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When I got home I found the letter on the table in the front hall, the place I always checked for notes from my wife:
Honey,
I have left you. I was just not cut out for an off-the-rack lifestyle.
It’s my fault, not yours, really. Sorry. My attorney will be in touch.
I stood there, stunned, reading the note more than twenty times, then floated into the kitchen. I sat down, right there on the kitchen floor. My wife had left me? She had an attorney? She addressed the note “Honey”?
I felt puny. Looking up, the counters seemed as high as canyon walls, the refrigerator and stove and dishwasher seemed made for giants. The ceiling fan, spinning slowly, was miles above me.
From a long distance away I heard a sound. I came to my senses: it was the front door.
I ran through the house—and got to the front door just as the mail came dropping through the slot. It was only the mail. I looked at the messy pile of letters and saw in it a metaphor for my life. Then I saw the big brown envelope. I lifted it from the pile. It was addressed to my wife—but in her own handwriting. She had mailed herself the envelope?
I opened it.
Inside was a letter from my wife to an editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. In the letter, my wife said she was submitting the enclosed “scintillating” story for publication, but when Cosmo printed it, “as it is based closely on real-life people and events and to keep said people from being hurt or even maybe possibly suing”, she instructed the editor to use her nom–de–plume.
My wife had a nom–de–plume?
A small rectangle of paper dropped from the manauscript. It fell face up on the hall carpet, so I lay down right there and read it. My wife’s name and the name of her story had been handwritten in a curly purple ink in appropriate blanks on a bad photocopy of a form letter; Cosmo had rejected the story.
I didn’t get up. I lay there and started reading my wife’s story.
No More Off-the-Rack for Me, Thank You Very Much
by
Patti Karan I
Patti read the advertisement one last time. She set the folded newspaper on the small table, the cherry wood table she had found in an antique shop on her last ski trip to Canada, and dialed the phone.
“Erik? It’s Patti.”
“Oh, hi neighbor. What’s new? How’s—”
“I saw your ad.”
“My what?”
“Your ad-ver-tise-ment.”
“What are you talk—”
“Oh, it’s you. I’m certain. I remember what you said New Years’ Eve. Maybe I was drunk, we all were, but I remember. You made like it was a big joke. You said you wanted to see if you could—”
“Patti! What are you talking about?”
“You’re a married man, Erik.” She picked up the paper and read: “‘Very wealthy and very lonely—’ Those are the exact same words you said New Years! I know this is you, Erik!”
She heard him sigh.
“I can’t lie to you, Patti. It’s my ad.”
“Ha!”
“Go ahead, laugh.”
“You are really something.”
“Yeah? What about you?”
“Me?”
“What are you doing reading the Personals ads?”
His challenging tone stopped her. She spoke slowly, “It was an assignment.”
“A what?”
“For my writing class.”
“What?”
“I am enrolled in a writing class at the University. My instructor, who for your information has published twelve mystery novels, told me to look through the personals ads. He told me to pick one interesting ad, and then write a story based on it.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What? I’m making this up? You’re the one who’s unhappily married, not me.”
He made a polite cough.
She got angry. “You’re an idiot, Erik.” She lied, “I have sex, great sex, with my husband. In fact, we did it this morning before he went to work.”
“Ouch.”
She realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled. “I’m sorry. That was mean. You must be wishing you had never told me about you and Suzie.”
“You are the only person I confided in, Patti. I thought you would understand. A man just doesn’t go around telling all his friends that his wife hasn’t had sex with him in eight months. Imperils the fragile male ego, see? I thought you would understand.”
“Erik, I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
“Now you think I’m some kind of sleaze, don’t you?
“I really don’t think that, Erik.”
“Go ahead. Easy for you. You’ve had sex, “great sex”, just this morning and whenever you want it. Try living with someone who’s thinks an active sex life is once every eight months.”
“Erik, you’re my friend. I just didn’t understand how bad things have gotten between you and Suzie. I feel so—”
“Do not say you feel sorry for me, Patti. Do not say that.”
There was a sharp silence.
“I’m sorry, Patti. It’s that male ego again.” He tried a chuckle but it sounded like a croak. “I don’t mind if you hate me or think me a low life but please don’t pity me.”
