Dirty Diana

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

—

Most mornings, arriving at work is like walking onto the set of a cozy sitcom. Every setup is the same, every scene routine and consistent. When the elevator doors open on my floor, I’m greeted by familiar sounds: morning pleasantries, assistants typing, and somewhere, a printer jamming. Endless phone-ringing. The reception area smells like it always does, like lilies and lemon furniture polish. And still, despite how always-the-same it is, I feel a tiny flicker of shock every day that I’ve worked here for more than a decade.

This morning, I dropped off Emmy, and then on a whim stopped by Oliver’s favorite café. The one with the espresso he likes and that always has a line down the block. They take a painstaking amount of time making each drink and no amount of people waiting makes them move any faster.

When we were dating, I would’ve waited in a line three times as long to buy Oliver coffee and a warm scone. Standing there, I think of all the little things neither of us do for each other anymore. Somewhere along the line, after Emmy was born, it was as if we made a silent pact—like we’d looked into each other’s overwhelmed faces, over the head of a newborn baby or maybe it was a tantrummy toddler, and quietly made a deal not to expect the small gestures. Like we said, Hey, I know you’re just hanging on, let’s do our best. Or maybe we never made that deal. Maybe Oliver has been quietly calculating the debt that my lack of small gestures is racking up, steadily building resentment. But where have his small gestures been? Have they not been there or have I just not noticed them? Has he betrayed me or have we both been playing by a completely different set of self-invented rules? When the barista hands over the coffee, I remind myself that I want to be the kind of woman who waits in long lines to make her husband smile.

I find Oliver’s assistant, Cara, at the copier. I feel terrible that one of the two coffees in my hand isn’t for her.

“Have you seen Oliver?”

Cara cuts her eyes in the direction of Allen’s glass-walled office, and when I turn the corner I see Oliver in there. He’s getting chewed out by his father while people in the cubicles out front try not to stare. Allen stands and strides over to Oliver, towering over him, still yelling. Oliver’s shoulders collapse. He does a lot of nodding but I can tell he’s somewhere else. I should have predicted this. I’ve noticed him absent from meetings and slow to respond on email, not returning clients’ calls. His head is clearly somewhere else, one of the only things we currently have in common.

When Allen finally sits back down behind his desk, Oliver rises and shuffles toward the door.

I follow him into his office. “What happened?”

“I fell behind,” Oliver answers quietly.

“How behind?” Our clients are wealthy and spoiled. Keeping any of them waiting never goes well.

“Very.”

“I can help.” I hand him a lukewarm latte.

“This isn’t your fault. I can do it.”

“The Aldon estate?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, good, I know the account. Let me help. What’s our deadline?”

“Yesterday.”

Shit. “No problem. We’ll get it done.”

“Diana, there’s weeks’ worth of work. I fucked up.”

“My day is light. We’ll fix it.”

—

We work in silence for a few hours, wordlessly passing receipts, letters, forms, and invoices between us. In the quiet, I think about distracting Oliver with a funny story about Emmy or even telling him that I’m dreaming up a new project. But the idea feels too new.

After sorting through a stack of receipts, I have to ask. “How did you fall so far behind?”

“I don’t know. The work feels harder to do these days. I don’t know why.”

I do. The work is tedious. And Oliver’s heart has never been in it. “Do you ever think about quitting this job? Finding something else?”

He looks up at me. “Every day.” It feels like the most honest thing he has said to me in months. “But I’m in so deep. I even brought you in.”

I laugh. “It’s not prison—”

“I don’t know what else I’d do. I’ve waited too long. I’m sorry I pulled you in.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind it as much as you do.”

“Of course you do. Who would like doing this shit? This place. It just feels like…”

“Your father.”

“Exactly,” he whispers.

We order a pizza for lunch and eat on the floor. We make a real dent in the work, and Oliver is calmer. By seven, the office has cleared out.

“You should take a break,” I say. “We can easily finish in the morning.”

Oliver looks at me as if slowly recognizing someone he thought was a complete stranger. His face softens and he smiles.

“I don’t have to play cards tonight. Maybe we could grab a drink. We have a sitter anyway. It might be nice.”

My heart all but leaps. It would be nice. But I haven’t let up on finding other women to interview. Alicia found me a woman named Jada, a friend of a friend from her NYU days, who she swears I’ll think is fascinating. I’ve asked her to come to the office at eight, figuring everyone would be long gone.

“I would love to, but I can’t. I have work of my own to catch up on. You go to your card game, and I’ll see you at home later.”

Oliver looks dejected, but he knows he can’t be upset after I helped him all day. He sighs and grabs his keys. “Okay,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”

—

“Do I just start talking?” Jada sinks into my office love seat wearing a bright green sundress. I can tell by the way she settles in that there’s no need for me to try and make her comfortable.

