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Romantic As It Should Be

Will Pewitt

    Erwin and Deidre have just picked me up for the threesome I agreed to last week. We’re going out for Italian food first and he and I are a bit overdressed: Erwin wears an ugly grey shirt, striped with blue and gold patterns, which, despite being hideous, complements his cigar-skin and light eyes. I sit in the backseat on the way, watching Erwin carefully eyeing the road. Whenever I’ve driven with him before, he has been loose and talkative—what you want in a comfortable, casual acquaintance. But when they picked me up his voice was jittery, his movements stilted; his responses to basic questions came after long deliberation. Then he began overcompensating, trying to sound in-control, and I’m sure he keeps thinking, What should I say to a man who’s about to sleep with my wife?

*    *    *

    I’ve known Erwin about three years. We had worked in the same office for a little less than a year until I took a job at a rec center after my wife left me. When we worked together, Erwin and I commiserated with each other’s entry-level jobs at the stock brokerage firm, complaining about the duties, the tedious input of numbers, and the rookie positions we had, trying to understand the way things worked inside the heads of men and women who made our salaries in a week—all while trying not to seem jealous, trying not to look stupid when we asked questions. We fetched Red Bull, brought back barbeque and each wore our five ties on the same days of the week the entire time we worked together. The people we dealt with at the firm were the types who go have martinis and say, “There are things in life besides money,” and then laugh raucously.
    I was offered a position at a local rec center that made me look as though I had copped out, abandoned lucrative work in favor of something easier, more juvenile—more fun. I shoot baskets with middle schoolers; I handle the immature children; basically I help people who need helping. Now, Erwin makes roughly five times more than I do and I try not to sound bitter about any of it. I can see, though, Erwin feels awkward in his mannerisms: the way he looks away when he shakes your hand, how he avoids conversation with you at neighborhood get-togethers, a way he parks his car farther from your door than he needs to. We have some mutual friends, and I see them around the neighborhood once a week or so—we still live in the same areas, saving up till I get my own wife and hopefully a life more like his.
    His mousy girlfriend has become a mature housewife and hostess. They serve fifty-dollar-a-bottle champagne and fancy cheese at an annual Christmas party. He flaunts his success. But he still looks at me sometimes as if I’d already slept with his wife. It isn’t with an expression like I’ve taken part in broken their marital bonds or done something lurid with her at a party—but he looks at me as if maybe sometime before their marriage Deidre and I may have had a one-night-stand, maybe lost our virginities to each other in high school, maybe mistook one another for prettier people some drunken night. This is the jealous way men size up each other when they have no substantial sensical reason to dislike one another.
    So why me for their threesome? The only reason I can come up with is that I mentioned over drinks one night that I had had some experiences with men in college. Neither of them said anything at the time, but I suppose they were both thinking things. Apparently, a couple nights of homosexuality makes me a prime candidate for a threesome in their mind. And I think the only reason I’m here is that I haven’t had a date in almost a year, since my wife left me. I blame the celibacy simply on not finding the kind of person I’m into. That’s when I started working at the rec center for less respect and less pay. Who needs money when all you have is yourself?

*    *    *

    “Slow down,” Deidre says to him now. “I think you missed your turn, babe.”
    “The restaurant’s this way. I know where I’m going,” he says.
    “Okay, I know you know where you’re trying to get to, but you should go down—.”
    “Please. If I went that way I’d have to drive up and down the block for—”
    I tune out here. They’ve been going on like this since I arrived. Out the window the sun is boiling down, glazing the gross part of the city. I’m not hungry, and even if I had been before, I don’t think I could stomach anything before the event we’re all supposed to enjoy together. I wish they would’ve said to go over to the house and we’d have it done right away. But apparently there’s a way in which these things are done. And I guess I’m not in a position to make requests. Maybe they’re thinking that I should feel lucky.
    “So Cale, how’s the work at the rec center?” Erwin says to me.
    “Good enough,” I say. Deidre turns around, like she wants me to expand on that, and I do. “It’s fun sometimes, stressful others. Some days there’s nothing much going on and others it’s crazy—tons of drama, you know? Listening to kids who can’t drive yet start talking about their problems. They’re all just getting into relationships. It can get annoying sometimes but mostly I just try to think of it as kind of entertaining.”
