Everything's Eventual

vacated my head for the first time since I'd quit smoking. I could only consider the careful composure of her face and marvel at how I could be angry with her and still want her so much it made me ache to look at her. Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.

   I also found time to wonder if I had really seen all I'd surmised. Anger? Yes, that was possible, even likely. If she hadn't been angry with me to at least some degree, she never would have left in the first place, I supposed. But afraid? Why in God's name would Diane be afraid of me? I'd never laid a single finger on her. Yes, I suppose I had raised my voice during some of our arguments, but so had she.

   'Enjoy your lunch, monsieur,' the maitre d' said from some other universe—the one where service people usually stay, only poking their heads into ours when we call them, either because we need something or to complain.

   'Mr. Davis, I'm Bill Humboldt,' Diane's companion said. He held out a large hand that looked reddish and chapped. I shook it briefly. The rest of him was as big as his hand, and his broad face wore the sort of flush habitual drinkers often get after the first one of the day. I put him in his mid-forties, about ten years away from the time when his sagging cheeks would turn into jowls.

   'Pleasure,' I said, not thinking about what I was saying any more than I was thinking about the maitre d' with the blob on his shirt, only wanting to get the hand-shaking part over so I could turn back to the pretty blonde with the rose-and-cream complexion, the pale pink lips, and the trim, slim figure. The woman who had, not so long ago, liked to whisper 'Do me do me do me' in my ear while she held onto my ass like a saddle with two pommels.

   'Where is Mr. Ring?' Humboldt asked, looking around (a bit theatrically, I thought).

   'Mr. Ring is on his way to Long Island. His mother fell downstairs and broke her hip.'

   'Oh, wonderful,' Humboldt said. He picked up the half-finished martini in front of him on the table and drained it until the olive with the toothpick in it rested against his lips. He spat it back, then set the glass down and looked at me. 'And I bet I can guess what he told you.'

   I heard this but paid no attention. For the time being, Humboldt was no more important than minor static on a radio program you really want to hear. I looked at Diane instead. It was marvellous, really, how she looked smarter and prettier than previous. As if she had learned things—yes, even after only two weeks of separation, and while living with Ernie and Dee Dee Coslaw in Pound Ridge—that I could never know.

   'How are you, Steve?' she asked.

   'Fine,' I said. Then, 'Not so fine, actually. I've missed you.'

   Only watchful silence from the lady greeted this. Those big bluegreen eyes looking at me, no more. Certainly no return serve, no I've missed you, too.

   'And I quit smoking. That's also played hell with my peace of mind.'

   'Did you, finally? Good for you.'

   I felt another flash of anger, this time a really ugly one, at her politely dismissive tone. As if I might not be telling the truth, but it didn't really matter if I was. She'd carped at me about the cigarettes every day for two years, it seemed—how they were going to give me cancer, how they were going to give her cancer, how she wouldn't even consider getting pregnant until I stopped, so I could just save any breath I might have been planning to waste on that subject—and now all at once it didn't matter anymore, because I didn't matter anymore.

   'We have a little business to transact,' Humboldt said. 'If you don't mind, that is.'

   There was one of those big, boxy lawyer suitcases on the floor beside him. He picked it up with a grunt and set it on the chair where my lawyer would have been if his mother hadn't broken her hip. Humboldt began unsnapping the clasps, but I quit paying attention at that point. The fact was, I did mind. It wasn't a matter of caution, either; it was a matter of priorities. I felt an instant's gratitude that Ring had been called away. It had certainly clarified the issues.

   I looked at Diane and said, 'I want to try again. Can we reconcile? Is there any chance of that?'

   The look of absolute horror on her face crashed hopes I hadn't even known I'd been holding onto. Instead of answering, she looked past me at Humboldt.

   'You said we didn't have to talk about this!' Her voice was trembling, accusatory. 'You said you wouldn't even let it come up!'

   Humboldt looked a little flustered. He shrugged and glanced briefly down at his empty martini glass before looking back up at Diane. I think he was wishing he'd ordered a double. 'I didn't know Mr. Davis would be attending this meeting without his lawyer. You should have called me, Mr. Davis. Since you did not, I feel it necessary to inform you that Diane did not greenlight this meeting with any thoughts of reconciliation in mind. Her decision to seek a divorce is final.'

   He glanced at her briefly, seeking confirmation, and got it. She was nodding emphatically. Her cheeks were considerably brighter than they had been when I sat down, and it was not the sort of flush I associate with embarrassment. 'You bet it is,' she said, and I saw that furious look on her face again.

   'Diane, why?' I hated the plaintive note I heard in my voice, a sound almost like a sheep's bleat, but there wasn't a goddamned thing I could do about it. 'Why?'

   'Oh Jesus,' she said. 'Are you telling me you really don't know?'

   'Yes—'

   Her cheeks were brighter than ever, the flush now rising almost to her temples. 'No, probably you don't. Isn't that typical.' She picked up her water and spilled the top two inches on the tablecloth because her hand was trembling. I flashed back at once—I mean kapow—to the day she'd left, remembering how I'd knocked the glass of orange juice onto the floor and how I'd cautioned myself not to try picking up the broken pieces of glass until my hands had settled down, and how I'd gone ahead anyway and cut myself for my pains.

   'Stop it, this is counterproductive,' Humboldt said. He sounded like a playground monitor trying to prevent a scuffle before it gets started, but his eyes were sweeping the rear part of the room, looking for our waiter, or any waiter whose eye he could catch. He was a lot less interested in us, at that particular moment, than he was in obtaining what the British like to call 'the other half.'

   'I just want to know—' I began.

   'What you want to know doesn't have anything to do with why we're here,' Humboldt said, and for a moment he sounded as sharp and alert as he probably had been when he first strode out of law school with his diploma in his hand.

   'Yes, right, finally,' Diane said. She spoke in a brittle, urgent voice. 'Finally it's not about what you want, what you need.'

   'I don't know what that means, but I'm willing to listen,' I said. 'We could try counselling, I'm not against it if maybe—'

   She raised her hands to shoulder-level, palms out. 'Oh God, Mr. Macho's gone New Age,' she said, then dropped her hands back into her lap. 'After all the days you rode off into the sunset, tall in the saddle. Say it ain't so, Joe.'

   'Stop it,' Humboldt told her. He looked from his client to his client's soon-to-be ex-husband (it was going to happen, all right; even the slight unreality that comes with not-smoking couldn't conceal that self-evident truth from me by that point). 'One more word from either of you and I'm going to declare this luncheon at an end.' He gave us a small smile, one so obviously manufactured that I found it perversely endearing. 'And we haven't even heard the specials yet.'

   That—the first mention of food since I'd joined them—was just before the bad things started to happen, and I remember smelling salmon from one of the nearby tables. In the two weeks since I'd quit smoking, my sense of smell had become incredibly sharp, but I do not count that as much of a blessing, especially when it comes to salmon. I used to like it, but now I can't abide the smell of it, let alone the taste. To me it smells of pain and fear and blood and death.

   'He started it,' Diane said sulkily.

   You started it, you were the one who walked out, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Humboldt clearly meant what he said; he would take Diane by the hand and walk