Love to all

DRESSED OLDER THAN SHE WAS. SHE WORE SUITS SHADED PEACH AND PAS­TEL. SHE WORE SCARVES SHOULDER-FLUNG: ONE TIME I WATCHED HER EXAMINE HERSELF IN A DARK­ENED SHOP WINDOW, FLINGING HER SCARF BACK ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES BEFORE JUDGING IT TOSSED ARIGHT. SHE MADE STRANGE FACES IN MIRRORS, LIPS INPUCKERING TO BLOT LIPSTICK. THEN SHE WOULD GIVE HERSELF THE SAME NAR­ROW STARE SHE SOMETIMES GAVE HER PARTNERS IN CONVERSATION, AND PAT, TO NO EFFECT, HER

hair, helmet-cut. Standard red lip­stick was her only and unvarying makeup and her jewelry was fake pearl earrings, dutiful and middle-aged. Her well-policed appearance suggested such a complete lack of humor that I sometimes suspected it to be, like her stiffly informal speech, a dry joke. Or was that just an idea I summoned to entertain myself, a fun-house mirror I put before Katherine to give her an interesting look? What, in fact, was she?

Leon also—what was he? Taci­turn, certainly. His grooming was not impeccable like his wife's: a day's blond stubble might cling to his jaw. He was trim, and handsome, his face a set of even planes undisturbed by expression. His pale eyes told noth­ing. Katherine often spoke for him, offering Leon's opinions as if he weren't present: Leon thinks this or that, Leon found the book tired, inter­esting, contrived, etc. Leon would sit and impassively listen to his own judg­ments, his inner life so opaque that one could believe either that Kath­erine was reporting his opinions with worshipful accuracy or that she was dictating them in an exercise of Pinteresque dominance.

The rare occasions when he did turn chatty were not revealing. We ate once at a restaurant next to a group of four young people the host sought to resituate so that he could push together tables for a larger party coming in. By way of apology the host offered the dis­placed young people a complimentary dessert. One of the women said, "That works for me!" and for the rest of our meal Leon offered concurrence when­ever appropriate (and sometimes when not) with a bright "That works for me!" He pressed the phrase into service at many of our subsequent get-togethers. I wondered if it also came to be used in his university lectures.

He walked with a cane, an odd-angled medical-supply thing with a forearm-circling ring above a ribbed grip. I never asked him about his limp, which was severe. I assumed the disability was congenital or arose in childhood. It was one of the things—I admit, not the first thing—that made me uneasy about what happened.

I was at their place for what I thought was going to be dinner with the two of them. When I arrived Leon wasn't there yet—held up at work, Katherine said. She was wear­ing a white top of a satiny material thick as a mainsail and dark slick pants with sharp creases that flapped at her ankles as she led me into the kitchen. She poured me red wine and went back to her cooking. She was making scalloppine and she bustled

about rattling pans, her eyes on the cook­ing as she talked.

Someone at work: "He spent 20 minutes describing the kind of pen he likes. The gel handle with a nib of however many micro­meters, and my Lord the man might have been discussing the nuances of a fine port. He was just like a wine bore. The things that people manage to be interested in. For heaven's sake, I can certainly appre­ciate a good wine—this one is nice, don't you think?"

"Very nice." I was on a swivel stool watch­ing her cook.

"But some people turn it into an end-all and be-all. Why would anyone want to make room in their brain for all that information—vineyards and vintages and varietals. Three Ks! Champion alliterator!"

"Heh-heh."

"I went to a wine tasting once, and the discussion—for Pete's sake, I could have been at an Asperger's convention. The lingo. Holy ma-holy. They could have been the Slovakian debate team. All these people, gas­tronomes, connoisseurs, whatever, a switch must have flipped in their brain at some point and all of a sudden they're obsessive and they can't know enough about X and the universe revolves around the one thing. How does that happen? Bad potty training? Are you a Freudian?"

"People are crazy," I nodded. A squeaking sound made me realize I was swiveling back and forth on the stool. I stopped. Katherine didn't seem to notice.

"Food and drink is a reality, of course. For its own sake. Sustenance. I enjoy cooking. But it has a place in life, in the overall context, am I right? Do we need to write a dissertation on it? And the seriousness. Ye gods, what a wacky perspective. Life is to be lived. When I start holding forth about what kind of Pentel pen I use or what kind of wine I think is really distinguished, you can call the guys with the butterfly nets. Or just take me out and shoot me, you have my permission. Not permis­sion, instruction. My psychological living will. Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

"Heh-heh."

"I do love cooking. As a part of life. I love doing something that I can do with my hands. You can't sit in an office reading all day and then come home and read for recreation. Or write, I assume. Don't you find? You have to rest one faculty, exercise another, rotate the crops? Do you love cooking?"

