—I hope you don’t mind, he said, I took the liberty of ordering you a Stella.
I said hello and thanked him and said I had to run to the bathroom, where I looked in the mirror and screamed at my reflection. John Fogerty drowned me out. I was in love.
We had a couple of beers and everyone in there was less excited than we were. We glowed together. I was proud of a lot of things about myself. The way I always knew how to make a dish taste better with salt or turmeric or Parmesan or lemon zest or cardamom. How I could make another person feel comfortable or feel smaller. How I was rarely drunk or out of my own control. I was even proud of my pain. It made me enigmatic and aware. But I had never felt better about myself than I did in that moment, with the sunlight coming through those filthy pretty windows, sitting next to that man.
—This secret accountant of yours sounds like he will be unbelievably helpful. I’ve gotten myself into a number of untenable situations.
—Listen, he said, leaning his chest across the table. Truth is, I’m not just trying to help you. Look, I was excited to come here. Looked forward to it all damn week.
I blushed and then we did what people in illicit situations do. We pretended something untoward hadn’t been said but enjoyed all around ourselves the warmth of it.
I tried several times to pay for a beer of his. As a thank-you, I said. But he kept saying, No, that’s not how it works. Gentlemen pay.
—I’m a certain type of woman.
—Okay, buy me a drink somewhere else, certain type of woman. This place is getting beat.
We walked to Tom & Jerry’s, a bar that had the same bearded bartender for years. On the walk he smoked a one-hitter. He smoked good pot. I thought it was sexy. We walked by a church in SoHo and he told me about its engravings. He knew the histories of places. He knew good bars. He was of an indeterminate wealth, somewhere in between a two-bedroom in Chelsea and a classic six on the Upper West Side. I said something funny and he laughed and then he stopped us on a block of Manhattan that I would, in the desolate future, walk over and over, trying to reconstruct the essence of that first night. I would stand in the very spot he’d stopped us.
—This is so weird. Seriously. It’s like the best first date I’ve ever had. Only I’m married.
I was so happy. I was too happy. I should have played it cool. I’d have given anything to go back and play it cool. At Tom & Jerry’s we sat side by side at the bar. We drank gin and tonics. He complimented my hair and my intelligence. Our thighs were touching, my jeans against his loose khakis. I felt the heat of his leg through the material. I had never wanted someone more.
—I have never wanted someone more, he said. I have a wife and a baby at home. I have to get out of here.
He paid and we left and outside it had started to rain, turning the streets darker. That little stretch of Elizabeth Street would become hallowed. Within months it would feel like the love of my life was buried under the cigarette packs and the fallen magnolia blossoms. He hailed a cab. One flew past.
—We didn’t want that one anyway, he said, laughing.
A second came and stopped and Big Sky opened the door for me. As I was getting in, he took hold of my shoulder.
—Hey, he said. Jesus.
His face looked like a wolf’s. He had a long nose and clever blue eyes. He didn’t look like a liar. His self-centeredness was sexy.
—May I kiss you on the mouth? he said.
The cabdriver’s impatience was palpable but nobody else mattered.
—Yes.
He came forward. My heart was a rock knocking in my chest. The kiss was openmouthed but tongueless and lasted no longer than three seconds. It was more sex, that kiss, than any sex I had ever had. Maybe it wasn’t love, but I don’t know what to call how I felt inside that moment.
Do you see how it’s a cycle? I was standing there with the lead singer of a seventies folk band. I was attracted to this faded man because he looked like Big Sky, because I craved men who had big happy lives of which I would never be a part. The experience of Big Sky gored me. In a way, Big Sky was responsible for Vic’s death. One man like that can be responsible for every big and small thing in a woman’s life. A woman he isn’t married to whom he doesn’t think very much about at all. But it’s not the man’s fault. The man is nothing. It’s what you think you are missing inside of yourself. I promise that you are missing nothing.
I DIDN’T KNOW IF I could bear to see Alice again. I like to think I was lying in wait, sharpening a knife, but really I was only postponing the last thing I had left to fear.
I considered writing her a letter.
Dear Alice,
I have had a lifetime of suffering. From what I know, you have not. I have something to tell you, and you have something to tell me. I am all alone. I thought about killing myself but I wanted to meet you first. I am depraved. I hope you like me.
On the way home from the café I passed River walking with a dog. They were on the crest of the lookout just before Comanche. The sun and the greens framed them.
The dog was a mutt, gray and brown with a beard like a schnauzer and robust as a shepherd. River came to my open window and said, This is Kurt.
He told me
