Early in the marriage, one of the things that Linda liked to do when he was gone was rearrange the furniture. At night, when he was home, on the way to the refrigerator for a glass of milk, he would often trip or stub his toes. He could never remember where things had been before he left.
Sarayu does not answer her intercom on his first try. He looks at the mailbox numbers to make sure he has the right apartment, and presses the button twice more before she buzzes him in. Looking up to the second floor, he announces himself. She is waiting in her doorway with a puzzled look. “What are you doing out in this weather? You’re lucky I was in.”
“I—” Phil does not know what to say. “We have to talk.”
Her black hair is brushed away from her face and behind her ears. He notices her eye makeup, something she would do when she was going out, but not when she was at home or working. He reaches her and takes her shoulders in his hands, but that is all he dares to do. He is unable to explain himself and he is soaking wet.
“I have someone here.” She sounds worried. “Come in and dry yourself.
She brings him a large bath towel from a white hallway cabinet built into the wall. “Here, you can go to my bedroom and take off your wet clothes. Wrap yourself in this.”
As he might have done as a child listening to an adult who knew better, he goes to her bedroom and closes the door behind him. He sets the towel on the bed as he takes off all of his wet clothes, then he begins to dry himself with it. What am I doing?” he asks himself, hearing the soft voices of Sarayu and another person echo from the living room. He wonders about Eleanor, what did she do during the storm? Did she shelter with her family in her basement while he was driving like a crazy man through the city? Was she cooking dinner and watching the storm through the window? He is overwhelmed with a rush of tiredness.
Phil wraps the towel around his waist and his long pink legs stretch out beneath it. The towel reaches to just above his knee. Carrying his clothes, he leaves the bedroom, padding along the cool wooden floors of the hallway to the main room, where he finds Sarayu seated in a chair by the window, sitting with a man he has never met in the other, matching chair.
Phil doesn’t know any of Sarayu’s friends. He hopes the man is just a friend. It has never occurred to him that she might have been seeing someone else. Holding the towel with one hand, he presents the other to shake. “Hi. I’m Phil.”
“Josh.”
They shake and smile. Josh is lanky and makes Phil feel old. Phil touches the crown of his head, at the bald spot, and tightens the towel as he sits on the couch with his knees together. Sarayu laughs. “You look ridiculous,” she says to him. “I’m just going to put these wet clothes into the dryer downstairs. I wish I had a bathrobe or something large enough for you to wear.” She is still laughing as she leaves.
“So how do you two know each other?” Josh asks.
Phil wonders what he should say. Friends? Dating? How much does Josh know? “We used to go out together,” he says. “Some time ago.”
“I’ve known Sarayu forever, and she has never mentioned you. Unless … You could be the mystery man from a year ago.”
“Mystery man?”
“Someone she was seeing while she was a traveling nurse, toward the end. She wouldn’t say much about him. I figured he was married.”
“That was me, then.”
“Married or a mystery? Or both?”
“A mystery. I’m separated.”
Josh smiles and sips from a glass of beer. Phil keeps his knees together and begins to feel cold. “Too bad you got caught in the storm. We heard a tree crash against something, and we probably should have turned on the radio or TV. We were going to go out to a bar. Good thing we hadn’t left yet. Were you driving yourself?”
“Yes.” Phil looks at his towel. “Then running from the car. It isn’t an easy neighborhood to park in, storm or no storm.”
“It isn’t.”
In the uncomfortable silence, Phil hears Sarayu open the door. She is holding a beach towel.
“This is bigger,” she smiles. “Should have more coverage than that miniskirt.” They all laugh uncomfortably.
When Phil returns in his new towel, there is a beer on the coffee table near where he had been sitting. Sarayu’s smile stretches the dark skin of her cheeks.
“That looks more presentable, though I don’t think we’re taking you to a bar with us,” Josh says. “Sarayu, Phil was telling me how you two used to go out.”
