He was inhaling deeply, trying to absorb the odor, retain it fully so he might mark its nature. His lean head flared, red-roostered. He thought it might be the smell of the bubble wrap around your new computer when you take it out of the shipping container. Or the shipping container itself. Or the computer itself. Or the plastic baggies that have been in your freezer too long, collecting Freon fumes. He thought it might be a hospital smell, a laboratory smell, a discharge from a chemical plant. He couldn't place it exactly. The insulation in your walls. The filter in your air conditioner.
"I thought they were odor-free. Modern condoms," I said. "Except when flavor is added."
"That's the new type that's odor-free. I bought him the old cheap latex that binds the sex member and reduces the sensation and smells bad. Because I want him to pay a price for being sensible."
Marian sat in Jeff's room watching a movie on TV I had to adjust to the sight of someone else in his room. His room was his animal den, his pelt and smell, and I thought she was committing some breach of species, sitting in there.
She wore beat-up jeans and an old tank top that drooped in front, the kind of woman who grows into her beauty, I think, who becomes beautiful over time and then one day you see it, sort of suddenly and all together-it becomes a local scandal of surprise and comment.
"When did you start smoking again?"
"Shut up," she said.
I told her about Condomology I stood in the doorway and talked above the noise from the movie. She was fine-skinned, assertive in a way that was all featural-slightly angular of face, straight-nosed, dark-haired, no-nonsense-looking, very near classical in an American way, a certain sort of old-fashioned way that doesn't stray drastically from plainness, like the face cut in raised relief on the old soap bar, maybe it was Camay, I'm not sure, the woman's head in profile, with marcelled hair, although Marian's was straight.
"Where's Jeff?"
"Went out. I'm watching this."
I told her about Apartheid Simulation Day, standing in the doorway.
She said, "I'm watching this."
"Want something? I want something."
"Mineral water be nice," she said.
I went to the kitchen and got all the things out of all the compartments. I poured the mineral water over ice in a tall glass and dropped a wedge of lemon in. Got the potato vodka from the freezer, smoky cold, and remembered what it was I wanted to say to her. I cut a lune of lemon skin and dropped it in a port glass.
I wanted to say something about Brian.
I'd tried drinking port for a while just to see how it would feel, how it would sound, a port glass, a fortified wine, and now I used the port glass for my vodka, pouring it syrupy cold and opal.
I heard the dialogue from the movie at the other end of the house.
Her skin was Camay-pure and her hair was dark and straight and she usually wore it short because short was easy. Her voice was shaped, it was deep and toned, sort of vowel round and erotic, particularly over the phone or in the bedroom dark, with brandy static in it or just the slightest throaty thing of night desire.
She used to sing in a church choir in her Big Ten town, she liked to call it, but quit over some belittlement, some perceived slight-how she would hate to hear me say perceived.
I handed her the mineral water and she said something about Brian. I thought she might be trying to preempt my own Brian remark. She'd felt it coming in the routine reading of signals in the marriage sensurround.
"Did he recommend another movie where everybody ends up in a storm sewer shooting each other?"
"This is how Brian relieves the pressure of being Brian."
I remembered a party where she stuck herself in a corner of the room with a man we both knew slightly, a university poet with long raked hair and stained teeth, laughing-he talked, she laughed, innocent enough, you say, or not innocent at all but completely acceptable, a party's a party, and if the huddle went on far too long, who is to notice but the husband? And I said to her later. This was a long time ago when the kids were small and Marian drove a car without a pencil in her hand. I said to her later, self-importantly because this was the point, to speak with exaggerated dignity, to speak to the depths of my being and make fun of myself at the same time because this is what we do at parties.
I said, I suffer from a rare condition that afflicts Mediterranean men. It's called self-respect.
I stood in the doorway watching the movie with her.
"Will Jeff be living with us forever, do you think?"
"Could happen."
"The job at the diet ranch. Fell through?"
"I guess."
"He didn't say?"
"I'm watching this," she said.
"Did you do the newspapers?"
"I did the bottles. Tomorrow's bottle day. Let me watch this," she said.
"We'll both watch it."
"You don't know what's going on. IVe been watching for an hour and a quarter."
"I'll catch up."
"I don't want to sit here and explain."
"You don't have to say a word."
"The movie's not worth explaining," she said.
"I'll catch up by watching."
"But you're interfering," she said.
"I'll be quiet and Til watch."
"You're interfering by watching," she said.
The remark pleased her, it had a tinge of insight, and she stretched smiling in a sort of coiled yawn, hips and legs steady, upper body bent away. I guess I knew what she meant, that another's presence screws up the steady balance, the integrated company of the box. She wanted to be alone with a bad movie and I was standing judgment.
"You work too hard," I told her.
"I love my job. Shut up."
"Now that I've stopped working too hard, you work too hard."
"I'm watching this."
"You work unnecessarily hard."
"If he tries to kill her, I'm going to be very upset."
"Maybe he'll kill her off camera."
"Off camera, fine. He can use a chain saw. As long as I don't have to see it."
I watched until my glass was empty. I went back to the kitchen and turned off the light. Then I went into the living room and looked at the peach sienna sofa. It was a new piece, a thing to look at and absorb, a thing the room would incorporate over time. It took the curse off the piano. We had a piano no one played, one of Marian's Big Ten heirlooms, an object like a mounted bearskin, oppressing all of us with its former life.
I turned off the light in the living room but first I looked at the books on the shelves. I stood in the room looking at the peach sienna sofa and the Rajasthani wall hanging and the books on the shelves. Then I turned off the light. Then I checked the other light, the light in the back hall, to make sure it was still on in case my mother had to get up during the night.
I stood in the doorway again. Marian watched TV, body and soul. She lit another cigarette and I went into the bedroom.
I stood looking at the books on the shelves. Then I got undressed and went to bed. She came in about fifteen minutes later. I waited for her to start undressing.
"What do I detect?"
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Between you and Brian."
"What do you mean?" she said.
"What do I detect? That's what I mean."
"He makes me laugh," she said finally.
"He makes his wife laugh too. But I don't detect anything between them."
She thought about ways to reply to this. It was an amusing remark perhaps, not what I'd intended. She looked at me and walked out of the room. I heard the shower running across the hall and I realized I'd done it all wrong. I should have brought up the subject standing in the doorway while she was watching TV. Then I could have been the one who walks out of the room.