Still smiling perfectly naturally, I walked past Lita to the swinging door. I cracked it open and peered out into the dining room the way Lita did. James was gone. My anxiety level shot up. Where had he gone, and when? If he’d left when I arrived, and had been in the bedroom or in his study, he’d have seen the yellow light go on, and I was dead. If he’d been in the bathroom, shaving, or if he’d only just now left the dining room, then I was safe. My heart was pounding even more, but the main thing, I thought, was not to panic. I would act natural, and do everything as usual.
I went back to where Lita stood at the sink.
“Lita,” I said.
“Sí, señora,” she answered at once, turning to face me.
“This afternoon, when you go to the dry cleaner’s,” I said, “can you ask them if they have my red skirt? I need it for tonight.”
“Sí, señora,” she said. There were other things that needed to be done, a water stain I wanted removed from a coffee table. I added pears to the grocery list. Lita’s face was stony, her expression grim. I could see that there was turbulence beneath it. I knew there was something she wanted to tell me, but I couldn’t afford to listen to her life right then. I couldn’t hear another story about Paco, I couldn’t bear to see her face turn thunderous, hear the music rise. I was having enough trouble with the turbulence in my own life.
I went into my study. Out of nerves I left the door slightly open, which I never do. I knew I couldn’t concentrate on real work, so I did sketches and layouts, peripheral things, as I waited for the next thing to happen. The worst of it was that I didn’t know what I was waiting for. Even if James had listened in to the phone conversation, he wouldn’t confront me. I tried to imagine what he would do: something bizarre and convoluted. Would I be found, in a few weeks’ time, sitting upright in my chair, my bones immaculately clean?
It was ten past eleven, and Guy and I planned to meet at one. I would have to call him soon. I hadn’t heard a sound from James in half an hour or so, so I walked very quietly across the rug to the door of my study and peered out. Why was I walking so quietly? If I wasn’t feeling guilty I’d make noise, I thought. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to tiptoe. My pulse was still racing. I peered soundlessly out into the front hall. There was no one there. I listened: no noise.
I stepped out into the hall, onto the big Oriental carpet. I took three more silent steps until I could see the dining room: empty. James was either in the bedroom, in his study, or in the bathroom, or he’d gone out. I would go in and see if he was in the bedroom. I could do this quite naturally, as though I were in there getting something. I walked quietly back down the hall—I seemed incapable of making noise—and opened the door to our bedroom. It was terrifying. I felt as though I were opening the door to an enemy camp. I stepped inside.
Someone was leaning over the bed, and to my panicky eyes it seemed to be James in his pale cotton dressing-gown—doing what? What was he doing to the bed? Poisoning my pillow? Guilt and nerves assailed me.
It was Lita, in her pale gray uniform, pulling the bedspread smooth. She turned around and looked at me.
“Oh!” I said, confused. Then, since I had started the conversation, I added, “Buenos días.” Ridiculous. You don’t say “Good morning” every time you see someone, all morning long.
Lita nodded without smiling. “Buenos días,” she answered politely, and turned back to the bed. She tugged firmly at the bedspread.
I hesitated, wondering whether or not to go through the bathroom, into James’s study. If he was in there getting dressed, I would have to produce some reason to be there. I would have to have something ready to say, something better than “Buenos días.”
“Señora,” Lita said. She plumped one of the pillows hard, thumping it on the bed. “Se fué.” He’s gone out.
“¿El señor?” I asked. How did she know what I wanted?
“Sí,” she said. She gave me a long, sober look.
“Oh,” I said, “gracias.”
I was safe for a few minutes. Back in my study I called Guy. This time I couldn’t help myself, I spoke in a near whisper. I was listening for the front door.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, “what’s up?” It was unspeakably wonderful, hearing his voice. Guy is totally, totally focused, and whatever he says he will do, he will do. I find this incredibly sexy.
“Things have gotten very weird,” I whispered.
“Listen, if this is a bad day, we don’t have to meet today, you know,” Guy said reasonably. “We can change it.”
