The First Affair (21 page)

“Over full-time dog-walking, um, yes. Wouldn’t you?”

Her hands flung over her heart. “
I
would never have left his office.
I
would have been, like, ‘I’ll just curl up around this potted fern and occasionally spit into it to earn my keep, thank you.’ ”

“It was hard to leave,” I admitted. “Especially without any more information than when I got there.” I glanced at the photo on her refrigerator of the two of us pretending to hold up the Washington Monument, the tourist bit she insisted we indulge in because it would “make us really happy when we’re really old.” “I don’t want to leave here. I mean,
here
I could live without, but not you. And honestly, Paul has left me feeling a little, I don’t know, uncomfortable with the whole thing.”

“Jamie.” Rachelle gripped my forearms. “They want me to assist
filming some power plant in Niagara Falls. Buffalo. In
April
. With
Geoffrey
. I’m going to cease to exist altogether and become some bodiless hand carrying his half-eaten fruit around the tundra.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No. Don’t say that. That’s the whole point! Jamie, everyone our age is slogging up a steep incline of shit, which seriously seems like it might just go on for, like, ever. Shit economy. Shit employment numbers. Shit opportunity. Yet miraculously—”

I opened my mouth but she pointedly continued.

“
Miraculously
, in the middle of all that a hand reached down to pull one of us out and it’s you. It’s you, Jamie. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And if you don’t fucking make the most of it, then I will seriously never forgive you.” Her brown eyes bored into mine. “Okay?
Okay?
”

“Yes,” I said softly, and she released me. She was right. Paul was bitter and it was coloring everything he said. Why would I let him take this away from me—from us? “As long as you promise to come join me soon, because I looked at Craigslist for five minutes today and it scared me. What does ‘European-friendly’ mean?”

She exhaled and reached for her Diet Coke. “That you’re cool with people walking around naked. P.S.: You are not. My brother squinted at that detail in Tucson and the guy walked right on into the shower with him. Plus, you need a studio for when
he
calls you.”

“That is
not
going to happen,” I said, trying to get used to what letting go would sound like.

“Jamie, he’s setting you up to be his girlfriend, I just really think so. I mean, it’s his best friend getting you a job. He wants you to be taken care of and within reach until he finishes out his term.”

“Really?” I curled around her vision like she would around Lewis’s plant. “Paul made it sound so pathetic.”

“Jamie,” she said sternly.

“Sorry, fuck Paul.”

She shook her head. “You need to nix talking to him, like, full stop. You can’t afford for his toxic shit to mess with you right now.”

“I can’t stop talking to him, Rachelle. He’s my boss.”

Her lips twisted to the side as she weighed this fact. “Fine,” she conceded. “But you have to remember that he’s just totally jealous.”

• • •

Paul didn’t come in to work the next morning. It was just as well, as I suddenly had three back-to-back Skype interviews that necessitated my squatting in the stairwell, while selling myself at a hundred miles per second to a tiny black circle in the frame of my laptop. Nobody referenced how Lewis Franklin came to recommend me, and I was excited to hear that the position was on the community development team. It wasn’t urban planning, but it was urban outreach, and I tried not to let myself be sidetracked by the realization that Greg had been listening all that time.

And then, two days later, when Jean summoned me with her usual pleasant obtuseness, I knew it. I didn’t get the job, and he was having the decency to tell me in person. But the prospect of getting rejected by Greg on yet another front was too much. I seriously played through not going.

But then I went. Of course I went.

I know jumping every time he called makes me seem like, at best, a lapdog, and at worst, a call girl, but given the nature of our placement in the world it could never have been the other way around, so I didn’t dwell there. It was like when people in Freshman English got worked up about Shakespeare using male actors to play female parts. That was British law—so it was impossible to claim it reflected anything about his lack of feminist principles. Similarly, I reasoned, our circumstances didn’t reflect how Greg felt about me. He couldn’t show up at my apartment. Or send flowers. It was risky to have even bought me those gifts. He could only call. And if I went, there was always that chance—maybe this would be the time I stumbled upon the phrase or action that unlocked our future together. How could I live with forgoing that?

