Where or When (15 page)

It was tantalizing for me, the vision I had of how this might work. But did I really imagine I could see you from time to time and then forget about you and go on with my life in the intervals?

I know that you understand that what happened yesterday was not casual, that it was, potentially, the first step of a thousand steps, and that ending it now is essential. What happened between us on that bench, for those few brief moments, was dangerous.

Yesterday, driving home from The Ridge, I felt deliciously female and wanted, as though I were carrying around inside me a wonderful secret.

I did not sleep all night.

I do not want you to do anything to hurt your wife or your family.

 

Siân

 

Friday, 6:45
P.M.

 

Charles,

You will think me deranged, or descending into madness.

I wrote the letter to you this morning, then I took my daughter to the playground. It was very quiet and peaceful there—it's really too late in the season to go to the playground, but Lily was bundled up and warm. She went immediately to a small sandbox, and I was grateful for the opportunity to sit on a bench and think.

All I can think about is you.

You held my shoulder in the restaurant. And then you held my hand, and I turned my head away, and you asked if it upset me, and I said no, when what I really wanted to say was, “I can't breathe.
”

And then I thought, sitting on the bench, with my daughter playing in the sandbox: This is madness. I just wrote this man a letter telling him it couldn't happen, when all I want—
all
I want—is for him to make love to me.

I am walking around in a feverish state. I am not sleeping not eating.

I know it would be better for everyone if we didn't see each other ever again.

I want you to know that I take
at least
equal responsibility for what happens now.

I ask myself all the time, every minute, every hour: What
is
this?

 

Siân

 

 

 

 

H
IS HANDS
are so wet and frozen he can barely make the phone work. He's forgotten his glasses and cannot see the digits, taps the numbers in as if working braille. The phone is exposed, an outdoor box at the side of the Qwik Stop. He hopes no one he knows will pass by: What's Callahan doing at a pay phone in this filthy weather, with his own house not two miles away? Needles of frozen rain sting the back of his neck. He turns his collar up, wishes he had an umbrella. The sleet drips off his nose.

“Hello?”

It is a woman's voice; it is Siân's. But her voice sounds tentative, as if she had not wanted to answer the phone.

“Siân?”

There is a silence. A long silence.

“This is—”

“I know who it is,” she says slowly. He hears a small sound, a tiny sound from the back of her throat. “Oh, God . . .,” she says.

“Charles will—”

“I know. I know.” Her voice is strained. He thinks she may be crying, but he can't tell without seeing her. “I thought when I said I might not be able to do this I'd never hear from you again,” she says in a rush.

“You had to have known that I would call,” he says. “Did you get my letters yet?”

“No.”

“You'll get them today. I just got yours.”

There is a silence at her end, though he thinks he can hear her breathing.

“Siân?”

“Yes?”

“We have to meet again. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“I want to meet you today, now.”

“I can't—”

“No, not today. The weather is awful. Is it snowing there?”

“Freezing rain.”

“Same here. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don't want to wait. I won't wait. I have to do this.”

“I'll try.”

“Same place?”

“All right.”

“But earlier. Can you get there by ten?”

She seems to be thinking, calculating. “Yes,” she says hesitantly. “I think so.”

“Good.” He lets out his breath. “Siân?”

“Yes?”

“I know you'll think I'm crazy, but I want you to know, in case something happens to me and I don't get there, that I love you.”

The silence at her end is so long, he thinks she may have hung up. He wishes he could see her face.

“And there's something else,” he says.

“What?” Her voice is quiet.

“I don't know how I know this on the basis of only one meeting,” he says, “but I'm sure of this. . . .”

“What?”

“I know I always have.”

 

He is standing at the side of his car when she drives into the parking lot. Ten past ten. The day is frosty and translucent; the storm from yesterday blew the front through, leaving in its wake a sky so blue it looks almost neon. She emerges from the car, slings her pocketbook over her shoulder, shuts the door. He watches as she crosses the parking lot to the Cadillac. They stand facing each other for an instant, and then he embraces her, folds her into him. She comes willingly, as if she, too, has been anticipating this moment for days. He can feel her trembling, and she says so: “I'm shaking,” she says, as if embarrassed. “I'm just shaking.”

He holds her at arms' length, looks at her face, kisses her. Her mouth opens; he feels as if he is pouring himself into her.

He breaks away. “I've got a room,” he says.

She composes herself then. He thinks for a moment that she may protest, may not be ready for a room yet and what that implies, but she says nothing, seems to be waiting for him to lead the way. He takes her hand, walks with her across the parking lot, up the steps of the inn and into the lobby. Again she is wearing black—a black coat, black high heels—and he senses, rather than sees, the slight limp as she walks. Inside the lobby, he turns to her and says quietly, “This is the hard part, walking past the front desk. I've already checked us in.”

“I don't feel guilty,” she says. “It's all right.”

