Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (31 page)

 
          
 
He felt a swelling in his shorts, taut pressure
against the pocket of his jockstrap. Dear God! He was getting a hard-on. (Milan
Kundera wept.) He fell it spring free of its pouch. It was probably poking out
the leg of his shorts. He didn't dare stand up.

 
          
 
"Are you okay?" Her voice came from
inside her shirt.

 
          
 
"Yes. You?"

 
          
 
"Well ... I have this head in my
armpit." She laughed.

 
          
 
He snapped his head back. "Sorry.
Sorry." He pulled his head free and, bit by bit, disengaged his body from
hers, backing away on his hands and knees. Before she could turn around, he
bent down and checked his shorts. There it was. Judas Priest! He swiveled on
his knees, turning his back to her and shot his hand down the front of his
shorts. He grabbed the offending member, and disregarding its painful protests,
wrenched it back to a respectable stance. He pulled the tail of his shirt free
of his shorts and let it hang out.

 
          
 
"You play for keeps, Mr. Burnham,"
Eva said, smiling.

 
          
 
He wanted to ask her to call him Timothy, but
he thought not: He had forced quite enough intimacy on her for the time being.
"I am sorry. Miss Pym."

 
          
 
"No harm done." She found the ball
in a comer. "That was a let, so it's still love-one."

 
          
 
"No, no, I insist. Your point. I never
got near the ball."

 
          
 
"Let's play it over."

 
          
 
Keep arguing, Burnham told himself. Stall for
time, till the creature in your pants dies a natural death. "No, really.
Your point. One-all."

 
          
 
Did she know? Her eyes left his face and
traveled quickly down his front. She smiled and shrugged and said, "Okay.
Whatever you say."

 
          
 
Burnham won the first game, 15-12. He was sure
she had let him win, because she had stayed a point or two ahead all the way to
11-all and then, inexplicably, had made three unforced errors in succession. He
double-faulted at 14-11, then she missed an absurdly easy shot to lose the
game.

 
          
 
He was positive she had let him win when she
thrashed him in the second game, 15-7, never ahead by less than four points,
drawing him back and forth across the court like a fly on a spinning rod.

 
          
 
He didn't know why she had let him win the
first game—a kindly gesture to his male ego, perhaps—but he was determined to
take, not be given, the third game.

 
          
 
As the loser of the previous game, he served
first. He knew she expected a high, slow dribbler, so he boomed a line-drive
serve that zipped behind her and took her by surprise.

 
          
 
He swung at his second serve as if he were
going to patty-cake the ball, but at the last instant snapped his wrist and
fired a low bullet that struck her in the hip.

 
          
 
Two-love.

 
          
 
As she prepared to receive his third serve,
she looked at him with a theatrical sneer and said, "1 see your rotten
plan.
Vietnam
squash."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"You plan to blow me away, turn me into a
parking lot."

 
          
 
"Beware, archfiend." Burnham
chuckled. "You haven't seen the half of it."

 
          
 
He hit a dribbler and moved out onto the
"T." She returned it hard down the center, right at him. He stepped
out of the ball's way and slashed it, floating a wicked slice that would die
when it struck the front wall.

 
          
 
But the ball flew higher than he had hoped,
and she had time to dash forward and scoop it up.

 
          
 
He could tell by the way she held her racket
as she ran that she meant to dink the ball into the comer, so he charged after
her.

 
          
 
She wristed the ball softly into the comer. He
reached around her and caught it an inch from the floor and flicked a little
lob that soared over her head.

 
          
 
She shot her arm up, but the ball was already
behind her head. She staggered backward, swung wildly, stepped on Burnham's
foot, slammed her rear end into his shoulder and collapsed on top of him.

 
          
 
He lay on his back. Her ponytail was in his
mouth. It tasted sweet and salty. His panting breath moved the little hairs
around the base of her neck. He could see far into the pink cavern of her ear.
She rolled off him and drove a heavy thigh into his crotch.

 
          
 
Not again, he prayed. I can't hide it this
time.

 
          
 
She rolled onto her knees and elbows. He could
see, down the front of her shirt, her breasts heaving as she breathed, and he yearned
for one to escape its silky prison and flop free.

 
          
 
"We have to stop meeting like this,"
she said. "You're a married man."

 
          
 
"How do you know?"

 
          
 
"Everybody's married." She smiled.
"Aren't they?"

 
          
 
"Are you?"

 
          
 
"No. Who'd want a wife who can't get out
of her own way?"

