Mid-Summer Fiction: Harvard Man

My wife and I have our most enthusiastic sex on the nights when Georgia comes over for dinner, which hasn't been for a long time. She's due here in twenty minutes, and I'm still sweating from biking down to the Jefferson Memorial, twenty- three miles roundtrip. I peel off my jersey and contemplate the unopened package of razor blades sitting next to the bathroom sink. Who will notice if I don't shave? Georgia. She doesn't miss a thing. Nikki and I have never discussed it, but we habitually pose for her friend's camera-like gaze. Nikki will kiss me tenderly on the lips after she pours me a glass of wine, or I'll laugh a bit too hard at one of her quips. Small embellishments like that. And after Georgia leaves, we'll stretch out on our king-sized bed and agree that she deserves to find a good man, because beneath her reserve she's warm and kind. We'll run through the tired, diminishing list of our single friends and come up with nobody for her.

And then we'll sigh, and Nikki's breathing will quicken, and we'll ravage each other like we did during our early courtship, when we spent full Sundays in the bedroom of the apartment she shared with Georgia, who likely heard our every groan and giggle through the paper-thin walls. Things shift around in my biking shorts in anticipation of the end of the evening.

I run a hot shower to loosen up my quad muscles. Too many hills today. I'm getting old, a thought I brush aside, along with the phone call I received from my college roommate yesterday, telling me that he's been tapped for a nice post at Treasury. No big surprise, but I'm neither generous nor patriotic enough to be happy for him.

Before Dubya stole Florida, I worked four offices down from the President. Lobbyists used to dribble my name like a basketball. Al and Tipper showed up at the twins' christening with two Baby Bjorns which we still keep, even though the girls just turned eleven. After Michelle Obama visited the kids' school, we entertained big conversations about soccer practices and White House sleepovers with Malia. The Obama girls ended up at Sidwell, a harbinger of the series of false alarms that have comprised my unsuccessful journey back to Pennsylvania Avenue.

I raise the water temperature, and the combination of the scalding heat and my endorphin buzz anesthetizes me, for now anyway. Through a thickening mist, I see Nikki come in and open the medicine cabinet. I haven't seen that blouse since early in our marriage, when I got jealous as hell the night she wore it to a dinner meeting with a charming Midwestern real estate mogul. She didn't need to rely on a tight blouse to make gallons of rain for the Democrats. The first Thanksgiving we spent in Phoenix, she almost persuaded her uncle Richard - Barry Goldwater's drinking buddy, no less - to write a check to the Clinton campaign.

When the water turns tepid, I open the shower door and Nikki faces me through the scrim of steam. Nursing Emma and Sophie robbed the perkiness from her breasts, and her blouse pulls between the middle buttons, revealing a dingy beige bra. "Here," she says, offering me a Gatorade with her jaunty smile, which during the early days of my professional purgatory meant something besides pity and resignation.

"Georgia!" She's always on time. I mean to kiss her cheek, but she moves her head and my lips land on a patch of her wiry hair. She's contributed her usual brick of Stilton cheese toward dessert; she and Nikki remind me of women I knew in college who read a lot of George Eliot and Margaret Drabble and drank tea instead of Diet Coke in the late afternoon.

The kitchen smells like mint and garlic and Nikki's lilacs, which puts me in a festive mood. Nikki opens the back door and in bounds Hugo, our German Shepherd-Lab mix. He pounces on Georgia, who's built like a slightly bottom-heavy Eastern European gymnast, and knocks her off balance. A true cat person, Georgia recoils.

"Down, Hugo," Nikki orders without conviction. It's been more than a year since Hugo joined the family, and she still hasn't learned how to control him. She feebly grabs his collar, and he tugs her shoulder toward him. She looks up at her friend. "That green really suits you, brings out your eyes. You should wear pastels more often. I discovered pastels when the girls went through that dreadful princess phase. Who ever would have thought? Runs against the grain of my inner feminist," Nikki prattles on to Georgia, which is really easy to do, since Georgia waits a few seconds after you finish talking before she responds. "They're at a sleepover tonight. End of the school year party."

Nikki muzzles herself by making some excuse to check on dinner, and Georgia examines me in her Georgia way. She hasn't seen me since I started working out, and damn but it feels good to be back to my fighting weight – one hundred seventy-four pounds. "I hear you're competing in triathlons." She dips a carrot stick into Nikki's famous (and labor-intensive) artichoke dip. "Sounds like a lot of work."

"Not if you love it. I swim with a masters team at the crack of dawn, over at Hains Point. I can usually squeeze a four-or five-mile hoof on the Mall into my lunch hour, and weekends are for long rides and runs." When I describe my routine to Georgia, it sounds more self-indulgent than impressive. "I signed up for a half Ironman in Texas in late fall," I add for no reason.

