I've loved you since the first time I saw you

Things aren't going so smoothly for everybody.

Ariel pushes the keyboard away and rolls her chair away from the desk and to the window.  She looks out at her lawn.  The children's toys, left out for months and now hummocked over with snow, look like stealthy arctic creatures.  She rubs her fingertip on the chilly glass, drawing a heart shape.  She considers her options for the afternoon.

The girls are at her mother's; her husband is at work; the house is as clean as she can usefully make it.  An hour ago, those had been good things: she would have the whole day to write or to read.

She sighs and admits the obvious truth to herself: what she wants to do was to call Joe.  He is in town for once, only a few miles away, they are even scheduled to spend the evening together tomorrow.  Her hand is cold from the window, she puts her hands together and squeezes them between her thighs.  She remembers the last time she and Joe were together.  They had been talking about her exercise regimen and he had had his hand just there.  She had squeezed so tight, he couldn't extricate his hand or move it at all.

God, had that been four weeks ago?  Yes, it was three days after her period ended, and today it was again three days after.  Four weeks without Joe.  She pulls her cell-phone out of the pocket of her terry robe, puts it back, pulls it out again, lays it on the window-sill.  She cups her chin in her hand and stares fixedly at the little phone, at its 2 key.

2 on the speed-dial is Joe, of course.  Six months ago, she had given his number that place of honor.  She had laboriously moved all the others down one.  Her husband had been bumped from 2 to 3 -- she had felt the slightest pang at that, barely noticeable -- and the girls' school had been bumped from 9 off the keyboard all together.

The night before, she brought everything she had, all the warmth and courage that good sex can bring, and told Joe how she felt, that she loved him.  His face instantly lost all expression, only his eyes moved, darting about.  Her stomach contracted: she had, she knew, wrecked it.  Joe had a wife he loved, back in Pittsburgh, an amazing six kids. The wife knew about Ariel and didn't approve but tolerated it for Joe's sake.  He felt guilty, Ariel could tell, though he refused to say so.  But now, she might have ignited his guilt and ended whatever they had.

But he embraced her, lay full-length on her, his body shuddering just as it had a few minutes ago, when he'd reached climax.  He whispered in her ear, "I've loved you since the first time I saw you."  The flood of emotion feels something like a climax to her too.

It is the memory of that moment that does it, and she snatches up the phone and mashes down the 2.

Joe was on the phone with his wife, talking to his boss, and instant-messaging with Operations, all at once.  Not possible.

"Honeydew," his nickname for her since she was pregnant with Ezra and Ethan and she complained that she was swelling like a melon, "Honeydew, I have to call you back."  He snaps the phone shut and drops it in his pocket.  "Bob, I'm sorry, there's some snag with the inspection on 12 Main, I have to deal with with it."  Bob, his bland, egg-like face showing his dissatisfaction, nods curtly and turns away.  Joe starts to type into his computer, looking around his desk for his bottle of Advil.

His head is ringing like a bell and his back feels like he's been beaten with a bat.  He closes his eyes, trying to breathe deeply.  He wants to sleep in his own bed tonight but that entails fighting through traffic to the airport, a hour in the stinking, humming cabin of the commuter jet, and then another long ride to his silent home and his sleeping family.  On the other hand, he quails at the thought of another night (what, tenth, fifteenth in a row?) in the sterile grim empty apartment the company provides.  The ringing in his head gets louder.

His phone buzzes.  He jerks it from his pocket and fumbles at opening it.  The little screen reads "Aerial Transport". Relief rushes through him like an opiate.  A mercy he hasn't even hoped for.

Because "Aerial Transport" is Ariel, of course.  Aerial for Ariel and Transport for the transport, the ecstasy and the freedom, he finds on those rare occasions when the complexity of both their lives part like storm clouds and she visits him in the grim apartment.  The day he thought of that pun and entered it into his phone's contact list, he had chuckled childishly for almost an hour.  Every time he sees it, it makes him smile.

But he isn't smiling now.  He feels calmer but still a million miles from happy, and besides, his tiny office has a glass front wall and it wouldn't do to be smiling foolishly into a cell-phone, not on a day like this, when everybody in the company is running around stricken.

