Housebreaking (22 page)

He exhaled loudly. “Correction. You never want to.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“At least I make an effort. At least I want to have sex.”

“You call that sex?”

“I call it the best I can expect.”

“Go have another scotch, why don't you.”

“That's not a bad idea.”

He got up and went out to the kitchen. He opened the aspirin bottle and poured a glass of water. Then he went into the den and turned on the television.

* * *

ANDREW HAD MET
his wife at Atticus Bookstore in New Haven about an hour before closing on a Friday night. He looked up from his bar exam guidebook to see her come through the door. When their eyes met she flashed him a smile and took a table in the café with her friends. They talked loudly, often all at once. When she got up and wandered to the fiction aisle, he followed, trying to think of something to say. She turned to him: “Law student?” She had dark blue eyes with copper speckles. “How did you know?” “Who else studies at ten o'clock on a Friday? Sorry we're so loud. It must be pretty hard to concentrate with all the noise.” After they talked for a few minutes, she produced a felt-tip pen and wrote her phone number on the back of his hand. “Maybe I can buy you a beer sometime,” she offered. At closing time, she left with her arm around a long-haired guy wearing a Superman T-shirt.

He left messages on her answering machine, but two weeks passed before she could find a moment for that beer. She was a master's student in English literature, specializing in postcolonial fiction. She dressed in silky skirts and embroidered tops, almost always earth tones. When she mentioned that she'd had a paper on V. S. Naipaul accepted for publication, he surprised her at her apartment with white roses and a card of congratulations. “No one's ever given me white roses before,” she said. “Red red red. Always red. That must mean something.”

“What?”

“I'll tell you when I figure it out.”

He ran into her at all hours—lying on a blanket on the town green in the afternoon, coming out of Richter's at midnight. Once she called at 9:00
A.M.
to rant, “What the hell is critical legal studies? Do you know anything about this? I mean, are they serious? Stanley Fish could knock these guys over with a pencil.” Another time, she phoned a few minutes before the start of a Neil Young concert at the Palace, offering an extra ticket. He closed his books, although it was less than a week from the bar
exam, and raced down Chapel Street, to find her—Audrey Martin, his gorgeous redhead—waiting out front with her arm around the Superman guy. Did he have no other shirts?

His name was Maximilian, Andrew learned that night. He was a poet. He'd published work in
The Paris Review
, she told him. He had a teaching job lined up at the university in Buffalo. “That's where we're going in the fall,” she informed him. Andrew came home to his sweltering third-floor apartment on Chapel Street, above a Lebanese restaurant. Through open windows, he could hear the customers below, ordering sandwiches and salads, going in and out the front door, the bell chiming.

He wanted to forget her, but she kept calling. “We'll celebrate after the exam,” she promised him. Mostly she complained about Maximilian, the way he dismissed her opinions about writers. “He called Kate Chopin
shite,
as if he were British. I hate the way he talks to me sometimes.” It got to be more than Andrew could handle. “Look,” he said at last, “I'm not one of your girlfriends. Don't complain to me about your love life. And I particularly don't want to hear any more about Maximilian, okay? You've got to be crazy to date a jerk like him anyway. It's not my problem.
You
are my problem, not him.” A long silence followed. “Okay,” she said, finally, in a serious tone. “I get it. I'm sorry.”

Later she told him that this was the moment he went from friend to lover in her mind. For some reason, she hadn't thought of him as passionate—until he blurted his feelings for her. With some women, you had to take the risk. With Audrey, the risk had paid off.

The night he finished the bar exam, she met him and his friends at a basement bar. “Where have you been hiding her, Murray?” one of his pals asked. “Under his bed,” she responded. They did shots of Jack Daniel's and danced until last call. At closing time he walked off with his arm around her. When they came to his building she said, “Are you ready to celebrate?” “I thought we just did.” She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Think again,” she said. “Think bigger.” In his room he could smell her sweat, her hot boozy breath. “I drank
everything
,” she said, taking off her skirt. “But I'm not drunk.”

She left at dawn, and a week later she was gone, off to Buffalo with her asshole boyfriend. In September, Andrew began a job in Bridgeport, clerking for a federal magistrate. He received a card with her new ad
dress.
I miss you
, she wrote. The memory of her—her body, her scent, her voice—refused to fade. Her
drunk
self had made the right choice. But, after he'd had her for only one night, she'd disappeared, magnifying the hurt. When would he see her again? The answer, he realized as the weeks passed and she did not respond to his letters, was
never
.

Then she appeared at his door.

It was the afternoon of a rainy Sunday in October, two months after her departure. She stood in the foyer in blue jeans and high leather boots. “Here I am,” she said, “if you still want me.” She'd left Maximilian, she told him. He'd been fired from his job for plagiarism. The poems he'd published, they discovered, were lifted verbatim from early-twentieth-century German writers. Maximilian had translated the work of little-known poets and signed his own name. “He's a fraud,” she said.

“I'll kick his ass, if you want,” Andrew volunteered.

“I'd rather you kiss me,” she said. “I thought about you a lot.”

“Ditto as to you.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“On one condition. That you never mention the name Maximilian again.”

“Actually, that's not even his real name. He made that up too.”

“I'm not going to say
I told you so.
”

She smiled. “Thanks. And I figured out the white roses too.”

“Tell me.”

“Red is for romance. Everyone knows that. White roses represent unity and virtue, honor and reverence. I looked this up, if you're wondering. So you were telling me it wasn't just about romance, like a first date. You were telling me I was worth more than that. It means you think I'm special.”

“I thought that was self-evident.”

“Sorry,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Sometimes it takes me a while to get the easy ones.”

