Momfriends (31 page)

“Honey, you were amazing,” I say. We laugh.

“I promise to last more than five minutes next time,” he says. “You will let me back in, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “Now spoon me.”

He does and I fall asleep with a smile on my face.

Chapter 16

Claudia Is on Fire

I was no longer in control. At the beginning, I told myself that it was only going to be that one time. And I avoided him the whole week after the company picnic. I wanted to see him, but as hard as I tried to run into him before the picnic, that’s as hard as I tried to avoid him when I got back to work after we had sex.

But that Friday my phone rang. When I saw his number, I sighed. My brain told me not to answer it, but my body, which already beginning to respond to him, made my hands pick up the phone. I didn’t say anything I just held the phone to my ear.

“Every part of me wants to touch you,” he said. And I grimaced at the line, but that was only to try and intellectualize my way out of it. Because as I sat there breathing, every part of me actually wanted to be touched.

I didn’t say anything, but picked up the pen and wrote down the address to his apartment. It was only a few blocks from the office. Then I hung up the phone and shut down my computer.

On Fridays in the summer, we were allowed to leave at three. In the past I never took advantage of it, but this year it was the perfect excuse. I told myself that I would go then, just that one time. And after that one time, I told myself, maybe I could do it every Friday. It could be my once-a-week thing. I could pretend to Peter that I wasn’t coming home early because I had errands to run, or, hell, I could pretend to be working the way I always did.

But my plan to only go on Fridays lasted a weekend, so that the Monday after that first Friday I told myself that no one would miss me if I skipped out at lunch. But like any addict, soon I was going to his apartment almost every day. Any rule I tried to set up I immediately broke.

I was certain that everyone knew what I was doing. The first few times I left in the middle of the day my assistant, Jennifer looked up, concerned. “Going out again?”

“Yeah, just going to run over to Chelsea Market for something for dinner,” I said.

But when I came back flushed and empty handed, she stopped asking. She also started scheduling my meetings to start after two and end before noon.

I was spending every extra minute over Keith’s apartment. And afterward, I would lie there sweaty and shaky and wondering how I was going to pull it together. Then I rode home on the subway, staring at everyone else in wonder. Did they all feel these things, too? Had it taken them until they were almost forty to feel these things? Probably not.

I really couldn’t control it, because every now and then when I had a lunch meeting, I found myself sneaking into a stairwell or the room a few floors down where they kept all the giant master tapes of soap episodes past. And there, in those places, I would let Keith peel my underwear down to my ankles and do things to me that I never imagined people could do.

Somehow, it didn’t affect my home life. I really think that with the exception of not going to pick the twins up early on Fridays, I was a better mother. I was calmer. I was expecting less from my kids. I felt guilty about what I was doing, so I transferred it to lowering my expectations for them.

And the weekends, when I knew I wasn’t going to see Keith, I threw myself into being with Peter and the kids. I didn’t try to overplan anything. I let myself be with them and enjoy the moments.

I even had sex with Peter every Saturday as before. And though his touch felt so off to me, I could close my eyes and imagine it was Keith and it got me through. Peter probably couldn’t tell the difference. In fact, he may have thought our relationship was better.

It amazed me that he couldn’t see the changes in me. While Keith seemed aware of every aspect of my body, I was able to get away with it with Peter. It made me realize that we weren’t really all that connected. We were going through the motions, like two colleagues scheduling, meeting and passing the baton of child care.

But even though I wasn’t happy with Peter, I still felt guilty. I was breaking a vow. Every Sunday, I told myself that I was going to have to scale it back. No matter how much fun I was having, this was wrong. This was immoral. I had to stop it.

But every Monday I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop. And though I might be acting funny, my secret was safe. No one knew. I wasn’t transparent. My thoughts and acts were my own. For the first time in my life, I almost felt free of anyone else’s judgment.

The only time I felt I was about to be discovered was when Kirsten and Ruth were over my house. After Ruth went home, Kirsten helped me clean up. She looked at me really closely at one point and I almost burst out and told her, but I didn’t.

