The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [21]
“Rebecca, don’t bother me at work with gossip.”
“It’s not gossip if it’s true, you said so yourself.”
“That’s defamation, Rebecca—truth is an absolute defense to slander and libel claims. There’s no defense for gossip.”
“Not even a lesbian affair?”
“Don’t they have a girl about Boo’s age?”
“They did. Muffy and her girlfriend ran off to California.”
“She left her kid? Why?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Everyone knows. She can’t show her face in this town again. Besides, she’s a lesbian; the child’s better off without her.”
“Rebecca, is that all you do at your lunches, gossip?”
“No…just during dessert. We call it scandal soufflé.”
She seemed pleased with herself, which made one of them. The thought of his wife sitting at lunch gossiping while Boo sat at home alone jacked up Scott’s irritation level to a new high. He was about to say something guaranteed to grate on her, but seeing her slick wet body as she climbed out of the tub, her red hair stuck to her face, her full breasts pink from the hot water, her abdomen flat from hours on her Ab Master, and her firm bottom that hadn’t dropped an inch since their wedding day eleven years ago, desire drove the McCall case, the Cattle Barons’ Ball, scandal soufflé, and all lingering irritation from his mind. He let his robe slip off his shoulders and looked down: he had a full erection. He went over to her, wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressed himself against her, and reached around and cupped her genitals, an act which not that long ago would have produced a soft moan leading to sex on the marble vanity. Tonight it produced only an exasperated sigh.
“Not tonight, Scott. I’m tired.”
She had been tired a lot the last six months. He released her and walked into the bedroom and over to the sitting area against the bank of windows. He sat and listened to the tak tak tak of June bugs banging against the outside glass, seeking the light like reformed sinners. He used the remote to turn on the television and then he looked down: his erection had melted away like a Popsicle on a hot summer day.
It hadn’t always been this way. They had met in his third year of law school, at a party at his old frat house after a football game. She was a senior cheerleader and the reigning Miss SMU. Scott Fenney was a football legend and a campus celebrity, so approaching the most beautiful coed at SMU was easy. They had sex in an upstairs bathroom that night. And at every other imaginable venue in the months that followed: in her car; in his car; at her sorority house; at his apartment; in a stairwell at the law school; in the park in broad daylight; on the eighteenth green at the country club late at night after jumping the fence—to this day he could not putt out on that green without thinking of that night. They were so hot, they couldn’t get enough of each other.
But somewhere along the way—when, he wasn’t sure—the heat had faded. And now they slept back to back, separated by two feet of king-sized mattress like a demilitarized zone. They weren’t mad at each other—they seldom had words—but they seldom had sex. She had just drifted away.
He sat slumped and limp as all the irritating thoughts—the McCall case, his wife’s lack of interest in his day, being denied sex again, scandal soufflé, and his daughter home alone all day—came rushing back. He yelled to his wife in the bathroom: “Why don’t you spend more time with Boo? Maybe she’ll listen to you then.”
Rebecca appeared in the bathroom door, still naked, her hands on her hips.
“She’s never listened to me. I’ve got these hideous stretch marks because of her, but she’s your child. By the time I was her age, I had won two beauty pageants. She wears overalls. And, besides, I’m busy this summer. Why don’t you spend more time with her?”
“I’m working.”
“Oh, I see. What I do isn’t important.”
“Sounds like all you do is gossip.”
“Only during dessert. During lunch we plan the ball.”
“A big society party.”
“Which raises money for charity.”
“Which you don’t give a damn about. It’s just another step up the Highland