Wife and Ex-Wife

Nina dragged into work several minutes late. Her tardiness was not the first thing her co-worker Teresa Schuster noticed about her.

Teresa had been a friend of many years' standing, and she had been invaluable in helping Nina through the trauma of her divorce. She was several years older than Nina, edging toward forty, and had been happily (or at least satisfactorily) married for nearly fifteen years. She and her husband, Frank, all but had Nina move in with them during the first few weeks after Larry had bolted from the scene; and for that kindness, and many others, Nina felt a huge debt of gratitude to her.

Teresa worked in the new accounts department at the bank, and this early in the morning her work load was pretty light. There were other things she could have been doing, but as Nina plumped herself down at the desk next to hers, Teresa said:

"Good Lord, Nina, you look awful!"

Nina turned a weary eye toward Teresa and said: "Thanks a lot—you sure know how to make a girl feel happy."

"I'm sorry," Teresa said, abashed. "But really, you look as if you've been hit by a semi."

Nina let out an immense sigh and said, "I'm just tired, that's all." But she couldn't help adding: "And sore."

Teresa's eyes opened wide. She was no dummy. "You were with . . . a man?"

Something about the tone of her friend's voice irritated Nina. "Am I not allowed to be with a man during off hours?"

"Of course you are. But I wasn't aware you were going with anyone. You haven't said—"

All of a sudden Teresa's mouth closed with an almost audible click. "Don't tell me you slept with someone on the first date!" She made it sound as if Nina had committed some heinous act of

lèse-majesté.

"Well, what if I did?" Nina said, her voice rising, perhaps to cover her embarrassment.

Not only on the first date—on the first hour of the first date . . .

"Nina!" Teresa chided. She was well aware of how upset Nina had been at being cast aside by her husband, and she had frequently urged her to "get back in the game." But this was not what she was expecting. "You really shouldn't have done that."

"Why the hell not?" Nina said hotly.

"What do you know about this guy? I mean—"

"I know plenty about him! He's good-looking, and kind, and sweet, and—and he has a job! Isn't that enough?"

Teresa looked at Nina skeptically. "Enough for what? I suppose you stayed with him all weekend?"

"He stayed with me, as a matter of fact."

"He stayed in your house?"

"Well, of course! He only has a little apartment."

I know: I was there, fetching his clothes.

"It was a lot more comfortable in my—my place." She had almost said "my bed," but bit her tongue before she could do that.

"Pardon my saying so, Nina, but he seems to have roughed you up a little."

"He didn't!" Nina cried, feeling she had to come to the rescue of Patrick's reputation. "It was—mutual."

"I see," Teresa said. "Um, exactly how many times did he—?"

"Did he do what?" Nina said in a faux-naïve way.

"You know what. It had to be more than once."

"So what if it was?"

"So how many?"

"I'm not going to tell you! It—it's private."

"Oh, come on, Nina, it's me, Teresa. You tell me everything." That was true: Nina had told Teresa all manner of things about her ex-husband that she'd never told anyone else, not even her mother (

especially not my mother!

).

Nina blushed crimson as she muttered, "Um, I think about eight times."

Teresa nearly fell off her chair.

"He fucked you eight times in two days?"

"Shhhh!" Nina said frantically. "Are you insane? People can hear!"

Actually, there were virtually no customers in the office, and other members of the bank's staff were far away and paying no attention to the chatting females.

"Let me get this straight," Teresa said, as if conducting a scientific inquiry. "He

came

eight times from—what? Friday to Sunday?"

"Actually it was Saturday to—to Monday," Nina confessed.

"He did you this morning? No wonder you look like a mess!"

"Look, does it really matter how many times we did it? We did it, okay?"

"I just didn't think it was humanly possible for a man to—you know, do it that many times. Even with a lot of rest in between. I think Frank's cock would fall off if he tried it."

"Teresa, will you stop talking like that? We're at work here!"

"Not much happening right now. I'm just marveling at this guy's . . . stamina. Your pussy must be sore as hell."

For some inexplicable reason Nina slipped out with, "It wasn't just there."

Teresa looked askance at her friend. "What, your mouth too?"

"Well, yes."

About an hour ago, if you really want to know.

