“Lots of things are that real.”
“Okay,” Howard said. “But I’m not sure I ever knew that.”
“Read the fine print,” Frances said. It was another of her dad’s Polack maxims. Everything you either didn’t like or were surprised by meant you hadn’t read the fine print. Marriage, children, work, getting old. The fine print was where the truth was about things and it was never what you expected.
“I really like you,” Howard said. “I’m not sure I exactly said that.”
“I like you, too,” she said. “I wouldn’t fuck you if I didn’t like you.”
“No. Of course not.” His grin showed his large teeth behind his almost feminine lips. “Probably me, too.”
“Then why don’t you just fuck me now.” She intentionally widened her pretty blue eyes to indicate that was real, too.
“Okay, I will.” Howard Cameron said, moving toward her, touching her knee, her breast, her soft cheeks, her lips in quick, breathless assault. “I want to,” he said. “I’ve wanted to all day. I don’t know why we waited ’til now.”
“Now’s okay,” Frances said. “Now’s perfect.” Which, she felt, was only true.
One thing he liked about Frances Bilandic was the direct, guiltless, almost stern yet still passionate way she involved herself with screwing the daylights out of him. His sexual preference had always been for a lot of vociferous bouncing and spiritedly noisy plunging; Mary referred to their early lovemaking as the side show, which embarrassed him. But Frances gave fucking a new meaning. Her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that was frequently intimidating, she entered a different sexual dimension, with assertive declarations about exactly how she expected to take hold of him, and him of her, raucous tauntings in the form of instructions as to how vigorously he was expected to bring her to fulfillment; plus limitless physical stamina and perplexing orgasmic variety and originality. “That’s not it, that’s not it, no, no, no. Jesus, Jesus,” she’d shout in his ear just when he thought he had her on the cusp. This insistent, uncompromising voice alone could blow the top off of him. “Don’t you dare lose me, don’t you lose me, god damn it,” she’d command. “That’s right. You’re right. There it is. I see you now. There you are. There’s no one like you, Howard. Nobody. Howard. Nobody!”
She made him think that in fact it was true. That by some amazing luck, among all men there was no one like Howard Cameron. He was as sexually insatiable as she was; he did possess the need, the vigor, the ingenuity — plus the equipment to do things properly. He’d never thought much about his equipment, which just seemed normal, given his height. And yet, why other men couldn’t cut the mustard wasn’t really a mystery. Life wasn’t fair. Nobody ever said it would or should be.
Frances, however, was unqualifiedly his sexual ideal. That was irrefutable. He’d never known there was an ideal, or that this version was what he’d always really wanted (his sexual experience wasn’t that extensive). Only here was a flat-out, full-bore sexual appetite, and with an arrogance that said that if all this wasn’t absolutely fantastic she wouldn’t even bother with it. Except it was fantastic. And he was moved by Frances, and by sex with Frances in ways he’d never in his whole life thought he’d be lucky enough to experience.
Of course, it wasn’t the kind of experience that ever led to marriage, or to any lasting importance. He remembered what she’d said about the Old Norse word. She understood plenty. She and poor lame Ed probably had polite, infrequent sex, just like his parents, so that her own ravenous appetites were permanently back-burnered out of respect for whatever pitiful use he was. His own luck, Howard understood, was to play a bit part in their life’s little humdrum. Though it was way too good to miss, no matter where it led to or from.
One thing had surprised him. After their first epic session at Howard Johnson’s in September — this after three weeks of steamy meetings in shadowy bars and roadside cafes in little nowhere Connecticut towns between Willamantic and Pawcatuck — they had stepped out of the room into the laser sunlight of the HoJo’s parking lot, with Interstate 95 pounding by almost on top of them. He’d looked up into the pale, oxidized sky, rubbed his eyes, which had grown accustomed to the darkness of the room and, without much thought, said, “Boy, that was really something.” He’d meant it as a compliment.
“What do you mean, something?” Frances said in her husky blondie voice — a voice that electrified him in bed, a voice made for sex, but that suddenly seemed different out on the harsh, baking asphalt. She was wearing red-framed sunglasses, a short blue leather skirt that emphasized her thighs, and what was by then an extremely wrinkled white pinafore blouse. Her hair was pressed flat on the sides and she was sweating. She looked roughed up and dazed, which was how he felt. Fucked to death would’ve been a way to say it.
He smiled uncomfortably. “I just mean, well … you’re really good at this. You know?”
“I’m not good at this,” Frances snapped, “I’m good with you. Not that I’m in love with you. I’m not.”
“Sure. I mean, no. That’s right,” he said, not happy being scolded. “We don’t do these things alone, do we?” He smiled, but Frances didn’t.
“Some people might.” She frowned from behind her shades, seeming to reassess him all in one moment’s time. It was as if there was one kind of person whom you met and maybe liked and thought was okay-looking and funny and whom you fucked — one kind of Howard; but then there was another Howard, one you never liked and who immediately started comparing you to other women the moment you fucked him, and who pissed you off. She’d just met that Howard. It was her “tough cookie” side, and she was dead serious about it.
Although maybe, he thought, Frances just wanted it clear that if somebody was going to be the “tough cookie” it had to be her. Which was fine with him. If you had only one situation in your life with no unhappy surprises and that one worked out just halfway well — the one his parents had had for thirty years, for instance — then you were a lucky duck. His own marriage, all things taken into consideration, might be one of those rarities. He wasn’t hoping to make Frances Bilandic number two. He just wished she wouldn’t be so serious. They both knew what they were doing.
Frances had tiny, child’s hands, but strong, with deep creases in their palms like an old person’s hands. And when he’d held them, in bed in the HoJo’s, they’d made him feel tender toward her, as if her hands rendered her powerless to someone of his unusual size. He reached and took both her little hands in both of his big ones, as semis pounded the girders on I-95. She was so small — a tough, sexy little package, but also a little package of trouble if you didn’t exert strong force on her.
“I wish you wouldn’t be mad at me,” he said, bringing her in close to him. Her strong little bullet breasts greeted his maroon Pawcatuck Parks and Recreation Department T-shirt.
“I’ve never done this before, okay?” she said almost inaudibly, though she let herself be brought in. They didn’t have to be in love, he thought, but they could be tender to each other. Why bother otherwise? (He absolutely didn’t believe she’d never done this before. He, on the other hand, hadn’t.)
“Same here,” he said. Though that didn’t matter. He just wanted a chance to do it again sometime soon.
One of the tractor trailers honked from up above. They were standing out in the hot parking lot at two p.m. on a Tuesday in early September. It was sweet and touching but also completely stupid, since the Weiboldt Mystic office was only five blocks away. An agent could be picking up clients at the HoJo’s. If someone blabbed, it could be over in a flash. Boom … no job. Their colleagues would love nothing more than for two new agents of the year to be fired and to take over their listings. And for what? For a minor misunderstanding about Frances being good in bed — which she definitely was. It made him suddenly anxious to be touching her out in the open, so that he stopped and looked around the lot. Nothing. “Maybe we ought to go back inside,” he said, “we’ve got the room the rest of the night.” He didn’t really want to — he wanted to get to an appointment in White Rock. But he would go back if fate required it. In fact, a part of him — a small part — would’ve liked to have gotten in his car, piled Frances Bilandic in beside him, and headed up onto the Interstate, turning south and never coming back. Leave the whole sorry shitaree in the dust. He could do that. Worry about details later. People who did that were people he admired, though you never really heard what their lives were like later.