The Deep End (32 page)

“What can I say?” she asks, careful not to look at him. “He’s a lawyer, very smart, very successful …”

“Very successful maybe. Not very smart.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If he had any brains, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because they make me uncomfortable,” she tells him, fidgeting in her chair and taking another sip of her Benedictine, feeling her throat warm instantly, as if someone had lit a match.

“Why should compliments make you uncomfortable?”

“Because they’re too facile,” she says strongly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unpleasant, but I’ve never been very good at any of this …”

“Any of what?”

“Any of … this! The games. Dating. I wasn’t very good at it twenty years ago and I’m worse at it now.”

“Am I the first man you’ve dated since your separation?”

Joanne nods, feeling her cheeks redden.

“I’m flattered.”

“I’m scared to death.”

“Of me?”

“You’ll do.”

He laughs. “Is that why you have every light in the house on?”

It is her turn to laugh. “Subtlety has never been my strong suit.”

“What is?”

“You just ate it.”

“There’s more to you than lemon meringue pies.” He smiles.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

She laughs. “I’m a lousy judge of character,” she says.

“Describe yourself in three words.”

“Oh, come on …”

“No, I’m serious. Indulge me. Three words.”

She rests her head in the palm of her left hand, positioning her face away from his penetrating eyes. “Scared,” she whispers finally. “Confused.” She lets out a deep breath of air. “Lonely,” she says finally. “How’s that for an uplifting appraisal?” Her eyes return reluctantly to his.

“Lousy,” he says and suddenly he is kissing her, his lips softly pressing against her own. The subtle scent of Tia Maria enters her nostrils; she tastes it on the tip of her tongue. “Now how do you feel?” he asks.

“Scared,” she replies evenly. “Confused.” She laughs. “Not quite so lonely.”

He leans forward to kiss her again.

Immediately she brings her small glass to her lips.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“Ready for what?”

“For whatever this is leading up to.”

“Which is?”

She shakes her head. “I feel so foolish.”

“Why? Why do you feel foolish?”

“Please don’t play with me. I told you I wasn’t very good at these games.”

“You don’t like games? Okay, I’ll tell you straight out where I’d like this to lead,” Steve Henry says. “I’d like it to lead upstairs. I’d like it to lead to your bed. I want to make love to you. Is that straightforward enough?”

“Can we talk about something else?” Joanne pleads, standing up and starting to clear away the dishes.

“Sure. We can talk about anything you’d like. Here, let me help you.” He picks up his empty plate.

“I’ll do that,” she tells him.

“Let me help you,” he repeats.

“Oh, put the goddamn dish down!” she shouts, then immediately buries her face in her hands.

Suddenly he is beside her and his arms are around her, his mouth buried against the soft curls of her hair. “Let me help you,” he says again, his lips finding hers, his body pressing tightly against her own.

“You don’t understand,” she tries to tell him.

“I do understand.”

“I’m afraid …”

“I know.”

“No,” she says, pulling back, feeling his arms reluctantly letting her go. “You don’t know.” She is aware of tears falling the length of her cheek. “You think that I’m afraid because you’re the first man I’ve dated since my separation, but it’s more than that.” She looks helplessly around the room. “I got married when I was twenty-one. My husband was the first real boyfriend I ever had. Do you understand what I am saying? Paul is. the only lover I’ve ever had, the only man I’ve ever known. I’m forty-one years old and I’ve only known one man my entire life. And he left me! Somehow I let him down. And now you come along, with your perfect twenty-nine-year-old body, and I don’t know what you think I can give you but …”

“How about what I can give you?”

“I’ll disappoint you …”

He pulls her into the hall. “Let’s go upstairs,” he says.

“I can’t.”

Once again his arms are around her waist as he presses her back against the hardness of the wall, her body beginning to respond to urges she has felt in the past only when she was with Paul. She sees Steve Henry lift his arm toward the light switch, watches as the hall goes suddenly dark, feels his lips brush against the sides of her own. And then suddenly, he is backing away. Her eyes search out his in the surrounding shadows.

