Entering the building she encountered a small group of students, waiting outside the classroom with their bags and books. They all looked smart, involved. She hovered near the drinking fountain, hoping no one would notice her. Even with the pills, she felt desperately anxious; her hands were sweaty and cold, her throat dry no matter how much water she drank. Annie Knowles came through the big noisy door at the other end of the hall and rushed toward them, her enormous leather bag swinging wildly from hip to hip. Her coat was open, as if she had put it on hastily, and she wore a silly wool hat, pink as a snow cone. She didn’t seem terribly organized, Lydia thought, not like the nuns at her old school. In fact, Lydia thought, Annie Knowles seemed more like a student than a professor. She found it amazing that the girls were so enamored with her.
Annie Knowles didn’t notice her at first, and Lydia followed the other students into the classroom, where they took seats around the table. There were fifteen students in all, most of whom were now seated and waiting expectantly. Lydia advanced toward her husband’s lover, who was already busy talking to another student, and suddenly the whole world slowed and went quiet and all she could hear was the wind inside her head and the howling of her own heart. She felt, at that moment, that she could do anything, even kill.
The professor looked up, confused by Lydia’s approach, her forehead as wrinkled as a basset hound’s. Their eyes locked, and in those fleeting seconds so much seemed to pass between them. Lydia reached into her pocket and everything slowed down to a whisper. Annie Knowles turned white and her lips trembled slightly and her long white arm went stiff on the tabletop, as if to ward off evil. It’s not a gun, stupid, not yet, Lydia thought, and it was in this potent and silent exchange that she realized all she was capable of.
42
IN A FLEETING SPASM of panic, Annie imagined her own death. Simon’s wife reached into her pocket slowly, deliberately, then pulled out what Annie thought was going to be a gun. It wasn’t a gun, of course. It was a pink slip, an add slip for her course. Annie took the piece of paper and excused herself and went into the bathroom to wash her face. In a matter of seconds, her shirt had been soaked through with sweat.
When she returned to the room, Lydia Haas was sitting at the table, doodling on a pad of paper. “Excuse me, Mrs. Haas, but this class began over a month ago. There’s no way you can possibly catch up. I don’t know how they could have let you in.”
“I’m only auditing the class,” she said. “They told me I could do it.”
The room had grown quiet. The other students watched the famous artist’s wife with dire fascination. Annie was acutely aware that they were watching her, too. Annie knew that her handling of the situation was critical.
“Do you have any writing experience?” The words stuck to Annie’s tongue like Velcro.
“Yes,” Lydia Haas answered tentatively, but Annie doubted that she’d ever taken a serious class.
“Are you a degree candidate?” Again the confused expression. “Are you working toward a degree?”
“No.” She paused a moment. “Not officially.”
Annie felt the sweat trickling down her back. Does she know? She wondered if Simon had mentioned the article for Vanity Fair to his wife. Perhaps his wife admired her work; perhaps she should be flattered. No, Annie thought darkly, she should not be flattered. Lydia Haas exchanged shy smiles with the other girls. The fact was, she might have been one of them, yet she had a sneaky, sly demeanor that thoroughly disarmed Annie. Lydia’s complexion was sallow, sickly, as if she lacked fresh air. Sitting there with clasped hands she looked as if she were calculating some elaborate scheme. “Well, then,” Annie said, “welcome to the class, Mrs. Haas.” She tried to smile at her, but Lydia did not smile back. The other students gazed at Annie attentively, waiting to hear her opening remarks. Acutely aware of Lydia’s presence at the table, Annie awkwardly reviewed the last assignment, then launched into a meandering lecture on the elements of writing the personal essay, encouraging them to dig into their own lives as a means of producing effective social commentary. “I’m looking for essays that tell the stories of how we live, stories that attempt to provide a context for the way we behave.” Hearing her own words, she began to formulate an idea. “I’d like you to try a writing exercise at home tonight. Write a page or two describing a close friend, someone who means a lot to you. It could be a sibling. Or even a parent. Or, in your case, Mrs. Haas, a spouse.”
Their eyes locked for a daunting moment, until Annie looked away. The classroom emptied. Lydia Haas was the last to leave the room.
Annie had a date with Simon that afternoon and considered breaking it. Did he know his wife was taking her class? If he didn’t know, she reasoned, she could possibly use it to her advantage by keeping it a secret, glimpsing the Haas household from the tormented wife’s perspective, if she was in fact tormented. Thinking like a true journalist again, Annie thought with irony. Perhaps she was getting her fangs back after all. Annie remembered Simon’s treatment of Lydia at the Spaulls’ party, his apparent violence, and she had sensed in his lovemaking a power that could do great damage to someone if he wanted to. Don’t be shy, she remembered her editor at Vanity Fair saying.
