Hard Feelings (5 page)

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she said. “You bought it for me.”

I remembered. It was the Victoria’s Secret nightie I’d bought for her to wear on our honeymoon in Jamaica.

“I didn’t know you still had it.”

“I would never throw it away, even though it is a little small on me now.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “It fits you perfectly. But what made you bring it up here?”

“I don’t know. I found it in the drawer the other day and I thought it would be fun to wear again. But if you want me to take it off—”

“No, I think I can manage that part myself.”

I took off my T-shirt and my boxers and climbed into bed. I started kissing her, my hands sliding over her breasts and hips, down her waist.

“You want a back massage?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I lay on my stomach and Paula sat on my lower back. It felt good at first as she gently worked out the knots in my shoulders and neck, but then she started to work my shoulders harder and suddenly I was in Michael Rudnick’s basement and I could smell the odor of his cheap, mediciney cologne. I heard him yelling, “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!” and I could feel his scraggly, teenaged beard against my cheek.

I turned over so quickly Paula almost fell off the bed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed.

I was breathing heavily, like I was having an asthma attack.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just got a bad cramp in my leg.”

“You scared me.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just give me a second.”

Paula was quiet as I tried to catch my breath.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I think I’m all right now.”

“Does your leg still hurt?”

“No, it was just a cramp—probably from driving.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Where were we?”

We continued our foreplay. Then Paula tried to climb on top, but I pushed her aside again.

“Sorry,” I said. “I think I might be coming down with something. You think we could—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s late anyway.”

It was quiet in the room except for wind rattling the windowpanes. I was starting to doze, but Paula was still wide awake, running her fingers through my sweaty chest hair.

We had breakfast at the inn’s restaurant. The atmosphere wasn’t any more active or less depressing than it had been last night. There were a few couples at the other tables, but they were all in their seventies and eighties and I felt like I was in the cafeteria at a nursing home. I wanted to make a joke about it to Paula, but I knew she would get upset and accuse me of “trying to ruin the weekend.” So I kept my mouth shut and instead made a few phony comments about how “peaceful” and “relaxing” it was up here in the off-season, and Paula smiled, agreeing, although I think she probably felt the same way I did.

After breakfast, we took a walk in town. “Town” was several quaint streets with small, artsy stores. It was a sunny, windy, chilly day. Most of the shops were open, but the streets were mainly empty and bleak. Paula seemed to be enjoying herself though, browsing in crafts stores. I was bored and sat down on a bench and read
The New York Times.
Later, at about ten-thirty, we decided we would go back to the room to change for tennis.

There were two courts at the end of town on Main Street. It was warming up outside, but it was still cool in the shade. Both courts were taken so Paula and I waited behind the gate.

Finally, the two older men who were playing on the court nearest to us finished their match and Paula and I went on.

I was out of shape and it showed. My timing and footwork were off and I couldn’t get my backhand going. Paula was having difficulty covering the court too, but she was playing a lot better than I was.

“Excuse me!”

I looked over to my left and there was a guy, about my age, with wavy brown hair, standing alongside an attractive, dark-haired woman who looked like she was about twenty.

“Do you think we can hit with you for a while?” the man asked.

I thought this was pretty ballsy of him, especially since Paula and I had been on the court only for a few minutes. But then, remembering seeing a sign on the fence that the courts were for “Stockbridge town residents” only, I said, “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

The couple came onto the court and greeted us at the net. Their names were Doug and Kirsten. Paula and I introduced ourselves and we all shook hands. Kirsten had a very small head. She was pretty, but vacuous-looking. Doug was about my height, but he was in great shape with thin, toned legs and cut muscles. They both sounded like they were from New York—definitely not locals—and I already regretted inviting them to play with us. Doug was wearing an expensive tennis outfit—a short-sleeved sweater and matching shorts—and Kirsten was wearing a clean white tennis dress. They each had brought three rackets and Doug had a large gym bag stuffed with God knows what.

I looked at Paula, rolling my eyes, but she didn’t seem to understand what I thought was so funny.

The four of us started hitting and I knew right away that this wasn’t going to be fun. Doug and Kirsten had good strokes, but they were taking themselves much too seriously. The way he grunted and she squealed after each shot, it sounded like they were having loud sex.

After rallying for about ten minutes, Doug said, “So are you guys ready for a match?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why not?” Paula asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, if everybody else wants to play I guess I’m game.”

Doug came to the net and wanted to spin his racket to decide who served first, but I said, “It’s all right. You guys can serve.”

“Then you choose the side.”

“This side is fine,” I said.

“Okay, if you don’t want the wind. Whose balls should we use?”

“We can use mine.”

“When did you open them?”

“Today.”

He examined one of the balls suspiciously. “They’re Spalding and we prefer Wilson. Do you mind if we use our balls?”

“Be my guest,” I said.

Doug served the first game. After double faulting, he shouted “Fuck!” and when Kirsten missed a volley at the net during the next point he yelled, “Come on!” I thought of the old saying, how a person’s true personality comes out on the tennis court. If this was true, Doug was the world’s biggest jerk.

After we won the first three games, Doug became increasingly nasty. He kept cursing at himself and at Kirsten and when I called one of his balls out he gave me a long, John McEnroe–like stare. I was afraid he was going to start throwing his racket.

Meanwhile, Paula and I were getting winded, breathing hard after every point, and Doug and Kirsten won the next few games. Now that they were playing better, Doug stopped yelling, but he was just as fiercely competitive. After I hit a weak return of serve, he hit an overhead that just missed Paula’s head. He said he was sorry, but I knew he was aiming for her.