    “So what was today like?” Deidre asks with a smile, I guess wanting to hear more about a person who’s going to see naked in a couple hours. Realizing that doesn’t arouse me in the slightest. It just makes me feel sorry for her.
    “I mean,” she says, “was it a more dramatic today or a plain day?”
    “Well usually since it’s the end of the school-year things start to slow down. The biggest drama we had today,” I say blandly, “is that we thought we lost the kid of the gymnastics coach.”
    “Jeez,” she says. “That doesn’t sound exactly drama-less.”
    “Well, I mean the whole thing only lasted half an hour. He wound up in the dugouts in the baseball fields.”
    “I used to play baseball,” Erwin jumps in. His voice is dry as he speaks. “I played centerfield in college.”
    Deidre rolls her eyes. “Did you ever play?” she asks me.
    “Baseball? No. I played football, though.”
    “What position?” she asks.
    “Receiver on offense. D-back on defense.”
    She says, “I don’t know why I asked that. I don’t know anything about sports.”
    “A receiver,” Erwin tries, “is a wideout when you’re on offense, when you have the ball, and a—”
    “Babe, I have no idea what that means.” She looks at me, “I don’t really care either. No offense.”
    I say, “Basically, I caught the ball when my team had the ball and tried to stop people from catching the ball when my team didn’t.”
    “Ah,” she says. I look at Erwin, both hands on his steering wheel.
    She adds, “I used to dance. Pretty good, too. I could’ve had a career.”
    “Don’t brag,” he says. “She likes to be ostentatious,” he says. Although he’s not really using it correctly I let it drop.
    She doesn’t wear lipstick, I notice then. Aside for silver nail polish, nothing about her seems to suggest any large event. I’ve dressed nicely though—perhaps too overdressed, and though I knew we weren’t going to some expensive locale, I assumed a big evening somehow equated to being well-dressed. But Deidre is wearing hardly any makeup, except a black spoke of mascara around her eyes, bringing my eyes to them instead of her rather androgynous clothes: jeans, a buttoned-up white blouse that reveals almost nothing.
    She sees me eyeing her, sizing her up, and when I don’t flash some coy smile I think she feels a touch insulted.
    “You look, you know, really sexy tonight,” I say, then wish I could have it back.
    Erwin looks back to me as though wanting to tell me I’m inappropriate. But can he say?
    Instead he says, “Ah thanks,” as though I was complimenting him.
    Deidre playfully hits him with her handbag.
    “See, why can’t you say things like that?” she says to him.
    He says, “Why can’t you say things like that to me? Guys have pride, too. Right, Cale?”
    “Right. Yeah. Guys have feelings, too.”
    “I don’t know about feelings,” he says, incorporating some of that pseudo-masculine there’s-more-to-life-than-money attitude. “But we can look good, too.”
    “Erwin doesn’t have feelings,” Deidre says. “He’s a little android most of the time.”
    “You just catch me when I come home from work.”
    “He leaves before I wake up.”
    “You can’t complain about these things. Tell her she can’t complain about these things.”
    “You can’t complain about these things,” I say.
    She looks at me and smiles as though we’ve known each other longer and better than we have. Her expression and the way she tilts her head happily seems to say, Maybe this wasn’t really that bad of an idea.
    “Maybe we should change the plans and just go straight to our place,” Deidre says.
    “What? Why?” Erwin says.
    “Well maybe Cale doesn’t like Italian food. We just kind of assumed. We could do it a different way. Maybe we should have ordered in.” She is visibly genuinely concerned. She wants this to go well.
    “We can still change the plans,” she offers.
    “I’m fine with it,” I say. “Totally fine with it.”
    “Maybe we should have ordered in. Also, Cale is dressed so nicely. I don’t look as good.”
    Erwin looks back. “Yeah, why are you dressed up? Why are you wearing that jacket?”
    “He looks nice,” she says.
    I don’t know what to say to this, so I say nothing. I’m shrinking into myself. A pawn.
