“Get off me and I’ll text her,” I said.
Amelia got off me. She watched me send the text, informing her mother that Amelia had invited me for dinner.
“Wonderful,” her mother wrote back, right away. “Do you eat lobster?”
We were having lobster.
That was fine.
I also loved lobster.
My father used to take me and my mother out to this restaurant on the bay, and I would get broiled lobster, with spaghetti as my side. My parents would get baked potatoes. Remembering this made me miss my father. Strange. Because I thought that I didn’t care one way or another that he had left us.
Amelia seemed totally fine after I agreed to come to her house for dinner. Probably they fought all the time at their house. I would be going to dinner at a house full of crazy people. It would be a break from the insanity at my home, another night of not touching my professor, aching with desire and pretending that I was fine. Amelia had a normal day at camp. I watched her during her swim lesson, learning to do the crawl.
“I am swimming, I am swimming,” she cried.
I snuck up next to her during arts and crafts and squeezed her skinny leg.
“Look what I am making,” she said.
She was making me a bracelet with wooden beads that spelled out my name.
“I love you, Rachel,” Amelia said.
“That’s so nice,” I said.
I didn’t say it back. I was very aware of the fact. Probably Amelia was, too.
I wished that it was my professor who loved me and then I wished that I had not wished it.
* * *
—
Amelia lived in one of those modern glass houses right on the water. It would be a good house to film a movie in. You could shoot from outside looking in. This would also be a dangerous house to fight in; it was as if the glass walls were begging a body to be thrown through. I realized right away that I should not have accepted the invitation. I understood that I had not told my mother where I was going because she would have told me not to go.
The table was already set. There was a tall silver pot on the stove, the water boiling. Amelia’s parents had this glassy-eyed look to them. Drunk, that’s what they were. They were drinking wine, but I saw empty martini glasses on the counter. Theo was still away at “school.” The older brother was there, drinking a beer. Amelia had not prepared me for him. He was good-looking in a way that was unnerving. Ice blond, blue-eyed, muscled. A hard jaw. He was wearing boating shoes. It was like Richie Rich grown up. I did not talk to boys who looked like this. They did not talk to me.
“This is Ian,” Amelia said. “And Amy and Richard. My mom and dad.”
Not Jews, my mother would have said, about all of them, in a way that was judgmental, though I am sure that was not what she had been thinking when the other son brought a gun to her classroom. I had talked to my mother on the phone that night and she had laughed it off.
“You could have died,” I said, and she agreed.
“It was fifty-fifty,” she said. “I have always been lucky.”
Maybe Theo Thornton was lucky, too, getting out. I certainly did not feel lucky to be in this house. The older brother, Ian, looked me over, head to toe. He looked right at my tits. He nodded as if to say they would do. My tits were small. For the most part, I was glad about this. I didn’t have to wear a bra. He poured me a glass of wine.
“So you’re the camp counselor,” he said.
“Rachel,” I said.
“Welcome to lobster night,” he said.
Amelia was wearing a lobster bib. The scene was stranger than what was happening at my house, which seemed pretty fucking strange to me. The stress of having Zahid sleeping down the hall, lying in a bed, in his boxer shorts, not wanting me, was starting to be too much. I looked at the wine Ian poured me and I took a big gulp. I wanted to return to a normal world. To summers where my father grilled hamburgers and my mother made salads. When they loved each other.
My father left while I was in my second semester of sophomore year, but his leaving didn’t seem real to me as I was already gone. I could not remember them ever yelling at each other. They had seemed like parents who would be married forever.
Amelia’s father peered at me as I drank from my glass of wine. At home, my mother would not let me drink, but his son had given me this glass of wine.
“Your last name is Klein,” Richard Thornton said.
I nodded.
“Your mother is the teacher,” he said. “You look like her. I saw the resemblance the second you walked in the door. She is a good woman. Your father is a fool.”
“Who?” Amelia said.
“We sent her flowers,” Amelia’s mother told me. “Did she like the flowers?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was at college. I’m home for the summer.”
Ian refilled my wine glass without my asking. I was grateful.
“What are you talking about?” Amelia said.
“My mother used to be Theo’s teacher,” I told Amelia. “In two years, she might be your teacher.”
“I think about it every day,” Amelia’s mother said. “What if he had killed one of them? What if he had killed your mother? Or himself?”
I did not know what to say. It seemed like this subject would be something that was not brought up at dinnertime.
“We’re so glad you are here,” Richard said. It was as if I was an honored guest. I chewed on a strand of loose hair and then noticed Ian, still looking at me. “I haven’t seen your father in some time,” Richard added. “I think the last time, I beat him at tennis. I owe him a rematch.”
I had never heard such a thing. I could not imagine my father even agreeing to play tennis with a man he did not like.
“Your father doesn’t like me much, as I recall.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was a very bad liar. “You don’t seem to like him, either.”
Amelia’s father laughed. “Good thing your mother didn’t know that.”
“What?” I honestly could not understand what he was getting at. His son had brought a gun, probably his gun, to school. Was he making jokes?
