Friend of My Youth

children on the roundabout, or feeling the excellent shape of a lemon in her hand at the supermarket, contained another woman, who only a few hours before had been whimpering and tussling on the ferns, on the sand, on the bare ground, or, during a rainstorm, in her own car—who had been driven hard and gloriously out of her mind and drifted loose and gathered her wits and made her way home again. Was this a common story? Georgia cast an eye over the other women at the supermarket. She looked for signs—of dreaminess or flaunting, a sense of drama in a woman’s ways of dressing, a special rhythm in her movements.
    How many, she asked Maya.
    “God knows,” said Maya. “Do a survey.”
    Trouble began, perhaps, as soon as they said that they loved each other. Why did they do that—defining, inflating, obscuring whatever it was they did feel? It seemed to be demanded, that was all—just the way changes, variations, elaborations in the lovemaking itself might be demanded. It was a way of going further. So they said it, and that night Georgia couldn’t sleep. She did not regret what had been said or think that it was a lie, though she knew that it was absurd. She thought of the way Miles sought to have her look into his eyes during lovemaking—something Ben expressly did not do—and she thought of how his eyes, at first bright and challenging, became cloudy and calm and sombre. That way she trusted him—it was the only way. She thought of being launched out on a gray, deep, baleful, magnificent sea. Love.
    “I didn’t know this was going to happen,” she said in Maya’s kitchen the next day, drinking her coffee. The day was warm, but she had put on a sweater to huddle in. She felt shaken, and submissive.
    “No. And you don’t know,” said Maya rather sharply. “Did he say it, too? Did he say he loved you, too?”
    Yes, said Georgia, yes, of course.
    “Look out, then. Look out for next time. Next time is always pretty tricky when they’ve said that.”
    And so it was. Next time a rift opened. At first they simply tested it, to see if it was there. It was almost like a new diversion to them. But it widened, it widened. Before any words were said to confirm that it was there, Georgia felt it widen, she coldly felt it widen, though she was desperate for it to close. Did he feel the same thing? She didn’t know. He, too, seemed cold—pale, deliberate, glittering with some new malicious intent.
    They were sitting recklessly, late at night, in Georgia’s car among the other lovers at Clover Point.
    “Everybody here in these cars doing the same thing we’re doing,” Miles had said. “Doesn’t that idea turn you on?”
    He had said that at the very moment in their ritual when they had been moved, last time, to speak brokenly and solemnly of love.
    “You ever think of that?” he said. “I mean, we could start with Ben and Laura. You ever imagine how it would be with you and me and Ben and Laura?”
    Laura was his wife, at home in Seattle. He had not spoken of her before, except to tell Georgia her name. He had spoken of Ben, in a way that Georgia didn’t like but passed over.
    “What does Ben think you do for fun,” he’d said, “while he is off cruising the ocean blue?”
    “Do you and Ben usually have a big time when he gets back?”
    “Does Ben like that outfit as much as I do?”
    He spoke as if he and Ben were friends in some way, or at least partners, co-proprietors.
    “You and me and Ben and Laura,” he said, in a tone that seemed to Georgia insistently and artificially lecherous, sly, derisive. “Spread the joy around.”
    He tried to fondle her, pretending not to notice how offended she was, how bitterly stricken. He described the generous exchanges that would take place among the four of them abed. He asked whether she was getting excited. She said no, disgusted.Ah, you are but you won’t give in to it, he said. His voice, his caresses grew more bullying. What is so special about you, he asked softly, despisingly, with a hard squeeze at her breasts. Georgia, why do you think you’re such a queen?
    “You are being cruel and you know you’re being cruel,” said Georgia, pulling at his hands. “Why are you being like this?”
    “Honey, I’m not being cruel,” said Miles, in a slippery mock-tender voice. “I’m being horny. I’m horny again is all.” He began to pull Georgia around, to arrange her for his use. She told him to get out of the car.
    “Squeamish,” he said,