—What can I get you boys?
—An iced genmaicha for me. Maybe a bowl of water for Kurt?
—Sure.
I filled one of the expensive soup bowls with water. My mother thought it was disgusting to use human bowls for dogs. After taking showers, my parents dried the stall with the towels they had used on themselves. The steel drain was always sparkling.
—I’m taking Kurt for his first dunk in the ocean.
—How do you know it’s his first?
—Oh. I don’t.
I felt bad so I walked around the counter and knelt to the dog’s eye level. I wore a frilly light green apron. I gazed in the dog’s eyes and then stood up quickly before the animal rejected me by looking away.
—It will be his first time, I said.
River laughed. One time I wrote to Jack, Last night was the best it’s ever been (for me, with you). Of course, I bookended it with several jokes. I addressed him as Fisheye. He wrote back, Hey handsome! He replied to my jokes with jokes, he told me about an interview he’d had with some start-up firm and asked for my advice. He included some song lyrics and ignored what I wrote about our sex.
I made River’s tea and handed it over to him. I took his money, a few crinkled dollar bills, and gave him change. He didn’t put any of the change into the tip jar. Each time Dean came in, he slipped all of his singles into it. Both actions—the tipping and the not tipping—made me feel like I had lesions.
—Thanks, River said. He brought the bowl of water back. The dog had splashed a good amount on the floor and I would have to wipe it up with one of the dirty bar mops.
It was just about closing time and I had given up on Alice coming in. Out of frustration I denigrated a woman on Letgo about the price of a basket. She wanted to give me five dollars less than what I was asking but was willing to drive nearly forty minutes to meet me. Stop haggling, I wrote to her. You’re embarrassing yourself.
Then I wrote to Vic’s wife, Mary:
Hey… tried you back a number of times. Calls not going thru?
She wrote back immediately:
I didn’t get any calls! Call me now!
I waited a few minutes and wrote:
Okay, as soon as I get off of work.
When?? she asked.
I thought of all the nights when Mary must have sat at home, feeling something wasn’t right, that her husband was not where he said he was. I never noticed him step away from me to call or write to her. Once, just once, he didn’t take me up on an offer for dinner. I’d emailed him from across the office. I wrote the name of the restaurant where I wanted to go to in the subject line and a question mark in the body. I could see into his office from my desk. He had a large one with big windows. I saw his face fall. I watched him type a response. His pain was like a graveyard I could stroll about and mark up as I saw fit.
Can’t do dinner, kid. Can’t tell you how sorry I am. Could do a quick drink before? Any drink, any bar in the city.
I let him take me to Bemelmans in the Carlyle with the drawings of Madeline and little girls in hats with ribbons in Paris and balloons, ice-skating elephants, picnicking rabbits, and little boys and their gray dogs. Nobody had ever read Madeline to me as a child. My mother used to tell me the story of Cinderella. In her version there was a cop in lieu of the prince. Cinderella and the Cop. She told it in both English and Italian. I have her on tape. I haven’t yet been able to listen because I worry that her accent will sound stronger, all these years later, than it did in my head. That she would sound like someone I never knew.
At the bar I drank a gimlet and so did Vic. By that point I’d been avoiding him quite a bit. The season of Jack had begun. Young-boy bars and beer and waking up next to a strong body with soft skin. I was waiting to hear from Jack all the time, so I rarely made dinner plans with Vic. But that night Jack was going to Queens to see a friend and I knew he wouldn’t be back until late. He would eat cheesesteak sushi in Astoria and possibly he’d want to fuck when he got back but most likely he would pass out on his friend’s couch or make out with some girl his own age. He would fall asleep in a pair of breasts. We were not exclusive. Or rather, I was exclusive with him.
I was upset that Vic couldn’t have dinner and take my mind off of the boy but it helped me to see how sorry he was that he couldn’t. I was cruel that night. I said, What a real shame, we haven’t spent any time with each other in ages. I thought we could watch a movie and be cozy with popcorn.
—Kid, he said. You don’t know how bad I wish I could.
—Did you know, I asked, pointing to the murals around us, that the author of the Madeline books exchanged these murals for a year and a half of accommodations at the Carlyle for himself and his family?
—No, I didn’t, he said. They must have been a happy family to live in such close quarters and not go crazy.
He knew how to hurt me when he dared. He stayed for a second round, which I could see he would regret. He paid for our drinks and got up. There were fine beads of sweat in the creases of his forehead.
—Tell the car to take Ninth to the tunnel, I yelled after him. You can’t be late to your wife’s birthday!
Now I looked at her
