Whenever You Call (15 page)

Except I’d been celibate for an awfully long time, and I wasn’t sure what difference it made that I’d only just broken that celibacy with one of my former husbands, who was poised to become a monk. As I parked my car on the street where I lived, and checked again in the rearview mirror to make sure that Al had found a place to park, I knew I shouldn’t sleep with him, and I knew that I was going to.

He made it easy.

We ended up consummating the deal on the floor of my study, exactly where I’d been with Isaac, the only difference being that Al and I didn’t even have a deflated mattress beneath us. I’d left him wandering around my little house, while I went down to use the bathroom in the basement. When I came out, he was standing in front of a bookcase in the study, head tilted sideways, peering at the books.

Without turning around, he said, “I love your place.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at the computer, then away. Fighting the urge to check my e-mail. Fighting the call of Rabbitfish. Fighting.

Methodically, he inched along the bookcase. He pulled out a book, flipped it open randomly, and began to read.

        
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,

        
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

        
I learn by going where I have to go.

His voice had shifted lower, to suit the words, and he sounded unutterably delicious, thick and rich, a heady complement to the language. Hot syrup pouring over pancakes, thunderstorm about to hit, Bach cello suite. The voice of some heretofore unimagined angel. Al’s legs folded beneath him slowly, and he sank to the floor, cross-legged. The reading continued. I found myself sinking just as he had, right where I’d been standing across the room. Instead of sitting, I kept on going until I was lying flat on my back, with my arms outstretched beside me.

        
We think by feeling. What is there to know?

        
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

        
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I wasn’t aware that he’d stopped reading because he moved quickly towards me, knelt and kissed me. Except for his lips, he didn’t touch me at all, and he remained on his knees so that he seemed to tower over me. Because the only sensation was in my lips, everything coalesced there. My mouth became my only source. It gave and it received. It tingled and throbbed. With no warning, I came.

Al pressed his mouth tighter over mine and our teeth rubbed together. My back arched and, distantly, I heard myself moaning. I lost track of time after that, but I had the sense that we moved fast, faster than fast, until it was over and I breathed in hugely, then turned on my side, away from him, and let the breath out.

I panted hard for a few minutes. So did he. We sounded like we’d run a 25-mile marathon. I rolled back in his direction, opened my eyes, and stared at him. He was on his back, face to the ceiling. His profile was every bit as attractive as the front of his face, the scar hidden from view on the other side. But it didn’t matter because, handsome or not, I needed him to leave.

I didn’t know why. It had been great sex. He was a gentle, skillful, even interesting lover. But. That wasn’t sacred sex, I thought. It was like we’d been on a roller coaster that stalled halfway up. I closed my eyes, debating. I swallowed. I’d never had the balls to ask a guy to leave, except the one who’d tied me up, and that had been a special situation.

“Al?”

“Umm?”

“I need to be alone.”

He placed a hand on my waist. “No,” he said.

My eyes flipped open. “No, I don’t need to be alone?”

“No, I don’t want to leave.”

I peeked at him, but he was still staring up at the ceiling.

He continued, “I like your house.”

“That’s why you don’t want to go?”

Al nodded vigorously.

“So it’s not really me you want, but my house?”

“Right.”

I was flummoxed. “Shouldn’t I be insulted?” I said, trying hard to
be
insulted though, in fact, I wasn’t.

“Your house is you, basically.”

Now he rolled toward me. We were on our hips, facing each other.

“The floor is killing me,” I said.

“How old are you?”

I laughed. “You’re so tactful.”

He kept looking at me.”

“48,” I said.

No change of expression.

I said, “How old are
you
?”

“38.”

I started to sit up, but his hand, still on my waist, pressed me not to.

He said, “On the count of three, we get up together and go to your bed.”

“On the count of three, we get up together and you go home.”

Al smiled a smile he had probably been using forever, the one no sane woman could resist. “It’ll be even better the second time.”

I figured he was right, but it didn’t really matter. I seemed to have crossed some endless divide, which I would henceforth name, “Great Sex Without Love Wasn’t Worth Much.”

I shrugged and sat up without counting to three. “I really do need to be alone,” I said. Though I was stark naked and mildly self-conscious that my buttocks’ jiggle would prove to be comical, I walked carefully to the bathroom and grabbed my huge bathrobe from the hook on the back of the door.

“Can I say something?” Al yelled.

“Maybe.”

I knotted the tie on the bathrobe and stood a few feet from the bathroom door, which was conveniently near where the stairs led up to the first floor.

