The Accidental Detective and other stories (6 page)

“Look, I want to fuck you,” Sylvia had said out of the blue, about six months after she started working for him. Okay, not totally out of the blue. She had tried a few more subtle things—pressing her breasts against his arm when going over a document, touching his hand, asking him if he needed her to go with him to conferences, even volunteering to pay her own way when told there was no money in the budget for her to attend. “We could even share a room,” she said. It was when Charlie demurred at her offer that she said: “Look, I want to fuck you.”

Charlie was fifty-eight at the time, married thirty-six years, and not quite at ease in the world. He remembered a time when nice girls didn't—well, when they didn't do it so easily and they certainly didn't speak of it this way. Marla had been a nice girl, someone he met at college and courted according to the standards of the day, and while he remembered being wistful in the early days of his marriage, when everyone suddenly seemed to be having guilt-free sex all the time, AIDS had come along and he decided he was comfortable with his choices. Sure, he noticed pretty girls and thought about them, but he had never been jolted to act on those feelings. It seemed like a lot of trouble, frankly.

“Well, um, we can't,” he told Sylvia.

“Why? Don't you like me?”

“Of course I like you, Sylvia, but you work for me. They have rules about that. Anita Hill and all.”

“The point of an affair is that it's carried on in secret.”

“And the point of embezzlement is to get away with stealing money, but I wouldn't put my job at risk that way. I plan to retire from this job in a few years.”

“But you feel what I'm feeling, right? This incredible force between us?”

“Sure.” It seemed only polite.

“So if I find a job with one of our competitors, then there would be nothing to stop us, right? This is just about the sexual harassment rules?”

“Sure,” he said, not thinking her serious. Then, just in case she was: “But you can't take your Rolodex, you know. Company policy.”

A month later, he was called for a reference on Sylvia and he gave her the good one she deserved, then took her out to lunch to wish her well. She put her hand on his arm.

“So can we now?”

“Can we what?”

“Fuck?”

“Oh.” He still wasn't comfortable with that word. “Well, no. I mean, as of this moment, you're still my employee. Technically. So, no.”

“What about next week?”

“Well, my calendar is pretty full—”

“You don't have anything on Thursday.” Sylvia did know his calendar.

“That's true.”

“We can go to my apartment. It's not far.”

“You know, Sylvia, when you're starting a new job, you really shouldn't take long lunches. Not at first.”

“So it's going to be a long lunch.” She all but growled these words at him, confusing Charlie. He was pretty sure that he hadn't committed himself to anything, yet somehow Sylvia thought he had. He had used the company's sexual harassment policy as a polite way to rebuff her, and now it turned out she had taken his excuse at face value. The thing was, he did not find Sylvia particularly attractive. She had thick legs, far too thick for the short skirts she favored, and she was a little hairy for his taste. Still, she dressed as if she believed herself a knockout and he did not want to disabuse her of this notion.

(And did Charlie, who was fifty-six, with thinning hair and a protruding stomach, ever wonder what Sylvia saw in him? No.)

“I'm not sure how I could get away,” he said at last.

“I've already thought that out. If you told people you were playing golf, you could get away Thursdays at lunch. You know how many men at the company play golf. And then we could have Saturdays, too. Long Saturdays, with nothing but fucking.”

He winced. “Sylvia, I really don't like that word.”

“You'll like the way I do it.”

He did, actually. Sylvia applied herself to being Charlie's mistress with the same brisk efficiency she had brought to being his administrative assistant, far more interested in his needs than her own. He made a few rules, mostly about discretion—no e-mails, as few calls as possible, nothing in public, ever—but otherwise he let Sylvia call the shots, which she did with a lot of enthusiasm. Before he knew it, two years had gone by, and he was putting his golf clubs in his car twice a week (except when it rained, which wasn't often, not in this desert climate) and he thought everyone was happy. In fact, Marla even took to bragging a bit that Charlie seemed more easygoing and relaxed since he had started golfing, but he wasn't obsessive about it like most men. So Marla was happy and Charlie was happy and Sylvia—well, Sylvia was not happy, as it turned out.

