Apart From Love (37 page)

At first I cannot see it, I wouldn’t, because look, her arms and legs are just as scrawny as ever—but then she starts turning away, and the light is so dazzling as to play tricks on me. It is erasing and redrawing the creases of his shirt around her curves, which suggests to me, at that second, crumpled tissue paper encasing a pear.
 

I watch the earring dangling there, from her fingers, as she flicks a wisp of her auburn hair, and brings the thing to her earlobe. A matching earring is dangling opposite her, glistening out of the pane of glass.

“Anyhow,” says Anita. “This morning Lenny got out of bed with a pretty foul mood, telling me not to wait up for him. And me, I tried to make light of how things had turned up between us, so I didn’t tell him nothing about how he’d cried last night, ‘cause anyway, he won’t even believe me. And instead I kissed him, leaving him no choice but to kiss me right back, which in spite of himself, he did.”

“And I shouldn’t even tell you, and even if I did, I shouldn’t, really, blush over it like this—but what started with a tiny tickle, and an innocent little smooch on the lips ended up, to my surprise, with a big flair—like old times, almost! So I made the mistake of not paying close attention to nothing he said after that, ‘cause like, I didn’t want to trouble myself with no more questions—till I got up from bed, and came here to find this envelope, see here? With them bundles, big bundles of cash, inside.”

I cannot help asking, “What is that for?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t deserve
this
.”

“Well,
he
thinks you do.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she says, shaking her head. “I ain’t the
other woman
no more. A wife, that’s what I’ve become, and not just because of a wedding, or a mistake in the way things came about—but because, you see, here I am. Ten years! I deserve better than an afterthought, I mean, better than someone swaggering out of the bedroom and like, making a big display of throwing his cash at me after having sex—no matter the damn amount! And I bet it’s small change for him, anyhow.”

Then Anita rises up from the table. Her motion is abrupt, as if she has come, in a blink, to a point of decision. “Here,” she says, pushing the entire heap across the table, to the very edge. “Want it?”

I hesitate, “If he did leave it for you, then...”

Anita cuts in, “You can have it, Ben. All of it.”
 

I step back from her. “No,” I say. “I cannot take it from you.”

Which brings a smile to her lips, which is playful and at the same time, full of spite. Impatient, she lays her hand on one of the bundles, and snaps lightly at its rubber band. “I don’t want none of this money, Ben, you can take it or else, return it to him, or whatever. Don’t make me decide things for you. I ain’t your mama.”
 

And in a snap, she tosses the bundle up in the air with all her might. The thing rises up, bending and flipping in the glow of morning light, till I make up my mind to reach up and catch it.

At which time, with a pop, dozens of bills separate out of the pack, as if a bird has just shot through the place, shaking out her tail feathers. There is a big, vigorous flurry of green. Hundred dollar bills go flying, drifting to and fro in the crisp, golden air as if to tease me, falling out of my grasp in a grand swirl all over the floor.

“Money don’t come cheap,” says Anita. “There’s something I want in return.”

And before I can ask, What is it, she takes my hand in hers and places it right there, on the coarse fabric of that shirt, on her belly. Instantly I feel warm—not just on the palm of my hand, but all over, inside.
 

“All I want is a fair deal,” she says. “And it’s not even for me that I’m asking this. It’s for my baby. You can’t judge me for that—so just, don’t. Now I ain’t stupid, Ben. I reckon Lenny has big expenses, like, taking care of your mom living there, at that Sunrise home, and all. Anyhow,” she gives me a look, “he’s gonna do right by
you
, all right. Just remind him he has two sons, will you?”

Is that all she wants, I ask myself, and as if to confirm, she nods at me, saying, “He should do right by both of them. Just promise me that, Ben. To you he’ll listen.”

Then, without even waiting for an answer Anita stuffs the bundles back into the envelope. With a swift motion—as if she denies herself the space of even a single second to think, to regret her decision—she drops in the pair of earrings, and the pearl necklace as well.

“Wait! Why don’t you keep that, at least?” I ask her.

“I wish I could,” she says. “Just a few years ago I would be dying, just dying for the chance to touch, let alone wear something so expensive, so stylish. I swear, I would have killed for that chance! For a girl like me, it’s awful tempting. But I can’t do it now. Believe me, Ben: I’ve tried. When I bring that earring near me it’s like, I feel Natasha rushing in, like she’s coming to breathe something right here, right in my ear. And her whisper—oh God!—it’s so freaking faint that I can’t even tell no more what it is that she wants from me.”

“You are so superstitious, it is cute,” I say. “I suppose you never dare play her piano.”
 

In place of an answer, Anita slips back to the window, and fumbles in the breast pocket of the shirt, and digs out a red lipstick. On her back I can, for an instant, spot a light impression of the clasp of her bra. I can tell—by reading the motion of fabric around her shoulder blade—that she is applying a fresh rim around her lips.
 

Perhaps to her, she does not look like herself today, because there she is, leaning into the glass, twirling a red wisp of hair around her finger, as if to make sure it is really her.
 

