The Nix(112)

“That’s not exactly poetry, is it.”

“I think he proposed to snap me out of my funk. But it backfired. And the funk became more terrifying because it does not seem like something I am able to snap out of. Now Peter’s pretending it doesn’t exist, and spending a lot of time away. Hence London.”

Bethany refills her wineglass. Outside, the moon has risen over the jagged sweep of Brooklyn. Blinking lights in single file across the sky are aircraft descending into JFK from points south. In the kitchen there’s a very small framed drawing of a bull that might be an actual Picasso.

“Are you still mad at me?” you say.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I’m not anything at you.”

“Okay.”

“Did you know that Bishop never even read that story of yours? I never told him about it. I was furious at you on his behalf, but he never read it. Isn’t that funny?”

You feel relieved by this. That Bishop never knew that his secret was not a secret to you. That he had his privacy, at least, till the end.

Bethany grabs the wine bottle by the neck and walks into the living room and plunks herself down on the couch, doesn’t even turn on a lamp or anything, just plunks herself down in the semidarkness so that you can’t really see the plunking so much as you hear the crackling of the expensive leather (alligator, you guess) as Bethany comes to rest on top of it. You sit across from her on the very same couch you were sitting on earlier today listening to a hyper Bethany and Peter simulate a happy relationship. The only light in the apartment comes from the two little spots in the kitchen, and the glow of the surrounding skyscraper windows—not nearly enough to see by. When Bethany talks, her voice seems to come out of the void. She asks you about Chicago. About your job. What your job is like. If you enjoy it. Where you live. What your home looks like. What you do for fun. And you answer all her small-talk questions and while you’re talking she pours herself another glass of wine, and then another, swallowing the wine with the occasional audible gulp while saying “uh-huh” at the key moments in your stories. You tell her the job is fine except for the students, who are unmotivated; and the administrators, who are ruthless; and the location, which is suburban-drab; and come to think of it you don’t really like your job at all. You tell her you live in a house with a backyard that you never use and pay someone else to mow. Sometimes kids run through your backyard playing various games and you are fine with that and you see that as your contribution to community civics. Otherwise, you do not know your neighbors. You’re trying to write a book for which you’ve already been paid, which presents certain motivation problems. When she asks what the book is about, you say, “I don’t know. Family?”

By the time Bethany opens the second bottle of wine you get the sense she’s trying to gear herself up for something that requires courage and that the wine is helping her do this. She begins reminiscing, talking about old times, when you were kids: playing video games or playing in the woods.

“Do you remember the last time you came to my house?” she says. And of course you do. It was the night you kissed her. The last moment of real joy you felt before your mother left. But you don’t tell Bethany that part. You just say, “Yes.”

“My first kiss,” she says.

“Mine too.”

“The room was dark, like this one,” she says. “I couldn’t really see you. I could only feel you very close to me. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” you say.

Bethany stands—the couch announces it, the popping of the leather, the little suction sound releasing—and she comes over to you and sits next to you and she takes the glass from your hand and sets it on the floor and she’s very close now, one of her knees pressing into yours, and you’re beginning to understand about the lights and the wine.

“Like this?” she says, drawing her face to yours, smiling.

“It was darker than this.”

“We could close our eyes.”

“We could,” you say. But you don’t.

“You were about this far away,” she says, your cheeks almost touching now. You can feel the heat of her, the lavender smell of her hair. “I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “I pressed my lips out and hoped it was right.”

“It was right,” you say.

“Good,” she says, and she lingers there a moment, and you’re afraid to do anything or say anything or move or breathe, feeling like this whole moment is made of air and could scatter at the smallest agitation. Your lips are only a few inches from hers, but you do not lean in. The space between you is something she must resolve herself. Then Bethany says in a whisper, “I don’t want to marry Peter.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Can you help me not marry Peter?”

To help her not marry Peter, go to the next page…





And so you finally kiss her, and when you do you feel a great cascade of relief deep inside break through, and all your obsessing and pining and worrying and regret, and all the ways you’ve been haunted by this woman, and all the torture and self-loathing that you had failed to make her love you, they all seem to shatter on the ground. It feels like you’ve been holding up a wall of glass all this time and only now you realize it’s okay to let it fall. And fall it does, and it’s almost percussive the way it tumbles and breaks around you—you try not to flinch as Bethany kisses you, as she pulls at you with her hands and you have this powerful sense memory of kissing her when you were a child, how you were surprised that her lips were dry, that you didn’t know what to do except smash your face into hers, back when kissing was not a signpost along the way but rather the destination itself. But now you are both older and you’ve had all the relevant experiences and each of you knows exactly what to do with another body—which is to say you know that kissing is a kind of communication sometimes, and what you’re telling each other right now is that you both very much want more. And so you press into her and slide your hands around her waist and curl your fingers into the slight fabric of her dress and she tugs you closer by the collar and still you’re kissing—deeply, wildly, devouring each other—and you’re aware of your awareness of this, how you seem able to concentrate on everything and feel everything all at once: Your hands and her skin and your mouth and her mouth and her fingers and her breathing and the way her body responds to yours—these things don’t feel like separate sensations but rather like layers of a single greater sensation, that drift of consciousness that can happen when you’re entwined with another and it’s all going very well and it’s almost as if you know exactly what the other person wants and can feel her emotions as they shudder through her body as if they’re shuddering through your own, like your bodies have momentarily ceased to have edges and have become things without boundaries.