It was a warm summer evening with a reddening sky as John escorted Eve out of the Foshay Hotel's front door. John had saved her from embarrassing both of them.
It was a short walk to a green oasis south of the hotel. Not a garden by any means, but it had grass, trees, and benches. Eve clung to John's arm for stability.
Eve was unstable, and she was angry. John could feel her tension in the way she grasped his arm. The clicking of her high heels on the cement bore audible witness to her frustration. John stayed quiet. He could - and he would - wait for a cue to know when it was safe to talk.
Eve roiled inside. She was sick and tired of her husband's maneuvering her. It was her husband Tim's fantasy, and she wanted no part of it. Tim just didn't get it. She'd told him a hundred times she didn't want another man inside her. She wanted the man she married to be the man of her dreams forever. Her dreams of Tim and their lives together had evolved; why wouldn't he?
She bit her lip and thought about the scene she'd made in the hotel bar when she'd exploded at John. It wasn't his fault. He happened to approach the wrong woman at the wrong time.
I had my ring on. Why'd he choose me?
Her body stiffened; John felt it.
Boys and men had hit on her ever since she had breasts at sixteen. It never stopped. Grown men, divorced men, married men, transgender men, and sometimes a woman had made passes at her over the years. And now Tim wanted her to have sex with men Eve had rejected all that time.
Eve didn't want sex with other men. Eve didn't lust for a new cock or a different cock. She wanted a good man attached to a good dick, and she'd had this with Tim for the past ten years. At least she thought she did. Why was Tim mucking this up with shared wife, hotwife, and swinger wife videos? What was wrong with the sex they were having? Was something wrong with her?
Why aren't I enough for him? The thought occurred often enough to undercut her confidence in herself. What kind of a husband would want her to sleep with other men? Was Tim sleeping with other women? Eve cringed at the idea.
She knew the incident in the Foshay bar was not about John. It was about Tim's stupid fantasy and all the men that hit on her over the years. She smiled wryly. An unexpected flirt is good for the ego at times. Still, when you can read a man's interest and intent across the room, you begin to count the minutes before he approaches you. You look at clocks, and you pick at nits on your clothing—anything to avoid eye contact. You don't want to encourage him. You want him to go away. But the men seldom do.
Eve took a deeper breath and exhaled through her mouth. John took that as a good sign and waited for more promising signs.
Eve looked down. She was walking with her arm snuggled and entwined with a stranger's. He said she needed a friend first and a lover second. Eve mused he was half right. She needed a friend to tell her troubles to. Not one of her regular friends, My God, they would be all over Tim in a heartbeat if they knew what he wanted her to do. They would tell her to divorce the bastard. Eve didn't want a divorce, and she didn't want another man up in her business either. John was right about needing a friend, but she didn't need a lover. John was wrong about that.
What should I do? The thought was always with her. Now it occupied her mind so much she'd made a scene in a hotel bar with a stranger. She taunted John, and she tried to humiliate him in front of everyone. It was not like her.
Eve felt terrible about her behavior. She squeezed John's arm as compensation for the verbal bruising she'd given him. She wanted him to know it was all on her. He was just a guy who saw a woman drinking alone, and he was hoping to get lucky.
Eve's lips curled into a half-smile. John had been quick with a reply. She gave him credit for that. His clever line Madam, I'm Adam, let's walk in my Garden allowed both of them to leave with dignity. And now here she was, in a garden of sorts with John. Was he a Snake in this Garden? Eve hoped not.
Eve squeezed John's arm a second time.
John knew it was time to talk.
Eve Talks in the Garden
"Are we ready to talk, or should we take a lap around my Garden?"
John swept his free hand around the green space on the corner of South Ninth Street and Second Ave South. It was perhaps twenty paces by twenty paces, barely enough for a dozen small trees and four benches. A corner of green surrounded by tall gray cement buildings, the space itself was a cut-through for walkers more than it was a park. As a Garden, it was lacking, but as a metaphor for John, it worked.
