The Backwoods

Patricia dearly wished she could say yes—she wanted to so much. But it’s not fair to him. That backwoods place is just as weird and awkward for him as it is for me. “No,” she declared. “You stay here and do your job. You’re the best culinary critic on that whole paper. I can’t have you slipping because of me.”

?But—?

“No,” she repeated. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Just give me some great sex before I leave.?

Byron’s rotund face seemed to brace for a moment. Then he shrugged and said, “No problem.”

The dim morning light seemed to make the street feel more desolate. Just this moment, it looked like anything but summer in the city. Only the faintest tinges of sunlight began to filter through the smog, which would only get worse when rush hour commenced. At least she wouldn’t have to drive through any of that this morning.

Patricia felt disconnected as Byron placed her suitcases in the trunk of the sporty Cadillac SRX. In the meager light, the car’s sumptuous burgundy paint job looked black.

Byron glanced up a moment, puzzled. “If you drive with the ragtop down, you’ll cause multiple wrecks, you know.”

She returned his expression, just as puzzled. “What?”

“But I have to admit, I like the idea of all those Virginia rednecks envying me.”

“Byron, what are you talking about?”

“Your bra, or I should say lack thereof.”

She briefly touched her bosom and then stifled her shock. She almost always wore a bra, yet at that moment she didn’t consciously recall deciding not to this morning when she’d dressed. Her sizable bosom in addition to the plain white blouse would likely incite any gawkers on the highway. “I’d keep the top up to avoid sunburn anyway, Byron, so the jealous male sexual animal in you can relax. The only person I’ll probably come in contact with today will be my sister.”

“I’m relieved,” he joked. “Believe me, this convertible plus that blouse plus your set of boobs would definitely cause a ten-mile pileup.”

“See? I’m thinking solely of public safety.”

The condo building loomed behind them. Byron smiled, the little bit of hair he had left disarrayed in spikes, stubble dark on his face. “Last chance. I could change real quick and go with you.”

She hugged him a bit too desperately. “No, honey. I’ll do this by myself while you hold down the fort. With any luck, I’ll be back in a week.”

“Give your sister my condolences. I’ll order flowers today and have them delivered. Oh, and not to sound too insensitive but . . . could you bring back a few of her crab cakes?”

Patricia chuckled. Crabmeat packaging seemed about as obscure a business as anyone could imagine, but Judy had done very well vamping up the old family business since Patricia’s investment of some venture capital. She’d paid back all the cash with interest, and the company was still growing. Judy had found her green thumb. Something rare and ideal about the waters of Agan’s Point produced unusually large blue crabs in abundance, and the meat was so uniquely sweet that the restaurants in the county outbid other crabmeat suppliers simply due to the quality. Hence, the long-shot business had succeeded tremendously. Even Byron, with his persnickety attitudes toward food, admitted that the best crab cakes he’d ever eaten were those made by Patricia’s sister. “I’ll bring you a box of them,” she promised.

The empty street sucked up the muffled echo when Byron closed the car trunk. But Patricia caught herself: “I’m such an airhead. I forgot my laptop—”

“You hope to do legal work in Agan’s Point?” her husband asked in amusement.

“Just to keep in touch with my associates on e-mail; plus I need my records with me in case there’s an emergency at the office,” she said, and scurried back into the condo.

It was an old, homey stone building, six large units total, and the equity had skyrocketed in the ten years they’d lived there. Patricia took the elevator up, listening to the drone that cleared her head and helped her feel solid about going “home” today. As for the condo’s interior decor, she’d deferred to Byron’s more modern, urbanized tastes—something that might be called post-art deco. It didn’t bother her, considering how little time she actually spent here; too often, for most city lawyers, the office felt more like the homestead. She brushed through the stark, light-toned living room, into the bedroom—the only room in the unit that she’d decorated to her own taste. Heavy paneling, dark hardwood furniture, and a plush four-poster bed. Colonial styles, though essentially passe in the modem city, had always appealed to her. She supposed it did remind her of her childhood on Agan’s Point, which seemed odd, since she never thought fondly of either her childhood or the town, a repressed, poor community in which she and her sister had been raised by dour, insensitive parents. God rest their souls, she paused enough to think. Their creaky old house on the hill, though, had been decorated similarly in the Colonial style. When she passed the dresser to grab her laptop and case, something made her pause, flicking her eyes to the framed picture of her and her sister smiling on the wide, heavily railed front porch of the house she was about to return to today. She’d been fifteen at the time the picture had been taken, Judy fourteen, both dressed in the modest sun-dresses they wore so frequently during the hot, southern Virginia summers. They were both freckleless in spite of inherent fair skin and bright red hair, and something about the photo made them appear even younger than they were. A glance back into youth gone by. Behind them both stood the oversized front door whose threshold Patricia would be crossing again in three or four hours. She wondered what memories would be waiting.

The next picture on the dresser showed her mother and father standing in the backyard. They’d begun parenthood in their late thirties—a late start that made Patricia wonder if she and Judy hadn’t really been accidents. Hard work in the crabbing business added still more years to her parents. Her father’s eyes looked back hard from the old photo, while her mother’s seemed bored. Both had grayed early, and just as neither of them smiled in the photograph, they’d seldom smiled in life. A mundane traffic accident had taken their lives the year Patricia would graduate from college. One thing she regretted was that they hadn’t lived long enough to see their daughters succeed, but not living long enough to see Judy marry Dwayne was something Patricia clearly didn’t regret.

Without thinking she turned the photo to face the wall. Her honesty about the matter had always bothered her, plaguing her with guilt. Patricia may have loved her parents, but she’d never really liked them very much. Her upbringing was an endless, unpleasant memory.

But there was one memory that hooked her right there when she was about to turn and go back out. You bad, greedy girl, she thought. The high, veiled bed she shared with Byron remained in disorder from last night’s gluttonous frolic. Maybe it was that plum wine from the restaurant? she wondered. It was definitely something, though, something that lit all her fuses at once. Byron wasn’t the greatest-looking man in the world, but Patricia knew that at their age, being sexually comfortable with a person was much more of a turn-on than muscles, a chiseled jaw, and other images of virility. She blushed at more recollections: He’d sensed her need all night, hauling her dress up to her waistline, dragging her panties off, and bullying her to the bed. He knew what she liked best, and he’d wasted no time in providing it, not even bothering to take his own clothes off before beginning an oral excursion of her body that lasted for over an hour, so delicately and featherlight at first, but graduating to animalistic fervor. Patricia came in multiples, biting her own knees like apples. Several times her shrieks of pleasure reverberated throughout the condo. We’re lucky the neighbors didn’t call the police, she thought now. A cruder thought occurred to her, maximizing her guilt: Last night I practically used my husband’s face for a bicycle seat, and I didn’t even do anything for him afterward. Her orgasms had so worn her out that she fell sound asleep immediately afterward. . . .

I keep telling him that I’m going to make things up to him now that I’m a partner. She frowned to herself. Great start, Patricia. You’re a selfish bitch.

She gave herself a final checkover in the mirror, happy that faded jeans, sneakers, and an old blouse wouldn’t be overdoing it for returning home. True, her bralessness left little to the imagination, but she hardly cared. Maybe I skipped the bra on purpose and just didn’t realize it? she wondered. Her breasts stretching the blouse and her nipples ghosting through it would leave her husband with a final sexy image of her when she left.