“What would our lives be?” Amelia’s mother said. She was having trouble sitting on the bar stool in their perfect kitchen. She slipped off. She was crazy drunk. “We would be ruined,” she said, her arms waving. “That’s for sure. How can you come back from such a thing?”
“Amy,” Richard said.
“We would not be allowed back into the tennis club, that is for sure.”
“You hate the tennis club,” Richard said.
“I am just making a point.”
“Children could have been killed,” Richard said. “Don’t talk about the tennis club. What will our guest think?”
“I don’t think anything,” I said. I wondered immediately if that could possibly be true. This was too much, too over the top. I did not know what to think. I glanced up at Amelia’s brother, the handsome one. He raised his bottle of beer, as if to say cheers. Was he drunk, too? I wished I could tell. I looked away from him. I had never been so attracted and repulsed at the same time.
“You have to stop drinking so much,” Amelia’s father said to his wife. “Listen to you. Forget about the tennis club. Keep on drinking like this and I won’t be able to take you anywhere.”
“You stop drinking,” she came back at him, without missing a beat. “You motherfucking hypocrite.”
I winced. This felt ugly and inappropriate. We should not have been here to witness them. Amelia’s parents should have known this. Basic parenting. I felt bad for Amelia. This was what she lived with. It was lobster Friday but there was nothing festive about it. This had to be one sad house to grow up in. There was nothing welcoming about it. They didn’t even have a dog. I would have asked if there was anoth
er lobster bib, just for Amelia’s sake and then I remembered Ian.
“Amelia,” Amelia’s father said. “Take your friend outside. We are going to eat outside. The water’s finally boiling. I’m going to cook the lobsters and we will eat.”
“You mean kill them,” Amelia’s mother said. “Poor helpless lobsters.”
I saw then that the lobsters were still alive, climbing on top of each other in a large plastic bag. Of course, I knew this was how you had to cook a lobster, but I had only eaten them in restaurants. I waited outside, with Amelia and Ian, for dinner to be served.
We sat at a picnic table, overlooking the water. The sun was setting by the time the meal was ready. It was breathtaking, the sky red and orange and a little bit of purple, and all of this beauty was wasted. The wine was cold and delicious. The corn was overcooked. Somehow, I didn’t even taste the lobster. I barely ate any, in fact, because Ian was watching me and lobsters are hard to eat, messy, and Ian was gorgeous and he had not stopped looking at me. I did not like the way he was staring at me, as if he was waiting for me to drip butter on my face or down my breasts even. It was not a kind gaze.
I had never enjoyed a lobster less.
Amelia ate hers. “Yummy,” she said, cracking open all of the joints, sucking the meat out of the legs. I was glad to see her happy. I felt bad for her, growing up in this house with so many hard edges. It made me miss my mother, who never turned mean when she got drunk. When I was a kid, it used to be fun when she drank too much. She would come home late from a party, tipsy, and find me still awake. She would let me watch TV in between her and Dad on their big bed and tell me all about their night.
When the meal was over, Ian offered to take me home and I said no.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” I said.
I wasn’t.
I looked at Ian again and my face turned hot, but I stuck with my answer. I would be safer alone. I walked.
Becca
He was going away for the weekend.
I was only half paying attention to the details. A friend named Kristi, an interview for a job. The University of Iowa. He was leaving. He had only been here a few weeks. It was almost August. It had not been that long ago that I had heard this speech before. Becca, I am leaving you.
I hoped the shock didn’t show on my face. He was leaving. It was unfair how he told me, right after we made love, outside, again, at the pool, when I was at my most vulnerable, when I was feeling nothing but pleasure, when I had left myself wide open. I was naked, literally and metaphorically. I knew that this was sex, nothing more, purely chemical, but at that moment I thought that I might love him. More than his beautiful poodle, that’s how far gone I was. I loved him. I hugged my knees to my chest.
“A job interview, Becca,” Zahid said. “For the fall. That’s all it is.”
My expression must have been blank.
“I feel the same way,” he said. “I need to make some money.”
A job. He was leaving for a job and not for a Kristi. I had not begun to think about what would happen next. After the summer. Rachel would go back to college. I would start teaching again. I could not spend my days at the pool, having sex in the bright sunshine. Everything would have to change. What we were doing felt too good. It couldn’t possibly be real.
“How long are you going for?”
I just didn’t know how to be cool about it. I had been calm and collected when Jonathan told me he was leaving, even though I hadn’t seen it coming, had no idea he was having an affair. Now I started to shake. Was I cold? The sun was hot on my skin, but I felt ice-cold all over.
“I don’t want to go, Becca,” he said.
Zahid sat at the opposite end of the pool chair. He put his hands on my knees. My chin was already resting on my knees. He lifted my head, forcing me to look at him. “Believe me. It is the last thing I want to do.”
His voice was so earnest I suddenly wanted to laugh. What was this? Shakespeare. Who was dying? The man had to get a job. It was not like I was going to support him for the rest of his life.
“How long are you going for?” I asked.
“Two nights,” he said.