Simon’s car was parked in the motel lot. Still uncertain of what she would say to him, Annie went to the door. Music surged within; was it Mozart’s Requiem? He’d pulled open the curtains and she could see him through the window, sleeping on the bed. He was fully dressed, hadn’t even taken off his shoes, listening to the music so intently that he had no idea when she entered the room. On the table was a bottle of wine, half empty, a baguette, a saucer of olives, and a small blue bowl full of figs.
For a moment she just stood there, watching him, as if he were the subject in one of his own paintings. A still life. Still Life with Figs, she thought. Now she, too, was in the painting. Lovers, she’d call it, or Afternoon Tryst. Annie tossed her keys down on the nightstand and Simon woke with a start. “You’re late,” he said, reaching out for her hand.
“I know. I’m sorry. My class ran over. I had a new student.”
Simon looked surprised. “A new student? Mid-semester?”
“Someone very unique, in fact.”
“They can’t do that to you. Kick her out!”
Obviously, he had no idea that his wife was taking her class. “Oh, this student is very dedicated.”
“Are you all right? You’re pale.”
“I have something to tell you.”
“What? What is it?” He looked at her, waiting, his face shaped with concern. If only she didn’t love his face. If only she didn’t want to kiss him.
Tell him, she thought, but instead she whispered, nearly inaudibly, “Kiss me.” Simon pulled her down gently onto the bed and kissed her and then she kissed him back, their kisses rushing at each other with urgency, and then they were rolling around like two boys in the grass, two boys wrestling, and she pulled on his hair and laughed a little wickedly and he pulled on hers and laughed, too, and then his mouth covered her neck with kisses. His mouth covered her shoulders and breasts and belly and thighs with kisses. Fuck you, Lydia Haas! she thought gleefully, clinging to his back. She wrapped herself around him so hard that neither of them could tell where one body began and the other ended, and they were one as they fucked, they were one, and tears fell from her eyes onto his face and became his tears. Requiem, she thought, the music storming through the room, thinking of the painting their bodies made. Requiem for Two Lovers.
She didn’t want it to be over, no, she didn’t want it to end, but she knew it must. I must end this now!
But she didn’t.
The chorus sang its desperate chant of loss and it was her loss, too, it was both of theirs, and they would both suffer for it. Oh, they would suffer.
She looked at him in the gray light. He had fallen asleep. It began to rain, the drops twitching on the window. “I have to go,” she told him.
His hand slid down her naked back. “So, go.”
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She dressed quickly, feeling his eyes on her, watching her. There was a taste in her mouth, like copper, like blood, and she wondered if perhaps he had bitten her.
“I’ll miss you,” he said.
“Me, too.” She looked at him directly, wanting him to read her thoughts, all of their unspoken words crushed together inside her head. She leaned over and kissed him and left him alone.
The air stank of rain. Crossing the parking lot, she noticed a white car parked near her own. A Subaru. There was a woman sitting in it. Just sitting there. The woman had on big sunglasses and a ski hat. Annie saw a little girl playing in the backseat. The car seemed familiar to her. Was it Christina’s mother? What her babysitter’s mother would be doing at the Hum Drum Motel at two-fifteen in the afternoon Annie could not imagine, so she quickly discounted it. Suddenly, the Subaru started up and drove away. The car had a bumper sticker: BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, CHOOSE— but the rest of it had been scratched away. Standing alone in the empty parking lot with the rain falling down her face, Annie wondered what to do next. Go to your children, a voice told her. Call your husband. But she suddenly could do none of these things.
Her cell phone rang, startling her, and she ran to her car and answered it, the rain pounding down on the windshield. “We know what you’re doing,” a man said, “we’ve been watching you.”
“Who is this?”
The man said nothing, but she could hear his breathing, the sound of the rain, a car horn in the background.
“I asked you a fucking question,” Annie shouted.
“I don’t talk to whores,” the man said, and the line went dead.
43
JUST TO TORTURE HIM, Lydia worked on the assignment at the kitchen table. Simon stalked the room with his mug of tea, squinting down at her work with perturbed frustration. Deciphering her handwriting was a near impossibility, according to the nuns at her old school. Sister Eleanor, the cruelest sister, with eyes black as prunes, had bound her hands with surgical tape when Lydia had failed to write in the proper position.
