“Vertigo” (or how a marriage opens)

We were with friends who had cats, two males and a female, and the talk was of whether to let the males have at her. I argued that we should, that was the natural thing to do, and prevailed, but I was disappointed she was given to the more aggressive one who knew her least, rather than to the gentle one with whom she seemed to have developed some rapport- I liked that cat better and thought he would be better for her, but there was no point arguing.

“It's going to be a kind of rape,” I said, trying to find some humor- these weren't people, after all.

“That's how things are in the world of cats,” someone said. I thought about how certain housewives would embrace the fact that she was no longer a virgin- and that there was something mean-spirited in that celebration of her having been had- as if they saw her now as closer to them, in their middle-aged resignation, no longer as young or free-spirited as before.

The female cat seemed a little sore, tender, the next day. I remarked the fact, adding hopefully, “She'll feel better tomorrow.” I made that comment really to cheer myself up. Her suffering bothered me.

“That's how things are with cats,” someone said. I recalled then that male cats had barbed penises, which caused pain each time they were pulled out. Could it get any worse?

On the Metro home there was some disturbance on the train that carried over into the station. Some black people were arguing and I got involved as a witness, offered an opinion. And as I was riding down the escalator away from the contretemps at last, someone reached down to bang me on top of the head. Fearless in my anger, I came back up, saw the guy, a dark-skinned black guy in a gray suit who hadn't been part of the original dustup.

“I know who did it,” I said. “Only a coward would hit someone from above, when he couldn't be seen.” The guy and I made eye contact, but I didn't push for further confrontation. Having made the point, I continued on my way.

A friend of mine from college came over with two friends to stay for a few days. Akemi and I welcomed him- but it struck me pretty soon as selfish just to show up unannounced and expect us to make room, not just for him but for his friends. I saw, though, that from his vantage point it was just natural; he didn't mean to impose and in his view wasn't doing so. I tried to think as he did, ease up, remember how things were in college. Akemi, for her part, seemed not to mind. She went on with her life- but it was a fact that while they were with us our life was no longer our own. I liked the friend- his easygoing ways- and his friends whom he'd met traveling, two young women, one from Hong Kong. I appreciated the opportunity to be near, share daily life up close with three attractive women now.

Akemi was opening up, adjusting to the new setting, living abroad. Guys came on to her, strangers on the street, and a lot of times the language barrier prevented her from quickly understanding what they wanted.

“Here's the business card of a 'sukebi na jiji,'” she said to me as she handed me the item in question, a slightly smudged white card from which the original address had been crossed out and a new phone number added. Seemed the man was new in the neighborhood. “Sukebe na jiji” meant in her language “horny old man.”

Akemi made a face as she explained he had approached her in the supermarket and again when she went back, second occasion greeting her with a great big welcome. He said he'd just been to her country. “That's an opening,” Akemi said to me. “You bet it is. Convenient.” I laughed.

“He told me he's a lawyer and his brother's an investment banker.” Akemi didn't like people who showed off.

“I was busy and forgot some things because of him. I couldn't concentrate.” So she had returned to the supermarket, only to find him still there.

“First at the vegetables,” she said, describing the second encounter. “Then he followed me. I don't like that aggressive type. It scares me. I pretended I didn't see him. Then when I was looking at fish.” She imitated his open-eyed smile she hadn't been able to ignore.

“Is he older than me?” I asked.

“Of course!”

She didn't like him. “That aggressive type scares me,” she repeated. If he just said, 'Hey!'-” She again mimed his smile, opened her arms- the display had struck her as ridiculous- “at the vegetables.” Where he'd arranged for them to bump into each other when he saw her in the aisles again.

“But he-”

“Followed you to the fish.” She'd already said this, so I finished the sentence for her. “He likes you."

“He's lonely.” Akemi frowned, not moved to sympathy.

“But he likes you,” I said.

“That's why he's lonely. That aggressive type.”

I nodded. Nobody wanted someone pushy.

“Why'd he have to tell me he's a lawyer and his brother's a banker?” She thought he meant to impress.

“Probably to let you know he's not some strange guy,” I hazarded a guess. “Maybe you should go with him,” I joked. “He has money and he'll die soon and leave it to you. Probably he won't expect much, just wants companionship.”

“You never know.” Akemi laughed. That he would die soon, she meant.

I could see why he liked her, of course. Akemi wasn't dressed specially that afternoon, outfitted for the neighborhood, casual. The jeans she wore were faded; thin denim conformed to her lines; they made her legs look longer- she seemed to float rather than walk. She had on a little top, dun-colored with pale pin stripes, so small it more or less snapped into place, rode her breasts- and rather than hang straight from there adhered to her belly, as if the stretch cotton contained some chemical additive that maximized static electricity. She wore the top untucked. It had little curved tails front and back and cut away on the sides, revealing the tan of her hips, left and right above her jeans. That top showed off a dynamic contrast- she was both petite and graced with curves. There was a tautness- she danced, kept in good shape- and a luxuriance the eye liked: slim waist and breasts that bobbed straight out, seemed to confront you with a challenge as you talked, say, in a supermarket. I sound melodramatic, I know, but there it was, the audacity of nature, wildness and rich abundance- exuberance and gravity, no limit to either promise or risk- before which only a fool could fail to react.

My gaze kept jumping down to her bust; the leading edge held the fabric so fast it trembled. That narrow waist and those projectile breasts- the improbability- took your breath away- that and Akemi's artlessness; open, unaffected, she was self-aware, didn't lack for maturity- in her eyes I saw playfulness and watchfulness; as she came of age, she'd realized how men reacted to her- no question it made her tired sometimes. Looking at me and talking about him, she appeared both entertained and wary, in which proportion I couldn't guess.