“Something is different about you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, stacking the dishes up in the dishwasher, trying to avoid her gaze.

“I don’t know, it’s your body language. It’s your energy. Something has changed.”

It was freaky. Kirsten said that her other senses were heightened because of her ear, but could she tell?

“What do you want, to photograph me or something?” I asked, hoping she would say yes. I had been feeling sexier lately, turned on. I wanted proof. I wanted some evidence that I looked different. Nothing other than my long lunches had changed.

“Actually, I do want to, but not tonight. I’m exhausted tonight. I’m a little drunk. And I’m a little sad. It’s not a good night for creating anything.”

“A little sad? Why?”

She shook her head. “Never mind.”

I was still mystified by how she could tell. And part of me thought I could tell her and it wouldn’t matter. She may have been judgmental in her own way, but I felt as if she was one of the only people I could tell my secret to.

I was barely speaking to my mom. I called her from work, so that I could get off the phone with the meeting as an excuse. I kept feeling betrayed by her. I felt like a show horse. And I tried to see things from her side, a single mom, trying to raise a daughter and keep her out of trouble, but why did everything about my life have to be so focused? Why wasn’t there ever a time to simply coast?

I kept looking around at all the people I passed in the day. I used to look at them and feel so superior. I used to walk into a room and know I was the smartest person, the most accomplished. I had it all on paper. No one could argue with my success, but now I looked at people and realized I was finally catching up. Everyone had been in on this secret, these moments of wildness and passion for so long. While everyone was having fun, I had my nose to the grindstone so that I could get to the finish line faster and then hurry up and wait.

Other people got together, fell in love, had wild and crazy sex and didn’t care about the mess. They didn’t care about the future; they just lived. I had squandered my youth, and now that I had something fun, I had too many responsibilities to actually enjoy it.

And so I was once again struggling to get dressed in Keith’s apartment. It was, in all honesty, a mess. But I never really had time to look around. Every time I was there, I wanted to do the pile of dishes that was in the sink, but of course I never got a chance. He was always pulling me close, pulling me down.

I could never live this way, I thought. Not that anyone was asking. I was trying really hard not to get caught up in the outcome of this, but sometimes I let my mind wander to what could happen between us.

“So I guess we need to get back, huh?” he said, reaching out to cup my butt. Sometimes, I still had flashes of self-consciousness. I worried that the way he touched me so freely gave him the upper hand.

“Yeah, I have a meeting at two,” I said. I thought about giving him more details, but I realized that Keith wouldn’t really be listening to me. He didn’t seem to have much interest in the day to day of my life. I searched for clues about him, the few ideas I had about his life were from things he had said before we had sex. Now we barely talked.

While I craved Keith, I didn’t really know how to talk to him. I had the impression that he thought I simply showed up at the appointed time and then went into deep storage when we weren’t together. He didn’t seem to want to know anything about me.

When we weren’t together, I thought about him constantly and maybe convinced myself that I was falling in love with him, but then we were together and there was nothing about his personality or his intellect that appealed to me. That made me feel worse. I didn’t want it to be only about attraction, but I was starting to think it was.

But he spoke to me as if this was a big deal for him. Maybe it was how some men were during sex. I wondered when he was going to get over it. I still couldn’t believe he wanted me. I couldn’t believe this body of mine made him look that way. It truly didn’t seem possible.

“So tomorrow, then,” he said more than asked. “Same place, same time.”

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t.

I left the apartment first, as I always did. Even though we didn’t work on the same floor, we didn’t want anyone to see us together in the neighborhood or going back into the building. All of this illicit behavior was part of it too. The old competitive part of me was happy I could handle this without getting caught. I waltzed back to the building.

I definitely felt changed. The constant orgasms were doing wonders for my mood and maybe even my complexion. Plus, I never had the chance to eat during lunch, so I was losing weight.

“Anything happen when I was at lunch?” I asked Jennifer, expecting to get the usual answer. It was amazing how little ever happened. And to think, I used to focus on only this. How could it have been enough for me?

