The Forever Marriage (6 page)

“My dad said he’d already paid a fortune for me to go to Amsterdam and Paris, he wasn’t going to shell out more for London.” She shrugged. “This is what I could afford on my own.”

“So why’d you come?” Jobe was stuffing rolled-up jeans and T-shirts into a knapsack he’d found on the floor. He’d already explained to her that he was from Baltimore, studying at Oxford—earning his doctorate at the Mathematical Institute—but it was spring break so he’d taken the train down to London with her. “Was there something in particular you wanted to do?”

Carmen tilted her head so the feather she wore brushed her shoulder. “I couldn’t stand the thought of coming all this way, over an ocean and everything, and not seeing more. It seemed so … boxed in. I don’t know. I’m not explaining this very well. It just. I wanted to feel like things were
possible
, you know?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Jobe said. And he looked directly into her eyes, holding himself steady, skinny chest barely moving. It was as if he were calculating, she thought. He was figuring her out, adding her up. Despite his wiry hair and bony, gawky body, this drew her in.

She considered moving toward him, but the attraction wasn’t exactly sexual. There was no part of her that wanted to touch him; he was fascinating the way a live lobster was. All those disparate body parts—claws and tail and antennae—moving in ways that looked mechanical and surreal. “What’s up?” she said finally.

But instead of answering, he dropped his gaze and went back to folding her clothes.

Back at Jobe’s hostel, his friend from school had arrived: a brawny boy named Tim who wore a flannel shirt open over a white tank top. His jeans were soft and work-worn, his feet in unlaced, oversized boots. He was sitting wide-legged in a chair, drinking a beer, reading from a book that lay open on his lap. Immediately, Carmen forgot her mild interest in Jobe. This was more like it: broad shoulders and big hands. She could see herself with Tim.

The three ordered a pizza for dinner. A mistake. The Brits did many things well, Carmen had learned—tea, scones, meat pies—but pizza was not one of them. It was undercooked and dripped with a tasteless tomato sauce. She gnawed on a slice but felt increasingly queasy about the flop of soft, bready crust on her tongue. When she put it down, half eaten, Jobe stared and looked fretful. “You okay?” he asked.

She itched with irritation, the way she had when her mother used to hover over her. Carmen’s mother, dead nearly a year now, had been fretful and easily hurt. It was, Carmen often told herself, a relief to be on her own. But then, as sometimes happened, darkness spread through her like ink and she felt simply small and sad. “I’m tired,” she said to Jobe. “And cold.”

The once-sunny day had collapsed into a stormy evening with extravagantly frothy brown clouds. Rain spattered the dirty windowpanes. Everything seemed unfamiliar, and Carmen tensed her cheek muscles so she wouldn’t cry. It was probably hormonal; her period was due in a couple of days. She really needed to get a grip.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Tim rolled his eyes. He was from South Dakota, a boy with bizarre, savantlike mathematical skills, Jobe had told her while Tim was out in the hall, using the bathroom. His buffalo-ranching parents had thought he might be insane when he was growing up. Now, Tim turned to Jobe and yawned. “How long are we going to be babysitting?” he asked.

Carmen flushed and the room around her pitched. Fixing her glassy eyes to the floor, she stood. “I’m going to leave so I don’t throw up all over your table, okay?”

But, of course, there was no place to go. They were all in one room, with the all-purpose table wedged in a corner. Jobe had made a bit of ceremony out of unrolling a camp-style sleeping bag for himself on the floor.

Carmen pulled a book from her bag and tried sitting on Jobe’s bed, but the mattress was thin and lumpy, so after a few minutes she sank to the floor and into the sleeping bag, which was covered in flannel and filled with soft down. Exhausted, craving a sort of nest, she burrowed down inside, not even caring that the men were still watching. Once inside, she wriggled out of her jeans and tossed them out of the opening, onto the floor. Then she closed her eyes but didn’t sleep. Instead, she floated dreamily on the low murmur of their voices—once Tim and Jobe had resumed their conversation—the way she had when she was a child and her parents were talking in the front seat of the car.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she awoke in the middle of the night, abruptly, unable to figure out for a couple of minutes where she was. There were bodies above her, two large forms like shadowy specters. Still struggling to place herself, frantically trying to remember the night before, she wondered whether they were good or evil. She thought for a flash that she might have died somewhere along the way and was just becoming aware of it. Or perhaps she was underground in a cave, buried alive among foreign things.

