Page 19 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

She looked completely unconvinced. Tough crowd. But at least she didn't heckle.

I was going anyway. And I went.

The Meridian Bar was on the ground floor of a boutique hotel downtown, the kind of low-lit room with a long curved bar built for people who wanted to be seen while acting like they didn’t care. Busy, not chaotic. Couples in corners. A table of women laughing. And men distributed through the spaces between, doing whatever men did in bars, which I realized, with a hum of anxiety, I had almost no experience reading. Do not think of predators, I told myself, instantly making me think of predators.

Brad had not been a bar person. Our life had been dinner parties and department functions where everyone knew each other and the rules were printed in the program.

I took a stool near the end of the bar, ordered a vodka soda, and arranged my face as though I belonged. It was four minutes before I checked my phone.

A few men came by over the next half hour, but none took a seat. Then one sat down, decent-looking, polite, and asked what I did, and when I said pediatric cardiology, I watched the small recalibration in his face, the information sorting me into a category he wasn't equipped for. He finished his drink in less than two minutes and left.

I looked at the mirror and reminded myself compatibility was important.

I ordered another drink. It was 9:13 on a Saturday night and I was a doctor sitting alone in a bar checking my phone. All was fine.

He appeared at 9:27.

Forty, maybe, dark-haired, broad without being imposing, easy in his body like some men are, at home in the room. He caught my eye in the mirror and smiled, nothing calculated that I could see. "You look like you're solving a very difficult equation," he said.

I laughed. "Is it that obvious?"

"Just a little." He nodded at the stool. "May I?"

His name was Paul. Commercial real estate, which he described with enough self-awareness that it didn't land as dull as it sounded. He asked what I did and didn't recalibrate. If anything, he leaned in, asked which was the hardest part, the people or the medicine, and I told him about the parents. He didn't offer a platitude. He said that sounded like carrying a heavy weight every day, and I said yes, that is exactly what it is, and felt the small surprise of being understood by a stranger.

Two years ago at a faculty dinner, Brad had cut me off mid-sentence when I started explaining a case to someone who had asked. She tends to go into detail, he had said, pleasantly, and steered the table elsewhere. I had picked up my wine and let the moment pass and not thought about it until now, sitting beside a man who was leaning in and asking me to go into detail.

He was naturally funny. He refilled my drink without making it a transaction. I relaxed. I stopped watching the room.

Around ten-thirty he asked if I wanted to dance.

"I'm not very good."

"Neither am I," he said, already standing, already offering his hand, and I thought, this is how it works, you just do the next thing. I took his hand and followed.

The floor was crowded enough that feet didn't matter much. Paul danced easily, unshowy, hands at my waist, courteous, present without pulling. The vodka had warmed the edges of everything, the lights were low and forgiving, and for a while it was simply pleasant, moving to music with someone.

Then a slower song played, and he drew me in.

And I went.

That was the part. Not that he pulled. That I went, and that I put my cheek down near his collar without being asked to, and that when his hand settled at the small of my back I let it stay there, and then leaned into it, so it would press harder.

He smelled like clean cotton, and the wanting came up so fast I had no chance to meet it at the door. Fifteen years of a marriage with a scheduled Saturday in it, and here was a man's whole body against mine in a dark room and my own hands sliding up his.

Then I felt him. Hard, along my hip, unmistakable through his trousers, and he shifted a half inch like he meant to be polite about it.

I moved with the shift, and felt the shape of him again, and something went off in me. Electric and wet. He wants me. Not a compliment across a table. Not a man being nice about my job. His body responding to me, and I pressed closer so I could feel it better. His breath changed against my hair.

Somewhere in the next turn his thigh came between mine, just a little, but I opened without thinking. Then the pressure, exactly where I hadn't been touched by another person in longer than I wanted to count, and my hips found the movement on their own, small, in time with the music, hidden in it. Oh, that's good.

I did it again. Three or four bars, my face against his shoulder so I wouldn't have to have a face, riding his leg in the middle of a hotel bar on a Saturday night, and my whole body went liquid and certain and pleased with itself. I could take him home, a dreamy voice said. Feel him inside—

And then I made a sound.

It wasn't loud. It was barely anything, a small catch of breath against a stranger's shirt. But I heard it, and the hearing put me back on the outside of myself, and I saw the whole thing from four feet away, the way you'd see a patient. A woman I didn't know, grinding on a man she'd met an hour ago in the middle of a crowded floor, wet through her underwear. Anyone could look. I looked around before I moved.

No. No, too fast, not now.