My Favorite Midlife Crisis (25 page)

“Yes, of course.” She glanced down. “I’ll do that, ah, Dr. York.” Very proper, although she brushed her fingers against his in the transaction. He looked at me and frowned as if she’d misinterpreted his interest.

Back outside, he bent down and rubbed his cheek against mine, like an eraser, erasing all doubts that I was his one and only. Then he wound his arm around my waist and we meandered like that to Rehoboth Avenue.

He halted in front of the window of The Cook’s Tour. “You need loose tea and a tea strainer instead of those tea bags you use.”

“Not here,” I said quickly, trying to steer him away from Brad’s shop. “Their prices are sky-high. There’s a shop down the street...” But he barreled in and I followed, praying.

Brad was not in evidence.
Thank you, God.
No Stan either.
Amen.

Betsy Whitkin, who’d once cleaned Crosswinds as part of a Merry Maids crew, was languishing behind the counter reading
Cosmo
when we interrupted her. She nodded at me and talked to Simon about English cheeses until I led him into the aisles of Brad’s overpriced inventory. We collected a tea strainer, sacks of Darjeeling and Assam teas, a box of Duchy Gingered Biscuits, and a jar of Fortnum & Mason gooseberry preserves. All of which, it turned out, got him hot, because back at the house after a proper English tea, I’d barely wiped the crumbs from my lips when he took me in his arms and said in a hoarse voice, “I want to make love to you, Gwyneth.”

Well, yes of course, I’d known when I invited him it would happen. A beach house. Waves crashing. Gulls cawing softly in the distance. As the day chilled down, I’d turned on the gas fireplace in the living room which made authentic flickering shadows on the wall. Thanks to Stan’s state-of-the-art stereo system, flamenco music throbbed throughout the house. Everything encouraged us. Nothing stopped us. God knows, I wanted it. Whatever had stirred up the original
coup de foudre
was still working. My mouth was so dry with longing, I could barely get the words out.

“Do you have protection?” I murmured. STDs were an age-defying menace.

“I’m a physician, my darling. Of course.”

“HIV test?”

“Last time a month ago. Negative.” So romantic, the language of twenty-first-century love.

What did I expect going in? Well, supereducated men tend not to be fabulous in bed. They work too much in their eggheads. Overthink the process. Make love as if they’d learned it from one of those Arthur Murray charts with the footprints. One, two, three, bump; four, five, six, grind. Lousy rhythm, no music. So I suppose I expected nerd-a-go-go.

I got Baryshnikov.

Joined at the lips and the hips, we inched our way into the bedroom. Two feet from the bed, groggy with lust, I fumbled with the buttons on my blouse.

“No, let me,” he said. With his surgeon’s nimble fingers, he unbuttoned me, peeled down my jeans, and tossed them. As I fought to breathe, he teased me, slowly unwrapping me from the last layer of overpriced Victoria’s Secret froth, brushing velvet kisses on my shivering flesh.

“Oh, God, Simon,” I heard myself slur, felt myself slip into that gorgeous drunken state where inhibitions crumble and every gesture is played out in slow motion.

And then the cool air against my flesh stirred a frisson of worry. Just in case, I’d draped a silk robe the color of crème brulée on a side chair. Just in case, I’d set the lights low. And from the bedroom fireplace, gaslight flickered camouflaging shadows. But still, my nude wasn’t a sprightly twenty-year-old’s nude. Not even a ripe forty-year-old’s nude. And Simon, I expected, had his choice of vintages.

He said, “Don’t,” as I reached the robe. “Let me see you. Please, darling, I need to see you.” I let the robe drop, heard his quick intake of breath. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. And that “beautiful” released me so I could stop fretting about myself and concentrate on him as he slowly, tantalizingly removed his trousers and shirt and stepped over them.

Simon York à la carte, all muscle, curly chest hair, and burning eyes looked—if this were possible—better than Simon York in his usual state of Savile Row perfection. Think Heathcliff with that quintessential English face, the sensual hint of overbite, the square jaw burnished with five o’clock shadow. Think great English lion. The one the sun never sets on. Think normally sleek silver hair, a tousled mane. Noble features softened by desire.

