The First Time by Joy Fielding Page A

during those years, I’ve furnished your various homes and offices with art.”
    “You’ve brought culture and good taste to my boorish existence,” Roy Crawford conceded gallantly.
    “And in all that time, you’ve never hit on me.”
    “I guess that’s right.”
    “So, why now?”
    Roy Crawford looked confused. His eyebrows, black as opposed to gray, bunched together at the top of his nose, creating one long bushy line.
    “What’s different?” Mattie pressed.
    “You’re different.”
    “I’m different?”
    “There’s something different about you,” Roy repeated.
    “You think that just because I fell apart earlier, I might be easy prey?”
    “I was hoping.”
    Mattie found herself laughing out loud. It scared her, forced her to strangle the sound in her throat before she could hear it again. So now I’m afraid of my own laughter, Mattie thought, swallowing hard. “Maybe we’ve seen enough photographs for one day.”
    “Time for lunch?”
    Mattie twisted her wedding ring until the skin around it grew sore. It would be so easy, she thought, picturing Roy Crawford’s big head between her slim thighs. What was she worrying about? Her husband was cheating on her, wasn’t he? And her marriage was over, wasn’t it?
    Wasn’t it?
    “Would you mind terribly if we postponed our lunch till another day?” she heard herself ask, dropping her hands to her sides.
    In response, Roy Crawford immediately lifted his hands into the air, as if one act were predicated on the other. “Your call,” he said easily.
    “I’ll make it up to you,” Mattie told him minutes later, waving good-bye on the front steps.
    “I’m counting on it,” he called after her.
    That was really smart, Mattie thought, locating her car in the parking lot around the corner from the gallery, climbing inside. And professional. Very professional. Probably she’d never hear from Roy Crawford again, although even as the thought was crossing her mind, it was being replaced by something else, the sight of her naked body slouching provocatively on a chair, Roy Crawford’s shoe protruding slyly into the corner of her imagination. “God, you’re a sick person,” Mattie said, banishing the troubling image with a determined shake of her head.
    Mattie gave her ticket to the parking lot attendant, who waved her away without any refund on her deposit. She pulled out of the lot, turned right at the first corner, left at the one after that, paying no real attention to where she was headed, wondering what to do with therest of her day. A woman without a plan, she thought, trying to figure out what she’d say to Jake when he came home—if he came home. Maybe she should see a psychiatrist, she decided, someone who could help her deal with her frustrations, with all her pent-up hostility, before it was too late, although it was already too late, she realized. Her marriage was over. “My marriage is over,” she said simply.
    Nothing is ever as simple as it sounds
.
    Mattie saw the traffic light several blocks ahead, registered the color red, and transferred her foot from the gas pedal to the brake. But it was as if the brake had suddenly disappeared. Frantically, Mattie began pounding her heel against the floor of the car, but she felt nothing. Her foot was asleep, she was kicking at air, and the car was going much too fast. There was no way she was going to be able to slow down, let alone stop, and there were people in the crosswalk, a man and two little children, for God’s sake, and she was going to hit them, she was going to drive her car into two innocent little children, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was crazy or she was having some sort of seizure, but either way, a man and two little kids would be dead if she didn’t do something about it soon. She had to do something.
    In the next instant, Mattie twisted the wheel of the car sharply to the left, catapulting her into the lane of oncoming traffic and directly into the