“Why should I have to drown out the noise of my daughter having sex?”
“In the morning, we’ll talk to her and ask her if she could talk to him about keeping it down from now on, but there’s nothing we can do about it tonight. I mean, it’s probably extremely awkward for her right now. What is she supposed to say to him? And I’m sure Xan isn’t aware of how loud he’s being, and after she talks to him about it everything’ll be fine. You like Xan a lot, don’t you?”
Adam stopped pacing, breathed deeply, as if he hated to admit it, then said, “Yeah, I think he’s a great guy.”
“Well, I like him, too,” Dana said. “I think he’s incredibly nice and charming and attractive, so I don’t think we should complain. She could do a lot worse.”
Dana noticed Adam was staring at her in an odd way, squinting, like he was trying to figure something out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and he said, “Nothing,” then turned on the TV to The Tonight Show, Leno doing his monologue. The TV didn’t drown out Xan completely, but it helped.
Adam sat at the foot of the bed, looking at the TV blankly. Dana, as she had several times during the past week or so, couldn’t help feeling paranoid. Whenever Adam seemed particularly distant or gave her a funny look or acted in any way unusual, she couldn’t help wondering if he’d somehow found out about her and Tony, or was at least suspicious.
“I just think it’s… interesting,” he said.
“What’s interesting?” Her heart was pounding.
“The way you described Xan. I haven’t heard you talk like that in a long time, calling another man attractive.”
“What’re you talking about?” Dana said, acting shocked, probably overdoing it. “I was just commenting about him, that’s all. He’s a good- looking guy. He looks a lot like Johnny Depp, don’t you think?”
“He was flirting with you a lot.”
“He was not.” She knew he had been; she just didn’t want to get into it.
“Come on, it was so obvious.”
“I noticed he was paying attention to me, yes, but I wouldn’t call it flirting. Come on, he’s Marissa’s boyfriend, for God’s sake.”
“I was just making an observation, that’s all, and wanted to let you know how it made me feel. It made me feel uncomfortable. It made me feel jealous.”
Adam was still in an annoying phase where he was constantly announcing his feelings, talking in I- statements. It was getting seriously wearing.
“I’m sorry you felt that way,” Dana said. Then, wanting to change the subject, she said, “I still don’t think you should be so hard on Marissa. You can’t give her rule after rule after rule. At some point you just have to back off and let her live her life.”
As if on cue, they could hear Xan in the other room, practically screaming.
“I’m going out to take a walk,” Adam said and left the bedroom.
Dana got into bed and shut off the light. It was so strange for Adam to get jealous; she hoped that there wasn’t more to it, that he wasn’t catching on. She thought she’d been acting pretty normal lately, not nearly as depressed as she’d been after ending the fling with Tony, but maybe he’d picked up on something and was projecting it on to her. Oh, God, what was happening to her? She’d been listening to so much of his psychobabble lately that she was starting to think like him now.
Although Dana hadn’t spoken to Tony since the night she left his apartment, she’d been missing him a lot, and it was hard to not have any contact with him. He’d texted her several times and had called her and left messages on her cell, and a few times she almost gave in and called him back. Yes, things had been better with Adam lately, but she wasn’t sure what “better” meant anymore. Better than what? Better than when she’d been miserable? Maybe being in a marriage that’s slightly better than miserable was good enough for some women, but not her. She felt trapped with Adam, and the idea of staying in the same distant marriage, having the same fights over and over again for the rest of her life, seemed almost unbearable.
While she appreciated that Adam was making an effort to change, she didn’t feel like it was a serious, heartfelt effort. Did he take her out to a nice dinner, or maybe surprise her with a weekend getaway? No, he brought home a cheerleader’s costume. The psychologist, the so- called expert on marital conflict, tries to save his marriage by trying to encourage his wife to reenact a scene from Debbie Does Dallas? Was that really the best he could come up with? It was pathetic with a capital P. The irony was that, while she’d told him she felt ridiculous putting on the outfit, the truth was she felt uncomfortable putting it on for him. During her fling with Tony, she’d dressed up many times- as a schoolgirl, a maid, a stewardess, and, yes, even one time as a cheerleader- but somehow living out her sex fantasies with a young sex object like Tony seemed much more normal than doing it with her middle- aged psychologist husband. And it definitely wasn’t the magic pill that would resolve their marriage problems.
But the only alternative to staying with Adam was divorcing him and the thought of being single again was terrifying. She knew a few women in the neighborhood who’d recently gotten divorces, and they were all miserable and lonely. What was she going to do, start dating again? She didn’t remember how to date. Where did people meet nowadays anyway, on the Internet? What would she do, post some picture of herself, retouched, in the perfect light, where she looked ten years younger, only to see the guys’ disappointment and disgust when she met them? Her ego wouldn’t be able to handle that. She seemed to get new wrinkles every day, and there was no way she could compete with women in their twenties and thirties who’d be interested in the same men. Then, in a few years, when she was in her fifties, it would get even harder to find someone. If she got very lucky, if she got incredibly lucky, then someday, maybe five or ten years from now, when she was pushing sixty, she’d have a chance to settle for someone who- at best- would be exactly like Adam, a decent enough guy with some very annoying qualities. What was the point of going through all of that pain, probably chopping years off her life because of all the stress, for the outside chance of winding up exactly where she was right now?
Adam returned from his walk, or wherever he’d been, and got into bed.
“Did they stop it in there?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Thank God,” he said and turned the other way and fell asleep without saying good night.
When Dana woke up, Adam wasn’t in bed with her. She went down to the kitchen and saw that he’d brewed coffee, but, as usual, he’d left barely one cup for her. And he was the one who called her passive- aggressive? He knew full well that she liked to have two or three cups in the morning.
Dana was scooping coffee into the coffeemaker when she heard someone enter the kitchen. She turned, ready to confront Adam, and saw Xan standing there. He was in the same jeans he’d been wearing last night and a plain white wife- beater. His hair was messy from sleep, but on him it looked almost stylized. She noticed how good- looking he was- somehow he was even more attractive with morning scruff, like he could be an underwear model- and then she felt embarrassed because he was seeing her without her makeup.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Hope I didn’t startle you.”
“No,” she said. “I just, um, thought it was my husband.”
He looked at her the way he had last night, in that flirty way, kind of the way
Tony looked at her sometimes, then said, “It’s a beautiful day today, isn’t it?” There was innuendo in his voice, especially in the way he’d said “beautiful,” as if he wasn’t only calling the day beautiful but calling her beautiful as well.
This seemed especially apparent because it wasn’t a particularly beautiful day.
It was cloudy, a little chilly.
“Yes it is,” she said. “So is, um, Marissa up yet?”
“Oh yeah, she is,” he said. “She asked me if I could bring her up some coffee.” “It’s good timing then, isn’t it?” Dana said. “Should I make some for you, too?”
“No thanks, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t need anything to get me going in the morning.”
He smiled at her in a slightly suggestive way. With any other guy- especially any other boyfriend of Marissa’s- Dana might’ve gotten offended, but somehow she didn’t feel that way about Xan. His flirtatiousness somehow seemed appropriate, within his character- and, yes, she couldn’t help feeling a little flattered by the attention. It felt good to feel sexy, even when it was early in the morning and she was wearing sweats and a
