She Poured Out Her Heart (44 page)

“This is it.” He stopped at a doorway in between two unidentifiable dark office fronts and unlocked the outer door's many and serious locks. Inside, a landing and stairs, on the worn side. “No elevator, sorry.”

He was on the third floor. Jane labored up the stairs, wishing she had drunk either more or less of the wine. Patrick was saying his place was nothing fancy, really. As if she was there for the decor. He said he'd tried to pick it up a little, but he hadn't been home much, you know? “Ta da,” he said, ushering her inside, and Jane thought the apartment wasn't any worse than she'd imagined, rather like the back room of a sports bar, and right away she asked for the bathroom, overcome by an ignominious need to pee.

Any cleaning efforts had not reached the bathroom. It was inhabited by swampy towels and a number of end rolls of toilet paper lined up along the sink. Jane had seen worse, but probably not since college days. The light was too bright and she squinted at the mirror, thinking she didn't look too bad, and anyway she'd gotten herself this far so she must look good enough.

When she came out again she passed the bedroom, empty, the covers pulled up on the unadorned bed in an attempt at neatness. She'd imagined him waiting there for her but no. She made her way back to the main room. Patrick was seated on the oversized couch with the television remote in his hand, clicking through the stations. Jane, confused now, stood in the doorway until he patted the seat next to him and she sat.

“Want something to drink? A beer? That's all I have, sorry.”

“No thanks.” He was still fiddling with the remote, leaning forward and trying to get something on the screen to advance. They should just, you didn't want to say, get on with it, but that was how she was thinking, get on with it before she talked herself out of it, before she had to start worrying about driving back home, had to think of her innocent, needy
children, had to go back to being Jane the uptight frigid dope. She looked around her at the unpromising furnishings, the bookcase with no books but the line of sports trophies, the magazines on the coffee table (automotive, football), the sweatshirt hung over a doorknob, the stack of newspapers under a chair, and the edge came off her desire.

“OK, wait a minute . . . wait a . . . here we go.” He settled back and put an arm around Jane, drawing her in even as her muscles tensed. The television screen brightened and the sound track started up in scratchy mid-note.

“What are we watching?” Jane asked, because the picture quality was uneven, both shadowy and washed out. A woman was making a phone call in a kitchen. Cut to the doorbell ringing and the woman opening the door and inviting the young blond pizza delivery boy inside. She couldn't find her money, or maybe it had somehow fallen on the floor? She bent over and her short skirt rode up to reveal her bare behind and a nether costume consisting only of a garter belt and black stockings.

“Hey,” Jane said, meaning it as protest, but Patrick's hand was working around the side of her bra to the front, even as the pizza boy grasped the situation, and then the lady, dropping his pants to reveal his erect, dark red penis. “I don't want to watch this,” Jane said, even as Patrick divided his attention between Jane's left breast and the action onscreen, where the woman was now on her knees, her mouth busy, and the pizza boy's face took on an expression of writhing agony.

“Patrick!” Jane succeeded in detaching his hand. She pushed away from him and stood up. “Cut it out!”

“What's the matter, huh?” He had a visible erection, Jane noticed.

“Turn that off, please.”

“You don't like this one?” He picked up the remote and the couple froze in mid-groan. “There's all kinds of others. There's one in a swimming pool, it's really hot.”

“No, why do you think I want to watch that, it's gross!”

“Really?” He seemed uncomprehending, as if she had announced that she was neither a Sox nor a Cubs fan. “I thought it would, you know, help you. Get you in the mood.”

“Well it really doesn't.” She didn't know if she should be angry, or if it was the kind of thing you could laugh at. “I'm sorry, watching other people have sex, that does nothing for me.”

“Oh.” He aimed the remote and the screen went dark. He looked around the room, considering. “You want me to light some candles?”

“No. I mean that's all right, I don't need candles.” It was funny, she decided. In a despairing kind of way.