    “What do you want to do, Cale?” Erwin asks. “Do you want us to pick something up?”
    “Maybe I could go pick it up and you two could go home,” Deidre says.
    “No,” Erwin says at the same time I say, “Whatever you want.”
    “Maybe we—” Deidre starts but is cut off.
    “What do you want to do, Cale?”
    “I think lets just stick to what we had planned. Soldier on. It’s fine.” I think of what I’m saying: Soldier on? What is that? It’s like I’m speeding through the nervous energy of trying to impress two first dates simultaneously.
    Deidre sucks in her breath and sits back in a way that lets me know she’s not satisfied by wanting to soldier on; it was a poor choice of words, I know. She doesn’t want things to just be fine. They need to be great, if not perfect.
    To avoid having to exchange glances I look out the window. There’s a girl—dressed in all white—in the street with trying to ride a bicycle, and I watch her a moment. She’s certainly inexperienced.
    When I turn back to look at the couple in the front seat I try to imagine how their conversation went, how they came to the conclusion that this was a good idea. I hadn’t even wondered if I was the first choice until now. They seem such a straight couple, almost too plain to be a couple seeking to satiate the smallest orgiastic urges.
    She was the one who slipped me the invite at a huge dinner party they threw last Friday. She pulled three fingers lightly down my chest, looked up at me, shrugged her shoulders, sighed. Her hips were barely showing between a tight, chic black skirt and the tip of her thin yellow top. I swallowed audibly. I could see Erwin in the other room, the dark skin, lambent eyes. I said yes.

*    *    *

    We pull up to the restaurant soon, and as Erwin and I start to unbuckle Deidre says, “I feel like we should get to know each other a little bit first.”
    “I hope you know me as well as you need to,” Erwin says to her.
    “Don’t be a smart alec.”
    “What do you mean?” I ask.
    “I mean, I don’t know. At dinner. I wanted to do dinner first just because I thought it would be a good way to get to know one another.”
    “I’d kind of prefer not knowing too much,” Erwin says. “Other than whether or not he has some kind of STD.”
    “Erwin. Jesus.”
    “I’m just asking. I wouldn’t want him to give you one.”
    “God.”
    “She likes to be all didactic,” he says, and although again he’s not using it right, it’s not my place to correct him—especially when I see Deidre doesn’t seem to know he’s wrong.
    “Well do you?” he says to me. “Do you have some kind—”
    “Erwin!”
    “No, I’m as clean as a whistle,” I say, then wishing I could edit my words. I try to sound calm though this might be one of the more awkward moments I’ve ever had: being screened by a prude-looking couple who are asking if I have an STD, sitting in a tiny sedan, in a Macaroni Grill parking lot.
    Why did I come here? I said yes when I didn’t have to, but even then the choice seemed beyond me. I’m twenty-eight years old and have felt powerless since my wife left. I guess this is only one more time.
    “Oh Jesus, Deidre. I’m only kidding.”
    “You wouldn’t be kidding too much if he’d say yes. What an embarrassing thing to be asked.”
    “Don’t you think it’s smart to ask someone that?” he says to me.
    “I would judge you if you didn’t,” I say, though the thought never occurred to me. Perhaps it should have. Perhaps it should when I sleep with women, which isn’t something I worry about now.
    When we step inside, the restaurant is crusted with white lights that grow on artificial vines and painted a veneer of faux red-brick wall. It looks like a place that’s trying too hard to make you feel like you’re somewhere you should want to be.
    A hostess seats us in a nook and Deidre smiles thankfully as if she’s glad to be away from the main floor where other people might see or listen to us.
    “This is nice,” she says to the two of us after the hostess has gone. “I thought some privacy would be better maybe.”
    “Are you ashamed of us?” Erwin asks.
    “No, it’s just a little odd. Seeing three people, you know, going out for dinner.”
    “Are you serious?” he says. “No it’s not. Three people go out to dinner all the time. Maybe he’s your cousin, or my brother. Or maybe we’re all just friends.”
    “You and I don’t look like friends,” she says. “We’re both wearing wedding rings.”