"I don't really. I'm not very good at it."

"You probably do some male thing? Carpentry?"

"Nah, I sit on my ass."

"I doubt that very much."

"No, really."

"We're going to Cape Cod this summer. As usual."

"How did you get to Cape Cod?"

"How will we get to Cape Cod? Drive?"

"No, from carpentry, how did you get to Cape Cod?"

"Oh—non sequitur! I don't know, was it the idea of relaxation? Leon loves it."

"Uh-huh."

"Sun, surf and—I would say sun, surf and sex. But we don't surf. And Leon is pretty useless in the sack."

"Uh-huh." I said it without inflection. I realized I was swiveling again. I stopped. I sipped the wine.

Kathcrine turned a cutlet and it sizzled. She looked at me. After a moment she said, "You're not much of a talker, are you."

"Oh, talking."

"But you're a writer. A verbal person."

"Yeah—professionally. I'm off now, heh-heh."

"I see, so I have to do all the talking."

"No, I'll, uh, I can recite 'Ozymandias.'"

"What's that, a poem?"

"Shelley. Actually I'm not sure I can recite it. 'I met a traveler from an antique land.'"

"Very amusing. I guess I threw you off your game, talking about Leon."

"Oh no, not at all. That's fine."

She looked at me, eyes narrowed. She glanced back down at the pan and turned off the range and turned to me again. "Okay, let's quit kidding around," she said. She stepped to where I sat with my back to the counter. She placed hands on my thighs and leaned in. "I think we both know the score," she breathed. Her head extended toward mine.

Katherine's lean in brought smells—of soap, a lavendery perfume, mint (her tooth­paste?), something cedary from the mainsail blouse. Katherine's lips were creatures from the deepest sea where fish are blind and have no color. They sucked and crawled across my lips. I closed my eyes. The kitchen was warm. I heard sizzles ebbing in the pan. The kiss ended with the sound of suction losing grip as my lipflesh slithered squeaking out of Kather­ine's mouth. She kissed again, regathering.

The strangeness of her advance had sent my heart into my throat, but now it settled, my mind letting go. A sexual encounter with Katherine was unthinkable—therefore, this wasn't happening. Therefore, I could relax. Her hand was crawling up my thigh. It found my cock, and her fingers brushed it with care enough to feel its shape. It responded with interest. Katherine's feet shuffled and her legs pressed between mine and tensed, push­ing into me. As we kissed I reached around, in the spirit of the thing, to hold her ass. Firm at first beneath the fabric, it relaxed at my touch, then tensed again and rocked against my hand. I turned my head so that my mouth slid from under hers and I gargled a pedes­trian thought: "What about Leon?"

"He's in Chicago."

"You said at work." It came out petulant.

"He is at work. At a symposium. In Chi­cago. Are you getting a boner?"

I had never liked that word, boner. "So he won't be home...."

"Till tomorrow. We can go nuts."

Her lips once again touched mine and worked many little muscles. My parts warmed, unfurling, higher (continued on page 98)

WE DON'T

u^fTan

LEON IS

LOVE & ALL

(continued from page 52) function hardly party. Her hand reached for me once more.

"Oh yes, you are getting a boner. Let's go to the bedroom. You can kiss me in the down-there region."

She disengaged and went into the hall, and my body obediently trailed, head turning as it passed a print: Grant Wood, hills, shrubbery. In the bedroom, street­light climbed weakly through the blinds to fall on soft geometric shapes. Two dark rectangles of art hung on white walls. A cream-colored square was the bed. An up-flared indigo chair, its back soft columns cinched by stitching, threw a heavy shadow on a shadowy floor.

Katherine was taking offher shirt. It hit the floor with a thud. A zipper snicked. Her pants dropped. She stepped. Her underwear was beige. Her hands were behind her back, shoulders working. Her bra loosened and her shoulders rolled for­ward and the bra slid off and there were waves of flesh. She hooked thumbs into her panties and wiggled, pushing down to reveal more flesh, a blue vein running between hip bone and tuft of hair. Her nakedness cued me to take off my own clothes. Released from its constraining briefs, my penis bobbed.

