—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 text message. The stillness of a message, even though you know the person on the other end is trembling, staring at her phone. The desperation of the poor, poor woman! I couldn’t believe it, actually, that Vic had left her with the pain of knowing her husband killed himself over another woman. Left her to care for a child with challenges. Some people had suffered so much that it seemed they could handle anything. I was not unfeeling. I had been through my own gauntlet. I knew someone like Mary would survive. Most women do.
The lady from Letgo wrote back, Your a fuckin pyscho cunt!
I wrote back, You spelled you’re and psycho wrong. I deleted that and wrote, WHATEVER CHEAPO.
Then the bell rang and Alice walked in. She wore a long gray sleeveless cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back into a wet ponytail. Her eyes didn’t need makeup.
—Is it closing time? Can we have some beer on the patio?
—Sure.
—You don’t have somewhere to be?
Her grin was acerbic, vaguely judgmental. She took out a ten-dollar bill.
—I didn’t pay for our second round yesterday, this one’s on me. I hate people who pretend to forget to pay.
Within moments we were in the middle of our conversation from the previous afternoon. Then she said something that made me feel we were speaking on a heightened plane. They were similar to the experience of psychedelic drugs, those first conversations with Alice.
—There’s something about your story—Big Sky—all of it, I feel like there’s a purpose. Do you know? Like we are getting somewhere. Of course I sound crazy. This is colder than yesterday. It’s fucking beautiful.
Of course the beer was colder. I’d turned the dial down on the beer fridge for her. It was so cold it glowed. I pictured her mother’s lips with my father’s lips.
—You’re going to hate the women here, she said to me.
—Aren’t they the same as in New York?
—I think they’re worse. They’re opossums. This one woman, Lara, I’m giving her private lessons in her Japanese garden in Santa Monica at six in the morning. She wants to have these talks with me. Her child is with the nanny staring out the window. Hands and face pressed to glass. Lara wants to talk about nothing, about how her hairstylist gives her preferential access, more so than celebrities. She wants me to be jealous of her. One time her husband came out to the garden and saw me and then she switched our time to nine a.m.
Alice had a light accent, maybe affected, but the artifice would have made her sexier to me. She pulled a cigarette from a new soft pack. I thought to light it for her. But I didn’t want to be the man between the two of us. I took a sip of beer and the flavor was suddenly bad. I felt an inch-thick lake of saliva coat my throat. My head buzzed. I willed myself back into the moment.
—Where did you grow up? I asked her.
—Are you asking because of my accent? Continental? Does it sound affected? Sometimes I think I’m affecting it. I totally am. I’ll try to be more genuine because I like you.
She explained that she’d been born in New Jersey but had spent much of her childhood in Italy. I told her I was from there, too. We “discovered” we both had Italian mothers.
—What brought your family to Italy? I asked, trying to neutralize the acid rising in my throat.
—We went back there when I was a toddler. Then we returned to the States for high school. Italy was not as my mother remembered it.
—And your father?
—Out of the picture, she said, fluttering her hand like half of a bird, squinting, and taking a drag. You have to tell me the rest of the story, she said. We are getting somewhere.