The Shape of Desire

by Sharon Shinn

  I don’t listen as closely as I should. I am too busy inhaling the perfumes of wet cedar and fading roses, marveling at the brilliant colors dripping off the surrounding trees. The soft September sunshine drapes itself across my shoulders like lace tatted by my grandmother’s hand—something made with love especially for me. This feels right, I think as I guide the stroller along the path. This feels happy.

  It doesn’t take long for that sense of certainty and contentment to fade. Minutes after we decide it’s time to go, just as Beth has gone to fetch Clara from the sandbox, a pickup truck pulls up and a young couple climbs out, a baby already in the woman’s arms. Clearly they don’t believe in traveling with car seats. They look like they’re in their early twenties, or maybe younger, and they’re dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and running shoes. She’s blond and petite; he’s not a big guy, but he’s burly, and I imagine that he works construction somewhere. As soon as they’re out of the car, he takes the baby from her and tosses it in the air—not high enough to be scary, but high enough to make the child shriek with delight. I think it’s a boy; at any rate, he’s dressed in blue coveralls with an engineering logo embroidered on the front, and the parents don’t, at first glance, appear like the types to ignore gender stereotypes in clothing. The father tosses him in the air again, then flips him upside down and dangles him by his ankles. I can hear the child’s infectious laughter from twenty-five yards away. The young mother says something to the father, and he leans down to kiss her on the cheek.

  All of a sudden, my heart cramps up; my fingers on the stroller handles turn icy. Beth’s right, in a way. I do have baby fever. I do have an empty sense that my life holds no core purpose. But I don’t simply want a child. I want a family. I want a family with Dante. I want to wake up on a Saturday morning—any Saturday morning—and know he’ll be lying beside me in the bed, half listening for the baby’s cry, half hoping she sleeps another hour so that we have time to make love. My life is incomplete, but it’s not just because I don’t have a cradle in the spare bedroom. It’s because, most of the time, Dante isn’t even in the house. It’s because, no matter who else I surround myself with, I always feel abandoned and alone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Monday seems to arrive much more quickly than usual, probably because I lost so much of my weekend to Lizzie. All morning, I have the sense that I’ve fallen behind, so I keep myself sequestered in my office, focused on the computer. A knock on the door frame makes me practically jump out of my chair.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kathleen says remorsefully. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. What’s going on?”

  She leans against the wall as if she’s been told that’s a commonly accepted casual pose, but she still looks tense and anxious. I don’t notice any new bruises, though.

  “I just stopped by to see how your weekend was,” she says in a timid voice. It’s so odd. I can tell she wants to be friends with me but she’s not certain how such a thing is accomplished. It’s as if she’s never had a friend before.

  The thought makes me gentle my voice when I reply. “It was much too fast! Remember I told you I was going to babysit for a friend? I did, and it was great, but it took up, like, hours. So then I spent all day Sunday cleaning the house and getting groceries and answering e-mail and—you know, organizing my life. What about you?”

  “Oh, we have bowling league on Friday nights, and then on Saturday and Sunday we did stuff around the house,” she replies. “Ritchie is remodeling the basement, so we always have to go to Home Depot a couple of times during the weekends, and then there’s all the work to do. Plumbing and electrical and so on.”

  Still sitting in my chair, I stretch my arms over my head. I should get up and jog down the hallway, or maybe run up and down the stairs a few times. Step aerobics with real steps. “You’re doing the remodeling work yourself? I’m impressed. Ritchie must be pretty handy.”

  “I suppose so,” she says doubtfully. I interpret this to mean that he thinks he’s handier than he really is; and that he hates it when, for example, his faulty wiring technique leads to a power failure or a small electrical fire. “He says it’s saving us a lot of money.”

  Before I can answer, Ellen appears in the doorway, peering over Kathleen’s shoulder. “Haven’t talked to you all day,” she says to me. “What are you doing for lunch? Marquez wants pizza.”

  They have a veggie option at Pizzeria Plus, one of our standby restaurants, so I nod. “That sounds good. Is it lunchtime already?”

