The Pillow Friend (37 page)

Her shoulders, which had felt so relaxed, were suddenly tight again, as if she were still driving. “Who's Mon?”

“Didn't I say? She's my wife.”

Despite his liberal use of “we” and “us” when he spoke, he hadn't mentioned a woman, and she hadn't thought of one. Absurdly (she now realized) she'd imagined the plural pronoun referred to a housemate or, at worst, a girlfriend living safely far away. She'd imagined herself in the midst of a gentle seduction.

“Mon,” she repeated vaguely and took a bite of sandwich to give herself time to adjust to the idea.

“Short for Monica. Married nearly two years now. She was—you might have known her. Monica Willies. She went to our school. Of course, she was two years below us.”

“Oh, Alex. You married a sophomore?”

While he laughed she ate the sandwich he had made for her. But as she tore out a bit of the sweet, chewy stuff it seemed to her that the texture was all wrong for a sandwich. And as she chewed it turned to flesh in her mouth, raw and indigestible. She chewed and chewed and chewed until her jaws ached. As she tried to swallow some of the pulpy mass, her throat closed with revulsion.

Pushing back the chair she struggled to her feet.

“Are you all right?”

“Bathroom,” she muttered thickly.

“Through there—by the front door—to your right.”

She made it just in time to throw up into the toilet. Oddly, although she heaved and retched until she was exhausted, apart from the small amount of undigested sandwich, only a little, greenish liquid came up. It seemed that her stomach was completely empty.

She lay in bed in the guest room with the light on, a glass of ice water and an empty bowl close at hand. The guest room was also Mon's sewing room, and she stared at the sewing machine and dressmaker's dummy in the far corner until she fell asleep.

As soon as she woke up she knew by the fact that the room was now dark that someone had come in. They might have just turned out the light and gone away again, but she sensed a presence. She lay perfectly still, moving only her eyes, until she saw the figure lurking in the dark.

“Alex?”

There was no reply, but she thought she saw the figure move slightly. In a normal voice she said, “Alex, I can see you.”

Still he said nothing, but in a flash she had a vision of Alex standing there in the doorway with his eyes closed and arms outstretched, shamblingly seeking her out like the pillow friend, and she screamed.

“Agnes, hey, it's all right, you were dreaming, that's all.” She felt his hands, his arms around her, his bare chest and she whimpered and went limp. When she opened her eyes the room was glaringly alight. Alex looked back at her, his eyes fully open and enlarged by a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses. His hair was tousled and he wore a pair of baggy shorts. “You were having a nightmare,” he said.

“I thought . . . someone was in the room.” Now she could see that the door was not where she had believed it to be, and she could see the dressmaker's dummy in its place. Alex pointed at it and she nodded. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize. Everybody has nightmares sometimes.” He was still holding her, sitting comfortably close on the bed. She could smell the soap and salt on his body and feel the warmth of his bare skin. She felt like stripping off her T-shirt and rubbing her nipples against his.

“Are you all right now?”

“Stay with me a little longer.” She rested the palm of one hand lightly on his chest, to feel the spring of his hair.

“Mon probably hasn't even noticed I'm gone. She kind of stirred and muttered when you started screaming, but I think she didn't really wake up. I guess, if we ever have babies, I know who's going to have to do the three a.m. feedings.”

She slipped her hand down his chest and into the waistband of his shorts. He caught his breath but made no attempt to stop her. He was already erect as she fondled him. His penis strained and butted her hand like a happy pet.

After a little while she withdrew her hand to strip off her T-shirt. He stared as if he'd never seen a naked woman before; as if he couldn't believe his luck. His excitement thrilled her; she felt eager to increase his pleasure, to show him how generous she could be.

As she pulled him down to her she felt him resisting what they both wanted, and saw him starting to frame his excuses. She didn't want to hear his wife's name again; she didn't want any more words to come between them. She put a finger to his lips and then, sitting up to face him, her breasts pushing against his chest, she whispered very low into his ear, “Quickly. No noise. Just do it.”

He tugged down his shorts and she lay back and opened her legs. He positioned himself between her legs and then—she couldn't understand what was happening—tried and failed to enter her. She was eager; she wanted him as much as she'd ever wanted any man; he was evidently fully erect. She tried to guide him in with her hands, thinking that excitement had made him clumsy, but that wasn't it. He was in the right place. The head of his penis butted, again and again, against the lips of her vagina, finding something blocking his entrance. She was beginning to feel sore and he was beginning to droop when he abruptly got up and pulled his shorts back on.

“Not a good idea,” he whispered. “Obviously.” He flashed her a strained, chagrined smile. She bit her lips and held her hands out to him, knowing as she did so that there was nothing she could do to hold him now, no reason he should stay.

She lay on the bed with her knees up and legs parted after he had left her, horribly aware of the broken-off cock inside her that remained as a barrier to any other lover.

