My Year of Casual Acquaintances (South Bay #1)

17.

Two nights later, at my apartment again, Charlie and I are stretched out on my couch, the TV tuned to a rerun of a popular nineties sitcom. His arm is around me, his posture is contented and relaxed – perhaps a bit too relaxed, apart from his soft chuckling at a humorous scene. Charlie hasn’t kissed me or made any overtures, and I pretend to concentrate on the program, but all I can think about is whether we are going to have sex tonight.

When we had sex that first time, I was hesitant, and perhaps that’s why he hasn’t made a move tonight. Though his hand rests on my shoulder and our bodies are touching, Charlie is reserved, holding himself back from me. Now he is the hesitant one, and his unexpected passivity ignites a flame of desire inside me. I start by snuggling up to him, running one hand along his chest as I burrow my face into his warm neck. His hand squeezes my shoulder, but he’s still watching TV as though unwilling to be interrupted in his viewing.

We’ll see about that.

Now I’m kissing him – light feathery kisses on the neck at first, but then I seek out his lips, prying his mouth open with my tongue. He’s responding, but I don’t want him to mistake this for one of our adolescent make-out sessions in the car. To make sure he understands my intent, I reach down with one hand and massage his crotch over his pants as I continue kissing him.

Now I have Charlie’s full attention. He moans and returns my kisses now, encircling me in a tight embrace before flipping me over gently on my back. Though he has assumed a dominant position, I’m determined to remain the aggressor this time. I’m the one who undresses us both from the waist down, I’m the one who decides how long the kissing and stroking should continue before I open myself up to him. To express it in Charlie’s lingo, I think we have found our stride. He was right when he promised we’d be fine.

. . .

On Sunday afternoon, we set out on a hike at Charlie’s suggestion. High on the peninsula, there is a labyrinthine network of trails popular with the local Sierra Club chapter and other hiking enthusiasts. “Won’t it be crowded on a Sunday?” I ask.

“Most of the groups go out early,” he says. “We should be fine in the afternoon. And with this cool weather we’re having, no worries about heatstroke.” June gloom has set in at last, with daytime temperatures topping out in the mid-sixties. The sun teases us every day with a brief appearance around three or four o’clock, only to retreat behind threatening clouds a mere twenty minutes later.

The hiking area has two intersecting main trails and a countless number of smaller arteries that branch out from these wide primary trails, forming a crisscross pattern across the rolling hills. Views of the sparkling blue Pacific from this elevated terrain are distant but breathtaking, extending all the way to Catalina Island and beyond when the skies are clear. Charlie knows his way around and leads us off the main trail, and we thread our way down the smaller paths, which are much narrower and overgrown with brush in places. The vegetation has shot up to six or seven feet in height, thanks to the rainy winter. Right now, there are still random patches of greenery, but the plants, the tall weeds, and the remaining wildflowers are losing their colors and fading to brown.

“How do you ever find your way through here?” I ask him. “These side trails aren’t even marked.”

“I’ve hiked here so many times, I think there’s a trail map etched in my brain at this point. I’ve memorized certain landmarks to guide my path. For instance, see the fork in the trail up ahead? And that small grove of cypress trees on the hill to the left? When we reach that fork, we need to bear right.”

We continue on our path, stopping now and then to hydrate and enjoy the views. At one stop, he says, “There’s something caught in your hair,” and he reaches over and extracts the offending twig with gentle fingers. After doing this, he pulls my head toward his and kisses me warmly. I get lost in that kiss, oblivious to the world around me. When I open my eyes and look around, I notice there isn’t another hiker in sight.

“I spoke too soon, predicting it would be crowded,” I say.

“There are so many miles of trail, the hikers fan out. It can be kind of isolated – especially later in the afternoons.”

“It’s nice having the whole hill to ourselves.”

Charlie smiles at me.

By the time we get back to the car, we’ve been out for over two hours. The trails are steep in places, and my legs ache from the strain of exertion. But I’m in good physical condition from all the working out, and it has served me well this afternoon. I’m tired and a little sore, but I had no difficulty keeping pace with Charlie’s longer, more expert stride.