  “We’ll probably leave in about fifteen minutes.” Ellen looks at Kathleen. “Want to come along?”

  Even I can’t tell if Ellen is merely being polite, since it’s rude to plan an outing in front of someone and not issue an invitation, or if she’s really hoping Kathleen will join us. I speak up. “Oh, please do,” I say as warmly as I can, hoping she’ll refuse. “You like pizza, don’t you?”

  Kathleen glances over her shoulder at Ellen, then back at me. Now she’s the one whose expression I can’t read. Does she want to decline but can’t figure out how, or does she want to come with us but desperately fears to intrude? “I’d like that,” she says finally. “Let me close out some files on my computer.”

  She rushes off. Ellen steps in from the doorway and we both wait in silence—long enough to be pretty sure Kathleen is out of earshot. I lift my eyebrows and Ellen smiles.

  “I saw her standing here,” she says. “If I didn’t want to ask her along, I’d’ve called you on the phone.”

  “We won’t be able to talk about her,” I say in mock dismay.

  Ellen snorts. “Plenty of other people to talk about.”

  In fact, the lunch is more convivial than I expected. It turns out that Kathleen is a little easier for me to take when there are other people participating in the conversation.

  It also turns out that Marquez has kind of a thing for her. Oh, he’s not romantically interested in her; he doesn’t flirt. But he treats her with an odd sort of tenderness, as if she’s a beloved sister who’s barely recovered from a long illness, or a frail, gorgeous child destined for an early death. He talks her into splitting a meat-lover’s pizza with him, almost as if he thinks he has to cajole her into eating more calories or she’ll waste away to nothing.

  “I like that sweater, it’s a good color for you,” he tells her, leaning over to fool with the collar. “But I think you need to undo this button and wear a black shell under it—no, navy. And then put on that silver necklace you have—the one with the blue topaz. That would look really good.”

  I trade a glance with Ellen. I don’t remember ever seeing Kathleen wear a necklace with a blue topaz pendant. But frankly I couldn’t tell you what any of my coworkers keep in their closets or jewelry boxes.

  Kathleen is smiling. “Ritchie gave me that necklace on our third anniversary.”

  “You should wear more silver,” Marquez tells her. “It brightens your hair.”

  “Maybe you can come dress me up someday,” Ellen drawls. “I could use the help.”

  He throws her a look. “You certainly could.”

  Kathleen looks dismayed, but the rest of us laugh. “You think he’s a sweetheart because he’s nice to you, but really Marquez is just as obnoxious and mean as the rest of us,” Ellen says cheerfully. “Don’t let him fool you.”

  “Yes, you can find my picture up on iambitchy-dot-com,” Marquez says, “right next to Ellen’s.”

  Ellen sighs. “Or you could, if my stupid laptop didn’t crash five times a day,” she says. “I spent half of Sunday on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why I couldn’t get to my e-mail account.”

  “Get a Mac,” Marquez says smugly. “All your problems will go away.”

  “I’d like a Mac,” Kathleen says wistfully. “I’d like any home computer. But it’s not in the budget right now.”

  I wonder how her expensive diamond-and-star-sapphire ring fit into the budget; it must have cost m
ore than a cheap desktop, unless it’s filled with cubic zirconia. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if Kathleen is the primary breadwinner for the household. Jobs might be scarce for a freelance security guard with a bad temper.

  “I have a little netbook you can borrow,” I say before I have time to think about it. “I haven’t used it since I got a new laptop about three months ago.”

  Kathleen looks at me uncertainly. She’s a whiz with the office equipment, like fax machines and photocopiers, but she has an uneasy relationship with her desktop PC. “Why not? Don’t you like it?”

  I wiggle my fingers. “I hate it. I can’t get my hands to scrunch down small enough to hit the right keys. You could keep it till you get your own—or until my laptop crashes, whichever comes first.”

  “Better make sure you erase all your top secret personal data before you go around handing out old computers,” Ellen says.

