Chapter 18
18
LAST JANUARY
The affair started on an ordinary Tuesday morning, when everyone else on the cul-de-sac was gone.
Everyone except Lisa and Anton.
After watching the school bus leave, Lisa waited at her window with a cup of coffee until she saw Aimee’s truck drive away. Moments later, Gwen appeared in a pencil skirt and three-inch heels and teetered to her car with a work bag slung over her shoulder. Lisa knew that she worked in Georgetown on Tuesdays and Thursdays and wouldn’t be home until late afternoon.
Her own house was empty. Marcus and Kai were long gone—middle school started earlier than the elementary school. Scott had left a while ago, so besides Paola and her ancient poodle, no one else was home in this little corner of Nassau Court.
It had been two weeks since the ski vacation in Vermont, and if Lisa was going to act, she needed to do it soon, before whatever had transpired between her and Anton evaporated. And something had transpired. It had animated the both of them for the remainder of the trip. Thrilling moments of eye contact from across the room, whispered jokes, although not obvious enough for anyone to notice. They were such a self-absorbed bunch, anyway, Lisa thought, they couldn’t even see it happening under their own noses. But Lisa felt it in every fiber of her being. Anton was interested.
It was unsettling to have an awakening of this part of her, which had lain dormant for so long. She had been faithful to Marcus in their fifteen years together. They still had sex dutifully once a week, always in the same position—starting with her on top, ending in doggy-style—at which point Marcus would jump up and head straight to the shower. Their sex life was as routinized and efficient as their grocery shopping on Instacart or the automated payments to their utilities that left their checking account each month.
But Anton made her feel like a teenager again, back when sex was forbidden. How many times had her mother blamed Lisa for ruining her life by being born? Her mother had gotten pregnant right after high school and had married Lisa’s father. Both were products of an insular Italian community in Syracuse, where they grew up. The divorce came three years and two more kids later. Then her mother’s second marriage and two more kids. But all through Lisa’s adolescence and teen years, the specter of teen pregnancy hung over her. With withering looks, her mother would call her a slut if her shirt was too tight, a whore if she painted her nails red. It only made Lisa more curious about sex, and good at hiding it when she discovered it.
Thinking about Anton tapped into that same teen thrill of sneaking around. On his own, he wasn’t that appealing of a man. She wouldn’t call him a failed writer, exactly; his one book, so many years ago, was a commercial success. But then nothing. No sequel or anything. There had been talk of a movie, but nothing ever panned out. As for his tenuous position at the university, he wasn’t even a full professor. He was good-looking enough, with nice brown eyes and a full mouth, and he was in decent shape.
But what made him sizzle was that he belonged to Gwen. And he was unhappy with her.
Since Vermont, she had established a pattern of taking a glass measuring cup to Anton’s on the days Gwen was gone. The first time, she went so far as to pretend she was really there for some sugar for baking. But now when she showed up, waving the empty cup, he smiled and let her in. Still, she carried it with her just in case someone on the street stopped her and asked what she was doing.
So far, when she had been over, they only talked and hung out. But today that would change.
Lisa threw a sweater and pants over her prettiest bra and matching thong—a bright bubblegum-pink lace set that showed off the tan she kept year-round. She was the opposite of Gwen physically—dark where Gwen was pale, voluptuous where Gwen had the figure of a hipless teenage boy. She was counting on the fact that Gwen would never wear anything like this. Her underwear was probably unbleached organic cotton.
Outside, the sky was milky white and the air damp. It was a miserable January day. There was talk of a snowstorm, but that’s usually all it was in Washington—talk. Despite the cold and gray, Lisa was as giddy as a little girl on her birthday. She swung her glass measuring cup by her side as she walked toward the house, a little bounce in her step.
She knocked to announce her presence, but then let herself in. Anton always left the door unlocked. Everyone on the cul-de-sac did. She surveyed his shoes lying on their sides in the foyer, Sababa’s leash on the floor, and his jacket strewn over the banister. Neither Lisa nor Marcus could tolerate personal belongings left about, and it bugged her to see a grown man being so lazy.
