Ghosts of Manhattan (6 page)

“Well, we've said we'd make a dinner plan in the city with them.”

“No one actually meant that, did they?” I truly believed that no one did.

“Of course they did. And we did. At least I did. Nick, I want us to make more friends in the city, especially friends that aren't Neanderthals.” This reference needs no clarification. We've had plenty of talks about my job and the sort of people it forced into our lives. “Just please call Oliver and make a plan.”

“I'm not calling Oliver. You call Sybil.” Damn it. My countermove has opened a door.

“Fine. I'll call her.”

“Jesus Christ. I don't want to do this.” I really don't. Not only would dinner be painful but there's something about Oliver that I don't want to invite into our lives even more so than the Neanderthals.

“Look. I'll just make one call and make the offer. If it doesn't go anywhere from there, so be it.” She says this in a conciliatory tone as though we've reached a compromise, though we still seem to be entirely on her agenda as best I can tell.

“It's already forgotten. Why mess with that?”

“Nick, we can't be flakes. We'll hold up our end and make an effort at follow-up.”

There is a forced and artificial casualness about her approach that is unsettling. She is pinning her determination on social etiquette. Since when has she ever cared about being a flake? She wants this dinner to happen for some reason and I know it isn't the reason she's given. I think of J.P. Morgan's observation that there are two reasons why a person does something—a good reason and the real reason. She holds her stare with me, one eyebrow up, defying me to knock her from the social high ground of good manners, as if to say, “You know I'm right and we have to do this.”

I know no such thing, but it's time to get out of bounds. Better to put this into the loss column and not fight. Maybe I can win a few points and get out of my hole from last night. “Christ, okay. Call her.”

“Thanks, Nicky.” She smiles, trying to be a gracious winner. Instead, I feel mocked.

She stands and I see her tiny workout shorts, the kind that stop right at the seam between the end of the buttocks and the very
start of the hamstring. She takes two steps toward me the way a kitten will approach a ball of yarn and slides one of her long, tan legs around behind me. She wraps her arms around me, resting her elbows on top of my shoulders. I lower my hands to cup her butt over the mesh of her shorts, like grabbing two not yet ripe cantaloupes.

My blood is up and I'm angry from our sparring over this dinner with Oliver. As usual, my aggression is channeled into an almost make-believe world where every muscle and nerve can lose control in violence and conquering while still getting and giving pleasure, release, and intimacy. This is a tactic Julia often uses, and one that has always enabled us to bury the awkward moments and stay happy. I'm not complaining.

At five ten and in her very high heels, we're almost eye to eye. I like times like this when she is in her bare feet and I can lean slightly forward over her and pronounce my height advantage. She pulls down on my neck and runs her lips from my chest to my jaw with the touch of a feather. I squeeze her ass, lifting her up and into me, and with her legs around my waist I walk us into the bedroom.

On the way, I pick up a bottle of lotion from the bathroom counter, then pulling her clothes off, I push her lying facedown on the bed and straddle her lower back. I squirt lotion on my hands and into her shoulders. Her hands over her head with palms down as though she's under arrest, I feel the hard muscles under her soft skin. I press down on the sides of her gentle V that leads from her shoulders to her small waist and back out again over her hips. I lower myself to sit over her calves while I spend more time working on the muscles of her butt. The longer I massage her, the shorter I'll last, so I move on to the hamstrings and calves, giving them less attention than they deserve. Sliding my hands back up
her legs, over her ass, and around her waist, I lift her hips up off the bed and back to me, her ear still to the mattress as though she's listening for a far-off herd, and her arms stretched straight ahead with her palms pressed down hard and ready to push back.

I enter her from behind. The first, slow entry always feels almost as good as the last will. I clamp my hands to her sides at the bend of her hips, controlling her motion. I'm like a captain at the helm of his ship, navigating the rolling waters onboard the envy of the fleet. She starts massaging herself with one hand.

