Work Text:
They haven’t stopped, though of course they should have. The whole thing was a mistake and it’s going to bite them both in the ass. He’s still texting and she’s answering. There’s a good chance that she’s slipping up hard and fuck if she can even bring herself to care. Maria used to be so careful. Erasing every text chain as soon as they’d made plans. Buying drugstore lube with cash to decant into small hand sanitizer bottles which pile up inside of her handbag. Never once had he come to her at home, or called her. Except for that lone date to a restaurant back in August, they’d kept their affair secret.
Maybe, Maria thinks, as she gets dressed for work on a night in early December when she’ll meet him after, maybe what she really wants is to get them caught. It’s what she imagines, even with the wife, even with the kids. Why does he come to her if he’s happy with them? Maybe James will find out, or his wife will discover them, and the decision will be made for them both, without her having to do a goddamn thing to escalate it.
~*~
Eliza loves Christmas, every piece of it, with all the fierceness of tradition. It’s absolutely her favorite holiday. She’s genuinely happy to hear harp covers of carols at her nail salon, eagerly anticipates the day when Starbucks puts peppermint everything on the menu. Once that happens it’s time to visit the tree lot, all five of them bundled up against the December cold, and to watch Alexander wrestle a Douglas fir tied up with brown twine down their street. She carries baby Alex, since the December sidewalks are treacherous with a stroller. Philip and Angelica hindering their father’s progress in their darling attempts to help with the tree.
She shops, online and in-store, for the kids, her sister, her sister-in-law, her other sister, her parents, her grandparents, her cousins. Alexander’s family always gets a box sent to them: gift cards, toiletries, basics that must seem like luxuries, and she takes care of that, too. They attend the tree lighting faithfully as a family. Every year Eliza beams, radiant with happiness in the red and green light reflected off of 30 Rock, and can’t imagine herself in any other city, any other time or place.
“Just hear me out,” she says to Alexander, after they’ve finally gotten the kids down for the night. They were wired on candy canes, marshmallows. Normally she wouldn’t let them have quite so much sugar, but the rules for everything relax at Christmas. Philip begged for a second story, and a few pages in, tried his hand at psychological manipulation and asserting that no, he didn’t like that book after all, so it didn’t actually count.
Alexander pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s worn out tonight, but weekends are always like that for both of them. For her, going to work can be a relief. He doesn’t have that luxury; an office of his own, a door that he can close.
“Daddy owns some investment properties,” she begins, and Alexander exhales the weight of the world at the ceiling. “Do we have to do this?” he asks, and rubs his temples. “Can we wait at least until after the holidays to have this conversation?”
Eliza folds her arms over her chest and takes a breath to center herself. Then she turns over to find her Roman chamomile and vetiver aromatherapy spray. When her pillow is clouded in a fine layer of calming mist, she continues. “Think about it,” she says, and punches down the soft center of the pillow. “You could have an office. In town, even, if you wanted, though I can’t see why you would. We could have so much more space.”
“Eliza,” he says, and turns on his side to gaze at her with heavy lidded eyes. When he gives her that look she finds it impossible to deny him anything. “Please. Later, okay?”
“Tell me what you’re so afraid of. I’m listening,” she tells him, as encouraging as anyone could possibly be with an intractable child of thirty-six.
“Just.” He pauses, as if on the verge of telling her something. “Just, c’mere.”
“Ten minutes.” She glances at the clock, it’s later than she’d like. “I’m doing Mysore tomorrow, I have to be up early.”
He licks his lips and gives her a predatory look, which sits oddly on his kindly, misshapen face. “Burn your calories with me,” he says, grinning. “It won’t kill you to skip it.”
“Alexander,” she chides, but he’s already dived down under the covers. That face, those eyes. Her hands find the silken strands of his freshly-washed hair. How could she say no?
~*~
when do you get back
couple days after christmas probably
no wait
we might stay through new years
that’s forever
i know baby i’m sorry
i miss you
i miss you too sweetheart
yeah?
you don’t believe me?
[...]
[1]
jesus okay
;)
you’re so gorgeous
thank you
night <3
night xxx
~*~
Come Christmas Day Alex is about to jump out of his skin. You couldn’t even call it a straightforward case of nicotine withdrawl. Several times he’s visited one of the two powder rooms, alternating between the two for variety, to splash cold water on his face. Eliza had slapped a patch on his upper arm the minute they boarded the Amtrak at Penn Station. Then he opens his messages. She hasn’t sent him anything today: no texts, no seductively posed pictures that he desperately wishes he could keep without getting caught. He screengrabs the best ones and sends them to a secret email address he only checks from his browser.
