Destined (31 page)

“Let me show you what I do with sex
addicts!” he said in a low growl. He slapped me on the rump and whispered in my
ear, “It’s time for your spanking now…”

The demonstration lasted for quite
some time.

We watched the sun rising from the
kitchen windows while we waited for the coffee to brew. I was wrapped in a
rumpled bed sheet, and Tony was wandering around the house stark naked. He came
up behind me, reaching to unwrap the sheet and put it around both of us, our
bodies pressed together underneath. We watched the sky change color as the sun
rose.

I felt a little sore and even bruised,
but totally balanced and serene. I actually thought I might know now what that
boy had been talking about, the difference between “loving” and being “in love.”
Because there was no doubt about it, I was in love with Tony. Absolutely head
over heels, madly, utterly.

We drank coffee and Tony went upstairs
to get dressed in his gym clothes, taking my car keys with him to jog through
the park and fetch my car from where it was parked in the alley behind the
store. My luggage from the trip was still in the trunk. While he was gone, I
wandered through the house in my sheet toga, imagining what it would look like
furnished.

When he came back very soon he had
bagels and cream cheese in a paper bag for our breakfast. We ate them sitting
side by side on the back patio while we watched the local bird population fight
over the water in the birdbath at the edge of the yard. Apparently it had
rained last night, as there were puddles here and there. I hadn’t noticed a
thing, and Tony laughed and admitted he hadn’t either.

He brought my suitcase upstairs and
left me there to shower and dress. When I came down the stairs, he was sitting
on the brown leather couch reading a newspaper.

“I’d better go to work now,” I
announced to the room. His eyes lit up to see me standing there, and the color
began to rise into his face again. I recognized that look by now.

“Oh no,” I said, taking a step
backwards and waving my hand, “I mean, I really have to go now!”

He laughed at me, and got up to kiss me
goodbye.

“But, you’ll be back?” he asked,
hopefully.

“Try and stop me.”

“I’ll never do that!”

“Wise man,” I said, and went out the
door.

That day I was such a total zombie at
work that Siri and Bella were concerned about me, and finally they asked if I was
ill.

“No, just a little, um, hung over, I
guess,” I admitted, rubbing my sore temples.

They looked at each other, then back
at me, expectantly.

“OK, so I got loaded last night and
slept with Tony! Though sleeping isn’t exactly what we were doing…” I caved in
and confessed.

“How was it?” Bella demanded.

“Let me tell you after I’ve had a nap,”
I replied, and we all giggled.

“That good, eh?” Bella wisecracked,
winking.

“He’s a very remarkable man,” I said,
holding my head in my hand. “Did I tell you he’s got a house over behind the
park?”

They exchanged glances again, and then
looked back at me. I told them about the Victorian, the walk through the park,
the cat in the window being Tree. They loved it.

“Wow,” said Siri, rolling her eyes. “What
a romantic story!”

She looked down at the simple gold
wedding band on her left hand.

“I still remember the first time I
made love with Tom,” she said. “I knew immediately that we would be together
forever.”

“Yeah?” said Bella, “Well I didn’t. I
thought I was just going to have a fun little summer fling, and be on my way to
college in the fall. Then look what happened!”

I broke into a huge yawn and both my
ears crackled.

“Wow,” I said, “I am wasted.”

Bella looked at me sympathetically.

“Why don’t you go grab a few winks and
I’ll stay for the rest of the day,” she suggested. “I still remember what it
was like, though things have calmed down with us a lot by now, especially since
the baby came!”

“Oh yes,” Siri said, her eyes big and
serious, “It makes a huge difference.”

I was having trouble focusing and felt
my consciousness begin to slide downhill. I thanked Bella and snuck out to my
car, kind of glad not to run into Henry today. I would have felt a trifle
embarrassed. I went back to my apartment and let myself in, missing Tree at
first and then remembering he was still over at Tony’s house. With my luggage,
it turned out, and my shampoo and my toothpaste, and everything else that I
used on a daily basis. Too exhausted to care, I kicked my shoes off across the
room and flung myself down on the bed, falling into a deep sleep immediately.

I awoke at dusk to the sound of my
telephone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hello! Have you been taking a sick
day?” asked Tony’s voice.

“No, I’ve been taking a
dead-to-the-world day. How about you?”

“I’ve been happy, happy, joy, joy.
Just like the cartoon beagle.”

“You mean, Snoopy?”

“Yes, I’ve been dancing for joy, like
Snoopy.”

I smiled fondly at the image. He was
just too cute for words.

“Aren’t you coming back home soon,
Emily? I’ve been waiting all day!”

“I am home, Tony.”

“No, you are not!”

“OK, all my stuff is over there
anyhow.”

“I have your dinner here for you, too,”
he said. I heard a soprano tone in the background. “And, your cat. This is a
hostage situation!”

“I’ll be right over,” I yawned, and
after I showered and changed, I was.

When I walked in the front door, he
was dressed comfortably in sweats and a white T-shirt, lying on the couch with
Tree curled up on his lap and reading the
National Geographic
from my coffee table, back at my
apartment. I could smell something wonderful cooking in the kitchen and there
was some quiet, classical music playing.

“My cat, my magazine, what’s next?” I
demanded.

“Pardon me?” he inquired politely,
looking up from his reading and flashing me a brilliant smile. There he was
again, so damned good-looking that it swept me right off my feet.

