23. A Pair of Lovers, Husbands and Wives

On Christmas Eve, Julian and Lana partook of the rescued sweinebraten and Julian concocted a massive salad. They sat across from one another in their decorated dining room, feeling the joy of each others presence, looking forward to the exchanging of their presents, and feeling somewhat proud of one another that they had held off on the demon rum long enough to prepare and eat supper. It was about five thirty in the afternoon. The sun had just settled down out of sight, leaving the colors and twinkles that draped around their tree to bathe them in a mercurial flicker. The ancient electric chandelier was dimmed, and its orange glow hovered over them.
“A toast,” Julian offered, raising his familiar jelly glass. “To you and me forever, and another year together.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“‘It’s my first one today.’”
“Indeed.”
The language they spoke among themselves was full of quotes and allusions. These two helplessly verbal people had too much vocabulary and reading under their belts for ordinary humans, their neighbors, for example, to make heads or tails of them, unless they made a serious effort to clean it up and communicate. They were capable of this; when neighbor Bob had run his snow blower over Dana’s buried garden hose, forgotten at the edge of their yard post season, they were able to offer the appropriate apologies and accept the appropriate condolences for a now decapitated hose. It took some work. The reference to ‘the first one today’ just demonstrates how wide and deep their cultural meanderings were. They had laughed themselves silly one night a few summers back working up a guitar and vocal duet version of Web Pierce’s immortal drunken drinking song. Since then, they often quoted it when commencing an evening’s debauchery.
“So, Jules, what the hell ever happened to that blogger you were in love with a month ago?”
“I have no idea.”
“No idea?”
“Well, I have some idea. The kids wouldn’t let it drop. One of them said that her blog had gone viral.”
“Viral. That’s a good word for it. Have you noticed how we use an expression that connotes ill health to refer to extreme popularity?”
“I’ve noticed that, yes. But it also refers to a method of spreading ‘contamination,’ the method itself as well as the implication.”
“So you’ve not been following…”
“Amy.”
“Right. You never read it any more?”
“I do sometimes read it.”
“Nice to get a little honesty out of you.”
“I read it, but I noticed that you get testy about talking about it.”
“No I don’t.”
“What about you? Don’t you have a constant Internet party going on with the gardeners, the crochet folks, the political activists? Don’t you still talk for hours with Steve the shrink from Kalamazoo?”
“Yeah, all of that’s perfectly true. Steve’s just a good old friend.”
“Well there you go. Why can’t Amy, whoever she is, just be a new ‘old friend?’”
“Oh, you’re right. You go chase all the Amys you want.”
“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”
“We gonna have a fire?”
“Of course!”
The habit at the Grays was to leave to bottle of rum in the freezer. Julian liked the beverage ice cold. Dana did hers, as noted, on the rocks with diet cola. She’d take the bottle out and forget to put it back. Julian, with perfect forbearance, accepted this dance of the bottle, and quietly, endlessly returned the bottle to the freezer when he found it out, frosted and warming. This is married life. You pick your battles. The fact that they had to get up and walk to the liquor was important to them. If they could no longer manage to walk, they’d had enough. On one occasion Julian had tried to crawl, after having taken out a floor lamp and an end table, for his refill. Dana had better balance. They were equally willing to suspend their good judgment when it came to this recreation. They both reasoned that they’d much prefer to be stoned, but the silly government, a part of a backwards culture in this country, made this too risky. Julian could point to his bruises and ruminate about how such damage would never occur if marijuana could still be the poison as it had been in their youth. Julian kept in the back of his mind the position of Blue Ridge on the topic of faculty substance abuse. Certainly their drinking could be considered problematic on those occasions when they’d totally gone over the top and started late enough that in the morning, they were either hung over or still drunk trying to teach. This happened very rarely. Julian figured if they got too far out on a limb, there was always AA or the faculty assistance program.
They abandoned the dishes where they lay, sprawled on the table. It was a holiday. They had all day tomorrow to clean up and recover. Retiring with her husband to the fireplace room, Julian’s study, Dana made the fire. She was a stickler with her sticks. Julian gathered lumber. Julian put a stack of cds on the carousel, fired up the vacuum tubes and let the carols and anthems entertain. They settled back with their second one today. Soon they were on their fourth one today, edging towards the fifth. Julian saw that Dana was edging towards her sloppy side. She had gotten around to the topic of her previous marriage, and that, Julian knew, usually did not bode well. He listened as she slurred her way through the never-ending hatred she bore her ex. Sometimes, she veered off onto the winding road of her hatred of Eric Clapton, the famous guitar player, for making money on the death of his son.
“He also made money on the affair he had with his friend’s wife.”
They were both ripped this time, so it was a level playing field.
“Which one was that?”
“George Harrison.”
“Oh, God. Yes.”
“George challenged him to a duel.”
“Oh, that asshole!”
“Which one?”
“Clap-trap!”
“He’s a great player.”
“He’s an ass.”
“That’s what artists do! They make art out of the stuff of life.”
“He can stuff himself up my ass.”
“I thought you didn’t like anal?”
“I don’t!”
“You wanna know who one the duel?”
“I assume you mean dueling guitars.”
“Right…”
“Well, unless there’s a dead body, I don’t see how you can get a judgment.”
One drink later, Dana is crying. She is murmuring about how no one loves her.
“I love you.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“Then why do I feel abandoned?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You don’t have any passion for me.”
“Of course I do.”
“No you don’t. Your dick only gets hard over that bimbo blogger.”
They’d been this way before. He was tired of her endless parsing over the sources of his erection. He decided to try a very different approach. He got on his knees and spread Dana’s legs so that he could work his way between them and get to her face. He took her head in his hands and kissed her mouth, passionately. She kissed back. He dragged her off her chair to the floor, where in front of the fire he made out with her until their knees were carpet burned and they were ready to stumble up the stairs to the bedroom. Drunkenness made him last indefinitely. By Christmas day, he was in the middle of some serious horniness. They opened presents in the early afternoon. He gave her a Stephen King novel and a gold necklace. They noshed on their pork. They went for a walk. They passed a serene day as lovers. Still, in the back of his mind, Julian turned over the hanging indent of Lana’s latest email. She had used the word “love” in closing. Was that significant? There were many kinds of love. They had never met. They barely knew each other by any sense of knowledge. It was all a bunch of words, and it was all heavily laced with fiction. She fictionally ‘loved’ him, he supposed. The idea of it, the expression of passion from a woman of such heat, made him mentally draft response after response. He was spending a delightful day with the love of his life, his wife, and yet he was also aiming some energy at ‘Amy.’

