Bad news: John's car struck an embankment on I-90, John dead on arrival. But more emerged in the following days, gradually, like blood at the corner of the mouth or welling from an ear.
It was raining at the time. There was water on the roadway. A witness had seen the car swerve and skid off the highway. Speed of impact was estimated at over 45 miles per hour. There was a woman in the car, currently in critical condition. Massive internal damage. A woman from work. They had been drinking. High blood alcohol.
Why had they been driving out I-90 in the first place, in the early evening? I guess I knew. John was supposedly working late.
It wasn't that we'd been unhappy, exactly. We were married young, almost 15 years ago, me at 19, him at 20. We were so different, even then. We were both tall, but I was skinny, flat-chested, smart and alienated where he was popular, athletic and average. He liked the way I never made a big deal about sex, one way or the other. In those days, there was only one way -- constantly. Sometimes several times a day. I remember feeling so wanted, so taken.
But I was cool about it, of course, and he was oddly naïve. He had never gone down on a woman. I had to talk him into it after we'd been seeing each other a while. I remember it was sweet how his apprehension dissolved into boyish enthusiasm. I could hardly get his head from between my legs for months afterwards.
It's odd, I was always the older one in the relationship. He was big and strong and confident, but I was in charge. Right from the start, I was the mom. I was smarter, and I guess maybe stronger in some way, but he didn't really seem to mind. All those years, he never treated me badly. The worst he did was yell once in a while, when I told him something he didn't want to hear, but then he'd feel bad and apologize and take me to bed with special tenderness. He was a sweet boy.
And yet it didn't sit well with either of us, in the end. I fought for years against a steady, low-grade yearning for someone to meet me in the places John never went. John, although he didn't say it, chafed at being the eternal child and went behind his mommy's back to do naughty things.
I vaguely sensed those things, I guess, and didn't mind because I wanted him to change, to grow up, even part from me if necessary. But the things he did somehow never transcended dirty little secrets you wouldn't tell your mother. Approaching our mid-30s, I decided we should have a child.
John had wanted children earlier, but I hadn't been ready. When I told him last fall I'd like to get pregnant, it bothered him, though he didn't know how to tell me exactly. He expressed enthusiasm the way he thought he should, but our sex life, hovering at once or twice a week, fell off abruptly.
I tried to talk to him about it. I was willing to drop the whole idea and go back to before, but there suddenly didn't seem like a lot to go back to. Neither of us was happy, though we respected and even loved each other. For the first time in all the years I'd known him, John's confidence seemed to falter, his straight-ahead, no-nonsense attack on life gave way to indecision and almost self-doubt.
He did come home occasionally with alcohol on his breath. I meant to speak to him about it, but I didn't want to seem... I was trying to give him space.
Now he was gone, didn't say goodbye. He hadn't had the happiness I wanted for him, and now it was too late. I could have done better. A lot better.
After a couple of days, I went to see this woman who'd been in the car. Drugged and battered though she was, I could see why he found her attractive. Her face was delicate, her nose narrow, her short curls doll-like. She was young, maybe mid-20s. She stared dully as I sat down beside her bed.
"Hello," I said. "Is there anything I can get you?" She struggled to make sense through the drugs. I tried again: "Do you need anything?" She just shook her head a little, no. I reached over and patted her shoulder and she closed her eyes.
I went back a few days later. She was pulling through. She seemed to think she should recognize me but had no idea who I was. I brought her flowers.
The third time, we actually talked. Josie, her name was. Sweet and animated, in spite of still being pretty disoriented. Timid, easily disconcerted, but also effervescent, with a radiant smile. She was worried about maybe losing her job. She was worried about her cat. Her brother might be looking after it, but he might not be. Could I check? Go over and just make sure Murphy was all right? Without even knowing who I was, she accepted me as a kindred soul in this antiseptic environment. Something in me gagged, but I felt I owed it to John. She had me take keys from a bag beside the bed.