Alex grew up taking care of himself, for the most part. Holidays the way the Schuylers do them — where the drunk, the childish, and the passive-aggressive meet in the cathedral of their living room by the lights of a tree the size of a delivery van — are profoundly foreign to him.
Christmas with his aunt in the Bronx had consisted of black-and-white movies on the TV while the radio played simultaneously. She smoked, he read the TV Guide aloud. Right now his father-in-law is talking to Joanne, who’s sanely avoiding the topic of politics, while her wife Angie is trying to coax his two older kids into playing with her instead of their Aunt Peggy, who they like more because she doesn’t talk down to them. Eliza is holding his hand in hers as they sit on the couch, and smiling beatifically at the scene around her. Everyone coos at the baby, who’s a full toddler by now, and laughing from the attention. He’s trapped, airless, in one of the heirloom glass ornaments that has grown to become man-sized, and he cannot breathe, or talk, or smash his way out.
~*~
James gives her lingerie for Christmas. Her face falls a little when she opens the box: a red thing, lacy, trimmed in rabbit fur that he’s pretty sure is real. That’s what the girl at the store said, as she wrapped it in paper, long fingernails clicking as she did so. The back is a thong, which of course Maria hates. She thanks him and goes to put it away back in the gift bag.
He’s quick to put a stop to that nonsense. “Put it on,” he tells her, and leans back with his legs spread apart. “For my present.” If he can’t go to the club because of the holiday — and hell, he straight-up wishes she was at work. For one, she’d get time and a half for working Christmas, and probably come home with a thank-you basket from the hospital — then at least he can imagine she’s Peyton, the white girl with the big ass he’s been paying through the nose for lap dances since October. She looks like a slut, has the right mouth on her, never talks back, but she hasn’t given in to his pleas to blow him in the back room yet. Says she’ll lose her job. He keeps showing up, drinking those overpriced Crown and Cokes, peeling off ones and fives and throwing them at her feet. She always winks at him when she picks them up off the stage floor. He’ll wear her ass down. Always does, in the end.
Maria comes back into the living room with her arms folded tightly around her, clearly uncomfortable. She hasn’t put on heels, which ruins the fantasy, but he can live with it.
“Thanks,” she says, though her eyes say something else entirely.
James leers at her and palms his crotch through his jeans. “Turn around, baby,” he coos. “Let me get a good look at what I paid for, m’kay?”
~*~
Some fucking Christmas this is turning out to be. They don’t even have a real tree, just a tiny pink and silver tinsel affair on the side table. James is on the couch with his jeans unzipped and a hand in her hair. They’ve locked the dog in the bedroom, and Maria can hear her pitiful whimpers from the other side of the door. He pulls on her hair the bad way, from the ends, not the roots, and it makes her eyes water. Her eyeliner is running and it’s making them smart even worse. When he pulls her hair it’s with a fist near her scalp and it makes her blood tingle. Thinking of him gets her excited, even a little bit wet. Maria keeps thinking on it, figuring it’ll be useful if James decides he wants to fuck when he’s bored of telling her to make his dick disappear.
~*~
After she blows him he sets her to finishing dinner while he watches TV. It’s a slow week because of the holiday, but he watches the commentary to glean what he can about the college ball season.
The food’s excellent. Maria’s a good cook, when she can be bothered to do it. There’s a half a ham, and sweet potatoes, and rolls, and green beans, and banana pudding. Maria picks at her plate, probably because he mentioned the size of her ass and how it looked in that red thong. It’s actually smaller than that girl Peyton’s, but that bitch knows how to work it, to boot. Maria could stand to learn a thing or two about how to move. James drinks five beers, one after the other. At some point during the beers, she takes the dog out for her walk. Normally he’d pay attention to how long she’s gone for, ask her to account for every minute, but he’s full of good food and feeling benevolent, so when she comes back in, half an hour later, her army coat stinking of cigarette smoke, he’s kind enough to let her get away with it. It is Christmas, after all.
~*~
did you think about me today?
i always think about you
i wish you could be here
i want to be there too
come back
i don’t think i can
can’t you try
can’t you lie
i’ll see
miss you
miss you too
~*~
The morning after Alexander is antsy to head back to the city. He mentions it first thing, like it’s just occurred to him.
“I could make the 10:25 train, if I hurry,” he says, scrolling through his phone.
Eliza looks up from her laptop — work emails, mostly, about final quarter sales, they can wait — and fixes him with a look. “Why can’t you relax for a few days? Is it that unbearable for you to spend some time with us?”
He bites his lip in a gesture of apology; he hates confrontation almost as much as she does. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, softly. “I hate being here, babe. It’s not you, it’s them. This whole charade.”