"But I didn't mean that."

"Then what—?" Teresa abruptly fell silent. Then, in a deep and hollow voice: "Oh, no, he didn't!"

"Didn't what?"—although Nina knew exactly what Teresa was talking about.

"In your bottom?"

Teresa whispered agitatedly.

"Sure, what of it?" Nina said with utterly insincere lightheartedness.

"Oh, God," Teresa said, holding her stomach, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Oh, Teresa, grow up! Women do it—or have it done to them—all the time."

"I don't know of any. Do you?"

"Well, for Pete's sake, I haven't asked all my friends. But I'm sure some of them do. I—I hear young women like it a lot."

It's more like young men like to do it to young women,

both Nina and Teresa thought acidly.

"How could you let him do that to you?" Teresa said, shocked and appalled.

"There's nothing wrong with it!" Nina exclaimed. "I mean, Jesus, Teresa, you make it sound as if I let him hack a finger off of me. It was fine."

"Fine? You're saying it was fine?"

"Y-yes."

"Didn't it hurt?"

"Sure, the first one did. But—"

"The

first

one? You're saying he did it

again?"

"Well, yes—twice more, I think."

"Oh, God," Teresa said, now seeming to writhe in pain.

"Teresa, you're being such a baby. Don't tell me you've never done it—not even in your wild college days?"

"No, I've not done it! And I never had any wild college days!"

"You're telling me that Frank hasn't tried—?"

"Oh, he's asked—over and over again—but I told

him

where he could get off!"

"So you've never done it?"

"No!"

"Then how can you say whether you like it or not? And how can you decide for

someone else

whether they like it or not?"

Nina concluded her peroration with a flourish, looking at her friend in smug triumph.

"Look," Teresa said, half in defeat, "I don't care about that. I—I just think you're jumping into a relationship before you really know anything about this guy. Right now it doesn't even sound like a relationship: it's just all—"

"Don't you dare say that!" Nina warned.

It's not all sex—I'm sure it isn't.

"Anyway, I know a lot about him. I mean, he's not the most talkative guy in the world, but believe me, I got to know a lot about his thoughts and feelings." Again, Nina couldn't help saying out: "He—he said he loved me."

Teresa gazed at her friend, stunned. "He knows you two days and says he loves you?" she said.

One day, actually.

"Yes," Nina said defiantly.

And I said it back to him—but I'm not telling you that.

"You don't think that was just the sex talking?" Teresa said pointedly.

That was exactly what Nina had been thinking, but she thrust the thought from her mind. "I—I really don't think so. I don't think he's that kind of guy."

Teresa gazed at her friend with immense skepticism. But after a few moments she said: "Look, we've been talking too much—I guess we'd better get to work. I just hope you know what you're doing."

Nina said nothing to that.

I hope I do too.

*

Nina had to take a nap when she came home from work. She really was pretty tired. She made sure to keep her cellphone nearby, anxious not to miss Patrick's call.

But as her meager dinner was over and she found herself at loose ends, not knowing what to do and not in the mood to do much of anything, she began to get more and more worried.

Don't tell me Patrick has already discarded me for someone else? Good God, what if he is actually on a

date

with someone—a date set up before he'd met me? Maybe he couldn't be bothered to cancel the date—or maybe he'll find this new girl more to his liking! Why the bloody hell doesn't he call?

She was getting to the point of wishing she could destroy all the clocks in her house when, after 9:30, Patrick finally called.

He did have the good grace to apologize. "Sorry, I got a little tied up."

Those ambiguous words filled Nina with dread. "With—with what, exactly?"

A new inamorata?

"I was working."

"Working—at home?"

"Working on my stuff."

"What do you mean, your stuff?"

He sounded annoyed. "I told you before. I'm trying to be a freelance artist, illustrating book covers for science fiction and fantasy publishers." Now that Nina thought about it, he

had

said something about that—between bouts of lovemaking.

"Oh, yeah. How's that going?"

"Good, I think. I have some contacts with small-press publishers, and I'm confident I can get a foothold in this field before too long."

"That sounds great." But Nina wasn't very enthusiastic.

This isn't exactly what I wanted to talk about with you, Patrick.

But at least he wasn't gallivanting around with another woman.

