See, isn’t it nice to flatter each other?
The sex was so good that I often cried while it was happening. Nick liked me to go on top, so he could sit back against the headboard, and we could talk quietly. I could tell that he liked it when I talked to him about how good it felt. It was very easy to make him come if I talked about that too much. Sometimes I liked to do that just to feel powerful over him, and afterwards he would say: God, I’m sorry, that’s so embarrassing. I liked him saying that even more than I liked the sex itself.
I became infatuated with the house he lived in: how immaculate everything was, and the coolness of the floorboards in the morning. They had an electric coffee grinder in the kitchen and Nick bought whole-bean coffee and then put small portions in the grinder before breakfast. I wasn’t sure if this was pretentious or not, though the coffee tasted incredibly good. I told him it was pretentious anyway and he said, what do you drink? Fucking Nescafé? You’re a student, don’t act like you’ve got taste. Of course I secretly liked all the expensive utensils they had in their kitchen, the same way I liked to watch Nick press the coffee so slowly that a film of dark cream formed on its surface.
He talked to Melissa pretty much every day during the week. Usually she would call in the evenings, and he’d take the phone into another room while I lay on the couch watching TV or went outside to smoke. These conversations often took twenty minutes or more. Once I watched an entire episode of Arrested Development before he came back in the room, it was the one where they burn down the banana stand. I never heard anything Nick said on the phone. I asked once: she’s not suspicious or anything, is she? And he just shook his head and said, no, it’s okay. Nick wasn’t physically affectionate toward me outside of his room. We watched TV together the way we would have done if we were just waiting for Melissa to get home from work. He let me kiss him if I wanted to, but I always had to initiate it.
It was hard to figure out how Nick really felt. In bed he never put any pressure on me to do anything, and he was always very sensitive to what I wanted. Still, there was something blank and withholding about him. He never said anything nice about my appearance. He never touched or kissed me spontaneously. I still felt nervous whenever we undressed, and the first time I gave him head he was so quiet that I stopped to ask if I was hurting him. He said no, but when I started again, he stayed completely silent. He didn’t touch me, I didn’t even know if he was looking at me. When it was finished I felt awful, like I had made him endure something neither of us enjoyed.
After I left the agency on Thursday that week, I walked past him in town. I was with Philip, going from work to get coffee, and we saw Nick with a tall woman who was directing a pushchair with one hand and talking on the phone with the other. Nick was holding an infant. The infant was wearing a red hat. Nick waved hello as they walked by us, we even looked at one another quickly, but they didn’t stop and talk. That morning he had watched me get dressed, lying with his hands behind his head.
That’s not his baby, is it? Philip said.
I felt like I was playing a video game without knowing any of the controls. I just shrugged and said, I don’t think he has children, does he? I got a text from Nick shortly afterwards saying: my sister Laura and her daughter. Sorry for walking on, they were kind of in a rush. I texted back: cute baby. Can I come over tonight?
That night at dinner he asked me, so did you really think the baby was cute? I told him I didn’t get a good look at her, but from a distance she seemed like a cute one. Oh, she’s the best, Nick said. Rachel. I don’t love many things in life, but I really love that baby. The first time I saw her I just started crying, she was so small. This was by far the most emotion I’d ever heard Nick express, and I was jealous. I thought about making a joke of how jealous I was, but it felt creepy to be jealous of a baby, and I doubted Nick would appreciate it. That’s sweet, I said. He seemed to sense my lack of enthusiasm and said awkwardly: you’re probably too young to care about babies anyway. I felt hurt and raked my fork over the dish of risotto silently. Then I said, no, I really thought you were being sweet. Uncharacteristically.
What, like I’m usually gruff and aggressive? he said.
I shrugged. We went on eating. I knew I was starting to make him nervous, I could see him watching me across the table. He wasn’t in the least gruff or aggressive, and I saved the question in my mind for later, feeling that he had unintentionally revealed some private fear.
When we undressed that night his bedsheets felt icy against my skin, and I mentioned how cold it was. The house? he said. Do you find it cold at night?
No, I mean just now, I said.
I went to kiss him and he allowed me to, but absently, and without real feeling. Then he pulled away and said: because if you’re cold at night, I can put the heating on.
I’m not, I said. The sheets felt cold just now, that’s all.
Right.
We had sex, it was nice, and afterwards we lay there looking up at the ceiling. Air hauled itself into my lungs, I felt peaceful. Nick touched my hand and said: are you warm now? I’m warm, I said. Your concern for my temperature is quite touching. Oh well, he said. It would look bad for me if you froze to death. But he was stroking my hand when he said it. The police might have some questions, I said. He laughed. Yeah, he said. Like, what’s this beautiful corpse doing in bed with you, Nick? It was just a joke, he would never really call me beautiful. But I liked the joke anyway.
On Friday night, before Melissa came home from London, we watched North by Northwest and shared a bottle of wine. Nick was leaving the country the following week to film something in Edinburgh, so I wouldn’t see him again for a short time. I can’t remember most of what we said that night. I remember the scene on the train where Cary Grant’s character is flirting with the blonde woman, and that for some reason I repeated one of her lines out loud in a clipped American accent. I said: and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started. This made Nick laugh a lot, for no real reason, or maybe because my accent was so bad.
Now you do Cary Grant, I said.
In a mid-Atlantic cinema voice Nick said: the moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
Do you typically pretend for long? I said.
You tell me, Nick said in his normal voice.
I think I figured it out pretty quickly. But I was concerned I was just deluding myself.
Oh, I felt the same way about you.
He had picked up the bottle and was refilling our glasses.
So is this just sex, I said, or do you actually like me?
Frances, you’re drunk.
You can tell me, I won’t be offended.