Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

Elizabeth was going to be pissed, if not worried. Andrew didn’t know which was worse. Worry could remove some of the sting of anger, if she was happy to know that he was all right. Of course, he wasn’t her child — why would she assume that something had befallen him? Andrew thought about explaining why he liked EVOLVEment but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound like he was about to start sleeping with a nineteen-year-old.

It wasn’t that. Andrew had no interest in having sex with the beautiful young things. There were unbelievable-looking girls everywhere in the house, making juice and dancing and kicking up into handstands, giving you a peek of their stomachs and underwear all over the place, and it only made Andrew feel like a latter-day Humbert Humbert, or like a more Jewish version of Sting. Andrew didn’t care. The only nineteen-year-old he wanted to have sex with was himself. He wanted to go back in time and watch himself take off his clothes, so terrified of the world that he couldn’t stop snarling, even when he was about to make love to someone for the first time.

He and Elizabeth had known each other from the dorms. They’d had a few classes together — an intro creative-writing class, plus The Story of the Dinosaurs, the science class that all the humanities kids took — and they were friends, a bit. If they saw each other outside the library, they would sit on a bench and smoke cigarettes. Elizabeth was so sweet, so suburban — Andrew had liked her from the start, even before they were in the band together and he saw what she could really do. She had none of the jaded bullshit that his friends from home had. She wasn’t spoiled. She could knit. They went bowling, and Elizabeth got strike after strike — it turned out she’d been on her high school’s bowling team. What kind of high school had a bowling team? Andrew thought it was possible that Elizabeth had grown up in the 1950s and been teleported to Oberlin through space and time. Lydia, on the other hand, had been as familiar as a sibling. She was from Scarsdale, which wasn’t so far from the Upper East Side. She had rich parents and her own car and a credit card that she wasn’t afraid to use. Just like all of his high-school friends, Lydia was mean as a snake, something she’d no doubt learned from her parents. She would have been the easy choice. His mother would have loved her.

Andrew hadn’t been outside at three in the morning since Harry was a baby, and they would take walks around the block to try to coax him back to sleep, the three of them like a tribe of zombies, he and Elizabeth making shushing noises and bouncing in unison, no matter which one of them was wearing the baby in the Björn. Ditmas Park was always quiet, but this close to Coney Island Avenue there were more trucks and horns, even in the middle of the night. It was true what they said about New York and sleeping — Andrew had forgotten that. He turned right on Beverly and started walking back toward Argyle. A breeze made the sweat on his forehead feel cool. Summer was the only season that mattered — the only reason for winter to exist was to increase the gratitude that Andrew felt for the month of June at this exact moment in time.

He unlocked the door to his house quietly and slipped his shoes off next to the front door. Iggy Pop was asleep on the sofa, and Andrew scooped him up and carried him up the stairs. The cat arched his back into Andrew’s shoulder, still mostly asleep. The bedroom door was open a crack, and Andrew could see from the hallway that Elizabeth had left her bedside lamp on. He nudged the door open a few more inches with his toe, and gently set the cat down on the bed.

Elizabeth stirred. She’d never been a hardy sleeper, but in the years since Harry was born — even well after he stopped waking in the middle of the night — she’d been prone to waking when cars drove past, at distant sirens, at barking dogs. He knew this only because she told him in the morning — Andrew himself was always fast asleep. It was something they fought about, in a low-level way, that she was awake and he was asleep and he had missed whatever it was that had annoyed her. Andrew slid off his shirt and his shorts. His sweat had dried to a thin film of salt — he smelled a little bit, but Elizabeth had never minded that.

“Where have you been?” she asked, her voice low. She rolled over to face him.

“At the yoga place. They were having a party.” Andrew sat down on his side of the bed. Elizabeth’s foot peeked out from under the sheet, and he put his hand on her arch.

“A party.” She narrowed her eyes at him, and Andrew tried to decide if it looked more like sleepiness or contempt. He clicked off the light.

“A party.” Andrew pulled back the sheet and slid underneath. He inched closer to his wife in the darkness. Elizabeth’s body felt like the ocean, vast and cool. First he kissed her arm, and when she didn’t shove him away, he kissed her shoulder, and then her cheek. By the time Andrew kissed his wife’s mouth, she was moving her body back and forth like a snake about to strike, and he knew that whatever happened next, it would be good. This is what it was like when they were kids: playful, nibbling. Elizabeth had been an eager lover, like the student athlete she’d been in high school, cheeks flushed and full of energy. They rolled and stretched like two lion cubs, biting and pawing at each other’s body parts. After a few minutes, they settled into a familiar position — they knew what worked. His ears were still vibrating from the party, and the room sounded like a subway platform. “Am I being too loud?” he asked Elizabeth, now flat on her back, his hands wedged under her hips with his face between her legs.

“Harry’s at a friend’s house,” she said. “Get to work,” shoving his face back against her body.

It was almost two when their feet actually touched the sand. Harry dropped the umbrella and his two enormous bags with a satisfying thud. Ruby leaned down to grab one of the beach towels, but Harry put out his arm to block her. “Please,” he said. “Allow me.” He stretched out two towels, stuck the umbrella in the sand between them, and then gestured for Ruby to sit. The sand was grimy, with candy wrappers and cigarette butts poking up here and there, but the water looked clear, and people were swimming. Harry’s mother had always told him that New York City beaches were toxic-waste zones and to be avoided at all costs, and he was glad he hadn’t listened. What other things were out there, just waiting to be enjoyed? Elizabeth didn’t like bacon, and so they never ate it, never. Harry was going to order a BLT with extra bacon — a BBLT — at the next possible moment.

“What else is in those bags?”

Harry dug around in one and pulled out a plastic pail and shovel.

“Okay,” Ruby said, giggling. “What else?”

Harry reached back down and pulled out a little insulated cooler. Inside were two tiny cans of champagne. It had taken Harry an hour and forty dollars to convince some young woman walking down Cortelyou to buy them for him. “Cheers,” he said, popping one open and handing it to Ruby, who took such a small sip that Harry knew she was impressed.

The beach was filled with old Russian ladies holding hand weights as they walked up and down the boardwalk, avoiding the packs of guys with beards and dark sunglasses and girls wearing tiny shorts and cutoff T-shirts.

“It’s like an American Apparel billboard,” Ruby said. “But with beer and sand.”

Harry couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or not, but Ruby seemed to be enjoying herself, and so he didn’t respond other than to nod and say, “Yeah.”

They took half naps, they splashed in the water. Neither of them had a bathing suit, but it didn’t matter. Ruby peeled off her dress. Her stomach was a soft, creamy brown, just like the rest of her, of course, though every inch gave Harry a new thrill. She had a perfect little outie belly button right in the middle! He could see more than the outline of her breasts through her thin, lacy bra, and when she walked away from him, toward the water, wearing nothing but her bra and underwear, Harry tried not to have a heart attack. He took off his shirt and his jeans and went in in his boxers, praying the flap stayed closed. There was a burger place just on the other side of the boardwalk, and Ruby waited on their towels while Harry got them food. She licked a spot of ketchup off her hand. It was the most beautiful beach anyone had ever seen, ever, even with the planes going overhead to JFK and all the seagulls and the noise and the people. There were towels everywhere, and Dominican families, and hipsters with ironic mustaches, and old men wearing Speedos, and fat women in bikinis. Harry thanked God that his parents had never moved to the suburbs, or to France, or anywhere else in the world. Ruby got the giggles after the champagne, and she let him put sunscreen on her shoulders. Harry took as long as possible, painting little designs and taking pictures with his phone before rubbing them in.