  “Yeah, well, I never used it enough to fill it with personal information,” I retort. “And I changed all my passwords when I got the new one. I think I’m safe.” I glance at Kathleen. “You still have to have some kind of Wi-Fi provider if you want to get online.”

  “I could take it to the library,” she says. “It’s right down the street.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She glows. “Oh, thank you. I would like that so much.”

  Ellen follows me back to my office after we return to our building. “That’s how we’ll save Kathleen,” she says without preamble. “We’ll draw her into our circle of friends, we’ll lavish her with gifts, we’ll make her trust us. Then we’ll do an intervention. ‘That dickwrinkle you’re married to will be the death of you. We’ll help you leave him.’ Maybe she’ll believe us.”

  I laugh so hard I can barely say the word. “‘Dickwrinkle’?”

  She shrugs. “He’s not even man enough to be a whole prick.”

  “What’s with her and Marquez?”

  “She reminds him of his mother.”

  “That’s kind of stereotyping, don’t you think?”

  Now she grins. “Well, ask him. I bet he’ll tell you the same thing. He doesn’t talk about it much, but he grew up in a house in Chicago where his father was abusive and his mother was tiny and afraid. But she opened a secret bank account and gave all the money to Marquez when he turned eighteen so he could get out of the house and go to school. Something like twenty thousand dollars. He calls her Saint Joan. I think she must look like our little Kathleen.”

  “His parents still married?”

  “Nah. Soon as Marquez got a job he started funneling her money and eventually she had enough to move back to California and live with one of her sisters. So she left the bastard.”

  “A rare happy ending to that story,” I say, shaking my head. “Most of the time, people just depress me.”

  “That’s because you’re weak,” she says. “They should intrigue you.”

  I look up in indignation, but she’s grinning. “You are a bitch,” I say.

  “But I’m a bitch who cares.” She nods in the general direction of Kathleen’s desk, a couple of hallways away. “Maybe we’ll rescue her yet.”

  Kathleen is suitably excited to receive my netbook the next day, and over lunch we head to a local coffee shop with free Wi-Fi so I can show her how easy it is to get online. She’s daintier than I am; her hands look just right on the undersized keyboard. I admit the observation leaves me a little disgruntled. But she’s so pleased by my generosity that I can’t hold the uncharitable thought for long.

  “The minute you want this back, you just tell me,” she repeats for the twentieth time. “Promise.”

  “I promise. But as long as the laptop is functioning, it’s yours,” I say. “Have fun.”

  The act of kindness buoys me for the rest of the day, which holds no other highlights and, in fact, delivers to me a rather nasty bookkeeping tangle that keeps me at the office an hour later than usual. Once home, I’m too lazy to cook, too unmotivated to exercise, so I eat an entire package of frozen vegetables for dinner and spend the whole evening watching the Moonlighting DVDs Beth gave me last Christmas. It’s hard to conceive of a less worthwhile way to spend my time.

  I recognize my mood for what it is: vague depression sparked by loneliness. Dante has been gone for two weeks; he will probably be gone six or seven more days, and the time apart seems so long and dreary. But I remind myself that I have made it past the midpoint of his absence, the winter solstice of our season apart. It is time for me to start feeling hopeful again. Time to begin looking forward to the lengthening of the days, the return of the light, the burst of bright sunshine that is Dante’s presence. Soon, I will feel spring move through my blood, full of promise and renewal. As I anticipate his arrival, I will begin to come back to life.

  The red LED numbers on my bedside clock proclaim a stark 1:47 when my phone’s shrill ring startles me out of a deep sleep. I swim back to consciousness, fumbling for the receiver. My erratic Caller ID is working here in the darkest hours of the night, but I don’t recognize the number, so it’s not particularly helpful.

  “Hello?” I say a little fearfully. Chances are good that any post-midnight call is trouble. Someone’s hurt, someone’s dead, or an unknown pervert is about to make an unwelcome suggestion.

