Red Clocks(56)

Almond pastries glisten under the glass.

“Tall skim latte, please,” says the wife.

“For your info, ma’am, we are an independent business with no ties to multinational corporations. I.e., a mermaid-free zone.”

“What?” The wife has one eye on the door, one eye on the boys. They could be Didier’s students. Or Bryan’s.

“You need to order a small,” says the barista.

“Then can I have a small skim latte. And a water.”

“Water is self-serve.”

She settles at the table farthest from the boys, facing the door. Ten minutes after two.

One boy cries, “Your griffin spell doesn’t frighten me, sir!”

Seventeen minutes after. No texts or missed calls.

At twenty after, she will leave.

At twenty after, she finishes all the water in her cup.

She will leave in one minute.

At 2:24, Bryan appears. Not in a hurry at all. “Well, hi there,” he says. “How’s your day going?”

“Great, yours?”

While he’s at the counter, the wife, facing the door, hears him ask the barista if she knows where the word “cappuccino” comes from; and she hears the barista giggle and say, “Um, Italy?” and Bryan say, “Well, for starters.”

When he sits down across from her, she remembers that his face is not beautiful, despite the dimple. A fair to middling face. But the body that follows— “Your hair looks awesome,” he says.

“Oh—thanks!”

Slurping milk foam: “Get it cut?”

“Ah, no, actually. So how were your holidays?”

“Good, good. Went to see my folks in La Jolla. Nice to be in civilization again.”

“Do you find this area uncivilized?”

He shrugs. Napkins the foam off his lip.

“Or too remote?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, in terms of, I don’t know—”

Bryan smiles. “Do you mean is it hard to meet women?”

“Or whatever. Yes.”

“Not to sound conceited?—but that’s never been a problem of mine.”

“I’m sure it hasn’t.”

He pushes one fist slowly down the length of his thigh. “Are you?”

“What?”

“Sure. That it hasn’t.”

A clod of dried mascara falls off the lashes of her right eye, landing on her forearm.

“Look,” says Bryan, “the way I see it, the scarcity model is a bunch of crap. When people are worried about not finding anyone, they pick the first person who comes along.”

She flicks the mascara away. Her mouth is so dry.

“That’s what happened to one of my cousins,” he continues. “Married a total dick because she didn’t think she could do better. And maybe she couldn’t have, but, hey, I’d take lonely over beaten to a paste.”

“Beaten?”

“Like I said, he’s a dick.”

“But that’s—?”

“We all wish she would leave him. They don’t have any kids.”

“Even if they did.”

“Well, maybe. Although children really need both parents at home.”

The wife can see and hear and feel but is no longer thinking.

She wants to feel the thigh sitting two inches from her knee. Feel the fingers resting on the thigh.

Long, hard fingers.

Long, hard thigh.

“What about you, Susan? Do you find Newville remote?”

“I find it …” She twists her mouth to one side, which Didier used to say was sexy. “Boring.”

“I wonder what we could do to make it less boring.”

“I wonder.”

“I can think of a few things.”

“Can you?” Wet flare in her pit.

“I can.”

“For instance?”

“Well …” Bryan leans forward, elbows on table, and holds his face in his palms. The wife leans in too, but the angle is awkward with her legs crossed. He stares at her. She stares back. Something is about to happen. He is going to kiss her right here, amid griffins and steam, twelve miles away from the house on the hill. She is going to blow up her life.

“Mini-golf team!” he says, grinning so wide she can see the black fillings in his teeth.

“What?”

“It’s a thing now, competitive mini golf. There’s a place right off 22. They run teams of four. I’m thinking you, me, Didier, and Xiao. You can actually win decent money.”

As though a giant hand had released its grip, the wife sags in her chair. “I suck at golf,” she says.

“Come now!”

“Get Ro to be on your team.”

“The grammar police? No gracias.”

He does not want her.

Why did she think he wanted her?

“Hey,” says Bryan, “let’s share an original sin amen bun. They’re fantastic here.”

Black fillings all over his mouth.

“Why the hell not,” says the wife.





In November of 1875, in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, pack ice started closing in on Oreius. The belts of open water grew farther apart; the leads shrank to black ribbons. Mínervudottír saw that the straighter leads seemed to stay open longer than the wavy, eel-shaped ones: was there something about the irregular margins that sped the knitting of the ice?