The Pleasant Day

He asks, "Why did you stay with him?"

She watches the lights of the inner suburbs slide by.

"Tod could be quite a bit of fun to be with."

It's as if with each overpass they rush under, another reason appears. She adds, "I've been unwilling to admit a mistake."

"He's easy on the eyes."

"I've learned a good bit. Working on that proposal was good experience. It'll help when I go back to school."

"The pleasure, though rare, hits in this super rush."

"It's nice to float along, doing as you're told."

To change the subject, she asks, "You live by yourself?"

He says, "Yes for some time now. I was married. Till ten years ago. We found we had different goals and separated. As there were no children and both of us had good incomes, it was amiable."

"No one since?"

"I run a mutual fund. It's been an eventful few years."

She opens her mouth, but closes it and watches the buildings pass by. They get off the highway. As they near his neighborhood, she says, "How far is the garage from your place?"

"Ten minutes. I'll let you in then go and park."

"I'm in the mood for a walk," she says.

He glances over at her in surprise. "You'll get cold."

"You've an umbrella," she says.

She doesn't stay under it. Sometimes she zigzags, hands in the robe's pockets. The robe opens as she steps to reveal startlingly beautiful white legs. Sometimes she balances on the curb, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, arms outstretched for balance, tipping to the right, tipping to the left and catching herself on a parked car. Sometimes she jumps in the shallow puddles.

Her hair gathers glistening droplets from the thin rain. Her face shines.

He opens the door to his condo, holds it for her and closes it behind her.

She shivers and says, "You were right about getting cold. It's lovely in here."

She stands in front of the fire. He opens the glass doors and adds a log to it.

She looks at the fire for a time, then says, "I feel so like totally dirty."

"It's late," he says, "I'll show you the guest room and get you a toothbrush and toothpaste."

------------------------------------

Next day. She surprises herself and sleeps late. It's the sun that wakes her. The rain has vanished and sunlight washes across the bed.

After showering and pulling on the man's tee shirt and the slightly too small robe, she somewhat cautiously goes down two flights of stairs.

She finds him reading the paper in the kitchen. She says "Good morning," shyly. She holds the robe tightly closed.

"Look," she says, "There must be like an 'Old Navy' or some such store nearby? Could you buy me like jeans and a sweatshirt? Then drive me back to that shit's place? I'll pay you back. I know it's a lot to ask. I should've gone back up last night."

"I have everything mapped out," he says, "Here, sit."

He pushes a chair back and slides the paper down the kitchen table. He watches as she extracts the sports section.

He gets her juice and makes toast for her, ignoring her "I can do that". Once she's eaten and is working on a mug of coffee, he calls a cab.

When it comes, he opens the front door and says, "Out we go."

"What about clothes?" she asks.

"That's our first order of business," he says.

She looks out. The air has the kind of cleanliness it only gets in the fall after rain.

He has gone down the steps and crossed the sidewalk and is opening the cab's door.

She reddens and hurries across the pavement. The sidewalk is no longer so deserted.

He directs the cab first to a CVS. He leaves her sitting in the cab and hurries in. He comes out with a pair of flip-flops.

The cab next takes them to an upscale department store.

"I don't know," she says, looking at it through the window.

"Unless you shop here regularly," he says, "You'll never see these people again."

He pulls her out and leads her in. When she is too embarrassed to do more than stand and nod after mumbling her size, he chooses a dress with a black and white floral pattern.

"She'll wear it," he says after she's pulled it on in the changing room.

She feels a lot easier and the sales woman doesn't look so strained.

He takes her to the lingerie department.

Here she takes an interest and helps pick several pairs of white briefs, two bras (one just a bit of pale stuff to support the breasts from below) and a white slip.

Coming out of the changing room completely dressed, she feels much more human. She expects they'll leave, him being close to five hundred dollars the poorer.

He leads her to where women's pants are displayed.

"This's enough," she says.

"Nonsense," he states.

They browse through pants and tops and sweaters. She begins to enjoy herself. After some pleasant indecision, she chooses one of each.

"Enough," she says.

They look at cocktail dresses. Somewhat in a trance, she eventually picks a black one with wide shoulder straps and an oval neckline.

"Shoes now," he says, "To go with that dress."

