by Sally Koslow
Brie pushes it away. “Stop for a minute, please.”
“Not hungry?”
“We need to continue our conversation.”
“Need?”
“Okay, want—about the baby.”
“What baby?”
“The one you don’t want.”
“That baby.”
“We could adopt, but I’d rather be pregnant,” Brie says. “I have to at least try to be a mother.” Molly wants me to have a baby, I hear her think. It’s crazy, the thoughts that we in the Duration hear attributed to us, but I am flattered and intrigued.
Isadora moves on to eggplant, whose glistening purple-black skin matches her inscrutable eyes. After the eggplant disappears, she lazily alternates between sesame-encrusted lobster tail, sautéed asparagus, and shiitake mushrooms, licking her full lips as she samples each one.
“Aren’t you going to talk to me?” Brie asks. Apparently not. Isadora is Barry in drag.
“What is there to talk about?” Isadora finally says, defiant. “You know my position. I’m not going to debate or defend myself. I never deceived you. This is who I am. It’s me or this mythical baby. Pick, my darling.”
“Won’t you even consider it?” Brie says, her voice silky smooth.
Isadora rests her chopsticks and meets Brie’s gaze. “I had a baby,” she says. “In my marriage to Pedro. Had the child lived, she would now be twenty. The bebé tore me apart in every way. I know this bloody experience, and now I have earned the right to be a hedonist. I want my decadent life where every day I wake up and think, What would make me happy? What would make Sabrina happy? I would like this life with you, love, but if not, not.” Isadora clips every sentence as if she is pruning a rosebush.
I have always been immune to feeling anything toward Isadora except envy, but as I try to make room for empathy, my bullshit detector blares. What a crock. Not the part about Pedro—Isadora was married once, for fourteen months. But there was never a child, not even in Isadora’s imagination or in the head of Pedro, which was filled with coke. I want to rattle Brie by the shoulders. I want to send her a harsh wake-up-toots-and-smell-the-bullshit psychogram, a ranting celestial e-mail.
“Honey,” Brie says, all sympathy, “why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Isadora casts down her eyes, as if she is exercising enormous self-control to maintain dignity.
“Why did you keep this a secret from me?” Brie asks again, taking Isadora’s hand.
Isadora removes her hand.
They finish their meal without talking, without sipping a drop of warm, soothing sake. Brie pays the bill, which is steep. I follow them home. Isadora goes directly to bed, while Brie stays up until three, her mind racing. Why can’t I be a dancing moonbeam who points her toward the truth? At the very least I long to haunt Brie’s dreams, but Bob reminds me, time and again, that such behavior violates the Duration’s bylaws, unwritten but transmitted on faith, and will terminate my powers. I can take no credit, then, for the conversation between Brie and Isadora the following week.
“I’ve made up my mind,” Brie says at midnight on the fourth of a series of rainy days and nights. “I need to be in a relationship where having a baby is at least a possibility.” She offers these words with tremendous tenderness, after many days of sleepwalking.
Isadora accepts the news without theatrics, but this time I feel compassion for a woman who has bargained and lost. I have searched her heart and believe she loves Brie. Now Isadora will have to search again for her matching sybarite.
When Brie returns from work the next day, Isadora is gone, along with her considerable library of books about twentieth-century art, early jazz, and contemporary architecture, her exquisite bags and hand-cobbled shoes, her Fendi furs and four-carat diamond studs, her elegant fruit knives and black bone china. Brie has twice as much storage space and an even larger vacancy in her heart, but she doesn’t look back. “Molly,” she says out loud now, because there is no one to hear her and tell her she is loca, “I can feel you guiding me.”
She is wrong. The decision was entirely her own.
A few weeks later, Brie rescues Jones, a year-old chocolate Lab, and her apartment is overrun with squeaky toys, organic dog food, and sloppy kisses.
Thirty
THEIR STORIES AND THEY’RE
STICKING TO THEM
et’s go over this once more,” Hicks says. “Your relationship to Molly Marx was—”
“Professional.”
