Bad Connections Read Online Free Page A

of Conrad’s solid thighs is wedged assertively between mine and his tongue is in my mouth and mine is in his and I run it along the edges of his sharp little teeth and feel everything cold and firm inside me melting away like so much sherbet, I see that my excuse-making mechanism has already started up, is in fact pumping away furiously because it has such an enormous amount of work to do. What it is coming up with very quickly is the image of Conrad as the victim of his own idealism. My Conrad, so sunny in his temperament, so unfailingly giving of himself to causes others would consider lost, had blundered into a situation where the zeal so admirable and appropriate in his professional life became a destructive element in his personal one. He was a man who could not resist an obligation. So it was Roberta’s misery in fact that bound him to her! And I suspected that no one understood this better than Roberta did herself.
    â€œOh, Conrad,” I said, disengaging my mouth from his for a moment, “I’m so tired of being miserable. I’d just like to be happy for a change. Wouldn’t you?” Since I knew there was no way I could compete with Roberta, what I was doing was offering a contrast.
    â€œWe’re happy together a lot of the time,” Conrad said, struggling with his left hand to unhook the back of my bra.
    â€œBut I don’t want to be happy in bits. I want it to be a continuum.” The bra came loose under my shirt and flapped against my skin, its stiff nylon lace grazing my nipples. Conrad’s hand came around from behind, lifted the fabric away and took a breast.
    â€œI love your tits,” he said. He squeezed gently, then a little too hard. “You’re very sensitive there, aren’t you?”
    I became afraid of losing my train of thought. “Yes,” I whispered faintly.
    â€œI think you’re sensitive all over.” He bit my ear. His right hand began to undo the middle buttons on my shirt. I began to feel more undressed than if I were naked.
    â€œConrad, we’re on Madison Avenue.”
    â€œI’m seizing some moments of happiness for myself. I’ve had a hard day. Besides, the windows are very dirty.”
    â€œConrad, I’m serious about what I was saying before.”
    â€œI know you are.”
    â€œWhat I mean was I thought you and I could be happy. I think we really have a chance.”
    â€œNo one can be truly happy in a capitalist society,” he reminded me sternly, plunging his face between my breasts. I held him to me, my fingers playing with his wonderful hair, twisting it into little red ringlets and letting them spring away from me, as his mouth moved eagerly upon my flesh.
    For some reason, I was reminded of the scene at the very end of The Grapes of Wrath, where Rose of Sharon, the young nursing mother, gives the starving man her breast. I hadn’t read it since junior high school but it had made a lasting impression on me.
    Conrad, are you listening? I was referring to the possibility of a private happiness.”
    â€œUh huh,” he said. His knee burrowed in between my legs and I clasped my trembling thighs around him, staring over his shoulder at the hydrant, the bottom halves of pedestrians passing as if in a dream. I thought of Roberta and her unstated sexual problems. I thought of Fred eating a hamburger alone in Max’s Kansas City. He orders it medium and gets it well done. Morosely he eats one French fry after another and leaves the pickle. He scans the bar for an available long-legged beauty but it is full of businessmen drinking Martinis. And then I stopped thinking of anything but how I could go on and on with Conrad just like this.
    Since the car could no longer be considered neutral territory, we went to Conrad’s apartment after all, rushing there in such a hurry that Conrad parked the Saab illegally and found it towed away when he got up the next morning. I went into the