She made her voice soft with kindness. “Well, you must have something that sets you apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read your ad. I knew it was you. Somehow.” She picked up the newspaper and read aloud, “ ‘Very wealthy and very lonely man. Thirty something—’ Erik, you’re forty-three.”
“But I look thirty-three.”
She continued reading. “‘Tall, lean and athletic. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. I have everything I need: money, houses, boats, cars— all the meaningless material things— but not the one thing I want: a good woman who really honestly likes me, wants me, will share herself honestly with me. In return, I will wine and dine her. I will treat her with honest adoring respect. I will sweep her off her feet. I will take her to Mexico, to Europe, to my heart.’”
“Does it sound lame? Does it sound too calculated?”
She decided to imitate the amused yet weary tone of her writing instructor when he critiqued her work. “Not to psychoanalyze, but it’s clear you don’t think much of women.”
“But I love women!”
“Well, when I read the ad I felt sexual hostility in it. It seemed some rich, shallow, horny guy was offering to wine and dine any willing woman and give her a chance to come away with a fur coat if she screwed his brains out.”
“Great!”
“Erik, you are a scoundrel!”
They both laughed.
“Then you’ll keep my secret? You won’t tell Suzie?”
“I won’t tell.”
“You’re worth a million, Patti.”
“Yes, I am. Maybe several million. Just how much money do you have?”
“Forget it. I hope you appreciate how lucky you are with your husband, Patti. I mean, money is great. But sometimes I would trade all mine to have a satisfying romantic relationship, to be loved for who I am, not just held on to because of my money. Patti? Are you listening?”
“Do they write or call?”
“Who?”
“The women who answer your ad.”
“They call. The newspaper provides a private voice mailbox. I can pick up my messages anytime, day or night, and call them back.”
“I want to hear the messages.”
“You’re crazy.” But he chuckled, and this time it sounded natural, not like a croak.
“If you don’t let me listen, I will tell your frigid, money-hungry wife. Then she’ll do exactly what you most fear: she’ll sue you for divorce. She’ll take half of all those ‘meaningless material things’ you have.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Patti!”
She made her voice playful. “Let me listen. It would be the neighborly thing to do.”
“Blackmail is not very neighborly.”
“Fine. I’ll tell everyone; Suzie, all our neighbors, your clients, the school board, the crossing guards, the newspaper boy, the—”
“Okay! Okay! You can listen, you pervert.”
“Pervert?” She felt a tiny shock of excitement. “Me?”
II
On Thursday night, as she was leaving for her writing class, she kissed her hus band’s cheek. “Honey, I’m taking the bus. I’m going for drinks with some of the women after class. I don’t want to drive after drinking.”
She saw no one as she walked through the quiet neighborhood of large houses set far back from the road and hidden behind old trees. Erik’s house, the largest and oldest in the neighborhood, was made of quarried stone and had always reminded her of a miniature castle. His grandfather had built it; his father had installed indoor plumbing; Erik had filled it with electronic gadgets and abstract art.
He opened the door after her first knock and pulled her by the arm into the house. “I only got two answers.”
He hurried her through the house, into his study.
“Is Suzie home?” she asked.
“She’s in San Francisco.”
“San Francisco?”
“Attending one of those seminars. They’ve even asked her to give a speech on The Healing Power of Crystals or White Magic or mud baths or something.”
“I didn’t know she was so spiritual.”
“Spiritual? You have no idea. My dear wife even has one speech, based on an article she’s written, how sex is a trap, how the orgasm is a distraction that prevents people from attaining some higher bliss. It’s all New Age voodoo.”
“Why are you so nervous?”
“Why am I so nervous? You’re kidding.”
She draped her large handbag, and her black leather jacket, the one she had bought at Bloomingdale’s on her last trip to New York, over the arm of the white leather sofa. She went to the big chair behind his desk, sat down, and spun herself around a few times.
“I’m glad someone’s having fun,” he said.
She stopped spinning and smiled at him. “You’re cute when you’re stressed.”
“Yeah. Right.”
As he dialed the desk phone he told her, “They let you record a two minute greeting. They say you’ll get more messages that way. But I didn’t do one.”
