The End Of An Affair (a story)

Ellen returned to her tiny apartment in the East Village at about 3:00 A.M. Her high cheek bones were streaked with tears and she was woozy from a few too many vodka martinis. The martinis were chugged quickly at the seedy bar down the block from Marguerite’s apartment on E. 60th St. after Marguerite had demanded that she leave her bed forever. “You’re nothing but a little slut,” the older woman hissed angrily, after Ellen, in the throes of sexual delirium, had mistakenly called out the name of Marguerite’s former lover. “I’d always suspected you of sleeping with Eva, you tramp. I never want to see you again.”
“Please, Marguerite,” Ellen cried, to no avail. “I’m so sorry. You must know that I love you.”

Ellen did love her but she’d never been able to control her own promiscuity. Since her teenage days she had juggled lovers like human bowling pins. In fact, Eva wasn’t the only woman with whom she was cheating. Ellen’s second cousin, Kat, had recently moved to New York and the two relatives had resumed an affair that had begun when they were young girls in Arkansas. Ellen was blissfully aware that she was addicted to sex and obsessed about it constantly. She had even kept lists of her lovers, actually rating their sexual performance.

Since she had begun sleeping with Marguerite, Ellen felt guilty about her infidelity but she did not try particularly hard to change her ways. She told herself that her furtive affairs added an exciting edge to the relationship. She even suspected that she was incapable of loving a woman unless she was secretly sleeping with others.

She’d met Eva at a party about a month ago and immediately fell in lust with her. Ironically, it was Marguerite, still on good terms with Eva, who had introduced them. Eva was a tall, willowy blond whose main attraction to Ellen was that she’d slept with Marguerite. Like a high school geometry teacher, Ellen had always had an affinity for triangles. In the back of her mind, she’d kind of hoped that Marguerite would find out.

Ellen had not really wanted to go to the party but Marguerite dragged her along anyway. “It will be fun, darling,” she said in her sweetest voice.
“Oh, all right,” Ellen replied grudgingly, but somehow Marguerite failed to notice her lack of enthusiasm.

The party was in full swing when they arrived. Most of the guests, Ellen noticed, were drinking cocktails. “I’ll see you later Marg,” she said and she headed straight for the bar, ordered a vodka martini, downed it quickly and ordered another. Drink in hand, she turned from the bar and circulated throughout the room, not really seeing anything that piqued her interest. Just as she was about to return to the bar, she noticed Marguerite speaking with a pretty blond. She got another drink and joined them. “Ellen, hello. I would like you to meet Eva. We’re old friends,” she said.
“Glad to meet you,” Ellen said and she shook hands with the woman, impressed by the long, graceful fingers; involuntarily fantasizing them roaming across her body. The woman blushed noticeably when Ellen stared suggestively into her huge eyes.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Eva replied.
Marguerite, not quite sure why she was feeling pangs of jealousy, took Eva’s arm and led her away. She spoke with her for a few more minutes then turned to mingle with other friends. Eva went in a different direction and Ellen watched from the bar as she began an animated conversation with a tall, stocky man and then moved on to a dark-skinned woman with an extraordinarily large behind. Ellen settled in for a long night of drinking alone but she kept one eye on Marguerite and the other on Eva.

The room was filled with the cacophonous sounds of raucous laughter and boisterous conversation. Cheerful piano music could be heard in the background, performed by a tuxedo-clad young man. The long, greasy hair and eyebrow piercings of the homely pianist were incongruous with his formal attire. Ellen was wracking her brain trying to remember from where she knew the unkempt musician. Finally it came to her; he was the house pianist at Ty’s, a gay bar on Christopher St. Perhaps she hadn’t recognized him because of the tuxedo or perhaps it was because she was drunk; or maybe it was because whenever she’d been at Ty’s she’d been too drunk to notice him. “Whatever,” she said aloud to nobody. “He’s a shitty musician anyway.”

Ellen felt that the party was terribly boring and that Marguerite was ignoring her, socializing instead with her many intellectual acquaintances, most of whom Ellen did not know or care to meet. Other than Marguerite, the only person in whom she had any interest was Eva. The moment she saw her alone, she approached her and made her move. The blond was interested and the women made a date for the following afternoon when Marguerite would be at work.

Morning came and Ellen awoke with a terrible headache, alone in bed. Marguerite had long since left for work. Ellen’s memory of the previous evening was a bit fuzzy but she did remember that Marguerite had been quite aloof and unresponsive when she’d wanted to make love. She also remembered that she had a date that afternoon with Eva. “Shit,” she said. “I’d better move my ass.” She dragged herself out of bed, downed a shot of vodka for her hangover and headed for the shower.

***

“Let’s get out of this place,” Ellen said in a hoarse voice tinged with desire as soon as they’d finished lunch at Ellen’s favorite Japanese restaurant.
“Oh yes, let’s,” Eva replied eagerly and they repaired to Eva’s apartment where they began what was to be a steamy, strictly physical affair.

But Marguerite was Ellen’s true love...the woman whom she considered to be her wife. Although she had held on to her apartment on East 2nd St., she had pretty much moved in with Marguerite. When she envisioned growing old with a mate, Marguerite was the one about whom she thought.

