Married Sex (3 page)

Chapter 4

I skipped the twentieth reunion of my class at Columbia Law because I'm just not nostalgic. Now I only go uptown when I'm asked to lecture. Every time, memories flash. Not the pain of torts and the Saturday nights in the library or the struggle to make law review. Only the pleasant memories: the ritual purchase of a Shetland sweater in the fall, plotting to separate Blair from her rich B-school boyfriend, Blair wearing my sweater as we talk over late-night coffee.

Barnard is as foreign to me now as it was when I was in law school. But Blair was—for the first time—leading a First-Year Class symposium. At dinner, when she summarized
The Wilder Shores of Love
, she made its profiles of four nineteenth-century English women come alive. They weren't head-in-the-stars dreamers; they were “realists of romance” who correctly understood that the epic lives they wanted weren't available in England's rigid social structure, so they fled to Algeria, Turkey, and Arabia. There they found men, adventure, and what they described as freedom.

When she talked about the book, my attendance felt compulsory.

Blair wasn't pleased.

“You'll be the only man,” she said.

“Don't Columbia guys show up with their girlfriends?”

A sigh.

“And others come to meet the new girls?”

“Such things have been known to happen,” she said.

“Essentially it's like a kegger with a brainiac overlay.”

“Do you not understand that this is the most selective college for women in the country?”

“I do,” I said. “And I get that this will be a hot ticket—in every sense of
hot
. And in that stew of ideas and nice-to-meet-yous, no one will notice the old duffer in the back row.”

“You'll make me nervous.”

“Maybe I'll come, maybe I won't—you'll have no idea if I'm there.”

I wore a work shirt and jeans and sat in the back row near a gaggle of frat boys who'd come to scope out the new prey. I was noticed by a few Barnard students, who looked askance—what legit reason did an old guy who wasn't a professor have for being here?—until I held up my hand, patted my wedding band, and pointed to Blair.

“Context is key,” Blair was saying. “You have to remember what England was like in the nineteenth century. In the upper class, marriage was a property deal, a merger of social equals. Women were expected to be faithful to the man they married, and they could be ruined if they were caught having an affair. But that wasn't the whole story, not nearly—at any house party at a country estate, guests were popping in and out of each other's bedrooms all weekend. These women rejected that hypocrisy. To them, love mattered.”

“It still does,” a young woman called out.

“But not as a first priority,” another shouted.

“What is your first priority?” Blair asked.

“Paying off my student loan,” a student said, to applause and laughter.

“Getting a job at Goldman,” another said.

“Isn't that the same thing?” Blair asked.

The quickness of Blair's response took the students by surprise, and there was some laughter.

“I'm not joking,” Blair said. “Seventeen percent of Columbia Business School graduates get hired at McKinsey, and eight percent get hired at Goldman, and the average starting salary at those shops is well over a hundred thousand. So your student loan may not be your first priority for long.”

Blair paused.

I knew what she was doing: pretending to think. She knew what she would say next as surely as she knew, as far back as last week, she'd wear a thin cashmere sweater, a blazer, gray flannel pants, and no jewelry to this gathering.

“I get that you want professional opportunity and personal success,” Blair said. “What I'm not getting is why your focus is so single-minded. What do you see yourselves doing at night?”

“Working late,” a student said.

“The gym,” another said.

The first student corrected herself. “Working late and hooking up.”

“What's your number?” a Columbia kid shouted, prompting laughter and applause.

“Really?” Blair asked when the room quieted. “That's it?”

No one had more suggestions.

“Jane Digby wrote to one of her lovers: ‘Being loved is to me as the air that I breathe.' I grant you, very mushy. But did anyone identify with her?”

Silence.

“
Agree
with her?”

Silence.

“
Like
her?”

A young woman stood, notebook in hand. “In 1799, Jane Digby's father seized a Spanish treasure ship. His share of the gold established the family fortune. So Jane, with no need to marry for money or earn a living, had the luxury of putting love first.”

“They were all rich,” the student next to her called out, “and all obsessed with men.”

“I want their numbers too,” the comedian from Columbia shouted, and, again, the room gave him the approval he craved.

Blair ignored the disruption.

“The author wasn't rich,” she said. “Early in her career, she was supporting her parents.”

“Doesn't matter.” The student with the notebook opened her copy of
The Wilder Shades of Love
. “She aspired. Look at what she wrote: ‘Admiration and love are the best beauty treatments.' The whole book is shot through with this stuff. It's totally male-centric.”

“Isabelle Eberhardt dressed like a man and used a man's name,” Blair countered. “And she married a soldier—how aspirational is that?”

