City Boy (27 page)

“How about I call you when I get in.”

“Sure. Whenever you get a chance.”

“There’s a reception tonight. An orientation. Then I guess we’re all going out to dinner, so use the cell phone if you need to find me.”

“Shouldn’t have to.”

“I wish you could come. I know you wanted to.”

Smiling her best, blue-eyed smile. She was able to relax a little, now that she was finally here. She was able to be nice to him, now that she was almost rid of him.

“Maybe some other time. Enjoy the hell out of everything.” Jack carried her suitcase to the curb, slid out the tote wheels and handle. “Knock ’em dead, kiddo.”

They kissed, in the self-conscious, public way you kissed at airports, then Jack said, “Break clean,” and Chloe stepped away from him, through the glass doors and into the terminal, looking back once to wave.

Jack waved too. He got into the car, edged out in traffic, threaded his way around the ramps and into the short-term parking lot. He found a space, locked the car after him, and walked back to the United terminal. Three days before he had booked a United flight to Detroit, then canceled it. The computer printout and his ID got him through security. He was carrying a backpack, which contained a new Discman and several of Chloe’s favorite CDs. He did not intend for Chloe to see him, but if she did, he would say this was a present he had forgotten to give her.

He took the walkway through the United tunnel with its blinking light show and computer-generated chimes, wondered as always if they meant the place to be spooky or relaxing, a weird, outer-space send-off before you entrusted yourself to air travel.
Oh folly, folly:
what he was doing crossed some kind of line, he was aware of that, but he was not inclined to think about it now.

For a time he had tried to come up with a way he could follow Chloe to New York, then gave it up. He had thought about things like hidden microphones, video cameras, tracking devices, all the gizmos ever invented to snare a cheating heart, but that was laughable, he had no idea how to procure or manage such things. He’d found himself considering
wigs and false mustaches for sneaking around airports. That should have been enough to shame him but it wasn’t. Then he remembered some minor Clint Eastwood movie where Clint was miscast as a master of disguise. The disguises consisted mostly of Clint wearing a variety of hats. If he was found out, Jack decided, it would be that much worse to be wearing a wig or a silly hat.

At the top of the escalator he took a quick look left and right. The gate for Chloe’s flight was midway down the concourse. He set off on a slow, careful path toward it, looking into all the cocktail lounges and newstands and Starbucks. Even this early, the place swarmed with travelers. The worst thing about O’Hare was not that it was miserably crowded, rude, noisy, or inefficent—it was that and more—but how it made you hate all of humanity. You could be pretty sure they were hating you right back.

Chloe wasn’t in any of the places he checked. As he approached her gate, he ducked into a bank of pay phones and pretended to dial. It was still early for the New York flight. The ticket agent hadn’t yet opened up, and only a few people, none of them Chloe, sat waiting. He walked past the gate, into the end-of-concourse hinterland of snack carts and not much else, except for several gates jammed together in a roundhouse. A troop of young Asian men, each carrying a navy blue JAL flight bag, milled in front of a departing flight to Los Angeles. A janitor in no particular hurry pushed a cleaning cart. Outside on the tarmac, planes lumbered in and out of line. It might have been an elaborately arranged stage setting designed to convince him that the rest of the world was normal.

Jack reached the end of the concourse, scanned the seats, and doubled back. Across the aisle he saw Chloe and Spence sitting at a table in a snack bar.

He stopped dead and found a wall to shield him. They must have just now sat down. They had paper cups of coffee and they were busy stirring and blowing and taking cautious sips. Spence had purchased a sweet roll. Jack could see them clearly enough but not hear them. He watched Spence break off a piece of the roll, lift it to Chloe’s mouth. Two fingers supported her chin while Chloe’s lips parted. She swallowed
the bit of roll, then leaned forward to lick the rest of the sugar from his fingertip.

He would fucking kill them both.

Although he was hidden from them, and although he was the one spying them out, he felt horribly visible. Anyone walking past would see murder shooting out of him in gaudy, radioactive flames. He was biting down hard on nothing, he made a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. Spence and Chloe were seated by a window. The splendid morning sun backlit Chloe’s hair. She was wearing a black pants suit and a white blouse. Her colors, black and white. She’d always been vain about having the dramatic looks you needed to carry that off. When she had dressed this morning, she was dressing for Spence.

