Live a Little (33 page)

The conjugal bed it will have to be.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” I say as an opener.

Phil peers at me over the top of the sports section he plucked at random from the gigantic pile of newspapers he’s been collecting since 1981. As with his allegiance to all things turd-colored, something in me rebels at the idea that a person could just start reading about a football game that took place nine years ago, and still be regarded as normal.

“I wish I knew this little fuck. I’d rip his nuts off and feed ’em to Stella,” he says.

I glance at Phil appreciatively. This is the side of my erstwhile husband’s coarseness that I like. The side that is primitive, tribal, brutish,
manly.
The side that used to make me feel like we were together for a reason. A primal reason that did not involve IRA plans and retirement villas in Florida but, rather, some savage imperative to mate.

Phil stares back at me. As usual, his eyes drop to my legs, which, I believe, are still long and lean enough to command a man’s attention, in spite of the fact that they originate in a quasi-girdle. In another telepathic moment, I glean what is simmering on low heat behind my husband’s saturnine gaze.

Lust.

Okay, not lust, maybe, but
something
animal and avid. Something that signals a desire that goes beyond Phil’s standard cravings for TV and beer.

Without thinking, I drop the sweatpants I am about to pull on over my stomach-compressing white undies. I have no bra on, just a camisole with a shelf bra that proffers my supposedly rebuilt rack like a row of recycled carburetors. Since I hadn’t anticipated disrobing, my fake scars—discovered at a gag gift shop in the Haight amid sacks of itching powder and piles of fake poop—are tucked into my lingerie drawer, along with the twenty-three-year-old photo of me and Ren at a Stray Cats concert and the frilly thong I purchased for Defilement

by Duke Dunne Day 2005.

Phil lunges.

We bang together like two atoms in a fission chamber. Phil’s hand snakes its way into my granny pants, sliding between the folds of my crotch without hesitation. After a few instrumental plucks at the nub of his former friend, the hand migrates to my back, skirting my chest as if it’s ringed by an electric fence.

Call me ungrateful, but this annoys me.

In full battle-ax mode, I wrap my legs around Phil’s waist, grab a hank of his hair, and yank his head back. Phil yelps as I capture a nip of man-wattle in my teeth.

“Fuck.” His voice is near growling. The green eyes have gone yellow and feral. With great abandon, my husband rips through the buttons on the fly of his Levi’s with one hand, probably wishing he’d gone zipper back in 1987, when he could still change his mind about things.

Phil flings me onto the bed and lands on me with a chuff of breath. The underwear is around my knees. Phil’s shirt is off. He’s lost weight since the eviction, his abdomen firmish instead of packed in layers of excess meat. This pleases me. I may no longer want Phil for myself, but I certainly don’t want anybody stuffing him with refined carbs. At least not until his pension matures.

I stroke him in all his familiar places. Phil’s face is darkening to that impending-cardiac-event shade of tomato unique to white descendants of northern climes. I suppose he’ll have me stop soon because of the whole heart-attack thing. Now, there’s a book I could write:
The Joy of Spooning.

“Was she good?”

In the midst of this glorious marital clit-and-cock jubilee, some idiot blurts out this. . .
monstrosity.

Oh no, it’s me.

“Who?”

“Tate.”

Phil groans and rotates away from me, quickly doing those minor adjustments men do when caught in a state of untimely arousal. His shorts tent out in front. Why is it that the same hard-on that makes young men appear virile makes its middle-aged bearers look ridiculous?

“That’s real nice, Quel.”

“I’m sorry.” Strangely, I am.

Phil levels me with a glare, as if I suggested we ask a Cub Scout to join us.

“I didn’t mean it. Honestly, Philly. It just came out. I don’t really want to know. I mean, of course she was. Otherwise why would you have bothered?”

Phil adjusts himself down to pup-tent dimensions. “She wasn’t.
It
wasn’t, okay? I can barely remember, anyway. It was ten fucking years ago, for chrissake.”

“Gimme a break! I saw you in North Beach!”

“I told you. That wasn’t me.”

