The First Affair (11 page)

“It’s raining,” he said as though he’d just looked up.

“I’m aware.” I beamed at the ceiling. “I am, in fact, soaked.”

“Are you, now.”

“I was out in flip-flops.”

He laughed. “I want to be out in flip-flops.”

“Pink ones? Do it. Your public awaits.”

“So . . .”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to hang out?”

I jogged in place, my fists jabbing the air as I strained for a casual response. “Sure. Meet you at the Crystal Mall Smoothie Barn in, say, thirty?”

“How about a yogurt beneath the ficus in my office. It’s relatively quiet around here this afternoon.”

“I don’t know . . .” I pretended to hedge.

“I could hum some Muzak.”

I laughed. “You’re dating yourself.”

“Come over, Jamie.”

“Okay.”

• • •

As the founding architect had so aspired, it was impossible to imagine I could ever feel unintimidated approaching the Oval. If the jewel-toned brocades behind his secretary’s Chippendale desk were intended to check the demands of those at the height of their power, the effect on my twenty-one-year-old self was such that my legs literally trembled.

Jean looked up from her novel to welcome me. “He just stepped out, but you can go ahead in, dear.”

“Thank you.” I tugged at the blazer I’d thrown on over my sundress in a last-minute insecurity fit. The lamps were on, casting a warm glow against the dark sky. Behind his desk there was a new addition to his sterling framed photos: Alison’s ponytail flipped over her shoulder as she gazed at those fireworks. Looking away, I cauterized my shame while hastily reaching up to tug out the one I’d spent ten minutes brushing into place.

“Jamie,” Greg called as he arrived behind me from the reception
area, looking relaxed in a loden polo that matched his eyes. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Hi.” I waved.

“This’ll be good.” He rubbed his palms as he passed Jean’s desk. “We can go over those details and you can get them in to Margaret tomorrow morning. Save us all a meeting.” Jean continued reading. It’s true what they say. Greg has the ability to reset your perceptions through sheer force of presence. He’s notoriously rerouted more than one foreign leader between their arrival and departure. And that afternoon he radiated a decorum that made me immediately ashamed of the erotic curiosity that had brought me there.

“Yes, well.” I buttoned my blazer as I walked over to meet him. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Hell of a day out there.” He dropped his broadcasting tone as he crossed the threshold, leaving the door purposefully open.

“Yes.”

“Have a seat.” He sat on the blue couch and I cut across the oval, avoiding treading on an eagle wing to sit opposite, unsure of the script we were reading from for Jean.

“So you wanted to go over some scheduling?” I glanced at the doorway.

He stared at me. “You look like summer,” he said, his voice much quieter so that only I could hear. “Cheesy?”

I nodded. But truthfully it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me. To this day it probably still is.

“You just . . .” He shrugged. “Do.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and he blushed. He was blushing. “So how was your thing yesterday with N.A.S.A.? There was a lot of discussion about whether the fans in the tent would be too noisy—were they?”

“Didn’t even notice, so there’s your answer. It was sad, honestly. Strange. I hate that that era is coming to a close under me. No more final frontier.” He sighed. “What did you do last night?”

“I, um.” I stared at the phone. “Went out—with friends.”

“To a bar?” He picked up his glasses from the coffee table between us.

“Yes. Yup. Just a few drinks out.”

“Fun.” He fingered the frames.

“It was no state dinner, but it was good.”

He blew a huff of steamed air on the lenses and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt. “Only someone who has not suffered through a state dinner would say that. I bet you were fending them off with a stick.”

“Well, you know,” I demurred. Contrived demurring. His brow dropped and he folded his glasses back on top of his papers. Was that why he called? To make sure I hadn’t spent the night out? It’s strange looking back to think I was so flattered, taking his signs of possessiveness as some sort of currency. As if it could be cashed in for having a real relationship.

“Sir, your lunch is here,” Jean called.

“Great, thanks.” He hopped up to greet the server and take the tray. “Hope you don’t mind. I’m starving.”

“No, please eat.”

“It may not be the Crystal Mall.” He set it on the coffee table between us, the muscles of his forearms momentarily defining. “But!” He gestured to three tall glasses. “Mango, strawberry, and pineapple—no, not pineapple—peach. Tell me you’re not a blueberry. Or tell me you’re a blueberry and I’ll have one sent up.” He looked hopeful. “Christ, say something.”

