Mask Market

“That was a lie,” she said. “A little lie. But it’s part of a lot of other ones.”

I didn’t say anything. My hand on her back didn’t so much as flex.

She went quiet. I matched my breathing to hers, waiting.

“You know what I want?” she whispered.

“No.”

“I know you’re mad, Lew. I don’t blame you. But I still want to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Tell you the truth,” she said.

“I don’t own this place,” she said, as if confessing to a mortal sin. “I mean, I do, but I don’t own it all.”

It took her a solid minute to figure out that I wasn’t going to be asking questions: I was the audience at a one-woman show.

“What I mean is, there’s a mortgage on it. A big one. And it seems like every year the maintenance goes up, too. When I bought it, I used everything I had saved up just to make the down payment. And I had to get… someone…to lie for me about my income, too. The board here is very strict.”

I moved my knuckle along her spine, just enough to tell her I was listening.

“For a long time, that worked out okay. I didn’t have a job, not a real one, but I never missed a payment. It’s all one payment here, every month. Your mortgage and your maintenance—the taxes are in there, too.

“But I haven’t worked in…in a long time, Lew. If I sold this apartment tomorrow, I’d walk away with maybe two hundred, two hundred and fifty. And that’s only because prices have gone up so much. So I have to gamble. I know the bubble’s supposed to break, but that’s what everyone said a couple of years ago, and the elevator still keeps climbing. I have to keep riding it, and jump off just before the cable snaps. That’s what I meant about waiting another two or three years. But if I take out one of those home-equity loans to cover the maintenance, I’m never going to come out with the cash I need.”

Time for me to participate. “So the plan is, you find another place to live, rent this one out, make enough to cover the mortgage and maintenance, build some more equity, and hope the co-op market keeps climbing?”

“That’s right,” she said, sounding as if she was ashamed of herself for such a devious scheme. “I could only rent to someone who the board approved, but that wouldn’t be hard—other owners in the building have done it.”

“Why couldn’t you just do that, and use the money you get from renting this place to rent a smaller apartment? If you rented this one furnished, you could get a pile of money. If you’re willing to live outside the city, it wouldn’t cost all that much. Then, when you go back to work…”

“I’m not going back to work, Lew. Not ever again. The last job I was going to apply for changed all that.”

“What was the last job?” I asked, shifting my weight slightly.

“You were,” Loyal said, reaching down to cup me in her soft, warm little hand.

“It’s all in there,” she said, an hour later.

We were sitting at a cafe-style table that barely justified an ad that would someday read “eat-in kitchen.” Loyal in a pink silk kimono, me in a white terry-cloth bathrobe that she’d given me when I got out of bed—a brand- new one, still in the original wrapper. She thrust an accordion file folder at me, as if I had demanded it, then folded her arms over her chest.

“What am I going to be looking at?”

“Everything. My bank account, my checking account, my mutual fund, my tax returns, the papers for the co- op…”

“I don’t need to see any of this, Loyal.”

“Don’t you want to know if I’m telling the truth?”

“I always want to know if you’re telling the truth.”

“I haven’t been.”

“Like you said, the whole business about needing a place to stay, it wasn’t exactly the lie of the century.”

“You know what’s not in there, Lew?”

“What?”

“How I earned my money. What I do for a living.”

“That’s not my business.”

“No? Then how come you’re so careful about condoms? Most men hate them.”

“I don’t want children,” I said. A truth, with a lie at its heart—my vasectomy had taken that possibility off the table a long time ago.

She gave me a searcher’s look.

“So if I told you I had my tubes tied…?”

“I—”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” she said, cutting me off. “You don’t know who I’ve been with, for one. And, for two, I could be lying. Plenty of girls who sleep with married men deliberately get pregnant, don’t they? Maybe they want to force the man’s hand. Or maybe it’s just about collecting a fat child-support check every month. It could even be for blackmail.”

“I suppose,” I said, as if none of that had ever occurred to me.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said gravely. “I never had my tubes tied.” She waited for a reaction. When none came, she went on, “And I never would,” clasping her hands prayerfully. “I couldn’t even have an abortion.”

“You’re Catholic?”

“No, no, no. I’m a…Well, I don’t know what I am. Not that way, I mean. I was church-raised, but I haven’t gone since I was last home. To say goodbye to my daddy. But that…other thing, it’s got nothing to do with church. I wouldn’t fault a woman for protecting herself, no matter what she had to do. I couldn’t do it because…”

“Because…?”

“Never mind,” she said, moving her hands to her hips.

I nodded, accepting her judgment.

“That’s it?” she said sharply.

“What are you—?”

“You just let me get away with that? What’s wrong with you, Lew?”

“I don’t under—”

“When a woman says, ‘Never mind,’ you’re supposed to ask her again. At least once.”

“Why?”

“To show you’re interested, silly. Of course, if you’re not…”

I wasn’t that slow. “Sure I am, honey. I was just respecting your—”

She leaned forward, generous breasts threatening to spill out of the pink kimono. “That’s my secret dream,” she said, librarian-serious. “A baby of my own. When I was growing up, I never thought much about things like that. I never thought about a big church wedding, or having kids. I don’t know when it got into me. Since I’ve been up here, I know. Someday, I’d love to have a little girl. I’d be a good mother. A real good one. And I could teach her things, too.”

“It’s a good dream, Loyal.”

“It is,” she said, closing her eyes for second. “I used to babysit all the time when I was in school. But it wasn’t until I got out in the world that I understood what that takes. Not to have a baby—anyone could do that—to be a mother. I kept telling myself I wasn’t ready. And the years kept on rolling, like a river that won’t be dammed. You know?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember, when we were having dinner, I told you about something that almost happened to me?”

“Your girlfriend? The one who went somewhere on a promise, and it turned out to be a trick?”

“A trick,” she said, bitterly. “That’s it, exactly.”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend, not like you’d say ‘girlfriend’ where I come from. Just another girl I knew, from the business.”