Now it was a Barnard student who interjected: “She married a
man
.”

There was no mistaking the derision in that student's voice.

Blair looked at her watch.

“Let me reframe the issue, okay? We asked you to read this book because it was about women who shattered expectations. Out of the box? They kicked a hole in it and ran for daylight. Glass ceiling? They didn't look up; they looked inward. Career path? None. They were on what you might call”—a small private smile—“a journey. And that's the implicit question of this assignment: What's
your
journey? How long is its arc? How high? In your wildest dreams, how aspirational are you? I'm not hearing that yet.”

Silence. This was one of those moments when everyone has an answer—who doesn't have a dream? —but no one wants to speak first.

A voice emerged from the middle of the room: “You start.”

“Fair enough,” Blair said. The slightest pause. “I'm married. I have a child. And I spend my days here with you. Freud said, ‘Work and love.' Well, I'm with him. That's what I've got. That's what I cherish. I'm not saying you can have it all, because I don't and I know I can't, and I think that's the wrong conversation. But finding work worth doing and having people in your life worth doing it for … doing the best you can every day … that feels honorable to me.”

These were not new ideas to these young women.

They were, in the main, their mothers' ideas. They were ideas their mothers had passed on to them. They had come to Barnard to reject these ideas, to find better ones, and what they were being told, by a woman they wanted to like and respect, was that these ideas were as good as it gets.

Unhappiness washed over the room.

Then, as Blair hoped, they began to say what they felt.

Chapter 5

If I didn't know she wanted half of her husband's frequent flyer miles, I might have thought Nancy Robb Russakof was irresistible. Eyes as gray as Nantucket fog. Bare, tanned legs. Black linen shirtwaist.

She wore an unidentifiable perfume that suggested the lavender fields and cypress trees of Provence, but whatever it was, her real scent was money—massive money. We had many clients like her. Their teeth were whitened, their toes and nails were glossy as Bentleys, their bodies were so kneaded and massaged that Kobe beef would be jealous.

Mrs. Russakof was entitled, but she was also nervous. I could tell because she stood in the doorway of my office, the heel of one ballet flat raised like a deer poised to pivot and flee at the slightest sign of danger.

Pleasantries were exchanged. I filled two heavy crystal glasses with gourmet water. To little effect. I only keep one picture in my office—of Blair and our daughter, taken when Ann was ten; they're walking hand in hand on a beach, love radiating from them in the golden late afternoon—and the absence of framed degrees or signed photos from grateful celebrities compounded Mrs. Russakof's discomfort. I let her stew. She wanted Victoria, not me. All attempts to charm her would be unavailing.

She spoke first. “Did Victoria brief you?”

“Yes. The general idea was short-man syndrome.”

“He's tall when he stands on his wallet.”

“Those weren't her words, but—”

“They're key. He's not going to make this easy.”

“The spouse writing the checks rarely does.”

“Then Victoria didn't really brief you.” She leaned forward, resentment streaming off her. “Billy started out as a bond trader for Milken and left before Boesky fooled the government into thinking Mike was Mr. Big. He took his loot, bought a company, flipped it, and became a player. He hit Eastern Europe just behind Soros, made the Forbes list, married me, and decided we should be the next power couple in women's wear. See where I'm going, Mr. Greenfield? He's always a step ahead. And widely hated for it.”

“Widely?”

“You don't know the joke about him? You have Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and Billy Russakof in a room. And you have a gun. But you only have two bullets. Who do you shoot?”

“No idea.”

“Billy Russakof—twice.”

“Oh. Why do you want to end the marriage now?”

“A few months ago, instead of working late or going out with his traders at night or screwing an assistant, Billy began coming home for dinner.”

“What did this suggest to you?”

“That I needed to go to the clue store. Really. I had no idea.”

“You might have taken that as a fresh commitment to the marriage. Why didn't you?”

“Because all he talks about are his trades. The bid. The ask. The number of shares. His reasoning. Their reasoning. It was excruciating. I started drinking glass after glass of water just so I could leave the table and pee.”

“He's trying to drive you crazy.”

“For starters, yes.”

“He knows you're here?”

“Billy's not above hiding a GPS in my bag.”

Another woman might have said it was a Birkin, which it was, selling for $20,000, at least. She didn't go there. Points for her.

“Mrs. Russakof, are you having an affair?”

She ignored the question, produced a brown envelope, and set it on my desk. She knew her business—it was sealed and signed on the flap, with clear tape over the signature.

“Put this in your safe,” she said. “How soon can we start?”