“Well, imagine how I feel? Look, they’re family,” she reminds him, and closes the lid. Sales are higher than projected, though the demographic info needs cleaning before it can be of any use to her. She’ll let Angie and Joanne try their hands at parenting and find a place with wifi to start scrubbing. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after. “Go for a walk. Take Philip to the park if you need to get out of here. But no smoking,” she tacks on.
“What about you?” he asks, with concern. Like he wasn’t thinking only of his own needs until half a second ago. “I know you don’t want to be trapped in the house with your sisters all day.”
“We’ll watch the kids, that’s plenty to keep us occupied. They have a million things to play with, and it’s supposed to snow again this afternoon. There’s that sledding hill in Lincoln Park, Philip would like that. As for being here? Peggy’s staying out of Mother’s way, and Angie’s okay this trip, don’t you think?”
His eyebrow rockets up his forehead. “Hormones are making her absolutely terrifying. I thought you said she didn’t cry, ever? Last night she started weeping into her cranberry relish when your father mentioned the odds for the Preakness. She hates horses.”
Her hand finds his shoulder. He leans into the touch as she rubs small circles on his back. “Angie’s never handled vulnerability well, I grant you. Or failure. She probably can’t stand the idea that I’m better at her than something, even if that something happens to be fertility.”
“But,” he says, and tilts his head away. His neck cracks; she shudders at the sound.
“Try to have some sympathy, that’s all I’m saying,” she tells him. “It must be hard for her.”
“Empathy,” he corrects, “what you actually mean is empathy.”
“Fine,” she sighs. Let him be right, if he must. “Now come on, let’s deal with the kids before Philip goes running out into the living room without any clothes on. Daddy’s still recovering from his last bout of angina, that’s the last thing he needs to see.”
“Sure,” he says, already back to looking at his phone again. It’s compulsive, a habit, but he’s a compulsive sort of guy. Of course she matters more than it. “I’m on it.”
~*~
The problem with a lousy fuck is that it makes you crave a good one. So many things are like that. Ice cream, steak, oral, cigarettes, vodka, movies. Maria long ago learned to let herself blank out with James, which is a defensive mechanism she rarely has occasion to regret. He’s cut, he’s cute, and they fit together well. But something clogs up inside of her when they do it, like the wad of hair that stops up the drain, and the stagnant soapy water spins and spins and goes nowhere.
It’s like that now, and though she needs to get up and get dressed for work, he’s sawing away at her with no signs of it being over soon. For a second she feels a twinge, a spark. An accident of contact, nothing to do with feeling aroused by his actions. Yet her body wakes up. She grabs his shoulder, digs in with her short nails, and wonders if she could spin the right fantasy to make herself get off; James himself incidental to the whole affair.
It ends up making no difference. Maria has barely enough time to dress herself up in something expensive — a slinky dress she’s seen in two photoshoots this season, a white Derek Lam with a cutout back — and think about how she wants her fantasy hair to look — before James finishes inside of her ninety seconds later. It burns, always has, and she wonders, as she winces away from him and looks for the tissues, if it’s her body’s way of subtly rejecting him. Even when she went off the pill he never got her knocked up, though of course now she’s back on it. Gives her something to blame when he calls her fat. Easier that way.
~*~
hey
hey yourself
how was christmas?
it was okay
only okay?
good
it was good
yours?
yeah fine
get anything nice?
headphones, gift cards, a shitload of guilt
sounds about right
~*~
She goes off to work in the evening. They’ve had a good couple of days. He stays in with the dog until he gets bored with the television. There’s a poker game he buys into sometimes, down in the 120s, so he puts on fingerless gloves and a slouchy hat and walks through the gray slush to the train. He blows on his fingers to keep them warm. He’s ready for it to be spring already.
~*~
“Alexander,” she says to the rumpled figure lying on the bed. “We’re going to the park, do you want to come?”
Her husband rubs his eyes. How he manages to look even more exhausted while on vacation she can’t comprehend.
“Who’s going?” he asks. “Is it just you?”
She comes to stand in the doorway and stares down at his disheveled appearance. “Me, the kids. Peggy.”
He nods cautiously. “Not your mother?”
“Not my mother, she’s watching the baby. It’s too cold out for him.”
“Your sister?” He means Angie. What is it with the two of them?
“She’s waiting for a phone call. Come on, get your boots on.”
~*~
The air is so cold that it compresses his lungs. As they walk there, Angelica running ahead with Peggy, Philip darting back to get his father’s attention — to point out a mailbox, a snowman, a truck buried by a drift — he hacks up wet loads of yellow phlegm and spits them in the frozen snow.
“Do you need medicine?” Eliza asks him. “We can run by the grocery store.”
