City Planner

She was looking at her lap while saying this as if she was feeling shame. I was going to say something encouraging, it sounded like she needed it, but she wasn't finished.

"My brothers took me into my old bedroom. They made me sit on the bed; they stood over me. Sean did the talking, he always does the talking for them. 'You got lucky,' he said, 'you don't deserve him; you're going to have to change to keep him. All that bullshit you've laid on the rest of us all these years? That has to stop. It's no longer all about you. You're in it together, you have to start thinking about him — he said pretty much the same thing you said before we went into the house. It hit me the wrong way, it felt like you were all ganging up on me. I got mad, I told them all to fuck off and mind their own goddam business and I stomped out of there slamming the door on them. I'm a complete shit; I know that, I've always known that, a completely self-centred shit."

I looked over to see if she was kidding. There were tears on her cheeks.

"Ya, but a completely self-centred shit I just happen to love ... so don't you start changing on me ... everyone of those people tonight? They made me feel like a martyr; your parents think I'm a saint; your brothers worship me. For god's sake don't even think of changing, you could wreck it all for me."

"OK, I won't."

"Well, a little."

She was thinking. I know to shut up when she's thinking. "What do you love me for, Mike, what's the one word you love me for?"

"Excitement. For some reason I find self-centred shits exciting, or this one at least."

"I've been excited since I met you. When I first met you and I told you when I was getting into my car that I had nowhere to go that night, my fists were so clenched in hope that you'd hit on me that my nails stuck into my palms. I almost orgasmed when you asked me out to dinner." She laughed. "That was just a few days ago, amazing, eh?"

When we got to the room we did what married couples the world over do ... a few times and again in the morning. I was flicking her nipple when I said, "It's hard to distinguish between love and lust with a body like your's. I find it troubling ... not being able to make that distinction, particularly when you're in your underwear. I could easily be a fraud, I could easily be in it just for the sex ... plus I get a new house out of it."

"You like saying stuff like that, don't you, things with just a little truth in them that you exaggerate."

"Sharon phoned me yesterday ... hard to believe it was just yesterday. She was in a bit of a lather. She wants to be with us, without Carl."

"When?"

"Sounded like immediately."

"Do you want it?"

"Do you?"

"Would it excite you?"

"Thinking about it sure does."

She reached for her phone on the night table.

It's amazing how quickly something so ... what? kinky, adventurous, wrong, could be organized: tonight at 7 o'clock; she couldn't stay over. Once done, in her usually efficient way she sprang from the bed and came back in a minute holding a jar.

"Do we have breakfast or do we do this first, your choice. And it's your choice who gives and who gets ... a massage."

When I said, "OK, I get, where should I lie?" she frowned, the sharp eagle face pinched fierce like it always does but she quickly recovered and pretended she was OK with it. But the woman doesn't know how to hide her feelings, that's part of her charm and her problem: everyone knows what she's thinking, it's in one of her 20 scowls, different ones for objection, irritation, anger, contempt, destain ... the list goes on, each type of scowl carefully crafted to an attitude; it's like a language only she speaks but everyone understand. You have to laugh and it's always the wrong time when you do.

She threw the jar on the bed and was stomping where? To the bathroom I guess, she was naked. I grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. "Do you want me to tell the boys we had a fight ... on our honeymoon?"

"I knew I shouldn't have told you about that, I knew you were going to use that against me ... what a prick ..."

I kissed her to shut her up. "Where do you want to lie? I can't wait to get my hands on you."

She took the towel she had brought out, folded it in half, longways, placed it on the table and lay down on her belly in front of the wall to wall windows.

"So, you're an exhibitionist, too?"

"Oh, I'm an exhibitionist alright, I hate to be the centre of attention but I just can't live if people aren't peeking at me ... why do you think I dress like I do?"

I was retrieving the jar. "I don't think you dress provocatively."

"Tight tops, low necklines, you never look, I've watched you — it pissed me off at first until I figured out why would you bother when you can peek at me in my underwear. And you do."

"So do you, you can't pass a mirror without ..."

"You're supposed to put a hand towel across my bum."

I obediently got one and reluctantly hid her ass. "No complaints, OK? Not one. I've never done this before, never had it done to me except that once and by physios when I was in pain ... I doubt this is the same thing — one word of complaint and I stop. Suggestions, I accept."