Katherine leaned to the head of the bed to grab the cream comforter, balancing like a bather in a painting. She pulled the comforter down the bed on her side and its weight made it slink to the floor. She climbed onto the pale green sheets and lay on her back and as she pulled her legs back and ran her hands inside her thighs something in my lizard brain sent roaring signals to my swollen lips. I fell upon her pussy, wagging and licking at it until it was sloppily relaxed and much of my face was wet and I worked my tongue inside as she started bouncing. I was belowdecks on a storm-tossed ship with its unsecured cargo, membranous and strange, banging around me. Claw-fingered hands kept me from climbing out until, suddenly, the works locked up—someone yelling "Bingo!"— and everything quivered, and relaxed, and the hands fell away and the seas receded. I got to my knees. Katherine took my cock in her mouth and rattled it around with a loud Mmmm and then dragged it across her face, licking and saying "Oh yum." She slid to sit upright and held my cock to her stomach as its aching grew and stroked it and then shook it against her breasts till it bucked and something raced shriek­ing through my nerves and I came on her and she laughed and said "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!" She hopped off the bed and went to the adjoining bathroom.

I lay back, dazed. A wedge of light popped through the bathroom door, cut­ting the bed. Waist down my body was terribly bright. I rested a curled hand edgewise on my thigh to shadow my sodden penis. A subtle change in its cen­ter of gravity sent it easing around like

a compass needle. I adjusted my shad­ing hand.

Katherine was humming at the bath­room sink. She ran water onto a washcloth, which she then used to mop the come off her chest. She leaned over the sink so that it would collect the water dribbling off her, and her arching back sent her privates back­ward under her ass as if to check on me. I made sure my penis was still shaded.

What this had to do with love I wasn't sure.

I wondered how I was going to get out of there. I thought about my own empty apartment, waiting. I thought about the deli at the corner where I could get the day's newspaper, still unread. The short Pakistani would be standing behind the counter murmuring Urdu into his head­set as he made change.

The bathroom light went off. Kather­ine came back still humming. She said, "Where are you?"

"Here."

She climbed blindly onto the bed. "You want to leave?"

"Um." I wasn't sure how to take it. It had seemed equable enough.

"You can leave." She started humming again.

I left, wondering if she would eat all the scalloppine.

I told my ex-wife I had slept with Kather­ine Augenblick.

"My God. Are you out of your mind?"

"I guess."

"What did you do that for?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean to."

"You didn't mean to. Are you a child?"

"I guess."

"But—why Kathy Augenblick?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean to."

"She drives you wild with desire?"

"Don't make fun of me."

"Okay. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say."

"No. What is there to say."

"What is there to say. Wow."

Three days later my ex-wife called again.

"Look—what's going on with you and Kathy Augenblick?"

"I told you."

"You told me you had sex, but why is she calling me? And inviting me to dinner?"

"She invited you to dinner?"

"She said the four of us should get together, it's been so long, blah blah."

"Huh. Well "

"This is your problem. Get her to quit calling."

"Of course. What did you tell her?"

"Oh, you know, I said I'm really jammed this week, we'll work it out later. Please get her to quit calling."

"Okay."

"Kathy Augenblick should not be my problem."

"No, of course not. It's funny she called you. She hasn't called me."

"I don't want to be her confidante."

"No, of course not."

"She said she admired how well you and I get along since the divorce."

"So she knows—that you know about us?"

"She said, 'Your ex and I had a little whoop-de-do.' I don't want to hear this."

"No, of course not. She said 'whoop-de-do'?"

"She said that you're very dear but pretty useless in the sack."

"She—what? Those words?"

"Then she tried to talk to me about pre­

mature ejaculation. This is "

"Holy fucking shit! What is that! I

never "

"This is unfair to me. Please get her to quit calling."

"Kathy, the thing is, though Lynnie and I get along well, I sense that, well, she doesn't want to be included in—she's uncomfortable with—she's not really, um, if I'm seeing someone—not that you and I are 'seeing' each other in that sense, but—it just, we shouldn't, there's no need to include her, really, because I get the feeling that for her it's somewhat, um, discomfiting, so it's really not a good thing. However well-intentioned."

I waited.

I said, "Hello?"

"Yes, fine, I understand, some people find it hard to act like a grown-up."

"Um...."

"You don't have to say anything, I shouldn't put you in the position of hav­ing to defend her. Especially since you start from a place of social awkwardness. She's a very dear person. Nothing to apol­ogize for."

"Yes. Thank you."

"So it'll just be you then?"

'Just me?"

"At dinner."

"Which—at dinner?"

"Tuesday, yes."

"I didn't know there was a plan. She didn't say there was a definite plan."

"Tuesday, yes. At Trastevere."

"Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay."

'Just you then?"

"Yes, okay. Tuesday. Let's see. At—which?"

"This is the appetizer portion? This could feed a family of four."

I said, "It's a lot of gnocchi."

"A lot of gnocchi? This could feed a fam­ily of four."

"It works for me," said Leon, forking a piece off her plate.

Kathy held the plate toward me. "Gnocchi?"

"No, thanks, I'm fine with the, uh

What's mine again? I forgot what I "

"Is one a gnocco?" said Leon, spearing another.

