As if on cue, Wyatt walked into the living room. He spotted the orange Sharpie in Owen’s hand and stated, “I want the pen.”
“No pens, Wyatt,” said Lucy.
“I want the pen.”
“How about a crayon, bud?” Owen said. “Or a colored pencil?”
“I want the pen!” Wyatt screamed.
“Oh, just give him the pen,” Lucy said.
“You sure?” said Owen.
“No writing on the house, Wyatt,” said Lucy.
“Okay,” said Wyatt.
“Not on the walls and not on the furniture,” said Lucy.
“Okay.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
Wyatt took the pen and headed upstairs to write on the walls or on the furniture.
“We really shouldn’t do that,” said Owen.
“I know,” said Lucy. “I just can’t face a two-hour meltdown over a Sharpie. Our house looks like crap anyway.”
“I’ll get another pen,” said Owen. “Where were we?”
“I can’t remember,” said Lucy. “I was looking at myself in the mirror this morning and thinking about what Victoria said. I think I’m nearing the end of my window.”
“Your window?”
“The window wherein people other than the man I’m married to will be willing to have sex with me without, I don’t know, being financially compensated in some way.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Which brings us to this: no prostitutes.”
“Of course not,” said Owen.
“Seriously. Write that down.”
“No prostitutes.”
“Because it’s skeevy and we can’t afford it.”
“I’ve got a rule,” said Owen. “No sexting inside the house.”
“I wouldn’t want to sext, period,” said Lucy. “Would I have to do that?”
“I don’t know how things work these days,” said Owen. “But if you want to sext, you have to sit outside. That’s my rule.”
“You know what would be brilliant?” said Lucy. “I think there should be a time limit.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think it should start and then it should stop. We both agree on an end date, and then when it’s over, it’s over. Boom.”
“That’s sort of genius,” said Owen. “It’d be like a rumspringa.”
“And we’d have to promise to actually end it. No more contact. Of any sort. With any of our, uh, our, uh—”
“Sex partners?”
“SPs for short.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Long enough that we can make something happen, but not so long that it becomes the new normal.”
“Six months?”
“Six months. And we can’t have sex with anyone we know,” said Lucy.
“What do you mean?” said Owen. “We have to find complete strangers?”
“No, I mean you can track down old girlfriends or whatever, or people in the city, but you can’t have sex with anyone in Beekman. Not with our crowd. I don’t want to be sitting at a dinner party and wondering if you’re sleeping with any of the women at the table.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” said Owen.
“What about talking about it? With each other, I mean.”
“Would you want to talk about it?”
Lucy thought for a moment. “No. I wouldn’t want to know anything.”
Owen wrote down No talking about it.
“I’d want to be completely in the dark,” said Lucy.
“No asking about it, then.”
“No looking too happy,” said Lucy. “No swanning around the house with a big smile on your face. No whistling while you get dressed in the morning.”
“No snooping,” said Owen. “We accept that we each have a realm of privacy. Our computers, our cell phones, our credit card bills. So with no snooping there can be no hiding of things, and no lying.”
“No leaving,” said Lucy.
“No leaving,” Owen agreed. “And no falling in love.”
“You already wrote that down.”
“I’m writing it down again,” said Owen. “We’re joking about this, right?”
“Yes,” said Lucy. She laughed. “Yes, we’re joking. We’re not insane.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Wyatt picked that moment to walk into the living room. He had orange Sharpie scribbled all over his face.
“I’m a largemouth bass,” Wyatt announced, and then he strode purposefully into the playroom.
*
Downtown Beekman was pretty Norman Rockwell–y, really, with its sidewalks a stone’s throw from front porches, and houses separated by thirty feet of driveway or grass. Main Street itself was both quaint and a bit pathetic. Beekman had never really caught on as a Hudson Valley tourist destination. It was missing the artsy tone of Beacon, the hippie flavor of Woodstock, the crunchy rock-climbing vibe of New Paltz, the ritzy country flair of Rhinebeck. Still, it had its charms.
Owen wandered into a quirky store on Main Street, looking for something to send to his mother for her birthday. Owen’s mother wouldn’t stand for something Amazoned to her with a click of a button. She wanted something that was purchased and wrapped and mailed to her with as much hassle as humanly possible.
The store was small, with an industrial/artisanal feeling, bars of brown soap stacked on old metal shelving, a soy fig candle burning, various odds and ends encased in muslin.
“It’s truffled honey,” a voice said. “Taste it.”
Owen looked over and saw an attractive blond woman who had just come out of the back. She was wearing a peasant blouse and jeans.
“It’s nice,” said Owen. It was weird-tasting honey.
“It’s amazing. The truffles are flown in from Italy and the honey is hyper-local. If you live in Beekman, you have seen the bees that make this honey. We sell out of this the minute we get it in the store. Smell it.” The woman waved the little jar of honey under his nose. It smelled like honey that had been filtered through a very clean person’s sweat sock.
“What do you do with it?” Owen asked.
She looked at him. “What do I do with it?” She laughed a hearty laugh. “This is a family store, my friend.”
Is she coming on to me? Owen thought. I think she is. Who is she?
“It will end your allergies forever,” she said. “And the truffles are an aphrodisiac.”
“Sex without sneezing,” said Owen.
She laughed like this was very funny.
“This place is great,” he said.
“Thank you. It’s my baby.”
“It’s your store?”
“It is. I am the proprietress.” She did a little curtsy, and he tried not to look at her boobs. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I’ve been in Beekman for five years, but I’ve never been in here before.”
“You are not a good local shopper!” She hit him playfully on the arm. “That’s what we do around here. We shop local!”
“You’re right, I’m not a good…local shopper. I’ll do better.”
“You promise? Because it’s not just me. We’re not going to have a thriving Main Street if the rich weekenders don’t buy things once in a while.”
“I’m not rich. And I’m not a weekender anymore,” said Owen. “I live here full-time.”
“That’s how we get you,” she said. “You buy a weekend house and two years later you’re living in it. You either lost your job or had a baby. I’ve seen it a million times. I’m Izzy, by the way.”
“I’m Owen.”
“Izzy and Owen,” she said. She got a faraway look on her face. “That would be a great title for a children’s book.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It should be about the unlikely friendship between a mouse and a, uh, crocodile.”
“A penguin and a hippo,” he said.