He stands at the foot of the driveway, thumbs hooked in his cutoffs’ pockets, smirking.
“Really?” he says. “I’m not very good with electrical stuff.” He speaks loudly too.
In high school, Marjorie was an actress, the star of all the school plays—Our Town and A Streetcar Named Desire and, in her senior year, The Children’s Hour. She has forgotten how that felt, to be on stage, to be watched, until right now.
“I’m hot,” she announces. “It can’t wait.”
And then she does the really unthinkable. Marjorie leads him into her room, hers and Gary’s, onto their bed. The room is, she realizes as Justin stands naked in the middle of it, stuffy and imposing. The smell of peach potpourri hangs in the air with its false aroma, not at all reminiscent of peaches. It’s the room of two old people. Marjorie sees that now.
But Justin is on her, with his sex talk, dirty and guttural in a way that no one has ever spoken to her.
“Give me that pussy,” he says. “Fuck me.”
And later he tells her that her tits are fantastic, that she tastes so good, that her ass drives him nuts. The talk does something to her, to them, because even though the clock—a silly old lady clock from a long ago trip to Germany, Switzerland, and Austria—is inching toward noon, when Gary gets back from golf and late morning martinis, Marjorie is back on Justin, frantically pulling him into her.
The voice that floats up from downstairs—“Mrs. Macomber? You home?” —frightens Marjorie so much that she yelps, and thinks for a moment she might faint.
“Mrs. Macomber?”
Marjorie grabs her robe, pulls it on, and races downstairs where, standing in the foyer, is the mother from next door.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman says, frowning. Her maternity top, pink with blue giraffes bouncing across her grossly large belly, is pulled tight.
Marjorie knows what she’s thinking, how odd it is for someone like Marjorie to be still in her robe this late in the morning. Is she thinking too that the garden boy has come in and never gone back out? The lawn is unmowed, the hedges unclipped. Dandelions poke their heads out here and there.
“I was getting into the shower,” Marjorie says.
A thin stream of come trickles out of her, down her thigh, and she pushes her legs together.
“It’s just Jessica again,” the woman says, arms open in apology. “Except this time she took Ashley with her.”
“You know she hides in the garage,” Marjorie says.
The grandfather’s clock chimes noon; Gary could walk in right now. Upstairs, Justin is naked, hard, waiting. And more than anything, that is where Marjorie wants to be too, with that boy, in his tattooed arms, feeling his long hair on her breasts. For a crazy moment, Marjorie thinks she will run off with him. She will leave everything and go with this boy somewhere.
Annoyed, Marjorie says, “Have you looked in the garage?”
The woman blushes and nods.
“It’s just so hard for me to get around,” she explains. “And it’s so hot out.” Then she looks at Marjorie, expressionless, and says, “It ain’t hot in here, though. Is it?”
Marjorie meets her gaze. Beneath the pink silk of her robe, she feels her heart fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a jar.
“Let me get dressed,” she says finally.
The woman smiles a broad smile that shows all her small teeth.
Marjorie was right; Justin is still on her bed, stretched out naked, stroking his penis.
“You have to get dressed,” she says, turning her back to him as she takes off the robe and slips on a beige cotton sift.
“Not until you come here and sit on this,” he says.
Everything seems to be off balance, Marjorie thinks. Because she is afraid the woman knows, and she is afraid that Gary will walk in, and yet she takes the shift back off and does what Justin asks and, riding him, she imagines again that she will leave here with him, that they will just do this, somewhere, anywhere.
When they are both done, toppled over him, she says, “You didn’t say you were leaving. Going to college.” Saying it, she feels as betrayed as she did when her high school boyfriend—a year older—left her behind to go off to Yale.
“Yeah,” he says, his fingers tangled in her hair. “Well.”
Marjorie sits up, looks down at him, at the sweaty curled hair that climbs down his chest and belly, and his penis lying pink and soft, pointing lazily upward.
“We could go away together,” she says.
“Like to the beach or something?” he asks her, puzzled.
“No,” Marjorie tells him. “Really away. Run off.”
Justin laughs. “You’re crazy,” he says.