Al was now fully dressed. “I know you think this was just sex or something,” he said.

I interrupted, “It
was
just sex—you can’t deny that.”

“But it wasn’t
only
sex.”

I plunged both hands into the voluminous pockets on the front of the robe. “I like you, Al, and I’m grateful to you for having helped me with the Harvest job, but this was only about sex.”

He walked quickly toward me. Smooth as my heart. Before I could get my hands out of their pockets, he’d unknotted the bathrobe tie. He pulled both ends taut in the air and danced them around. “I want to tie you to the bedposts, which I noticed you have,” he whispered.

“The only time I tried that, it was a disaster.” Surprising myself, I smiled.

He crossed the tie in front of my body, then wrapped it around my waist, tying the ends together in the small of my back. He was close to me, and I had to tilt my head to look him in the eyes.

“Admit it wasn’t just sex,” Al said, his mouth inches from mine.

“No.”

He carefully licked my bottom lip.

“No, it was just sex,” I said when I’d reclaimed both lips.

“Yes, it wasn’t just sex,” he said, kissing me.

Maybe he had a point. We kissed for a few moments. Al spoke with his lips still attached to mine. “I’m going to prove to you that this wasn’t just about sex, and then I’m going home.”

“Okay.”

He took my hand and led me up the stairs. In the squinchy space on the landing, he tugged me to the right and into my bedroom, where he grabbed the manuscript copy of “Tie Me to the Bedpost.”

I thought about protesting, but I didn’t. He kept pulling me around the end of the bed, then across the room and out the bedroom door, to the small entrance hall. With the manuscript tucked into his armpit, he leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll call you,” he said.

Al was gone while I still making inarticulate noises. I double-locked the door and headed back down the stairs to the basement. Maybe Rabbitfish had sent me another e-mail.

Secretly, I’d begun to hope that if I had sex with someone, then Rabbitfish would write, as he had the night when I’d been with Isaac. Magical thinking again. Six e-mails popped up on my screen, and every last one was from him, and each contained a single word.

Parachute.

A.

Like.

Up.

Poufs.

Dress.

I returned to the e-mails and scribbled down the words on a piece of paper.

parachute, a, like, up, poufs, dress

Though they obviously made no sense, they tugged at me. Frustrated, I pushed my chair away from the desk and went into the bathroom. After I’d switched on the little space heater, I took off my robe and began to rub in skin cream. I should take a bath, given the sexual activity, but I was physically exhausted. Before hearing from Rabbitfish, I’d been ready to fall into bed. Now, my curiosity was like a blinking red light. A warning to stop so pronounced that, contradictory, my inner accelerator revved to go forward. My body still yearned for bed and my mind was just waking up. When I dropped my flannel nightgown over my head, it clung, clam-like, to places on my body where the cream hadn’t been completely absorbed. I put the bathrobe back on and tied it tightly, while my head kept a litany going: parachute a like up poufs dress, parachute a like up poufs dress, parachute a like up poufs dress.

Then, kaboom, I got it.

Dress poufs up like a parachute.

Eureka!

I dashed to my desk, double-checked the words, then rewrote them in the correct order.

Which got me exactly … nowhere. What did it mean? I thought of answering the last e-mail with a caustic and smart response that implied I understood the message even if, in fact, I didn’t. Instead, I felt something growing, though whether it was, again, a deep curiosity or simply annoyance that I hadn’t yet figured out the message, I wasn’t sure. But I was determined to get it, whatever
it
was.

Ping! Another e-mail. I checked and saw that it was from Al.

Not just sex.

I burst out laughing. He amused and flattered me. Not bad, indeed.

What did “dress poufs up like a parachute” mean? It suggested falling. Jumping out of an airplane and falling, with a dress caught by the air and becoming a parachute. But since when did anyone jump out of an airplane wearing a dress? Okay, it couldn’t be an airplane, per se. Jumping out of what? Or falling from what?

I shrieked. Falling down the rabbit hole!

At my bookshelves, I hunted for my copy of
Alice in Wonderland
, but I couldn’t find it. Then I remembered having put all the children’s books together up in the guest bedroom, thinking that, someday, I’d have grandchildren sleeping in that room. I climbed the two flights of stairs and knelt in front of the bookcase, head tilted sideways, searching for the familiar binding. Once found, I snatched it, stood, and carried it into the kitchen across the small landing.

