Vox(34)

All of a sudden, there’s a lump in my throat the size of a beach ball. I try to say “Ciao” around it, and what comes out has all the force of a mouse fart. My knees give way as the room spins around me, multiple Lorenzos and coffee makers and bookshelves, all swirling in a whirlpool of color and texture.

He catches me on the way down and props me in the large leather chair behind his desk, taking the smaller visitor’s chair for himself. “Nice to know I still make you weak in the knees, Gianna.”

In one reality, I recover completely from what women used to call la petite mort, stretch my neck to meet Lorenzo’s face, and wrap both arms around him. We kiss, slowly at first, then furiously. Then all hell breaks loose and I’ve got him on the desk or he’s got me on the desk or we’ve got each other under the desk. It’s fantastic and loud and wet and sweaty and perfect.

Then there’s the other reality, the one that’s actually happening, the one where I have precisely enough time to drag the plastic-lined wastebasket from its corner, line it up under me, and lose my breakfast into it with a very unsexy slosh.

All Lorenzo says is, “Wow.”

“I’ve gotta go,” I say, pulling myself up, using the desk for leverage. “Ladies’ room.”

I think the true test of a man is how he acts when a woman pukes in front of him, in his office, into his wastebasket. What Lorenzo did, right before he walked me to the door of the women’s restroom at the opposite end of the hall from my office, was smile. A “wow” and a smile, nothing more.

I love him for that.

“I’ll be fine. Just need a minute,” I say, pushing the door open and heading for the closest stall. The rest of my bagel and coffee comes up, and I flush it away before sitting on the toilet seat with my head between my legs and the bitter bile and stomach acid in my throat.

I never get sick, and I don’t have a sensitive gut, and I can’t remember the last time I puked.

Yes, I can.

The stainless steel box with its hinged lid and plastic liner is to my right, opposite the industrial toilet paper dispenser that could wipe the bottoms of a small country before it runs out. I don’t have anything to put in it, no carefully wrapped tampon, no rolled and taped napkin, not even a mini pad.

Oh, holy shit.

I’m forty-three years old. I have four kids, thanks to Patrick and his Irish virility. I had twins eleven years ago. And I know enough about reproductive biology to realize that my chances of having multiples are higher now than they were then.

I also know I’ve got a one-in-two chance of having another girl. Will they snap a word counter on her wrist the second she pops out? Or will they wait a few days? In any case, it will happen quickly, and I won’t have any more bargaining chips.

So I do what any woman in my position would do: I throw up all over again.





TWENTY-SEVEN




Lin is waiting for me outside the restroom door, her face painted with concern.

“You okay, honey?” she says.

“Fine. Except half of my breakfast is in his office.”

She puts an arm around my waist and leads me back to our hobbit hole, cleans a smudge of mascara with a wet wipe from the bottomless pit of her purse, and gets right to the point. “You put a rather literal definition on lovesick, Jean. And don’t pretend you have no idea what I’m talking about. Still got a thing for our Italian colleague?”

I sink into the task chair behind my desk. “It’s that obvious?” Now I’m wondering whether the entire department, including Morgan, was onto my regular meetings with Lorenzo in his office. “Who else knows?”

Lin leans in toward me, elbows on the desk between us. “If you’re worried about Morgan, don’t be. He’s an idiot, he’s self-absorbed, and he’s a guy. He wouldn’t recognize afterglow if someone poured a bottle of it on his head. I doubt he noticed your wardrobe change, either.” Her smile fades into a line, and the line becomes a frown. “But be careful. You don’t want Carl Corbin’s adultery wagon coming for you.”

“No,” I say, and feel sick all over again.

In our new, abnormal world, a surprising number of things are exactly as they used to be. We eat, we shop, we sleep, we send our kids to school, and we fuck. Only there are rules about fucking.

“How long has it been going on?” Lin asks.

“About two years, I guess.” There’s no sense in telling her I can point to the exact date when I first noticed Lorenzo’s hand on the satin wood of the music box, when I felt a pleasant electrical current run up and down my spine at the thought of that hand on my skin.

“Only before? Or after?”

I float away from her now, from the sterile functionality of our office to the cluttered crab shack in Maryland, its walls covered from floor to ceiling with marine-themed kitsch. A fishing net there, a bottled boat on the windowsill, a rusted anchor leaning against a wall in the corner. And a bed. It’s the bed I remember best because it was lumpy and squeaky and too narrow for both of us to lie on comfortably without overlapping limbs. I loved that bed.

We shared it only once after the Pure Movement went national, which is what Lin meant by Only before? Or after? I’d taken the Metro down to Eastern Market in early March to the cheese shop that used to be run by an elderly couple and now was the sole concern of the husband. I can’t remember what I was looking for, maybe smoked scamorza, maybe fresh ricotta. Or, maybe, I wasn’t looking for cheese at all.