He has suggested I bring casual clothes to change into, and I’ve stashed a few things in my gym bag. We’ve agreed I’ll go to his house after the hike, which I add to the list of the “firsts” in our month-long acquaintance: the first date, the first kiss, the first time together at my place, the first time making love. I like to think of these “firsts” more as adventures than milestones. A milestone sounds like such a heavy thing. But aside from our recent conversation about Bet, there’s been nothing heavy about my relationship with Charlie.

He lives in a coastal section dotted with ranch houses built during the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the lots are spacious by California standards, so the area has become popular for new construction and remodels. As we drive through the area on the way back from our hike, he points out some of the more controversial remodel jobs – McMansions with overblown footprints that fill every available square inch allowed by local building codes, encroaching on neighbors’ property lines and spoiling the symmetry of what was once a pleasing neighborhood of cottages. Charlie’s house, too, has undergone a complete remodel. He had the plans drawn up right after securing the film deal for Bicoastal, he tells me.

The house has morphed from a single-story mid-century classic ranch to a two-story Mediterranean-style villa. But in transforming and enlarging the home, Charlie has taken care to maintain balance on the site, leaving space for a front garden, an ample back yard with a swimming pool, a detached garage, and a tiny side yard. The main residence features the Spanish-influence architecture that countless California developers have favored for decades, but Charlie’s home has an air of authenticity that is lacking in many of the tacky, lower-cost imitations I’ve seen.

“You’ve done an amazing job,” I say as we walk through the main floor with its Saltillo tile floors, arched doorways, and ornate woodwork.

“Thanks. It’s been a work in progress for a long time. See the big garden out front with the old fountain? I commissioned that after optioning The Chandler to a Hollywood studio,” he says, naming another of his novels. Other major projects include a large deck with a built-in barbeque and fire pit, and a guesthouse that’s been built onto the garage. Every improvement to the property, he explains, can be linked to a large book advance or some ancillary revenue stream. “Do you mind if we have a bite to eat before cleaning up? I’m ravenous,” says Charlie as he pours two tall glasses of water from a ceramic pitcher in the fridge.

“Oh, I’m glad you offered. I’m famished too.”

“I’ve got chicken sausage lasagna I can reheat, if that sounds good.”

“Perfect.”

A few minutes later, he serves us each a generous helping of the savory dish, piled into deep porcelain plates with a dark blue glaze that echoes the home’s Spanish motif. Though he’s offered to open a bottle of rosé, I prefer to stick with water after our rigorous workout.

“This is delicious,” I say, smacking my lips after the first bite. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it.”

“You made it? Like, you layered it yourself?” Realizing this sounds like Mum, I blush. Just because I’m a slouch in the kitchen, why should I assume Charlie is incapable of cooking a classic Italian favorite? I worry that my remark will strike him as sexist or plain dumb.

But his eyes sparkle with amusement. “Yep. I layered it, I sauced it, I performed all the required steps.”

“Whatever those might be. Damned if I know.”

“You’re not into cooking, then?”

“Oh no. I can’t see investing all that time in something I will never be good at. Same with golf. Anyway, I figure I’m doing a service to the community.”

“How’s that?”

“Think of all the restaurants and take-out places that are staying in business because of my patronage.”

“Good point. The kitchen can be a dangerous place, too, if you meet up with the wrong sort of people.” Now he’s chasing me around the kitchen island with a spatula, thrusting and parrying like a fencer with an epée as I dissolve into helpless laughter. I forget my momentary embarrassment.

He leads me upstairs through the master bedroom suite to a large bathroom with an oversized shower stall. The floor and inner wall are constructed of floral patterned dark green, pink, and white tiles with a distinct Mexican flair. The shower enclosure is partially glassed in, but the structure is open at the far end from the showerhead. This open design – combined with the natural light flooding in through a skylight overhead – gives it that plein air feeling often associated with tropical showers.