When I was ushered into the room, he didn’t walk over from behind his desk. He stood there in his pinstripe pants, red tie slightly loosened. The veins at his temples were visible and his fingers pushed
against the leather blotter, the tips going from white to purple like candy corn. There was no acknowledgment of any kind. Of my arrival. Of the fact that I’d sat astride him in that leather chair. That he had broken my heart. Leaving the door ajar as always, I crossed to the other side of his desk. He put his fist into his hand as if it were a ball in a glove. “I got a call from Lewis.”

“Yes.” I nodded, nails taking position against the flesh of my palm.
Crying will only make you seem more—whatever it is he decided you are. Cry at home.

“They’re going to call—will be, um, calling you, I’m sure—this evening. But I wanted to be the one to—”

“Well, I appreciate your trying to help.”
Look him in the eyes, show him you can
—

“No—you got the job.”

My fingers opened. “I did?”

“You did.”

“Thank you!”

“No need to thank me. They loved you. You got raves all the way around. Not that I’m surprised.”

“And it’s not really an unpaid internship wearing an Elmo costume in Times Square?”

He let out a short laugh. “You’d make a great Elmo. But no.”

“Well, I really appreciate you making the call. Wow.
Wow.
”

“So you’re on your way, then.” His left hand recupped his right.

“That’s what you—” I faltered when he looked at me—hopefully. And suddenly everything—paid-off loans, a secure roof over my head—seemed worthless by comparison. In that second, given the option, I would have lived the rest of my life suspended in the revelation that he still wanted me. His hands hovered at his sides, as they had that first time, and it was evident that this was there for me—if only until he was called to his next emergency.

He quickly rounded the desk. “I need to show you something.”

“Greg,” I begged off.

He continued to the hallway. “Seriously, I want you to see this.” I suddenly wondered if I had misinterpreted Jean’s phone call about not moving forward. Or if perhaps she had made it of her own volition.
Maybe Rachelle was right, and he was setting me up to take this to the next level when he was finally able to get away. He turned back to me, his gaze hard, telegraphing a current of need more anxious than lust. “Please,” he repeated, and I saw a bead of sweat on his forehead. I followed him, right up until he stepped out of the way of the darkened bathroom doorway and motioned for me to go in.

To my surprise, I couldn’t. And it wasn’t a ploy. The pain outweighed the desire. “I can’t.”

“I’ll stand out here then. Fuck, Jamie. Please. Just look in the bathroom.”

I tipped my head in and saw, in the light from the hall, the silver shaving kit sitting beside the sink on the black marble. He leaned in around me and picked up the brush. “I’ve been using it.”

“Really?”

“The highlight of my day.”

“Shaving?” I asked, reaching for levity.

“Don’t you believe me?” He stepped closer and I looked up at him.

“How are you hanging in there with all this?” I asked.

He gripped the silver handle. “Today is . . . my brother was killed today. At least that’s when we found out.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He stared at me a long moment, inches away, finally still.

“Greg, whatever I said or did to make you think I couldn’t or wasn’t—”

“I keep thinking about how you smell.” He looked down at the brush, running his thumb back and forth over the bristles. “And how you hunch when you laugh. Do you think about me?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?” He looked up. “That I’m pathetic?” I watched his eyes dart back and forth like he was trying to scan my face into his brain.

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

“I try to get myself to accept that I’m never going to know what it’s like to have you inside me.”

His knuckles whitened.

“Is this over?” I asked.

“I’m just going to kiss you.”

“Over forever? Are you never going to find me again?”

“Just once. Okay?”

My lips were trembling. He took my jaw in his free hand, and my arms wrapped around his neck. He lifted me onto the vanity, my skirt pushing up, my thighs meeting the cold stone. His eyes flashed in the darkness as he tugged down my panties. My hand went for his belt, our arms mashing as we both tried to find the other’s wetness. It was desperate. I kissed his lips, his jaw, his neck, running my tongue over the prickle of stubble he would shave, thinking of me. And all at once he was right there, where he had never been, warm and solidly insistent. Shaking, he sunk his forehead against mine, gripping my ribs. I thrust, tilting my hips, but suddenly he bucked away, stumbling back, his face stricken.