She loves shopping for shoes. After half an hour of looking and rejecting she glances over at him with a guilty expression. She's surprised to see that he looks quite happy. He stands with an abstracted expression, looking across the store at the staff and at the customers and at nothing in particular.

She finally chooses a pair of black pumps with black ribbons and moderate heels.

Then at his insistence, "And a pair to go with what you're wearing." Despite her, "Really, the flip-flops are fine," she sinks back into the pleasures of looking at shoes. She finally picks a pair of white flat soled sandals.

Despite her protests, he makes her look at handbags. She after 20 minutes she chooses a red leather shoulder bag.

They wander into the jewelry section.

"I have earrings," she shows him, "Tod missed them". They're little glass things.

After more pleasant indecision, she chooses a pair of gold earrings, little gold flowers that hang on gold chains.

"This is costing you a fortune."

He shrugs. "I like being with women when they shop. It's relaxing, or usually is. I can just gaze about at the beautiful things and let them get on with it. With you I've had to do more work than I like, that's my only complaint."

Their cab pauses long enough to let him open his front door and toss the stuff in, then it takes them to the art museum.

They spend an hour idling through the impressionists. She finds all the vague women and flowers a bit dull, but wanders about at his side dutifully.

After lunch in the museum's cafe, they return to his home. He tells her to change into the pants and blouse and sweater. When she has, they walk some blocks to the river and he takes her out in a small boat.

It's windy and on the water it's cool. For a time she's nervous, ducking when told. Grabbing a line when told. Leaning when told. Then she loses herself in the experience of being on the water, with the sun flashing on the surface, the other boats, and the beauty of the city rising before her.

Safely ashore again, they wander a bit, side by side, not touching, on the paths along the water. Then he does touch her arm and they return home.

"We'll dress for dinner."

She showers and spends some time putting her hair up using hair pins she finds in the top dresser drawer in the guest room. She puts on the gold earrings. She looks at the instructions and lies on her back on the bed and presses the adhesive bra under her breasts. She admires herself in the mirror. She pulls the black dress over her head. She frowns at her hair and touches it up. Finally she steps into the black pumps.

Downstairs she finds him sitting at the desk, his back to the bay window. He has his laptop open and has evidently been working. He looks up at her with a frown. He's wearing a gray suit with a dark red tie.

"I didn't know we were on the clock" she says to his frown.

He sighs, "You look quite lovely." He puts a simple black choker around her neck.

The cab takes them to a restaurant on the harbor.

For desert they share a slice of cheesecake, their heads close enough together to bump as they take turns with his fork. The fork the waiter brought for her lies untouched.

"The, the ... what you have upstairs," she says in a low voice.

"Yes?" he asks, showing no surprise that she knows.

She explains anyway, "While I was waiting for you to come back with the car last night I went up and well snooped."

"Yes?" he asks, "Your question is?"

She looks around at the other tables, some with couples, some with larger groups, families? "Who?"

"Ah, it doesn't reflect well on me," he says. He looks out through the windows at the gray water and the peer and harbor beyond. "The wife of a friend. In fact the guy who was with me last night to share the pleasure of your arrival. They have smallish children. Sometimes she finds them and my friend a bit much. Once, sometimes twice a month, rarely more often, she tells her husband she's going out with her girlfriends or friends from work. Sometimes she really does. Often she comes over.

"She says an out of body experience, and that is what she says it is for her, cannot really be counted as infidelity.

"She says that a break from always making decisions, managing her family's lives, is essential. Some time to simply exist without thought.

"When I see her socially, she always looks very happy."

"Does your friend know?" she asks.

"I don't know," he says, "I imagine."

"Listen," she murmurs, looking down at the destroyed remains of the cake, "Anything you wish to do with me, well, to me, is fine."

"You didn't look happy in those pictures, the ones your boyfriend showed me."

"I suspect I won't be happy with what you do either."

"There's no need then," he says.

"However the surroundings weren't so nice," she says reflectively, "I expect that will make all the difference."

He smiles and scrapes together a last forkful of cake and lifts it between her lips.

"I feel like its me that's desert," she says.

They take a cab. She looks surprised when they stop in front of a small movie theater. "I'd thought,..." she says.