Andrew, after his long quest, reveled in his luck.
Audrey Martin
, the woman he'd obsessed about those long months. In restaurants, at bars, in theaters, holding her hand, he was astounded that this brilliant creature was actually
his
, that she shared his bed, made his meals, cared about his little triumphs and discontents.

They were married the next June.

* * *

AFTER A FEW DAYS
his hamstring felt back to normal. A series of fine fall days passed, perfect for tennis. He called Sampson into his office and handed over the files and suggested a rematch. Sampson made excuses, putting him off.

His insomnia returned, a bad case; he spent hours staring at the ceiling listening to the sound of his sleeping wife. He blamed some of this on Sampson; if he'd been able to get some exercise, he would sleep better.

At first light Audrey stirred and squinted at him with her myopic stare. “What's wrong?”

He checked the alarm clock. “Couldn't sleep.” He ran his hand over his head—his hair was cowlicked, jutting upward.

“Is something bothering you?”

He exhaled heavily. “You were snoring.”

“It never bothered you before.”

“Of course it bothered me. It always bothers me. You sound like a teakettle.”

“It's my allergies. I'm sorry.”

“To hell with it,” he said, jumping out of bed. He stood by his dresser, staring into the mirror. “Jesus. I look like a zombie.”

“You probably slept without realizing it.”

“I think I would know whether or not I slept. So don't placate me. Don't tell me I slept when I didn't.”

“Could you lower your voice, please?”

“I've got a ten-hour day ahead of me, while you lie around the house doing whatever you do, which is nothing as far as I can tell. It would be nice if I didn't have to trip over boxes in the hallway.”

“Would you like to tell me what's wrong?”

“Do you want me to go over it again? Do you want me to spell it out for you?”

He went into the bathroom and closed the door.

* * *

IN THE
claw-foot tub he stood under the stream of hot water with his eyes closed. He shouldn't have yelled at her like that. True, she had snored during the night, often starting at the exact moment he'd felt himself drifting toward sleep. But all he had to do, all he ever had to do to quiet her, was nudge her, and she would flop over on her side, like an automa
ton. But he hadn't slept in the ensuing silence either. His mind returned to the tennis match. He'd had Sampson down a set and a break. Then he'd blown it, spraying the ball all over the court. Even before pulling his hamstring, he'd made all those unforced errors. And then Sampson had started giving him pity points.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

He pondered Sampson's proclivities for men
and
women. Odd, that lack of preference. Andrew could understand being gay a lot easier than being bi. He'd never done anything sexual with men, unless you counted the dorm shenanigans at Andover. Back then, the guys on his hall sometimes jacked off in a circle, seeing who could do it the fastest. All the guys did it. And there was that French kid, Claude from Quebec, who used to give blow jobs for five bucks a pop.
He
was a faggot, someone who sucked cock, someone who took it up the ass. Andrew had never used Claude's services, although a lot of his dorm mates had. It annoyed Andrew that he'd blown the match with Sampson. Winning would have established his natural male dominance over an upstart, a necessary act of authority. Because, once his position was secure, a guy like Sampson could be useful to him at the office.

But what pissed Andrew off, what ruined his sleep, was how Sampson had put off the rematch since then, making bullshit excuses. Particularly when there was money involved. You win a bet, you give the other guy a chance to get even. That was understood. That was the custom. You didn't avoid the issue. It was the lack of courtesy that annoyed him. The lack of deference.

Andrew stood before the mirror, toweling off. The shower had put some color in his cheeks and cleared the red from his eyes. He felt better, as he always did after a shower. He combed and gelled his hair. When wet, his hair looked thin, the scalp showing beneath. His hair, once as dark as his kids', was now gray around his ears. He needed a haircut, the best cure for a receding hairline. Maybe he'd shave his head entirely. He began to dress but couldn't find the proper shirt.

“Audrey.”

His wife could sleep through any sort of disturbance—storms, bright lights, a blaring television. He shook her foot. When she rolled over, the pillow fell onto the floor and she yawned, suddenly childlike.

“I'm sorry about yelling. I get grumpy when I lose sleep.”

“It's okay,” she said.

“Which shirt, do you think?” he asked.

She squinted, nearly blind without her glasses.

“Olive suit,” he told her.

“Your Ralph Lauren?” She reached for her eyeglasses on the night table, knocking a book onto the rug. She stacked the books five or six high, bookmarks in each; she read them at the same time, a practice he found mystifying. How could she concentrate on so many books at once? “Light blue shirt, black tie,” she said. “It'll look great.”

He got a shirt out of the closet, pulling off the dry cleaner's plastic. When he tucked the shirttails into his pants and buckled his belt, his stomach bulged uncomfortably. He sucked in his gut. “I've got to work out more often. I've been trying to set up another tennis game, but the guy I played with last week won't set a date.”

“The guy from your office?”

“Yeah. Johnny Sampson.”

“
Johnny?
Is he a grown man?”

“Allegedly.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“Who said that?”

“I just got that sense. You've mentioned him a few times now.”

Andrew shrugged. “He's a third-year associate. His job is to impress me, not the other way around. After I pinched my hamstring, he started giving me points. Hitting shots into the net on purpose.”

“I know. You told me about it already. He was just trying to suck up to you, obviously.”

“I don't need that kind of charity. That's him thinking he's better than me. I was ranked in New England.” Andrew pulled on his suit jacket. “How's this?”

“I'd go with black shoes. Are you going to court?”

“Just a couple of depos. Why?”

“You never wear that suit to work.”

“Don't I?”

He went into the bathroom and splashed some cologne on his neck. He hesitated in the doorway. “Audrey, I really am sorry.”

“I know. Do you want some breakfast?”

“I'll grab a coffee on the way. You stay in bed. Sleep.”

He grabbed his gym bag and tennis racket out of the closet, just in case. He went out the kitchen door in his overcoat, holding the racket in its vinyl cover over his head against the rain.