“And?”
“Okay, personal—for a while, off and on—but any …”—Luke fishes for a word—“intimacy between us was over well before she died.”
Intimidation, intestines, indigestion, intifada, intimacy. Could Luke possibly make what went on between us sound colder and uglier?
“Mr. Delaney, the last call Mrs. Marx got was from you, and as I like to remind folks, half the truth is a big fat lie.” This guy’s giving me nothing, I hear Hicks think. The husband, he’s one more doctor who mistakes himself for God. But Delaney—something doesn’t add up. “What did you two talk about that day?”
“I don’t recall.”
This isn’t a lawyer-coached response. It’s true. Just as I can’t tell you if I put 1 percent or 2 percent milk into my coffee the day I died, Luke has no recollection of cross-the-t-dot-the-i specifics of what went on that day. “My guess is we discussed work.”
Until today I’ve never mustered the courage to witness conversations between Hicks and Luke. I’ve been too raw, too confused, and entirely too chickenshit. As they face each other, Hicks towers over Luke, whom I’d always thought of as tall but who now looks not just shorter but older. He could use a posture lesson from my mother: Shoulders back, chin up, darling. The blue-gray shadows under his eyes may as well be tattoos, and he appears gaunt and more in need of a haircut than usual. His apartment is worse. Bathroom towels are funky and askew and his hockey equipment hides under a layer of dust in which I could easily scrawl my name if the Duration allowed such folly. Except for some Major Grey’s mango chutney whose sell-by date most likely is older than the Colonial occupation, the refrigerator is empty. Luke’s freezer, however, is stocked—with Stolichnaya, Absolut, and three vodkas labeled in Cyrillic, as well as Cherry Garcia and Dulce de Leche, unopened.
Since my body left this world in its lumpy radiance, Luke has accepted every job that’s come his way, even the one in Sheboygan. Any escape has been better than New York City. But this explains only some of his home’s disarray. He’s not just backed up in his domesticity but deeply, profoundly sad—guilty and sad.
One of Hicks’ more successful techniques is to say nothing and hope that whoever he’s grilling will interrupt the discomfort with a shocking disclosure. He has a 62 percent success rate with this ploy, but not today. “There was a time when I loved Molly deeply and she loved me back,” Luke says. “I will not deny that. I treasure the memories.” Not that Luke lets himself take out those images, carefully archived deep in his mental hard drive. “But before that time, and after it—and during it—we were also colleagues. That’s what we were when she died.”
Colleagues who wanted to be something more, Hicks thinks. He focuses on how pitiful Luke sounds, but what I notice is that Luke’s brain uses the present tense. Molly and I love each other deeply. As my ninth-grade English teacher said, there’s power in grammar.
“I once thought, for a few weeks at least, that we should and would be together permanently.” Two old people making sure the other takes their Lipitor and Avapro, loving the wrinkles in each other’s faces, and finding lost reading glasses. “I hated that because of some cosmic snafu we didn’t meet until after she was already married.” To that schmuck.
“If only we’d met sooner, everything would be different”—the bumper sticker of every cheating man, Hicks thinks. But I don’t care what an asshole a husband is—only a weak, sniffling sonofabitch goes after another guy’s wife. And I know this because I’ve been that weakling.
“Did the two of you plan to be together?” Hicks asks.
“Never,” Luke says emphatically, and too reflexively for my liking. “You and I have gone over this so many times. I was pure diversion. Molly would never have left her husband.” At least not for me. “Although I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I had the occasional fantasy about winding up together.” We’d have moved to a brownstone, maybe in Brooklyn, where I could see us cooking decadent pastas and me walking Annabel to the public school down the street, teaching her to take pictures and to sing Christmas carols when we’d visit my parents in New Hampshire. On the weekends when Annabel visited Barry, Molly and I would be all over each other, and barely crawl out of bed.