But that was not possible. I couldn’t bear the thought. I had been waiting for this day to arrive for decades, it seemed. And the day itself had started slowly, and quietly, in small dry trickles, like an avalanche, moving from the trickles into steep meaningful slides, gaining speed and mass and thunder. It was now hurtling downward in a huge sliding roar, carrying me with it, carrying all of us, headed straight toward this lunch, and my meeting Guy. My heart was thundering too. The thought of it all not happening was impossible. Putting it off meant meeting him sometime in another era. It was not possible. It had to happen today.
“No,” I whispered, “it will be fine. Only we’ll have to meet on the street. The corner of Madison and Ninety-first, the northeast corner. Same time,” I said, not naming it, in a desperate attempt to leave something unsaid.
“See you then,” Guy said, and we hung up.
I straightened. In my urgent secretiveness I had hunched myself over the phone as though I were trying to keep it warm. I stood up, not looking around. I was consumed by the horrible certainty that I was being watched. The skin on my neck felt cold, and my heart was galloping along, loud and wild, like a runaway horse. I made myself walk to the window, very naturally, and look out onto the park. I stared out for a few moments, seeing nothing, and then allowed myself to turn. James was standing in the door.
“Hello,” I said, breathless. “I thought you’d gone out.” Damn Lita, I thought, wild. I’ll kill her.
“No,” he said. He smiled. “I hadn’t.” There was a pause. I walked back to my desk and sat, very naturally, down.
“Are you going out for lunch?” he asked.
“No,” I said instantly, and my heart sank at once. A fatal error. How could I have said something so stupid? It was a denial reflex. I was really answering the question: Are you guilty? Right then I would have said “no” if James had asked if I’d ever seen him before.
If I hadn’t been such a fool, I could easily have told James I was going out for lunch with someone, anyone. Now I had trapped myself into staying here.
“What are you doing? For lunch?” I asked. Maybe he was going out, I thought hopefully.
“I’m not sure yet,” James said. “I may be going out.”
I nodded casually, as though it meant nothing to me. James stood there a bit longer, as though he was waiting for something else, and then he turned, looked back at me, then left.
I turned back to my sketch pad. Had he heard me? How would I know? I had an hour and a half before meeting Guy. I started making useless sketches. If worst came to worst I could call a friend, and tell James afterward that she had asked me to lunch. An hour and a half. I looked at my watch. My heart was not going to last the day if it kept up like this. “Shh,” I whispered, but it kept on.
Then the door began its sporadic crashing again. This time, every single time it crashed I had a wild urge to go out and look. Had James gone out? Come in? And why had Lita told me he was gone when he was not?
At twelve-fifteen I decided to make a move. When I heard the next crash, I went out into the hall. It was empty. “James?” I said, loudly. I looked in our bedroom, and in his study. They were empty. He was definitely out. When he came in, when I heard the next crash, I would tell him someone had called, and I was having lunch out after all. I went into the kitchen and fixed myself another cup of coffee—as though what I needed was caffeine—and started back to my study. Crossi
ng the hall, my mug in my hand, I met Lita.
“Señora,” she said, meeting my eyes with some urgency. “Lo siento. Creí que se fué.” I’m sorry, she said, I thought he had gone out.
“No importa,” I said, waving my hand. I didn’t want Lita to think I was spying on my husband.
“Está en el armario,” she said. He is in the closet.
I stared at her for a moment. In her life, this sort of thing was always happening. Paco was constantly lying in wait for her, banging on doors, leaping out from alleys, accusing her of infidelity, trying to seduce one of her friends, or doing some other wild and alarming thing. But these things never happened in English. It’s true that I was seeing another man, but quietly, decorously.
I wondered if I had misunderstood Lita, if she was continuing with some story about Paco she’d started earlier.
“¿Quién está en el armario?” I asked.
“Su esposo,” she answered. Your husband. She stood very straight, her face solemn, as though she were a scout reporting on enemy activity.
“¿En cual cuarto?” I asked. In which room?
“Su escritorio,” Lita said.
