She Left Him

2.

            I was part of the plan.

            Here at the evening poolside party.  Media mogul's place. Hamptons. The ocean breeze dreaming in. In the tent. For donors to the ballet. Swank city.

            I was happy he'd put me on, and I was hoping I was making a difference. You see, his girl had left him. Run off.

            All the women at the party thought he looked dangerous. Heck, all women thought he was trouble.

            And he was.

            Maybe it was his jaw line. Or his eyes. There was something menacing about them. About all of him, actually. He made his way in the world doing deals, swooping in. The way a hawk would. Or maybe they thought he was a risk, a big one, by the way he held himself, his back to the bar, leaning against it, one foot on the rail.

            A real cowboy. In Armani.

            He's rough and refined. Like me.

            I'm uncreased. Like his face. I'm a pair of twill linen trousers. Beige-y doesn't sound masculine enough. Think sand. Think dust. Think severe. Severely nonchalant. Frankly, I could be a pair of pajama bottoms, so relaxed, my cuffs pooling around his ankles.

            Confused? Don't be. Think nightclothes.

            It's those eyes of his, taking everything in. All the ladies in their gowns. So much plumage, so many sequins and beads, so much chitter chat. A few hens. But mostly chicks, the long-legged kind. His fingers plied the stem of his martini glass. He liked stems. A lot.

            He brought his girl to this little evening thing thinking she would like it. Had a fantasy she might get loose, go crazy nuts, go for a dip. Maybe he'd jump in, too, though he knew he never would. Something people would talk about for years. It would be legend. He would enjoy watching her. He liked watching her.

            But all she did was pout, all the way from the braised beets and arugula through the poached trout to the raspberries and crème brulee.

            Then he said something she took wrong. She snarled at him and got up to leave. He grabbed her wrist. Hard. He could have broken it. He was that kind of man. But she shook loose of him and went off into the night, a shoe falling off. Just like in the fairy tales.

            Except there's no black patent leather in Grimm's.

            He knew it was inevitable she would leave him. It broke his heart.

            You'd never see it on his face. No way. No how. You'd never even know he had a heart, looking at him.

            His jacket's off and on the bar. Too hot for that, even with the fresh wind. Like him, it's structured and loose, all at the same time. And on the jacket? Her shoe, brand new.

            She would have to come back for that, now wouldn't she? He was waiting. Patient. That's what his clients paid him for. His self-discipline. He would forgive her for her childish behavior. He knew her all too well.

            

            And his shirt. I don't mean to draw attention away from myself, but it was so sheer it would have been barely acceptable if a woman had been wearing it. Really. Cuffs rolled to his elbows.

            There's something relaxed and coiled about him—all at the same time. Like he's about to explode or dissolve. More likely neither. Just locked-jaw tension. Think Kirk Douglas—the movie star whose best roles were that of a boxer, a saxophone player, Van Gogh, and a U.S. Navy destroyer officer who also happened to be an alcoholic. And a rapist. Not a cat with whom to mess.

            There he is all easy. At the bar. Acting like nobody saw what had happened.

            Then she comes up. Up in his mind. Like a champagne bubble rising.

            Better put, She. Capital 'S.' It's the most feminine letter—all curves. Sibilant, too, and smooth.           

            He watches her professionally shed the geezer chatting her up. That old bore. Money talks, but not with her.

            She comes over, her falcon eyes leading the way. They locked in on him, and she came across the space. I wish I could say she floated, lissome, but there was this....mmm…thrust of androgyny about her.

            They were two of a kind, her in 1920s-style floral-print silk brocade satiny pants. More like lounging pajamas. Shoes? Gold silk faille. Her top? A sheet net bodysuit aswirl with vines, a chinoiserie pattern of beads, rhinestones, cabochon stones. Blooming roses just happened to adorn her nipples.

            A pixie do. A real Louise Brooks, she was.

            Dangly earrings. A real cascade, she was. A controlled avalance of a woman.

            Neck like a swan's, a bird. All song.

            "Hey, mister," she said, cozying up next to him, touching his forearm with the very tip of the laquered nail of her index finger. Quite feminine. Quite bold. "Buy a girl a drink?" she asked. She didn't flutter her eyelids or blink.