Since I first confronted him, Phil has maintained his innocence on this point. For the first time in a long while, I stare directly into my husband’s eyes. His are puffy and mean and intelligent and weary. Not for the first time, gazing at them makes me think of a wolf forced out of his habitat, a formerly sleek animal made to survive on fast-food remnants and beer dregs abandoned in alleys bordering tract homes. It strikes me that he might be telling the truth. For some reason, this idea sends a rush of shame to my head and a bolus of blood to my crotch. I really do hope it is not too late for Phil to raise the jib, as it were.

“Come back,” I say. Aiming for Bacall, I deliver a perfect Harvey Fierstein.

Phil inches toward me on the bed. He looks a bit wary, but who can blame him? I did, after all, subscribe him to
Titty Titty Bang Bang
magazine and have it delivered to his school office without discretion wrapping.

I put my arms around his neck. He smells. . . like Phil. Not objectionable. Not great. Well rounded. Like whole-grain toast sprinkled with yeast.

“At least we have two lovely children.” I slide my hand into the pup tent, which is rapidly ballooning to a ten-man.

“Yeah. I was going to nominate you for mother of the year,” Phil gasps.

“Funny, me, too.”

This cracks us both up. Phil gently removes my hand from his shorts and eases off my remaining clothes. I halt him at the camisole with a shy glance borrowed straight from Tatum O’Neal in
Little Darlings;
he acquiesces. As my sort-of husband begins the next stage of his ministrations, I wonder if he can sense the opening of my body to another and, if so, whether it is as clear to him as it is to me that we have Duke Dunne to thank for relighting the oil-lamp glow of libido inside me.

“You know what I’ve missed?” Phil says into the dimness, inhaling. “Your skin.”

CHAPTER 24

Assume the Position on Memory Lane

I run into Tate Trimble at yoga several days after Phil and I advised Taylor on the dangers of penile penetration and had—for the first time in a while—pretty hot sex (hoping the two aren’t related, obviously).

Facing my husband’s lover would have been a lot harder before I became a BC superstar and started selling my work. I know it is appalling, but for me, success has put a neat spin on the typical wronged-woman scenario. It’s almost as if I am the victor and she the victim, being saddled, as it were, with the immensely past-its-sell-by-date spoils of battle, Phil.

This is not to say I don’t experience the sickly trickle of nerves that begins in my stomach and branches out across my lower region like forked lightning. I do. I just don’t immediately vomit and collapse in a paroxysm of inferiority, that’s all.

“Hello, Tate,” I say gamely. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Annunciata Milk whisper furiously to Rochelle Schitzfelder. The rest of the class has gone rumps up, assuming the position of downward-facing dogs, but several women in our circle are simply staring, tights straining at crossed thighs, watching the spectacle unfold, awaiting action. “How are you? How’s Ross?” I say.

The woman who would be my nemesis if my life ran to such luxuries stares blankly at me, her pert nose wrinkling above unnaturally pillowy lips. I realize with a frisson of horror that she does not know who I am.

“Fine! Fine,” Tate says, not even bothering to whisper (the bitch). The instructor never chastises anyone who has the balls—and butt—to go thong-’n’-tights in lieu of sweats. One of those squirming, sweaty-armpitted hippie-whippet types who populate the ranks of yoga teachers like worms on organic compost, Ms. LaRaza McGuire—no joke—is thoroughly cowed by the vulpine and entitled among us.

“Your husband bought one of my sculptures,” I say, increasingly frustrated with the situation. I mean, for God’s sake— I’m big, muscular, cuckolded and reputed to be psycho. Why isn’t she scared of me? “I’m an
artist,
” I add with as much contempt as I can muster.

Comprehension dawns in the prescription-drug-infested land that is Tate Trimble’s mind. The woman really does have enormous lips. I wonder if she gave Phil head. Imagining those collagen-fattened kielbasas wrapped around Phil’s cock is actually quite unsettling.

“Of course,” she says. “How do you do?”