“Afraid someone might recognize your voice?”
“I have to be careful. Suzie may not like sex, but she’s never wanted to divorce me—” He stopped and pressed the speaker button on the phone. A woman’s voice, loud and hurried came out of the speaker. She said her name and phone number three times, said, “give me a call” three times, then hung up loudly.
Patti laughed. “Very disappointing. Think she graduated high school?”
Erik frowned. “The other one is better. Slightly.”
The next voice, a wispy monotone, left a rambling message in which she used the word “integrity” seven times.
“That’s it,” Erik sighed, switching off the phone. “Those are the only two answers. What do you think?”
“They’re both fat.”
“What? How can you tell?”
“Can’t you just hear it? I’d bet my entire wardrobe they both look and dress like those Russian women you see on CNN, always sweeping the sidewalks in front of the Kremlin.”
“Jesus.” He began pacing, pushing his hands through his hair. “So much for my little adventure in infidelity.”
“You’re giving up?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Give me my handbag.”
He brought the bag from the sofa over to the desk. She took her notebook and a pen out of the bag, pulled the big chair up close to the desk and began writing. “This is as good as if I’d gone to my class.”
“I’ll get something to drink.” He left the room. When he returned, carrying a silver tray with hot tea and a bottle of brandy, she stopped long enough to drink a small brandy, then continued writing.
He sat on the sofa and watched her work. After half an hour she threw down her pen.
“This is the one.”
He took the notebook from her and read the ad. “But this is written by a woman!”
“Who has an ‘extremely eligible, handsome, wealthy and lonely friend she wants to see happy’. Believe me, women trust women.”
“I don’t know about this, Patti.”
“Do you want to get laid or not?”
“I could pay for it, if that’s all I wanted!” He dropped heavily onto the small sofa.
“Then what do you want?”
“I want some affection. Romantic affection. Sexual affection. Lots of exciting sexual affection.”
She could not keep from thinking of her husband then, of his good natured, almost doting affection, and his low sex drive. She was irritated by the thought. She said, “When they give you a phone number for the ad, call me. I’ll record a greeting.”
She stood up and stretched, noticing how Erik watched her. She bent over smoothly and touched her toes.
“Impressive, Patti. You’re very limber.”
“Lots of aerobics. Now, my jacket, if you please.”
He held her leather jacket as she slipped into it. “Will you come and listen to the answers? Or have you had enough of my sad situation?”
“If you can wait until next Thursday, when I have class.”
“Perfect. Suzie goes to her spa for a mud bath and massage every Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday night. Patti, you’ve been magnificent. I don’t know how to thank—”
She shut him up with a quick kiss on his lips.
III
"I lost count at thirty! Thirty, Patti! Can you believe it?”
He hustled her through the house and into his study. He practically spun her out of her leather jacket then put a strong hand on each of her shoulders, and gently pushed her into the big chair behind the desk.
“I owe you my life!”
“Really? How much is that worth, Eric?”
“Not as much as you may think.”
He fumbled the phone into the center of the desk and turned the speaker up loud.
As he dialed, she took out a pen and note pad.
The first woman’s message began and Erik said, “Listen to her. She sounds seventeen!”
“Probably is.”
He smiled lasciviously and rubbed his hands. Patti smirked at his pantomime.
The next voice was not as young. Her name was Kate and she had a confident, almost brusque manner. She was “multi-degreed”, was a corporate recruiter, “strictly on a retainer basis for the $100,000 and up salary levels”, and she went in for “all the usual romantic cliches: walking on the beach, fireside lovemaking, Paris in Springtime.”
Erik was excited. “This one gets a call back! Kate. Definitely! Write her number down.”
“She’s not your type, Erik.”
“And you know better than I?”
The next voice came on the speaker phone and Patti ignored his question. He grabbed the note pad from her and wrote down Kate’s phone number.
It took nearly an hour to listen to all the messages.
“Okay,” she said. “Where shall we start? There’s at least five worth call backs.”
“We start with Kate.”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
He used a wireless phone, beginning to pace even as he dialed. Patti could not help but smile at his enthusiasm.