    “I don’t know that we need disguises,” I say. “It’s not something we need to hide.”
    Erwin nods toward me, “She’s just being ridiculous.”
    “Don’t do that tonight, Erwin,” she says. Don’t go talking about me like I’m not here.”
    He rolls his eyes toward me, and I wonder how he gets through this relationship without a guy to fall back on when he needs to.
    I thought by now I’d be able to decipher whose idea this was. I don’t really care, and I haven’t really been looking, but it seemed an important thing to know—like having all the facts in front of you when dealing with a customer or when I try to talk to kids about their issues.
    “So what is it you were so desperate to talk about?” Erwin says to his wife.
    “I wasn’t so desperate to talk about anything. I just thought it would be a good idea or something. And then you launch in with your STD junk.”
    “Hey we don’t really know Cale all that well. Not on those levels, anyway. It’s only smart to ask.” Then he asks, “So why aren’t you married anymore, Cale?”
    “Erwin, you’re being so, I don’t know, inappropriate tonight.”
    “Inappropriate?”
    “All right, bad choice of words. But you know what I mean. Stop being so,” but in the frustration, her vocabulary is limited. “Weird. Stop being so weird.”
    “This whole thing is weird. But fun. You can’t escape the weirdness, though.”
    “Maybe this is a little too weird,” I say.
    “No, no,” Deidre says. “Erwin’s not being on his best behavior.”
    “I’m not a child.”
    “Calm down,” she says.
    “Maybe we should change the subject,” I say. “I mean, I don’t want cause problems.”
    Deidre says to Erwin, “You should be thinking about how you can make someone uncomfortable, Erwin. He’s always like this when he feels awkward.”
    “Well, I can see where he’s coming from.”
    “Do you feel awkward?” she asks, as though my answer has the possibility of offending her personally. “What do you want to do?”
    I wish they would stop asking me what I want. I want to fuck them and set them on fire at once.
    “No, no. I’m fine. I’m great. Let’s keep on.”
    “Soldier on?” Erwin says and grins. “This is what our leader says.”
    I nod, and look to the side as if I’m assessing something poignant, but really I wonder what the odds are that we’ll drop this whole thing. I’m really not in the mood anymore. But I don’t want to disappoint. They’re marriage might be floundering; they might need something new—although I don’t really see why sleeping with another person makes them any closer. Having a shared unusual experience?
    “When was the last time you had sex?” Erwin asks.
    “Erwin, quit with this. It’s like you’re interviewing a witness.” Then to me, she says, “Erwin watches too many cop shows.”
     “You’re the one who wanted to get him talking about personal things—get to know each other, right?”
    “Well I thought we’d do it a little more naturally than all this.”
    “So when was it?” he asks me.
    “I don’t know. A few weeks I guess.”
    “When was the last time we had sex?” he asks his wife.
    “I’m done,” Deidre says and stands at the moment the waitress comes at that moment and Deidre asks for the check though we haven’t ordered anything—not even drinks.
    “Um?” the waitress says before looking at Erwin and me. “Do you mean you’re leaving?”
    Deidre still stands but doesn’t move. She surveys the table as if she expects something to happen or someone to say something to save her from embarrassment. No one does.
     “Don’t be so pedantic,” he says, and then I pick up on how this is what he does: use words a little too lofty for his wife to make her feel stupid—or at least below him.
    It works. She looks down at her menu as if reading, but her eyes flick over it so quickly it’s obvious she’s thinking of other things. She has nothing else to say. What do you say when you don’t know what’s going on besides just agree and go along?
    “I’d like to leave. Yes,” she says. At that second I can see this is something she’s pushed on Erwin that now he wants to get out of I look at him. He avoids looking at me. I wonder if I would’ve pushed my wife into something like this when I was married. I once mentioned with my wife that we could have had a threesome with another man. She didn’t want to though. From then on she questioned things about me. I’d be lying if I didn’t start questioning myself, too.
    “I’ll be in the car,” she says.
    “Don’t make a scene,” he says.
    “I’m not making a scene. I’m just leaving. I’m trying not to make a scene.”
    “You’re being obsequious,” he says.
