Another scene he thinks he already thought about tonight. Once? More? Twice? It was about a month after they started sleeping together. They were in bed, it was night, lights were off. Her back was to him. He moved his hand down the side of her body to her underpants, to get inside them and eventually to pull them off, and felt her two cats there, lying against her thigh. His hand jumped. The cats didn’t move. She laughed and said “I forgot to tell you. They occasionally like to sneak under the covers with me. Do you mind?” and he said “At the moment, yes. I’d rather not have them there.” “Gee,” she said, “I don’t know how to stop them, or if I want to. They’re used to my letting them stay there. It’s the cold.” “Please,” he said, “could you try? Or I could do it.” She picked up the cats one at a time and set them down on the floor. They jumped back up and crawled under the covers again. He leaned over her, pulled back the covers and pushed the cats off the bed. “Be nice,” she said. “Remember, they were here first and you’re taking their place and they might feel squeezed out.” “Do you think I did it too roughly? I’m sorry. — I’m sorry, cats,” he said. “Try to understand.” He pulled the covers back over her, waited about a minute, stroked her thighs and pulled her panties off and tried tugging her nightshirt over her head and she said “Let me keep it on. I’m also cold.”
She’d come into the kitchen in their New York apartment, where he’d be working at the typewriter table by the window, and say “Like to take a break?” She’d come into the bedroom of the cottage in Maine they rented and say “Are you deeply involved in something that can’t be immediately interfered with or in the next few minutes?” She’d come halfway down the basement stairs of the first house they had in Baltimore, or just yell down the stairs from the top “Martin, think you can tear yourself away from your typewriter for a brief intermission?” She’d come into the narrow storage room where he worked in their Baltimore apartment for six years, or else knock on the door frame of it, and say “Care to take a short rest?” She’d come upstairs to the spare bedroom he’d turned into his study in the farmhouse in Maine they rented and say “Would you have strenuous objections to being interrupted awhile? I hope not, and it’d be a nice way to break up the day.” She’d meet him at the front door after he’d just come back from town in Maine and pretend to stifle a yawn with her hand and say “I’m a little tired. Are you, or do you need to get right to work?” She’d say to him after he’d come back from driving the kids to day camp in Maine or to school in Baltimore or after walking them to school in New York when he was on sabbatical for a year: “I know it’s early and you probably want to get to your writing, but would you like to take a pre-work break?” She’d come in to whatever room he was writing in, from behind put her hands over his eyes or arms around his chest or cheek against his cheek or chin on his shoulder and say “Don’t jump. It’s only me. Like to take a breather?” or “Recess time. Think you’d like to join me?” or “What do you say, my dearie? Kids are out of the house. Not expected back for hours. We’ve already put in a good morning’s work. Want to have some fun? I know I feel like it.” Of course he did this lots of times to her too. He thinks he never refused her, or at most said “Just let me finish what I’m doing — it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes — and then, if you’re in bed, I’ll meet you there.” While she said a number of times something like “If you’re suggesting what I think it is, don’t I wish I could. We’ll have other opportunities.”
