The Affair

Pierre Klossowski, Chantage et dédain, 1973

He first fucked Addison in August. August seventeenth. A Wednesday. The affair—she was married—lasted for roughly three months, into the fall, up until the time the last of the leaves fell from the trees.

He was out running, following one of his routes that took him from the flatlands where he lived up into the hills where the high net-worth people resided in gigantic houses, most of which were tasteless monstrosities but cost millions of dollars. Silence reigned supreme up here. Barely a car passed in either direction—one of this route’s attractions—as there were no through roads or streets, they all looped around the hills, intersected with each other, and fed back down into the main road that intersected the county road. Private security made their rounds now and again, but mostly remained parked down below by their shed. They always gave him a friendly nod when he encountered them.

Plodding up the steep incline on Eisenhower Drive his peripheral vision discerned movement through the gaps in a wall of tall privet hedge on his left. There and gone in the blink of an eye he glimpsed the thighs of a woman walking. His attention diverted, he stumbled on a rock, causing him to roll his ankle. He swore at the pain and sat down on the curb to assess the damage and catch his breath. Are you all right? A female voice called through the greenery. I’ll be fine, he answered. I’ll be right there, she said.

A moment later the driveway gates swung open and out strode the woman presumably responsible for his injury. Deep slits on each side of her dress revealed almost all of her long, lean legs as she headed toward him. Are you hurt, she asked.

He recognized her from town. Now and again, he saw her in the gourmet goods shop, in the drugstore. In the supermarket. Pushing her cart with the same dispirited world-weary attitude Sisyphus wore as he pushed his rock up the hill knowing there was no hope, no future, only resignation, repetition, forever.

She repeated her question, Are you hurt? It’s my ankle. I’ll be ok. he said, and got up from the curb. Come, let me get you some ice. It’s important to take down the inflammation right away. He protested it wasn’t necessary but she insisted, and shepherded him, lightly touching his elbow, through the gates around to the back of the house. Into the mud room they went, then into the kitchen where she sat him in a chair. She brought him an ice pack from the freezer. I always keep one of these at the ready, she said. She handed it to him along with a dish towel to wrap around it. She fetched him some ibuprofen and a glass of water. Take all four, she counseled.

She jumped up on the kitchen table facing him and began lifting and dropping her legs, like a child on a swing waiting to be pushed. He swallowed the last tablet, put the glass down. The late afternoon light was streaming through the windows, illuminating the room with other-worldly wonder. Time seemed to have fallen into abeyance. The silence was total. His ankle was throbbing in pain but he felt fatigued, so tired that he could instantly fall asleep. The ibuprofen will take a minute to kick in, she said. She was staring at him, solicitously he thought, and he held her gaze and matched her unflagging concentration and smiled, and she smiled, and there was something between them but he didn’t know what, and of a moment she hiked up her skirt revealing her nakedness and he understood it was lust. She pushed herself farther back on the table and spread her legs wide as if she were preparing for a pelvic exam. Would you like to eat, she asked, lying back and covering her eyes with one arm.

Out of the chair, he dropped to his knees and stared at the origin of the world. He placed his lips on the lips of her labia and with the tip of his tongue he opened them and sampled her salty, wet flesh. She moaned softly as he licked her and she moaned loudly as he inserted two fingers in her and pressed another on her clit. She came in a fury then jumped off the table, flattened him out on the floor, pulled his cock out and took it into her mouth in one gulp, her lips as hot and smooth as her labia, and while holding his shaft steady, twirled her tongue around his quivering head until his cum came, which she swallowed greedily.

She helped him off the floor. Every time he tried to speak, she indicated he should not. He had questions that begged for answers. At the door she placed her hand over his mouth to insist upon his continued silence. Next Wednesday, she whispered, around the same time. Only if the gates are open. That will mean I’ve shut off the security. She practically pushed him out. What’s your name, he managed. Addison, she said, and closed the door before he could tell her his.

He left her house dizzy, delirious, devastated.

At home he poured a scotch, and, since his ankle was screaming for attention, he filled a tub with ice and water, removed his shoe and sock, lowered his foot in and sat in a daze. He needed to understand this unprecedented event. He was not quite sure what to make of it, the it being such an uncanny, unheard-of, extraordinary occurrence it could have been a dream come true although he had never had this particular dream. He tried to thread together the series of moments leading up to their intimate interaction. He wanted to comprehend how what happened could have happened from a chance encounter. A throw of the dice will never abolish chance, he thought. Or was this not chance, but luck. Or something else entirely. For it was possible that this concatenation of circumstance had been arranged by the Moirai who controlled men’s fate, and they had—for reasons unknown—arranged for that rock to be in his path at the moment Addison strolled by.   

Over the next several days the pain in his ankle subsided, but the memory of the pleasure he had taken in Addison did not fade or become less intense. He could not stop thinking about the ecstatic state of bliss he had been privileged to visit and which still sent shivers down his spine when he thought about it.

The following Wednesday he showered and shaved and put on deodorant and cologne and headed to her house. He didn’t run, he walked. Every step he took provoked the image of her serving herself up on the kitchen table for his delectation.

