To Covet

The dove grey smoke swirled languidly from her Parliament light, downward, swallowed up by the steam rising from the sun-baked asphalt. The rain was slowly subsiding for the first time all day, leaving behind it the scent of fresh night, brisk and ready. She checked her phone, fidgeting all the while; four new missed calls from the same number. She cringed, closed her eyes, furrowed her worried brow, and inhaled one last time, fighting desperately the urge to exhale and move on from her cigarette (since this surely meant her departure from underneath the red awning refuge of Joe’s Deli was impending). Her severe stiletto heel punctured the butt, extinguishing the smoldering embers at once. A taxi rapidly approached and she scurried to the curb to hail it down. Climbing inside the patchouli-perfumed cab, she heard her phone vibrate, violently, once more; her thighs clenched against the cool leather seat as she raised the phone to her ear.

            “Hi, sorry,” she exclaimed, surprised by the uneasiness in her own voice.

            “Where the hell are you?” he demanded, verbally sniffing her out, exploiting her transparently mendacious tone.

            “I told you,” she pleaded, “I was meeting Britni for drinks, and”—“Oh, Christ, don’t you even try that with me… what, you think I’m completely oblivious to your bullshit now?” he interrupted without hesitation.

            “I’ll be there in five fucking minutes, couldn’t we just talk about this at the bar?” she asked, knowing full well that five minutes was not enough time and space between she and him. She was failing again, falling back into old patterns, living in a perpetual state of indecision, buying herself more time while trying to beat the clock. Procrastination had become her marked foible.

He’d hung up without warning, prompting the cab driver to make deliberate eye contact with her in the rear view mirror. Her eyes said, “I’m sorry” back to his, suspecting that he’d been offended by her crude choice of words. Instead he gave her a pitying glance, as if to say in a fatherly manner, “No, I’m sorry, dear.”

She handed the cabby a twenty-dollar bill with her shaking hand and jumped out, her pulse quickening as she saw the neon lights of her former-favorite haunt. She smoothed her hands anxiously over her tousled hair and patted her lips with her trembling fingertips, an obsessive-compulsive routine she’d developed to cope with her latent fear of men.  She could already make out the back of his head through the glass—he was yammering on to the saint-like bartender as she cleaned glasses and feigned interest.

She paused in front of the door for a fleeting moment, one second too long, and was surmounted by her own weakness—her willingness to give herself over to longing and reminiscence had been previously pointed out to her as a character flaw she’d have to work on. Gazing at his brown curls (that now seemed distressingly perfect), she forced herself to remember, though it filled every inch of her with sickness; oh, how she’d once fantasized about putting her hands roughly through that very head of hair, how she’d yearned for the scent of his musk, dreamt of his full, fearless mouth. He was nearly twenty years her senior, a topic that often came up in jest when she’d tried so desperately to flirt like the best ingénue. The course he taught was “French Poetry,” and he’d so consummately fulfilled every female student’s fantasy of what a French professor should look like, sound like, act like, (and as she’d come to know: taste like, smell like, feel like, fuck like). He’d moved to New York from Paris the previous fall, leaving behind him a life of writing and directing in Montmatre. He’d often recount to her the wistful yearning for his homeland; “It’s morning now, in Paris” he’d whisper at midnight. She’d sensed that he resented becoming a college professor, something he’d never readily admit to anyone, even in the depths of night, when darkness so kindly shrouds insecurity (just enough to let us all feel brave).

Her masochistic mind made that painful voyage back to the present, wherein the stone cold reality of her choices no longer felt glamorous or romantic, but desperate and reckless. She was only invested in the chase, it would seem, and once she’d caught his attention, she slowly began to retract from his advances. She’d needed him, though, for protection and for shelter of the literal and metaphorical varieties. She had nowhere else to go when she arrived in Manhattan in the spring, and knew what was expected of her in return for a free bed to sleep in while she was so steadfastly down and out. She stepped through the threshold, leaving her jacket and her pride at the door, and made that walk of shame over to the stool next to his. He was already drunk (beads of sweat pooling at his temples) as he leaned forward, sloppily, to kiss her.

“Stop, please, not here,” she begged, as he ignored, smiled, and settled his hand on her cheek. He still smelled of sweet musk, but his touch she no longer felt in her stomach as she once so sensually had. His smile faded; he began to drop his hand from her cheek surreptitiously, down her neck, his fingers tracing the line of her collarbone. He bit his lip, a signature move that implied a multitude of sins. His hand dropped inches further as he cupped her breast, gazing at it like a ripe apple, ready to be consumed.