Thank God Nikki appears. She gives a little clap. "Let's go ogle my peonies before it gets dark." We follow her into the garden, where the cicadas are screeching in cadence. I love summer. Georgia bends over to sniff a pink flower, nodding in appreciation. "Do you still have that orchid you stole from Perry Eisenfeld's wedding?" She means Perry Eisenstadt; he had a thing for Nikki when he worked for her. She wore stilettos to his wedding, which gave her a good inch on me. Sexy. After a few gin and tonics, she led the guests in a plucky if less than graceful version of the Electric Slide. A couple of hours later, I held her hair while she retched from an unfortunate encounter with a shrimp cocktail. Luckily for me, I'm allergic to shellfish. Luckily for me, she decided to marry me that night.

"It died last summer." Nikki smiles wistfully, fingering the pendant I gave her for our tenth anniversary. "Seems like another lifetime." We return to the den to find that Hugo has polished off the artichoke dip. Nikki and I exchange glances. Mine says, He never would have gobbled up my artichoke dip. Nikki's says, I'm working on it, Tad. And even though we haven't spoken, I feel like Georgia has heard every word of our conversation. I clear the spotless - thanks to Hugo - dip bowl, a wedding gift that we rarely use anymore. These days, we mainly invite other families over to wolf pizza after a soccer match or dance recital. The energy is different when it's just Georgia, who almost always arrives solo. After the twins were born, she showed up with a manic bass player who looked like an exterminator but apparently oozed sex appeal onstage. He lost his charm when he tried to light up in our living room, only a few feet from our dozing infants. Georgia's visits grew less frequent after that.

Nikki is sprinkling dried cranberries on the salad when Georgia asks me about my new job. "I write a lot of op-eds, even though people are about as excited to read about health-care issues as to hear the details of someone's Disney vacation, in real time." I chuckle, more out of truth than self-deprecation. Nikki gives me a courtesy laugh. She used to love my analogies. "I'm the number two guy at the association, so I have quite a bit of freedom." Code word for boredom, but the money is good, and I haven't had to give up much training time.

Nikki adds brightly, "One of Tad's Harvard buddies wants him to coauthor a book." Ever since my career went on life support, Nikki's been sneaking my Harvard degree into conversations: "When Tad lived in Cambridge . . ." or "He graduated with Tad, Harvard, class of '82 . . ." or "Tommy Lee Jones lived in Tad's dorm . . ." She used to drop the H-bomb to mock her snotty little pedigree-happy DLC staffers, back when we were a power couple. Now she says these things without irony.

Hugo interrupts us by barking at some neighbors strolling past our dining room window. "Hugo," I command. He quiets down immediately, and I rub his belly with my foot. Georgia nods toward the dog. "So are the girls helping with him?" Nikki's pale blue eyes reveal amusement. "Hugo is definitely Tad's puppy. They run together in Rock Creek Park, and then he takes him to Starbucks." In a sing-songy voice, she crafts this neat little Kodak moment for her friend, as if she's composing our annual Christmas letter. "Hugo would be your dog too, love, if you asserted yourself." I sound like I'm scolding one of our daughters. Nikki sighs dramatically. "Are we going to have this alpha-rolling squabble again?" Another Georgia thing we do is stage these fake arguments for her to settle. "Tell me what you think of this, Georgia. Tad's upset with me because I refuse to alpha roll the dog." Nikki tucks a lock of her black hair behind her ear. "Alpha-roll?" Georgia raises an eyebrow over her glasses.

My enthusiasm for this topic crackles like a hot tin of Jiffy Pop. I describe how I stumbled upon a book called How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend, written by the Monks of New Skete. They based their advice on scientific studies of wolf behavior conducted in the 1940s.

"Georgia, you may know from editing nature documentaries that like wolves, dogs order themselves." I take a sip of wine, which goes straight to my head after my long bike ride. "You've got to show the dog that you're dominant, or alpha. That's the only way they'll listen to you." My voice is loud. Georgia adjusts her glasses and blinks. "So have you alpha-rolled Hugo?"

"I have." I look at my wife. "Nik won't do it." This is Georgia's cue to offer an obvious solution to our discord, granting the illusion that we've acquiesced to her idea and not to each other. Instead she furrows her brow. "What does it entail?" Despite her soft voice, I feel like she's putting me on the witness stand, and I don't like being challenged. "You flip the dog onto his back and hold him in that submissive position, sometimes by the throat, and then you growl at his jugular."

"This works?"

"Have you noticed how Hugo only responds to my commands?"

Georgia pauses for her usual few seconds, during which I assume she's registering my wise choice of technique. "Doesn't this traumatize the dog?" Did she hear me say that a group of monks thought this up?

Nikki scoops up a stray walnut with her fingers. "That's right, Georgia. I knew you'd go to bat for me."

"Make that you and Hugo." Georgia puts her salad fork on her plate with finality.

People don't listen to me like they used to. I even caught an intern, a little sorority girl from the University of Alabama, text-messaging her boyfriend while I led a staff meeting. The anger I numb daily with exercise is pitching a tent in my gullet like a Bedouin in a sandstorm.

