—Oh, yeah, he said. He was grateful I didn’t say anything else. I also knew that would make him want me more. The notion that I might have forgotten the way he made love.
I crossed and uncrossed my legs. The dress made a V shape between my thighs—a gleaming silk triangle. It was impossible for him to avert his eyes. I drank half the bottle. I could feel the heat growing between us.
—I wish there was a pool or something, I said. Do you know the song “Nightswimming”?
—Fuck yeah. That’s a great song. I’ll play it.
—That’d be great.
He played the song. I lay down on his bed and cuddled with Kurt and swayed my bent legs left and right to the music. The dog was a very good dog. He liked to lie against a warm human body but he wasn’t needy. He didn’t smell or shed. He was smart and loyal. He never left River’s side, even when they were mountain running. I’d never known a dog that good. I thought how lucky Alice was to have a kind and good-looking boyfriend with a perfect dog. The fact she was able to have that was because of the particular love she’d been given by her single mother. I believed that with my whole heart.
By the end of the song River was lying beside me and our legs were interwoven. We kissed like high schoolers for nearly half an hour before I leaned in to his ear and told him to please put it everywhere.
28
—I FEEL SICK, ELEANOR SAID the next day when finally she woke from her drugged slumber. What time is it?
—It’s noon. Maybe you have the flu. It’s going around.
—I missed work.
—I called in for you. Steve opened. You can go in now. Or I can if you don’t feel well.
—I wish you could just stay home.
—One of us has to work.
She nodded and got up. She pulled her hair back and walked groggily to the door.
—You’re not going to shower?
—I’ll shower later.
She walked out of the door in a way that recalled all the times I’d walked out of Big Sky’s door when his wife was at their country house in the Hudson Valley or at the cabin in Montana. I walked out with the fear that he was glad I was leaving. The fear that I might never see him again.
Big Sky and his wife lived at the Montana house most of the time now, and when I found out the location of Alice’s retreat, I began to pick at the skin on my deformed thumb. My father had deformed me. I’d had a wart on the finger and my father had picked up my thumb and turned it. He said that warts did not go away with the creams I was using, and he brought out a little laser, like a crème brûlée flare, and burned half of my thumb off. But the wart was also gone.
I went to rip off little pieces of skin that grew over the deformity. I looked at a map of Montana. The retreat was less than a half hour from Bigfork, from their six-bedroom lodge on Flathead Lake, with the kayaks and the water skis tied to a giant oak that grew out of the water. There was a grand main residence with all local woodwork, with stone showers, and with a kitchen that made my chest hurt. And then there was a small but gorgeously appointed cabin on stilts over the water where he sometimes slept alone to hear the lapping of the lake against the pebbles he’d had specially imported from a place in Sandpoint, Idaho. In the beginning he told me he slept in the lake house to think unmolested of me. And I would picture him staring up at the log ceiling, stroking himself and wishing I were there.
I had told Alice where the house was. I’d pulled it up on my phone, the old listing with the photos I’d studied as though there would be a test about my former lover’s real life. I’d told her about the grocery store where he bought his big cuts of beef. It’s no organic market, he’d said, but they know their ribs. Johnny, the meat guy, he knows his ribs.
It was the next day when River knocked on my door. I’d never seen him look sad.
—What’s wrong?
—I told her. I told Alice.
—You told her what?
—About what we did.
—Oh.
—Yeah. It’s terrible.
—Why did you tell her?
—Because I couldn’t live like that. I pretty much love her.
—Why are you telling me?
—Because you’re friends.
—Not really anymore, I said. I felt faint and I didn’t think it was from the pregnancy. I heard my burden come to the door.
—May I have a moment? I hissed at Eleanor. It was the first time I’d snapped at her. I went outside and closed the door behind me.
—She’s really upset. I think she hates me.
—Well, you cheated on her.
He looked like he was about to cry.
—She’s leaving for her retreat in a few days. She said she’d think about whether she could forgive me. But either way she wasn’t going to be exclusive with me for a while.
—Why are you telling me this?
—I don’t know, he said. I have no one else to tell.
—So go tell your dog, I said. I walked back inside my house and slammed the door.
I WROTE HER THAT DAY.
I didn’t know about the two of you.
Predictably, there was no reply. I felt remorse but not really. Mostly I felt fear. I closed my eyes and saw her at the Whitefish Farmers’ Market, carrying a baguette and a bouquet of poppies. Big Sky would be coming from the opposite direction with a brown bag of tomatoes and basil. Then the pink fucking.
And all I had was this lump of a child on my couch. I kept checking my phone for a reply. Alice would know I’d be doing that. I’d told