"How've you been?" he asked.

"Pretty good," she said. "Kind of tired." She giggled girlishly at that.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Me too."

"Well, I'll have to get used to it, I suppose!"

God, I can't believe I said that!

Patrick didn't respond. His silence made Nina wish she could have unsaid those words.

I don't think he likes joking about sex—the issue seems too important to him.

To fill up the dead space, Nina said, "So when can I see you again?" She wished she didn't sound quite so whiny.

"That's a good question," he said tentatively.

That is most definitely

not

the answer I was looking for!

"What do you mean by that?" Nina said nervously. "You want to see me again, don't you?"

You said you loved me!

"Of course I do," Patrick said, again sounding annoyed. "But I do like to do my own work in the evenings—weekday evenings, I mean."

"So you don't want to see me until the weekend?" Nina cried, utterly crestfallen.

"I didn't say that. I—"

"Then what do you mean?" she said, more and more agitated.

"Nina," he said sharply, "get a hold of yourself. You're getting upset about nothing."

"But I have to see you sooner than the weekend! You can't shut me out like this!"

"I'm not shutting you out." He heaved a sigh. "Look, how about you coming here Wednesday night?"

"Come to your place?" she said, a bit mollified.

"Yes."

"I could do that."

"Can you come late? Say, maybe around this time?"

"You don't want to have dinner with me?" she said, again lapsing into depression.

"Maybe we can wait till Friday for that. I'll take you out to a nice restaurant then."

"Okay," she said resignedly.

"Good," he said with undue satisfaction. Then: "I love you, Nina."

She gripped the phone tightly and pressed it against her cheek. "I love you too, Patrick."

He disconnected. Nina looked at the phone as if it was some kind of pest that had crawled into her living space. She tossed it aside, fell on the couch on the living room, and burst into tears.

*

Wednesday couldn't come soon enough; and that evening, as Nina prepared her lonely dinner, she began getting more and more angry.

God, he's just trying to compartmentalize me! I'm supposed to stay out of his way while he does his all-important "artwork"—and then he snaps his fingers, and I'm expected to go over to his place and spread my legs—and other parts of my anatomy—for him! What sort of a relationship is that? How am I supposed to get to know him if all he wants to do with me is plow his way into my body?

She sensed that she was being just a little too hard on him—but only a little. Maybe he had come to regret the crazy weekend he'd spent with her and was trying to pull back a little. Of course, there was always the standard worry a woman has about a man's dread of commitment—augmented, in this case, by the divorce he went through. Well, by God,

she'd

gone through a divorce, too!—and she wasn't afraid of committing! She'd spent a weekend with him like no other in her whole life; she'd allowed him to do things to her that she'd never let any other man do, not even her ex-husband. And he was already getting cold feet?

Or maybe

she

was the one rushing into things, as Teresa seemed to think. She'd held off dating for so long that she was pretty rusty at it. She probably shouldn't have let him take such liberties with her: in spite of his protestations of love, maybe he

did

just want her for sex. But no—she refused to believe that. He couldn't be such a scumbag. But she had to tread carefully. His criticism of his ex-wife as a "somewhat needy person" rang in her ears, and she knew she had to avoid that pitfall if she was to have any hope of keeping him around for the long term.

That was assuming she really wanted him around for the long term. Yes, she had also said she loved him—but did she? Were those words just a way of making sure he didn't bolt after their wild weekend? She had to know a lot more about him before she was ready to commit to him.

I can't overthink this. Let's just play it a day at a time.

Nina threw some clothes into a tote bag, since she assumed she would be staying the night at his place. How mortifying if he didn't even want that! But he almost certainly did. Freshening up her makeup, she left the house at just before 9:30 and drove over to his apartment in Maple Leaf.

As soon as she entered the place, Nina got the sense that she was not entirely welcome there. It wasn't that Patrick didn't greet her with a big hug (which, as she expected, included some squeezing of her bottom) and an ardent kiss; it was that he seemed nervous and jumpy, even though he knew full well that she had been here before, when he had asked her to get some clothes for him. She remembered the layout—a smallish living room leading off to two even smaller bedrooms, one of which Patrick was clearly using as a kind of study or maybe even a studio. There were all manner of art paraphernalia there: no actual easel with a canvas on it, but a slanting desk where he seemed to be working on some black-and-white line drawings. The room he used for a bedroom barely had space for a queen-size bed, two nightstands, and a dresser. Even so, you had to go sideways between the bed and the dresser to get to the far end of the room.

