'I didn't mean to—'
'To what, to reach me emotionally? Don't apologize.'
'All right.'
'So my mascara runs. So what.' She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. 'Oh, God,' she said. 'This is so embarrassing. I feel so stupid.'
'Because of a few tears?'
'No, because of what I have to say next. My turn now, okay?'
'Okay.'
'Don't interrupt, huh? There's something I haven't told you, and I feel really stupid about it, and I don't know where to start. All right, I'll blurt it out. I quit.'
'Huh?'
'I quit. I quit fucking, all right. My God, the look on your face.
Other men, silly. I quit.'
'You don't have to make that decision,' I said. 'I just wanted to say how I felt, and—'
'You weren't going to interrupt.'
'I'm sorry, but—'
'I'm not saying I quit now. I quit three months ago. More than three months ago. Sometime before the first of the year. Maybe it was even before Christmas. No, I think there was one guy after Christmas. I could look it up.
'But it doesn't matter. I could look it up if I ever want to celebrate my anniversary, the way you celebrate the date of your last drink, but maybe not. I don't know.'
It was hard not saying anything. I had things to say, questions to ask, but I let her go on.
'I don't know if I ever told you this,' she said, 'but a few years ago I realized that prostitution saved my life. I'm serious about that. The childhood I had, my crazy mother, the kind of teenager I turned out to be, I think I probably would have killed myself, or found somebody to do it for me. Instead I started selling my ass, and it made me aware of my worth as a human being. It destroys a lot of girls, it really does, but it saved me. Go figure.
'I made a nice life for myself. I saved my money, I invested, I bought this apartment. Everything worked.
'But sometime last summer I started to realize that it wasn't working anymore. Because of what we have. You and I. I told myself that was meshugga, what you and I have is in one compartment and what I do for money is way over there, but it got harder to keep the doors of the compartments shut tight. I felt disloyal, which was strange, and I felt dirty, which was something I never really felt hooking, or if I did I was never aware of it.
'So I thought, well, Elaine, you had a longer run than most of them, and you're a little old for the game anyway. And they've got all these new diseases, and you've had a scaled-down practice the past few years anyway, and just how many executives do you figure would throw themselves out of windows if you hung it up?
'But I was afraid to tell you. For one thing, how did I know I wouldn't want to change my mind? I figured I ought to keep my options open. And then, after I'd told all my regulars I was retired, after I sold my book and did everything but change my number, I was afraid to tell you because I didn't know what it would do. Maybe you wouldn't want me anymore. Maybe I'd stop being interesting, I'd just be this aging broad running around taking college courses. Maybe you'd feel trapped, like I was pressuring you into marriage. Maybe you'd want to get married, or live together, and I haven't ever been married but then again I haven't ever wanted to be. And I've lived alone ever since I got out of my mother's house, and I'm good at it and I'm used to it. And if one of us wants to get married and the other doesn't, then where are we?
'So that's my dirty little secret, if you want to call it that, and I wish to God I could stop crying because I'd like to look presentable, if not glamorous. Do I look like a raccoon?'
'Only the face.'
'Well,' she said. 'That's something. You're just an old bear. Did you know that?'
'So you've said.'
'Well, it's true. You're my bear and I love you.'
'I love you.'
'The whole thing's very fucking Gift-of-the-Magi, isn't it? It's a beautiful story and who can we tell?'
'Nobody diabetic.'
'Send 'em right into sugar shock, wouldn't it?'
'I'm afraid so. Where do you go when you slip away for mysterious appointments? I assumed, you know —'
'That I was going to blow some guy in a hotel room. Well, sometimes I was getting my hair done.'
'Like this morning.'
'Right. And sometimes I was going to my shrink appointment, and—'
'I didn't know you were seeing a shrink.'
'Uh-huh, twice a week since mid-February. A lot of my identity is bound up in what I've been doing all these years, and all of a sudden I've got a lot of crap to deal with. I guess it helps to talk to her.' She shrugged. 'And I've gone to a couple of Al-Anon meetings, too.'
