“It’s not a big deal,” Liz said, while trying to shove from her mind the thought that the whole squash article had been a pretext for him to fly to Cincinnati so they could have sex. “We’ll try again later.”
“You don’t want me to just get you off, do you?” Jasper said, which seemed a far less gallant question than Do you want me to get you off?
After a few seconds, she said, “Let’s try in a little bit.” She rolled over and reached for the remote control on the nightstand.
They landed on a political talk show, and the longer they watched, the more incredulous Liz felt. After not seeing each other for almost two months, how could this happen? Just purely as a physiological matter—shouldn’t he have been struggling not to finish too fast rather than to get started?
“Do you and Susan have sex?” she asked. She hadn’t planned to say this; the same moment the question had occurred to her, she’d uttered it.
“Are you kidding?” Jasper said. “Susan hates me.”
“Does she still have that boyfriend?”
“Where’s all this coming from?” Jasper said. “Yes, she and Bob are still together.”
“I’m feeling confused about what just happened,” Liz said.
After a beat, Jasper said, “Sorry for not being able to satisfy your insatiable sexual appetite.”
“This is not about me being sexually insatiable.” Liz sat up, folding her arms over her bare chest. “Are you sleeping with someone else?”
“The other woman is asking if there are other women? Please tell me you see the irony.”
“Are you?”
“Liz, what the fuck?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Jasper was looking up at the ceiling, not at her, and his tone had reverted to being sincere and conciliatory when he said, “You’re really important to me. The conversations we have, the way we talk—there’s no one else I have that with.”
She had been such a fool, such a preposterous, unmitigated idiot; how could she have been this foolish?
She said, “Who else are you sleeping with?”
The expression on his face was oddly compassionate as he said, “You really want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Fiona.”
“The editorial assistant?”
He nodded. Liz didn’t know how old Fiona was, but definitely under twenty-five; also, red-haired and gorgeous. All this time, Liz had understood that her relationship with Jasper closely resembled a distasteful cliché; she hadn’t understood that it actually was a separate, equally distasteful cliché.
“Anyone else?” Liz asked. When she and Jasper made eye contact, he didn’t do anything—he didn’t nod again, or shake his head, or speak. Then he pulled her toward him and she let him; she lay with her face pressed to the warm skin of his shoulder.
“You’re like my life coach,” he said softly, and she was pretty sure this was his ultimate compliment.
So many years—her entire adulthood thus far!—wasted on this man. And she was more to blame than he was. Would extricating herself be difficult or not difficult?
She still thought they might have sex, either later that night or the next morning before he flew back to New York. But they didn’t, and he had to leave for the airport early in order to return his rental car.
KDB GIVING A speech in Houston on Thurs, Aug 29 to Nat’l Society of Women in Finance, read an unexpected email to Liz from Kathy de Bourgh’s publicist. 20 minutes available after for sit-down interview, assuming mention in your article of speech/organization.
In theory, Mascara frowned on agreeing to conditions of coverage, but in practice, it happened constantly. Also, twenty minutes with Kathy de Bourgh, modest as it might sound to a nonjournalist, was enough of a coup that it would result in a full profile rather than a few remarks tucked into an article on a different subject. Thus, without checking in with her editor at Mascara, without doing further research on the event, Liz wrote back, I definitely will attend.
“I KNOW THIS isn’t your cup of tea, so thank you,” Jane said. She and Liz stood in the backyard, beneath the fungus-afflicted sycamore tree.
“Just, not to sound disrespectful, but we should leave for the airport eight minutes from now,” Liz said.
Jane had invited Liz to join her as she bid a ceremonial farewell to the Tudor, which Liz superstitiously thought but did not tell Jane increased the likelihood that the prospective buyers wouldn’t like the house after all.
Jane closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled, then said, “Om.” Liz didn’t close her eyes and wondered if their parents or sisters were watching from a window. “Thank you for sheltering our family all these years,” Jane said. “For keeping us warm in the winter and cool in the summer”—both claims, Liz thought, were rather generous, given the draftiness that kicked in around November and the erratic functionality of the third-floor air-conditioning—“and thank you for being a place where we celebrated holidays and played games and ate delicious meals. Even our challenges here have made our lives richer and deepened our ability to feel. Our family has been very lucky to live somewhere beautiful.”