“I’m not going to force you to do something you don’t want to do,” he is saying. “If you want me to go, then say so. Tell me to go.”

Her eyes remain locked on his. Slowly, her lips move to form the appropriate word. “Stay,” she says.

J
oanne cannot believe what is happening. She is trying her best to pretend that it isn’t.

They are in her bedroom. She has a vague recollection of having been half-carried up the stairs, her arms draped around unfamiliar young shoulders, her mouth fastened to lips that are somewhat fuller than she is used to, two mismatched bodies curiously joined at the hip as they tumble toward the bedroom. Now they are beside the bedroom window, and she has barely enough time to pull the drapes closed before this stranger surrounds her again, his strong hands delicately caressing her outstretched arms as he draws them around his narrow waist, his mouth searching out hers, his legs burrowing in between her own. She feels strangely giddy and light-headed and has to resist the ill-timed impulse to laugh. Sex is funny after all, she thinks, but knows that he will not understand. The young take sex so seriously. They have yet to discover the humor in it. She feels confident hands at her breasts and closes her eyes tightly, pretending they are Paul’s hands. Her breath comes in short, frightened gasps, as if he is holding a pillow over her head.
She tries to pull away, to throw off the suffocating pillow, but he refuses to release her.

“Easy,” he cautions, drawing her toward the bed, his fingers tugging at the buttons of her blouse.

She is momentarily distracted by the mechanics of disrobing. This is a new blouse, she thinks. She has just paid almost a hundred dollars for it. The buttons are unique, flower-shaped, which is probably why he is having such difficulty with them. She feels the impatience in his fingers, and hopes that he doesn’t get tired and just rip the buttons off. They would be difficult to replace; the blouse is new; it would be a shame to ruin it after only one wearing.

Somehow he has the buttons undone and he is slowly pulling the blouse off her shoulders. She fights the urge to catch it before it falls to the floor, recognizing that they will probably step all over it in the next few minutes, and that she will have to wash and iron it the next day. Perhaps she should take it to the cleaners. She’ll have to check the label in the morning.

His hands are tracing the soft lace around her new bra. Can he see it in the dark? Has he any idea how much these things cost today? Oh God, what is he doing? she wonders as he easily locates the front clasp and pushes the soft fabric away from her now bare breasts. “You’re beautiful,” she hears him mutter as he moves his mouth down her neck. She covers her eyes with her hands, her arms blocking her exposed breasts from his view, her elbows knocking against the bones of his cheeks.

“Sorry,” she apologizes quickly, but her arms refuse to budge from their protective position.

He says nothing, gently prying her arms apart, holding
them firmly behind her back as his lips return to her breasts, tracing the outlines of her nipples.

Joanne looks helplessly around the room, searching for someone to rescue her. In the darkness, she locates the image of Eve watching her from the doorway. Not bad, Eve is saying. Relax. Enjoy yourself.

Help me, Joanne pleads, but Eve only smiles, making herself at home in the comfortable blue chair at the foot of Joanne’s bed. Relax, silly. This is opportunity knocking. Enjoy it.

Steve Henry’s hands are at the side button of her trousers, Joanne realizes, wishing they could just forget about all this nonsense and go back to kissing. That was fun, not nearly so demanding. It didn’t require as much concentration, being relatively easy to close her eyes and imagine the lips she was kissing were Paul’s. It is harder to make substitutions when entire bodies are involved, when she is dealing with altogether different techniques.

As if he understands what she is thinking, his mouth is suddenly back on hers, his tongue growing more insistent. Paul would not be so relentless, she thinks as her slacks fall to the floor. She hears the soft fabric being kicked aside, wonders if he has taken off his shoes. Silk is so expensive to clean, she thinks in dismay, wondering where she acquired this streak of practicality, wishing that she could lose herself in the fantasy of what is happening.

Which is precisely the problem, she realizes—that it
is
happening. This is not a fantasy. This is reality. And the reality of the situation is that she is on her way to bed with a man she doesn’t love and barely knows except that she knows he is not Paul, no matter how tightly she closes her eyes and tries to imagine otherwise.

