Thirty - Jill Emerson [9]
What must have rendered Edgar attractive, I guess, is that Marcie had already told me that Edgar fluttered like a bee from flower to flower. (More precisely, she said that he would screw a snake if someone would hold its head.) The knowledge that he’s out there screwing all those snakes evidently got to me. Perhaps it’s a case of being unable to trust my own taste. If all those other women find Edgar attractive enough to have affairs with, they must be right, and he must be attractive, and thus I must be attracted to him.
There’s also the fact that I drank too much at the party.
The drinking helped cast a fine haze over everything, both at the time and in memory. I don’t know how we got into the room where they kept the coats. The bedroom, that is to say. The coals were piled on the bed. But somehow it’s a good deal less compromising lo think of oneself being in the coatroom with one’s best friend’s husband than in the bedroom.
“Jan, Jan, Jan,” he said. When people have nothing to say they repeat one’s name pointlessly. “Having a wonderful time, you wonderful girl?”
“Well, it’s a party.”
“It is indeed.”
“And people always have wonderful times at parties.”
“They do if they know what’s good for them.” He grinned owlishly, except that owls have their eyes spaced much farther apart. “You know,” he said, “I’ve had my eye on you for a long time now.”
“Which one?”
“Eh?”
“Which eye have you had on me?”
“Clever,” he said, moving toward me, eyes atwinkle. Both eyes atwinkle. Both beady eyes atwinkle. “I like women with something in their heads, you know. I like clever women.”
“Do you really?”
“I’ve always admired you, Jan.”
Then he kissed me. I didn’t discourage this. Quite the reverse, I guess. I opened my mouth and wrapped my arms around him, and he, the cute little rascal, stuck his tongue in my mouth.
We clung like that for what I think was a rather long time, neither separating nor quite managing to spill ourselves onto the bed, where we could have had a choice of fucking on Marcie’s silver-blue mink or Lenore’s beaver. Instead we just clung, and he groped me a little, and then we broke apart, both of us a trifle breathless.
“Jan,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know, Edgar. Maybe we ought to go join the party.”
“We’re the party, doll.”
“I just don’t know about all this, Edgar.”
“I’m crazy about you, Jan.”
“Oh, and Marcie’s my friend and all—”
“Marcie doesn’t understand me. I’m really crazy about you, Jan.”
It was the talk that decided it. I just wasn’t stoned enough to handle that dialogue. He was crazy about me and his wife didn’t understand him. Bullshit, she explained. No, at that very moment Edgar made my decision for me. We were not going to have an affair.
But we did have a little genteel struggle. We did roll around on top of Marcie’s mink, and he did sort of lie on top of me and agitate his hips in a not unfamiliar motion, and I could feel his penis rubbing against me through his pants, and did, if the truth be known, handle it a little. It was large enough to impress me favorably, but not so monstrous as to be desirable in and of itself, separate and distinct from its owner.
And he did put a hand under my dress and a finger where one puts fingers, and we did rock and roll a bit in harmony, and ultimately he quivered and stiffened and said something actionable about loving me, and then relaxed, which I took to mean that he had come in his pants. So I guess we had what we in my lamented youth used to call a dry fuck. It wasn’t much fun now, but then it hadn’t been much fun then, either.
Edgar rolled off me, found his breath again, and put his hand back under my skirt and said something gallant about making me come. I said something about letting me go instead, which I guess was fine with him. I went to the bathroom and washed up, feeling a little like Lady Macbeth. All the perfumes of Arabia