Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

“What?” Fred asked, puzzled.

“You never said whether you were dating anybody,” she said, shyly now, lowering her eyes, her smile fading.

“Well …” he huffed, shifting uncomfortably. He didn’t want to admit that his sex life had been at best dull, at worst dormant, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to enrage her with a portrait of promiscuity. “I have gone out.”

“With anybody serious?” she asked, suddenly hoarse.

He sighed. He shook his head. “I been doing the book. It took everything I had. It was a bitch. Marion. I went out a couple times, but …” He trailed off.

She nodded. Not triumphantly, not smugly, not with confirmation. She nodded in acceptance of how hard, how tediously grim their lives had been. He felt, too, that the stupidity of their marriage, its begrudgement of love, might have been dreary and disgusting … but it was the only real content in their lives.

Tony lay in bed. The day was bright. And loud. Nearby a brownstone was being gutted. He heard its insides landing in a dumpster. He looked at the clock. Noon. He still didn’t want to start the day and it was half over. Betty usually made coffee before leaving for work. He should get up and heat it. The Times would be in there, the business section untouched, still ironed flat by neglect. But the C section with its reviews (not of his plays) and its Broadway column, full of plans for future work (none of it his) and gossip about those now working (none of it about him), would be on the kitchen table, wrinkled, open to the last article she had read. All of them read it, even the fucking stockbrokers who read the business section. Less than ten percent of New Yorkers actually went to the theater, but by God every one of them knew who was hot and who was not on Broadway — because of the accursed, the horrible, the infuriating goddamn cultural pages of the Times. It was better to do without coffee.

And he was dead for years, by that standard. Now, when a review made reference to the promising young playwrights, his name was no longer listed. A few more years like the last two and he would no longer be able to complain that he should be mentioned in a young-playwrights roundup.

A month had passed since he threw his fit at the artistic director of the Uptown Theater. He hadn’t returned Hilary’s calls. He had skipped the regular readings since then as well as the meetings of the Playwrights’ Lab. Indeed, he had done nothing other than attend a few publishing cocktail parties for Betty’s sake. He had spoken to a friend from college about seeing a shrink, frightened by his exhibition of rage in the restaurant, but hadn’t called the names suggested.

He sat up in bed and thought about Proust. He felt he understood his work habits today — the bedroom was cozy, protected. Still can’t read him, he thought, and laughed. The sound felt lonely in the empty apartment. Outside they worked on, the whole city, memorizing the New York Times, working, and not knowing his name.

Tony picked up the phone and dialed. He had to think for a moment about the number — disuse had made what was once automatic unfamiliar. It rang only once before she answered, brightly, energetically:

“Hello!”

“Hello,” he said. And there was silence, a shocked silence.

Then, tentatively, incredulously, Lois asked, “Tony?”

“Yep,” he said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she said, sounding uneasy, as though she were constrained by the presence of someone. Could that be? “I’m fine. I’m really surprised to hear from you.”

“Why? Am I supposed to be dead or something?”

“No,” she said in good humor. “I thought you …” Again the hesitation.

“Thought I was out of your life?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, and laughed quickly. “So what’s new?”

“What’s new! What kind of question is that? I expected rage or tears of happiness or something! What’s new indeed!”

She was laughing while he spoke. “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t provide any of those things. They happened long ago.”

“What long ago? A few months.”

Her voice was gentle, solemn. “It’s been seven months at least, Tony.”

“I didn’t realize it was like a visa. What happened? I didn’t renew it in time and now it’s canceled?”

“Sort of,” she said. “Listen. I really can’t talk now. Can I call you back in an hour? Will you be home?”

“Yeah.” She’s got somebody there, he realized, shocked. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t remain frozen, unchanged, awaiting his defrosting presence, the warm light of her life.

“Talk to you soon.”

Who the hell was it? Who was she fucking? Some TV writer? A producer? Maybe she was fucking a TV star. Maybe she was a lesbian. He was furious. He got out of bed and turned on the shower in a rage. He stepped in without checking the temperature and scalded himself, jumping away and hurting his back against the towel rack.

“I don’t even want to take a goddamn shower!” he yelled at himself, and stood there panting, aching, his skin red, half of his head wet. After a moment the fury passed, and he washed himself quickly, shaving and dressing in a rush, as though late for an appointment.

Later he got to the kitchen. He picked up the New York Times and threw it across the room. It lay on the floor humpbacked, like a broken umbrella. He heated the coffee and sat down to drink it, staring at the kitchen phone, waiting for it to ring, waiting, as he had his whole life, for an explanation of why he had lost something he wanted.

Gelb lay between her legs, his head moving up and down while he worked his mouth over her clitoris. The warmth spread from there, radiating into her belly, down her thighs, her breasts feeling the heat wave over her like a rising tide. She felt gentle on the sea of sensation, floating there blissfully, basking in the sun of its relaxation. She could rest in the midst of its excitement forever, she felt, without the surf picking her up to crash on the shore.

She glanced down at him. His cold eyes were staring at her from under his eyebrows while he licked, checking on her progress. He was so achievement-oriented that he never seemed to relax, to let any experience simply be itself, a man forever tugging at the sleeves, straightening the tie, tucking in the shirt of life; always dressing for a job interview, desperate to make a good impression, or at least an impression. A-for-effort Gelb, she thought, and he began to move his tongue rapidly sideways, pushing her knob one way, then the other, and suddenly she was riding a wave, cresting up in the air, the sky spinning, her arms reaching for an anchor to hug. …

When she was done, he moved up to her navel and kissed it, smiling like a prankster. “Good, huh?” he asked.

“Yep,” she answered. “We’re getting better.”

“Oh, you’re so full of shit. I got you and you know it.”

“Oh, shut up.” She sighed. “What am I going to do about David?”

“Leave him,” he said, and put a hand around a breast, squeezing it, staring at the effect on her nipple.

“I just pack and say ’bye?”

“Yeah!”

“Is that how you’re going to do it with Elaine?”

Gelb looked at her angrily. “I have kids!” he claimed.

“Oh, please. You don’t give a shit about your kids.”

He sat up, staring furiously. She smiled sweetly. He frowned at his lack of effect. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes I do. You’ve got a great life. You’re the most important man in your held, your wife is beautiful and she loves you—”

“Bull—”

“— she loves you, your kids adore you, and you have a beautiful mistress who writes brilliantly. You don’t care what you feel about people, you only care what they feel about you, and you’re the center of everyone’s attention, which is the closest you can come to happiness.”