To most observers, Ellen and Marguerite were an unlikely couple. At 42, Marguerite was more than fifteen years Ellen’s senior. She was an intellectual whose German parents had known each other as children and had miraculously survived Auschwitz. They emigrated to America and lived with distant relatives, losing contact with each other for years. They each began careers in academia and reunited when, coincidentally, they both got jobs teaching at Hunter College. They eventually married and had Marguerite quite late in life. The middle-aged parents doted on the child, instilled in her the famous Jewish love for learning, and were unabashedly proud when it became apparent that their daughter was a brilliant girl. Marguerite earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University, was now a professor of classical literature at that esteemed school in Morningside Heights and had written several best-selling novels.

Ellen was a hard-drinking, fun-loving girl from small town Arkansas. She had never met a Jew before moving to New York and then didn’t know what to make of them. Marguerite was the first Jew she’d ever slept with.

She was a high school dropout who had come up north to become a model. That plan didn’t seem to be working out. She hadn’t yet been signed by an agency and, on her own, had found only one job, posing nude for a disreputable photographer who had paid her fifty dollars and then posted the photos all over the internet. He’d told her that the photos would appear in a well-known, tasteful magazine and instead they ended up on every XXX site on the web. When she’d discovered what the sleazeball had done, she got drunk, broke into his apartment, and attacked him with the dagger she always carried for protection. Although she managed to slice his cheek before he was able to get away, the man never pressed charges, perhaps embarrassed that he’d been bested by a girl. For her part, Ellen awoke the next day terribly hung over but with no recollection of the incident.

Ellen had never read any of Marguerite’s books or, for that matter, anybody else’s books. Her reading was pretty much limited to the popular fashion magazines. Marguerite tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get the girl to read.

Physically, Marguerite’s semitic features and voluptuous body contrasted sharply with the small-breasted, lanky figure of the fair-skinned younger woman. She wore expensive, tailor-made suits and dresses whenever she left the house and was often irritated when Ellen accompanied her wearing old jeans and t-shirts. “At least wear a damn bra,” she scolded one day when she was particularly annoyed. They were a curious looking couple when seen on the street but their dissimilar bodies complemented each other perfectly between the sheets.

Ellen had been working as a bank teller at a Park Avenue branch of Wells Fargo when they met. Marguerite entered the bank on a Tuesday morning, her wet blouse clinging and translucent after she had been caught in a sudden rain shower. Ellen was immediately turned on by the sight of the wet woman. The two women’s eyes met simultaneously and each felt an instantaneous yearning. Unaware that the older woman was drawn like a fly to the light of her sparkling blue eyes, the young teller prayed that she would come to her window. Her heart jumped when her prayer was answered.
“I would like to make a deposit to my checking account,” Marguerite said in a voice so sweet that Ellen was momentarily flustered.
“How may I help you?,” was Ellen’s inappropriate reply. She laughed in embarrassment when she realized what she had said.
The brief miscommunication was quickly forgotten and the two women spoke for many minutes until Ellen’s supervisor threw a withering look of disapproval in her direction. Afraid that Ellen would get in trouble with her boss, Marguerite suggested that they meet for coffee after work and Ellen eagerly consented. At Ellen’s recommendation, they met at the Bluebird, a wonderful coffee house not far from her apartment. They stayed for hours, drinking endless cups of espresso and getting to know each other. They met every afternoon that week for coffee or a drink, their attraction to each other increasing with each meeting. When, at the end of the week, Marguerite invited her up to her apartment, it was Ellen who made the first move, embracing her while they sat on the sofa sipping cognac and listening to Vivaldi.
“I’ve wanted you from the moment you walked into the bank,” Ellen said as she pulled her closer.
“Mmm, me too, Marguerite moaned. “What are we waiting for?”


Although Ellen was the seductress, once the relationship was underway Marguerite became the dominant force. Ellen was intimidated by the older woman’s cutting-edge intelligence, maturity and large bankroll. She was embarrassed by her boyish figure which she considered somehow inferior to Marguerite’s well-developed body. “How can you love my skinny ass?,” she often asked, not realizing that her skill as a lover more than made up for what she lacked in curves. She had never left her mate unsatisfied.
As the days went by, however, Marguerite, censorious by nature, became more and more critical of her young lover’s faults, of which she perceived many. “You must stop drinking so much,” she would complain. “You dress like a slob. Why won’t you let me buy you some nice clothes? Read a book for heaven’s sake.” Rather than retaliate, however, the usually hot-tempered Ellen held her tongue and fell more in love, perhaps subconsciously seeing Marguerite as a mother figure.

Now, Ellen knew, it was over. Alone in her depressing little apartment, she poured herself a large glass of vodka, lit a joint and flopped onto the beat-up sofa, feeling sorry for herself. She became more despondent with each puff of marijuana and each gulp of liquor. The tears returned and she loudly chided herself for her unfaithfulness and stupidity. “What have you done, you stupid slut? Now you’ve lost her forever.”

After another couple of drinks Ellen fell asleep. She dreamed a strange, drunken dream. In the dream, she and Marguerite, happily together again, were admiring a naked girl as she stepped into the bathtub. The girl submerged beneath the bubbly surface for what seemed like forever and when she finally came up for air, her gorgeous body glistening, she beckoned seductively to Ellen and Marguerite to join her. Only Ellen obeyed, stubbornly disregarding her lover’s insistent demands that she stay. When she reached the tub, Ellen grabbed her dagger and deftly slit the girl’s throat. Ellen awoke from the dream with a start, surprised to find herself in a tub full of blood and suds. A strange gurgling sound was coming from her throat and, in a panic, she realized that she was unable to breathe. Her final vision was of Marguerite and the naked girl leaving the bathroom arm in arm.