From the moment the conversation with Kate began, Erik was smooth, affable, relaxed. Patti thought how it was no accident that her attractive neighbor had made a fortune before he was forty, even before inheriting the fortune his father and grandfather had amassed. She sat on the couch, listening to his casual, attentive, utterly charming conversation. She watched his tall, lean body get tense with happy excitement.
He was absorbed in his conversation with Kate when Patti walked up behind him. She put her hands up on his broad shoulders and felt the heat of his body under his silk shirt. She thought of the closet full of bland, off-the-rack clothing her husband bought and wore without the slightest attention.
Erik turned, smiled at her, and did not miss a beat in his conversation. Patti began massaging the front of his shoulders as he spoke. He made a puzzled expression, but did not interrupt a story he was telling Kate about a biking trip to Italy he had made upon graduating from law school. Patti held her breath and slipped a hand between the buttons of his shirt.
He covered the phone. “Patti!”
She stopped, but did not pull her hand from under his shirt. “Keep talking.”
“What are you doing!”
She looked straight in his eyes. “Keep talking.”
Into the phone he said, “Sorry, nothing, just lost my thread. Uh, yes, a friend of mine is here. For moral support.”
Patti laughed softly. She undid the top two buttons of his shirt. She traced her fingernails across his chest.
Erik inhaled sharply, but he did not break away from her.
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “My friend who wrote the ad for me. No—” He stared appraisingly at Patti, then said, “No, she’s just a housewife.”
Patti pinched both his nipples. Erik stifled a gasp.
He looked into Patti’s eyes as he explained to Kate, “She’s playing a game. She’s trying to distract me while I talk to you.”
Patti stood on her tip toes and kissed along his neck.
He covered the phone with one hand. “Patti! I can’t think! I sound like an idiot! I can’t do—”
“If you stop, I stop.” She smiled and waited.
Erik resumed his conversation.
IV
When Kate came into the restaurant, Patti was seated at the table next to Erik’s. She sat with her back to them, but she could hear everything they said. Erik was good; smooth, warm, charming. After Kate and Eric had ordered, Patti left her table.
People in the restaurant watched her as she walked. She was wearing her black Gautier dress, the tight, ankle length one with the large square wood buttons up to the neck and the daring slit all the way up to the top of her hip.
She dallied in the lobby, looking into her tiny purse, and Erik was suddenly in front of her.
“Enjoying your date?” she asked.
“That dress is wild.”
“Glad you like it.” She thought how her husband, while he would tell her she looked “nice” when she dressed up, was never excited by her sexiness. She smiled at Erik. “I’ll be going now.”
He stepped behind her. “I don’t think so.”
He held both her arms and moved her out of the lobby, down the narrow hall past the pay phone. He pushed open the mens’ room door, turned on the light, then hustled her inside.
He locked the door and turned to face her.
She said, “You really know where to take a girl.” V The next week their date was a red haired legal secretary named Melody. Patti wore a white cashmere sweater, white stretch pants and oversized sunglasses. She watched from the counter of the coffee shop, as Erik and Melody, seated at a corner table, made animated conversation.
Patti followed Erik’s car as he drove his date home. She turned off her headlights and coasted up in time to see him kiss the woman’s hand as they stood on the doorstep.
When Erik got back in his car, Patti gunned her engine and drove past him. He raced after her, down a dark, winding back road. She spun sharply onto a gravel path and found that it ran uphill through a huge cemetery. She was standing beside her car when his car scrunched to a stop on the gravel.
She would never forget how, with her naked back pressed into the wet grass, she had watched, past his shoulders, the countless glimmering stars slowly wheeling in the black sky above them.
VI
The next Thursday it was Sabrina, a corporate lawyer. After drinks they went to a foreign film. The tiny theater was crowded andPatti was able to slip into a seat on Erik’s left; Sabrina sat on his right. When Eric put his right arm around Sabrina’s shoulders, Patti gripped his thigh so hard that her nails sliced through his thin Italian slacks and into his skin.
After the movie, Erik met Patti at his house. The lights of Suzie’s third floor bedroom were on, but they sneaked into Erik’s study.
