I'm having a hot dream; I'm in a large bath in a white 2050 style flat in Shanghai. Young Chinese men in white t-shirts and tights are working on a huge scaffolding, but also peering in, watching me. I'm turned on by their attention. Now, I'm in the giant, sleek white bed. They are agile and appealing. I want so badly to get off. Aching! Don't, I tell myself. Today is Valentine's Day, and Nick and Riki, the young couple who live with us in our curious Wimpole Street house in London, will be out. All week Stuart has been planning for our night alone, thinking up events and escapades to be considered and attempted. The Chinese men are acrobats, and have well-curved, firm backsides and thighs. Their arms are smooth and powerful. I twist. My sheets in this dream are satin -- this kind of dream is probably bad form; is fantasy disloyal? I force myself to wake up, and throw myself out of bed. I will go downstairs and make Stuart tea. My yearning will be useful for both of us all day. He'll be feeling the heat, the ticking, the swelling. He's kissing me soft and serious even before his first morning medicines, "I want you," he says.
"Later," I say.
"Will we be alone tonight?"
"Yes. Promise."
"No phone calls?" he asks. "I read in the New Yorker about a couple who study the brain. There's this peptide called Oxytocin produced in the body during orgasm...it can make you more trusting and co-operative."
"I could have told them that, Stuart."
He sort of smiles. Stuart never exactly smiles. He lifts the corner of his upper lip ever so slightly. I'm not crazy about men who have big smiles. All my life, all seventy-years, I have always loved moody, difficult men who would rather talk books than football. For most of our twenty-seven years together we'd spend our time awake walking around the city, strolling to plays, concerts. That seems long ago now, but still the best times, as he's written, are the talking times, and the loving. Not technologically driven, let's say, he has learned to use the TV wand to find the adult channels when I'm upstairs writing, so I won't know he's watching. It's great for his spirit's energy.
I perch on his bed, kneeling over him, holding his face in my hands, kissing him. His lips are swollen with longing, "Be my Valentine," he says.
"Always," I say, "and we'll have a fine time tonight."
His hands swoop up and reach under my breasts, holding them, so pleased. Once again, I'm ripe fresh fruit. Is it true this only happens with someone who remembers you? I don't want to rush to find out the answer, if you see what I mean. All through the day, he's ruddy, randy, and urgent. "When are they going out?" he asks. "What time is it?" He is disappointed by his watch, "I thought it could be later than it is."
Nick and Riki come home from a run, "I thought you were out," Stuart says.
"No, that's tonight."
"What would you like for dinner?" I ask Stuart. "I'll make something wonderful, risotto with truffles."
"Don't try to distract me. Maybe I'll go for a walk."
"Are you sure you're up to that?" Would I have believed last January, when it looked he wouldn't live for very long, that he'd ever say, 'Let's go for a walk?'
"I'd like some white chocolate from La Fromagerie."
"I could run and get it for you. And I'll pick up a perfect steak."
"No, we can go get it together, then we'll come home, and they'll be out."
"It doesn't matter," I say, "we can close the door to our room."
"It's not the same. You know."
We're walking slowly up the street. But Stuart is walking well today, not shuffling, not stumbling; walking.
"Well, Stuart!" Patricia, who owns La Fromagerie, is clearly delighted, "I never expected to see you just walking in here again, what a treat." She hugs him.
"I've done it all on white chocolate." He may not know how to find his glasses at home, his wallet, his slippers, and sometimes isn't sure which room his desk is in, but he knows where the fine creamy bricks of La Fromagerie's white chocolate are kept. He goes around the low table, and picks up a stocky package.
"My treat," says Patricia.
Then a stop at the Ginger Pig for steak, "and what time is it now?"
"Maybe time for a short nap. I want you perfectly rested."
That will give me time to sort through the luggage and books by the stairs. What Nick doesn't want can go to charity, then I can write for an hour or two, and Nick can go back to working on his PhD about Henry Greene. "We won't travel with this tweed and leather stuff again, probably won't travel."
"You don't know that now," he says. "I wouldn't give it away." He's right. Life had seemed rather steadily on a dark track, I'm not sure what to do with this -- what do we call it -- rehabilitation. Too clinical a word. A reconsideration of life. Is that what Stuart has done? Faced with his dilapidations, has he tossed them aside, or found a new key to his spiritual center, and decided to come alive? Nick helps me hang the luggage in the closet. I see a dark blue hanging bag here. Yes.
Do I have a treat in mind. I pull out this black velvet negligee, bordered on its great medieval sleeves, all along it's wrapped front and down the lovely train with black marabou feathers. "This was made for me, oh, decades ago, by this designer Galanos, for my actual picture in Vogue. This is true. I was famous, almost." It felt, I remember, like sex. Stuart met me right at the end of that time, I felt turned on, assured I was delightful. He's kept me feeling that, I remind myself as I put on the negligee and go downstairs to show Nick and Riki, who are making pre-theatre quesadillas. "Wait until you see me," I call out to Stuart.
"You are talking to other people," he says.
"Nick and Riki," I glide into his room and twirl around.
"They're supposed to be out."
"We're leaving NOW!"
"I can't wait to hear about the Seagull," I say.
"I can," Stuart is crisp. "I will tell you all you need to know."
The door closes. "Do you want some supper?" I ask.
"Don't be ridiculous," he says.
Nothing is simple now; he does not move easily. We laugh over details and what you could call gymnastics, but I'd rather call choreography -- but we race through all this, hearts beating, so electric -- is there, surely, a newer word than electric, I don't care if you have one, we are fine with this, with the fireworks we exact from the knowing precision of our finely tuned lips and fingers; is it orchestration, now, the notes and responses we reach for, and demand from each other; crying out with deep mores and yeses and wild sighs like great beach birds, gulls, indeed, and I laugh and clutch onto him so tightly, fingertips on the trails of black feathers on the white sheets. "So," I say, "dinner?"
"No, this is all I ever want."
"Perhaps, it's the wanting that's keeping you going?"
"And the knowing I can get it."
With more arranging of cushions, and so on, I can lie next to him now on the narrow bed, in my flannel nightgown.
When Nick and Riki come home, they peer in to say goodnight. Stuart is sound asleep.
"How was the play?" I ask.
"You would love it so much," Nick says. "Did you have a good evening?"
"Perfect," I say.