"Oh," Lara said, "no, I feel selfish. Let's do something we can both do. What you like best."
"I think my favorite thing would be to drink a beer."
"Decadent, eh?"
"Not at all," Michael said. "Wholesome. Agreeably provincial."
They drove her Saab to a sports bar in a mall surrounded by dairy farms, whose silos and storage tanks loomed over the fake tiles and tin towers of the mall. A few students from campus and a tableful of off-duty FedEx drivers were half watching a British soccer game on the bar's giant screen. Sunderland against Manchester United. The screen commentary competed with Billy Joel.
Lara was wearing an ankle-length fox coat. Hanging it for her, he could feel the warmth of her body against the coat's silk lining. He ran his fingers over the fur. The bar sold draft Harp lager by the pint.
"I'll sleep tonight," Lara said with feline satisfaction. "I'm sure of that."
"I hope I do."
"Have trouble sleeping?"
He nodded and shrugged.
"Get the health service to give you something."
"Not my guy."
"Nonsense. Insist."
"Come on, you know how they are. He believes in valerian root. He believes fatigue makes the best pillow. He thinks people don't need sleep. He likes saying no."
"You should sleep," she said. "I'll give you something."
Her lips were inches away, and when he kissed her he thought he heard a little yahoo chorus rise from the bar. They sank back against the banquette. Michael was weak-kneed and dizzy.
"Want to play tomorrow?" she asked. "I'll teach you squash."
"I don't like all this losing-to-a-girl stuff," Michael said. "It's against religion."
"I'm a good teacher. I'll have you beating me. We'll turn it into an opera."
"Squash?" Michael asked.
"Squash is fate's game. The ball game. You have to be ready to die. You have to know how to sing."
"Maybe I can beat you," Michael said. "I get your clothes if I do. Isn't that right? I'll settle for that."
"Nicey, nicey," she said. "I'll have you singing in chains. I'll have your soft heart on a dish."
He kissed her again.
That night when Paul had gone to bed, Kristin asked him, "Did you ever think of joining AA?"
"Not for the merest instant," Michael said. "I think I might join Al-Anon."
"Really? Getting bored nights? It's supposed to be a hot pickup spot."
As usual, she left the sarcasm lying where it fell, immune. "I've been thinking about how out of contact you are sometimes. As though you're not there."
They were on the second floor, tidying a spare room full of shelves they'd placed to accommodate an overflow of books.
"But I am there, Kris." Dumb denial was the best he could do.
She picked up an unjacketed book and looked at the spine. "I may be a dumb squarehead, fella, but I know when you're with me and when you're not."
They went to bed. Michael turned out his bedside lamp and turned over, facing away from Kristin. She lay beside him stiff as starched laundry, reading or pretending to read. He fell asleep before she did.
3
HE MADE a racquetball date with Lara for the next day and served ace after ace. Time and again their bodies touched, so that their match was compounded for him of brief sensory impressions, each one leading him to anticipate the next: her breast against his arm, her wrist linked for a moment with his when she retrieved his racquet.
"Call it yours," she said.
"No, yours."
In the shower he was inflamed, frightened and guilty. That morning he and Kristin had enjoyed a laugh together over the paper. Some droll, forgettable bit of buffoonery in an editorial. Their shared jokes had become infrequent; it had been heartening, a good omen. But no scalding water could wash away the shimmer of Lara's touch.
"C'mon out," she said when they were showered and dressed. "Let's go."
The assumption was that it was her house they were going out to. He climbed into her Saab. On the way, he ran his palm over the leather armrest. His eyes were on the warm turns of her thigh against the seat beside him. For God's sake, he thought, for once in your life, know the difference between what it is you want and what you don't. It had not been long ago since he had been reflecting on his capacity for happiness. Of course that had all been desperation.
"What other sports do you like?" she asked him.
"I like to swim. Every summer I dive wrecks up on Lake Superior. We've been through the Virginia Giles stem to stern."
"Really. I dive as well. Have you ever been in tropical water?"
"Once. On a charter to Bonaire."
"Like it?"
He shrugged. "There are no words for it. It's sublime. But the sunken vessels are what I really like. I went through the length of a German submarine off Block Island. I'll never forget it."
"I prefer coral reefs," she said. "Too many ghosts in wrecks."
It was a clear, nearly windless day. She parked beside the barn. He followed her and watched while she unbarred the doors. It was a six-stall horse barn and two of the stalls were occupied, one by a handsome chestnut, the other by a gray. Both of the horses had plain faded blankets. They turned at her touch, the gray snapping at her fingers until she withdrew her hand. The horse's breath vaporized in the freezing barn.
"Do you tend them yourself?"
"Mainly, but there's no shortage of farm girls at school if I need help."
She took a brush from a peg and began to brush down the chestnut's coat. This time she had troubled only to throw a ski jacket over the spandex workout gear she had played in.
"I exercise them in the morning. Are you an early riser? Come on out and watch."
"In the morning I'm feeding my own small animals sugar crunchies."
"Of course," she said. She walked into the next stall and brushed down the second horse. Then she hung up the brush and led him out of the barn and over to the main house.
"Want a fire? The makings are there."
While he was crumpling pages of L'Express and gathering shavings, she said, "I'll make one in the bedroom too."
He lit the kindling. On the living room wall, over a sideboard, the senator's picture was in place. In the next room, Lara sang to herself in French, a simple, familiar tune he had heard before. Perhaps a children's song.
He brushed the wood shavings off his hands and went into the bedroom, where she stood beside the stove and put his hands under her ski jacket and pulled him against her. She closed her eyes, smiling slightly. The feel of her body took his strength away gram by gram. The tan and white column of her throat, her strong firm breasts, the curve and cleft at the warm silky seat of that spandex under his palms' caress — blindness, vertigo. Mounds of earth, vault of sky, purity, corruption, incorruption. Heaven, the grave. Flesh as violation, bliss, freedom, offal, oblivion. Bury himself in her and fly, turn her into his own will. Her hair was damp and fragrant. It was all certainly what he wanted. Had wanted for so long.
Everywhere he touched her inflamed him; he shivered in the heat. She disengaged his hands and held them at his sides; he was looking into her strange aloof smile. Then she bent his wrists behind him, like a prisoner, and stood on his feet so that she was an inch or so taller. She kissed him on the mouth. Releasing his hands, she ran hers over him, pushing her thumbs in his armpits, fondling his erection.
"My dear," he said. It was an absurd thing to say, and quite properly she laughed at him.
In bed, she laughed at him again when he asked her if she had come.
"Several times, cheri. Yes, yes really," she insisted as though he doubted her. "Only tell me this," and she giggled softly. "This wife of yours, the Chaucerian, didn't she tell you where her clit is? Because" — she led his hand to the top of her vagina and brought his fingers to the button—"because it's here. Voilà, eh?"