"There's pleasure in postponement," he tells her, "And this is part of my itinerary."

Next to the theater on one side is a delicatessen, on its other is a tuxedo store, then a vacant store front and beyond that a dry cleaners. The theater advertises a Billy Wilder retrospective.

Inside it is clear that at one time the theater was much larger. Walls slice the space into a narrow corridor.

She is way overdressed. The crowd of mostly college aged kids wear jeans and sweatshirts.

They watch 'The Apartment' in a crowd of people, the way it was meant to be viewed.

The next cab does deliver them back onto his elegant residential street.

Inside her heels click on the wood floors. He guides her by the elbow into the living room then over to the desk that sits in the bay window. He bends and lifts her skirt. She takes the hint and leans over the desk. She supports herself on her elbows. She spreads her legs. He tosses her skirt up onto her back.

He sees that she is not wearing panties. "Ah," he says.

He runs a dry finger down her cunt. She shivers. He says, "It's a little ungrateful of you not to wear what I purchased."

He leaves her then. He closes the curtains in front of her. He vanishes behind her. She hears him at the fireplace. She hears the sounds of wood being moved, a certain rattling sound and a soft sigh as the flames rise from the kerosene tray he uses.

She shares the desktop with a pen and paper and his black laptop.

She does not try to look around, but just looks down at the shiny wood of the desktop. A vague reflection of herself looks up at her.

She hears his footsteps leave the room and climb the stairs. She hears them return.

He goes to the coffee table and sets a tray with a bottle of white wine, a glass and other things that are indistinct in the firelight on the coffee table.

She hears him approach her. She hears the rattle of ice in a glass. She feels him pull at her dress and push it further up her back. She shifts her weight onto her left arm and slips her right back to help pull the dress forward. She feels him press up behind her. Her right hand is conveniently located to touch him and guide him as a tug does a ship to its allotted berth.

She looks up at the curtained window. He enters her. Her eyes widen, her tongue touches her lip, and she murmurs a soft "oh".

She feels his zipper and belt press up against her bottom. She lifts her right leg and rests it on the desktop.

She looks back down at the desktop. She concentrates on what she's feeling.

The man's view is limited. He sees the confusion of cloth on her back. He sees her pale arm circle under. He knows by feel where the hand is, where her fingers are as he slides forward and back. He admires her delicate neck and the black choker that circles it. He sees her hair and its growing confusion of strands.

He cannot see her face. Only a vague hint of it in the polished wood of the desktop.

Her vantage point is even more compromised. All she can see is her flawed reflection in the wood. She can see the slim arm that supports her, its elbow hard on the wood, her forearm rests on the wood and her fingers just grip the far edge of the desk.

Hers is not a visual world just then.

A privileged onlooker would sit on the windowsill a short distance from the desk, his head level with hers. As such an onlooker does not exist, he must be imagined.

Their imagined audience can't tell if her eyes are open or closed, all he can see are her eyelids with their hint of makeup and their delicate dark fringe.

Her hair, still neatly done when they returned, is now beginning to come loose. The delicate gold flower of one of her earrings brushes her cheek as she is rocked forward and back. Its gold makes a nice contrast with the pink of her cheek and the black of the choker that clasps her neck.

The red of her lipstick is still perfect and unmarred. Her lips are closed.

The black of her dress frames her breasts. There is humid darkness between them. Only her nipples are out of view.

The man's tie, still neatly knotted, is thrown back over his shoulder as if there's some danger of it getting tangled and pressed up into her, causing something of an industrial accident.

He looks sad and lost.

His hands hold her hips. They grip through the fabric of her dress.

She moves the leg that rests on the desktop back and forth. Her black shoe makes a slight scraping sound as she moves it. Is the movement conscious or not? Our imagined observer can't tell.

Her thigh eclipses the man's hips. There is only indirect evidence of his motion. The reaction to action.

Her expression is calm and focused and intent.

Something happens in the man. A sudden expression of anger and revulsion. He steps back.

She frowns slightly at the interruption.

With a sudden fury the man pulls his belt from his suit pants. One of the loops rips. He lifts the belt and brings it down hard on her bottom.

The sharp crack echoes. She gasps and cries out with pain and surprise.