“Deanna was looking for you,” Jennifer said. I hadn’t stopped walking as I got in, but now I stopped in front of Jennifer’s desk and tried to gauge her expression.

“What do you mean? Did she call?” I asked.

“No, she came by,” Jennifer said. She shrugged.

“Ok,” I said. “Did she say anything?”

“Just to have you call her when you got back.”

“Did you tell her where I was?” I asked as if Jennifer knew where I was.

“No, I didn’t know where you were. I said you were at lunch,” Jennifer said. And I gathered from her expression that while she wasn’t going to hazard a guess to Deanna, she had her suspicions as to where I might have been. But instead she said, “That’s where I assumed you were.”

“Ok,” I said and I started to walk into my office. “What time was this?”

“12:15.”

“Thanks, Jennifer,” I said. I closed the door to my office behind me.

Shit! Almost two hours ago. Breathe, breathe, relax, I told myself. Jennifer didn’t know where I was, and Deanna definitely didn’t know where I was. For all she knew, I had a long lunch with a friend or a root canal or a family emergency or sex two times. Shit!! I didn’t have to answer to Deanna for being gone for so long. She didn’t know this was a habit. I deserved a pass. And from now on, I would scale back a little. Maybe I would keep it to Fridays or a few times a week or at least limit my lunches to one hour.

But why had she come down personally instead of calling or emailing?

I called Deanna and talked to her assistant, Kate. Deanna was in meetings until 4, Kate said. I tried to keep my voice light. I tried to stress the urgency that she have Deanna call me back without seeming frantic. It shouldn’t have been urgent. She is the one who wanted to talk to me.

I sat there at my desk, sweating even though the air conditioner was turned up way too high. I had so much to do. I always had so much to do. And lately I hadn’t done much of anything. But it was summer and most people slacked in the summer, I’d noticed. All that time studying the grasshoppers, I picked on the seasonal ways people checked out. I found that people were most productive in January, February, September and October. The rest of the time they were beaten down by winter or already off on some holiday in their heads. Most grasshoppers spent their work lives barely getting by, covering their asses. Now it was time to cover my ass. This was the consequence, I guess. But it didn’t seem so bad.

I started to do some work research, in case certain things came up, in case that is what Deanna’s call was about. Budgets were due in October, but I always had a good handle on the numbers way ahead of that. I guess this whole thing with Keith had made me removed from all the responsibilities that were supposed to fall under my umbrella.

Everything was fine. I was fine. No, I was terrified. I don’t know why. I had the urge to run out of the building. Over the Brooklyn Bridge and all the way home. I had the urge, this weird primal urge, to grab my children and hold them tight. Animals always sense when a disaster is about to happen, Kirsten said. It was rubbish, I thought at the time. But now I wanted higher ground. I wanted something safe.

I called the day care. I spoke with Svetlana. The twins were napping, she said. They were having a great day. She sounded surprised to hear from me. I never called to check up. I wanted to believe that they were ok when I dropped them off. I didn’t want to be one of those helicopter parents. I was on the phone with Tatiana for a little longer than necessary,

“Is there anything else, miss,” Tatiana asked in her hesitant English made even more hesitant by my weird behavior.

Yes, Tatiana tell me what to do. Tell me how to make my kids look at me the way they look at you even though I’m not worthy.

“No, that’s all. Thank you.”

“Ok, see you later,” she said cheerfully.

“Ok, bye.” I hung up the phone and looked at it. The digital display read just after three. What had Deanna wanted? I picked up the phone and called Jennifer.

“Hey,” she said. She answered fast and cheerfully, which I took to mean that she was probably on a personal call. Jennifer was an expert grasshopper, well versed in covering her ass. I should have asked her for tips.

“Hi, Jen,” I said. Jennifer may have had her suspicions about me doing something illicit, but I needed to keep my tone even and professional. “Do you have some—I don’t know—software you use that tells you what conference rooms are being used and by whom.”