At first the grass, immersed by the rain, was soft and muddy. He had to drive slowly, in the lowest gear. He churned up ruts and wakes of earth and water. He damaged tended grass. Soon the formal grasses gave way to raised picnic squares and cindered ball fields which were hard and gravelly. He switched the headlights off and bumped forward toward the shielding canopy of trees with the help only of his side lamps. And then — heroically — he switched the side lamps off. The gray Panache had disappeared from view. He knew that he was breaking Rules. That he’d be fined if caught. Imagine what the gossip columnists would say. He also knew that he was taking greater risks. The river had been known to swell and break its banks. In 1989, as he could testify, Navigation Island had been entirely submerged. No resident mammal had survived. But he was determined not to waste the opportunity. The sudden looming darkness and the frieze of foliage and the possibility of floods were thrilling. He’d found a spot where, even if the storm abated and there was moonlight, they’d be completely hidden from the road. Here was another chance to fix that oversight he had failed to fix just an hour earlier: they had not had sex in the car for months, not since their Sunday drive down to the lakes that spring when Mouetta — midcycle and ovulating, according to her charts and her thermometer — had tried to stop him from using any contraception and what had started out as love had ended up as argument. He would not take the risk of having one more mouth to feed (even on alternate weekends). He’d pulled the comic condom on and Mouetta had reluctantly allowed him to continue. To be so fertile was a curse.
To be so timid was a curse as well.
Here was a predicament, then, tricky and elaborate, but so familiar to men, especially that night with so many couples unexpectedly accommodated in their cars and keen to make the most of it. Lix’s wife, already irked by him, was sleeping, snoring slightly even. Making love to her right then would require a degree of subtlety and patience that, obviously, at pressing times like these, he did not have. Sod’s Law. Catch-22. The mocking Science of Perversity.
Like other men with complex and attractive wives, he’d fantasized, of course, so many times, so many tense and sleepless times, of waking in the middle of the night, Mouetta dead asleep, as innocent as a cat curled up on her side of the bed, and simply helping himself to her. Helping himself in both the sense of rescuing and the sense of stealing. Just reaching out and piling up his plate with her, as if she were as ready and quiescent as a slice of cake. Her body, almost naked underneath the rucked and pushed-up nightclothes, would wake before she did, as he imagined it. Or perhaps she’d wake only after he’d pushed into her, alarmed and shuddering and animated by the wet and warm conjunction of their limbs. She’d wake aroused. This would be arousal in both senses of the word for her. She had to wake aroused. That was the whole point of his dream.
Or then again, perhaps she’d persevere with sleep despite his unignorable embraces, and he would have to penetrate her dreams, so that the husband would become a sleeper’s chimera and only prove himself as flesh again within her slumber and her reveries. Fat chance of that. Because, of course, that was the stuff and nonsense of a dream, his dream, not hers. (Well, that’s a sham. Not dream. This never was a dream. In men, these fantasies are conscious and contrived. They are the product of a concentrated mind, not slumber.)
Now, in this muddy and secluded place, their privacy protected by the darkness and rain, there was a chance at last — he seemed to have waited all his life for this — to make the fiction real. Except he dared not touch. He dared not seize the opportunity — though he thought of touch, he contemplated it, while Mouetta slept. He dared not even put his finger on her leg, let alone invade her skirt or slip a hand beneath the wide lapels of her cocktail jacket to pick at gaps and buttons on her blouse. He knew, of course, he was a disappointment to his wife, that waking her would wake her irritation, too. He understood. It was his fault, his never-ending fault, that Freda’s student would not be saved by them, that if he always had his way, then nothing brave would ever happen in their world. If only this were on the stage, a semblance of a car parked, tilted, and spotlit on the boards where all the audience could see inside, then he’d have the nerve to act. He’d have the script. He’d be rehearsed. He wouldn’t hesitate. He’d know no fear — although he’d have the tremors, possibly. That was the bitter joy of acting. It was the business of not being yourself, but knowing you could only be your best when you were being someone else.
Lix got out of the car as quietly, meekly, as he could — he was ashamed — and hurried behind the nearest tree, beneath its canopy of rain-drummed leaves, to urinate onto the piles of peeling bark. It would, of course, be considerate, quick, and wise to masturbate. Then Mouetta could continue sleeping. He could join her, easily. He was immensely tired — and angry, too. Angry with his wife that she was not like him, not “passionate,” not idolizing flesh, not ruled and motivated by a husband’s cock like women in the cinema.
His cock, indeed, was full and stiff by now. His urine, steered by his erection, made a confident and steaming two-streamed arc. He pulled his foreskin back and shook himself. It was a tempting moment, difficult to navigate. To masturbate would only rob a minute from their lives. To masturbate would make good sense. To masturbate would not annoy or wake his wife or spoil their disappointing anniversary. But masturbation never is enough. Our populations would be decimated if it were. The joyless pleasure we can give ourselves is only dancing for the mirror. It’s air guitar. It’s sending flowers to yourself without the validation of a grateful kiss.
Lix required some courage in his life. He’d “let the student down.” Betrayed the boy. He’d confirmed his lack of fortitude, his recent, growing fear of taking risks, of giving any offense. “Dear cousin Freda” had defeated him again. He’d lied to Mouetta and he’d disappointed her. Masturbation would not help him make amends. Besides, the rain was soaking him again. He licked the water from his upper lip. He took deep breaths. He tried to draw some daring from the air.
No one who knew him could say that Lix was bold or unpredictable. He was, as you’d expect, rehearsed and hesitant in everything, including sex. Now, for once, he was an activist. What he was doing was a risk. He tucked his penis in his pants, zipped up his trousers, not without difficulty, fixed his belt, squelched through mud and water yet again, and got back in the car as noisily as he could. He turned the interior light on. He banged about. He almost hit the buttons of the radio, to fill the car with jazz and rock.
Mouetta was still sleeping, though she’d swung her body around, away from him, and was still making a pillow from the tightly stretched webbing of the seat belt. Her back was arched, her jacket high, her blouse pulled free of its moorings at her waist, two vertebrae and the top centimeter of her underpants adding to Lix’s resolve.
His plan was adolescent and barefaced. He would wrap his arms around his wife to wake her, an innocent embrace, then he would say — a worthless promise, as he well knew — that he had decided they should, at first light, return to the campus to collect her cousin’s student. That was their duty as progressive, decent citizens. The militia would surely have dispersed by then, and in any case, he was certain he could bluff his way through, flaunt his name maybe, offer a bribe. Signed photographs of Lix were almost currency. He’d kiss her face, perhaps. Remark how beautiful she was. Remind her that the third year of their marriage had begun. Apologize for being grumpy in the restaurant. Indeed, he’d use apologies to make her twist her body back to his.