The driveway gates were open. The mudroom door was open. He entered and made his way to the kitchen door. No sooner did he step inside than Addison swept down upon him like a bird of prey, her robe open, trailing behind her, revealing her regal beauty in all its naked splendor. She embraced him with such surprising strength that he gasped. Her tongue snaked so far down his throat he nearly choked, and before he could catch his breath they were on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. She undid his pants and he mounted her and let her guide him inside her. She cried out as he pressed his cock into her and lowered his full weight upon her. She grabbed his ass and with one hand set the beat of their coupling, moaning deeply and mournfully. She forced him to move to her rhythm, clawing his flesh, pulling him in and pushing him out so that he slammed into her ever harder with each thrust and she cried yes, yes, like that, like that, until his seed shot out, deep inside her and then he collapsed on top of her and she threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, expelling joyous breaths of air. He lay prostrate on top of her. He moved his hands under her and cupped her ass and pulled her into him and she nuzzled her lips against his neck and cuddled him and mumbled, you’re so good to me. It’s been too long since I’ve known love like this. Then she was up, hustling him to the door. You have to go. He wanted to ask... We’ll talk, she said. Next week, Tuesday. If the gates are open, she said. If not, another day.

How could he wait until Tuesday?  

His mind was in turmoil. He could think about nothing but her. His autonomic nervous system kept him functioning, but he was living in a trance. At work he performed with minimum effort the tasks listed in his job description, the same tasks with small variations that he had been repeating for years. Outside of the paltry amount of brain work satisfying his superiors required, every second of his time was devoted to reliving the moments he and Addison spent together and fantasizing about the ones to come. The rush of dopamine that engulfed him when he was with her was so powerful that his only wish was to reproduce that feeling again as soon as possible. He let the woman he had been desultorily dating drift away as she proved incapable of keeping him from thinking of Addison.  

He needed to know more about her. He found her house on Zillow. The description said there were six bedrooms, the master with its own fireplace. There were eight bathrooms, a custom bar, a gourmet kitchen, a wine cellar, a billiard room, a media room, a gym, a pool with a cabana, and a four-car garage over which was the maid’s quarters with its own private entrance. Through a property search of town records of her address he found her husband’s name, Bill Burroughs. Further investigation uncovered his marriage to Addison Matterson, eleven years younger, seven years previously. It had been a grand affair. Mr. Burroughs was the founder of a hedge fund and richer than rich. A sports and hunting fanatic, he traveled to Africa for big game, to the Rockies for mountain climbing and white-water rafting, to Hawaii for surfing, to Florida for polo, to Europe for cycling. On Instagram there were pictures of the two of them arm in arm on the beach, in the mountains, by a pool, living their best life one of the captions said. In a news item in the local paper, he read that two years previously Mr. Burroughs had suffered a catastrophic cycling accident while descending a mountain road in the Italian Alps at high speed. He was paralyzed head to foot, wheelchair bound with severe neurological injuries and an uncertain future.    

That she was living with a damaged husband who could no longer satisfy her sexually and was using him to satisfy her carnal needs didn’t dissuade him from continuing to participate in her infidelity. He knew what they were doing was wrong, but he felt no guilt and continued to accept every assignation she gave him. He told himself that what came to one unsolicited—as a gift—one was permitted to enjoy.   

They fucked mostly in the kitchen, on the table or on the floor, or sometimes on the counter top, or on a bar stool chair. Now and again, they repaired to the pool house and availed themselves of the chaise lounge. It was never clear whether her husband was on the premises or out of the house, off somewhere, perhaps at a rehabilitation clinic receiving therapy.

When she showed up at his house one evening unannounced—I had to, she said—he understood that she was as madly obsessed with him as he was with her. She arrived on an e-bike and stripped off her spandex the moment she walked through the door indifferent to whether there was anyone besides himself present in the house. She got down on all fours in the foyer and said, I don’t have much time. He pushed his face into her taint, licked her from hole to hole, spit into his hand and lubed his cock and entered her one push at a time, slowly going deeper, waiting for her juices to begin to flow. When he was gliding in and out of her effortlessly, she called for him to sodomize her. He plunged his thumb into her ass and she wailed with pleasure. Fused together, they moved in violent synchrony climaxing simultaneously.

He brought a washcloth for them to clean themselves.

He offered her water, which she refused.

Are you happy, he asked as she was dressing.

What kind of a question is that.

Are you happy, he repeated.

Is anyone, she said, sharply.

Some people, I imagine, he said.

Would I be doing this if I were happy, she snapped.

She gave him back the washcloth. Softening, she snuggled into his embrace. You don’t understand. I can’t do anything. He was good to me. And now he’s no good to me, and my life is hell. You’re all I have. You make me happy. Next Wednesday if you can, she said on her way out. I’ll be waiting.

Ever since his divorce indolence and indifference had ruled his emotional life. His romantic relationships since that time were nothing more than temporary arrangements. Good for today and gone tomorrow, or at least in a couple of weeks, rarely more than a couple of months. By mutual agreement, with no hard feelings. How long could this last?  

