S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel Read online

  “ ‘Practical’ is my middle name,” I said.

  “I do plan to renovate,” he said, when he saw me noticing a chip in the tile floor and, later, a wobbly ceiling fan. The place was run-down but homey and only a ten-minute walk from my apartment at Chartres and Mandeville. He told me he named it Café Rose after Rose Nicaud, an ex-slave who used to sell her own blend of coffee from a cart on the streets of New Orleans. Will was distantly related to her on his mother’s side, he said.

  “You should see our family reunion pictures. It’s like a group shot from the United Nations. Every color represented … So? You want the job?”

  I nodded enthusiastically, and Will shook my hand again.

  After that, my life shrunk to a few essential blocks of Marigny. Maybe I’d go to Tremé to hear Angela Rejean, one of Tracina’s friends who worked at Maison. Or I’d wander antique or second-hand shops on Magazine. But I rarely went beyond those neighborhoods, and stopped going to the Museum of Art or Audubon Park altogether. In fact, it may be strange to say, but I could have gone the rest of my life in the city without ever seeing the water.

  I did mourn. After all, Scott was the first and only man I’d ever been with. I’d break down crying at odd times, while on a bus or in the middle of brushing my teeth. Waking from a long nap in a darkened bedroom always triggered tears. But it wasn’t just Scott I mourned. I mourned the loss of nearly fifteen years of my life spent listening to his constant put-downs and complaints. And that’s what I was left with. I didn’t know how to shut off the critical voice that, in Scott’s absence, continued to note my flaws and highlight my mistakes. How come you haven’t joined a gym? No one wants a woman over thirty-five. All you do is watch TV. You could be so much prettier if you just made an effort. Five Years.

  I threw myself into work. The pace suited me well. We served the only breakfast on the street, nothing fancy: eggs any way, sausage, toast, fruit, yogurt, pastries and croissants. Lunch was never elaborate: soups and sandwiches, or sometimes a one-pot dish like bouillabaisse, lentil stew or a jambalaya if Dell came in early and felt like whipping something up. She was a better cook than a waitress, but she couldn’t stand being in the kitchen all day.

  I only worked four days a week, from nine to four, sometimes later if I stuck around for a meal and a visit with Will. If Tracina was running late, I’d start her tables for her. I never complained. I always kept busy.

  I could have made more money in the afternoons, but I liked the morning shift. I loved hosing the night’s dirt off the grimy sidewalk first thing in the morning. I loved how the sun freckled the patio tables. I loved stocking the pastry display case, while the coffee brewed and the soup simmered. I loved taking my time to cash out, spreading my money on one of the tippy tables by the big front windows. But there was always something lonely about heading home.

  My life began to take on a steady, reliable rhythm: work, home, read, sleep. Work, home, read, sleep. Work, movie, home, read, sleep. It wouldn’t have taken a superhuman effort to shift out of it, but I just couldn’t make a change.

  I thought that after a while I would automatically start living again, dating even. I thought there’d be a magical day when the rut would fill itself in, and I’d join the world again. Like a switch would turn on. The idea of taking a course crossed my mind. Finishing my degree. But I was too numb to commit. I was slouching towards middle age with no brakes on, my fat calico cat, Dixie, a former stray, aging right along with me.

  “You say you have a fat cat like it’s something that she caused,” Scott used to say to me. “She didn’t get here fat. You did this to her.”

  Scott didn’t give in to Dixie and her constant whining for food. Me, however, she worked over until I caved, again and again. I had no resolve, which is probably why I put up with Scott for so long. It took me a while to realize that I didn’t cause his drinking, nor could I stop it, but there was this lingering sense that I might have saved him if I had tried hard enough.

  Maybe if we had had a baby like he wanted. I never told him how secretly relieved I was to learn that I couldn’t have kids. Surrogacy was an option, but it was too expensive to be a viable one for us, and thankfully Scott wasn’t keen on adoption. That I never wanted to be a mother was never in dispute. But I still hoped for a sense of purpose in life, for something to take up that space that a yearning for children had never occupied.

