Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

“Gloria.”

“Gloria Fowler? How did that happen?”

“She called me.” Tony raised his eyebrows in an attempt to look snooty. “Said she admires my plays and wondered if we might have lunch.”

Betty whistled.

“You think she wants to represent me?”

“Does she do theater?”

“No, she doesn’t really. But other people in the agency do. She might want me to write movies.”

“Movies!” Betty reached for a pack of cigarettes on the night table beside her. “What would make her think you’d want to write movies?”

“Well.” Tony stood up and walked majestically toward the window, his legs stepping high and deliberately in front of him, a soldier on the march. “Don’t you think I can?”

Betty’s eyes were on his greenies. “Do you want to write movies?”

“God, you say it as if I’ve announced I want to fuck a leper.” He peered out a window at the street tragically.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. It’s fine if you want to write movies.”

“Thank you. Now we just have to get a studio to agree.” He turned to face her, smiling pleasantly. She looked at his flat stomach and followed the line of black hair that ran from his navel to the bulge in his greenies.

“Come here,” she said.

He did, approaching with a skeptical look. When he reached the side of the bed, she took his hand and pulled him down, her arms wrapping around his broad and bony back. She ran her fingers down his spine. “You have doe’s skin,” she said in a whisper.

“I think I should be saying that to you,” he answered.

“Let’s do it quickly. I don’t want to be up for hours,” she said with a kiss on his cheek. She moved her way up to his earlobe and nibbled on it.

“You flatter me,” Tony said. “It’s never taken hours.”

She smiled and slipped out from under him, opening the night-table drawer to remove the blue plastic diaphragm case, and then tiptoed quickly toward the bathroom. As she modestly shut the door behind her, she winked at him, like a girl at summer camp sneaking out of her bunk to do mischief.

Fred had left the bathroom, stung by his wife’s rejection. When, with an attitude of disdain, she took his hand off her body and placed it on the cold and slippery porcelain, he wanted to smash her. That deadly look of boredom and contempt — it was humiliating.

“I have to get cigarettes,” he said in a clipped voice, and left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang: hard enough to register a protest, but just short of actually slamming it.

He found a pack on the coffee table. There were only two cigarettes inside and he knew he would be up for hours. “Fuck.” he said, and got his coat. “I’m going down for cigarettes,” he shouted at the bathroom door.

“What?” Marion asked, her voice made faint by the closed door.

Fred opened it and said, “I’m out of cigarettes. Do you want something?”

Marion, her face a mask of indifference, shook her head.

Fred suddenly couldn’t maintain his anger: his look pleaded for mercy. “Are you angry at me?”

Marion’s eyes widened with surprise. “No. I’m taking a bath. I don’t want visitors when—”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” He shut the door and left, walking angrily, his feet stamping on the gray-carpeted floors. He stood at the bank of elevators and muttered to himself, accompanied by the hollow noise of wind rushing down the shaftways. “She really doesn’t want me around.” An elevator door slid open as he said this and there was a couple, dressed formally, inside. Fred suspected that they had heard him and he stepped in with his head down, embarrassed. This marriage isn’t going to last, he thought to himself, peering at the logo of Otis Elevator on the floor. This thought was loud and final in his skull. He knew the marriage wasn’t going to end that night, but inevitably it would have to: they had no desire for each other, they squabbled constantly, the entire relationship was joyless.

Or was it? Outside, he crossed the street along with a mass of people leaving the Beekman movie theater, and remembered last Saturday when they had stayed home and read and played a few hands of gin. That had been fun. He cheered up, entered the stationery store, and stood behind a few people lining up for tomorrow’s Times. Next to him, hanging by large metal clips, were copies of magazines. Many were pornographic. Fred leafed through one, pausing momentarily at a picture of a young, thin, tanned blond with her legs spread, and nothing on but black stockings. My God, is that what a woman looks like! he thought. What possible kinship could that creature have with Marion? Marion: her mousy hair, her round, sad face, her small breasts already sagging, her toneless stomach, her lumpy buttocks. And the dull look: what did Marion’s blank judgmental eyes have in common with the sparkling blue gems that laughed at him off the page of this seedy magazine?

His turn at the counter allowed him only a fleeting look at the page, but he carried the contrast with him back to the apartment.

Marion was in bed. Her hair had been flattened by washing. This made her face look even rounder and more expressionless.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully.

“You cooked a great meal,” Fred said, undressing at the closet. He tossed the clothes on its floor. Marion watched each item: she wanted them hung up or neatly folded.

“I got it from an author. The Fat and Happy Italian Cookbook.”

Fred laughed. This meant he was about to say something funny. He turned to Marion, his pants in his hands. “Maybe you should convince Goodson to market the book with food samples.”

“I wish we could.” Her eyes stayed on the pants.

Fred, rather than using a hanger, absently hooked the pants by one of their loops on a wall bracket meant for ties.

“Fred!” Marion sat up. “What are you doing! That’ll ruin them.”

“Huh?” He stared at her.

“Your pants. Hang them up.”

Fred obeyed. He was as thoughtless and as stupid as a child, Marion thought. “I think Bart really knows what he’s doing. You know? He’s psyched out what’s going on.” Fred finished hanging up his pants and walked to the window, opening it slightly.

“No,” Marion protested. “It’s too cold.”

“They send up heat all night, you know.”

“My hair’s wet. Wait until it’s dry.”

He shut the window, went to the bed, took off his underpants, and got under the covers.

Marion knew, because he had taken off his shorts, that he planned to make love to her. Otherwise he slept in them.

“Why don’t you do something different with your hair?” Fred said. “Maybe you should get a perm.” He was proud of himself for suggesting she change her hairstyle. If he found her unattractive, wasn’t the healthy reaction a frank attempt to discuss the problem?

“A perm!” She frowned.

That was her frown of intense disapproval. It infuriated him. “You don’t care enough about your appearance,” he said. “We both take the way we look for granted.”

“Speak for yourself, buster.” Marion turned on her side, pulling up the covers to her ear. “Turn out the light, okay? I’m going to sleep.”

Fred felt the disappointment of this statement keenly. He had his hand on his penis — it was already swelling. He had assumed they would screw. “Honey,” he said in a small voice.

Silence.

He breathed slowly, feeling the flutter of emotion as he inhaled. He knew, or part of him knew (the tiny, huddled creature inside who was frightened by people: terrified of their judgments), that to push her would mean an argument. But nevertheless, he repeated his plea. “Honey?”

“What?” This simple question was said in a tone so harsh that a man less committed to truth would have shrunk from answering.