Brick by Brick Page 5

  Considering what he and Gage had just done, James’s sheepish look at a mere kiss on the cheek was adorable. He scraped back his blond hair with one hand and delivered the smile the Cotton Council had paid for.

  Gage’s was equally radiant. “You, on the other hand, were so fantastic and it was so beautiful. One of the finest experiences of my life. Thank you too.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Before we go, can I use your bathroom?”

  “Sure.” James pointed toward the door to the little powder room off the kitchen.

  We put on our shoes and stood waiting in silence, pretending the sounds of Gage peeing didn’t reach our reluctant ears.

  I could barely hear James’s soft voice over the flush. “What does this make me?”

  Chapter Eight

  “A large, please, for here. Just black.” While the girl at Crave poured my coffee, I fished in my purse for change for the tip jar.

  “Make that two,” Cynthia called. “I’ve got to tell you, Natalie, I was relieved when you suggested this place. I refuse to go anyplace that calls itself a coffeehouse but doesn’t have ordinary coffee.”

  The girl set heavy pottery mugs on the counter and grinned. “I hear that a lot. Something to eat?”

  “Is that a cheese Danish? Warmed, with two forks, please. Let me get this, Natalie.”

  “Next time’s on me.” I put two dollars in the tip jar anyway. “Where do you want to sit?”

  Cynthia led me through the half-empty seating area to a corner table. We settled, tasted our coffee, and gobbled the pastry, laughing at our appetites.

  “Well, I hope it’s not rude to make the observation,” Cynthia said, pulling two glossy-covered hardbound books from a tote bag and setting them on the table, “but something about you just glows. Are you always like this when you’re not around crowds?”

  “Glowing? Hardly.” I considered for a moment, then decided to tell her. “You know how it is. Sometimes your marriage has a really good stretch, where you rediscover how attractive and wonderful the other person is. It’s practically like dating again.”

  “Oh, I understand the glow now. You’re getting laid.” She covered her mouth with one hand and glanced around, but nobody was near enough to have heard. “So it’s glow-level good?”

  “Better. I don’t usually talk about this.” Why was I now?

  “We don’t have to. But I know exactly what you mean. We made Joel during a period like that. All of a sudden we were like adulterers, grabbing every opportunity. Which meant every night.”

  Something about Cynthia engendered trust, as if I’d known her for years. “That’s us. I’m insatiable.”

  Cynthia laughed too loudly, then covered her mouth again. “Doesn’t he bring the, you know, the book to a satisfying conclusion?”

  “Two or three times, usually.”

  She leaned confidentially close. “Oh, my, he’s good for three? You’re married to Superman.”

  “No, he’s just the once. I’m Superwoman. Is there a Superwoman?”

  “Not that I recall, unless she keeps the superhouse superspotless. Jacob hadn’t learned to climb out of his crib in our bedroom yet, so Doug and I were all over the house with it, everywhere but the bedroom. There was always something digging into my back.”

  “And his knees.” I wouldn’t tell her how dirty the cab of James’s truck was, or how public the carport felt even though none of the neighbors’ lights were on so early in the morning. “Although we did find my pearl earring that way.” I’d been afraid to vacuum until it turned up.

  “Be glad you didn’t lose a needle, huh?” Cynthia grinned. “I remember walking around knowing that every man who saw me wanted me, never mind that I needed to shave my legs and get a haircut.”

  It was my turn to laugh too loud. “Right. The most casual glance and I just know.”

  “Well, in your case it’s probably true. It’s fun to feel like some earthy fertility goddess. For real, I guess. Joel’s the proof of that.”

  “Not us. We’ve tried for years. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with me, but James—” I covered my mouth, aware I was giving way too much personal information.

  “Refuses to make his deposit in a cup, right? Men. So, what are you reading?”

  * * * *

  James presented the heating pad, hot tea, and remote control when my period came.

  “I need alcohol, not tea.”

  “There’s still some Michelob.”

