It was Sunday night. I was in our bedroom, sorting my laundry, getting clothes ready for the work week. When you get to be our age, preparedness helps to avoid the situations where you can't remember what you were thinking about or what plans you made. If I line my clothes up ahead of time, it makes it easier to get out of the house in the morning, which is something I have trouble with. Once upon a time I could get four kids out the door in reasonable fashion, and sit down and have a cup of quiet coffee before work. Now, in my advancing years, it's all I can do to get myself out the door, dressed and ready. So I spend Sunday night in preparation. And, often, while I'm at it, I try on various combinations, which is actually fun. Blouses, skirts, pants, shoes, jewelry, even makeup. It's my Sunday night ritual. On this Sunday night, I was also trying to keep my mind off the two men down in the family room, watching the World Series. Is there anything more boring than baseball? I'd show them a good time, if I had the nerve.
One of the men was my husband, Ed. The other was his friend, our friend, Jim. Jim is single. Always has been. Always will be. And he is known, in these parts, as a lady's man. Each of the half-dozen times we've had him here on an occasion which required a "date", he has come with a different woman. And I mean different. Young, not so young, skinny, heavy, tall, short. Each of them hanging on his every word. Each of them about to be hung out to dry.
Jim has always been careful with me. Careful what he says about his women, careful how he looks at me. Just plain careful. It's always given me a slightly uneasy feeling, like he's concealing something. I have no idea what he and Ed talk about when they are alone. They may talk in the raunchiest ways about Jim's women, or me, even. I don't know. I do know that I'd love to get Jim alone and talk about anything, even his women. Better yet, talk about me. And him. And touch and kiss, and then have sex. Even in his 50s, Jim is sexy. Strong, trim, masculine, clean, handsome. I have often dreamed of being one of his harem, if just for a night. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that it's just a dream.
Which doesn't keep my mind from wandering where it shouldn't go. Changing my clothes every few minutes was giving me ideas. What fun it would be to put something nice on, march into the family room, and ask, "How does this look?" And if that doesn't get their attention, come back and get a few different items, march into the family room again, and change tactics. "Which one do you like better? This one?" Then change my blouse while standing in front of them. "Or this one?" And if that didn't get their attention, I could try the same thing with my pants. Alas, I don't have the courage, or anything like it. It's just a harmless daydream. But it sure beats baseball.
It had been quiet for the last ten or fifteen minutes from downstairs. Earlier there had been quite a bit of yelling and hollering. The lack of noise likely meant that things weren't going well in the game. I was laying a blouse on the bed when there was a light rap on the bedroom door and it opened. I turned around, expecting to see Ed, but it was Jim, which was startling, partly because I had only a bra and panties on. Well, I had shoes on, too, but only because I was playing this game of imagining marching down to the family room half naked and changing clothes in front of the men. Because it was Jim and not Ed, and because I was startled, I reached for the blouse I'd just put on the bed. Also because it was Jim, I made sure he had a good look before I managed to hold it up in front of me, as if I were looking at it in a mirror. After all, there aren't many fiftyish women with a body like mine, and I didn't, this time, have to just imagine showing it off.
Jim stepped inside the room and said, "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, Suzanne."
Yeah, right, then why did you enter before I could say, "Come in." I just looked at him.
"Ed called and said he'd be a couple hours."
This was very confusing information.
"What do you mean? I thought he was downstairs with you."
"He was, but his beeper went off and he had to go out on a call." Ed is a paramedic with the town volunteer ambulance.
You know how in "the old days" in dormitories in women's colleges when a student brought a man to her room she'd holler "MAN ON THE FLOOR"? Well, right now, inside my head, a voice was hollering, "MAN IN THE BEDROOM!"
I said, "I didn't hear the phone ring."
"Well, he called my cellphone from the scene and said they had to take the patient to the trauma center in Albany."
All this time, Jim had been fighting to maintain eye contact with only limited success. His eyes kept flicking down to my thighs. He was now leaning against the door, partly, I think, to hold himself up.
"Well, that's too bad... I feel a little silly holding this blouse up."
"I wouldn't mind if you didn't hold it up, Suzanne."
"You wouldn't mind?"
"I mean I'd like it if you didn't hold the blouse up."
"But if I don't hold the blouse up, you'll be able to see me in my underwear."
"That will be a nice change from having to imagine you in your underwear."
"Oh, Jim, you've never done any such thing."
"I never do anything else."