“You are being mischievous, Josh,” Sarayu says. “I bet Phil isn’t asking you how we have known each other. We were practically children together in Toronto.” She is comfortable and friendly in the way she exchanges looks with Josh and touches his arm. Phil watches them carefully.
Then Phil smiles, feeling he has dodged the proverbial bullet and mostly kept their relationship private. He opens his mouth to say that the whole thing wasn’t a big deal, and who can remember specific details, but then he sees the way Sarayu glances at him, warmly, affectionately, and he can’t bring himself to say anything that might hurt her. He begins to cross his legs, and feels the air come into the towel and hit the tops of his thighs as he does, and he stops. He is sitting like a schoolgirl, his knees together, his toes pointed forward. Sarayu brings him another bottle of beer, and he holds it in one hand and places the other on his lap to keep the towel closed.
Josh is looking out the window. The storm has let up, it isn’t as dark, but it is still raining. “It seems to have stopped, but I wouldn’t go out there just now. I wonder if some of the neighborhood restaurants even have power.”
Phil thinks of when he was in the restaurant with Sarayu, then tries to put it out of his head.
“Thank goodness we have power,” Sarayu says.
Josh drinks his beer and grins. “Plus, Phil is practically naked.”
Phil laughs in a high-pitched, unexpectedly feminine way. He is relaxing.
Josh and Sarayu hover over a small countertop, preparing vegetables for an intricate salad they seem to have created together in the past. They boil pasta.
Phil watches Sarayu’s thin brown fingers, her trimmed pink nails holding the broccoli delicately under the stream of water in the sink, slicing the tomatoes slowly and smoothly into small wedges, and with the flat of her hand brushing the juice and seeds from the cutting board into the garbage beneath the sink. Josh works around her, skimming her back with his hand as he maneuvers from the stove to the refrigerator. Phil looks to see how they touch each other. He is having a live version of one of those dreams where you forget your clothes when you go to school, only it is at Sarayu’s apartment and she has another man as her guest, when he had hoped that she would be alone and he could explain Linda’s behavior to her. He has to wait for an interminable forty minutes for his clothes to dry and then decide what to do afterward. Maybe go home.
Sarayu retrieves Phil’s clothes from the basement and Phil dresses in her bedroom, wondering what Josh and Sarayu are saying with him not there. His jeans are damp, but not soaking wet.
“I rather liked him in the towel,” Josh says as Phil emerges from the bedroom and returns to the kitchen.
“How do you feel now?” Sarayu says.
“Better. Thank you.”
“We’re almost done here,” she indicates the salad and bowl of pasta. “Our emergency meal.”
Josh hands Phil a pile of plates. They all move toward the dining table in the living room with the food. Dinner is quiet. In this calm, domestic setting, with Sarayu and Josh, Phil is now part of the life Sarayu has without him. He can sense Josh watching him. Mother bird watching the nest. He has interrupted Josh and Sarayu’s evening together. He had never before cared about other people in her life, as long as she was there for him when they met. Here, he is sinking into it, stuck, unable to climb out. They chat about nonsensical things and clean up the dishes together amicably. Josh puts the food away and knows where everything goes. Sarayu opens another bottle of beer and put
s it next to Phil. “After drinking this, you will have to stay tonight,” she says. It puts Phil at ease that she does not have a romantic connection to Josh.
Then, finally, Josh says that he has to go. “I have to make sure a tree hasn’t bashed my sun porch,” he says.
Sarayu begins to go toward the hallway and the front door. “No,” Josh says, “You finish up here. Let Phil show me out.”
Phil wipes his hands on his pants and follows Josh through the hall, past the closet and the bathroom and the bedroom, and Josh stops before turning the bolt on the front door. “I hardly know you, Phil. But I do know the role you played in Sarayu’s life, and I don’t want you to hurt her again.”
Phil is silent. He has nothing to say but looks Josh straight in the eye. “I won’t hurt her again.”