Her little studio apartment in a faceless Bellevue development was a bit messy, but basically decent. Her things were a strange mishmash: an Ingres print and a Spice Girls poster. Her books included Milos Kundera, Marian Zimmer Bradley and Anne Rice. The cat was fine, plenty of food and water, though I'm sure he was glad to have his litter box cleaned.
On her dresser was a pair of satin panties and an open box of condoms. I picked up the panties and ran my fingers over the slick fabric. I pictured them on her ass, under John's strong hands. I dropped them back on the bureau. I pictured John inside her, those delicate features contorted in pleasure. I knew John would have appreciated her; he had a deep and immediate understanding of people on some core level. I thought of them together, and sat down and burst into tears. It wasn't that they had sex, it was that I suddenly realized that even here, no matter how nice it was, he probably couldn't have found what he was looking for. And now he never would.
When I took her keys back to her, she thanked me fervently. In the alien landscape of the hospital, I could tell I'd become a sudden friend. Then she asked my name. "Eleanor." Eleanor who? "Eleanor Houx. John's wife."
"Oh my god." She looked at me in horror. I could see the questions moving in her mind like wind across water. Was I here to murder her? Was I going to scream? She cringed and stammered in a small voice, "What do you want?"
I shook my head. I felt so sad. "Nothing," I said. "I don't think you did something wrong, Josie. I just..." I couldn't go on. She sat there like a rabbit, and I shrugged. "It's hard to explain.... I felt like I let him down. I didn't want to let him down. We didn't know how to change. I don't know if that makes any sense, without being married for years and years."
She still didn't say anything. "Well, Josie," I said, getting up. "I wish you well, I really do. I'm sorry this happened. I hope you're out of here soon, and find someone wonderful." I looked at her with my heart aching. "It's just too bad." She was trying to find something to say, and not finding it. I waved a hand clumsily. "So long."
I turned, hoping as I left she'd say something to stop me, wanting to talk about it more, but she didn't.
And so time passed. I worked. In April, Robert began asking me out. He was one of my colleagues at the institute, divorced last year. A tall, arrogant man, intelligent, forceful and handsome as a model. He was a match for me in many ways, not someone I could push around. He was close to my equal in intelligence and certainly my superior in beauty. He had money. I just couldn't bring myself to be interested.
Part of me said I was scared, I couldn't handle a strong man. Another part said it was just too soon. But when he asked me to a fancy party on the first of May, I accepted.
We drove in his Lexus far out into the countryside to somebody's idea of a mansion in the foothills of the Cascades, butted up against the National Forest. We were in evening dress. There were cheerful college kids in ill-fitting morning coats serving over-prepared canapés, and a string quartet playing obscure classical pieces well beyond the frontiers of their capacity. Something perverse in me delighted in how clunky it all was. Robert didn't seem to notice.
We danced languidly, arguing without heat about the respective merits of Baudelaire and Victor Hugo in the context of existentialism. We lapsed into French, which we had both spoken as children, he in Paris and I in Québec.
It's nice sometimes to speak French again, but not as an affectation. Robert seemed more fascinated by the perfection of his accent than by what he was trying to say. I laid on the québécois a bit to see if he'd notice, but he was too absorbed in his own voice. I mentioned Rimbaud, as a test. His eyebrow lifted; not quite a sneer.
I realized suddenly that whatever John might have lacked, his heart had been great. He met people openly, with enthusiasm and generosity. Almost everyone liked him. He had no meanness at all. Robert, by contrast, seemed to revolve around a shriveled little nut of egoism. I couldn't help feeling he wanted me to be honored by his attentions.
A little later we found ourselves standing with drinks among a circle of more or less intelligent people all play-acting at belonging to an alien élite, with Robert somehow playing mentor. I murmured an excuse nobody heard and slipped out the French doors to the terrace behind the house.
The night was relatively warm, with the sliver of a moon in a sky not yet dark. The terrace looked out over an expanse of lawn that fell away to end with startling abruptness in towering forest below, where tree frogs were singing. At the other side of the terrace, several smokers leaned on a stone balustrade, talking quietly. They kept looking over at me.