  “Ugh, not beer. Let’s open the last bottle of red.”

  I might as well have slapped him; he looked that startled and a bit stung. “No. If you need wine, I’ll get you some.”

  “He isn’t going to call, James. Just open it. I hurt.”

  “We’re not opening Gage’s bottle.”

  “What, he matters more than I do? Then marry him.”

  James slammed the door on the way out, and it pleased me that his old truck didn’t want to start right away. I should just open the wine anyway, and the hell with him and Gage both.

  Before I heard his tires spit gravel, I’d turned up the volume and was stabbing the remote, like some engrossing cop show or murder mystery would make me forget that James didn’t much care how I felt.

  I settled for something with explosions and fake perspiration, but it didn’t hold my attention. Neither could the book Cynthia had loaned me. I’d have liked to fall asleep over one or the other, but between the cramps and the agitation from our argument, I couldn’t.

  Nearly two hours later James returned. He poured me warm sauvignon blanc without saying a word. I sipped dutifully and pretended not to notice the shreds of cork floating in the glass or the smell of beer floating on his breath.

  I clicked the TV off. “We need to talk.”

  “What for? You got your wine.”

  “Because I feel terrible, but hey, I’m just your wife. He’s movie star Gage Strickland. The way you’re hoarding a one-night-stand bottle of wine makes me feel like his ‘do me’ matters more than my ‘I do.’” Tears filled my eyes. I turned my face away, cursing hormones.

  “What? Jesus.” James sighed. “Natalie, it’s a memento. We’ve got a drawerful of programs and ticket stubs, the shells from Mexico, your rocks from Cape Cod, even that damned pillow.”

  I couldn’t help smiling, remembering all my triumphant one-sided pillow fights armed with I Spit a Mile at the Grand Canyon. “It’s just something to remember it by? You don’t want him more than me?”

  “It’s a souvenir.” He dropped to one knee, like he had when he proposed, his expression the same earnest intensity but ten years more mature and handsome. “Of course I want you more. We’re not you and me; we’re us. I meant it when I said, ‘Till death do us part.’”

  “Oh, Jamie,” I said, blinking fast.

  “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it again—if you wanted to too—given half a chance and my share of two bottles.”

  He would? I’d wondered if the weeks of James the Sex Machine had been his proving his manliness to himself, although I didn’t dare ask. What did it make him?

  “So would I.” I considered, then added, “I don’t think I’d need the wine, either.”

  “Yeah?” he said, lifting an eyebrow. “So why do you think he isn’t going to call?”

  “He can play with new friends every night. I don’t know that we’re so amazing he’s going to choose reruns over a new episode.”

  “We’ll muddle along without him, I guess.” James touched my face, moving his hand to my breast as he kissed me. Had he forgotten I was on my period?

  Kissing back, I almost forgot it myself. The small helpless noises Jamie made when I fondled him, and the way his shaft pressed my tender belly, woke the sexual me a little.

  Ignoring the attached thin napkin, my husband tugged off my panties, tossed them aside, and pressed his glans to my pubic hair. I felt quite wet, too wet for this level of arousal.

  “No,” I protested, rem
embering at last. “Not on the couch.” If I could be jollied into the mood, even a small orgasm would do wonders for my cramps.

  “Over on the sheepskin, on your knees,” he said, unzipping.

  I scooted over. I’d give him my mouth, and he’d use his hand on me.

  “Good. Now down on your elbows.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want your mouth. I want what he gave me.”

  “You know I’ve never done that.” Or wanted to.

  “Me either, until that night. I liked it, a lot. We both did.”

  “I’m not him.”

  “That part of you might as well be. There’s no reason we can’t do it. I swear we’ll stop if I hurt you even a little. Please?”

  “No.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “How about the same thing you’ve been doing for the last ten years?”

  “I figured you’d say something like that. Will you go down on your elbows so I can at least see it?”

  I would, although I felt oddly self-conscious, knowing that he wanted to view that part of me while jabbing himself into another.