  A few months after I started working at the Café, and way before Tracina stole his heart, Will hinted that he could get tickets for a coveted show at the jazz festival. At first, I thought he was going to tell me about a girlfriend he was getting the tickets for, but as it turned out, it was me he wanted to go with. I felt a flash of panic at the invitation.

  “So … you’re asking if I’ll go out with you?”

  “Uh … yes.” There was that look again, and for a second I thought I even saw hurt flicker through his eyes. “Front row, Cassie. Come on. It’s a good excuse to put on a dress. I’ve never seen you in a dress, come to think of it.”

  I knew then that I had to shut it down. I couldn’t date. I couldn’t date him. My boss. There was no way I wanted to lose a job I actually liked for a man who would, when he spent a bit of time with me, see just how dull I really was. Also, the man was way out of my league. I was paralyzed with fear and the prospect of being alone with him, outside the context of our working relationship.

  “You haven’t seen me in a dress because I don’t own one,” I said.

  Not true. I just couldn’t imagine putting one on. Will was quiet for a few seconds, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “No big deal,” he said. “Lots of people want to see this band.”

  “Will, look. I think being married to such a wreck for so many years might have rendered me kind of … undatable,” I said, sounding like a late-night radio psychologist.

  “That’s a nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ ”

  “But it is me. It is.”

  I rested my hand on his forearm.

  “I guess I’ll just ask the next attractive girl I hire,” he joked.

  And he did. He asked the stunning Tracina from Texarkana, with the Southern accent and the endless legs. She had a younger brother with autism who she fiercely cared for, and she owned more cowboy boots than any one person needs. She was hired for the early evening shift, and though she was always a little cool towards me, we got along well enough and she seemed to make Will happy. Saying good-night to him became doubly lonely because I knew he’d probably be spending the night at Tracina’s instead of upstairs at the Café. Not that I was jealous. How could I be jealous? Tracina was exactly the kind of girl Will should be with—funny, smart and sexy. She had perfect cocoa-colored skin. Sometimes she’d let her afro go wild like a mound of cotton candy, and sometimes she’d expertly tame it into cool braids. Tracina was sought after. Tracina was vivacious. Tracina fit in and belonged. I simply did not.

  That night, the notebook still warming my front pocket, I watched Tracina set up for the dinner crowd. It was the first time I admitted I actually was a little jealous of her. Not because she had Will. I was jealous of how she made her way around the room with such ease and appeal. Some women had that thing, that ability to insert themselves directly into life—and look so good doing it. They weren’t observers; they were in the middle of the action. They were … alive. Will asked her out and she said, “I’d love to.” No dithering, no equivocating, just a big fat yes.

  I thought about the notebook, the words I had scanned, that man at the table, the way he caressed his partner’s wrist and kissed her fingers. How he fingered her bracelet, his urgency. I wished some man could feel that for me. I thought of a fistful of thick hair in my hands, my back pressed against a wall in the kitchen of the restaurant, a hand lifting my skirt. Wait a second, the man with Pauline had a shaved head. I was imagining Will’s hair, Will’s mouth …

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Will said, interrupting my absurd daydream.
r />   “These ones are worth a lot more than a penny,” I said, knowing my face was shot red. Where had that come from? My shift was over. It was time to go.

  “Good tips today?”

  “Yeah, not bad. I gotta run, and, Will, I don’t care if you are sleeping with her. Tell Tracina to restock sugar on the table before she goes home tonight. They should be full for my breakfast shift.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, saluting me. Then, as I was heading out the door, he added, “Plans tonight?”

  Catching up on TV. Recycling is piling up. What else?

  “Yeah, big plans,” I said.

  “You should have a date with a man, not with a cat, Cassie. You’re a lovely woman, you know.”

  “Lovely? You didn’t just call me ‘lovely.’ Will, that’s what guys say to women over thirty-five who haven’t gone completely to pot but who are well on their way to romantic retirement. ‘You’re a lovely woman, but …’ ”

  “But nothing. Cassie, you should get out there,” he said, jerking his chin towards the front door and beyond.

