After Lisa left I went back to the kitchen and sat down with another cup of coffee. I was trying to puzzle out how I was going to talk to Sandy about her relationship with Lisa (and for that matter, my relationship with Lisa). I had no desire to limit my relationship with Lisa to a one-night stand.
"But then again," I asked myself, "What would I do if Sandy demanded I stay away from Lisa?"
"So how could she do that, given what she has done with Lisa?"
"Yeah, well, she just could," I told myself, "and I don't think I'll have the courage to tell her no."
"But why would she do that? She certainly didn't with Rachel."
"Maybe I should just be mad at her and walk away."
"Yeah, fat chance of that happening. Besides, how do you walk away from someone who's never around?"
"Maybe Sandy would just deny the whole story and claim she never knew Lisa."
"Not likely," I told myself. "First, the way Lisa reacted when she saw my drawing of Sandy on the dock was a giveaway. She was telling the truth. She had been deeply in love with Sandy and still is. Besides that, I'm sure Rachel knows the whole story and would tell me if I asked. Sandy knows that too. She won't lie about her affair with Lisa."
"So really no shit, Steve, what are you going to do?"
I had gone around this conversation about three times (and a cup and a half of coffee) when the phone rang. It was the art supply house calling to tell me the roll of paper I had special ordered for the big drawing had just come in. That gave me the excuse I needed to stop torturing myself with the Sandy/Lisa problem. I quickly cleaned up the kitchen, showered, dressed, and headed for the subway to get my paper. Right now I wanted, more than anything else, to focus on my drawing.
So that's exactly what I did for the next three days. Doing the big drawing presented some problems, because my drawing board wasn't big enough for the sheet I was working with. I sketched out the outlines of the figures on the floor and then did the color work on the drawing board in sections. I was a little concerned about how well this would work, but after three days I had a completed pastel drawing taped to the wall that I really liked. It was just like the small model I had done, but bigger. Much bigger!
Two naked women slumped against each other on a couch with that "oh so satisfied, just climaxed so fucking hard I can't believe it" look. The tall blonde, the one with the small tits, is lying with her head back and eyes closed, her long shapely legs stretched out before her, with the left one splayed to the side exposing her glistening sex to the viewer. The shorter redhead is tucked under the blonde's right arm, her eyes closed and her unruly curls covering one of the blonde's breasts. Their hips are tight together sharing their warmth. The redhead has one leg extended like the blonde's tight alongside hers. Her other leg is pulled up, the heel on the couch threatening to slide off if she falls asleep, exposing her equally gleaming sex.
The key to the picture is the expression on the women's faces. Rachel, the redhead, has a pure smile of love and satisfaction. Sandy's smile is perhaps just a little more complex, a bit ambiguous. Is it satisfaction, contentment, love for Rachel, or pride at how she had just satisfied Rachel, or made Rachel satisfy her? I didn't know, and I didn't want the viewer to know either—not for sure. This wasn't a Mona Lisa smile. It was something else. Just as ambiguous but more erotic. The contrast between the two girls' expressions was the emotional heart of the picture. It invited the viewer to speculate about the women's respective emotions and motivations, thereby making the drawing's story the viewer's own.
"Yes, it works," I told myself.
That was when my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw it was Sandy. My heart leaped. I still didn't know whether to be pissed or fearful of losing her. We hadn't talked since before my fling with Lisa. I had been avoiding the issue by burying myself in my work. But the work was done, and there was Sandy on the phone. "Time to step up," I told myself.
"Hi you," I answered.
"Hi yourself," she said. "I'm glad you're there, but where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for three days, but you don't answer your phone or respond to voice mails."
"Oh . . . Yeah, well, I guess that's right. I've been buried in my work. I got the roll of paper I needed, and I've been doing the big drawing of you and Rachel for my show. I guess I got pretty engrossed in what I was doing, but then if anyone would understand that it should be you."
She laughed a little. "You've got a point there," she said. "Actually I'm thrilled to hear that. You haven't been like that since you got laid off. I've been worried about you."