I was stunned. “You made me a smoothie.” My hands crossed below my collarbones. “
Three
smoothies.”

“By proxy.”

“I love it. Any of them. Peach, I guess.”

Beaming, he handed it off to me and removed the silver lid to reveal a cheeseburger. “You want to split it?” I shook my head and he disarmingly slid down to the floor at the coffee table to hunker in. “So did your folks have a good time at the party?”

I took the straw from my mouth, unsure if we were going to acknowledge how I sought him out after they bolted. “Thank you for that.”

“I was just giving thanks where thanks were due,” he tossed off, studying me for a moment.

I held his gaze with an appreciative smile before daring, “I mean it.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“That’s funny coming from you, Mr. Evasive.” I took a sip, smiling to myself as I realized we had an in-joke. “It was great.”

He grinned, wiping at his mouth.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m starting to be able to interpret your positive summations.”

“Oh? Care to translate?”

“That one was something closer to ‘not so great.’ ”

“They’re just . . .” I shrugged. “My sister’s kind of the main attraction. As she should be,” I hastened to add, out of habit. “She’s overcome a lot. A learning disability—which my dad treated as a discipline issue. By the time she was formally diagnosed she’d kind of come up with her own way to cope, which took so much to kick. You’re probably picturing some mess, but she’s, like, the total opposite.”

“So you two are close.”

“Yes.” I put down the glass, unprepared for his interest.

“Did you tell her?” he asked without pause.

“I told her that I was having a . . .” I didn’t know how to name what was happening between us. “But not that it was you.” I watched for his response, but he continued chewing. I pushed the fact that Lena knew from my mind. It wasn’t as though I’d told her everything. “I know not to just spout off about this.”

He set down the burger. “Let’s be clear, Jamie. I’m not now, nor have I ever, telling you what to do.”

“I know.” Stung by the indirect directive, I leapt to change the subject. “So you’re an only child, right?”

“Wrong. But it’s nice to know you haven’t Googled me.”

“Brother or sister?”

“Brother.”

“And did you tell him?” I dropped my voice in imitation.

“That would be difficult.” He balled his napkin. “He’s dead.”

“Oh my God, I’m so—”

“No.” He reached across to me. “I didn’t mean it like that. He died in Nam. One of the last casualties. I was ten. Then it was just me and my mother. But Sam was that same thing for us, the—how did you say it?”

“Main attraction?”

Greg wiped a stray dot of ketchup marring the E Pluribus Unum on the plate’s rim before pushing the tray to the side. “I used to watch Sam shave before he’d go out. He had this antique kit with the brush and everything. He’d wink at me in the mirror. Bright, smart, smooth.”

“And now you’re the President.”

His eyes were focused somewhere in the middle distance. “I was certain I’d get that kit when I left for college, but my mother couldn’t part with it. She was . . .” He screwed his face up and then exhaled. “Out in the woods I had this makeshift zip line, all of four feet off the ground. I’d pull myself up to the jerry-rigged platform he built for me and, you know, zoom.” He shot his palm into the air like a plane. “Sam’d hide things under the base—liquor, condoms. I’d leave him messages sometimes. That’s where I found the note he left me.”

“Note?”

“Rolled up in an old Coke bottle.” He looked down, noticing a small rip in the seam of his worn khakis. “I reread it whenever I visit.”

“What did it say?”

“Sir?”

“Jean!” We looked over as she stood from her desk. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m going to go out now for some lunch.” She came to the doorway, tying a rain bonnet under her chin. “Will you need anything?”

“We’ll be fine, thanks.”

We heard the outer office door click closed. We were alone. As alone as the President ever was.

“It’s weird to be higher than you,” I said, referring to my position on the couch. The rain started to pelt the glass.

“I like it. Go ahead. Decide something, anything.”

“Ummm, college tuition shall now be subsidized by the tobacco industry,” I decreed.

“Done.” He threw his fist up.

“That’s all it takes?”

“Yup.” Lightning flashed. “I’ve never told anyone about that shaving
kit,” he said, unaware—or perhaps not—of the potency of having earned his secret.

