Dan Wakefield - Home Free

“Gene? I forgot.”

“What?”

“A weekend meeting of all New England faculty-student peace planning committees at Providence. I’m supposed to go.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. No need.”

“Should have said.”

He shrugged, so hard his shoulder wrenched.

She went back to her test papers.

He went to the kitchen and stuffed away the dead box of pizza, made himself a tall glass of gin with an ice cube. He spread out the Globe sports page on the floor and studied the NBA standings.

He heard Lou yawn, looked over to see her stretch, and said, “Hey, babe?”

“Hmmm?”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Will you promise that if you start makin it with any other guy you won’t tell me? I mean, you know, I know you’re free, we both are free, to do anything like that we want, but I just don’t want to know about it.”

She looked at him steadily and said, “OK, I promise.”

Then she went back to her work.

She had promised, anyway.

Not that she wouldn’t do it.

That she wouldn’t tell him about it.

The weather went from raw and clammy to steamy hot. The gentle, breezy part of spring didn’t happen that year. Gene was baking alive in his goddam suits and realized he’d have to hit Filene’s basement and try and pick him up some kind of summerweight jacket.

All just part of the pressure of being a rising young professional man.

The hell of it was he was having to hold off the lady editor who liked him from pushing for the company to bring him up from the stockroom into some better job. It was hard to explain he didn’t want the kind of jobs they considered “better.” Just to ensure he stayed in the stockroom, he thought he might have to fuck up a little. Forget to bring the lady editor the coffee that kept her awake in the afternoon. Maybe let old Hoskins get lost in the Public Garden. Show a little irresponsibility.

One night he came home from work and found Lou there with a six-pack, some deli food, and a guy named Steven Alexander.

“Steven,” Lou explained, “is active in the inter-University Peace Co-Ordinating Group.”

“Oh,” Gene said.

This time it was him and not the other guy who must have looked unpleasantly shocked. He could feel the heat of his cheeks, and that made him more uncomfortable. He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew.

Steven Alexander looked completely at ease. He was an instructor in mathematics at Boston University. Tall, with red hair in a brush cut and steel-rim glasses. Smooth, pale skin with freckles on his face and hands. He wore a lightweight cord summer suit of the type Gene had just decided he’d better try to buy before he baked to death. He wore a neat blue shirt and a black-and-white polka-dot bow tie. Though he was sitting on the floor along with Lou where she had spread out plates for the deli food, he did not look casual or mussed. He looked crisp.

“Please join us,” he said to Gene, indicating the food.

His voice was unbearably pleasant.

“In a sec,” Gene said.

He took off the scratchy coat to his suit, went to the bathroom, and washed his hands and face. His shirt stuck to him. He didn’t want to make a big production of changing his clothing. He just rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He came out whistling, went to the kitchen, and cracked a can of beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon. That must be the beer of Steven Alexander. Lou didn’t drink Pabst. Didn’t used to, anyway.

He sat down on the floor and Lou said, “Corned beef’s good.”

She pushed the plate with corned beef toward him. He made the sandwich, careful to be sure it was a normal sandwich, neither scrimpy nor gigantic.

“Have a good day?” Lou asked.

“Super,” Gene said.

“You look hot.”

“It’s a hot day.”

“Yes, it is.”

“We seemed to have missed spring,” Steven Alexander said.

“Or it missed us,” Lou said.

They laughed. Lou and Steven did. Gene smiled.

Lou finished her sandwich, wiped her hands, and went to the kitchen. She opened a beer for herself and asked Steven if he’d like another one. He said no thanks, he had to be getting along pretty soon.

“I mustn’t forget,” he said as he stood up, “those clippings about the deserters in Sweden you were going to loan me.”

“Oh! Right.”

Lou went to a pile of papers on the couch and extracted a couple of sheets of Xeroxed newspaper stories.

“Here,” she said, handing them to him.

“I’ll return them,” Steven said, as he slipped them into his briefcase.

“No hurry.”

“Good evening,” Steven said to Gene, “it was nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Gene said.

Lou walked with him to the door, and stood out in the hall with him for a moment or so. It was quiet and then Gene heard them exchange “Good night.”

Lou came back in and started clearing stuff off the floor.

“I’m going to clean up,” Lou called from the kitchen.

“Clean up what?”

“The kitchen. All this shit that’s accumulating. Breakfast dishes.”

“OK,” he said.

The kitchen wasn’t in any different shape than it usually was, and usually it was Gene who got around to cleaning it up when it started to get out of hand. He turned on the radio to a rock station, but it was hard to hear above the noise from the kitchen. It sounded like a minor war. Pans banged and clashed, plates and cups collided and pillars of suds billowed up like the clouds from explosions.

When it was over Lou emerged pale and bedraggled, pulling her dress over her head.

“I think I’ll go to bed and read awhile,” she said.

“It’s awful early.”

“I’m awful tired.”

“He seems like a nice guy.”

Lou looked blank a moment.

“Oh. Steven?”

“Yes.”

“He is,” she said, “he’s a very nice person.”

“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I believe it’s true.”

“Well, I guess you can believe what you want.”

“What I want is for you to tell me if it’s true.”

“You told me once you didn’t want me to tell you that. If it ever happened.”

“Well now I do.”

She got a cigarette, lit it, and sat down on the couch.

“OK,” she said. “It’s true.”

“Congratulations,” he said.

She stood up and yelled.

“Goddam it you asked me to tell and I told and you go and get smartass about it.”

“OK. I’m sorry.”

“We talked about this from the start. Remember? We agreed we’d both be free to—to do what we want.”

“Yeh. I guess I just thought—I thought maybe we might not want to.”

“Well, for a long time we didn’t.”

“I still don’t.”

“Then don’t.”

“It makes it different.”

“Why? Why should it make anything different for us? I didn’t say I loved the guy or anything. I wanted to make it with him, and he wanted to make it with me, and we did. That’s all there is to it.”

“And what if you both want to do it again?”

“Then we probably will.”

“Do me one favor.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t do it here. I mean even if I’m not here or something. Do it at his place.”

“OK.”

“That’s all.”

“Good night, Gene.”

“Good night.”

Gene decided to take a lover. He didn’t really want to, but he felt he should. Maybe it would help bring the balance back between him and Lou. Maybe if they both had other lovers it would somehow bring them closer again. If nothing else it might help make him forget about her fucking that Steven Alexander guy. He kept picturing Lou in bed with him, imagining her doing with him all the things she had done with Gene. It actually seemed … obscene . For the first time he understood what the word meant.