Wes. The rumors, as usual, didn’t take into account the complexity, much less the truth.
Sloane was heartbroken. She missed Wes, this man who’d made her feel safe and as though her lifestyle were not too aberrant. Richard was her mainstay, of course, but Wes had been someone on the outside who helped legitimize her choices. He had become a close friend. And he had made what Richard wanted of her feel less sexual and even more loving.
What she really wanted was for Richard to explain to Jenny that he’d pushed her to do it, which was the truth. She wanted him to say, Look, this isn’t Sloane going after Wes; we were confused about your relationship. This is something we both did as a couple. It wasn’t Sloane. She’s not what you think.
It wasn’t actually Sloane who thought of this. It was her best friend, Ingrid, who said, Richard needs to go to this woman’s house. That’s what has to happen.
A few months later, Sloane saw the whole family on the ferry. She was alone and she felt acid rising in her throat. A great fear. Fortuitously, Jenny was looking in her handbag. Wes and the children were talking and looking out at the water. They were pointing to something in the water and then Jenny was looking, too, and they were all laughing. Sloane saw that they were happy. It was nothing, she thought. It has passed. Nothing bad has happened. She thought Wes caught a glimpse of her, but if he did he made no sign of it, and neither did Jenny, and they continued laughing and talking like a blissful family and Sloane quickly got into her car and stayed there for the rest of the ride. She felt an extravagant relief. She did wonder if Wes had seen her; it seemed as if he had, though of course it was possible he had not. It was possible nobody could see her at all.
Lina
The next time he texts her it’s four P.M. The kids are home and it’s that early evening time when Lina heats up dinner and puts laundry in the dryer and polishes some mirrors. If she knew she’d be seeing him tomorrow, then this could be the best part of the day to fantasize about the following evening.
But he never asks her ahead of time to meet him. He texts her whenever his desire strikes. It’s cruel, demoralizing. His desire can come, as it does now, at four P.M. when both kids are home and there is nobody to watch them.
And there is no rescheduling. With men like this you can’t reschedule their desire. In two hours it’ll be gone. In twenty minutes if Lina hasn’t responded quickly enough in the affirmative he will face the almost-walk-in closet and jerk himself off toward his wife’s bralettes. He’ll shoot a ghost-shaped driblet of semen onto a brown Macy’s shopping bag and tear off the moist corner and toss it into the bedroom wastebasket and there in that bin will go the entire day Lina has been obsessing over and dreaming of and Barre Burning toward for these past few weeks.
And the truth is—Lina knows it in clear moments on clear days—he thinks of her only when it’s convenient and when he’s drunk and when he’s bored and when there is a perfect storm of possibility. When he can see her easily and not risk being caught or being in trouble with work or wasting too much gas. But even then, he won’t mind if he doesn’t. Even then he can take it or leave it. This is crushing but Lina accepts it.
She’s in her kitchen slicing fresh tomatoes and the slice of the knife first into the thin skin of the fruit and then into its plush middle is like sex; to Lina right now everything is like sex. Her dreams are filled with images of her body in salt water up to her knees as she kisses and fucks Aidan, of him sucking oysters from between her legs, of them fucking on blankets in the woods and getting leaves in her hair. She thinks of what she will be wearing the next time she sees him, how he might touch the hem of her black cotton dress, how he’ll bring it up past her thighs and his thumb will find the bottom lip of her panties. She dreams of burning orange sunsets although she would have made fun of sunsets before she fell in