Anyway, if she was going to get fat and depressive before our divorce and I was going to get morose and cruel, we’d better get cracking. I was already morose, so she was going out to get food and more whiskey so she could catch up. I was to stay in bed. She liked me best in bed.
—
Fucking cow! (She had called her mother but in two minutes had slammed down the receiver.) Did the cow think she was going to spend her evenings at home listening to a drunk fucking cow? With nothing to do but get drunk with a cow or lock herself in the bathroom and masturbate in the Jacuzzi?
See, see, I liked my little pervert, my punky little dirty smart-ass Texas pervert, admit it. Admit it! Hah! Proof! Corroboration! Hard evidence!
—
Motherfucker if we hadn’t been indoors for three days, or was it four? (she said). We were going to go for a walk. We were going to acknowledge that we were making each other miserable and that we had no future. We would pretend it was fall. We would pretend we were in a French movie from the sixties. Goddard or Truffaut, I could pick. She would be succulent and pouty. Chain-smoking, I was to be ill-tempered, silent, and unreadable. Like I was already. Pure cinéma vérité.
Get up, Dr. Slampiece (she said, whipping the sheet back). I could put my clothes back on now. In any event, we had run out of whiskey.
—
It was late, but still with a little light, the evening warm and cloudless. In a bistro we had split an omelet and a carafe. Reggie was trying to teach me how to roll a cigarette. God, she hoped I wasn’t a surgeon. Did my hands always shake like that? That one was better. That one she could smoke. Maybe I wasn’t a lost cause. Maybe her de-dorkification and reintegration program was not doomed to complete failure. With luck I might survive the transition back to the wild.
—
That night, after midnight. We had found a bench under a linden tree in a dark little cul-de-sac just off my street. Almost dark: a white bead burned glassily in Reggie’s eye. She’d taken a slug from the bottle, swung her leg over my lap, straddling me. Opening my lips with her tongue, she let the wine flow from her mouth into my mouth. See, she said, that’s how baby birds learn how to drink wine. Was I worried that we would scandalize the bourgeoisie? she asked with a little squirm. See, see, I liked this kind of thing. Or at least somebody liked this kind of thing. Couldn’t we give him a little fresh air? Couldn’t we let him have a little look around?
See, he liked it when she just pulled her panties over to the side. Didn’t I see how he appreciated that?
See that.
Didn’t I like to watch that—
Didn’t I think—
See, like this. Nobody. Nobody could see us. Knew.
(Astride me, she pressed the meat of her palm between my teeth for me to bite it.)
Like that. See how quick. See, nobody—
See, nobody knew that she was going to, fuck, nobody knew that she was fuck motherfucker coming fuck.
Shit. Gah.
And then she had me in her hand and she was saying, Whoops, hey, there we go, oh gosh, Doctor, sorry about your shirt, but that was better now, wasn’t it? Wasn’t everything better now?
—
How long did she stay astride me like that? Her face was pressed against my neck, and as her breath slowed and eased, the pressure of her body against mine was like nothing so much as (how soon I was to learn) the heaviness of a child in my arms, having surrendered her whole exhausted weight. Her breath was now regular, yeasty with wine. Now and again, a tremor fluttered through her.
I couldn’t have slept, but time had somehow passed, or skipped.
How long had we been there, Reggie’s face buried in my neck, astride me still, the heat of her long body close and heavy against me?
How long had she been there, on the sidewalk in front of us, small, motionless, her arms at her side?
Miriam.
How long until she said, her voice without tone or inflection: “J’ai eu raison, Daniel: c’est toi”? I was right, Daniel: it is you.
Light from the streetlamp somewhere hollowed her face with shadow. It laid across her face a blaze lead white like greasepaint: that face a mask, a moon, my moon, my Miriam.
And how long did she stand there, motionless, after speaking? How long did it take for that face, blank behind its grille of shadow, to brand itself on my retina, to pierce through the prospect of all future days to my very last, like an arrow through mist, like a telegram homing in on its addressee, like a pellet of white phosphorus burning through a book of hours?
THIRTY-FIVE
At that moment, everything stopped. And nothing did. The streets filled and emptied as always. The sun went down and the sun went up; commuters went back and forth. Up went the grates over the storefronts, and awnings fluttered down. At night, newspapers accumulated in piles at the kiosks; in sunlight the piles melted away. The hands of the clocks wheeled in circles. Leaves fell from trees; days flaked from the calendar. Do I remember nothing? No, I remember that time passed. How much? Seconds. Years. Weeks. Weeks like years like seconds.
Miriam is there under the linden tree, where the streetlamp lays its blaze of white over the hollows of her face. She says, I was right, Daniel: it is you. And then there is a gap, a break.
I remembered Mr. Michaels, my epileptic patient, how he experienced a seizure as a gap in time. Emerging from a seizure was not like waking up or coming to. It was merely the sense that time
