“It’s me,” said John. “Can you talk?”
“Hold on,” she said. Patsy was asleep on the couch, so she took the phone out to the hall.
“I’ve been thinking of you all day,” he said. “I really want you to know how much last night meant to me. How great it was. You know, I forgot about everything. About the fact that, well, I can’t just do anything I want to.” He stopped talking. Pru sat down. She felt this could not be going in a good direction. The elevator doors opened and some people stepped out, their noses red from the cold. Pru pulled her feet back as they walked past.
“I just hung up with Lila,” John said. “I have to tell you something.”
“Okay,” said Pru, trying to keep her voice neutral.
It seemed that Lila was unhappy. She claimed that she had made a terrible mistake leaving him. Being alone in the snow-storm forced her to do some thinking. She’d broken off her other relationship. She wanted John’s forgiveness. She wanted to fix their marriage. She was willing to do whatever it took. She had left him only because she couldn’t handle losing the baby. But now she realized she needed him. That they needed each other. John’s voice was sad, and quiet. Pru listened quietly. She didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” he said, after a long pause.
“I’m here.” She could hear the sounds of a TV on her floor. Someone was watching Seinfeld. She wondered if she could figure out which episode it was. She thought maybe the one with man hands. She tried to parse the voices on the laugh track, decide what each of the laughers would look like, if they were real people.
“Are you still there, Pru? Will you talk to me?” he said. It was heartbreaking, the way he said it.
“I’m still here.” Her throat was dry and the words stuck in her throat. “Here,” she said again. Googly googly googly, she thought, would be a tall man with adult acne.
“Will you say something?” he said again.
There was that familiar heaviness, like someone sitting on her head. It was so heavy that she forgot everything else. Suddenly, the cracks in the plaster on the wall fascinated her.
“This has nothing to do with me,” she said. “I have to go. I have to get back inside.”
“Pru,” he said, then stopped.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Can you just . . . can you slow down for a minute?”
“What do you want? Permission? Forgiveness? Advice?”
“Listen, I don’t have it all figured out. All I know is, I had to talk to you. Tell you everything. Isn’t that right?”
“John,” she said, “we were together for one night. You don’t owe me anything.”
“What would you have me do?”
“That’s just not relevant,” she said.
“It is, to me.”
“Then,” she said, “I’d say, you have to try again with Lila. You’ll never know, if you don’t. And no matter who you love after that, you’ll always wonder whether you did the right thing.”
“And us?”
“There’s no ‘us.’ There’s a last night. That’s all.” She bit her lip, waiting for him to tell her she was wrong. That, of course, there was an us, and that he didn’t want Lila or Gaia or anybody else. That he wanted her, only her. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything.
“John, I have to go. Annali’s awake,” she lied. “The phone must have woken her up.”
“All right,” he said. He sounded tired. “Pru, I’m so sorry. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you, right? Especially so soon after-”
“John, it’s fine. I’m fine, really. I don’t have any expectations of you. You’re not my boyfriend, we just fooled around. That’s all.”
“Pru—”
“I’ve gotta go,” she said. “I hope everything works out.”
THE NEXT DAY SHE WENT TO EDIE’S AND TOLD HER SHE’D work for her during the holiday season. Then she went with McKay to see a house in Cleveland Park.
It was a huge old three-story on a good street, in beautiful condition. She wondered how McKay and Bill could afford it. They sat on the couch in the sun room, facing the blank television, for a while. Then the agent, a friend of McKay’s, took them into the master bedroom suite. The suite’s bathroom featured a huge, black whirlpool tub.
McKay and Pru climbed in the tub, to see if they could both fit. They sat facing each other, and the tub was so big their feet didn’t even touch. The agent went off to take a phone call, and McKay called after him, “Bring us cocktails!”
“I think I did something stupid,” Pru said, when they were alone.
“Uh-oh. Did we wander off the subject of you for a moment?” Then he saw her face and said, “Oh, sweetie. What happened?”
“I slept with John Owen,” said Pru.
McKay blinked a few times. “Okay,” he said. “So far that sounds like a good thing. A great thing.”
“And I think I’m in love with him.”
“Well, that is stupid, I must say. Sex with someone you love— yuck.”
“And now his wife wants him back.”
“Oh. And?”
“And I told him he should go back to her.”
“You didn’t.”
“I practically sent him off with my blessing.”
“Did you tell him you were in love with him?”
“No. But I’m sure he must know.”
“Bad assumption,” he said. “Why didn’t