Good old Spence. Now he was covering Chloe’s hand with his big executive paw and listening seriously as she explained how truly rotten it made her feel to be screwing around on her clueless dope of a husband. Spence nodded. He was a sensitive guy. He understood her deeply conflicted and nuanced feelings. They did her credit. He was calculating the hours until he’d be able to get into her pants.

If he were Clint Eastwood he would walk over, cool and tough, pull a gun, throw a punch.

Jack didn’t move. He couldn’t keep from watching them. He needed to hate them both for a while, breathe it in. He probably hated Spence less than he wanted to. After all, what man wouldn’t want to fuck Chloe. He knew exactly how that tooth bit. How old was Spence anyway, sneaking up on fifty? Jowls. Going to fat. He looked in the mirror and saw himself too successfully disguised, as a middle-aged man packed into a suit. A guy who probably read, in secret, ads for weight-loss products and hair restorers. His dick gone as lazy as a trout in winter, rising only occasionally to take the missus’s familiar bait. Doctors talking somberly of triglycerides and prostate and heart attack, heart attack, heart attack. Oh vicious irony, tragic fate, that a man could achieve the very pinnacle of worldly success, yet find himself looking down this dreary narrowing tunnel, bereft of youth, joy, vigor, passion, etc. Jack corrected himself. He did hate the whoreson prick.

Was it better or worse that his wife was fucking a fat old man? Better than some muscle-bound walking penis? Was this all just some slimy career move? He couldn’t figure it any other way. Jack didn’t doubt that there’d been some of the pressuring Chloe had talked about, mixed in with courtship. Promises, coaxing, negotiations. He wondered when, officially, technically, their affair had begun. Probably back when Chloe had stopped talking about it, when she said she’d settled it.

So now he knew otherwise, or thought he did, raging fool, skulking behind a rack of luggage carts.

How long had he been standing there? Once more he felt visible and self-conscious, but now there was shame in it. He guessed he’d been there long enough for Chloe and Spence to finish their coffee. They were getting up from their chairs. Nothing extraordinary in their manner now, they were simply people with a plane to catch, and Jack might have believed he’d imagined everything except for the look on Spence’s face. Chloe was bending down to retrieve her carry-on. Spence stood over her. Chloe didn’t see him but Jack did. Spence looked happy. Not just cheerful or content or at ease. Happy, even grateful. Love, hope, the rebirth of everything that made life worth living. Got the knot in his middle-aged pecker untied. Oh yes.

Chloe and Spence made their way to the gate and Jack trailed after them. Up in some control room, security guards were watching TV monitors, hoping to spot hot babes. Jack paused in front of the arrival and departures boards and tried not to look like a terrorist. Chloe headed for the ladies’ room. Spence took her carry-on over to the gate. Jack saw no sign of anyone else from the bank, no one there who Spence seemed to know. He had to assume that part was a lie also, and that the two of them were traveling alone. He bet they had first-class tickets. Fringe benefit to whoring yourself.

When Spence’s back was turned, Jack walked quickly past him to the phones on the other side of the gate. From his hiding place he watched Chloe emerge from the ladies’ room. She passed within a few yards of him. He heard her heels clicking and imagined, rather than felt, the current of cool, displaced air in her wake. She took the seat
next to Spence and the two of them settled in to wait. Spence had a newspaper and they traded sections. Jack picked up the phone and dialed Chloe’s cell number.

He observed the phone’s ringing register on them, and Chloe reaching into her bag for it. Then her amplified, staticky voice in his ear. “Hello?”

“Hey there, beautiful.”

“Jack? You’re home already?”

He watched the show. The two of them mouthing questions. Christ. What does he want.

“Yeah, there was like, no traffic. So, you all squared away? You get your coffee?”

“What’s going on?” Shifting the phone to her other ear. Forehead puckering, expression of impatience. Spence rattled his newspaper, detaching himself. You had to expect these little episodes of unseemliness. Husbands making pests of themselves.

“Nothing. Just wanted to call and tell you how much I’m going to miss you.”

“That’s nice. Me too.”