            He smiled thinly at her, looking down into her green eyes. She was tall, especially so in heels, but he was taller. He did not like what his cock was doing. Better put, what she was inspiring his penis to do. Which was pay attention. To her. I didn't mind. Plenty of room in me in which to secrete one's self. Capacious, I am, hider of many secrets.

            He changed his position, putting a hand in my pocket, deep, the better to conceal his feelings. Don't want to let a gesture give a thing away.

            "Happy to oblige, Missy," he replied, his hand balling. That was what people called her—Missy. Her real name was something agonizingly Mayflowery like Florence Mildred Evangeline Brewster Winslow. Of course, no one ever called her any such damn thing. As far as he was concerned she was Miss Chief, the chief mistress of mischief.  A lot of trouble she was, especially between her thighs. She had athletic thighs.

            "Give the lady what she wants," he told the bartender.

            "Shot of Jack," she replied. "Neat." Without looking at the bartender, her eyes locked on his, high on him.

            "Shot of Jack," he laughed. "Neat. What kind of drink is that for a woman?"             Intentionally, he did not say, "What kind of drink is that for a lady?"

            Not replying, she asked, "What are you drinking?"

            "I'm drinking you in, good lookin'." He straightened up so he could be even taller than her, and he stepped back a bit to better absorb her. Such dove-like breasts. Conspicuous, yet hidden. Wasn't that always the way with women?

            Wasn't that always the way with him, I wondered.

            She put a hand on one hip and did that thing that women can do with their hips. Which men notice.

            "And are you drunk yet?" she asked.

            "I'm getting' there," he replied. He found himself staring at her lips. They were compelling—parted, glistening.

            Women were always doing things to him, and he would catch himself staring at their fingernails or hair or elbows. Her lips were moist. Like she was fresh from the ocean. He wondered if she would taste salty. He took a deep breath and held it in. And he looked away from those lips, a pale red whose name he did not know. He would not let on, not about not knowing a hue, not about nothing.

            "When you get there to Drunktown, let me know," replied Missy. She took the merest sip from her whiskey. If it was a sip at all. The deceiver. How Atlantic she was.

            He didn't say anything.

            "You do that deal with J&J?" she asked.

            "P&G," he replied, bored, looking off in the distance, as though he might catch a glimpse of his girl.

            "It's all about the ampersands to you," she teased. "You don't care anything about the companies you do. Do you?"

            She nudged my cuff with the tip of her pump.

            "The companies I 'do'?" he asked. "Are we being euphemistic?"

            "Very," she replied. "I remember being in your company."

            "I remember being in yours," he said, thinking about their carriage ride in Central Park, the overnight train in Scotland, and the back of his limo at 3 a.m. on New Year's Eve.

            And the ride home in the cab alone after the judge gave the both of them his ruling.

            And a piece of his mind.

            "I felt very well employed," she said.

            "But I had to discharge you," he said. "Non-performance. Thought we had a non-compete."

            "A shame," she said. "I'm happier now."

            "Yes, I heard you found a new position. One you'd never tried before." Then he asked, going a bit too far, "Want me to punctuate you again? Old time's sake. Hostile takeover."

            She knocked back the whiskey, her dangly earrings asway like pendulums. "You're cruel."

            "Like you," he said.

            "Fuck you," she replied.

            "Done that," he said.

            They both looked at their feet. Each other's.

            "So where's your date?" she asked, her eyes glittering at him. "You had a little tiff with her. Everyone saw. Quel scandale."

            Smirking, she applied a hand to his forearm.

            Some comfort, I thought. If insincerity was medicine, she'd be a full bottle.

            "Lover's quarrel," he replied. "She'll be back. She left this." He picked up his girl's Mary Jane, dangling it from a finger.

            "I bought it for her at Saks."

            A 12-year-old girl came running up, breathless.

            Hopping, actually.

            Blond tresses. Ballerina-length dress, peppermint, blue sash at the waist. One shoe.

            "Mom, you and Dad aren't fighting again, are you?" she asked, her arm around him.

            I felt his hand relax in my pocket. He took it out and draped his arm around his girl.

            "Never," he said, looking at Missy. "Never."

           

(From the forthcoming book "The Secret Lives of Men's Britches" by A. Tad Strange.)