"He was the fourth Marx Brother," said Katherine.

"No, Zeppo was the fourth. Gnocco would be fifth," said Leon.

"Over one Marx Brother I'm a liar?"

"Actually there were five, I think," said Leon. "Bippo or Bumpo or something, never in the movies."

"You're thinking of Natty Bumppo."

"You're thinking of Natty Dresser."

"You're thinking of Marie Dressier."

"You're thinking of Rose Marie."

"Gnocco would be a Stooge," I said.

Leon and Kathy looked at me, blank. I had had a drink before leaving home and a drink before we ordered and now we were having wine.

I explained, "Three Stooges. Because, Curly, you know, Nyuk nyuk nyuk."

They continued to stare.

"Then that would be Nyukko," said Leon. "Except it wouldn't, because that was Curly."

"Women don't like the Three Stooges," said Katherine. "They find them inane."

"I'm going to explain that at the next MLA conference. After I deliver my paper on Harry Ritz."

"Scholar. Genius. Harold Bloom. Excuse me," she said to the waiter who was putting a glass in front of her. "I ordered my seltzer water midway through the meal."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, taking it away.

"He thought all of our selections were

excellent," said Leon. "Except for mine, which was very nice."

"Loser. Sad sack. Harold Bloom."

"I march to the beat of a different drum," he said.

"How poignant. How brave. How Emersonian."

"Heh-heh-heh," I said.

"Look, I'd like to settle something," said Katherine, "before the mains arrive. I'd just like to know what we're doing after dinner."

"Going back to our place, aren't we?"

"You'll come back with us?"

They were looking at me.

"Well...sure. I, uh...."

"There's a ringing acceptance," said Leon. "There's an eager camper."

"Heh-heh-heh. No, it's just that I have to

get up pretty early "

"You do know why we're inviting you back?" said Katherine.

I looked at them looking at me.

"A little repeat performance?" she said.

I looked at Leon. His eyebrows lifted. "With variations?"

"Oh. Well. I'm not sure."

"We have somebody who isn't sure."

"Oh for God's sake," said Katherine, "it's just sex. We're not asking you to co-sign a mortgage."

"Heh-heh-heh!"

"We have a chuckler," said Leon. "We

have a dubious chuckler. You want to keep everything to yourself?"

"I don't know, I, sometimes I, yes, I want to keep my genitals to myself."

"Ha-ha. Amusing. Of course we're not talking about just genitals."

"Well."

"Your anus is part of your sexual equipment."

There was quiet. From back in the kitchen, pots clanking. When I became aware that Katherine and Leon were still looking at me and I wasn't speaking, I spoke. "Urn. Leon, I'll be frank. There are two words in that sentence that scare the shit out of me." I cleared my throat. "Three words."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," said Katherine. "We know you have a timorous manboy sexual­ity. That's okay. It's okay to be frightened of something new. It's rather dear, actually."

"Up to a point anything is charming," agreed Leon. "Then you want to get down to cases."

In my mind Katherine and I were facing

each other, naked, in their bedroom. There

was bouzouki music and she was performing

a Middle Eastern dance. A clanking behind

me—Leon handling his cane

"I've got to go," I said, standing.

"Oh for God's sake, grow up," said Katherine.

I dropped my napkin onto the chair. "I've got to go."

As I walked away I heard Leon saying, "I can't believe you called them 'mains.'"

I expected not to hear from them again and didn't, except for a mailing at Christmas­time. Above the salutation ("Dear Friends") was a picture of the two of them on a beach smiling into the camera, Katherine wearing a kind of sarong and Leon an open-necked oxford shirt. He had one arm around her. The other gripped his cane.

Among the things touched on in the letter (work, promotion, tenure) was this: "We are now officially a childless couple growing old and dotty. We've adopted a French bulldog, Rene, that we just adore. (I own up to it. Leon still pretends to resent having to walk him and affects disdain for the whole idea of pet owning.) We had to find a new rental for our annual pilgrimage to the Cape— our Truro cottage was strictly no pets. The new one, in Wellfleet, is not as quaint. But life changes and, as they say, you can't go home again—not even to a second home! Oh my! Hope your holidays are truly won­derful and the new year fresh and full. Love to all. Katherine. Leon."

I stared at Katherine's flowing signa­ture and beneath it Leon's crabbed print. I looked again at the picture of the two of them smiling. I called my ex-wife.

"Did you get the Christmas letter from Kathy and Leon?"

"The Christmas letter?"

"The letter they send every year with their news?"

"Do they? Oh yeah, I guess they do."

"You didn't get the new one?"

"God, I don't know, I might have," she said. "I just throw them out."