The glass gives a glimpse of what lies beyond, a gray street view, over which flows a faint line, the line of his stiff collar, peeling away from what looks to be her neck. From this angle I think I can spot also the hollow, the reflected hollow between her beasts, and a vague impression of something plump and fruity. Perhaps a mouth.
 

So I say, “I suppose you never dare look in her mirror, either.”
 

And she turns over her shoulder and gives me a look, as if to say, No! It ain’t true, and I so hate you for guessing that! Like, I don’t need none of your stupid comments—so don’t you start, now!

Which of course, I ignore.
 

“The way I see it,” I go on to tell her, “you must choose, and soon. Either you get rid of everything here, I mean, empty this place, no matter what my father says, and make it yours, I mean, truly yours—or else, for your own good, move out of here and go, make your home someplace else.”

“I’ve thought about that,” she has to admit.
 

A moment later she says, “Yes, you’re so right! I’m gonna totally empty this place!” And her mind leaps ahead of mine, because now Anita comes up with, “Of all them old pieces of furniture, the first thing to go is this: the white piano.”

The piano? It is so dear to me, and carries so many memories of mom, her piano lessons and her rehearsals and concerts, that at once I change my position, and say, “What? Why? And how, how dare you? I mean, how can you even think of getting rid of
that
?”

She lays her arms around my neck, as if to calm me down, and she says to me, in a softer voice this time, “The piano, it don’t belong here, and it don’t really belong to me—or even to you. It belongs to your mama, right? So let’s do the right thing, and bring it to her.”

I hesitate to ask, “What, to Sunrise?”

And she smiles, “Yes, Ben, to Sunrise!”
 

And then, then her arms find a way to wrap around my shoulders, and in turn—before I realize what it is I am doing—my hand slips around her waist, first over that shirt, then under it, so now my fingers are in the small of her back, clasping her tightly against me. I can feel every curve, every dimple on her, which makes my body come towards hers and cling, much too stiffly, to her.
 

I feel the flow, the blood swelling wildly in my veins, and my flesh melting here, under her touch, and at the same time hardening there,
 
under the crotch of my jeans, making me rise, rise from a newly formed core down there, in a truly immense way.
 

Her face is close, so close that the freckles on her nose turn suddenly into a milky blur, below which I can sense a smell, the strawberry smell of the lipstick on her mouth. And yet, in spite of nearly bursting out of my skin with this enormous erection, I make no advance, for fear she may guess that I do not know what I am doing.
 

She may bid me withdraw, or laugh at me, or even reject me outright.
 

I try to control myself, making absolutely no move—except for one thing, which is stronger than me: trembling. Oh, and another thing: sweating. I suppose I should remove my palms from her breast, because by now they are so wet, wet to the point of being sticky.
 

But before I can bring myself to do that, Anita takes pity on me, for which I shall forever be grateful. She brings me in, and rubs her cheek against mine, so now her hair flames all around me.
 

I fall to my knees before her, pressing my head below the mound of her belly, nosing around, down the slope to the red fuzz right there, between her legs. Which makes her hips roll this way and that around me, and her knees part slightly as she comes down, and she holds me, with great softness, and kisses my hair, my eyes.
 

And her lips—

I should not tell you anything about her lips, how sweet and moist they are. I should not tell you anything, period. Not sure right now if that is what I have just done. If so, I should edit it out. Erase it.
 

Wait; let me just do that.
 

Rewind. Record.

And Anita smiles, “Yes, Ben, to Sunrise!”
 

After which she bustles about, and with a new burst of energy she runs to the living room and wraps the piano in a few layers of blankets, which she ties around the legs, so its surface would not be scuffed or gouged. She calls some piano moving experts, and negotiates a price, and tells them to be extra careful and strap the thing securely to a dolly, or else.
 

She orchestrates the arrival time with the administration at Sunrise home. She calls each one of my three aunts, just to give them a chance to give their blessings for the move, or not.
 

Finally, Anita calls my father once, twice, three times in his office, and cannot leave a message, because the answering machine must be full.
 

So she dials Mr. Bliss’s number, which she has managed, somehow, to find in a notebook in some drawer, and talks with his secretary, who seems quite surprised to be asked about Lenny.
 

By now everyone is on board regarding the piano—everyone, that is, except my father, who for the moment, cannot be reached anywhere.
 

Meanwhile I get a large frying pan, and turn the heat up, and start pouring batter till it hisses in there. I do it because I must. I must get myself busy, to delay thinking about what has happened here between us, to avoid realizing that a price would be paid for it. Sooner or later he would know what we have done.
 

No doubt I would be severely punished, and so would she.

I manage to burn the batter into pancakes, lifting one after another with a spatula into an attempted flip in the air. It turns out that despite years of trial and error, and above all, of unreasonable hope, still, to this day I am just as I used to be: an incredibly lousy cook.
 

By the time I am done, the scene is a mess. It brings to mind a charred battlefield. Some of the batter has ended up drizzling on the cooktop, and spattering onto the floor, mostly on my left foot, and on a limp rubber band, and a previously crisp one-hundred dollar bill, both of which are lying down there, in the dust. But I do not mind—and neither does Anita.