‘Jesse?’
‘Hey. Sorry. Did I scare you?’
As her eyes adjusted she saw him sitting across the room in the mahogany rocking chair. His hands were crossed over his chest and his head rested against the chair back. The smell of fresh garlic and baking bread wafted in from somewhere.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just admiring your sleep.’
‘My sleep?’
‘I came up to wake you for dinner, but you looked so peaceful. I don’t really sleep, pretty much ever, so it’s always nice to watch someone else. Probably creepy, but I hope you don’t mind.’
‘It’s actually ironic, because I don’t sleep anywhere else but here. There’s something about being out here that’s better than Bambien,’ Leigh said.
‘Isn’t it Ambien? Without the B?’
‘Bath plus Ambien equals Bambien. But even that only works some of the time.’
Jesse laughed and Leigh felt a surge of happiness. And for the first time in her thirty years of life, Leigh did something without giving any thought whatsoever to any potential consequences or reactions. With a completely blank mind and absolutely no anxiety, she climbed off the bed and walked over to the rocking chair. Not even standing above him made her nervous; she extended her hand and, when he accepted it with only the slightest confusion on his face, she tugged him upward. They were face-to-face, something that felt strange because Russell was so much taller. Leigh looked down at her hands, interlaced with his, a moment of intimacy that was undeniable, unmistakable. He unhooked their hands and put them behind her neck and entangled his fingers in her hair, and their lips pressed together and opened; Jesse’s tongue on her own was more surreal than exciting, strange, or foreign.
From there everything moved quickly. They fell back onto the bed and within seconds they were naked. It was a violent, needy sex Leigh had rarely experienced. Even though he played with her hair, cupped her face, kissed the tip of her nose, stroked her back – he didn’t hesitate to pin her down almost roughly, hands over her head. Afterward, Jesse pulled her close, still on top of the covers, and ran his fingers lightly across Leigh’s shoulders until goose bumps rose along the backs of her arms. He asked if she was okay, did she feel all right, did she want some water? When Leigh was quiet for a few minutes, he lifted her chin and kissed her with such softness she thought she might die. They kissed like that for minutes, many minutes, lazily and languidly, and when Jesse pressed the flat part of his tongue across her bottom lip, Leigh had the sensation that she could disappear entirely into his mouth. Neither lifted their head from the pillow; they turned and kissed, so warmly and softly until something snapped and the urgency became overwhelming; their teeth clashed and their nails dug and their hands again grabbed and pulled.
Afterward Leigh rested her head on his chest and through half-closed eyes peeked to see Jesse awake, looking at her. Not with curiosity or love, though; he looked as though he was trying to remember every detail. Eye contact during sex was supposed to be the ultimate intimacy, a glimpse into the soul, blah, blah, blah. But no matter how close she’d felt to Russell or to other guys before him, meeting eyes had always felt forced or contrived, as though they’d both read the same article insisting lovemaking included eye contact. It always made her uncomfortable, took her out of the moment, but this was different. When Jesse’s eyes found hers it was hard to breathe; no one had ever looked at her like that before. It was out of a movie, and Leigh felt like a movie star. It no longer mattered that she had a small rash on her belly from an allergic reaction to a new lotion, or that Jesse’s skin was a bit too pale for such dark chest hair, or that they were both red and sweaty and panting; they had become the two sexiest people on earth. They had, in a very real way, found each other.
At some point they fell asleep because when Leigh opened her eyes the sky was beginning to lighten. She eased herself out from under the throw blanket Jesse had pulled over them, and she tiptoed to the bathroom across the hall, waiting for the floods of regret, guilt, and self-flagellation. Nothing came. Instead, she peed and braced herself for the familiar stinging of a UTI, but miraculously, she felt fine. Splashing water on her face, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and nearly fainted. Her chin and cheeks were raw, and patches were lightly bleeding from beard burn; her lips were swollen; the skin on her neck was splotched red with teeth marks; her hair was tangled in ratty knots; there were bruises on her inner thighs from where he’d pushed himself against her. Her head throbbed from hitting the headboard, her pelvic bone ached from grinding, and the sensitive skin between her legs felt like it had been sandpapered. Even her feet ached from curling her toes for so many hours.
