***
The marathon editing sessions with Richard became oddly charged now. They worked in Richard's office until the days became a week and then almost two. When Margaret left the office each day it was night. Once, fat wet snowflakes fell, silhouetted by the yellow of the streetlamps. Margaret bumped home in a taxi through the unearthly flurry. Had she eaten? Edward asked her. No, she didn't think so, she said. And she went to bed. Richard's voice, caressing, followed her, murmuring in her dreams.
"You're never home," Edward said one night, bending over her to kiss her before she fell asleep. "You've left me for an overrefined homosexual pedant." He sometimes referred to Richard as her other husband.
Each morning she rode to the office on the subway. She could think of three times when she had felt this same tremulous anticipation. When Richard had edited her first book. When she'd gone to a psychiatrist for a year. And her first trip with Edward. Courtship, psychotherapy, editing, Margaret thought. For the true egotist, they are all one.
She watched Richard as he hung up his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, then furiously slapped through piles of papers on his desk, found something, handed it to his assistant, and sarcastically inquired if he could manage to make three Xeroxed copies. They were where they belonged now, side by side at Richard's desk in Richard's office. No more shapeless world, infinite and buzzing with aimless attention-sucking uncles and nurses and taxi drivers.
To Margaret's delight, the phone rang, and Richard spluttered, stomped, and finally yanked the receiver toward him, then murmured his silvery "Hello?" At the sound of his voice, Margaret found herself unaccountably happy.
Perhaps she was in love. Perhaps it was Richard she desired. With gratitude and tenderness, she watched Richard speak into the phone and did not hear what he said. With his close-cropped hair and pink, close-shaven face, he looked very, very clean—radiant, Margaret thought—and she was overcome by a desire to touch that cleanliness, as if some of it, shining and uncomplicated, would rub off on her. To touch Richard, Margaret thought. What an astonishing idea.
"Margaret," he said, when he'd hung up, "your eyes are glittering and your cheeks are flushed."
"What?"
"Do you have the flu?"
"What? No."
"You're not contagious, are you?"
"No."
"I don't want to catch anything."
She studied him, so sturdy and well groomed, a refined Ivy League wrestling coach sort of a style. He leaned back in his chair and returned her stare. Richard, she thought. There you are. She smiled at him, excited by her secret thoughts.
"Germs are airborne," he said gravely.
Well, it felt like being in love, very much like being in love. She couldn't bear to be away from him. She forgot what to say when they were together. She thought everything he did was wonderful, even the things she knew very well were not wonderful at all but petty and unpleasant. He was her editor, her teacher. She felt indistinct, barely recognizable stirrings of physical desire. Yes, that all sounded right.
"Richard, I think I'm falling in love with you."
"You may admire me from afar if you like."
Her lust for Richard was irritating and short-lived, like a mosquito. Puzzled, though somewhat relieved, Margaret considered possible reasons for this. Richard was not interested in women? Yes, but that made him something of a challenge, and it had not stopped her initial infatuation. She was no longer interested in other men? No. She was still cruising dads pushing strollers in the supermarket.
We've finished editing! That's all, Margaret realized. And so, didactic lust has bit the dust.
She turned toward Edward, who was lying beside her in bed, correcting papers, and watched him carefully. He had been unusually quiet this evening. His hair stuck up in tufts so defiant they seemed political. Had he read his students the poem about the boys bathing? The twenty-eight young men? And the one woman watching them? He had, she knew. He had read the poem, and twenty-eight young women had been watching him. He should be reading Whitman to her, not to twenty-eight girls trembling at their desks.
"How many in your Whitman seminar?" she asked.
"Nine. That's the cutoff. Nine spotty children who want to know if attendance counts."
"Does it?"
"No. They come to class anyway, they arrive early, they stay late, they dog my steps, loyal, adoring little pups jostling one another in their eagerness to approach their master. You know, I can't wait to see them either. Each Tuesday, each Thursday! Completely ignorant, this litter. They stare up at me, hushed. Whitman is astonishing the first time round."