He cannot remember the last time he booked a room in a clandestine manner with a woman. Certainly not since he has been married. He has been faithful to Harriet throughout their marriage, as he imagines she has been to him. Yet it is not guilt he feels so much as awkwardness—as if he were a young man who has had little experience with women. He wonders, too, not for the first time, if it will work—if, in the throes of an emotion he can barely define, he will be able to make love to Siân Richards. He has tried, over the past several days, to envision making love to her, but he has not been able to bring these fantasies into clear focus. He can only remember them as children. He would like to say to her that the room is simply for convenience, for privacy, so that they can talk out of earshot of others, get to know each other again, but he knows that would sound disingenuous. She walks slightly ahead of him, to his right. He gives directions behind her. The room is on the top floor, on the west wing. The wing in which the boys once had their rooms. The view from the room is out to the back, to the lake. He has already been to the room, inspected it.

He puts the key into the lock, opens the door, and lets her pass through. In the center of the room is an austere four-poster, the bed covered with a white duvet. The other furniture in the room—a tall dresser that conceals a television, a washstand on which there is a white porcelain bowl and pitcher, two silk-upholstered chairs—is of matching cherry, either authentically eighteenth century or intended to resemble that era. Entering the room again, he marvels at the transformation. When he was a boy here, the rooms contained two sets of bunk beds, four crates intended as storage cabinets.

Siân stands with her hands in the pockets of her coat, walks to the window to see the view. He joins her at the window, puts a hand at her shoulder, looks out with her. The sun glints harshly off the water. He makes a gesture so as to remove her coat; she lets the coat and her pocketbook slide off. She is wearing a black dress with a gray jacket. Again she has worn her hair up, twisted into a knot held with a clip.

He bends down, puts his lips to the nape of her neck. She seems to shiver. She lets her head fall slightly forward.

“You remembered,” she says, her voice barely a whisper.

“Of course I remembered,” he says.

He turns her to him, walks with her the two or three steps to the bed. She sits at its edge, he beside her.

She opens her palms. “I'm not . . .”

She looks at him, a question on her face. She opens her mouth as if to finish her sentence, but he kisses her, brings her with him onto the bed. Her mouth is open, welcoming, but he feels, too, as if at any minute she might pull away. He puts his hand under the skirt of her dress, feels the skin of her hip, her belly. Her stockings stop at the top of her thigh. He raises her skirt so that he can see her body.

She has on a short black slip, the lace falling across her abdomen. She lets him remove her underwear. He finds her then, slips one finger inside, then another. He moves his fingers back and forth slowly, savoring her. He bends toward her, his fingers still lost inside her, and lets his mouth hover over hers. She opens her mouth slightly, as if to receive him; he can see her teeth, her tongue. He opens his mouth but does not kiss her yet. Their mouths are not an inch apart. She lifts herself slightly toward him, waiting for him. He can feel her breath on his lips. He removes his fingers from inside her, puts them to her mouth. He traces the outline of her bottom lip. She reaches for his hand, pulls his fingers toward her, into her mouth, lets him move them slowly back and forth there as he did inside her.

Quickly he unfastens his belt buckle, enters her. He raises himself up on his hands; he has to be able to see her face. She watches him, closes her legs around him. He can feel the cool smoothness of her legs on the backs of his. She watches him steadily, closes her eyes briefly, intently, only at the end. He is not far behind her, and he knows, when he comes, knows it for a certainty, that he will never want to make love to any other woman but Siân Richards again.

 

After a time, under him, she turns her face to the side. He raises himself up so that he can see her. She is smiling.

“What is it?” he asks, beginning to smile himself.

She shakes her head slowly. She turns back to him, gazes at him steadily, seeing him as he knows he has never been seen before—not by Harriet, not by any other woman. Her smile is full of knowledge, beyond the circumstances of just this day, just this bed.

“I've been waiting for you,” she says.

 

She is sitting on the edge of the bed in her black slip. She has removed her jacket, her dress. Her hair has fallen down to one side, barely held with the clip. He is nearly naked, under the covers, propped up against the pillows. He likes watching her move in her slip.

“Do you always wear black?” he asks her.

She shrugs, crosses her legs. “I suppose so. It's easier that way. Everything goes with everything.”

“I think I'm going to kill every man who's ever heard you have an orgasm,” he says.

“There haven't been many,” she says. “And in any event, if we keep this up, we'll soon surpass our marriages.”

They have made love three or four times. He is no longer sure how to define the act of making love, or how to count the experiences, each time somehow merging into another, exciting another. They haven't even had lunch yet.

“Well, it's not going to take
me
long,” he says.

She laughs. “That's a sweet thing to say.”

“It's true.”

“It's odd,” she says, “how the fourteen-year-olds really didn't know what was happening to them, and now the forty-six-year-olds don't really know what is happening to them either.”

“One of us is only forty-five.”

She raps him on his arm. He flinches in mock pain.

“
I
can't define this,” he says. “I can only relate it to how I felt about you at fourteen.”

He sits up, lifts her hair, kisses her again at the nape of the neck. “When I do this now,” he says, “I smell a sexual odor. It's something about my breath on your neck.” He pulls back, looks at her neck. “You have a stork bite,” he says.