I nodded, feeling for the first time that I’d been unfairly blaming myself.
—But he didn’t have to, you understand.
—We worked together. Should he have fired me?
—No! He should have sucked it up, that he was married with a family and that a young woman who lost her own family might be looking for something that replicated that. And that just because you wanted connection, someone to make you feel protected, that didn’t mean you wanted someone to chain you up. To emotionally jail you. Joan, this man took advantage of a sad young woman. Joan?
—But the truth is I kept going back to him and back to him. Every time I was hurt by some little thing, every time I needed help with my work. Every time some fucking little boy hurt me. I felt loved by him. I needed that so badly. But this time it was different. The way I felt for Big Sky, Vic could tell I was blown away. Vic saw it and it killed him. Plus, Big Sky was a man, he wasn’t some kid. He had more money than Vic. He was powerful.
—But these games he was playing! Asking you about the size of another man’s dick? After we returned to Italy, I worked as a waitress at this café on La Dogana beach in Maremma. Every day this bald man with one of those cartoon guts came in. Every day he ordered the linguine con vongole. They made it the best there. And every day this man, Carlo, would ask for extra parsley, but he wanted me to sprinkle it on top right there in front of him. Some days he was my only lunch table. He didn’t act untoward with me, unless you can count him wanting the parsley sprinkled tableside, and the way he would watch my hands. I used to apply clear polish every other day because I was conscious of Carlo watching my fingers. Joan, do you understand? There are rapes, and then there are the rapes we allow to happen, the ones we shower and get ready for. But that doesn’t mean the man does nothing.
—It’s a finer line than that, I said. I wasn’t innocent. Don’t forget, I’d slept with Vic, I’d even tried to get off. I could never come with him. But I tried. I exhausted myself trying. I told him I cared for him. More than once.
—And then one day you didn’t and he wouldn’t lay off of you. He stuck around. You didn’t force him to. Not only did he stick around, he suctioned himself on like a fucking octopus!
—But I lied to him. And all he wanted was the truth. He didn’t want half-truths. And I would lie. I could have just said, I love this man, this married man. Now fuck off, please.
—And it should be your responsibility to talk to someone that way? You don’t think he knew you didn’t love him? Didn’t want him around?
—But it would have been honest. In the beginning I would see him everywhere, as though he were a man I loved. Probably he felt real love from me. Of course, I was confusing it with a fatherly love I’d been looking for. But to change suddenly. To start to talk to him about other men. I didn’t believe him that he wanted to hear these things. But he also didn’t want me to lie. I was confused, but still I was never doing right by him. I sent him into a pit of despair. And at home he had this wife and this son with problems.
—Oh, fuck his problems! You lied because if you told the truth, he’d make you feel terrible. In his own little ways. And you are saying that you changed suddenly? What about the ways he must have changed? Going from a man who reminded you of your father to a man who made you feel like a slut, like a bad, bad girl. He scared you, the way men scare women, into submission. He could have fired you, and you needed the job! You’re still under the spell of him. And Big Sky. You need to come out from there. Where is Vic now? Where is this bloodsucker?
—That’s the part.
Alice poured us both some more wine and raised her eyebrows in curiosity. At the very least, I didn’t feel boring.
—A little over a month ago, just before I came here, Big Sky got in touch with me after a very long time. I was so happy. I cried for a day. I went to a Turkish bath. I buttered every inch of my skin. I had everything plucked, tinted. We met for dinner at this Italian restaurant in the Village. I can’t tell you how delirious I was. I didn’t tell Vic, I didn’t tell anyone. In fact, Vic asked me if I’d heard from Big Sky lately. He acted like it had just popped into his mind. Of course, I realized later he’d been reading my email, he knew my security question, having to do with my mother’s maiden name, because he had all my employment information. And my email was always saying that my password had to be changed. So I knew he was reading my email. At home with his wife, sitting there and clicking away like a teenage sociopath. So he must have known. He must have followed me. I had a hunch that he waited outside my apartment. Once I saw him and he played it off, said he’d been in the area and was going to ring me up. Other times I felt his energy. I would turn around quickly in the street, expecting to find him there. I started to wait longer and longer to reply to his messages. One time he texted and then, when I didn’t reply for over an hour, he called me. I shoved my phone in my bag and roamed the streets. I finally wrote back: You don’t have to follow up a text with a call. It’s obsessive. I’ll reply when I see it. What’s up? And he wrote, I was calling because I saw you I saw you on the street. I wrote back, Why didn’t you call my name? But I was frightened. The streets of Manhattan are the most naked places. If there’s someone you want to see, that person lights up, they glow. I know you don’t want to be seen with me at certain times, in certain spots. I was respecting your boundaries. God, how I hated myself. That I allowed people like him to feel they owned pieces of me.
—Joan, Jesus. It keeps getting worse.
—This night in question, I wore a very pretty green wool dress, long-sleeved, wifely, you could say. I felt aware of everything. When I saw Big Sky at the table, I was happy but I was also ready. After all that time I felt strong. He told me I looked beautiful. I could see in his eyes, he had that fear about him, when a man hasn’t seen you in a long time and worries he no longer has his thumb over you. That was the look he had, and I savored it. We ordered fried zucchini blossoms and a bottle of expensive wine. His hair was long and I loved it but I didn’t say anything. I was clever and restrained. He spoke vaguely of some problems in his marriage. By the time our entrées arrived, I felt like he was feeling all the things for me I’d always wanted him to feel. God, I felt so happy. And then Vic walked in. I saw him come in, I saw him the whole time, and I knew I wasn’t seeing things. I told you how he hated that I lied to him, that he once said that was the worst part. And there I was with the man whose existence in my life had almost killed him. And Vic thought it had been put to bed and likely he thought there was still a chance for me and him. That one day I’d grow older and Vic would be there for me. And sometimes I thought that, too, that eventually I’d be too tired, too wrinkled. A woman like me can’t exist past a certain age. And Vic must have dreamed about that day. He’d get us a condo in Sayulita with white stucco and a little Jacuzzi on the balcony and he’d buy me high-cut bikinis and we’d eat plantains and just live out our days. But I think seeing me there with Big Sky, seeing me wearing a wonderful dress, looking more beautiful than I’d ever looked with him, I think it was a concentration of every raw hurt he’d ever felt at my hands. I could see his face melt from the inside.