“Jesus! I said stop!” she yelled, gathering attention from the bartender and surrounding patrons.

“Fine!” he mumbled, “let’s go outside, then.”

He led the way, back out onto the street as she blindly followed. She noticed a slight chill in the air that wasn’t there just ten easy minutes ago. They walked until they reached the empty privacy of an alleyway and she felt frightened to be alone with him for the first time since they’d met.

“Just tell me, please, I’m begging you,” he moaned in a thick Parisian drawl, “tell me why you were with that fucking man last night...”

“I told you three times!” she cried out, shattering the silence of night. She began to recount to him yet again her rehearsed response: “I got to the restaurant early… I sat down at the bar… I was alone and the gentleman next to me offered to buy me a drink. We talked about the weather, the Yankees, and E.B. White. I was laughing at a story he was telling me about his son when you walked in…”

“I don’t believe you, how could I believe you? You don’t fucking care for me—you close your eyes so tightly when we make love… how can I believe you?” he shook his head vigorously from side-to-side, his fingers clenching his own darling curls.

“You’re too drunk.”

“And you’re too heartless,” he lamented.

He turned away from her, presumably to mull over the explanation he’d now heard four times. Leaning forward, he put his heartsick hands on his knees, breathing in and out as fervently as she’d smoked that last cigarette. He stayed, slumped over, his brown leather jacket creasing as he swayed involuntarily from drunkenness. She looked around, wondering if anyone was witnessing this pathetic, public display of wounded jealousy; had it really only been a week since they’d been intimate for the first time? Their sordid relationship had the oddest of trajectories: they’d built up speed, blasted off, and erupted in such a condensed period of time. The comedown was harder on him than she’d anticipated. She laughed to herself as she considered her utterly irreverent indifference to him at this point. Couldn’t it all just be over? Just then, he stood up straight and swiveled around, facing her directly. The look of lust had returned to his olive green eyes as he sauntered back in her direction. Without a moment’s notice, he pushed her up against the brick façade, one hand around her face as he forced his violent kiss onto her lips. His free hand was now thrust up her skirt, grappling for the flesh of her inner thigh. His weight against hers was enough to leave her breathless; she whimpered like a trapped mouse. His balmy hand moved down from her face and placed itself around the circumference of her neck, with just enough pressure to force out a small cough. She knew not what he’d intended to do here, as adrenaline began to course through her. Pushing against his chest, she managed to thrust him off; his inebriated state worked to her advantage. The forceful shove caused him to stumble on the cobblestones.

She walked towards him, feeling that innately feminine need to make sure that he wasn’t hurt (ignoring the fact that he had most definitely intended to hurt her). As she reached down to touch his head, he lunged forward, like an animal of prey, and raised his arm… the slap across her cheek burned incandescently as she crumpled over, her face in her hands, her knees busting open on the street.

“Oh, darling… Oh, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it…” his voice trailed off in disbelief.

She waited—she wanted to be viscerally sure that this had really just happened, and wasn’t the product of her darkly overactive imagination. Without verbalizing so much as a syllable, or shedding a single tear, she picked herself up off the warm, wet ground and walked towards Ninth Avenue, refusing to look back.

 When she reached his loft, her face was swollen and throbbing with heat; she glanced in his foyer mirror, and couldn’t (or didn’t want to?) recognize the ghostly reflection staring back. The faint purple hue of a bruise was already developing just above her cheekbone, and her eyes were so bloodshot their irises glowed Forget-Me-Not blue. She grabbed every piece of clothing, every book, every little trinket, every shred of respect, and stuffed them all headfirst into a black garbage bag. On her way out the door, without having any real plan in mind, she glanced back into the apartment… there sat the queen-sized bed where they’d first made love last Tuesday night. She looked, and looked, and with looking came to find that the want she’d had for him was nowhere to be found in this nice apartment, in this lovely neighborhood, in the city of her childhood dreams.

The door shut stridently behind her. She hoisted the weight of her possessions over her shoulder, contemplating letting go of it all. She couldn’t help but smile, albeit weakly, consoling herself with the notion that this door, his door, she’d never have to venture through again. Completely alone now, she was welcomed into the freeing obscurity of night (which would offer her so much more than his selfish kiss).