Living Room (20 page)

“What the hell are you laughing about?” Al said.

In answer, she kissed her rapist’s lips.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DURING THE NIGHT SHE WOKE nestled into his twining arms and legs, a maximum of his warm skin touching hers.

Her waking woke him.

His kiss was just below her breast, then lower.

And lower still. She felt the flicking of reptilian tongue on the satin of her thigh, and then he was loving her in a wholly different way. She wanted him, could only reach his head with her hands. No warning, it caught her by surprise.

When her breath came back, he had turned her over and was kissing the hollows of her back, and then with his first thrust, she raised herself on her elbows and knees.

*

The bright light of Bermuda sun streaked through the blinds, announcing morning. Shirley threw an arm across her eyes, remembering bit by bit. Three times, Freud, she thought, and each
one different.

She forced herself out of the covers and into the bathroom, casting a backward glance at Al, murmuring from sleep. In the mirror, the skin under her eyes seemed slack, but her face was beginning to seem alive again. She stepped back so that more of her body would be in view. Life was in the eye of the beholder.

She turned. Al was watching her. Quickly she slipped into his robe hanging on the door. He laughed.

They took turns showering, breakfasted quickly, hurried to the beach. The heat of the early sun was unbelievable. The sun cures, she thought. Like making love. She basked, then turned to let it warm her back. Once, when she thought Al was off in the water swimming, she turned to find him staring at her.

A sand fly woke her. After that long night, how had she fallen asleep again? She sat up, hugging her knees, saw Al coming over with people, a balding man of forty, tubby, carrying a snorkel, a woman wearing an old-fashioned skirt swimsuit, introduced as his wife. Shirley stood, didn’t quite catch their names, Aldrich, Offrich, Offritz, something like that.

“Down for long?” asked the man.

“Only the weekend,” Al saved her.

“Me and the Mrs. were wondering if you’d like to join us for drinks at the end of the day?”

Al looked at Shirley. She tried a courtesy smile. The man said, “That’s good. We’re in number thirty-one. Five o’clock okay?”

The woman spoke. “You two meet down here?”

“We came together,” said Al.

Shirley laughed.

*

Al hired a taxi to take them into Hamilton for the afternoon. Shirley tried to interest herself in the onrushing flowers on the side of the road. They passed an open field in which a ram had mounted a goat, bucking.

“You arrange that especially for me?” Shirley asked.

In his rear-view mirror, the driver glanced at his mad passengers.

In town, they bought their quota of duty-free liquor for the return trip. It wasn’t much cheaper than in New York, just something to do. In a stall, they examined woven handbags, hats, carryalls, bought none. They stopped in a café for a rum drink.

He raised his glass. “To initiative.”

She clinked hers against his. “To mutual rape.”

Later, when he asked the waitress for the check, she pointed a thumb at the overalled mulatto behind the cash register. On signal he came over to the table, sat down on the third chair, grinning. “Six dollars,” he said.

“For two drinks?”

The grin said, “Oh no, sir. Two dollars for rum, four dollars for pictures.” He took a pack of playing cards out of his overall pocket and put it down in front of Al.

Al didn’t move. Shirley reached across, took the pack, broke the seal. “My God,” she said, examining them for only a second and put them back in the case.

“Don’t want pictures,” said Al.

The overalls shrugged. “Lady broke seal. You buy. Six dollars please.”

From a distance the waitress was watching them. Shirley looked at the direction they had come from, the crowded streets. The native policeman saw them, turned the other way. Al looked as if he was about to lose his temper.

“My treat,” she said, taking a five and a one from her purse and sliding them across the table to the mulatto hand.

“Thank you,” said the overalls, rising and going back to his post behind the cash register.

Shirley dropped the playing cards into her handbag. They walked quickly toward where their taxi driver was waiting.

“You didn’t tip the waitress,” said Al.

“Don’t get mad. Just wanted to keep the peace.”

“It’s a racket.”

As they were leaving Hamilton, Al said, “Let me see them.”

Shirley avoided a smile, handed him the pack, looked over his shoulder. The same couple in all of them, joyless acrobatics. The man’s tattoo reminded her of Harry’s picture book so long ago. She took a card out of Al’s hand and dropped it out of the car window. They looked behind them and saw it flutter to the street. Al spun another out of the window. Then Shirley flipped one out of the other side. They were hysterical as one by one they left a trail of playing cards all the way from Hamilton. The driver picked up speed, anxious to get these crazies to their destination and be rid of them.

“We could try the beach again for an hour if you wanted to.”

She was listening to the resonance of his voice, as she had when they had first met in Jack and Mary’s apartment.

*

With one strong palm from underneath he kept her above the water as she tried, under his instruction, the crawl, smoothly executed instead of splashing as she had always done. She was aware of the hand holding her up.

*

Al guessed correctly that the couple would be dressing up a bit for the cocktail hour, so they changed, too. Shirley slipped on an orange splash of tropical print, white shoes. Al looked like he was ready for tennis.