“What are you writing?” he finally asked.
“Oh,” she sighed in a voice light as meringue, “just an assignment for a class I’m taking.”
“What?”
Just as she’d thought, Annie hadn’t told him anything during their fuck session. “Don’t worry, Simon, you don’t have to pay for it. Actually, it’s free. All the spouses are allowed to do it.”
The look on his face was priceless. “You’re taking a class at St. Catherine’s?”
“Is something wrong?”
He’d broken out in a sweat. “I just wish you’d told me.”
“I’m telling you now. It’s a writing class. The art of the personal essay.” She emphasized the word personal.
“A writing class? What in hell for? You have no interest in writing.”
“Matter of fact, that friend of yours teaches it.” Quivering lips, twitching shoulder. An old man, she thought. A disgusting, horny old man. “Well, it’s been nice chatting.” She grabbed her bag and started for the door. He grabbed her violently.
“What do you think you’re doing, Lydia?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” she repeated derisively.
“Answer my question!”
“I don’t have to answer to you.” Roughly, she pulled away and walked out. It wasn’t until much later, when she’d driven into town to solemnly walk the aisles of the supermarket, that she realized she’d left her assignment on the kitchen table.
44
SIMON IMMEDIATELY TRIED calling Annie’s cell phone, but she didn’t pick up. He left a message on her machine at the college, begging her to call him, but he knew she wouldn’t. He also knew that she would end their affair; perhaps, in her own mind, she already had. It’s over, he thought, a sinking feeling in his chest. His stomach on fire. Over.
He would go to the registrar’s office in the morning, he decided. He would have Lydia’s name removed from Annie’s class roster. He would explain to the forlorn woman behind the counter that his wife was delusional, thinking she could handle a college-level class, and would not be attending any more of them.
The idea of never seeing Annie again, of never touching her, filled him with the deepest sense of anguish. He would go to her office in the morning, he decided. He would explain the situation. He would find a way to reach her.
But when he went to the college the next morning, Annie’s office was locked.
“Where’s Professor Knowles today,” he asked Charlotte, the department secretary, in as casual a tone as he could muster.
“Called in sick.”
“Oh?”
Charlotte gazed up at him. Her pencil, he noticed, was all chewed up on the end of it. “You look rather disappointed, Professor Haas.”
“Well, as a matter of fact I am. We were supposed to have lunch today.”
“Lunch?” Her big brown eyes widened suggestively. He didn’t appreciate the suggestion.
“Yes, Charlotte, we were going to masticate together.”
Charlotte’s face simmered. “Oh?”
“You might want to look it up.” He grinned. “Masticate.”
She gulped. “Okay.”
“Has she canceled her classes?”
“Professor Wendell is covering for her this afternoon.”
“Thank you, sweet Charlotte.”
Halfway out of the room, he heard the thump of her dictionary.
Felice Wendell taught all her classes in Briggs Hall, on the north side of campus. Felice was in the midst of lecturing when he slipped into her room, inspiring a ravenous eruption of whispering among her students. Felice flushed and smiled at him. “Well, now, what an unexpected delight. Hello, Professor Haas.”
“Hello, Felice. Ladies.” He sported a charming grin. “May I have a word with you, Felice? Won’t take a minute.”
“Of course.” She walked over and put her hand lightly on his shoulder. “What could possibly be so urgent?”
“I just spoke with Annie Knowles,” he lied ruthlessly. “She mentioned you were teaching her class this afternoon. Look, I’ll teach it. I don’t have anything this afternoon.”
Felice scoffed, “Be my guest. I was doing her an extreme favor.”
“I realize that. I’m happy to do it.”
“Well, isn’t that nice. You know I’d never refuse your services, Simon,” she said dramatically, loud enough for the students to hear. “But who’s doing whom the favor? That’s the real question, isn’t it?”
He cracked a smile. “Good afternoon, ladies.” He bowed slightly and walked out.
Felice called after him. “They’re reading their essays aloud, something about lovers and enemies. I gather it’s a subject you know something about?”
Without turning around, he answered, “Yes, I know something about that.”
At noon, he entered Hillard and located Annie’s classroom. He was a few minutes early. He couldn’t wait to see the expression on Lydia’s face when she found him sitting here. Contrary to her devious little plan, she would not be reading her essay, which was chock-full of slanderous untruths. My husband is an abusive man, she’d written. Once he locked me up in a closet. I didn’t eat for four days. This, of course, was entirely fallacious. He has the sexual needs of a predatory animal. Well, perhaps that one he would allow.