“I don’t want to bug you while you’re in New York, I know you’ll be busy and all, so I figured I’d better call now. Boy, a week seems like a really long time.”

Jack was pleased to see that Chloe had lowered her head in some attempt at privacy. She said, “I know. But it’ll go fast.”

“When I say I’m going to miss you, you know what I mean, right? The old hubba hubba.”

“Don’t be obnoxious.”

“Marital consortium. Hot cha cha.”

“Are you drunk or something?”

Eloquent raised eyebrow from Spence.

“No, but listen, I’ve been thinking, maybe we’ve been taking things for granted in that department. Too much of a settled routine.”

“Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“A little experimentation. Couldn’t hurt. Hey, here’s an idea. Phone sex.”

“No.”

“Come on. Just for fun. Get crazy.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“Fine, but then I’ll just keep calling back. If a man can’t talk dirty to his own wife—”

“I’m in an airport.” Chloe stood up, paced. With her free hand she waved to Spence, waved him off. No big deal.

“So don’t say anything. Just listen. Where’s your sense of adventure? A mad caprice. I ever tell you that you have a great ass?”

Chloe sighed. They were announcing some flight and Jack heard it in both ears. He said, “Come on. Work with me here. I can get hard just thinking about your ass.”

“Thank you.”

“I’d like to spread your legs and tickle your pussy till it’s wet. How’m I doing so far? Having any effect?”

Spence was motioning to Chloe, he wanted to ask her something. She walked over to him and covered the phone while she spoke. “What’s that?” Jack asked.

“I wasn’t talking to you, it was one of the guys.”

“The guys are all there? Everybody rarin to go?”

“Are you finished yet?” She sat down next to Spence, opened her briefcase.

“Darlin, I’m just warming up. Stay in the moment here with me. I’ve got you butt naked and I’m playing with you, you know, finger-banging, and then I decide I want your nipples hard—”

“Jack, I’ll have to talk to you later.” Another off-mike conversation with Spence, who seemed to require something in Chloe’s briefcase.

“Why, you’re doing something really important now?” Spence leaned across Chloe to retrieve the needed paper. He took the opportunity to squeeze her thigh. The rogue.

“Now’s not the time, okay?”

“But I’m just starting to hump you. The way you like it. You know, kind of teasing, so you have to ask—”

The phone clicked off. Jack watched Chloe put it away. Spence asked her something and she said, clearly, Nothing. Spence said—he
couldn’t guess what Spence might say. Something about the sad necessity of deceiving the injured parties? Or hubba hubba? Chloe smiled briefly and shook her head.

He could have gone up to them then, done the Clint Eastwood thing, watched their faces change. Instead he turned and walked back through the terminal and drove home.

The apartment had the feel of absence. It was a place that a woman had left. Damp towel in the bathroom, empty hanger parked on a doorknob. Her orange juice glass in the sink. The unmade bed. He lay down in the softened sheets, with their ghosts of bodily smells—what was it Chloe had said about the smell of sheets?—and tried to remember back to before his troubles began, his and Chloe’s, but he couldn’t follow the trail of events that far, nor find any sequence of thought or hope or action that might lead him there again.

He surprised himself by falling asleep, or rather, by waking up. It was almost noon. Chloe’s plane had already landed in New York. Jack got up and poked around the kitchen. He was actually hungry, another surprise. He didn’t feel good, or anything close to good, but his unhappiness was more matter-of-fact now, he found it easier to take up the weight of it. He made a sandwich and ate it at the kitchen table and sat there a long time, trying to keep his mind from dragging him around the same rutted track, like an ox dragging a millstone, the question of what he must do, do, do.

The only thing that mattered was to get Chloe back. The ox had produced an answer. The how of it was unimportant, as were her lies, the fact that she’d sold herself and made a fool of him. All that could be bargained away, if in the end he had Chloe. It didn’t seem impossible. People got through things like this. He loved her. Love, sure, everybody knew what that meant, or thought they did, but who could have guessed it was a stone, a stone inside you, who could have guessed its weight. He wanted her back in spite of everything wrong or sad or lost that had happened, that was happening
right now
, but he couldn’t let himself enter that track again, not yet.