He strikes her again. She grips the table top. Her eyes are tightly closed. Her teeth are clenched.

Three, four, five. She puts her mouth to her right arm to stifle her cries.

Six, eight, ten, fifteen cracks.

He sags and looks down. He drops the belt. "My God I'm sorry," he says.

He helps her up. Her face is tightly twisted with shock and hurt. She sobs softly. He guides her to the couch. She sits, winces, stands and then drops to her knees on the hearth rug. Unlike the patterned deer who are fleeing, she has been brought down.

"I'm so sorry," he repeats, "I, I'll get you a hotel room. I'll get you a cab."

She looks at the coffee table. On it, on a tray, is a bottle of wine and and an empty glass. Also on the tray are other items, clamps, candles, a whip. She looks away hurriedly.

He goes to the desk and comes back with his phone. He starts to tap purposefully. His finger shakes. "I'm getting the room," he says.

"Why," she manages in a barely audible voice.

"Because you won't want to stay."

"That wasn't I meant by why."

"I, oh, Christ I don't know. It all became too much. I felt suddenly destructive and angry."

"At me?"

"At you, at myself, at everything. I'll get you a hotel room."

"Why," she asked again.

"Because you won't want to stay."

"This is kind of circular," she says. They're silent a few moments.

She sighs, "And I did say you could do anything you liked to me, remember? You still may. Though if I were putting in requests, I'd not include that as one of them."

"You're sure?" Then with more of his easy dryness, he adds, "Think carefully, free rooms at the Ritz don't come one's way often."

"But I'm not sure I'm able to get there," she says, "I don't fancy sitting in a cab and in fact I may not able to walk at all, thanks to you."

"You might add wood to the fire," he says.

He watches as she crawls the couple feet to the fireplace, takes a log from the stack to the side and places it gingerly on its burning fellows on the grate. She looks very delicious on her hands and knees, in her black dress with her disheveled brown hair.

He pours her a glass of wine.

He looks at the fire and her. He sips his whiskey. He says in a self mocking though serious tone, "You know, that was the first time I've been unfaithful to my wife."

"You said you weren't married," she says unpleasantly surprised, "I wouldn't've..."

"Ex-wife then, though the legalities don't always affect how one feels about something."

"Oh," she says. "Your friend's wife..."

"Ten, no well, I guess closer to twelve years now, Jeanne and I split up. Amiably, like I told you last night, at least civilizedly, if that's a word. She wanted children. I did not. My friend was single. He had been too ambitious and hard working for real relationships. He's a lawyer. He was reevaluating his choices. The two of them did the sensible expeditious thing. She was then in her mid thirties. They'd been friends since college. It's worked out very well all around."

"Does she still love you?"

"I'm not sure what that means."

"Do you still love her?"

"Yes," then, "I'll call around for a hotel room."

She shifts about and pulls her dress over her head. She holds it up by the shoulder straps so that for a moment it looks like there's an invisible woman wearing it. She folds it neatly. The movement makes her look very fetching. She places the tidy small square of black fabric on the coffee table. She pulls off the half cups of the bra. Her breasts hardly need the support.

He sits for a moment. "You are sure?" he asks.

When she doesn't answer he takes from the tray on the coffee table a length of black cloth. He bends forward and wraps it around her head, blindfolding her.

He takes her wine glass from the coffee table. He idly runs a finger along its lip, making a soft ringing sound. He stretches it to her and she sips.

He touches a nipple. He sees her shift just slightly.

He squeezes the tender little thing, letting his fingernails pinch. "Your frown is very sweet," he tells her.

From the tray he takes a jar of pebbles. "Lift yourself off your knees a moment." When she does he spills the pebbles on the carpet. "Kneel again." He smiles again at her frown.

"Today was very much like the weekend days we used to have, my wife and I," he tells her. "Shopping, lunch, sailing, dinner, theater or a concert or a film, then back here. I didn't think they'd ever end, those days, but they did. I thought I'd find them again with someone else, but I never wanted to.

"It's stupid but I get so full of regret. I want to kick myself."

"Just don't kick me," she says.

He takes from the tray a bag of party colored plastic clips, the kind you get in the supermarket to close bags of chips. "I'm thinking of a number from one to ten," he says.