Free Rapture by Susan Minot Page A

in love with him there was a brief attempt to see each other
on a friendly basis
. There was no poetry in the phrase
on a friendly basis
. He’d kiss her hello with dry, tight lips and hitch his chair away from her at the small marble table of the coffee place where they met. She was used to being close to him and had liked that. That was
how
she liked him: close. She was irritated how easily he seemed to be adjusting. He said he was just happy to see her. But then, he wasn’t on his own. He had another person. He always had that other person.
    She took him into her mouth again, keeping ahold of him with a hand, fingers encircling his base, rooting him down.
    NOT ONLY did he need to prove to Vanessa that he had been worth sticking with, but he needed to address the panic that this would, unless he put a stop to it, keep on happening. He would keep falling in love with women. He would love one woman for a few years like he had Vanessa till things got a little regular, then another woman like Kay would appear and he’d fall in love with her, and even if he never actually
fell in love
with any woman ever again, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to say no to the occasional temptation. He didn’t see how he’d be able to help himself. He figured he’d better stop it now and try to stick with one woman. If Vanessa didn’t take him back, he was sure he’d never maintain a permanent relationship with a woman. A wife, in fact, a person to grow old with, the thing his parents had. His parents had it effortlessly. Despite what his brother thought—his brother was more cynical about these things—he saw his parents as being still in love. So why couldn’t he expect to find that?
    â€˜Because you’re not your parents,’ Kay had said to him once. He’d ended up talking about that sort of thing with Kay, about his ambivalence, more than with Vanessa. When you meet a new person, you sometimes get an urge to explain yourself. He told Kay he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to find something like his parents had, maybe it was outside of his personality. He was not as good as they were. And Kay, who usually argued with fervor when she didn’t agree with something, must have grown weary by then, weary of his hopelessness, of their hopelessness. ‘You’re not that bad, Benjamin,’ she said, looking pained, as if this were a harder thing to admit than his being a complete catastrophe.
    He glanced down at her now resting against his leg and figured she must be getting tired. He better stop his mind from wandering. He didn’t have forever. He better concentrate.
    SHE SPENT more time trying to forget him than she ever did actually being with him. Obstacles fed the longing. She grew impatient at work, distracted when she was out with friends. Returning home late at night, she’d think, Has he called? She’d told him not to, but one section of herself still pictured him calling, with a miraculous message which would somehow change everything. She knew that for this to happen
he
would have to change, totally, his whole personality. But it consoled her to imagine him suddenly otherwise than he was.
    One night she dreamed of a cheetah pacing silently on a long veranda outside windows where she slept. Suddenly it leapt at her window, crashing through the glass and attacked her, biting her throat. When she told him about the dream, he said, unembarrassed, ‘That’s me. Cheater, cheat-ah.’
    IT WAS NICE, though, no question, seeing Kay again, seeing her naked. The last time they’d had sex was in the dark so he hadn’t been able to look at her. They’d kept most of their clothes on anyway, ending up in a contorted position in her hall just inside the door. Fuck that seemed like a long time ago. When was it. After the wedding of Margaret, his costume designer. They hadn’t really spoken to each other till the very end of the