I kicked off my shoes and ran down the steps onto the lawn. The grass was deep and lush, wetting my stockings. Sounds of the party diminished behind and a lifting flowed through me, a sense of release and escape. I wandered toward the woods.
At the lawn's edge, someone had planted a riot of flowers. Beyond, under the trees, the ferns were dense. The earth smell of B. subtilis and Northwest molds mixed with sweet flowers and a faint cedar scent. I breathed it in to the bottom of my lungs, feeling my mood shift in the late dusk to align with the place. If there had been a trail, I would have taken it at once.
Standing at the edge of the forest, a temple to endless processions from seed to earth and everything in between, I was overcome again by a flood of yearning too acute for tears, that drowned me pretty much every night now.
I was helpless to the feeling that my life had broken off short. My marriage, for all its imperfections, was where my heart had been, and John, almost to my surprise, was more important than my glittering career. No outside successes could ever compensate for not finding a path through the tangle of our relationship, and now the venture had been canceled. Fifteen years of striving had stopped in the middle, coitus interruptus on a major scale.
A faint sound caught my attention. Something was moving among the trees. A deer? I held my breath, half afraid. Nothing. Then I flinched as I saw motion out of the corner of my eye.
It was just a man, emerging from the trees 30 feet to my right. He saw me and stopped. He was short, broad, bearded and impeccably dressed, a discordant combination somehow. His dinner jacket fitted perfectly, and the silk stripe on his trousers gleamed in the dim light. He bowed.
"Excuse me if I startled you." His voice was deep and slightly hoarse. He strolled over in my direction. "I was just coming up from the pond."
"Oh," I said vaguely, "A pond. There's a trail, then?"
"Certainly," he said. We stood there for a moment in silence. The top of his head didn't even come up to my shoulders. His hair was curly and thick, and his complexion, from what I could make out, was rather swarthy. Swarthy is a strange word.
"Would you like to walk down there?" I raised my eyebrows, which he couldn't see, or perhaps he could. His eyes were dark, large and liquid. He offered me his arm smoothly. It was impossible to guess his age. Over 40, I thought.
I took the arm, thick and muscular beneath the jacket, and he escorted me to what turned out to be a rather wide, well-tended path. I was afraid my bare feet would encounter sharp pebbles and thorns, but the ground was mossy. Around us, trees gathered in the almost dark. In spite of the difference in our heights, he matched my stride easily.
"So," he said. "Life has not been easy for you lately, I perceive."
"An excellent party gambit," I replied. "Is life ever easy?"
He laughed. It was a good laugh, animal but not coarse. He had a faint male odor to him, too, that was nice. "Life is a dance," he said.
"Life is behind the dance," I said. "Sometimes I wish it were more visible through our silly cultural overlays."
"Perhaps you are too mental. You forget how to move."
I raised an eyebrow again. "Move?"
"Run flat out, for example. Remembering that you are an animal."
"What?" But he did not elaborate. "Well," I said, caught between annoyance and amusement, "Actually, I run regularly. I rather suspect I run a good deal faster than you."
"Than I?" His eyes positively seemed to twinkle at me in the dim light. "Never." "I'd bet on it," I told him. A sprinter in college, I could safely make that claim. With his build, he probably couldn't jog more than 20 yards. Not that he looked fat, just very stocky.
"You wouldn't dare bet," he said, stopping in mid-stride. Irritated at so much male self-aggrandizement in one evening, I stuck out my hand. He shook it without hesitating, his hand hard like wood.
"Unfortunately," I said, "there's no easy way to settle. Perhaps it's time to return to the house."
"Why not race to the pond?" he said. His eyes were very bright and his expression was... merry, I guess. Something odd was going on. Part of me was irritated, part was sad, part wanted to be home asleep, but part was stirring. I actually wanted to run. Stupid little man. But he wasn't that. I almost felt aroused.
