“I never joke about money,” said Cleo in a voice that neither confirmed nor denied whether this was true. “So, where are you going to put it?”
“Put what?”
“My painting, Anders.”
“Oh. Isn’t a wall the usual place?”
“Don’t be clever. In your apartment?”
Anders hadn’t thought about it. He’d never expected to end up actually owning the thing.
“Why don’t you come over and see? You can help me pick a spot.”
“We both know I’ve already seen your apartment.”
This surprised him. Neither of them had ever openly acknowledged any detail of the night they’d spent together. It had happened shortly after she and Frank met, before any of them knew it would be serious. In fact, he realized, this was the first time they’d spoken without Frank present since.
“Never in daylight,” he said.
“And whose fault is that?”
“No one’s fault. Just a fact.”
But it had been cold of him, he knew, sending her home in the middle of the night like that. It was guilt. Letting her sleep next to him, touching her in the sober light of morning, would have felt like a second betrayal of Frank.
“You humiliated me,” she said quietly.
“Look,” he said. “I crumbled my teeth over it, I did.”
“What?”
“It’s what we say in Denmark when we regret something we’ve said.”
He could hear her smile in the silence. “How many teeth did you crumble?”
“All of them. Anyway, it’s different now.”
“What is?”
“My apartment. You should come see it.”
“How?”
“It’s got new … doorknobs.”
Cleo laughed. It was as good as done.
It helped that Frank was gone for the next few weeks shooting a series of commercials in South Africa for a new energy drink that claimed to have hangover-curing properties. Millions of dollars of bullshit, he’d said, laughing, to Anders over beers before he left. Anders had been under the impression that Cleo was going with him, but clearly she’d stayed behind. He had never considered before what she did while Frank was on these trips. Paint, he presumed, though when he asked her about her work a few hours later, she waved the question off with a brusqueness verging on irritation.
Cleo was standing in his apartment, looking at the large white walls of his living room. Below them the evening traffic provided its usual complaint of car horns and sirens.
“How can you live with nothing on your walls?” Cleo asked.
Anders shrugged. He spent all day being ambushed by images at the magazine; it was a relief to come home to sparsity.
“Can I get you something?” he asked. “A drink, maybe, or …”
He strode toward her and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and let him snake his tongue inside her mouth. They toppled onto the sofa, but Cleo shook her head and pulled him down onto the floor. Of course. Last time they had been on the sofa. She was encased in layers. He pulled off a sweater, a turtleneck, a T-shirt, then unbuttoned her jeans to reveal a pair of tights beneath. He laughed as he tugged the stockings off her feet.
“You’re like opening a Russian doll.”
She offered him her slow, catlike smile.
“Worth the effort,” she said.
She was spread naked on the carpet before him, her clothes scattered in a halo around her head. He ripped off his own shirt and pushed his trousers and underwear to his knees. He didn’t even wait to kick them off before he spread her legs and was thrusting inside her, dipping hard and fast. He was in another world, no thoughts but the sensation of her wrapped tight around him. God, she felt good, even better than he remembered.
Cleo brought her hands to his chest and pushed him away. She stared up at him seriously.
“Anders,” she said. “This isn’t sex.”
He looked down at her, panting.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what you’re doing—this jabbing thing—it’s not sex. It’s you masturbating with my body instead of your hand.”
“I—uh. God, Cleo … Well, what would you like me to do?”
Cleo put her hands on his lower back and pulled him deeper inside her.
“Do you feel that?” she said. “That ridge at the top in the back? That’s what you’re trying to hit. Well, not hit, exactly, just stroke with the tip of … Yes, yes, like that, but slower. Roll up against it. Good … Good … Nice and slow. Mm-hmm, keep rolling and stroking, stroking and rolling. Yes, yes, that’s it …”