Infidelity

I pictured suddenly what I looked like, and I remembered in that instant every gorgeous woman I had ever seen him with, the perfect blonde beauty of his wife, and I studied his face, so passionate and beautiful and dark between the ivory skin of my thighs.

He was looking up above my head now, then his head whipped around and he stared out of the porch at the street. I leaned forward. There was a black Nissan with dark tinted windows across the street, the engine idling.

He stood and reached for me. “Come with me. Quick, get in the house…”

“…Mary,” I reminded him. I could see he didn’t remember my name. I pulled my jeans up. “My name’s Mary.”

He reached for something on the rock ledge of the porch. It was what he had been staring at over my head. Then he pushed me inside the front door and locked it. “Jesus, Mary, I know who you are.” He was holding up a delicate silk cardigan sweater, a pale peach color with pearl buttons. He held it up to his face for a moment, as if to smell it. Then he looked at me. “We got some self-esteem issues?”

I stared at the sweater, then looked around the living room of his house. His wife’s house. His wife’s front porch, where he had just… “Where’s your wife?”

He looked down at me, his face suddenly dark. “She split.” He threw the sweater on the back of the couch. “I don’t remember seeing this on the porch. I thought maybe she’d come back for something. She didn’t take any of her clothes. Good excuse to go shopping for more, I guess.” He walked through into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. “You want a beer, Mary?”

“I should go.”

He came back through from the kitchen and leaned in the doorway, a brown glass bottle of beer in his hand. I felt a little shaky being so near him, like I wanted to touch him, maybe run my fingers under the waistband of his Levi’s and feel his erection through the faded soft denim. I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands to hide the tears. “What are you doing here? With me?”

“I live here, Mary. Alone, now. And what I’m doing here is tasting you.” He faltered, his lower lip between his teeth. “You’re so fresh and sweet, girl, so open. Almost transparent. Maybe I want to say I’m sorry for what I said to you in class. But I can see the way you look at me. So much hunger.” He tipped the bottle up to his mouth. “Maybe I just want to be with someone who looks at me the way you do.”

Jesus. He was doing it because he felt sorry for me. “Okay, I’ll take the beer.” I flopped down on the couch, and he brought me a bottle and sat down next to me. I felt a little awkward. Just because a man has had his head between your thighs doesn’t mean you know him well enough to talk afterward. “What’s with that car outside?”

He stroked his moustache, staring over at the locked front door. “One of my wife’s lovers.” He looked down at me. “She always has a pack of men around her, like the Queen’s court. I don’t really know if she tried to change when we got married, but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break. Too hard, as it turned out.”

“I’m sorry.” He was working a fingernail under the label of the beer bottle, peeling it off. “I mean, I’m sorry about your wife. That things didn’t work out.”

He ignored this. It sounded lame even to my ears. I gestured toward the street. “So was that guy the husband? You know, of the woman you were with in the restaurant?”

He shook his head. “No. That husband, he just likes to collect trophies. No, the one outside in the Nissan, he’s… I don’t know, he’s crazy. Obsessed. He doesn’t get Jessica at all. He doesn’t get that, for her, it’s a game. Like a hobby.” He shrugged like he didn’t care, but I could see the frost come back into his eyes, dangerous black ice.