“Nothing. Keep the cat, who cares?” I
smiled, as he got up off the couch and came over to kiss me hello. And kiss me
again. And then, to pull me down onto the brown leather couch to kiss me yet
again, with that extreme thoroughness that I had recently come to know and
love, oh so well.

A few minutes later we rolled onto the
floor, and then a while after that, I was sitting on the edge of the granite
island in the kitchen wearing Tony’s white T-shirt and nothing else, chewing on
a chicken drumstick.

“So what did you do today?” I asked.

He was wearing boxer shorts, and
nothing else. And it looked very good on him, I must say. Tony is very fit,
without being muscle-bound, with a naturally long and lean body type. He
continued to attack the roast chicken, which had shown considerable resistance,
with a carving knife.

“Oh, I installed the new stereo system
and took a nap, then I went shopping and cooked dinner for you and your scruffy
little cat,” he answered, carefully slicing the breast meat. “I mean,” he said
with a frown, “Your very handsome, brave, ferocious cat!” He fed a piece of
chicken skin to Tree, who was sitting on the island beside me paying close
attention to the proceedings.

“And then what happened?”

“And then the most beautiful girl in
the world walked into my house,” he said, serving the sliced chicken onto two
plates.

This sounded good! “And then what?” I
persisted.

“And, then the most beautiful girl in
the world took off all of her clothes, and I ravished her,” he said, carefully
spooning freshly shelled peas and chopped carrots onto the plates.

“Really?” I said, crossing one long,
bare leg over the other. He glanced at me once, and then glanced again. “You’ve
had an awfully good day, haven’t you?” I asked, gazing at him from under my
lashes.

Tony abandoned the food and slid his
hands up under the white T-shirt along my thighs, my hips, my waist. Soon I was
lying naked on the cool granite, smooth and hard against my skin, spinning off
into space as he took me on another quick tour of the galaxy. This time, when I
came back to full rational awareness, we were sitting on the kitchen floor next
to each other in the dark, leaning back against the island and surrounded by an
arc of flickering votive candles. We were eating dinner, our plates in our
laps.

“More wine?” he asked, offering to
pour.

“No, thank you,” I replied absently,
putting my empty plate on the floor next to me and sighing.

“What’s the matter?” he said, concerned.

“I’m just tired, aren’t you?” I asked,
suddenly exhausted.

Without a word, he put our dishes in
the sink and took me by the hand, leading me up the stairs. He tucked me into
bed and disappeared for a few minutes to turn things off downstairs, where I
heard him moving around the house. When it was dark and quiet inside, he came
back to the bed and slipped in between the cool sheets with me. A thump and a “Mmrrr?”
told me someone else had joined us, too.

Tony pulled me back against his chest
and snuggled me. As I started to drift off to sleep, I realized it felt now
just exactly like it had in my dream, when I’d hovered over him and lay down
next to him on the bed.

Had my dream actually created this
moment, made it happen? According to the theories described by Henry in our
recent conversation, this could be true. Henry had said that Tony believed he
could control his future with his thoughts. Henry called it being a “visionary.”
Maybe I was a visionary, too. Maybe I shaped the future with my dreams, instead
of my waking thoughts. I smiled into the darkness of the big empty room where
we lay nested together in perfect alignment, curled blissfully in a loving
embrace.

I dreamed that Tony and I were in
Paris. There was a lot of traffic and little cars zipping around, and lots of
tourists in the streets. We wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower, but though we
could see it easily in the distance, we couldn’t figure out how to get there.
Every cab or bus we took brought us back to where we had originally started.

Then suddenly we arrived at the tower,
and I was looking up at it. The sky had filled with dark clouds and it seemed
like it was going to rain. A jagged fork of lightning came out of the clouds
and struck the tower, breaking it in some way. People screamed, and dangerous
things started to fall down from the sky. It was terrible!

I woke up shaking in the darkness,
with Tony still sleeping peacefully beside me. A summer storm had blown up
outside and it was raining hard. I got up and drank some water in the bathroom,
then I went back to bed and slept dreamlessly until morning.

Those first few days after Tony and I
got together were what we always referred to later as The Lost Weekend. We
dropped off the face of the world for a while. He wasn’t kidding about it being
a hostage situation, but Tree and I were willing prisoners.

We holed up at Tony’s house, going out
only to get provisions and clean clothes for me. And there was one short trip
to the Mall where Tony bought a big flat screen TV with a DVD player, and a
bunch of movies. His taste ran to classic films from the forties and fifties,
and contemporary action thrillers. We both loved the old mysteries, like the
Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone, and the Charlie Chan movies.

Tony installed the TV in the built-in
shelves in the master bedroom, and I made real popcorn like we do in Iowa,
which is an entirely different food from the tough yellow stuff they sell at
movie theaters. We turned on the ceiling fan and spent two whole days in bed watching
movies, having lots of great sex and talking.

When Tuesday morning finally rolled
around I was totally satiated and felt as relaxed as though I had been at some
fabulous resort for a month.

Sometimes it’s like that when you let
out all the stops. It might be overindulgent, it might even be dangerous, but
it’s also very satisfying to express your desires, passions and obsessions. It
completely diffused the tension between Tony and me and cemented our
relationship.

That weekend
was like an intensive crash course on each other, we talked about so many
different things, openly and trustingly, and touched each other’s most secret
places. I had wanted things out in the open between us, and now they were. My
entire world had changed in a critically important way, and the path I saw
ahead now was shimmering and beautiful, leading us into the future side by
side.