husband who worked for the phone company, I might be able to deceive her but I couldn’t deceive myself or the obligation I had to her. It didn’t matter that my desire was gone or that it would have been easy to ignore hers, it didn’t even matter that we were barely acquaintances, crossing paths at the mailboxes one afternoon when she was mad at her husband and grumbling at her mail and we started talking and wound up going up to her place for a glass of wine. … What mattered was that I had telephoned her tonight because I wanted her and she had answered, and now I couldn’t just forget her because I had been satisfied by someone else. I was obligated by my desire for her of earlier that evening and though the desire had passed, the obligation had not, because I was obligated by desire’s memory; she had offered her self to that desire and for her it wasn’t just a memory, it lived and breathed in the moment, it was still a part of her present even as it had already spurted into my past: even desire has its laws. So you can see how when I reached the hotel and pulled the car into the garage I had no choice but to head up to her apartment; the door was unlocked. I had no choice but to make my way into her bedroom and turn the top sheet back and run my fingertips down her belly; she shuddered. I pulled her to the edge of the bed where I knelt so I could separate her thighs and open her with my fingers and press my mouth against her; even in my exhaustion I couldn’t help loving the moan that answered. Half asleep I slipped my tongue inside her. I don’t know how long it took, maybe it was minutes or maybe it was hours, I just remember kissing her when she came and her purr of response before she fell asleep. …
Tonight, before I fall to sleep, looking at the city’s scattered lights and gapes of blackness outside my window, thoughts of Sally return. And I know, in my exhaustion and fulfillment, that it wasn’t all Sally’s fault. With the strange, hallucinatory clarity of fatigue, I suddenly understand how the burden of my romantic expectations was unendurable to anyone but me; there isn’t a woman on earth who wouldn’t have felt buried alive under them. We both knew she wasn’t capable of reciprocating in full. When the receiver can barely return what has been given, then the giving is not really about giving but power. In both our minds Sally could only repay my “gift” with her very life, since her love couldn’t possibly be big enough; it was too much for her to live up to, and part of me knew that and demanded it anyway. Now I find myself saying to her, “Your love was a lie,” as Lauren said it to me, and maybe this is where love’s journey always ends, in the land of liars. Maybe now she writes me a letter, as I wrote to Lauren, to say: I’m sorry, but they were your expectations, not mine, and it isn’t my fault . And she’s right, it wasn’t her fault, not all of it anyway; maybe it wasn’t even mostly her fault. I don’t know anymore. Now the most profound regret I have is that Polly, Sally’s little girl, who I raised during those years with Sally as surely as did her mother, must have forgotten me. Little Polly is seven now, her little life doubled since I last saw her; if I was to see her on the street I might not even know her, except for the way she must look more and more like Sally. If I talked to her on the phone, hers would be a voice I’ve never heard, communicating things she could never conceive only a few years ago. When I think of how I’ve surely slipped altogether from her memory—“Who is that strange man? I think perhaps I knew him once”—I can barely stand it, and it was my own doing, of course. …
What the hell. At least I got one good laugh out of the whole thing. Drifting off to sleep I have to laugh that the city out there beyond my window is eaten up by the “secret” of Sally’s wedding. People wondering and worrying when I’m going to find out,
Tonight, before I fall to sleep, looking at the city’s scattered lights and gapes of blackness outside my window, thoughts of Sally return. And I know, in my exhaustion and fulfillment, that it wasn’t all Sally’s fault. With the strange, hallucinatory clarity of fatigue, I suddenly understand how the burden of my romantic expectations was unendurable to anyone but me; there isn’t a woman on earth who wouldn’t have felt buried alive under them. We both knew she wasn’t capable of reciprocating in full. When the receiver can barely return what has been given, then the giving is not really about giving but power. In both our minds Sally could only repay my “gift” with her very life, since her love couldn’t possibly be big enough; it was too much for her to live up to, and part of me knew that and demanded it anyway. Now I find myself saying to her, “Your love was a lie,” as Lauren said it to me, and maybe this is where love’s journey always ends, in the land of liars. Maybe now she writes me a letter, as I wrote to Lauren, to say: I’m sorry, but they were your expectations, not mine, and it isn’t my fault . And she’s right, it wasn’t her fault, not all of it anyway; maybe it wasn’t even mostly her fault. I don’t know anymore. Now the most profound regret I have is that Polly, Sally’s little girl, who I raised during those years with Sally as surely as did her mother, must have forgotten me. Little Polly is seven now, her little life doubled since I last saw her; if I was to see her on the street I might not even know her, except for the way she must look more and more like Sally. If I talked to her on the phone, hers would be a voice I’ve never heard, communicating things she could never conceive only a few years ago. When I think of how I’ve surely slipped altogether from her memory—“Who is that strange man? I think perhaps I knew him once”—I can barely stand it, and it was my own doing, of course. …
What the hell. At least I got one good laugh out of the whole thing. Drifting off to sleep I have to laugh that the city out there beyond my window is eaten up by the “secret” of Sally’s wedding. People wondering and worrying when I’m going to find out,
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