Never before had she felt so awful, if by awful one really means absolutely fucking fantastic. She returned to the guest room and found Jesse sitting in bed, still naked under the blanket. Light from the bedside window illuminated his face, and Leigh could now see the clock: 7:23 a.m. He looked up and, for the first time in hours, she was overcome with self-consciousness. She was standing there completely naked in the glow of full daylight before this man she barely knew, her author, for chrissake. Had she really done this?
‘Leigh.’
She forced herself to look directly at him. The room was cold and she could feel the hair on her legs beginning to prickle.
‘Leigh. Sweetheart. Come here.’ He lifted the edge of the blanket and motioned for her to join him.
She climbed in next to him. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled the covers over them both. He kissed her on the forehead like her father used to when she was sick. And what her father would think if he could see her now … not just in bed with someone – bad enough for a dad – but with the man she had been assigned to edit … and what about Russell … her fiancé … she was still wearing the beautiful ring he’d placed on her finger only five months earlier. She was a filthy, disgusting slut, unworthy of all of them.
‘You look like you’re in the throes of a crushing panic attack,’ Jesse whispered in her ear. He pulled her even tighter against him, but it was protective, not sexual.
‘I’m a filthy, disgusting, unworthy slut,’ she said before she could stop herself, but the second the words were out she regretted them.
Expecting a denial or, at the very least, another hug and some sympathetic clucking – Russell’s specialty – Leigh was horrified, and then supremely pissed off, when Jesse started to laugh.
She wrenched her body away from his and stared, dumbstruck. ‘You think that’s funny? You think it’s amusing that I basically just ruined my life?’
He hugged her tighter and rather than feel suffocated like she usually did, Leigh allowed herself to relax. Jesse kissed her lips and forehead and each cheek before saying, ‘I’m only laughing because you remind me so much of myself.’
‘Oh, great,’ Leigh muttered.
‘But we didn’t do anything wrong, Leigh.’
‘What do you mean, we didn’t do anything wrong? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Maybe with the fact that I’m engaged? Or you’re married? Or that we work together?’
She emphasized the working together bit, but it wasn’t until she’d listed everything that Leigh admitted something to herself: She’d been waiting for Jesse to offer a reasonable explanation for his marriage, something along the lines of ‘We’re actually divorced’ or ‘I’m not really married.’ She knew this was unlikely. But that hadn’t stopped Leigh from hoping.
He pressed his finger to her lips and shushed her, which she was surprised to discover she found cute and not enraging. ‘What happened between us happened naturally. We both wanted it. What’s wrong with that?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ she snapped, her voice taking on a mean, almost vicious tone. ‘What about your wife?’
Jesse rolled over onto an elbow so he was hovering above Leigh and looked directly into her eyes. ‘I’m not going to patronize you with the usual shtick about how miserable we are and how she doesn’t understand me
and how I’m about to leave her, because that’s not true and I don’t want to lie to you. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t extenuating circumstances. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t want you desperately right now.’
Well, that was definitely not what she wanted to hear. The I-hate-my-wife-she-doesn’t-understand-me shtick would’ve been just fine as far as she was concerned. The fact that it wasn’t forthcoming made her even more acutely aware of how wrong this all was, something made more confusing by the fact that it all felt so right. So right? What the hell was she thinking? This was lunacy … There was nothing right about betraying Russell or having sex with the man she was supposed to be working with. It had been a horrible lapse in judgment, inexcusable even, and it would be a miracle if they all got through this unscathed. Of course she could no longer edit Jesse, that much was clear, but that seemed an insignificant price to pay for her overwhelming stupidity.
It was time to leave. Immediately.
‘What are you doing?’ Jesse asked as Leigh wrenched herself out from under him and wrapped herself in the throw blanket. She grabbed her entire overnight bag and, with one hand clutching the blanket to ensure she remained covered, she half sprinted, half hobbled to the bathroom. Only after locking the door behind her did she allow the blanket to fall, but this time she couldn’t face her body in the mirror. Knowing she would only sob if she allowed herself the luxury of a shower, she pulled on a pair of clean underwear, jeans, and a button-down and wrapped her knotted, frizzy hair into a bun. She took the time only to brush her teeth and, with that single task complete, Leigh clamped her jaw shut to keep herself from crying and opened the door.