Why the hell is she so keyed up on this dinner with Oliver Bennett? It has nothing to do with Sybil, who's as dull as a spoon. Julia barely paid any attention to her at that wedding. I'm sure she's interested in some new friends who have something different to offer from Jerry Cavanaugh, but she seems unusually interested here, like she's trying hard to seem uninterested.

I've developed a strong inner monologue living with Julia, especially during sex. I just can't always control the subject of conversation. I increase the pace, pulling back hard on her hips and straining my stomach muscles to throw myself forward in a thud of flesh. Each collision sends a minor tremor up her lean backside and the bounce forward of her body gives an appealing resistance to my next pull back against her hips and we build a rhythm like dribbling a basketball.

Looking down at her back and ass, I can imagine this same form in its college days, clenched and springing over the high bar. This is a visual that has sustained me, even when alone. With enough foreplay, this position can bring Julia to orgasm and sometimes we don't adjust. In a few thrusts, I hear her moans that are our verbal cue that she has come and that I can finish. I've felt on the verge since the beginning and in a few more thrusts I'm done.

I lower forward, stacking my shoulders on top of hers, and we
press our hips down flat on the bed and in another moment I'm no longer in her. The sweat between us feels slippery and good and I kiss the back of her neck but neither of us says anything. There's no conversation topic at the ready. I don't want to talk about my workday and I certainly don't want to talk about that god-awful dinner plan. She's already settled her victory there and won't bring it up again. Why force a conversation? I roll off her and enjoy the silence.

We used to wake up late on a Saturday with nothing planned and decide to drive four hours to Maryland just for a crab dinner that night. Or out to the Hamptons to rent a boat so we could spend the day sailing naked, swimming, and sunbathing. It was a standing decision to be together that was binding like a country of citizenship. It was our relationship that we loved. We were committed to it, worked for it, took pride in it, would take up arms to defend it. We each brought energy to the other, and each evening or weekend was a mini adventure with my companion and confidant. We were two kids masquerading as adults.

When we met at twenty-seven, she loved her career working for an interior designer in the city. When we married at twenty-nine, she seemed to care much less about work. She still worked but seemed to want to focus on family and a great marriage. I was already making good money and she knew plenty about the lifestyle of my job, but everyone thinks they can change a person a little. Just enough to suit them. She has tried with me in the years since, less and less over time. The less she tries with me, the more she disappears into her design books or the gym.

I don't believe in fate and I don't believe there's just one person out there for each of us. I also don't believe there are very many. Maybe there are a few hundred in the whole world who can really be the person to find their way to our soul. How many
opportunities, chances, encounters are we likely to have in our lifetimes to capture a moment with one of them? Maybe there are only five or six events in our lifetime when we have a glimpse of someone who could be that partner. I know Julia is one. Our chance for each other came early and I worry that we can't sustain our bond as we have grown into adults.

I put her through more headache than she deserves. Not many thirty-five-year-old wives have husbands that routinely flop into bed drunk in the middle of the weekday night as a part of the job. And worse yet, I doubt many wives have husbands who experience the world so privately, not sharing any observations or conclusions or real feelings. She knows I don't like my mother, and when she asks why, I say it's because my mother's a pain in the ass. I'm sure I can be frustrating to speak with.

I look over at her sweet face, eyes closed, lips slightly parted like a child sleeping. I still love her very much. I feel it in a swell, so strong that I discover I suddenly want to exclaim it to her, like a sailor first sighting land after long months at sea.

I reach down and squeeze her hand, hoping I can pass this swell to her in a current, like plugging in Christmas tree lights. She squeezes back. “I love you, Nick.” That felt good. Could this be so simple?

“I love you too.”

She rolls toward me, laying an arm and a leg across me, and angles her chin on my shoulder. “Your sister called. She needs to move the party back by an hour. Something to do with a soccer game with the kids.”