    Deidre and I look at each other like neither of us knows what it means. Erwin probably doesn’t either.
    “She’s always doing this,” he says to me.
    She says, “You’re acting like a child.”
    “I’m acting like a child,” he says to me. He grins and straightens his posture and smooths out his repulsive shirt. He swallows and briefly looks unsure of himself.
    Then he looks at me, grimaces and looks away. He rolls his eyes in a way people do when they’re worried their sarcasm is going to get them slapped but can’t help themselves anyway. Deidre is gone.
    As she departs I take the napkin out of my lap. When did I set it there? We haven’t been here long enough for me to touch the table. I look at the single men at the bar, the waiters, the other parties. I look at any of the men present other than Erwin.
    Then it occurs to me I am witnessing the crossroads of their marriage. No. More than that. I am integral—critical—to it.
    “I’ll go see how she is,” I say. “I mean I can just go talk with her a second.”
     He’s quiet. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m messing with him or if I genuinely want them to work through this. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m after either.
    “Maybe I’ll do a good job of settling her down.”
    This idea does not sit well with Erwin. He looks at me, with something like anxiety at my smile—the wriest one I can conjure.
    “No, no. I will.”
    “Listen, I really think she’s made it pretty clear that y—”
    “Just don’t go anywhere yet.”
    I have never given Erwin enough thought to truly consider him someone who gets under my skin, but now I want him to be. My thoughts go back and forth about the different reasons I am here: lust has so little to do with it. Salvaging, for both myself and for them, seems a much more appropriate word. Power, also, doesn’t seem unfitting.
    In less than five minutes Deidre is back. Erwin is nowhere to be seen.
    “So did you kill him?” I say.
    She huffs a laugh, “Not yet.”
    “Ah,” I say. “I thought now we’d have a chance to be alone.” I wink and touch her foot with mine. It should be obvious that I’m kidding, but I don’t know that it registers.
    Her mouth scrunches in a softly snorted laugh.
    I ask, “So did he make you come back in to turn me on again?”
    She swallows. “Hardly. I told him I can’t look at him. He said don’t go. Here I am. If he comes back in here right now I swear to God, it’s over.”
    “That’s a big statement.”
    “It’s gotta be obvious that this isn’t exactly working,” she says, with eyes that rest on me, begging me, Please you have to understand.
    “Is that why I’m here?”
    She shrugs in a way that says yes.
    “Because I keep getting the feeling that I’m causing more harm that good.”
    “No, no,” she says. “You’re helping us. This is gonna make or break it.”
    I hold out my hand. She takes it reluctantly. I wish Erwin would come in right now.
    “I think that if you need something like this then the decision’s already been made for you.” She is quiet and staring into the shiniest dinner plate I’ve ever seen. I’m sure she can see her reflection. Maybe this would be a turn-on to her husband. To see her holding me like this. Or maybe it would be the end of everything. I look at her. Do I actually find her attractive? Sexually? I haven’t even thought about it. He is.
    “I don’t think you should be putting me in a situation where I should make the choice for you guys.”
    “You’re not making it. I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she says, pulling her hands toward her so she can put them over her face. I take her hands back.
    “Yes you do.”
    I kiss her.
    A couple of neighboring tables are looking over. I can’t even imagine what they think is going on—what is happening. What is happening?
    The first thing I’ve actually wanted to happen all night does: Erwin is a few feet away.
    “I thought this would calm her down.” I wait to get hit, to feel a muscled fist thrust against me. Instead he grabs her—not hard, not violent—and speeds her toward the exit.
    She looks back at me with nothing like desire, with only desperation. Again, I am her hope. I follow. I want to fuck them and set them on fire at once.
    At the car there is no conversation about it. Deidre doesn’t say she wants to drive. She sits where she is and waits for him to get in the backseat. When they both sit next to each other, daring the other to speak I get out, go around the car to the driver’s seat.
    I stop a moment and see the craggy, bird-dropping-drenched trees. I see a homeless man on the corner with a sign, the back of which, I see, is the box of a family board game. I think of them in the back. I can hear them as I stand outside even with every door and window shut. They are an attractive couple. I’ve seen him at the pool in the summers—dark-skin with taut muscles. She’s pretty good too.