He was standing in the doorway wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, looking miserable. Leigh wanted nothing more than to hug him, a desire she found both repellant and appealing, but she managed to squeeze past him without so much as brushing against his arm.
‘Leigh, sweetheart, don’t do this,’ he said, following her down the hall and then the stairs. ‘Sit with me for a minute. Let’s talk about this.’
She swept into the kitchen to gather her papers and notebooks and saw the remnants of the dinner they’d never gotten around to eating. A casserole dish of hardened lasagna rested on a hot plate between two place settings and two poured glasses of red wine; two simple silver candleholders were covered in melted ivory wax.
‘I don’t want to talk. I want to leave,’ Leigh said quietly, with no intonation.
‘I know, and I’m asking you to wait.’ Leigh glanced at him and noticed his stubble was sprinkled with gray and the hollows around his eyes were so dark they could be mistaken for bruises.
‘Jesse, please.’ She sighed, her back to him as she slid her files into her bag. She remembered she’d left Something Blue in the guest room upstairs, but there was no way she was going back for it now.
He placed his hand on her shoulder and pulled at her gently to turn her around. ‘Look at me, Leigh. I want you to know that I don’t regret last night at all.’
For the first time since she’d gotten out of bed, Leigh met his gaze. She stared at him with her iciest narrowed-eye look and said, ‘Oh, I’m so relieved! Thank goodness you don’t regret what happened. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that. In the meantime, get your hands off me.’
He pulled away. ‘Leigh. I didn’t mean it like that. Please, sit down with me for just a minute …’ Something about the way his voice trailed off let them both know that the invitation, while sincere, was not something he actually wanted. He looked tired and beaten, like a man who was exhausted by the thought of having to deal with yet another hysterical postcoital female.
She would give anything for him to say that he loved her from the moment he met her and this wasn’t just another extramarital conquest for the legendary Jesse Chapman – that she, Leigh Eisner, was different – but she knew better. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked proudly through the front door with her head held high, both surprised and saddened when Jesse didn’t follow.
three men do not a femme fatale make
Adriana literally could not remember the last time she’d waited so anxiously for the phone to ring. In junior high, before puberty, when, like all the other girls, she had to wonder if she would get asked to the school dance? Perhaps. She had been rather eager to hear from the campus health center a few times regarding the occasional pregnancy test, and there was that little incident in Ibiza with the smidgen of cocaine that had necessitated flying in a decent lawyer … Waiting hadn’t been easy then, either. But this was different: She so desperately wanted Marie Claire to call with good news that she could scarcely think of anything else.
Not that she was expecting anything but good news, of course – if yesterday’s meeting with the editor-in-chief was any indication, she was sure she’d made a good impression – but these magazine editors were unpredictable. It wasn’t Adriana’s outfit that made her nervous (what sane woman wouldn’t adore the contrast between a floaty Chloe dress, patent Sigerson heels, and a perfectly distressed shearling coat that nipped in just so at the waist?), or how the meeting had gone (the two had shared Pellegrinos and opinions on the city’s best plastic surgeons); she just couldn’t help but wonder why Elaine Tyler had wanted to meet her in the first place.
As promised, Mackenzie had called Adriana a few days after the dinner party to see if she might be interested in writing a sample advice column on sex and relationships, to which Mackenzie would then add her own pitch describing Adriana’s innate talents with men. If all went as expected, Elaine would approve a trial run of the column on the magazine’s Web site and they’d wait to gauge the reader reaction. It had taken Adriana only a single afternoon to compose half a dozen essays (who could ever narrow it down to just one?), missives with titles ranging from ‘Sex Yes, Sleep No’ to ‘I Was Just Being Friendly and Other Idiotic Excuses.’ She was quite confident she’d imparted her hard-won wisdom while keeping the tone light and entertaining, so why on earth had Elaine insisted on meeting her? More to the point, why hadn’t Elaine’s office called yet? Dumbly, Adriana had given her home number when asked by Elaine’s assistant for contact information, and when she’d tried to correct herself and provide her cell number, the girl had waved her off. It was nearing six, and on a Friday! In just a couple of hours she’d have to drag herself out from under her favorite mink throw and get ready to meet Toby. Did they really expect that she’d just sit around and wait for the phone to ring?