“Come on and sit back down. Jeez, I'm sorry.”

Jane sat, but at some distance from him. Her mouth was dry from the wine. She didn't feel angry, just disappointed and dreary at this latest failure. Maybe you were supposed to like porn. Maybe Bonnie did. “I should probably go.”

“No, come on. What's the problem, huh? It's no big deal, it's a stupid movie. Relax.”

It really wasn't a big deal and Jane told herself that and tried to send the Relax command to her central nervous system. The message wasn't getting through. She knew she wasn't being fair to him, backing down like this, and that made her feel even worse. She tried to explain. “I guess I've never been very good friends with my body.”

“Friends,” Patrick repeated, uncomprehending. “You can do that? Be friends with yourself?”

“Comfortable with your body. Natural.”

“Yeah? How come, you think?”

He was trying, gamely, to follow along. Jane said, “I've always been more of a . . . spiritual person.”

“You mean, religious?” He was wary now. “Because I gotta tell you, I've done my time with girls who got totally messed up by nuns.”

“No, don't worry, I'm not Catholic, or anything else. I meant, living in my head. Not being very physical.”

“You have a really nice figure, you know? Especially for having kids.”

“Thank you.” She guessed you had to take your compliments where you found them.

“I mean it, is that the deal, you think you don't have a good body? I like a tall girl, they don't go to fat. Is that all right for me to say? I don't want to get you mad again.”

“No, that's OK.” She'd been thinking of her mom boobs and her stretch marks. Maybe you had to get over things like that.

“I wish you'd come sit a little closer.”

Sitting closer did not commit you to any particular course of action. Without standing up, she moved herself along the cushions, stopping just short of his reach. He made a mock grab for her, failed, and fell back against the cushions. “She's hard to get,” Patrick said, as if to an audience. “She's making me work for it.”

“I'm not making you work for anything,” Jane said, although she was beginning to like the idea of doing so.

He was studying her now, pretend-solemn. “So will you help me out here? I need, like, spiritual enlightenment.”

“You're making fun of me.”

“Naw.” He was trying, and failing, to keep a straight face.

“Yes you are.”

“Maybe a little. But you have to tell me, seriously, is there some way you like doing it better than others?”

Jane shook her head, embarrassed all over again. Was there? She didn't think so. But then, she had not spent much time considering the matter.

“Fantasies,” Patrick suggested. “Give me a clue. Work with me here. Think of me as your friendly neighborhood sex therapist.”

Her fantasy was that she was Bonnie. Someone who knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about it. Jane reached behind her, unhooked her bra, and let the straps slide down her arms. Unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt and leaned back. Crossed her legs and let her skirt ride up.

“Whoa.” Patrick took a measuring look at the space between them. “You're not going to sit over there all night, are you?”

She was such a tease. She liked that he was excited, that he acted like she was worth putting up with, worth pursuing. “Would you turn off the lights?” she asked, and he got up to do so.

You could be anybody in the dark. She stood, stepped out of her panties; took off her stockings, skirt, and bra; put her shirt back on. There was a bit of dim light from the hall, enough to see the shape of him moving toward her and she guessed he could see her too, her white shirt, her hair, maybe, because he went right for her and everything began to happen fast.

He had her lie back on the couch and there were the sounds of his belt buckle loosening and the sounds of unzipping and the next minute he was inside her. He was standing in between her legs and holding them apart and he went slow at first, holding back. “You're so big,” she murmured, because he was, and because she knew he would want her to say it, it was the kind of thing you said to a man, and she was the kind of woman who said such things, at least she was now, wasn't she? He let go of her legs and put both hands beneath her to pull himself even farther in and come at her harder and it hurt, at least until she got used to it, but she thought this was how it was supposed to feel.