THE QUESTION ANSWER'D

—Sei Shonagon

L
ondon looked old and gray and unwelcoming. After Houston it felt cold, but no less humid. She took the train from Gatwick to Victoria, and then, unwilling to struggle home on the underground with her suitcase, took a cab. During the long, slow journey out to Harrow she tried to cheer herself with the London views and oddities glimpsed through the window. But she found no pleasure today in pub signs, Victorian architecture, eccentrically dressed pedestrians, or advertisements exhorting her to “Try a saucy faggot!” Those were a tourist's pleasures, and what she wanted more than anything now was simply to feel at home.

Leaving Alex's yesterday morning she'd gone straight out to the airport with the intention of simply staying there until she could get a seat on a flight to London. There had been one available that very evening, and she had taken it.

At the airport, she'd bought a small mirror, and had spent several long sessions locked inside a toilet cubicle examining her vagina. She couldn't see anything unusual, and her own fingers encountered no obstruction, but she was still uncomfortable. She had a slight sensation of heaviness, a faint genital irritation, a little like having a constantly full bladder, yet without the urge to urinate.

Gray didn't know she was coming; she hadn't been able to reach him. She hoped he didn't have plans for tonight and would be coming straight home after school. She had been attacked by a kind of waking nightmare while trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep on the plane, and she couldn't quite get it out of her head. In the nightmare she came back to discover that Gray did not exist, had never existed outside her own mind. Her marriage to him had been a fantasy, like her mother's acting career, like Marjorie.

The little house had never looked better to her. The honeysuckle around the front door was in bloom: even in a city the English spring made itself felt. Indoors it smelled, as always, of damp paper and stale smoke, only now that smell made her heart beat faster, and she was possessed by a yearning nostalgia for her early days of living here, as if she had been happy then.

Now she was home, and could relax. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down to look through the small stack of mail and magazines Gray had left for her, but halfway through she felt impelled to rush to the bathroom and check her vagina again, this time with the aid of a larger, magnifying mirror, and a small flashlight. When she had assured herself there was nothing there, she had a bath and washed her hair. The water was only lukewarm, because she hadn't left the heater on for long enough, but she felt compelled to have a thorough wash, in case any trace of either the pillow friend or Alex had survived the shower she'd had before leaving his house. Nothing that she had done in Texas could be allowed to contaminate her life here, or her marriage. She was convinced her only safety lay in forgetting. It had been a time of madness, but it was over now. Graham must never know, never suspect.

After she had changed into a clean, if slightly musty-smelling, sweat suit she found in the bedroom wardrobe, she unpacked her suitcase. Everything in it would have to be washed, and she noticed that the laundry basket was full. A trip to the launderette at the bottom of the road was obviously called for. She didn't really feel like leaving the familiar safety of their house until she'd seen her husband, but it would be hours before he got home, and those hours had to be filled somehow. Gray would be pleased she'd done his washing, she thought; he hated the launderette more than she did.

She was exhausted and finding it impossible to concentrate by the time she got back. Some of the images which came into her head unexpectedly were as vivid as flashbacks, and frightened her badly. She made herself a cup of coffee and tried to eat some bread and cheese, but when she dozed off with her mouth full of bread she decided to stop fighting it. She put away the clean clothes, stripped off her own, and crawled into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

A high, shrill scream of terror sliced into her sleep.

“What is it?” She sat up, heart pounding, and felt around on the bedside table for her glasses. Without them she could only see Graham—even in dim and fuzzy outline she knew him—standing stock-still in the middle of the floor.

She got her glasses and focused on his face. “What's wrong? Did you scream?”

“Jesus Christ! You might have told me—I wasn't expecting—I thought the house was empty, I thought I was alone, and then I see someone in the bed—Jesus!” He seemed to be trembling, patting at himself; not until he located the pack of cigarettes did she recognize the familiar gesture.

“I tried to call you, but . . .”

“You couldn't have tried very hard.”

Guilt settled like a heavy quilt around her shoulders. “I'm sorry. I was staying—out in the country. My aunt's old place, you remember. And there's no phone. I did try to call as soon as I got back to Houston, but there was no answer.”

“You should have tried again.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I thought I'd wait until I knew what plane I was going to be on, but by then you were out. I didn't want to wait; I got the first plane I could.” There was a burning sensation in her throat; she wished he would smile at her, put his arms around her, hug her, tell her he was glad to see her. The words came out in spite of herself. “Aren't you glad to see me?”

He looked at her. “Of course I am. Just a bit—shaken. You don't know how I—how
worried
I was, not hearing from you, especially after I called your sister and she didn't know where you were. She said you'd vanished. Where were you?”

“I told you. I went to East Texas. My, my aunt's house. Where my mother was headed when she died. I didn't realize—I didn't mean to be gone long; time just kind of . . .” She trailed off, realizing, as she spoke, that she still didn't know how long she had been away, how many days she had spent in the old house in the woods. She was reluctant to ask, to be precise about her sins and remind him of her guilt; later she could find a newspaper, discover today's date, get out her desk diary to find out when she had left, and reconstruct her time away for herself.

“You've lost weight.”

She remembered she was naked and pulled the sheet up over her breasts. “I'm sorry.”

Finally he smiled. “Well, don't apologize! It looks good. You were just a little bit plump, before. I have missed you, you know. And I was worried. But now you're here and everything is all right again. Come on, get dressed and I'll take you out to dinner.”