Georgia helps Nikki clear the salad plates while I hunt through the refrigerator for another bottle of wine. Nikki reaches out to stroke my arm, but I move away from her. The last thing I need right now is her propping.

"Here, Georgia." She hands her friend a bag of feta to sprinkle on the eggplant dish and then removes a pan of Greek chicken from the oven. "Did I tell you that our neighbor Becca Coopersmith is taking a pole-dancing class?" She's trying to maneuver the conversation to safer terrain.

"Striptease pole dancing or folk pole dancing?" Georgia's tone is sardonic.

"The former." Nikki giggles. "Yeah. Ooh, this is hot." Nikki puts the Pyrex pan on the stove. "All in the name of self-actualization. Becca takes very good care of herself."

I love the bite in her voice; I miss the random moments of bitchiness she used to reserve for me alone. "Well, it melts that middle-aged sag like a slab of butter on a hotcake," I say, glancing toward Nikki's belly, focusing my gaze on the spot where her blouse labors over a fold of skin that won't budge no matter how many crunches she does every morning.

Georgia averts her eyes, and Nikki blinks, almost as if I've slapped her. She pauses for a second, and then looks right into my soul and replies in perfect body English, You miserable tool.

By the time Nikki cuts the first piece of lemon tart, I've polished off the rest of the Williams Selyem 2001 Chardonnay and my head is pounding. We've been chatting too politely, exhausting our topics of conversation: Emma and Sophie's summer plans, Washington bike paths, Georgia's film on Lewis and Clark, and Nikki's new fund-raising client, a literacy group based in Northern Virginia.

Nikki fills the teakettle and rummages in the pantry. "No tea. How can we enjoy our sweets and Stilton without tea?"

"I'll fetch you some," I offer, trying to be funny and a little mean too. Mainly, I just need some air.

"Take Hugo with you, Tad." Nikki looks at like me I'm a stranger. I've really gotten to her. Took long enough.

The Coopersmith-Kornfelds can probably spare a tea bag. I knock on their door, not knowing what I'll do if Becca answers. Tell her that all her pole dancing is paying off? That I liked what I saw when I watched her unload her groceries the other day? Hugo needs to crap, which saves me from myself. I walk away quickly, not knowing if she even answers the door. I haven't played ding-dong-ditch since I was twelve.

I'm too drunk to drive anywhere, so I walk a mile to the 7-Eleven. They'll carry Lipton, which will just have to do for the Brontë sisters, who are probably shredding me right now. Not that I don't deserve it. I'm a cad. I've become that underachieving Harvard guy whose arrogance unsuccessfully masks his "I got picked last for kickball" disappointment in life. I'm Charles Emerson Winston III, the Bostonian whom Alan Alda torments in old M*A*S*H episodes. My insignificance overwhelms me. A wife like Becca Coopersmith would have lassoed me, insisted that I pull myself together. Nikki used to be like that; I want that Nikki back.

Hugo leads me to the park around the corner from our cul-de-sac, where I throw a stick for him to retrieve while I sit on Sophie's old favorite swing dragging my feet. Dust smokes around my calves.

Georgia is gone by the time I return home from 7-Eleven with a box of Lipton tea bags. The dishwasher hums and a mound of soiled linen napkins lies on our kitchen table. I am sick with shame and loss, the loss of Georgia's reflection of who we were. That mirror broke tonight.

In a vain attempt to rinse my mouth of the foul taste of the evening, I take a swig of Listerine. I let the khakis Nikki ironed drop on the bathroom floor, and I stare at the tan lines from my sunglasses, at my flat eyes and newly chiseled cheekbones. I looked younger with a little baby fat.

I sidle up to Nikki, who lies coiled on her side of the bed. I close my eyes, willing the sunrise to come early, longing for my daughters to climb into our bed and bicker over the narrow space between us. They're too old for that, and I'm off to swim laps well before they wake up. Tomorrow I'll cook up a batch of blueberry pancakes. I'll try to make things right with Nikki. And then, for no reason, I'm angry again. I stroke the side of her face, and her tears wet my fingers. I still want to have enthusiastic sex. How did I get here?

I roll away from her, and through a bent slat in our blinds I study a cluster of spindly pines backlit by the moon. It seems like hours pass before the tension of the evening drains from my limbs. Just as I'm drifting into sleep, Nikki yanks the warm sheets from my body. I shiver. She grabs my waist, rolls me over on my back, and climbs on top of me. In slow motion, she lowers her face toward me. She looks like she did when she pushed out Emma and Sophie: fierce, brave, fed up with the pain. Her hair is wild and her breath caresses my face; it smells like toothpaste and Stilton and alcohol. I want her. My lips part, waiting, waiting for her to kiss me. Her mouth comes within a millimeter of mine before she jerks her head away, slapping her hair against my face. She slides one hand from my wrists down toward my throat, and then she presses her dry lips to my jugular and growls.