When I had fifteen minutes to spare, I’d go find Lev, or he would find me. We were careful not to be spotted together anymore, but the logistics of that care sometimes meant dropping everything and running as fast as I could through the snow. I ruined more than one pair of shoes that way, and my fingers kept getting cold, losing feeling at the very tips, beneath the nails. Once, late morning, I came back to the greenhouse and found several flower bushes depleted of their blooms; for the next few days, girls all over campus wore corsages pinned to their shirts, smirking when they caught my eye. I’d thought I was safe because we were nearing midterm exams, but I miscalculated, or one of them just got bored and saw her chance. After that I always locked the door when I left, even to use the restroom. John got stuck outside a few times this way, since he always forgot to carry his keys.
“What’s with the extra security?” he asked me, when I returned to find him shivering there, hands stuck under his arms for warmth. It was February then.
“I’m just taking precautions,” I said. “Protecting our work.”
“Well, that’s fine, honey.” John breathed into his palms as I turned the key and let us inside, heat hitting our cheeks all muggy and strong, like the warm sigh of a horse. “Just try not to outsmart yourself, ok?”
And I did try. I did.
It took me months to admit to Lev what I knew about his wife. Namely, her maiden name, her patronymic, the way she wore her hair as a girl. I didn’t want to risk losing his attention by bringing anyone else inside our stolen moments together, when I could keep his focus secure. Mouth to thigh, wrist bound to bed. Then I was just afraid he wouldn’t believe me, as indeed Vera later didn’t—“You’re mistaken,” she said. “I was never a Pioneer.” And when I insisted she got stern and asked, “Do I really look like a cultist?”
But with Lev, there was no need for concern. It was spring by the time I got up the nerve, and we were both somewhat giddy with the turn in the weather. He laughed at my description of her twisted mouth and scout uniform, the way she dropped the yarn and fled. We were sprawled in my bedroom, limbs akimbo, with afternoon sun filtering in through the curtains. He reached across the mattress and pulled me on top of him. Murmured sweetly into my neck.
“Of course,” he said. “I always sensed a connection between you.”
You may be surprised to learn I took this as a compliment. Most women—or let me be clearer: most mistresses—want to distinguish themselves from their lover’s wives. Dye their hair the opposite hue, go vamp where she’s virtue or vice versa. Say the things she never says, agree to whatever she’s withholding. But I knew better than to play that game with Lev. For one thing, he adored me for just who I was, and said so. When he slipped into the greenhouse and walked up behind me, pressing himself onto the small of my back, he would say, “Hello, working girl.” He took me on dates out of town, driving a recently acquired Mercedes-Benz with enough aplomb to make up for his lack of expertise, and took special pleasure in buying me things I couldn’t otherwise afford. We had many fine wines under these auspices. Cassoulet and filet mignon. And there was something more—his genuine shiver of pleasure when he touched my skin. Which I felt too. The kind of awe you can’t fake, or fully articulate. Our only fit vocabulary being touch, taste, smell.
But he didn’t hate Vera. God no, he loved her. Couldn’t get enough, and was terrified of her. Quick wit, pale skin, infinity as expressed through human flesh. There was some electric current that went between them, replenishing itself only when it was passed back and forth. The sex was good. He spoke of his work and I could tell he was picturing her face, the tics that let him know what was affecting and what was weak. Tics he had internalized, so he had an inner Vera, driving him by the sticky shift. When I climbed on top of him and rolled my hips, he was there, and he was gone. He was with her, too. A parallelism I know pained him, more and more as time went on. But, at least in the beginning, I was more flattered than distressed to be the grand exception to their perfect union.
“What do you mean,” I asked, “by a connection?”
He turned away, moving me gently off of him and then lying on his back, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. Lev, who fate had brought to me. “How else could I possibly love you both?” he asked.
“The human heart—?” It was a weak suggestion, but still. Surely he knew he wasn’t the first man to find a second bed, a second comforting womanly form. Though I winced to think of myself that way. Always wondering: what about those girls? Leo Orlov chasing fawns across the grass.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not a matter of being fickle. Maybe when I was young.” He sighed, and I knew: he had been fickle then. A spritz of envious fireworks went up in my head and in that moment I stopped being able to contain my curiosity. Not ten minutes earlier, he’d bitten my inner thighs so hard there were marks.
“But what about your students?”
“My—?” He laughed. “Well, I suppose I love them in a certain way.”
“Which way.” I reached over and grabbed him. Caressing with just enough force to make him open his mouth but not enough to elicit a gasp. “Tell me. Be honest.”
“Oh—my dear. I always am.”
“Are you?”
“You draw the truth out of me like a venom. The girls. What are you asking me?”
I kept moving my hand, and I said, “You know.” His face flexed painfully, and I wanted to kiss him hard and shut him up. Keep him mine. But I wanted him to answer my question even more.
“Oh no. No. They—I never. Never touched them.”
“That’s not what they say.”
He licked his lips. “Children.”
“Yes.”
“They lie.”
I stopped. My eyes filled up with tears. The same eyes with which I’d seen him running after Daphne, stalking her amidst the laurels.
“It doesn’t look like a lie.”
Lev sat up and regarded me. His face touchingly flushed. He didn’t reach out for my shoulder, didn’t take my hand and nibble my fingers, as he often did for a distraction. In fact he looked as serious as I’d ever seen him, no less so for his obvious arousal, his body alert for action.
“You noticed. Of course. You were supposed to—or anyway, people were.” I turned away to wipe a tear, and now he did touch me, taking my chin in his hand and swiveling me back to face him. “I thought maybe in time you’d guess it.”
“Well, I haven’t.”
“Try.”
“You love me.” He nodded his encouragement. “But it started before we even met.” Another nod, raised brow. I crumpled. “I don’t know.”
“Think, darling. You know how Vera is—a part of my professional life.” Now it was my turn to nod. “You know, then, that she is in charge of every move. I don’t mean to say I didn’t let it happen,” he gestured to nothing, an irritated flick of the wrist. The memory of a party, or two or three, that he tried to escape to, only to find her already there. His manuscripts, all covered with her writing. A blessing first, and then more of a trap. “But now it seems unstoppable. When we came here—well, I didn’t want to be here at all. No, don’t protest, of course that’s all different now. But I mean, she has always been able to change things for me.” A haunted look. “Out from under me, even. And I started to wonder, once we settled in, what it would be like if she couldn’t anymore.”
He told me about his plan, which had been cooking underneath his hood for who knows how long. Less a plan than a feeling. If lowly, loving Lev gave in to his baser impulses, who could blame his wife for being upset? He might let it slip over drinks with a fellow prof, or over scotch with George Round: things not exactly rosy at the homestead. And yes, he’d say with a little mea culpa wink, perhaps he had been seeking succor, though a gentleman would never tell.