She moved—it was excruciating, like stepping into a scary, dark chasm—and then became aware of a stickiness between her legs; the hazy, moonlit night beyond the windows; and the eyes of Tim, either awake or sleeping with them open. Maybe he
was
insane. She untangled herself from the sleeping bag, feeling with one bare foot the streak of blood that she’d oozed like slime.

Emerging like a trapped bug tearing its way out of a spider’s web, she gathered her shirttail and tried to cover herself, wrapping it
around the upper part of her legs where she imagined there were probably bright stains.

Lurching a little as she walked toward the door, Carmen rubbed her abdomen and moaned. How could it be that she’d never asked Jobe where the bathroom was? It had to be close; Tim had been gone only a few minutes when he used it. But was it for men only? Was it locked? And if so, where was the key? Carmen looked around the room, which became more real by degrees. The fuzzy illumination of a streetlamp came through the window. Tim blinked, his eyes yellow slits in the soupy light.

“Hey, where’s the bathroom?” She tried to sound tough, but she was beginning to panic. There was a heaviness in her gut, thick liquid on her legs, and she had to pee, urgently.

“What’s wrong, little girl? Not feeling well? Need some love?” Tim’s voice was low and sinister, and he pulled back the covers to show her that he was naked underneath. “Come on in. I’ll make everything better.”

Just then a cloud covered the moon and the door’s outline vanished into the murk. The room seemed to have sealed itself, like some sort of pod in a science fiction movie. She stood clenching like a kindergartener about to wet her pants. And she was furious, but for some reason this made her feel like crying. Tears and urine threatened to let down together. Then she heard a voice from above, low and as mean as a six-year-old’s and wrecked with sleep.

“Leave her alone, Tim.” There was a rustling of covers and now Jobe was standing beside her, his skinny chest bare and brushing her arm. Carmen clenched and managed to contain the liquid that threatened to spill out of her. “Here.” He grabbed her arm almost roughly. “I’ll take you.”

Jobe’s hand found a doorknob that materialized for Carmen the moment he reached for it. He pulled the door open and led her down the hallway to a tiny WC where he tugged a cord and an overbright light flooded the room. Carmen covered her eyes and whispered, “I need my knapsack, from back in the room.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a minute. You …” Jobe gestured, then seemed at a loss for words. He backed out and Carmen slammed the door, then peeled her sticky underpants away and sank down onto the chipped toilet.

A couple of minutes later, there was a knock. She stood and slid herself back into her squishy clothes. “Here.” Jobe shoved the knapsack through the wide crack she made in the door, along with the longest white T-shirt she’d ever seen. “Here’s something to change into. I’m going to wait out here to make sure you get back.”

There was blood on Carmen’s fingers and a few drops on the floor. The little WC was beginning to look like a crime scene, and her panties were completely ruined, the elastic bands around the leg holes soaked a rusty red. She looked around, but the room had no waste-basket. Just a toilet with a tank on the wall and a sink with one faucet—undoubtedly cold—and no soap.

She washed herself off as best as she could, using the water (which was, indeed, ice cold) and a wad of scratchy toilet tissue. Then she fanned herself, one foot up on the toilet rim. Someone had left a towel on the sink. Carmen picked it up, found a rough edge, and ripped it, folding the square she made, praying it was mostly clean, using it to line a fresh pair of underwear, then putting them on. Finally, she pulled on Jobe’s T-shirt, which fell to her knees. By the time she’d washed her hands, stuffed her bloodied panties into the space behind the toilet, and opened the door, fifteen minutes must have passed. But he was still there, leaning against the wall at a tilt, eyes closed, half sleeping.

“Everything okay?” He moved carefully, detaching from the wall as if he were protecting his sharp bones. He was wearing scrubs, like a doctor, the pants tied tightly around his narrow hips.

She nodded and said quietly, “I’m fine,” and felt an abrupt wave of affection for him. Alone, in the dark, his awkwardness was touching.

They walked silently back to the room. Jobe reached down with one hand to work the knob and pushed the door open with the other above her head. For a few seconds, she was inside the span of his
arms. And surprisingly—like when, many years ago, her grandmother had taken her out for lunch and Carmen had ended up enjoying the prim meal of Cobb salad and Earl Grey tea—she experienced a flicker of pleasure. Jobe reminded her of a tree, the kind you take shelter under. It wasn’t sexy, but maybe it could be nice for a change.