"Hi," he says.  He wants to say, Hello, my love, my only, my life, but he's afraid he will accidentally call her "my honeydew" and that would be too much for both of them.  Plus, his office door is still open. "Hi."

At her end, Ariel smiles at the sound of his voice and girlishly twists a plait of her hair.  "Hi, sweetie.  I was just thinking of you."

"Me too, me too."  As soon as he has spoken, Joe realizes that it isn't true, that he wasn't just thinking of her, he was thinking about his trip home and about the inspection problem on the Main Street project.  Still, he is usually thinking about her, he thinks about her whenever he has spare time, and that should be enough.

"So, am I going to see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?" Joe rubs his throbbing head and tries to remember what is supposed to happen tomorrow.

"The craft show at the expo center."

The craft show.  He doesn't want to go to the craft show.  First, she'll want to hold hands and there is always the chance of running into someone from work, the expo center being only a block from the office.  His wife may know about Ariel but his co-workers do not and he'd like to keep it that way.  Second, every minute they are at the craft show is a minute they aren't in the company apartment making love.  He cannot say either of those things, of course.

He hears the hurt in Ariel's voice as she says, "You remembered the craft shop.  You promised."  Stockton, from the legal department, walks into his office and closes the door.  His paralegal, Roberto or Alberto or something, a quiet Hispanic kid, is with him.

"You know the problem with the 12 Main Street thing?" the lawyer asks.

Into the phone, Joe says, "Hang just a second.  OK, honeydew?" He winces momentarily at his mistake, using the wrong nickname, but there's nothing to be done.

Ariel presses the phone to her ear, squeezing her eyes shut in chagrin.  He's forgotten.  He promised, now he's forgotten, and he's going to cancel.  Jesus, it's been a month, a month!  Goddammit, she says to herself, I'm attractive, I'm an attractive woman.  I deserve his attention.  She imagines herself standing naked in front of him, she catalogs the flaws in her body, the marks that time and children have left.  The little attic room has gotten noticeably colder and she is starting to shiver.  She curls up best she can in her chair and squeezes her eyes tighter.  Pick up, you!

Stockton has been droning on longer than Joe could stand.  More than anything, he wants to talk to Ariel and he wants the ringing in his head to stop, and neither is going to happen until this lazy excuse for an attorney shuts up and leaves.  Finally, he snaps.

"Stockton, you know the difference between your job and your mother?  I enjoy doing your mother."  Stockton's loose, featureless mouth purses, but Roberto or whatever his name is cannot repress a grin.  "So get the fuck out of my office and go do your own fucking job."  Stockton glares at Joe and then at Roberto, who instantly wipes the look off his face, and stalks out.

Roberto hangs around a second to try to share the victory with Joe, but Joe stares him down and he trots out after his boss.  Joe digs in his desk and finally finds the Advil.  One tablet rattles around in the plastic bottle.  Another mercy, he thinks, and that reminds him he still has Ariel on the phone.

"Oh, babe, sorry.  I'm back.  I'm just dealing with so much other crap."

"'Other' crap?  'Other' crap?" Ariel bridles.

The ringing is almost deafening now and Joe clamps his fist to the side of his head, trying to countervail the splitting pressure of it. "Baby, you mis.."  He stops.  She didn't misunderstand, he knows, she's just angry, about the craft show or about being put on hold or something else he can't guess, and this is how she chooses to punish him.

Damn, the one thing he most wanted was to talk to her and now she's getting all, all this.  Say something.  "Look, baby, maybe we should..." He stops again, because he simply doesn't know what they should do.  What he would like to do is spend the next four hours finishing all the work he has to do and then go back to the company apartment and make love to Ariel in the shower, but he thinks she will get even angrier if he says this and even if she doesn't, she probably can't do it, kids and everything, and if even she can, he isn't totally positive it would help.

This time Ariel does misunderstand.  She thinks he trailed off because he couldn't bear to say what he was going to say next: that they are done.  She touches the soft pad of skin on her belly, still pouchy two years after the pregnancy.  She sets her jaw.  She tries to sound bold, but it comes out as a strained whisper:

"Yeah, baby, maybe we should."