“It’s just a cough,” he assures her. His back pocket vibrates and he itches to look at what she’s said. Every mundane text seems like a small salvation when he feels this trapped. “You know,” Alex pauses, spits again, “I might get myself some soup, isn’t there a soup place in that shopping center?”
Eliza grimaces at the suggestion. “It’s a Panera,” she says, then shouts after their daughter. “Angie, honey, stay close to your Aunt Peggy, okay?”
“Well, maybe I’ll do that.”
“Fine,” she says, her eyes tracking the children and gliding right past him. “Get some tea, maybe that will do the trick. Put honey in it. Actually, can you bring me back an Earl Gray? I'm freezing.”
“Sure thing,” he says, and shoves his hands into his pockets. He opens the message as soon as he’s hidden by some trees, and whistles with chapped lips into the frozen air.
~*~
you like?
fuck you
god i wish
me too baby me too
where are you
are you alone
gimme like ten minutes
i have to get inside it’s freezing
lol keep it in your pants
you’re not helping you know
have this now
[1]
more later
~*~
“Where’d he go?” Peggy asks, once she and Philip catch up. They’ve brought one sled for the kids to take turns with. It’s a cheap drugstore one, weighs next to nothing.
Eliza sticks her hands in the pockets of her sky-blue peacoat. “He went to get some tea. His cough is gross.”
“That sounds good,” says Peggy, as they watch Philip and Angelica fight over who gets to go first. She wraps her scarf around the lower half of her face. “Is he bringing you some?”
“I can text him,” Eliza says, “if you want anything. Kids!” she makes for the hill, “Philip, let your sister go first, please.”
~*~
“Can I have the bathroom code?” he asks the girl at the counter, a dead-eyed goth who’s all of seventeen and thrilled to be wearing a uniform, he’s sure.
“It’s for customers,” she says, bored. He stuffs a dollar in the tip jar. Her eyes follow his movement. “Can I have the bathroom code?” he repeats, and she gives him the precious four digits.
~*~
hey
you good
i’m good
i don’t have much time
have to get back
we’ll have to be efficient i guess
send me that picture again
i’ll send you a new one
[1]
are those new underwear?
yes
i wish i was there to take them off
tell me more
~*~
Maria has pulled one side of her underwear down over her hipbone. She’s turned on, mostly from knowing that he’s on the other side of all this, fucking pathetic and desperate. Ready to do anything she asks for. She shakes out her hair and sends another picture.
~*~
Hey babe.
Are you still there?
Peggy wants a hot chocolate.
Now Philip wants one too, he heard us talking.
And Angelica says she’s hungry.
Look we’re going to come to you.
Is your phone off?
Alexander?
sorry babe i was in the bathroom
Oh, okay. You’re still there?
yeah i’ll get a table
??
Sounds good.
~*~
All he wanted was to fuck someone cute who wasn’t Eliza like a dozen times and move on with his life. All he wanted was a mid-life crisis like a normal guy, was that too much to ask for? All he wanted to do was make a pretty girl soak her fucking panties for him, gaze at him with loving admiration, scream his name, praise his intellect and his skill with his fingers.
He did not want, specifically, to have locked himself in the bathroom stall of a fast casual restaurant in upstate New York two days after Christmas with a low-resolution photograph resting on the toilet paper dispenser while he tries, frantically, to rub one out before his wife and sister-in-law arrive. He wants to fuck her so badly that his own hand is hardly on him before he’s drenched it, and he has to text her back with his other one, which is fractionally cleaner.
~*~
did you?
god yes
did you?
mhmmm
are you a mess?
kinda, yeah
you wanna deal with that
you mean
??
clean it up, baby
show me that you're clean
fuck you’re so nasty
you love it
[1]
damn right
i have to go now
okay
this was fun
you’re fun
bye ;)
bye xx
~*~
When they arrive a few minutes later, stopped on the way by a sudden tantrum of Philip’s over who would carry the sled, they find Alexander set up at a table with five paper cups surrounding him. The cashier brings him two plain bagels, both lightly toasted, for the kids, and he thanks her.
“Hi,” Eliza says, and pecks him on the cheek before she takes off her coat. “Thank you. This is great, I'm glad they're open.” She removes her gloves and gratefully wraps her frozen hands around the cup.
“Yeah,” says Peggy, who unwinds her scarf. Her cheeks are bright red, and she touches them gingerly with her fingertips.
“Sure thing,” Alexander answers. He unwraps the butter packet and scoops it out in a hard lump with the little plastic knife. He butters all four pieces of the bagels. They smell good, warm and yeasty, but they won't taste nearly as nice. She sips her tea. “Angelica,” he asks, “Philip. How about we wash our hands, okay?”
“Okay,” says their daughter. “Okay,” repeats their son. “Okay,” Alexander echoes, and shuffles them all in that direction.