Group Sex by Ann Arensberg

Author:Ann Arensberg [Arensberg, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7077-4
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-01-06T22:23:00+00:00

III

SEX LIFE

FRANCES WAS WORKING A night shift and a day shift. By night, she worked for Paul; by day for Harwood. Since Paul was directing The Winter’s Tale in Kansas, Frances had a month of evenings to herself. The first week, she stayed at home and caught up on her reading. She soaked in the bathtub, since Paul disapproved of baths. She liked steeping with open pores in her own juices. She liked lounging on her bed, with no higher goals or plans. She liked watching Lewis, the black-and-white bob-tailed cat, who could open the kitchen cabinets with his claws. The second week, Frances was busier, but she set her own hours. By the third week, her unscheduled evenings had dwindled to two; the long arm of Paul Treat could reach across half a continent. He needed some books from his library (special delivery), relating to previous productions in Sweden and Moscow. He needed four jars of hand cleanser made with tar, sold only at a druggist’s supply house in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He needed a bear for the play (Act III, Scene 3), a live bear, no question of using a man in a bear suit. There was no bear for hire at the Kansas City Zoo. Frances balked at the bear, but she knew Winter’s Tale by memory; there were shepherds in Act IV, which portended an order for sheep. Frances wondered if the Mortenson Theatre had dismissed its propman, or if Paul set her tasks to test her love and allegiance.

The fourth week was carefree and slothful, like the first week—slothful in Paul’s terms, since her work did not benefit him. She rewrote large sections of a manual on healing with gemstones, and stayed up very late indexing a life of the Lunts. Paul’s reaching arm and its extension, his dialing finger, were occupied with technical run-throughs and dress rehearsals. At this stage of a play, Frances never had access to Paul. If The Winter’s Tale were opening in Manhattan, Paul would sleep at the theatre, fully clothed, on the set or in the aisles. If he summoned Frances to his side, he made one condition: no sexual congress until after opening night.

Frances picked up her telephone in the evenings without fear of errands. She started to take her own calls at the Harwood Press. Ruthanne complained. She was bored with typing. She preferred shielding Frances from importunate masculine voices. Paul had sometimes outwitted Ruthanne by disguising his speech, so she had learned to ignore the pleas of any caller with a foreign accent, lisp, or laryngitis. Although Frances’s telephone did not need a monitor, her office door was vulnerable and unguarded. Other secretaries’ desks sat outside their editors’ doors. Ruthanne’s desk lay across the room, at a slight diagonal. This position was more effective, as it happened, for keeping watch without overtly spying.

Ruthanne looked up from her typing, alert to danger. She saw the new editor, Allan Schieffman, in Frances’s doorway. With his palms against the frame of the door, he pushed in and out, as if to develop the muscles of his arms and chest.

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