Barefoot: A Novel

supposed to write a screenplay when her mind was crowded with the details of her disgrace, her legal and monetary worries, her absorbing concern for Vicki and the kids—and most of al , her lingering obsession with John Walsh?

Brenda couldn’t stop thinking about Walsh. It was absurd! Brenda was now thinking that she should go to the doctor—she needed medication or, better stil , surgery. Remove the obsession with John Walsh. It’s eating me up like cancer; it’s growing in me like a baby.

In three weeks, John Walsh had cal ed only once, right at the beginning, on the day that Blaine was lost and then found, when Melanie answered Brenda’s cel phone and scribbled the message that Brenda had since kept tucked inside her copy of The Innocent Impostor. She hadn’t heard Walsh’s voice since she left New York; she hadn’t seen his face. He had pledged his love so ardently, so convincingly, that she thought the phone cal s would be as incessant as those from her mother and Brian Delaney, Esquire; she thought Walsh would pursue her until she gave in. But no: There had been the one phone cal and that was it. How typical y Australian he was! If you want me, he was no doubt thinking, you know where to find me. Or maybe he just didn’t love her anymore. Maybe he took her words to heart and decided that nothing good could come of their relationship. Maybe now that Brenda’s career was in tatters and her good name sul ied, he had lost interest. Maybe he had met someone else. It was fruitless to speculate, but she couldn’t help wondering how he was spending his summer days in the city. Was he back working for the construction company? Was he sitting on scaffolding, hard- hatted and shirtless, eating a sandwich out of a metal lunch box? What did he do at night? Was he working the slow summer-evening shift at the law library as Brenda hoped—or was he out at the clubs, dancing and sleeping around? Al of the girl-women in Brenda’s second-semester class had been in love with him—even Kel y Moore, the purple-haired soap opera actress, even Ivy, the lesbian, and especial y Amrita, the brownnoser. That had been the problem.

Brenda felt like she was trying to scramble out of a gravel pit but couldn’t unbury her feet. She found it impossible to concentrate. Every five or six minutes she would stare at her yel ow legal pad and see the faint blue lines and the empty space between them and she would admonish herself.

“Focus!” But the movie playing in her mind wasn’t The Innocent Impostor. The two reels endlessly spinning were Brenda and Walsh Together ( The Joy Ride) and Brenda and Walsh Torn Apart ( The Crash).

Brenda set her notebook aside and lay back on her towel, raised her face to the sun. She preferred to indulge in the first reel. The Joy Ride. The night Brenda and Walsh first got together had started out innocently enough. Brenda met her best friend and forever-secret-true-love, Erik vanCott, and his girlfriend, Noel, at Cafe des Bruxel es for moules et frites. Brenda hated Noel—she had always hated Erik’s girlfriends—but she especial y hated Noel because, according to Erik, Noel was “marriage material.” Erik had actual y spoken these words out loud, forcing Brenda to face a tough reality: Erik would, most likely, spend his life with someone else, someone who was not Brenda, despite her years of devotion and despite Brenda and Erik’s rich, shared history. Brenda understood that she needed to break away from Erik; loving him was like staying on the Titanic and drowning in her stateroom. However, she couldn’t give him up cold turkey, and to see Erik these days meant also seeing Noel.

Noel’s eyes were a warm yel ow-brown and her hair was as long and luxurious as a fur coat. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater and little pearl earrings. The three of them were seated at a table meant for two, with Brenda stuck off the side like a tumor. Before the famed frites even hit the table, a startling thing happened: Erik and Noel started fighting. Noel wasn’t eating, and Erik had chosen this night of al nights to accuse her of being anorexic.

“You’re not having any bread?”

“It’s my business what I eat. Why do you care?”

“Why do I care? Are you asking me why I care? ”

Brenda, meanwhile, busied herself with the crusty bread; she slathered it with butter as Eric looked on approvingly. “That’s my girl,” Erik said.

“Brenda real y knows how to eat.”

“Yeah, wel ,” Brenda said. “You know me. Indiscriminate.”

A while later, the mussels arrived, with the fries. Noel made a face.

“You real y don’t want any?” Erik said to her. “Not a single frite? ”

“No,” she said.

“That’s okay,” Erik said. “That’s just fine. Brenda wil have some, won’t you, Brenda?”

Brenda looked between Erik and Noel. She was being lobbed like a grenade at Noel’s fortress. That was what happened when you were a single person out with a couple; you were either ignored or used as ammunition. Thus, Brenda did the only reasonable thing: She pretended to excuse herself for the ladies’ room and she snuck out of the restaurant.

She stood on Greenwich Avenue at nine o’clock on a Friday night, with people streaming around her like a river around a rock, unsure of what to do next. Her confidence bobbled around like it was attached to a spring. She couldn’t decide if walking out of the restaurant had been a bril iant move or an unforgivably rude one. What would her mother think? At that moment, Brenda’s cel phone rang. John Walsh, the display said. She knew she should let the cal go to her voice mail—because what were the chances John Walsh was cal ing to ask about the syl abus? However, Brenda was reeling from Erik and Noel–caused anxiety. Her good sense splattered al over the sidewalk, like she had dropped a melon. She answered the phone.

Brenda met John Walsh at the Cupping Room on Broome Street. She arrived first and ordered a fat glass of Cabernet to calm her nerves, and lo and behold, the bartender informed her that a man at the end of the bar had offered to pay for it. What man? A portly man in a suit with a gray handlebar mustache. A man slightly younger than Brenda’s father. Brenda felt flattered, then creeped out. She was swimming in unfamiliar waters: She was alone in a bar waiting for her student to show up, and a stranger wanted to buy her drink. What was the etiquette here?

“Thank you,” Brenda said to the bartender. “That’s very nice. But I’m meeting someone.”

“Fair enough,” the bartender said. Meaning what, exactly?

No time to think because in the door strol ed Walsh, looking so handsome that everyone at the bar stared at him, not least of al the man with the handlebar mustache. Walsh was wearing a black shirt and a black leather jacket, and with his close-cropped hair, his skin, his eyes, wel , he was a lethal dose of something. Col ege