 
          
 
They both laughed, and they helped each other
up. Her arm, as Burnham touched it, was slick with sweat, and once again he
felt the creature stirring in his shorts. Quickly, he removed his hand, but he
could not bring himself to wipe his palm on his shirt. He kneaded his
fingertips together.

 
          
 
Now the creature struggled again to slip its
bonds. He dropped his racket and, as he turned to fetch it, wiped his hand on
his shirttail. "Now. Where were we?"

 
          
 
"What do you say we flip for the third
game?" she said. "I don't think either of us'11 survive it if we play
it."

 
          
 
"Okay. Rough or smooth." Burnham
spun his racket.

 
          
 
"Rough."

 
          
 
Burnham examined the telltale string. It was
smooth. "Rough it is," he said. "The day is yours."

 
          
 
Why did he do that? he wondered, as Eva
gathered up her sweat suit. Why did he want to play the gallant? Who was he
trying to impress? Himself?

 
          
 
In the corridor outside the court, Burnham
looked at his watch. It was ten to one. He wanted to ask Eva to lunch, but he
didn't dare. He should go back to the office, he told himself, in case the
President called. But that wasn't it; he was lying. The fact was, he was
married, and to ask a young woman to lunch constituted a kind of infidelity. No.
Even that wasn't the whole truth. He could take a woman to lunch—Dyanna,
say—without burdening himself with guilt, because Dyanna caused no turmoil in
his loins. But to go to lunch with a young woman over whom he had already sprung
not one but two impudent boners would be more than a lunch: It would be a date.
Like Jimmy Carter, he would be committing adultery in his heart. He had so far
been trying to maintain a conviction that the sorry state of his marriage was
no one's fault. The misunderstandings would eventually sort themselves out. But
if he added adultery to the mix—even mental adultery, spiritual self-abuse—the
balance would tip against him; he would become the villain.

 
          
 
He and Eva walked toward the locker rooms. A
few steps before the point where they would have separated, Hal intercepted
them.

 
          
 
"How was it, children?" he asked
cheerfully.

 
          
 
"A scrimmage," Eva said. "I
thought I might have to have his nose removed surgically from my armpit."

 
          
 
"Lovely."

 
          
 
"I was about to make a peace offering to
Mr. Burnham." She glanced at Burnham with a half smile. "Like buying
him lunch."

 
          
 
Burnham stopped breathing. She had read his
mind. Maybe she had read his shorts. What should he say? He should beg off. He
could use work as an excuse. The White House was always a valid excuse for
anything. No one understood what went on in the White House, but everyone
assumed it was a cauldron of constant crises.

 
          
 
But he didn't want to beg off. He wanted to
have lunch with her. He said, "Oh."

 
          
 
"A gentleman must accept," Hal said,
reaching out to pat Burnham's shoulder.

 
          
 
Burnham recoiled from Hal's touch, raising his
hand and pretending to be gravely concerned with the time of day. "I'd
like to . . ."he said, leaving an implicit "but" hanging in the
air.

 
          
 
"The President won't miss you," Hal
said.

 
          
 
"All right," Burnham said.
"Sure." He looked at Eva, whose smile made him uncomfortable. It
wasn't a flirting smile, but it was knowing, as if her sensors had plucked the
conflicting signals from his mind, appraised his temptations and determined how
to exploit them. He felt that she knew more about him than she had any reason
to know. And that, he reassured himself, was patently absurd.

 
          
 
"I'll see you back here in . . . ten
minutes?" Eva said.

 
          
 
"Ten minutes."

 
          
 
In the shower, Burnham did battle with guilt,
and, to his surprise, won an easy victory. His mind was finely tuned to
self-interest, and it concluded that infidelity was defined by intent. If he
were to be mugged in an alley and raped by the Rockettes, no infidelity would
exist. Just so, he had decided not to ask her to lunch. His intentions were
pure; he could not be responsible for hers. He suspected that arguments could
be made against his conclusion, but he chose not to entertain them. For the
time being, he was secure.

 
          
 
The only uncontrollable element hung in a
froth of soap suds between his legs. "You, sir," he said sternly to
his quiescent penis, "are well advised not to betray me again."

 
          
 
When they were outside the Y, Eva said,
"Where do you want to go?"

 
          
 
"Anywhere. As long as it has a
menu."

 
          
 
"A menu?"

 
          
 
"I have to order myself. I can't take the
blue-plate special."

 
          
 
"Why not?"

 
          
 
"I have a bunch of food allergies. It's
no big thing, but I have to be careful."