“If Erica died, I think my family would spin off into space or something. She’s the thing we’ve, I don’t know, figured out how to do,” I admitted—sharing it to forge something with Greg. He nodded, and that potent combination of past pain and present recognition, which informs my desire even now, pulsed beneath my ribs. The thick air from outside seemed to be seeping in. “Let’s open a window. Can we?” I stood to break the intensity of his gaze.

I heard him follow me over to the heavy gold drapes bordering the French doors. “My men are just outside, Jamie.”

“Right. Sorry. I know it’s raining, but it looks like there’s a breeze. It would be nice to get some air . . .” I turned and he was inches from me.

“If I were twenty years younger . . .”

“You’d what?” I asked, meeting his eyes.

He cupped the back of his neck with his hand. I dared to lift my finger to his hip, to the rip he’d been worrying into a hole, feeling the warmth of his skin as I darted it inside. He pulled my hand away. “I hoped we could just . . . I’m trying to be good.”

“Okay,” I breathed, his hand hot around my wrist. We stood like this, me looking into his chest, him peering down.
Don’t you think that means something?
Beyond the glass and the ever-present guards, the wind tossed the branches. Suddenly he bent my arm behind my back, stepping me to the wall between the windows. He dropped to his knees, gripping me to rove under my hem before pulling me onto the floor. His mouth warm, his tongue darted into the side of my panties, the lace edge cutting into my skin. There, beside his desk, the sky flashing, the rain beating, he took me in until I was gripping at his hair and turning my mouth into the rug to muffle my cry.

Then I was limp, the seismic undercurrent rendering my surface still. “Was that okay, baby?” He lifted his head to implore so tenderly, I was reminded instantly and acutely that this man was in a relationship. Only guys who’ve loved touch like that, care like that. He was trained to ask . . . from kindness. It was habit and I was the beneficiary. I reached down to lift him up, to reciprocate, to sear anyone else
out of both our minds, but he rolled onto his back to hold me against him until his body was able to relax. We lay like that, my ear pressed against his heart, his thumb stroking my cheek, until the rain slowed and our breathing quieted. We talked about books that had changed us, camping in backyards, bad teachers we’d had, why the French refuse to put a satisfying ending on a movie. When we finally returned upright sometime later, we hugged each other fiercely. “God, Jamie, it’s never enough time with you,” he said into my hair. Passing Jean as she returned with a dripping umbrella and pleasant smile, I was dizzy from the attention.

• • •

I walked home slowly, flooded by impulses to open a bottle of wine, eat a box of chocolates, dance atop a table to Beyoncé—anything to keep my endorphins skywriting and stave off the doubt I knew would creep in by morning.
“OMG HE KISSED ME!!!!”
Rachelle’s text came as I stepped into my elevator.

At that moment, I just wanted to be lounging in the unforgiving plastic chairs of the cafeteria
so badly
. Sunday morning. French toast sticks. Nothing more pressing than comparing the triumph of last night’s touches and glances.
“Me, too!”
I texted back, since getting Lena to celebrate with me threatened to be more complicated than I had the space for, and no longer just because of the logistics.

My phone rang a second later. “What?!”

“I hooked up,” I blurted, hastily adding, “with this guy in my office.”

“Oh my God! Who? This just happened now?”

“You don’t know him. He called me in to work, I thought, but he really wanted to see me.” I told myself to
shut up
. “Want to take a victory lap?”

• • •

“
Matt Mc-Gee-han kissed me
!” she shouted the way Oprah used to announce her guests as she walked in. We ordered dumplings, shared our successful one-liners, and inhaled the lingering cologne on our skin. While Rachelle’s hook-up consisted of what could reasonably take place under a restaurant awning before Matt got in a cab, it was
still
seriously gratifying. Given that there were over three hundred men it could have been, I was careful not to specify the office where mine had occurred, referring to Greg only as “he,” and Rachelle, delighted just to have a partner to burst through the finish line with, didn’t press it just yet. So, having given in fully to one temptation for the day, I managed to partially stave off the other.

• • •

Slightly hung over but still skywriting, the next morning I eagerly stepped in when Margaret asked for me. “Do you have a delivery?” She didn’t, but informed me that one of her staff was sick, so Dana was taking over his work and I was going to assist her.