We wound up losing the set. I was willing to call it a match right there, but they wanted to play best two out of three and, for some reason, so did Paula.

At this point, I couldn’t care less who won, but now Paula was taking the match as seriously as our opponents, as if Doug’s cutthroat personality had rubbed off on her. When I missed a backhand on a ball hit to the center of the court, she said seriously, “From now on let those balls go.”

“But it was on my side of the court,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter—let me take them. My forehand is a lot better than your backhand.”

If we were alone, I wouldn’t have let a comment like that go, but I didn’t want to get into a big shouting match around strangers.

We wound up losing the second set and the match. Victorious, Doug’s personality changed. He greeted us, smiling, at the net.

“Great game, guys,” he said.

I was ready to shake hands and leave, but Paula wanted to stick around and have a conversation. It turned out that Doug and Kirsten were boyfriend and girlfriend, and that they lived in separate apartments in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, not far from Paula and me. It also turned out that they were staying at the Red Lion Inn this weekend. It annoyed me that we suddenly had so much in common.

“It’s a nice place,” Doug said in regard to the inn, “but looks like the geriatric crowd’s up here this weekend, huh?”

Paula laughed, although I knew if I made a crack like that she wouldn’t have thought it was funny.

Kirsten was smiling with her perfect white teeth.

Doug talked for a while about the Berkshires versus the Hamptons and how much better the Hamptons were. Then he said, “I have an idea—if you guys don’t have any plans tonight, how about you join us for dinner?”

Before I could make up an excuse, Paula said, “That sounds great.”

Doug suggested that we meet on the front porch of the inn at seven o’clock, then he and Kirsten continued to play tennis, grunting and squealing.

Walking away next to Paula, I decided not to say anything. I was so angry I knew that it would be impossible to have a normal conversation and that I was better off waiting until I cooled down. But Paula never let anything go and after about a minute or two of silence she said, “So why are you so mad at me?”

“Forget it,” I said.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “You didn’t want to have dinner with them tonight?”

“No, I’d love to have dinner with them. Tennis was so much fun, dinner should be a blast.”

“If you didn’t want to go you should have said something.”

“Maybe if you gave me the chance—”

“I can’t tell what you want to do. I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“Asking me might’ve helped.”

“What’s so bad about having dinner with them?”

“They’re annoying.”

“I don’t think they’re so annoying.”

“Well, I do. Besides, I thought the point was to spend a weekend alone.”

“It’s just dinner.”

“And what was with your attitude before?”

“My
attitude?
”

“You were getting so competitive.”

“We were playing a game.”

“Exactly—a game.”

“The object of a game is to win.”

“No, the object of a game is to have fun.”

“It’s possible to win
and
have fun.”

“You didn’t seem to be having much fun.”

“
Me?
”

“Miss My-Forehand-Is-a-Lot-Better-Than-Your-Backhand.”

“So I got competitive. It’s better than being lazy.”

When we got back to the room I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long shower. Knowing that Paula was sweaty and anxious to wash up, I took my sweet time.

I knew what Paula had
really
meant was that I was lazy with my career, that I wasn’t ambitious enough. She had hit me with similar put-downs over the years, ever since she had gotten her MBA. She used to encourage me to go back to school all the time, casually mentioning the husbands of friends of hers who had just completed law school or gotten their MBAs—hint, hint! Her passive-aggressiveness cooled while I was raking in the big bucks at my last job, but now that she was a vice president and I was fighting to keep my sales career alive she was starting to get her digs in again.

Finally, I came out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist. Paula was lying in bed, watching a movie on TV.

For a few minutes, while I was getting dressed, we didn’t speak. Then Paula said, “I’m sorry. You’re right—I shouldn’t’ve snapped at you.”

“It’s my fault,” I said, tired of being angry at her. “I was making a big deal about nothing.”

“If you really don’t feel like having dinner with them tonight of course we can cancel. You know I’d rather eat alone with you—I just didn’t want to be rude.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Maybe I just had a bad first impression of them. Maybe they’re not so bad.”

After Paula showered and got dressed, we took a drive up Route 7 to Lenox. The small New Englandy town catered to the Tanglewood Music Festival, which wouldn’t open for another couple of months, so it was even quieter and more deserted than Stockbridge.

I didn’t want to complain to Paula, but so far this weekend had been depressing and not very relaxing and I wished we had just stayed in the city.

Back in the room, I napped while Paula watched TV. I slept in an awkward position and woke up with neck pain and a headache. I took a couple of Tylenols, which helped the pain, but I was still groggy and in a generally lousy mood. Paula got surprisingly dressed up for dinner, wearing a black cut-velvet dress she had bought a few weeks ago for four hundred dollars at a boutique on Madison Avenue. I put on a pair of chinos and a black button-down shirt from Banana Republic.

At seven o’clock, we arrived in the lobby and saw Doug and Kirsten waiting near the main entrance. They were decked out. Kirsten looked like she had stepped out of
Vogue,
in a long brown dress with two- or three-inch heels, and Doug was Mr.
GQ
in a beige linen sport jacket and a white linen shirt and beige slacks. We exchanged hellos, then walked in the cool night to the restaurant. Doug was talking about tennis—how he had been playing since he was five years old and how he was once a ranked amateur player in New Jersey. I zoned out, still trying to get out of my bad mood. The sun was setting and the wind had died down.