“It’s fine,” Lauren said. “I’m total y cool with it.”
Once when they were walking down the street and saw a dead pinkish slug on the ground, Lauren hit Betsy on the arm and pointed to it. “Look at that. Did that fal out of your vagina?”
Betsy narrowed her eyes. “I hope when you have a baby, your vagina tears into a mil ion pieces,” she said.
“Wel , thanks to you, dear sister, I’m not sure I wil ever have a baby.”
“Oh, you wil .” Betsy laughed like she knew something. “Believe me, you wil .”
Lauren was scared by Betsy’s knowing voice. Betsy was two years older and Lauren sometimes had to remind herself that Betsy didn’t know everything. Stil , it scared her to think that labor had turned Betsy into a person who talked out loud about her vagina ripping. If that’s what it did to Betsy, what would it do to her? For a while, she stopped teasing Betsy about it. If karma existed, then it wasn’t a good idea, Lauren decided. Then, last Thanksgiving, when the turkey was al done and stuffed, little dried cranberries and hunks of corn-bread stuffing fal ing out of the open cavity, Lauren put her arm around her sister and motioned to the turkey.
“You know what that reminds me of?” she asked.
“Go to hel ,” Betsy said, and Lauren laughed and laughed. Karma be damned.
On their twenty-seventh date, Mark made macaroni and cheese at Lauren’s apartment. They had planned to order Chinese food, but Lauren had had a late lunch and wasn’t hungry, so Mark decided to make a box of Kraft. They sat on the couch and watched sitcoms, and he ate the neon orange noodles as he always did, in huge, heaping spoonfuls. He ate the whole pot and then leaned back and rubbed his stomach. He let out a giant belch and then a happy sigh.
“Lovely,” Lauren said. He smiled.
The two of them sat and watched TV in silence. Then they got into bed and read. In the quiet, Lauren thought about her pastel client from Kansas City staring at the empty place where the baby’s wal would go. She looked over at Mark.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever eaten macaroni and cheese at my apartment,” she said.
Mark put his finger in the magazine to keep his place and moved his eyebrows together. “Huh,” he said. “I guess it is.” Then they both went back to reading.
Wil ard died on a cold November morning. Lauren found him tilted to the side. He was turning white and only one fin was paddling. She was sure he’d had a stroke. She sat in the kitchen with him for a while, and then (believing it to be the humane thing) she took him to the bathroom and flushed him. She did it quickly.
Lauren washed out the bowl, then threw it out. She should have gotten him a real fishbowl. He’d deserved that much. The kitchen looked empty without him there, and Lauren felt alone in her apartment. “This is so stupid,” she said aloud. “It was just a fish.” Then she laid her head on her arms and cried.
“The fish died,” Lauren said, “which can’t be a good sign.”
“Wel ,” Isabel a said, “fish die a lot. I think we had, like, four hundred different goldfish at my house growing up. A couple of them committed suicide by jumping out of the bowl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lauren asked.
“I’m just saying, it could have been worse.”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “It just feels like a bad omen.”
They were out to breakfast, eating blueberry pancakes on their forty-ninth date, when Mark said, “I would like to hire you.”
“Hire me?” Lauren asked. “You know, I’m already doing it for free. If you started paying me now, it would change the nature of our relationship.”
Mark smiled just a little. “I would like to hire you as a Realtor. I want to buy a new place.”
“Oh,” Lauren said. “Okay.”
Lauren had shown Mark only three apartments before he found one he liked. He went to see it seven times. On the eighth visit, Lauren didn’t even bother talking about it. They just stood and stared at the bedrooms. Final y, Mark said, “I think I’m going to buy it. I like it here.”
“Me too. Let’s look at the closets one more time.”
Mark nodded and went over to the front hal closet. He bent forward so that half of his body was inside. “I think you should live here,” he said. His voice was muffled.
“It smel s like liver?” Lauren asked. She didn’t even know what liver would smel like.
“No,” Mark said straightening up. “I think you should live. Here.”
“Oh,” Lauren said. “That might be a good idea.”
“There’s enough closet space.”
“Definitely.” And the two of them stood and looked at al of the space in the empty liver closet.