“Don’t.” Then Josh smiles forcefully and leaves. Phil stands at the door and closes it, clutching the knob, annoyed. He is overcome with tiredness. It washes over him like a wave. He turns to the kitchen, floating along the wood floor in his bare feet. He finds Sarayu wiping the countertop with a washcloth. Where he once would have carried her off to the bedroom, he waits. He does not know what to do now.
SARAYU OPENS HER eyes. It’s barely morning, and the darkness is violet around the room, with a thin line of light emerging through the side of the bedroom curtains. She moves her arm and elbows Phil, accidentally, and as she feels his skin, warm and damp next to her, she begins to remember that he stayed the night. He snores softly beside her. She traces imaginary lines on his back with her index finger and notices that, even though she woke in the middle of the night, unable to sleep next to him, she feels tender toward him where she once could only feel hurt. She moves her face toward his skin, which almost seems to glow in the pale morning, and breathes in his scent, a deep sourness that she had come to enjoy a long time ago and has missed.
She throws her legs over the side of the bed, stands, and stretches her arms to the ceiling, watching Phil’s body move with each breath. She finds herself smiling absentmindedly. In the bathroom, she sees the condom floating in the toilet water, and flushes it away before sitting on the seat. When she is finished, she washes her face and brushes her teeth. She drinks two full glasses of water to wash out the alcohol from last night so that she can go to work later with a clear head. She goes back to the bedroom.
Phil’s ice blue eyes are wide open. She can see this when she adjusts to the darkness. He is on his back and his arm is stretched to her side of the bed. “Come back,” he says, and she crawls in beside him, her head on his warm bicep. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asks her quietly. Then she feels his body relax as he slips back to sleep. She closes her eyes and begins to fade into a half-sleeping state, where she imagines that Josh has had words with Phil. It is the sort of thing Josh would do, warn away her boyfriends, after flirting with them, almost hitting on them, then telling them to be careful of her feelings. But this time, there is something in what Josh says that is correct about Phil. Phil is vulnerable, still married, still living in the same house with his wife. There are things she needs to discuss with Phil before launching into another relationship with him. Phil isn’t thinking straight now. He is needy, and here she is, after a long period of trying to get over him, here she is once again.
21
PHIL PACKS THE hardback copy of Julia Child, an old birthday present to Linda that she never used, a button-down shirt, nice shoes, a new pair of jeans, and his favorite Italian cologne into his duffle and pulls the zipper closed. He is going to stay with Sarayu for the weekend. He hopes that he can cook for her, or that they will cook together. He has picked green beans, lettuce, and asparagus from his garden and put them into a single-handled cooler. He has not discussed his cooking plan with her, but in the past, she has been open to his suggestions.
The relationship is moving forward and Phil is pleased about it. They rely on texting when she is busy working, with no time to talk, or when Linda is in the house. He admits that this gives this new part of their relationship the same edge of being forbidden that existed in the past. He has explained to Sarayu that it is Linda’s idea to leave the marriage. She knows they are still in the same house. They both acknowledge Linda’s part in bringing them back together.
Linda stands guard at the front door as Phil leaves. He stops at the threshold of the entryway. “What?”
Linda glares at him. She wears her arms folded across her chest. “What about the dog? Who is going to take care of it?”
“She’s the family dog,” he says.
“She is your dog and I don’t want to take care of her.”
Phoenix is not in sight. Phil assumes that she has sought out the back of her crate as she always does when he and Linda raise their voices. “Isabel will take care of her. She knows what to do if you”—he hesitates—“don’t.” Now he is concerned about Phoenix. Isabel is a fairly responsible teenager. She doesn’t get into trouble. And Linda has never shown that she doesn’t like the dog.
He stands at the doorway with his duffle in one hand and the cooler in the other. “What’s the deal, Linda?” he asks. “You want to move out, but you haven’t yet. Do you want me to move out? Because I feel I need a life right now. I can’t continue in this limbo, tripping over all of your stuff, and having you around every corner hissing at me and giving me dirty looks. I definitely can’t have you calling up potential girlfriends and trying to manipulate my life that way.”
