HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? HE TELLS ME he felt it once-love. Lust, mainly, though he had hoped it would turn into love. He-a friend I know from work-is dedicated, driven, will be as good a salesman as there is (they taught us at a seminar in Dallas to learn one story and to tell that story well, tell it to any potential client: the birth of your kid, the day you won the big game, your most recent vacation-it doesn't matter what story; its only use is to begin a conversation, which will lead to a sale)-he is quick, incisive and, we all tell him, a wonderful listener. In his personal life, however, I believe my friend is laid-back, fun to be around, attractive in all ways. I don't know him too well, but I admire him. Something about his easy way. His lover, this woman, almost ruined him. He holds his glass of scotch and soda up to his lips and says he couldn't believe it-it was, in his life, the first time he knew he was feeling stress.
Anxiety. He had been studying for the Series 7. He said he'd wake up at night in a panic. What with all that was going on with her and the test. My friend has a chest like you wouldn't believe-thick and strong, like a swimmer's. Thick black hair. The woman was his boss from his first job out of school. She was tan, fit, had short blond-brown hair-the type of woman who looked like she might have been a tennis instructor, or a high-impact aerobics instructor.
She liked it in the ass, he tells me. That was one thing that turned him on about her. It was her favorite way, actually. It was also when he knew there was something different, and possibly wrong with her, and part of what made him fall for her so badly. How it started, he does not tell me. Not this night, the canopy of the lounge we're at pulled back, the sky blue and void of clouds, the two of us just having drinks, a quiet place near Lake Michigan; no pressure, just two guys having cocktails: slacks and shirts and gleaming black shoes and thin belts and thin bodies. A moment without a past or a future. Well, a bit of a past-a story.
His story. This woman. Maybe they met for drinks after work, had a few (he more than she), took a few bumps of coke (he does it, but only when it's around him), had a cigarette, and then the sex. He said her body was clean and unblemished, tight; her pussy was waxed-beautiful, he tells me, just beautiful. There was also the issue of her being his boss. It excited him, he says. A thrill. He is the type of man who lives for such things: the big sale, a rush.
Four black coffees in the morning for my friend, and four scotch and sodas at night. He kept his apartment and she hers. People at work knew-it wasn't a big secret. The guys at the office (it was in Arizona, he says) thought it was cool. They thought she would have been wild in bed. Was she? How was it with her? Good? He never really told them. He never told them that once they did it in her office, during work hours-well, toward the end of the day, but still. He never told them that there was a pathos to how she liked to do it, what she liked to say-it was beyond him to think of it in terms of demeaning her-that wasn't it at all.
She would say, Fuck me in the ass. Fuck my asshole. He had never heard such things, and he had heard a lot. He did it. "How did it feel?" I ask. He takes my finger and makes a fist around it. The other things they did together were what normal couples did. She liked to hike (he less so, but he was more than willing to do it for her).
He had a hard time keeping up with her. So much energy. Over rocks, across fields, on the hard-packed desert floor, the heat bearing down on them like a mantle, they hiked to elevation. She loved to sweat. She drank hardly any water when she did these things. Her body browned. In the evenings, they would do dinner. Candles, low lights, white tablecloths, fish or salad to eat for her, beef if they had it for him, scotch and soda, cigarettes, sunburned legs touching each other under the table, sandals fallen off or dangling-the whole of the desert watching her, as if it knew she was worthy of being understood, reckoned with.
He never had to say a thing, he said. She did all the talking. But it wasn't annoying. He liked her voice. A smooth, even voice. Happiest person he'd ever met. Sunny. Really, a delight to be around.
Skin tight around her mouth. Talked about the work they were doing, the money they were then making, her house, her garden that she loved-all the succulents she kept, the deck she'd built, the desert and then the mountains beyond. It was a nice home (he had seen it a few times), but it had been so sparsely decorated. She had moved in seven months ago and still there were boxes around. She announced that she wanted to buy a pet. To share. How did that sound? Would he go in on one with her? It meant something, he felt. Sure, he said.
They were moving their relationship forward. What a fantastic woman. Drank deeply from life, she did. What he asked her that night, which was not much (she had already offered so much), was about her growing up, her childhood. She said he knew all that already. She was from Portland. He said he knew, but he just thought it would be nice to talk about; he felt like he hadn't been the best conversationalist. As he was saying it, he realized that he had seen no pictures of her family at her place.
He assumed her parents were still alive, working or retired. He knew that she was an only child. He had assumed they'd have talked about these things. She said it had been nice, fine-very good, actually; her spirits seemed to dip and then lift as she told it, and he knew here, he tells me, that she was fabricating an upbringing that she felt would be one not that he would want to hear, but one that would be suitable to be heard. She did not go on at length about her parents, only told him what they did (her father was a mechanical engineer and her mother was a lawyer). She then went on to tell him all about what she'd done in school, all the activities she'd been involved in, the clubs (president of the distinguished lecture series, writer for the business section of the university newspaper, intern for the dean of the school of arts and sciences), the partying she'd done there, then work: one company, where she'd worked as a personal financial adviser and then this most recent company, and then working her way up the ladder. There was no discussion of the difficulties in being a woman in a man's business, no discussion of harassment. She was happy on all subjects.
At his apartment, after work, he studying from the kind of book you'd keep a door open with. She wanted to go out, but he said he really had to study. The fan going. A clean-line apartment building. The walls were white. He had put up a number of large photographs of him and his father: playing golf, at the Cubs game-they were so close. His mother had taken them. The girlfriend never asked him about this.
He had hoped that she would. She watched television, sitting beside him. Her policy was to work hard and leave work at work. He, on the other hand, was still junior, and had to pass the exam if he wanted to move up. She told him not to worry about it. He said he was a little worried. He had made it through college with little effort-he'd never been going for honors. He had gotten hired on charm alone.
Could talk to anyone and everyone admired him. She said the exam wasn't that hard. She'd passed on her first try; she was sure he would. They'd go out and celebrate; she had a surprise for him. He asked her what. She said he'll have to wait to find out. He tells me that he couldn't wait; he desired her. She had this effect on him, got him hard right away, like a piece of lead pipe, like a truncheon, she in a T-shirt advertising a sports store and baby blue terry-cloth shorts, straddled him on the leather sofa.
Air-conditioning was coming down from the vents. The night was purple above the skylights. He says it was always like being with a goddess-and he is not a man to speak in hyperbole. He means it. All clothes, off. Her knees on the sofa, she told (not asked, told) him to put it in her ass. He said he wanted to do it the regular way. She reached behind her.
The book fell off the sofa. No, she said. My way. This way. She grabbed him, licked her other hand, wet her asshole, wet the bulb of his cock, and put him inside. If that was how she wanted it, he tells me, then that was how. I loved her. * * * On the way to the pet store.
They were going to get a lizard. You have never seen someone so excited, he says. She was freaking out. It was like picking up a new car. The truth was, though, I was kind of excited, too, he says. For her. But also for us. We were going to do this thing together.
It would bind us. We would have to care for it together. Feed it. Talk to it. Clean the aquarium. Even though we had decided to keep it at my place. Though her place was so much larger, so much more light (she even had a good spot for it in the great room). She promised she would always be over to help.
At the store, they looked around at the lizards. They had snakes, too. But snakes you had to feed mice, and it was too big a hassle. There were salamanders-too small. Then they saw it-this iguana-not moving, really, just sitting in its glass aquarium, its lids folding upward. Skinny green thing. It had this look on its face, he says. He d.