“Sure, it’s okay.”
“I guess there are some benefits to this whole home-buying thing,” Jason muttered a few minutes later.
Andrew glanced up and noticed the woman he’d seen before leaning against the rail of her deck, twirling a wine glass in her hand. Her hair was pale blond, he saw in the daylight, not silver. She was dressed this time, a white fitted blouse and turquoise trousers. She turned and peered at him, lifting the glass slowly to her lips and taking a long swallow.
The grill hissed and Andrew looked down in time to save the steak from being engulfed in flames. When he looked up a minute later the woman was gone.
On Monday, Christine left for work with both boys strapped into car seats in the back of her Volvo. She would drop them off at her mother’s, where they spent their days being spoiled by Nana and an elderly housekeeper named Winnie, before driving to her downtown law practice.
Usually, Andrew left for work at the same time, but this summer was different. The move had delayed the writing of a paper he had to present at a conference in late summer, and he’d set up a home office to work on it without interruption.
Except he couldn’t seem to concentrate. In their apartment, his desk had been in an alcove near the front window where he’d watched city life passing by and had gotten used to the noise — sirens and delivery trucks, children laughing, neighbors bickering. It was so quiet in his new neighborhood that he jumped at the screeching of a bird in the woods behind the house. The only regular noises were the sounds of lawns being mowed by the landscape crews that arrived regularly to tend to all the larger, expensive houses. They came next door every Tuesday — Henry called it the castle house because it was a large stone Tudor with a turret. Andrew thought of it as the naked yoga house, but he’d never told Christine. Every morning he saw the man zoom away in a silver Porsche, but he had not seen the woman again.
That afternoon, fed up with his inability to produce anything coherent, he decided to go for a run. He often used the treadmills at the university gym, but it didn’t seem worth it to drive that far. There were plenty of paths throughout the vast swaths of borough parkland. He drove a quarter-mile to a small horseshoe of unpaved parking where he left his car next to others and headed off on a trail. He ran hard for two miles.
On his way back he ran into his neighbor. She was running along the path toward him, wearing a green singlet and thin black running shorts, her hair pulled back severely in a ponytail which swayed side-to-side as her legs and arms moved like pistons. On one arm she had a silver bracelet that chimed faintly as she ran.
She was a faster runner and focused. She stared straight ahead and Andrew thought she would pass without speaking. He spoke instead. “Hello.”
“Hi.” She barely glanced at him.
Already she’d moved two paces past him. Afterward, when he dreamed of her, it would begin with this moment when he could have let her go, pretended he didn’t know her. He turned and called out, “I think we’re neighbors. I’m Andrew Durbin.”
She looked back and surveyed him, standing in the path with her hands on her hips, panting. Her expression wasn’t promising. After a moment she replied, “I’m Elsa.” Then she said, surprising him, “Do you want to run together?”
He felt a jolt of pleasure in having been invited, like he was back in middle school and the popular girl had asked him to dance. He tried to play it cool, glancing at his watch as if time somehow factored into his decision though Christine wouldn’t be home for hours. “Sure.”
He had to work to keep up with her; he could feel his chest heaving, hear his labored breaths. Her own breathing seemed effortless. She ran like the deer he’d seen from the back window of his house, thin-legged and nimble, darting fluidly around trees and missing stray branches that seemed to reach out and whack him in the face.
When the path narrowed, he followed blindly, feeling damp spreading at the neck and under the arms of his T-shirt. Finally, they were back at their cars. He leaned against the hood of his Honda, sucking air, while she walked calmly over to her car, a sleek black BMW, raising a key tag to open it with a little beep. She slid into the seat and turned over the engine before poking her head out to ask, “You want to meet again on Wednesday? How about one-thirty?”
That was how it started, but he couldn’t say it was ever innocent. When he got home he went straight to the shower and, leaning against the tiled wall, masturbated like a teenager, while imagining peeling the clothes off her sweating body.
She didn’t talk while they ran, it wasn’t her style, but she did linger sometimes afterward, once offering him some water when he’d forgotten his, and another time telling him that his stride was improving. Never once did she ask him about his life and she didn’t volunteer anything. He wanted to ask about the man he’d seen on the deck, the man he assumed was her husband, judging by the thin gold-and-diamond ring set on her left hand, but he always chickened out.
Instead, he searched his garage for the free weights he’d bought at a yard sale years earlier, which had been gathering dust ever since. “What are you doing?” Christine asked when he hauled them up to their bedroom.
“Just getting back into shape.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Are you trying to drop a hint?”
He looked at her standing there in a spit up — stained blouse with a dish towel slung over one shoulder. She’d taken off her jacket, but was still wearing her suit skirt, her stomach bulging over the waistline. She frowned, her round face puffy and sweaty. “Well? Because I don’t appreciate the pressure.”
“No, it’s not for you. It’s for me.” He wanted to add, You could use them too, but he didn’t.
They’d been running together for three weeks when Elsa said, “Do you want to come over for a drink?”
He’d fantasized about this moment many times, but strived to sound casual. “Why not?”
He followed her back up the hill to their quiet street, struggling to maintain the same speed, while looking out for cops, because she went seventy the whole way, the Beemer flashing along narrow roads, hardly slowing for dangerous curves.
He pulled into his own driveway and stopped outside the car for a moment, wondering if he should shower first.
“Aren’t you coming?” she called, and he immediately walked across the wide expanse of emerald lawn that divided their properties.
The house was cool inside, dark after the sunshine. “This is nice,” he said, admiring the midcentury modern furniture, the entire living room done in shades of black, white, and steel. She’d vanished into another room, returned with two tall glasses of ice water.
“Do you think so?” She handed a glass to him and drank her own in one long, soundless swallow, wiping the back of a delicate hand across her mouth when she finished.
“How long have you lived here?”
She smiled. “Long enough.” She was standing close enough that he could see her perfectly manicured nails.
He tried to look into her eyes, but his gaze was drawn down to the erect nipples poking out of her shirt.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she said, surprising him. He felt hotter, suddenly, his vision blurred for a moment.
“I’m married.”
She laughed and put her glass down on a side table, advancing toward him. “So am I.”
Afterward he would think about the improbability of it, but at that moment all he thought about was the taste of her mouth and the smell and feel of her skin. It had been a long time since he’d taken time with sex, since he’d had to tell himself to slow down, enjoy it, since he’d been young enough to come immediately instead of waiting, and knowing to wait for his partner.