In the Thick of Things
Ross and I had arranged to meet in the office on Saturday; he had been away for over a week and would be flying back that morning. Somebody was usually in on weekends, generally Paul, and when I arrived just after noon, both he and Ross were already encamped there: Paul in the middle of some heated conversation on the phone, Ross sitting on the edge of the copy table, listening to him, biting his thumb nail, occasionally putting in his two cents which Paul would immediately repeat, barking the words into the receiver.
I had lived a dual existence while he was gone, working hard and outwardly flourishing in his absence, but mooning away a good part of my evenings, ostensibly watching TV in my room, but really just reliving all my encounters with Ross; running through my memories of his phone calls during the week to the office, but, especially, his phone call to me here at the house Tuesday night, when, lonely in his hotel room, he murmured lover-like into the receiver, or stopped talking completely, the feeling running silently through the wires. I'd remain in my trance-like state, lying on my back with my one arm draped over my forehead, staring unseeingly at the little black and white screen until Janet, rapping on the door, would yell, "Give it a rest! Turn it off."
These thoughts were so surprisingly vivid, even in his physical absence, that life moved along with relative ease. Nevertheless, a warm flush spread through me on seeing him once again. He looked a little more unconventional in the flesh: eyes more startlingly compelling, nose more prominent, lips more sensuous; a bigger presence altogether. His face brightened at the sight of me as he waved his hand, silently motioning me into the office, glancing down but grinning, almost to himself. Paul looked up briefly, still arguing with the person on the other end of the line, not batting an eye at this restrained little reunion. Our being together had been tacitly accepted by most of the staff.
About an hour later, Colleen showed up. Taken aback by our unexpected presence, evidently feeling the need to explain herself, she complained a bit too strenuously of ‘an overwhelming overload of stuff to do,’ which I found suspect. What did she have to do? She knew Ross was coming back today. She had probably prayed to her fates to find herself alone with him. She never missed a trick. Since the disclosure of our relationship Colleen had gone into a permanent sulk; still she pushed forward, refusing to recognize the black hole sucking in all her emotional ambitions. Paul left shortly after her arrival; he and his wife were going to New Jersey that afternoon to visit Cathy’s family. That left just the three of us. I gave Colleen no shelter, cruelly cutting her off from any conversational ties she tried to string together until she gave up and went home empty-handed.
So Ross and I spent the rest of the afternoon just ‘doing and being,’ as Janet would say, working silently together in our little universe of the reception area and the office just down the hall, its door open and mutely acquiescent; working suspended there in the empty building, the one air conditioner we dared turn on in the outer office (after Paul left) humming away and dripping, accentuating our isolation. For once I didn’t want to turn time forward or back. I wanted it to stay right where it was, just on the edge of something, just on the cusp of the curve. After a little while I turned on the radio and we communicated that way, our thoughts riding piggyback on the airwaves.
Around four Ross called me into his office. He had turned on his small desk fan, but it only succeeded in chopping at the hot intimate air; I’d noticed earlier his shirt stuck sweatily to his back every time he came out into the outer office to use the copier or send a fax. I sat down and filled him in on what had been going on here during the past week. We really could be doing this someplace cooler I thought, watching him put in a call to Gretchen, fanning myself with my papers. So close to each other—in my mind, on the phone—so intimate with the miles separating us, now here, alone in this sauna with only his desk between us, a reservedness had perversely sprung up leaving me slightly uneasy and a little depressed. Why this formality, this pretext of meeting at the office, making sure he left himself a way out, a means of escape? Everyone probably already assumed we were sleeping together. I was having a hard time believing I was that daunting a concept to a man who’d been around the world a few times. There must be a hidden switch on him somewhere I mused, if only I could find it.
Having done everything we could there, Ross stood up, picked up his bags off the other chair—he had come straight from the airport—and swung them over his shoulder. He announced he was gonna pack it in. Did I want to come back to his place and watch the ballgame? Or was that too boring? A Red Sox/Yankee day-night doubleheader (his version of heaven, and I was flattered to be included in it). We could get supper later, between games.
“No, I’d like that . . . by the way, all those vegetables the Wilson’s gave you, did you ever use them?” I asked while gathering up my stuff.
“No.”
“Have you eaten any of them?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s . . .”
Ross rapped my head with his folded up newspaper, an annoying gesture which was why he liked doing it. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Someday we’ll go to Fenway . . . it’s totally different than on TV,” he promised rather wistfully, going out the door behind me and locking it, and I imagined the two of us having a someday, imagined us having a fine time together in that hallowed place. We emerged from the building onto the heat shimmering street; it was still a high summer day, hot and sunny. Blinded by the glare, we stopped short and a panhandler accosted us. Ross dug into his pocket and gave the man his change. I dug into my purse and put on my sunglasses.
Driving down I-95 to Milford, we put a tape in the tape deck and shouted over the music and the highway air blowing through the open windows, talking in a rush between songs. Quiet earlier, intuitive and ambient, we both now had a lot to tell. We drove through town, and on turning one corner, the ocean suddenly came into view in front of us. This never lost the ability to stun. It had only been a little over a week or so since I was here, but it was like greeting an old friend, the warm breezes pushing the smell of rotting seaweed through the car; it smelled like home.
“It’s great to see the water again; you know what I always say: it’s like being let out of a box,” I enthused, turning to Ross. We were stopped at a stop sign. He covered my hand with his and squeezed it for a moment.
“It’s good to be back,” he said, smiling at his own reflection in my sunglasses. He stepped on the gas and we sped forward. I had learned to enjoy the kickback by this time, closing my eyes, sticking my hand out the window; the luxury of time with him stretching out in front of me.
Image: His heaven. Source: Jerry Reuss, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Edited by J. Weigley.