I pushed an extension on the phone. “If you have a few minutes …”

This impressed her. “You have a forensic accountant on staff?”

“Not exactly an accountant. But definitely an expert. He's been with Victoria for a long time. Before he comes in, two things you should know: He's not a mute, just very silent, and he prefers not to use his name. You'll know him as Reboot.”

“Reboot?”

“He's a master of the art of getting—and forgetting. Swiss bank records, mistresses, whatever we need. All very discreet.”

She nodded. With the matrimonial business with me over, she took up some personal business.

“Just so we're clear, Mr. Greenfield,” she said, “I don't sleep with married men.”

“I don't either,” I replied.

A soft, timely knock on the door. Reboot appeared. He was exactly as described: not memorable.

I made introductions. Reboot nodded. Nancy Russakof seemed slightly intimidated. And as she began to outline her husband's enterprise, I dared to think maybe we'd hear no more of air miles.

Then I had other thoughts: tanned legs, gray eyes, and lavender perfume.

Chapter 6

When Jean Coin called to ask if we could meet—“It's not urgent but as soon as possible, outside the office”—I took that to mean she wanted maximum privacy. Once I got over my surprise and set aside my curiosity, I knew where to have this conversation: the café at the model boat pond in Central Park, a cheery stage set where rich kids and their fathers sail small, radio-controlled boats. On weekends, it's mobbed. On a school day in September, the tables would be empty.

My office was six blocks away. Jean Coin's loft was in Tribeca. Of course she arrived first.

She was standing with her back to me, a foot on a chair, retying a shoelace. White shirt, faded jeans, sneakers. Her all-purpose uniform.

“Ms. Coin?”

She turned.

“Sorry to be late,” I said. “Weepy client.”

“If you're not early, you're late,” she said, but then I got a smile I didn't expect and a quick, awkward kiss on the cheek I expected even less.

At the gallery, her gaze had been so powerful and our conversation so intense that I didn't really notice much else. I did now. She had a look much prized in our city. Memorable cheekbones. Legs so thin it looked as if the bones could snap at any time. Breasts, and not small ones.

I felt … stirrings.

She claimed the chair with her back to the pond. Her view: a stone wall, the tops of buses, the trunks of trees, and, through the foliage, a sliver of limestone apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, which is to say she had no view at all. I understood her choice when I took the chair that looked into the park—the better view. Jean was a picture waiting to be taken, the woman in the center of the frame with stripes of water and lawn behind her.

On the table sat two bottles of Evian and two sandwiches precisely wrapped in paper napkins.

“Ham and brie, with honey mustard,” she said. “Okay?”

“Salami and cheddar would have been fine. But thanks.”

Multitasking seemed unwise. I didn't unwrap my sandwich.

“Hypothetically,” she said as she opened her bottle of water, “what makes a client weepy?”

“Hypothetically … he's due in court next month, and he just fired his fourth lawyer. But even as he's pleading poverty, he bought a ranch in”—professional discretion made me pause and go vague—“some Rocky Mountain state. With separate pilot's quarters. Don't you love that phrase?”

“I don't understand. What are pilot's quarters … hypothetically?”

Did Jean Coin giggle? No. But close.

“Hypothetically,” I began—now her laugh was full-throated, and I could almost see her knocking back shots of bourbon in a bar a half hour before closing—“pilot's quarters means an apartment over the garage for the pilot of your private jet.”

“The pilot can't stay in a motel?”

“Not the pilot of a CEO's G5. Not in an unnamed mountain state resort.”

“Will the husband win?”

“Hypothetically … no. But my weeper and I will sweat to earn every dollar. And then we'll have to wait for it. That's how these guys operate.”

“If you had him for a client …”

“Men like that,” I said, “are why my partner and I prefer to represent the wives.”

“This is so much more interesting than photography,” Jean said. “If you can talk about it … what's the best present a client has ever given you?”

“Gratitude. And tears. Good tears.”

“No ‘now that I'm not your client, maybe we could …'?”

“Hypothetically, no. And, in fact, no. A better question would be: What's the best present you ever got from a client's ex-husband?”

“That happened?”

“Once. Two bottles of '78 Petrus … with a card that said
thank you
.”

“He must have been very relieved to be rid of her.”

“No doubt. But I think he was sending me a message: ‘You missed the twenty million dollars I stashed offshore.'”

Jean's reaction was pretty much nothing, and I began to suspect that she was more interested in running a line of questions than hearing the answers. I don't mind sharing war stories—it's one of the perks of the profession. Doing it at a party is one thing, but doing it for a woman who has summoned you from your office in midday? Enjoyable at first, just because it was Jean Coin, but getting old fast.

