Animal

pairings got rearranged and Vic was on the couch with me. I’d had two glasses of Scotch on top of the three glasses of red wine at dinner. I don’t know if I laid my head down. My guess is that he, by measured increments, lowered it down: Aw, poor, tired baby. I remember only the airplane runway of his lap, the navy miles. The ocean shushing. The other two watching me lie across him. Nothing happened, but merely the position of my head on his lap, it was somewhat a rape. That he had hunted me so quietly, that I had allowed my neck to get caught in the teeth of something stupid. I closed my eyes so that it was happening only for the others and not to me and that was when I remembered about the handicapped woman. And I felt sad about not sending the French toast with vanilla bourbon cream and whatever lavender flowers came on the side. Then a moment later I thought, She doesn’t need you, idiot. She has a mother and a child. You have nothing.

That was the first time with Vic. He caressed my hair. My earlobe, which thereafter felt whorish and diseased.

Anyway, that’s what Vic’s wife—Mary—that’s what she asked me.

—How did it start? she said.

I told her to hold the line. That it might be a while.

I walked out of Lanvin in the heels I was wearing. It’s easiest to steal when you don’t know you’re stealing. The heavily made-up blonde had been watching me the whole time but she was violently texting when I walked out. They were display shoes, so they didn’t make a peep when they walked me out of there.

Suddenly I was in the sunshine in these bright, beautiful Lanvin sling-backs. Their strings were like thin snakes around my ankles. Tourists were ordering cupcakes from a cupcake ATM. They were Italian and laughing. The shoes took me to Spago. I was seated in the courtyard. It was windless out there, I was early for lunch, and everybody seemed to enjoy my presence, the busboys especially. I ordered the Maine lobster salad and a glass of Dr. Loosen. I unmuted the phone.

—I’m sorry, I said. Can you repeat the question?

—I want to know how it started.

I didn’t say anything for a long time and held the phone to my ear and my hand to the mouthpiece as the waiter poured me a glass. He smiled at me conspiratorially, like here we were being bacchanalian and the person on the other end of that line was probably folding laundry.

—Do you understand the question?

—Yes, perfectly, I said. I think it’s what I’d want to know, too. It started on his lap.

She made a noise of disgust that doubled as reproach. Like I was stupid to lay my head on a married man’s lap.

—You know my husband is dead, of course. But do you know my young son got into an accident a month ago, and he’s dead now, too? You didn’t know that, did you? You cunt.

I had, up until now, taken many measures not to think of the children.

Because it was a cold dish that only needed assembling and because I was the first customer of the afternoon, my lobster salad was delivered quickly. Bright wedges of avocado. The haricots verts were glossy and dark, the bacon was crisp and auburn, and the lobster was so fresh it looked raw.

—I didn’t. How—?

—He drowned.

Now Mary began to make these little noises on the other end, like a guinea pig. Vic had met her in high school. He told me he’d never cheated on his wife with anyone other than me. It might have been a lie but I didn’t think so. He’d probably slept with five or six women before her; high school girls in the sixties, I pictured no condoms and the girls just going home and angling a faucet to exhume it out of them. Maybe there was an abortion or two. I bet I was the first woman he did not come inside, and anything new, for a man, can be an erotic discovery.

I started crying. I knew something of the world in which Mary was now living. The heart pills he’d no longer need. Things in the refrigerator are the worst because you cannot save them indefinitely. What if the dead person comes back and wants his coffee yogurt.

But the child. I couldn’t imagine. Or I could imagine. Before I even found you, I imagined losing you. It felt like someone was serving my heart to me on a plate and forcing me to carve out pulsing segments and eat them without condiments.

—Why are you crying?

—I’m sorry, I said. I shouldn’t be crying. I didn’t ask for him that way. I’m so sorry about your boy.

—You’re a lying cunt!

She would never understand. If I’d said, Go home to your wife, you pig, he would have wanted me even more and her even less. You can’t say these things to any woman, let alone a grieving one.

—I’m sorry, I said more quietly.

—I’m calling, she said, for another thing. My daughter, Eleanor—in case he never told you their names—I don’t know where she is. She hates you. She said she wants to kill you. And I’m thinking. If she’s coming for you. If she comes for you, will you give me the dignity of telling me?

I nodded into the phone.

—Do you hear me, you cunt!

—Yes, I said. I thought of the word dignity and wanted to kill myself.

7

ON THE WAY HOME I took two milligrams of Klonopin. It worked enough for me to forget a little about the child. But it would come back in terrible notions—anime eyes blinking inside of a child-size coffin.

When I walked into my place, I found my landlord sitting on my couch. I had no one to turn to, aghast.

—Darling! he said, standing. I’m so sorry, I feel so awful. I’ve been here, pacing, wanting to off myself.

—Leonard?

—Yes,