She tells me about her new job at a tech start-up. “Our offices look like a millennial blogger threw up. I’m not kidding. There’s a tire swing and a free cereal bar, the whole deal.” She looks around my office. “I like that this place is like, fuck it, we’re old and crusty, so get on board. Or don’t. You know?”

Jada is easy to talk to and when I tell her about what I’m trying to do with gathering other women’s stories, she smiles brightly. “Okay. Cool.” She runs her fingers through her shiny black hair. “I love it when it’s all about me. This is very on brand.” She has a hint of a nonrhotic accent, like a New Yorker who drops her R s and occasionally sticks them back in, in a different place. “Let’s start.”

—

On the drive home, I have a familiar, electric feeling. I replay pieces of Jada’s interview in my mind and thrill at how willing she had been to share. We talked about longing and sex and I asked her about the last time she felt the most in her body. Jada thought for a long time, and then like the sun breaking over a field, her face lit up.

When my girlfriend and I lived in New York, we had this tiny fourth-floor walk-up apartment. I could never live there now, I’ve gotten so lazy. I drive a block to the grocery store these days. You know?

But once, I got really sick with strep, and I was basically bedridden for a week. Bored out of my mind but too sick to read or really focus on anything. So I’d spend hours just lying there and watching my neighbors in the building next door, waiting for something interesting to happen. The street between the apartment buildings was so narrow that I might have been in the same room with them. There was a banker who had endless coke parties and ordered dim sum every night. There was a sweet old lady whose face would light up every time the phone rang. And directly across from my apartment was a woman with long dark hair and short bangs. I decided she was French and I named her Celine. She must have worked from home. She was always on her laptop. But she would leave once a day with her yoga mat and return with coffee from the shop on the corner that I thought was too expensive. She had a dancer’s body. Tall and lean with small, perfect breasts. She lived with her girlfriend and they’d have sex right there by the window, the drapes open.

When I get home, Oliver is still out. I pay the sitter while she tells me about the new game Emmy made up, where the two of them played Disney princesses lost in a dinosaur jungle with only Capri-Sun and a guide to eating insects to survive. “We legit played for over an hour. Then she fell asleep, fast.”

Once she leaves, I find my drawing pad and pencils and sit at the kitchen table with my headphones on. I hit play, and my voice fills the empty room.

Does that turn you on? Watching them?

No! Jada answers me. No, the sex was so boring. Always the same. Even with the drapes open there wasn’t much to see. She was on her back, the sheets pulled up over both of them. The good part was always when they finished. After her girlfriend fell asleep, Celine would masturbate on her own. With no sheet. She’d turn away from her partner, toward the window, and it was like she was looking right at me. She’d lay on her side, and stretch out her legs, pointing her toes like a dancer, like maybe she was showing off for me. Then she lifted an arm over her head and sighed. Like she had all the time in the world and she wasn’t going to rush. She would exhale and let her arm fall slowly and gently to her neck. I think about that a lot, the way she caressed her neck. Her fingers kind of lingered, eventually finding their way to her chest. That’s where she started, caressing one of her breasts, then the other. Then her hips started to move, like they were waking up to the greatest sensation you could feel and they shifted, writhing just slightly beneath her. Her body was ready to be touched, everywhere, aching the same way I was aching to touch her. Then she teased herself. She traced her fingers up and down her stomach then back to her mouth where she’d suck on them, looking at me the entire time. My face was so close to the window, watching, waiting. And finally, she moved her hand between her legs and turned onto her back. She spread her legs wide and shifted her gaze so that her eyes were locked on mine. Then she slipped her fingers inside, moving them in and out. Slowly at first, and then much faster when the feeling started to grow. Then she pulled her hand away, teasing us both. But her body wouldn’t let her get away—her hips rose up and her fingers found her again, moving in circles, faster and with more pressure, her hips moving in circles, too, until her body clenched, holding in the sensation. She turned away from me then, her eyes closed, she didn’t need me. She was on another plane. And that only made me want her more. I could see her face when she climaxed, flushed and pleased.

I can’t get the slope of Jada’s neck right. I pause the recording and pour myself a glass of water. For several minutes, I wander the house, quiet and still. I take my sketch pad and pencils to bed and make a desk on my lap with pillows. I press play. Jada continues:

I have this fantasy I think about sometimes. I think about walking over to her apartment, once her girlfriend leaves for work. She lets me in, like she’s been waiting for me to arrive. Then she leads me to her bed and slowly undresses and puts my hand between her legs so I can feel her soft wetness. And the minute she does this, I can feel my orgasm building. It’s immediate. Nothing like when I’m with my girlfriend and it feels so far in the distance, and I’m concentrating hard—any rogue movement can throw it off, any miscalculated dirty talk can destroy it. But this, it’s right there for me. I’m the one trying to stop it for once. It must be what men feel like all the time.