Eventually, Lana and Julian ended up on their couches. As soon as Dana opened her laptop, Julian opened his. Into Lana’a email box he poured these words:

“Lady L,
I hope the season finds you toasty if not toasted. We’re having much fun around here. I spent some brain time trying to figure out what you meant when you signed off with “love.” The word has many variants, especially in Greek. I assume you ‘meant nothing by it.’ It’s just another ‘four letter word.’

By now I assume you’ve opened all of your gifts. What’d ya get?
JJG”

He hit send.

At that same instant, in their relative Palace in Parkersburg, the Andrews were recovering from a sexual encounter that might have peeled the paint off the walls as far away as Cleveland. Lana, delighted that Scott had championed her right to blog at the Christmas party, decided to reward him with a gift of her. She got herself dressed in the latest next to nothings from Victoria’s Secret, and approached him from behind has he sat on the sofa reading about the twin aircraft he dreamed of owning. She put her warm hands on his neck, and he looked around. His eyes were soon wide, and he was soon kissing her with passionate abandon. She led him upstairs to their bedroom and, as often was the way for them, she climbed atop him and made of him a ‘cello. He lasted longer than she thought he might. She let herself go over the falls, and her barrel disintegrated on the way down. She was washed away in salt and sweat, her single hand aloft and twining in ecstasy. They’d always had this magic between them, and even now, when things had been so uneven in her mind regarding him, his response to her was total and she could not help where she went. He made her desperate, and he filled her up. She made him wild and he seized her hips to exert his mastery. He loved his hot wife more than anything. No aircraft could match this matchless woman. Flight was a bore beside this extreme pleasure. He would remember this time for the rest of his life. Lana too, would think of this in the few remaining times she had to do so, and though she tried to shut the memory out in the wake of what came to pass, it would recur all on its own, unbidden and unwelcome. She gave herself to her husband this one last time, giving all of herself, and making an art of it.

In afterglow, without a stitch of clothing on, the Andrews’ cuddled. Scott’s cellphone rang on the nightstand. He let it ring. It rang again, and he reluctantly took it.
“Hey.”
“Hey Scott. Hope I’m not interrupting.”
“You kind of are, but I’ll cope.”
“Sorry, dude.”
“So what is it?”
“Apart from merry Christmas, I got a call from that client in Oakland.”
“California checking in.”
“Right. Is there any chance in hell you can fly out this week? He’s really hot to trot. Can’t wait to meet you. Has a huge customer base all lined up, but wants some face time.”
“Oh, geez.”
“I know, you just got back, it’s the middle of the holidays…”
“Let me think about it for a few hours. Really. I’ll call you back in just a bit.”
“Sure, Scott. Merry, happy…”
“Same to you, buddy. Regards to Annie.”
“Roger. Regards to Lana.”
“Roger. Over and out.”
He stretched and put the phone back on the nightstand.
“Bruce.”
“I gathered. She’s the only Annie I know.”
“Yeah…”
“So, out with it? What is it you’re thinking over?”
“A trip to California.”
“When?”
“Now. Tomorrow I guess.”
“Aw. Geez. You just got back. We just made it.”
“I know. You just blew my mind.”
“That’s not all I blew.”
“Baby.”
“I didn’t say yes.”
“But you think you should go.”
“I kind of do. Say…”
“Say what?”
“Why don’t you come with me? It’s been a while since you been up in the shaky tin can.”
“It’s tempting.”
“You would be so welcome. You’d make a long trip fun again. We could fuck in the cockpit like old times. I’ll let you fly.”
It was, especially lately, rare of Scott to offer Lana a choice about anything. He’d gotten into the deplorable habit of giving her orders. For this reason, she felt strongly the pull of this offer. At the same time, she thought about the bad juju over the books and the Bar. She thought about the crazy tap dance about the blog. She pondered the skittish behavior of the cats when Scottie was around. At long last, meandering down the list of her ponders, she reached her off duty professor. She’d been sort of flirting with him shamelessly. She tried now, still sweaty and sweetly sore, to remember why she liked words so much. Did she like words enough to flirt with them instead of fly? She raced back over that bit about the cat among the coyotes. ‘The distant rumble of an idea.’ The image of the pouncing predator regaled her afresh. This had activated her leonine core. She had been spoken to like an adult, like a worthy, like an equal. She felt that she should press her advantage, and push back against Scott, not just as a sex partner, but as a life partner.
“You tempt me, my sweet man. I would love to say yep. However, I really want to get going on that blog project while I have a few days totally free to focus on it.”
“Can’t you blog in flight?”
“Technically yes, but my concentration would be dicey. Plus, if I’m going to crank out some recipe sharing pages, all of my recipes are here. How many scraps of paper can we jam into that Cessna?”
“Fine.”
The frost had bitten. Scott got up, got dressed, and went downstairs, leaving Lana to be alone in their damp bed in the twilight. It was to prove a fateful decision that she had just now made.