The High Season(72)
Doe looked up, trying to swallow. She’d forgotten where she was, and that he was here. The rain had intensified, she could hear it pounding on the roof. The bay was dark pewter, ruffled with white.
“I have to go.”
“You can’t go!”
“I have to take care of something.” Where was her purse?
He put his hand on her wrist. “What is this shit? You’re not leaving me alone in this storm!”
His grip was too tight, making her panic. “Let go!” She pushed him and he hadn’t expected it and stumbled back, hitting a chair. She tried to get past him and he grabbed her elbow and yanked her hard so that she fell backward on the bed.
Not a good position for a woman. She felt something new in the air, like a burning wire.
He snatched her purse from the floor and swung it by the strap. “Come and get it,” he said in a singsong voice.
He was between her and the door, the only exit. She reached out for her purse and he lifted it higher, cackling in a high laugh she’d never heard before.
She wasn’t going to deal with this shit. She came up fast, the top of her head connecting with his chin. He howled and stepped back, dropping the purse.
“Bitch!” He felt his chin, his eyes wet and aggrieved. He grabbed her by the arms, and it pinched her skin.
She didn’t like being restrained. It reminded her of an old boyfriend and that made fear settle in her belly. Impulse overcame caution and she jerked her arm, flipping his wrist so he had to let go, and hit him in the face.
Her ring cut him, and he touched the blood. “What the fuck,” he said. He reached out to steady himself on the wall, and left a tiny smear of blood. “That’s my face.”
He took a step toward her. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” she said.
All she heard was their breathing. In out, in out. Everything was so clear, the water glass on its side, the pool of water, the pillow, her purse, his bare feet, his fists.
He turned and walked out, and her breath left her all at once. She felt everything drain out of her and she was trembling but she needed to find her shoes and pick up her purse.
The watch had fallen on the carpet. She considered kicking it under the dresser, but he would find it. He deserved to lose something so beautiful. Something he carelessly tossed on a dresser. She put it in her pocket, found her things, and left while he was examining the cut in the bathroom mirror and calmly saying she’d better get out or he’d fucking kill her.
44
RUTHIE RODE OUT the storm alone, huddled on the couch, clutching a blanket. Barely sleeping, alternating panic with rage that battered as hard as rain. She had never hated anyone before. She understood why it was called a “towering” rage. It made you bigger, stronger, as gigantic as a building, willing to crush whatever lay between you and your enemy.
Adeline had taken something from her that wasn’t a house, wasn’t a man. It was the past. I was never in love with you, Mike had said.
The first time he’d said it was only months after they met. Holding hands on Franklin Street, leaning into each other, and him turning to her and kissing her, saying, Watch out, I think I’m in love with you.
Watch out? A warning she’d ignored.
Did men have to do that, reframe the past into a lie, so they wouldn’t feel guilty moving on? They had the strength to break things, but not the strength to carry them.
They’d met in the mid-nineties. She was at a party at a loft downtown. She was wearing a baby-doll dress, hugely popular at the time, with tights and boots. She’d bought the dress at the Saturday flea market on lower Broadway. Her hair was pinned on top of her head. She was having a miserable time. Everyone at the party seemed to know one another, and she’d long before lost the friend she’d come with.
There was an artist who dressed Barbie dolls as all the Bond girls, then took color-saturated photographs of them against tiny fabricated settings. There were painters. Matthew Barney was expected at any moment. Everyone was gathered around a sculptor who was supposed to become the next big thing, but Ruthie no longer remembered his name, because he’d never become the next big thing. Matthew Barney had become the next big thing.
Ruthie had clutched her beer and swerved through the crowd. She was working for Peter and going to grad school at night, and she was always exhausted. She wasn’t over Joe. She half hoped he was there with Sami so that she could ignore him. She wanted to go home and polish off some cookies in her pajamas. She left, clomping in her heavy boots down the stairs, worn and sloping to the middle. Five flights down, hoping for a cab, her black coat flapping open.
At the bottom of the stairs, a man was pushing through the battered metal door. His coat was wet, and so was his hair, subduing the dark blond. When he looked up at her, she felt the impact of it in her stomach.
She smiled as she went by. She opened the door and the wind blew the wet snow in her face. She felt the tug of attraction to the stranger, but she also felt the tug of Pepperidge Farm.
She heard footsteps behind her as he hit the stairs. He went up two stairs and stopped. For a moment there was just silence. Him on the stairs, her at the open door. A taxi went by slowly, still within hailing distance if she ran out and shouted for it.
She turned.
Their eyes, as they say, met. That first look, that spark, and there is nothing better in life. Just for that moment, though. It can go all kinds of ways from there.