  My small arousal had vanished, but my menstrual blood was moisture enough for painless entry. James might be annoyed or disappointed, but he would never be anything less than a considerate lover. In our marriage’s early days, I’d endured the first part of sex while he worked hard to make me enjoy it. All I had to do now was hold on until I reached that place.

  Before long his little animal noises and the unaccustomed angle woke my sexual self again. Despite being on my period, I felt my lower lips open plump for him, first the outer, then the inner. His touch on my clitoris zinged with electrical sharpness. I gasped.

  “Yeah, you like that,” he said, rubbing it in a circle. It stood up, no doubt recognizing the master’s hand. Jamie closed thumb and forefinger on it to work its tiny length in the world’s smallest handjob.

  I could make animal noises too, apparently. The squeal that sneaked from my lips startled me. If I hadn’t been so turned on, I might have laughed.

  Jamie removed fingers and penis from me at the same moment. “You all right?”

  “Put it back in. Hurry.” I was wetter than wet, not with blood. He did, and the strokes worked their usual magic. I forgot about my silly noises, our disagreement about the wine, what he’d wanted to do to me here on the sheepskin. My whole world was the piston relentlessly pushing the breath out of me as surely as if I were climbing a literal hill toward my orgasm instead of a figurative one.

  Jamie read the signs easily, as usual, and sped up so he’d climax at about the same time. His motions slapped his stomach against my bottom. For just a moment, the memory of the same sound with Gage came to me, but it was fleeting.

  I tipped my chest lower, thrusting my sex at Jamie. My breasts half-crushed on the soft sheepskin, I silently begged for the deepest penetration yet, for the passion that might make him a little rough, for an orgasm. I opened my thighs wider, and one of my knees strayed; the bite of the stone hearth was nothing compared to the urgency of Jamie driving deep into me, pulling back so fast he almost sucked me inside out, then jamming in. He gripped my hips, yanking me to him, using his thumbs to spread my buttocks uncomfortably wide.

  He paused before he tickled my anus with the tip of one thumb. Already deep in me, he pulled his rod back only an inch, then slammed in deeper.

  “Oh! Now,” I gasped. I couldn’t stop my hips from twisting with the intensity of my orgasm, but Jamie tugged me straight enough not to dislodge him. On cue, Jamie throbbed within my body, his juices splashing inside me while he pressed his thumb’s tip as if to enter. It gave my orgasm another ripple.

  “Was it good, baby, was it? Did I fuck you real good? Make you come big?”

  “Huge,” I said at last. “God, I love you, Jamie. That was terrific.”

  “Yeah, it was. Kind of messy, but so what?” James pulled free, bent forward to kiss my bottom with a playful nip, and headed for the bathroom, holding his bloodied hand away from himself. The shower started before he could possibly have gotten undressed.

  I recovered my panties and poured myself more warm wine. Although my orgasm had greatly reduced my cramps, the sullen blues hadn’t departed.

  My knee, scraped more than I’d realized, stung considerably. Drops of menstrual blood marred the snowy sheepskin. Even though we’d made up, James had gotten so mad he’d had to leave the house and drink. Worst of all, although I loved my husband, in a way I wanted someone else.

  The same someone he wanted.

  Someone who wasn’t going to call.

  Chapter Nine

  “The good news is,” I said, “today the scab fell off my knee. At last, huh?”

  “The bad news is,” James countered with a crooked grin, “you’re telling me just to tell me, not offering me hot doggie-style sex.”

  “Don’t rule it out.” More than three weeks after the argument and its makeup sex, we hadn’t made love once. I’d have hung from a trapeze if that’s what he wanted.

  “I need to work on some drawings and update the books. After?”

  “Yeah, like you’re not going to take until nine, then be tired. I wish you’d get a computer. It would mean more time for us.”

  “And less money.”

  That was the crux of it. James never shared his worries about our finances, but we had to have fallen way behind before the Rosenfeld job. He’d worked at Cynthia’s and Doug’s for weeks, and done gorgeous work, but costs had mounted and his temper frayed.

