Free Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner

she forced herself to hold in all sounds for fear of being heard on the other side of the wall.
    He heaved on top of her and then he was still. A moment later he withdrew from her body and lay down beside her on the bed. For a moment she couldn’t move—as though he’d cast her into a statue’s position and she was doomed to remain there—but then she forced her body to roll over on its side and after a moment she was able to slowly unlock her spine and stretch out. Her brassiere was tangled around her neck and arms and she took it off. She pulled up her pants. She turned to look at him; he was looking at his watch.
    “Theresita,” he murmured, “when I tell you the time you will not believe me.”
    Nor did she care. But it was different for him, of course. They both had classes at one and he couldn’t just cut his, although she couldn’t help wishing that he would, just this once.
    It was twelve thirty.
    “Quickly, quickly,” he said. “We must hie ourselves to yon campus.”
    Obediently she got out of bed and put on her clothes. She felt sweaty and messy and was about to ask him if she could go to the bathroom when she realized it made no sense for her to have to ask. She took in her comb and after she’d washed herself, she combed her hair without ever actually looking at her face in the mirror. When she came back into the study he’d taken the sheets off the bed; only then did she realize that there must have been blood on them.
    The next time she came he asked her if she realized that the following week was the last week of school and that she was now marking the last of the papers. She said that she did. He said that she could come the following week, anyway, because he would be preparing to go to the country and there were things she could help him with. Besides, he wanted to talk to her and he didn’t see when else they would have time. It was as though nothing sexual had ever happened between them. She thought he must be holding back because of the work to be done, but when she got there the following Wednesday all he was doing was cleaning out some old file cabinets. He asked about her back and she said it hadn’t hurt her since that day. He made her promise that if it hurt her over the summer she would go to a doctor; this was a painful promise to make for the implication was that she would not see him before fall, and she’d vaguely hoped for some kind of reprieve. Perhaps their conversation today would be about how they could meet occasionally during vacation.
    He sat on the floor in front of the file, handing her things either for the wastebasket or for another file.
    “Now tell me why you called it scoliosis instead of curvature of the spine,” he said suddenly.
    It was the part of their lovemaking she hadn’t thought about since. The way it had begun. His interest in her illness.
    “It sounded more medical,” she said uneasily.
    He’d asked his wife.
    “In other words, you were obfuscating.”
    She was silent.
    “Why don’t you trust me?”
    “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”
    “What is it, then?”
    “I don’t like to talk about all that,” she said.
    “Oh, all right.” But what he seemed to mean was that she needn’t talk about it but he didn’t feel like talking about anything else. They worked in silence for perhaps an hour and then she could bear it no longer.
    “Why do you want to know about it?”
    “Because I want to know about you. Because I care about you. Because your telling me is an act of faith.”
    “Okay, then,” she said. “What do you want me to tell you?”
    “Was it congenital or did it develop from something else?”
    He’d had the question all waiting! He’d known she was going to give in! If it had been possible for her to get angry at him she would have been furious at that moment. As it was she just felt hopeless; she might as well do as he wished and get it over with.
    “From something else,” she said tonelessly. “I had polio when