“Two nights.” I actually laughed. That was not very long. Look what a fool I had made of myself over two short days. But then, would he come back? How could I be sure?
“And then I will come straight back,” Zahid said, answering my question as if I had spoken it out loud. “I will come straight back to you, Rebecca.”
I could be wrong, but it felt as if we had skipped over all the traditional steps. We did not go on dates. We had not once before talked about what was happening. To talk about it would ruin everything. But what it seemed like, to me, was simple. Stupid. Laughable even. We were in love.
“You will?”
“I promise,” he said. “I will come straight back.”
The words were ridiculous, but they were also what I wanted to hear. I let go of my knees. I climbed on top of Zahid and we were doing it again, again, again, again. God, I loved this, this secret and magical world of sex. Zahid had his hands on my waist, and I was moving, slow and then fast and faster.
Zahid
I was the last person off the airplane.
I had fallen asleep and when I woke up, the other passengers were all unbuckling their seat belts, collecting their belongings from the overhead compartments, exiting the plane. I watched in a stupor. I had had one drink, only one, but it was early in the day on an empty stomach. Iowa City. The middle of fucking America. What the fuck was I doing? I could still taste Becca on my fingers.
“Are you all right, sir?” a flight attendant asked me, and I was grateful that she’d called me sir. Since 9/11, every time that I got on an airplane, I understood that I was a potential terrorist. I always made sure to shave, wear good clothes. The drink had been a mistake.
I rubbed my eyes.
I got my bag from the overhead compartment. I had packed a suit for the interview, my shiny shoes. It was like tap dancing. I had been dancing since the book came out and Kristi would agree, though to us it meant two different things. She called me a party boy. “Be a writer,” she’d said recently. “For a goddamned change.” It was a fucking slap in the face. And now, now that I was writing, she was dragging me away from it, wanted me to get a job.
I thought an ugly word about her.
I wished that I hadn’t. I loved Kristi.
At least, for the first time in a long time, I no longer wanted to sleep with her. That was over, finally. I walked slowly through the empty airplane. The entire crew was standing at the exit, even the pilot. It was a woman, a small and pretty woman with straight blond hair. She had bangs like a schoolgirl. I looked at the wings pinned on her chest.
“Thank you for flying with us,” she said, with that perky voice that came when anyone from a corporation ever thanked you for patronizing their business. It was incredibly patronizing.
“You are welcome, Mandy,” I said.
It was an unusual name. The name of a 1970s cheerleader. It suited her. This Mandy, the pilot, looked annoyed at me. I had taken a liberty saying her name, but she was wearing a name tag, after all. She, of course, did not know that I was an award-winning writer. She thought I was a dark-skinned alcoholic, preventing her from getting off her airplane and getting on with her day. But somehow, I was not willing to get off the airplane.
“It was a smooth flight,” I said. “Your gentle flying rocked me to sleep like a baby.”
“Oh, no,” she said, laughing. “You did not just say that.”
I shrugged.
“Have a nice stay in Iowa City,” she said.
Okay, so she obviously was not flirting with me. Was I flirting with the blond pilot? I was. I felt like a shit then. For being a man. Walking around with my swinging penis. Probably this
pilot went through this bullshit every day, dealing with men who refused to treat her with respect. I did not want to get off the plane. I wanted it to turn around and fly back.
This morning, I had kissed Becca’s eyelids. I had gently fingered her in the kitchen. Rachel was already out of the house. Day camp, fortunately, started early. I wanted to pretend that nothing had ever happened between me and the girl, Becca’s daughter, but sometimes I saw her looking at me, almost ready to pounce, and I knew she held too many cards. I knew that she was trouble. I had to get out of her house; I wanted desperately to stay in that house, forever and ever. I got off the plane, one step at a time. I could feel daggers from the pilot’s eyes, shooting into my back. I had not charmed her.
Kristi wasn’t even waiting for me at the gate. I turned on my phone and I found a text saying I should get an Uber. I was fucking pissed. An Uber. She had dragged me here and didn’t have the decency to pick me up.
“Do they even have Ubers in Iowa City?” I texted her.
The population of the airport was doughy and unnervingly blond, beefy white guys wearing baseball caps. This was not for me. Where was my VIP treatment? Where was the car waiting for me, an adoring undergraduate at the wheel to take me to campus?
This, of course, was Kristi, putting me in my place.
“Fuck you,” she wrote back. “And see you soon. Xoxoxo.”
* * *
—
My Uber driver turned out to be a grad student in the English department. It wasn’t a campus car, of course; I was still going to have to pay for it. It was shameful, how fucking broke I was, and Kristi knew this. The ride from the airport cost me thirty-two dollars. I would have to leave a tip. Kristi should have picked me up. I could not understand it.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” my driver said.
She started to blush. She had a crush. They always had a crush. It had stopped being flattering. I could not get myself into any more trouble than I was already in. Fortunately, the student was not my type. She had short hair. A nose ring. Tattoos. For all I knew she was gay. Bisexual. Gender-fluid. I never knew anymore.
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