And then he laughed, a deep rumble. “Look at what you’ve done to me.” He smiled down on the huge hard-on in full salute. “That’s from you. And
for
you. Do you want that? I want to give you that.”

Oh, I know Fleur likes to say, “It ain’t the size of the clapper that makes for the toll of the bell.” And she’s right in principle, but I gasped at the sight of Simon so huge, so ready for me. I went to him. Ran my fingers down his muscled back. Gripped his shoulders and pressed myself to him. Rocked against that urgent hardness and heard his low growl before I slipped my tongue between his teeth.

He returned my kisses. So deep. So wet. Against his warm flesh, I inhaled Eau de Simon, a wild perfume of citrus aftershave, sweat, and musk. I licked that sweet saltiness, then traced my tongue down his neck and heard his breath go rough. He glided a path along my cleavage, drew wet circles to the left, to the right, put his mouth to one nipple then the other. I moaned my arousal. And as his tongue slid its descent, I swayed and staggered back against the wall, beyond hot, beyond fevered, approaching throwing off sparks.

And yet I said, “Don’t,” to the top of his head as he sunk to his knees. “Not yet.” Meaning not that I wasn’t moist with eagerness but that what he had in mind was so intimate we needed more time to…

He looked up at me, his eyes intense. “Please. I want to. You do want me to.”

I nodded and lost him. Lost myself in him as he worked that devilish tongue. Faint with pleasure, I braced myself against the wall and just…let…it…happen.

When he came up for air, he murmured, “You taste like honey.” Answering every woman’s question, every woman’s secret fear. “Delicious. God, I want to fuck you.” So said my brilliant British scientist whose usual vocabulary was pristine, and I was putty. Literally, I felt my flesh melt into something yielding, malleable, able to be shaped to any desire. We hit the bed, tumbled onto my six-hundred-count Porthault sheets, and really messed them up.

Simon, the gynecologist, knew where all the hot spots were buried and precisely what to do when he uncovered them. While the guitar played a frenzied
bulería
in the background, we strummed each other until we were both taut, ready to snap. So that when finally he entered me, it took only seconds before I crescendoed, soared, spasmed, went off in all directions. Then he drove to his finish, gaze locked on mine, letting me watch those pure gray eyes cloud, then flame as he shuddered.

Not once in my life, in all the years I’d made love, had I ever seen a man climax eyes wide open. That windows to the soul cliché? Absolutely true. I felt magically connected to him.

Afterwards, as I lay in his arms, he said, “God, that was lovely, Gwyneth. Everything I’d hoped for. More than. You were wonderful.”

“You were,” I said, barely breathing.

He took my hand and kissed its palm. “
We
were,” he said.

At sunset, we took our martinis to the deck. While Simon swiped a red pen over his article for
Cervix,
I stretched out at the other end of the wicker sofa, my feet in his lap, finishing off the previous Sunday’s
New York Times
crossword. Occasionally, I tapped into his brain for a lost word. From time to time, I stole a glance at him. The sheaf of silver hair falling over his forehead, the twitch of his jaw as he concentrated, the squared shoulders under a gray merino crewneck like the ones the rich kids wore back in college—all this tingled me down to my toes, which he massaged with his free hand.

In the background Isaac Stern fiddled through the Brandenburg Concertos. “Do you play bridge?” Simon asked, not looking up from his editing.

“I do. How about chess?” I asked. “Do you play chess?”

“I do,” he said.

It was a match made in dork heaven.

Except that heaven lasts forever, and our weekend was running out. Still, there were many weekends ahead. Why shouldn’t there be? I closed my eyes and stretched the moment the way women do, prematurely. Why couldn’t we go the distance? Why couldn’t we end up as The Drs. York? Writing papers together. Making fantastic love into eternity.

If not, if Simon and I ended badly, well then, I would have had a wonderful love affair with a brilliant, charming man. More than a fling. Something to remember fondly while rocking on the nursing home porch.