  He was never going to work with this salvage yard again. His first brick order arrived ruined by sandblasting they hadn’t mentioned, and its replacement was not the color specified. James’s crews had excavated, then laid the gravel and sand layers before the brick arrived, only because James paid extra for expedited shipping. I’d overheard him on the phone to Manny, his longtime employee, saying expenses were so close to the estimate he now hoped to break even.

  “You don’t have the time to learn how to use it anyway, right? Someday, if you get one, I’ll take a class and you won’t have to mess with it. I could be the bookkeeper.” I thought he was a little scared of computers, and felt foolish for not being computer literate, but I didn’t say so. We’d had this discussion over and over.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” he said. “Next time Daniel offers me their old computer because he’s got a new one again, I’ll take it, okay?”

  “Really?” James’s fraternal twin never let an opportunity to prove himself superior go past. I was not surprised James hadn’t mentioned the offers he’d refused. Daniel had money, but James had pride.

  “And Sunday you and I will go out to breakfast, then come home and work it off in bed. Sleep like stuffed pigs, then wake up and do it again.”

  He kept his word, but the occasional Sunday doubleheader wasn’t enough. For me, anyway.

  * * * *

  Cynthia and I met at Crave once a week. At first, we mostly talked about books over our coffee, but as we became friends, we talked about ourselves just as much.

  “Look,” she said one afternoon in May, laying her hand almost on my napkin.

  Was the watch new? One of the rings? “Wow. When did you grow an arm?”

  “I’ve got a tan, silly. First time in years.”

  “It’s hard to avoid if you go outside.”

  “I’ll have to show you my little garden out back. I was surprised at the tan, because I do all the work right after Doug goes to the office, before it gets too hot. You can see how high my gardening gloves go.” She saw through my forced smile. “Honey, I can’t help but notice the glow is gone. Are things okay at home?”

  “Sure.”

  “Try harder to convince me.”

  “He’s just busy, working hard so I don’t have to.” James left early, returned late and tired, ate dinner listlessly. The meal gave him a burst of energy that he devoted to plans and paperwork, not me.

  She nodded
. “For every month of that crazy passion we talked about, there’s a year of blah.”

  “A whole year?” I could endure a year without lovemaking, but not without James’s attention.

  “No, no, I’m exaggerating. Still, when a husband’s professional life is speeding along, the wife had better find something to keep herself happy.”

  “You mean have an affair?”

  “Who said anything about cheating? I meant find something that makes you feel good without involving James at all, and do it. I volunteered at Legal Aid back in New York, filing and phones. It was beneath me, of course, but they needed office workers, and I met some wonderful people. And contributed something to ‘justice for all,’ I think.”

  “I could do more than I do.”

  “More of what?”

  “I volunteer at a school library. I read out loud and help the kids find books that I hope will make them love reading. It’s easy for the little ones, but I’m getting to be the go-to person for the seventh- and eighth-graders.”

  We talked about books for kids until Cynthia had to go. When I got home, I called the volunteer coordinator and told her I wanted more hours, during the big kids’ library times.

  The following Sunday James shaved, which meant we were going out to breakfast, which meant he expected sex, a nap, and sex again. I didn’t have any say about it. This was the only window of opportunity I was likely to get, and I could take it or leave it.

  Irritated, I left it. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Not hungry? What, is that code for your period again already?”

  “No. It’s code for not in the mood.”

  “What does that even mean, not in the mood?” he said.

  “It means don’t think you can ignore me thirty days out of the month and expect sex the thirty-first because you bought me a waffle.”

  “I’m busy. And I’m tired. I’m busting a nut in the heat here, trying to make a good living for us both.” He sighed. “I’ve got so many people saying they’ll hire me, that they love the plans I draw up, but nobody’s writing me a check. I’ve got my crew pointing fucking chimneys, for people too old to get up on their roofs to do their own mortar repairs.”