“Okay.” I had forgotten about her party and am now looking forward to it. My sister, Susan, is so much like me, only so much better. Mainly we have the same sense of humor. She's two years younger but I always included her with my crowd of friends. Even
among my closest friends it was she and I who were in on the silent joke. No one else in the room could speak our language of glances and nods and lips curled in a half smile. Speaking with her is like a window into a healthy me. One who hasn't polluted himself. “It'll be great to see them. Been too long.” She and her husband and kids live in Pelham. We rarely make the thirty-minute drive north out of the city to their house.

“She has a home and kids and a normal life.” Julia says this with her eyes still closed and the words come out as effortlessly as breathing. This doesn't require deduction. She felt she was just stating the obvious reason why we hadn't seen Susan for so long.

Julia and I haven't talked about kids of our own in years. We've always brushed it aside, saying there's time and we're having too much fun living a city life in Manhattan. Actually I'm terrified I'll be a complete bust as a father. I think she secretly thinks the same. If her comment is an invitation to talk about kids, I'm declining.

I give her hand another squeeze, then release and run my fingers through my hair, stopping with my hands behind my head. Fixing Julia's dissatisfaction with our lifestyle will not be so simple. I realize this, truly realize this, for the first time. Panic is setting in and my eyelids are stretched wide open as though I'm trying to see more of the ceiling. I've always been able to count on at least one part of my life going well. If I was unhappy at work, I could come home to Julia to feel her healing. If Julia and I fought, I could go to work to forget and enjoy mindless therapy. Like the air of a balloon when one end is pressed down, I can escape to the other end. I can't have both work and home turn bad at the same time. I know I'll go to pieces.

“Let's go out.” This suddenly seems like the thing to do together.

“What are you talking about?”

“Let's get out, go for a drink somewhere.”

“Right now?”

“It's only nine thirty. Someplace casual, just put some jeans on.”

Julia and I have never been one of those couples that has to do social things only with other couples. We like when it's just the two of us. I prefer it. We sometimes go out to dinner and I look at other couples sitting in silence, staring at their soup with an unhappy expression, and then I look back at Julia and realize I have a pretty good thing. We have stories and laughter and then some silence that is in appreciation of everything else.

Sometimes we go out and get a little drunk together. Not college, puking drunk, but a few drinks. We've loved going to the Hog Pit for years, and we decide on that for tonight. It's a bar that could be in west Texas. It's got a sort of swinging saloon door, only really it's just a rickety old door barely hanging on to the hinges. The front room has a long bar running along the left wall, lined with bar stools. The rest of the room is little tables and a jukebox with a good amount of country. A hallway in back passes by the bathrooms, then opens to another room with a pool table, foosball, and a few pinball machines.

Most places in Manhattan charge at least eight bucks for a beer. Here it's two for a Pabst Blue Ribbon. We take two bar stools and order two beers. The bar is full of some younger kids out of college who don't yet make enough money to go to nicer places, and some older folks who don't make enough money either.

We take our first sips quietly. I know there is this evolving problem between me and Julia, and like most guys I'm frustrated that fixing it isn't as simple as turning wrenches in the physical world. It'd be nice if I could make a few tweaks to the motor, maybe change a fan belt, then turn it back on, slap it on the side, and say, Yup, this baby's running fine again. It won't be so easy. We're
outgrowing the lifestyle my job has created and this tension is a deterrent to us growing in any other way, including having kids.

We're noticing all the off things about the people around us, which is a fun game with Julia in a place like this. All the while I'm searching for my verbal quick fix tools like a klutz.

I should just engage her on it. She's a trusted listener and she needs me to talk about it, but I'm waiting in front of it like a cold swimming pool, trying to work up the nerve to jump in. I start the jumping motion a few times, then step back and tell myself just jump in, once you're in it's fine.

“I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back.”

“Okay.”

The bar is filling up and I weave through some people on the way to the men's room and stand in front of the urinal staring at a 1980s poster of a blond bombshell in a Budweiser bikini and a hard hat while I come up with my game plan.