Though even while swimming he was preoccupied by his wife and what she’d said—“Don’t have too much fun”—and her expression, like she knew. Now they were apart again, yet here he was still haunted. So much of their life was a cycle of separations, whether it was his leaving for work in the morning or being called away in the middle of the night; and it was also the women he’d been with in the past, either leaving Marilyn to be with them or using her absences as an excuse to play. He thought of Frances Stevens that summer long ago, after Marilyn had gone off to college his senior year, Sheppard looking up from under the hood of his Model A to see her standing at the garage door watching him, for how long he had no idea but with the same awareness as she walked toward him that Marilyn was there—witnessing this very exchange. He remembered the four-way he and Lester had with those nurses back in medical school, when Marilyn returned to Cleveland for a few weeks to see her father. Even today, so many years later, he could recall the heart-stopping beauty of the girl Lester had set him up with. Andrea: raven-haired and ruby-lipped, as black-eyed as a deer. Dinner and drinks as if he wasn’t married, and the drinking game afterward, Buzz, the four of them back in Lester’s living room, his friend and the other girl waiting for them to make some sort of decision while they all got drunk, until it was up to Sheppard to hand his glass to Lester to give to her as they sat cross-legged on the floor around the little coffee table and tell them, as they both held the cup, “Give it to her, Les.” His friend had finally put the drink down, checking back one last time with Sheppard as if for permission, and then he kissed the woman, the two moving lip-locked to the couch, as Sheppard took Andrea’s hand and hurried her into the bedroom, pushing her down face-first onto Lester’s bed and throwing up her skirt and yanking off her panties, his hand on the back of her neck, the sounds of them all mingling while he rammed away. Yet oddly Marilyn’s face had drifted in and out of his mind, her expression vaguely disappointed when the other woman and Les appeared half-naked in the room, falling with them onto the bed and winding around one another, Sheppard raising himself up for a moment as if he were a charmed snake and they, coiled below, were the rest of his body. And Marilyn watching from above with that same look she’d shown him before driving off today. Why now? Sheppard wondered. Why still? “Don’t have too much fun.” He didn’t want fun. That wasn’t what he was here for. Though what he was here for wasn’t as clear to him as it had been.
He was resting in the deep end of the pool, his arms over the edge and his chin atop his locked hands. He could feel the sunlight on his scalp. There was something about Susan today that had repulsed him. It was unfair to her, but he could no more shake that than what Marilyn had said. The freshened makeup didn’t really hide the dark circles under Susan’s eyes and she had the off-putting odor of fear and hope on her breath. When she took his arm, trying to stop him from leaving, her nails had dug into his flesh and it had taken every ounce of his control not to yank it from her grip. And even then Marilyn was there, when he was finally ready to act. It was like being under perpetual surveillance. Though in truth it wasn’t like that at all. It was more as if she were waiting for something from him, but what?
Later that night, well into the poker party, he called Marilyn at Jo’s. It was long distance and it was late, nearly eleven, and like everyone he was drunk. Part of him wanted to speak with her while another simply wanted her to know he was here, where he’d said he’d be. He wanted to maintain the illusion in her mind that he’d soon be asleep in his bed, readying himself for the long day to come—when in fact he’d be off to meet Susan. He let the phone ring several times. By the tenth, told himself to hang up and at the same time he thought to wait, so when Jo answered the phone he apologized.
“No,” she said,