they watched the video in the living room, Amanda slyly drifting in and out of the room in search of more wholesome food. When the movie was over and they went to bed the sexual tension was as thick as a Crème Brule. She kissed Ian sweetly and said she understood his feelings but she had been turned off by how the movie had shown a woman manipulated so heartlessly. She was of course lying through her teeth! He disagreed. He passionately disagreed. He gave the best arguments for the defense of hot manipulative sex that he could muster, but the judge ruled his motion out of order. The defense of hot sex had to rest, before it even had a chance to present its case. She was playing him like a Marlin.
Every day Laura would report to George the fun she was having teasing someone who was just not used in it. The fatigue and headaches that were usually the reasons Laura didn’t feel sexy, were now just an excuse to build the thirst in Ian, and truth be told, she was feeling almost as frisky as her husband. It wasn’t easy to control a bonfire of certain sexual vanities. It was fun. It was illicit. It was sexy and original like sin.
George’s email replies to Laura’s reports were wonderfully erotic, leading her imagination in touching a nerve, expanding a performance or setting a lovely little scene. He told her of a game of his invention called, ‘Tell me what to do’, in which she was to ask her lover to do something that was particularly sensual that must not lead to sex. The other name for the game was ‘Peel Me a Grape’. She had Ian peeling fruit and feeding her ice cream and massaging her feet, and he couldn’t believe the new Laura. The best one was when she asked him to brush her hair a hundred times as her mother had done when she was a girl. Poor Ian. After two weeks, she finally put both of them out of their misery on a Saturday night when Amanda wasn’t home.
And the sex was perfectly wonderful. Like old times.
Laura didn’t realize that George knew that words and language were the idiom in which her imagination was most comfortable. She didn’t realize that to her sex was a soliloquy and George had turned her computer monitor into a spotlight where she could step forward and really shine. He knew that she wasn’t interested in what his imagination contained. She was interested in knowing the potential of her own. She was surprised but delighted that, especially in print, she was such an accomplished performer. In a way her email correspondence with George made her feel almost young again. Her description of the strip tease she had done for Ian the night they finally made love was amazing in descriptive detail and sensual rhythm. Laura knew the language of love.
The day that George finally phoned her directly was almost perfectly timed. Everything was very, very good and George and his little cyber messages had definitely made it better. The reality of his real voice was erotically explosive, compared to the ten point Times Roman of her dreams. It was funny. A fifty year old verbal gymnast like her could be tongue tied at hearing a voice that made her feel, for want of a better word, shy, because it was a voice that knew for certain she was an honest to god, sensual Diva.
‘Did he want to see her? Was
he calling because he suspected she really wanted to see him.’ She had thought about it. She had definitely thought about it.
It was like she had been an operative in a sexual spy novel in which her own life had been the cover: she had secrets she couldn’t reveal; a handler known only to her, an invisible George Smiley of sex.
He made no apology for phoning, asking how her day was going, and they could both feel the sexual tension as she told him about her day’s appointments and how she was desperate for some really exciting launch for Anthony Holtz’s collected works. When it seemed like he was going to close off without any mention of an invitation to get together, or any mention of how much or how deeply she had revealed herself to him, she got mad. Their emails had had a tremendous intimacy.
“So you called just ask how my day was going?” she spat
“I called to see if that’s all you wanted to say.” he replied, calmly. “Obviously it’s not.”
“Obviously!”
She was almost shouting. The fox was in the hen house and reality was confronting what imagination and desire had flushed out. She felt cornered, and when she felt cornered she attacked. He stepped aside from its force like a graceful Torero masterfully moving the big red silk cape of language.
“Tell me what you want?” he asked gently. “Do you want to know what I want?”
“God, yes! God no!” she groaned and then fell into absolute silence.
He didn’t reply. He didn’t fill the petrified air. He let the tension build until she thought she couldn’t stand it and she was going to hang up the way Anthony Holtz had first done with her. Frustration had a seam of anger that his voice touched like a finger at the back of her languid throat.
“Come to dinner next Tuesday evening. I’ll prepare a lovely table with crystal and China and I’ll spread you among them and thrill you until they shatter.” Then he hung up the phone without waiting for her reply.
“Thanks for calling.”
Her heart was pounding and she was breathing hard when she said that to the dead receiver. She put down the phone and it rang immediately and she let it ring for a moment while she gathered her breath and her emotions. When she picked up the phone, it was Ian with the second worst call a parent ever gets.