Fascinating Authors

Chapter Thirty-Five

David wasn’t home. Phil laid the mail on the kitchen counter and went to bed. Were the sounds of the night always so clear? He tried to identify each one, wanted to hear the cry of a loon. Hundreds of times over the years they had lain in bed and listened to the haunting, shrill calls of the loons. Not tonight.

The most vivid images of Nora bombarded him. Her clear eyes and silky golden hair. Her soft skin and perfect teeth. Her movements beneath and over him. Her lingering scent, her taste, the sound of her voice. Attempts to think of baseball, of fishing, of business, didn’t work. Nora swept everything aside. He’d had the strength to leave, the right thing to do, but what about her feelings? Leaving her like that at the brink of intimacy had to be cruel and humiliating. But it would have been more wrong to stay, wouldn’t it? Of course it would, idiot! But….

Logic failed. So did praying. If only sleep would come. A hiatus of sleep followed by full daylight would change everything. Things were always different in daylight, always better.

The burning in his stomach wouldn’t stop. He went downstairs for an apple, but there were none so he poured a glass of milk and took one of the two chocolate chip cookies in the cookie jar. Ellen probably had baked four dozen yesterday, but the way David attacked them they never stayed around long. The only things the kid ate more of were apples. How many times over the years had Ellen threatened to buy an orchard? She had made the cookie jar, a fat brown squirrel on its haunches with a nut in its paws, in ceramics class. It was during the time they waited to hear from the adoption agency twenty years ago. “You can’t have kids without a cookie jar!” she said the night she brought it home.

The cookie and milk and memories didn’t help. He dragged himself upstairs and climbed into bed. A short time later, David came home, used the bathroom and went to bed.

Exhaustion and enervation would surely lead to sleep. Phil reached over and deactivated the alarm. He would sleep as late as he could in the morning, go to mass, busy himself around the house, maybe even take David fishing until it was time to pick up Ellen and Jessica at the airport. And then he would never look back.

He retreated from the edge of sleep at five. After a quick shower and shave, he looked into David’s room. David had talked him into putting the Caravelle Interceptor into the water much earlier than usual because of the warm weather. Except for coves and north-facing shorelines, the lake was free of ice.

The red and white Interceptor’s 350 Magnum V8 thundered in the early morning solitude. The boat knifed through the smooth water at low speed in the darkness. He knew exactly where to go because he had envisioned it fifty times during his night of fitful near-sleep. Twenty-five minutes later he knocked on Nora’s door. He did it again and again, eight or nine times in all.

“What do you want?” she said finally.

“I need to see you.”

“Go to hell!”

“Let me explain last night.”

“Just leave.”

“Not before we talk.”

He stood at the door for five minutes before going to the end of the driveway. From there he walked for a quarter-mile on the asphalt road before coming back and knocking hard on her door.

Silence.

He searched along her drive until he found a rock the size of a golf ball. Using his handkerchief as a pad so as not to damage the wood, he maintained a steady beat on her door. When he had done this for several minutes, something—it sounded like a pot or pan—banged on the other side of the door frame.

“I’ll call the police!”

“Open the door.”

“Stick it!”

“If you were half the woman you think you are, you’d open the door. What’s the matter, can’t handle a little rejection? I thought you were tough. Maybe you’re just another blonde!”

The latch clicked. The door swung open.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said.

“Who do you think?”

“Fuck you!” She turned away.

He lunged in and kicked the door shut behind him. She strode to the kitchen, where she stood at the sink with her back to him. He approached her, put his arms around her and held her when she tried to twist away. She kicked him on the shin with her heel. Pain shot up his leg.

“Let go of me, you bastard!”

“I need you!” He buried his face in her hair.

“Too bad!”

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“After you called, I went through hell trying to decide what to do, you son of a bitch. Because you’re married, because I had a date, because of many things. I was only going to drive past MR’s. But I parked and went in, hoping you’d left and hoping you hadn’t. By the time we got here, I was so ready for you I thought I’d scream. And you ran away with your dick standing at attention. Well you can run again!”

He released her. She wheeled around and slapped him hard. His face contorted. He blinked back the stinging in his eyes. She touched his face.

He embraced her. “I thought of you all night. Every minute, every second!” He held her hand and took a step toward the hall to her bedroom. She jerked free.

“Don’t you dare presume!” She pushed past him. “I’ll lead.”

When she entered the bedroom, she flipped a switch next to the light switch. A moment later, “Fanfare for the Common Man” filled the room. Next to her bed, she unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it from him, unbuckled his belt, tugged his pants down over his hips and let them drop to the floor. She pulled his briefs down to his ankles. While Phil removed his shoes, she untied the belt on her robe and let it fall to the floor. A moment later the satin sheets intensified his arousal. Her scent intoxicated him even more  than it had last night. The minty taste of her tongue told him she had used mouthwash only minutes earlier. Her veneer of control evaporated.

“Touch me there, there! Keep doing that!”

Her desire and energy were greater than before.

“Do me! Do me!”

Lost in her own ecstasy, she seemed to derive pleasure in a way that had nothing, necessarily, to do with him, but it didn’t matter. Soon, too soon, he crested like a flash flood in a sun-parched arroyo, and thirty years of fidelity vanished.

The sound of running water was muffled, as if coming from a long distance, but the thrilling notes of the “William Tell Overture” were far from muted. Nora nudged him.