I made a quick cup of decaf espresso and sat down at the small table. Despite the flannel nightgown and terry cloth robe, I shivered. Old houses at night seemed, by their nature, to manufacture drafts. I opened the book and began to read. It didn’t take long to find the sentence.

Alice falls down the rabbit hole and her dress poufs up like a parachute.

I put on my literary hat and began to analyze Mr. Rabbitfish’s message and this text as if it was an assignment in graduate school. Right away, I understood that he’d sent me the second half of the sentence, backwards. Very like what happens to Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole, and everything turned upside down and topsy-turvy. The “rabbit hole” must be symbolic of Rabbitfish, suggesting that in my dealings with him, my world would be in reverse and backwards. I thought of looking in a mirror, when I’d see what I took to be my reflection, though it was reversed.

I stared out the black glass of the window by the table. The reflection of my kitchen lights twinkled.
Alice In Wonderland
was about a dream, really. And the dream was a reflection of Alice herself, but like any mirror image, reversed.

Now I saw my own face in the window, dim and somewhat featureless. And I thought, Who am I? And who is he? I knew, whatever it might mean, or
not
mean, that I’d fallen down the rabbit hole.

Part Two

J
EN WORE PANTS, SO the prosthetics weren’t visible. She stood at the far end of her apartment, where the huge windows overlooked a view of Boston Harbor. The moment I entered, using the key I still had, I knew everything had changed, and not only because she was standing instead of sitting. The apartment smelled different. It took a few seconds of deliberate sniffing to figure out that it smelled of
food.
Apparently, she and Tom actually cooked. I glanced into the galley kitchen and saw the evidence. Instead of a pristine emptiness, the counters held a toaster oven and a rack of spices. Dish towels hung from the oven door, and a green ivy plant dropped growing tendrils down the wall from the pass-through window.

She turned carefully and held out her arms, in a gesture of “Can you believe it?”

I started to cry. I knew it would irritate her, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, swiping at my eyes and walking across the room toward her.

“You should’ve forced me to do this a long time ago,” Jen said, belligerent as always. “Don’t you dare hug me,” she added as I got close.

So I hugged her.

I stood back, still grasping her by the shoulders, a little afraid she might tip over. “Oh my god,” I shrieked.

“What?!?”

“You’re taller than I am!”

We stared into each other’s eyes, with my gaze looking up to meet hers. I whispered, “This is really something.”

I thought, then, that
she
might cry. Instead, she gave me a push and said, “Watch me.”

I stepped aside.

Carefully, she let go of the window sill and walked away. A little halting, a little jerky, a little nerve-racking to see since I was worried she might fall. Halfway across the room, she turned around. Then, well, she
danced.

I realized music was playing. It sounded like XM’s Folk station, and at the moment she danced, it had begun to play an old blues song.

        
I woke up this mornin’, feelin’ round for my shoes

        
Know by that I got these old walk-in’ blues, well

        
Woke this mornin’ feelin’ round for my shoes

        
But you know by that, I got these old walk-in’ blues.

She shimmied her shoulders and her hips followed with a little bump-and-grind. My hands rose and covered my mouth, overwhelmed.

“Aren’t you going to dance?” Jen grinned, and her white skin flushed bright red across her cheekbones.

I made a couple of fast, undulating slides. We burst out laughing, hardly able to believe what was happening. Suddenly, she started to list to the side, about to fall. I rushed forward, ready to catch her, but she stuck both arms out, wildly flapping and circling. She reminded me of a baby bird, teetering on the edge of the nest. As if in slow motion, her arms slowed and she regained her balance.

Jen said, “You want a cup of coffee?”

I nodded.

She turned and headed for the kitchen. I stood at the pass-through while she filled the coffee maker with water, then measured coffee.

“How are things?” she said between scoops of coffee.

“Confusing.”

She cocked her head at me. “Meaning you like Al more than you think you should?”

“Guess so.”

I tried a nonchalant shrug, but she wasn’t buying it. “Tom and I really enjoyed meeting him at that dinner a couple of weeks ago. I know he’s not your usual overeducated type, but he’s
refreshing,
especially for you.”

“And gorgeous.”

She opened her eyes wide. “I noticed.”

“Don’t notice too much,” I warned her.