  “That’s precisely where I’m headed,” I said, backing into the street and nearly getting sideswiped by a speeding cyclist.

  “Cassie! Jeez!” Will lurched towards me.

  “See? That’s what happens when I put myself out there. I get flattened,” I said, calming my heart and trying to laugh it off.

  Will shook his head as I turned and made my way down Frenchmen. I thought I felt him standing there watching me walk away, but I was too shy to turn around and check.

  Is it possible to feel really young and really old at the same time? I was bone weary as I trudged the four blocks home. I loved looking at the tired, tiny houses in my neighborhood, some leaning on each other, some coated with so many layers of paint, and ringed by so much wrought iron and festooned with so many ornate shutters that they looked like aging showgirls in costumes and stage makeup. My apartment was atop a three-story stucco block of a house on the corner of Chartres and Mandeville. It was painted pale green, with rounded arches and dark green shutters. I had the top floor, but at thirty-five I still lived like a student. My one-bedroom rental had a futon-couch, milk carton bookshelves that doubled as end tables, and a growing collection of salt-and-pepper shakers. The bedroom was in an alcove, with a wide stucco archway and three dormers that faced south. To be fair, the staircase was so narrow it prohibited big, fat furniture; everything had to be portable and bendable and foldable. As I approached my building and looked up, I realized I’d one day be too old to live on the top floor, especially if I continued to work on my feet. Some nights I was so tired, it was all I could do to heave myself up those stairs.

  I had begun to note that as my neighbors got older, they didn’t leave; they just moved to a lower floor. The Delmonte sisters had made the move a few months ago after Sally and Janette, two other sisters, finally moved to an assisted living facility. When the cozy two-bedroom was freed up, I helped them haul their books and clothes from the second to the first floor. There was a ten-year age difference between Anna and Bettina, and though Anna, at sixty, certainly could have taken the stairs for a few more years, Bettina forced her hand when she turned seventy. Anna was the one who told me that when the single-family dwelling was converted into five apartments in the ’60s, it became known as the Spinster Hotel.

  “It’s always been all women,” she said. “Not that you’re a spinster, my dear. I know single women of a certain age are very sensitive to that word these days. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a spinster, even if you were a spinster. Which you most certainly are not.”

  “I am a widow, though.”

  “Yes, but you’re a young widow. Lots of time to remarry and have children. Well, to remarry at least,” Anna said, one eyebrow up.

  She slid me a dollar bill for my troubles, a gesture I had stopped resisting long ago as that bill would inevitably end up folded over eight times and shoved under my door a few hours later.

  “You’re a treasure, Cassie.”

  Was I a spinster? I had gone on one date last year, with Will’s younger brother’s best friend, Vince, a lanky hipster who gasped when I told him I was thirty-four. Then, to cover his shock, he leaned across the table and told me that he had a “thing” for older women—this from someone the ripe old age of thirty. I should have slapped his stupid face. Instead, an hour into our date I began glancing at my watch. He was talking too much about the crappy band that was playing and how bad the wine list was and how many run-down houses he was going to buy in New Orleans because the market was surely going to correct itself anytime now. When he dropped me off in front of the Spinster Hotel, I thought about asking him up. I thought about Five Years hunched in the back seat. Just have sex with this guy, Cassie. What’s stopping you? What’s always stopped you? But when I caught him spitting his gum out the window, I decided I just couldn’t take off my clothes in front of this overgrown boy.

  So much for my last date, I thought, as I prepped a bath and stripped off my waitress clothes. I wanted to wash the restaurant smell off me. I glanced down the hallway at the little notebook on the table by the front door. What was I supposed to do with it? Part of me knew I shouldn’t read it, and the other was powerless to resist. So all through my shift I kept putting it off, thinking, When you get home. After dinner. After a bath. When you get into bed. In the morning. Never?

