228
JOYCE CAROL OATES
She remembered his gestures, the witty energetic circling of his hands.
"How are you? Please don't hang up!" he cried.
"I can't - I don't want to go through it again - ."
"I'm not going to hurt you. Just tell me how you are."
"Everything is the same."
"Everything is the same with me."
She looked up at the ceiling, shyly. "Your wife? Your children?"
"The same."
"Your son?"
"He's fine - ."
"I'm glad to hear that. I - ."
"Is it still the same with you, your marriage? Tell me what you
feel. What are you thinking ;'"
"I don't know...."
She remembered his intense, eager words, the movement of his
hands, that impatient precise fixing of the air by his hands, the jabbing
of his fingers.
"Do you love me?" he said.
She could not answer.
"I'll come over to see you," he said.
"No," she said.
What will come next, what will happen?
Flesh hardening on his body, aging. Shrinking. He will grow old,
but not soft like her husband. They are two different types: he is ner–
vous, lean, energetic, wise. She will grow thinner, as the tension radiates
out from her backbone, wearing down her flesh. Her collar bones will
jut out of her skin. Her husband, caressing her in their bed, will dis–
cover that she is another woman - she is not there with him - instead
she is rising in an elevator in a downtown hotel, carrying a book as
a prop, or walking quickly away from that hotel, her head bent and
filled with secrets. Love, what to do with it... ? Useless as moths'
wings, as moths' flutterings.... She feels the flutterings of silky, crazy
wings in her chest.
He flew out to visit her every several weeks, staying at a different
hotel each time. He telephoned her, and she drove down to park in an
underground garage at the very center of the city.
She lay in his arms while her husband talked to her, miles away,
one body fading into another. He will grow old, his body will change,
she thought, pressing her cheek against the back of one of these men.
If
·it was her lover, they were in a hotel room: always the propped-up
little booklet describing the hotel's many services, with color photographs