"I suggest you get started."

"In a minute ... I've always wanted to see the back of ya."

She looked up with a new one, a scowl of derision; I put some jel on her shoulders and pressed down hard.

Look, this is pretty heady stuff to me. I don't have any brothers and sisters ... well, I probably do, I just don't know about them, just like I don't know anything about my parents. She was right, she is a kind of a possession to me. I want that, I want the feeling of ownership and, God knows, I want the feeling of being owned.

Her back was blurred through the brimming tears I was fighting back; I concentrated on my pressure but that just made it worse, I was pressing my fingers into the naked flesh of someone who had just given herself to me — I might have gotten away with it but my nose started to run and I sniffled ... it came out just like the sniffles you hear at sad movies. When she heard it she turned and looked up and in a moment we were lying on the bed and she was hugging me into her, my arm was covered in her un-rubbed goo. "Oh, fuck, I had no idea."

The tears were flowing now like my eyes were peeing, I tried to hold them back but I couldn't ... but I could wonder about it. I thought of that dog again: he once had gotten into a fight with a much bigger dog; he lost; he took it well but he got pretty beaten up. We had been out walking in a park; we were driving home; he always stood in the shotgun seat with his feet spread apart looking out the window, as stationary as a hood ornament. About 5 minutes into the ride he just emptied his bladder, he looked straight ahead and just emptied himself from the emotional turmoil he had just gone through. I thought that's what I was doing; it was involuntary, my eyes just emptied all my historic angst — I didn't blubber, I didn't cling helplessly, it was like I was just getting rid of decades of bile.

It lasted about 10 minutes. I tried to make a joke of it when it was over but she wasn't buying it.

"You need psychiatric help," she said, as she caressed my cheek, still wet.

"I need psychiatric help?" I laughed.

She laughed, too. "We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

"A couple of tears and I'm as fucked up as you are? I don't think so."

She reached for her phone, left a message for Sharon cancelling tonight, then crawled back into my arms. "You need me."

"I do but you need me more."

"I haven't forgotten about Sharon, have you?" We were two days into our new home, we hadn't argued once.

She was putting on her bra, she knew I'd be watching. "Entirely."

"Liar." She pressed her breasts into place like she always does, aware, I think, of the effect it always has on me. "So when do you want me to have her over?"

She called me just after lunch. "Guess what?"

I knew it was about Sharon so I declined to bite. "What?"

"You've done it for me ... it would never have happened without you." She chuckled, she never chuckles. "I'm outside having a smoke, trying to calm down."

"You smoke?"

"I used to for a bit ... I suddenly needed one."

"What's up?"

"They've had the Head of Planning job advertised for a while, a couple of months. They just asked me to apply for it ... which means if I do I'll probably get it. They said they've wanted me in the job for awhile," she chuckled again, "it's just that I've always been in such a lousy mood they were reluctant to promote me ... for office moral. Now that I'm such an obviously happy, well adjusted married woman, the world is suddenly my oyster. They want me to take a doctorate; they'd help with the cost and the time involved — they aren't insisting on it but they'd like it — smart cities and all of that; cutting edge."

"Are you going to have enough time to look after me?" I threw this in while I tried to process it all.

"With Sharon's help."

"That's not funny and this is nothing to joke about, it's fantastic ... isn't it? Do you want it? The job? You've never talked about anything like this."

"The way I'm feeling right now, I want to run for Prime Minister ... I didn't mention it because I had no idea it could be in the cards." I could hear her drag on her cigarette and exhale the smoke. "Honestly? I feel like super woman right now. It's strange, it's really, really strange, one lousy guy and I'm a completely changed person. Not good."

"There was a lot of room for improvement."

She didn't hear me. "No matter what, I think I want the Doctorate, that appeals to me ... I've kind of been thinking about it anyway ... but, do I want it? The job? I've been thinking ... two years for the doctorate, a year in the new job, the better part of a year in the new job while pregnant — two years from now, kid, doctorate, challenging job which I would then have a good handle on ..."

"Two years of turmoil."

"It gets down to you."