And there was her glossy black hair, held back in a pony tail for shopping- her face beamed. You naturally wanted to run your hands down the slope of her back to the outward curve of her ass, those young wife's faded jeans. She made a bright package, compact, ready to burst into your arms.

Of course, I felt some jealousy listening to her version of the encounter, and it was good to hear her dismiss the older guy out of hand. Though more powerful, more moneyed, able to show for himself accomplishment I still lacked, he clearly didn't stand a chance with Akemi. I could easily smile and listen to her talk about him.

"What?" Akemi stopped, her eyes flashing, her anger spilling over to me until she caught herself. "Aren't you taking me seriously?" she asked. "Are you laughing at me?"

"No. Go ahead."

Akemi smiled in turn, softened, realizing my glee signaled no disrespect but instead overflowing love for her.

My hand went to the little shoulder of her top, drawn by curiosity to that soft fabric- I wanted to touch her. For a moment Akemi didn't know what to do, as my hand stayed put. At last she leaned her face to it, nudged with her cheek, showed she understood me. We looked at each other seriously then, almost without expression, the smiles drained into other feelings. Akemi made the world seem all right again.

"Did you have a good sleep? Alone."

"Mm." Akemi meant that affirmative answer playfully, knew I'd hoped she'd say no, lament the loneliness she'd felt without me at her side. With the house guests there, we'd given up the bed. Akemi got the sofa. The three visitors were out on their own sightseeing- that afternoon we had our first time alone since they'd arrived unannounced.

"Good texture." She knew I was relaying the message my hand sent me from her bare upper arm. I ended up pulling the shoulders of her top down, beneath her breasts, couldn't resist. It made them really jut out, missile-like.

I could point to no good reason for my getting turned on by the thought of another man wanting Akemi and being unable to have her.

My hands found warmth that wasn't only from temperature, raw sensation my skin interpreted as heat. I had at those rubbery surfaces, nipples plugs between my fingers.

"What?" Akemi laughed, as she indulged me getting her chest wet- moving around like some artist at a canvas, wielding my tongue as a paintbrush. Of course, that became a kiss of our open mouths. If Akemi sometimes wondered what the difference was between me and a guy like the one in the supermarket, well, so did I. I stood guilty as charged, like him a horny American turned on by her exoticism. I just happened to be Akemi's husband. I too was older than her, though not by as much.

At a party for work I attended with my former girlfriend Pam, my thoughts weren't on the festivities but a packet of seeds I had spotted at an outdoor market on the way there. The seeds were for a flower and packaged with the title "ai," which I recognized as the Chinese word for love. That wasn't the name of a flower- the picture resembled an iris or a crocus- must have been the variety. I wanted to send the seeds in their paper sleeve as a greeting to Akemi, who I had just met and hoped to see more of. It would be a great gift. She'd have a houseplant, a flower, and know of my interest. If moved, she could respond. A gesture that poetic- "AI" for love!- if she liked me even a little bit she'd be thrilled and make the next move. But I decided not to mail her the present after all. The setting caused me to think twice. There I stood in the middle of a convention center, nearly middle age now, surrounded by coworkers and associates, yet thinking like a teenager. I had reached the stage in life when it was time to stop flirting that way, jumping from woman to woman, no matter how good it still felt. I realized I probably never would again. It was a sad moment, actually. Yet somehow Akemi and I did get together after all.

We undressed, worked Akemi's jeans off too. She landed on top of me, jumping up and down for joy- inside her pussy, that really was heat- only worry then whether the tourists using our home as their hotel would return before our hips finished their work.

"Your name's like mine," the semi-retired attorney in the vegetable aisle proclaimed after learning Akemi's. He gave a belly laugh, as if at some remarkable coincidence. "We have a connection! Ha ha!"

Receiving no encouragement, he continued, "I bet you're the same astrological sign as me." Akemi's failure to divulge hers didn't slow him. He simply moved to the next question, asked how old she was. His voice brimmed with confidence. After all, what woman would like a man who folded under adversity? What he lacked in youth, he would make up in spirit.

"Twenty-six," Akemi allowed. She wanted to know his age. That threw him back on his heels. Buying time, still cheerful, he appealed to the woman coworker accompanying him on this shopping trip- she'd been all but invisible till then.

"How old am I again?" He scratched his head, and with a broad grin for Akemi's benefit asked the friend to help jog his memory. She obliged. Judging from her gray hair, wrinkles, she was his contemporary, but the answer she gave revealed a childlike streak. The two colleagues were accustomed to playing off each other.

"Well, I'm thirty-nine and you're three years younger than me. So that must make you-?"

"See? Only ten years difference!"

Forced humor. Even so, Akemi couldn't suppress a smile. Off by just a few decades!

He asked where she worked and how long she had been there. "That's not long. That's good work. It doesn't bother the rest of your life much." Leaves you free, he meant; she could spare time for a date with him.

Here Akemi volunteered a detail about herself. "I'm a painter. That's why." She had chosen that job- part-time, it took away little.

The amorous lawyer enthused about her paintings he'd never seen. "They're very special. Like you are."

"If only my husband thought so." Akemi too showed humor.

"Well, I think so." The news she'd divulged came to him as in a double-take. She'd let him know she was already taken.

"Oh, so you're married. Well, so am I. It doesn't matter. Ha ha. We're connected." He kept playfully looking for, inventing things they had in common, trying to prize more information from her, making it a game.

----

As Akemi found her way, gained control, she opened up. My friend and his two companions traveling around the country stayed three days, and by the time they were gone, so was our routine pretty well disrupted- we would need a while to return to normal. Akemi and I had both opened some. It was the weekend after our house guests departed that we visited her friend's place- instead of going back to life as it had been, we took a step forward- better put, our marriage took off in an unexpected direction.