“Come again,” she begged. “Come for me. Show me you love me. Do it again.”
For a moment I was sure that he was going to push her away, but then he bent over, lifted her by her waist, and put her on the table I had made. He entered her again and repeated his exuberant pounding. The slapping of flesh was like one man’s hearty applause in a room full of doubters.
The poorly made table rocked and squealed along with Mona. She was cheering, shouting, screaming, “Fuck me goddammit! Fuck me!”
I wondered many things in my dark closet. The only light brought images of my beautiful middle-aged wife, wanton with passion for a man I hardly knew.
I wondered why I wasn’t aroused by the sexuality and why I wasn’t angry at either of them. I hypothesized on whether or not Mona had used that kind of language with all men but me. And I thought about Harvard Rollins; had he been her lover long?
“Oh yeah,” Harvard said; it was almost a whisper. “Oh God, yeah. Here it comes.” He doubled, then tripled, his already frenzied beat. Mona was singing a wordless song of praise. She got louder and louder while Harvard just kept hammering away. When he finally came, he emitted three hard grunts. Mona sat up, using her well — defined abs, and stared longingly into his eyes.
They stayed in that position for some time, gazing at each other, tremors going through their bodies at odd moments.
After maybe two more minutes he lifted her again and carried her to the bed.
They lay side by side and she kissed him carelessly, something she had never done with me. With me her kisses were always short and accurate. With Harvard you had the feeling that she wanted to lick his face.
I thought about Lana then, her licking me.
“What are we going to do about Ben?” she asked Harvard.
“I don’t know yet,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “Tell ya the truth, I find it hard to believe.”
“But maybe he did. Maybe we never knew each other.”
A laugh deep inside me strained to get out. The idea that I was in their conversation and in the closet at the same time seemed too bizarre. I wanted to walk out casually as my wife held Harvard’s now flaccid penis, to sit on the bed and make some wisecrack.
“Do you think he has a lover?” Harvard asked.
“He’s not interested in sex,” she said dismissively. “Never was, really. He never let go, not even in the beginning. You know how it is. Some men think because they can get it up that women love it.”
“But you said that you might not really know him.”
“Yeah,” she said. She sat up and leaned over to kiss the head of his cock. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Are you sure you want me to do this?”
“Fuck me?”
“Look into Ben’s past.”
“Fuck me first,” she said.
I didn’t watch the next two bouts of lovemaking. I sat back in the closet while Mona moaned and Harvard grunted, wondering why my wife would want to investigate me. She’d said that she didn’t think I had lovers. She was wrong about that, but if that wasn’t her worry, what was?
I was beginning to feel fear in that closet. What was happening to me? Why was my past, a past that held nothing but a few drunken benders, coming back?
There was nothing to worry about. I hadn’t done anything but have an affair with a young Russian student.
Still the threat of Harvard Rollins looking into my past made me wish I had a weapon. I thought about holding a pistol in my hand. This thought was so alien and yet so natural that I began to fear my own response. What was wrong with me?
When the door to the bedroom closed, I realized that I had stopped paying attention to the lovers. A moment later the front door to the apartment opened and closed. I could have left then. I should have left before Mrs. Valeria returned, but I stayed in the dark wondering why my innocuous past had become so important.
I felt safe in the darkness. From there I could watch and still remain hidden. Maria could have come home and never once looked behind that door. In the night, while she slept, I could sneak out and get water and food. I wondered semi-seriously how I could make a life like that — hidden.
On the train ride up to Lana’s place I was going over the past few days with Mona. She had been talking about divorce, had been thinking about the settlement. She believed I didn’t have a lover and so she needed Harvard Rollins to help her prove her case against me. Of course that was it. It wasn’t my past but her need to somehow incriminate me that made Mona turn to Rollins.
Maybe when she had talked to Barbara Knowland, she came up with the idea to find out about my wild drunken days in Colorado. Now it was making sense. She wanted to make sure she could prove that I was the bad guy before suing for divorce. Of course.
“Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben,” Lana cried over and over as we made love for the third or fourth time that night. While we fucked on the floor next to her bed, I was thinking, couldn’t stop thinking about Mona and Harvard Rollins. There was no jealousy to it. I was excited about how she kissed him and how she didn’t even complain when he wouldn’t wait for her to bring out the condoms. I could see in her face how excited she was that he would not be limited by her.
I was grinding away at Lana even though I knew that I’d had my last orgasm of the night an hour before. But when I thought of the grunting pleasure Mona exhibited while watching Rollins ejaculate, as I watched secretly over her shoulder, I came again — painfully hard. In the middle of that passionate surprise the muscles of my left buttock went into a spasm and I tumbled off Lana and cried out in pain.
“What’s wrong, Ben?”
“I got a charley horse in my butt,” I said, laughing and groaning at the same time.
Lana rolled me over and began massaging the taut cheek with her elbow. After a minute the pain subsided. As soon as it did, I began feeling excited about her massage.
“You have never made love to me like this,” Svetlana said as she kneaded my quivering backside.
“I don’t know what it is,” I said. “Mona stayed away from home and I made a beeline straight to you.”
Lana turned me over and looked into my eyes.
“Are you falling in love with me?” she asked.
“I don’t know what’s happening, baby,” I said. “There’s something, something wrong. But I don’t know what it is. If you had asked me a week ago what I’d be doing with my life in twenty years, I would have told you that Mona and I would be in the same apartment and I’d be at the same job. But now I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.”
“Is it because I called you that night?”
“No. I don’t know what it is.”
“You never make love to me like this,” she said again.
“Like what?”
“Like you are hungry for me, like animal. I get afraid a little and I like this and I’m scared too. Maybe when you were biting me, I was feeling a little like I was falling in love.”
My heart was pounding but not with the feeling of sex. I was afraid. I closed my eyes, and even though Lana kept talking, I stopped listening. I tried to figure out what had happened, what had scared me so.
It was hard to concentrate. My well-ordered little life had come apart like a flower that drops all its petals after having finished its work. I felt desperate, when only days before life had been parsed out like plain white bread, one slice after the other all exactly the same.
“Maybe we should take a vacation,” I said, interrupting whatever it was Lana was saying.
“Where would we go?”
“Maui? Hawaii.”
Lana kissed me and then stood up, pulling me toward the bed. When we were under the covers, she sat up on my chest and cupped her hands around my face.