“Ms. Coin …”

“One more, okay?”

“One.”

“What was the meanest thing a husband ever did to his wife?”

“So many to choose from. But this is a classic. … She put him through med school. He became successful. Just before their anniversary, he told her, ‘Go to Bergdorf's and try on fur coats.' She did. Left him a note about the coat she liked and the woman who'd helped her. The anniversary came and went. Nothing. She mustered some courage and asked what had gone wrong. ‘Oh, trying on the coat—that was your present,' he said. And yet she stayed married to him for five more years.”

She looked down at her sandwich, clearly uneasy. Seconds ticked by; minutes might follow. “What's the most amazing thing a client ever told you?” This was blurted out. As if she were stalling. Why?

“That's a second question.”

“Please.”

This took no effort. I think about this woman all the time.

“I represented a woman who would go, once a month, to a hotel, where three or four guys were waiting. She'd do them all, one after another. And then she'd go home to her husband. I asked her why she did it, why she liked it. ‘Because it's just … filthy,' she said, and the look on her face when she said that last word … it was rapture.”

“
Rapture
,” she said. “Is that not the most beautiful word in the English language?”

I could have suggested others:
again
and
more
. But that story about the client in the hotel room was the end of the pleasantries for me. I wanted Jean to state her business.

“Did you want to see me about a … matrimonial issue, Ms. Coin?”

“Oh, I'm not married, counselor,” she said. “This is … social.”

Again she descended into silence, jaw clenched. At last she said, “Promise me you won't laugh.”

“Cross my heart.”

She took several calming breaths but was no calmer for them.

In a rush: “I'm leaving the city for six months at Thanksgiving, and I'd like to have a lover until then, and I'd like you …”

She couldn't make it to the end. But she was looking right at me, and her eyes said it all.

“I could not possibly be more surprised,” I said.

“Surprised—and flattered?”

“I may get to
flattered
. Right now, I'm stuck on
surprised
.”

Not what she hoped to hear.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I
can
do foreplay, but not at the beginning.”

“Funny, that's when it's usually done.”

I meant a light tone, but I missed. Why the sarcasm? Because although I'm a good man, I am, in the end, just a man. Monogamy-challenged. Eternally. I know this—early in my marriage, there was some nasty trouble on just this issue—so I walk the line. I don't hide my wedding ring or maneuver conversations with married women in the direction of lies about my “open marriage” or initiate any strategy that could lead to a woman's bed without that seeming to be my idea. Blair says I'm a flirt, but I don't think women are confused—my idea of flirting is more like banter.

I've never directly propositioned anyone.

A woman bluntly propositioning
me
? It's never happened. But here was Jean Coin, shoving temptation in my face. Many men would be thrilled. And maybe I would be, if I allowed myself to admit it.

So I admitted it.

Reality check—my defenses had been breached. I'd almost forgotten the signals, but here they were: dry mouth, pounding pulse, and a surge of blood. Another minute and I'd pull her to me and lock mouths.

“I need to be elsewhere,” I said.

An obvious lie but apparently obvious only to me.

“You're shocked.”

“It's more like … I feel that I should respond in … oh … French. Or Swedish.”

Such bullshit. And worse—cowardly. Sophisticated New York lawyer David Greenfield would do battle for a woman, but he'd do anything to avoid confronting her.

Jean missed my evasion. I'd rejected her; anything else was just noise. And the rejection grated.

“You really ought to get out more,” she said.

No mistaking her edge.

“Yeah? Where?” I asked, with edge of my own.

“Any bar. Any city. Any day of the week. It's as American as the NRA—people hit on each other.”

“No, men hit on women.”

“Boy, you are weak on the facts.”

Nasty. Condescending. I went into my default: Play the lawyer, and grill the witness.

“The facts are subtext. I'm hung up on the main point, like why me?”

“In your business, when you meet someone, do you ever get a … feeling?”

“All the time,” I said, evenly. “But I never act on first impressions.”

Now Jean looked completely defeated. When she spoke, she mumbled.

“I sensed a restlessness … I felt a possibility … I hoped you'd find me attractive. I hoped—”

“Jean, I have a wife.”

“All the good men do.”

“Find another one. My marriage doesn't work that way.”

“How does it work?”

My God, she was relentless. Somewhere this was a virtue.

“Actually, I don't think you're entitled to an answer.”

“You only regret what you say no to,” she said.

I could hear her hurt and see her disappointment, but there was no civil way to end this. I got up and walked away, not looking back.