“A passion like ours is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
“It is?”
“What?” she screeched again.
“I mean, it is. We have known a great passion. But that’s precisely because we haven’t been married. Marriage is different, Sylvia. You’ll just have to take my word on that.”
This apparently was the wrong thing to say, as she began to sob in earnest. “But I would be married to you. And I love you. I can’t live without you.”
“Oh, I’m not much of a catch. Really. You’ll get over it.”
“I’m almost forty! I’ve sacrificed two crucial years, being with you on your terms.”
Charlie thought that was unfair, since the terms had been Sylvia’s from the start. But all he said was: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lead you on. And I won’t anymore.”
He thought that would end matters, but Sylvia was a remarkably focused woman. She continued to call-the office, not his home, which indicated to Charlie that she was not yet ready to wreak the havoc she was threatening. So Marla remained oblivious and their golf continued to improve, but his assistant was beginning to suspect what was up and he knew he had to figure out a way to make it end. But given that he wasn’t the one who had made it start, he didn’t see how he could.
ON THURSDAY, JUST AS HE WAS getting ready to leave the office for what was now his weekly midday nine, Sylvia called again, crying and threatening to hurt herself.
“I was just on my way out,” he said.
“Where do you have to go?”
“Golf,” he said.
“Oh, I see.” Her laugh was brittle. “So you have someone new already. Your current assistant? I guess your principles have fallen a notch.”
“No, I really play golf now.”
“Charlie, I’m not your wife. Your stupid lie won’t work on me. It’s not even your lie, remember?”
“No, no, there’s no one else. I’ve, well, reformed! It’s like a penance to me. I’ve chosen my loveless marriage and golf over the great passion of my life. It’s the right thing to do.”
He thought she would find this suitably romantic, but it only seemed to enrage her more.
“I’m going to go over to your house and tell Marla that you’re cheating.”
“Don’t do that, Sylvia. It’s not even true.”
“You cheated with me, didn’t you? And a tiger doesn’t change his stripes.”
Charlie wanted to say that he was not so much a tiger as a house cat who had been captured by a petulant child. True, it had been hard to break with Sylvia once things had started. She was very good at a lot of things that Marla seldom did and never conducted with enthusiasm. But it had not been his idea. And, confronted with an ultimatum, he had honored her condition. He hadn’t tried to have it both ways. He was beginning to think Sylvia was unreliable.
“Meet me at my apartment right now, or I’ll call Marla.”
He did, and it was a dreary time, all tears and screaming and no attentions paid to him whatsoever, not even after he held her and stroked her hair and said he did love her.
“You should be getting back to work,” he said at last, hoping to find any excuse to stop holding her.
She shook her head. “My position was eliminated two weeks ago. I’m out of work.”
“Is that why you’re so desperate to get married?”
She wailed like a banshee, not that he really knew what a banshee sounded like. Something scary and shrill. “No. I love you, Charlie. I want to be your wife for that reason alone. But the last month, with all this going on, I haven’t been at my best, and they had a bad quarter, so I was a sitting duck. In a sense, I’ve lost my job because of you, Charlie. I’m unemployed and I’m alone. I’ve hit rock bottom.”
“You could always come back to the company. You left on good terms and I’d give you a strong reference.”
“But then we couldn’t be together.”
“Yes.” He was not so clever that he had thought of this in advance, but now he saw it would solve everything.
“And that’s the one thing I could never bear.”
Charlie, his hand on her hair, looked out the window. It was such a beautiful day, a little cooler than usual, but still sunny. If he left now-but, no, he would have to go back to the office. He wouldn’t get to play golf at all today.
“Who is she, Charlie?”
“Who?”
“The other woman.”
“There is no other woman.”
“Stop lying, or I really will go to Marla. I’ll drive over there right now, while you’re at work. After all, I don’t have a job to go to.”
She was crazy, she was bluffing. She was so crazy that even if she wasn’t bluffing, he could probably persuade Marla that she was a lunatic. After all, what proof did she have? He had never allowed the use of any camera, digital or video, although Sylvia had suggested it from time to time. There were no e-mails. He never called her. And he was careful to leave his DNA, as he thought of it, only in the appropriate places, although this included some places that Marla believed inappropriate. He had learned much from the former president and the various television shows on crime scene investigations.
“Look, if it’s money you need-”
“I don’t want money! I want you!”
And so it began all over again, the crying and the wailing, only this time there was no calming her. She was obsessed with the identity of his new mistress, adamant that he tell her everything, enraged by his insistence that he really did play golf in his spare time. Finally, he thought to take her down to the garage beneath her apartment and show her the clubs in the trunk of his car.
“So what?” she said. “You always carried your clubs.”
“But I know what they are now,” he said, removing a driver. “See this one, it’s-”
“I know what’s going on and I’m done, I tell you. The minute you leave here, I’m going to go upstairs and call Marla. It’s her or me. Stop fucking with me, Charlie.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t use that word, Sylvia. It’s coarse.”
“Oh, you don’t like hearing it, but you sure like doing it. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking!”
She stood in front of him, hands on her hips. Over the course of their two-year affair she had not become particularly more attractive, although she had learned to use a depilatory on her upper lip. What would happen if she went to Marla? She would probably stay with him, but it would be dreary, with counseling and recriminations. And they really were happier than ever, united by their love of golf, comfortable in their routines. He couldn’t bear to see it end.
“I can’t have that, Sylvia. I just can’t.”
“Then choose.”
“I already have.”
No, he didn’t hit her with the driver. He wouldn’t have risked it for one thing, having learned that it was rare to have a club that felt so right in one’s grip and also having absorbed a little superstition about the game. Also, there would have been blood, and it was impossible to clean every trace of blood from one’s trunk, according to those television shows. Instead, he pushed her, gently but firmly, and she fell back into the trunk, which he closed and latched. He then drove back to the office, parking in a remote place where Sylvia’s thumping, which was growing fainter, would not draw any attention. At home that night, he ate dinner with Marla, marveling over the Greg Norman shiraz that she served with the salmon. “Do you hear something out in the garage?” she asked at one point. “A knocking noise?”
“No,” he said.
It was Marla’s book club night and after she left, he went out to the garage and circled his car for a few minutes, thinking. Ultimately, he figured out how to attach a garden hose from the exhaust through a cracked window and into the backseat, where he pressed it into the crevice of the seat, which could be released to create a larger carrying space, like a hatchback, but only from within the car proper. Sylvia’s voice was weaker, but still edged with fury. He ignored her. Marla was always gone for at least three hours on book club night and he figured that would be long enough.