All You Could Ask For: A Novel (10 page)

“YOU HAVE
GOT
TO be kidding me!” I said, when Pamela said the telephone was for me.

I had left very specific instructions only to call in case of an emergency. Apparently, whatever I was about to be told rose to that level, at least in Pamela’s mind, and in that of Lourdes, my babysitter. I was
so
not ready to take that phone call. Not because I was afraid of what she might say. I was just so
into
what Pamela and I were doing.

All my life, I have associated sex with romance, with art, with gentleness and quiet. The musical accompaniment, in my mind, has always been classical: Mozart is sexy, Tchaikovsky is sexy. Beethoven is not. Beethoven wrote music to march to. Mozart wrote music to make love to. I even use those words all the time; Scott and I could sneak downstairs while the kids are watching television and do it with me bent over the washing machine and I would still describe it as making love. And that is all well and good, making love always has and always will have its place. But as of today, I realize it is not the only option. There is a rock-’n’-roll way of going about this as well. There is a Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Quiet Riot way of going about it. I didn’t actually have sex with anyone today, but while I was rocking out—fully naked—with Pamela snapping photos and shouting encouragement and offering the occasional shot of tequila, there is no doubt in my mind I had an orgasm. It was in my mind and in my spirit, but let me tell you, it was every bit as good as having one anywhere else.

Pamela felt it too. “I feel like we’re fucking!” she shouted to me, over the whir of a blowing fan and Janis Joplin’s scratchy vocals.

The truth is, I never use that word. Not in that context, anyway. I use the F-word, occasionally, as an expletive.
What the fuck happened to my car keys? What a fucking mess Megan’s room is. I really don’t give a fuck how big her earrings are.
Those are all perfectly acceptable usages. But just to say
We’re fucking
? I would never, not in a million years. How graphic, vulgar. How
ugly
that sounds to me.

Or it did until today. Today was different. Today, when Pamela said it, and as I let it rattle around in my mind, it didn’t sound dirty anymore. It sounded sexy.

So that’s what I learned today, about sex and about myself. I learned that sex doesn’t have to be sweet and romantic. It doesn’t have to be about love, at least not all the time. Sex can be about power, and rock ’n’ roll. It can be about fucking. Sometimes that’s okay.

Then my phone rang.

Again, I had given strict instructions to Lourdes not to call unless there was an emergency. Had the phone rung and her number appeared after three o’clock, I would have been concerned, but it was only noon when she called. The kids were still in school. Had anything happened to them, the school would be calling, not Lourdes.

“Answer this, please,” I said to Pamela, tossing her the phone. “Unless it’s a true emergency I don’t even want to know why she’s calling.”

Pamela answered the phone and I started to dance. I did not want to let the moment get away. I liked it here, in this sexy, boozy, rockin’ reality.

“Sweetie, I think you need to take this,” Pamela said, a funny look on her face.

I flopped down on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest. “You have
got
to be kidding me,” I said, pouting. Pamela tossed the phone over and it landed on my bare thigh. I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Brooke!” It was Lourdes and she was shouting. “I am in the emergency room!”

I sat up, suddenly sober despite a bellyful of Patrón.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was cleaning and a Wiggles bobblehead fell off a shelf and I think it broke my toe!”

“Oh my gosh, which one?”

“I think it was Jeff!”

“No, I mean which toe?”

She was distracted then. I heard voices. Someone else was speaking to her.

“What’s that, Mrs. Brooke?” she asked.

“I said I want to know which toe is broken, not which Wiggle fell on it.”

Lourdes didn’t answer. She was distracted again. I heard the voices in the background.

“Lourdes,” I said, more loudly. “Are you all right?”

“Mrs. Brooke, they are calling me in to see the doctor,” she said. “I’m sorry but I won’t be able to pick the kids up at school!”

And then the line went dead. I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I looked up and found, to my surprise, that Pamela was crying too.

“You have to go, don’t you,” she said. She pulled a woolen blanket off an armchair and spread it over me, then plopped down beside me on the couch. “Damn, that was fun.”

I laughed a little. “Thank you,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank
you,
” she replied.

I sat up and shook my head. I needed to drive, to get my kids, to be myself again.

“Let me get your clothes,” Pamela said, and ran her fingers through my hair.

“Hey,” I said, “I just need one other thing.”

“What’s that, darling?”

I looked directly into her smiling eyes. “Do you have a cigarette for me?” I asked. “I quit years ago, but after this I definitely think I need one.”

SAMANTHA

“NO, THANK YOU,” I said, as Eduardo Marquez offered me a cigarette. “I don’t smoke.” We had just ordered dinner, and I couldn’t figure out if I was on a date here. Or if I wanted to be.

“Will it disturb you if I do?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I said, though it wasn’t really true. I never could stand the smell of smoke, not even from a fireplace. Some people find a roaring fire cozy in the wintertime, not me. I can’t stand the smell of the smoke in my clothes, in my hair. And as for cigarettes or cigars—nothing could be more repulsive. (Robert insisted I take a puff of his victory cigar the night of the election and it almost ruined my evening.) However, there was something debonair in the way Eduardo drew a cigarette from the case in his jacket pocket, and something of a flourish in the way he brandished his lighter. It was a cool lighter, stainless steel or perhaps silver, thick and solid-looking with a Spanish word I didn’t recognize engraved in the handle, perhaps a name. Whose name would he have engraved in his lighter? A wife? A girlfriend? Did he have either of those? Was I on a date?

