“No, it was just a woman who... found me attractive, I guess.”
“You are attractive.”
“Thank you, but I wasn’t fishing.”
“I love your looks.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you love my looks? And I am fishing.”
“I adore the way you look.”
“Do you like my being a redhead?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like my being red down here, too?”
“Yes.”
“I used to hate it. I was shocked to death the first time I saw a girl with red pubic hair.”
“When was that?”
“In the locker room at school. I was eleven, I had nothing down there at all. This was an upperclassman. Woman. Person. An eighteen-year-old girl. She had red hair, too, on her head, I mean, much redder than mine. Seeing her naked scared hell out of me. I thought, Jesus, is that what I’m going to look like when I grow up? Those great big tits and that flaming red hair down there, Jesus! I never did get the tits, as you can see, but I sure as hell got the rest. This is my summer trim. You should see it when it runs rampant. It’s like a forest fire. Tell me about your Boston shrink.”
“There’s not much to tell. We met at one of the seminars, and discovered we were both from New York...”
“Both married...”
“Yes, both married.”
“How did I know that?”
“Maybe because I told you she was lonely,” he says, and wonders why such an association would have come to mind. “Anyway...”
“Are you lonely?” she asks at once.
“I may have been back then.”
“How about now?”
“No.”
“Then why did you start up with me?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, we had dinner together, I forget who asked who to dinner...”
“Whom. And I asked you to dinner, don’t forget,” she says. “And lunch, too. Don’t ever forget that. I was the one who wanted you,” she says, and kisses him again.
Her kisses make him dizzy.
Her hand drops to his naked thigh, rests there, the fingers widespread.
She pulls her mouth from his.
Looks into his face again.
“Tell me,” she says.
“We ended up in her room,” he says, and shrugs. “She wanted to be in her own room, in case her husband called.”
“Did he call?”
“No.”
“Did your wife call? Helen? Did she call your room?”
“No.”
“Did you stay the whole night with her?”
“No.”
“Was it good?”
“Yes.”
“Better than me?”
“No one’s better than you.”
“Mmm, sweet,” she says, and her hand moves onto him. “Did you ever see her again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I felt too guilty.”
“Do you feel guilty now?”
“No.”
“Good,” she says, and gives him a friendly little squeeze.
“I almost told Helen about her,” he says. “When I got back home.”
“Don’t ever tell her about me,” she says, and squeezes him again, hard this time, in warning.
“I was glad in the long run. If I’d told her, it would have meant the end of our marriage. We had just the one child then, Jenny. Annie wasn’t even on the horizon. If I’d told her...”
“You have two children, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Two little girls.”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Six and nine.”
“Annie, you said?”
“And Jenny.”
“Jennyanydots,” she says at once. “Put the names together...”
“Yes, I guess they do, come to think of it.”
“Oh, no question. Jennyanydots. That’s one of the cats in the show.”
“I know.”
“So you’re how old? If you were thirty-nine...”
“I’ll be forty-six this month.”
“Oh? When?”
“The twenty-seventh.”
“We’ll have a party. Do you believe in fate?”
“No.”
“I think we were fated.”
“Then I believe in it.”
“I’m not Glenn Close, by the way.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I mean, I’m not going to boil Annie’s pet rabbit or anything.”
“She doesn’t have a pet rabbit.”
“Or Jenny’s. Or anybody’s, anydots. This isn’t Hollywood, there isn’t just one plot in the entire world, you know. Oh, it’s Fatal Attraction, I get it! But with a psychiatrist and a dancer, right? Wroooong! This isn’t that at all. If you think that’s what this is...”
“I don’t.”
“Good. Because you don’t have to worry about me, I know you’re married. In fact, I’m glad you didn’t tell her about that shrink in Boston. Because then she’d be suspicious, and I don’t want her ever finding out about us.”
“I’m glad, too. She’d have left in a minute. And for what? A meaningless one-night...”
“Am I a meaningless one-night stand?”
“This is our second night,” he says.
“I’d better not be meaningless,” she says, and kisses him fiercely, biting his lip, and then pulls her face back, and stares into his eyes again as unblinkingly as a cat, and bares her teeth an instant before biting him again. She is straddling him an instant after that, sliding onto him warm and wet and demanding, and an instant later he comes inside her.
I was intoxicated, delirious, crazed, depraved, call it whatever you like.
I don’t care what you call it.
His nine o’clock patient has just left the office.
David dials the number at the Menemsha cottage and listens to it ringing, four, five, six times, and is about to hang up, relieved, when Annie picks up the phone.
“Chapman residence,” she says in her piping little voice, “good morning.”
“Yes, may I please speak to Miss Anne Chapman?” he says, disguising his voice so that he sounds like a rather pompous British barrister.
“This is Miss Chapman,” Annie says solemnly.
“Miss Chapman, you have just inherited a million pounds from your aunt in Devonshire.”
“A million pounds of what?” Annie asks.
David bursts out laughing.
“Is that you, Dad?” she asks.
“That’s me,” he says, still laughing.
“A million pounds of what?” she insists.
“Feathers,” he says.
“I’m busy eating,” she says. “Did you want Mom? She’s still in bed.”
“Wake her up, it’s five to ten.”
“When are you coming up here?”
“I told you. Friday night.”
“We’ll have lobster,” Annie says, and abruptly puts down the phone.
When Helen picks up the extension upstairs, she sounds fuzzy with sleep.
“Hullo?” she says.
“What are you doing in bed?” he asks.
“I know what I wish I was doing in bed.”
“Late night?”
“Oh sure, a drunken brawl. I was in bed by ten, but I just couldn’t fall asleep. When are you coming up here?”
“Must be an echo in this place.”
“Everybody misses you.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“Me,” she says.
“I have to lay out my clothes in advance, or I’d never get dressed,” Susan M is saying. “You know that, I’ve told you that a hundred times already.”