“Too strong? I can...”
“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, gasping. “Before you got married...?”
“Yes?”
“Did you go to bed with your wife? I don’t mean to be personal.”
“No, no, that’s a perfectly legitimate question. We’re both adults, after all, and if we’re going to be honest with each other, we should be entirely honest.”
“Precisely,” Millie said. “Did you go to bed with her?”
“Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Every now and then,” Frank said. “We were at school together, you see. The University of Pennsylvania. It was very convenient.”
“It was very convenient for Michael and me, too.”
“It’s even more convenient for the kids nowadays. My son, for example...”
“How old did you say he was?”
“Nineteen. He’s a sophomore at Yale.”
“Does he have a beard?”
“A mustache.”
“Michael has a mustache, too.”
“I was saying that the kids don’t give a second thought to it nowadays. It’s all very natural and casual with them.”
“Natural maybe,” Millie said, “but I don’t think casual.”
“Well, it should be a very natural thing, you know. Sex, I mean.”
“Yes, but not casual. I don’t think it should be casual, do you? Sex, I mean.”
“No. But I do think it should be natural. Would you like to take off your jacket or something?”
“It is warm in here, isn’t it?” She took off the suit jacket, and tossed it to the foot of the bed. “You were saying about your wife...”
“My wife?”
“About sleeping with her all the time.”
“Well, not all the time. But we were on the same campus for four years.”
“That’s a long time to be sleeping with somebody.”
“Especially if her father is a Methodist minister,” Frank said.
“My father runs a Buick agency in the Bronx,” Millie said. “Did you deliberately set out to marry a Wasp? I mean, because you’re ashamed of being Italian and all?”
“Hey, come on,” Frank said, laughing, “I’m not ashamed of being Italian. And besides, I don’t think of Mae as a Wasp.”
“What do you think of her as?”
“A woman,” he said, and shrugged. “My wife. Whom I happen to love very much.”
“I happen to love Michael very much, too,” she said, “though he is a pain sometimes. This is very good, this Scotch. No wonder Michael belts it down every night. Could I have just a teeny little bit more?”
He took the bottle of Scotch from the dresser and went to her, and poured more of it into her glass, and then sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“That must have been very nice,” she said, “going to an out-of-town college, I mean. I went to N.Y.U. I used to commute from the Bronx every day.”
“When did you graduate?”
“Ten years ago. In fact, Michael and I went to a reunion just before Christmas. It was ghastly. Everyone looked so old.”
“How old are you, Millie?”
“Thirty-two,” she said.
“Do you realize that when I started at the University of Pennsylvania you were still being pushed around in a baby carriage?”
“You’re how old? Forty-six?”
“Four.”
“That’s only twelve years older than I am,” she said, and shrugged.
“Exactly my point. When I was twenty-two...”
“Why’d you start college so late?”
“I was in the Army. My point is that when I was starting college... did you want some more of this?”
“Just a drop, please,” she said, and held out her glass again. He poured liberally into it, and she raised her eyebrows and said, “That’s like one of Michael’s drops.”
“Anyway, when I was starting college, you were only ten years old.”
“Yes, but that’s not in a baby carriage.”
“No, but it’s very young.”
Sipping at her drink, she said, “Is that why you want to make love to me?”
“What?” he said.
“Make love,” she said. “To me,” she said. “Because I’m twelve years younger than you are?”
“Well, who... well, who said anything about...?”
“Well, you do want to make love to me, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but...”
“Well, is that the reason?”
“Well, that’s part of it, yes.”
“What’s the other part? That I’m Jewish?”
“No. What’s that got to do with...?”
“If that’s part of it, I really don’t mind,” she said. “A lot of Gentiles find Jewish girls terribly attractive. And vice versa. Jewish girls, I mean. Finding Italian men attractive.”
She looked at him steadily over the rim of her glass. She rose then, and walked to the dresser, and put her glass down, and began unbuttoning her blouse.
2
The motel courtyard was washed with sunshine, the trees were in full leaf. It was April, and Millie was wearing a bright cotton dress that echoed the blues, greens, and yellows of the season. Frank was wearing a business suit, but the tie he wore seemed geared to spring as well — a riot of daisies rampant on a pale green field. He unlocked the door knowledgeably, and removed the key with familiar dexterity. Millie entered the room first. She went swiftly to the dresser and put down her bag. As Frank locked the door from the inside, she went quickly to the drapes and pulled them closed across the windows. Frank threw the slip bolt and was turning away from the door, when Millie rushed into his arms. She kissed him passionately, and then moved out of his arms and disappeared into the bathroom.
Frank went to one of the easy chairs. He turned on the lamp between the chairs, and then began taking off his shoes and socks. Millie came out of the bathroom, carrying a facial tissue. She went to the mirror and began wiping off her lipstick. Frank took off his jacket. Millie slipped out of her pumps. Frank carried his jacket to the clothes rack, and hung it neatly on a wire hanger. Millie padded over to him barefooted, turned her back to him, lifted her hair from the nape of her neck and waited for him to lower the zipper on her dress.
“What’s the use?” he said.
“Huh?” she said, and turned to look at him, puzzled.
“What’s the use, what’s the use?” he said despairingly, and went to one of the chairs, and sat in it, and began wringing his hands. “How am I supposed to put my heart in this when my mind’s a hundred miles away? She’s driving me crazy, Millie. If she doesn’t stop, I’ll just have to leave, that’s all.”
“Leave?” Millie asked, surprised.
“Leave, leave, right,” he said, and rose and began pacing in front of the dresser. “I’ve warned her. I’ve told her a hundred times. She can’t treat me this way, damn it. I’m not some adolescent kid fresh out of college.”
“You’ve told her?” Millie said, and her eyes opened wide.
“A hundred times. More often than that. Repeatedly. Over and over again. A thousand times. Then today...”
Alarmed, Millie said, “What happened today?”
“What’s today?”
“Tuesday. You know it’s Tuesday. We meet every Tuesday.”
“I mean the date. What’s the date?”
“April sixth.”
“Right. So that means she was five days late to begin with. So what’s she jumping all over me for?”
“Five days late?”