“It is a habit I solemnly regret,” he said, “but one I will never leave behind.”

“How old were you when you started?”

“Nine years old,” he said, and laughed gently at the look of horror I’m sure was on my face. “Yes, it is horrible. But there wasn’t a boy who didn’t smoke when I was in school.”

“I grew up in Connecticut,” I said. “I remember some kids started smoking when we were about twelve or thirteen. Nine years old, that’s just crazy.”

“I never thought a thing of it until I came to live in the States. Last year I was in Madrid and I lit a cigarette for a pregnant woman in a restaurant. She was quite far along. After living in America for so long, I hesitated to do it.”

“I would hope so.”

“But I thought to myself that if I did not, surely she would find someone else who would. The cigarette was dangling from her lips. It would have been rude of me to pull it out, so I decided to light it for her instead.”

He dragged gently on the cigarette. His fingers were long and slender.

“It seems to me a shame that you have spent four weeks on the island now and seen nothing of it,” he said. “It is admirable to see how dedicated you have been in your training, and I have no doubt this has been fine therapy for the personal difficulties of which you informed me on the day you arrived, but I cannot imagine you don’t have some time to experience the sights and culture of the island.”

“Have I really been here four weeks?” It felt as though I had arrived yesterday, and perhaps dreamt the rest of it.

“As of tomorrow, yes.”

“It has flown by, really flown,” I said. “Our breakfasts have been a lovely part of that.”

Every morning since that first one, without fail, I have begun my day with a swim in the ocean. I am in the water by six o’clock and usually for more than an hour. Then I trudge up the beach and fall into a comfortable chair by the pool, where I inform a waiter (most days the same one with the pleasant smile from my first day) that I am ready for my tea and granola and ask him to please alert
Señor
Marquez that I am safe. This began my second morning on the property, when Eduardo told me it was strictly prohibited for me to be in the ocean so early, because there was no lifeguard on duty.

“Let me ask you this,” I said to him that day. “If you catch me doing it, what is the punishment?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, I’m sure I can’t go to jail for swimming alone when no lifeguard is on duty. I couldn’t be arrested or anything. Could I be thrown out of the hotel?”

“That would be at the discretion of the general manager,” he said.

“Aren’t
you
the general manager?”

“Sí, señora.”

“So, Mr. Marquez, are you going to throw me out of the hotel if I go swimming by myself every morning?”

He hesitated. “Certainly not,” he said. “I do not condone it but I will allow it, on one strict condition.”

“What is that?”

“Every morning when you are finished, your first obligation is to see that I am informed immediately of your safe return.”

I stuck out my hand, and he shook it gently. “We have a deal,” I said.

And so, every morning I order my breakfast and I make sure Eduardo Marquez is aware of my return. And every morning, without fail, he has appeared a few minutes later and joined me, uninvited, for breakfast.

“It has been my pleasure every morning,” he said tonight, puffing contentedly on his cigarette, politely holding it as far from me as he could. “I look forward to it every day.”

“I do too,” I said.

And I realized, to my surprise, that I was thinking about what it would be like to be in bed with him. I wondered if he was thinking about it too. I couldn’t tell, which was strange. Was I just out of practice? It’s not as though I was married for thirty years, I was barely married for thirty hours. And I was only
with
Robert for a few months before that. It seems hard to believe, but a year ago at this time I was completely single, wholly unattached, being actively pursued by two or three men of varying significance. Surely a year ago I had no trouble detecting any man’s intentions, or his level of interest, or determining whether or not I was on a date.

“On second thought, I think I
will
have a glass of wine,” I said, having declined at the start of the evening. I’ve not had a sip of alcohol this whole month. My every second has been consumed with preparation, training, but all of a sudden a glass of wine sounded really good. “Something dry and crisp.”

“I know just the glass,” he said, raising his hand for the waiter.

Of course he did. He is one of
those
men. If you think about it, you can pretty much divide men into categories based upon what they drink and how much they know about it. There are beer guys, and we all know who they are: fun, fraternity guys with baseball caps on backward, meeting you for dinner after a softball game. There are whiskey guys, who take themselves very seriously and—whether they acknowledge it or not—are the most misogynistic of all the drinkers. Men who drink gin are very straitlaced, men who drink vodka are very deep, and men who drink champagne are usually very gay. And then there are men like Eduardo Marquez, who drink wine and know a great deal about it. I’ve never been with one of those before. I was raised by a scotch-drinker, married a beer-drinker, dated all of the others, including the champagne-drinker (
yes,
he was gay), but I’ve never spent any real time with a wine man.

Until tonight.

“Marco,” Eduardo said, “bring a bottle of the ’88 from the cellar beneath my office.”

“Oh,” I said, holding out my hand to stop him, “just a glass for me, please.”

“If that is all you want that is no problem,” he said, and sent the waiter off with a wave, “but if you are only going to try one bottle from our list, this is the choice.”

“I assume you don’t usually sell it by the glass,” I said.

“You assume correctly.”

I batted my eyes at him and smiled. My goodness, look at me, making eyes at a man ten years older than the man I married, who himself was too old for me. Strange, too, because there isn’t anything about Eduardo that would normally appeal to me. He isn’t athletic or headstrong, or arrogant. Maybe this was just about the moment, the island and the breeze and the sound of the ocean, or maybe my hormones were in overdrive from all the training, or maybe I was just a mess from all that has happened. Or maybe, just maybe, I was finally getting smarter. I have to believe that’s a possibility, too.

KATHERINE