“Lovely,” I say. The house Henry and I shared had an enormous master bath, all marble, with a Jacuzzi tub and large separate corner shower with multiple spray nozzles, like the kind you see in luxury spas. It’s the one room in my grand former house that I miss.

Charlie smiles and draws me close to him, kissing me on the nose. “Would you like to shower together?”

I nod. This is a couple’s activity we won’t be able to enjoy at my apartment, where the shower stall resembles a telephone booth. He points out a white wicker basket filled with plush bath sheets, and two fluffy white terrycloth robes hanging side by side from wooden pegs mounted next to the shower door. “For afterward,” he says.

I start unbuttoning my hiking shorts, but Charlie stops me and says, “Darling, please—you must allow me,” with mock formality, in an accent that sounds part American, part British. I stand at obedient attention as he removes my shorts, my tank top, then my sports bra and panties. He folds each item slowly and deliberately, like a manservant in a PBS mini-series, but there’s a wry twinkle in his eye. Then I realize who he’s mimicking.

“Sir, you are very sexy when you channel Cary Grant,” I say, going for a Katherine Hepburn vibe myself. “My turn, darling.”

“Excellent.”

I remove his clothing, careful to exercise the same calm deliberation with which he undressed me moments before. When we’re both naked, he turns on the faucet, and, after double-checking the temperature, he leads me into the shower. We stand under the cascading water for a couple of minutes, allowing it to drench our hair and soften our skin with its moist heat. Then he grabs an oversized sea sponge and soaps me up, starting with my neck and working his way down. “We’ll save the hair for last,” he says.

After my body is slick with soap suds, I take the sponge from him and return the favor. When I reach his privates, I note a responsive twitch, but he doesn’t become erect. Am I doing something wrong, or is Charlie saving his ammunition, so to speak? After years of married life, I’ve become inept at this kind of foreplay. Was I ever ept to begin with? It’s been so long, I have no clear recollection.

He plants a warm, slick, wet kiss on my lips. Maybe he is responding after all? But I’m forced to break away unceremoniously from the embrace, my mouth curling into an expression of distaste that I’m helpless to prevent.

“Is my kissing that bad?” asks Charlie, half-amused, half-concerned.

“Soap,” I say, choking on the word. I open my lips and indelicately spit out a mouthful of grayish-white foam. “I swallowed soap. It tastes awful.”

“You look like you swallowed moose dung.”

We both laugh. Before long, I am collapsing against him in a fit of giggles, though my face is still contorted from the horrid aftertaste of soap scum. “It’s not funny,” I say, laughing even harder.

Charlie slips back into the Cary Grant voice. “Poor thing. Don’t move a muscle, I’ll be right back.” He steps out of the shower, hustles to the sink, and comes back with a toothbrush to which he has applied a stripe of red and white paste. He pries open my mouth and pokes the toothbrush in, running it across my teeth and tongue before putting the brush in his own mouth for a quick cleaning. This makes me squeamish for a moment – but then I think, as long as we’re sharing saliva and other bodily fluids, what’s the difference? His mouth finds mine again, and now the kiss is sweet and minty. We are like a couple in a romantic film, two people discovering each other in a gauzily filmed love montage. The shower ended, we wrap ourselves in the plush robes and walk into the bedroom. I expect this to be our next destination, but Charlie takes my hand and says, “Come with me. I’d like to show you something.”

He leads me down a corridor to a carpeted alcove at the end of the hall. There is a yoga mat spread across the center of the alcove, and open shelves filled with additional mats, blocks, straps, bolsters, and blankets, all in a matching warm sand color. “There used to be a desk here, but last year I turned the area into a little yoga retreat.”

I speculate the desk must have been Bet’s. Charlie already showed me a large office on the ground floor where he does his writing and correspondence. “But you go to classes almost every day at the club. I can’t believe you do more yoga here at home.”

“I use this more for stretching and meditation. I try to meditate for twenty or thirty minutes a day. Twice a day if time allows.”

“Nice.” I respect people who meditate, the same way I respect people who never touch alcohol. Both are admirable practices I have no intention of pursuing myself. The alcove faces out onto a small balcony lined with dozens of potted plants, many of them flowering in brilliant bursts of color. “Oh, how beautiful,” I say.

