Flipping the House, Igniting Us

I'm Andreas Conti, sixty-four years old, retired firefighter, thirty-five years married to the same woman. And until last month I'd never been blindfolded by anybody, which is a sentence I did not expect to say at this point in my life.

But let me back up.

The Victorian nearly killed us. That's not dramatic. That's just true. Tracie found it in a neighborhood that's half coffee shops and half boarded windows, and she stood on the sidewalk with her real estate agent face on and said, "We can flip this. We can flip this and make enough to do Italy."

Italy. Thirty-five years of marriage and she knows exactly which button to push.

So we bought it. Gutted, cursed, beautiful. The previous owner had started tearing it apart and then just... quit. Exposed lath everywhere. Wires hanging out of walls like weeds. Drywall dust on every surface, in my hair, in my coffee. There was one mattress up in the master bedroom where we slept when we worked too late to drive home. It was that kind of project.

It was a Tuesday in October when the window nearly beat me.

The master bedroom has these old double-hung windows, painted shut by somebody in what I can only assume was 1987. I had a pry bar and a putty knife and I was fighting the west window in dim light, dust floating around me like it was snowing indoors. Tracie stood in the doorway watching me. I could feel her watching. Thirty-five years, you can feel it.

"Want help?" she said.

"I want this window to respect its elders."

"Uh huh. You want me to hold the flashlight?"

"I want you to stand there and admire me. That's what you're doing, right?"

She laughed. She's sixty-one and she still laughs like she's getting away with something. "Sure, Andy. Admiring. That's the word."

I got the window. It cracked loose with a sound like a knuckle popping and slid up six inches, and cold October air came in and moved the dust around. I stood there feeling like I'd won something small and stupid.

That's when I noticed her smile. Not the laughing one. The other one. The one I've seen maybe a dozen times in three and a half decades, usually right before she talked me into something.

"What," I said.

"Nothing."

"Tracie. What."

"Do you trust me?"

"Depends. Am I about to be on a roof?"

"No roof." She came into the room, stepping over the drop cloths, and picked up a bandana off the nail where we hung rags. Red one. Clean, thank God. "I want to play a game."

"A game."

"A game. You close your eyes, or better, you wear this. I put a tool in your hand. You tell me what it is by feel alone. Three guesses. If you win, you get a prize."

I looked at her. She looked back, all innocence, which from Tracie is the least innocent look there is.

"What's the prize?"

"If you win, you find out."

I've been a husband a long time. I know when a negotiation is not really a negotiation. I also know that when your wife of thirty-five years picks up a red bandana in a dusty gutted bedroom and smiles like that, the correct answer is yes.

"Okay," I said. "But if I guess Phillips head screwdriver wrong I'm blaming you."

"Sit on the mattress."

I sat. She tied the bandana over my eyes. Firm knot at the back, her fingers brushing my hair. Then the room went dark and got very quiet, and I heard her moving around among the tools on the floor, and I'll admit my heart picked up a little. Not fear. Something next door to fear.

"Hand out."

I put my hand out, palm up. Something cold and metal settled into it. I turned it over. Slim. Flat blade. Tapered.

"Five-in-one scraper."

"Ooh. Correct." The blade left my hand. Next thing was heavier, longer, with a shaft and a head I rolled between my fingers. Paint roller? No. Smooth cylinder, threads at one end.

"Uh. Extension pole attachment? Paint roller frame."

"Correct again. Lucky."

"Skill, sweetheart. Skill and forty years of holding tools."

The third thing was small. Light plastic. I pinched it. Rounded body, a little nub on the end, a switch I could feel under my thumb.

"Tracie, this is a utility knife with the blade retracted."

"...That was my third one lined up, yeah."

"Playing with knives now, are we?"

"Retracted, Andy. I'm not an animal. Okay." She took it away. Her voice dropped a little, and I heard her step closer. "You won. Three for three. Come here."

"Where's here? I'm blindfolded, in case you forgot."

She took my hand and pulled me up off the mattress, and guided me a step, and then her mouth found mine.

