“Was it the end of it?” Lisa says.
“No, no, there’s always more,” Amelia says. “Things don’t end as neatly as they do in TV shows. But anyway — that was it, that’s what started it all, that’s how I came to meet The Astronaut. I couldn’t go back to the apartment. I wanted to get away, I wanted to leave forever. I wasn’t thinking. I started to drive, I got on the freeway. I had to get as far away as possible because I knew right then and there that no matter how much I needed or wanted someone to be a part of my life, to be in my life, no matter what, maybe it was best that I just went it alone. The loner: moi. The drifter. The old maid. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get the hell away, far away.
“And so I did. I never thought I’d ever be able to do something like that, but there I was, in my car, driving away. I was taking the highway east, out of the city. I was going into the mountains, the desert, I was just driving and driving — and I need another beer,” she says, holding her bottle up.
I turn to wave for the waitress because I see that we all pretty much need new drinks, and that’s when I see Frederick Slater.
Chapter 12…
“I am getting a little drunk,” Amelia adds, “but not too drunk.”
Tasha sees Slater, too. I don’t need to look at her to know this, I feel it from her body, a wave. I know her well enough to pick up on these things; I know her body, something I possessed, or wanted to possess, as much as I wanted to possess Veronica. Slater is at the far end of the bar, talking to a man in a three-piece Perry Ellis suit. Slater’s suit is a bit rumpled, his tie loosened, his silver hair neatly slicked back. I believe he’s in his mid-fifties, I don’t remember. I don’t think Tasha ever told me. They’d been lovers once, but from what I know, he’s been lovers with many young women in the publishing industry. I’d met him before at publishing parties I had gone to with Tasha, but I didn’t know they’d had sex until much later, when she had sex with him while we were married. It happened right after our night with Veronica. She said she didn’t know how it happened, it just did, probably much like the encounter Amelia had with David. An act without prologue.
The waitress comes to our table just as Slater and the man he’s with leave the bar. He doesn’t notice that Tasha is here, or the other women, and doesn’t see me, either. I’m glad. When I turn back and look at my ex-wife, I see she’s relieved too, judging from the change in her expression, ever so slight, on her face, but — I know her. There is a quick exchange between us. It’s in our eyes, we both recognize it: the secret history of something else.
It’s probably not something Tasha has disclosed to her friends, despite their apparent candor with one another. In fact, my ex-wife has been rather quiet all this time; I don’t know if this is usual for her, or if it’s my presence. She has always been a reserved person. She was that way when we first met. She can have her wild moments of grandiloquence and anger; I have seen her lose control on several occasions. Tasha is a woman who takes pride in control, in a world that runs logically; and when that falls apart, so does she. This is one of the reasons why we are no longer together.
The waitress comes by. Only some of us order more drinks. Amelia does, and so do I, and so does Sheila. Holly, Cara, Lisa, and Tasha aren’t ready for more. Some people drink, and some people don’t.
I’m getting drunk, too. I want to, especially after seeing Slater.
“Married men mean no obligations,” Sheila says. “It’s pretty cut and dried — it’s all about fucking. There’s nothing more to it. There isn’t a future to think of.”
“Not all the time,” Lisa says.
“But most of the time,” Sheila says. “Although I’ve told myself: ‘No more married men, it’s just not right.’ That isn’t a moral statement; I don’t feel any particular obligation to the wife, you understand. It’s just not right for me. It’s okay to play around with them when you’re younger, but now that I’m getting older,” she shakes her head, “it’s just plain stupid. And I always wonder, if I get married — when, if — will I ever be that other woman, will I be someone’s wife in her forties, fifties, whose husband is off having a quick poke with a bouncy twenty-two-year-old?”
Twenty-two. That’s the age Tasha was when she met and slept with Slater for the first time. She told me about it two weeks after our night with Veronica. She came home and said we had to talk. The sound in her voice didn’t make me feel good. It was a bad night, and it had been a bad day. A man I’d served a summons on in the East Side had come after me with a bat and would’ve done some damage if I hadn’t been quick and dodged him. I was drinking beer and watching TV; Tasha came in, put her briefcase down, and said, “We have to talk.” I knew we were reaching the end of something, if we hadn’t already.
“I can’t lie to you,” Tasha told me. “I slept with another man three days ago. In a hotel room, after work — it just happened. It was quick. It was dumb. It’s only happened this once and I don’t think it’ll happen again, but I can’t say for sure because I don’t know what my life means anymore. I don’t know what’s happening in the world. I don’t know anything.”
I just looked at her.
“I didn’t do it in retaliation for anything,” she said. “That would be too easy. I didn’t stop you — didn’t stop us — from what happened. I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame Veronica. I don’t even blame myself. But I slept with this man and I guess you should know about it.”
“You guess,” I said, “that I should know.”
“You have a right.”
I asked, “You couldn’t keep this a secret?”
“Secrets kill you.”
That hurt. I said, “Who is he?”
“Frederick Slater; you’ve met him before.”
I couldn’t put a face to the name. She mentioned several parties and then I recalled. A rugged, energetic older man — and I didn’t have a clue. I never did.
“How?” I said.
“I’m not sure.” She didn’t look at me — the floor was apparently a better place. “We happened to have lunch,” she said, “and we talked about old times, and then we went to a hotel room. It was like I wasn’t even really there.”
“Old times?”
“We were lovers once,” she said. “At least, I was one of the young women he seduced.”
“You never told me this before,” I said.
“I never told you about a lot of things before,” she said. “Leonard.”
I nodded.
So she told me. She’d come to the city freshly graduated from the University of Colorado for the summer publishing program she’d been accepted to, which assured her an entry-level position into the profession she dreamed of. “I was so convinced,” Tasha narrated, “that one day I would discover and nurture great writers.”
She met Slater during the fourth week of the program, when there were a lot of guest speakers from the industry attending. She came in late, while Slater was speaking. She’d been up till two A.M. the night before, reading, and cursed herself for her tardiness, promising herself to re-adjust her sleeping schedule. She wanted a good start in this field; she felt she needed to motivate herself better.
Slater stopped his lecture when she barged into the class. Slater looked at the clock, then smiled warmly in her general direction. He had the touch. She smiled back, embarrassed. All eyes in the class were on her. Tasha took her seat and Slater continued with his lecture on the mechanics of publishing, from handling writers’ manuscripts to dealing with the marketing department. “You want to set your own standards and not fall into the footsteps of others,” Slater told the class. To be a great editor you need to make up all new rules that fit into your personal vision of what this damn industry is going to be in the future.” He frowned as if to give his own words some thought. Tasha thought he was a handsome man, for his age.