He’d think about calling her before he’d jerk off. Why, though? It was earlier there, the workday still. They rarely talked dirty on the phone. And so he’d carry the buzz from the bars to the bedroom, settle in with the usual clips from the usual sites. He’d watch for five minutes, ten minutes, and then he’d find himself drifting. Imagining Whitney after work, Whitney after a run at sunset, the golden light of his home state pressing against the glass of the hotel room. Whitney riding the night where it went and finding herself like the girls on his laptop screen. With bosses or coworkers or neighbors or deans. Whitney being undressed slowly. Out of those familiar clothes, first off the shoulder, and then unzipped. Whitney down to very little material, to matching white or matching red or matching blue. Whitney on her knees, with something to prove to someone strange. Whitney on her back, Whitney with her clicky hips slung wide, and her eyes closed, and her body feeling the same old things but in new ways, maybe. And Whitney, ultimately, on her palms and her knees, her head between her arms, her hair spilled off her head into a puddle in the sheets. Whitney, from behind, always from behind, the way she most preferred. Whitney’s face lifting when the pace shifted, when the force escalated. Whitney’s face in the foreground, eyes tight in a centered-ness, 1-2-3 as a mental retreat, sure, but as a physical exhibition above all else. Devoid, for Will, of the specifics of feelings, of names, of thoughts. Just the image of 1-2-3 at its basest, Whitney as the lead actress, the whole thing transpiring in real time, right then and there, with Will at home and Whitney on the road. It made him sick. It always worked.
After he’d finish, he’d text. She wouldn’t be able to talk. Always busy, always late. Hardly bothering herself with his same fruitless pursuits: bars in the neighborhood, bars at happy hour. Maybe they wouldn’t go through with it, after all. He’d look around the apartment—the shared everything, intertwined for all time, maybe. Bureaus and books and lamps and framed posters that were uncuttable-in-two. But they were down this path already. There was no turning back. He’d smell her dresses. He’d smell the perfume. He’d reply to her reply. She was still working—didn’t he understand it always ran late? She was working from the restaurant of the hotel, there was no one else around. It was quiet, she was alone. She would go to bed soon. He would probably pass out before she could talk. Everything in the closet in Barcelona reminded him of those nights.
“Of course, of course,” she said into the phone. “You fold six into five, thread in the stuff about the sister beginning in four. So that when you reveal it, people feel like they knew there was something worth paying attention to there, even if they can’t quite figure out how they sensed it coming all along.”
Will returned to the couch and opened his email and was surprised to find forty new messages since he’d fallen asleep. A writer at one of the magazines was threatening a lawsuit. Will had been looped into the situation weeks ago. But they’d just learned that the writer was going public with accusations of coercion. The editor-in-chief needed to know what their options were to make sure it didn’t become a big public mess. The first several messages in the chain were to Will’s boss, asking him to advise. But Will’s boss had snipped at the chain earlier in the weekend, complaining that he had already wasted “too much of his alleged ‘vacation’ on this garbage,” and that he wouldn’t be checking in again until Tuesday. Will knew his boss well enough to know that he’d meant it, that nothing would get him on the line from Nantucket, no matter how much money the media company paid him as lead counsel. Will felt the familiar pulse in his neck. A coursing of poison to his extremities. It was the feeling of the lobby mural all over again.
Will couldn’t drown out Whitney’s voice in the other room. She was still on her call, sounding impossibly enthusiastic, offering recommendations that would make a thing that was actually being made better. He clammed his laptop shut. He hated this. He hated the pitch of anxiety. The work was often meaningless and only ever had downsides, but at least he was underpaid for it, too. He needed the money. They’d been spending like assholes lately. And now the extension on the Airbnb. They’d budgeted for a specific length of trip, not days and days longer. He listened to Whitney’s tone, that pleasant authority. She made 50 percent more than he did, and now she was beginning to produce, too. The apartment wouldn’t be a problem for them, collectively, but they’d booked it on his account, and these extra days would go on his card. He couldn’t leave his job. How had he put himself in this position? How had he allowed it to take control of his life? He wanted more than anything on earth to snip the line of his contacts, to change his email address by a single letter so that all correspondence would bounce. Maybe he would never emerge from beneath the cloud. Maybe it would be best to stay stuck in Barcelona for good.
He checked his personal email, willing a response. He’d been waiting all week, and still nothing. Before the trip, he’d submitted the script he’d finished during the month of 1-2-3. He’d been working on it on the sly for a year now, a side project for his own sanity, a pressure valve for when he needed it most.
