Too Easy (11 page)

Thing is, nobody's ever seen us together. That might be important, the way Robie's talking now, maybe doing something extreme. . . . Didn't think the guy had it in him.

Clever, really. Nobody in the whole world knows about
us. Robie and me, working it out, private business, the way it should be.

Kathy gets out at 34th Street, in a good mood. She thinks about going by the office. Then realizes she's probably not entirely sober. Got to be real careful.

She laughs. I see Robie in this mood, I'll scare the hell out of him, for sure. Get him to fuck me in an elevator or something. Whoa, girl. Let's just go shopping.

•
 Anne goes down the steps into the basement. A delicious tenseness in her whole body. Things you aren't supposed to do . . . why are they so much fun? Well, no, she thinks, not fun exactly. She's nervous, scared. She can feel the beat of her heart. But she wants to do this; she's sharply aware of enjoying it, in a way. It's not just the hope that she might learn something. It's the knowledge—there's a voice in her head saying this—that she's doing something she shouldn't do.

But then you do it anyway, she thinks. You just do it. And there's this odd, sickly pleasure. The way orchids are. They're just too pretty, and they smell evil. . . . Oh well, all my people were Puritans, what can you expect?

She glances at her watch. 6:34. Robert called to say he'd be a little late, he thought he'd be on the 7:07. How many times is that now? She should have been counting, keeping a record. But that was never their style. One of them was
always late, or changing things in a minor way. What difference does a half hour make? Or even an hour? Still, she's sure that it's happening more now. Or New York's more chaotic than last year, and editors work more. . . .

I have to start listening more closely to his excuses, she thinks. Never mind. I'm safe now. Coming down here. . . .

It's an almost empty basement, used only for storage. Twenty big cardboard boxes are stacked along one wall. There are piles of magazines and old clothes. They talked about putting a ping-pong table down here, or a pool table. There was always the sense that they'd have children and then the whims of the children would decide what filled this useless space.

The man who installed the recorder looked around and said, “Well, it's getting warmer. Nobody wants a blanket now.” He put the device on two magazines, under a half dozen folded blankets. “You don't have flooding, do you?”

She said, “No, never.”

Anne stands with her arms folded, staring at the stack of blankets. The odd thing is that she can access the device by telephone, from anywhere. But she worries she'll push the wrong buttons, erase something. No, that's so little of the truth it's a lie. She
likes
coming down here to this musty place. She likes touching the expensive little piece of hardware and listening to what it contains.

She likes, she realizes, the rising anxiety in her chest. The totally alert sense that each second is important, that every sound is something she must pay attention to. The sounds on the machine. The sounds that could come suddenly from upstairs. It's a very long shot that Robert would say he's going to be late, then come early. Still, she knows she is vulnerable.

Anne tries to remember something in her life that combines danger and anxiety and sin, the way this does. She has to go way back. Nothing she did as an adult seems to qualify. There's nothing in college or B school. She thinks about
all that hot, clumsy making out when she was a teenager growing up in Ohio. But how sinful is that? Everybody's telling you to do it. All she can think of, really, is when she first masturbated, when she was fourteen, fifteen, somewhere in there.