Hicks’ mind is roaming as well, to what happened to one lovely Lola. Man, was I out of my league with her, he remembers. He conjures this woman—more cultured, more educated, and infinitely more married than he. After his nonstarter Franny fantasies, Lola and he were a couple, sporadically and secretly, for four years. But Hicks never felt he had as much to offer her as he believed this goddess deserved, never begged for Lola to leave her chump husband. Then, poof over—for Lola but not for him.
Luke fuckin’ Delaney’s got Lola stamped all over him. This Hicks knows.
Hicks can have his sashay down memory lane, but I don’t want to stroll along with him. I’m weighing the knowledge he’s convinced of—that Luke’s still in love with me. It’s an enormous ego stroke to believe this, but I’ve decided it’s also revisionist history. Luke and I didn’t make big plans, and a lot of that had to do with me, because I liked our togetherness with a dreamy patina, not the five o’clock shadow of reality. He never begged me to reinvent my life. Luke toyed with me, not the other way around. This is my story and I’m sticking to it, at least when I’m thinking that I’d be alive today had I not accepted that lethal pink flamingo drink from Luke, if we’d never danced, if we’d only been in Buffalo, not on Expense Account Island.
“Who ended things between you two?”
Luke clears his throat with a sound between a sigh and a groan. “The relationship ran its course. We both got tired of the lying and disappointment, the frustration and the subterfuge, the high drama. We moved on.”
Except you haven’t, Hicks decides. Molly Marx is gnawing like a termite on that wooden heart of yours. “And after that?”
“Detective, I spend every minute running away from my regrets. Every time the phone rings, I expect it to be Molly springing some brilliant idea on me for one of our shoots. I try to trick myself into thinking that she’s just temporarily out of my life.”
How’s that working for you? Hicks wonders. He leans back on the leather couch and takes stock of the room, which could be comfortable were it clean. He can picture me here, taking a stemless wineglass from the tray on the sideboard, opening a decanter, and sharing a glass of decent Syrah with Luke Delaney, the kind of guy women think of as sensitive. He’s currently such a holy mess, it’s not fair to judge him as a world-class lover. And as a killer? Could be. Every damn answer is vague and slippery and he has no good alibi. Zippo.
Despite this, Hicks hasn’t come on with a full frontal attack. With Luke, Hicks is Mr. Softie. Maybe it’s a been-there-done-that guy thing.
“I don’t believe she’s gone,” Luke continues. “Sometimes I go up to the park and sit and could swear that she’s still there.”
I am. A lot. I see him watching, waiting, wasting himself on emotions as useless as expired MetroCards.
“I think I’m going to see her walking or on her bike, that this is all a grotesque fuck-up.”
Hicks decides on this point Luke might be speaking from the heart, because that’s how it was for him until finally the big Lola boom faded to an echo. One day, Hicks realized that Lola was no longer the first thing he thought about each dawn and the last thing each night. He could listen to Marvin Gaye again, and other women started to look quite fine. But it took forever. He’s only gotten there now, this year.
Then Hicks snaps back. “When did Dr. Marx find out about you two?”
“Barry Marx? He didn’t.” Shit. Was he on to us? Luke feels the same sickness in his belly that for the last few weeks has kept him from pouring his good or even his not-so-good vodka or breaking into the ice cream.
“You know that for a fact?” Hicks asks.
“No,” Luke admits. This detective is messing with me. Or maybe not. Could Barry have found out, he’s thinking. Then what?
“So how’d she die, Delaney?” Hicks’ face is so close I wonder if Luke will turn away. He does not.
“I do a head trip about that day and night, Detective.”
“Did she kill herself because she felt so damn guilty about you?”
Luke wonders, Is this policeman mocking me? “I doubt everything about what you just said—that she killed herself, to begin with.” Luke makes this point with dignity, and I am proud he has found some.
“So it was an accident?”
Luke takes his time. “Not necessarily.”
“Then say it,” Hicks all but hisses. “Murder? Say it.”
Luke can’t. “That’s my vision, and it haunts me.”