She had been with plenty of men: four just since arriving in Europe, and six in her lifetime before that. All but three of them had been dark-haired and handsome. One was black. There’d also been a Scot—her first redhead—just a few days before. Ten was a risky but not an unreasonable number, on the far edge of normal (most of her girlfriends claimed between five and eight) but nowhere near the territory of a true slut. Many of her friends were skirting the rules anyway, by going out with men and doing only “uncountable” acts: jerking them off, giving them blow jobs, or sleeping in the nude—this was the oddest one, as far as Carmen was concerned—pressed up against each other but utterly chaste.

She knew she didn’t want to suck this guy off, and tonight there was no chance of her sleeping without clothes to hold her diaper on. But Carmen decided on the spot she would be willing to trade a quick hand job for a spot next to Jobe in his clean bed.

“I’m sorry it’s, um, kind of a mess ….” Carmen said, gesturing at the sleeping bag. “Look, I’ll find a laundry and wash it tomorrow. Can I just get in next to you? I promise I won’t kick or anything.”

“Sure.” Jobe’s voice was so low she could barely hear it. “Come on.” He flattened and inserted himself into the bed like a sheet of paper in an envelope. She followed, feeling round and extravagantly three-dimensional next to his plank of a body, lying in the space he’d created by backing all the way up against the wall. They lay for a minute not touching, though this must have required Jobe to practically not breathe. Finally, he relaxed and his body contoured against hers, all ridges and planes, long angled bones, and the distinct shape of his erection.

She moved her hips slightly, and it grew. Carmen was caught between disgust and a sense of power. It required so little effort for her
to control a man’s body—this man in particular, it seemed, who wanted her despite the fact that she’d soaked his sleeping bag with blood. She reached down with one hand and touched the hard, curled lump that was straining against his cotton scrub pants, causing Jobe to jump back a half inch or so.

“Does it hurt?” she whispered. “It’s like a rock. I can’t imagine having a part of me just … change like that.”

“Uh, no, not hurt, exactly.” Jobe was still edging back in the bed, but he couldn’t get quite far enough away from her for his penis not to be touching. “I’m sorry, it’s just something that happens sometimes. Maybe if I lie on my back.”

“Oh.” Carmen had been preparing to close her hand on his cock, but it looked now like she didn’t have to do anything in order to stay.

Outside there were drops falling like coins on the roof and Carmen relaxed into Jobe’s side. The arm he’d stretched out under her neck—because where else was there to put it?—tightened and curled a little, drawing her in. And she sighed and drifted as if she were being carried on a raft toward sleep, nose against Jobe’s upper arm, the faint, spicy deodorant smell of him mixing with the steel scent of the rain.

Tuesday afternoon, flopped on a bed at the airport Holiday Inn, Carmen looked out the smeared window at planes lifting, showing her their bellies as they rose through the air.

“It’ll be strange going back to work.” She reached for her glass. There was no longer any concern about Jobe’s smelling the wine on her breath when she got home at five, having to come up with some invented client meeting that involved marinated olives and a bottle of Chardonnay.

“Afraid you’ll have to play the part of a devastated widow?” Danny, lying beside her, reached for her free hand.

“Sort of.” She sighed. The truth was that Carmen was confused. The house felt large and lonely, she was perpetually turning corners expecting Jobe to be there. But how did she explain this?
I didn’t expect to be sad about my husband’s death, but in fact, I am
. Instead, she had to pretend that there had been no such gap—that she was slowly ascending from dark horror rather than just now going into it. “People will be whispering about me, asking constantly how I’m holding up. Even if Jobe
had
been the great love of my life, I doubt I’d have known how to grieve.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you a copy of Joan Didion’s book. You can study up.” Danny ran his hand up Carmen’s torso, tobogganing it roughly over her nipples and sending sparks through her chest and up into her throat. “Just wear dark clothes, buttoned all the way up to your neck. You’ll have to hide these beautiful breasts for at least a year.” He grew serious then, wearing his library face. “Or you could tell them the truth: that you’re exhausted from the last year and relieved that Jobe’s not in pain anymore. People will give you space.”