“I do fine, Tate. The thing is, I try not to do it with other people’s husbands.” I turn around. “Hey, Rochelle. Your leotard’s up your ass, just so you know. Oh, and while I have you here, I resign from the committee.”

“Which committee?” Rochelle’s eyes are not just slits; they’re hermetically sealed.

“All of them.”

When I get home from yoga—or, more accurately, from Target, which has this lovely new collection of Belgian chocolate called (ludicrously) Choxie just loaded with partially hydrogenated oils—I am surprised to see Ren’s car parked on the street. Before exiting the safety of the Sienna, I brush the chocolate flakes from my chin and adjust my underwear so it covers my life preserver.

“Hey, brother-in-law.”
For the love of God, Raquel, who besides you needs reminding?

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

There is something disconcerting about Ren’s appearance. I realize that in all the years we have known each other since he became a practicing plastic surgeon, I have never seen him in green scrubs. I suppose I always imagined the needle as his surgical implement of choice, not the messier knives and suction hoses that the elimination of fat, wrinkles, and age require. If pressed, I guess I might have envisioned a plastic-shellfish-eating-style bib or perhaps an apron. The fact that his hospital-green blouse is paired with gym shorts sounds an alarm.

We go inside. I unload my duffel bag, purse, Nicole Richie– esque shades, and—discreetly—year’s supply of Choxie. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, no. Well. . . okay, maybe a Scotch.”

Hmm. Scotch. Before three
P.M.
Something is definitely wrong in Loren/Lauren-land.

I root around in the “wet bar,” a holdover from the house’s previous owners that the current owners use primarily to house sports trophies and mouse traps. I find something dusty and suitable, pour it in a glass, and press it into Ren’s hand. The brief touch ignites the same tremor of yearning in me that it always has, the one I thought would dissipate under the weight of Duke Dunne’s ravishment.

“You have to talk to Laurie.” Ren raises his stunningly wrought eyebrows. On someone lesser, the expression would look contrived; on him, it looks querulous. And meaningful. My heart beats a bit faster.

“About?”

Ren doesn’t say anything. It takes me a second to realize that he is staring, horrified, at something on the countertop. You know the word “aplomb”? The concept has not played a huge role in my life thus far, but I try to channel it nonetheless as I remove the neatly folded leopard and lace teddy and crotchless panty set and note in Phil’s handwriting that says
BACK AT 10:00. WEAR THIS
and drop it into the Tupperware-lid drawer.

“About?” I say again.

Ren snaps out of it. “I don’t know what you said to her, but she thinks we slept together. You know, in college.”

Carefully, I ease the Scotch out of Ren White’s hand. The magic tingly thing happens again. Then I drink it in one gulp. I do not gag. I do not wince. There are things that need to be said here, but they don’t need to be said sober.

“We did sleep together,” I manage.

Don’t tell me you don’t relive the magic daily, brother-in-law.

“Quel, you know we didn’t.”

You bastard. You goddamn gorgeous life-ruining bastard.

Gazing hard into Ren’s eyes, I search for duplicity and madness but see nothing but garden-variety regret and dread. In spite of the suddenness of the encounter and Ren’s spontaneously odd getup, it occurs to me that I have expected this reckoning for decades.
Did we or didn’t we,
if not the central question of my life, has provided a sturdy container in which to store my fears, regrets, and neuroses.

“We dated,” I begin slowly, praying for rescue but not without a measure of relief that the unutterable is being uttered at last. “We went out to dinner and to the beach and the library and class, and then we went to bed together, and we were . . . well, we were naked, Ren. We slept together.” I am sure of it. Surer than I am of the shark tattoo on Duke Dunne’s backside. Surer than I am of the fact that, if I die before him, Phil will wear brown slacks to my funeral.

“I don’t know if actual
clinical
penetration happened”—a slightly hysterical dart of laughter bursts out of me—“but we sure did have sex! Oh yeah, we sure did.” I pause to refill Ren’s Scotch glass, which, rudely, I have yet to return. You know what gets me? Having to use the word “penetration” in conversation with Ren White without having actually been penetrated by him.