Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online

while. I think he called me a few times, I called him, and then we met for lunch and
then
we went back to his place. I stayed until I had to go home for Michael.”
    “Wasn’t it hard?” I asked. “I mean, to shift gears like that?”
    “Yeah, it was really hard. I felt terrible, giving Michael a snack on his little dinosaur plate, looking at his schoolwork. His teacher had given him a sticker on one of his papers and I thought, What would
she
think? And the worst part was that night Eric wanted to make love.”
    “Did you?”
    “More or less. I mean, I’m sure nothing seemed different to him. For it me, it was awful. But after the first he, it gets so much easier. It’s disappointing, in a way, how easy it is.”
    “Are you still seeing him?” I asked.
    Ruth sat up, shook her hair back over her shoulders. “Nah. He was three guys ago.” She looked at me. “Is this terrible? It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think it’s just that at some point I made a conscious decision that I was not going to be without passionin my life. I need it like water. And I’m not really promiscuous, honest.”
    I smiled.
    “I’m not!”
    “I believe you!”
    She looked my face up and down. “Did you ever think about having an affair?”
    “I guess everybody does,” I said.
    “No, not everybody does.”
    “Well, I have.”
    “Why haven’t you done it?”
    “Well, God, think of it. Think of all that could happen if you got caught.”
    “If the only reason you’re not doing it is because you think you’ll get caught, you might as well do it,” Ruth said. She bit into an apple, stopped chewing to say, “Really.”
    “That’s not the only reason I don’t do it,” I said.
    “Uh-huh,” she said. “What are the other reasons?”
    I said nothing.
    “You won’t get caught,” she said. “I can promise you that. I’ve been doing this for six years, Ann. It doesn’t take much intelligence to not get caught. Although, at first, you really wish you would.” She looked down to trace a design in the dirt. “You have this idea that maybe it could help.” She looked up, smiled bitterly, then smoothed her hand over her drawing to erase it.

W e are finished eating. Laid out on Ruth’s floor are the remains of our meal. There are broccoli stalks, courtesy of L.D., who went out and got that as well as the makings for hollandaise sauce. There are ravaged orange-red lobster shells lying in a steep pile, and gigantic bowls with sticky pools of leftover ice cream at the bottom. L.D. ate an amount that could most kindly be called inspirational and now, satisfied, leans against the wall picking her teeth with a matchbook cover. Sarah, long legs silkily crossed, is sitting in a chair by Ruth’s bed, idly flipping through a magazine. I am stretched out on the bed beside Ruth, my jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, even my bra unhooked. “I’m sick,” I groan.
    L.D. snorts. “What a wimp.”
    “I’m not a wimp!”
    “Yes, you are,” Ruth says.
    Sarah puts down the magazine, looks at her watch, stands up and stretches. “I’ve got to go,” she sighs. She leans over to kiss Ruth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She nods to L.D.; then, as she is pulling on her coat, asks, “What does L.D. stand for, anyway? I never heard you say.”
    L.D. pushes herself up off the floor, heads for the bathroom. “You never will, either.” She slams the door shut.
    Ruth smiles. “Loosely translated: Good-bye, Sarah. Great seeing you.”
    “Do you know what it stands for?” Sarah asks quietly. At the same time Ruth shakes her head, we hear L.D.’s muffled voice. “No, she doesn’t. Nobody does.”
    “Oh. Well. Good night then, Lucinda Diane,” Sarah calls.
    Nothing.
    “Laura Dee Dee?”
    The toilet flushes, the door bangs open, and L.D. reappears. “Fuck you, Sarah.”
    “Oh, no, that can’t be it,” Sarah says. “That would be F.Y.” She smiles, embraces all of us, and is gone.
    “Does that woman