One Plus Two Minus One (25 page)

Robert
was standing there watching her. He didn’t say a
thing.

She went back
into the bathroom and slammed the door, and was pretty sure
Robert had no idea what to say.

Half an hour later she walked past him
without a word and left the house.

She phoned
Ethan, and took him to a hotel, and had some of the slowest,
dirtiest, sweatiest sex they’d ever had, until all the anger and
irritation and annoyance she felt for
Robert was burned out of her.

*

Beth went
home.
Robert had cleaned up the muesli
and shaving cream before he left, and had put everything he’d had
in the bathroom away somewhere. He must be trying to calm her
down.

He didn’t
come home until late.
Beth cooked, pasta
and a tomato sauce, and was eating it at the table when he walked
in. He stopped in the hall and looked at her.

“Want some?” she said.

He looked at her, a little wary. “Yeah,
sure.”

She got up,
and put some food on a plate.
“Wine?” she
said.

He nodded.

She put the
plate opposite hers, across the table, and handed him the
wine.
“Cutlery in the drawer.”

He sat down
and looked at her.
After a while he ate
some pasta.

“I don’t understand you any more,” he
said.

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know that too.”

“Are we okay?”

She looked at him and chewed slowly and
didn’t answer.

“Beth, I just want to understand what’s going
on.”

“You want to understand what’s going on?” she
said.

“I do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Well, maybe you should try harder to work it
out.’

She sat there
for a moment, the pushed her plate towards him.
Pushed it slowly, right across the table, so it hit against
his and both of them slid onto his lap. One plate fell onto the
floor and broke with a crash.

He sat there and watched her, like he’d
thought she was going to stop, right up until everything landed on
him.

She stood up and walked around the table and
tipped half a glass of wine onto his lap too.

“What was that for?” he said, still quite
calm.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“
My
mistake.
It sure as fuck sounded like
it.”

She was wondering what she was turning
into.

“
If you want
to understand me,” she said, “Just listen to me.
Instead of talking all the fucking time and asking me such
asshole fucking questions.”

“Beth, I…”

“I’m going to bed.”

He watched her go like some unknowable
monster had suddenly appeared in his life, and she was pleased.

Beth lay down
in bed and read, the most complicated of her maths books, because
for some reason it irritated
Robert to
have equations in bed with him. He came upstairs after ten minutes
and got in the shower, then came into the bedroom.

“I cleaned up,” he said.

“Okay.”

He climbed
into bed behind her.
“How do I ask you
what’s wrong without pissing you off?”

She lay there
for a while.
“I really don’t know if you
can.”

He put his
hand on her hip.
She was still sleeping
in clothes, so it wasn’t as rude as it would have been if she was
naked, but it was still an interruption while she read.

She didn’t move, didn’t respond, but didn’t
push him away.

She was lying
with her back to him.
After a while he
slid over and kissed her neck.

“No,” she said.

“You’re tired?”

“
Yeah,” she
said.
“Sure.”

He looked at
her for a while.
“What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“But you don’t want me to touch you?”

“Yep.”

“Got your period, got a headache, hate the
sight of me, what?”

She put down
her book, and turned off the light.
“I
don’t want to fuck right now, Robert, it doesn’t have to be for a
reason.”

She wanted to
tell him about Ethan, and just get it over with.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t. She wanted to tell him, and
get him out her life, and get Ethan back here where he should be.
Except she loved Robert and couldn’t.

That was probably why she felt so angry.

After a
while, in the darkness, he said.
“Are you
trying to drive me away?”

“No.”

“It feels like it.”

“
I’m
not.
I’m really not.”

He didn’t answer.

“
I’m angry,”
Beth said.
“I don’t know what’s wrong
with me.”

Still no
answer.
After a while he rolled over and
seemed to go to sleep.

*

Robert
wasn’t in bed when Beth woke up the next
morning. It seemed late. The sun was up and she could hear traffic
outside. He tended to run away after problems, so he might already
have gone.

She lay there
for a moment, then shouted, “
Robert.”

No
answer.
She shouted again, then rolled
over and got a vibrator out the drawer.

She needed
this.
She needed this most days. It
inside her, hugging herself, thinking of Ethan.

Robert
came in halfway through, saying, “Did you
shout?” and then, “Oh shit.”

It was warm,
so she’d pushed the covers back.
She’d
taken her underwear off, to reach, and had pulled her tee-shirt up
so it didn’t get marks on it. She was lying on her back, and had
her free arm over her face, pressing her mouth against it, like she
did during sex, and like he knew she did during sex. The vibrator
was on her, buzzing loud and madly. She hadn’t put it inside, where
it might conceivably have been hidden, and let her somehow cross
her legs and muffle the noise and pretend it wasn’t
there.

It was
obvious what she was doing.
There was no
way he could misunderstand, and he just stood there and looked at
her. Too shocked to move, she thought.

“
Fuck off,”
she said, “For fuck’s sake.
Let me
finish.”

He pulled the
door closed, and went away.
And she made
herself come twice, because apparently being horrible felt
sexy.

“Should we talk?” he said, when she went
downstairs.

“Not a chance.”

He looked at her for a while.

“I thought you were gone,” she said.

