Take
It's two days before our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary when I tell my wife to undress and wait for me in the attic.
Her fingers stop moving on the keyboard.
The sun from the window catches the edge of her glasses. Outside, someone is mowing a lawn. The dishwasher hums behind me.
"Excuse me?" she says.
I lean back against the door.
"You heard me." I hold her gaze.
She studies me for a moment, then a half smile appears. It's the look she gets when she doesn't know what she thinks yet.
"Surprise me," I say.
"Okay," she says finally. No follow-up questions. No details. No negotiation. Which, for Margot, is its own kind of surprise.
A few minutes later I hear the attic ladder unfold in the hallway. A step. Another. Then nothing.
I wait.
My first impulse is to follow her, maybe even check in: Are you sure this is okay? Instead I open the refrigerator, stare into it for a moment, then close it again.
The attic is directly above the kitchen. Somewhere overhead, something scrapes softly across the floor. I pour a glass of water. Drink half of it. Set it down, then undress, dropping my clothes on the tile floor.
Margot's chair is still pushed back from the table. I walk over and touch the seat with my fingers. I leave my hand there for a moment and then sit down. The seat still holds her heat. Upstairs, another floorboard shifts.
The light from the single window divides the attic into brightness and shadow. One wall is painted. Another isn't. A mattress sits beneath the slope of the roof. Exposed rafters disappear into the darker corners. The attic has looked half-finished for as long as we've lived here. On the floor, a sheet has been spread and smoothed flat. Next to it, she has placed a glass jar filled with lavender oil.
Margot is sitting on a low stool, dressed in a black lace bodysuit I've never seen. Her hands rest on her knees, palms down. Her posture reminds me of a yearbook portrait: carefully arranged and faintly uncomfortable, as though she'd become self-conscious halfway through posing.
The sight of her makes me smile.
I cross the room and stand in front of her. This close, I can see that she's done something with her hair, pinned it up, left a few strands loose. She did that for me, I realize. She came up here and prepared.
"Stand up," I say.
She stands.
I'm not sure what I expected, resistance maybe, or a joke to break the tension. Instead she just rises from the stool, quiet and attentive, like she's listening for something.
I walk a slow circle around her. I do it because it seems like the right thing to do, and halfway through I feel slightly self-conscious, a man circling his own wife in an unfinished attic. But I finish the circle anyway. The lace clings to her hips, the weight of her ass beneath it, and I feel it low in my stomach, the way I always have.
"Turn toward the window."
She turns.
The light finds the curve of her shoulder, the line of her neck. Twenty-seven years and I'm seeing her like this, like I've been given new permission to look.
"Put your hands behind your back."
A pause. Not long. The length of a breath.
She puts her hands behind her back.
Something moves through me that I don't have a name for. Not quite power. More like knowing.
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