Linda moves to the side silently. He slams the door as he leaves. In the car he texts Isabel about the dog. She can handle it. Then he backs his Spider down the driveway.
The drive to Sarayu’s is slow. He tries to put Linda out of his mind because he doesn’t want the distraction, the aggravation. By now, rush hour is on. He calls Sarayu from the car to say that he is running late.
“Phil?”
“I’m sorry. It’s taking some extra time.”
“Is it your wife?”
“No. No,” he says. But he thinks of her standing at the door. He can’t stop her. He wonders who she will email now, Sarayu, even Eleanor. Right now, there is nothing he can do about it. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says on the phone to Sarayu.
“She was upset that I was leaving the dog behind.”
“Isn’t it the family dog? You can’t bring a dog here. They’re not allowed in the building.
“No, no. The dog is at home. Linda needs to move out, take her pills, get a massage.” He wonders, is he telling her too much? But he wants to be honest this time around, not leave out details that could get him into trouble later on.
“It’s okay that you are late, Phil. I’m home from work. Just get here when you can.”
“You don’t have mood swings, do you?” he asks, laughing at his own joke.
But her tone is guarded. “No, of course not.”
“I’m just kidding, you know that.”
“Is it going to be this way every time you visit, the arguments with your wife? I don’t see why she even has to know.” She isn’t shrill, or loud, or angry. “Just get here when you can. I’ll be waiting.”
PHIL DRIVES AROUND Sarayu’s block three times before another larger car moves out of a parking space, five buildings away from hers. The Spider fits easily. Phil is becoming more adept at the parking game with each visit. He carries his cargo to her vestibule and presses the button next to her mailbox. “I’m here!” he says loud enough for the entire hallway beyond the glass door to hear him. He senses the vibrations of her footsteps on the carpeted stairs, pausing at the landing before coming down to open the door. The suspense is now over.
She has no expression on her face when he first sees it, as if she needs to register his arrival. Then her lips spread into a smile, and she says softly, “Here you are.”
He reaches over through the open doorway and takes her mouth with his and kisses her.
“What is all of this?” she says pointing to the cooler.
His face burns with emba
rrassment. “I thought we could cook.”
“But I have things ready for dinner.”
“It’s all right. We’ll do it another time. No worries.” He actively tries not to show his disappointment.
Inside the apartment, they unload. Phil hangs his shirts in Sarayu’s closet, then turns as he feels her present.
“You brought vegetables for an army. I’ll never finish them. You could ask first.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.” He smiles and takes her shoulders before moving past her to the hall and the kitchen. “Share it with your friends. Share it with Josh.” He opens the refrigerator and sees the six-pack of his favorite beer, which he believes she has bought for him. He looks at her and raises his eyebrows, inquisitively. She nods. “Go ahead,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“Next thing you know you will be logging on to my computer,” she says, smiling.
“I’d tell you if I did that.”
“Before or after?”
“Pull this off,” he says, reaching for her T-shirt and lifting it away from her torso.
She does and he puts the beer down and traces the aureole of her left breast, which is round and wrinkled as she shivers. “Your hand is cold from the beer bottle. Just take what you want, Anderson,” she says, smiling.
He laughs.
PHIL FINISHES THE beer he has left, which is now mildly warm. He wants to shower, but Sarayu is in the bathroom and he does not want to get involved in showering with her right now, so he gets up and puts his clothes on and goes to the kitchen.
In the refrigerator, he notices bowls wrapped in clear plastic and through the film of the wrap he can detect something with pasta and a green lettuce salad, items he hadn’t noticed before when he took the beer out. He pictures her cooking with Josh as she had on a previous visit, when he was the outsider, the way they moved in synchronization, reading minds, maneuvering around each other’s bodies as though they had done it many, many times. It was something he had once seen himself doing with her, the way he used to cook with Linda, a long time ago.
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