“I know.”

“
What do you
think I do when I’m not fucking you?” she said.
“For fuck’s sake,” and left.

*

Beth had a
lecture at the same time as some kind of big political rally near
the library.
She could hear them in the
distance as she walked to her class, shouting and chanting.
Robert’s political rally, the one he and his friends had been
organizing. Beth looked around her class and realized a few of her
students were missing. They might be there, but they might just be
lazy. She probably wouldn’t have noticed if Robert hadn’t been
irritating her about it lately, talking about the rally, all the
time.

“This will be on the exam,” she said, and
wrote a proof on the board.

They all started writing.

“And don’t say that to anyone who isn’t
here,” she said.

Most of them
looked confused.
A few of them seemed to
understand.

Someone must
have complained.
She got bailed up by two
of the older professors on the way back from the tearoom later that
afternoon, and asked what she thought she was doing.

She almost
said something awful, something she couldn’t have got back
from.
She thought at the last minute, and
instead just smiled and said she didn’t know what they were talking
about.

“In your lecture today.”

“Sorry, still no idea.”

They didn’t
push.
No balls, she thought. The whole
problem with people like that. Chattering gossips, but they
wouldn’t just stand up and say what they meant.

Someone
told
Robert, though, and he was sulking
and whiney that night.

“Like you aren’t writing political shit up on
the board all day,” she said.

“I’m actually not.”

“Because you say it?”

“
Because I
don’t let my political views interfere in my teaching.
Even when I believe them strongly.”

“
Bullshit.”
She looked at him for
a moment, then decided he was serious. “Okay, but you must be the
only one in the whole polisci department.”

“No idea,” he said.

“I’ll do it again,” she said.

“I know.”

“Are you angry?”

He shrugged and walked away.

She went to
her office and fucked Ethan on her desk, and wondered why she was
still trying so hard with
Robert.

Beth was taking risks.
She had
Ethan at her place far more often than was sensible, as if some
part of her was tired of lying and wanted to get caught. She felt a
kind of desperation to be with Ethan, to touch him. She needed him,
and her need seemed to be made stronger by having to keep him away.
She took risks, knowing it was only a matter of time until
something went wrong, and didn’t actually seem to care.

One day it
went wrong.
Badly wrong.

Robert
cancelled a lunchtime lecture because of a
broken projector. Cancelled the lecture, and told his students to
go home, he’d put everything on the course website, and he went
home too.

Beth only found that out later.

She was lying
on her back, on the bed, watching Ethan jerk himself off onto her
face.
She was laughing, was stroking
Ethan’s balls and telling him to come. His cock was shiny and
slippery with her and her spit, and she vaguely thought she heard
something downstairs, but ignored it because she knew Robert had a
class. She was distracted. Ethan was close, and she was close, and
they’d just been sixty-nining and she was waiting for Ethan to get
himself off so he could go back down and finish her.

Ethan
came.
Semen landed on her cheek, and went
in her mouth, and she stuck her tongue out and caught what she
could because she knew Ethan would be looking.

And
Robert said, “Beth,” from the
doorway.

It was about
the worst way to get caught she could think of.
There was no way Robert would ever understand.

Ethan said,
“Shit,” and panicked, and looked around for something to hide his
cock behind, found a pillow in the end, and knelt there holding it
in front of himself.
Beth knew how he
came fairly well, and was almost certain he hadn’t finished, that a
couple more spurts would have gone onto the pillow. Unless Robert
appearing had put him off enough he’d just stopped.

Beth wanted
to laugh.
That surprised her. She wasn’t
worried and she didn’t get a fright. She wasn’t embarrassed at what
she was doing, not really, or violated by being watched. She just
thought it was funny. Robert was there, and she’d been caught, and
she was naked with Ethan’s spunk all over her face, and she just
wanted to laugh.

Robert
hadn’t said anything, so Beth sat up. She could
taste Ethan. She could smell sex in the room, and feel Ethan’s
semen warm on her chin and cheek and lip. She had some in her
mouth, and didn’t know if she should swallow, because even here,
even naked and caught like this, having someone else see her make a
swallowing movement seemed far too personal. In the end she had to,
that or choke, so she did, quickly, then just sat there, and Robert
still didn’t react. After another minute she leaned over and got a
couple of tissues, and wiped her face, then pulled the sheet up
over her chest.

She didn’t know what to do next.

Robert
was just standing there, like he was too
horrified to move.

“Could you give me a sec?” she said to
Ethan.

“I’ll go.”

“Don’t go, just wait downstairs.”

He nodded.

Ethan looked around, and seemed to remember
his clothes were somewhere downstairs, and kept hold of his pillow
while he edged out the room.

Robert
almost didn’t move out the doorway. Enough Ethan
had to hesitate, and look at him, like he was wondering whether to
ask.

“
Get the fuck
out of the way,” Beth said to
Robert, and
then Robert stepped aside.

That was when
Beth realized
Robert was angry. He wasn’t
showing it, because he hardly ever did. He was motionless and calm,
probably because he didn’t know what else to do. He clearly didn’t
know how to deal with this, if he should shout at Beth, or call her
a slut, or throw things, or what. So he just stood
there.