Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

“No one believes me. My friends think I must have done something horrible. But I’m innocent, I swear!” She clutched David’s arm and begged: “Do you believe me?”

David laughed at her desperate gesture and language, because while she pleaded, her eyes twinkled mischievously, hinting, like starlight, at tomorrow’s unseen and powerful sun.

He was drunk. The party had made him uncomfortable. Tasting the bourbon over and over helped, and by the time Marion’s heavy meal of crab croquettes and lasagna arrived, his stomach felt full and he only wanted more cool liquid. But the booze didn’t soothe his uneasy memory of his behavior. He had heard himself arguing with every opinion the guests pronounced. It had begun with Bart about writers and businessmen, but he even found himself telling Fred the Yankees couldn’t win this year, quoting half-remembered opinions of Harold Yeller, Newstime’s sports columnist, as if he had thought them himself, or even understood them. David hadn’t watched a ballgame in years. Yes, the general feel of the evening had disgusted him. There was something pathetic about Fred’s formal arrangements: forcing them into some sort of community. Worst of all was the pretense that they were important, when, in fact, other than Bart (who, after all, was merely an agent), they were mediocrities. All of them standing in line at the New York cafeteria of young professionals: stuffed with opinions before the meal of life had even begun.

Patty had noticed David’s succession of bourbons. No one else was drinking hard stuff, for one thing, and David also seemed to cling to his glass in a somewhat tragic and desperate manner. She liked him for it. She felt he would understand her own desperation. Besides, Patty was raised in a Philadelphia suburb, and David’s drinking summoned a more manly image than seeing a shrink or complaining endlessly, as it seemed to her most New York men did when they were unhappy.

Their cab took Second Avenue down from Fred’s and Marion’s apartment on Sixty-seventh Street. They were passing the gaily colored Roosevelt tram, parked in its cocoon like a children’s toy of a giant race. They were through the midtown traffic and would be at David’s stop on West Broadway in ten minutes. She wanted him to ask her up, or at least suggest they go for a drink at the Spring Street Bar. It would be hours before Patty could sleep.

“What time is it?” she asked dishonestly, having seen eleven o’clock flash when they passed the Daily News Building.

“I don’t know. It feels like four in the morning, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, no. I’m speeding. I feel like I just got up.”

“I didn’t mean I was tired,” David said.

“Good. I want you to buy me a drink.”

David turned to her and showed surprise. Patty held her breath. She hadn’t planned to make the invitation. Everything, these days, seemed to fly out of her: not merely indelicate invitations to men, but also intimacies, anxieties, confessions of guilt, of meanness, details of her bowel movements, all sorts of high-security information that was normally guarded closely by censors.

“Okay.” David didn’t mean to sound perfunctory. He had been so caught up by the image of himself sniping and nattering at the party that seduction hadn’t occurred to him. But the surprise was pleasant. Patty’s blond hair, wanton mouth, and big eyes were excellent lures.

“If you’re tired, don’t—” she began.

“Don’t be silly,” David said, turning his attention to the possibilities. His voice deepened; he shifted toward her and smiled agreeably. “But let’s not go to a bar.”

Patty pursed her lips. “Your apartment?” she suggested, batting her eyes.

Tony expected his wife to be in bed reading. She was.

“Dollface.” he announced at the bedroom door.

“Hi!” Betty said, her high thin voice making this word gay and ringing. She spoke in fiat tones usually, but greetings were her strong suit. She lay in the bed wearing a long pin-striped nightshirt. Ensconced in the big pillows, her short curly red hair framed by the bright colors of the linens, she looked young — a dutiful daughter waiting for Daddy’s good-night kiss. Tony always felt slightly startled by his wife’s girlish face. Her short nose and pale blue eyes were eager, almost naive, whereas he knew her interior to be different: cynical, cautious, and mature. It was the latter, internal picture of her that he carried out with him to the world and subconsciously expected to find on his return.

“You’re awake,” Tony said, pleased. He took off his jacket and opened the closet door.

“Let me see you.” Betty said.

Tony turned around. “What?”

“Put your jacket on. I want to see how you look.”

He obeyed with boyish sheepishness: showing himself to Mom for inspection.

“You’re putting on weight,” she said.

Tony sagged. “Great. For this I put my jacket back on?”

“Aw,” she laughed. “Don’t disappear,” she called after him as he went into the closet.

“How was your mother?” Tony asked, reappearing, with only his Jockey shorts on.

“Your greenies!” Betty said, delighted. She referred to the color of his underpants.

“I wore your favorites,” Tony said in a lofty tone.

“My mother! What about my mother!”

“Aha! I knew you’d forget. Tomorrow, when Fred calls to say he was sorry you couldn’t come, he’ll ask how your night out with Mom was.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry. I’ll remember.”

Tony closed the closet door and hurried under the covers, his hands immediately playing, ticklishly, up and down his wife’s body. She squirmed and giggled like a girl.

“Oh — oh — don’t! You’re waking me up!”

“God!” Tony shouted in his deepest and most dramatic of voices. Despite its masculine low register, whenever he used that tone, Betty heard Tony’s mother talking — Maureen Winters, a drink in her hand, standing atop the stairs, her hair prettily disheveled, calling out in a throaty voice: “God help me!”

Tony had abruptly rolled away and over onto his back. He stared at the ceiling. “We’re so damned domestic.”

Betty rearranged herself, retrieving her book. “Tell me about the party.”

Tony groaned. He rolled over again to his side, facing Betty. “Nothing happened. Boring.” His hand sneaked under the cover, heading for Betty’s thighs.

“Was Fred’s new agent there?”

Tony nodded. “Bart What’s-his-name.” His hand touched her thin, smooth, and elegant leg.

“Bart Cullen.” Betty pursed her thin lips with disapproval — a snobbish mannerism Tony disliked. “He’s a bizarre person.”

“He’s psychotic. I think he believes he gets ninety percent of his clients, not ten,” Tony said in a seductive whisper. He ran the flat of his hand up her hip to the side of her belly.

“Who else was there?”

“Your good friend Patty.”

“Oh! I have to call her!”

Tony moved closer. His hand moved over Betty’s stomach and up to her breast. Despite the frown she put on, her body undulated with pleasure. He gently followed the slight rise of her collarbone to her neck. There was a faint trace of a line just above her Adam’s apple and he touched it lightly. She shivered. “Fred and his wife, Bart and his girlfriend. A writer named Karl Stein—”

“Karl Stein? That sounds familiar.”

“He’s under contract to your colleague Bob Holder. Bart is his agent.”

“Right! Yeah, Bart only deals with Bob. Supposed to be a terrific novel.”

Tony dropped his hand to her hips and pulled her toward him, speaking softly as he warmed himself against her body. “Can’t be. He’s a frightened rabbit. He listens to Bart like he’s God.”