“Come shower with me.”

Wondering about her choice of music, but excited by it, he rolled off the bed and followed her to the shower with images of the Swiss Alps and the Lone Ranger racing through his brain.

They lathered each other and moved in and out of the force of the spray. Nora rubbed her breasts across his chest, and slowly caressed him from his thighs to his temples.

“Lock your arms behind my neck,” he said. He lifted her to him and cradled her buttocks in his hands. She wrapped her legs around him in a scissors hold, grasped his arms and leaned back against the shower wall so that he could enter her. Impaled on him, she tightened her grip on his arms and moved on him and against him in a way he had never known. He did everything he could to hold off but didn’t last long, just long enough. When she came a moment later, she bit him hard between his neck and shoulder.

“Lie with me,” she said after they had toweled each other. They lay on her bed as the sun rose in the morning sky and flooded the room, along with the insistent sensuality of Ravel’s “Bolero.” Even in his fog of sexual satiation, Phil sensed he was more the seduced than the seducer.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m not.” How could he possibly articulate the jangle of half-thoughts and fears and recriminations assailing him, the silent scream that wouldn’t stop?

She kissed him on the throat and snuggled against him. After a while, they got up and stood at one of the large windows. Lake Minnetonka glistened blue and silver in the distance through the trees.

“Are you sure no one can see us?”

“Not to worry, it’s special glass.” She slipped into a billowy dress of yellow muslin. “Join me in the kitchen.”

Earlier, the groundwater of reality had begun to seep into the drywell of spent passion. Now it poured. If only Ellen were frigid or shrewish, a witch, a bitch—anything that would fractionally sanction what had happened. Could he contain this infidelity in its own small compartment, without repetition and without meaning? What effect could one day have on three decades? And what about David? Christ, what about David? If he ever found out… And Jessica? Dear God!

“Coffee’s on,” Nora called through the doorway. “Or you can have herbal tea. I’ll be right back.”

He dressed and had read part of the Sunday paper by the time Nora returned with fresh croissants. These were joined minutes later by piping hot strips of pastrami, cream cheese, honey, raspberry preserves, wedges of cantaloupe and cold whole milk.

“Any good news in the paper?”

“I don’t remember a thing I read. You have enough food for a battalion.”

“I try different combinations every Sunday. Have some.”

“How do you stay so slender?”

“Exercise. And, uh, you know.” She arched an eyebrow.

He kissed her and cupped her breast. She fondled him. He broke away and waited for his breathing to slow.

“You drank hot water that first day in my office. Any significance in that?”

“Absolutely none. I’m not much of a coffee or tea drinker, but hot water soothes my throat and relaxes me.”

After they had eaten, she showed him her studio by daylight. They stepped outside and began walking toward the bushes and a stand of trees that surrounded her lawn.

“Painting and computers. Which do you enjoy more?”

“Hope to make my living by painting one day. Not as an escape from computers, but to escape other peoples’ schedules and rules. I can paint anytime, anywhere, and the finished product will endure. Nothing lasts in the computer world. Hardware is obsolete as soon as you install it. Have you ever noticed the deterioration rate of computer paper? Worse than newsprint. There has to be something in life more lasting than that.”

“Your beauty will last.”

“Ha! That will disappear faster than today’s technology.” She took his hand. “Don’t get sentimental.”

He turned to face her. “I can’t imagine your beauty not existing.”

She tugged his hand. “Time to walk.” They walked in silence until Nora squeezed his hand and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “Let me explain something important. I grew up dirt-poor. My parents hated each other and shouldn’t have stayed together. Why they did, I’ll never know. I think marriage made them the way they were. I was lucky. One of my high school teachers worked her buns off to get me an academic scholarship, my ticket out. As much as I love my painting, I would trash it to survive financially. I’d do it without hesitation. I’ll never be poor again, will never get locked into a limiting situation.”

They followed a path through the woods and over a small rise. They looped back, crossed a road and reached a marsh. Nora knew the names of the trees and birds and even the ground animals that had left markings on the ground. Her delight in seeing and knowing them was evident.

“Nature. Another counterweight to commerce and convention,” she said.

Back inside, she served hot spiced cider.

“My own version. A cross between applejack and a Swedish spiced wine we had when I was a kid. Like it?”

“It’s delicious.”

“One product disclaimer: There’s a touch of demon rum in this grog. For character. And stimulation.”

“Unnecessary. I know you’re naked under that dress.”

They made love for the last time on a thick sheepskin spread before a low fire in the den. Afterwards, he sat up and looked at her. She moved her legs so that he could see her better, and cupped her breasts with her hands.

“I love your body. Your beauty will never fade. It would be too great a loss.”

Nora put a finger to his lips and shook her head. A clock on an end table glowed red. David might be up by now.

“What’s wrong? You tensed,” she said.

“I need to go.”

“Mmmmmm. Wish you didn’t.”

“I want to sleep and see you as soon as I open my eyes.”

“Me too.”

He kissed her eyes, her hair, her lips, her breasts. Only the thought of David kept him from staying.

He dressed and returned to the Interceptor. The water was smooth except in a few spots where the breeze ruffled it. While he crossed the lake at low throttle, an old refrain came to him again and again. It was from childhood when someone tried an April Fool’s joke a day late: April Fool is past, and you’re the biggest fool at last!