Because Bonnie had liked it. She'd said so. Said she'd liked fucking him. The word she used. What Jane was doing this very minute, and it was quite extraordinary to think this was really her, it was
really happening.
It went on and on. It was her, Jane, but it was also Bonnie, this confusion of bodies the strangest thing, but how else would she have come here? How else allow herself this cresting pleasure? She had come close to such feeling a time or two but for once it was in reach and she let go, let go, let it shake her all the way loose.

“How you doing?” he said from somewhere next to her ear, because he had collapsed on top of her. He balanced his weight on his elbows and raised up. “You OK? Huh?”

She couldn't talk yet so she nodded. She was still wearing her shirt; it
was all wadded and crumpled around her. When she could speak, she said, “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see his face, big and pale and too close up, as if the moon had come in through the window and fixed itself on her chest. The angel on his right bicep fluttered as he moved.

“What we just did,” she said weakly. There was a slick of sweat all along her stomach, turning chill.

He gave her a smacking kiss on the mouth. “It all comes natural, darlin'. Scuse me.”

He hoisted himself up and took off down the hall to the bathroom. Jane got up too, shivering, and put on the sweatshirt hanging on the doorknob. She searched the floor and found her panties and put them on too. She was wet between her legs and that felt strange, soiled, and what she wanted most now was to leave and find some quiet space to be alone and put the pieces of herself back together again.

But she couldn't leave yet, you had to go through the awkward part first. She heard Patrick come out of the bathroom and then he must have been in the bedroom, opening and closing things. “All right if I turn on the lights?” he asked, when he came back in.

Jane said yes. The light came on and she saw that he was wearing a pair of basketball shorts, the silky kind, blue with gold striped up the side. “You checking out my fat belly?” Patrick asked, striking a pose that made his stomach stick out. Jane shook her head and dropped her eyes. She thought the shorts were ridiculous.

She didn't want to get dressed with him watching so she took all her clothes into the bathroom. She'd seen cleaner toilets in gas stations. When she went back out, he had the television on again.

“Relax, it's just SportsCenter,” he said. “Come here.”

Jane sat down next to him and he patted her knee. “You OK?” Jane nodded. “You sure? You're not going to get weird on me, are you? Sometimes girls do that.”

“What do you mean, weird.” She guessed she knew what he meant.

“They act like this is some kind of sad occasion. Like we just murdered somebody.”

Jane started to tell him it had to do with insecurity and anxiety and whatever cocktail of sensations the body served up before, during, and after. Then thought and words and everything else left her and she floated free in blissful white space and here was Patrick calling her name and shaking her.

“You all right? Hey!” He was standing over her, so that she opened her eyes to the ridiculous shorts, the cheap synthetic fabric with the perforations for ventilation and the elastic stitching at the waistband and the piece of white net lining working its way loose, and she had an impulse to pull the shorts aside so she could examine his penis with the same degree of intensity and wonder, but that would be a different kind of weird or else taken as an invitation for some new carnal activity and she didn't mean it that way. And so even though she felt extraordinarily fine, clear-headed and refreshed, she made a show of fluttering her eyes and breathing small sips of air as if she were coming out of a swoon.

“Wow,” she said. “I guess you really did a number on me.”

Which was the truth, but not in the way he would imagine.

“You OK? Really? How about I get you some water.”

Jane allowed that water would be nice. She closed her eyes. She heard him in the kitchen, running the tap and opening cupboards. Lord save her from having to look at the kitchen. She tried to recapture the feel and the memory of that floating white space but it got confused with the feel and memory of the recent sexual climax, which was not a bad thing at all.

Patrick came back in and she opened her eyes to find him carrying a bowl and a tall glass of ice water. He set them down next to her. “Chocolate ice cream,” he said, indicating the bowl. “Actually it's frozen yogurt, it's better for you.”

“Thanks.” Jane drank the water and started in on the frozen yogurt. She didn't think she was hungry but it tasted better than she expected
and she liked that he was fussing over her. “This is good,” she told him, waving the spoon in the air.

“Yeah, it's not bad for healthy. So what happened, did you pass out or something?”