Now. Thirty-five years. I have kissed this woman probably a hundred thousand times. Wedding, kitchen, hospital parking lots, funerals, ordinary Tuesdays. But there's something about standing in the dark, in dust, in a stranger's old house, with her hands on my jaw, kissing me slow like she's got nowhere else in the world to be. The blindfold took away my eyes and gave everything else to my mouth. I could feel the exact shape of her lower lip. I could feel her exhale through her nose against my cheek.

She pulled back an inch.

"Well?" she said.

"Well what?"

"Did you like your prize?"

"I'd like to negotiate for another round."

"Greedy." But she kissed me again, longer, and this one had a little heat in it, and when it broke I was smiling like an idiot under that bandana.

"Another dare," she said.

"Tracie."

"What? You won. Winners get more dares."

"What's the dare?"

She didn't answer right away. I heard her step back. Then I heard fabric, a soft rustle, and I realized she was moving around me, and I just stood there like a statue because what else do you do.

"Okay," she said, close again. Her breath was warm near my ear. "New rules. I'm taking off my flannel. I'm in my tank top and jeans. You get to use your mouth only. No hands. Lips only, Andy. You find the spots. You know me thirty-five years, let's see if you actually know me."

"Find the... spots."

"Erogenous zones, Andreas. Use the big word."

"Where do I even start? I can't see you."

"That's the whole point of the game, dummy." She took my hands and put them behind my back. "Keep those there. And you ask permission before you kiss anything new. That's a rule. I want to hear you ask."

I stood there with my hands clasped behind me like a man at a funeral, blind, listening to her breathe.

"Deal," I said. "Can I start?"

"Start where?"

"Your neck. Left side, under the ear."

She was quiet a second. "Yes."

I leaned in. Blind, you aim with your nose first, and she smelled like her, soap and a little sweat from the workday, and I found the side of her neck with my lips and kissed it, soft, and heard her breath change.

"Still there," she said, a little ragged. "Good guess."

"Not a guess. Thirty-five years of data."

"Shut up and keep going."

I worked down her neck. Without hands it's all chin and cheek and careful angles, and I had to ask again for her collarbone, and she said yes, and I kissed along the neckline of that tank top, and she made a small sound that I have not heard from her in years, a sound I'd almost forgotten belonged to her.

"Andy."

"Yeah."

"There's more of me than the neck."

"I'm aware. I'm being thorough."

"You're being a chicken."

I laughed into her shoulder. Fair. The thing is, blindfolded, hands behind your back, kissing your own wife, you feel like you're nineteen and nervous, except we're sixty-four and sixty-one and nobody in this room is that. She's the only person I've ever been with. She knows it. She's the only person I'll ever be with. We've never talked about it much. It was just how it went.

She took my face in both hands then and turned it toward her.

"Lower," she said.

"Lower where? I need a map, Tracie, I'm blind down here."

"Ask me."

"Can I kiss you over the tank top? Here?" I tipped my head down toward where I judged her chest to be, which, blind, was a gamble.

Her hands tightened on my jaw. "Yes."

I found her. Low on the ribs first, wrong spot, she huffed a laugh, then I walked my mouth up slow, lips barely touching cotton, until I felt the change in her breathing and knew I'd found one of the spots. Her fingers slid into my hair and held on.

"There," she said. "Right there. Oh, Andy, don't stop."

I didn't stop. And that's when the night stopped being a game about tools.

* * *

I worked her through the tank top until she was tugging my hair like a signal flag. "Okay. Okay, up. Stand up."

I stood. "New spot. Your waist. The left side, where it curves in."

"Permission granted. Go."

Blind, I had to find her by walking my mouth along the hem of the tank top until I hit denim, then follow the waistband around until the fabric ran out and there was skin. The curve of her hip into her waist. She's softer there than she was at thirty, and I love the change, and I told her so with my mouth pressed to it.

"Andy." Her hand landed on the back of my head. "That's a good spot. That's a real good spot."

"Told you I had data."

"You have data." Her fingers curled in my hair. "Keep going."

I traced that curve down. Hip to thigh. At the thigh I ran out of courage and just breathed against her.

