essentials? “Let’s go”, “let’s eat”, “let’s have sex”. As if gentility and its preliminaries are wasted effort.
Rob draws me close, shoves a hand down my pants and coarsely reaches for me. It’s not that I don’t like sex; I do. It’s just the getting started part that seems impossibly difficult. When Rob and I first began having sex, he’d spend nearly an hour stroking me, whispering into my ear and kissing my neck. Then he’d make his move, but invariably, I’d hesitate, falter. “I’m not quite ready”, I’d say, and he’d begin again. As the years have evaporated, so too, has Rob’s patience with me until now we have come to this phrase in time: I want some pussy.
On the bed, Rob climbs on top of me. My hands go over familiar territory; my fingertips brush over his back, his buttocks. The closest I have come, in fourteen years, is to stroke his inner thighs. I cannot bring myself to touch his penis. It is such a bizarre and foreign thing to me. Like a specimen from outer space.
He grunts his pleasure; his hands grab me on either side of my collarbone, nearly around my neck, pushing me down each time he thrusts upward. The smell of his sweat covers me. Somewhere deep in a place I cannot name I find this sensation pleasurable. As I begin to pant this is Rob’s signal that I am excited. His intensity rises and he growls, bear-like until he comes with a gasp and a long guttural groan. Did I have an orgasm? I’m not sure. I guess so. I must have.
Rob rolls off and lies next to me. We are barely touching. He sighs.
“I’m not happy,” he says.
I roll towards him, prop myself up on one elbow. My heart is suddenly pounding in my chest.
“What do you mean?”
“Our sex life,” he says. “I’m bored,” he adds.
I’m not quite sure what to say.
“Bored?”
“It just seems like it’s the same every single time.” He sighs. “Wouldn’t you like a little variety?”
“What do you mean, like me on top?” I ask, trying unsuccessfully to picture this acrobatic feat.
“Well, what about getting some movies, or maybe toys or something.”
His voice is dry and quavers; he is nervous. He has been thinking about this for a long time.
Pornographic movies? I don’t want to even begin to imagine what a sex toy might look like. A tickle of disgust crawls across my skin.
“Oh Rob, I don’t know,” I say, hesitating. My mind is on Robyn. Where she is; when she will be home? I don’t want to get into all of this tonight.
“Whatever,” he sighs. “It’s only our marriage.”
“Rob,” I begin, my stomach flops and then tightens. I fall back onto my pillow and stare into the inky darkness.
“I’m tired,” he interrupts.
The flare rises into my throat again, beginning from the angry, broiling cauldron in my abdomen. My hand reaches, instinctively, to my nightstand and the half empty roll of Rolaids. My fingers go through the familiar motion of peeling back the outer paper; then the soft, flimsy skin of foil to reach their prize. I pop a tablet into my mouth and chew hard. The chalky texture coats my tongue and teeth and throat.
I want to cry or to scream but feel girded only by worry over my daughter. My husband and his carnal desires seem trivial, at best.
“I’m worried about Robyn,” I say, my voice wavering.
“She’ll be fine,” he says.
August 5, 2002
“Like I said, I hope to be in before noon, Carmelita,” I say, trying very hard to keep the anger out of my voice. Why can’t this woman give me a break?
“There are mistakes on several of the vendor lists,” Carmelita says over the phone.
“What?” I say. “What do you mean mistakes?”
“Some of these purchase were in oh-one, I think. I don’t remember any of the associations having capital purchases this year. But you show that Alliance Heating and Cooling was paid five grand in March,” she says.
Carmelita is wrong, of course. Three homeowner associations out of the forty-five plus that we manage did have capital purchases. How on earth would a purchase from last year be posted to 2002? But I can’t think about that right now.
Right now I am thinking that it is nine-thirty on a Friday morning and my daughter is still missing. She never came home and the school called half an hour ago to report her absence. She has never, not once, been gone this long. I do not want