“Is Barry Marx in this vision?” Hicks takes out his black notebook and his black pen. I hate to think the detective investigating my case can sit across from the big passion in my life and write only the skeptical, critical things I see him scribble about Luke. I miss Luke so much I feel almost physically capable of crying real tears.
“Oh yeah,” Luke says. “He is.”
Thirty-one
SECOND OPINION
wish I’d known her,” Brie whispered, as awed as the rest of the crowd in this garnet-walled gallery.
Brie and I were at the Met, headed now toward the curator’s prize. There she hung, Madame X.
“What do you suppose she’s thinking?” Brie asked.
“‘My boobs are better than yours’?” The woman’s pearly skin shone against a black gown that would have been scandalous on any catwalk in any century. Madame wore a bemused smile, her profile turned away from contemporary admirers. I had rarely seen such an arrogant pose. In her day, this woman was considered to be quite the babe. Now, instead of having a sitting with John Singer Sargent, she’d see Barry about that nose.
“What I’d give to have her tutor me in the womanly arts,” Brie said.
“Like you need help,” I said.
“Do I have to remind you that the last man in my life was a lot more Norman Bates than Carl Jung?”
Brie’s most recent suitor had, indeed, given new meaning to the profession of psycho analyst. I’d learned not to get Dr. Demented started on fat people who drove up American health care costs.
“Anyway, I’ve met someone new,” Brie said as we moved to the next painting.
“Tell me,” I answered, giving most of my attention to a moody rendering of four exquisitely dressed American girls whose fortunate genetic gene toss allowed them to be raised in Paris, not a midwestern suburb closer to Best Buy than a boulangerie. I knew this painting well. It had been covered in the art history course where I met Barry.
“He’s a she,” Brie said. “A gorgeous she.” She brushed the hair off her face and tried to look blasé. I could tell she was anything but.
“Excuse me?” I said, spinning away from the portrait. “When did you switch teams? You haven’t been without a man for, what, more than six months of the last sixteen years? I’ve always thought you should have a catch-and-release policy.”
“I say it’s high time for another gender.”
I deposited myself on a bench. “Who is she?” A venture capitalist? Titled Englishwoman? Cartoon princess? More importantly, will I like her?? When you’re lucky enough to be a grown-up with a very best girlfriend, the idea of sharing her with another woman feels uncomf
ortably close to cuckoldry.
“She’s my architect,” she said. “Isadora Vega.” The syllables rolled off Brie’s tongue as if she were savoring a rich, decadent sauce. “Dark hair, big eyes that are almost purple, bigger brain, muy Latina.”
“The type Pedro Almodóvar would cast as the lead in a film?”
“A Velázquez Venus.”
In silent agreement, the two of us stopped looking at portraits and began to search for one of the museum’s cafés, not even stopping to browse among the minimalls of posters, umbrellas, and too-cute wine corks. We wove in and out of the building’s familiar chambers as if led on a leash. “My treat,” I said as we arrived at a small cafeteria overlooking Central Park, where in the late afternoon light I could see more leaves on the lawn than on the trees. Waving Brie away as I got out my wallet, I paid for two glasses of wine and followed Brie to a table by the window, thinking how she was always, literally, a step ahead of not just me but every other woman I knew.
“To … whatever,” I said as we toasted.
“To happy surprises,” Brie said, and offered up ten more minutes of juicy, girl-crush details. Lingerie shopping for the same bra size, double entendres, identical taste in Italian shoes.
As I listened, I debated whether to drop my own bomb. It was an afternoon for shocks, and Brie would be the last person to judge me for seeing a man who wasn’t my husband. When my glass was almost empty, I said, “Since we’re talking about relationships, I need your advice.”
“What’s Barry done now?” Brie’s face was flushed with excitement and fair-to-middling chardonnay.
“Not Barry.”
“Ah, Lucy, then?” Brie, who didn’t have a sister, typically took the position that Lucy was guilty until proven innocent.
“Not Luce,” I said in a low, conspiratorial voice.
“I give up, but for the record, I’ve suspected something’s not right.”