“When are you going to marry me?” she asked abruptly one day, right in the middle of something that Charlie particularly liked, which distressed him, as it dimmed the pleasure, having it interrupted, and this question was an especially jarring interruption, being wholly unanticipated.

“What?”

“I'm in love with you, Charlie. I'm tired of sneaking around like this.”

“We don't sneak around anywhere.”

“Exactly. For two years, you've been coming over here, having your fun, but what's in it for me? We never go anywhere outside this apartment, I don't even get to go to lunch with you, or celebrate my birthday. I want to marry you, Charlie.”

“You do?”

“I looooooooooooove you.” Sylvia, who clearly was not going to finish tending to him, threw herself across her side of the bed and began to cry.

“You do?” Charlie rather liked their current arrangement, and given that Sylvia had more or less engineered it, he had assumed it was as she wanted it.

“Of course. I want you to leave Marla and marry me.”

“But I don't—” He had started to say he didn't want to leave Marla and marry Sylvia, but he realized this was probably not tactful. “I just don't know how to tell Marla. It will break her heart. We've been together thirty-eight years.”

“I've given it some thought.” Her tears had dried with suspicious speed. “You have to choose. For the next month, I'm not going to see you at all. In fact, I'm not going to see you again until you tell Marla what we have.”

“Okay.” Charlie laid back and waited for Sylvia to continue.

“Starting now, Charlie.”

“Now? I mean, I'm already here. Why not Saturday?”

“Now.”

Two days later, as Charlie was puttering around the house, wondering what to do with himself, Marla asked: “Aren't you going to play golf ?”

“What?” Then he remembered. “Oh, yeah. I guess so.” He put on his golf gear, gathered up his clubs, and headed out. But to where? How should he kill the next five hours? He started to go to the movies, but he passed the club on his way out to the multiplex and thought that it looked almost fun. He pulled in and inquired about getting a lesson. It was harder than it looked, but not impossible, and the pro said the advantage of being a beginner was that he had no bad habits.

“You're awfully tan,” Marla said, two weeks later.

“Am I?” He looked at his arms, which were reddish-brown, while his upper arms were still ghostly white. “You know, I changed suntan lotion. I was using a really high SPF, it kept out all the rays.”

“When I paid the credit card bill, I noticed you were spending a lot more money at the country club. Are you sneaking in extra games?”

“I'm playing faster,” he said, “so I have time to have drinks at the bar, or even a meal. In fact, I might start going out on Sundays, too. Would you mind?”

“Oh, I've been a golf widow all this time,” Marla said. “What's another day? As long”—she smiled playfully—“as long as it's really golf and not another woman.”

Charlie was stung by Marla's joke. He had always been a faithful husband. That is, he had been a faithful husband for thirty-six years, and then there had been an interruption, one of relatively short duration given the length of their marriage, and now he was faithful again, so it seemed unfair for Marla to tease him this way.

“Well, if you want to come along and take a lesson yourself, you're welcome to. You might enjoy it.”

“But you always said golf was a terribly jealous mistress, that you wouldn't advise anyone you know taking it up because it gets such a horrible hold on you.”

“Did I? Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.”

M
ARLA CAME TO THE CLUB
the next day. She had a surprising aptitude for golf and it gave her extra confidence to see that Charlie was not much better than she, despite his two years of experience. She liked the club, too, although she was puzzled that Charlie didn't seem to know many people. “I kind of keep to myself,” he said.

The month passed quickly, so quickly and pleasantly that he found himself surprised when Sylvia called.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well?” he echoed.

“Did you tell her?”

“Her? Oh, Marla. No. No. I just couldn't.”

“If you don't tell her, you'll never see me again.”

“I guess that's only fair.”

