Bonk
Fiction
“No adultery is bloodless. ”— Natalia Ginzburg
Afterward, they lay coiled in each other’s arms. Downstairs, the band shrieked a bad cover of a James Brown number that competed with a chugging window air conditioner. Aaron nuzzled Doris’ neck, just below an ear. That always brought a giggle and a round of laughing play.
“What do you think…” A blast from a horn section in the nightclub below drowned out her words.
“What do I think about what?” he asked when the brass subsided.
“What do you think about when we make love?”
Aaron raised himself up on an elbow to look at her. She overwhelmed him, as she always did when he looked at her, whether in his bed, across the room, or on the street. He had lived with unexpressed desire for her through a decade; from the moment he met her and her husband Scott at a party. He experienced the clichéd Hollywood version of Love at First Sight. The movie version, though, rarely included a husband.
Men rarely displayed physical beauty, and so they possessed a need to have it, hold it, and protect it through women. He knew that, should Scott recover, Aaron would never again possess anything of such beauty.
“Thoughts that occur during moments of passion do not make themselves available for later analysis, my dear,” he said in his best bad W.C. Fields imitation. “But I’m usually aware of my breaking heart. And you? Do you make to-do and shopping lists?”
“No, silly. I mean, does it ever cross your mind that you’re bonking your best friend’s wife? Or are you one of those men who get turned on by that?”
Uh-oh, Aaron thought. We’re treading dangerous ground here.
The need women have to talk about their emotions rested at the top of the list of things he could not understand. That she wanted to talk about her guilt meant she wanted to talk about Scott, and Aaron didn’t want her to dwell on broken vows. And he didn’t want Scott’s presence in his bed while he held the dying man’s wife.
The band finished its set with a high-decibel flourish. A siren wailed past on the street below.
“Bonking? I sort of love it when you sort of talk dirty.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and rolled over to gaze at the ceiling.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not when we make love, but when I’m alone, wanting you. When I’m with you I feel fulfilled.”
‘Tell ’em what they want to hear,’ he thought. ‘How can I feel guilty when I’ve got what I’ve wanted for ten long years? Years of unexpressed desire and slavish devotion precluded any remorse I should feel for taking my best friend’s wife.’
A better man would have turned away but Aaron was not a better man. He was just a man, a victim, and not a director of his emotions.
Doris turned, sat at the edge of the bed with her back turned to him, and picked up articles of clothing from the floor.
“I’m going home,” she said. “I can’t stand that noise downstairs. How can you live here with that going on six nights a week?”
“The bands are not all as bad as this one. Besides, the bookie next door makes more noise than the nightclub.”
“I want to be at the hospital early tomorrow. They will run tests on Scott all afternoon and I won’t see him again until Wednesday.”
‘I should feel jealous, but how can I feel that way over a husband?’ He pushed the thought aside.
He arose to gather his clothes from the pile on the floor.
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
He stole glances at her as she dressed. Satin skin, square shoulders — he preferred women with good shoulders, it gave to them an aura of strength and self-sufficiency.
They passed through crowds of drunks and revelers taking breaks outside with the band. Doris walked silently ahead of him. Aaron attempted some light-hearted banter but she took no notice of him.
“When will I see you again?” he asked as she slipped into her car.
She rolled down the window.
“You won’t,” she said without looking at him.
He leaned into the window as the engine turned. Doris wiped a tear with her fingers.
“Come back upstairs,” he said. “I’ll make some coffee and we’ll talk about it.”
She turned to face him. Tears rimmed her eyes.
“I can’t do this anymore, not while my husband is dying. Scott and I have had our problems but I’ve been faithful, until you… until I…”
She wiped her face again and drove away. Aaron stood rooted in the parking lot watching her taillights disappear into the night. The band, back from its union-mandated break, opened a set with a bad imitation of Wilson Pickett.
Aaron knew this day would come. He knew it when they arranged their visits to Scott’s bedside so that they did not appear there at the same time, lest Scott read their affair in their eyes and in their words and actions. He knew that when the death sentence came from Scott’s doctor, she would break down in anguish at having betrayed her dying husband. He knew that he had taken advantage of their shaky marriage to seduce his wife.
Aaron waded through the throng of dance club hipsters to make his way inside.
‘I’ll have a couple of drinks and go home, upstairs,’ he thought, even as he knew he was going to get drunk and stoned, and maybe even tripping. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘I’ve got nothing to do tomorrow. I can’t visit Scott: We can’t both be in his room at the same time.’
He missed his friend even as he began, already, to miss his wife.