The coffee maker sputtered and made plopping sounds. Fresh coffee smells floated in the air around us. I was having a hard time trying to talk to Jen about anything, much less my complex relationship with Al. Perhaps she didn’t understand what it was like for me to see her standing up because she’d never completely
seen
herself in a wheelchair. Given that she’d lost her legs when she was twelve years old, she must’ve had strong, definitive memories of being an upright, two-legged person. Anyway, I was discombobulated by seeing her standing up, though I also felt somewhat ashamed that I was so struck by it. I kept wanting to freeze the camera and stare at her. Tom hadn’t known her as long, so he probably had an easier time with the adjustment. Plus, he’d obviously visualized her standing up from the start. I wondered whether Jen’s parents had been thrown as off-balance as I.

“Can I have him when you dump him?” Jen said, laughing.

“I can’t believe
you
said that.”

“These legs are making me feel naughty.” She poured coffee into two mugs and placed them both on the passthrough. “Carry those to the couch, will you? I’m not steady enough yet.”

I sat down on the couch, clutching my mug of coffee, and watched her walk across the living room. She seemed to collapse, or drop, into the couch, but it looked strangely wonderful, like a hawk diving to its prey.

We both sipped our coffee for a minute, silent.

“So, yeah, I’m wondering whether I should date other men now,” Jen said.

“But you’re in love with Tom, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.” She pursed her lips. “We could go out to a hot bar and see what happened.”

“I already spend an awful lot of time in a bar.”

“I forgot that.”

“Also, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’re past the age for the ‘hot bar’ scene.”

“We don’t look our age.”

She certainly didn’t. Maybe it was her lack of sexual experience over the past twenty years, but the skin on her face lay smooth and peaceful over the bones. I knew she lightened her blond hair with highlights, and she was naturally slender. Even her breasts, since they hadn’t fed any babies (or so I liked to tell myself as an excuse for the more deflated nature of my own), plumped out in a young, urgent way. Still, I had the sense that I should be supportive of her desire to branch out, even if it was hard for me.

“What if Al came with us?”

“Yeah, he could be our wing man,” she said.

“What’s a wing man?”

“He starts talking with other guys and kind of makes the introductions to me that way.”

“It seems really weird that you’d know about wing men.” I sighed. “Do you seriously want to do this?”

She nodded. “Tom’s wonderful, but it would be like settling down with the your first boyfriend when you were a teenager.”

I unclipped my cell phone and called Al. We made arrangements to meet that night after my shift ended. I disconnected and asked Jen, “You don’t have plans with Tom tonight?”

“Yeah, I do.” She took a gulp of coffee. “I’ll tell him my parents need to see me alone for dinner.”

My head whipped around to stare at her. “You’re going to
lie
?”

“I can’t tell him the truth.”

“Of course you can.”

“But then he’ll break up with me.”

“Wouldn’t you break up with him if he wanted to go out to a hot bar to pick up a woman?”

“Totally different situation. It’s all relative.”

“Just because you’ve got legs all of a sudden, you think it’s okay to lie to him?”

The look of surprise on her face was obviously genuine. “It’s important that I experience some of what I missed out on,” she said.

“I agree,” I said, “but isn’t it also important that he
know
that this is important to you?”

“Shit.”

I nodded. “And he’s the whole reason you’ve got legs now.”

“He’s going to be pissed.”

“Yeah, he’s going to be pissed! I mean, the poor guy suffers through your wrath when he originally suggested prosthetics, then, when he convinces you to try ’em, you leave him because you have the hots for multitudes of men.”

“This kind of sucks.”

I burst out laughing. “It’s a whole lot more sucky for Tom than for you.”

“But I don’t want to lose him.” She smiled. “It’s probable that I’d go back to him in the end.”

“If you tell him that, I’m sure he’ll be fine with your plan.” I hoped my facetious tone came through.

She squinted her eyes at me.

“Do whatever you want,” I said.

Jen muttered, “The truth, huh?”

I stood up and carried our empty mugs into the kitchen.

She yelled, “I changed my mind!”

I burst out laughing.

“You’re such an asshole,” she added.

I shouted, “
You’re
the asshole. Now I have a date with Al for after my shift when I’m exhausted.”

“Explain that I changed my mind and you’re too tired.”

Back in the living room, I just looked at her.

Jen said, “What?”

“Then he’ll get pissed at me and maybe go out by himself, and that means he’ll have at least a dozen women after him, which means I might lose him.”

“Oh.” She brightened. “But you’re not sure you want him anyway.”

“Is this sounding at all familiar to you?”

“Yeah.”

She rose from the couch and stood still for a minute, finding her balance. “Give me a break, Rose, I’m just learning to walk.”