  “Hey, baby,” says a rough voice on the other end. “Sorry to wake you up, but I think I only have about an hour.”

  Just like that, I am fully awake and flooded with happiness. “Dante! Where are you?”

  “Sedalia, I think. I’m not sure. I think I found the last pay phone in the entire state of Missouri.”

  “And you’re all right? You’re healthy?”

  He sounds a little amused. “Perfectly healthy. Don’t fret.”

  I can’t help but fret. I fret every single minute that you’re gone. He knows that already, but he doesn’t particularly like to hear me say it, so I change the subject. “I saw Christina over the weekend.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “She was in St. Louis and asked if I’d watch the baby overnight, so I did.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Oh, she’s the cutest thing. Lizzie, I mean.”

  He laughs. “I knew who you meant. How did Christina seem?”

  How should she seem? “Oh, you know Christina. A little manic but perfectly cheerful. I could tell she was glad to get away from the baby for a night, but I can’t help thinking she’s a really good mom. Well, Lizzie is just so happy and good-natured, so obviously Christina is doing something right.” I can tell I’m babbling, but I can’t quite stop. “I mean, I know you were concerned about Christina trying to raise a baby on her own. But I think she’s doing a really good job.”

  “Great, then I won’t worry anymore,” he says. “What else have you been doing? How’s work?”

  When we’re together, when he’s actually in my presence, Dante doesn’t ask me many questions. He doesn’t seem that interested in my job, and only listens out of politeness to my tales about family activities or shopping expeditions. But when he’s gone, when I’m out of sight, out of reach, he’s filled with curiosity. What did you have for breakfast? What did your mom say? Did you get that travel account? I’m not fooled; I know he doesn’t really care about those details. He’s just trying to fill in all the colors for the image of me he carries in his head. He wants to make me real. I feel so far away I could be imaginary; he wants to give me weight and substance and flavor. He wants to devour me.

  I know, because that’s exactly how I feel about him.

  I find myself telling him about Kathleen, the fact that she’s married to a jerk, the fact that she seems to have chosen me for a friend and I don’t know what to do about it, the fact that I gave her a computer. “Well, she’ll really want to be your friend now,” he says with a laugh.

  “I know! I should have kept my mouth s
hut.”

  “No, it was nice. You’re nice.”

  During the conversation, I have slouched farther and farther under the covers, and now I’m not even making a pretense of sitting up. I roll to my side, cradling the phone between the pillow and my ear. I never bothered to turn on the bedside lamp, so the room is completely dark except for the fugitive lights that sidle in from streetlamps and passing cars. There is a kind of unmatched intimacy that comes from a phone conversation at night—no noises, no sights, no sensory inputs except that warm voice in your ear.

  “Have you really been taking care of yourself?” I murmur. “Have you been safe? Have you been eating right?”

  His voice is amused again. He’s irritated when I ask such questions face-to-face, but he doesn’t seem to mind if they’re posed long distance. “Oh, yeah, I had a nice tasty squirrel for lunch, and I found a Dumpster behind an Italian restaurant. That’ll make for a good breakfast.”

  I want to say Yuck but then he’ll say Why ask me about food if you don’t like to think about what I eat? and I don’t want to end the conversation on a note of exasperation. “Well, doesn’t that sound yummy,” I say instead. “Maybe I’ll have some leftover pasta in the morning and I can pretend like we’re having breakfast together.”

  “I wish we were,” he answers. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too,” I say. “Every day.”

  “Sometimes—” he says, and then stops abruptly.

  “Sometimes what? What were you going to say?”

  “Sometimes I can’t figure out why you put up with me at all,” he bursts out. “Every time I come back. Every time I show up at your door. I stand there for a minute—usually covered in grime and stinking to heaven—and I think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t go in. Maybe it would be better for Maria if I just walked away.’”

  My eyes fly open and I stare in horror at the ceiling, just barely visible in the imperfect dark. “Dante! What? No, no, no! Don’t say that! Why would you—Don’t think that! I love you. It would break my heart if you left me.”