Yes, she remembers the time with a putter. An uncle—her favorite uncle—played golf and he left the clubs in the front hall. She sat in an old chair and played with his putter. She remembers twirling it. The adults were in a room close by. She could hear their voices; that was a big part of it, the fear of discovery. She remembers how she sat there on that hot summer day, in some loose shorts, and fondled—really, that's what it was—the putter. And then she got the idea of sliding the handle along her thigh, inside the shorts, until the blunt end of the putter touched her underwear. And very carefully she pushed it against her vagina, feeling exquisitely evil, then up higher to her clitoris. She remembers how she leaned forward, covering what she was doing. Still, the putter was sticking out way past her knee. Anybody would have suspected something. She moved it just a little, steady flicks of her wrist. God, she can still remember the turmoil in her thighs, her pelvis, right up past her stomach to her pounding heart. Every few seconds she had to monitor the voices, make sure nobody was moving around. She got wetter and wetter, until she was sure there would be a stain on the chair's upholstery. But she didn't want to stop, she remembers this clearly, she wanted to keep going, going and going, forever. Her body tightened just like a string on her Gibson guitar, everything seeming more shrill and high pitched. Dear God, it was wonderful. The room started to become hazy and brighter. There were probably minutes when the whole family could have been watching, and she wouldn't have known. Maybe they did; and they were always too polite or embarrassed to mention it. Maybe, she realizes, you secretly hope for some horrible exposure, a scandal that proves how truly evil the whole thing is, and
how evil you are. But what she remembers for sure is how she struggled with every nerve to make sure nobody did see her. How she stayed with it, cunning and furtive and watchful, and jabbed that putter against herself until a wave of prickly heat seemed to rise through her body. She remembers gasping but trying not to, almost little hiccups. And when the wave passed, she could suddenly smell herself, she was so wet and sticky, which seemed to her the perfect finishing evil touch. She put the putter back and ran to her room. When she was changing her clothes, she realized that her uncle might later smell the putter. The very part he would be holding. Her favorite uncle! She wetted a cloth and raced back to wipe off the putter. The voices still droning in the nearby room. Then she went back to her room again, threw herself on her bed, and thought something like, Gosh, that's so horrible, thanks, God.

Anne is smiling at the details still so clear in her memory. She realizes with a start that she's pressing her thumb against the front of her skirt. Not much, just a subtle accompaniment.

Going to the dogs, she thinks. Robert comes home now, I may attack him. Well, that could be awkward if he's been . . .

She looks at her watch. 6:51. Damn.

She goes back to the steps, listens upstairs. “Robert!” What if he came in while she was daydreaming? “Robert?”

When there's no answer she goes quickly to the blankets, squats down next to the recorder. She plays the voices at a very low volume, just listening for Robert talking to a woman, fast forwarding through anything else, through her own conversations. Listening also to any sounds from upstairs. The whole time keenly aware of the almost sexual pleasure she's getting from all this.

It takes ten minutes to check the last three days of calls. Nothing. Still nothing. And yet she's more sure, just on instinct, that Robert is pulling back from her, drifting somehow, spinning into another orbit.

The bastard, she thinks, resetting the machine, concealing it again.

I really need him now. I wish he would throw me on the living room floor and make love to me. But what if . . . ? I could pull him into the shower, wash him off, like it's a game.

Another woman, she thinks, knowing that she still doesn't really know if there is one. Definitely something evil here. She wonders if the thought excites her even as it repels her. Robert's body still smelly from another woman? Or maybe I don't care. It's Robert's problem. Okay, stud, let's see you do two.

Or maybe trapping him, finding him tired and impotent, is a turn-on. Oh, Robert, that's really a shame, and I thought you were such a man. Getting old, I guess. . . .

Anne goes energetically up the steps, knowing she's on edge and she'd better watch herself. Knowing also she's, by her own standards, getting a little nuts.

So, she wonders, what will fix it? I find for sure that Robert is mine and always wants to be? Yes, that and he comes through the door and tears off my clothes and makes love to me. An Anne Klein outfit?—sure, what the hell!

Or maybe I've got enough time to run upstairs and finish what I've started here. Maybe find a putter. . . .

•
 They're in a little bar in Astoria, Queens, a ten-minute cab ride on the other side of the East River. Sipping margaritas at 3:35 on a Wednesday afternoon. Nobody they know would be in Queens, and certainly not in a dim, musty dive like this. A cheap motel just down the street.

“Hooky,” Robie says. “I love it. Fuck that paper.”

They're sitting shoulder to shoulder in a booth. Lots of names and initials carved in the wood table. Hillbilly music on the jukebox. Something about love in a trailer park. Not even five people in the place, counting the bartender.