‘Bor-ing!’ Otis cawed. ‘Big bor-ing!’ He was perched on Adriana’s blanketed ankle, staring at her as she stared at the TV.
‘Okay, okay, it was just a commercial. There, look. It’s starting again now.’ Otis swiveled his head toward the television and proceeded to watch The Hills with rapt attention.
Adriana reached toward him and stroked his silky back. Otis pushed against her hand, loving the massage. Adriana smiled to herself, pleased with the bird’s progress. After endless screaming, too many sleepless nights, and no fewer than half a dozen international phone calls to Emmy in which Adriana threatened to maim and dismember Otis were she not relieved of duty immediately, bird and girl had bonded.
Thank god for her epiphany – without it, who knows what would have become of poor Otis. It had happened only last week and was such a welcome surprise. Adriana had just stripped off her night clothes and was sprinkling salts into her morning bath when, from his perch near the toilet, Otis screamed, ‘Fat girl!’ Instantly Adriana’s eyes darted to the mirror, seeking assurance that she hadn’t ballooned overnight; when she was satisfied that her thighs looked as tight as ever, she turned to look at Otis. He was sitting on the bar of his metal cage, head hung low, beak fixed into what could only be described as a sorrowful expression. Most notably, he was staring at himself in the mirror, and just as Adriana understood the importance of this, Otis let out a long, sad sigh and croaked, ‘Fatty,’ with quiet resignation.
It was then that Adriana realized Otis thought he was fat,
not her.
All this time Otis had been screaming ‘fat girl’ and ‘fatty,’ and they were cries for help! He must have known Emmy always offered too much food in a desperate attempt to quiet him. Poor thing! How could he be expected to control himself with the unlimited quantities of processed pet-store birdseed constantly paraded through his cage? Adriana immediately went online and scanned a few sites on proper African Grey nutrition, and she was horrified to find that packaged commercial bird food practically guaranteed morbid obesity and early death from kidney failure. Not to mention the psychological toll it was taking on him! To look at yourself in the mirror day after day – to live your life caged in front of a mirror! – and to recognize that you’re overweight but not be able to do anything about it … well, Adriana wasn’t sure it got worse than that!
This changed everything. Once she understood that Otis’s anger and insults weren’t directed at her, she was overcome with sympathy for the tubby little creature. That very afternoon she’d placed a call to Irene Pepperberg, the living parrot legend herself, and asked what the woman had fed Alex, her world-famous African Grey who had a larger vocabulary than the average American eighth-grader. Mobilized with newfound knowledge and bolstered by a very foreign-feeling desire to help, Adriana immediately hit Whole Foods, the Union Square farmers’ market, an upscale pet boutique, and a vet who specialized in exotic birds. It had taken nearly a week of constant work, but Otis’s lifestyle makeover was nearing completion.
It was hard to say what had had the greatest effect, but Adriana guessed it was probably Otis’s new digs. Banished was his rickety aluminum cage with the vile smell and nasty wire bars that looked – and sounded – like some sort of Middle Eastern torture cell. In its place was a proper avian home: an armoire-sized, handcrafted wooden chest designed by one of New York’s finest architects and built by a reputable contractor who had executed the vision perfectly. The frame was made of solid oak that Adriana ordered stained an espresso color to match her living room furniture; granite made up the floor and ceiling; the sides consisted of high-grade stainless steel mesh; and the front panel was made from floor-to-ceiling unbreakable acrylic that looked just like glass. She’d ordered a lush, high-resolution jungle print from a world-renowned National Geographic photographer and had it laminated and mounted in the background so Otis could feel close to nature, and she’d requested a full-spectrum lighting system installed so he wouldn’t struggle so much with day and night. On the advice of a parrot behaviorist, Adriana had outfitted the inside with an assortment of basking ledges, swings, shelves, feeders, and perches, although she had later removed a few accessories after worrying the space might feel too cluttered. It was undoubtedly eight grand well spent, as evidenced by the fact that Otis had literally sung upon seeing it for the very first time. Adriana swore she could see him smiling as he gazed at the jungle panorama from his bamboo perch.