Free Be Mine by Laura Kasischke

NY WORD from your lover today?" Jon asked when I walked in the door.
    I said, "Yes. As a matter of fact there was."
    He put his newspaper down on the ottoman and looked at me.
    The sunset in our picture window lit him up, made him glow—robustly, handsomely. Jon, I thought, at least, has not changed much. There's some gray in his hair now, and a few lines around his eyes, but, if anything, these things have made him more attractive. Women have always looked at Jon when we walked into a restaurant together. The demeanor of the mothers of Chad's friends always changed when we joined their semicircles at an event—posture improved, stomachs sucked in, a lighter laughter, more batting of the eyes. And, if I showed you a picture of him twenty years ago and a picture today, you would know instantly that this was the same man, and that the decades that had passed had been fairly kind ones, that life had been mostly good to him, that he was a physically vital man and would remain so for many years.
    "Tell me," he said.
    I took it out of my purse, the note, and handed it to him.
    Jon looked at it for what seemed like much longer than he needed to read it, and then looked up. "Holy shit," he said. "We aren't just talking some kid with a crush here. This is serious stuff."
    "Are you upset?" I asked. I thought of those months, so many years ago, of my infatuation with Ferris Robinson, how, when I confided in Jon, he had been titillated at first, then angry, and then sad, and then desperate, and then giddily attentive, and then had grown so cold I thought our marriage was over. "Are you angry?"
    "Frankly," Jon said, standing up, walking toward me, stopping in front of me, putting his arms around my lower back, "I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'm almost unbearably turned on."
    He pressed his body against me. He had an erection.
     
    L AST night, after we made love (or was that
making love
?—Jon, pushing me onto my side, then onto my stomach, putting himself in me from behind, saying,
You think this is what jour mechanic wants to do?
grabbing my breast, cupping it, pinching the nipple hard enough that I gasped, then orgasmed so quickly it shamed me) he fell asleep, but I lay awake a long time.
    Too long.
    I woke up exhausted.
    In the morning light, the kitchen looked hazy—everything haloed with that glow that comes from exhaustion, and a kind of dull ringing deep in my ears. I thought, briefly, about calling in sick, but I'd missed my classes last week, having taken the time off to spend with Chad. If I missed again today, they'd be confused, my students. The ones who were doing poorly might throw in the towel altogether. The ones who were doing well would feel betrayed.
Another crappy absentee teacher.
I had to go.
    I drank a cup of coffee black, standing in my bare feet, wearing my bathrobe, at the kitchen window. Before Jon left for work, he bit my neck and said, "You be good today."
    In his dark suit, he'd looked so handsome, smirking at me as he stepped through the back door into the driveway, that I had a sudden recollection of the thrill of seeing him for the first time, at that bar, and how I thought (maybe because he was friends with the wild bunch who'd introduced us) that he looked a little dangerous.
Too
handsome. The kind of man you'd have to worry about losing to some other girl, some flashier girl. He'd be, I thought then, the kind of guy who would be constantly pursued. Or, he would, himself, be the pursuer. Surely, I thought, he knew how beautiful he was, and the power it gave him. What man
wouldn't
abuse such power? Those blue-green eyes. The solid build.
    Tail chaser,
my mother used to say about certain kinds of men. It was derogatory and appreciative at the same time, coming from her. She liked a man with spunk.
Milquetoast
was the kind of man with whom you didn't want to waste your time.
    But, as it turned out, Jon wasn't dangerous.
    As it turned out, Jon was the safest man in the world.
    When we walked down