But she bit her tongue.
She wasn’t here to lecture Anton on housekeeping.
“Hello? Do you have any sugar by any chance?” she sang out. “I’m baking a cake and we’re all out.” She giggled. It was preposterous, comical even. She wasn’t a baker. She couldn’t remember ever using this glass measuring cup, or even where it had come from. She had never understood the point of spending hours destroying the kitchen just to make things that were sold in stores.
“Oh, I think we’ve got some,” Anton called from inside. “Come on in.”
She found him in the living room, sitting on the sofa, game console in his hand. Who was Anton? She had never really considered him before Vermont, as she had never really considered any of the husbands of the women she knew. They were appendages to the women, interesting only in what they might reveal about the women themselves.
Women were infinitely more fascinating.
And what did Anton reveal about Gwen?
That she was willing to put up with a man-child. He taught at the university on Mondays and Wednesdays but was otherwise home, theoretically working on his novel. Lisa had once heard a tipsy Gwen complain that Anton spent hours playing video games, drinking, and watching porn. It made her think that Gwen’s self-confidence was a facade—she had to have low self-esteem to put up with behavior like this. A guy like Anton might be fun to date, he might make a great boyfriend, but he wasn’t husband material, and probably never had been.
Anton went into the kitchen and came back with two mugs of coffee, stopping at the bar cart to pour some whiskey into each.
They had begun this ritual—drinking hot coffee with just a splash of whiskey—on her first visit, when she had professed a deep interest in video games and an eagerness to try playing them.
It was bullshit, of course. But Anton wanted her to want to play. He was like a child that way, the way so many men were. Wanting to be watched and cheered on. They were all like that. Marcus with his cycling. Kai with his soccer.
She had learned this as a young girl, ingratiating herself with her mother’s boyfriends. Big-eyed, attentive, demure. A few ended up liking her more than they liked her mother, which didn’t endear her to her mother at all.
Lisa knew there was no way Gwen was playing video games with Anton. She didn’t need him to tell her that Gwen didn’t approve.
Why would she? Lisa wanted to laugh. She was probably at her fancy PR firm tweaking some press release. PR was a perfect job for Gwen, she was so obsessed with her image. Lisa could tell by looking around the curated house, with its oatmeal-and- cream palette, that Anton was the one thing that just didn’t fit. He must have felt it, too. His slovenliness was an act of rebellion.
Lisa took a seat next to him on the couch, but she could barely make small talk. She was trembling with excitement. Knowing that she was about to take someone else’s husband was such an aphrodisiac, it was making her physically jumpy. What was Gwen doing now? Was she managing the Insta of one of her PR clients, touching up that one stray hair, or staring out the window of her office in Georgetown, praying that someone might put her rich, bored housewife self out of her misery? Lisa giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Anton cocked her head.
“Oh, I don’t know. This. Everything.”
“You mean playing video games in the middle of the day when I should be writing?” He smiled, but he looked a little hurt.
“Oh no, not that. Not that at all. I was just thinking of how when I was getting dressed this morning, I was wondering if you’d like what I was wearing.” Her heart sped up. This was it. She felt like she might explode.
He looked at her sweater and her jeans. “I like your sweater.”
“No, silly, not the sweater.”
She put the mug of coffee down and stood up. In one move, one she had practiced in front of the mirror until she got it down pat, Lisa pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it, then wiggled out of her jeans so she was standing before him in only her pink bra and thong. “I mean this.” She did a very slow twirl so he could take it in, including the barbed wire heart tattoo she had on her ass. She came back around and stood in front of him, her skin starting to get goose pimples from the cold.
For a millisecond Anton was frozen, and an icy chill went through her. Had she miscalculated? Was she about to be humiliated?
He put the game console down and stood, smiling.
“Oh, I like it,” he said. “I like it a lot.”