  Dixie circled my ankles for food while water and bubbles filled the tub. The moon hovered over Chartres, and the sound of cicadas blotted out the traffic sounds. I looked in the mirror and tried to see myself as someone else would for the first time. It’s not that my body was awful. It was a good body, not too tall, not too thin. I had dishpan hands, but overall I was in good shape, probably from waitressing all day. I liked the shape of my butt, it was nicely rounded—but it’s true what they say about your late thirties: everything starts to soften. I held my C-cups in my hands and lifted them slightly. There. I imagined Scott, no, not Scott. Will, no, not him either. He was Tracina’s, not mine. I imagined that guy, the one from the restaurant, coming up behind me and putting his hands on me like this, and bending me forward and then … Stop it, Cassie.

  I had stopped getting those stupid Brazilian waxes after Scott died. The look always unsettled me, like I was supposed to be a little girl or something. I let my hand travel down to my … what? What do you call it when you’re alone? Vagina always sounded by turns juvenile and clinical. Pussy was a guy’s term and felt too feline for me. Cunt? No. Too much. I moved my finger around down there, and found, to my surprise, that I was wet. But I couldn’t muster the energy, the effort, to do anything about it.

  Was I lonely? Yes, of course. But I was also slowly shutting down parts of myself, seemingly for good, like a large factory going dark, sector by sector. I was only thirty-five and I had never had really great, mind-blowing, liberating, luscious sex, the kind that notebook seemed to allude to.

  There were days when I felt I was just a suit of flesh pulled over a set of bones, pouring in and out of buses and cabs, walking around a restaurant, feeding people and cleaning up after them. At home, my body was a warm place for the cat to sleep on. How had this happened? How had this become my life? Why couldn’t I just pick up the pieces and get out there, like Will had said?

  I looked in the mirror again: all that flesh, all of it available and tender, yet somehow locked away. I stepped into the bath and sat down, then slid all the way under the water, submerging my head under the suds for a few seconds. I could hear my heart underwater, beating out a sad echo. That, I thought, is the sound of loneliness.

  I rarely drank, let alone drank alone, but somehow that night called for a glass of cold white wine and a warm bathrobe. I had a box of Chablis in the fridge, albeit one that had been there for a couple of months, but it would have to do. I poured a big tumbler full. Then I settled into the corner of the futon-couch with the cat and the notebook. I traced the initials PD on the cover with my finger. Inside was a
nameplate with Pauline Davis printed on it, but no contact information. That page was followed by a table of contents in scripted lettering, spelling out steps, one through ten:

  Step One: Surrender

  Step Two: Courage

  Step Three: Trust

  Step Four: Generosity

  Step Five: Fearlessness

  Step Six: Confidence

  Step Seven: Curiosity

  Step Eight: Bravery

  Step Nine: Exuberance

  Step Ten: The Choice

  Oh my God, what did I have in my hands? What was this list? I felt hot and chilled at the same time, like I had uncovered a dangerous but delicious secret. I got up from the couch to draw down my lace curtains. Fearlessness, Courage, Confidence, Exuberance? These words had leapt out at me from the page, blurring before my eyes. Was Pauline taking these steps herself? And if so, where was she on the list? I sat down again and read the steps once more, then flipped the page to the next heading, “Fantasy Notes on Step One.” I couldn’t stop myself. I began to read:

  I can’t tell you how scared I was, how worried that I would chicken out, cancel, run. That’s what I do, right? When things get overwhelming, esp. sexually. But I thought of the word Acceptance, and I became open to the idea that I should accept this, accept the help from S.E.C.R.E.T. But when he silently entered the hotel room and closed the door behind him, I knew I wanted to go through with it …

  I could feel my own heart beat as though I was in the hotel room as this stranger opened the door …

  This guy! What can I say? Matilda was right. He was so damn sexy … he walked towards me slowly like a cat, and I backed away until the bed stopped me at the back of my knees. And then he sent me backwards on the bed with a gentle nudge, lifted my skirt and parted my legs. I pulled a pillow over my face after he uttered the only words he’d say that day: You are so fucking beautiful. And then he brought me into a kind of ecstasy I can’t really describe here but I will try …