"Chicken again," she said, but her voice had gone low and rough.

"No. I'm pacing."

"You're stalling. Ask me."

"Can I kiss your inner thigh? Through the jeans?"

There was a pause long enough that I almost took it back. Then: "Yes. God, yes."

I bent and put my mouth against the inside of her thigh, denim and all, and I didn't kiss so much as press my open mouth there, slow, letting her feel my breath through the fabric. Her whole leg trembled against my cheek.

She made a sound. Then another. Then she said, hoarse, "Andy. That is the hottest thing I have felt in years. Years. Do you understand what you just did?"

"Presumably something right."

"Something very right." She pulled my head back by the hair, gently, and I heard her breathe a couple of times like she was reassembling herself. "Okay. One more spot. Behind my knee. The pulse point."

"You have a pulse point behind your knee?"

"Everybody does. Mine's been neglected since roughly the Carter years."

I laughed. "Can I?"

"You may."

Finding it blind meant kneeling, which meant my hands behind my back were useless and my knees were on a tarp over bare subfloor, but I got down there and found the back of her leg with my nose and then my lips. I kissed the soft spot behind her knee and felt the pulse jump under my mouth, fast, quicker than it had any business being.

"Oh," she said. Quiet. Not a joke in it anywhere. "Oh, Andy."

I stayed there a minute, mouthing that spot, and she held onto my shoulder with one hand and I could feel her shaking a little. Not cold. Not scared. Something else.

"Stand up," she said finally. "I need you standing. I need to look at you."

"You can't look at me. I'm the one who can't look."

"I know exactly what I'm doing. Stand."

I stood.

* * *

Her hands went to the bandana and I felt cool air on my eyes before the knot even finished. I blinked. The bedroom was dim, two work lights on stands, everything orange. Tracie stood in front of me, tank top rumpled, cheeks flushed, looking at me the way she looked at me when we were first married and I'd come off a shift and she'd been waiting up.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi yourself."

"Next dare. And this one's mine, so you get to say no."

"I hate when you say that, because then I can't say no."

"I know. That's why I say it."

She went to the corner where we'd piled the renovation gear and came back with a coil of yellow utility rope. My stomach did something complicated.

"Tracie."

"Hands," she said. "Above your head. The joists are exposed, you've been telling me about them for three weeks. Solid old growth. They'll hold you."

"You want to tie me to the ceiling."

"I want to tie your hands to the ceiling joists. Yes. With rope. In a house we own. While I do whatever I want to you and you can do exactly nothing about it." She let that sit. "Say no if that's a no."

It wasn't a no. I need to be truthful about how it was not a no. Sixty-four years old, retired firefighter, and my hands were almost shaking wanting to be up there.

"It's not a no," I said.

"Then up."

I reached up and found the joist, rough-sawn, cold, and she wrapped rope around my wrists. She tied a knot I didn't recognize, snug but not biting, and when I tested it, it held. Of course it held. The woman has watched me tie off loads for thirty-five years. She learned from the best.

"Too tight?"

"Good. It's good."

She stepped back. I heard her boots on the tarp. Then she said, "Andy. Look at me."

I looked.

She had the tank top off. The jeans off. Everything off, except a scarf, some sheer red thing I'd never seen before, draped around her neck so it hung down past both breasts and did the opposite of hiding them. Sixty-one years old. Two kids. Thirty-five years of me. She stood in the orange light like she owned the room, which she does, always has.

"Where did that scarf come from?"

"Back of my closet. Since I was forty-two. You've never once looked in that closet, have you."

"I look in that closet all the time."

"You look in it for shirts." She took a slow step toward me. "Question."

"Okay."

"Do you like it?"

She turned once, slow, all the way around, and the scarf moved and did not cover anything, and my arms were tied over my head and there was nothing in the world I could do about any of it except want her, loudly, visibly, in work pants.

"Yeah," I said. "I like it."

"Good." She stopped in front of me, close enough that the scarf brushed my chest. "Because the next part of the dare, I ask, and you answer honest, and whatever you say, I won't be hurt. That's the rule."

"That sounds ominous."