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I only uttered such indelicacies to Anna.
 Behind our bedroom door. I've no evidence that she approved of my saying what I did. Yet, she never insisted I stop. Simply impenetrable silence, inertia. I imagined she smiled into her pillow.
We'd attend to ablutions the following morning. "Good morning, Edgar."
"Good morning, Anna."
"Pleasant night's sleep?"
"Yes, and you?"
"Very."
Any evidence of my shameful uttering was absent. Anna's facial muscles were relaxed and her expression sanguine.
In the summer time with the ceiling fan whirring, I'd express the indecencies to her more frequently. Sometimes every night. In the dead of the winter my vocalizing became more restrained. But Anna expressed no preference for summer or winter.
Throughout the early years of our marriage my conduct in the confines of our boudoir was irreproachable. There was no need then to express what I did later in darkness.
My belief is that my psyche had begun to overpower its body. As an adolescent male the latter had made many demands which, for various reasons, I could not fulfill. Marriage was the first major sop to its clamoring. For years a quiescent harmony, a strain of coexistence, was shared by the two. But a decade into Anna's and my discreet marriage, the cordial duality had begun to tilt.
It began with sex. The intellect lingered and began goading the flesh, "Stop now? Why?" following the act.
I'd roll over to ponder why I couldn't execute tenths with my left hand on the piano, for instance? Or I'd mentally record the various permutations of an Ab7 diminished chord. But the mind would twist my thoughts back to Anna's and my intimacy. Where foreplay once had a distinctive place in our relationship, I sought gratification in solipsistic after play. Real sex now occurred between my ears.
Of course I never let on. Until the psyche turned on me.
"The entertainment for you is over, Edgar. Now you must share it with Anna."
"I can't," I said. For nights I resisted.
"Go on. Say it out loud," it pestered.
One night Anna's restlessness told me she lay awake. Our room hadn't been in total blackness for but several minutes.
"Dammit, speak!" the voice urged.
For the first time in my adult life I talked dirty.
I could literally see my psyche gloating as those scurrilous words hung like pregnant bats in the darkness. Anna knew I was speaking to her. Any second she's going to rise up in the bed and strike me, I thought. Either that or she'll bound out of the bed and retire on our living room sofa.
It was as if the ceiling fan had begun whirring sibilant depravities, black moths flecking debaucheries down upon her precious ears. She lay deathly still.
Shamefacedly the following morning I glanced at her in the bathroom mirror.
"Good morning, Edgar. Pleasant sleep?"
"And you, darling?"
"Like always."
Not even a hint of my lewd muttering. Had she convinced herself that it never transpired? Darkness like dreams often gives birth to depravities and daylight is the healer of all transgressions. Was it true? Always I felt contrite at dawn.
Yet the psyche wouldn't let up.
The nocturnal fantasies only became more tortuous, obsessive. Not one part of dear Anna's body escaped my eroticizing, commencing with her smallest toe, the one lacking a nail that she was unable to paint magenta like the others.
In successive nights mental images took shape wherein she and I began to accommodate each other's libido. You understand it was the psyche's splendid capacity for invention. Why it didn't amuse itself by cogitating means of assembling a viaduct to span the Charles River, I don't understand. I have to assume Anna might have accepted that as well.
Soon I was entangling the neighbors on our street in these naughty adventures. People I'd never speak with other than to nod good morning while walking our dog, Jim. The Rabbi's wife, the financial analyst up the street, the heart surgeon on the lane behind ours, even his spiritualist wife. My God, I thought, if this keeps up, the selectmen will be invited to the orgy.
Yet, Anna didn't stir.
Until the evening the psyche changed tunes.
Even I'd begun to tire of squeezing delight from the pairings and licentious acts. As far as I could tell they were doing nothing for Anna. She continued to bake two loaves of bread on Sunday, knitted sweaters for the nieces and nephews, and faithfully rose each morning for work. Anna proofread real estate Purchase And Sales Agreements. I installed clam shell molding around doors and windows in tract housing.
On the humid evening of July 18th I'd switched on the ceiling fan and kicked the sheet off our bodies. Anna, as usual, lay nude with her back to me. I awaited the Eros drama to commence. Normally the psyche would entice me with an illustration or two to titillate, then, as if to say, Suppose, Edgar, you . . . I'd think of something that heretofore was taboo. Always libidinous. Like involving the Rabbi's wife, for instance. Rebecca Leyb, who lived across the street, smiled at me while hiking her raven black skirt embroidered with violet nosegays. It was as white as lard, her thigh. At first I laughed, convinced the mind was playing tricks with me. It looks like a phylactery strapped to it, I thought. Rebecca gestured I come closer.
"Come and take a peek," she urged.
It was a kreplach. A boiled noodle dough she'd tied with butcher string about her upper leg.
"Anna, your white thigh, its sallow kreplach beads with the sweat of jasmine," I whispered.
But this night there was no rabbi's wife. Instead, the psyche led me into another of its rooms where there were no women or men.
"Im bored," it confessed, "inventing all these carnal acrobatics. What does it all add up to, Edgar? There is an orgasm or two. Anna, I believe, is as weary as I."
I couldn't disagree. What had she ever done to deserve this?
The room was barren of windows and doors. In its center a butterfly chair, a fifties conceit, wire frame with a canvas sling seat, this one apple green where I sat waiting for what I presumed would be more concupiscent pictures projected upon bare walls.
Several minutes passed. In the earlier mind performances, music would often accompany the Dionysian goings on. Yet, nothing. I was about to fall asleep (as I assumed Anna already had) when a sepulchral radio voice announced:
"Dead end, Edgar. This is where you get off."
"What?"
"Did you enjoy the ride?"
"The ride?"
"You'll never look at the Rabbi's wife in the same way again, will you?"
There was dull laughter‹like windows and doors opening and closing.
"What will I say to Anna?" I asked.
"You must tell her."
"Oh, this I could never say to her."
"Why?"
"She is too dear to me."
"Your choice."
"You mean . . ."
"What did you imagine would happen?"
"But I thought you. . ."
"Were going to entertain you forever as you've entertained Anna?"
"I don't know that I have."
"Oh, you have alright. Trust me."
"Why didn't she ever say?"
"She giggled into her pillow."
"But some of what I uttered was utterly unspeakable. Thoughts that would arch the eyebrows of a whorehouse pianist."
"When you observe insects copulating, are you aroused?"
"No."
"Likewise for Anna who was pleased that you were enjoying yourself . . . and causing no indignity to the neighbors, especially the Rabbi's wife, Rebecca."
"Oh, what a good and loving woman she's been to me."
"As faithful as your body. Well, Edgar . . . "
"No more pictures?"
"None."
"No more entertaining darling Anna?"
"Huh-uh."
"I'm not certain if I'm man enough."
"Man enough to copulate unsuspecting acquaintances."
"She didn't even stir."
"She will now."
"Should I whisper the words?"
"You've been silent for several nights."
"I don't wish to frighten her."
"After the darkest slime you've gathered from your libido's river bed?"
"But this is different."
"Well?"
The overhead fan whirred noisier than usual. I cleared my throat.
"Anna, the wrought iron railing stands 38 inches above the balcony's deck. My soft leather slippers sit in a puddle of sunlight."
Nothing.
"Anna, the coffee that I bring to your bed will be late this daybreak."
Still no sign of life. As before when I said what I did about Rebecca. The strands of titian-red hair I saw a finger's length above her sallow kreplach.
"Anna, the bell in the tower at Jefferson Street Market building tolls 6 times."
She stirred.
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