“What?” Sylvia's voice, never her best asset, screeched perilously high.

“I accept your conditions. I can't leave Marla, and therefore I can't see you.” Really, he thought, when would he have time? He was playing so much golf now, and while Marla seldom came to the club on Thursdays, she accompanied him on Saturdays and Sundays.

“But you love me.”

“Yes, but Marla is the mother of my children.”

“Who are now grown and living in other cities and barely remember to call you except on your birthday.”

“And she's a fifty-seven-year-old woman. It would be rather mean, just throwing her out in the world at this age, never having worked and all. Plus, a divorce would bankrupt me.”

“A passion like ours is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

“It is?”

“What?” she screeched again.

“I mean, it
is.
We have known a great passion. But that's precisely because we haven't been married. Marriage is different, Sylvia. You'll just have to take my word on that.”

This apparently was the wrong thing to say, as she began to sob in earnest. “But I would be married to
you.
And I love you. I can't live without you.”

“Oh, I'm not much of a catch. Really. You'll get over it.”

“I'm almost forty! I've sacrificed two crucial years, being with you on your terms.”

Charlie thought that was unfair, since the terms had been Sylvia's from the start. But all he said was: “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lead you on. And I won't anymore.”

He thought that would end matters, but Sylvia was a remarkably focused woman. She continued to call—the office, not his home, which indicated to Charlie that she was not yet ready to wreak the havoc she was threatening. So Marla remained oblivious and their golf continued to improve, but his assistant was beginning to suspect what was up and he knew he had to figure out a way to make it end. But given that he wasn't the one who had made it start, he didn't see how he could.

O
N
T
HURSDAY, JUST AS HE WAS
getting ready to leave the office for what was now his weekly midday nine, Sylvia called again, crying and threatening to hurt herself.

“I was just on my way out,” he said.

“Where do you have to go?”

“Golf,” he said.

“Oh, I see.” Her laugh was brittle. “So you have someone new already. Your current assistant? I guess your principles have fallen a notch.”

“No, I really play golf now.”

“Charlie, I'm not your wife. Your stupid lie won't work on me. It's not even your lie, remember?”

“No, no, there's no one else. I've, well, reformed! It's like a penance to me. I've chosen my loveless marriage and golf over the great passion of my life. It's the right thing to do.”

He thought she would find this suitably romantic, but it only seemed to enrage her more.

“I'm going to go over to your house and tell Marla that you're cheating.”

“Don't do that, Sylvia. It's not even true.”

“You cheated with me, didn't you? And a tiger doesn't change his stripes.”

Charlie wanted to say that he was not so much a tiger as a house cat who had been captured by a petulant child. True, it had been hard to break with Sylvia once things had started. She was very good at a lot of things that Marla seldom did and never conducted with enthusiasm. But it had not been his idea. And, confronted with an ultimatum, he had honored her condition. He hadn't tried to have it both ways. He was beginning to think Sylvia was unreliable.

“Meet me at my apartment right now, or I'll call Marla.”

He did, and it was a dreary time, all tears and screaming and no attentions paid to him whatsoever, not even after he held her and stroked her hair and said he did love her.

“You should be getting back to work,” he said at last, hoping to find any excuse to stop holding her.

She shook her head. “My position was eliminated two weeks ago. I'm out of work.”

“Is that why you're so desperate to get married?”

She wailed like a banshee, not that he really knew what a banshee sounded like. Something scary and shrill. “No. I love you, Charlie. I want to be your wife for that reason alone. But the last month, with all this going on, I haven't been at my best, and they had a bad quarter, so I was a sitting duck. In a sense, I've lost my job because of you, Charlie. I'm unemployed and I'm alone. I've hit rock bottom.”

“You could always come back to the company. You left on good terms and I'd give you a strong reference.”

“But then we couldn't be together.”

“Yes.” He was not so clever that he had thought of this in advance, but now he saw it would solve everything.