—Fuck, I said, are you trying to kill me?
—Do you still love him?
—No.
—You do. Well, you can’t. Maybe that’s why you’re telling me this.
It turned colder and the water blew the salt air against our bare skin. Alice was one of those people who didn’t feel cold. The littlest thing can make you feel another woman is better than you.
—This is important, she said. Please don’t stop.
—The next part is terrible.
—Go.
—I said, Here. And I handed him his gear and he looked down at it and I began to close the door.
—Like you were just, what, dusting the cabinets in panties and heels?
—Yes, I said, groaning. I’m ashamed.
—No. You are all of us. You are the parts of us that no one wants to admit to. Go on.
—He said hey because he had to say hey.
—Otherwise he’d be a monster!
—And I said, Did you want to come inside? Can you imagine? Like you said, it’s daytime, everyone’s sober. He looked confused. But he came inside.
—Probably, you think, he wanted to end it then? Just get his gear and take off?
—I never thought of it like that. My aunt once told me that if you have feelings for someone, feelings that are very strong, they can’t exist in one direction alone. That the other person feels them, too. But you’re probably right.
—You don’t believe I am.
—I don’t, so what?
—So nothing. Go on.
—I offered him a beer. I was the devil, I guess. We sat on my couch and—
—What?
—I can’t.
—Joan, she said, then paused. That’s interesting. I’ve never said your name. I’ve never said the name Joan out loud. Or I must have. Joan of Arc. Etcetera. It’s silky. Joan, please, you must go on. This is how we learn from one another.
—I asked him if he wanted a massage. I never liked a man that much before. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was flooded with emotion. I took off his shirt and he lay on his stomach on my couch.
—Couches are less barbaric than beds. There is something half-assed about cheating on a couch.
—And I gave him an excellent massage. I imagined exactly what would feel good and did it.
—I just was thinking, when you’re with someone you’re tired of, you give them a massage to get things over with. You expend the least amount of energy. But the first time with someone new, you massage a back like you’re before a committee, competing with every woman you’ve ever felt threatened by.
—Yes, I said, that’s exactly what I was doing. And his back was stippled with freckles and scars. It wasn’t a pretty back, but I loved it anyway. It was pale. Eventually he lifted himself up and sat down. He pulled me close and I straddled his waist and wrapped my bare legs around it, heels still on. I must have looked like a prostitute. We kissed for thirty minutes, maybe more. My legs wrapped around his waist and no other touching, just kissing. He took my shirt off. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he leaned up and began to jerk himself off and he came on my chest.
—Romantic.
—I’m saying it out loud, now, so you are my witness. What I thought was sweet, what I looked upon later as a gesture of, I don’t know, kindness, affection, love? was how he got up to get one of my paper towels and wiped his semen from between my breasts.
—Fucking hell.
—Then I spilled a beer in anxiety on my rug and I got so paranoid about the smell of beer lingering that I sprayed it with carpet cleaner right away.
—In front of him?
I nodded.
—What a marvelous complexity, though! So you didn’t come at all?
—No.
—He just jerked himself off and you cleaned up some beer.
—Jesus, I said. You’re making me see the rot on a moment I thought was golden.
—That’s the point! Now, is coming important to you, as important as it should be?
—No, I don’t think so, I said, realizing I’d never explored the question.
—That’s funny. It’s all I care about.
—Really?
—It’s all I think about the whole time. And when I have one, I’m like, Goodbye! So people need to get there with me. Or they will be having corpse sex.
She tilted her head to one side and stuck her tongue out and I laughed.
—I’m too busy thinking, I said.
—About?
—How I look. How he’s feeling.
—So you fake orgasms?
I nodded.
—To what end?
—I don’t know.
—You want to please him, to let him know he has pleased you?
—I suppose.
—I find that men have a better time when they think they are terrible in bed. It inspires them to read magazines and find a new nub to tweak. They come back and back until they feel they’ve figured it out.
I was upset that she was more sexually conversant than me. She was younger and better at fucking. She would have eaten Big Sky alive. I shuddered to imagine them together.
—Are you cold? she asked, rubbing the tops of my arms with her palms.
—Not a lot, I said, trying to hide how loved I felt.
—Please, she said, continue, I’m sorry.
—I’m starting to feel silly.
—No, we need to get to where this is going. So you didn’t come and he did and he watched you clean the rug and pretended it wasn’t weird.
—Yeah, and it was tax season and he asked whether I’d received all my forms yet. Then he just stopped and looked at me and said, Who are you? His eyes, I have to explain his eyes. He was like a wolf. Fuck and I loved him. And I didn’t know what he meant. I said, What? And he said, Like, who do you hang out with? And Jesus, I thought he meant—I thought he was trying to inhale me, the way I wanted to inhale him, you know? I thought he was trying to get to know me.
—Oh, you poor thing.
—And I began to name friends of mine, like first names. Like an idiot. Because I didn’t understand what he really meant. Which was: What circle are you in? Will my wife find out? Do you hang out with weird bouncers from New Jersey, because you just acted like a girl who does. Then he gave me tax advice and I thought how lucky his wife was—her name was fucking Parker—I thought how lucky she was to have this beautiful, smart, sexy man who does her taxes, who makes a lot of money. Who fishes and hunts. I felt so empty and shitty and stupid. I put on a pair of sweatpants. He left with his gear.
—But that wasn’t the end.
—No, but every time was the end.
I felt like I was going to cry. I didn’t want her to see. I looked ugly when I cried.
—Perhaps we need an interlude. I think you should tell me about Vic.
—You’re right, I said, because Vic is part of the actual end. But I’m tired of my fucking voice.
—I’m not, she said, taking my hand.
I didn’t think another woman had ever taken my hand in that way. We sat there on the cooling sand and I began to tell her about Vic. I told her about Scotland, our naked bodies on the bed. She didn’t look at me like I was disgusting, and for the first time, I didn’t feel that I was.
15