“The view is even better from the mat.” He gestures for me to lie down.

I lower myself onto the yoga mat and gaze out towards the balcony separated from the alcove by a pair of French doors. The blooming greenery is tall and lush from this vantage point, and I’m in the middle of a garden of repose, a place of rare tranquility.

Charlie rolls out a second mat and lies down parallel to me. “Do you like it here?” he asks.

“Very much.”

“It’s too light out to show you, but I installed colored spotlights that shine down on the plants. It creates a whole different effect at nighttime.”

I adjust my position and wince a little.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. My neck gets stiff sometimes.”

“Roll your head from side to side gently to lubricate the joints,” he says.

I do as he suggests, but as I turn my head, a strand of wet hair gets caught in my mouth, and I’m once again wrinkling my nose. “I think I swallowed more soap.”

“We must’ve been careless with the rinse cycle.” He leans over to sniff my hair. “I detect a scent of cucumber and a little mint. It’s pleasant. Kinda sexy.”

“Not to me. Soapy.” I pull a face, which gets us both giggling again.

He stops the laughter with another deep kiss, then slips the damp robe off to nuzzle my bare shoulder. “Are you cold?” he asks, pointing to the goosebumps on my arm.

“A little.”

“Here, I’ll get something.” He grabs a yoga blanket and a couple of other items from the shelf, sheds his own robe, and lies down beside me, pulling the soft cover over us.

We’re back to the love montage, I think. Nice.

What happens next takes us outside the realm of romantic films and into an altogether different genre. Charlie grasps a yoga strap, pulls my arms up over my head, and winds the strap around my wrists, tying them firmly together. I must look startled, because he leans in and says, “Just say the word and I’ll untie you. We won’t do this unless you’re comfortable with it.” He whispers this in my ear as though sharing a secret he doesn’t want anyone else in on.

My heart is racing—but from excitement, not fear. In all our years, Henry and I never experimented with bondage. Not even the generic kind, let alone yoga bondage. “Keep going.”

He looks me in the eye for visual affirmation. He has the same playful expression he wore when entertaining me with a sock puppet, dispelling any fleeting concerns I might’ve had about a sinister motive. I nod to confirm my approval.

Next, he slides a cotton bolster pillow under my hips, elevating me into a bridge pose. He parts my thighs with a gentle motion and pushes my ankles in close to my hips so that my knees are at a raised angle with my soles planted on the mat. The blanket covers us both, except for my bound hands poking out at the top. We’re like a couple of kids playing under a tent, except it is a decidedly grownup game in which we’re engaged. Charlie holds the power in this game – the power to do with me whatever he chooses.

And as it turns out, his choices are very much okay with me.

. . .

A little later, we’re watching a stand-up comedy routine on HBO. The comic, a young Korean woman, delivers a hilarious rant about the terrible driving habits of Caucasian men, taking the old stereotype about female Asian drivers and turning it upside down. We’re side by side on the couch, our bodies touching. But between the frothy entertainment and the chilled rosé we’re now sipping, the temperature between us has cooled off a few degrees since our antics on the yoga mat.

The comedy special ends and a sitcom airs next, the one about the crabby comedian who elevates small annoyances into explosive but funny confrontations. “Okay if we watch this?” Charlie asks. Considerate to a fault, he always seeks my agreement, whether the choice at hand involves sexual predilections or taste in TV programming.

“I love this show.”

“Me too. Some people find it mean and sardonic,” he says.

“That’s what I love about it.”

Charlie grins. About ten minutes into the episode, he slaps his thigh and says, “Damn. The writing is so good and so tight.”

“Have you thought about writing comedy yourself?”

“My publisher would be thrilled to see a little more humor. My books still do well, but they haven’t been blockbusters like the earlier novels. My agent would like me to be ‘less contemplative and more commercial.’ But to answer your question . . . I don’t think I have it in me to write comedy.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, ‘Dying is easy, comedy is hard.’”

“I wonder who came up with that.”

