There is a frenzy to their joining.
It is as if they have been waiting all their lives, each and separately, for this moment to arrive, and now that it is here, they must cling to it desperately and drain it of every last passionate drop. They writhe on her pillows in shafts of light slanting through open blinds across the room, glide in silvery sunlight as if through something wet and viscous, yellow cat eyes watching from the wall behind them, helicopter rising against a yellow moon on the wall behind them, little French-girl eyes peering curiously from the wall behind them. And Hannah. Hannah the cat. Watching indifferently.
Only once does his wife cross his mind, briefly, her name, his wife’s name, Helen, and then her face, her blue eyes, Helen’s face and eyes, but he banishes her at once, excluding her from all he has already done to this woman in this room, all that he is doing now to this woman in this room, all that he will continue doing to this woman, in this room, in frenzy, forever — or at least until the afternoon shadows start to lengthen and all at once it is dark and time to go home.
“Stay the night,” she says.
“I can’t.”
They are standing just inside her door. He is fully dressed. She has put on a man’s white tailored shirt, which she wears unbuttoned and hanging loose, the sleeves rolled up. He wonders whose shirt it was, or perhaps whose shirt it still is. Does the shirt belong to Ron? Is it Ron’s shirt she wears after sex on a Sunday afternoon? Old “Especially Ron,” who together with sister Bess offered such support and encouragement?
“When will I see you again?” she asks.
“When do you want to see me?”
“Tomorrow morning. The minute the sun comes up.”
Standing barefoot inside the doorway, looking up at him, green eyes and blue fingernails, wearing only Ron’s or whoever’s white shirt open over her breasts, the nipples still erect and looking angry and raw, the tangled patch of red pubic hair showing at the joining of her long naked legs.
In the dream, I’m wearing a white blouse, but that’s all. You come all over the blouse. In the dream. Your semen stains my blouse.
He pulls her fiercely to him.
He does not leave her apartment until eleven that night.
By the time he gets home, it is too late to call Helen.
On the phone early Monday morning, he tells Helen that shortly after he’d spoken to her yesterday he’d gone over to the crafts fair on Amsterdam Avenue, where he’d eaten his way serendipitously from food stand to food stand.
“I didn’t see anything I wanted to buy,” he says, “not even for the kids. I went over to the office afterward, to study some notes I’d made, and then I went back to the apartment and took a nap before dinner.”
“Did you eat in?”
“No, I went to a place over on the West Side,” he says, and names the restaurant where he and Kate had brunch.
“The West Side again?” Helen asks, surprised. “How come?”
“There was a movie I wanted to see over there.”
“Oh? What movie?”
The Arts & Leisure section of yesterday’s Times is open before him on the desk in what they both laughingly call “the study,” a room that had been a butler’s pantry at one time, but which they converted into a windowless office when they bought the apartment. He has circled with a felt-tipped pen a foreign movie playing at the Angelika 57, and has underlined the time of the screening that would have got him home sometime between eleven and eleven-thirty, which was when he had got home, eleven-twenty to be exact, he’d looked at the kitchen clock when he walked in. He reels off the name of the movie casually now, tells her it wasn’t all that good, and is starting to ask how the kids are, when Helen says, “I was wondering why you didn’t call.”
“I thought you’d be asleep,” he says. “I didn’t get home till eleven-twenty.”
Which was the God’s honest truth.
“Actually, I was still awake,” she says.
“I didn’t want to risk...”
“I was worried. I hadn’t heard from you all day.”
“Honey, I spoke to you...”
“I meant after that.”
“I’m sorry, I was just on the go all...”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, really.”
“Did you call Stanley to thank him for the evening?” she asks, abruptly changing the subject.
“Do you think I should? He let me pay for dinner, you know. Even though he said we’d be going Dutch.”
“Yes, but the tickets came to more than that, didn’t they?”
“Honey, the tickets were free. A patient gave him the tickets.”
“Even so.”
“Well, I’ll see. I really don’t like to get into conversations with him, Helen. I really don’t like the man.”
“Well...” she says, and lets the rest of the sentence trail.
“How’re the kids?” he asks.
“Fine. Well, I’m not sure. Annie may be coming down with something.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has the sniffles. I kept her out of the water yesterday, and she got very cranky. Well, you know Annie.”
“Tell her I love her.”
“Tell her yourself,” Helen says, and shouts, “Annie! Jenny! It’s Dad!”
Annie is the first one to come on the line.
“Mom wouldn’t let me go in the water yesterday,” she says.
“That’s cause your nose is running.”
“No, it isn’t. Not now, it isn’t.”
“That’s because Mom wouldn’t let you go in the water.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you got all better.”
“Sure, Dad. When are you coming up here?”
“Friday.”
“Jenny has a boyfriend.”
“I do not!” Jenny screams in the background, and snatches the phone away from her. “Dad? I do not have a boyfriend. Don’t listen to her.”
“How are you, sweetie?”
“I’m fine, but I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m going to kill you, I swear to God!” she shouts.
“You can plead temporary insanity,” David says. “I’ll testify on your behalf.”
Jenny begins giggling.
Annie grabs the phone from her.
“Why is she laughing?”
“She’s temporarily insane,” David says.
“Permanently,” Annie says, and bursts out laughing at her own sophisticated joke.
“Let me talk to Mom.”
“Bye, Dad, I love you, see you Friday!” Annie shouts.
Jenny grabs the phone from her.
“Bye, Dad, I love you,” she echoes. “See you Friday!”
“Love you, too, honey. Put Mom back on.”
“What was all that about?” Helen asks.
“Temporary insanity,” he says. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Why, you want to take me out?”
“I wish.”
“I’m going to dinner at the McNeills’.”
“Who’s baby-sitting?”
“Hilda.”
“She’s not the one with the wooden leg, is she?”