    After a moment I open the door, trying not to listen to them. I take the emergency brake off, put it in gear, and start to drive. They are talking about why they’re here.
    The first thing I hear is him saying, “That’s hitting below the belt.”
    “Yeah, well something was wrong down there already,” she says.
    “Listen man,” I say, “I just thought I’d kiss her to maybe start things along. I thought that’s what you’d want.”
    “You just drive, asshole. Take yourself home.”
    “At least he made a goddamn move. The only thing you’re doing is trying to back out. You’re trying to back out of everything. You don’t even want this to work. Cale was right about this—if we’ve come to this then this marriage is officially on the outs.”
    Having the actually drama collapsing just behind me as I’m driving them along changes the feeling of the whole thing. There’s no power in it. There’s no resolution in it.
    “I think I will just take myself home.”
    “See, you’ve scared him off,” she says.
    “Oh please. We weren’t gonna do anything. We all knew that.”
    “Not this guy,” Erwin says, giving a decent thump to the back of my head. “He was into it. Definitely more than we were.”
    “Shut up. It’s our fault it’s like this. You didn’t even think about Cale.”
    “Bullshit. The guy didn’t have to come. He could’ve said no and never talked to us again. What’s the damn difference to him.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Why would you even put up with this? With this jackass.”
    “Shut the hell up,” he says.
    “Don’t talk to me like that.”
    Then to me, she says, “Seriously though, why did you even come?”
    “Don’t ignore me,” he says.
    Then all of a sudden I start yelling things.
    “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. Maybe I’m sick of talking to kids all day at some rec center. Maybe I know I should be happy to be doing better than you but I’m not. Maybe your wife is pretty. Or you, maybe you’re just goddamn hot. Who knows?”
    None of that seems to be true, but who knows. Maybe it is and I can’t realize it.
    I go on. “And why am I dressed up? I don’t know. Maybe because I never have an excuse to look good anymore. Maybe because this is my first ‘date’ in a year. Why am I wearing nice clothes? How do I know what to do in a situation like this? I’m wearing this jacket because I wanted to wear this jacket.”
    When I take a breath I realize I’m looking in the backseat as I’m driving. When I look back around the girl I saw earlier on the bicycle is in the road.
    I swerve to miss her. I do. However, I’ve run their car between a bush and a tree.
    The car and the tree collide almost silently. I couldn’t have been going more than ten miles an hour. The engine is clicking to a halt. I get out of the car. The engine is running but the only thing I hear is the wind pushing through the Spanish oak that now punctuates the car.
    The sun has just gone down and the streetlights aren’t on yet on. It’s still early, I realize. Not romantic as it should be—if it’s even “supposed to be” romantic at all. But I don’t know what this should be like.
    Deidre and Erwin are quiet in the car. Everything is quiet though everything seems to be broken down. I feel like they should do something, and I wait for it to come—for them to blow up at me. But what would they do? What do you say to something like this?
    After about a minute, I realize the girl is trying to ride away, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s trying to learn how to ride by herself, which momentarily makes a touch of empathy split through me. I walk over to her, wanting to help her, feeling sorry for her that no parent or sibling or friend is trying to teach her how to do something that everyone should enjoy. Nobody is trying to help her. Her hair is tied back and she looks tired, like she’s been trying to learn something on her own for a very long time.
    I step closer. She notices I’m coming toward her. Then she drops the bicycle in the middle of the street. It lands with a clang that lingers loudly in the street. Then she tears off, running back home I guess, her clothes—all of them perfectly white—receding until she’s completely vanished. She leaves without thinking about it, without doubting for a moment what she should do. She makes a good decision, the decision I actually tell kids at the center to do if they’re ever alone and see a stranger coming toward them. She does what’s right—what she knows she should do—and runs away. Even though she’s alone.
    I keep walking toward the middle of the street, and when I get to the bicycle I pick it up, straighten it, and lean it upright against a tree and walk—not knowing the direction I’m going, but knowing I’m walking away, so unsatisfied.

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