"In this?" I indicated my silk sheath, the pearls, the hose.
"Well," he said, "It's true the dress seems designed to slow you down." He looked down the path, into the darkness. "I tell you what," he said, stepping behind me. "No one will know the difference."
To my stupefaction, I felt him unzip the back of my gown to my waist and sweep it down from my shoulders before I could react. As it fell to my feet, I started to turn, and he jostled me so that I stumbled out of it. When I caught my balance, he was already shaking it out.
He looked up at me neutrally. My adrenaline was suddenly pumping. "You may want to take off the pantyhose as well," he said. "If this is your idea of a joke..." I spat out with the harshness of fear and an- ger.
He raised his eyebrow, I swear he did, an impossibly thick and bushy eyebrow. "You're backing out, then? You concede? I --"
"What are you doing?" I said incoherently. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"We will race," he said, almost growling. A chill went up my back.
"What, in the dark, me in my underwear and you fully dressed? Me barefoot and you in shoes? I have no idea where the path even is. Give me back my dress!"
He handed it to me without comment. I snatched it and started trying with shaking hands to open the zipper he had closed again.
"I would run on an even footing," he said. I glanced up and saw him kick a shoe deep into the bushes. He didn't unbutton his jacket and shirt, or unbuckle his pants, he just tore them open in one smooth motion, and slipped out of them. They fell on the forest floor behind him, the arms and legs spread like a corpse. I looked around in panic. How was this happening?
He looked like a beast, covered with hair. His body was massive, thick with layer upon layer of muscle. Somewhere inside me a little voice noted, "No socks, no boxers." His cock and balls were huge, like an animal's. My cunt contracted involuntarily.
"Well," he asked me, "Will you dress again and go back to the house? I shall not. I am tired of clothing."
"May I go?" I asked.
"You may do as you choose," he said. "Or can you match me?"
I took a step back from him, trembling, bent over in fear, preparing to make a dash to the house. His eyes met mine, hot, unflinching, all too understanding. I looked into them, and flame erupted through me.
I straightened and threw the damned dress on the ground. "Are you going to kill me?" I yelled. "Here!" I peeled off my pantyhose and panties. "Here!" I dragged off my chemise and threw it on the stupid dress. I stood naked in front of him, panting, full of rage, suddenly not afraid of him.
He pointed down the hill. "Ready, then? Go!"
I glared at him, and sprinted past, trying to bump his shoulder, waiting for him to grab me, but he just stepped clear.
He was right; even in the darkness, the path was somehow plain. I felt as if I knew every turn, every bush, every root, every stone. My feet gripped the earth, my breath came in great smooth gasps, my arms pumped madly. I had never run faster, I swear. Even when I broke the Nebraska state record for the 100, I had never run this fast.
I heard him behind me, panting like a boar, his heavy feet thudding on the earth. He couldn't possibly be keeping this pace, but he was. I glanced back and almost choked. He ran intently, his arms raised before him like claws, a predator's light in his eyes.
Difficult as it seemed, I ran faster, a raw panic coursing through me, tearing away my control. At the same time, a terrible yearning to be caught began to fill my belly. I wanted him in some raw way, as his prey, even if it meant death. This only redoubled my fear.
He was closing on me; I could hear his breath louder. Glancing back again, I saw he was only a few feet behind, and he had a hard-on like a baseball bat, jigging in front of him.
How can he run like that, I wondered, but my panic flared, driving thought away. Ahead, I saw the forest opening onto a small pond, my only safety. I was so close. My lungs burned with each ragged breath, and my head was spinning. In the distance, out in the water, I saw a woman. The path dropped off steeply, and I tried to brake. In slow motion, I tripped on a root, spinning out into the air. I glimpsed a sliver of a moon above me as I landed not on the rocky shore but in his massive arms.
I lay there, trapped, panting, my loins throbbing. I felt heavy with lust such as I'd never felt in my life, in heat, helpless, strangely safe.