She launched herself in my direction. I saw the tears in her eyes before she threw her arms around me. It seemed like the first real hug we’d ever had. She whispered, “I love you.” And I shouted it back at her.

IN the two months since I’d fallen down the rabbit hole, I’d eventually stopped expecting to either hear from Mr. Rabbitfish by e-mail, or to see him at The Harvest’s bar. I’d responded to his last e-mail by finishing the
Alice In Wonderland
sentence backward: hole rabbit the down falls Alice. Pleased at my cleverness, I assumed he’d write back. He didn’t. Of course, that made some convoluted sense given the nature of Alice’s adventures. Though I’d stopped expecting to have any direct contact, I hadn’t forgotten the message.

The perverse message.

Sleep to dream to fall to wake.

Saturday afternoon, when I returned from visiting Jen, I took a nap before starting the evening shift. I’d learned pretty quickly that to fulfill my bar tending duties well, I had to get enough sleep, especially when Ravi moved me to the evening slot after my first month.

I put on cotton pajamas and lay on top of my bed with a light blanket over me. June had come to Cambridge the week before with surprisingly hot temperatures, but my open windows created a draft. And the blanket comforted me, especially as I dropped into sleep. More and more, as I went to sleep, I’d been experiencing that sensation of falling and then, abruptly, catching myself with a start of fear. My legs or arms would leap back to my body and my heart jumped. It happened again that afternoon, but this time I managed to quell the panic. I let myself feel the fall, and then I floated back to consciousness for a few seconds before, again, falling to sleep.

When I woke up an hour and a half later, my phone was ringing. I snatched up the receiver, still half asleep, and said hello in loud voice. Trying to prove that I wasn’t napping.

“Did I wake you?” Isaac said.

“Isaac, it’s you!” I said. “How
are
you?”

I hadn’t heard from him since he’d driven away from my house at two o’clock in the morning, though I’d sent him a couple of notes through the regular mail.

“I’m doing fine.”

Suddenly I could smell him on the breeze floating from my windows, an odor like a hot baked potato. I used to tease him about this, in the early days of our marriage. I’d bury my nose in his neck, make a loud snuffling noise, then exclaim, “Yummy, baked potato.” He thought it was cute the first couple of times, but then it irked him, so I quit. He really did smell like hot baked potato, though, and it was strange to sniff the air and smell him while talking long distance over the telephone.

I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Obviously, there’s an adjustment to be expected.”

“Do you have an older and wiser monk who counsels you?”

The hot potato smell grew stronger. My stomach rumbled.

“Yes.” He paused. “But they don’t hold your hand.” Another pause. “Quite the opposite.”

“Do you want to quit?”

“Sure.”

“Is that why you’re calling?”

“I think so.”

Usually, with friends, I was sure about a course of action I felt they should follow. When Jen had gotten sick on the morning of her first date with Tom, I’d somehow known she should go on the date. I tended to be straightforward with my advice. Or, yeah, bossy. But every now and then, I got cross-eyed and didn’t have a clue. This was definitely one of those times. I had a vague sense that becoming a monk was supposed to be rigorous. Or, maybe not. Weren’t monks pursuing peace and tranquillity?

“Did you talk to your counselor monk about leaving?”

“Yes.” I heard Isaac sigh. “He wasn’t particularly surprised, which pissed me off, naturally.”

“You’ve never seemed like the quintessential monk.”

“I guess not, but it still feels right.”

“Then it is.” I placed a hand over my stomach, beneath the blanket, and rubbed hard. “I know everyone thinks it’s dumb for me to be bar tending when I could be writing and publishing novels.”

“Yup.”

I could imagine his large head nodding up and down.

“Bar tending has been hard, physically. I’m so damn tired all the time. But it feels okay, like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing even if it makes no sense. “

The rumbling of my stomach was so loud that Isaac interrupted me. “What was that noise?”

“My stomach, if you must know.”

He burst out laughing.

I added, “You’re making me hungry.”

“That sounds pleasantly suggestive.”

“Except I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He taught the bar tending course and found me the job at The Harvest. He’s a sometime actor, writer, and bartender.”

“The guy you cut with the martini glass!”

“That’s not the most significant thing.”

Isaac interrupted, “He’s skilled in tantric sex tricks.”

“He’s pretty good in bed, and he’s pretty, too.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to hear any more about this.”

“So what
do
you want to hear from me?”

“Just whether I should quit. Very simple.”