That’s what I told myself as the flaming sun dipped into the turquoise sea, just like a sappy painting on velvet.

***

“Remember fondly? Oh honeybunch, are you kidding yourself,” Fleur said, chuckling, when I confided that on Sunday night. “Let me tell you, if you and Simon get something going and he breaks up with you, if Simon does you dirty, you’re just another Jerry Springer biker chick wanting to tear his eyeballs out. We’re all primitive creatures when we’re pulling the knife from our guts. Okay, so you had sex. Which you’re not going to talk about because well-brought-up women don’t. Except you weren’t well brought up, so it’s an affectation.”

“The sex was dynamite,” I said, failing to suppress a smirk.

Fleur blinked at me as if I were some new specimen of Gwyneth she hadn’t come across before.

“Listen to you. Dynamite, huh? That’s a surprise. The Brits are not known for sexual proficiency. Brussels sprouts, yes. Sex, no.”

“Well, he was incredible,” I said. “It’s been years since I had such a big…well, you know…”

“You had A Big You Know? Then he must be good. Because honestly since menopause, my You Know hasn’t been that big. I think it’s all hormone related. Blood rises to your face for a hot flash instead of settling in the nether regions where it’s needed.”

“The vast majority of women over fifty report an increase in the intensity of orgasm,” I said.

“This is your
farkuckteh
survey again, right? That survey has gotten us all in trouble. I’ll tell you it was a hell of a lot easier back in Jane Austen’s day when fifty-five-year-old ladies put on their lace caps and retired to play whist. Sometimes I wonder if civilization has really made any progress.”

“Your date last night was lousy, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “the pits.”

Chapter 27

I brought back souvenirs from my beach weekend with Simon. Occasionally, the memory of his chiseled profile on the next pillow would surface. Or I’d get ambushed by a flash of him buttering his toast or laughing at something I’d said. These blips of pleasure didn’t interfere with my work, mind you. I saw patients, performed surgeries, watched CNN, ate my yogurt, but occasionally a thought of him jingled the serotonin receptors in my prefrontal cortex and passing a mirror, I’d catch a glimpse of my goofy smile.

Early in the week, Kat got a second opinion on the best way to treat her tumor that agreed with Abe’s first and now that she knew what had to be done, she just wanted to get it over with.

Kat’s lumpectomy was really a partial mastectomy and Abe and I had gone toe-to-toe with her insurance company to buy her an extra day in the hospital, after which she’d require some looking after. She intended to stay with Summer and Tim for a few days. The plan was for me to stop in over the weekend to do the post-op care that made Summer blanch when I described it.

“Well, isn’t she the delicate flower. It doesn’t sound so bad. Hell, I’ll do it if you show me how. You can even go to New York if you want to,” Fleur said.

Simon had invited me up for the weekend, but under the circumstances, Kat came first.

“Atta girl,” Fleur cheered. “Friends before lovers. It’s nice to know you’ve still got your priorities straight. And you know, Gwynnie, when the lovers are long gone, the friends are still there for you.”

“That’s so comforting.” I said it as a joke but, deep down, I meant it.

Simon was disappointed when I postponed my visit, but he understood. “Of course, you must be there for your chum. You have a good heart to go with the not-so-shoddy brain. In fact, I think you’re quite wonderful. You do know I like you very much, Gwyneth.”

I swallowed a major lump. “And I like you very much.” We both paused reverently at our display of feeling, and then I added, “God help us both,” which really broke him up.

***

I couldn’t change my two surgeries scheduled for Thursday afternoon and wouldn’t rush them. And although I intended to get to Kat before they wheeled her into the operating room, the pelvis of my second patient, Mrs. Violet Sandler, aged eighty-two, had other ideas. Working around adhesions from her previous procedures was like picking through scotch tape. By the time I reassured the family and stripped off my scrubs, Kat had been in Abe’s hands for more than an hour.

I made it into the waiting room just as he emerged to tell Summer, “It went the way I like surgeries to go—short and sweet. We won’t get the final pathology results for a few days, but let’s take it one step at a time. Your mom did fine in there.”