James was in the closet of my study. He was standing there, dressed for the office, in his suit, in the dark. He was probably standing on my shoes, crushing the insteps. Was he hunched over, his ear against the heavy door, listening? Was his hand on the doorknob, holding it still? What if I tried to open the door? Would he hold on to it and keep me out? Would we wrestle, through the door? What if I managed to open it and we stood there, confronting each other? What would he say?
I didn’t want to find out.
“Gracias,” I said to Lita. My stomach felt terrible.
“De nada,” Lita said, soberly, and we passed by each other, she on her way to the kitchen, I on my way into my husband-infested study. I sat at the desk, doodling on my sketch pad. I thought of leaving the room again so that James could slip out, but of course it was possible that he didn’t want to slip out. It was very possible that he wanted to wait there until something incriminating happened.
The phone rang and I jumped. “Hello?” I said nervously.
It was only a friend, but I knew James was listening to every word. This made me feel very strange, and I must have sounded odd, because Susan asked if I had a call on the other line. I told her I was working on deadline, which was true, and we hung up. The hands on my watch moved so slowly that I kept looking at the clock, to see if my watch had stopped. Every time I did, I thought of James, breathing quietly, still standing on my shoes in the closet, for whom the time was passing even more slowly.
Finally, at twenty-five past twelve, I stood up. James would be ready by now to get out of the closet, I thought. I went into the kitchen, to give him a chance to slip past. I stood well back inside, across the room, where I could see out into the hall if James went by.
Lita was in there and turned, her eyebrows slightly lifted, as I came in. I smiled at her and put the kettle on again.
“¿Está todavía adentro?” she asked. Is he still in there?
I nodded, smiling slightly, shrugging my shoulders lightly, not looking at her. I wanted to act casual, as though we were not really talking about this, my husband standing in a dark closet for over an hour, listening to me make doodles on my sketch pad. Lita gave a decisive and disapproving shake of her head, then turned back to the silver she was cleaning.
It was now twenty of one, and I had one last hope. If James was going out to lunch, it would be soon. He refuses to eat lunch any later than one o’clock, because of his theory about digestion. He might be leaving any minute. I was so unnerved by having him in the closet that I didn’t think I could now manage to tell him someone had called earlier, while he was out, and asked me to lunch. I couldn’t even be sure, now, that he had been out. For all I knew, he’d been crouching in the hall coat closet all morning, tiptoeing out periodically to slam the door, and rushing back in after each crash.
I closed the door from the kitchen to the front hall and turned to Lita.
“Listen,” I said. “I want you to go out and stand on the corner of Madison and Ninety-first.” I told her what Guy looked like. I told her to tell him to wait, that I’d be there within ten minutes. “Okay?” I asked. “¿Me entiende?”
Lita washed her hands as I talked, listening carefully, with a frown of concentration. When I was finished she wiped her hands firmly downward on her apron, like a salute.
“Sí,” she said. “Entiendo.” She went to get her coat. I stayed in the kitchen. Lita came back, her coat on, her face sober. Walking past me she turned. “¿Por qué no sale a la oficina, como los otros?” she asked contemptuously. Why can’t he go to the office like other men? She set off on her mission.
I stood in the kitchen, hoping to see James leave my study. I turned off the kitchen light so I wouldn’t be seen. I had forgotten to ask her this, but I hoped she would slam the door loudly, loud enough to be heard by someone standing inside the closet in my study. I waited, holding my breath. There was a huge crash.
In a second James strode rapidly down the hall toward his study, past our bedroom. I waited, wondering what to do. I looked at my watch: four minutes to one. If James had a lunch date nearby he could still make it. Even if he didn’t have a date, he’d leave if he thought I’d gone out. Wouldn’t he? There would be nothing else for him to overhear, but maybe he’d stay in, out of sheer perversity: I had no idea what he would do. I could take the bull by the horns and walk out boldly myself. That would throw him into confusion, but was that what I wanted?
I couldn’t think what I wanted. All my talent for organization had vanished. I couldn’t think of what would be the best thing to do. I had no idea. As I stood there, hesitating, I heard the front door slam again. I looked out into the hall at once: it was empty. James was gone. The heavy botanical green wallpaper, the big oak chest, were alone, the room silent, unpeopled.
