Trophy House by Anne Bernays

Author:Anne Bernays
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-02-01T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter

7

AS DAVID CLOSED THE door of room number 1208, I began to imagine us as two characters in a movie, and this put me at an awkward distance from the scene, as if I were sitting in the audience, making judgments: Were the characters “realistic”? Did the plot follow some basic understanding of cause and effect? How about “motivation”—did we have a clue as to why they were doing what they were doing? Then I leapt back into the action, where the clichés made me extremely self-conscious. The camera had focused on me, and beyond that sat an unseen director watching my every move and telling me what to do. Was this going to be a teen flick, where you rip off your clothes willy-nilly, tearing buttons from their anchors, leaving your things in a heap on the carpet, flinging yourselves onto the bed and going at it like two beasts? Or would it be an “autumn of life” story, with nostalgic background music, up, while you do a languorous mating dance, with whiskey sipped to help you bury the shyness and trepidation?

“Nice room,” David said.

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t suppose you have anything to drink?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“No minibar?”

I shook my head. We were standing motionless, waiting to be cued, the hesitancy factor about equal in each of us. “Well.” Hesitancy was now joined by reluctance. “Do you get high?” he said, reaching into his coat pocket.

“Once in a while,” I said. “But right now it seems too much like Annie Hall. I think I’ll give it a pass.”

What was I doing here? The wild and windy attraction had lost some of its power, downsizing from an outright hurricane to a tropical depression.

“Why don’t I order something from room service?” David said.

“There’s a package store just down the street,” I said.

“What’s a package store?”

“A liquor store,” I said.

“Hmmm.” Was he reminded, as I was, that two hundred and fifty miles lay between us, as authentic an obstacle as a tree, fallen across the road?

“Do we really need it?”

“I guess not,” David said. He looked as if he felt exactly as I did. The oddest element of my hesitation had, I think, to do with the way I looked undressed. While David had the slimness of a person who never had to worry about calories, I was a “before” picture, familiar to readers of diet pill ads, lumpy around the thighs, heavy-breasted, my abdomen, once flat, now rounded like the second trimester of pregnancy.

“I feel silly,” I said.

“Don’t,” David said. “You’re anything but.”

“Do we really want to do this?”

“I do. I was hoping—given plenty of evidence, as a matter of fact—that you did too…” He trailed off. Next, he would be accusing me of being a tease, the ultimate male put-down. I suppose you can’t blame them—their dicks are all dressed for the party and they have nowhere to go.

We sparred for a few minutes more, and then, like some old married couple, we offered to let the other use the bathroom, then quietly took off our clothes and, me first, got into bed.

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