He set me down, his huge cock hard against my stomach. "Take me," I gasped, trying to climb up onto it. "Now, for god's sake, now."
He pulled me down to him and kissed me, his hair like the forest, his tongue spreading madness through my mind. I felt his hands on my breasts, my stomach, my ass, my cunt. Everywhere they touched, a layer of dust fell away. I was becoming something else, losing what I'd been. My mind was helpless with desire.
I grabbed his cock and tried to guide it into me, but he held me effortlessly and growled, "Not face to face, not now. Your time is not yet come." He rolled me onto hands and knees, spread my legs and took me from behind. He didn't fill me, he enveloped me, spread me wider than I could bear, pushed into me deeper than I knew for a fact was possible and set me alight.
I felt my elbows on the ground, my fingers in the grass, a twig under the ball of my right thumb. My knees lifted off the ground with each endless thrust, his coarse hair frotting the backs of my thighs. My nipples burned like candles. Each breath became an agony and a caress. I felt individual pearls roll against the back of my neck and tap my throat. I began to sense particular hairs on my arms and belly. All over my body, small muscles awoke as distinct voices of pleasure. I began to feel individual bones, deep beneath the skin. It was as if sensation radiated from my groin, intensifying rather than obscuring every possible physical awareness.
Time disappeared. Each instant was far more intense than the wildest orgasm I'd ever had, excruciating in its intensity of pleasure, unbearable to let pass as the next was born. And yet it built. I really saw how I might die, but I couldn't stop.
When I did come, I swear I held John beneath me one last time in fulfillment of a solemn promise we'd never known how to make. I felt his heat inside me as I had so many times before, while at the same time my soul was washed on a different flood of semen that ran through me faster and saltier than my blood. The howl of the god's ecstasy tore me from the world for a moment to a place of pure fire, where I burned away in heat and the sweetness of a kiss.
I came back to consciousness in a fetal curl, naked on the moss at the edge of the trees. I sat up slowly. My clothes were folded in a neat pile beside me. Although the temperature felt to be in the low 40s, I was warm. Something pulsed rhythmically in my womb. Dawn was breaking. I just sat there for a long time, cross-legged, staring at the ferns, listening to the birds.
Finally, I got up and dressed. I walked along the edge of the forest, looking for the path. There was no path. What's more, gazing down among the trees, I could see this was not the landscape I'd run through in the night. Drugs in the punch? I thought about it. Maybe.
I went up to the house. My shoes were still on the terrace where I'd remembered kicking them off. I took them and tried the French doors, which were not locked. Inside, no one was up. I wondered if Robert had spent the night. How else would I get home? Somehow, it didn't matter. I clenched my thighs and thought of other things.
In the front hall, I spotted my bag on a small table against the wall. I didn't remember putting it there. In fact, I didn't remember bringing it at all, but my purse and car keys were inside. I looked out through the pretentious leaded windows by the oversize front door and saw my little Saab parked down the drive by an ancient cedar tree. I let myself out quietly.
In the car, I sat for a while, seeking some sign of him. There was the forest smell, but that was on me too. I sighed and started the engine.
Since that time, nothing dramatic has changed. I'm not pregnant. I've dated a couple of men and can report that I still don't come during intercourse, no matter how long it goes on. When I do come, maybe the orgasms are a little more intense than they used to be, but that kind of thing is hard to quantify.
At the same time, everything has changed. I feel alive as never before. I taste air as I breathe it, I see everything around me more sharply than I used to, I feel my fingers and the hairs on my legs and the backs of my ears.
I think maybe I can accept now that Johnny and I have parted our ways. I feel I've kissed him farewell with a geas never to neglect his heart's desire, and with my love to warm him as he goes.
I know things more clearly, too. I know I want a child, and I know I shall find the father, though not who he will be. Someone John would approve, I think.
I have also thought that when my time comes, perhaps when I am sere and wrinkled, I want to be taken face to face by my unknown god. No matter how old I am, I know I shall welcome the chase then.
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