Okay, I thought. She sounds like she still cares.
"But do I?"
"Of course you do you dumb shit. You're still head over heals in love with her."
"Yeah, but she . . . she and Lisa . . ."
"Yeah and you and Lisa did too, so what's the big deal? Not to mention she and Rachel and you and Rachel. You and Sandy are going to have to talk it through, that's all."
"Okay, but not over the phone."
There was an awkward silence while I had this little conversation in my head.
Finally I spoke up, "Where are you?"
"JFK. That's why I've been trying to reach you. To tell you I was coming home."
My heart flipped over again.
"There are some things we have to talk about," she said.
Uh oh. It's never good when a woman says that to you.
"Do you have to go to the office first?" I asked.
"No. I'm coming straight home, and we're going to talk, and then I'm going to fuck your brains out. There's a car waiting for me that'll bring me straight home. I'll see you in an hour."
"Okay."
"Oh and Steve, one more thing. I love you. I really fucking love you more than anything else in the world." Then she hung up.
Wow, I thought. I guess it's okay. But what about Lisa?
I realized that I smelled like the oils in the pastels I had been using, and I hadn't had a shower in three days (yeah, I really was engrossed in the drawing), so I stripped off my clothes, threw them in a hamper, and then got a shower. After I got out, I shaved off three days' beard and dressed in clean clothes that didn't smell like the studio. It wasn't much—an old pair of cutoff sweats and a T-shirt. I was hoping underwear wouldn't be needed. Then I puttered around the house picking up a few things here and there. I'd been neglecting my house-husband role for the last three days. Mostly it was a matter of gathering up empty, or partially empty, pizza boxes and empty beer bottles and tossing them down the trash chute. I really had been engrossed in my work.
But the whole time, I was running variants of how I thought our conversation might go through my head. I alternated between terrified that I was about to lose my wife and asking myself why I shouldn't walk out on her. Oh yes, and I was also was horny as hell. I hadn't even thought about sex since my night with Lisa, but my libido had taken flight as soon as Sandy had told me she wanted to fuck me.
As horny as I was, I was still mentally prepared for a long, serious talk. Well, as prepared as you can ever get for that. I really expected that Sandy was going to arrive in her serious mode and want to sit at the kitchen table over a Scotch or two to talk about Lisa, or god forbid, just tell me she wanted a divorce.
That wasn't how it worked. I heard her key in the lock, and I walked into the hall just as she came in. She left the door open, dropped her bag in the doorway, and reached me in three long strides, her spiked heels banging on the hardwood floor. Before I could even say anything her arms were around me, and she had pulled me close for a long kiss.
"Oh Steve, she said. "You can't believe how good it is to see you." She had her hands on my ass, pulling my hips into her. Then we were kissing again, her sexy tongue sliding in and out of my mouth, and I had let my hands drop so I had ahold of her hips. All my thoughts about confronting her about Lisa disappeared. All I wanted to do was make love with her.
I pushed her against the wall, still kissing her, but now I was using my hands to pull up the hem of her skirt. I got it up so I could now grab her bare ass unencumbered by the skirt. Where did she lose her panties, I thought for a second? Then she raised one leg and wrapped it around my upper thighs, pulling me in close, and I quit caring where her panties had gone.
We backed apart just enough to start tearing at each other's clothing. I was trying to unbutton her blouse, but I think I tore at least two or three buttons off, and then I heard seams popping as I wrenched it over her shoulders. Wherever her panties had gone, her bra had gone to the same place. Her nipples were like hard little rocks, the way they always got when she was aroused.
Sandy had her hands in my sweat pants and was massaging my rigid dick. She paused just long enough to push the sweats over my hips so they fell in a pool around my bare feet. Somehow the fastener and zipper on her dark blue skirt were released and it joined my old grey sweats in the pool of clothing around our feet. I don't know. I may have damaged that garment too. For the moment, it didn't matter.