I draw Jada at the window, her back to us, and through the window, Celine in her bed.

Then what happens?

I lay her down on the bed and suck on her breasts, and kiss between her legs and slide my fingers into her. Seeing my fingers disappear inside her, she holds me even closer. She kisses me deeply, breathes into my ear. I know how good I’m making her feel. Better than her girlfriend ever could.

It’s such a feeling of power, you know? Pleasing a stranger. And I’m determined to make her come. I can’t leave her unsatisfied the way her girlfriend does. But she wants me to come, too, so she starts kissing me, all the way down my stomach. And it feels like, this is the moment, the only moment I’ve ever really wanted, and now it’s here and I don’t ever want it to stop.

My pencil hovers over the paper, not moving, and I just listen.

It’s 12:30 in the morning. Oliver still isn’t home, which makes me imagine all the places he could be and all of them make me worry. I picture everything from a car accident to an illicit affair with Connie Britton, the last woman Oliver told me he found attractive. I find an old Xanax from my nervous flying days and pray that it still works. It kicks in ten minutes later, and I feel more relaxed than I have in months. As I lie in bed, I stop thinking about Oliver and focus on Jada. Her desire is right there on the surface. Waiting for her.

Do you come?

Like a freight train. As soon as her tongue slips inside me, I can’t stop. I come harder than I ever have. And then she lies back on the bed and I tease her with the vibrator she hands me, bringing her so close to climax, and then pulling away. And she kisses me with desperation, with want, and she’s kissing me so deeply and her breasts are pressed against mine and she feels so soft that I want to fucking melt inside her. When I touch her, she’s so ready that it takes less than a minute. She laughs when she comes and there’s something incredibly gratifying about it, like putting the last piece in a thousand-piece puzzle.

But then we hear the front door open. Her girlfriend is home early and I have to climb out on the fire escape, and we’re both laughing uncontrollably, like teenagers. She makes me promise to find her again the next day. It all feels so real. That attraction. It’s so powerful.

Do you go back? The next day?

Do I go back?…Wouldn’t you?

Suddenly, I’m not thinking about Jada. Or Oliver. I’m in a parking lot and it’s cold and snowing, and someone is there, but I only feel his body, I don’t see his face. He’s strong and slim and I’m pushing him against my car. Our hands everywhere, searching.

Alone in my bed, a throbbing sensation builds. My body is begging to be touched. I slide my fingers between my legs just as my phone vibrates on the bedside table.

I don’t want to answer but I know I should.

“Hello?” I say brightly, trying to not sound like a woman who has been interrupted while masturbating.

No answer on the other end, only music.

“Hello? Oliver?” I check the screen again to make sure and Oliver’s name is as clear as day.

“Oliver? Can you hear me?” The music is loud, a deep thrumming bass.

Then, a woman’s voice. Slow and kittenish. “Is this how you like it?”

Then a voice that is unmistakably Oliver’s. “Yes. That’s how I like it.”

I feel pinpricks of shock on my face, across my back and belly. “Oliver. I can hear you. Oliver. Pick up!” I yell into my phone.

Then the woman’s voice again. “You’re so fucking hot.”

Oliver moans in response. “Amanda.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Oliver?” I say again, quieter this time.

I sit up in bed. I disconnect the call. My own desire drains out of me as my mind races trying to understand what I just overheard. I draw myself a bath and run through every scenario of how to act when Oliver comes home. Some versions play like the soap operas I’d spent an entire summer watching when I was nine. I picture myself demanding answers and throwing something, narrowly missing Oliver’s head.

I slip under the bubbles into the warm water. Beneath the surface, I think maybe I should just forget it ever happened, swallow it down with another Xanax and fall asleep. Maybe it will feel different in the morning, farther away and less important.

Or maybe he will find me here—sitting in the bath and totally confused.

Eventually the water turns cold. Oliver still isn’t home. I shiver and climb out of the bath, dressing myself in warm pajamas and crawling into bed.

Close to three a.m. , I hear the rattle of keys in the door, then footsteps on the stairs. In the bedroom, Oliver drops his wallet on the bedside table and shuffles toward the bathroom, peeling off his clothes as he goes.

“How was poker?”

Oliver jumps. “Holy shit. Diana. I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I can’t sleep.”

He sits on the very edge of the bed. “Is everything okay? How’s Emmy?” I smell beer and perfume. He’s flowery and sweaty.

I turn on the lamp and Oliver blinks and squints in response. He looks rumpled. I ask him again. “How was poker?”

“What?” he asks, pretending again that he didn’t hear.

“Poker. How was it?” Now I just want him to tell me the truth. If he does, maybe I’ll feel closer to him, like we can still tell each other things.

He studies my face to see what I know—and that’s when I know he’s going to lie to me.

“Good,” he says, without flinching. “I won forty bucks.”