She wouldn’t take his phone number, wouldn’t give him hers. Talking on the phone was a recipe for disaster, Addison said. People blathered on, on the phone. Texted idiocies. More words would create more ties between them. Their craving for each other would make them say silly things, make them make promises they couldn’t keep and cause unimaginable regret. She said the hurried nature of their meetings kept their intercourse to a minimum and assured everything remained superficial and ephemeral and intense and it was better that way. He told her he was crazy for her and couldn’t stop agonizing about how she could go on living how she was living. Divorce would leave her destitute due to her prenup, she said, and she couldn’t live poor.

We could…

We can’t, she said.

I could…

You can’t, she said. I can’t.

There was nothing to do except what they were doing, which gave her all the pleasure she needed to survive her situation.   

He found himself in the absurd position of having become her subject. He submitted to her needs, which ignited and inflamed his own. She took prisoner his will power leaving him impotent to fight with himself about how to handle his ever-increasing longing for her, a longing that was now the center of his existence.

The penumbra of danger that attended their clandestine couplings and the frenzied, overpowering sensations he experienced while fucking her were different each time and unlike any he had previously known. He told himself he could never let her go. He was agog every time she stripped off her clothes. He had never had the good fortune to embrace such beauty. Nor had any woman ever so completely submitted to his desire. Anything you want, she said, anything for you. He wanted everything. Other women he had been with were hot, Addison was on fire. Her lips and breasts and vagina generated heat, heat like nothing he had felt before. When he entered her, she let out little cries and stared into his eyes and said, you like that, don’t you. It’s you I’m hot for, she said, only for you. You.  

He suffered unbearably during the days between their trysts but resigned himself to the fact that he would never have sole possession of her, that she would never leave her husband and come to him for anything but pleasure. The question he couldn’t resolve, however, was whether her monopolization of his thoughts was merely his obsession with the pleasurable sensations she aroused, or whether it might be love. If it was the former, then sooner or later he would be free. Because obsessions didn’t last forever. Eventually the intensity of the sensual pleasures upon which an obsession was based, plateaued, and it’s imperious demands dwindled and died—it was a law of nature that couldn’t be contravened. Love, on the other hand, love went on forever.

There were times, toward the end of their affair, that her will to pleasure abated and he saw then someone delicate and sad, trapped and resigned, the woman pushing the shopping cart in the supermarket with a glazed faraway look in her eyes.

One Thursday, she told him her husband was improving. He was receiving the best healthcare. He was spending entire days in physical therapy. Flying to Cleveland and Houston and Washington to meet with specialists. He received daily infusions of vitamins and nutrients and proteins. He was regaining use of his hands, improving day by day. The doctors in California were going to implant electrodes in his brain to repair and regenerate his damaged neurons. Someday soon, she said, someone would flick a switch and, like Frankenstein, he would be up and about. And then what? What will I do with you, she wondered. I can’t keep you, but I can’t bear to lose you.

As her concern about her husband’s improving state of health became more acute, it took him longer to arouse her. It was only after many kisses and caresses that she became wild and wanton. And even then. When he forced her head down and pulled her hips up and spit in her ass to lube it before jamming his cock in, she pleaded yes, yes, do it, hard, I want it hard, all of it. But when it was over she cried. Next Friday, she said.

Next Friday when he showed up, the gates were closed. He returned home distraught. The following day at the same hour he drove by the house. All the curtains and blinds were drawn tight and the gates were shut.

He waited at home for two days thinking she might come to him. Bring him some explanation of what had happened, lie down on the floor and let him ravish her. He answered every random phone call from unknown numbers hoping to hear her voice.

On the third day he was desperate without word from her and headed up the hill to her house on foot. The air was crisp and cool, the sky azure, the leaves were off the trees and blanketed the lawns and blew up and down the streets in the breeze. The gates were open. The mudroom door was unlocked.

Inside, he listened. Silence.

Holding on to the door frame he half-opened the kitchen door and leaned in to look around. Addison was lying flat on the floor, next to the table, her right arm stretched out in front of her, reaching for something that must have fallen under the oven. He whispered her name, but she remained motionless. He opened the door wider, stepped inside and went to her, calling her name softly but insistently as he approached her so as not to frighten her. When he was standing over her he saw that just below her right shoulder there was a hole in her blouse and a red stain surrounding it. It took him a second more to realize her lifeless body was lying in a puddle of blood, mostly still bright red, except for the outer edges were a glossy, reddish brown. He kneeled and placed his hand on her neck, trying not to stare at her unblinking open eye. She was as cold as the tile upon which she was lying. There was, he noticed, something in the collar of her blouse. A piece of folded paper. He pulled it out, opened it, and read: I paid for my pleasure with my life…and so will you. A noise startled him, a click of some sort that came through the door from the dining room. He didn’t know it was the sound of a .44 Magnum Colt cocking. He stood up, and was facing the door when it opened and he saw a man in a wheelchair roll into the kitchen and there was a loud explosion of light and then nothing.