As she undid his snake skin belt she saw the holes her nails had made in his slacks. She smiled, pushed him down onto the white leather sofa and pressed herself on top of him.
As always, the urgency of controlling herself when her breath was coming in gasps, when her blood was pulsing loudly in her own hearing, heightened her surging climax.
The moment it was done, he whispered in her ear, “I’m leaving Suzie.”
She raised her head from his chest and looked closely at him.
“I’ve bought the plane tickets, Patti. I’ve got a very large condo on the ocean in Mexico. Bought it six months ago, even though the market was up. I couldn’t get Suzie to go with me. It’ll serve her right. We’ll have a month together, you and me. We’ll deal with the mess when we return.”
She said, “When’s our flight?”
He smiled. “Tomorrow night.”
“No.”
“No?”
“My instructor won’t have my story critiqued until next Thursday.”
“Jesus. Next Friday then.”
As she kissed him hard on his mouth she mentally inventoried her wardrobe. She would need several things for the Mexican climate and romantic settings and physical recreations of their tryst. Fortunately, she would have enough time to shop.
The End!
I dropped the pages.
My wife had actually typed those words, "The End!" on the manuscript.
For a long time I lay on the cool slate floor of the kitchen, staring up at the revolving ceiling fan.
Next thing I remember, I was in the upstairs bathroom, showering. I may have been crying, or it may have been the warm water of the shower flowing over my face that made me think I was crying.
I toweled off, then lay on the bed.
When the doorbell rang I didn’t move. It rang again. I heard the screen door open. I held my breath. Someone began knocking on the wood door. Was it my wife? Had she come back? Had she forgotten something, or changed her mind? Had she impulsively tossed away her house keys, but now had come back, and couldn’t unlock the door?
I scrambled into jeans, jumped down the carpeted stairs and ran to open the front door.
“Hi, neighbor.”
I stared at Erik’s wife. “Suzie?”
She looked me up and down, and smiled. “You’re unzipped.”
I stood aside, zipping my jeans. Suzie came in, stopped, then closed the door for me. She took me by the hand and led me to the living room.
She looked up at me. She had very blue eyes. She put a hand on my forehead. Her hand was cool. “Oh, boy,” she said. “Are you going to be all right?”
She made me sit on the couch. She had been to all our dinner parties and knew where we kept the liquor. She knew without having to ask that I liked scotch. She put a big glass of it in my hand and I drank it down.
“Oh, boy,” she said. She poured more scotch into my empty glass.
She sat next to me and gently turned my face so that I had to look in her blue eyes.
“For you, I’m sorry. But for me, I’m ecstatic. I didn’t expect to be, but what a relief! To finally be free of Erik!” She clapped her hands together and bounced on the sofa.
I drank the rest of the scotch.
“Tomorrow, I file for divorce. Oh, joy!” She stopped, seeing my dumb expression. “Oh, but I am sorry for you. I had no idea he’d take your wife. That’s so like Erik.”
“Did you really not have sex with Erik more than once every eight months?”
She looked startled. “Did he tell you that?”
“Uh, no. My wife. She, um, mentioned it, before leaving.”
“Sex is over rated. Believe me. I get more pleasure from spiritual physicalness. A massage and mud bath beat an orgasm every time.”
She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Erik is very over-sexed. He thinks he’s a great lover, but he’s just athletic. He’s all physical, shallow.” She pointed at her own head and said, “With Erik, there’s no there, there.”
I heard myself say aloud, “We didn’t have sex very often.” I looked at Suzie and explained. “Me. My wife. I love her so much. But—” I stopped. I got lost in images of my wife having sex with Erik, all the times I thought she had been in class. I forgot about Suzie until I realized she was kindly patting her hand on my face, massaging my neck, combing back my wet hair.
That was when I pushed her down on the sofa. She made a noise but I pressed my mouth hard on hers and pinned her shoulders.
When she stopped struggling and became resilient, I started biting softly along her neck. She moaned then, and whispered in my ear, “Eight months is a very long time after all.”
I pulled off her clothes until all she wore was a necklace with a large triangular crystal laying between her heaving breasts. The crystal caught the light and cast tiny rainbows on her very white skin.
Suzie panted. “Don’t stop now, neighbor!”
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