The fact that Patrick was dressed only in a robe was not reassuring: she hoped to heaven that he didn't expect her just to leap into bed with him.

God! that would make me feel like some sort of escort . . .

Maybe he just wanted to be comfortable. In fact, he urged Nina to change into her nightgown, and she was happy to do that. (

At least he didn't say I should just parade around naked!

)

She didn't know exactly what they would do until they were ready for bed. Someone of Patrick's temperament was not likely to want to watch some brainless TV show! A bit to her surprise, he asked if he could put on some music—by which he meant classical music. He had told her that he had played the piano for some years when he was a teenager, and now he put on a recording—he still had a huge collection of LPs, which filled an entire wooden bookshelf in the living room—of one of Mozart's late piano concertos.

Nina didn't know a lot about classical music, but she found the alternately exciting and dreamily soft fluctuations of the piece incredibly stimulating. There was something so flawless in the composition that she felt a whole new world of aesthetic appreciation was opening up in front of her. The slow movement was so poignant and romantic that she came close to tears—and she was amazed that Patrick felt the same way. Nestled in his arms, she looked up at him and saw him staring off into space, eyes glistening, lost in transport at the exquisite melding of orchestra and piano.

There was nothing to do after that but go to the bedroom.

The love they made was tender and gentle, but Patrick didn't omit his now customary request for rear entry. Nina was mildly offended that he had taken the liberty of buying a jar of cold cream (

what the checkout clerk at the grocery or drug store had to say to that, I'd be very interested in knowing!

) and placing it in one of the nightstands, as if assuming she would yield to him on the point; but as a matter of fact, she was getting to like the procedure.

Actually, "like" was a pathetically inadequate word for what she was feeling. She began to have a vague understanding of what Patrick meant when he said that this act represented a kind of pinnacle in his quest for "the intensity of intimacy." As she lay down in her usual position, flat on her stomach, with him lying on top of her, his legs outside hers, she received his member into her orifice without pain, but with an indescribable sense of union and harmony. As he grasped her breasts with one hand and stroked her sex with the other, she felt totally at his mercy as he stimulated all her erogenous zones—but in some paradoxical and indefinable way she also felt as if she was in full control of the proceedings, making her entire body available for his delectation in a way that couldn't happen in any other position.

He was, mercifully, satisfied with two emissions (he had easily coaxed two climaxes out of her), and they collapsed in sleep afterwards. Morning was a hectic affair, as they got up late and had to hurry to take showers (alternately, not together) and wolf down a quick breakfast before heading off to their respective offices.

Patrick had made it clear that she shouldn't expect to see him until Friday night. He was working hard on his freelance artwork, and it required immense concentration and also a lot of time in the evenings; and without even having to say so, he emphasized that he needed total solitude for the work. Nina was disappointed, but realized that a major part of being in a relationship was accommodating your partner's wishes and schedules—so long as he accommodated yours just as sincerely.

When Friday finally came, Patrick said his work—both official and freelance—was (largely) over until Monday, and Nina was to be the sole object of his attention. He took great pains to take her to a reasonably fancy Greek restaurant in his neighborhood; afterward, by mutual agreement, they headed over to Nina's house, where they would spend the weekend. The sex they had was stimulating, as always. One time, Patrick insisted that Nina "ride" him: while he remained flat on his back, she would squat over his groin and insert his cock into her pussy, pumping him just as he had done to her so many times. She wasn't entirely happy with this position, chiefly because she seemed so horribly exposed—and Patrick added to her discomfiture by devouring her with his eyes, at times squeezing her breasts or bottom as he did so. But, aside from the fact that this position afforded fairly deep penetration, she figured that it was time for her to do a majority of the work during copulation: he had worked hard enough at other times!

It was on Sunday morning, after they had eaten a particularly lavish brunch she had prepared (omelet, bacon, toast, roasted potatoes, coffee), that Nina said something that she perhaps shouldn't have.