“Lots of people have said it, but nobody can take ownership of the quote.” He stands and stretches those long, chiseled arms in the air. “Hungry?”

“Now that you mention it, yes. I thought the lasagna would hold me for the rest of the day, but I could use a little something right now. A snack will be fine.”

“Let me go to the kitchen and rustle up bread and cheese, olives, stuff like that.”

“I’ll help you.”

I hoist myself up from the couch, but he shakes his head and says, “You relax and enjoy the show. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Ten minutes later, however, Charlie hasn’t returned with the food, and my wine glass is empty. I walk into the kitchen to investigate. He is standing at the kitchen island with his back to me, but I can see him arranging an assortment of munchies on a platter. I’m in bare feet, so he doesn’t hear me enter the room. His shoulders are shaking, which causes me to stop in my tracks. The sight fills me with alarm – an alarm that intensifies when an unwelcome memory floods back.

Henry. Henry sitting on the bed with his back to me, all those years ago, shoulders shaking in that same heartbreaking pose. Henry crying over his guilt about cheating on me, as it turned out. Charlie’s cheating on me too? Already? It’s only been a month. Recognizing my suspicion is absurd, I run over to him. “Charlie?”

He blinks at me through tears. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see this.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Today—today has been a big step for me. This is the first time I’ve brought a woman into this house since Bet died.”

“But you said there’ve been other women.”

“There have been a few. But I never invited them here. I couldn’t handle it. Until you.”

I digest this. “And now you—you feel it was a mistake to bring me to the house you shared with your wife? You’re sad because you miss her?” Though these are both questions, my tone is flat, as if I’m delivering statements of fact instead.

“No. I’m sad because I don’t miss her.”

“Sorry?”

“For the first time since Bet’s been gone, I’m finally ready to move on and leave my life with her behind, to pursue . . . whatever this is that’s happening between us.” He gives me an inquisitive look as though searching for an answer in my face. “I can’t say for sure what is happening, but all my senses tell me it’s something important. Something worth nurturing.”

I don’t say anything, and he continues. “This realization that I’ve moved on . . . there’s something final about that, more final even than her death. Does that sound crazy? Anyway, that’s why I lost it for a moment.”

Whoa. I wasn’t prepared for this. I still don’t know what to say, but he wraps his arms around me, which saves me from having to reply. I slip my arms around his shoulders, hoping to offer comfort after such an important revelation. I’m flattered by what he’s told me but not yet certain how to respond.

We nibble cheese, olives, and cherry tomatoes, finish off the rosé, and chuckle through two more episodes of the sitcom. As the marine layer continues to hang its heavy shroud over the neighborhood, the sky deepens in gradual shades from light gray to charcoal to black without benefit of a sunset.

Charlie reaches to clear away the cheese plate, then changes his mind and sits back down beside me. He takes my right hand in both of his and raises it to his lips, kissing my knuckles. As he does this, he gives me a searching look – the same expression I witnessed in the kitchen, right after he’d told me he was ready to pursue a more serious relationship. “Spend the night with me?”

I pause, deciding how to word my reply. “Sorry—I can’t. I have an early conference call tomorrow morning with the New York office, and I need to be back at my own place. In fact, I should spend a little time tonight preparing.” The part about the call is true. But with a pang of conscience, I acknowledge to myself that I’m using it as an escape strategy. After such an amazing day and evening, why am I now in such a hurry to leave?

Charlie nods. If he is perturbed or disappointed, he’s not letting on. “Maybe some of your self-discipline will rub off on me,” he says with a crooked smile. “Now that you mention it, I could benefit from an early start too. I promised my editor three chapters, and I’ve fallen behind. I’ll drive you home.”

“Before we leave, can I check out the lighted balcony upstairs? Now that it’s dark outside.”

“Sure,” he says, looking pleased by the request.

We go upstairs, where I admire his floral light show with great enthusiasm, my guilty conscience assuaged. I try to convince myself that fawning over the balcony project will make up for my hasty retreat from Charlie’s sleepover invitation and my nervous departure.