I felt my chest cave as hot tears broke. Twisting to the wall, I lifted my hand to shield me. He enclosed me in his arms. “You get to leave,” he said into my ear, his lips landing hot and then roving to my mouth. The salt of tears—mine—his?—blurred with our tongues. Then all at once I felt the cold handle of the brush slipping inside me. My eyes flew open and he was staring into me, kissing me. “Remember me,” he murmured like an incantation until I bit down into his shoulder, squeezing my quivering thighs around his wrist while he shuddered against me, warm liquid seeping through the thin wool of his trousers.

It was suddenly still. I could hear the faint tick of the grandfather clock in his office. His breath was shallow as he leaned against the wall, spent. He looked stunned and suddenly very far away. I hopped down, one heel clicking against the tile, then the other. I tugged at my skirt. He touched his hand to his pants, with a mixture of surprise and shame.

“I’ll change,” he said. “Could you?” He jerked his head at the hall. I stepped outside as he slipped into the spare suit that hung behind the door. Then he joined me, pulling it shut with finality. He slid his
arms though the blazer sleeves without meeting my eyes. “I won’t be able to see you now,” he said weakly.

My skin was still static. “Because you’re done with me,” I asked, no clearer.

“Because of the trial.”

“Are you worried they’ll find out about—”

“No. No. We’re the only two people here.” His presidential absoluteness resurfaced as he buttoned his blazer. “Don’t get sucked into the hysteria. You’re too smart for that.” This was it. The last few moments. Questions swarmed, batting each other out of the way like desperate exiles trying to board the last boat. Was this different from Brianne? Was this real? Do you care about me? Should I wait for you? Instead I asked . . .

“You told me to call you Greg when we first—met. Even Amar doesn’t call you Greg. Why?”

He paused for a second and I expected yet another evasion. “Because of the way I felt at that moment,” he said quietly, the answer not easy for him. “The way I feel at those moments,” he added, acknowledging the ongoing grip of his anxiety. “That isn’t the office. That’s me. No one but you has ever seen me like that.”

“Not even Susan?” It was the end. I could say it.

“Susan doesn’t see me.”

“Sir?” Jean called pointedly from her desk. “Your next appointment just checked in at the gate.”

“Yes, thanks!” he projected out to her, his booming voice at odds with his expression, wasted from what had passed between us. “This was—I shouldn’t have called you in.” His hair flopped down and we both went to push it away, his warm fingers enclosing mine for a last second.

“I’m glad you did. Always do—if you ever find yourself unencumbered . . .”

He smiled so sadly, the creases around his eyes deepening. “Jamie, in three years I’ll be able to rethink a lot of things. But by then—” His voice caught. “You’ll be conquering the world, clubbing every night.”

“Clubbing.” I smiled back. “You’re dating yourself,” I said, repeating my quip from our first phone call as panic surged. “I love you.”

He suddenly crushed me against him. “I love you, too.” Just as quickly, he turned away, his back to me, but I’m certain he said, “This isn’t goodbye,” before the door shut.

• • •

I returned to the DOHS as if there were a tow-truck hook sunk into my back, its steel cable stretching farther and farther across the city. At security I stared into my purse for my ID, startling when a man said my name. “Yes?”

He slapped an envelope into my hand. “You’ve been served.”

The guard looked me over as the man hustled away. My heart sounded like a field of startled birds taking flight.
Go to your desk.
I walked through the scanner and into the lobby—the guard had to chase me down to return my ID.
Call—who? Who do I call?

Paul was watching as I stood, coat on, envelope in hand. I saw the Edith Wharton tile atop some papers and, not knowing what else to do, put it in my bag. My line rang and I picked it up, but couldn’t speak.

“You okay?”

I looked over and saw that it was Paul.

He hung up and came quickly over as I started to hyperventilate. Guiding me by my forearm, he led me back out to the hall. I choked out about being subpoenaed, about Amar Singh, how he must have given me up during his deposition. He was the one that wanted me out of the White House. He’d wanted Paul out, too, hadn’t he?