He turns more toward her, admires her new haircut. Very short, very chic. She looks more like the way he thinks of her. She just wanted a change, that's how she explained it.

She didn't mention coming through the newspaper's lobby on Monday, seeing Keith waiting out front, leaning on his big motorcycle. Not a care in the world, to look at him.
Maybe not a thought either. Kathy studied him from behind a column, then went out another entrance. Glad she didn't feel a thing when she saw him. Or maybe she felt pity for this juvenile delinquent almost turned thirty-five. Or was it anger? Maybe she wanted to go out there and yank him backward over his motorcycle.

Then she thought:
I don't want to look the way he remembers me. For sure.

“You look great,” Robie tells Kathy. “Super.” He kisses her. “And terrific. And wonderful.”

He pushes her skirt farther up, looks down.

She watches his face. “Like white?”

“On you? Any color they make.”

“If you whisper just the right stuff, I'll take them off.”

Robie laughs. “Now?”

“For you, lover? Anytime.”

“I'm thinking about it,” he says. “Love it. No, not yet. We'll ease up to it.”

She gives him that lazy fuck-me smile he sees in his dreams.

“Another thing,” she says. “I can put a wig on this. Be a blonde.”

“Yeah?”

“Might be useful sometime.”

Robie nods at her. Pressing his hand along her thigh.

“If, you know . . .”

He shakes his head.

She stares seriously. “I don't know, Robie, it's a big step.”

“I didn't think it up,” he says sharply. “You did.”

“Everything you were saying went that—”

“Drop it, please.”

He slides his hand up between her thighs, smiles grimly. “Sorry. Let me put down another one of these Mexican depth charges, and I can talk about anything.”

“Or we can go in the bathroom and do something.”

“Always thinking.”

“Not you?”

“Yeah, I though about it.”

She smiles, delighted. “We don't have to think about things. We can do them.”

“I was thinking . . . will it always be like this?”

“I sure hope so. . . . Why, what do you think?”

“You know the guys I admire? Cartoonists in the paper. Every day they got to come up with that new joke. I can't even imagine how they do it. Then I thought, well, if what's-his-name can think of something new for Garfield every day, a couple of sex maniacs like us ought to be able to think of some new way to fuck.”

Kathy laughs. “Robie, you say the sweetest things. . . . So it
will
always be like this. You agree?”

Robie shrugs. “Looks like it.”

“Always and always.”

“At least.”

She looks the place over, then stands a little off the seat, and eases her panties down. Gets them off her feet, balls them up in one hand and puts the white ball in Robie's shirt pocket. “Close to your heart.”

“My
heart,”
Robie says dramatically. “Looks like cardiac arrest. It's the margaritas, or that smell . . .”

“You're silly when you drink. You know that?”

“You aren't worried about my heart?”

“You talk about that smell . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I don't want any jokes. I want this expression like, you know, you've gone to heaven and seen the face of God.”

They start laughing, so loud even the two drunks at the bar look over.

•  •  •

Robert jogs through Grand Central Terminal toward Track 23. Catch the damned fucking 6:39 to get to damned fucking Bronxville at 7:07. A conductor is yelling something,
waving at him. Robert takes a long step into the train, stumbles a little, catches a pole.

Whew. The brain's wobbly, but the legs are weak. The dick's dead. Long live the dick.

He glances scornfully at all the sober assholes who stayed at their desks until 6:30 or some shit like that. Suckers. Let me tell you what I did this afternoon. Funniest thing, I had a doctor's appointment—hey, that's what I
thought
—and the next thing I know this gorgeous nurse starts taking her clothes off. . . . Ah, you couldn't take it.

He sits on the aisle, next to a fat, matronly woman. He gives her a few secret sneers, just to make sure they understand each other.

Now, what time is it, kids? It's sober-up time. By a tremendous act of will. Think sober thoughts, get sober . . . or, conversely, just think of a story where everybody got drunk.