"You could have told me about all this a few days ago and I could have hooked up with Peggy Sue instead, a solid, stay-at-home shag but no ..."

"She probably doesn't have my body ... or my kink."

"And I love you for both of them, it's the other stuff I have trouble with ... the ambition ..."

"Seriously?"

"Please ... good on ya; I'm entirely supportive, as supportive as that truly wonderful wired bra you put on this morning."

"Why do you always trivialize everything?"

"What that thing is supporting is hardly trivial."

"Sharon's coming over Friday at 7. I told her we can try it ... but I have my doubts ... with her. I think we should find someone for something like this but I don't think it's her, do you?"

"I can barely handle you."

"I'm serious. Do you think it's her?"

"We haven't really talked about this, Erica." And we hadn't, she just assumed I wanted it like she apparently does.

"No, we haven't talked about it, we've done it, and you obviously loved it."

This was the wrong place to have this out, but I knew there wasn't a right place. She wanted excitement, she wanted to experiment, she wanted sexual adventure, I knew that so I had to get real. "I think we should keep an open mind: do it, see where it goes, see how it feels and decide after."

"If I get the job and start the Doctorate I'm not going to have a lot of time. Be nice not to have to look for this ... be nice just to have someone we could call."

The image had occurred to me often in the past few weeks: I'm a simple paper airplane kept aloft by the currents of someone else's making. A woman I barely knew had kept me intellectually engaged, physically challenged, sexually satisfied and morally tested. Viscerally, I knew I needed her; she is the right woman at the right time for me. But intellectually? I've ridden the currents and I've never once landed to ask myself: is this really who I want to spend the rest of my life with? At least, I've never asked myself that question when I didn't have an erection.

I asked that question when I put the phone down. And in moments I had my answer; it is the same answer that has flitted through my head since I met her: she excites me, that's who I've hooked up with, a woman who excites me, all the more now when she has all but confirmed that she's an uber-ambitious, bi-sexual on the make and she just expected me to lay down for it.

What kind of wacky shit did she have lined up for our future? I didn't have enough imagination to speculate, but I did know I don't have her desires. She is enough for me, more than enough. She wants other men, other women, other groups, other whatevers when all I want is the intimacy of watching her put on her bra and step into her panties.

Thank God for sports.

It's strange but we never really talk. She assumes I feel the way she does about everything, assumes I understand her and she, like me, is content to leave it at that. Did we talk about Sharon again? Nope, we just went about our week, filling it in with work and, me, with play — we got knocked out in the football play-offs and had our final practise before the hockey season begins.

So Friday night arrived quickly; Sharon was right on time and as breathlessly desperate as she had been on the phone, so breathlessly desperate that she all but overwhelmed Erica, and that's saying something, and so breathlessly desperate that what should have been highly erotic (to me) was merely frantic.

I watched them for a bit at the start, that was fun, the unwrapping part, but the devouring part was slightly embarrassing.

Erica was sheepish when Sharon left the next morning — sheepish but spoiling for a fight, I could just tell: one word from me and she was going to unload. So I said nothing and waited for the moment when I could politely extricate myself from the house to go for a run.

"Not quite what we had in mind, was it?" She said when I got back, smiling. "I'm bad but Jesus ..."

"Now you know how I feel." It was the smile that encouraged me.

The smile was gone. She got serious. "So what do I do? Ignore it? Or try to control it?"

I wasn't sure what she was talking about and decided not to speculate. I stayed quiet.

"What?" she said, getting annoyed.

"You can't ignore it so I guess it's best to control it," whatever 'it' is, although I thought I knew.

"Not with Sharon, that's going the wrong way."

I nodded sagely.

"Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Doubt it, but I'll think about it."

"Not just for you, for both of us."

"Ya, no, sure."

I understand the spectrum thing. I understand that none of us are 100% anything; even the most flamboyant gay guy isn't 100% gay; even someone like Erica, so convincingly female ... hasn't totally convinced herself. But most of us say we're close enough and forget about the other unused percentage. Obviously, Erica wants to tap into her minor spectrum self; I'm guessing that's what she has meant by the adventure she has been insisting on.