Everything in me had now started up like a factory. My heart was hammering, my blood was pulsing, my nerves vibrating. My ears were ringing. I was sweating, and I couldn’t remember how it was I normally breathed. I went to the hall closet and took out my coat, but I had a hard time putting it on. I couldn’t remember which one I normally wore, or if there was a reason for wearing a different one today. I was going to see Guy in moments, moments. He was already waiting outside, on the street corner. Lita would be standing surreptitiously nearby, on guard, having delivered her message but unable to tear herself away. The message was brief, one she could say in English—only a few words, the name, the phrase “ten minutes.” Her sober Mayan features would be her credentials.
Guy’s car would be parked along the sidewalk, right on our corner. James, long and lanky in his tweed overcoat, might stride right past him, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his untidy overcoat, his face enigmatic. James might stop when he saw Lita, and then she might, in her excitement, glance at Guy. Then James might follow her glance, and look at the man in the car parked alongside her. Then their eyes might meet, James’s and Guy’s. Oh, God, I thought, anything could happen, now, anything at all. The music was rising, the sunset colors coming up.
I was buttoning up my coat as I was thinking all this. I felt hot and cold at once. I couldn’t remember what season it was outside. In the elevator, the door slid shut behind me and I turned to the mirror. I had fastened my own coat all wrong. The brass buttons were out of alignment and the hem was awry, like a crazy person’s. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt the floor suddenly plunge out from under me, dropping away, leaving me aloft with nothing beneath my feet, leaving me breathless.
I felt unprepared and helpless: I could do nothing about any of this. It was alarming, but it was also thrilling. I could feel my whole known, orderly life slipping away. I could feel it slipping into Spanish, right before my eyes.
The Nile in Flood
When Nora woke, the cabin was dark except for a rumpled strip of light under the curtains at th
e window. This was not dawn. Outside on the docks, where their ship was moored, the big sodium lamps stayed on all night. Their sizzling glare struck directly at the cabin window.
This was not how Nora had imagined things. She had thought that only the moon would shine into the cabin at night. She had thought that the window would be small and round, a porthole, opening easily so she could lean out into the jeweled night. Instead, the window was big and square, like a motel’s. It did not open at all, and anyway was almost entirely blocked by a huge television, set between the bunks. Nora thought of the cool breezes outside, sweeping down the wide brown Nile.
The cabin’s air was thick and fumy, as though the ventilation system were circulating exhaust from the engines. These throbbed steadily, though the ship was moored. By morning the cabin would smell like a garage. This was the second night that Nora had awakened, alarmed, her head pounding, the throat-closing stench overpowering sleep in the tiny room.
She looked through the gloom at Gordon’s bunk, at his motionless silhouette. Perhaps he’s dead, she thought. They had been married five months. She watched his dim shape: slowly the angle of his shoulder rose, then dropped. He was only asleep.
The Egyptian trip was their belated honeymoon. Nora had not expected something so majestic, so exotic, so old-fashioned. She had thought vaguely of a week spent driving through England in a rented car. Or a week anywhere, or even a weekend: she was forty-nine, and her expectations had diminished.
Nora had never been to Egypt before. She had read about it, but the reality surprised her. There was the heat, for one thing, which was violent and relentless. Standing in the desert, outside the tombs at Giza, Nora felt dazed, assaulted by the sun, which threatened madness and death. Still, once inside the silent, shadowed passages, the heat was forgotten: Nora had also been unprepared for the paintings. In the books, the text was in charge of the paintings, decoding and diminishing them. In reality, the paintings were in charge. They needed no text: they had a life of their own. They drew her into their own world, rich, powerful, intimate. Nora was entranced by the vivid, graceful, warm-limbed bodies, by their magical energy. At the temple of Dendera, deep in an underground passageway, she had put her palm on one of the glowing figures, as though she could absorb its power. The guide frowned sternly, and Nora withdrew her hand. Of course touching would be forbidden.
Asking for Love Page 5