The couple had already had a drink when they arrived. Their name turned out to be Osweicz, not Aldrich. Maybe it would homogenize into Aldrich one day, Shirley thought. Osweicz told a dirty story badly. For Al’s benefit Shirley laughed too loud. He reciprocated. Watching the Osweiczes getting duller, drunk, seemed to be fashioning a link between Al and Shirley across the divide of the room. If there were gaps in the world, the big one was between them and others, not between them. Shirley pretended to be listening to Mrs. Osweicz talking about the joys of Pennsylvania but her cocked ear heard Mr. Osweicz pull Al over across the room and whisper, “You people swing?”

And she heard Al’s answer. “From trees, just like our ancestors.”

Mr. Osweicz looked very disappointed. He showed his disappointed face to Mrs. Osweicz.

When Al and Shirley found an excuse to flee to their room, glad of each other’s company at last, Shirley said, “You set that up to prove a point.”

“What point?”

“Two is better than four.”

“Well, the theoretical permutations of four—”

“You ever go in for that?” she asked, hoping her voice did not betray her.

“No.”

“When Mary introduced the two of us, she held your hand with one of hers, and my hands with one of hers. She was our link. It felt like incest.”

She waited for Al to break his silence.

“Did you and she—?”

“What makes you think that?” He hurried the words.

“Intuition.”

“I thought women didn’t have that any more. I thought intuition was an attribute invented by male chauvinists to distinguish fluffy thought from logic and common sense.”

“You’re angry.”

“Not at all.” He avoided her eyes.

Gently she turned his head so that he would look at her. “Does Jack know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“If I guessed, he might.”

She hadn’t meant to upset him. And she could not stop herself. “Is it over?”

“We’re friends.”

“Not lovers any more?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Was she being an exorcist? “How long did it go on?”

“Not too long.”

“It’s over?”

He nodded.

“Any more secrets?”

“Lots.”

“Tell me.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“Promise?”

“No.”

*

She took off her shoes so they could walk along the beach, watching the waves break on the hidden rocks. The air was damp with spray.
The past is not useful to lovers,
she thought.
Attics should
be locked shut.

Then, miles farther along the shore, they spied a fire burning. “Isn’t that dangerous?” Shirley asked.

“It could be a beach party.”

“Oh my God,” said Shirley.

“What’s the matter?”

“I lost my purse. The little flowered one.”

“On the beach?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think I was carrying it when we left. I must have left it at the what’s-their-names.”

“If we go back at this hour…”

“They’ll be sure we’re taking up their invitation!”

“What’s in it?”

“Credit cards, money, keys.”

“I’ll go,” said Al.

“Oh it’s too late. You might be waking them.”

“More likely disturbing them with some other couple. They probably kept trying.”

They ran, stumbling through the sand, Al yelling, “I’ll call from the room, it’s safer.”

In their own room, next to the telephone, lay Shirley’s flowered purse. They were beside themselves with relief and laughter, hugging each other before they realized it.

“Incest,” she whispered, turning her back to him so he could unzip her dress.

*

They fell asleep only toward morning and woke, the sun high in the sky, to realize the hour was late, they had barely time to pack hurriedly, pay the bill at the front desk, and race the taxi to the airport. She wanted the plane to take off without them, they were the last to board, and as it rose and banked, out of the window, leaning across Al, she could see the island, a curlicue rimmed by beaches, shrinking second by second into the sea.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN NEW YORK Al dropped her at her apartment, carrying her bag up. She didn’t invite him in. He didn’t ask. They parted wordlessly.

Inside, for the first time, she felt alone. Music didn’t help. A drink didn’t relax her. Her apartment was not feeling like home.

She wanted to phone her father. What would she say? She wanted to ring up Mary and Jack, but they would be full of questions she didn’t want to answer yet. She felt desperate to use the phone and dialed the time, checking it against her watch.

She undressed quickly, got into bed, tried to read, couldn’t concentrate, put out the light, tossed, put on the light, tried to read again, couldn’t. When she woke toward morning, she discovered she had fallen asleep with the light on.

*

When she glanced at the
Times,
delivered to the door, it reminded her of Al’s headlines. What would he be thinking this morning after?
You’ll get what you want,
she thought,
if you are prepared to walk away from it.

Downstairs she found the mailbox stuffed, had to yank hard to
free the accumulated wedge. Junk mail, bills, and a familiar corner card: letter from the office. Ripped open, in handwriting it said,
Shirley, I apologize for what I said, Marvin.

Only then did she remember the condition she had flung at Arthur for coming back to work. Marvin the bastard had actually apologized. Shirley raced back up to the apartment, glanced at her walls to find among the many frames a small, simple, black-and-glass one of the right size, removed the print, slipped Marvin’s letter in, put the small frame into her attaché case, and, in a state of high excitement, walked to the office, feeling like a stranger in the city threatened by traffic and jostling people, seeing Bermuda everywhere. It was crazy to fall in love—is that what she was doing?—with a man you could not control. It was crazy to fall in love with a man you
could
control.

She stopped at a drugstore, went to a phone booth, dialed the first few digits of Al’s number, stopped, decided not to call. What would she say?
Get ahold of yourself,
said her mother’s voice.

Twitchy, relieved to see her, watched as Shirley hung Marvin’s framed letter in back of her chair. Shirley felt a presence behind her. They both turned to see Arthur Crouch, trying hard to control his expression, coming toward her desk.

“Excuse me,” said Twitchy, and exited, closing the door.

“Where were you?” asked Arthur.

“On sick leave.”

“You’re lying. Where have you been?”