Heather Lewis - Notice

Beth and I would get where we were headed whether I told her about Ingrid or not. This I already knew but chose not to acknowledge. If anything, I could’ve used Beth’s intentions as incentive. Let them egg me on as a kind of reward. The kick was I could only actually see it that way if I thought it wouldn’t happen. And lately, who knew?

And Ingrid? To see what happened with her made me feel dumb and run over. Like all the time I’d spent so worried about her husband was wasted because it left me wide open to her. And then she’d hit me so hard I barely noticed.

You understand, right? How I could land on my back and just lie there? From that position, it’s hard to make sense of things. Hard not to get caught up in someone telling you the things you’ve wanted to hear your whole life, and so does it matter if what they’re saying is true? In that moment, I mean? Does it matter?

I’m not saying Ingrid lied. I know she believed the things she said if only because she had to. How in hell else could she possibly see me as a way out? That piece had always been pretty hard to swallow, but it gave her a push. And me? Not much else was asked but to be who she needed me to be, which was exactly the thing I’d been born to.

This wasn’t the stuff I planned to tell Beth. I’d keep that to what she wanted to hear because like I said I’d been born and bred that way and it’s a hard thing to break out of. Besides, breaking me out wasn’t something either of us was up to, or planned on – maybe not ever and surely not right now.

Beth had let my last question hang, the one about why she wanted to know. She looked hurt about it and I couldn’t decide whether to lay off or go in for the kill. “Never mind,” I said, trying to pick a place in between. “Never mind. I think I know why.”

After I’d said it I realized it could mean anything. And the way I’d said it, which was sort of gently, anyone’d think…

“What is it you think I should tell you?” I said this gently too because now that I’d started this way, and almost by accident, a pull had begun and I couldn’t resist it. It was all I could do to keep from actually comforting her. By this I mean getting up and putting my arms around her.

“Why don’t you just start where it starts,” she said, and she sounded so weary.

It wasn’t until then I realized I hadn’t said any of it. That I’d stayed with stories about harmless commuters and any time I got near Ingrid and her husband I circled back. Not quite – I mean I had told her about my first time with him. I was pretty sure of that. Well, not entirely, but pretty close to certain.

“Did I tell you about going back to the house?”

She shook her head rather than speaking and looked out the window. It was too dark out there to see anything and soon she got up and pulled the shade. When she sat down again, she looked at me. I realized what I should’ve done was go to her at the window. This would’ve been a way out except I’d missed it, been too slow on the uptake.

“I never went home with any of them. It never entered my skull and none of them asked. They were all hiding from home.”

I carried on this way for a bit, making the important discovery that I could stall and talk at the same time. I could probably keep it going for hours and never get to the door of Ingrid’s house.

I don’t know why I didn’t do it that way, but instead I found myself getting to the point and kind of quickly. Began telling her about sitting on their couch with Ingrid’s head in my lap and him behind her.

Something about telling this was catching me up. So much so I didn’t look too close at what was happening to Beth. Instead I watched the small crack of blackness at the bottom of the window shade – the place where it almost hit the sill but didn’t.

I noticed, by chance really, that she’d focused over my shoulder. And though it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, I stood up and went to the other window, the one behind me. I pulled that shade down.

I guess I knew it was an invitation. She must’ve known too but she didn’t take it, and so I stood there until I felt foolish for standing. Now that I felt weak like this, she got up and came over. She stood near me, first without touching and then she took my hand.

It could’ve been she’d heard enough. Or maybe that I’d become lost and foggy. She just stood there holding my hand and if I wanted a way out it was right there before me. I’d come to understand that when we went that route, I’d have to start it. That she’d need it that way. That it was the one thing she couldn’t quite do.

But I couldn’t do it either. Not right now. Not with the last few days catching up to me. And not stuck right smack in the midst of that first time with Ingrid. That was where Beth had left me. I suppose this was why I shook loose from her and went to the door, and maybe, too, it’s why she didn’t stop me.

I just walked out and kept walking. I walked until I got to the train station. My idea had been to pick up my car. And I did. I picked up some cash on the way, did a couple of guys on their way home from the bar. Just blow jobs. I guess this time I’d been looking to. I guess I’d been looking to since Friday.

I went back to work the next day. My day job. Though I guess I went back to the other thing, too, and for a while it kept being harmless. I couldn’t pick up the guys right off the train and still get to Beth’s on time, so what I started doing was heading over to the station afterwards. Getting the guys coming out of the bar. And while their being drunk made some of them easier and more generous, it made others nastier. Impatient and impotent – this combination I seemed to encounter more and more often until I got nasty back and then got off on it.

I was working this fine. It made more sense all around. And it gave me something to look to while I sat with Beth and tried to answer her questions. It distracted me and I used the distraction to keep her at bay. I even convinced myself she didn’t notice the change. Or that if she did, like me, she saw it was for the better.

The money helped, too. Though it started that same calculation in my head. The “why am I keeping this stupid job?” I suppose I was keeping it for Beth – because to quit would give her something to latch on to and worry about, give her a distraction. I suppose I was keeping it because of what happened the last time I quit.

I still looked for him, for Ingrid’s husband. I knew he probably wouldn’t turn up. And I knew I wasn’t looking for him in the right way. I wasn’t anxious and fearful of an encounter but instead longed for one. I couldn’t conveniently file this; couldn’t make it about getting to Ingrid. It was about that, but not only. What I’d had with her had been so vested in him – so in relation – that when she got free of him, even if only in theory, there wasn’t much left between us.

I figured they’d found someone else by now. Someone closer to home or farther away. Maybe they went to her, or to a hotel. Maybe she was younger and easier, or older and more of a pro. I still had a lot to learn about indifference.

Despite knowing all this I kept looking for him but the one I kept finding was Burt. By comparison, he seemed a lightweight. Someone I could easily handle and therefore, I guess, boring. The hold here was drugs – coke, the promise of junk, an occasional Quaalude. I couldn’t conceive he was playing me and so I didn’t worry much along those lines. He was something to do at the end of a night. Someone I didn’t have to do and so, if my body could rest, he could fuck my mind all he wanted.

That’s what Beth seemed to be doing, too. Every afternoon like the last one, sitting in her office while she tinkered and I kept remote. We went on this way some weeks before she said, “What is it with you?”