left.”
Nancy reached for her robe and put it on; she picked up the hair, held it for a moment, and then, with her usual practicality, still attractive, always attractive, dropped it into the wastebasket. She glanced around the room and said, “Well, let’s clean up before he gets back, okay? And can you take me to the airport tomorrow?”
Lily nodded. They began to pick things up and put them gingerly away. When they had finished the bedroom, they turned out the light in there and began on the living room. It was difficult, Lily thought, to call it quits and go to bed. Kevin did not return. After a long silence Nancy said, “I don’t suppose any of us are going to be friends afterthis.” Lily shrugged, but really she didn’t suppose so either. Nancy reached up and felt the ends of her hair, and said, “Ten years ago he wouldn’t have done this to me.”
Had it really been ten years that they’d all known one another? Lily looked around her apartment, virginal again, and she was frightened by it. She felt a sudden longing for Kevin so strong that it approached desire, not for Kevin as he was but for Kevin as he seemed—self-confident, muscular, smart. Her throat closed over, as if she were about to cry. Across the room Nancy picked up one of her hairbrushes with a sigh—and she was, after all, uninjured. Lily said, “Ten years ago he might have killed you.”
Jeffrey,
Believe Me
M y fondness for you I set aside. That you have always attracted me I set aside. That I had gone seven weeks (since Harley, you will remember) without, even that I set aside. I swear to you, Jeffrey, my motives were altruistic to the last degree. Humanity was what I was thinking of. Humanity and, specifically, the gene pool.
I might, as you would perhaps suggest, have consulted you. Needless to say, I thought of it. But where? Over café mocha after dinner, inserted somehow into both our speculative glances at the waiter, do I lean across the table dripping necklaces into the dessert and say, “Let’s make a baby, Jeffrey”? Do I risk having to retreat into my chair and endure rejection while tonguing
mousse au chocolat
off my gold chains? My mother once dipped her left breast into a wedding cake, and my father licked the half-moon of
crème au beurre
from her peach satin, but that is precisely the point, Jeffrey. We aren’t on such familiar terms. I will clue you in, J., with no condescension but only respect for your separate but equal experience: one whispers “So-and-so, let’s make a baby!” onlyin the most passionate or most boring of circumstances. One always means it, but never does it.
And, truthfully, by the time I was ready to consult you, I had made up my mind. You are a thoughtful man, even cautious. “But let’s talk about it,” you would have said. “Let’s wait a bit.” Perhaps then, “I think we’d better not.” Mine is the necessary affectionate nature, and I have plenty of money. The internal logic, the organic growth of my plan could possibly have been distorted. I wanted it to be perfect. Persons are not created lightly. Who can tell the lifelong effect of a cacophonous conception?
I eventually decided against alcohol and in favor of marijuana. The point was not to incapacitate you, but confuse you. I admit I was foraging about among a pastiche of high school and college experiences reconsidered. You were right to sense something odd in my insistence that dinner could not be put off an evening, though I know you work on Tuesdays. But when one has to deal with thirty hours, calculated rhythmically and astrologically, one is not interfered with by the trivialities of custom. You arrived punctually, considerate as always, three-piece-suited as always, bringing, as always, a bottle of St.-Emilion, though I hadn’t told you about the roast chicken. You were right to mistrust my mood. The tentatively seductive me you had not before seen, silk skirt and no underpants (mindful that we had once agreed
Nancy reached for her robe and put it on; she picked up the hair, held it for a moment, and then, with her usual practicality, still attractive, always attractive, dropped it into the wastebasket. She glanced around the room and said, “Well, let’s clean up before he gets back, okay? And can you take me to the airport tomorrow?”
Lily nodded. They began to pick things up and put them gingerly away. When they had finished the bedroom, they turned out the light in there and began on the living room. It was difficult, Lily thought, to call it quits and go to bed. Kevin did not return. After a long silence Nancy said, “I don’t suppose any of us are going to be friends afterthis.” Lily shrugged, but really she didn’t suppose so either. Nancy reached up and felt the ends of her hair, and said, “Ten years ago he wouldn’t have done this to me.”
Had it really been ten years that they’d all known one another? Lily looked around her apartment, virginal again, and she was frightened by it. She felt a sudden longing for Kevin so strong that it approached desire, not for Kevin as he was but for Kevin as he seemed—self-confident, muscular, smart. Her throat closed over, as if she were about to cry. Across the room Nancy picked up one of her hairbrushes with a sigh—and she was, after all, uninjured. Lily said, “Ten years ago he might have killed you.”
Jeffrey,
Believe Me
M y fondness for you I set aside. That you have always attracted me I set aside. That I had gone seven weeks (since Harley, you will remember) without, even that I set aside. I swear to you, Jeffrey, my motives were altruistic to the last degree. Humanity was what I was thinking of. Humanity and, specifically, the gene pool.
I might, as you would perhaps suggest, have consulted you. Needless to say, I thought of it. But where? Over café mocha after dinner, inserted somehow into both our speculative glances at the waiter, do I lean across the table dripping necklaces into the dessert and say, “Let’s make a baby, Jeffrey”? Do I risk having to retreat into my chair and endure rejection while tonguing
mousse au chocolat
off my gold chains? My mother once dipped her left breast into a wedding cake, and my father licked the half-moon of
crème au beurre
from her peach satin, but that is precisely the point, Jeffrey. We aren’t on such familiar terms. I will clue you in, J., with no condescension but only respect for your separate but equal experience: one whispers “So-and-so, let’s make a baby!” onlyin the most passionate or most boring of circumstances. One always means it, but never does it.
And, truthfully, by the time I was ready to consult you, I had made up my mind. You are a thoughtful man, even cautious. “But let’s talk about it,” you would have said. “Let’s wait a bit.” Perhaps then, “I think we’d better not.” Mine is the necessary affectionate nature, and I have plenty of money. The internal logic, the organic growth of my plan could possibly have been distorted. I wanted it to be perfect. Persons are not created lightly. Who can tell the lifelong effect of a cacophonous conception?
I eventually decided against alcohol and in favor of marijuana. The point was not to incapacitate you, but confuse you. I admit I was foraging about among a pastiche of high school and college experiences reconsidered. You were right to sense something odd in my insistence that dinner could not be put off an evening, though I know you work on Tuesdays. But when one has to deal with thirty hours, calculated rhythmically and astrologically, one is not interfered with by the trivialities of custom. You arrived punctually, considerate as always, three-piece-suited as always, bringing, as always, a bottle of St.-Emilion, though I hadn’t told you about the roast chicken. You were right to mistrust my mood. The tentatively seductive me you had not before seen, silk skirt and no underpants (mindful that we had once agreed
Similar Books