Do I have a problem with that? I went out for the run with that on my mind and ran for a full mile thinking just of that before I decided, no, I have no problem at all with it, in fact I admire her for it. I've always thought that bi-sexuals have it right, the rest of us are cheating ourselves. What I couldn't figure out was why Sharon was so wrong; she struck me as ideal: a married heterosexual who had a hair trigger going the other way. I didn't have the courage to ask.

We were supposed to go to a party but neither of us felt in the mood, no doubt for different reasons. But we went anyway.

One of us had a good time, the one who didn't drive home; the other seemed to be deep in thought all night. She climbed on me the moment I got in bed. "Why don't we just rut like minks until we get a kid and say fuck it to all the rest of the stuff?"

"Because A-personalities like yours just won't be satisfied with that. You have too much to offer. I like your two year plan, it makes all kinds of sense to me."

She slumped off me and lay on her back. "I probably have an A-personality, don't I? I've always hated that type ... bunch of humourless assholes." She lay there thinking until she turned to me and pressed her face into my arm. "I don't have a sense of humour, do I? Not really."

"You're pretty serious, serious enough to want a plan like you've got."

"And where are you in that plan? I get a big job, I get to go back to school, I get a baby and you get to go to work every day."

"I get to live with you."

"Why weren't you fucking Sharon? Why did you leave us alone?"

"That was your thing, not mine."

"That's a problem. It isn't going to work for me unless it's our thing."

All I knew was that someone was coming over to dinner, she didn't say who, I didn't ask — we'd had a few people over in the five weeks of our married life, people from her past; all from our age group. Marion Blackmore wasn't.

Her bio was brief and somewhat reluctantly delivered to me over a glass of wine while Erica was busy in the kitchen. Marion works in the same building as Erica; she's an actuary for a life insurance company; they first met in the cafeteria in the building and occasionally have lunch together. Anything more than that felt like prying, so I backed off the personal questions and tried for her worldview.

The reason Erica invited her over emerged at dinner. Marion had been married a long time ago; it didn't work out; no kids; no details. At their lunches Erica had talked to the experienced spinster about life as a single woman — Erica's obvious prospect at the time.

Erica looked at me. "I remember Marion's advice: 'Find a couple who will offer a warm port in the cold storm.'" She looked back at Marion. "I've thought a lot about that."

Marion smiled. She is a wonderfully composed woman, that's what comes across first ... that she's seen it all, understands it all, accepts it all — that's what you believe about her because she's so sensibly pretty, so sensibly presented, so sensibly composed, so sensibly imposing. Charisma is what it is; it took me awhile to figure it out but she has it like no one I've ever met before. She bristles with charisma; you find yourself lured in. I could easily see why Erica was drawn to her.

"You knew I was attracted to you right from the beginning, didn't you?" Erica seemed nervous, tentative, oddly unsure of herself. There was something going on here that I didn't get.

Marion just smiled.

"You didn't come on to me." Erica sounded like she was almost complaining.

"You weren't a couple."

"I was half a couple."

"Not quite the same thing, is it?"

Erica wavered for a moment as if she had to suck up her courage. "Do you have a couple now?"

"No."

"Do you still want one?" I finally knew what this was about.

"Yes."

"How about us?"

There. That was it, the point of it all: an unambiguous solicitation from a woman who knew nothing about subtleties. Or collaboration: this was the first time I heard of any of this.

Marion appeared slightly surprised. She quickly looked at me. "Have you talked about this?"

I glance at Erica hoping she would answer. She didn't. I went with honesty. "We did before we got married. We tried it with a friend of her's but she wasn't what we wanted."

"And what was that?" The pretty face was as inscrutable as Erica's was wishful.

Why was I having this conversation: this wasn't my idea. I took another quick look at Erica for help and when I did I felt like a guy in a police interrogation room pleading for his lawyer to intervene. "To keep Erica happy."

"So you don't want it?"

I was being interviewed, I suddenly figured that out and it pissed me off. I leaned back and looked into her very intelligent, very curious eyes. "Erica wants to be shared, I guess that's the word. I should have a hard time with that but I don't; I've known it from the beginning; it's part of who she is. We tried it with another guy. I didn't like it — jealousy and all that. We tried it with a woman ... that didn't work out either except that obviously, she wants it and I'm OK with it ... that kind of need, not the other."