Whatever it is, she hears Eve protest, it’s not half bad. Get with it, my girl. Reality or illusion—who cares? Enjoy.

I can’t, Joanne cries silently as Steve Henry pushes her across her bed, leaning her head gently against her pillows, his hands skimming over the bare surface of her exposed stomach. This is not the way I’m used to being touched, she tries to tell him, though she says nothing. It tickles and I’m very ticklish. Paul understands this. He knows just how to touch me. He knows how to make me relax, how to dispel my self-consciousness, not heighten it.

His fingers are pulling at her panties, pushing them down over her thighs. I’m so embarrassed I could die, Joanne thinks, burying her face into the side of the pillow, trying to pretend she is somewhere else as his hands pry her legs apart.

“You’re going to like this,” he is whispering softly as she feels his tongue teasing the insides of her thighs.

It is typical of the younger generation, she decides in this moment, that they think they have invented oral sex. All the various rock singers writhing on the concert stages of the world, miming fellatio to the shocked squeals of their pubescent audience and horrified parents. What would really shock them, she thinks, is the discovery that their parents—and just about everybody else—were doing it for years before they were born, and that the only thing shocking about any of it is their collective naiveté in imagining that theirs is the first generation to have come up with this idea.

She pulls at his hair, forcing his head up. He mistakes this for passion, interprets her discomfort as excitement, impatience to move on. She hears the rustle of clothes, knows that he is pulling off his shirt, feels Eve lean forward
in the blue chair to have a better look. Joanne’s eyes remain closed tight. She refuses to open them as he takes her hand in his and guides it toward the front of his pants.

“I know where it is,” she says suddenly, her voice cutting through the stillness of the room like a knife through a perfect arch of meringue.

“What?” he asks, his voice hoarse, as if she has just jolted him awake, which perhaps she has.

Her hand grips the bulge at the front of his pants. “I said I know where it is,” she repeats. “You don’t have to show me.”

He sits up abruptly, dislodging her hand. His tone is sad, curious. “What’s the matter?”

She shakes her head, pulling her body into a sitting position.

“There’s nothing the matter.”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

That’s exactly what I am, she thinks. I’m angry. Angry at me for putting myself in this position; angry at you because you’re not the man I want you to be, because you can’t be the man I want you to be, because the man I want doesn’t want me anymore, because I’m stupid and old and useless and ugly …

“If you’re not angry,” he is saying, oblivious to these inner ravings, “then lie back down beside me.” He pulls her back across the bed, his fingers returning to her nipples. “Relax,” he says.

“I can’t relax,” she says impatiently, brushing his hand aside.

“Why not?”

“Because I find what you’re doing very distracting,” she tells him.

“Distracting?”

“I can’t concentrate when you do that.”

“You’re not supposed to be concentrating on anything
but
that,” he tells her. “What’s the matter, Joanne? What’s happening that I’m not aware of?”

She pulls at the covers of the bed and brings them up protectively around her naked body. “It’s not your fault. It’s not you.”

“Who else is it?” he demands. “Who else is here?”

“Too many ghosts,” she replies helplessly, after a pause.

Eve pushes herself off the blue chair at the foot of Joanne’s bed. She shakes her head in dismay, lifts her palms into the air in a gesture of defeat, and promptly disappears.

“I’m sorry,” Joanne is saying as Steve Henry pulls his pale pink polo shirt over his head, struggling momentarily with one of the sleeves. “I wanted to. I thought I could.”

“Maybe you thought you could,” he corrects her, looking around in the dark for his shoes, “but you certainly didn’t want to. Do you mind if I turn on some lights?” he asks. “I can’t see anything.”

Joanne pulls the covers higher so that they reach her chin. “Go ahead.”

He doesn’t move. “Where are they?” he asks finally, sounding like a lost little boy afraid of the dark.

“I’ll do it,” Joanne says, reaching over to the end table beside her and switching on the lamp, wincing as the room comes into bright, sharp focus.

Steve Henry quickly locates his shoes as Joanne glances at the clock radio. It is only half past ten.