Richard Ford - A Multitude of Sins

She let her gaze rise woozily above the sparkling rhomboids of gaudy Phoenix and into the moonless dark, to where the face of Howard’s wife, Mary, a woman she’d never seen even in a snapshot, materialized out of the dark clouds like a picture in a developer’s tray. The image was of a young, sweet-faced blonde like herself, whose oval face and small heart-shaped mouth bore a look of disappointment, her eyes large and doleful and unmistakably expressive of hurt.

“That’s true,” Frances Bilandic said. “I understand that.”

“Hm?” Howard said. He looked around at the door as if someone had entered and Frances had begun talking to whoever it was. The red message bulb on the phone was blinking as it had been since he came back from dinner. Too late to call home now, he’d decided, with the time difference.

No one, however, had come into the room. It was chain latched. “Were you talking to me?”

“I guess I’m pretty whacked,” she said. “I must’ve gone to sleep sitting up.” She smiled a smile she knew was a sweet, probably pathetic smile. It was her surrender look, and she was ready for him to give up being so reserved. It hadn’t been at all pleasant to see Howard’s wife’s face frowning out in the sky. It hadn’t been the end of the world, but it had left her feeling a little dazed. But that would go away if she could get Howard to take her to bed and fuck her in the damn near frightening way they’d gone at it back home.

“I feel so free now,” he said suddenly, incomprehensibly. His great, smooth, ball player’s hands encircled his tiny plastic cup of cheap wine. He was looking straight at Frances, his elongated, not particularly handsome face full of wonder, his sensuous lips parted in a dopey smile. “Really. I can’t explain it, but it’s true.”

“That’s good,” she said. She hoped he wouldn’t give a speech now.

Howard shook his head in small amazement. “Not that I’d ever really thought different. But this is no sidetrack we’re on here. This is my real life, you know? This is as free and as good as things ever get. I mean like — this is it.” He nodded instead of shaking his buzzed head. “This is as real as marriage, for sure.”

“Lots of things are that real.”

“Okay,” Howard said. “But I’m not sure I ever knew that.”

“Read the fine print,” Frances said. It was another of her dad’s Polack maxims. Everything you either didn’t like or were surprised by meant you hadn’t read the fine print . Marriage, children, work, getting old. The fine print was where the truth was about things and it was never what you expected.

“I really like you,” Howard said. “I’m not sure I exactly said that.”

“I like you, too,” she said. “I wouldn’t fuck you if I didn’t like you.”

“No. Of course not.” His grin showed his large teeth behind his almost feminine lips. “Probably me, too.”

“Then why don’t you just fuck me now.” She intentionally widened her pretty blue eyes to indicate that was real, too.

“Okay, I will.” Howard Cameron said, moving toward her, touching her knee, her breast, her soft cheeks, her lips in quick, breathless assault. “I want to,” he said. “I’ve wanted to all day. I don’t know why we waited ’til now.”

“Now’s okay,” Frances said. “Now’s perfect.” Which, she felt, was only true.

One thing he liked about Frances Bilandic was the direct, guiltless, almost stern yet still passionate way she involved herself with screwing the daylights out of him. His sexual preference had always been for a lot of vociferous bouncing and spiritedly noisy plunging; Mary referred to their early lovemaking as the side show , which embarrassed him. But Frances gave fucking a new meaning. Her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that was frequently intimidating, she entered a different sexual dimension, with assertive declarations about exactly how she expected to take hold of him, and him of her, raucous tauntings in the form of instructions as to how vigorously he was expected to bring her to fulfillment; plus limitless physical stamina and perplexing orgasmic variety and originality. “That’s not it, that’s not it, no, no, no. Jesus, Jesus,” she’d shout in his ear just when he thought he had her on the cusp. This insistent, uncompromising voice alone could blow the top off of him. “Don’t you dare lose me, don’t you lose me, god damn it,” she’d command. “That’s right. You’re right. There it is. I see you now. There you are. There’s no one like you, Howard. Nobody. Howard. Nobody!”

She made him think that in fact it was true. That by some amazing luck, among all men there was no one like Howard Cameron. He was as sexually insatiable as she was; he did possess the need, the vigor, the ingenuity — plus the equipment to do things properly. He’d never thought much about his equipment, which just seemed normal, given his height. And yet, why other men couldn’t cut the mustard wasn’t really a mystery. Life wasn’t fair. Nobody ever said it would or should be.

Frances, however, was unqualifiedly his sexual ideal. That was irrefutable. He’d never known there was an ideal , or that this version was what he’d always really wanted (his sexual experience wasn’t that extensive). Only here was a flat-out, full-bore sexual appetite, and with an arrogance that said that if all this wasn’t absolutely fantastic she wouldn’t even bother with it. Except it was fantastic. And he was moved by Frances, and by sex with Frances in ways he’d never in his whole life thought he’d be lucky enough to experience.

Of course, it wasn’t the kind of experience that ever led to marriage, or to any lasting importance. He remembered what she’d said about the Old Norse word. She understood plenty. She and poor lame Ed probably had polite, infrequent sex, just like his parents, so that her own ravenous appetites were permanently back-burnered out of respect for whatever pitiful use he was. His own luck, Howard understood, was to play a bit part in their life’s little humdrum. Though it was way too good to miss, no matter where it led to or from.

One thing had surprised him. After their first epic session at Howard Johnson’s in September — this after three weeks of steamy meetings in shadowy bars and roadside cafes in little nowhere Connecticut towns between Willamantic and Pawcatuck — they had stepped out of the room into the laser sunlight of the HoJo’s parking lot, with Interstate 95 pounding by almost on top of them. He’d looked up into the pale, oxidized sky, rubbed his eyes, which had grown accustomed to the darkness of the room and, without much thought, said, “Boy, that was really something.” He’d meant it as a compliment.

“What do you mean, something ?” Frances said in her husky blondie voice — a voice that electrified him in bed, a voice made for sex, but that suddenly seemed different out on the harsh, baking asphalt. She was wearing red-framed sunglasses, a short blue leather skirt that emphasized her thighs, and what was by then an extremely wrinkled white pinafore blouse. Her hair was pressed flat on the sides and she was sweating. She looked roughed up and dazed, which was how he felt. Fucked to death would’ve been a way to say it.

He smiled uncomfortably. “I just mean, well … you’re really good at this. You know?”

“I’m not good at this,” Frances snapped, “I’m good with you . Not that I’m in love with you. I’m not.”

“Sure. I mean, no. That’s right,” he said, not happy being scolded. “We don’t do these things alone, do we?” He smiled, but Frances didn’t.

“Some people might.” She frowned from behind her shades, seeming to reassess him all in one moment’s time. It was as if there was one kind of person whom you met and maybe liked and thought was okay-looking and funny and whom you fucked — one kind of Howard; but then there was another Howard, one you never liked and who immediately started comparing you to other women the moment you fucked him, and who pissed you off. She’d just met that Howard. It was her “tough cookie” side, and she was dead serious about it.